ZooFall

by Lawrence Ambrose

"Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you."

  "Great minds think alike, I guess."

  He motioned her ahead of him into the nearest entrance. The floor was sandy and pockmarked with prints – all Nazrene, to Diana's eyes. Uneven stacks of the same brown boxes they'd encountered in the baboon camp towered on one end. She guessed perhaps half of them had been removed.

  "Food and water's over here."

  Diana hobbled after Gary Hanson toward a tall, spherical device on the end opposite the boxes. He pulled the middle of the two handles and then one on its right side. A dark chunk of something pushed out from that side that reminded Diana a lot of a bodily excretion. Still, she thought she detected a meaty smell. Her stomach's grumble seconded the notion.

  "And the other side is water." Gary yanked the handle on the left side and a clear stream of water gushed out. "See?"

  Diana had to restrain herself from leaping forward and diving under the water fountain. She was more thirsty than hungry. Gary extended the sausage-like substance to her. She sniffed it. The meaty odor was undeniable.

  "This is what the Nazrene ate?" she asked.

  "The Nazi what?"

  Diana smiled. "The monkey-creatures."

  "I guess." He shrugged. "I saw them carrying stuff out of here and thought I'd take a look."

  Diana nibbled at the "sausage." It tasted more like oatmeal mixed with hamburger than sausage. She took a bigger bite.

  "Not bad, huh?"

  "No."

  "Lucky we ran into each other, right?"

  Diana stopped herself from jamming the sausage into her mouth as Gary leered at her, doubtless drawing the usual adolescent inference. She limited herself to more lady-like mouthfuls.

  "You say you've been following them," she said. "Have you observed how they're treating the Jensens?"

  "All I've seen is the monkeys carrying them. They look kinda scratched up and frown-faced but seem to be hanging in there."

  Diana finished the meat. She moved over and pulled on the water lever. She couldn't budge it. Clearly intended for someone stronger than she was. Gary reached over and gave it a tug. Diana dropped to her knees, catching the precious fluid in cupped hands and slurping it up greedily.

  "You can see why the monkeys stuck around," he said. "The boxes have a bunch of stuff – rope, pouches, and flint they use for starting fires, I guess."

  The water stopped. Apparently, it delivered a set amount per crank. Diana got out her two water bottles and had Gary crank the device a couple of times to fill them and also squeeze out two more sausages for Zurzay. If the sausage was meant to feed the Nazrene, she could only hope their physiology wasn't too different.

  "I don't suppose you've noticed anything that looks like medical supplies?" she asked the youth.

  "Nope. But I haven't checked most of the boxes." He eyed her. "How bad is your pet hurt?"

  "He's not my pet." Diana eased up on her scowl. "I don't know. He caught a spear in his side. Not sure how far it went in."

  "Ouch. That could put a dent in your day."

  He followed Diana outside. The Nazrene had not reappeared at the forest's edge, but she'd been rather incautious staying inside the cylinder so long, counting on Zurzay to sound the alarm. For all she knew, the wolf might've fallen asleep...or worse. Diana stepped out far enough to see that her lupine-like friend was still upright, facing the forest, appearing alert and still clutching the rope.

  "If you're looking for medical supplies," said Gary, "there's a hospital maybe ten miles east of here."

  "What city? I don't even know where we are."

  "I don't, either. Not too far out from Minneapolis, I'm thinking."

  "What's the name of the hospital?"

  He shook his head, averting his eyes. "Didn't notice."

  "But you noticed it was a hospital."

  "Yup. Had a medical symbol on the sign out front."

  Diana gave him a look, but decided not to press it. "If Zurzay is up for it, we might head over there."

  "You sure he can fly? I watched you come in. He looked a little shaky."

  "No, I'm not sure." Diana bit back the irritation in her voice. Tension was mounting in her as she considered the more dire possibilities. "If he can't, we'll stay here."

  "The monkeys know you can pick 'em off in daylight. When it gets dark, that's when they might come, figuring you can't see 'em."

  "That did occur to me." Diana opened her mouth to loosen her tight jaw muscles. "I won't be leaving Zurzay, regardless."

  The boy nodded solemnly. "I get it. But if it's any help, I can see pretty good at night, 'specially if there's a moon."

