Zoo 2 (11 page)

I throw on the
fresh clothes, grab my still-damp wallet from the meager personal effects on the table, pocket the iPhone (sorry, nurse!), and quietly lock the door to my room. Then I hobble over to the window.

I pry off one of the wooden boards meant to keep out animals and see I'm on the third floor—way too high to risk jumping down safely.

So I decide to do what I've seen in old movies so many times. I'll use my bed linens to make a rope.

Nuts, I know, but what other choice do I have?

I strip the bed and hastily knot two sheets together as tight as I can. I tie one end to the railing, toss the other end outside, and carefully start to climb down.

I'm about halfway down when, damnit, one of the sheets rips.

I fall into some bushes, intentionally rolling and tumbling to soften the impact of the fall. I may be a little scuffed up, as if I wasn't already, but I've made it.

Now I just have to slip aboard the next commercial flight to the mainland…just as soon as I figure out where the hell the airport is.

I search in Google Maps, but the screen doesn't move. I try again. Still nothing. Seriously?

But then I hear a loud rumbling overhead—and see a jetliner flying dangerously close to the ground. Is it going to crash? No. It's coming in for a landing. Which means the military facility and the airport are just blocks apart.

Keeping an eye out for both wild animals and military police, I race across the base. A lot of the chain-link fence along its perimeter looks damaged by—what else?—attacks from feral creatures, so I find an opening, slip through, and keep running as fast as I can until I reach the airport. It's not hard to find it, since hundreds, maybe thousands, of people are cramming into the terminal, desperate to get off the islands. Which won't be easy. Since the animal crisis has dragged on, the number of flights all around the world has gone down dramatically, while the cost of flying has skyrocketed.

I get in a long ticket line and wait. I'm terrified that any second, Captain Fileri will burst through the doors and drag me back to the base.

Finally it's my turn to speak to an agent. I breathlessly explain my situation and how badly I need to get to Salt Lake City—the closest major city to the lab—to make sure my wife and son are okay.

But the agent barely lets me finish. The next available direct flight to anywhere in the Rockies, she tells me, isn't for four days.

My heart sinks. My eyes tear up. I beg and plead. Isn't there
any
other option?

The agent purses her lips and types rapidly. Maybe I've gotten through to her.

“There's a plane leaving for Vancouver in twenty minutes, if you can make it. From there you can connect to San Francisco. Then to Chicago. Then double back through Phoenix to Salt Lake. You'll be traveling for over thirty-six hours straight but—”

“I'll take it!” I exclaim, slapping a credit card down on the counter. By some miracle, my cards were undamaged in my wallet.

And I need all
three
of my credit cards to split up and cover the whopping price: $29,487. Insane, but worth every penny.

The agent hands me my ticket and I take off like a rocket through the packed terminal. I somehow manage to make it through security and reach the gate seconds before the boarding doors close.

I scream in terror
as I'm jolted awake in my seat—and grab the unfamiliar hand just inches from my throat.

But then I relax and let it go. And turn beet-red from embarrassment.

It was just the flight attendant tapping me on the shoulder, asking me to bring my seat to the upright position. We'll be landing soon in Salt Lake City.

The past forty-plus hours have been a blur of exhaustion, stress, and actual pain. The meds I was given at the military hospital in Hawaii have long since worn off, and my entire body is throbbing. Add to that multiple layovers and multiple delays in multiple airports, each more chaotic than the next…plus the constant threat of a feral human attack at any moment and…well, you get the idea. Not exactly a pleasure trip.

Seeing all the other passengers whip out their smartphones after we landed in Vancouver, it dawned on me. I felt so stupid for not thinking of it sooner. My wife doesn't have a cell I can call, but of course I still know her email address.

Using the nurse's iPhone, I logged into my personal account for the first time in weeks and fired off a quick note, praying that Chloe
would think to check her email, too.

About six hours later, when I landed in San Francisco…no response.

But then,
another
six hours later, after we touched down in Chicago…I dabbed away tears of joy at the sight of my wife's name in my inbox. Still more tears came as I read about the terror that went down at the lab and their harrowing escape.

As soon as the plane's wheels make contact with the tarmac and my journey finally ends, I leap up out of my seat, race down the jet bridge, sprint through the busy terminal, and burst outside into the hot Utah afternoon.

The curbside pickup area is total mayhem. Cars honking, cops shouting.

My iPhone died hours ago, before I could arrange any kind of specific meet-up time and location with Chloe. I need to charge it, badly, but first I want to find some ground transportation. I've come so far, and my family is
still
so far.

Then something catches my eye: a handmade sign with the words
J
ACKSON
O
Z.

