Cage The Dead (12 page)

He nodded with satisfaction, recognizing her words as a compliment and smiled proudly.        

Gaia shook her head, not knowing what to make of it all as the pair climbed down the stairs. Gaia stared out the windows on the far side of the house nearest the veterinary facility, where she and Nick had gone not even twenty-four hours ago. All seemed pretty quiet outside.

Almost
too
quiet.

“I better get an extra clip,” she said to no one in particular, as she headed toward the basement door, scrambled down the stairs, opened the gun safe and the hard shell case within, and put the extra clip in her jacket pocket.

Another thirteen, she thought, hoping that she wouldn’t even need to empty the current clip in the gun. She quickly ascended the stairs and rejoined Justin, who was staring out the glass pane on the door. He stepped aside and nodded for her to go first.

She turned the handle on the door and pushed it open wide. Nothing stood within eyesight there except for a pair of lions in the far distance, tearing at something. She had no idea if their meal was a zombie or another animal, but she did admit that things were chaotic at best, and that she couldn’t do anything about it right now anyway. She needed to head in the opposite direction, to check on the gorillas and from there she could see the wolf and hyena pens, too. They were probably getting hungry, she thought, shaking her head at the collective misery through which these animals were suffering.

“This way, Gaia whispered, heading off and toward the section of the zoo that held the primates. She almost leaped out of her skin when Maye hopped up from behind her and climbed up her leg. Maye was chattering and a bit frantic, which had Gaia concerned.

“It’s okay, Maye. We’re fine,” she said, until she rounded a corner of the veterinary lab and saw half a dozen zombies kneeling on the ground, feasting on an animal corpse. She saw only a hoof and assumed it to be a moose, and hoped that the animal had at least taken some of them down before they killed it.

They quietly walked past the zombies, who were more than fifty or so paces away, out in the open, were probably too wrapped up in their meal to notice them—until Maye squawked unexpectedly.

“Run!” Gaia said, taking off running toward the primate enclosures. As she pumped her legs harder, Maye clutching her shoulder and neck uncomfortably, she peeked back to see that Justin was keeping pace with her.

She looked back and saw that the zombies were a good distance away and that only two chased them. What felt like a full minute later, the gorilla pen was near, and as she got closer, she noted Solomon sitting before the rest of the family, which struck her as odd. She tapped the keys in her pocket, but realized unlocking the pen would spell doom for the both of them. She began to remove the keys and noted a breach in the fencing and changed direction toward it.

It appeared that something bent the fencing inward, causing a gap in the links.

As she arrived, she saw that Molly and the babies were lying still. She managed another quick glance over her shoulder and noted with terror that the zombies were closing the gap, less than twenty paces from Justin now and closing.

“Here!” she yelled to Justin, running to the opening in the pen’s fencing. It was large enough for them to squeeze through, and so she removed her pistol and raised it toward the onrushing undead, allowing Justin time to carefully climb through the gap. She stopped and spun to face the oncoming undead, but as she lifted the gun, it flew from her hands.

Maye leapt from her shoulder and onto the pen, scaling it, leaving an unarmed and disheartened Gaia behind.

They were a mere few paces from her and so she turned and saw Justin holding the fence open for her. She dove into the opening, scraping her forearm on the exposed steel and running a thin gash along her skin.

She felt a hand grasp her boot. She kicked in a panic more than once, until she wiggled free, the zombie pulling it loose with a tug. She began to crawl forward, managed to regain her footing, and ran to where Justin stood, staring at Solomon. The gorilla beat his chest angrily and maneuvered in front of Gaia and Justin and as the first zombie came through the breach in the chain link.

Solomon pummeled the first one that came in smashing its skull with his fists twice, the first one bending its neck as Gaia heard the bones snap under the ferocity of the attack. The second blow caused its head to explode under the impact.

Solomon was angry. Gaia had never seen the silverback behave with such ferocity and it made her feel terrified.

The second one came into the pen, and again he beat his chest as the creature lunged for him. He slapped the zombie away with such force, that once again Gaia heard bones shatter under the impact. Solomon beat his chest, hooted, and knuckle-ran straight into the onrushing zombie, which latched on and bit into Solomon’s hide, but did not get a firm grasp before the gorilla seized it and launched the undead creature into the air. He then struck the zombie on the way back down with such force that he broke its back.

The zombie, unfazed by the devastating blow it had just received, lay on the floor in a crumpled heap, trying hopelessly to crawl forward toward the gorilla. Gaia looked from the zombie back to Solomon, who was clearly still upset, pacing back and forth and grunting some more.

She strode up to the zombie and jammed the machete tip through its skull, wiped the gore off on the grass, and then put it back in her leather sheath.