  "How good is 'pretty good'?"

  Gary rolled his shoulders. "Maybe three times better than I could see before. Good enough to see the monkeys coming across this field, I'd say. Plus, I can smell 'em if the wind's right."

  "Do you know how good their night vision is?"

  "Far as I can tell, it's no better than a person's."

  Diana tried not to let her optimism overwhelm her. It wasn't as if he could help her aim her rifle at night, but it was better than nothing if it came to that.

  "We'll see where we're at as it gets darker," she said. "In the meantime, you said there's a hospital ten miles from here. Maybe you would consider running there and bringing back some medicine? How hard would that be for you?"

  Gary shifted his gaze away from hers uneasily. "Wouldn't even work up a sweat. Long as I eat and drink, I can run all day without getting tired."

  "Then what's the problem?"

  "Who said there's a problem?" He met her steady gaze for a moment before looking away again. He let out a growling sigh. "Okay. One problem. I can't seem to read anymore. That part of my brain doesn't work right now, I guess."

  "Oh." Diana softened her voice.

  "He's strong," said Gary. "I'll bet getting stuck with a little spear ain't gonna kill him."

  "I hope you're right. Let's see if he has an appetite." She raised her hand to Zurzay. "Coming up!"

  Diana grasped the rope awkwardly with one hand, hoping to avoid messing up the inside of her pack with the alien sausages, but no way could she climb back up with one arm.

  "Here," said Gary, holding out a hand. "I can take 'em up to him. Might be a good way to break the ice, you know?"

  Diana handed over the meat. The youth backed off several meters and launched himself in a cheetah-like sprint at the cylinder, leaping off one leg ten feet from its edge and sailing perhaps a third of the way up before using his momentum to scramble to the top. Gooseflesh crept down Diana's back. It was an amazing display of athletic prowess. On the downside, if Gary could do that, the baboons probably could, too.

  She hauled herself back up with considerably more effort. Zurzay accepted the boy's food offering with a dubious air, sniffing and turning the sausages in his hand before nibbling on one. Then he gobbled down both. Diana handed him one of her water bottles, which he also downed.

  "Shit," Gary murmured, drawing back from him. "Didn't realize he was so big. That is one creepy-looking motherfucker." He glanced at Diana. "If you'll pardon my French."

  She gave him a cool smile. "Lucky he doesn't know French."

  Chapter 11

  DAN WASN'T SURE WHAT day or what time it was – only that it was day. He'd been falling in and out of consciousness as well as in and out of his bed. And on and off the upstairs toilet, which he hadn't flushed in recent memory. Fortunately, his lack of food and drink limited his bodily output. Also, fortunate he was still in this world.

  He was coming up for another round of consciousness. His thoughts, the light in his eyelids, and his senses were growing clearer, more sharp-edged. He opened his eyes. The winged thing with the red and black-streaked blue eyes looming made Dan think of a succubus. He reached for the pistol at his side.

  "It okay," said the creature. "It me, Dan. Myth."

  Dan kept his fingers wrapped around his pistol. "Myth?" He coughed up a layer of sediment from
his lungs. "What the hell happened to you?"

  "I changed." Myth smiled, exposing triangular shark teeth. "Again."

  "God. You look like a queen bee with shark teeth."

  "Thanks."

  Dan laughed with mild pain under his breath. "How long have I been out?"

  "About a day and half."

  "What's happening?" He looked around groggily. "Diana hasn't come back?"

  "No, Dan."

  Dan sagged back on the bed with a sour gust of breath. He took inventory of his left forearm. His hand was a little pale and his forearm a slightly mottled pink. Not infected, then. The duct tape itched like a bastard, but he could live with that. He was able to flex his fingers.

  "I need to get up, get my shit together," he said. "Go after them."

  "Where would you go?"

  "Track the baboons." He breathed in his exasperation. "The Nazrene. Just as Diana and Penny are theoretically doing."

  "Are you strong enough?"

  "I'll have to be."

  He sat up. Not quite as painfully as the last couple of times, when every muscle and joint in his body seemed dead-set against movement. A long ways from being an ideal condition for a hike of indeterminable length through Zoo Land, but then maybe his muscles would loosen once he started walking? Maybe he'd regain his strength along the way? Did he have a choice?

