Ashton Memorial (13 page)

Caleb shook his head and
turned back to the screens. “No. We need to get everyone together.
Pool our resources. Help. Something.”

Lee stepped up, still
holding the tranquilizer rifle. “Are you nuts? You can't trust
these people. You saw what happened.”

“Please Lee, shut up,” said
Caleb, gritting his teeth. He didn't look at Lee, but Ella saw his
back tense. “I'd rather not talk with the murderer right
now.”

“Don't you dare!” said Lee,
pacing and gripping the rifle. “Don't you fucking dare! He attacked
us. We're Keepers, Caleb. Keepers stick together.”

“The man was scared,
Lee.”

“The man was a bully! A
goddamned bully who thought he could yell and threaten things into
his way. He needed to be put in his place!”

“I said shut up, Lee!” yelled Caleb with a force
that surprised Ella. Caleb turned to glare at Lee. Lee fell quiet
and stepped back. Caleb slowly turned back to the screens. He
reached over and flipped a switch. The screens switched to cameras
placed outside the zoo. Each one showed corpses. “We’ll let the
cops sort it out,” said Caleb after a moment.

Shelley started pacing. “I
doubt the cops are coming, honey.”

“Somebody, then,” said
Caleb. “Someone in authority.”

“We're in authority,” said
Lee, quietly.

Caleb ignored him. Ella stood from her chair and
stepped over to Caleb. She watched the corpses on the screens
wander and reach at nothing. “How did Stepdad get in?” she
said.

“Hmm?” said Caleb, turning
to face her.

“Gregory, I mean,” said
Ella. “He got in the zoo after the things outside had surrounded
us. How did he do it?”

Caleb sighed. “He got
lucky. Watch.”

Caleb turned back to the instruments. He
flipped through cameras until he found one that only showed a small
group of corpses, four or five at the most. Ella watched them for a
moment, almost entranced by their jerking movements and silent
chewing mouths. After a moment, the corpses dispersed, some
distracted by something off screen, some just carried away by their
own jerking. For maybe twenty seconds the street in front of the
camera was empty. Then, more corpses stumbled into view. Some the
same as before, some new.

“See,” said Caleb. “Those
things just stumble around all the time. I sat up all last night,
looking for a back door we could get out through.”

Ella nodded, imagining escape. The cool air
on her face.

“But,” Caleb continued, “every time I'd find a place
like this, a small break in the corpses, new ones would fill in the
gap long before we could have ever made it there. We'd have no way
of knowing which doors were safe before we got to one and opened
it. And even then, we'd maybe only have seconds to open it and get
out. And once we were out, those things would just close in from
every side.”

Ella nodded, watching the corpses.

Caleb flipped to another
camera, then back to the first one. “So it's almost impossible for
us to get out that way. But, if you wanted to get in, you'd only
have to hide from those things and wait for a gap. You could rush
through one of those openings and have the door open and shut
before they could get you.”

“So that's what Gregory
did?” Ella asked.

Caleb nodded.
“Yeah.”

“How do you know for
sure?”

Caleb sighed and rubbed the
back of his neck. “I saw it.”

“What?”

“After your dad called last
night, I went back through the camera recordings. I saw him sneak
in with your sister.”

“I want to see
it.”

“Ella, there's nothing to
see.”

“I want to see it.” Ella stepped closer, using her
best insistent face. “Please.”

Caleb sighed, looking at
her for several seconds. “Fine. Hold on.”

He spun in his chair and fiddled with some
knobs and switches. One of the screens changed to a fast-moving
blur of images. Corpses stumbled in and out of frame, so fast and
jerky it would have been comical if things were different. Ella
quickly realized she was seeing a recording from the middle of last
night, going by at high speed.

“It'll take a moment,” said
Caleb watching the screen.

