Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island (8 page)

They had seen some fires in the city and avoided those neighborhoods. Neighborhoods like these that had been burned out and picked over offered little protection for anybody, so no one stayed here. Still, Eric was careful. He didn’t want to get caught as he had in the cemetery.

D.B. had her own weapon, one she’d fashioned herself back at the camp when Eric had tossed her those clothes. One of the garments was a large bra, a 38 C.

D.B. had held it up to her own small chest and grinned. “You’ve got to be kidding, right?”

“Remember that slingshot you’d made from your last bra?”

“The one the ghoulies in the boneyard got. Hey, good idea.”

She used the elastic panels to make another one. Now she carried the Huck Finn-style slingshot tucked in the waistband of her jeans and a handful of rocks in her pocket. Since then she was always on the lookout for the perfect-sized stones.

“There’s one,” she said. She stooped over and picked a stone from the street. “It’s gotta be just right. The size of an eyeball.”

Eric ignored her and kept walking. She scampered up behind him. They continued down a few more dark and gloomy streets. Nothing happened.

Eric tried to keep to the dark shadows. The moon was a little brighter tonight than usual. It lit a whole section of Halo, making it glow smoky white like the fog in old Sherlock Holmes movies.

“There,” Eric said. They stopped to look at the entranceway of the zoo.

D.B. sang in a whisper, “ ‘Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo.’ Think this is what Simon & Garfunkel had in mind?”

Eric crept ahead, staying along the wall. The large parking lot to their left was about a quarter full with cars, though most of the cars had been trashed and gutted. Stray bones were scattered about the lot.

“Animal or human?” D.B. asked. Her voice was no longer glib.

“Too dark to tell.”

She looked at the wall next to them. “Looks like they’ve added a few touches since last time I was here.”

Eric nodded. The walls, not all that difficult to scale, had been topped with barbed wire and broken glass. Trip wires were woven into the barbed wire so that any disturbance would rattle the bells strung along the wall. Primitive, but effective. “At least we know someone is in there.”

“But we don’t know how many? Maybe a whole gang is in there slowly feeding off the animals.”

Eric raised an eyebrow. “Prickly pears anyone?”

D.B. sighed. “Let’s go.”

It didn’t take Eric long to climb the wall and silence the bells. He threw his shirt over the barbed wire and hoisted D.B. up. She stepped over the wire and hopped down to the other side. Eric put his shirt on and jumped down too.

“Lookit,” D.B. said, pointing excitedly. Three grayish flamingos stood by the water’s edge, their faces buried under their wings. “How come they’re not pink? They were pink last time I was here.”

“They’re only pink because they add red dye to their diets. In the wild they eat crustaceans every day so they can stay pink. That’s too expensive for a zoo.”

“Red die! Shit, how disillusioning.” She shook her head at Eric. “How do you know that’s true?”

“Okay, it’s not true.” He walked off.

She ran after him. One flamingo shivered, but otherwise didn’t move. “All right, I know you’re right. You’re always fucking right.” She sighed. “Sometimes I get tired of everything you know. It’s not like you show off or anything, it’s just
so much stuff
. I don’t think it’s healthy.”

Eric kept walking.

“Listen, huh? I’m not saying this right I guess. It’s just that some of the junk you know is neat, like how to find water and make things out of plants, that sorta stuff. Important survival stuff. But other stuff, like history guys and, and . . .”

“How flamingos get pink?”

“Right. What the hell good is that anyway?”

Eric could feel her confusion and anger. He stopped and stared at her a moment. He’d seen that reaction before, heard almost the exact words every semester, always from one student in each class. Someone who didn’t think memorizing a lot of dead people’s names and dates had anything to do with them, with whether or not they were popular, got a car, a job, laid. Ironically, it usually wasn’t the lazy students who asked the question, but the smart ones. That’s why Eric always took the question seriously. Still, this wasn’t a classroom. And they probably weren’t alone. “Maybe this isn’t the time to talk about it.”

“Yeah, right. We might get charged by rampaging flamingos.”

Wild birds chattered in the dark.

Eric looked her in the eyes. “What do you know most about?”

“Songs. I know more song lyrics than anyone in the world. Go ahead, name a song, any song.”

“I believe you. Now, why do you bother? Why memorize all those dumb lyrics?”

She was shocked. “Dumb lyrics! Songs are everything. They’re how people express their emotions: love, pain, hope. They’re people’s dreams. I already told you, man, I’m gonna become the singing minstrel of California, traveling from town to town and singing all the songs so people never forget what’s important. Like love and friendship. I’ll be reminding them who they were, what they still can be. Like a photo album of their emotions.”

Eric nodded. “So what you’re doing is providing a history for people. A past they can tap into for strength. Like a well people can keep going back to for a cool drink.”