Then she waited a long minute before turning to witness the horror that she knew awaited her. She spun and gazed upon the corpses of Molly, along with two of the babies, all lying dead. She collapsed on the grassy surface of the enclosure and began to weep uncontrollably, Justin staring at her in an uncomfortable silence. A moment later, she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Solomon staring down at her.

But, the odd thing was that there seemed to be an intelligent understanding behind his gaze. She knew better though, realizing the absurdity of that notion, but appreciated it nonetheless.

She stood and hugged him, and then backed away, using sign language to ask him to come with her. He shook his head and banged the ground in front of the deceased gorillas.

“You want me to fix them?” she asked. “I can’t, Solomon. I’m sorry,” she added, gesturing with the appropriate signs. “You need to come with Gaia, okay?”

Solomon again ran around the pen angrily, stomping on the dead zombie body, beating his chest, screeching, and generally showing her that he was angry with the zombies. And rightly so, she knew.

“You come with me, okay? Come with Gaia. I will take you to be safe,” she said, again signing it out for him. The enormous silverback finally calmed and sat in the pen again, gesturing to Gaia that he was sad. She leaned over the huge animal and hugged him, something she had done many times in the past. But this time, she noted that there were wounds on his hide and matted blood in his fur.

She scanned the area inside the enclosure, finally seeing a pile of zombie corpses, at least three of them, all dead and torn to pieces, lying in the far corner.

“Come with me and I will get you some fruit,” she said, trying to entice the gorilla to follow her. Then she noted that some more zombies in the distance were heading their way, wandering slowly. She needed to cut them off. Through the binoculars, she could see four of them.

“As a matter of fact,” she stated, ‘You stay here with Justin for a minute. Wait with him, okay,” she said, signing first to the gorilla and then instructing the boy, who nodded, saying nothing. She reached for the gun in the small of her back and then recalled she had dropped it. Quickly scanning for and then recovering the gun, Gaia walked slowly toward her prey.

She chambered a round and drew close enough for them to see her. The first one came charging toward her, blood and gore staining its face and dripping from its mouth. Then the second and the third began that same frantic charge. Gaia dropped the first one squarely, allowing it to get close. She repeated with the second and then the third, the gunshots echoing throughout the open space.

Howls and cries from the nearby wolves and laughing from the hyenas broke the silence next. Gaia had an idea.

She waited for the last one to see her, it was possibly another of the many children that had come yesterday to see the animals. But right now, she didn’t care. She saw the thing that came toward her as something much more sinister.

“You killed my family,” she said evenly, shooting it in the knee, causing it to run more slowly. She turned in that moment and ran, racing past the pen with Justin and Solomon in the distance, keeping far enough away from the pair so that the zombie could not see them as it shambled wildly after her.

She raced to the pits, purposely dug out and fenced in so that the hyenas were ten feet below, and she waited for the approaching zombie. On one side were the wolves, and on the other side were the hyenas.

It closed the gap quickly, charging along despite the wounded leg, and driven by its need to sate it’s never-ending hunger. As it arrived in her personal space, Gaia bent low.

She knew the zombies were not smart and so she used that lack of intelligence against them. The zombie grasped at the empty air where she had just been and tumbled over her. Gaia stood, finishing the zombie’s reckless momentum and tossing it to the hyenas below, launching the body over the half fence. It crashed to the hard ground, landing in a way that saw one leg snap in half.

She stared down over the edge and smiled as the hyenas approached. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a pack of cigarettes lying on the ground and picked them up.

“Fuck it.”

She opened the pack, removed a cigarette, a neatly tucked-in lighter, and stared at them both. Gaia was a reformed smoker of five years now, but she shrugged, placed the cigarette in her mouth and lit it.

She took a long drag, looked down at the ensuing chaos as the hyenas tore pieces of flesh off the zombie and she smiled with gratification.

Chapter 10

She heard Justin’s voice calling in the distance, interrupting her from the grim satisfaction of watching the hyena’s feasting on the undead thing. Despite the fact that it was once a young boy had no bearing on Gaia right now. She only knew that these undead creatures had been responsible for the deaths of everyone she’d held dear.

They’d taken Adam, Nick, Molly and the babies, Aubrey, and every other zookeeper and employee that she could—wait, she thought—not all.

Someone else that worked here has to be alive. Someone opened the cat enclosures. Who was it, then? Who could—?

“Miss Gaia!” called the voice of Justin, derailing her train of thought from the mystery at hand, namely: who opened the pens and were they still alive?

She tossed the butt away and tucked the pack of cigarettes into her jacket. Gaia made her way across the open area to the gorilla pen and unlocked the door there.

“What is it, Justin?”

“I…I was just worried about you, that’s all,” said the young boy, causing Gaia to smile at his attempted deflection of concern for her, when she knew very well that he was scared, too. And she didn’t blame him, as she was just as frightened by this whole turn of events. Maye was resting comfortably on his shoulder and he seemed to like her there.