Ella nodded, watching the images race by.
After another minute, a different blur rushed across the screen,
toward the zoo. Caleb clicked something on the panel and the image
froze. He clicked again and it reversed. Then it paused, showing a
single frame of empty street just outside one of the back doors
into the zoo. Ella knew corpses were hiding just out of frame,
unseen by the camera, but the single image gave the impression that
none of this had happened.

Caleb turned back to face
her, leaving the image frozen on the screen. “Now, Ella, this
is...”

“What the hell's that?”
said Lee, stepping up and gesturing at one of the other screens.
Ella turned to look. Caleb and Shelley followed.

The camera showed the outside of Zoo Bites, the zoo
restaurant. The Keepers who manned it stood outside. A group of
visitors surrounded them, gesturing and telling. The Keepers looked
like they were struggling to remain calm. A few of them had already
started yelling back.

“Sons of bitches,” said
Lee. “Those sons of bitches are trying to take over the
Bites.”

“What the hell do you mean `take over'?” said Caleb,
stepping over to face Lee. “It's theirs as much as ours. We should
be sharing with them.”

Lee turned to Caleb. Ella could see his
eyes. They reminded her of a dog she'd seen once just after it was
hit by a car. It had happened right in front of her. The dog was
injured badly, injured beyond living, but it hung on for several
minutes. And while it did, the pain in its eyes gave it a fury and
rage Ella had never seen in a living thing before. That dog's eyes
then were Lee's eyes now. His eyes scared her.

“There's no sharing with
those people,” said Lee. “They will take and take unless you keep
them in line. That's where we come in. We're Keepers. We keep.” He
nodded to Caleb, then turned and started toward the door leading
out into the zoo.

“Where the hell do you
think you're going, Lee?” said Caleb.

Lee stopped, turning back. “To stop them. To save
the Bites. We run this zoo, not them. If we let them have their
way, we'll have chaos, looting. More death. And you know damned
good and well what dead bodies mean now! Are you coming to help or
not?”

Caleb sighed and ran his
hands through his hair. “This is crazy. Shelley, help me out here.
This is crazy, right?”

Shelley held up her hands
and stepped back. “Don't drag me into this. I say we just ride
things out here. Let the outside do whatever the fuck it
wants.”

Caleb shot her a look.
“Fine. Tom, is this crazy? Tom?”

He stopped, looking around.
“Tom?”

Ella looked around. They all looked around.
Tom was nowhere in the room. Ella tried to remember when she last
saw him. Had he even been in the room this whole time?

“Where the hell is he?”
said Caleb, walking to the breakroom. He shook his head and turned
back. “Tom?”

“Use your thing,” said
Shelley, pointing to Caleb's belt.

Caleb looked down at his belt, then pulled
off a small handheld communicator. Like a walkie-talkie, only much
more expensive-looking. Stepdad had been proud of those as well. He
insisted Ella not call them walkie-talkies. They looked like
walkie-talkies to Ella.

“What's Tom's frequency?”
said Caleb, turning a small dial in the top on the
communicator.

“957, I think,” said
Shelley.

“We're wasting time,” said
Lee, sighing and adjusting the tranquilizer rifle on his
shoulder.

“Just hold on for one
fucking moment, Lee,” said Caleb, still turning the dial. He
stopped and held the communicator to his mouth. He clicked and held
down a button. “Tom? Tom? You there?”

He released the button and they all paused,
listening.

Nothing.

Caleb clicked the button
again. “Tom? Do you hear me?” He released the button.

Nothing.

Caleb growled to himself and walked back to the bank
of screens and dials. He switched the screen showing the Zoo Bites
to another camera. Then another, then another. All showed different
animals or visitors. No Tom.

Caleb sighed and clicked quickly through
camera after camera. Images flew by so quickly Ella barely had time
to register any of them.

Caleb stopped and slapped
his palm on the panel. He lifted the communicator back up and
clicked it. “Tom? Goddammit, Tom?” He released the button,
sighing.

“Nothing?” said
Lee.

“Nothing,” said Caleb. “I
went through all the cameras too.”

“Not all of them,” said
Shelley.

“What?” said
Caleb.

