Zoo 2 (3 page)

Dawn is breaking over
London. It's 2016, but squint, and you'd swear it was back during the Blitz.

Our three-SUV convoy is speeding east along Marylebone Road, one of the city's central thoroughfares. My eyes are glued to the streetscape outside the window, and my jaw is stuck to the floor. I'm getting my first glimpse of just how much the world has changed since I've been gone.

By “changed,” I mean “gone to absolute shit.”

The sidewalks are splattered with dried blood and strewn with debris and broken glass. Gutters are filled with soggy garbage. Shops are boarded up. Most traffic lights are out. A few other cars and trucks are on the road—police and military vehicles, generally—but I don't see a single pedestrian.

Instead, central London is overrun by animals—in particular, roving packs of rangy, rabid wolves.

Their fur is patchy, but their fangs glisten like icicles. They seem to be stalking down virtually every sidewalk and alley we pass, sniffing the ground, searching for human prey.

Clearly they're the primary animal threat in this part of the city. But I also spot plenty of feral dogs and house cats in the mix. I see squirrels skittering across rooftops, too. A flock of falcons circling and cawing overhead.

When we pass a burnt-out black London cab, abandoned on the corner of Baker Street—near the address of the fictional Sherlock Holmes—I notice that inside, about fifty greasy rats have built a giant, filthy nest. They're gnawing the flesh off a severed human leg, and it doesn't take a crack detective to figure out how they got it.

“Welcome back to the jungle, Oz.”

Seated beside me, Dr. Evan Freitas pats me on the shoulder and lets out a grim chuckle. He can't be more than fifty, but the stress of spearheading Washington's scientific HAC response has clearly aged him prematurely. His bushy black beard is streaked with gray. Every time he speaks, his entire face fills with wrinkles like a prune.

“It's…it's just…,” I stutter, “unbelievable.”

“Worse than you imagined?”

“Worse than—my worst
nightmare!
We had satellite internet back in the Arctic. I'd read that the animals were gaining ground. That huge swaths of major cities had basically been overrun. And abandoned. But this…this is just beyond—”

“London Town ain't been abandoned, mate,” says Jack Riley, our driver, a cranky, baldheaded Brit with the Metropolitan Police. “See?”

He gestures to an apartment above what was once a high-end shoe store, now looted and dark. A woman has opened her second-story window a crack. She quickly reels in a line of laundry and slams the window shut.

“The whole bloody lot of us just stay indoors now. Least the smart ones do.”

Yep, I'd read about that as well.

In many places, just setting foot onto the street is a death wish. So most people, especially in big cities, remain inside their homes pretty much 24/7, with their doors and windows locked tight. Some have gone even further, converting their buildings into anti-animal mini-fortresses, as Chloe's parents and a few neighbors had done to their Paris apartment complex. It was one of the many reasons I thought my wife and son would be safer there.

Folks communicate with friends and family almost exclusively by phone and internet—even more so than they did before. School and work are done online as much as possible. In terms of food and other necessities, people have come to rely on sporadic deliveries of rations by armed government soldiers. Doctors have gone back to making house calls, at great personal risk…and are almost always packing heat.

“It's like this in Atlanta, too. And the suburbs and surrounding counties? Even worse. People are getting desperate. Civilization is breaking down.”

Those ominous words come from the woman sitting in the row of seats behind us, nervously biting her cuticles: Dr. Sarah Lipchitz.

While I'd waited with Freitas at Heathrow for about half an hour for Sarah's plane to arrive from the United States, he explained that she was a brilliant young biologist and pathogen expert currently employed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who had been handpicked to join our team. (What he
didn't
mention was that the bespectacled Sarah was very pretty, in a geeky, girl-next-door kind of way.)

“Precisely, Doctor,” Freitas responds. “And preventing global chaos from becoming total anarchy is why we're all here.”

He means me, Sarah, himself, and the rest of the scientists and experts in our three-vehicle convoy. Barely a dozen people, responsible for the lives of millions.

I have about a thousand follow-up questions for Freitas, but they'll have to wait. We pass Hampstead Road and turn down a one-way side street. Our convoy comes to a stop in front of the main gates of University College London. The international symposium we've come to England to attend is a gathering of some of the finest scientific minds in the world, all trying to save humanity.

As armed British soldiers open our doors and escort us inside, I hear a pack of wolves in the distance, howling.

I hope they're not signaling that another innocent person has been mauled.

My God, these scientific
conferences are dull.

I'd forgotten how absolutely painful they can be. Even when the topic is literally the fate of the planet, the only thing these bland professors and rumpled “experts” seem to know how to do is drone on and on. And on.

