Monsterland (9 page)

“You filthy animal.” The zookeeper yanked on a four-inch-wide hose, his face smiling evilly. “Got to get cleaned up. Company’s coming.”

Billy cringed as the nozzle jerked in the keeper’s hands, spraying his pen with hurricane-force jets of water. He folded up, his naked body beaten by the freezing liquid. It forced him into a corner, his feet slipping on the slimy, muddy floor. His unkempt hair lay coldly on his back in long rattails. The knobs of his spine scraped the brick in the back of his pen, scraping it raw. He surged forward, hitting the chain link fence so that it bowed outward, and he had the satisfaction of smacking against his jailor. His hands slid through the meal slot to grip the worker by his neck. Billy shook him like a rag doll. He snarled a smile at the satisfying
thunk
when the keeper fell on his backside. All the inmates laughed and then started their howling. Burning needles hit him on his hairy, naked chest when the guard Tasered him. Billy collapsed, breathlessly keeping his hands underneath him.

“I told you not to get too close!” a coworker yelled as he helped him up. “You can’t taunt them. You’ve been warned.”

“Yeah, yeah. What are you going to do, replace me? Nobody wants to work in this stink hole,” he grumbled. They left the room.

“You okay, Billy?” Petey growled.

“Never better,” Billy said, holding up a flat, plastic card. It was the passkey to all the cells.

C
HAPTER
10

C
arter leaned against
the wall, his eyes scanning the growing crowd of dignitaries invited to the grand opening. Danny Jessup, his boss and chief of police, walked past him, pausing to take a sip from his ever-present coffee cup. He exchanged a look over the rim, catching Carter’s shrug. His phone vibrated with a message. He pulled it out, noting that Wyatt informed him he’d just arrived.

Carter texted back, “Can’t now—on duty. Meet you later.”

The press walked around, getting interviews from the guests. The air buzzed with excitement, like opening night. Carter laughed. It was like the friggin’ Oscars, he snorted to himself.

Jessup’s deep-set eyes watched him intently. He was just past forty, and his love of burritos showed on his waistline. He hitched his pants and nodded. “Kids?”

“Yep. They’ve arrived. Yours?”

Jessup shook his head. “Nope. Told them I didn’t want them here. Don’t want distractions.”

Carter nodded. “Mine got special invitations.”

“You could have said no.”

Carter cocked his head. “What, and be the evil stepfather? No thanks. I’m still working on getting them to play ball with me.” He looked at the coffee cup. “I thought we weren’t allowed food or beverages in the park.”

“We
are
considered in a safe zone,” Jessup said with a smirk.

“I know,” he stated, as if that was all that had to be said. They had worked together for close to fifteen years and could pretty much read each other’s thoughts. “I don’t like it either.”

“Too many important people here. I heard the ambassadors for both China and Russia just landed.”

“Not to mention the president, a clutch of senators, and a bunch of military.”

Carter nodded to a brace of suited men obviously in the secret service. “They’ve brought their own guns.”

“Not enough for my taste. The way I see it, we’re outnumbered at least a hundred to one.”

“That only counts if the shit hits the fan,” Carter said. “Conrad keeps assuring everybody he’s got it under control. The inhabitants are heavily sedated.”

“I’m not comfortable with it.” Jessup threw his cup into a garbage can.

“I read the playbook. They have protocols in place. The wolves are behind impenetrable glass, they keep the vampires sated with blood, and the zombies are in a walled-off village. Visitors wear special suits.”

“It seems Dr. Conrad thought of everything,” Jessup said.

“Yeah,” Carter laughed. “And they said the
Titanic
wouldn’t sink either.” There was a bite of sarcasm in Carter’s voice. “What could go wrong? Have you talked to them?” he gestured to the secret service.

Jessup inclined his head. “Seems they dance to their own drum. They don’t want to expose any plans on how they protect the president. We appear to be on our own.”

“Sometimes it’s better that way.”

“I still don’t like it,” Carter said with a shake of his head.

“What, in particular, is bothering you?” Jessup asked.

“Well, start with the fact that we are surrounded by a hostile population…”

“He seems to have it under control. He has security in place. You saw the wall of guns.” They had been given a tour of the park earlier and shown a room with mounted shotguns loaded with silver bullets.

