by Bryan Chick
Dazed, Richie forced himself to stand. The visitor area was perhaps two hundred feet long and twenty feet across. One wall consisted of the cage bars; the other was colorful brick. When he grabbed the steel door, trying to swing it shut and lock the angry rhino out of the cage where Lee-Lee still lay, it didn’t budge, and he realized it was dangling at an angle, its top hinge broken and its bottom jammed against the ground.
The rhino snorted and swung around, and Richie took off running into the visitor area to keep the rhino’s attention away from the helpless Lee-Lee. He ran past marble benches and tall ficus trees in weighty ceramic pots. The floor began to rumble, and he realized the rhino was bearing down on him again. As Richie dove off to one side, the animal charged past before coming to a quick halt.
He moved to the far side of a bench, putting it between him and the rhino, which paced forward, tiles cracking beneath its heavy hooves. A second later, it charged again. Richie jumped aside just as its snout flung the bench into the air, where it spun and crashed into the steel bars. The rhino turned and trampled a ficus tree, dirt spilling out and ceramic pieces clinking against the tiles.
Richie ran, uncertain about everything. A door stood in the far wall of the visitor area, but it was surely kept locked, and even if it wasn’t, he couldn’t lead the rhino outside.
As the ground began to tremble again, Richie lost his balance and fell.
CHAPTER 32
THE BIZ WITH BLIZ
Megan stood frozen, watching the guard. The walkie-talkie hovered inches from his face. As his lips curled to form his first word, the black box shot out of his hand, struck the floor, and dropped its battery pack. The guard glanced at the suddenly distant walkie-talkie, then his hand. Before he could react, his head rocked to one side and he toppled over, banging against a wall of steel bars. He slipped to the ground and lay there in a knot of twisted limbs, unconscious.
Megan stared, dumbfounded.
A girl’s voice came from beside the fallen guard, “Don’t just stand there . . . get your bear!”
Megan realized what had happened. Sara. She’d slipped down the hall undetected and leveled the person who was about to radio in what he saw.
The guard’s legs suddenly sprang feetfirst into the air. His body turned like a snake’s, then he began to slide down the floor toward Megan, Sara dragging him by his ankles.
“C’mon!” Sara ordered. “Get Blizzard out so I can lock up this clown!”
The gate squealed as Megan shoved it all the way open.
Blizzard stood and nearly slipped on the straw-covered floor. Snarling, he took a nervous step to one side, his head hung low.
“Blizzard,” Megan said, “it’s me!”
The powerful polar bear let out a slow growl. His gaze was fixed on something toward the front of his cage, and when Megan looked over her shoulder, she realized what was wrong. It appeared that the guard was somehow sliding down the hall on his back.
Megan quickly opened one portal to send her chameleons back, but the noise of the zipper startled Blizzard more, and he charged for the open door, knocking her aside. The guard’s legs dropped to the ground as Sara was struck, and then Blizzard plowed up the aisle. In seconds, he was gone.
“Get him!” Sara shouted.
Megan jumped to her feet and stumbled over the Specter after she headed out of the cage. She wondered why Sara wasn’t following, and then realized she still needed to lock up the guard.
Megan heard a door bang open just before she turned in a new direction. Thirty feet away, Blizzard had charged out into the night, alone and afraid, and full of dangerous power.
CHAPTER 33
THE MONITORS, THE MIRAGE
Frank Redford stepped out the front door of the security building, jumped down the steps two at a time, then hurried across the sidewalk. In the fifteen years that he’d been a security guard at the Waterford Zoo, he’d never experienced a single break-in.
Until now.
Seconds ago, he’d seen someone standing near camera fourteen. A girl. A girl with tall, bushy hair. In the grainy, black-and-white monitor, she’d looked . . . strange. Ghostly, somehow.
