ZooFall

by Lawrence Ambrose

Zurzay landed with his usual grace and aplomb: a last-second extension of his wings stalling him out as he touched down. Diana approached him holding up one hand in what she liked to think of as her Star Trek interspecies greeting.

  "Hello," she said. "I never got a chance to thank you for saving my life."

  Zurzay surprised her by raising a hand to match her own greeting. She stopped a few feet away, suppressing an urge to offer her hand for a shake or close in for a hug. Zurzay turned and pointed in the direction she had been traveling in – and where Penny had disappeared – with an air of gravity.

  "Yes," said Diana. "Penny" – she lowered the flat of her hand to indicate a shorter person – "is running ahead."

  Zurzay made a chopping gesture that suggested dismissal. With slow emphasis, he mimed a shape that suggested a baboon-creature to Diana before southeast again.

  "Are you saying the Nazrene are up ahead?"

  Zurzay made a fist and smacked it into an open palm. Diana hoped that gesture applied to the baboons and not Penny.

  "Okay, the Nazrene are ahead," she said. "So what else are you saying?"

  Zurzay smacked his fist into his hand again, and this time pointed to her and himself.

  "Okay," said Diana. She pantomimed a Nazrene – clumsily, she was sure – and duplicated Zurzay's smacking gesture, finishing by pointing to them both. "You're saying you're a glutton for punishment. All right. If you think we can pull this off, I guess I'm in."

  Zurzay kneeled on both knees and motioned to his back. Diana released a grateful breath and scrambled onto the creature's broad, furry back. Welcome aboard Winged Wolf Airlines. You may experience extreme turbulence.

  Chapter 9

  IT'S NOT THE END of the world, Laurie kept telling herself as the Nazrene carried and dragged them along at what for the three humans was a dead sprint. I'm still the same person.

  She wanted to talk to her mom and brother, but they'd been moving so fast and relentlessly that she'd barely found the time to breathe not to mention speak. The best they'd managed so far was gasping shouts to each other that they were okay and just to cooperate with the "monkeys" and that their father would come for them and mete out justice soon enough.

  Laurie wasn't so sure. Two of the Nazrene had stayed behind: the one she'd wounded with the bow and another she guessed was a friend or was simply following the leader's directives. That meant her dad, Diana, and Myth, plus the little Adderall girl, had an unpleasant surprise waiting for them. It wasn't clear to her if the baboons understood that someone else lived in the house and would be returning. But ready or not, her dad and the others were heavily armed, and Laurie didn't see two Nazrene – one wounded – standing much chance of surviving that encounter. Still, the creatures were incredibly strong and dangerous and nothing was certain.

  Laurie was reminded of that by every bounding step of the creature carrying her in one arm like a small sack of potatoes. It wasn't the leader – the piece of crap who'd assaulted her in her bedroom – but he ran along nearby, keeping a watchful and perhaps proprietary eye on her while she and her family were bandied about between the pack members. Laurie had refused to run at first, and one baboon grabbed her by the hair and started to drag her, but the leader dictated otherwise. For having no obvious verbal ability, they communicated remarkably well, she thought.

  It was bone-jarring to be carried at near the speed of a galloping horse draped over one arm, her neck snapping to and fro like some damn Bobblehead. She'd already barfed up her breakfast, and both her mom and brother had retched up theirs as well. She didn't think they'd die from being carried this way, but she wasn't sure. These apes either had no clue about how relatively fragile they were or didn't care. They obviously didn't care how much they were hurting when they thrust their monster organs into them.

  Anger flared in Laurie. Big mistake. You can't treat people that way and get away with it! You're going to learn that when my dad shows up.

  Her outrage and fantasies of revenge were a thin rope to hang her hopes on, but it was all she had. She preferred not to dwell on the practical problems of her dad's rescue: how fast the Nazrene were traveling, how difficult it might be to track them, and how difficult their numbers and ferocious strength would be to overcome. Her dad was an ex-Army Ranger. He'd find a way to get the job done.

