Cage The Dead (14 page)

“Shit,” Gaia whispered. “Your mom was a chaperone on the class trip?!”

“Yep.”

“What about family? Brothers, sisters, dad, uncles, grandparents?

“Nah. My dad left us a long time ago. I don’t even remember him. And no one else lives around here. I got no brothers or sisters, either…so I guess I got nobody else.”

Wow
, Gaia thought. “Well, Justin. You are not alone. You’ve got me, and you’ve got Solomon, right? And the hippos and the otters would love to see you every day, too.” Justin smiled, half-believing what she said. Gaia suddenly realized that she had no idea how to talk to him. She assumed that he was too old to believe in fictitious things such as the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and so on, but she really couldn’t be sure. All she really knew for certain was that she needed to speak in truths as much as possible with the young man from here on out.

At least the hippos and otters had plenty to eat. On the contrary, she would need to take an active approach in making sure to feed the wolves and hyenas on a regular basis.

“Come on, guys. We have to go see what kind of food we can give to our hungry predators there,” Gaia said as she pointed toward the hyena and wolf pens. “We’ll need to feed them something other than zombies, I suppose, eh?”

‘Dunno,” Justin said with a shrug of his shoulders.

And so, the eclectic group continued along their way and finally stood at the rear entrance to the veterinary facility. Gaia had no intention of entering the other side where she knew the corpse of Dr. Nancy Friedman still lay. They would need to remove that body at some point, she realized. But each examination room inside the veterinary lab would have meds as well as emergency equipment that she would need to keep running, just in case. She would also need to keep those freezers running indefinitely.

If the zombies stayed away, this might actually be a nice place for Justin to grow up, a place for them all to live, and a natural environment in which Solomon could enjoy himself, too. Then, as they passed the gorilla enclosure, she realized that they would need to bury Molly and the babies, too.

“Justin, I’m gonna need some help digging another pit, if you don’t—“

“No problem, Miss Gaia. I can help.” She immediately went and gathered a few bottles of water from the refrigerator, went into the freezer shed and the basement and gathered up two shovels—one of which until recently was used as a zombie-killing weapon—and they made their way to the gorilla pen.

As they arrived, Solomon entered the pen hesitantly and became agitated. Gaia had to calm him down again and she shooed him to the opposite side of the spacious area where he could eat and rest while she and Justin took care of Molly and her babies.

The two pair began digging soil right beside the fallen trio. It was then that Gaia recognized that there were only two of her three offspring lying beside her. As she continued the laborious task of digging out their graves, she gave thought to what might have happened to the third babe. Her thoughts ranged from it being devoured by the ravenous undead to perhaps having gotten out of the enclosure, to even that it might be hiding nearby.

An hour or more into their task, Justin stopped to get a drink of water and then found himself playing with Solomon just as quickly. Gaia was about to protest, but the sight of seeing both of them so happy gave her pause against that line of action. And so, she continued to toil, digging out the earth and occasionally looking back at the happy pair, which inspired her to continue on alone in her endeavor. The image also filled her with hope that perhaps this child would not grow up broken and full of despair about the state of the world.

Several hours later, Justin approached her as she stood leaning on the shovel, completely exhausted.

“Sorry, Miss Gaia, I just wanted to play with Solomon,” he admitted in a  sympathetic way that made all anger, frustration and pain escape her, replaced instead with a feeling of lucidity for the boy.

“Don’t worry about it, little man. Solomon really enjoys spending time with you, and you are making his worries go away. That’s amazing!”

Justin beamed with pride at that statement of praise from Gaia, as the young man picked up his shovel. He began helping her dig once again while Solomon continued obliviously eating from the low hanging branches in the enclosure.

Another hour or so later, as Solomon slept soundly in an area far away from them, Gaia and Justin dragged the bodies of Molly and the two young gorillas into the pit, and then began burying them. Shortly after this, Gaia said a few thoughtful things about the gorilla family that had made an impact on her life—a vigil for her fallen friends.

She placed a wreath, which she’d kept inside the gorilla enclosure from last Christmas over the grave area as a monument to her extended family, as Justin watched the impromptu ceremony, silently sitting in respect of Gaia.

