Sleep came quickly, it always did. In his days in theNational Guard, the others soldiers had joked that he must be narcolepticbecause he could always manage to fall asleep immediately, no matter theconditions. Gunfire wouldn't stop him. Insufferable heat couldn't keep himawake. Not even his own troubled thoughts could prevent him from falling asleepfor long.
His dreams were dark, filled with the faces of the dead,not the rotting dead, but the people they had been before, screaming in pain asthey railed against their condition. They didn't want to be dead, but they werenonetheless. In the dreams, he could hear again. Though they screamed, he wasfascinated by the noises they made, terrible shrieks, garbled words that weremore feeling than recognizable syllables. It was a nightmare, but to be able tohear made it all worth it.
When he felt a rough shake on his shoulder, emotion shotthrough him, a longing so deep that he couldn't help but snap at the outline ofMort's face when his eyes opened. "What?" he said. Or did he yell it?He must've yelled it because Mort put a finger to his lips in a shushingmotion. He pointed down the tunnel, and Blake saw the shapes outlined againstthe daylight pouring in from the tunnel's entrance. They had been found.
Just like that, the sounds of his dream were gone,replaced by the dangerous silence of a dead world. He felt as if he werealready partly dead as well. A couple more senses, that's all it would take.Wasn't that all life was? The processing of the sensory data around you? Whatcan you see? What can you feel? What can you taste? What can you smell? Soundwas lost to him. In his eyes, that made him less alive than the others.
Blake grabbed his bag, which he had left already packedand ready to go. It was never a good idea to leave your gear lying aroundbecause you never knew when you would have to pick up and leave. He slung itover his shoulders and then shouldered his rifle. He moved softly through thetunnel, following the others out the other end and into the early afternoonsun. It was hot. It was also a bad time to be moving around; Blake couldalready feel sweat springing forth from his body.
He imagined the sounds that he saw, the light rustle ofleaves in the wind, the clop of his own boots on the pavement, the clink andclack of people running, loaded down with everything they needed to survive. Heimagined it all as the survivors circled through the zoo, hoping that the polarbears they had seen on the way in were no longer there.
The cages and enclosures were empty, and to Blake thatmeant something. He didn't know what. He doubted that the animals had startedtheir own jailbreak, so that meant that someone had set them free. Someone whowould do that... well, they probably wouldn't just take off, abandoning theanimals to their own devices. The fish were one thing, but the elephants, thelions, the polar bears... they were sticking around. They had no place to go.They had no steady food supply, unless someone was feeding them somehow.
The empty zoo flew by as they walked briskly. The deadwere spread out, easy to move through. From the corner of his eye, Blake keptspotting movement in the underbrush. Animals or the dead? It didn't matter aslong as they made it back out of the zoo.
Ahead of him, Mort skidded to a halt. Blake, trying tosee what was in the bushes, smashed into his back and then fell backwards,landing on his ass. He was about to swear, when he spotted the cause of theirstoppage. In the walkway sat the three bears from earlier. They were closerthis time. Their maws were stained red from eating something... something aliveor something dead, it didn't seem to matter. Their skin was tight on theirbodies, and they didn't look like the bears from those old Coca-Colacommercials at all. They were emaciated. They were hungry... they wanted meat.
****
Lila watched them from the rooftop of the gift shop. Sheheld the rifle steady in her hands, observing the people. They had done nothingyet to warrant her actions, but she could see how that might all be coming toan end.
Life the last few weeks had been hard in the zoo. Atfirst, she had felt great releasing birds and non-violent animals, but then shehad finished the job, releasing predators into a wild that they knew nothingabout. The animals that had stayed in the zoo quickly became food for thepredators, the bears, the lions, the tigers. Then, when they had all run out,the predators became food for each other. The zoo had turned into a giantDarwinian experiment, and now all that was left of the zoo she had known were afew bears, one lion, some quick-thinking monkeys, and an elephant that seemedto have gone completely crazy when its mate had inexplicably died. At least thebirds were safe, the ones that had left anyway.
She had watched it all, though it pained her. For a briefsecond, she had considered taking down some of the bigger predators, but thatwasn't who she was. She was no god; she was just an animal like all of theothers. She had no special rights here to pick and
