Half-Off Ragnarok

Twenty-one

Ohio’s West Columbus Zoo, running like a bat out of hell toward the big cat enclosures

THE GEESE HAD TAKEN over most of the zoo’s walkways without humans to shoo them away. They scattered as I ran, spreading outward in feathery waves to either side of me. Between the motion and their angry honks and hisses, there was no chance I’d have the advantage of surprise on my side: anyone with eyes or ears would know that I was coming. So I put my head down and focused on speed. The faster I could get to Shelby, the faster I could convince myself that everything was all right; that I was the first person in the history of my family to be paranoid for no good reason.

I actually found myself wishing that security would spot and stop me. At least then I’d have some backup.

The roar of a big cat—lion or tiger, I didn’t know, although Shelby would have—sounded from ahead, loud and angry and filled with a territorial possessiveness that I didn’t need to speak feline to understand. The cats never roared at Shelby like that. They’d eat her if she gave them the chance, but they didn’t see her as an intruder. I ran faster.

The geese tapered off as I got closer to the roaring. They knew a predator when they heard one, and they wanted nothing to do with what they heard. The smaller big cats were outside in their daylight enclosures, prowling and snarling, clearly agitated. The zoo’s two snow leopards were crouched atop their rock, tails puffed out to three times their normal size, snarling in low, almost subsonic tones that put my teeth on edge. Eyes flashed from the darkness of the lynx enclosure as I ran past it, and I found myself grateful for the fences between us.

Humanity is on top of the food chain because we have weapons, and fences, and the ability to run from danger. I was running into danger, and since I didn’t want to get tackled by any security guards I might happen to run into—possibly literally at my current speed—I was doing it without my gun drawn. This was stupid. It might actually cross the line into suicidal. And it was what I’d been training for since I was a kid who didn’t understand that someday, the world would come with consequences.

The door to the big cat house was ajar. I managed to slow down before charging inside, putting a hand on the gun I had concealed beneath my jacket as I eased my body through the gap.

The hot stink of cat hit me as soon as I was inside: raw and primal and vitally alive in a way that was entirely different from the smell of my reptiles. There was blood beneath the surface stench, freshly-spilled and lingering in the air. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. The big cats were obligate carnivores, and they required a lot of meat to get through their days.

The cats themselves were watching me as they prowled their cages, growling in agitation. A big male lion occupied the enclosure to my left, while an equally large tiger of indeterminate gender was to my right, lips drawn back to display massive canines. Looking at them, I guessed that the lion had been the source of the roaring. He still looked unhappy, although he wasn’t roaring anymore. I couldn’t tell whether or not that was a good sign.

Moving carefully, so as to minimize the amount of noise my footsteps would make, I made my way down the length of the big cat house. The lion and tiger followed in their enclosures, matching their steps to mine. Eerie as the giant predators were, I was strangely grateful. Their growls and the thudding of their paws would cover any noise I happened to make, muffling it and making it easier for me to reach my destination.

The layout of the big cat house was linear, with an entrance at either end. The door leading to the offices and zookeeper back-channels was at the other end of the room from the entrance I had used. Naturally. Circumstances never conspire to deposit me near the door I need. As I approached the door, I saw that it was also standing slightly open. Not enough to be obvious from a distance, but enough that it was obvious someone had been through very recently, and in a hurry.

Stealth was abandoned again as I jogged for the open door. The big cats matched my stride, although they were stopped by the edges of their enclosure, and snarled in obvious frustration as I went through the open door and stepped into the narrow white hallway of the backstage area of the big cat house.

There was blood on the floor.

Not much—just a few drops, small enough that they could almost have been dismissed as runoff from feeding the cats. Except that the big cats didn’t get live prey, no matter how much they wanted it, and nothing dead bleeds like a living body. This blood was bright red, almost artificial-looking, with none of the watery clarity of blood that came from pre-butchered meat.

The halls were silent. I stopped long enough to draw my gun and continued forward, listening for any sign that I was not alone. The blood trail led deeper, curving away from the offices and into the channel that was used to carry food to the big cats. I followed it, trying to focus on the entire area, and not just on the question that those bright drops of blood forced me to keep asking. Who was bleeding? Shelby, or someone else? How badly were they hurt? There wasn’t enough blood to be fatal, but that didn’t have to mean anything. There are a lot of ways to keep blood from hitting the ground.

The trail led into one of the feeding pens. I hesitated only long enough to be sure that the channel connecting it to the cage on the other side was closed. Then I unlatched the door and stepped inside.

