Neither one of them noticed the barred door had bounced back open an inch. The old safety latch on the seldom used cage hadn’t caught.
3
Harper
The shuttle bus pulled to a stop in the parking lot of the Piedmont Animal Sanctuary and as soon as the driver opened the door Harper Alexander sprang for the exit and was the first one out. The rest of the kids were right behind her, rushing for the gates to be the first in line. Mr. Baynard just shook his head at their exuberance to get inside the park the second it opened. It reminded him of his military days: Hurry up and wait. He waved the driver away and operated the wheelchair lift himself, a fine line of perspiration on his upper lip despite the cool morning. Murray Sanders took off as soon as his wheels hit the ground with a Thanks Mr. Baynard thrown over his shoulder. He was hurrying to grab his place in line the other were saving for him.
“Care to join us?” Baynard asked the driver. “I have enough passes to get you in too.”
The bus driver just grunted and waved him off.
“Nah, I’ve got stuff I need to do.” he said and pulled out his phone.
He was feeling lucky today. He had two hundred bucks left in his checking account and he was going to double it. Maybe triple it if Lady Luck held and the online poker game didn’t cheat him again.
“Suit yourself,” said Baynard, wincing at the sudden pressure behind his eyes as he joined his eager students near the head of the line.
“Ok, guys and girls. Everyone have their phones? Snack money?”
There was a chorus of excited acknowledgements as the gates swung open and the parks ticket taker slid open the window to his booth.
“Good, stay in touch.”
He had to raise his voice to be heard over their excited chatter. “Remember, study your animals. How they move, interact with their environment. That’s important. Many of them are not native to this country, so how they’ve adapted to their surroundings is part of your research. Sketches, photos, videos and any data you can collect will factor into your grade. Be thorough and have fun!”
“I’ll be around to observe each of you in a while. Now get out of here.” he yelled at the retreating kids and watched them scatter.
He could feel a killer migraine coming on, his head was throbbing and the light was hurting his eyes. He made his way towards the gift shop where he was sure he could find some cheap sunglasses, a bottle of water and surely, they carried aspirin.
Harper made a beeline for the giraffe enclosure. She had seen Bert once before with her parents on the guided tour. He was magnificent. Easily sixteen feet tall and in his prime at 15 years old. She stared up in awe at the kind but funny face of Bert while he surveyed the park. A staff member had answered all her questions and her parents nearly had to drag her away to keep up with the group.
He had come to Piedmont via Venezuela eleven years ago. A zoo outside of Caracas fell on hard times and began selling animals for big game hunts. The resulting uproar and outcry of animal activists around the world saw the facility shut down and all the surviving animals relocated to other zoos. Bert was lucky enough to find a home at Piedmont.
Harper had no problem with hunting, she understood how the money from sportsmen funded conservation and protected habitats. Careful management of wild game kept the population healthy. She came from a long line of outdoorsman but slaughtering tame zoo animals was just wrong.
Finding Bert this morning wasn’t hard. All she had to do was look up. She spotted him with his head up in a tree, pulling leaves into his mouth with his eighteen-inch purple tongue. Picking up her pace, she was soon standing a few feet away from the bull giraffe.
“Hi Bert, I’m Harper. I doubt you remember me, but I think you are amazing. If you don’t mind, I’m just gonna watch you awhile and take some notes and a few pictures.” she said.
The girls at school would snicker and make jokes if they were to see her now but Harper didn’t care. She didn’t care about most things teenaged girls obsessed over. Boys, clothes, music and social media didn’t dominate her life. Thirteen years old and easily the prettiest girl in school, she preferred comfort over fashion and usually had her nose in a book instead of someone else’s business.
She studied the fence that separated the walking path from the animals. It was eight-foot-tall and no one was watching and this might be her only chance before too many people arrived. She stuck her foot in one of the four-inch squares that made up the wire and started climbing. The ever-alert Bert abandoned his quest for the perfect leaf and stepped her way. Another foot higher, then another, she found herself at the top staring at his long neck. Bert lowered his head towards the girl, sensing no ill intent from the small creature with the tasty looking straw-colored hair. She felt the warm air expelled from his nostrils as he stared into her eyes mere inches away. Letting go of the fence with one hand, she raised her phone and snapped a selfie of her and the friendly giraffe. She giggled as he extended his long tongue and touched her hair with it. Deciding he didn’t care for the taste he pulled it back in. Girl and giant stared unblinkingly at each other for a few seconds. The magic of the moment was broken by the putt putting of a golf cart.
“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to get down from there, please.”
Harper climbed down as Bert returned to his foraging. She faced the man on the golf cart. His shirt said Derek on it and she knew there was a friendly smile just below the surface of the stern look he was giving her.
“I’m sorry. I’m his biggest fan. He gave me his autograph,” she said as she wiped giraffe drool off her cheek.
Derek tried to hold the frown but couldn’t. “It’s ok,” he relented. “I was more concerned about you falling than Bert eating you. Enjoy your day and try to stay on the ground. I’ve got a date with two hyenas, so I’m gonna trust you won’t try to steal my giraffe while I’m working.”
