Animal Kingdom

by Iain Rob Wright

  Mason smiled in a reassuring manner. It was surprising how much the curator’s dry personality and lack of social skills could still be such a comfort. “You certainly have been in the wars,” he said to Joe. “Come on, I think you’re okay to get up now.”

  Joe took Mason’s arm around his shoulders and heaved himself up onto one knee. After a couple of deep, laboured breaths he pushed himself up onto his feet. Pain stabbed through the bite-mark on his right thigh, but he fought it to the back of his mind. He had to get back to Danny.

  “Easy there,” said Mason, steadying him.

  “I’m okay. Let’s just get out of here.”

  The two of them headed back out into the corridor and crossed over to the other side. Mason opened the door to the seminar room and stepped inside. Joe followed, limping and stiff.

  “Where is everyone?” Mason asked.

  Joe’s stomach rolled and a spark shot up his spine. “Where’s Danny? Where’s my son?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing. Let’s just go look for them before jumping to any unhelpful conclusions.”

  Joe clenched his giant fists and felt himself tremble. They had no right to move Danny without informing him first. He stormed out of the room. If it were not for the agony in his leg he would have run.

  “Slow down,” Mason shouted from behind him.

  But Joe did the opposite. He sped up, zigzagging the corridor from door to door and checking behind each one. Every room was empty.

  “Danny!” he shouted.

  Somewhere up ahead, a voice shouted back. Joe finally managed to run, ignoring the pain in his leg. Up ahead on the left was a room with the label: WAREHOUSE – UPPER BALCONY.

  “Dad, I’m here.”

  The voice definitely came from the room in front of him, and it definitely belonged to his son. Joe pulled down the handle and pushed open the door. Inside was a cavernous room that stretched down to an open space at ground-level. It looked like a storage space for the zoo, a warehouse full of random crates and boxes. Joe was standing on a metal walkway that towered above. It led to a flight of stairs on the right and left to a small, windowed cubicle-office. Danny was inside the office.

  Randall was with him.

  “Son of a bitch!” Joe sprinted into the office just as Randall turned around to face him. The punch caught the man square in his flabby jaw, knocking him sprawling to the floor. Joe stood over him. “What the hell are you doing with my son?”

  Randall cowered, scooting back on his backside as he rubbed at his chin. “Are you insane?”

  Joe noticed his son, shaking in the corner, and put an arm out. “Danny, come here.”

  Danny ran over to his father, buried his face in his stomach, and wrapped his arms around him. Joe turned his stare back to Randall. “Why were you alone with my son?”

  “He wasn’t alone,” said a voice behind Joe.

  He turned around to find Grace coming up the metal staircase from the warehouse floor. He raised his eyebrows at her. “What?”

  Grace was shaking her head and seemed angry. “I told Danny to wait in the office with Randall while I looked downstairs for supplies. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  “Why did you all run off without telling me? What was I supposed to think?”

  Grace laughed. It was an unpleasant sound. “You were the one that ran off. We didn’t know where you were. We were hoping we’d find you on our way.”

  “What?” Joe stepped towards her, shaking his head. “You couldn’t have looked very hard. I was still in the lab.”

  Grace seemed confused for a moment and Joe caught her glancing past him towards Randall. “But we looked there,” she said. “Randall said the room was empty.”

  Joe turned around. Randall had gotten back to his feet and had plonked himself down on an office chair. The man was rubbing his chin and wheezed slightly as he spoke. “It was empty. It was a bit of a mess in there, but I didn’t see you.”

  Joe didn’t buy it, but before he had chance to say so Mason came up behind and placed a hand on his back. “You were unconscious, Joe, and I was kneeling on the floor. It’s quite possible that he didn’t see us.”

  “Right,” said Randall. “I only poked my head in – granted – but it looked to me like you were both gone. I’m sorry, my friend.”

  “No,” said Grace. “It’s Joe that should be apologising to you.”

  Everyone looked at Joe and he suddenly felt like a misbehaved child. Reluctantly, he stepped towards the man he had just struck across the face. “I’m sorry, Randall. I acted badly.”

  “You did.” Randall walked forward a few steps and then offered his hand out. “But we have bigger fish to fillet right now, so let’s just forget it.”

  Joe couldn’t be certain, but he thought he saw the beginning of a smirk on the other man’s face. Still – whether he trusted Randall or not – Joe was the one in the wrong. “I’m sorry,” he said begrudgingly.

  “Okay then,” said Grace. “Now that we’ve got that sorted, maybe Mason can tell us what’s what in here.”

  “Of course,” said Mason. “This is the zoo’s storage warehouse. It’s one of the places we keep dry animal feed, maintenance and landscaping tools, cafeteria supplies, etc. The cleaner’s station is also in here”

  “Cafeteria supplies,” said Grace. “Excellent, that’s just what we need.”

  “Should we leave it here or gather it up?” Joe asked.

  “I think it would be best to split it,” Randall said. “If something happens to one stockpile then we will have a backup.”

  “Good idea,” Joe admitted, although he hoped the theory wouldn’t have to be tested. “Mason can show me where the supplies are and then we’ll bring some of them up. Where are gonna camp out with the stuff?”

