The Forbidden Fortress

by Diana Peterfreund

  “What’s keeping those monkeys in their habitat?” Eric asked.

  Savannah stamped her foot. “They’re chimps, Eric. Apes. Do you see a tail? Only monkeys have tails.”

  “Fine. What’s keeping those apes in their habitat?” When Savannah said nothing, Eric smirked. “Not so smart anymore, are we?”

  Howard stepped over the pile of broken glass and ducked through the door frame. The chimps all arched their necks to look at him.

  “Um, Howard . . . ?” Savannah began. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. They don’t seem friendly.”

  But when had Howard ever listened to any of us? Slowly, gingerly, he crept across the floor, his legs slightly bent, his arms outstretched. The monkeys—apes—watched him approach but remained motionless. As he reached the concrete waist-high divider that still stood between the observation lounge and the dome, the chimps began to vocalize and lunge at him. Howard stopped.

  “I think it’s okay,” he said, “as long as we stay here and don’t cross into their habitat.”

  Eric went inside, too, and Savannah and I scrambled after them. “So what’s keeping them there?”

  Howard shrugged. “Look at this place. It’s a wreck. There’s glass all over. At least their habitat is in good shape.”

  “True,” Eric admitted. “That tree house thing is amazing.”

  Savannah gasped, indignant. “You’re kidding, right? It’s still a cage.”

  Inside, it was almost too dark to see through the visors of our utility suits. I took down my hood, and Savannah and Eric did so too. The room smelled of dust and rot and excrement. The dirty, cracked windows on the outside of the building shone shadowy light onto the remains of what might have once been top-of-the-line equipment. Long desks were strewn with computer screens and other electronics, all broken to bits. The chimps watched us looking around, growing calm again now that it seemed clear we weren’t going to enter their space. I even dared to turn around to see what stood above the bank of windows on the outside wall.

  My mouth opened in horror. Tall, narrow alcoves lined the walls above our heads, and in each one stood a skeleton. For a second I thought they were the bleached white bones of humans, but I quickly realized they must be chimpanzees, their remains mounted and on display in full view of the animals inside the dome.

  As I stared at the skeletons, I could almost feel the accusatory glances of the chimps on the back of my neck. Was this the result of their “completion dates”? At the base of each skeleton was a small bronze plaque. Part of me wanted to read what they said, and another part just wanted to run.

  “What kind of monster imports a bunch of chimps to this island and abandons them here?” Savannah asked, still looking at the live animals.

  “They aren’t trapped,” Eric said.

  “You mean just because the doors and dome are broken open?” I said. “That doesn’t mean they can leave. Where would they go?”

  “Chimps aren’t native to the Chesapeake Bay.” Savannah looked grimly around the observation room. “Who knows how they’re even surviving?” She grabbed one of the folders that, miraculously, still lay on a desk and started flipping through it. “This is why I hate animal research. These apes were bred for research, brought here, and now . . . left here.”

  “Is that allowed?” I asked. There had to be some kind of rules about animal cruelty and stuff, right?

  “I’m pretty sure none of this is allowed,” Savannah said. She began flipping through the pages. “‘Bone density decay as a factor of orbital duration in utero,’ ‘deterioration of intelligence quotient to the fifth generation’ . . . whatever they’ve been doing to these chimps, it’s not nice.”

  And I was pretty sure Elana must know about it. This wasn’t something that could be passed off as some middle school stunt. This wasn’t even a wire fence and some pygmy sheep, which, I guess, technically was some sort of agricultural project. I mean, sheep lived on farms.

  But this dome had obviously been built for these chimps. Which meant this island had never been just a home to Guidant’s agricultural experiments.

  It was a cover for Shepherd projects.

  But what did the Shepherds want with a bunch of chimpanzees? They were supposed to be guiding humanity, not apes.

  Howard was examining the skeletons. “This is wrong,” he said. “He’s not supposed to be here.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Ham.” He pointed to the chimp skeleton before me. “This plaque says this skeleton belongs to Ham.”