  They stopped at a small lake where another group of baboon-creatures appeared to be waiting. Laurie's hopes fell when she saw there was at least another fifteen or twenty of them, more than enough to make up for the few they'd killed at the house. She, Donny, and her mom were deposited on a sandy shore to one side of the congregation. Donny lay on the sand, pale and softly moaning, his eyes open but barely registering his family or the world around him. Sonja crouched over him, feebly caressing his head. Laurie huddled on the sand with them.

  "You okay, Mom?"

  Sonja closed her eyes for a moment, and nodded. "What about you?"

  "I'm okay."

  Sonja sidled in against her son, running a hand along his ribcage. "What about you, Donny? Are you injured?"

  "Don't know." He started shivering, and Sonja pressed more against him. "Feel torn up inside..."

  Sonja hung her head for a long moment before parting her dry lips. "You'll be all right. Just hang in there, all right?"

  Donny closed his eyes and didn't reply. One of the Nazrene was pointing impatiently to the water.

  "Does he want us to drink?" Laurie whispered. "Or wash?"

  Sonja shook her head. Her dull eyes didn't show much more cognizance than Donny's.

  "We can't drink that," she murmured, rubbing her lips together. "The water's loaded with microorganisms. We'd be sick within hours."

  "But..." Laurie was going to say that if they didn't drink some water they'd soon be sick or worse anyway, but another idea shoved that thought aside. "We could pretend to drink. Once in the water, we could swim away. They might not be able to swim. Monkeys don't swim, do they?"

  Gazing out at the lake, imagining an escape strategy, Laurie noticed a large ripple forming about fifty feet out, as if something big was moving just below the surface. A large, grey-skinned head broke through the water like some giant, mutant turtle head, followed by a pair of broad shoulders bunching with muscles.

  "Mom," said Laurie. "There's something in the lake."

  Sonja turned wearily toward the water. The creature had stopped its approach with its chest at the water's level. Long, muscular arms extended at its sides ending in webbed hands and white, curving claws. It opened its mouth, revealing an impressive set of ice-pick teeth.

  "Oh, God." Sonja wriggled in a bit from the water. "I don't think going for a swim would be a good idea."

  A few of the Nazrene noticed the creature and started snarling and waving their long arms at it. A couple of them snatched up some rocks and tossed them at the creature with the speed and accuracy of a slingshot. The creature ducked down and disappeared into the water.

  Further down the beach, an argument appeared to have erupted between the leader of their party, Laurie's assailant, and another large Nazrene. They weren't thumping chests like cliché apes or chimps, but they were in each others' faces.

  A fight broke out abruptly. Their pack's leader lashed out with a right cross that his opponent ducked. They grappled, kicking up a halo of sand, spinning in each other's grasp toward the lake. In the water, Laurie's assailant established what Laurie thought looked like a "full Nelson" hold on the back of its neck. He forced the other down on his knees, and then his face into the water. His opponent thrashed and threw elbows furiously, but their pack's leader didn't budge. A few more seconds and his submerged opponent slapped the surface of the water twice.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the fight was over. Their pack's leader stood up, even offering his opponent a hand, which he accepted, and was helped to his feet. They returned to the shore. The fifteen or so Nazrene who'd been waiting at the lake assembled into a group and as one kneeled in the sand and bowed their heads w
hile their pack's leader stood tall and straight. He grunted something and raised a hand.

  The assembly rose. The leader's body relaxed and so did his former opponent's and his group. Their pack converged and merged with the other. Laurie blinked in disbelief as they exchanged hugs and slaps on their backs. Not exactly brutish behavior. She had trouble imagining two groups of antagonistic people settling their dispute so easily. It made her feel at once queasy and hopeful. They weren't superior to humans, of course, but maybe they had some humanity?

  After the love-fest broke up, the leader ambled over and towered over his human captors. He exchanged some hand signs with their three guards and appeared to grow impatient, waving them back and crouching down to make eye contact with Sonja and Laurie. He scooped a handful of water and took a sip, pointing to them.

