The Last Peak (Book 2): The Darwin Collapse (19 page)

"Need a lift, stranger?"

He laughed again as he settled himself on the pillow.

Theresa was about to thumb on the power and pull away when a voice to her left startled her.

"What are you guys doing?" Noor asked standing in the open doorway.

Theresa froze. They were busted. She had no idea what to say.

“Mason wants us to go on a neighborhood patrol," Elio said. "To check things out so we have better situational awareness."

Nice use of the fancy bodyguard words!

Noor digested the information and then nodded. "Okay."

“Can you check on Clyde while we’re out?” Theresa asked.

Noor nodded.
 

“Close the gate,” Theresa said, knowing it locked automatically. "We'll be back later."

"Be careful,” Noor said. “It’s scary out there."

She had no idea. Unfortunately, Theresa did.

BETH
rode through the Los Angeles Zoo parking lot and up to the entrance. The front gate stood open which was odd because there wasn't a car in sight in the vast, empty parking lot. Normally, she loved the throaty rumble of her old Kawasaki. Now was not normally. The burbling growl of the old 750cc engine was too loud. She’d never thought that before the outbreak. But now that ambient sound levels had fallen off a cliff, it stood out like a spotlight under a new moon.

Which wasn’t good when attracting attention could get you killed.

She considered leaving it outside and sneaking in but she didn't want to be so removed from her getaway ride. She eased on the throttle and rode through the open gate. She snaked up the handicap ramp and headed toward the medical complex. On the left, the flamingos exhibit was conspicuously empty. Where would a flock of fifty hot pink and orange birds end up?

A flurry of movement caught the corner of her eye to the right.

She looked forward and hit the brakes as a small troop of monkeys darted across the path like they were between the lines in a school crosswalk. They all ignored her except for the last one. It paused in the middle of the path and then screeched at her before hurrying to join the others.

In the first several days of the outbreak, Beth had wondered what would happen to all of the animals at the zoo. At some point, there would be no one to feed them. And how did they manage to escape? Did one of the employees throw open the gates and wish them the best of luck? If someone did do that, which animals did they do it for?

Presumably not for the larger carnivores.

The zoo carried a wide variety of animals that mother nature never intended to be mixed together. The majority of them never would've encountered the other animals in their native habitat.

It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the age-old law of survival of the fittest. Predators and prey both hungered and so both struggled to survive. That most fundamental struggle didn’t feel as removed as it once did.

She continued on with all of her senses attuned, listening for anything beyond the growl of her bike. She passed a concessions stand. The windows were closed. No customers were seated at the round tables or lined up at the windows complaining about how long it took to get a basket of fries and a soda. No children ran between the tables screaming with glee while parents relished being off their feet for a few minutes and so did nothing to rein them in.

For some reason, that vacant scene seemed sadder than the rest. And it was all sad.

The zoo had been Beth's life for over a decade. Many of the animals were as dear to her as her own family. The events that occurred the last time she was here flooded into her mind. How dear Jane, the Bili chimp she'd raised from an infant, had died on the operating table giving birth to her twins. One hadn't made it and the other was the reason she’d returned. As Jane died on the operating table, Beth had promised to take care of her surviving baby. Clyde would get the medicine he needed. Beth had bet her life on it.

A cacophony of clicking and stamping sounds caused her to hit the brakes. The sound thundered around the bend up ahead. The noise grew louder as she waited.

 
What could it be?

A large African Impala antelope raced around the curve. Its head dropped and it almost wiped out as it front hooves slipped on the pavement. Its back legs adjusted and the torso twisted to somehow right itself and continue on. A herd of a dozen or more followed behind the alpha. They rounded the curve and thundered toward her. They jostled shoulder to shoulder filling the width of the path completely.
 

For a second, Beth sat there confused by the spectacle. There just wasn’t any reference for it. There was never a herd of anything sprinting along the circuitous paths that wound around the zoo. Well, there were herds of people. But they didn’t run forty miles per hour and sport three foot, twisting horns on top of their heads.

