“This,” Butsko replies, sounding like a proud father, “might just be patient zero.”
“Patient zero’?
”
Wilder repeats
.
“That implies…”
“That implies that there is some kind of outbreak,” Butsko cuts in. “I told you men that this was more serious than any other threat we’ve ever faced. This goes beyond an American problem. This could threaten the world. We think the subject before you might be the first human to be infected from an animal bite.” He lets that sink in before continuing. “This just might be the man where the virus mutated into attacking human beings.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Wilder asks.
“He worked at an animal shelter that ended up housing many of the infected animals released from the lab outside Austin. We’re assuming that the guys who took the animals didn’t know what to do with them, and so they dropped them off at a shelter in Hyde Park.” Butsko hasn’t taken his eyes off patient zero since they entered the room. “The poor bastard was attacked by one of the animals, and it practically took his hand off.”
“Is he… dead?” Laning asks.
“He was,” Butsko says bluntly.
“Was?” Reynolds asks.
“He’s experienced and went through exactly what that wolf is about to go through down the hall,” Butsko says. “He had a very high fever and flu-like symptoms for about four hours and then he died. Then, about eight hours after he died, and believe me when I tell you this man was dead, he woke up.”
“Is he dangerous?” Laning asks.
“Considering we have no idea what is going on inside that man, I’d say he is the most dangerous man in the world right now.” Wilder can tell that Butsko isn’t exaggerating. “What scares me the most,” Butsko says as his voice gets lower, “is that whatever we’re dealing with can infect almost anything on earth.” The men stare. “We don’t yet know if this can infect plants, but we know for sure that both animals and human beings are in danger.”
After a few minutes, Wilder nods to patient zero and asks, “So what are you going to do with him?”
“Watch, study, and monitor him until something happens,” Butsko says calmly.
“What if nothing happens?” Reynolds asks.
“Something’ll happen,” Butsko replies. “Something
always
happens.”
4
We are exhausted. The stress of the day is finally taking its toll. What’s worse is that safety should have been around the corner, literally. The walk from the train depot to the gift shop only takes seven minutes even if you’re taking your time, but right now, it feels like a thousand-mile hike.
We aren’t walking slowly just because we are tired. Something just isn’t right. We’ve seen a lot of cars in the parking lot, yet no people. I imagine we are all thinking the same thing. No one needs to verbalize our collective fear.
Passing by the reptile house, I can’t help but take a look in. There are usually two very large iguanas inside. It is hard to see anything through my cloudy eye, but even I can see that the reptile house is empty. I’d have been more surprised if the iguanas were actually there. I put my hands out to signal to the others to stop, and like a well-trained combat squad, everyone stops at the same time without question.
“Look,” Jason says as he points to the dirt ground around the reptile house. There are footprints going in every direction. “Hard to tell how many people were around here, but one thing’s for sure: it looks like there was a panic. Maybe even a struggle.”
“Christ,” Brice says, breathless. . “It looks as though these people were dragged off.”
“Yeah,” Julie adds, “but it doesn’t look like they were struggling as they were dragged off. See.” She points to the long lines in the dirt. “If they were struggling, then the lines wouldn’t be perfectly straight.”
I again am glad I can’t see what everyone else is looking at, but in my mind’s eye I paint a vision of hell that even Dante himself couldn’t have imagined. “What could have dragged these people away?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“The real question,” Julie asks, “is where did they drag them off too, and why were they dragged away?”
“Look, guys,” Brice says through clenched teeth. He’s in a lot of pain. His breathing is worsening and he’s beginning to look as though he might fade on us. “We need to get to where we are going. I’m not gonna last too much longer.”
We all start walking again in silence. The silence is more frightening than when we were in the woods and heard the constant shaking of trees and bushes. At least then we knew they were following and watching us. Now we are walking in stone-cold silence. The air is calm, and what little trees and bushes are around us remain eerily still as well.
We fall into the pattern of all taking steps at the same time. Everyone is looking in different directions. No one but Julie knows how badly my sight has deteriorated, so I pretend to look straight ahead. I have a visual range of about ten feet, which scares the crap out of me. There could be a fucking bear twenty feet away and I would never see it. Julie and I have agreed that we don’t want to scare the others by telling them a newborn baby has better eyesight than I do right now.
We move forward, Julie helping me scan in front of us.
We are about fifteen feet past the reptile house, walking toward the petting zoo corral, when I suddenly feel tiny claws digging into my leg. I look down and see that Fi has grabbed on. I can feel her tears running down my leg. I bend to pick her up and hear Brice.
“Jesus Christ. Look,” he says as he turns his head violently away from the petting corral. “God, I’m gonna be fucking sick.”
I walked closer to what she had been looking at. I may not have been able to see anything, but then the coppery stench of blood mingled with the smell of shit from torn open intestinal tracts, told me that the people at my feet were torn apart and eaten by the animals.
It is a massacre, plain and simple. A fucking massacre. The bodies of children and adults litter the corral. I push Fi’s face into my shoulder so she doesn’t see any of this grizzly scene. Most of the bodies are children, innocent children who thought they were going in to pet some baby goats. Some kids had their faces chewed off, while others were torn limb from limb. In the center of the corral are two arms removed at the elbow revealing jagged bone. The fingers on both hands are intertwined. You can see that one hand belonged to an adult and the other to a child. It was their final embrace.
“I’m gonna be sick!” Julie yells as she runs to get away from us.
“Oh my God,” I say, hugging Fi closer. I never believed in God and always thought praying was the equivalent to throwing money down a sewer grate. Neither action was sane, and both actions left you broke. Words escape me at this moment, and that phrase seemed as good as any. There are eleven bodies in the petting corral.