  "No," said Sonja. "It would make us sick. It needs to be boiled."

  She pointed to one of the fires the Nazrene were starting on the beach. Laurie had noticed that many of the baboons wore leather pouches on their waists like "butt packs," but hadn't known what they were carrying until a few pulled smoldering coals from the pouches and used them to start fires.

  Sonja pointed to the water and the beginning fires, drawing what Laurie thought was a look of utter incomprehension on the Nazrene leader's face.

  "This is hopeless," she said. "I'll never get them to understand."

  And even if they did, Laurie thought, what good what that do if there was nothing to boil the water in? On an impulse, she looked around the lake, which might've been off the beaten track but still was far from pristine: a few food or candy wrappers hung in the weeds around the lake, and a dilapidated dock extended a few feet out before slouching into the water. Sitting near the back of the dock was what looked to her like a metal tackle box. Could it hold water?

  Laurie caught the leader's eye – something she loathed to do – and pointed to the tackle box. He stared at her in blank question. Laurie edged toward the dock, gesturing for permission to get it. Begging the rapist-ape for permission was something she loathed much more than meeting the vile creature's gaze, but if they wanted to survive it was something she had to do. Not just for herself – for her family. If the baboons were dumb enough to keep them alive, for whatever nefarious purpose, they would suffer the consequences. Eventually.

  The leader made what seemed to be a permissive gesture. He walked with her over to the dock, perhaps anticipating the possibility she might bolt. Laurie guessed he understood that Donny and her mom were her family. He and his gang seemed to be a kind of family, though more a "band of brothers" type. Everything she'd seen made her think they were all males, functioning as soldiers. She sensed camaraderie between them, and when they burned their dead, some form of devotion to each other with religious overtones. Did they have religion? Hard to believe, but the longer she was with them the more complex they seemed to be.

  The leader stayed close but didn't press her as Laurie opened the rusty box, finding the expected fishing tackle inside. Did someone leave it here and forget it? She shook her head. The question was, would it hold water and could it stand up to fire?

  Laurie dumped the fishing tackle and leaned cautiously off the rickety dock, dunking the open tool box into the water. When she lifted it back out, the water stayed put, though dripping slowly from the bottom. Probably being in a fire would worsen its water-tightness. She couldn't see how it was going to work, but as her dad had told her annoyingly more than once, solving anything required a first step. So here was the first step.

  It was difficult if not near-impossible to read her tormentor's face, but from the way his eyes shifted back and forth from the tool case to her and to the lake suggested he was utterly dumfounded. His comprehension didn't seem to improve when she carried the tool case full of water to the nearest fire and lowered it into the outer edges of the burning embers. Some Nazrene made objecting sounds and gestures, but the leader silenced them with a sharp motion.

  Laurie returned to her mother and brother while the leader stayed with his tribe. Donny was sleeping – or simply unconscious. Sonja was watching the creatures with haunted eyes, her expression flat. Laurie had never seen her look so out of it.

  "You think that fishing box will hold water?" she asked.

  "I hope so."

  "Did you wash it out before filling it?"

  "Sort of." Laurie dialed down the irritation building in her voice. "Mom, we don't have a lot to work with here."

  "I know, I know. It's just..."

  "Just what?"

  "What's the point? How much longer do you think we can last being carted around like this? Using us when they want..." Her mom hesitated, barely lifting her gaze to meet Laurie's. "You didn't see what they were doing to us in the yard. You were in the house."

  "I did see."

  "And did they..." She cleared her throat. "With you...?"

  "Yes." Laurie ground her teeth down on the word. "Just one...the leader."

  "The leader." Sonja glanced across the sand at him, small flames flaring in her eyes. "So you understand what's in store for us with them."

  "But not forever, Mom. Dad will be coming for us. He'll take care of these baboons!"

  "Will he?"

  "Of course, he will! How can you doubt that?"

  "I don't doubt he'll come after us, honey. But can he catch us? And if he does, what can he do against all these Nazrene? Now there's even more of them."