The antelopes raced toward her.

She looked around for an escape, but it was too late. The herd was closing in fast. A blur of horns and hooves came at her. She dropped down low in her seat so that the bike would hopefully take the brunt of the impact.

The scraping and sliding and clicking of their hooves drowned out everything. The big male rushed by her on the right side. Another ripped off a side mirror as it passed. The mass of tan fur and taut muscles jostled her on both sides. A hoof stamped on her bare right foot and she screamed in pain.

And then they were gone.
 

Beth sucked in a slow breath and tried to swallow her heart back down into her chest. She checked her foot and was relieved to find a superficial cut that shouldn’t require stitches. Now that her prefrontal cortex emerged from the primal ooze of the flight or fight response, she had one question about what just happened.

What were they running from?

She stared at the bend ahead. Her hands gripped the handlebars tightly, ready to whip the bike around and make for a quick escape. She waited. Nothing happened. Almost disappointed, she blew out a slow breath and then continued on to the medical buildings.

Maybe the herd got spooked by something silly like a branch creaking in the wind or one of the others in the herd passing gas. They were twitchy creatures and Beth couldn't blame them for it. In their natural habitat, they were always on the menu and that made for a necessarily nervous disposition.

The growl of the Vulcan couldn't die fast enough. Beth shut it off and coasted to a stop in front of the medical center. She stayed put for a minute, listening, waiting. For what exactly, she didn’t know.
 

Nothing appeared.

She tried the front door and it silently swung open. The front gate open. Now this door unlocked, too. She wondered what it must’ve been like in the first few days of the outbreak. It would've begun in a sane and organized way. The security guys would’ve swept through the corridors and pathways to ensure that no customers remained inside. They would’ve gone through all the structures and facilities to verify everything was secured. They would’ve left a skeleton crew overnight to keep an eye on things until normal operations could resume.

It probably started that way.

But what happened on day two or three when people didn't show up? When no one arrived for the next shift rotation? What happened when whoever was left realized no one was coming back? What happened in the days after that, when the entire complex was completely abandoned? And finally, what happened when people living in surrounding areas started thinking of the animals not as entertainment and education, but as calories and nutrition?

And if they did, was it wrong?

Her heart said it was, but the grumble in her half-empty belly told it where to go. Maybe when she was finished here, she should track down those impalas and try to take one home. Surely a Glock with seventeen rounds of ammo could take one down. Couldn’t it? But even if it could, could she? For her family?

Beth resolved to answer the question later. She’d come for medicine first. That was the most important thing. The thought of killing one of those beautiful animals could wait. Besides, she wasn’t even sure she could safely strap a one hundred and fifty pound antelope to her bike and make it home.

Then again, the zoo had smaller animals. Some that weren't nearly as fast either.

Beth shuddered. It sickened her how quickly such insanity could become so sensible. It was her job to care for these animals and keep them alive. And now she was considering putting a bullet in their heads so her family could consume their calories. She shook her head.

Talk about messed up.

She clicked on her headlamp and entered the dark interior of the building. She tried the lights but there didn't seem to be any power. The interior security door was also unlocked. She followed the interior corridors—and they were creepy as hell—and then took a left toward her old office and the lab. She arrived at the door to that wing and tried the handle. It jiggled but didn't open.

Locked. Thank God. She pulled the keys out of her pocket and found the right one. The door opened like normal, just as it had thousands of times over the last decade.

She passed her old office and then arrived at the door to the lab. She almost snarled as she touched the door. The memory of that bitch Diana Richston firing her burned in her gut. She’d tried to stop Beth from taking Clyde home to care for him. That bitch had even tried to force a security guard to physically stop her.
 

Of course, Beth had then threatened to kill them both with a dart full of Etorphine, a synthetic opioid powerful enough to kill a human with a single drop. So, the hatred probably went both ways.