Frank stripped the baton off his hip and moved into the area that camera fourteen monitored. The girl wasn’t there. He turned left, right. Was it possible that he’d imagined her in the video? She’d seemed so ghostly—could he say for certain that she’d actually been there? Maybe a spot had appeared on the screen, some type of interference or something. It sometimes happened with the old cameras. Maybe his tired eyes had imagined a person.
He looked all around a final time, then holstered his baton. Fifteen years with no break-ins—why was he being so jumpy?
As he turned to head back to his post, his security cap suddenly slipped off the back of his head. He spun around and saw it lying on the sidewalk, a dark oval among the shadows.
“What in the world . . .”
He looked around again. The only movement was the soft sway of tree branches. There was no one, especially no ghostly girl.
He swept up the cap by its brim and put it in its proper place. As he turned to go, his cap tipped forward, slipped across his face, and tumbled down his chest before landing flat on the ground.
He pulled his baton and spun around again, fully expecting to see the girl with the big hair. He turned left, right, left again. The baton trembled in his hand. Grumbling, he scooped up his hat and pulled it so far down on his head that his ears curled outward. He headed back to the security building—a bit quickly, he realized. When he got to the door and tried to turn the knob, it wouldn’t budge. Locked. When he reached for the key chain on his hip, the familiar clink and rattle didn’t come.
Frank Redford’s keys were gone.
He cocked his baton again. No one was around. When he tried to ask, “Who’s there?” the words wouldn’t come because his breath was stuck in his throat.
He plucked his wallet from his jacket and opened it. Inside one of the leather pockets was an emergency key for the shack—all the guards carried one. Frank quickly pulled it out, jabbed it into the slot, and pushed his way inside, locking the dead bolt behind him, grateful that this lock only opened from the inside. Footsteps pounded up the outside stairs and then the door handle shook in his hand.
Someone was out there.
As Frank rushed over to get a walkie-talkie, his gaze happened upon the rows of monitors on the wall, and he saw something in camera nineteen that made him halt. A polar bear was charging across the open zoo yard. And in camera twenty-five, a rhino was out of its exhibit.
Frank flung open a steel cabinet and snatched a walkie-talkie off a shelf. He held it to his face and pressed a button.
“Adam—it’s Frank.”
He waited, the walkie-talkie trembling in his hand.
“Adam, come in!”
No answer. Something was wrong.
“Troy!” he said. “Pete! You there? I can’t. . . .” His voice trailed off as he noticed the polar bear running past the zoo carousel.
A staticky voice came through the speaker. “Come back.”
Frank realized the room was spinning, and he forced air in and out of his lungs. “Guys—we got . . .” He could hardly bring himself to say the words. “Two animals loose. A rhinoceros and a polar bear.”
A chuckle came through the speaker. “No elephants? You sure camera twelve is clear?”
“Guys—I’m not joking! This is real!”
When the airwaves stayed quiet, Frank realized he was believed.
“I’m near the rhino exhibit,” Pete said. “I can be there in five minutes.”
“Copy that,” Frank said. “Troy?”
“Where is it now? The bear, I mean.”
“Near the carousel. I’m not picking him up on the cameras right now.”
“I’m on my way.”
Frank nodded, forgetting that no one could see him.
“Frank . . .” Troy said, “are these the animals the Clarksville Zoo brou
ght us?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said, worried about the same thing. “They . . . they could be.”
A pause, and then Troy’s voice again, more serious than ever: “Frank—you better call the cops.”
“Roger. I’ll do that right now.”
As he set down his walkie-talkie, he did a double take at the monitor for camera twenty-five. Someone was in the rhino exhibit. A kid—a kid with a red winter hat.
As Frank reached for the phone to dial 911, something crawled onto his desk. Some type of lizard—a chameleon. It was followed by another, and another, until dozens appeared.
Frank cursed under his breath. As he took a step back, he felt something pulling on his pants, and he looked down to see countless chameleons crawling up his legs. He screamed and swatted at them, again and again.
On the ground around him were hundreds of chameleons. Frank glanced toward the main door and realized they were coming through a mail slot.
