Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island (12 page)

The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

“Bang,” Eric said. He plucked the gun from her hand.

Spock, the gorilla, lumbered forward with a menacing expression.

“This may be empty,” Eric said, brandishing the gun, “but a pistol whipping can really mess up his face.”

The woman stared at Eric a moment. She signed to the ape and he sat down. She shook her head at Eric. “You don’t bluff easily.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You got away with it last night. Though I should have suspected when you risked your ape rather than just shoot us.”

The woman shrugged. “I ran out of bullets months ago. Now I carry it for show. It usually works.”

“Where’s my bow?”

She pointed. “Back in the garden where I was weeding. I heard Spock’s chest-thumping and hurried over without it.”

D.B. shaded her eyes and looked in the direction the woman was pointing. “Where is this garden of yours?”

“The other side of the zoo, near Highway 163.”

“That’s a long way to hear.”

“Not really,” Eric said. “That sound can carry for a mile.”

“One and a third miles,” the woman corrected.

D.B. laughed. “How about that? Someone smarter than Doc Rock!”

The woman looked puzzled. “Doc Rock?”

“Nickname,” Eric said. “That’s D.B. I’m Eric Ravensmith.”

“You ever hear of The Warlord?” D.B. asked her.

She shook her head.

“Christ, lady, where you been? If there was a
People
magazine around here, this guy would be on the cover. I call him Doc Rock, though, because, well, look at him. Doesn’t he remind you of rock-’n’-roll music? All that wild energy and ragged edges.”

The woman looked at the two of them as if they were lunatics. “You said you wanted to go. So go.”

“First, let’s see those other intruders you talked about.”

D.B. tugged at his arm. “First, let’s eat.”

“Later.”

“Okay, but if I don’t eat soon I’m gonna have to start talking with my fingers like Spock here.” She reached out and tickled the ape. He chuckled and rolled over on his back, grasping his feet.

The woman studied Eric and D.B.

D.B. continued to tickle Spock. “I’m gonna keep this up till you show me your stash of bananas.” Spock rolled playfully from side to side.

“Okay,” the woman said. “I’ll take you to them. I can’t stop you anyway.”

“What’s your name?” Eric said.

“That’s not important.”

He handed her the gun. “I’ll trade you. This for your name.”

She looked surprised but took the gun. “A gun is very valuable, even an empty one.” Eric shrugged.

“Wendy,” the woman sighed. “Dr. Wendy Chen.”

“Now, Dr. Chen,” Eric said. “Let’s see your other prisoners.”

Dr. Chen led the way. “Follow me very carefully,” she warned. “The quakes allowed a lot of animals to escape from their display areas. During the past year Spock and I have recaptured most of them and returned them to their repaired homes. However, a few animals have eluded us.”

“Like what?” D.B. asked.

“A few koalas.”

“You mean those Australian teddy bears?”

Dr. Chen shook her head. “They aren’t bears, they’re marsupials.”

“They have pouches,” Eric explained.

“Oh.” D.B. smiled. “They’re so cute.”

“They also have long sharp claws,” Dr. Chen said, marching ahead.

“What else is on the loose,” Eric asked.

“A couple of orangutans. A Komodo monitor—”

“Commode monitor?” D.B. laughed. “Sounds like someone watching you on the toilet.” She laughed again and Spock made a whooping sound too.

Eric grinned. “Finally someone who can imitate your laugh.”

Spock made a sign with his hands, repeating it over and over.

“What’s he saying?” D.B. asked.

Dr. Chen looked over her shoulder. “He wants you to tickle him again.”

“Okay,” D.B. said. She worked her fingers into the fur under Spock’s arms. He whooped again, rolled onto his back. “You’re not afraid of no commode watcher, are you Spocky?”

Dr. Chen spun around with an exasperated sigh. “A Komodo monitor is also known as a Komodo dragon. It’s the largest living lizard in the world, nearly ten feet long. It has sharp, serrated teeth and formidable claws. In the wild they’ve been known to bring down one thousand-pound water buffalos.”

“Oh.”

“Now, can we get on with it? I don’t want you two here any longer than necessary. It has taken me almost a year to rebuild the walls and capture many of the animals. I don’t want outsiders spoiling everything.”