She entered the lab turning her head this way and that to illuminate portions of the expansive room. There in the center was the operating table where she'd lost Jane and saved Clyde. She'd occupied this room the day the world outside decided to stop making sense. The simple steel operating table was now empty. Jane's body had been removed and every surface sanitized.

Beth hurried to the security cabinet and rifled through her keys to find the right one. There. She rotated the handle and pulled the door open.

Yes!

Inside was a trove of priceless medicine. She quickly located several bottles of Cephalexin and Doxycycline capsules. Kept in a dual cool dark place, the antibiotics were known to store for up to a decade while retaining their efficacy. She shoved the bottles into a bag and then grabbed additional meds for other uses. She shuffled through the remaining bottles, ampules, and boxes determining which might prove useful.

"Take me with you."

Beth spun around ready to scream. The light of the headlamp came to rest on a disheveled, unrecognizable form. Tattered rags hung from limbs streaked with grime. A tangled mop of long black hair showed gray at the roots. The visual was bad but the smell was worse. The apparition reeked of feces and decay.

It took a minute before Beth recognized the revolting orange hue of her artificially-tanned skin.

"Diana?"

“Please take me with you,” Diana said as she grasped Beth’s arm. The days since their last encounter had not been kind. What may have once been a nice blouse was now little more than a tattered brown rag. The sleek material that was once suit pants now hung in patches that revealed more skin than it covered.

"Please Elizabeth,” she said, "help me."

Despite never liking the woman, and at the end absolutely hating her, Beth was not the type to turn away another in need.

Diana faltered and Beth caught her hands before she collapsed.

“Come sit down." Beth led her to a chair and then helped her take a seat. "What happened to you?”

Diana stared at her hands as she rubbed at the coating of filth. She pinched her lips together and shook her head.

"Diana, tell me. How did you end up here, like this?"

She looked back up at Beth. Her eyes glistened with tears. "He left me here."

"Who is he?"

"Anton Reshenko." Her jaw twitched and her eyes grew hard. "After all I did for him! He left me to die!" Her back straightened as anger burned the tears away.
 

“Reshenko?” Beth said aloud even though she wasn’t asking a question. That was Iridia’s last name. Had Mason ever mentioned her father’s name? She couldn’t remember for certain. She just knew that he was some kind of high-level scientist working for the government.

“Yes, he's the Chief Virologist for Milagro Corporation. He's the reason we needed the Bili chimpanzees."

Beth froze. Her heart stopped. The blood in her veins turned to ice. The compassion she’d felt at Diana’s condition vanished.
 

"What did you just say?"

"I don't care if you know. What does it matter now? Nothing matters now. Look at me! I may as well be dead!"

Beth grabbed her shoulders and would've been shocked by how bony they felt were it not for the crashing wave of fury in her gut. "What do you mean? Why did he want the chimps?"

Diana's eyes opened wide and she stared up at Beth, apparently realizing that maybe it did still matter to someone else. She sat there with her mouth hanging open.

Beth shook her violently. She wanted to wrap her hands around Diana’s throat and choke the life out of her. Sadly, Diana was in no condition to resist for long so the pleasure wouldn’t last.

"Don't hurt me! Please! It's not my fault!"

"Tell me what happened to the Bili chimps. You told me they were going to zoos in other countries. I wondered why I could never get ahold of them. That was all bullshit, wasn't it?"

Diana nodded her head.

Yes. Death by strangulation was the best this criminal could hope for.

"Then what actually happened to the chimps?" Beth leveled Arctic-cold eyes at Diana. They silently promised unspeakable violence if she refused to answer.

Diana crumbled to the concrete floor. "He demanded it. I couldn’t say no. I wasn’t involved in that part of the company, but I heard it was supposed to be a super vaccine. The last flu vaccine you'd ever need. I was never told what he needed the chimps for. I swear it!"