Zoo

I took a deep breath.

“There is an imminent threat, ma’am,” I said. “Perhaps if you’d taken time out of your busy day, you could have come by the meeting yesterday and seen for yourself. Animal behavior is changing radically and alarmingly, and people are dying. I can prove it.”

“It doesn’t make the slightest shred of sense,” Wernert said. “Why is it happening?”

“I’m not sure. Not yet. That’s one of the questions we need to figure out. But the why of it is not what’s at stake at the moment, Ms. Wernert. You don’t have to know why your house is on fire to run for the exit. Warnings need to be sent out right now for people to be wary of animal aggression.”

“Right. I’m afraid that’ll fly like a lead balloon on CNN,” Wernert said. “Senator Gardner tells the public, ‘Lock up your killer Shih Tzu.’”

“Please. At least let me show Senator Gardner the film I have.” I was irritated to hear a new note of begging in my voice.

“The senator has more important things to do than become involved with your fringe theory. He’s booked solid for the next month. Good-bye.” Wernert hung up.

I stared at my phone. To come this far just to be sold down the river was unacceptable. I didn’t even care about all the time and effort it took me to put this presentation together. It was the fact that the public needed to hear what I had to say, and that the facts were being hidden by the very people who were supposed to be protecting the populace.

Senator’s blessing or not, a warning needed to go out. No one else was going to do it. It was up to me.

I looked at the media people down by the door, gathered for the environmental hearing that was starting to get underway, and a plan came to me.

As I walked back toward the metal detectors, I turned and stopped. Then I climbed up on the platform base of the giant indoor sculpture, jumped up, and caught the first branch of the stainless steel tree.

Lawyers and politicians and even some real people stopped and started pointing as I scurried up to the top.

“Excuse me!” I called to everyone through cupped hands. “Excuse me. I have something important to say.”

“Oz?” Chloe said, looking up at me from the lobby floor. “What are you doing?”

“The only thing left to do,” I called down to her. “The people need to know.”

Chapter 42

“EXCUSE ME!” I shouted. “Everyone—I am a scientist. My name is Jackson Oz, and I was invited to speak at an environmental hearing for the US Senate before I was mysteriously uninvited.”

I glanced down to see the cop who’d just eighty-sixed us standing beneath the tree, his gun in one hand, his radio in the other.

I paused, swallowed, continued.

“An environmental disturbance of global proportions is happening. Three days ago, in Botswana, more than a hundred people were killed by wild animals. I believe this epidemic is spreading worldwide. Everyone may be in jeopardy. Be on the lookout for sudden aggression in animals—”

An alarm sounded. I paused. A piercing white light strobed, and the hallway reverberated with clanging bells. From deeper inside the building, I could hear an approaching herd of stomping footfalls.

I bit my lip. I thought maybe I’d grab a little attention from a reporter or two before I was arrested, but now I was worried. After 9/11, this was probably one of the best-guarded places on earth. Maybe my plan wasn’t as brilliant as it sounded a moment before.

That thought was confirmed as a team of men in black fatigues appeared from an interior hallway, swinging M16s and riot shields. As the SWAT team came through the ringing metal detectors, I could see the letters CERT flashing in silver tape across the backs of their flak jackets.

“Get down from there! Now!” a mustached man in a tactical helmet called from the skinny end of a crackling megaphone as he trained the business end of his M16 at my chest.

I was doing just that, kneeling down to hang-jump off the metal branch, when I heard a boom, and what felt like an A-Rod line drive hit me in the back of my right hand. My grip faltered and I dropped to the marble floor like a bag of meat.

I looked at my hand. It felt broken. It looked like I’d been stung by a hornet the size of a kitten. I’d been shot with some type of nonlethal round. A rubber bullet, I guessed.

But that was the least of my problems. Two blinks later, there was a violent, zinging pain in the backs of my legs and my teeth involuntarily clenched as I started shaking.

“You are being Tasered. Don’t move, you squirrelly little prick,” said a voice so close to my head I could smell the onions on his breath.

That was easy: I couldn’t move, as my muscles were being zapped into paralysis. Even after the Taser’s fishhooks were ripped from my back, it still felt like someone was boring into my skull with an electric drill. My brain was numbed.

Now four cops were on top of me, wrenching my arms behind my back to cuff my wrists.

“That’s what you get for dicking around,” the cop said in my ear. “You’re in trouble. Like federal homeland security–style trouble.”

I was hauled to my feet and shove-walked toward an open double door in the marble wall. I tried to get my feet under me, but the muscles in my legs were still wobbly. I stumbled, they dragged me, I got my legs back, and then they fell out from under me again. I looked down at my useless, jellylike legs. It was like they were somebody else’s.

“Oh, so now you’re resisting arrest,” the cop sneered, and a boot blasted into my spine.

“Get off of him! Stop hurting him!” A woman, screaming. I heard it as if I were underwater, registered it as if I were in a coma.

I saw Chloe out of the corner of my eye. She was rushing forward, pushing at the cops as she screamed.

I also spotted Gail Quinn, Claire Dugard, and Charles Groh beside her, shouting at the Capitol police. The hallway resounded with the cacophonous echoes of shouting, scuffling, stomping boots.

Two dream moments later, they were all cuffed and trussed on the floor beside me. They even cuffed Charles Groh to his wheelchair. Clearly a very dangerous man, him.

We were yanked up and dragged toward a side door opening onto a dingy back corridor.

“Hey, look, Larry,” said the cop to one of his buddies. “It’s the attack of the retards. Where’s the bearded lady? Outside keeping the short bus running for the getaway?”

Right then was when I truly lost it. I turned and tried to kick the cop in his balls. I missed, though I did manage to land a pretty good blow on his shin.

Then my view was blocked by a fist, showing me a sweeping vista of some guy’s fingers and knuckles. I took in the scenery for a leisurely fraction of a second before being disturbed by the noisy crunch of my nose breaking, which echoed numbly in my ears as the lights above me dimmed and sputtered out.

Chapter 43

AFTER THE PANDEMONIUM, the Capitol cops brought us to an MPDC holding tank. We were processed and conveyed into a cell in the rear of the building. The walls were cluttered with peace signs, anarchy signs, and pot leaves that previous occupants had keyed and Sharpied onto the grimy tiles. This room had seen its share of troublemakers.

We spent the night in the cell: Gail Quinn, Claire Dugard, Charles Groh, Chloe, and me, as well as a few cockroaches I at first mistook for Yorkshire terriers. I leaned against the wall with two scraps of paper towel