Right now, she would take care of the four of them, wait out the zombies that were inside the zoo, hope that the big cats would find other ground on which to hunt and then they could think about leaving.
But then who would care for the remaining animals?
It was quite the decision she would have to make. And she didn’t even know how many animals were still alive.
For today, they would stay put. Tomorrow, they would explore the grounds more closely. Gaia ran back upstairs into the bedroom, and opened the drawer in which she had placed the gun. She stared at it and wondered how many more zombies she would have to kill, and how many animals she might need to put down, in order to keep them safe.
Gaia removed the warm clothes from the dryer, folded them and placed them neatly on the dresser top. Those garments were now thought of as something far more than simply work clothes, and when she donned them, they would now symbolize a side of her that would do whatever it took to keep them safe.
“Whatever it takes,” she whispered in agreement with that straightforward pledge.
Chapter 11
Gaia awoke the next morning to the wonderful sounds of laughter. Justin had decided to sleep on the floor beside her, and she could not argue as he awoke frightened in the middle of the night. But now, he played with Maye, who screeched and chattered away, which woke Gaia. But she was not upset or angry at the interruption of her slumber. Instead, she was enchanted by the simplistic happiness in that very moment experienced by the boy. It was so innocent that it seemed such a contrast to the world in which they now lived. It gave Gaia hope that the future was not so bleak after all.
She rolled out of bed and quietly put on her work ensemble. She removed the gun from the drawer and holstered it in the small of her back and then retrieved the other pistol case that she had carefully hidden in the back of the closet, removed the gun, along with an extra magazine.
“Where you goin’?” Justin asked.
“I wanna get some more food from the storage shed, and I want to see if there are any animals still out there that need my help,” Gaia answered a bit sharply. “You can stay here with Maye and Solomon, okay?”
“I wanna come with you,” he answered, tossing the blanket off and getting to his feet. “And Solomon wants to come too.”
“Oh yeah? He said so, did he?” Justin laughed at that comment, knowing she was joking with him. It seemed to give him comfort, which in turn, made Gaia feel better about what she had to do.
“I’m going to have to show you how to use a gun, Justin. Are you ready?” the boy nodded. “You will need to be able to defend yourself. Let’s go outside and see what we can find.” The two of them went downstairs leaving Maye to her exploration inside the bedroom. Solomon was sitting quietly when they came downstairs. She brought a handful of peanuts and dumped them into a plastic bowl and bent low to Solomon.
“You stay here and eat,” she signaled to him, the gorilla signing back the motion for ‘eating’. Then he signed ‘yes’ to her. After that, Gaia waved Justin to follow her.
The two of them went outside and left Solomon alone, wandering out toward the barn. Gaia removed the binoculars and scanned the area and saw nothing out of the ordinary. As a matter of fact, she saw no signs of movement anywhere.
She took solace in that fact and brought Justin over to the barn, and showed him how to hold the pistol, how to aim it, and how to fire it. She oversaw him as Justin fired a few practice shots into the charred remains of the barn so that he could get the feel for the kick and the weight of the weapon. Most importantly, she made sure he understood where the safety was and how to make sure he knew how to put the gun in both the safe and ready positions.
Gaia nodded at him and grinned as he hit the last mark solidly, a stray piece of wood that hung all by itself.
“That was well done, little man,” Gaia congratulated him. “Safety on? I think you might be okay now. We don’t have a lot of ammunition to use, so tell me truthfully whether or not you can handle it, okay?”
“I can, Miss Gaia. I promise,” he said, as deadly serious as she had ever seen the young man. She nodded with tight lips, hoping that she was making the right choice here.
“All right, get Solomon and we’ll take him for a walk while we look for any animals or people that might still be alive out here.” The two of them quickly fetched Solomon, who gladly followed them outside as Gaia began her rounds, going systematically around the outskirts of the zoo, looking into each pen, enclosure and even the reptile house and aviary to see if anything yet lived.
