The Secret Zoo (10 page)

A
s Blizzard lumbered through the City of Species, Noah studied the sights around him. It was as if he'd stepped into a fairy tale about the union of humans and animals, city and nature. He tilted his head upward and watched hundreds of birds fly above the city. They soared through the open spots in the sky, wove through buildings, and flipped across branches in deeply meshed tree limbs. Their shadows crossed the streets, more like dark wedges of matter than spots emptied of light. Noah felt as if he could reach out and scoop their shadows up.

Blizzard strolled past tigers, wolverines, and a family of
rhinos. An elephant used its trunk to pick leaves off tree branches. A kangaroo hopped onto a tortoise's shell to sniff a fat possum dangling upside down from a branch.

Noah noticed velvet curtains like the one he'd just stepped through hanging in front of doorways. Beside each curtain, a wooden sign announced a different sector.

“These sectors,” Noah muttered. “They connect the City Zoo to this place. But how?”

A gorilla bumped into Blizzard. The bear growled, but the gorilla ignored him and kept rushing by. Noah noticed something peculiar—the gorilla was carrying a pair of strangely familiar running shoes.

Seconds later, Noah heard a man's voice shouting something about a “security breach.” He glanced over his shoulder. There was Charlie Red! The nasty security guard from Creepy Critters was yelling orders into a walkie-talkie. Simultaneously a squad of monkeys charged out of a dark alley into the street.

Beside Blizzard, a father scooped up his young daughter and said to his wife, “Something's wrong! Police-monkeys are on alert!”

Noah looked at Podgy with a furrowed brow. “Police-monkeys?”

The monkeys charged through the city, weaving through the other animals. One jumped over the back of a lion. Another darted between the tall legs of a giraffe.
A third hurdled a koala and a mailbox in a single bound. Some were langurs like Mr. Tall Tail, with thick, cartoonish eyebrows and patchy, unkempt beards growing from their cheeks. Others were stern-faced baboons. Even Charlie Red looked apish, the way he was jumping around. Noah almost expected him to jump onto a tree branch and start scratching his armpits.

“Who are they chasing? I don't see—”

But then Noah
did
see. Ella and Richie were running down the sidewalk. Charlie Red's squad of police-monkeys was chasing
them
!

“No!” Noah gasped. He slapped Blizzard on the side and said, “Blizzard! My friends are here. They're in trouble!”

Blizzard didn't waste a moment. He charged across the street. Every animal smaller than a truck ducked out of his way. It was obvious to all that Blizzard meant business.

“Go, Blizzard!” Noah yelled.

As the polar bear charged, Podgy bounced around like a pillow on a bull. At one point, he shot into the air, and Noah had to snag his flipper and pull him back. Watching the chase, Noah noticed a curious thing. Monkeys weren't the only animals chasing his friends. So were prairie dogs! He dismissed his confusion for the time being and called out, “Ella! Richie!”

They didn't hear him. The two scouts darted through one of the velvet curtains. An overhead sign read,
SECTOR
13. Blizzard pursued them, nearly trampling a few prairie dogs. Beside the curtain, Noah read a sign that said,
NO ADMITTANCE FOR THE UNWINGED
!

“The unwinged?” Noah asked. “What's that?”

But roaring his thunderous roar, Blizzard was already pounding through the velvet drape.

A
s the curtain closed behind the scouts, Richie asked, “What's Sector Thirteen?”

“I don't know and I don't care!” Ella answered. “Just keep me away from those monkeys!”

Accompanied by prairie dogs, they found themselves scrambling down a short, gloomy hallway. The hallway ended on a wooden platform that jutted into a bright space. As the scouts raced onto the platform, Ella skidded to a stop just inches from the platform's edge, beyond which the Earth disappeared. Far below, Ella saw a deep fog. Her heart stammered as she realized that she'd just
missed falling over a cliff—a cliff in the middle of what she'd thought was flat land.

“Richie!” She flung her arm out to the side and slammed Richie across the chest. Richie's feet flew forward, and he crashed down on his back. Ella leaned out and again gazed over the cliff. The faraway fog looked menacing.

“No way,” she muttered. “There's just no way.”

 

As Blizzard charged down the hallway, Noah tried to figure out the meaning of the sign he'd just read:
NO ADMITTANCE FOR THE UNWINGED
!

“The unwinged,” Noah said. “The unwinged, the unwinged, the unwinged…I don't get it.”

Podgy's beady black eyes stared intently into Noah's. He pointed his flippers out to his sides and flapped them deliberately. Noah raised his eyebrows.

“Oh no,” he murmured. “It's the Forest of Flight, the
real
one.”