When they were finished, Gaia came to the dire understanding that both she and Justin were both very hungry and decided to put off exploring the veterinary facility until tomorrow, and instead would cook both her and Justin a well-deserved meal. Besides, it would be better to do the exploring during the day. They gathered up their weapons and the digging tools and Gaia said one final blessing over the gorilla enclosure before turning to leave.

Gaia and Justin began to make their way back to the house, along with Solomon, who was roused from his slumber and was now knuckle-walking quietly beside them. When they arrived at the house, they were all greeted by the capuchin, who leaped about the kitchen cabinets and was extremely happy to see them.

Gaia eventually opened the freezer, stared blankly inside, trying to stem the hunger and exhaustion long enough to think, found some chicken, breading and spices, a pan, some oil and fried up the chicken for Justin. She made herself a bowl of noodles and then the two of them shared the remaining ice cream that remained in the freezer for a richly justified dessert.

“Anything to read in this house?” Gaia asked aloud after she’d washed up and put everything away. Justin and Solomon were in the living room, Solomon once again leaping on one particular sofa that was destroyed beyond repair, its springs bursting forth from beneath the cushions.

Inside a wicker basket beside a lazy boy chair, she found a few magazines that seemed interesting enough. There were also a few of the classics, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein among the few books. They were grisly in nature and she was certainly not in the mood for anything like that. She continued to rifle through a stack of books in the basket and found Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as well as A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.

“Good night, Justin. Be careful down here, keep the lights low and try not to make too much noise after dark. Just in case,” Gaia instructed. She retired to her room alone, Solomon and Justin still playing, and Maye nowhere to be seen, but she left the bedroom door open for Justin in case he was frightened again in the middle of the night.

She disrobed, placed her weapons, keys and the binoculars in the top draw of the armoire in the bedroom for safekeeping and then began to page through Huckleberry Finn. A few hours later, she found a crossword puzzle book in the nightstand drawer with not a one done yet. She began solving puzzles for a while until she eventually fell fast asleep.

A crash awoke Gaia, who tossed the crossword puzzle book off her face, threw away the covers, ran to the armoire and grabbed her pistol and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Justin and Maye were in the kitchen, a broken porcelain dish was in pieces on the floor, which Gaia found a piece of in a very painful manner, stepping right on a jagged shard. She bit down her cry of pain and gritted her teeth as she sat down at the kitchen table, blood dripping from the bottom of her left foot. She placed the gun down on the table and stared at Justin.

“Sorry, Miss Gaia!” Justin yelped. “It was Maye, I swear!”

“I'm sure it was,” she said, wincing and staring daggers at the capuchin. “Please grab me that towel over there.” Justin retrieved the dishtowel and handed it to her. She proceeded to pick the jagged shard of porcelain out of her foot, cover it, and knew she needed to clean it out next.

“Can you fill that bowl there with water,” she asked as Solomon slowly bounded into the kitchen, hovering in the archway. “I’m good,” she signed to the gorilla, who signed back ‘yes’ that he understood.

As she finished cleaning the wound, the water in the bowl stained crimson with blood, Justin sat next to her in a chair opposite.

“Sorry—“

Another crash drowned out the boy’s second apology as the window behind him exploded, showering both Justin and the area beside him with glass fragments. Arms, a head, and a torso protruded through the gap in the window, pushing through and breaking the frame of the opening along with it as it tried to climb into the kitchen. It was a massive zombie, tall and strong, with flannel shirt and jeans, and long stringy hair covered in dirt and gore.

Justin fell backward, landing hard against the hardwood floor and rolling out of his chair as the zombie made its way frantically toward him.

Gaia reached for her pistol, knocking over the bloodstained water bowl in her panic to get the weapon. She grabbed the gun, chambered a round and slid free the safety, and spun to face the zombie.

But when she did, all she saw was black fur. Solomon stood between the zombie and the boy with two fists raised high. He brought those massive fists down in a thundering blow and all Gaia could see was gore as, presumably, the zombie’s head had exploded under the violent impact. It immediately stopped moving as Solomon grabbed the remains of the zombie man, and tossed it right back out the window.