Harper laughed and gave him a wave as he motored away. Looking at Bert she smiled. “Now, where were we?”
Harper followed him as he ambled along, sampling various trees at random. She made rough sketches of him foraging and tried to capture the way his tongue curled out to snag the leaves. He always picked the ones farthest away, the highest he could reach and she wondered if there was reason for that. She made a note to research it further and laughed as his behind erupted in one of his famous thundering farts. She took more photos, added detail to her sketches and carried on a one-way conversation with him.
She looked up when she saw Derek motoring as fast as the golf cart would go; he passed her with a quick wave and left her in a cloud of dust. She shrugged and went back to writing observations in her notepad.
A few minutes later, Bert whipped his head toward the front entrance as the sound of screams and honking horns shattered the stillness of the morning. His mane bristled, and he snorted at the disturbance. Harper gathered up her things, told Bert she’d be back and headed to see what all the fuss was about.
4
Vanessa
Vanessa Talley made her way through the sanctuary chewing her ever present bubble gum. She blew a bubble as big as her face and inhaled it quickly when it popped, avoiding having to peel it off her cheeks. At ten years old, she was the youngest of Mr. Baynard’s zoology group, but she held her own with the older kids. She had already been advanced a year ahead in school once and was smart enough to skip another. She could graduate at 16 and be in college shortly thereafter. Her dad, however, didn’t want her to grow up too fast and always be the youngest of her class. She breezed her way through school, turned assignments in ahead of time and finished whole textbooks while her classmates were in the early chapters.
She thought she looked older than her ten years, she certainly felt it. Her high cheekbones and confident poise garnered no doubt that she was a descendent of African royalty somewhere in her lineage. She was proud of her ancestry and her one goal in life was to help end hunger in poverty-stricken nations through smart resource management. Poaching an
imals provided one meal one time. Proper management meant many meals many times. Her father called her idealistic but she felt that part of the answer lay in the ostrich. Ugly to most, but beautiful in her eyes, she adored the species and its potential to improve lives. She had argued her point with her father and Mr. Baynard more than once. It was a bird that could adapt to practically any environment found on the African continent. They were low maintenance with a highly adaptive digestive system. A female ostrich could lay up to sixty eggs a year and it was an egg that could weigh five pounds! The meat was protein rich, the skin yielded high quality leather, and the feathers were a market in themselves. There was also its significance in African folklore; the ostrich was considered the King of the Birds. They also possessed a set of four-inch claws at the end of their feet that could gut a lion so the highly social flocks of the giant birds were fully capable of defending themselves. She would sum up her argument by saying it was like having a velociraptor that gave you the world’s biggest omelet for breakfast. Her passion made it hard to argue with her.
Her goal today was to spend some quality time with Ziggy, a female ostrich. Ziggy toured for a while with one of the last traveling circuses in the country. When her owner retired to Florida, she spent a couple of years entertaining children on the boardwalks at the beach.
Her trainer used a laser pointer to paint a target and using her massive beak and long neck she busted piñatas full of candy for the enthralled children, popped balloons floating in the air and occasionally took an adventurous child for a ride on her back as she ran down the beach, clucking and chirping.
When her trainer passed away, Ziggy was willed to Piedmont with a large endowment to make sure she was always cared for and could spent the rest of her days entertaining children and adults alike.
Vanessa watched her walk along the fence hunting for snacks. She darted her head quickly and gulped down the unwary cricket. She was an efficient hunter and her eyes, the largest of any land mammal, easily picked out the small prey that she loved to munch on. Vanessa shot some video of her hunting and narrated along remarking on the powerful legs and graceful motion. No effort was wasted as the large bird sniped cricket after juicy cricket.
The sound of crinkling cellophane brought Ziggy to full focus on the girl. She knew that sound. Ziggy loved popcorn. She anxiously awaited the toss and when it came, she snatched the fluffy treat out of the air, ready for more. Vanessa tossed her two at once and Ziggy snagged them both. She shared the bag with the ostrich, glad for the time she had with the magnificent strider all to herself before the park became crowded. She tossed Ziggy the last piece but as she darted for it, her head swiveled toward the front gate when the screaming started. The popcorn fell forgotten to the ground.
Vanessa grabbed her stuff and headed for the gate as Ziggy kept pace on the opposite side of the fence. Her daddy taught her to always be aware and ready for danger. She had no idea what could be going on, but she was going to find out.
5
Swan
Swan Michaels skipped along the tour route, stopping to pull a pretty yellow flower from the wild patch growing beside the road. She tucked it over her ear and gave a quick apology to Mother Earth. She recited aloud the poem she was working on about all the people and all the animals living in harmony with each other. It wasn’t very good, she thought, but whatever, it was a work in progress.
Swan was the child of globally aware nature lovers who were quick to sign a petition or attend a protest for causes they believed in. Her mother was a spokeswoman for the Meskwaki Indian tribe and her father was an environmental management tech who had been smitten with her from the first time he’d met her on the reservation. They both encouraged her activism. Her long raven colored hair hung straight and glossy. She had a carefree, thrift shop chic look that she managed to pull off with her Ugg boots, Save the Whales t-shirt and knee ripped jeans. A strict vegetarian, except for the occasional chicken nugget, she sometimes felt guilty about all the lettuce that gave its life for her salads.