Carter shook his head. “I don’t understand why he keeps his arsenal under lock and key.”

“He explained it all.” Jessup shrugged. “The park is filled with silver axes behind glass doors every ten feet, for emergency use. The silver works on all three groups, the axe on anybody. He didn’t want armed guards in the park. I get that. The whole place is under surveillance. He looks like he’s got a good security team here. Created a lot of jobs.”

Carter laughed. “Yeah. They’re an odd bunch.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Just a feeling. I can’t quite put my finger on it, Dan. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”

“Well.” Jessup put his hand on Carter’s shoulder. “Keep your feelings to yourself.”

C
HAPTER
11

Zombieville

Z
ombieville was set
up like a bizarre television or movie set, with tree-lined streets and pastel-colored bi-level homes. They could have been in a small suburban town anywhere in the states. Maintenance people patrolled alongside guards dressed in metal armor not unlike chain mail. This prevented the zombies from biting and infecting them. It was only through the exchange of body fluids that the disease traveled. Their faces covered, they walked through the byways, cleaning blood and guts from the pristine streets.

There were a total of twenty homes, each filled to capacity with pus-covered, rotted wrecks of humanity that dozed in a drugged stupor all day, roused by their keepers with the tantalizing smell of meat when the sun slipped behind the mountains. They would wake each other, moaning with desperation to get to it, climbing over each other to find a way out of their four-wall confines to the large tube that brought the food into the development. They didn’t talk to each other; their brains had lost the ability to communicate anything other than the
driving need to consume flesh. They burst out the door, staggering across the manicured lawns, their arms stretched out before them to feel what they could find and feed the voracious hunger keeping them alive.

He couldn’t believe he’d ended up here. He had to get out. He needed to feel fresh air, some remnant of his mind told him. Vincent put him here, of that he was sure. He had gone into the danger zone for him, for business. He returned to find himself changing within a few hours of being infected. At first his skin turned putty-like, its color the pale green of celery. His bones became brittle, and his hair fell out in clumps. Where was the hospital, he wondered. Vincent was supposed to take care of him. They had a deal. He had a deal! Instead he was shipped off to an internment camp in bum-fuck Montana. Now this—the man scanned the wreckage of humanity laying in catatonic oblivion. A bell sounded. The call to food. He knew where he was—it wasn’t a call to food. It was the call to make Vincent richer and even more powerful than he ever was. Not him. He was a Rhodes scholar once. He graduated at the top of his class. He was a family man—well, he was once. He stood, pushing a woman out of the way, stepping on her leg, not caring when he heard her femur break. Sidetracked, he spun, watching her fold on her unsteady leg. She sank to the floor, her hand clasping her head. He smelled the blood of her wound as it seeped from her crushed leg onto the floor. They were on her in a minute—the room filled with the sound of her flesh being torn from her bones, the splatter of her body fluids as they hit the concrete floor. The man turned back, grabbing her wrist in his hand. He pulled, watching in fascination as it detached from her body, the rubbery tendons glistening in the light. He put it to his lips and ate.

C
HAPTER
12

T
hey parked the
car on the ninth level, and Howard Drucker promised to remember it because it reminded him of the ninth circle of hell from Dante’s
Inferno
, which he had just read for AP English. He noted it in his cell anyway, so he wouldn’t forget, just in case.

Water dripped, and the crowd was strangely subdued. They met up with Nolan and the others at the elevator. They piled in like sardines in a can, and when the pneumatic doors closed, Wyatt was surprised to feel his brother stand very close to him. The doors opened to bright floodlights turning night into day, a concrete path with green areas on either side. A red carpet had been spread;
Entertainment Tonight
,
Access Hollywood
, and all the major stations were there. Giant strobe lights crisscrossed in the sky, creating white beams that seemed to go to the heavens. Beautiful reporters in long gowns walked with bejeweled mics to actors and actresses, all holding tickets. Some held the parchments, and others held the silver strips like the ones Vincent had given Nolan. Everybody was tense
with anticipation, thrilled to be included in this exclusive activity. The noise level was high, and flash bulbs burned Wyatt’s retinas, but he and his group were largely overlooked because of all the talent that arrived. Clearly, they were small fish.