  Dan slid to the edge of the bed and while waiting for the shifting room to stabilize he took a closer look at Myth's new shape. She appeared taller, more wiry, harder-muscled. Transparent, dragonfly-like wings lay folded in against her sides. Her black and red-streaked eyes reminded him of a spider's. Her face was still predominately feminine but had a sharper structure that struck Dan as fox-like. Her body – he realized now she wasn't wearing any clothes – was covered with a short, downy red-yellow fur that matched her overall pale-red skin-tone. Small breasts protruded through her chest hair. The same downy fur covered her head instead of normal human hair.

  "What you think about how I look?" Myth asked.

  Dan paused. Was it possible that she had a typical female vanity about her appearance? Or was she simply curious?

  "It's...interesting," he said. "You say you changed again...?"

  "I brought in Ekorake genes."

  "The killer fairies?"

  "Yes, Dan."

  "You sure that was a good idea?" When Myth didn't reply, he asked how she felt.

  "Much stronger. Lighter. More spring in body. Smell things better." Myth smiled almost shyly. "And I always wanted wings."

  Could be a good thing, Dan told himself. "Do you, uh, plan to change again?"

  "Only if there is benefit."

  With no fire going in the woodstove, Dan resigned himself with a sigh to a cold can of baked beans flecked with beef jerky. Myth sat across from him at the kitchen table, regarding him with an unblinking gaze.

  "Do you have any theory why they took my family instead of killing them?" Dan asked.

  "Use for mate."

  Dan's spoon paused before his open mouth. His mouth closed, and the spoon dropped back into the bowl of beans.

  "Did you say 'mate'?"

  "Yes."

  "But..." He swallowed the residue of beans clinging to his tongue. The small clump lost momentum halfway down his throat. "Those things...couldn't..." He swallowed hard. "They're a different species – an alien species – for God's sake!"

  "The Pack all-male. Need female. Mating parts same."

  The food in Dan's stomach turned to hard, jagged rocks. "But Donny's not female."

  "But young and soft. They may use as female or servant."

  Dan's hands slapped down on the table. He regretted it instantly as some beans sloshed out and a tsunami of pain rolled up his left forearm and burst between his eyes.

  "Okay, Dan?"

  Myth rose and braced one clawed hand against his shoulder. Dan jerked back, sending another branch of pain – this time through his neck.

  "What do you think, Myth? You just told me my wife and children are being used as sex slaves, for Christ's fucking sake!"

  "Sorry. Not understand everything how you feel."

  Damn right you don't. Dan gripped the edges of the table and stared at the spilled beans, horrific images forming in his mind. He closed his eyes. Steady. Can't help anyone if you lose it. The important thing was that his wife and son were probably still alive. If the Nazrene hadn't had some use for them, no matter how foul and repulsive, he'd be burying their bodies right now. Where there was life there was hope. He had to keep telling himself that.

  Dan picked up his spoon and forced himself to eat what remained in his bowl.

  PENNY HAD rushed the shot and the elk was fleeing. She caught up with it in the middle of a cornfield whose first shoots were inching out of the ground. A bullet in the head finished its spasmodic kicking and gasping. The idea of harming animals had once been anathema to her. She'd been a vegetarian in her former life, unable to articulate her reasons beyond angry, declarative sentences, but in her head she knew. They had no right to hurt other creatures just because they were different, just because they couldn't argue ethics with you. She'd been different, and they'd acted as if her beliefs were nonsense, as if she had no rights, too, because she couldn't argue with them. Her language had been math or the moves of games like chess. That didn't mean her ideas had no value. They were just too stupid to see that.

  But now she could see she hadn't been all that smart, either. All animals, including humans, preyed on each other. That was the natural order of things. And even the arrival of loads of unnatural animals hadn't changed that. It was her survival or theirs. She had the right to survive.

  She used her survival knife to slice through the hide and get to the meat. She'd read somewhere that organ meat had the highest density of nutrients, and maybe she'd dig for them later as a treat, but right now she was starving and wanted to get some meat in her squirming tummy.

