Ashton Memorial (9 page)

“Fuck knows,” said Park,
shrugging. He scratched at his beard. “Back to the car?”

Angie nodded. “Yeah. I'll
drive.”

Three

Ella watched a tapir wander back and forth
in its exhibit. The red-brown animal shuffled its feet and sniffed
the air nervously with its snout.

“Gary's upset,” said Ella,
leaning on the railing that separated the public from the exhibit.
Beyond that was a deep concrete ditch to keep the tapirs from
escaping. Beyond that was a fairly convincing re-creation of the
creature's South American habitat. “He can tell what's going on
outside.”

Tom stepped up next to her,
pulling his Keeper vest around himself in an attempt to block the
fall wind. “How the hell can you even tell them apart?”

Ella rolled her eyes at
him, pointing at the different tapirs in order. “That's Gary,
that's Ricky, that's Bella, and that's Steve.”

“Steve?” said Shelley. She
stood next to Tom, her arms crossed. “The same Steve as the chair
in the breakroom?” She nodded to the tapir Ella had last indicated.
“Is that his chair?”

“Yes.” Ella nodded. “But he
can't sit in it because he's a tapir.”

Shelley shook her head, looking flustered,
and walked away. Ella smiled. She liked flustering Shelley.

“Where's my sister, Gary?”
said Ella to the first tapir.

“I doubt he knows, Ella,”
said Caleb from behind her.

“I know,” said Ella,
turning. Caleb adjusted a rifle on his shoulder. Several other
Keepers stood behind him. The closest, a young man just out of high
school, nodded at the rifle.

“Do you think we'll need
that?” he said, looking nervous. He pushed his greasy black hair
back and rubbed his hand across his face.

“It's just tranquilizer
darts, Lee,” said Caleb. “In case one of the animals got out during
the confusion yesterday.”

Ella shuddered, remembering the day before.
It had been late afternoon and she and Lori had told the bus driver
to let them off at the zoo. They wanted to visit Mom. Lori
complained about having to still take the bus.

“Another year,” Lori said,
“and I'll have a car.”

“Nope.” Ella shook her head
as they walked across the zoo's parking lot. “Just me. Mom said.
She also said I could paint it to look like a
spaceship.”

“She said no such thing,”
said Lori, sticking her hands in the pockets of her denim jacket
and drawing in her arms to block the cold.

“Don't worry,” said Ella.
“I'll give you rides. But you'll have to wear an astronaut
helmet.”

Lori rolled her eyes and Ella chuckled. It
would be the last good thing that day.

They made their way into
the zoo and to the Communications Office. “Hey girls,” Mom said,
stepping over and hugging both of them in turn as they entered. “I
gotta run back home real quick. Your dad's...”

“Stepdad's,” Ella said,
quietly.

“...car is acting up. I
need to give him a ride back here.”

“I'll go with you,” said
Lori.

“Sure,” said Mom, smiling.
She looked at Ella. “You coming, El?”

Ella thought about it, then
made the decision that would later make her chest hurt. “Nope. I'll
wait here.”

So off they went. Ella spent a good thirty
minutes making Caleb switch the view screens from camera to camera
so she could look at the different animals. Then Lee ran in from
the breakroom, pale and wide-eyed.

“There's something bad on
the news,” he said. Ella and the others followed Lee back to the
breakroom and crowded around the small TV.

They saw a group of people holding down a
screaming woman in front of a grocery store. The woman grunted and
jerked, trying to pull free. A cop ran over, the news camera
jerking to follow him, and pulled the people off her. He bent down
to help her up and she bit into the cop's neck. The cop pulled
away, clutching his neck in shock as blood ran through his fingers.
He fell to his knees as the woman crawled to him. The group ran,
knocking the camera over.

Within a few minutes of channel surfing,
they had gleaned what was happening. Corpses were moving and
indiscriminately eating. Clip after clip of people running or
dying. Sometimes both. And the ones that were dead got up and
attacked. Caleb flipped to another local channel and they watched
the grocery store footage again.