“Come with Gaia, Solomon. I have fruits for you,” she said as she signed the ‘eat’ gesture to him. The massive silverback shuffled along, then seemingly full of sympathy or concern, looked back again at the deceased female gorilla and her babies. “We will come back and bury them,” she said, patting Solomon on the back. He made a sign to Gaia that he was sad and Gaia’s anger mounted knowing that these zombies had done this. She wanted to make them pay.

As they made their way back toward the house, Gaia passed the veterinary lab, remembering Nancy and what she’d had to do to the undead creature that stood in her stead. Then they passed the storage shed that housed the freezers full of food, as well as skids of dried foods, and she decided to stop there. She stood before the freezers and heard the humming and knew that they still had power, as did everything in the facility…for now.

She gave thought to the idea that they might not be stay that way for long. But, who knew? They might stay on for the foreseeable future. But what if they weren’t? Gaia remembered the generator beneath the lab that Nick spoke of that could power everything, but she would need to check on that to make certain.

Not now, though
, she decided. She spun to see Justin and Solomon standing in the threshold of the doorway. Gaia searched through the many crates stacked on skids and eventually found a bag of nuts and a bushel of bananas. She scooped them up and paused at the freezer door. Opening the massive door, she saw many things inside, including several things that she would be able to cook—at least for the boy. She would come back for them and to confirm that the generator worked at a later date.

“C’mon, boys. Let’s get inside and get settled. Then she heard a growl and Solomon was beating his chest. She knew whatever it was outside had Justin frozen in fear, and Maye ran into the shed and hid behind a crate. She dropped her supplies and quickly retrieved two frozen sides of meat and ran outside.

There were two lionesses creeping slowly toward them.

Gaia recognized these two specifically, having visited them many times over, and even more recently, on an educational tour where Nick went over some things about the big cats.

These two fascinated her, and she remembered them distinctly.

“No, Allie. No, Misty. These are your dinners,” Gaia said, rolling two huge frozen chops of meat toward them.

“Justin, take Solomon by the hand and walk him toward the house, honey. Take him inside.” Justin touched the finger of the huge silverback and looked to Gaia who signed to him. “Follow Justin,” she said, shooing them away. Eventually, they did just that, and Gaia looked back to see if she could locate Maye.

“Maye, come.” The capuchin leaped up and onto her shoulder as the lionesses licked at and began biting at the frozen meat. She watched as Solomon had to turn sideways and duck to enter the house, and that particular image looked absurdly comical to her in that moment. She slowly followed them, but her mirth quickly faded as a low growl sounded from behind her.

She slowly turned to regard the source. She was both relived and then horrified to see one of the lionesses had sprung on a zombie. It must have appeared from around the corner of the shed only a few seconds ago. It was at one time a young boy. The lioness pounced and pinned it to the ground in one brutally graceful effort.

 Gaia no longer wanted to see what happened next as she ran forward and entered the house, not looking back.

It took tens of minutes for her heartbeat to slow once again to a steady rhythm as she considered the actions of the big cats.

Do they like zombie meat? What is it doing to them?

She knew that lions and tigers and such did not prefer carrion, but she supposed, they did what they had to in order to survive.

Gaia led Solomon around the house and they gathered up the zombie bodies that were lying around, including Nick’s, and the four bodies that were upstairs, and brought them out to the screened-in porch area outside. Solomon was so strong that he could carry two at once.

Gaia looked out back and saw nothing in sight, and so she decided to drag the bodies out toward the burnt remains of the barn and drop them there--all except for Nick’s.

She retrieved the rounded edge shovel and picked a spot outside the screened in porch area in the backyard under the shade of a large tree.

She began to dig.

***

Several hours later, as the sun waned in the western sky, Gaia had carved out something that resembled a pit. It was at least three feet deep or more, she believed and she felt the sting in her back to remind her. She regarded Solomon and Justin watching her from inside the porch area, Justin offering on more than one occasion to help her, but Gaia refused, needing to work out her frustration. As she felt the ache in her back, she briefly considered rethinking that offer. She stared into the windowpane, seeing Solomon shove leaves into his mouth and then curl up on the floor to take a nap. She had seen Justin nod off a few times, but now stood vigilantly observing her.

As the gloom replaced the light a bit more, making it more difficult for her to complete her task, Gaia turned on the porch light out back and then found a floodlight that shed some light on the back where she worked. She would not allow herself to stop until Nick was properly buried, even though doing this was a reckless move. She considered that it might very well attract zombies, but she did not care in that instant, and so she continued.