  The first bite was heavenly. No food in her former life could compare with fresh, raw kill. Fruity, metallic, sweet, tart flavors burst on her tongue. A whole new universe of taste. Too bad it took the end of the world to experience this, but as Grandpa Dick had said, you gotta give up something to get something.

  Penny was so absorbed in her feast that she didn't notice the huge, grey-blue wolflike quadrupeds loping up behind her until they were thirty or forty feet away. She grabbed her rifle from the ground and spun to face them.

  Strangely, the five "wolves" had pulled up and were sitting on their haunches, regarding the girl with large, calm blue eyes. She sensed no hint of aggression in their stances. In fact, she had the impression they were showing her respect by maintaining their distance. Her finger eased off the trigger.

  "You guys hungry?" she called softly. "Work up an appetite killing all those mean little timber wolves?"

  She was startled when one of them issued a yodeling sound in response. It was kind of creepy-sounding, but not hostile. The more she stared at them, the more they reminded her of their old labs, Bernard and Bernice, other than being about three times their size, with chests and heads more like bears than dogs. Their curly grey-blue fur was really cute, though, she thought.

  Penny sliced off a slice of the elk's thigh and tossed it toward the center of the pack. It landed only a couple of feet from one of the creatures. Neither it nor any of its fellows batted an eye or made a move for it. They continued to regard her calmly. She cut off another piece and tossed it toward one of the other wolf-creatures. Still, none of them budged or even glanced at her generous offerings. They had eyes only for her. Penny suppressed a scowl.

  "Maybe you prefer teenage girl?"

  When her large canine guests gave no response, a chill passed through her. Maybe her joke wasn't that far off? The staring creatures were starting to get on her nerves. What were they waiting for? Penny raised her rifle.

  "Start eating," she growled, jabbing a finger at the meat, "or I'll start feeding you bullets!"

  As
if they'd been waiting for permission, the dogs snapped up the meat. But it wasn't the usual, snarling gorge-fest she'd expected: the creatures made a point of sharing the elk, biting off a piece and then sliding it toward one of their fellows like a polite family passing food around the table. She'd never seen anything like it before. A gob of bloody drool dropped at her feet, reminding her that her mouth was hanging open.

  "Gentlemen dogs!" she laughed. "Wait till I tell Diana about you!"

  The creatures stopped eating and for the first time gazed past her, their heads lifted to the sky. Penny turned with a puzzled frown in the new direction of their stares. A big, black, fluttering mass of the same triangular-shaped birds that had made her, Diana, and Zurzay hide in some trees yesterday was now approaching fast over a nearby woods.

  "Oh-oh," Penny murmured.

  The wolves took off, charging past her in huge, big-cat strides. Taking their clue, Penny fell into step behind them, nearly matching their pace. In the sky, the flock of triangle-creatures adjusted en masse to pursue them. A quick calculation convinced Penny that the "birds" would reach them before they reached the nearest woods dead ahead. She slowed a little, raising her rifle and popping off five shots into the center of their writhing mass. Some fell, but they might as well have been a few drops from a twenty-gallon bucket.

  She spotted her possible salvation: a wide black plastic pipe sticking out from the edge of a field. Somehow, she doubted the creatures would crawl after her in there, but if they did, she couldn't see that ending well for them.

  "Hey!" she yelled, pointing urgently to the culvert when the wolves glanced back at her. "Get in the pipe!"

  The things were on them – a dark, writhing blanket of snapping and tail-whipping creatures that up-close reminded Penny of giant, kite-shaped bats more than birds. She glimpsed rows of razor-like teeth in their short black faces, their three eyes a spooky, glowing shade of grey, as if they had lights inside their heads. Luckily, they shied away from her when she opened fire, joining the multitudes attacking her new wolf-bear friends.

  The giant wolf-bear-creatures weren't easy prey. They whirled and leaped and snapped their massive jaws, dropping the creatures in growing piles around them. The "bats" relied more on their tails in battle, driving what appeared to be small barbs on their ends into the wolves at every opportunity. At first, they didn't seem to have much effect, but as Penny raced to the culvert pipe, shooting down a couple of killer bats that swooped on her, she noted that her newfound friends were slowing. Were the tails poisonous like the fairy-things' stingers?