Water gushed from a waterfall, and birds screeched from the swaying palm trees. Wyatt’s eyes searched for the familiar khaki-colored uniform of his stepfather. He saw, instead, a sea of Monsterland employees dressed in black jumpsuits.

“This is creepy,” Wyatt told his brother in a hushed whisper.

“You were expecting Knott’s Berry Farm?” Wyatt heard Howard Drucker say from behind.

Melvin walked briskly before them, taking in the lush scenery. Wyatt felt another person near his other side, smiling when he realized Jade came up close to him. She returned his greeting, her eyes softening. They walked close together, squeezed by the packed crowd. The air charged between them, and Wyatt felt his heart beat a bit faster. Nolan stood slightly behind her. He gave Wyatt a dirty look and then grabbed Jade’s hand, pulling her to walk next to him. Wyatt turned around looking for Howard Drucker and didn’t see him through the crowd. His eyes met Keisha’s, who brightened and motioned that he was next to her. Wyatt recognized the top of his friend’s head.

They shuffled en masse through the winding path that opened up to a wide plaza with three life-sized statues of monsters on a grassy knoll in the center. The noise level increased as they got closer, voices meshed together until they seemed like a giant beehive of people, finally unwinding, at the end of the walkway, from the tight ball they had become. There was a bronze plaque and a bust of Vincent Conrad next to it.

People milled around the plaque. Wyatt pushed through to read the contents.

“Monsterland was created with the sole intent of introducing the habitat of those unfortunate creatures to create a better understanding of the species we share our world with. Dr. Vincent Conrad is working hand-in-hand with the government to foster tolerance and keep our different habitats from colliding.” Josh read it aloud. There was applause and scattered chatter.

Overhead, the stars that were blotted by the shadows of the three helicopters they had seen earlier reappeared. The rotors whipped the trees to life, and the crowd instinctively ducked as the helicopters hovered overhead and then took off toward town.

Gears grinded, and a row of solid iron doors slid open, revealing murky walkways. Attendants dressed in crisp green uniforms stood like silent sentinels at each portal, their faces impassive. Melvin raced ahead to be the first one in.

People surged forward like cattle, dividing into small groups to enter the turnstiles one by one. Wyatt gripped his brother’s sleeve, pushing him in front where he could keep his eye on him.

He watched Nolan hold Jade possessively by the hand as they went through the entrance to his left.

Wyatt pulled his parchment from his back pocket where it had been folded into a neat square. He handed the girl his invitation, which she examined, and then searched his face to see if she could recognize him as someone special. She gave up with an embarrassed shrug and told him to keep the parchment as a souvenir. She directed him to an escalator where he saw Melvin halfway to the top. Nolan was told to go to another doorway. Wyatt saw him wave at him, Jade close to
his hulking side. He turned to the attendant and asked, “My friends, can they join us here?”

“No,” she said. “Dr. Conrad is waiting to take you on a private behind-the-scenes tour. You can catch up with them later.”

“Come on,” Melvin shouted, waving wildly from the top of the escalator. “Let’s go!”

Wyatt followed his brother toward the steep moving stairs, his eyes searching and finding Jade as she disappeared through a portal. He saw Howard walking slightly behind Keisha.

“Howard Drucker!” he shouted. “You are supposed to be here!”

Keisha looked up, she was holding onto Howard by the back of his shirt.

Howard looked up at him and shrugged.

“Well, that’s one way to get him to take her on a date,” Melvin observed.

“He thinks he’s not good enough for her,” Wyatt answered.

“He’s not, but it looks like it doesn’t matter.” Josh laughed.

“She’s aggressive, I’ll give her that. What did Conrad call her, Diana the Huntress?” Melvin asked.

“Looks like she finally got her prey,” Josh added. “But it should be the other way around. Howard Drucker should be the hunter.”

Wyatt said simply, “Howard Drucker wouldn’t know how to hunt, even if a deer landed in his lap and said, ‘Take me.’”

“And you would?” Melvin asked him.