 

Ella had little more than a second to look around and realize what they'd nose-dived into. Sector 13 was some type of birdhouse—a birdhouse the size of a stadium. But this birdhouse seemed to be bottomless. Below her feet, the cliff fell and fell, ending in a distant fog that concealed its true depth. From the ocean of fog rose hundreds of trees. They were too long and thick to be anything but
magical. The birdhouse was circular, and its walls were dressed in green ivy. Overhead Ella saw a glass dome, and beyond that, the strange blue sky she'd seen in the City of Species. All around her, waterfalls spilled over mossy cliffs and burst into mist as they splashed across boulders. Thousands of birds soared through the air and skipped across tree branches—birds of so many sizes and colors that Ella thought they looked like bits of a rainbow.

Ella's attention abruptly returned to her predicament when a prairie dog came racing from behind her. It skidded, trying to stop before the cliff, but was unsuccessful and fell over the edge with a fearful screech. A moment later, another prairie dog followed suit. Then a third, and a fourth. One after the other, they all skidded and disappeared. Ella had no time to stop them. It took only seconds for every prairie dog that had followed Richie to fall over the edge. She could do nothing but scream.

 

From his high perch on Blizzard's back, Noah spotted his friends at the edge of a cliff. For some reason, Richie was lying on his back. Then a terrible thing happened: one by one, the prairie dogs that had been chasing them tumbled over the edge.

Blizzard hotfooted along, reaching the scouts so suddenly that his huge paw barely missed planting Richie's head in the ground like an oversized seed. Noah jumped
down and rushed to Ella, who was on her hands and knees, looking over the cliff.

“Ella!” he called. He gazed over the edge. The prairie dogs looked like falling dots as they headed down to the fog.

“I couldn't stop them!” she explained. “I couldn't!”

Noah knew he had to do something—but what? He sprang to his feet and scanned the ivy-covered walls of the building. In his search for a solution, he noticed something directly in front of him, across the great distance of the Forest of Flight. A single hole was carved in the wall beneath a small blinking light. On the basis of everything Noah had experienced, he was certain that the hole led to the Clarksville City Zoo.

“It's a tunnel,” he said. “A tunnel that gets birds from
that
zoo to
this
zoo—like the one Podgy and I came through. The day I met Marlo at the Clarksville Zoo…all those birds…they came from here.” But he had no time to think about that now. He looked toward the treetops, whistled, and called, “Marlo! Are you here?
Marlo
!”

A tiny blue bird shot out from the leaves as quickly as a pellet from a gun. He landed on Noah's shoulder and stared at him.

“Marlo!”

Still distraught from the sight of the falling prairie dogs, Ella jumped up. “This is
that
bird? The one that came to your window?”

“This is Marlo in the flesh—er…feathers, I guess.” Noah pointed to the prairie dogs and said, “Marlo, we need help!”

With a few lightning-quick jerks of his head, Marlo assessed the situation. He chirped twice and launched back up to the treetops.

“What's he doing?” Ella asked. “He's going the wrong way!”

“I don't know. But we need to trust him. He's smart.”

“Smart is good, but we need fast.” Ella looked down. The prairie dogs had disappeared into the fog.

Marlo dived out of the sky and zipped past in a blue blur. Seconds later, thousands of birds burst from the treetops. They raced after Marlo, creating a gust of wind so powerful that branches and leaves ripped into the air. The wind blew back Ella's ponytail and flapped the earflaps on Noah's cap. Richie clung to Blizzard's leg.

Noah stood and watched; after all, he'd seen this before. Birds of every family and species descended: eagles, owls, vultures, falcons, hawks, and chickadees. Swarms of hummingbirds, as colorful as crayons and not much bigger, dived into the depths of the birdhouse.

Noah cried, “Get 'em, guys!”

Together the three scouts peered into the wondrous tree-filled abyss and watched the endless stream of birds race after the falling prairie dogs.

“I can't believe this!” Richie exclaimed. “They say the
early bird catches the worm. What kind of bird catches a prairie dog?”

Noah was about to answer when he heard a droning sound. Ella and Richie heard it, too. Even Blizzard perked up his ears, and Podgy cocked his head. The sound was distant, but there was no mistaking what it was: paws beating the ground.

“Monkeys,” Richie whispered.

Noah walked to the middle of the platform. To the left was a gate that led to a narrow bamboo ramp. The ramp skimmed the interior wall of the birdhouse, winding around until it disappeared into the trees. It looked like a special access ramp—a quick way to get from the platform to other sections of the Forest of Flight. Whatever the ramp was intended for, it was too narrow and unsteady to be for general use.

“Where does that thing go?” Noah asked.