  “Who’s Ham?” Savannah asked.

  “The first chimp in space.”

  “There were chimpanzees in space?” asked Eric.

  “Yes,” I said. “And dogs and mice and all sorts of stuff. They tested space travel on animals before they tried it out on humans.” And it didn’t usually work out too well for the animals.

  “Typical,” Savannah said with a scowl.

  Could that be what the Shepherds were doing? Just like NASA, were the Shepherds trying out things on apes before they graduated to people?

  “But it can’t be Ham,” insisted Howard. “His skeleton is supposed to be in a museum.”

  “Maybe they loaned it out?” Eric suggested.

  “And this one.” Howard pointed to the skeleton next to him. “It says it’s Enos. He also went to space. The dates are wrong, too. Enos died of dysentery a few months after his mission, but this chimp is listed as being alive until 1974.”

  What were the chances that there were two different chimpanzees named Ham and Enos? “Are these all space monkeys?”

  “Space chimps,” Savannah corrected.

  “They’re all the same names as the space chimps, if the plaques are right.” He looked at the info etched into the bronze. “And the birth dates are right, too. But nothing else is the way it’s supposed to be. I read a whole book about the animal program, and this is not the way it is in the book.”

  Savannah and I exchanged glances. Well, that answered that question. Nothing was ever the way the books said. Even, I was learning, the ones by my dad.

  Howard gestured to the next skeleton. “That’s Minnie. She was in the Mercury program. They bred her afterward. . . .” He trailed off. “Oh . . . that’s what that paper Savannah saw is about. The fifth generation. They bred the space chimps to see what would happen to their offspring.”

  “Oh,” we all echoed, and turned back to the apes in the habitat. Now their glares made a lot more sense. They’d been abandoned, here, in the tombs of their ancestors.

  “What do we do, Gillian?” Eric asked.

  “I have no idea. What do you think, Savannah?”

  She looked as baffled as me. “I don’t know. Call the Humane Society?”

  Tracking down the Shepherds and getting to the bottom of their messages was one thing. After all, we’d found Omega City, and we’d outrun Fiona, too. But dealing with a tree house full of abandoned space chimpanzees? That wasn’t nearly so clear cut. I took out my cell phone—still no reception—and turned on the camera. At least we could get proof of what was happening here.

  The second the camera flashed, the chimps went wild. They started to hoot and jump up and down, baring their teeth and waving their arms in the air. Eric ducked as a stick whizzed by his ear.

  Sticks, unfortunately, were only the start.

  Something squished against the arm of my utility suit. I glanced down and another projectile hit me square on the ear, splattering across my neck.

  “Monkey poop!” Eric screamed, and we all ducked as more feces came flying our way.

  Savannah didn’t bother correcting him this time. Together we crawled behind an upturned desk to protect ourselves as the hail of poop intensified.

  Savannah made a face at me. “Yuck!”

  I grabbed a spare piece of paper and started wiping at the mess on my arm and face. “I thought you liked animals.”

  “Yes, animals. Not their poop.” She cowered as something smacked wetly again
st the outside of the desk.

  “Do they have a stockpile or something back there?” I asked.

  “Just be glad it’s only poop.”

  “Tell me that when you get hit.”

  “I’m just saying, poop is a sign of minor aggression. They could really hurt us if they wanted to.” She wrinkled her nose and fanned her hand in front of her face. “It’s in your hair, you know.”

  I groaned. “I know.” What did she want me to do, stick it in a Guidant styling machine?

  “Incoming!” Eric cried. He and Howard were hiding beneath another desk, their hands over their faces for protection.

  “We know!” Savannah and I shouted back at him.

  “No . . .” Eric’s eyes were wide with fright. “Incoming.”

  A big, hairy hand clamped down on the corner of our desk.

  We screamed.