“Yeah, that’s a neat way of putting it. A cool drink.”

“Well, all knowledge is from the same well. Knowing where flamingos get their pink is the same as knowing what Kierkegaard thought about Existentialism.”

She made a face. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good, because that’s enough talk. Let’s grab a bird and get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t you want to shop around first? Christ, this is like a supermarket. Maybe we could get some lamb.”

“This isn’t a supermarket, D.B. It’s a jungle. We don’t know who else is here or what animals may be loose.”

“Loose?”

“Free of their cages or exhibits. The quakes could have drained the moats or crumbled the walls that enclosed many of the dangerous animals.”

She touched her choke collar. “I hadn’t thought about that. I’m so used to seeing them on display.” She looked around nervously.

Eric handed her the crossbow. “You keep guard while I grab the flamingo. Then we go back up the wall and out. Ready?”

She nodded.

Eric ran silently across the courtyard. He saw the gift shops, the restaurants, the turnstiles. He tried to concentrate on the sleeping flamingos, but the memories started to come back, stuck in his throat like barbed hooks. Annie. Jenny. Tim. The four of them wandering through the zoo on the Saturday morning. Before coming, each had taken a specialty to study and share with the others. Annie had taken reptiles because she’d had a turtle as a child. Jenny had taken birds (she had told them all how the flamingos got their pink). Tim had insisted on primates. Eric had taken cats. They’d had so much fun impressing each other with what they’d learned. Annie even had notes, which she referred to secretly when the kids weren’t looking, shoving her glasses on and reading from her notebook. Tim and Jenny started well, but after a while got their information mixed up. Finally, they all started to make up facts, each trying to top the other with a more absurd animal “fact.” “The porcupine,” Annie had lectured, imitating Eric’s classroom stance, “once had the softest coat of fur of any other animal. Until it became known among the other animals as ‘nature’s toilet paper.’ To protect itself from their abuse, it evolved the prickly quills we see today.”

They had all thrown popcorn at her.

Eric forced the memory away, concentrating on the flamingo. One quick snap of its head and it would be dead. He could throw it over his shoulder, holding onto the long skinny legs, and be over the wall again in less than a minute. If everything went according to plan.

It didn’t.

It chuffed like a steam locomotive. Huffing and grunting in the darkness, coming closer.

Eric stopped in mid-run to look around. He didn’t see anything, yet he felt something coming at him. Its energy and power. Its dark intent. He turned back to D.B. “Give me the bow.”

She started to hand it to him, but it was already too late.

It dropped out of an overhead tree, landed with a ground-shaking thud beside Eric, and knocked him to the ground with a flick of its huge arm.

Eric sprawled across the grass, sliding into the flock of flamingos. They ruffled their feathers, then stalked away on their stilted legs. Eric roused himself with some difficulty, shaking the fuzziness from his head. The blow that had hurled him to the ground had merely been a brush, but it had come from a 6-foot, 400-pound, silverback gorilla that stood in front of him now, baring its fanged teeth at him, rearing back on its legs to thump its chest at Eric.

D.B. lifted the crossbow and sighted down the arrow. “Should I shoot it?” she asked.

“Damn right,” Eric said. “And don’t miss.”

“You pull that trigger,” a woman’s voice warned, “and I’ll put a bullet through your head.”

Eric and D.B. turned to face the woman. She was short, barely five feet. Her black hair was woven into one long braid, thick as rope, that hung past her waist. Her accent was British, but her face was strictly Oriental, smooth as a river stone. She looked jumpy, but in control. Eric had no doubt she would shoot. “Put the bloody bow down,” she said, motioning at D.B. with her gun.

D.B. laid the bow on the ground.

The gorilla rocked side to side, leaning on its knuckles.

Eric started to stand up. He spoke calmly to the woman. “There’s been some mistake — ”

The woman jumped back as if Eric’s movement were threatening. Suddenly she tucked the gun under her arm and said, “Spock!”

The gorilla looked over at her. She made a gesture with her hands: her right hand was an open claw which she closed as she brought it downward in a catching motion, ending with it bumping the back of her other hand.

The gorilla immediately lunged at Eric. Its thick hairy arms wrapped around Eric’s body, pinning his arms to his chest. It huffed foul air in his face as it squeezed tighter and tighter. Eric struggled, writhed, kicked at its knees. No use. It sat down, rolled onto its back and continued to crush Eric. He felt his ribs bending, his vertebrae shifting under the enormous pressure. His face was buried in the ape’s furry chest. It smelled like old carpet left out in the rain. Eric felt as small and helpless as a Cabbage Patch doll.

Eric’s legs went numb. He tasted oily metallic blood in his mouth. He could only manage to inhale a slight gasp of breath.

The gorilla kept squeezing.