“It doesn't matter,” Richie said. “We're too heavy. It'll collapse if we try to walk on it.”

“What if we run superfast?” Noah said.

“Don't be stupid! This isn't a cartoon.”

“It's either that or we wait here for the monkeys.” Noah climbed on Blizzard's back, taking his seat behind Podgy. “It's our best shot.”

Blizzard growled, seconding Noah's idea. Ella silently climbed up behind Noah.

“I don't like this,” Richie said. “Not at all!”

But he clambered up Blizzard's furry side and plopped down in the last available seat—near the bear's rump. Blizzard charged through the gate and raced onto the bamboo ramp, carrying the scouts away from Charlie Red and his threatening squad of police-monkeys.

“H
urry, Blizzard!” Richie called out. “I see the police-monkeys!”

Blizzard dropped his head and raced forward. The bamboo stalks were strong, but Noah wondered how long the ramp could support them. He looked over his shoulder and watched the monkeys charge out of the dark hallway. Some of them stopped to watch the extraordinary spectacle of birds, but most chased after the scouts, quickly gaining ground on them.

“They're too fast!” Ella yelled.

A moment later, the birds that were flying alongside the
scouts swooped upward with a deafening cacophony of squawks and whistles, but nothing bothered Blizzard. He kept his head low and barreled forward, pounding down on his meaty paws and slicing his claws into the bamboo stalks.

Ella looked down. Five black falcons were rising from the depths of the birdhouse. They were flying more slowly than the other birds, and with good reason: each one had a prairie dog in its talons. Seven eagles trailed the falcons, following suit.

“They got 'em!” Ella shouted over the noise.

Most of the furry animals were bug-eyed and terrified, but some looked quite relaxed considering the monstrous drop they'd just endured. Together the eagles and falcons coasted up and above the bamboo ramp and safely dropped the prairie dogs near Blizzard.

“Yes!” Ella exclaimed.

“I thought you couldn't stand those prairie dogs,” Richie said.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Danger makes me sensitive, I guess.”

Blizzard didn't slow down for the prairie dogs. He dodged them as if they were ordinary obstacles in his path—not living things he could make go
splat
!

Noah looked around and pointed. “We're in trouble!”

Half of the band of monkeys was leaping through the
trees, lunging from branch to branch, while the others stayed behind.

“They're gonna head us off!” Ella announced. “We'll be cornered!”

The scouts could do nothing but charge forward. Noah watched as the monkeys caught up to them and passed them, still in the branches above. A few minutes later, the speedy animals dropped to the ramp a hundred feet ahead of the scouts. Seeing himself surrounded, Blizzard stopped and growled menacingly. He swung his head in long, slow arcs, assessing the situation and displaying his bone-crushing teeth.

“What are we gonna do?” Richie yelled. “What do these stupid monkeys want with us, anyway?”

Noah didn't know the answer, but he knew he didn't trust the monkeys. They were under Charlie Red's command, and Charlie Red was keeping Noah away from Megan. Charlie Red was one of the bad guys.

“We're trapped,” Ella said.

Marlo flew down from the treetops and landed on Noah's shoulder, chirping hysterically.

“Marlo! What should we do?” Noah asked.

The kingfisher glanced at the police-monkeys and flew back into the trees. The monkeys closed to within seventy-five feet of the scouts, from behind and ahead.

“What now?” Ella asked.

“Charge through 'em, Bliz!” Noah commanded. “It's our best shot.”

The polar bear raised his chin and growled. He threw back his weight, ready to charge forward. Suddenly—
Craack! Crrraackkk! Crrraaaccckkk!
The bamboo beneath his rear paws snapped, and the broken strips dangled toward the fog below. The scouts screamed. The prairie dogs scattered in all directions.

“The ramp!” Ella shrieked. “It's falling apart!”

Noah's eyes darted to the treetops, and he willed Marlo to return. “C'mon, Marlo!” he moaned. “We need help somehow! We need help
now
!”

Crrraaaccckkk!
The bamboo snapped again beneath Blizzard's weight. The bear's front legs lurched through the planks and dangled precariously over the abyss. Pieces of bamboo plummeted, ricocheted off branches, and whirled away, out of control.

“Everyone off Blizzard!” Noah yelled.

The monkeys closed to within thirty feet on both sides. The crazy creatures didn't care that the ramp was breaking up.

“Move!” Noah shouted again. “Off! Off! Off!”

As the scouts rolled off Blizzard's back, the birds swooped out of the trees and swept down on the monkeys. They poked them with their bills and claws, trying to protect the scouts. Even Marlo plunged into the action. The tiny blue bird dived at a monkey and prodded its
rear end with his pointy beak until it howled, leaped up, and fell right off the ramp. With their long, hairy arms waving wildly, the monkeys screeched and slapped at the birds.