It was a small, concrete space reminiscent of the zoos of old, the ones where the animals slept on bare stone and were little more than prisoners of man’s eternal war against the natural world. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all designed to be easily hosed down, and there was a drain in the middle of the room, making it clear that the hosing happened on a fairly regular basis. In addition to the entrance and the broad, portcullis-like barrier that separated the feeding room from the open enclosures, there was a narrow, solid metal door set deep into one wall. In case something went wrong during a feeding, the keeper was to retreat into the tiny built-in “panic room,” giving time for the other keepers to run for help.

The blood trail led to the panic room door.

Cautiously, I approached the closed door. When I was close enough, I whispered, “Shelby? Are you in there?”

“Alex?” There was no mistaking the relief, or the pain, in her voice. “Is that really you?”

“If not, I was replaced so long ago that it doesn’t make any functional difference,” I said, which may not have been the most reassuring answer possible. I was too worried about her to think straight. “Can you open the door?”

She laughed a little, unsteadily. “No. It’s not meant to be opened from the inside. I wasn’t thinking too clearly when I ran in here.”

“Okay. Can I open the door, or will you shoot me if I try?”

“Are you sure you’re Alex?”

“Believe me, no one else is going to claim my family.”

This time, her laughter was a little more sincere. “All right. Yes, you can open the door.”

“Thank you.” After one last glance back to make sure that no one was sneaking up on me, I holstered my gun and opened the panic room door. Shelby, who had been crammed into the small space with little room to move, or even turn around, tumbled out. I managed to catch her before she could hit the floor. She cried out—a small sound, quickly swallowed, but that was enough to tell me that the blood was definitely hers. “Shelby?”

“It’s nothing.” She paused before laughing unsteadily. “All right, it’s not nothing, but it’s not that bad. Let me up.”

I let go of her, and she straightened, pulling away from me. The motion revealed the blood soaking into her khaki top, turning it a plummy purple. “Shelby . . .”

“No, really, it’s nothing. Look.” She pulled up the bottom of her shirt, revealing a cut that slashed across her ribs, deep enough that it was going to need stitches. It was surrounded by a thick crust of dried blood. “Hurts like nobody’s business, but it’s not going to kill me.”

“What happened?”

“I barely believe it, and I’m the one who got stabbed,” she said, pulling her shirt back down. She shook her head slowly, confusion written plainly across her face. “It was Lloyd.”

“Lloyd? The security guard?”

Shelby nodded. “The same. He saw me checking the bushes outside the cat house. Came over to ask what I was doing here when the zoo was closed, and I said I’d dropped my wallet in the bushes the day before, and that I was trying to find it. He offered to take me back to the office to check the lost and found, and I would have gone with him so that I didn’t seem suspicious, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“But what?” I prompted.

“But when he saw that I was wearing glasses, his whole face changed. He didn’t look like Lloyd. He looked like a stranger—an angry stranger, who wanted to hurt me. He asked whether I’d always worn glasses, and I said no, they were new. I should have pretended, I should have said I wore contacts for work, but I wasn’t thinking. I was just reacting. As soon as I said that . . .” Shelby paused again before looking up, meeting my eyes, and saying, “He said he wasn’t going to let me stop him. That he’d always liked me, but that he couldn’t let that change anything. And then he drew a knife. On me!”

“What kind of knife?”

“A stupid big one, that’s what kind of knife,” snapped Shelby, looking annoyed. “Does it matter what kind of knife? He pulled it out of his coat and he stabbed at me in broad daylight, where anybody could have seen.”

“That means he wasn’t worried about getting caught,” I said. “That’s a bad sign.”

“You think?” Shelby shook her head. “I turned and ran into the cat house. I figured he might not follow me inside. The cats get a little unhappy when people fight in front of them, and they were already all up in arms about something.”

“If the cockatrice was nearby, that would have given them plenty to be upset about.” Animals were more adept than humans at knowing when there was danger close by them. Better senses of smell, better instincts, and less arrogance. It wouldn’t necessarily keep them safe, but it could turn them into early warning systems. “Did Lloyd say or do anything else?”

“You mean beyond stabbing me? Because believe me, that was more than enough to convince me that I didn’t want to be anywhere near the fucker.” Shelby pressed a hand against the cut in her side. “He said I wasn’t fooling him. I wanted to ask him what I’d been trying to fool him about, but he didn’t leave me much time. The stabbing was already in process, and running away was a much more important goal.”

“Right. We need to get you out of here.” I looked at the door that would lead us back into the big cat house. Shelby was injured; she needed medical treatment. But unless we wanted to explain the entire impossible situation to the Columbus police, I needed to get her out of the zoo without either of us being seen, and without running into Lloyd, who had somehow been transformed from a mild-mannered security guard to a knife-wielding maniac.