  “I think we should remain in the seminar room, for now,” said Mason. “It’s the only room with soft furniture, and the closest to the stairwell, which will give us the quickest warning if anything gets through the barricade in the lower hallway.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Randall. “I’ll check on Victor and the others and bring them up to da–”

  They all heard the shouting from across the corridor. Two male voices. Neither of them happy.

  Joe shook his head and sighed. “I think maybe we should all go and check on them.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Joe and the others found Bill and Victor arguing in a cramped office at the end of the corridor. The conversation was heated and both men looked ready to get physical. Shirley stood nearby and seemed content to watch.

  Bill squared up to Victor. “Call me that again. I’m begging you.”

  “I think once was enough for you to get the point, pal.”

  “I’m not your goddamn pal.”

  Joe got between the two men. “What’s happened?”

  Bill took a step back and seemed like he was trying to keep hold of himself. “Man here called me a nigger and a queer.”

  Joe looked at Victor, shocked that the man was grinning with what looked like pride. “Is that true?”

  Victor nodded. “What’s the problem? He’s both of those things, so where’s the harm in being honest about it.”

  “You’re vile,” said Grace.

  Victor shrugged. “Your opinion, lass.”

  “Actually,” Mason added. “I think you’ll find that it’s all decent people’s opinion. It is wholly unacceptable in this day and age to use language like that.”

  Victor stiffened up defensively. “Where I come from we call a spade a spade.”

  Randall stepped up to Victor and pulled him slightly aside. “But you’re not there now. You’re here and need to respect other people’s feelings. When this is all over you can go home and think and say whatever you like.”

  “I’ll think and say what I want, where I want.”

  Bill slapped his hands to his forehead. “I can’t believe I’m stuck with this racist prick.”

  “Look,” said Joe. “If you
want to keep making yourself unpopular, Victor, then go right ahead. The rest of us will just ignore you for the pathetic, closed-minded little man that you are. What I want to know is why the hell you two got into this in the first place.”

  Everyone took a breath and seemed to calm down for a moment. Bill finally answered the question. “We saw something from the windows and I panicked. That’s when Victor decided to insult me.”

  “I just told you to calm down.”

  “What you actually said was, ‘Calm down, you nigger queer.’”

  Joe sighed. People like this still exist? Hate-filled bullies spouting prejudice bile?

  And brandishing knives?

  “What did you see from the window?” Grace asked.

  All of the anger in Bill’s face drained away momentarily, anxiety taking its place. “I think it will be better if you look for yourself.”

  Joe nodded and Bill led the way as everyone followed over to the window. It was covered by a cheap venetian blind filmed in a layer of grey dust. Bill pulled at a drawstring beside the window and the shutters turned, casting dim shafts of light through the gaps. It was getting dark outside.

  Joe walked up to the window and looked outside. He wished he hadn’t. Gathered on the pathways below was every animal in the park. They stood in tightly-ordered columns like a well-trained army from the nineteenth-century. Each species grouped individually. A pack of Timber Wolves sat on their haunches in a rigid square, three-by-three. Five giraffes stood together like the dots on a dice – four corners and a centre. A mother orangutan crouched in front of her three adolescent offspring. The zoo’s pair of komodo dragons flicked their tongues back and forth beside a small clan of blood-soaked meerkats, who themselves stood next to a growling panther. The entire scene was an exercise in the impossible, and there, amongst the entire battalion, standing almost in its exact centre, was a lone silverback gorilla, its size and massive strength apparent even at a distance.

  Their leader?

  Grace was standing beside Joe now, looking intently at the scene below. “What do you think they’re doing?”

  Joe could think of only one reason. “Preparing for war.”

  “Impossible,” said Mason, taking in the view himself. “Animals lack the necessary level of rational thought to behave that way. They behave on instinct not forethought. They cannot plan.”

  “I think the rules have changed,” Joe said.

  “If the animals are planning then we need to do the same,” said Randall. “We need weapons.”

  “I agree,” said Grace, “but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that they’re assembling to get inside here. They could be preparing to leave the zoo.”

  Shirley cackled, getting everyone’s attention whether she intended to or not. “They will not leave. Not while the damned still remain among us.”

  Joe sighed and rubbed at his eyes. He was getting tired of a lot of things today but Shirley’s preaching was high on the list. “What is happening has nothing to do with God. Even if it did, who are you to act like an authority? Who are you to label any of us as damned?”

  “I’m not,” said Shirley. “The Bible is our authority and it is He who condemns the damned. A man should not lie with another man.”

  Bill almost jumped in the air. “Not you too? What the hell did I do to deserve this? If it isn’t Victor one minute, it’s her the next. I can’t be doing with any more of this shit.”

  Bill stomped away, but a smash against the window made him stop and turn back around. “The fuck was that?”

  Joe didn’t know. Through the window he could still see all of the animals lined up in formation. Only one of them had moved: The silverback gorilla. It now stared straight up at Joe as if offering some unspoken challenge. There was something in its hand. A large stone.

  Joe managed to duck to the floor just as the window shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. “He’s throwing rocks!”