It's being held up by Chloe, standing in front of a tan Jeep as if she were a chauffeur, a megawatt smile plastered across her beautiful face.

Eli is clinging to her leg. “Daddy!” he yells, letting go and bounding up to me.

He leaps into my arms. I squeeze the boy so tightly I'm afraid he might pop. Covering his messy hair with kisses, I carry him to Chloe and wrap her in the hug as well.

And the three of us just stay like that. Half-laughing, half-crying.

No words. Just unimaginable relief.

And infinite love.

Finally we pull apart, sniffling, wiping our eyes.

“So, how was your little vacation,
mon amour?
” she asks with her trademark smirk. I've missed that so much. To answer, I give her a long, deep kiss.

The front door of the Jeep opens and out steps Sarah. Like my wife and son, she looks tired and stressed and grimy but also relieved to see me. The feeling is mutual, especially since Chloe told me in her email that Sarah helped save their lives.

“I don't know how to thank you,” I say as we embrace.

“
I
do,” Sarah answers, pulling away to look at both Chloe and me. “No more crazy expeditions to far-flung corners of the globe. No more unnecessary tests. No more big government agencies telling us what to do. And no more delay.”

Chloe understands where Sarah's going with this and picks up the thread.

“
Oui!
Feral human attacks are on the rise. And with the president's task force in ruins…yes, we will need equipment and a laboratory and new specimens…but the three of us—working
together
this time, Oz—may be the best shot the world has at finding a cure.”

I smile, feeling a real sense of hope and optimism I haven't in weeks.

“I couldn't agree more. And I think I know where we should start.”

Nothing like flying forty
hours on five different planes, then taking a six-hour road trip through the sweltering Nevada desert.

But, hey, I'm not complaining. I'm alert and fired up and feeling great. I've got my wife by my side, my little boy dozing in the backseat, and the beginnings of some actual working theories about the feral humans and how to cure them.

“I agree with you, Oz,” says Sarah, “that the pheromones that feral humans give off must be different from normal humans'. When animals get one whiff, they all go running. But how do you explain the tissue death we saw in Helen's brain? Pheromones affect behavior, mating, aggression. Not brain damage. It's impossible.”

“Actually, it is not,” Chloe offers. “Research has shown that cells can die in response to pheromones if response pathways are lacking.”

“Fine,” Sarah concedes. “But the more pressing question is, how do we stop it? And reverse it in the people already affected? How in the world do we regrow human brains?”

“Easy,” I reply. “Stem cells. They're like cellular free spaces. With the potential to grow into any kind of cells in the human body—including brain tissue, as long as we program them right. Toss in a high-octane antihistamine to block pheromone absorption, and we'll be in business!”

Chloe and Sarah consider my suggestion, both clearly intrigued by it.

“We all know stem cell therapy is still a new field,” I continue. “The idea I'm proposing is radical. It's hard. But—”

“You're wrong, Oz,” Sarah replies. “It's simple. It's elegant. It's…genius.”

Chloe chuckles good-naturedly. “Careful now, Sarah,” she says. “My husband's head is full of great ideas. But we don't want it to get so big it explodes.”

We continue driving down this long, deserted stretch of I-15. Dirt and shrubs are all around us, as far as the eye can see. A highway sign says we're only about seventy miles out from our destination: Las Vegas. An old friend of Sarah's from grad school is an adjunct professor of biochemistry at the University of Nevada. With his expertise—not to mention the use of his lab space and equipment—we just might be able to pull off my “genius” idea. Emphasis on
might
.

“Of course, the
real
challenge,” Sarah says, “is going to be finding some feral human test subjects. If history is any guide, that won't be—”

“Oz, look out!” Chloe shouts.

Before I have time to react, a pack of rabid coyotes lying in wait along the highway shoulder leap up to the road—easily a dozen or more, all yipping madly—and onto the Jeep.

I swerve wildly—to try to shake them off, since none of us has a weapon, and because I can't see a damn thing.

The animals scratch at the windshield like fiends. They snap their razor-sharp fangs at the shut windows. The smart little bastards even claw at the tires to try to pop them and slow us down.

Trying to kill us.

Eli is crying. Sarah is screaming. Chloe is just hanging on for dear life.

Me, I keep jerking the wheel side to side, accelerating fast and then braking sharply, trying desperately to shake them off.

And it seems to be working. One by one the coyotes lose their grip and tumble off onto the hot asphalt. So I keep it up.

Until I
mess
it up.

There's a highway sign I don't see until it's too late.

I sideswipe it. Direct hit. The passenger window next to Sarah shatters.

The Jeep goes spinning wildly out of control.