It makes me want to pull my hair out. Worst of all, we've been at this for almost five hours now, and I haven't heard one single presenter offer any useful new information or viable solutions.

If this really is a confab of the finest minds in their fields…we're screwed.

A team from Senegal, for example, discussed the inconclusive results of some recent biopsies of the brain tissue of rabid elephants. A Brazilian electrical engineer spoke of her lab's failed attempt to use gamma radiation waves to block the effects of cellphone signals on animal pheromone reception.

A group of officers from Moscow's Valerian Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy outlined a Kremlin-backed plan to carpet-bomb any and all major underground animal breeding areas. When I angrily interrupted to explain that the American government had tried an almost identical bombing campaign just a few months ago and that it had failed spectacularly, the committee chairman cut the feed to my microphone.

Thank goodness it was time for a fifteen-minute break.

Right now I'm standing in the hallway outside the main meeting room, mainlining some desperately needed caffeine and sugar: a muddy cup of coffee and a rich, gooey Cadbury chocolate-caramel bar.

Sarah is reviewing her notes for a presentation she's giving later about what she's dubbed HMC—Human
Microbial
Conflict—which she believes, based on her research, will be the next, even more terrifying stage in all this madness.

Freitas, meanwhile, is sitting on the floor, talking animatedly on his smartphone and tapping wildly on his iPad. I don't have the foggiest idea to whom or what about—but by the look of it, it's important.

“Feeling nervous?” I ask Sarah when I see she's reached the end of her pages.

“Of course,” she replies. “
Exceedingly
nervous.”

“Don't worry about it, you'll do great. Just try to imagine that every chubby, balding, pasty scientist in the audience is wearing nothing but his underwear. Actually…no, don't do that. That's a pretty disturbing picture.”

Sarah smiles and shakes her head.

“Thanks, Oz. But I'm not nervous about giving the presentation. I'm terrified…about what my
data
show. If you think wild
animals
attacking humans is bad, just wait another few months or so, when I predict wild
bacteria
will join in. There's no way to bomb something microscopic.”

“Good God,” I mumble, rubbing my temples. The prospect of that sounds beyond horrific. “One crisis at a time, please.”

Suddenly Freitas leaps up from the ground and hurries over to us, waving his iPad in the air. Given the glint in his eye, I can tell he's overjoyed about something.

“They're in! The latest worldwide AAPC numbers!”

“Isn't that just a bunch of old fogeys?” I ask.

Freitas doesn't like my joke. The acronym, he says, stands for animal attacks per capita. It's a metric he invented to measure the rate of animal-related incidents and deaths in different countries around the world.

“Over the past few weeks,” he explains, “rumors have been flying that all nations are
not
created equal. At least not when it comes to HAC. Allegedly, some have begun seeing a marked decline in attacks, while others have experienced a skyrocketing.

“So,” he continues, “I ordered a team of DOE statisticians to crunch all the millions of data points we had and turn them into an easy-to-digest format.”

He hands me his iPad. On it is a map of the world shaded every color of the rainbow.

“Uh, okay,” I reply skeptically, skimming it. “So it looks like…Finland, Japan, South Korea, and Egypt are seeing fewer attacks. But Brazil, Indonesia, and Canada are seeing more. Big deal. Where does this get us? It doesn't tell us why—or what any of these countries have in common.”

“No, it sure doesn't,” Freitas responds. “Which is exactly what I want us to find out. Now come on!”

He turns and starts jogging down the hallway—away from the conference room.

“Dr. Freitas!” Sarah calls out, confused. “Where are you going? Our break's almost over. I have a paper to present!”

But Freitas doesn't slow. Instead he glances back and calls out, “Forget your stupid presentation, this is way bigger! We've got a plane waiting to take us to Bali!”

Bali? Is he serious? According to his own data, Indonesia has seen a massive spike in animal attacks recently—and
that's
where he wants to take us?

But when I glance down back at the map on the iPad still in my hands, I see that in the past month, the island of Bali has actually had almost
zero
reported attacks.

That has to be some kind of mistake. Doesn't it?

Or could the key to solving HAC really be right under our nose?

I grab Sarah's arm and practically drag her down the hallway after Freitas.

The day just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

Chloe is in her
old childhood bedroom, lying in her old childhood bed. Eli is curled up in the crook of her arm. The little boy is dozing soundly. Obliviously.

But for Chloe, try as she might, sleep just won't come.

She's been living in her parents' fortified apartment complex for only a few days now, but already she's started losing her mind.