It appeared that every place that Gaia visited was either empty, or the remains of whatever was in the pen, was still there. It turned her stomach, broke her heart and made her lose hope that she could remain in the zoo all at the same time. And most, if not all the enclosures that she inspected, were unlocked.
Someone had set the animals loose. But who? Who would have let them free during this chaos? It’s reckless!
She made her way all the way around the zoo, passing the front and seeing some zombies still lingering in the parking lot.
She continued around and found a trio of zombies wading in the waters of the petting zoo, stuck in the man-made pond where the ducks and goats watered themselves.
She wandered over to them and she and Justin fired their pistols at them, taking down those three as they tried to clumsily escape the water to get at them, some falling with a splash.
“Remember, aim for the head, boy,” Gaia said sternly, and he did just that. They only needed four shots to take them down. It did manage to get Solomon a bit riled up though and Gaia needed another few minutes to calm him.
They continued along and Justin called Gaia over to see a section of the fencing where zombie hands poked through, trying to get to them.
“It’s okay, buddy. They won’t get in. Trust me,” she said as they continued along.
As they made their way around to the back of the zoo, Gaia leaned over the hyena and wolf pits and saw remains of flesh, body parts and gore down there among the dirt and grass.
“I guess we’re gonna have to let you guys run free, too, aren’t we?” Gaia whispered. “If I am ever going to leave this place in good conscience, you will all need to be set free.” She went over in her head all of the other animals had been freed already, their gates having been unlocked, except for the bears that had somehow gotten free early on. That, she assumed, was just a coincidence.
Suddenly out of the corner of her eye, she saw Solomon react to something. He swung his arm in a wide arc as a figure sprinted toward the boy. He swatted aside what she recognized now as a zombie, Solomon breaking its bones under the brutal swing, but the creature slowly and stubbornly got to its feet.
“There,” Gaia said to Solomon, “put it in there.” She gestured to the pits behind them, as Justin stood with arms at his side, seemingly in shock at having realized that the zombie would have gotten to him if Solomon hadn’t reacted.
The massive gorilla grabbed the zombie creature by its arm—an arm that appeared to have once belonged to a young woman, and one that Gaia did not recognize— and swung it around.
Gaia gestured to him and Solomon tossed the zombie into the wolf pen below.
Howls and snarling ensued.
“Justin! Are you all right, hon?!” she asked, though his eyes stared off into space. He was clearly somewhere else in that moment. She shook him gently and asked him again, this time more forcefully. He nodded and swallowed. Then Justin walked right up to Solomon and hugged him, tears in his eyes. Gaia stared at Solomon and signed ‘he thanks you’ to the gorilla, who signaled back ‘yes’ that he apparently understood what she meant.
That was when Gaia also noted that Solomon seemed more aware of things. It was as if his intellect or ability to reason was markedly greater. He also seemed to be a bit larger than she’d remembered, standing before him and taking his hand. Her’s disappeared in Solomon’s grasp, her tiny hand engulfed by his own. Gaia also hu
gged Solomon and kissed him on his cheek, something she had done often in the past to reward him for doing well.
He is definitely a size larger. But how did this happen? So many questions to go along with everything else that’s changed in this shit world.
They continued along their circuitous path around the outside edges of the zoo’s borders. Gaia found one pen that was unmolested. The hippopotami were basking in the sun and the water inside their pen and nothing had seemed to have disturbed their habitat, and the enclosure was still intact, though upon closer inspection, their gate was unlocked. She was relieved to at least see some semblance of animal life inside the zoo that had remained intact, other than the hyenas and wolves.
The next enclosure was slightly ajar, too, though its inhabitants remained. In the rear corner of the zoo, she found a family of otters that were still in their pen, where a stream ran tirelessly along its outer edge. It was the very same stream that ran along the borders of the cat pens, along with the hippo pen to the west, as well as the reindeer enclosure to the east.