  Grace jumped down onto the floor beside him, pulling Danny with her. “Who is?”

  Everyone hit the ground. Joe moved his back up against the wall just as another piece of debris came flying through the broken window. “The motherfucking gorilla, that’s who. Throwing rocks like a bloody Russian shot putter.”

  “Don’t swear, Dad.”

  “Sorry, Danny. I’m just excited.”

  Grace stared at him wide-eyed. “Guess that answers our question about whether they know we’re in here or not.”

  “Sure does, but as long as they don’t get in I can live with a little bit of stone throwing.”

  “Joe!” Mason was calling him and pointing to something on the floor. The object was mottled grey with darker patches in several places.

  A human head. Stripped of all flesh.

  “I think it’s more than just stones,” said Mason.

  Joe got up into a crouch and hurried his son and Grace away from the window. “Let’s get out of here, everybody.”

  No one argued and the group hurried out of the office, re-entering the corridor. They gathered into a disorganised huddle and Randall took the lead. “We need to find weapons. I think it’s pretty obvious that they’re not going to stop until they find a way in here. They’ll climb the bloody walls if they can. We need to be ready when that happens.”

  “What weapons though?” asked Bill. “It’s not like we have guns and stuff.”

  “We don’t need guns,” said Victor. “We can improvise. Anything heavy or sharp will do. Plus we can set traps.”

  “Like in Home Alone.” Danny smiled and seemed happy with his contribution.

  “Yeah,” said Victor. “Just like in Home Alone, little man.”

  Danny giggled. All things considered, he seemed to be holding up better than any of the adults.

  Joe had a thought. “Hey, Mason, doesn’t the zoo have tranquiliser guns? You see them all the time on TV.”

  Mason frowned. “There are dart guns in the Ranger’s station, of course, but I’m afraid that’s at the other end of the zoo. There’s another one inside a locked cabinet in the elephant enclosures too, but again we’d have no chance of getting there unharmed. In the case of a severe emergency such as this, the local police force is trained to deal with escaped animals with lethal force. Our protocol would simply be to call them – which I have tried already.

  “So there’s nothing at all here to help us?” asked Bill, seemingly close to an emotional breakdown.

  “There are drugs in the various laboratories,” Mason added, “but the only way to administer them is by injection or oral ingestion. Does anyone want to get close enough to that gorilla to stick a syringe in him? I don’t.”

  Joe showed his disappointment. “Okay, well then do you have any other suggestions for what we could use as weapons?”

  Mason thought about it. “There will probably be certain items in the warehouse area. There’s brooms, mop handles, et cetera. We could also look for the litter pickers that the Janitors use. They’re long metal sticks with sharp spikes on the end.”

  “Like a spear,” said Victor. “Bill should know how to use one of those.”

  Bill ignored the racist remark and Joe had to admire the man’s self-control. Despite Victor being such an asshole it was good news about the litter spikes. Joe nodded. “That sounds like the best thing we have.”

  “Let’s get going then,” Randall urged.

  “Should we split up or–”

  The sibilant shattering sounds of more objects being thrown through the window of the nearby office alerted them all. It sounded like several things in quick succession.

  “Do we ignore that?” said Grace. “Or do we look?”

  Multiple rage-filled screechings sent Joe over to the door. Looking inside the office was probably a stupid thing to do, but he needed to know what they were up against. They couldn’t afford to ignore a single thing.

  Carefully, Joe cracked open the door and looked inside. There were white and black lemurs everywhere, flying in th
rough the broken window one after another. They spotted Joe and immediately rushed towards him. He slammed the door and pulled up the handle to engage the catch. When he turned back towards the group he didn’t quite know how to explain it, other than saying: “We’re under siege.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “They’re coming in through the window,” Joe told them.

  “What are?” asked Randall.

  “A bunch of those little monkeys – lemurs, I think. The ones with the ringed bushy tails and little hands? They’ve gotten into the office.”

  As if to validate his claims, several bodies hit the other side of the door. Sharp fingernails began to scratch at the wood.

  Grace looked worried. “Do you think they will get through?”

  Joe watched as the door handle rattled and then began to turn. He lunged for it and pushed it back up again. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

  “We need to jam the door,” said Victor. “Somebody find something we can use to wedge the handle.”

  Grace stared at him like a deer in the headlights. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, woman, but the longer you stand there having a stroke, the longer it will take you to find something. Now get moving, you daft bint.”

  Grace rushed off. Joe hoped she found something soon because his fingers were already beginning to ache from clutching the door handle so tightly. The force on the other side was getting stronger now and his grip was getting weaker. It was almost as if the diminutive creatures on the other side were infused with the strength of animals three-times their size. Joe didn’t want to think about what that could mean. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold this…”

  “Just hang in there, pal.” Victor tried to get a hold on the handle too, but there was no room for the both of them. Joe thought about changing with Victor, but the brief moment his hand would be off the handle could be all the lemurs needed to get the door open.

  Grace reappeared in the corridor, holding a mop and bucket.

  Victor laughed. “Clean up on aisle six, love? How’s that going to help?”