Or, at least it eventually went out the window after a few tries, Solomon catching its limbs on what was left of the window frame and surrounding area the first few attempts.

“Justin! Are you all right, hon?!”

The boy remained quiet, vigorously rubbing a knot on the back of his head, clearly so scared he could not find his breath. His silence persisted for several more minutes as Gaia sat back down, pressing the bloody towel against her injured foot still, trying to stop the bleeding.

“I…I am okay, Gaia,” he said running up to her and crushing her in an embrace that felt so warm that Gaia could not comprehend it, like it or not, she was indeed the matriarchal figure to this young boy. This embrace was proof of that.

She wrapped and tied the towel around her foot, calmed Solomon enough so that he would respond to her signing, and she ushered both of them into the living room to lie down. Maye appeared suddenly from the stairs and then climbed back up them again,

Once that was finished, and Justin and Solomon were safely tucked away and sufficiently calm, she surveyed the mess that was the kitchen, blood stained water, shards of glass and porcelain, as well as zombie gore stained a chair and a heavy portion of the hardwood floor. She shook her head and knew that this was going to take hours to clean up. Plus she had to do something about blocking the gaping hole in the wall where the window had recently been.

“Fuck me,” she moaned as she once again held the blood-soaked towel against the gash in her foot for a very long time, anticipating the dreadful cleanup that she was about to endure.

Chapter 12

Maye’s face was the first Gaia saw when she opened her eyes, feeling the intrusion of a hand shaking her, dragging her from her slumber. She realized that it was Justin's hand on her shoulder, shoving her back and forth, as Maye chattered. She watched through tired eyes as the capuchin hopped away toward the opposite side of the room, and then disappeared into the walk-in closet, engulfed by the shadows within.

Gaia had cleaned up last night’s mess in the kitchen and gone to bed only a few hours ago, according to the clock on the wall in the bedroom. Of course, she had no idea if that was the actual time, but based on the daily cycles, it seemed to be close enough. She had slept only four hours, her foot heavily bandaged and throbbing with a dull but very real pain, which kept her tossing and turning last evening. And that was despite her taking some mild pain reliever she’d thankfully found in the bathroom medicine cabinet. She’d thought about taking a handful of the morphine pills but decided that she wanted to keep her faculties in check. But, the pain had come back in kind this morning, her foot aching badly.

 It was time to step up the pain reliever a notch, she decided.

“Gaia, I helped finish cleaning up downstairs,” Justin said, as Gaia covered herself with the blanket and kicked her feet off the side of the bed. She had placed a plastic cloth on top of the sheets as to keep them stain-free, and the plastic was speckled with blood. Then she turned to stare at Justin as if finally hearing what he said.

“What? You finished
what
?” she asked, trying to remember where she left the morphine pills she’d given to Nick when they were in the lab a few days ago. She remembered that she had left them in the left jacket pocket of her zookeeper uniform and hobbled over to retrieve the jacket hanging in the closet.

“Yeah, I took the trash outside that you left in the bags. It stunk pretty bad and Solomon was getting angry about it, so I put them out. That’s okay, right?” he asked, staring at her.

“Where is Solomon now?” she asked, digging in her pockets, removing two pill bottles, and opening the lid on the first.

“He is downstairs sleeping still,” he said as she poured three of them out into her hand.

The morphine pills would definitely have some kick from what she was told by Doctor Friedman and from Nick for that matter. Then she opened the second bottle and ingested two antibiotics found in that one, wanting to stem off any type of infection that may present from the injury.

As she retrieved her clothing, she walked into the closet and began slowly putting her clothes back on. Once that was done, she exited the closet and saw Justin sitting patiently on the edge of the bed, staring through the binoculars she left on the dresser top.

She put her shoe on the right foot, but could not do the same with the left. She dug around in the closet and found an old cane for support, but as she tested her movements, it didn’t seem to help much. She would need to find something better. She opened the top drawer and retrieved and fitted her gun and the machete, slowly putting them on, before finally making her way to sit beside the boy.