He felt a tug on his jacket—the chameleons were past his waist now. He swatted a few away, but there were too many. They crawled onto his chest and over his shoulders, their claws pricking his bare neck. He looked down again and screamed at what he saw.
The chameleons were gone.
And so was his body.
Frank ran then. It was all he could think to do. He grabbed the door, pulled, and stepped onto the porch which, like his body, was no longer there even though he could feel it beneath him.
Nothing made sense anymore, and Frank continued to run. After a few seconds, his foot slipped on an icy patch and he fell. As he struggled to get up, he noticed his body was visible again, but now it was covered in long hair, like an animal’s.
To his left, an administrative building was bathed in the light from a tall lamppost. Frank ran to one of its windows and stared into it, barely able to believe what he saw: the skin around his eyes and nose and mouth was black and leathery; he had deep, upturned nostrils and thin lips; and the rest of his head was covered in thick black hair.
Frank looked like an ape.
The world began to spin. Frank went hot, and then cold. He stopped moving, and then collapsed onto his back. The starry sky began to narrow and narrow, and beneath the sudden hum in his ears, he was able to make out two voices.
“At least we got this one,” one said.
“Does it matter?” the other asked. “The damage is done.”
The hum stopped, the starry sky disappeared, and Frank momentarily left the world, glad for it.
CHAPTER 34
THE TRAP IN JELLY ALLEY
Noah followed Ella down a dark hall, occasionally reaching out to ensure she was still near. Though Noah couldn’t see Tank and Hannah, he was certain that they were still helping Tameron along. Evie led them through a corridor, and then another, and then Fish Foyer appeared. As Noah stepped toward the intersection, one in which he knew Evie had turned right, he heard a loud rumbling in the dark corridor straight ahead and looked up to see three animals charge around a corner. A lion, a tiger, a rhinoceros—but with red eyes and bulging muscles. They looked monstrous, and Noah realized they’d been poisoned by DeGraff, just like the sasquatches and the monkeys that had invaded his room.
When Noah tried to run, he tripped on Ella and tumbled to the ground. He glanced up and saw the striped face of the tiger, the mangy mane of the lion, and the thick horn of the rhino, which was slicing through the vines dangling from above. The animals had already closed in.
Ella quickly reached under his arm and hoisted him up, but before Noah could get aside, something hooked his leg and he was hurled off his feet as the animals charged by. His head thumped the floor and stars streaked across his vision. He looked up: five yards now separated him from where he’d been standing. The rumble had stopped and the animals, who were behind Noah and Ella now, were turning around, their bodies colliding, their wide rumps smashing out a few aquariums. Noah sucked back a deep breath and kept perfectly still. The animals still couldn’t see him, not with—
His thoughts stopped. On the floor, something was skittering toward him. A chameleon. He saw a second, a third, a fourth. As one stepped onto his hand, he realized he was visible. The chameleons had fallen off him when the animals had knocked him over.
Something soft and fluffy bumped against the side of his face—one of Ella’s earmuffs. She quickly helped him back to his feet, saying, “C’mon, Noah! Stand!”
As Noah took off running, the rumble of the animals started again. The floor began to quake and tremors carried up his legs. When the two scouts tried to turn down the corridor Evie and the others had taken, they were met with a steel wall which had somehow closed off their escape route. Noah, stunned, could hear someone pounding on the other side—Tank or one of the Descenders.
“This way!” Ella called out.
They tore off straight down the corridor with the mutated animals giving chase, their grunts and footfalls echoing off the hard glass walls. Remembering he was still visible, Noah unzipped his portal pocket, ordering a fresh batch of chameleons onto him. The two friends followed a bend and continued on, walls of aquariums blurring past and bugs crunching beneath their feet.
Noah glanced back and saw eyes glowing red in the dim light. The animals, he realized, were gaining ground on them.
“Go!” he commanded. “Faster, faster!”
They followed another turn and emerged in a new hall. Toward the end of it stood three figures—hulking, upright creatures that could only be sasquatches. A nearby torch made them glow orange. The sasquatches were blocking their escape.