Most of the coyotes are thrown off, but once our car comes to a helpless stop, they regroup and charge at us. I stomp the pedal, but it's too late.

At the broken window, I see two coyotes approach to leap in…

But instead of piling inside, they begin howling.

They jump away from the car just as fast and scurry away. Within seconds, the entire pack has disappeared into the desert.

Jesus, another close call! All that talk about rabid humans, it's easy to forget there are still
animals
out there who want us dead just as much.

Slowly Chloe, Sarah, and I all catch our breath. We're relieved. We're safe.

But then, we begin to trade nervous glances.

Sarah is turning pale with shock. We're all having the same chilling thought.

The reason the coyotes ran away the second before they jumped through Sarah's window…

Is because she must be on the verge of going feral.

Up until now, the
stakes of the feral human crisis had been huge but impersonal.

I knew thousands of people around the world had been affected, but I didn't
know
any of them. Helen and Reiji were total strangers to me. I'd only met Tanaka a day before our fateful flight over the Pacific.

But now, with Sarah about to join their ranks, this damn plague has come to my doorstep. She's a colleague. A friend. A good person who saved Chloe and Eli's lives at the Idaho lab. A good scientist whose help we need to discover a cure.

“But she could kill us, all of us!” Chloe anxiously whispered to me the first night we spent inside the UNLV lab. “If she
changes
before we discover the antidote—”

“Incentive for us to discover it even faster,” I replied. “And on the bright side, now we have a rabid human guinea pig to test it on.”

I tried to downplay my wife's fears, but of course I felt them tenfold.

I shared with her, Sarah, and Dr. David Stapf—Sarah's biochemist friend from grad school—what I saw happen to Tanaka in the minutes before he went rabid. I wanted us all to be on the lookout for similar warning signs: sweaty brow, red face, clenched fists, arguing, and aggressive behavior.

And just in case we miss them somehow, Sarah's given us permission, if she starts acting dangerously, to put her down. Like an animal.

I respect her bravery, but, God, do I hope it doesn't come to that.

Except now, it's looking like it might.

We're wrapping up day six locked in the bowels of the University of Nevada science complex, trying to program the stem cell genetic sequence that will bring dead white blood cells back to life in a petri dish. So far, we've crammed about two months of research into one grueling week. And I feel it. My back aches from hunching over my microscope eighteen hours a day. My eyelids are heavy, my mind foggy.

I glance over at Eli, on the floor in the corner, playing with a collection of lab equipment serving as toys. Rubber gloves, plastic funnels, safety goggles. Just watching his innocent smile is enough to keep me going.

Next I look over at Chloe, working furiously at her lab station, pipetting solutions into test tubes. Her dedication makes me love her even more.

Then I notice Sarah, also working hard…but with more intensity somehow, almost with an anger in her eyes. Could this be the first sign of aggressive behavior? I watch as she subtly dabs some sweat off her forehead. It's hot and stuffy down in this lab; I'm sweating, too. But maybe that's another symptom of her impending change?

“You guys, check this out!” David exclaims, leaping off his lab stool.

Chloe, Sarah, and I head over and take turns peering into David's digital microscope.

“Oh my God,” Sarah says, seeing it first.

“Incredible,” Chloe adds after she looks.

Finally, it's my turn—but I don't have any words. Just silent joy.

I'm watching thousands of previously dead white blood cells regenerate right before my eyes! I clap David on the back with excitement.

“Amazing, right?” he says. “Obviously there's no way to know if this nucleotide chain will have the same effect inside a feral human brain. I
think
it should, but—”

“David,” I say, “we don't have time to ‘think.' We need certainty. Now.”

Chloe suggests we share our results with the new DOE team, with whom we've been in sporadic touch the past few days, so they can run with it themselves.

“For sure,” I say. “But first, get these stem cells into a nasal spray canister. When Sarah starts…transforming…at least we'll have
something
to try on her.”

Everyone soberly agrees, and David eagerly sets to work. We all do. That was just the kind of moral boost we needed. Maybe we'll cure this thing after all.

But then, barely two hours later, everything changes.

Every single light and device and computer in our lab flickers off.

“Incroyable!”
Chloe shouts, enraged. “We are on the brink of saving mankind and we lose electricity?”

“It's all right, honey. Relax. I'm sure it's just…”

In the near distance, we can hear glass being shattered. Guns being fired. And humans screaming, grunting, roaring.

Feral
humans.

We all immediately realize we're no longer safe here.

I turn to David. “How many nasal injector serums did you make?”

“Just…just one,” he stutters. “For Sarah.”

Great.

“Make sure you bring it,” I say. “I have an awful feeling we're going to need it.”