“Where did you put the bags, honey?” Gaia asked Justin, putting her arm around him. She was suddenly overwhelmed by his body odor and she noted too that he still wore the same clothes as when she had found him.

“Justin, why don’t you take a shower and I’ll wash your clothes?”

He stared up at her with a dissatisfied frown and shrugged. 

“Its right there,” she continued, pointing at the bathroom door. “Throw your clothes out the door when you are ready.” The boy stood and walked into the bathroom closing the door behind him. Gaia waited and a few minutes later, the water was running and the door opened once more, and the boy’s clothes came out one at a time. Then the door closed once again. “Let me know if you need anything,” she added before picking up the clothes with thumb and forefinger, holding them away from her face as far as her reach would allow, and dropping them into the washer.

She waited on the bed with her leg up for the next forty minutes watching the minutes tick off until the washer buzzed. As she hobbled over to the machine, she heard growling downstairs.

Or so she thought. She couldn’t be sure over the sound of the washer.

Gaia tossed the clothes into the dryer and turned it on. Then she began to limp down the steps and froze as she heard something in the distance that did not sound like the thundering movements of Solomon, or the light sounds associated with Maye’s comings and goings. She looked down the hall where she could see a light cast through the cracks of the bathroom door, indicating that Justin was still in there.

She swallowed hard, peeked around the corner, and came face to face with the majestic visage of a deadly lioness, one that she did not recognize.

“Shit.”

The animal was magnificent in its splendor, its muscles rippling with each step she took toward Gaia, who remained frozen in place on the bottom step. Gaia didn’t know what to do next and sat on the step waiting for the lioness to make a move.

She couldn’t shoot the creature, could she?

“How the fuck did you get in here?!” Gaia whispered under her breath. She had covered the hole in the wall left by the invading zombie that had forced its way in by coaxing Solomon into moving the refrigerator directly in front of it. It was a temporary fix, but there was no conceivable way that the lioness could move that refrigerator from where it was, nor would she be able to squeeze her way through that small an opening.

She was the most beautiful and most deadly animal that Gaia had ever recalled seeing. Gazing at an animal through the bars of a pen did not do this magnificent creature justice, Gaia thought, as the big cat took another step toward Gaia and growled. Her heart raced, pounding loudly in her chest as she felt her blood running hot in her veins. The throbbing of her foot was negligible as the morphine pills did their job, though the panic she felt was unquestionably profound.

Everything seemed surreal to her in that moment.

As she anticipated the deadly attack that was sure to come, she heard a thundering movement off to the side, getting louder with each passing heartbeat.

Solomon?

Her hopes were quickly confirmed as Solomon appeared from around the corner of the hall and came into view, savagely pounding his chest in an attempt to intimidate the lioness.

Solomon forced the big cat to slink backward, as the mighty gorilla stepped in between Gaia and the lioness.

Gaia slowly stood and believed that offering the big cat a meal that was other than her might be a way to go, and so she slipped away as the two animals postured. She certainly did not want to see any harm come to either animal, especially Solomon, and she did not want to have to put the lioness down.

She quickly opened the refrigerator and located a package of chicken she had removed from the freezer last night— intended initially to be Justin’s meal this evening—and ran back by the front door, which was open wide.

That queued Gaia to consider what Justin had conveyed to her this morning. Justin, in his wonderful attempt to ‘help’, must have left the door ajar, she thought. She peeked outside to see remnants of the trash bags that Gaia had left in the house last evening. They were shredded, and she was thankful that the odors had only brought this animal to their doorstep.

“Come on, girl. That’s it…follow me,” Gaia whispered to the lioness, dangling the slab of meat out before her, waving it back and forth. She knew she was playing a very dangerous game with the big cat, but it was a plan of desperation that spurred her actions. The lioness followed her, all but ignoring the hooting, grunting and chest thumping of the gorilla, apparently honed in on the chicken.

Gaia backed out of the door and the big cat followed her, step for step, snarling and making noises that Gaia could not decipher as to whether or not they were unfriendly. She waited, taking a few more steps, and then tossed the meat out into the open space behind her.