A flock of woodpeckers gathered in a nearby tree. All at once, like pickaxes, their beaks began to hammer a branch in a blur of ultra swift motion. A cloud of wood splinters and sawdust filled the air.

Ella scrutinized them. “I don't like the looks of this,” she said.

“What are they doing?” Richie asked.

“Heck if I know,” Noah said. “But when that thing falls, it's gonna land on top of us.”

The scouts scattered. All around them, the birds continued their chaotic attack on the monkeys, while the long-armed animals chanted,
“Oou! Oou! Oou!”
and slapped the air.
Crrraaaccckkk!
Another bamboo stalk snapped in two. Struggling to stand up on the splintering planks, Blizzard groaned. Now he was frightened.

The woodpeckers hammered deeper into the branch. It trembled ominously.

“Get up, Blizzard!” Noah shouted.

Skrrackkk! Skrrrackkk! Skkkrrraaackkk!
Cracking noises filled the air. The sound meant only one thing—the tree branch was splitting, and in a matter of moments, it would crash down on top of the great bear.

Finally Blizzard managed to lift his back paws and free them from the holes.

“Get up! Get up! Get up!” Noah shouted.

The branch twisted downward, and the woodpeckers scattered. Seconds later,
Ssskkkrrraaaccckkk!
The branch split in two.

“
Blizzard!
” the scouts yelled in one voice.

As the tree limb plummeted through the air, Blizzard freed his front paws and lunged forward. When the branch hit, a shock wave rocked the ramp. Everyone—the monkeys, the prairie dogs, Podgy, Blizzard, and the scouts—bounced and flailed out of control.

“Hold on!” Ella screamed.

The ramp rolled up and down, waving in the air for what seemed like an eternity. When it finally stopped moving, Noah scanned the scene to figure out what had happened. The fallen branch was wedged between the birdhouse wall and two other branches. It had become a secure bridge from the ramp to a distant tree. The woodpeckers had provided the scouts with an escape route!

For a minute, nobody moved except the birds that had been attacking the monkeys. Confused, they circled above the scene.

Then, as if someone had flicked a switch, the animals remembered what they had been doing and picked up where they'd left off. The birds dived down at the
police-monkeys. The monkeys screeched in response and swatted the air.

The scouts ran to the fallen branch. Ella was the first to climb on, yelling, “C'mon, you guys! It's solid!”

Noah jumped on the bridge. “Blizzard, it's strong enough for you!”

He was contemplating how to get Podgy across when he noticed that Richie had already taken care of the logistics. He had placed his backpack between Blizzard's jaws and given its place on his back to Podgy. The penguin was riding piggyback! He'd wrapped his flippers over Richie's shoulders and wedged his feet in the crooks of his arms. His beak stuck out above Richie's forehead. Together they looked like an extraordinary creature with two mismatched faces. Podgy nervously snapped his head back and forth, slapping his bill against Richie's crown. His bill was like a pinball flipper and Richie's head the defenseless ball.

Ella and Noah quickly crossed the branch. The bridge was wide enough for Blizzard to plod over it without much difficulty. Even Richie and Podgy traversed it in a snap, though they were slightly wobblier than the others. As soon as everyone was safely planted on a sturdy, wide branch in the new tree, the woodpeckers descended on the fallen branch and started to work their red-plumed heads like miniature jackhammers.

“Now what are they doing?” Ella asked.

“Cutting through,” Richie replied. “They're gonna get rid of the bridge so the monkeys can't get us—at least not without finding a different route.”

“They're buying us time,” Noah said.

Crrraackkk!
The gigantic branch snapped in two. The scouts watched bark, twigs, and leaves plummet toward the distant fog, bouncing off other branches and sending tremors through the trees. Eventually all the pieces disappeared into the silence of the fog below.

Minutes passed. The scouts clung to their branch and waited. Noah had to determine their next move. They needed more help from the animals, but he worried that they might be on their own from now on.

Then, from the depths of the Forest of Flight, a roar rumbled. Before everyone's eyes, the fog shifted and shimmered. It was breaking up. One by one, an army of unusual birds pierced through the wall of fog and rose toward the scouts. The cloudy air swirled around their wings like smoke on a windy day.

“Now what are we dealing with?” Ella said.

“This is part of Marlo's plan,” Noah replied.

Ella slumped against a small branch, confused and dull-eyed.

“Don't you get it? We've got a ride off this tree.” He stuck out his thumb and called, “Taxi!”