  The chimp froze. The poop stopped. A second later, one of the chimps began calling out, an ear-piercing, barking cry. The ape on top of our desk vanished. I could hear him scurrying back to the habitat. Then I felt it: a vast, buzzing rumble that shook the floor and every pane of glass still standing in the habitat.

  “What is that?” Eric asked. I risked peeking over the edge of the desk.

  The tree house had become a mass of activity, with every chimp jumping from branch to branch, crawling down the ropes and over the tangled roots at the base of the trunk. As I watched, they started lowering themselves into a hollow under one of the big, knotted roots. “They’re hiding,” I murmured. But what were they hiding from?

  Frantic chimpanzees tumbled over one another, fighting to shove into the hole at the base of the tree. I saw a mama chimp holding her hands out to her baby, who clung, trembling, to one of the large swinging balls. She hooted at the little thing, which was all wide eyes as the rumbling passed.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb here,” said Eric, “and say that if the chimps are scared of it, we should be, too.”

  “Hide,” hissed Howard, and scooted back into the shadows under his desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement at the door. We flattened ourselves against the furniture. Boots crunched glass somewhere near the vicinity of my head.

  I could still see the habitat. The mama chimp screamed and grabbed her baby, hurrying down the tree with the little chimp clinging tightly to her fur. I saw two figures cluster close to the habitat, but could make out little more than dark pants and military boots.

  “That one,” said a man’s voice. Something arced through the air and hit the chimp, who tumbled, limp, to the floor, knocking the baby free. I clapped my hands over my mouth to hide my gasp of horror. Savannah stared at me, terrified, her eyes running over with tears. Her mouth twisted into a determined grimace. I shook my head at her and mouthed, Don’t move.

  The baby cried out and crawled toward its mother.

  “Bag it,” said a second voice. One of the figures grabbed the unconscious mama chimp, knocking the baby out of the way. The smaller chimp was sent tumbling, hands over feet, as the figure shoved the mama chimp into a dark blue canvas bag imprinted with the unmistakable logo of a pair of shepherd’s crooks crossed over a globe.

  The Shepherds were here. Not just their signs and symbols. Not just their sympathizers. Actual, real live Shepherds. Every accusation and dark theory my dad had ever written about them reared up in my mind, and I cowered farther behind the desk.

  The sound of the baby’s sobs filled the air as the figures departed. We waited a minute or two, then emerged from our hiding places. The chimps were doing the same. One dashed out from between the roots, grabbed the screaming baby, and dragged it back down into the hollow of the tree. I could still hear its plaintive cries.

  Savannah looked stricken. “What do we do?”

  There was something hard and hot in my throat, and I couldn’t get the image of the unconscious chimp out of my mind. Whatever was happening here, we were in way over our heads.

  15

  RECEPTION

  “I THINK WE SHOULD GO BACK,” I SAID, MY THROAT TIGHT. I HATED TO admit defeat, but even if the Shepherds did have Dad on the island, we were way outnumbered.

  “Seconded,” said Eric. “It’s like Nate says, once there are guns involved, even stun guns, it’s time to go.”

  After making sure the flash was off this time, I took pictures of the habitat, the mess, and even a few blurry shots of the chimpanzees as they slowly emerged from the base of the tree. If the animals knew to hide when the rumbling started, then this couldn’t be the first time the Shepherds had come to steal one away.

  And because of their advance warning, we’d been able to hide, too. They had saved us from the Shepherds, so now we had to return the favor. No matter what else happened, I’d have evidence of the conditions these chimps were living under, and what was happening to them.

  I had no idea what that sound meant, though, or where the Shepherds had come from. My first thought was a helicopter, though the rumbling sounded nothing like the chop of helicopter blades. Still, the sound had to be connected to the men’s arrival.

  I didn’t want to stick around to figure it out, though. The Shepherds could come back at any time. We weren’t safe here.

  “Come on,” I said to the others. Savannah was rummaging through some of the scattered papers, and Howard had gone back to staring at the skeletons.