But the sound of the meat hitting what should have been the grass instead sounded a great deal nearer. The chicken rebounded off something solid and rolled back toward her.

Gaia spun to see a crazed zombie woman racing toward her at immeasurable speed, its mouth wide, drooling blood and gore, and wanting to sink its teeth into her flesh. In Gaia’s condition, she could not run. In addition, the zombie was too close and she did not have time to retrieve her gun.

She felt panic turn to despair.

She was doomed.

In her peripheral vision, she saw the huge shadow of the lioness as it was suddenly airborne and she had no time to react to either the cat or the zombie. She closed her eyes, dropped her weight and fell to the ground.

Gaia felt her bowels discharge, as she believed this to be the time of her own death. She heard the distinct sound of impact, though she felt nothing.

She forced her eyes open.

Instead of having her flesh torn from her body as she’d expected, she found herself lying unmolested on the grass as the lioness sat atop the zombie, tearing pieces of flesh from it as it still flinched and spasmed.

Gaia watched in horror as the thing tried to bite the lioness, but she held it down with a massive paw, continuing to tear at its head and neck.

Gaia removed the gun from her pants and rolled over. Holding the weapon out toward the zombie, she quickly came to understand that her aid was unnecessary at best, as the magnificent cat, who had centuries of primitive survival instincts at her disposal, quickly dispatched with the undead creature.

Gaia stole a glance behind her and saw Solomon wander out into the yard, coming toward her. He gently lifted Gaia off the ground, picking her up and holding her like a baby. She felt so tiny in his massive arms. And then he turned and wandered right back into the house as Gaia placed a soft hand upon his cheek.

He put her down inside the threshold and Gaia closed the door, hearing the click as she watched the lioness tear more flesh from the zombie. She watched for many moments until finally, the big cat picked up the chicken in her teeth and stalked off, leaving the zombie, headless and armless, lying in an unmoving heap in the distance.

“Well, I know now she prefers the taste of chicken more than zombie. Who can blame her?” she whispered rhetorically.

Gaia stood, watching Solomon as he knuckle-walked onto the back porch, no doubt to eat, and she hobbled as quickly as she could back to the washer upstairs. She then tossed her soiled shorts and delicates into the washer, found a towel, and began to clean up, thankful that she yet lived. She then removed Justin’s clothing from the dryer and brought them with her as she came to a stop in front of the bathroom door.

“Justin, your clothes are out here on the floor, okay?”

“Yes, Miss Gaia!” he called out to her.

“Are you okay in there?”

“Yes, Miss Gaia!” he repeated.

She nodded to herself and hobbled into the bedroom, finding a loose-fitting pair of cotton shorts and pulled them on. Justin had no idea what had just happened downstairs and she decided not to bring it up to the boy.

She would however, make sure that he hears a click whenever he closes a door from now on, and that all doors were to be locked.

Gaia limped downstairs again and stared out the windowpane on the door and took note of a pride of lions outside feasting on the remains of the zombie that lay in the grass.

The danger that existed outside the house on the grounds was grave, and seeing that there was at least one breach in the outer fencing, the number of wandering zombies as well as other threats may increase—or it may not. Gaia hoped for the latter, wishing that the zombies would go away.

She limped her way onto the back porch to see Solomon sitting on the floor in front of one of the potted plants, eating the leaves, staring up at Gaia when she entered.

“You like the boy?” Gaia signed to him. “He makes you happy?”

Solomon signed ‘yes’ to both questions. She decided to take the next few days off from doing anything but mandatory cleaning, wanting to allow the wound on her foot time to heal.

Soon after, she sat with Solomon on the back porch and watched as the silverback continued picking roots and leaves from the plants as the sun shone down upon them from the skylight above. She could not help but give thought as to what other threats might lay in wait for them outside on the zoo grounds and decided that lowering the blinds around the porch completely , instead of halfway as they were currently, might prove a good idea. It would keep curious eyes from staring inside. So, she lowered the blinds one by one until the only light coming in was from above them.