After Julie throws up a few times, she rejoins us and helps me count the corpses. Seven children and four adults. Although it looks like a hell of a lot more due to all the parts strewn all over the place.
My next thought terrifies me. I look up quickly and try to focus on the red barn in front of us. I think at any second that a horde of these animals will charge us.
“Did you see something, John?” Julie asks nervously.
“No. No, nothing,” is all I can say. “That barn could hold a shit load of animals. They could just be sitting in there, waiting for us.”
Everyone is now staring at the barn.
“What should we do?” Brice winces. We’re losing him fast. He needs help immediately. I suspect something may have pierced his lung.
“I don’t think there are any animals in there,” Jason says nodding towards the barn. “Besides, if there were, what the fuck could we do about it?” Point well taken. These animals could take us at any moment, and the sooner we realize that, the better off we’ll be. We need to get the fuck out of this zoo and get to our cars. The faster we do it, the better.
We leave behind the carnage at the petting corral. There is absolutely nothing we can do and those poor kids and their parents were dead long before we got there. We step off the main trail and veer to the left. This path leads up a semi-steep hill that will take us straight back to the gift shop and out of this hell. Once to the gift shop, there’s only about another thirty feet to the parking lot. We are all gaining a renewed vigor and can see the exit as we approach it cautiously.
We climb the hill carefully. I have Brice’s arm around my shoulder and Fi still holds my other hand. After the scene in the petting corral, she’s had enough. She is starting to shut down, so I keep her close. Brice’s breathing is becoming more labored the higher we climb. I start to hear a wheezing sound as he exhales. Not a good sign.
I think about all the times Fi and I have walked this exact path. It had to be at least a hundred times. We’d be talking about the train ride and all the animals from the petting corral that slobbered over Fi’s hands as she pet and fed them. Remembering her smile and laughs brings a tear to my eye. So far, Fi has remained safe and untouched, but it will only take a split second of not paying attention to lose her forever. I let the tear roll down my cheek. I hug her closer with my free arm and feel a new strength flow through me.
I’m not ten years old and this is not my best friend
, I think.
This is my little girl, and there’s no way I’m going to let anything happen to her
.
As we come to the top of the small hill, I know what is up there. On all the zoo maps it’s labeled as a “Retention Pond,” and for as long as we’ve been coming to the zoo there has never been so much as a foot of water in that so called ‘pond.’ I’ve always thought it looked like a large crater from a meteor. Fi and I had our own elaborate story of how a rock from space slamming into the earth at this precise location, and then thousands of years later, the zoo was built around it. I can’t help but smile thinking about all the good times Fi and I have had in this place.
We are getting closer to the top of the small hill when I hear everyone breathe in at the same time. I am behind everyone with Brice and Fi and can’t see what they are looking at. I don’t think I want to see.
“What the fu…” Brice starts, but he is silenced before he can get his final word out. A small donkey comes from our left and rams into Brice. He tries to scream, but the pain is too intense. He drops to the ground, gasping for breath.
I let him fall. I know I can’t save both him and Fi. I make my choice and don’t think Brice will fault me on it. I run to the top of the hill and see what everyone is looking at. Even through my deteriorating eye, I can see that at the bottom of the retention pond are what lay the bodies of, I am guessing, all the people that were at the zoo. There are children, parents, and grandparents piled on each other in some bizarre picture taken straight from Saint John Bosco’s, “The Road to Hell.” I squint, but can’t tell if they are alive or dead. I am assuming the worst. This explains the trails we saw by the reptile house. This also explains where all the animals were.
They are here, and they are protecting their kills.
I swear I see one of the bodies move in that crater, but know better. My eyes are showing me what my brain wants to believe.
I immediately drop to try to get my bearings. I can see the animals all around us, but can’t tell exactly how many there are. So far, Brice was the only one who was attacked, but judging by the sounds coming from behind me, the animals are still hungry. I can’t stop myself. I scream at them as they tear apart Brice, “What’s wrong? Eating children isn’t filling you fuckers?” They don’t pause for even a second, but keep chewing on Brice. His stomach cavity has already been emptied buy the ravenous animals. Only his left arm remains attached to his torso, and I can see a lion five feet away from Brice’s body, chewing on one of his legs.
Jason starts to yell “run,” but stops as some of the animals start to circle us. I can’t exactly see the gift shop, but I know it is only about forty feet away from where we stand. “No way,” I say to no one in particular. “We are too close for it to end here.”
I curl Fi up and hold her closer to my body. I don’t want her arms or legs to dangle behind me. Julie sees what I am gearing up for. “We can’t!” she yells. “They’re all around us!”
“Then find us a gap in their perimeter!,” I yell back. “The exit is right there!” I frantically point in the direction of the gift shop
.
“Fi,” I say, whispering into her ear. “I need you to do something for me. We’re gonna make a run for the gift shop.” She starts to cry as she buries her head harder against my chest. “It’s okay, sweetie. We’re so close. I know we can make it, but I need you to do something.”
She lifts her head and looks me in the eyes.
“I need you to get on my back and wrap your arms around my neck and hook your feet around my stomach. Can you do that?” She buries her face back in my chest. I can see the animals moving in closer. They are fucking taunting us. They know they have us surrounded and don’t even have to break a sweat to take us down.
“Fi,” I almost shout, “we’re running out of time. I know you’re scared, we’re all scared, but I need you to get on my back. I need both my arms.” She looks up at me again. “I got you, sweetie. I got this.”