“You didn't do the one
right outside,” said Shelley.

“Right outside
where?”

“Right outside here.
Outside this office.”

Caleb blinked, looking back to the screens.
Ella knew Shelley was right. There was a camera just outside the
office door. They rarely used it. Usually it was easier to just
open the door and look outside.

“If he was right outside
why wouldn't he just come in?” said Caleb. He turned to look at
Shelley. They all fell quiet.

“Dammit,” said Lee. “Again
with the time wasting. I'll just go open the door and see.” He
turned and started for the door.

“Stop!” said Caleb, holding
up a hand. Lee stopped.

Caleb turned to the screens and put his hand
on the controls for the camera. Lee stepped up and looked at the
screens. Shelley followed. Ella stayed in the back but kept her
eyes locked on the screens.

Caleb clicked a control and a screen
switched to the view just outside the building. There was the
familiar walkway. There was the familiar large tree which the
walkway had been built around.

And a body hung by its neck from the
tree.

All four of them gasped.
“Oh god,” said Shelley, putting her hands to her mouth.

The body rocked back and forth, swinging as
wind shook the dry leaves of the tree.

“Is that Tom?” said
Shelley.

“Who else would it be?”
said Lee.

“Shut the fuck up Lee or I
swear to god.” Caleb turned and headed for the door. The others
followed behind him. Ella stayed at the back, afraid of what might
happen when he opened the door.

Caleb reached the door and put his hand on
the handle. He paused.

“Open it, pussy!” said Lee.
Ella looked at him in surprise. Lee had never talked like that in
his life.

Caleb glared at Lee silently, then turned
the handle. The door swung open.

They all stepped outside, slowly. The cold
fall air bit at them and a light rain was falling. It was silent
except for rustling leaves and the slow, methodical creak of the
branch the body hung from.

It was Tom. A rope had been tied around his
neck and then to the tree. His face was purple and bloated and
saliva ran from the corners of his mouth. Blood ran from his nose.
He hung limp and still. His shirt had been torn open, revealing his
bare chest. Words were carved into his chest, crude and
bleeding.

For Dad
.

“Those sons of bitches,”
said Lee. The door to the Communications Office opened. Other
Keepers filed out, muttering among themselves and gasping when they
saw Tom's body.

Tom's eyes opened and his body jerked. He
blinked and moaned down at them. His hands clutched at them. He
hissed and gurgled.

“Dammit Tom,” said Caleb,
quietly. “I don't suppose that's you coming to.”

Tom groaned and kicked his legs, struggling
to get to them.

Lee cocked the rifle, aimed and fired. The
dart lodged in Tom's forehead. Tom jerked, then was still.

Caleb looked back at Lee.

“You see?” said Lee. “You
see what I mean? These people are animals. We have to stop them. We
have to maintain control.”

Caleb was silent for a
second. “To the Bites, then.”

* * *

Angie stepped up to the glass door and
looked down into the parking lot. The collapse of the deck had,
oddly, saved them. The noise they'd made in Bobby's apartment would
have attracted every corpse in the building if the deck hadn't made
a much louder noise outside. A good twenty to thirty corpses
stumbled around the parking lot, rain running down their torn,
rotting faces.

Now if only we could get
to the car
, Angie thought, sighing and
biting her lip. The corpses from the building were all outside,
which was good. But they blocked the way to the car, which
wasn't.

Park stepped up beside her.
“They'll probably thin out after a while.”

Angie nodded. “Yeah.” A few
stragglers had already wandered off, distracted by noises outside
the apartment building.

She turned away from the door and looked
around the living room. Maylee and Dalton sat on the couch. Maylee
rubbed her eyes. Dalton's head slowly slumped forward, then jerked
up. He blinked and looked around, yawning. They both still wore the
clothes they'd worn to sit at home and eat pizza with the
babysitter. They were lucky they were wearing shoes when the
corpses attacked. It all happened so fast. There had been no time
to prepare, no time for anything.