Secrets and Shadows

by Bryan Chick

  As the scouts headed down one of the tunnels, Noah said, “Okay, I guess we find Daisy.”

  “Which one is she?” asked Ella.

  “She’s a gorilla—that’s all I know. I’m hoping she’ll recognize us.”

  The scouts followed the tunnel through several winding turns and soon found themselves near the middle of Metr-APE-olis. Here a gorilla pushed off its grassy seat and hoisted itself into the air. Then it dropped forward onto its knuckles, balancing on its hands and feet. Sniffing the air, the gorilla fixed its stare on the scouts, swaying softly from side to side.

  In the tunnel, the scouts halted. Noah said, “That’s got to be Daisy.”

  “Yeah . . .” Ella rapped her knuckles against the tunnel. “But what are we supposed to do about this?”

  Noah looked up and down the glass. He realized that it consisted of small segments joined together by seams. He slowly walked down the tunnel, stroking his fingers along the wall.

  “Knowing what we know about the Clarksville Zoo,” he said, “how could we get to the other side of this glass?”

  It was Richie who answered. “Maybe from outside the building?”

  “I’m not so sure.” Noah continued to slide his finger-tips along the glass. When he had gone about thirty feet away from his friends, he stood still and concentrated his touch against one of the seams. “Hmmm . . .”

  “What?” asked Megan. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking about how creative our friends are.” He reached over his head and ran his hand down the vertical seam. Then he pointed to a seam on his left, only a few feet away, and said, “Right here—this edge and that one. Don’t you think they’re pretty close?”

  The scouts peered in both directions. All the other sections were more than twenty feet wide.

  Noah reached his arms out and touched both seams at the same time. “When the Secret Society first built this tunnel, they made this piece really small.”

  The scouts gathered around him and felt the glass wall. Meanwhile, Daisy knuckle-walked toward them. She stopped about twenty feet away from the tunnel and faced the scouts, still on her hands and feet. Then she shook the tension out of her shoulders, tipped her head, and locked eyes with Noah. With a snort and a grunt, she leaned forward, bracing herself.

  Noah dropped his arms and said, “Uhhh . . . guys? I think we better back up.”

  “Why?” said Richie.

  Daisy lurched forward. On all fours, she charged the glass, her furred muscles shuddering.

  “Move!” Noah shouted. He wrapped his arms around his friends and pushed them away from the wall. Richie tripped over his own flashy feet and fell in a heap.

  Daisy dropped her shoulder forward and crashed into the tunnel, directly between the two close-together seams. The wall shook, knocking her backward. She regained her stance and walked back to her former spot, where she turned, pounded her chest, and dropped to her knuckles once more. She snorted and fixed her stare on the glass.

  Richie jumped up and darted behind Ella. Peering over her shoulder, he said, “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “It won’t be the first time you’ve used me as a human shield,” said Ella.

  Daisy dropped her head, charged, and rammed the tunnel again. This time the glass segment did more than just shake—this time it rose into the air, and tipped up and back, as if hinged to the ground behind them. It lifted two feet, three feet, and finally stopped four feet above the ground. Daisy stuck her head into the opening and roared, revealing the pink cavity of her mouth and the sharp points of her stained fangs. She struck her fists against her chest and cast a hard stare at the scouts.

  “Uhhh . . .” Ella said, “you never really get used to this kind of thing—gorillas opening secret passages and stuff.”

  “She’s letting us in,” said Noah. “C’mon—let’s go.”

  He ducked his head and slipped through the open wall. The other scouts followed. As Richie passed Daisy, he brushed his shoulder against hers. The gorilla grunted and showed her teeth.

  “Oops!” Richie squeaked. He raised his hands and swung his body away from her. “My bad, my bad.”

  Seconds after the scouts exited the tunnel, the elevated wall fell closed again, snapping into place along the seams. The scouts turned and watched Daisy. She strode up to them, sniffed the air, and batted her eyes.

  “I guess . . . I guess you know who we are,” said Megan. “Mr. Darby said you’d be able to help us.”

  Daisy didn’t react.