She’d begged her parents for a trip to observe pandas in the wild for her upcoming thirteenth birthday. Her passion was conservation and she had inherited some her parent’s radicalism. When she got older, she wanted to take on Japanese whalers, big game hunters, loggers, real estate developers, oil company pipelines and anyone else who might harm an animal.
In her young mind, it was perfectly natural for animals to prey on one another, just not man. Man had no business interfering with the natural order of things. She had been proud to carry a homemade sign outside of a meat packing plant, protesting the wholesale slaughter of animals and the deplorable conditions in which those animals lived out their short lives. Sure, people had to eat too, but she believed there had to be a better way. More harmonious and in tune with nature. She believed strongly in spaying and neutering to prevent unwanted litters. She loved baby animals and hated to see them discarded by careless owners and she cried every time a commercial came on TV about animal cruelty.
The walls of her room were covered in posters of cute animals and she sent ten percent of her allowance to PETA without fail every week. Most weekends she volunteered at the animal shelter and would have adopted all of them if she could. In an ironic twist of fate, her mother was allergic to dogs and her father, cats. She was relegated to caring for a solitary goldfish named Terry, but Terry lived as well as any goldfish ever had, so there was that.
Her biggest passion though was wolves. She loved them! The pack mentality and the mating for life: It was so romantic. All those dumb ranchers out west raising a stink about a few missing sheep drove her nuts. They were wolves! What else were they supposed to eat? Personally, she couldn’t imagine eating a fluffy little lamb, but wolves needed meat and more importantly, wolf cubs needed meat. They were so cute! It was the circle of life and that was cool with her. Mother Earth knew what she was doing.
Swan reached her destination and stared through the enclosure at the magnificent male Timber Wolf laying in the shade. His eyes were alert and darting as he surveyed his surroundings and kept an eye on his mate as she fed on a chunk of raw meat. She admired their thick silvery gray coats and the large canine teeth. Sinewy limbs built for speed and endurance. Graceful and effortless in their motions, they were truly apex predators and she loved everything about them. It saddened her to see them in their enclosure, even though it was very nice by any zoo standards. They should be free to run wild and hunt. Zero was definitely an Alpha and with his mate, Lucy, by his side, he would easily rule over any pack.
Zero and Lucy had been born in different petting zoos thousands of miles apart but were together now, mates for life. She snapped a few photos with her phone and posted it to her Instagram account. Later in the day, a handler would appear and lead them out to greet visitors. Despite their size and the sharpness of their teeth, the two were as gentle as puppies. They had been born in captivity as had their parents and their parents before them. They’d never known the wild and were as friendly as any family dog. Later the crowds would come but for right now she had them all to herself.
Inspired she pulled out her notebook and started writing bad poetry about the majestic hunters. “Now, what rhymes with wolf?” She asked herself.
After several minutes of deliberation and eraser chewing, she decided to file the poem away for later. Great poetry couldn’t be rushed.
Honking horns and what sounded like a scream broke the silence and Zero stood quickly and looked toward the front of the zoo. Hackles raised and lip curled, he let out a low growl. Lucy moved in beside him, guarding his flank and protecting her mate and there was a low rumble in her throat too. They didn’t seem so cute and cuddly anymore as Swan snapped another photo of the two regal animals ready for battle. She was surprised but pleased to see the wild in them come out. She had kind of hated that they seemed so docile and gentle, they were wolves after all.
She gathered up her bag and gear. She had all day to visit with them and whatever the di
sturbance was, it sounded serious. People were so stupid sometimes, she thought. Animals didn’t engage in petty behavior; if there was a problem, they solved it right then and there. They ate when they were hungry, they drank when they were thirsty and they mated when they wanted to mate. They didn’t fight for petty reasons but if they did, they fought to kill. Only people got angry over little things that didn’t matter.
6
Annalise and Tobias
The twin brother and sister duo of Tobias and Annalise Richter made their way through the sanctuary eating the snow cones they had purchased at the snack bar. Pale blue eyes, hair so blonde it appeared almost white and alabaster skinned, they were an eye-catching pair. They evoked thoughts of elven children from some frozen fairy realm. Tall and slender, elegant in their movements, they had an air of aloofness as if they were visitors to this world and not just a couple of twelve-year olds from Iowa. They were an odd pair, preferring each other’s company to that of others, quick to finish the other’s sentences and communicating at times with just their facial expressions. They had the same uncanny bond that most twins shared and their ability to sense each other’s thoughts seemed like telepathy at times.
According to their online genealogy research, they were descendants of the Nordic peoples. Their Scandinavian forefathers were Vikings and explorers. Mighty warriors and fearless women. They were proud that their ancient ancestors were the first people to set foot on the continent of North America, not Christopher Columbus as so many people erroneously believed. They preferred to think of themselves as children of the Norse God of Thunder, Thor instead of Dennis and Tina Richter. Not to be confused with Thor from the comics and movies, although Annalise thought he was hot.
The Feral Children [A Zombie Road Tale] Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 3
