Burn Patterns (24 page)

‘Are their wings closed?' asked Iris, turning slowly.

‘Yes.'

‘Aha. They are my favourite. They're called the Ulysses swallowtail. When they fly you can see a beautiful blue colour and I love the shapes of their wings. Like a bird's.'

The girl examined Iris with suspicion, downgrading her as a generic form of teacher or zoo worker, therefore slightly less interesting than she had first thought.

The boy said, ‘They won't land on me.'

Iris said, ‘You have to be very still. It's the colours they're attracted to.' She pointed towards the coloured discs on the white feeding tables set throughout the false forest of the enclosure.

‘Like a flower,' said the less suspicious girl.

Then Iris smelt smoke: plastic, acrid.

The children were looking up above Iris's head.

Iris whirled around to see flames. Half of the enclosure was made of a fine netting that allowed air to pass but reduced temperature and wind. It was now covered in a yellow shimmer of flame like the sun setting in the ocean. The edges dripped melting net, goops of bluer flame falling into the entrance end of the butterfly house. Iris heard a dull roar like water down a distant fall, also crackles, pops, children's calls of fear.

‘We need to get out.' Iris turned away from the fire, towards the other exit at the solid end of the butterfly enclosure. The back section was constructed of wooden walls protecting the butterflies from the weather. Iris recalled from previous visits how it was warmer here, the temperature controlled to tropical heats of thirty degrees with higher humidity.

A man in a baseball cap banged on a side door that led to the incubation room. The sign said staff only. People, mostly mothers and children, were at the exit, piled there, stacking into each other. Why weren't they leaving?

Iris looked back again to the fire. The heat was already
intense, pushing at her. It looked like a wall of yellow liquid, descending as well as spreading above. A wave of yellow turning to red and orange. The molten drips from the material started smaller fires below. The wood of a feeding container and the wood of the building structure were bursting into bluer flames, dotted around the ground. A plastic electrical outlet exploded in a sizzle of green and white sparks. Plants were frying, searing, sagging, collapsing in black heaps. One burst into momentary flame like a flare.

The butterflies were gone. Instead of the garden of blooming orange, yellow and blue drifting, fluttering flowers, there was only dry heat. Iris supposed the occasional sparkle and flash was a butterfly burning, cindered in an instant. She inspected the ground, finding a scatter of them. Autumn. They were still. Dead from the heat before the flames would reach them. One quarter of the butterfly house was on fire, orange now, not yellow.

One entrance was completely engulfed, the other seemed closed, a pile of people gathered there. Someone screamed, a cry of despair. The man in the baseball cap smashed a bollard against the wooden wall on the side of the incubation room. The wall was smoking.

Iris looked to the pond. A man-made stream fed a fake pond in the middle of the fake rainforest. Iris shouted to the children who hovered at the back of the blocked entrance. ‘The pond. Get in the water.' She held her hand out.

They looked at her, looked at each other, looked at the walls of the enclosure, thinking of their parents beyond.

Iris stepped towards the fire, then off the path and down into the water. She lowered herself into the water, dipping herself to neck height before sitting up, turning to the children. She yelled, ‘Get into the water!'

The boy came first, the two girls ran after. They came down into the half metre of water, and Iris splashed them. The fire felt near, the heat harsh. Iris squinted up to see the plastic net roof and walls were nearly gone. She could see sky past the smoke. She wasn't sure there were still flames above.

Then came the explosion like her recurring nightmare,
like one of her flashbacks. It seemed distant, hollow, a truck backfiring without echo. Iris turned towards the fire to see a cylindrical object flying towards her, like a black torpedo in the air with yellow flame coming from the back. It swerved and fell with a metallic clunk into a pole, bending it. Then came another explosion, a deeper whump, white, complete with a hot blast of air. Metal sprayed, flying, falling fast. Iris recoiled from it, crouching her back to shield the children, turning with the blast of hot air, a piercing tickle in her shoulder.

It was quieter, suddenly, a freeze in time like at the school, as though the physical world complied for an instant with the emotions of the humans, physics and stress taking a rest beat. Iris heard the crying and the alarms. She breathed in the faint noxious smell of all kinds of burnt things, plastic, rubber, plants, gas, meat. Iris finally opened her eyes. One of the girls was whimpering. Iris put her arms around all three.