  Snapping each syllable out, Richie said, “We—need—in—side—Se—cret—Zoo.”

  The gorilla furrowed her brow. She tipped her head to one side and stared at Richie, as if trying to figure out what was wrong with him.

  “Nice job, Richie,” Ella commented. “It’s good to have you along to bridge the language gap.”

  Daisy backed away from the scouts, stopping at a tree full of chimps. For a moment, she simply stared at the four friends, as if waiting for something. Then she hammered her fists against her chest, startling the scouts off their feet. She turned and walked off, her big rump swaying.

  “Where’s she going?” Megan asked.

  “No idea,” answered Noah. “But let’s follow her.”

  Daisy led the scouts to a flat, grassy spot between two trees. Five tire swings dangled from the branches, their ropes disappearing into the dense foliage overhead.

  Daisy knuckle-walked to one of the tires and gripped it in her mighty hands. Grunting, she gave the tire a shake. She stared straight at the scouts.

  “Uh-oh,” said Richie. “Anyone thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “The tires—they’re the way into the Secret Zoo,” said Megan. “But . . . how?”

  Walking to one of the swings, Noah said, “There’s one way to find out.” He coiled his fingers around the rope and slipped his legs inside the tire. Nothing happened, but Daisy jumped up and down excitedly.

  “C’mon, guys,” said Megan as she walked over to another swing. Ella followed. The girls stepped into two tires, seating their rear ends against the rubbery inner circles.

  Richie didn’t move.

  “C’mon, Richie,” Megan urged. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “You know . . . I could always wait here. Maybe I could—”

  “Richie!” Ella snapped.

  “Okay, okay!”

  Each of the scouts was now seated in a tire swing. Noah’s and Megan’s tires dangled from one tree, and Richie’s and Ella’s from the other. The tires swayed softly back and forth, making the overhead branches creak. The expanse of Metr-APE-olis suddenly felt empty and quiet—a place for echoes.

  Ella said, “Ummm . . . in case you guys haven’t noticed, nothing’s happening.”

  “Maybe we need to swing,” Noah suggested.

  To get the tire rocking, Noah dropped his back and kicked his legs forward. As the swing began to move, Daisy dashed over and stopped it.

  “Or,” Noah added, “maybe not.”

  Noah realized that Daisy was staring at a rope bridge above them. He followed her gaze. A chimp ran across the wobbly planks, its shoulders seesawing, and jumped into the attached hut. Daisy let out what seemed to be a grunt of satisfaction.

  From the hut came a screeching sound, like a lever being worked into place, and all at once the tire swings dropped a few inches. Noah peered overhead but couldn’t see anything through the leaves.

  Then he heard a second squeal—another lever had been thrown. Immediately, the ground dropped out from under the scouts’ feet. Four square hatches had opened, one beneath each of them, like trapdoors. They gave way to dark caverns in the earth. Noah watched as small rocks soundlessly tumbled into the void beneath his feet.

  Noah glanced at Richie. Wide-eyed and pale, his friend was staring into the empty hole beneath him. Just above the pit dangled Richie’s fabulously bright running shoes.

  “Guys . . .” said Noah.

  The scouts answered in un
ison, “Yeah?”

  “Don’t . . . don’t let go of the ropes.”

  At this piece of advice, a screech from the hut announced another lever being thrown, and all at once the four tires plunged into the holes. Around the scouts, the world went black and the air turned damp—cold and thick, with an earthy aroma.

  The scouts were on their way into the Secret Zoo. Again.

  Chapter 3

  Inside the Secret Metr-APE-olis

  Noah continued to fall—to fall and fall and fall. The air whirled around him, lifting the back of his jacket and whapping the earflaps of his cap against his head.

  He lost all sense of time and could only guess how much had passed. Occasionally, the falling tire skipped off one of the walls, sending tremors through the rubber. Worried that his feet might get pinched, Noah wrapped his ankles together and straightened his legs directly beneath him.

  Something soft and smooth brushed his body. In an instant, it was gone, but Noah knew what it had been: velvet. A velvet curtain marking the entrance into the Secret Zoo.