But Gaia did not have to adjust or alter anything inside this habitat as the otters had plenty of food to eat on their own. They could remain indefinitely inside their lodgings, which was how it was intended when it was built. Kristen had spared no expense to make alterations to the animal habitats, and Gaia was thankful for that now more than ever.
They continued along and Gaia found a gap in the deer pen, along with an open door to the front of the enclosure. Gaia saw some movement to the far outer edge of the enclosure and placed the binoculars over her eyes.
She struggled for what little food she had in her stomach to stay down at what she witnessed next. Inside were half a dozen zombies feasting on one of the deer that they’d trapped inside the enclosure.
This made her very angry.
“Wait here,” Gaia said to Justin, who was hovering beside the silent gorilla, still shaken from what happened not ten minutes prior. She entered by herself, removed her machete and her gun along the way.
As she neared the feasting undead, she shot one in the back of the head, a man not all that long ago, wearing tee shirt and jeans, that she watched with satisfaction as it fell over silently. Two others stopped their feasting long enough to see her, probably kids from the same school trip as Justin she guessed, and she shot both of them, holding her ground some ten paces away at this point, as they fell over, dead once again.
A fourth zombie now raced toward Gaia, one that wore zookeeper garb, and one whom she recognized as one of the ladies who worked in the reptile house. Jill was her name. Again, she callously put a slug right between its eyes as it closed, falling over lifelessly right in front of her feet.
Another zombie set upright, an unknown woman some three days ago, and she shot that one in the knee, causing it to fall over right in front of the other zombie who lay dead before her. She methodically placed the blade of the machete through the back of its skull multiple times until it stopped twitching. Gaia stood on its head and yanked the machete out of the living dead’s skull, pulling some hair and gore along with it. She wiped it on the ground before her.
Then she stood before the last one, deer guts and gore covering its face. She raised the machete and then recognized a certain piece of jewelry in the zombie’s ear, a golden hoop, and remnants of a mane of long hair, which gave her pause.
It was at one time, a longhaired fellow, with hoop earrings and a tee shirt that she also recognized, which read ‘keep calm and support animal rights’. It was a nutty animal rights activist who, just about every other day, came into the zoo and who often had to be forcefully removed. She could not recall his name but did recollect that she’d personally had more than a dozen run-ins with the man.
It is ironic that in his death, he sat on his knees before one of the most beautiful creatures on god’s green earth, shoving the deer’s entrails into his mouth—its mouth, rather, she corrected. She sighed, aimed the gun at its face as it finally recognized her standing there, stood, and then fell over, landing right beside the deer carcass as Gaia planted a slug in its brain.
As it fell, she watched as a rather large set of keys fell out of its pocket, which came to rest right beside his hand—a hand that was tightly curled around a piece of deer meat.
“So, it was you who let all the animals out of their enclosures, eh?” she asked the undead creature as she knelt beside it and retrieved the keys, holding them up and inspecting them. “Son of a bitch.”
At least they only got one of the deer.
Gaia stormed back out of the reindeer pen and met up with Justin and Solomon, leading them back around and finishing their trek around the zoo. Then she began to make her way toward the vet lab, meaning to check on the backup generators to see what was there.
“Are we staying here, Miss Gaia?” Justin asked from behind her.
“For now, yes,” Gaia responded. “Until I can figure out our next move. I still have hyenas and wolves, hippos and otters that need tending.”
“Can’t they take care of themselves?” Justin asked, matching stride with her and staring up into her eyes.
“I suppose they all could, little man. But I need to come up with a solid plan to make sure they’re taken care of, before I can act on getting us out of here,” she said. “I suppose they would be fine on their own, so, that could be something to consider,” she added, voicing her own thoughts. “What do you think?
“I dunno,” he shrugged. “All I know is that my mom is dead, and so are all of my friends,” Justin added bluntly.
“Shit,” Gaia whispered. “Your mom was a chaperone on the class trip?!”