Maybe it's because the air inside is so oppressive and stale: to prevent wild animals from entering, each and every window, chimney, and vent has been double-locked, triple-sealed, and completely boarded up.

Maybe it's because her elderly parents' health has started to deteriorate so rapidly and unexpectedly. Since the last time she saw them, her mother has grown increasingly forgetful, and her father's mobility has become severely limited.

Maybe it's because the apartment's food and supplies are stretched so thin. The government's biweekly rations delivery is inexplicably two days late, so the family is down to their last can of beans, a few shriveled tomatoes from their indoor hydroponic garden, and half of a stale, moldy baguette.

Or, maybe it's because the sounds echoing across the city each night are so utterly terrifying. Screeching cats. Growling dogs. Yowling foxes. Shrieking vultures.

Screaming humans.

As Chloe snuggles Eli a bit closer, her mind drifts to Oz. She's still mad at him for tricking her into staying with her parents in Paris. But of course she understands. He did it out of love. Frankly, had she been in his shoes, their roles reversed, she'd probably have done the same.

Now she just prays that he's safe. They spoke briefly earlier today; he'd called from a plane, somewhere over the Pacific. Something about going to Mali. Africa? No, that wouldn't make sense. But the connection was lost before she could ask more.

Chloe feels her eyelids finally getting heavy. She's just about to doze off when a pounding on the front door practically shakes the apartment's walls.

Eli jolts awake and begins to cry with fright. As Chloe comforts him, she looks over at the clock on her nightstand: 3:18 a.m. Who could it possibly be at this hour?

No one good,
Chloe thinks to herself.

She reassures her son she'll be right back and slips out of bed to investigate.

The pounding continues as she passes through the kitchen—and grabs a glistening chef's knife, just in case. Marielle has been woken up, too, but Chloe gestures for her stepmother to stay back and let her handle this.

“
Monsieur Tousignant!
It is the gendarmerie, with rations. Open the door!”

Chloe looks through the peephole. She sees two soldiers standing outside in the eerily dim hallway. One is carrying an assault rifle, the other a cardboard box. Both wear black fatigues and body armor.

Chloe exhales with relief. She sets down the knife, unlocks the deadbolt, and opens the door.

“Bonsoir,”
she says. “Thank you very much for finally coming. I can take them.”

She reaches for the box of food, but the soldier pulls it away.

“I am sorry,
mademoiselle
. This is to be delivered to Jean-Luc Tousignant only.”

“It's fine. I'm Chloe Tousignant, his daughter.” She glances up and down the hallway, making sure the coast is clear. “Now please give me the rations and shut the door, before an animal manages to—”

“You could be Marie Antoinette, for all I care,” the other soldier snarls. “It does not matter.” He holds up his smartphone, which is connected to a tiny digital fingerprint scanner. “The thumbprint of each recipient is required for delivery verification.”

Chloe can't believe this. “He's in bed. He's sick. The man can barely walk! And I have a four-year-old son who's very hungry. Please.”

The first soldier gives her a sympathetic look, but he won't back down.

“The rules are the rules. I am sorry. If you want the rations, your father must accept them personally. If not, we have many more deliveries to make tonight.”

Chloe groans in annoyance. French citizens are dying in the streets, they're starving in their homes, and the army is worried about sticking to protocol?

“
Merde!
Fine! Wait here while I—”

Chloe suddenly sees two beady little eyes appear on the hallway ceiling.

In an instant, a furry four-legged animal squeals and leaps down at her.

She bats it away—a giant raccoon just inches from her face.
“Non!”
she yells as it lands on its back on the floor, then quickly rights itself and comes at her again.

Chloe screams and struggles to fight it off as it scrambles up her legs and torso toward her head, its claws digging into her flesh every inch of the way.

The soldier holding the box of rations drops it and frantically comes to Chloe's aid. He rips the rabid animal off her and flings it into the apartment. His partner swiftly aims his rifle and sprays a flurry of gunshots, killing the creature instantly.

Chloe is out of breath. In total shock. Her legs and chest are crisscrossed with bloody scratches. She's otherwise unharmed, but scared. And furious.

“Merci,”
she snaps at the soldiers—as she scoops up the box of rations they dropped and slams the door in their face, before either has a chance to protest.

Chloe locks the door and grips the box tightly. Marielle, who witnessed the entire episode, is too stunned to say a word. All she and her stepdaughter can do is stare at the raccoon's bloody carcass, and the trail of bullet holes along the floor and wall.

And be thankful that Chloe is still alive.