They walked the entire length of the zoo, skirting the bird aviary that had not been damaged by the quakes. They passed the Ape Grotto where three pygmy chimpanzees were swinging on ropes and climbing the wood platform while two others slept in the sun. One of the grottos had a lone ape in it. Spock paused in front of it to look at the other ape.

“How come that one’s not out here running around?” D.B. asked.

“That’s Madonna.”

“Like the singer?”

Dr. Chen gave her a sharp look. “Like the mother of Christ.”

D.B. winked at Eric. “Oh yeah, The Mothers of Christ. I got one of their albums.”

Dr. Chen ignored her and kept walking. When they arrived at Dr. Chen’s garden, she began shouting furiously. “Oh no! Not again!” She ran down the rows of tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, zucchini, cucumbers, and several other varieties of food. The garden was huge, at least half an acre. She’d constructed a fence around the entire garden, only one section had been trampled down and the strawberries had been eaten, the careful rows stomped flat.

Dr. Chen spun around looking in the distance, her long black hair swinging around behind her like a pirate flag. “I know you’re out there, Candy. You too, Red.” She looked down at the busted fence. “Damn! That’s the second time this week.”

“Orangutans?”

She nodded. “Male and female.” She looked up suddenly at Eric. “How’d you know?”

“I saw them.” He pointed. “They were hiding in that brush.”

Dr. Chen squinted, following Eric’s extended finger. “That’s pretty good vision. Learn that in the jungle?” Her tone was sharp.

“Learned it in the movies. As a kid I liked sitting in the balcony so I could drop popcorn on the people below. Only problem was we had a real small screen, hard to see from up there.”

She turned away, fussed with the broken fence. “I’ll have to fix this first. I don’t want them coming back for dessert.”

“What’s the big deal?” D.B. said. “Why don’t you send Spock here to catch them? You can do it, can’t you Spocky?” She poked him in the ribs and he chuckled.

Dr. Chen’s voice was tight. “An orangutan is about four feet tall and weighs one hundred-eighty pounds. Its arms are longer and stronger than its legs. They can crush a coconut in one hand.”

“Boy, make a statement around here and you get a history. I’m a singer, okay, not a zoologist.”

“Your weapon is over there,” Dr. Chen pointed. “I’ll take you to the prisoners as soon as I’ve mended this fence.”

Eric gestured to D.B. who made a sour face but finally went off after the crossbow and quiver of bolts. That left Eric alone with the woman.

“Let me help,” he said, reaching for a strand of snapped wire.

She pushed him out of the way. “No. I can do it. I’ve managed for almost a year without any help.”

“That doesn’t mean help wouldn’t be welcome.”

“Not from you.”

Eric stood next to her now, looking down at her small frame. She worked quickly and expertly with the wire, her nimble fingers twisting and tying the broken strands. Lean muscles flexed in her arms and legs. He could smell her sweat, rich and musky. “A brother or husband?” he asked.

She paused but didn’t look up from her work. “Father.”

“Where?”

“Saigon. He was with the
hat boi
.”

“The Vietnamese opera.”

“Of Chinese origin,” she said emphatically. “My father was Chinese, not an easy thing to be in Vietnam. Hatred of Chinese domination over them is as strong and fierce as many of your Southerners over the Civil War. Still, he was a gifted singer.” She looked up now, dark eyes moist as if covered with melting ice. “Someone slipped into our apartment one night and slit his throat. The job was so expert that my mother who slept beside him was never even disturbed from her sleep. Only the sticky blood drying on her fingers finally woke her.” She stared accusingly at Eric. “A note was left condemning him as a spy. My father sang opera. He was not a spy.”

Eric replied softly, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill your father.”

“No, but someone like you. I can see the way you move, the way you handle yourself. You were not just a foot soldier, a grunt. No, it was someone very much like you who stole into our home that night.”

Eric stood motionless. She was right. It was someone like him. Not him, of course. Eric remembered each mission clearly. But the Night Shift had killed suspected spies before. Slit throats in bed, shot heads at dinner, bombed cars and even bicycles.

“My mother took us back to China afterward, hidden among a cargo of dead fish at the bottom of a boat. There we lived since I was thirteen.”

“Until Cambridge University.”

“Yes. That is when I left. I have not been back since.”

Eric reached over and began helping her dig the fence post deeper into the ground. It took only a few minutes to fix the fence. By then D.B. and Spock returned with Eric’s crossbow and bolts.

“It won’t hold them, you know,” Eric said.