“Yep.”
“What about family? Brothers, sisters, dad, uncles, grandparents?
“Nah. My dad left us a long time ago. I don’t even remember him. And no one else lives around here. I got no brothers or sisters, either…so I guess I got nobody else.”
Wow, Gaia thought. “Well, Justin. You are not alone. You’ve got me, and you’ve got Solomon, right? And the hippos and the otters would love to see you every day, too.” Justin smiled, half-believing what she said. Gaia suddenly realized that she had no idea how to talk to him. She assumed that he was too old to believe in fictitious things such as the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and so on, but she really couldn’t be sure. All she really knew for certain was that she needed to speak in truths as much as possible with the young man from here on out.
At least the hippos and otters had plenty to eat. On the contrary, she would need to take an active approach in making sure to feed the wolves and hyenas on a regular basis.
“Come on, guys. We have to go see what kind of food we can give to our hungry predators there,” Gaia said as she pointed toward the hyena and wolf pens. “We’ll need to feed them something other than zombies, I suppose, eh?”
‘Dunno,” Justin said with a shrug of his shoulders.
And so, the eclectic group continued along their way and finally stood at the rear entrance to the veterinary facility. Gaia had no intention of entering the other side where she knew the corpse of Dr. Nancy Friedman still lay. They would need to remove that body at some point, she realized. But each examination room inside the veterinary lab would have meds as well as emergency equipment that she would need to keep running, just in case. She would also need to keep those freezers running indefinitely.
If the zombies stayed away, this might actually be a nice place for Justin to grow up, a place for them all to live, and a natural environment in which Solomon could enjoy himself, too. Then, as they passed the gorilla enclosure, she realized that they would need to bury Molly and the babies, too.
“Justin, I’m gonna need some help digging another pit, if you don’t—“
“No problem, Miss Gaia. I can help.” She immediately went and gathered a few bottles of water from the refrigerator, went into the freezer shed and the basement and gathered up two shovels—one of which until recently was used as a zombie-killing weapon—and they mad
e their way to the gorilla pen.
As they arrived, Solomon entered the pen hesitantly and became agitated. Gaia had to calm him down again and she shooed him to the opposite side of the spacious area where he could eat and rest while she and Justin took care of Molly and her babies.
The two pair began digging soil right beside the fallen trio. It was then that Gaia recognized that there were only two of her three offspring lying beside her. As she continued the laborious task of digging out their graves, she gave thought to what might have happened to the third babe. Her thoughts ranged from it being devoured by the ravenous undead to perhaps having gotten out of the enclosure, to even that it might be hiding nearby.
An hour or more into their task, Justin stopped to get a drink of water and then found himself playing with Solomon just as quickly. Gaia was about to protest, but the sight of seeing both of them so happy gave her pause against that line of action. And so, she continued to toil, digging out the earth and occasionally looking back at the happy pair, which inspired her to continue on alone in her endeavor. The image also filled her with hope that perhaps this child would not grow up broken and full of despair about the state of the world.
Several hours later, Justin approached her as she stood leaning on the shovel, completely exhausted.
“Sorry, Miss Gaia, I just wanted to play with Solomon,” he admitted in a sympathetic way that made all anger, frustration and pain escape her, replaced instead with a feeling of lucidity for the boy.
“Don’t worry about it, little man. Solomon really enjoys spending time with you, and you are making his worries go away. That’s amazing!”
Justin beamed with pride at that statement of praise from Gaia, as the young man picked up his shovel. He began helping her dig once again while Solomon continued obliviously eating from the low hanging branches in the enclosure.
Another hour or so later, as Solomon slept soundly in an area far away from them, Gaia and Justin dragged the bodies of Molly and the two young gorillas into the pit, and then began burying them. Shortly after this, Gaia said a few thoughtful things about the gorilla family that had made an impact on her life—a vigil for her fallen friends.
Cage The Dead Page 13