“Wait,” said Shelley,
leaning in closer to the TV. “Oh my god, I know that store. It's
three blocks away.”

They all rushed back to the Communications
Office. Caleb switched on as many screens as he could at once. The
cameras outside the zoo all showed corpses gathering. Mangled and
misshapen people, bent and torn and gnashing their rotten teeth.
The cameras inside the zoo showed no sign of them. Just visitors
wandering the zoo, most of them oblivious. A few were on cell
phones and looking very worried.

“Lock it down!” yelled Tom.
“Before those fuckers get in!”

“But Mom!” said Ella.
“Lori!”

Caleb looked at Tom, then
at Ella. “I'm sorry, Ella. Your mom has a keycard for when they get
back.”

He flipped open the panel that controlled
the electronic locking system Gregory had recently installed.
Another of his advances he was so proud of. The panel had two lines
of switches. The ones for the animal cages were lit up red. The
ones for the doors were lit up green. Caleb flipped all the door
switches to red, using his palms to flip as many at once as he
could.

“No!” said Ella, stepping
back and biting her thumb. She reached in her jeans pocket for her
cell phone. Her heart dropped when the pocket was empty. She'd left
her phone at home. She'd complained about it all day at school. It
was a minor annoyance then. Now it was devastating

Caleb looked at her and
shook his head. “I'm sorry. We have to keep everyone
safe.”

The TV showed increasingly worse images,
culminating in graveyards filled with holes, some with corpses
still clawing their way out. Any graveyard anywhere could easily
produce hundreds of the things at once. Almost everywhere was
overrun within hours.

As the night went on, they slowly lost all
contact with the outside world. The TV channels went out one by
one. Then the radio channels followed. Finally, the Keepers were no
longer able to reach loved ones on their cell phones.

Finally, somewhere around 3 A.M., Gregory's
voice came over the speakers. He said everything was fine, he was
in the zoo and he would share more later. Before he clicked off,
Ella thought she heard Lori screaming.

“Where did he call from?”
Ella said, rushing over to the controls.

Caleb looked at screens
Ella didn't understand. He frowned. “I can't tell. That's weird. I
should be able to tell.”

Then nothing the rest of the night nor into
the morning, until the second call from Gregory came. The one where
he told Ella her mother was dead and he had her sister. He had her
sister and wouldn't tell her where. He'd hung up after she'd
screamed at him. Again, Caleb had not been able to tell where he
called from.

A brief meeting had been held then among the
Keepers. It was decided it was light now and the zoo appeared to be
clear. They would look for Gregory and Lori themselves. Once they
were all together, they could wait out the chaos outside. There was
food in vending machines and in Zoo Bites, the overpriced
restaurant set in the center of the zoo. There were water
fountains. They could last for weeks if need be.

Ella looked at Gary the
tapir, then down at the concrete ditch keeping him in the exhibit.
Tom nodded at the ditch, then looked back at Caleb. “I don't see
how the animals could get past those. Isn't that the
point?”

“Not this way,” said Caleb,
indicating the front of the exhibit. “That way.” He pointed to the
back, behind Gary and his habitat. Set in the back wall, in
concrete made to look like stone, was a door. The red light next to
the door indicated it was locked.

Ella nodded, looking at the door. Behind it
and the concrete wall was a large cage, also locked with its own
red light. The cages were used when the weather was really bad. The
chances of both locks being accidentally opened were slim,
especially with the electronic system Gregory had installed.

“Gary's still locked in,”
said Ella. “Red light says so.”

“What happens if the power
goes out?” said Lee.

“Everything defaults to
locked,” said Caleb. He jingled keys on his belt. “That's why we
still have old-fashioned keys.”

Caleb adjusted the
tranquilizer rifle on his shoulder. “We ready?”

Everyone nodded.

“Then let's find
them.”

They slowly made their way from building to
building, looking. All the animals they came across were still
safely in their exhibits. Ella gave them each a little wave as she
passed. She grew more and more nervous as hours went by with no
sign of Lori or Stepdad, but interacting with the animals made her
feel a little better.

