The Secret Zoo (15 page)

T
he scouts jumped aside to make room for the spectacular herds behind them. Noah looked around. The world ahead was draped in darkness. Shadows covered a gloomy forested landscape, blotted by a web of inky rivers and murky ponds. Stark mountains rose in the distance. Half-dead trees jutted from the dirt like the claws of buried monsters. Cords of lightning leaped between storm clouds and stabbed at the ground. Clouds hung heavily, as if they might crash from the sky. The animals pushed across the wet terrain, splashing water and mud.

“Well,” Ella said, “they don't call this the Dark Lands
for nothing.” She had intended to make a joke, but her voice quivered before she finished her sentence.

Behind her, a voice boomed, “It ain't a lack of light that gives this place its name. It's a lack of goodness.”

The scouts spun around. Standing there was Tank, looking as big and bald as ever. His muscular body was as bumpy as the mountainsides.

“Tank!” Noah said. “You're gonna help?”

“Kid, I've been waiting to help with this operation for a long time.”

Noah smiled. He turned and watched the last of the animals charge through the fallen wall. Crocodiles and seals dived into the rivers, and birds and bats filled the stormy sky. Monkeys, possums, and flying squirrels leaped through the trees.

The scouts were joined by their animal friends—Blizzard, Podgy, Dodie, and Little Bighorn. Marlo perched on Noah's shoulder. P-Dog and a dozen other prairie dogs scampered around Richie's feet.

“You guys ready?” Ella asked.

The animals grunted, snorted, chattered, and shuffled back and forth.

Noah climbed on Blizzard's back and said, “Let's find Megan!”

Ella ran to Little Bighorn and said, “Mind giving me a lift?” The rhino threw his head around and snorted his
approval. Ella quickly climbed up and took her seat.

The troop headed into the Dark Lands. Dodie and Marlo flew up to search the treetops, while the prairie dogs raced in circles around everyone's feet, checking nooks and crannies in the ground.

“I don't see anything that looks like a sasquatch,” Richie said to Tank. “Are they dead?”

“Maybe.” Tank scanned the mountainsides and the forest. “Or maybe they're hiding.”

In front of them, a pod of seals squirted out of the water and rushed clumsily along the shoreline, clapping their flippers against the muddy ground and chanting,
“Arrt! Arrt! Arrt!”

The animals spread out as they journeyed deeper into the Dark Lands. Before long, the sounds of the city inhabitants faded, and the scouts found themselves alone with their group. The quiet was unnatural. It made Noah nervous.

“Guys,” Ella said, “look at the hillside.”

Noah looked up. He had trouble seeing the details until a flash of lightning lit the terrain. The hillside was covered with caves and crevices—all sorts of hiding places.

“Did anyone see that?” Richie moaned.

“Why do I suddenly feel like we're being watched?” Noah whispered.

“Stay up,” Tank said. “Be prepared for anything.
Remember, nobody's been here for eighty years. Anything's possible.”

Noah whistled for Marlo. The bird plunged from the sky and perched on his shoulder.

“Marlo, I need you to check those caves for sasquatches. Can you do that?”

Marlo chirped, sprang off Noah's shoulder, and flew toward the mountainside.

Tank walked to a pond and squatted. “Hmm.”

“What is it, Tank?” Noah said.

“I don't know. It's too quiet. Something's making me nervous. This ain't making sense.” Tank plucked a flashlight from his tool belt and shone it on a large footprint in the mud. “See that print?” He pointed the light at the distant ground, exposing more footprints. “All those prints are new. There—look at the mud. It's still wet.”

“Maybe our animals did that.”

“Nunh-unh,” Tank said. “Only one animal leaves a print like that: a sasquatch. I've seen their prints a hundred times in our library books.”

Spasms of lightning flashed over the landscape. Thunder boomed and echoed across the sky.

“They're here then,” Noah said. “They're alive.”

“This is
sooo
not good,” Richie said. He bobbed his head nervously, causing the pom-pom on his cap to quiver. The prairie dogs zipped around his feet.

Marlo swooped down from the sky and landed on Noah's shoulder, chirping wildly. His beady black eyes almost popped out of his feathery face as he cocked his head from side to side.

“He's seen something,” Tank said.

“A sasquatch?” Richie asked.

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Tank,” Noah said, “let me use your flashlight.”

Tank handed the flashlight to Noah, who shone it on the hillside. In an instant, his heart leaped into his throat. As he moved the beam from cave to cave, little points of light flashed back. Clusters glimmered in every cave—glowing spots of yellow bobbing in the darkness. What they were was obvious—eyes! The eyes of animals! And these animals' eyes were watching them.