‘It's okay,' she said.

And it was. The fire had gone. The huge wave of flame was nowhere. The fire had evaporated. She heard alarms. Someone moaned in pain up near the exit. She became aware of waves of wailing coming from outside of the butterfly enclosure. She imagined a hundred parents standing outside, crying for their children in the gutted zoo enclosure. Iris stood, nearly tripped over the three kids still cowering in the plastic walled pond. Her shoulder hurt. She'd been cut. Water dripped, discoloured with blood. The cries outside were surreal, a mix of fear and keening, altogether inhuman.

She focused on the edge of the pond, looking for a safe way through the burnt material. Zookeepers with fire extinguishers and hoses began to come through the missing end of the butterfly house, through the smoke like a patrol in a Vietnam War film.

Iris held out her hand to the kids. She got them standing. ‘We've been in an accident, team. We didn't get hurt. It missed us. How lucky were we? What a story we've got to tell. Did you feel the whoosh like a wind?'

They stared. Shock. They weren't talking yet. Good idea.

Iris saw more advancing zookeepers in their green zoo shirts. One figure wore a yellow fire tunic, not yet zipped. Other
staff were coming into the burnt forest now too. Some carried first-aid kits. Others wore emergency team vests. They were tentative, frightened as though they might step on mines. They weren't professionals. They fed hippos, mucked out lion poo. They didn't want to find cindered corpses or screaming, half-melted children.

The exit opened, the people there tumbled out into the arms of other men in yellow fire tunics. Iris helped her three kids out of the pond. ‘Are your parents here?' asked Iris.

‘Granma,' said the boy.

‘Good. She will be so happy to see you kids. What a story you've got to tell, hey? Imagine what the kids at school will say.'

‘We were in the fire,' said the distrustful girl in awe. Her long blonde hair had frizzed slightly in the heat.

Iris passed them up, one at a time, to the zoo workers. She took an offered arm, pulled herself out of the pond.

The person called, ‘Wound here. Bleeding.' He put one arm above his head, called again, ‘Hurt person here.'

Iris swivelled to search behind, imagining someone hurt, but turning sent a stabbing sensation into her shoulder. Iris gagged. She bent, which made her shoulder hurt more. She vomited, felt hands lowering her to kneel.

‘Stay still,' a woman's voice said.

‘Let's get you to first aid.'

They took Iris to one of their own veterinary units housed within the zoo. It was out of the smoke, well stocked, sterile. The more badly injured were placed in the first ambulances. A gas cylinder had exploded. They were taking names, addresses, contacts. Iris had lost an earring and her phone but had apparently kept hold of her purse this time. No one had died. The wailing Iris had heard was the monkeys. The gibbons, rightly terrified by the fire, gave cries of warning and fear, which set off other apes. Iris's hair was singed at the tips. She couldn't help rubbing at the melted ends in spite of the gingery burnt hair smell she kept releasing.

As Iris was loaded into an ambulance she looked back down the hill to the butterfly enclosure. A third of the building had gone. A fire appliance was parked nearby, its hoses no longer
charged. Iris could make out news crews and the familiar uniforms of the Arson Squad, fire investigators and police. Forensics in their booties and overalls were fanning out over the ruins. Standing at the perimeter in their bulletproof, black uniforms were members of a tactical response group. They carried semiautomatic weapons.

*

Iris borrowed a phone to call Mathew from the hospital. He wasn't answering. He would not have recognised the number, Iris supposed. They gave her a local, removed the metal with large tweezers, stitched. She was bandaged, given a tetanus shot. She monitored her own emotions for signs of trauma but felt remarkably calm. Maybe she was getting used to this. Or was it simply too soon? She did not believe in the God story to explain the universe, but if there was one, she was prepared to agree with Gillian; he/she was indeed pissed at her. Hubris seemed the most likely cause. Icarus's wings were melted. None of the gods were particularly fond of self-worshipping humans.

They'd given her a pair tracksuit pants from lost property or in stock for such occasions and a green hospital top worn by surgery nurses. Her clothes had been ruined in the fire, water and medical treatment, but were also being held now as part of the new arson investigation.