“No big deal, right?” I muttered. More loudly, I asked, “Shelby? Where do you keep the bleach?”

Shelby had almost stopped bleeding, and while her injuries were bad enough to make me want to scoop her into my arms and carry her back to the car damsel-in-distress style, they weren’t bad enough to be life-threatening if we got her looked at soon. Much as I hated to take the time, leaving a trail of human blood through the big cat house would cause us a lot more problems than we had the energy to deal with right now.

Fortunately, zookeepers are experts when it comes to dealing with bloodstains. I found bleach, meat tenderizer, and a bloodstained mop in the janitor’s closet, and set about mixing Shelby’s blood with the blood of a whole lot of dead animals as I vigorously mopped up the trail I’d used to find her. She sat tiredly on an overturned bucket, watching me work, pointing out when I missed a spot, and trying not to get any more blood on the floor. She was still responsive and alert, and she swore she wasn’t bleeding anymore. I wasn’t certain I believed her. I wasn’t certain it mattered.

When the mess on the floor had been reduced to just another stain of indeterminate origin, I returned the mop, bucket, and cleaning supplies to their places. Shelby was waiting when I came back. “All good?” she asked.

“All clean,” I said, offering my arm. “We’re going to have to find another way out of the zoo.”

“What about the delivery gate?” asked Shelby. “That’s how you had Dee get Chandi out before.”

“That might work. Can you walk?”

“I could hike a mile without noticing it, but only if we left now,” said Shelby. Her grip on my arm belied her careless tone. She was worried, and frankly, so was I. “I’m sorry we didn’t find the cockatrice.”

“No, but we know it’s here.” I began walking toward the exit, taking it slow out of consideration for Shelby’s injuries. This time, I was hoping we wouldn’t see any other security guards. As we walked, I explained what I’d found in the capybara enclosure, including the poor, petrified duck.

She laughed, sounding a little bit perplexed as she asked, “So what, you just walked off and left him there? Won’t someone notice?”

“Maybe. But everyone will assume someone else did it. In five years, everybody will swear the duck came from one of the fountains, or that it was put there as a prank by one of the summer trainees. It’ll become part of the landscape. Trust me. Denial is a powerful force in the human psyche, and anyone who works around animals gets extremely good at it.”

“Swell. How do you think they’ll explain away us if we get petrified? Will we be a tribute to the two zookeepers who mysteriously decided to abandon their posts after a few people got murdered?”

“Since statues wearing real clothes aren’t exactly considered high art in Ohio, probably not.” I kept scanning the bushes as we walked, watching for signs of the cockatrice. “They’d remove us quickly and without making a fuss, and write it off as a terrible prank committed by someone with no social skills whatsoever.”

“Sounds like you’ve really thought this through.”

“I think most things through, even when it might be better not to.” The zoo was built in a mostly circular design. Every path curved slightly, either conforming to the shapes of the enclosures, or leading the guests inexorably toward the money-making points on our local compass: the gift shop, the café, the exit. We were trying to avoid falling into that easy passage, working against the shape of the land as we pressed on toward the gate that was used for large deliveries.

We could have taken the back passages, hidden from the main facility by clever fencing and building placement, but those were narrow and confined, and much more likely to be observed by the skeleton crew of security on the premises. Counterintuitive as it seemed, cutting straight through the middle of the zoo was the best way to move unobserved.

Then there was the matter of Lloyd. I kept the hand that wasn’t supporting Shelby on my gun as we walked. I didn’t know why the old security guard had stabbed my girlfriend, and if he put in a repeat appearance, I wasn’t going to give him the luxury of explaining.

Something rustled in the bushes. I looked over and saw another smug, well-fed goose waddling out, tail wagging as it approached us. “Just a goose,” I said, shoulders relaxing slightly.

Shelby didn’t answer.

“Shelby?” Even as I said her name, I realized she wasn’t walking so much as stumbling along, more than half-dragged by my own momentum. I turned toward her. She was sagging on my arm, shoulders slumped, head dangling like it was simply too heavy to be held up. “Shelby?”

“’M okay,” she slurred. “Just a little shocky, that’s all. ’M fine . . .”

“Liar,” I said. Speed was suddenly more important than safety. I took my hand off my gun and swung her up into my arms, only staggering slightly under the weight of her before I started jogging down the path toward the delivery gate. She gasped a little at the jostling. I winced, and kept going. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry, but we need to get you looked at as soon as possible, and that means we’re running.”