  We ran back around the outer buildings and skirted the sheep paddocks, pausing to take more pictures of the signs with their Shepherd symbols. We hurried through the woods toward the beach, while Savannah kept chattering about animal testing.

  “The truth is, there’s probably very little anyone can do. I mean, these experiments are obviously secret, but even if we report the Shepherds, or Guidant, or whatever, the worst that will happen to them is a fine and maybe forcing them to fix their habitat so there isn’t broken glass everywhere. The apes still belong to them, so they can stun them or kill them or abandon them or whatever they want. That kind of stuff happens all the time.”

  I shuddered.

  “That’s assuming that we can report them,” said Eric. “The last time someone attacked the Shepherds, it was my dad. And it didn’t go so well for him, remember?”

  I was quiet, thinking this over. Yes, last time the Shepherds had gone after Dad. But as Mom had pointed out, they seemed much less worried about what Dad was exposing lately—as if Omega City wasn’t the problem at all. And if that was the case, then what was it that they were scared of us exposing? What were they doing to these chimps, to these sheep, that was worth keeping everything on this island a secret?

  The beach came into view, and we quickened our pace. My arms were still aching from our earlier trip across the cove, but I couldn’t wait to get back to the water—and not just so I could rinse the monkey poop out of my hair. As soon as my phone got a signal, I was calling Dad, Mom, everyone. All of a sudden, getting tracked everywhere I went didn’t sound half-bad.

  There were the kayaks, right where we left them.

  And standing in front of them, with their backs toward us, were half a dozen Shepherd guards.

  “Stop,” I hissed, and dropped to the ground. The others thumped low around me.

  “Now what?” Eric whispered to me as I peeked through the underbrush at the knot of men and women clustered around our only means to get home. Like the Shepherds in the ape habitat, they were wearing dark pants and boots, as well as crisp button-down shirts, vests festooned with pockets, and black baseball caps. From a distance, they looked like any security team, complete with utility belts featuring weapons I was afraid to examine too closely. Was one of these guys the man responsible for knocking out that mama chimp? What had they used? Tranquilizer darts? Electric shock? I seriously doubted they’d hesitate to use the same methods on us.

  I pursed my lips and thought. Okay, maybe we should have hidden the boats. Of course they had patrols on a forbidden island.

  “Wait them out?” Savannah suggested.

 
I shook my head. Not likely. They weren’t talking or anything, just standing around, like they were waiting for us to come back. I supposed that would be easier than trying to find us in all these trees.

  So, the kayaks were out. There was no way to swim home. And forget about washing off the monkey poop in the cove.

  I pulled out my cell phone, but it still showed zero bars. “If only there were a way to get a message out,” I whispered.

  “There is,” Howard said, taking the phone out of my hands. He pointed back toward the buildings and the cliff. “The radio tower.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I still have the radio in my room back on the campus tuned to the numbers station, and it’s set to record on the room tablet. If we can get to the broadcast station and send a message to your dad . . .”

  “But what if Dad is already captured by them?” Seagret in place . . .

  “If he’s not,” said Savannah, “at least we can warn him to watch out.”

  “The radio tower sends Shepherd messages.” I shook my head. “They’re bound to be listening to whatever we say.”

  “So?” Savannah broke in. “They already know we’re here.”

  “They know someone is here,” Eric corrected. “And they don’t know what we know. If we send a message through their own system, they’ll know we’re onto them. And they might be able to intercept Dad before he can reach us.”

  I looked at him, surprised.

  “What?” Eric shrugged. “I told you. I listen to you and Dad.”

  Eric was right, of course, but I didn’t know what other option we had. Besides, there was always the chance that someone else would hear the broadcast. Some numbers station fan. The Guidant Middle School’s cryptography club. I mean, they probably weren’t Shepherds, too.

  Right?

  And we couldn’t stay here. Our utility suits might make us invisible to an infrared camera, but it wasn’t going to help us hide from actual people only a few yards away. At least back by the buildings or the radio tower, we might blend in with the metal and other rubble.