Iris was not allowed to leave, even though she was out of bed. She couldn't lie on her back, nor sit back against the chair in the hospital room. She'd need to go pick up her car again. At least this time she'd kept her keys.

She turned to a knock at the open hospital room door to see a uniformed policewoman accompanying Detective Pavlovic. He was wearing the same dark pants as the day before but a striped business shirt with thin red alongside the thicker blue.

‘How are you, Mrs Foster?'

‘Detective Pavlovic.'

‘This is a police officer.'

‘So I see,' said Iris. ‘And she has no name.'

‘We're interviewing witnesses to the fire at the zoo.' He spoke over the policewoman before she could answer. Pavlovic surveyed the room. He put his tape recorder on the hospital
server table, rolled it towards Iris before sitting up on the end of the bed.

Iris said, ‘Iris Foster. Witness. Not a lot useful to tell really. I was in the butterfly enclosure at the zoo where there was a fire. I don't know how it started. I think an exit was blocked. Some children and I took shelter in the water. I suppose we should be checked for meningococcal. There were explosions, possibly a kind of rocket was fired in at us. Then a bigger explosion which put the fire out. Have there been other attacks? Are we at war with someone? I was inside the maelstrom so I don't have much overview. All I know. Is everyone all right?'

Pavlovic said, ‘No deaths. No serious injuries. A big show. Should we have expected other attacks?' He peered, studying her as though she were the darkness outside the cave.

Iris considered the policewoman again, found herself searching the floor for meaning.

Pavlovic said, ‘The fire investigators have already made early reports. The rocket was probably an LPG cylinder. It didn't explode – the intake nozzle detached so it flew. The bigger explosion was from oxygen cylinders stolen from the veterinary surgery at the zoo.'

‘The fire was deliberate,' said Iris, her mind whirring suddenly.

‘Absolutely. One of the golf buggies the zookeepers zip around on was parked up against the exit door. We figure they used it to get the gas cylinders and later to block the entrance.'

Iris stood. ‘Have you found a Passiona can?'

Pavlovic said, ‘Not yet. Or any zeds. Where should we look?'

‘I don't know. Around where the gas cylinders were put, possibly.' Iris racked her brains to think of anything odd. Was someone following her she should have noticed? She had not been paying attention.

Pavlovic said, ‘The thing is, the zoo has lots of security cameras. Walkways, enclosures, the two surgeries. Day and night, they need to see who's where and what the animals are doing and what crazy person wants to hug a polar bear. We're looking at it now. We're going to see the whole thing – like an episode of
Big Brother
.'

‘Good. Can I have a look too?' Iris searched for her handbag.

‘Anything you want to tell us, now, before it comes out in the video footage?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Anything you got up to at the zoo or last night you want to share? Experiments and all?'

‘Last night?'

‘Yes.'

The policewoman was listening intently. Very intently.

‘Detective Pavlovic, why would I try to burn myself to death?'

‘I'm not a psychiatrist.'

Iris didn't say anything. She re-ran the conversations of the previous day. When the detective said he was looking at her file, she had assumed it was ascertaining her strengths.

He said, ‘I think working out why people do things is over-rated. Sure, motive is worth looking at, but mostly I go over physical evidence. I don't believe in coincidence. Fires happen around you, Mrs Foster. You're a common denominator. Like Chuck's zeds and Coke cans.'

‘Passiona.'

‘Sorry. Does the brand have any significance?'

‘I am sure it does. Detective, if this is not a coincidence, then I have been targeted. Which would go to motive. Why did Zorro or the terrorists or whoever try to kill Iris Foster?'

‘My superiors are asking the same question. Where were you on the weekend of the school bombing, Mrs Foster?'

‘Do I need a lawyer?'

‘I've been asking you a variety of witness and consultation questions in this interview, Mrs Foster. If at any point you feel you need to protect your interests, I would advise you to have a lawyer present. Certainly, if we take you to the station, I would apprise you of your rights. You don't have to answer any questions and any answers might be used as evidence against you. On the other hand, you could keep helping us with our inquiries, especially if you're innocent and caring. Isn't that right, Officer Johnston?'