She didn’t say anything. I chose to take that as an admission that this was the only way, and jogged faster, trying to keep myself as calm as possible under the circumstances. Panic would just slow me down and reduce Shelby’s chances.

How deep had the knife actually gone into her body? How much blood had she lost? Questions warred with my absence of answers, but only briefly: then guilt showed up, and was more than happy to take over for everything else that I might be feeling. I ran, and kept running, until I reached the wood gate that would lead to the loading area. I shifted Shelby enough to free my right hand, undid the latch, and slipped quickly through, trying to tell myself that her unresponsiveness wasn’t a bad sign.

I wasn’t really listening by that point.

Luck was with us, in a small way: there was no one in the loading area. I was able to carry Shelby to the outside gate without anyone questioning what I was doing or what we were doing at the zoo while it was supposed to be closed.

The delivery gate was closed and padlocked. Of course. There wouldn’t be any deliveries today, not with no one here to accept them, and this would have been seen as a potential security risk. One that I’d very much been looking forward to exploiting. There were no cameras on the delivery gate. Why did they need a damn lock?

“I’m going to put you down for a moment, all right?” I didn’t expect a response from her, but I wanted her to know what I was doing as I carefully lowered her feet to the ground and propped her against the side of the gate. There was a chance she’d leave bloodstains behind, but I couldn’t worry about that, not now. I needed to worry about getting her out of here. That took priority over everything else.

The lock on the gate was a straightforward one, probably purchased from the local hardware store when someone realized that having unfettered access to the zoo could result in drunk teenagers breaking in and getting eaten by alligators. I produced a set of lock picks from the inside pocket of my jacket and set to work.

“I don’t know what your childhood was like, but my parents began teaching me the basics of breaking and entering when I was five,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral, like I was having a conversation with my girlfriend and not babbling at her semiconscious body. “The day I can’t take out a lock like this in thirty seconds is the day I find myself disowned—ha.” The tumbler snapped open. “Today is not that day. Come along, darling, your ride to much-needed medical care awaits.”

With Shelby in my arms, I was able to close the gate, but not relock it. Hopefully, everyone would assume someone else had left the padlock open. If not, that would become one more problem that we would have to deal with later. I had my hands full with the problem I was dealing with now.

The frontage road used for zoo deliveries ran around the back, following the curve of the fence. That was a good thing; the trees were thick between us and the highway, and unless one of the delivery drivers had missed the memo, we would be able to walk here undisturbed. And that was the bad thing: we would have to walk for quite some distance, because my car was safely hidden in the trees on the other side of the zoo.

Shelby wasn’t moving at all. Only the slow rise and fall of her chest told me that she was even alive. If I tried to run to the car, I’d face the risk of dropping her, and even if I didn’t drop her, the bumpiness of the trip wouldn’t do her any favors. It would be a shorter trip through the woods, but that would be even harder on her—and on me. If I was being truly honest about the situation, I wasn’t sure I could carry her that far. Shelby was a slim woman, but she was muscular, and almost as tall as I was.

“Shelby? Can you hear me?”

She mumbled something. Or maybe that was my imagination assigning meaning to a random gasp. It didn’t matter. Either way, I knew what had to be done if I wanted there to be any chance for her.

“I need to leave you here while I go and get the car,” I said, stepping off the road and into the trees. I walked a few yards in, positioning us so that we wouldn’t be visible to anyone who happened to be passing by. “I’m sorry. It’s the only way I’m going to get you to a doctor in time. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”

She didn’t make a sound as I lowered her to the ground, propping her up against a nearby tree. The temptation to check her stomach wound was high. I quashed it, forcing myself to turn away from her and head back to the road. I broke into a run as soon as my feet hit the pavement.

I felt incredibly light without Shelby in my arms, and the guilt and fear that nipped at my heels drove me to break all my previous records for distance running as I covered the half mile between my starting point and the car. It was still where I had parked it, thank God; if it had been gone, I would probably have stood frozen in the woods outside the zoo until the police found Shelby’s body and came to collect me.

Throwing myself into the front seat, I jammed my key into the ignition and broke several speed laws pulling out and turning around, heading back to where Shelby was waiting. Just hold on, I thought desperately, thankful for the short distance, and even more thankful for the fact that there was no one else on the road. I’m almost there, so just hold on.

Cars are wonderful things. I was back where I had left Shelby only minutes after I got into the driver’s seat, and less than fifteen minutes total after leaving her behind. I stopped the car in the middle of the road, stumbling out onto the pavement, and ran into the trees. I pushed through the branches to the place where I’d left her—

—and stopped, blinking in confusion at the scene in front of me, or rather, at what wasn’t in front of me.

Shelby was gone.