Across the red screen of Attila’s mind, a memory plays. A man’s face appears—vague, watery, but there. It comes down close to the bars of the tiny cramped cage he is trapped in. The man opens the door of the cage, cradles him, talks to him, soothes him. The first kindness he ever experienced.
Rocking his dazed head from side to side at the strange vision, Attila stops in the shattered balcony doorway. He is in there somehow, somehow a part of the boy. And yet Attila is angry, so angry. He stands there, his impulses warring with his memory.
The other two apes, squirming with the blood rage, struggle to squeeze past him.
Attila grabs the first one by the shoulder, and then the other. He draws them away from the doorway, back into the outside. There is other meat.
Chapter 87
“MOMMY! MOMMY! WAKE up! Listen!”
Chloe’s eyes flutter open. There is a high, ear-piercing primate-call sound coming from the balcony. The chimps on the balcony seem to be tussling with one another.
She sits up.
Chloe reaches out and wraps her arms firmly around her son. As they watch the animals jostle and shriek, she recognizes the familiar sound the chimp is making. It is a warning call—a kind of siren that chimps emit when a threat is close.
One is warning the others not to enter?
After a moment, the apes break it up. The largest of them—who, bizarrely, seems to be wearing a ragged old red hat—knuckle-walks to the balcony railing and hops onto its edge, beckoning the others to follow. A moment later, all three of them slip over the railing and are gone.
Chloe expels a long, shivery breath. First, the chimps wanted to attack, but then, suddenly, they stopped.
Attila. How could it have been him? How could it
Chloe sits on the floor with Eli in the dark. Outside the shattered window, she can hear people yelling, people singing and chanting in Central Park. It is as if human beings are regressing, becoming primitive again. Maybe human beings will start reacting to the pheromones now. Create human zombies to join the four-footed ones. Anything is possible.
Eli struggles in her arms like a giant fish. Struggles to escape her grip.
“No. Stay here,” Chloe says in a curt whisper.
“I’ll be right back.”
She thinks he needs to use the bathroom. But he returns a moment later and hands her something. It is the bowl of popcorn.
“Daddy said I should take care of you while he’s gone,” he says. “Here.”
She kisses him.
There comes a heavy, pounding knock on the door.
“United States Army,” a voice shouts. “Is there anyone in there?”
Chloe scoops up Eli and rushes to the door. A young blond soldier with glasses smiles in the glow of his flashlight as she lets him in.
“Thank God you’re alive, ma’am,” he says, lowering his rifle. “Somebody turned off the electric fence, and they got in through the basement somehow. We think we have it under control now. Are you hurt? Is your son all right?”
“We’re fine,” Chloe says. “Chimpanzees tried to get in through the balcony, but then they left.”
“So that’s what they were,” the soldier says, shaking his head. “I knew I saw something jump over the perimeter fence from the second-floor balcony.”
“Are many people hurt? The other families?”
“I’d be lying if I said no,” the soldier said. “Three families on the fourth floor seem to have taken the worst of it. There have been about half a dozen casualties so far. We’re still sweeping. In the meantime…,” the soldier says, offering her something.
Chloe just stares at it.
It is a flat black pistol.
“We can’t be everywhere at once, ma’am. You might need to use it to drive off the next wave.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then you might really need it,” the soldier says, slapping it into her hand and turning to go.
The gun lies dark, cold, and heavy in her hand. She hates to touch it. She knows all too well what he meant about needing it. He meant that she should use it on Eli and herself rather than be eaten alive.
“Mommy, is that a real gun?” says Eli.
“No.”
Chapter 88
THE MESSAGE, AS it has come to be called at the White House, is delivered the next day at 0900, and put on a loop to repeat for the rest of the day.
On all TVs and radios, programming is interrupted. The message is broadcast through megaphones on helicopters and through the speakers on army vehicles roving the streets.
An image of the Oval Office appears on the forty-foot LED screen at One Times Square. The forty-fifth president of the United States of America, Marlena Grace Hardinson, sits behind the desk. Her smoky, dark green eyes look resolutely into the camera, and in a slow, careful voice, she begins.
“My fellow Americans, I would like to say good morning to you,” the president says. “But as we all know, this isn’t a very good morning for many of us. We are currently experiencing a dark moment in the annals of human history.
“I say this from hard-won personal knowledge. My own daughter, Allison, died yesterday. She was killed by our family pet. This is a tragedy that I and my husband, Richard, may never recover from. But we need to go on. We all do, and we will. That is what the United States of America does.
“Despite the efforts of our military, all across our nation, and indeed all across our planet, animals continue to attack human beings savagely, and without cessation. Fortunately, after much careful research, our scientists believe they have discovered some of the responsible factors underlying these attacks.
“For many years, there has been much heated debate over industrial pollution and its contribution to global warming. As we researched the dangers of industrial activity on climate change, it seems we were simultaneously overlooking another problem that has been developing unnoticed right under our noses for years. This problem amounts to the destabilization of the biosphere.
“It has come to light that the aberrant animal behavior may be directly related to human activity. The recent buildup of hydrocarbon-rich petroleum products, coupled with radiation from cellular phones, has caused changes in the environment, which these animals are reacting to. It has been explained to me that the hydrocarbons normally found in the human environment have subtly morphed into a substance that many animals’ sensory faculties are interpreting as a pheromone, altering these animals’ behaviors. These new airborne chemical particulates are causing animals to swarm together and attack human beings.
“In the interest of public safety, we must do everything in our power to reverse this process. That is why I am asking for the people of the United States of America to come together with the rest of the world this morning. Though I know it will be a great hardship, for the next two weeks, we must cease the use of all cellular phones and