  The tire fell out of the darkness into a bright space filled with trees. Noah screamed, partly with fear and partly with relief at being released from the dark unknown of the cave. As the tire dropped through a thick web of branches, Noah saw that he was falling into a jungle—a jungle that was undoubtedly contained within the walls of a sector in the Secret Zoo. Huge trees filled the space, sunlight stabbing through their branches. Vines dangled in the air, some falling limply across branches and others looping back into the heights. More than five hundred feet below lay a grassy plain.

  Noah craned his neck to look upward. The tire swing had punched through an opening in the bend of an enormous branch. Somehow, the ordinary exhibit in the Clarksville Zoo came to an end in the hollow of an extraordinary tree.

  Across the trees stretched the winding trails of long parallel bars—monkey bars, like those in the Metr-APEolis exhibit above. Nestled in the treetops were countless wooden huts. Some were elaborate, with roofs and open doors, and others were simple, nothing more than platforms wedged between the branches. Long-reaching rope bridges joined the huts to distant trees. Staircases spiraled down many of the trunks.

  Noah spotted the other scouts, each falling at a different speed. At least a hundred feet below him was Ella, while Richie was more than a hundred feet above him. Thoughtless with panic, Richie was twirling his tire, sending it jerking in every direction, bumping branches and bursting through meshes of leaves. Halfway between Noah and Richie was Megan.

  Finally, Noah realized with relief that his tire was slowing, and he relaxed his white-knuckled grip on the rope. He approached a distant platform set in the trees, a simple collection of wooden planks with no walls or rails. Oddly shaped with seven sides of different lengths and angles, the platform had been custom-built to fit the unique grip of the surrounding branches. It was the size of a small parking lot and covered with chimpanzees, as many as a hundred. They were rushing about, stomping, rolling, and leaping off one another’s backs.

  Ella was the first to land, touching down near the center of the platform. As she stepped out of her tire, she was immediately surrounded by chimps. The rambunctious apes shrieked and hollered and swatted their palms against the planks beneath their feet.

  Noah touched down next and slipped out onto the wooden floor. Released from his weight, the tire sprang into the air, bouncing off the occasional branch as it headed back up to the Clarksville City Zoo.

  Ella glanced at Noah and then returned her attention to the commotion around her, saying, “These stupid things won’t leave me alone!”

  Noah squeezed into the crowd and joined his friend. As the two of them fended off the half-crazed chimps, Megan touched down on the platform. Noah couldn’t believe how calm his sister was. She had been through so much in the past few weeks. Could anyone but Megan have survived being trapped in a cave for weeks by dangerous animals in an underground fantasy world? Noah knew the fact that she was here now, back in the Secret Zoo with the other scouts, was a testament to her courage.

  Megan stepped out and let the chimps sniff her fingers. Then she gently stroked their heads.

  “Check out Megan,” Noah said to Ella. “It’s like she’s been dealing with these things her entire life.”

  “Well,” said Ella, batting away another chimp, “she does hang out with you and Richie.”

  Noah couldn’t resist smiling. Hearing Richie’s name made him wonder where his friend was. He looked up and spotted him twirling in his plunging tire, about sixty feet above their heads. When he finally came to a stop above the platform, he tumbled out and hit the planks with a thump, a thud, and an “Oomph!”

  “Nice entrance, Richie,” said Ella. She boxed another chimp away. “Thanks for proving again that dodos can fly.”

  As the rope drew Richie’s tire back into the heights of the Secret Metr-APE-olis, he peered up at his friends, his eyeglasses cocked to one side and a dazed look on his face. “Am I okay? Did I break anything?”

  Ella said, “Maybe the world record for the longest distance ever traveled by a nerd with his butt in a tire—but if you mean bones, nope, I don’t think so.”

  Richie patted his arms, his legs, his ribs. “Are you sure I’m not injured? Because I feel like I should be injured.”

  Ella pushed through the crowd and grabbed Richie by his jacket collar, hoisting him to his feet. “Quit worrying!”

  The chimps bounced over to Richie and studied him, curious, their hairless eyebrows raised. They rocked back and forth, bumping into one another and grunting. One poked Richie in his belly button, and he swatted its furry hand.