Blizzard slunk forward and let out a slow, angry growl. Still on his back, Noah felt the bear's big muscles clenching.

“Sasquatches!” Tank said, and for the first time, Noah heard fear in the powerful man's voice—deep fear.

A bolt of lightning exposed a lone sasquatch racing down the mountainside. Noah struggled to focus his flashlight and saw a second beast charge behind the first. Another massive lightning bolt cracked the sky. Thunder boomed. Then dozens of sasquatches rocketed out of their caves, all raging toward the scouts.

In the Secret Zoo, the land of impossible things, a strange hillside was raining sasquatches—creatures that didn't exist, monstrous beasts trapped between animal and humankind. And in the Secret Zoo, the land of impossible things, a huge polar bear carrying a boy named Noah—a boy far from home, far from family, and far from the life he knew—charged forward, prepared for battle.

B
lizzard barreled through the trees, flattening the underbrush beneath his mighty paws. Noah clung to the polar bear's neck, leaning so far forward that his chin repeatedly slammed down on Blizzard's head, leaving the taste of dirty fur in his mouth. The wind rushed across his cheeks and blew the flaps of his red hunting cap against his ears. Blizzard splashed through a river as if it were a puddle and blazed forward.

As the bear bore down on the first sasquatch, Noah had his first good look at the creature. Standing upright with its arms hanging down to its knees, indeed it was half ape
and half human. Clumps of hair drooped from its elbows, knees, and toes like the matted fringes of an old stage curtain. At the sight of Blizzard, the sasquatch hunched over and raised its claws.

Blizzard planted his paws in the mud and sprayed it everywhere. Standing face-to-face, the two animals began to sidestep slowly in a circle, the way Noah had seen animals square off on TV. The sasquatch snarled, exposing thick square teeth and two pairs of fangs. Its yellow eyes and black pupils narrowed in on Blizzard.

Blizzard lowered his rear end to let Noah off. Noah backpedaled all the way to the edge of a nearby pond, which was as far away as he could go.

“Careful, Blizzard!” he called.

Blizzard and the sasquatch slunk from side to side. Blizzard let out a deep, slow growl. The sasquatch snorted and beat its fists against its chest. Each animal was studying its adversary. Then, in an instant, they jumped at each other and tumbled in a whirl of grunting, grabbing, and biting. Blizzard sank his teeth into the sasquatch's leg, and the sasquatch ripped a chunk of fur off the bear's back. They knocked each other into the trees and crushed the scrubby underbrush.

In horror, Noah watched, helpless. Then something seized his ankle. He glanced down and saw a sasquatch
in the water, clutching his ankle. The beast had swum up silently behind him.

A flash of lightning revealed the creature's yellow eyes. Its long hair floated on the murky water like seaweed. It yanked Noah into the mud, knocking the wind out of him. Then it dragged the boy into the water. Noah tried to grab something, but his fingers found only mud and slid through it, leaving behind ten little trenches. He glanced up. The other sasquatch had its arms wrapped around Blizzard's head and was wrestling him to the ground. Blizzard was losing the fight, but that wasn't the worst of it. A gang of sasquatches was rushing in behind the mighty bear to finish him off.

Noah tried to scream but barely managed to wheeze. The sasquatch wrapped its claws around his other ankle and hauled him deeper into the pond. As Noah gasped for air, dirty pond water gushed over his head, and he swallowed that instead.

The sasquatch pulled him in deeper. And deeper. And deeper still. The farther Noah sank, the darker and colder the world grew. His heart pounded with fear. For the first time since Megan's disappearance, he doubted that he would see his sister again.

L
ittle Bighorn advanced through the trees, carrying Ella on his back, with Tank and Richie right behind. Suddenly Ella heard the clashing and grunting sounds of a fight. She looked ahead and spotted Blizzard squaring off with the sasquatch. With his head locked in the grip of the beast, he was being pulled down on his front legs and was struggling to keep his backside in the air.

Then she saw Noah—and that scared her senseless. A sasquatch was dragging him into a pond, and Noah was clawing desperately at the mud. Ella leaped off Little Bighorn and ran to the edge of the water, but by
the time she got there, it was too late. Noah was gone! She dropped to her knees and stared across the water. Lightning flashed, revealing a few ripples, but nothing more.

“Richie!” she called out as she looked over her shoulder. “Did you see that?”

Richie had stopped ten feet from the water. His eyes wide with terror, he nodded his head.

Ella yelled for Podgy, but the penguin didn't need to be told what to do. He'd already swung into action, dashing toward the swampy water, the flat tops of his webbed feet flinging mud in all directions. Reaching the shore, he pushed off the edge and dived in.