Ella’s screams echoed in the narrow space.
Noah realized he couldn’t hear the rumble of the animals, and he glanced back to see that they’d come to a stop. Perhaps fifty yards divided the animals from the sasquatches, with the scouts somewhere in the middle.
“Ella—stop!” Noah said, and she did, so suddenly that Noah ran into her back.
“What are they doing?” she hollered.
Noah glanced up and down the hall. On one end, the sasquatches were standing side by side, their gargantuan shoulders touching, and on the other end, the animals were gathered, perfectly still.
“What are they waiting for?” Ella asked.
Steel walls suddenly sprang out from the walls on both sides of Noah and Ella, blocking off their attackers and confining the scouts to a space that was perhaps twenty yards long.
“What’s happening?” Ella squealed.
The normal walls had rows and rows of intact aquariums full of colorful, glowing jellyfish. Along the corridor ceiling, stringy seaweed dangled, and Noah realized they were in the counterpart for the Clarksville Zoo’s Jelly Alley.
Noah ran to one steel divider and slammed his shoulder against it. The wall didn’t budge. As he rejoined Ella, glass shattered somewhere and she screamed. An aquarium along the bottom of one wall had broken and water was pouring into the sectioned-off corridor as if from a hole in a dam. The swirling flood quickly covered the floor and then rose past their ankles.
The scouts paced. Ella was muttering something under her breath, practically whimpering. The flood showed no signs of slowing, and Noah realized the broken aquarium connected to another place full of water—water that was being drained to Jelly Alley to drown the two of them.
Noah and Ella had fallen into one of DeGraff’s traps.
CHAPTER 35
RICHIE AND THE RHINOS
The charging rhino was only a few feet away from Richie, its snout low, its horn aimed straight ahead. The floor quaked and shards of tile burst into the air. Just as Richie prepared for the worst, the rhino suddenly fell onto its side and slid past, its massive hooves just missing him. It crashed into a marble bench and ripped it from the floor. Standing in the rhino’s former place was another, bigger rhinoceros, and Richie immediately recognized him. Little Bighorn.
Richie jumped to his feet and moved in behind his animal friend, and the floor shook as the other rhino got up. Little
Bighorn stepped forward and came horn to horn with the rhino, which stood its ground for a few seconds and then slowly walked off, its head hung low. When it dared to glance back, Little Bighorn grunted and it quickly looked away.
With a breath of relief, Richie touched Little Bighorn’s side and then quickly remembered Lee-Lee.
“C’mon!” he said, and he took off running.
Little Bighorn followed him into the cage, where Richie squatted beside the Specter, who was now on her hands and knees, her wet hair dangling around her face.
“You okay?”
Lee-Lee nodded and rose to her knees. Around her, a few chameleons were crawling in the wet dirt, their eyes shifting nervously. “He was in one of the caves,” Lee-Lee said when she saw Little Bighorn standing behind him. “Asleep, I guess.”
Richie nodded. As he stood, he helped Lee-Lee up. Then he patted Little Bighorn’s side. “We got to go.”
The huge rhinoceros understood what this meant, and he lowered himself to the ground. Richie climbed into the front spot on his back, and Lee-Lee took a seat behind him.
“Hold on to me,” Richie said as Little Bighorn came to his feet, and Lee-Lee’s arms wrapped around his stomach.
Little Bighorn trotted across the exhibit. At the rear door, he abruptly stopped and perked up his ears. Richie heard something just beyond the exit. Soft crunches—feet coming down on crisp autumn leaves.
One of Lee-Lee’s arms let go, and a second later Richie felt his portal pocket open and then the pad of tiny feet as dozens of chameleons streamed onto him and Little Bighorn. Parts of the rhino began to disappear—but was there time?
The crunching sound grew louder, and then the door flew open, revealing a security guard. His baton was raised, and he seemed ready to strike at anything. He came to a sudden stop and turned his head to listen to something.
