When she was done, the birds sat in the trees waiting, asif she were going to feed them. At that point she had run around the aviary,her arms in the air making screeching noises to drive the birds off. Many ofthem left, but not all of them. She supposed that would have to be good enough.Sooner or later those birds would get hungry and then they too would leave,their survival instincts sending them on to greener pastures.
From there, she had cut down the netting of the outdooraviary for birds that were native to the Northwest. Even with the netting down,many of the birds were loathe to leave their nests, but she saw a few takeflight, and her heart was warmed as she took the time to watch them fly throughthe air.
On the third day, she had finished freeing all of thegentler animals. She sat in the security room eating a snack of junk food thatshe had cobbled together from gift shop treats and some hot dogs that werestill sitting in a freezer in one of the concessions booths. As she ate, sheplanned how to go about releasing the larger animals, the lions, the tigers,the bears... and then she saw something in one of the monitors. It was Sy,carrying a rifle and a thermos of coffee under his arm.
The old man walked up the road as calmly as if it were atypical day and he was merely heading to work. Only there was no work anymore.Now there was only freedom, and the chance to let the animals live. She didn'twant Sy there. She didn't trust him. Oh, he seemed like a nice enough old man,but what if he had the disease? She still knew next to nothing about the man,and she had experienced no more human contact since the first diseased humanhad attacked her. Sy could be one of them. Sy couldn't be trusted. She decidedto greet him at the gate and tell him to go home. Perhaps he would just turnaround. That would be the best case scenario. The worst case scenario would bethat he shot her, and the animals died, but she decided to go through with theplan anyway.
She walked through the gift shop and out into theentrance area of the zoo. The gates were locked, the metal turnstiles frozen inplace. Sy stood on the other side, his free hand wrapped around one of the graymetal bars of a turnstile. She felt as if she were looking at a man in prison.He wondered if Sy felt the same way looking at her.
"There you are," he said, smiling underneathhis battered Oregon Zoo hat.
Lila said nothing. She just looked at the man wonderingwhat he wanted. Sy was an older gentleman, 60, but wiry, still strong. Hisrifle was pointed at the ground.
He must have seen her regarding it. Sy looked at itself-consciously and said almost sheepishly, "You can't be too carefulthese days, not with those things out there."
"What things?" Lila asked.
Confusion crept across Sy's face, and he looked obviouslyshocked. "You mean you don't know?"
"Know what?"
"The dead are out there. The dead are walkingthrough the streets."
Lila couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth.The dead. How preposterous. But the way he had said it, there had been no doubtin his voice. He hadn't seemed like he was trying to pull a fast one on her. Hehonestly believed what he was saying. "That's impossible," she said.
"No, it's not. I'm lucky to even be here right now.I lost everything," he said. He looked as if he were remembering somethinghorrible, and then he re-focused on her. "What about you? How have thingsbeen up here?"
She didn't know why she did it, but she spilled theentire story to him, about the man that had attacked her, about her releasingof the animals, and her fears that the cops were going to come and take heraway before she could finish her work.
"I don't think anyone's coming, Lila. Unless it'sone of the dead." He looked at her from the other side of the turnstileand said, "You want me to help you? I don't really have anything else todo. Those things got into my house, and when I escaped, my neighborhood wascrawling with them. I really don't have anywhere else to go."
She pulled her keys from her pocket and unlocked theturnstile. The fact was that she could use the help. If he was willing to helpher, she was willing to let him in. Besides, he was an old man, as kind as anyyou'd ever come across. He stepped inside, and Lila locked the gate behind him.
Once inside, Sy took a deep breath of air, and thenexhaled as if he had never breathed in such clean air before. "This is thefirst time I haven't been scared for my life in days."
Lila said nothing.
"What do we do first?" he asked her.
"We need to knock down one of the walls around thisplace so that the animals have some place to escape to."
"Sounds simple enough."
****
Lila and Sy stood looking at the concrete wall thatsurrounded the zoo. It was thick, seamless, and completely impenetrable. Withshovels and hammers, it would take a lifetime just to make an opening throughthe damn thing.
Sy pulled his battered gray hat from his head and wipedhis sweaty brow with his forearm. "I hate to say it, but the only way tomake a hole big enough in this zoo for these animals to escape is