Ella looked at Blizzard. The sasquatch had wrapped its arms around him and was bringing the bear down one leg at a time. Then she heard the thrashing of bushes and branches, and a gang of sasquatches charged out of the darkness. They piled on top of the great bear and drove him down to the muddy earth.

Tank and Little Bighorn stormed toward the sasquatches. The rhino dropped his head and pointed his horn straight ahead. To Ella, that horn was suddenly the deadliest weapon in the world.

Little Bighorn crashed into one sasquatch, but his horn just missed its stomach and passed harmlessly between its legs instead. With a quick snap of his neck, he flung
the beast high in the air. Then he plowed into three other sasquatches, knocking them flat. Tank attacked the four sasquatches that had pinned down Blizzard. One by one, he seized them by the shoulders and hurled them off their feet.

“Excuse me!” Tank bellowed, “but you're sitting on my friend!”

Blizzard rolled to his feet and shook the confusion out of his head. He hurled his massive body forward and smashed into two sasquatches, bashing them down.

Ella's eyes darted to Richie. Prairie dogs were scampering around his feet, and some still stared at his heels. Even in this chaos, these critters wanted nothing more than Richie's long-gone sparkling shoes.

Ella threw up her arms and shouted, “Are you furballs gonna help or what?”

The prairie dogs glanced at one another with their noses and cheeks twitching, as if to say, “Is she talking to us?”

The next moment, a sasquatch that had just been flattened by one of Tank's crushing right hooks slithered through the mud, right up to the prairie dogs. It lay in front of them, stunned. P-Dog jumped, landed on the creature's head, and bit the tip of its flat, upturned nose. The sasquatch emitted an ugly guttural wail and rolled over in the mud, clutching its snout. Taking their cue from P-Dog, the prairie dogs charged the other beasts.
They bit their heels and long-haired toes.

Marlo and Dodie assailed the enemy from above. They swooped down and jabbed the sasquatches with their pointed beaks.

“Ella!” Richie said.

Ella turned. Richie now stood at the edge of the pond, gazing across the dark water.

“I don't see Noah!” he said. “I can't see a trace of him!”

“How long have they been down there?”

“Too long!”

“Should we go in after him?” Ella asked.

Richie looked back and forth between Ella and the pond, but he couldn't speak.

“Richie! Should we go in after him?”

“I—I don't know!” he stammered. “I think our only hope is Podgy!”

They had nothing else to say. They could only wait.

Ella turned back to the brawl and saw Tank head-butt a sasquatch and toss the beast aside. Little Bighorn and Blizzard were grappling with a mob of sasquatches. The huge animals stomped on bushes and snapped trees in two. The prairie dogs were still scrambling in the mix, chomping on the heels and hairy toes of the sasquatches.

Richie grabbed Ella's shoulder and said, “This is madness!”

The Dark Lands were in chaos. Countless sasquatches
were storming down the mountainside and racing for the opening in the wall. Some of the animals from the Secret Society were trying to fight them back, but most were losing. All around, they lay in the mud, unconscious or worse. On top of this, there was no sign of Megan. The world was falling apart.

“We've been set up,” Ella said flatly.

“What?”

“This whole thing. The sasquatches have been holding Megan prisoner knowing we'd eventually crash through that wall and come after her. This is their first chance in eighty years to escape.”

Ella's eyes widened as she watched a sasquatch kick P-Dog. The prairie dog flew through the air and splashed down in the pond. He tried to paddle with his minuscule front legs but sank almost instantly.

“P-Dog!” Richie cried out.

Richie started toward the pond, but Ella seized his elbow. “Wait!” She pointed into the sky. “Look up!”

The scouts tilted back their heads just in time to see Dodie dive straight at the pond. If he wasn't being heroic, he would have looked comical with his wimpy wings pumping and his oversized beak weighing down his face. The dodo hit the pond and splashed water in every direction. A moment later, he emerged and rose into the air clutching the prairie dog by his rear end. P-Dog's eyes
darted around as he tried to pinpoint what had gone wrong in the last ten seconds of his life. Dodie circled in the air and dropped him into Richie's open arms.

“Are you all right?” Richie asked.

P-Dog just blinked and buried himself in the cradle of Richie's arms, looking like a fat furry baby.

“Richie,” Ella said, “how long has it been now? For Noah, I mean.”

Richie didn't answer, and his silence was frightening.

Ella leaned toward the lake and whispered, “C'mon, Noah! C'mon, Podgy!”

Around them, the battle raged. The sasquatches were winning.