A moaning sound broke the silence out back mere moments later, followed by increasingly rapid footfalls on the soil in the gloom. A heartbeat later, a zombie entered the outer edges of the light. She recognized that the creature wore garb similar to hers, signifying that this one was an employee at the zoo, though she didn’t recognize who it was.

Gaia stepped backward in an attempt to back away from the onrushing creature. Suddenly, she felt her footing go out from under her and the cold soil against her hands as she tried to stop her fall.

She screamed and felt her vision become cloudy as her head hit the hard dirt wall of the pit.

She heard Justin’s voice, but could not comprehend the words.

Through that hazy vision she witnessed brief images of Solomon’s teeth biting and fists pummeling the creature. Gaia was malnourished, exhausted, wounded and more. She fought to keep conscious. But her senses betrayed her.

Then there was blackness.

***

Light penetrated her vision and Gaia squinted against it, attempting to force it away. She shot up in a panic and subsequently regretted that as her head throbbed once more against that sudden effort. She stared at Justin, who sat in a chair beside her, the silverback gorilla resting on the floor in the living room beside them both.

“The pit? Nick?” Gaia asked.

“Solomon helped me bury him after we brought you in the house,” Justin said with a certain unexpected maturity that again had her dumbfounded. “Well, he tried to help, anyways. We had to do it in the dark, ‘cause the light was making the bad people come.”

“Smart.” Gaia gazed from him to Solomon and then back to the boy again. “You really are fond of the gorilla, huh?”

Justin smiled and nodded. “He’s really cool.”

Then Gaia panicked again and looked around. “Where’s Maye!?”

As if in answer to her question, the capuchin appeared from the kitchen with a handful of mixed nuts, some of which she ate, and some she tossed about here and there. This time Gaia chuckled for a few long minutes. It was the first time in days that she had done that.

She slowly stood, leaning on the arm of the sofa as she got her bearings. She felt a rumbling in her stomach and realized that she hadn’t eaten in a while and, most likely, neither had Justin. She grabbed her jacket, the gun, still in its holster, and the binoculars from the table. “Did you eat?” she asked him, finally able to stand on her own two feet without aid.

“I had some cereal I found in the cabinet.”

“Was there any milk in the fridge?”

“Yup. I checked it. It’s good for a few more days. Solomon ate almost all the fruit though.”

“All right. I’ll get more. Why don’t you take a nap while I shower, okay?”

“Sure. I am kinda tired.” Gaia smirked at him and then checked the gun, making sure that it was still loaded and that the safety was on. It was just as she’d left it.

“And thanks for helping last night.”

“Welcome, ma’am. I mean, Miss Gaia,” he corrected with a sheepish grin. She gave him a mocking, narrow eyed look, shaking her finger at him, and he smiled back at her and then took her spot on the sofa. Gaia covered him up and then began a perimeter check. She tested the front door, and then peered out the side window, careful not to move the curtains. She did see a zombie wandering around outside by itself with half its arm missing, gore covering its body. She hoped one of the animals had done that. Out the back window on the porch, she noted the loose soil that covered Nick’s body, and was grateful that Justin was able to finish the job.

She placed the binoculars over her eyes and noted a pair of tigers off in the far distance along the tree line. They were near the gap in the fence though they did not exit. Instead, they lay in the grass as peacefully as ever, allowing Gaia the briefest of respites from the reality of their situation.

In that moment of peace, she remembered Adam, and how much she missed him. The next thoughts were of her family—her mother and father, her cousins, aunts and uncles—and she wondered if they were still alive. She had to hope that they were and that sooner or later, they would be reunited.

She checked the backside door peering across to the shed and veterinary facility and saw nothing out of sorts.

She wanted to make sure they would remain safe for the foreseeable future, and methodically went about checking everything, including locks on doors and windows, as well as to make sure that the electrical system and plumbing were in good shape.

She longed for a shower. That also made her wondered if the house had an oil or electric heater. She took a walk down into the basement, assuming it would be down there. The stains from the zombie attack were still there, dried and sticky, and try as she might to not remember, the images came flooding back anyway. She tried to ignore them as she went about checking all the pipes down there, and then she finally came upon the water heater tucked into a far corner.

It was electric heat and the tank felt warm to the touch. She was thankful for that, knowing relief might soon be coming to her aching muscles.

Then she wandered over to the gun safe and retrieved the case she originally took, found another clip and went about testing it, ejecting it and so on for a few moments. It worked just fine. She also grabbed another of the hard shell cases on the top shelf and opened it. Inside were the manual, certificate and the pistol itself—a Colt Mustang— along with a handful of magazines and loose slugs inside. She grabbed that and took it with her, turning the lights off as she left.

She wandered upstairs and found a bedroom that she decided would do nicely for the time being. There were old clothes in the closets, some never even worn it seemed, and the top shelves of the chest of drawers were loaded with female undergarments and bras.