  "It's not just him, Mom. There's Myth and Diane and Penny."

  "Him and two women – one not even really human – and one eleven year old girl. Why is that not filling me full of confidence?"

  "They've got assault weapons. The apes throw rocks."

  "Guns don't scare these creatures off. When they're determined to do something, for whatever reason, they seemed prepared to die for whatever their cause is."

  "I know. It's weird, because Diana said they backed off the first time she shot some of them."

  "Well, they seem to have become more determined."

  Down the beach from them, the Nazrene had four fires going and were busy fashioning spears out of wood with sharp rocks, spearing fish a few feet out from the shore, knocking birds and squirrels out of trees and the air, and cooking game on spits over the fire as their victims were brought it.

  "Make that spears on top of rock-throwing," Sonja added with a soft, despairing groan. "They seem to be functioning at about a Stone Age level."

  "Stone Age people were basically as smart as we are, right?"

  "Theoretically," said Sonja. "But I think primitive man would've worshiped us as gods or run when we started killing them. These creatures are different. They seem to have a concept of advanced technology and it doesn't incline them to worship or fear."

  "I still think Dad and the others will take them out. If they have to, they could pick them off from a distance."

  Sonja gazed toward the west in the direction from which they'd come, her eyes tired and mournful. A strange, warbling whistle that sounded like a drunken bird drew their gazes over to a clump of trees twenty or thirty yards from them. It took a full ten seconds before Laurie could make out the red human figure tucked within the brush behind a tree. He gave her a small wave and grinned. Another several seconds passed while she pondered who he was and why he was insanely waving and grinning.

  "Mom," she said quietly. "Don't be obvious about looking, but there's a guy maybe thirty yards away behind a tree waving at us. At our eleven o'clock." The method her dad used on hunts for identifying an animal's location.

  Sonja lifted her gaze casually, shifting it until locating their visitor.

  "Oh, God," she said after a moment. "I think I know who that is. It's the brother – Cindy's brother."

  Laurie squinted and a shock of disbelief rocked her. Even from ninety feet away she thought she recognized the handsome features of the former Glenwald High football star.

  "Gary Hanson," she whispered. "I think you're right, Mom."

/>   "But why is he here? Did he follow us?"

  The red youth whistled and waved again. This time, Laurie and her mom weren't the only ones who heard him. Several Nazrene, including the leader, cocked their heads in his direction. A couple of them pointed.

  A sharp vocalization and gesture launched six Nazrene from the lake shore toward the boy. Laurie glimpsed his smug grin collapse before he ducked out of view. In seconds, the Nazrene plowed through the brush surrounding the tree and continued north. Laurie anticipated him crying out as they grabbed him, but instead he reappeared on a long, meadow slope rising up a nearby hill that reminded her of a ski run. She expected him to dodge into the adjacent woods – clearly his only chance of escape – but instead he sprinted straight up the center of the clear area with startling speed. Doubly startling, because the Nazrene couldn't seem to gain on him. In fact, he appeared to be inching away.

  Gary Hanson kept adding onto his lead during what Laurie guessed was a several hundred yard ascent, and disappeared over the top ridge. The Nazrene paused at the top of the hill, gesturing among each other for a few moments before turning around and loping back down.

  "I can't believe it," Sonja murmured. "He outran them!"

  "He must be super-powered like Penny," said Laurie. "Only he's a star athlete and about twice her size."

  "He'd have to be. I have to admit, it was fun to watch. But it didn't help us."

  "But maybe he could," said Laurie. "Maybe he might go get help – tell Dad about us."

  "Hard to see why he'd do that. He still appears mentally altered, judging from his behavior."

  But as her mom stared at the hilltop where the boy had vanished, a hint of color lit her pale face. The color of hope, Laurie thought.

  ZURZAY DRIFTED down to the shore of a small lake beside a ring of still smoldering fires. Penny was already there, poking around in the embers with a stick, sniffing the tracks in the sand.

  "They were here," she said.

  "Any idea how long ago?" Diana asked, hoping against hope it hadn't been long.