"Come on! Let's go," he yelled.
With Mort by their side, they headed back to the entranceof the zoo. Blake's head began to swim as they neared the buildings in thefront of the zoo. Their path was blocked off by a new stream of the dead, freshfrom the highway. They must have heard the gunfire.
Blake saw Lou race past him. He stopped ahead of them andwaved his arm, calling the rest of the survivors into the building. They raninside the busted glass doors of the gift shop and filtered their way throughthe racks of junk and into the back of the building. It was dark inside, andwhen they closed the back door of the gift shop, it was even darker.Flashlights came on, and then Joan was there, looking at Blake's hand.
She probed and she squeezed, and the pain almost droveBlake to his knees. He couldn't look at it. One look had been enough, so helooked at his surroundings. He sat on a plain wooden floor, his back leaningagainst the upper part of a stairwell that curled around to his left. Therewere a few chairs and a table in the room, and it felt unused, as if no one hadbeen able to think of a proper use for the space.
Joan pulled the notepad and pencil from his shirtpocket. The others shined their light on the pad, and Joan ripped the firstpage free as it was wet with blood. His own or the polar bear's, he didn't know.She scrawled some words on the page and held the notepad out so that he couldsee the words. "Do you want me to cut it off?"
Blake looked at Joan as if she were out of her mind."Are you fucking kidding me?"
Joan wrote some more on the pad. "It's never goingto heal right," the next note said.
"I don't give a fuck. If it doesn't need to comeoff, then I want it."
"The pain is going to be tremendous, and it willprobably never go away," she wrote.
The others jumped as the first bang on the door rangthroughout the space. It was a wooden door, nothing special, the type of thingyou'd find in any office around the world. It wouldn't last long. "I'drather have the pain," Blake said. "At least then, I know I'malive."
Joan shook her head in disbelief, as a parent does whenthey let a child make a mistake that they know is just plain stupid.
Blake smiled at Joan, "If it makes you feel better,we can cut it off later if it continues to bother me."
She shook her head, annoyed by his pigheadedness. Thenshe looked upward. From the way that the others looked up as well, Blake knewthat there must be something above them. He felt Mort's arms disengage from him,and he sank to the ground. He wanted to tell Mort not to go up there. He wantedMort to stay with him. But he was too exhausted and damaged to say anything.Mort pounded up the stairs, Lou following close behind. The loss of blood wastoo much for Blake. His head slumped, and blackness closed in.
****
Mort didn't want to leave Blake behind, but the noisefrom above meant that work wasn't over yet. Surviving wasn't over yet. Therewas still one more thing that needed to be done. Mort was still running onadrenaline, and he felt like he wasn't quite thinking straight. That tends tohappen when you're fighting for your life at the end of the world and your bestfriend is being mauled by a giant polar bear. He still couldn't believe he hadgone after the thing with a hammer. He only wished he had been quicker. Maybethen Blake's hand wouldn't be all messed up.
He climbed a plain stairwell, towards where the sound hadcome from. He felt more than heard Lou behind him. The noise had sounded like athump, the type of thump one hears when a body falls to the ground. Theupstairs was a little brighter, as the hallways and the rooms had smallrectangular windows built into them. They were too tall to see out of withoutstanding on a chair, but they provided just enough light to see by.
The stairs creaked under his foot and he cringed. Then hecringed some more when he heard a sudden cough from one of the rooms. Theyapproached the door where the cough had come from. On a plain black placard, itread "Security Room." Lou moved to the left of the doorway, and Mortstood front and center. As he reached for the doorknob, and noise boomed outand a splinters of wood sprayed Mort in the face.
A small hole appeared in the door. Mort had only a momentto grasp what was happening, and then Lou tackled Mort and sent him crashing tothe ground.
"Oh, shit," Mort said, as Lou rolled off of him.He kept repeating the phrase as he checked his body for holes. He patted downhis chest, his legs, everything he could think of, and in the end he foundnothing. He didn't know how that could be. The bullet should have gone rightthrough him. Somehow it had missed.
"Are you alright?" Lou asked.
Mort was confused. He knew that he was alright, but hedidn't understand how that could be. "I think so."
"Are or are you not?" Lou asked.
Mort shook his head, "Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine."
Lou patted him on the shoulder, his head dropping. Thenhe held his gun up and leaned back against the wall. "Whoever the fuck isin there better come out right now."
A strained voice yelled back, "Fuck off." Itsounded as if the person on the other side of the door was choking onsomething.
"I'm going to count to three, and if you're not outhere by then, I'm going to fill that room full of bullets."
"I can't move," the woman's voice said.
"Bullshit," Lou said, checking his clip.
"Believe what you want. I'm dead anyway."
Lou and Mort looked at each other and shrugged."Then throw your gun against the wall," Mort said.
"I don't even have the strength to do that. You'regoing to have to come in here and take it from me."
"Man, I am not going