  Noah worked his way through the crowd to stand at an edge of the platform and stare out at the sector, one of the many that joined a Clarksville Zoo exhibit to the City of Species, the core of the Secret Zoo. He stretched out his legs, lay flat on his stomach, and peered directly beneath the platform. The scouts were about five hundred feet off the ground, and there was no direct way off—no ladder, no rope bridge, no staircase. The only way down would be to climb to a nearby tree and descend from there.

  Noah stood and gazed across the Secret Metr-APEolis, trying to locate the end of the sector—the entrance into the City of Species. These entrances were normally marked. It took some searching, but he found it. On a platform about two hundred yards away hung a velvet curtain beneath a blinking light.

  “Over there!” Noah called out as he pointed at the curtain. “The entrance to the City of Species!” As his friends joined him, he said, “The only way we’re going to get off this thing is to climb to another tree.”

  “Whoa!” said Richie, holding up his palms and stepping backward. “I’m not so good in the trees!”

  “Then we go to Plan B,” Megan said.

  The scouts stared at her, puzzled.

  Ella said, “And that would be . . . ?”

  “C’mon, you guys,” Megan groaned. “The three of you know this place better than I do!”

  She leaned forward and whispered something in a chimp’s ear. The chimp raised its eyebrows, pursed its lips, and grunted. Then it ran to the edge of the platform, jumped into the trees, and swung swiftly through the branches, calling out to the other apes in its strange language.

  Richie looked confused. “Megan—what did you say?”

  Megan shrugged her shoulders. “I just asked for some help.”

  “Wonderful,” Richie said. “Why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like this?”

  Not far from the platform with the velvet curtain, the chimp climbed into the treetops and disappeared. The scouts stood by, watching in silence.

  Across the long reach of the sector, the treetops began to quake as hundreds of apes descended. Chimps and orangutans scurried down trunks and heaved across branches until they had aligned themselves in a perfect single file between the two platforms—the one on which the scouts stood and the distant one with the velvet curtain. They held on to anything and e
verything: branches, monkey bars, vines, staircases, huts, and trees. No two apes were more than fifteen feet apart. The first orangutan in front of the scouts clung to a tree, its eyes fixed on the four friends, its arm reaching toward them.

  “You guys see what’s going on, right?” Megan asked. When no one responded, she added, “You remember connect-the-dots? Just think of the apes as the dots and us as the ink.”

  The color drained from Richie’s face as he realized what Megan was getting at. “I think I hate you now.”

  Megan’s smile broke into laughter. “C’mon, Richie,” she said. “This is going to rock!”

  Chapter 4

  The Swing of Things

  “Maybe I’m not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree,” Ella said. “But connect-the-dots? What are you talking about?”

  Megan walked back through the chimps, briefly touching her palms to their heads as she moved past. About thirty feet in from the edge of the platform, she turned and faced not only her friends, but the first orangutan in the line of apes across the trees.

  Noah understood what his sister was thinking. “Megan, you sure about this?” he asked.

  “No,” Megan said. “But we trust Mr. Darby, right? I don’t think he’d put us in danger, not without warning us first.”

  With that, she ran through the crowd, past the scouts, and threw herself over the edge of the platform.

  The orangutan shot out its long arm, seized Megan’s wrist, and swung her forward. At the farthest point of its reach, it sprang open its fingers, releasing her. Megan soared to the next ape in line, a chimpanzee who was already reaching behind itself with an open hand. The oafish-looking chimp cinched Megan’s wrist and pitched her around, just as the ape before it had done.

  The catch-and-throw of the first two apes had been easy enough, but Megan knew what would make it easier. She could swing across the animals, treating their hands like monkey bars. She just needed to twist her body, alternate her arms, and heave her weight. In the air between the second and third ape, Megan dropped one arm and reached the other forward, pivoting at the same time. When the third chimp seized her wrist, she grabbed the chimp’s, and together they swung her weight forward, their arms locked like two acrobats on a trapeze. When the chimp let go, she soared forward, an arm and a leg extended in both directions.