Dr. Chen nodded. “I know. Not if they really want to get in. But they’re pretty domesticated for orangutans. They know the fence is more a statement than a real barrier. They’ll keep away for a while anyway.”

“Maybe you just oughta feed them more,” D.B. said.

Dr. Chen laughed for the first time since they’d been there. Her mouth opened revealing straight white teeth. Her eyes crinkled until they almost disappeared. “Orangs can never eat enough. That’s all they do. In the wild they spend almost every waking hour looking for food and grow to be an average of one hundred-sixty pounds. In a zoo, they can bloat up to three hundred-fifty pounds if not watched.

D.B. patted her own stomach. “I know how they feel. I used to pack away a few Twinkies after school myself.” She poked Spock’s massive stomach. “Been chowing down a little yourself, eh Spocky?”

Spock pointed his two index fingers toward each other and moved them up toward his neck.

“What’s he saying?” D.B. asked.

“He likes your necklace,” Dr. Chen said. “He wants it.”

“How do you say, ‘Forget it, pal’?”

Dr. Chen extended the index and middle fingers of her right hand, tapped them twice against her thumb, like an alligator snapping. D.B. mimicked the movement. Spock lowered his head into a sulk.

“This is great!” D.B. laughed. “You gotta teach me more.”

Dr. Chen smiled. Eric was pleased to see it was friendly smile, her fear and hatred momentarily subdued by D.B.’s enthusiasm. The way to any teacher’s heart is a curious student, even a teacher of apes.

“Spock knows about four hundred signs.”

“Great, I’ll teach him song lyrics. How about this one Spock: ‘Gorillas Just Wanna Have Fun’?”

D.B. and Dr. Chen laughed.

Eric cocked his crossbow and slid in a bolt. “Where are your prisoners, Dr. Chen?”

Dr. Chen gave Eric an angry look. “Why are you so interested in them?”

“I’m looking for somebody. They might know where he is.”

“Who are you looking for?”

Eric and D.B. answered at the same time. Only their answers were very different.

“His son,” D.B. said.

“Dirk Fallows,” Eric said.

Eric and D.B. exchanged glances. He could see the bewilderment in her eyes, though he hoped she couldn’t see the same thing in his own. He looked away, staring out over the garden, seeing the swollen green zucchinis, the plump red tomatoes.

Dirk Fallows. Is that what this was all about? Not Timmy at all? He had given himself such pure motives for every action: rescuing his son. But if revenge was all that drove him, was Tim really any better off with him than with Fallows?

“Let’s go,” Eric said.

Dr. Chen led them across the zoo, keeping the paths that she said the animals that were loose usually didn’t bother coming near because there was no food.

As they walked, Dr. Chen and Spock in the lead, D.B. fell in beside Eric.

“He wouldn’t even be asking,” D.B. said.

“What?”

“Fallows. He wouldn’t even be asking himself the questions you are.”

Eric didn’t look at her. “You don’t know him.”

“Don’t I?” She gripped her choke collar tightly, her knuckles white under the pressure. “He’s like the men who put this on me. I know men like that. I know.”

Eric walked on without saying anything. Then he looked at her with a small smile. “When’d you get so damn wise.”

“Always have been,” she said. “You just never noticed.”

“Hey, man, talk some sense into this lady.”

“Yeah. Let us outta here.”

Eric looked at the two men standing with their faces pressed up against the wire mesh. One was black, the other white. They wore chambray shirts and dungarees, the uniforms of navy men in active service. The badge on their sleeves showed two dolphins standing on either side of a submarine. The white man was big and beefy, with puffed jowls and tiny pinpoint eyes. He wore a petty officer’s stripes. The black man was tall and thin and had to stoop slightly in the six-foot cage. He had only one chevron on his sleeve.

They were inside the Primate Propagation Center.

The two men stared out at the four of them with a cold malignant gaze they were unsuccessful in concealing.

“What the fuck’s going on?” the white petty officer asked.

“Trespassing,” Eric said. “Didn’t you read the signs? It’s illegal.”

The petty officer spat on the floor of the cage. “Shit, man, there ain’t no more laws. Me and Washington here just got lost. We were hungry.” He grinned, his lips pulling back to reveal square chunky teeth similar to Spock’s. “Okay, maybe we was wrong coming in here to the little lady’s private game reserve. We didn’t know.”