The group rounded a corner. Ella looked
around. To her left was the giraffe exhibit. A giraffe stuck out
his long tongue to grab at the dried leaves clinging to a nearby
tree.

“Hey Lenny,” said Ella
quietly. “Sorry you're hungry. No one fed you
yesterday.”

She turned and saw a small administration
building set behind a vending machine. Caleb walked toward it,
keycard in hand. He pressed the card up to a panel to the right of
the door. A light on the panel changed from red to green. Caleb
opened the door and went inside. A moment later, he came back out,
shaking his head.

“Nope,” he said. “Not in
there.”

“Hey!” a strange voice
yelled from one side. They all turned to see a balding man stomping
up the concrete path toward them. He wore jeans and an
Ashton Tigers
T-shirt
under a thin jacket. Behind him stood a woman and two teenage boys.
They all also wore
Tigers
T-shirts.

Caleb blinked in surprise,
then stepped toward the man. “Can I help you sir?”

“You can let us the
motherfuck out of here is what you can fucking do!”

Tom stepped over, in front
of Caleb. “Okay, dude, time to settle down.”

“You'll settle down on my
dick!” The man jabbed a finger at Tom, then walked past him to
confront Caleb.

“What seems to be the
problem sir?” said Caleb. Ella knew what it was. She couldn't
believe they'd all forgotten last night. She knew what the man was
about to say.

“The problem,” said the
man, “is you people locked the damn gates last night! You locked us
all in here, you stupid prick!” The man shoved Caleb. Caleb
staggered backward. The tranquilizer rifle slipped off his shoulder
and clattered to the concrete.

“Caleb!” yelled Shelley,
running up behind him and putting her hand on his
shoulder.

“You stay out of this
bitch!” yelled the man. “Now let us the fuck out! We're cold and
hungry and you trapped us in here!”

Caleb held up his hands.
“Sir, please, it's dangerous outside.”

“I don't give a fuck about
a few homeless-looking assholes outside. I'm getting my family
home! And you will unlock the gate or I will pound you and your
stupid bitch girlfriend into paste!”

“Back off, fucker!” yelled
Tom, stepping up and shoving the man.

The man roared and punched Tom across the
jaw. Tom staggered back.

Behind Ella, the giraffe shuffled its feet
and gave a nervous snort.

The man turned to punch Caleb then stopped
as they all heard a rifle cock.

Frozen mid-stance, everyone turned their
heads to see Lee holding the tranquilizer rifle. His hands were
shaking as he kept the barrel trained on the balding man.

“Everyone just settle down,
please!” said Lee.

“Lee,” said
Caleb.

“You gonna shoot me now?”
said the man, face turning red, but staying still. His fist was
still up in the air, mid-punch. “You gonna gun down me and my
family to cover up your little mistake?”

“It's just a tranquilizer
dart, sir,” said Caleb. “Please, Lee, put it down.”

“No!” said Lee, his voice
shaking in time with his arms. “He's crazy. He's crazy and we need
to sedate him.”

“Lee, it could kill him!”
said Shelley.

“No,” said Lee. “It's a low
dose. Enough for a monkey. Enough for a big punch-happy monkey like
fuck-face mcgoo here. I dealt with fuckers like you in high school.
Now you calm down or I will calm you down myself!” His shaking
voice went up in pitch as he ended the sentence. He panted, ragged
and wheezing. He kept the gun trained on the man.

“Dad,” said one of the
teenage boys behind him.

“Stay out of this, son,”
said the man, licking his lips and looking among the group of
Keepers. “Listen, buddy. We don't want any trouble.”

“Fuck you don't,” Lee
said.

“Lee,” said Caleb, taking a
slow step toward him.

“Stay back, Caleb!” said
Lee.

Tom stepped over quickly
and grabbed the barrel of the rifle, moving it a few inches off its
target. “Lee, let it go!”