Ashton Memorial (18 page)

“Dalton!” she yelled again,
swinging the bat again. More glass broke and the screen came loose,
falling into the yard.

She jumped up and caught
hold of the windowsill. It was too high and she struggled to pull
herself up. “Dalton!”

Mom's voice rang out behind
her. “Maylee stop!” Maylee felt Mom's hand catch her leg and pull
her down.

“Mom no!” yelled Maylee as
her grip came loose and she dropped back to the ground. “I have to
get to Dalton! I have to!”

Mom slapped her across the face. The sting
of it silenced Maylee. For a second she stood in the cold rain,
staring at her mother.

Mom was crying. “Goddammit,
Maylee, do you have any idea what it would do to me if I lost
you?”

Maylee blinked and put her hand to her
cheek.

Park came around the corner
and ran up. “What the fuck?”

“Park!” yelled Angie. “Come
here. Give me a boost.”

Park looked at Maylee, Angie, then the
window. He nodded in understanding then stepped over to Angie.

Seven

Ella drew her jacket tight around herself, walking
quickly to keep up with the Keepers as they marched through the
zoo. Heading for the Bites. Caleb and Lee were out front, arguing.
Lee had the dart gun slung over his shoulder.

Cold and intermittent rain pelted Ella's cheeks as
she walked. She blinked and sputtered in the cold water. Why was
she even coming along? She didn't care about the Bites. She wanted
to find Lori. When she thought about it, it was obvious she was
just following because they were adults and she was not. She hated
that.

They passed several animal exhibits as they
walked. A llama trotted from one side of his exhibit to the other,
stamping his feet a little harder than Ella had ever seen before.
Ella called him Tom. Tom was usually happy. Today Tom was not. The
same was true of Linda and Bo, a pair of red foxes Ella loved
talking too. She could swear they bared their teeth at her as she
passed. Their eyes glinted in the gloomy daylight.

They heard the Bites before they saw it. Many
voices, yelling. The animals they passed grew more agitated the
closer they got to the noise. A large brown bear Ella called Geoff
was on his back legs, front paws pressed against the side of his
exhibit. Geoff drew his head back and roared at the sky. Then he
slammed his head against the wall. Ella gasped but had no time to
stay and comment. The group moved on and she followed. Geoff turned
his bloody face to look at her.

Ella saw the building come
into view.
Zoo Bites
, said a large sign in front. The normally-lit letters were
dark, looking hollow and sad in the cold rain. A large crowd of
people, all zoo customers judging from their clothes, stood around
the front entrance. A small group of Keepers stood in the entrance.
Both groups were yelling at each other. The customers made wild,
violent gestures as they screamed. The Keepers looked defensive, a
few stepping farther back into the protection of the
building.

“Hey!” screamed Lee in a volume Ella had never heard
from him. Neither had anyone else. Caleb, Shelley and the other
Keepers looked at him in surprise. The customers and the Bites
employees kept arguing.

“I said 'Hey' goddammit!”
screamed Lee.

The crowd fell quiet and looked over to
him.

“Alright then,” he said,
holding up the tranquilizer rifle. “I need everyone to
disperse.”

“You fuckers trapped us in
here,” said an older woman in the crowd. “The least you can do is
give us some fucking food.”

“Okay, first of all, watch
your fucking mouth, grandma. And second of all, we don't have to
give you shit.”

The crowd started yelling again.

“I said be quiet!” yelled
Lee. The crowd quieted down. “Trapped you in here? We saved your
fucking lives! Have you seen what's going on outside?”

“No, we haven't!” said a
fat man toward the back of the crowd. “Because you trapped us in
here!”

“Those things trapped you
in here!” yelled Lee, his cheeks turning red. “We're protecting
your huge ass, so you better be hiding a newfound sense of
gratitude under your gigantic fucking stomach roll.”

“You scrawny little shit,”
said the fat man, stepping toward Lee. Lee raised the rifle and the
crowd gasped. The man stopped, holding up his hands.

“You better back off,
bubba,” said Lee, cocking. The crowd stepped back.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” said
Caleb, stepping between Lee and the man. He looked at the crowd.
“It's a tranq rifle, everyone. It’s just sedative.”

“You're going to drug us?”
screamed a woman, holding her children close to her.

“No one is drugging
anyone!” said Caleb, looking back and forth.

“No one's feeding anyone
either!” shouted a man in the back of the crowd. The crowd yelled
their agreement to each other.

“Let us out!” screamed
someone else.

“No one gets out!” screamed
Lee. “We're keeping you safe! We're the Keepers here! We're the
Keepers and you will all be fucking Kept!”

“Fuck you, crazy ass!”
yelled someone. A rock vaulted though the air, smacking Lee in the
side of the head. Lee jerked and stumbled to one side. The gun went
off. The dart flew across the lot and with a sharp “thud” embedded
itself in the stomach of the fat man.

The crowd exploded, rushing at the Bites. The fat
man stumbled back, clutching at his stomach. The Keepers inside the
Bites backed up hurriedly and slammed the doors shut. Lee yelled
obscenities and fired his dart gun into the crowd. Several people
fell, clutching at arms or chests.

“Dammit Lee stop!” yelled
Caleb, snatching at the gun.

“Keep the fuck away or I'll
drop you too!” yelled Lee, pulling away from Caleb and aiming the
gun back at the crowd.

Ella backed away, chest pounding. She looked at the
people fighting. Customers pounded at the glass doors to the Bites.
The Keepers inside pressed their bodies against the doors, keeping
them shut. Lee yelled and fired. Other Keepers, behind Lee, started
taking their own tranquilizer rifles off of their shoulders.

Behind Ella, animals howled and screeched
from their exhibits. The noise from both sides, the people in front
of her and the animals behind, was deafening. It was madness. It
sounded like the world coming to an end. The rain picked up,
pounding cold water down on her head. Ella drew herself close and
tried to look small.

A woman, at the back of the group of
customers, turned to see Ella standing there. For a moment Ella
thought the woman looked sad. She stepped over to Ella and opened
her mouth.

“She's with them!” the
woman said, pointing. “Get her!”

Several customers at the back of the group
turned to Ella. An older man grabbed her across the shoulders. Ella
screamed and tried to pull away.

“We've got the girl!”
screamed the woman, looking crazy as the rain poured down her taut
face. “Let us out if you want her back! Give us food if you want
her back!”

Shelley, up toward the
front with Caleb, saw and heard. “Ella!” she yelled, running
over.

The old man saw Shelley
running up and clutched Ella tighter. “Back off, Keeper
bitch!”

My god
, Ella thought, struggling against the man.
He's talking like Lee. They're using Lee's words.
Everyone's crazy
.

Caleb, up front with Lee, clutched the front
of Lee's rifle, trying to pull it away. He let go when he saw Ella
and the old man. He ran toward them.

Shelley reached Ella and
grabbed her arm. “Let her go!” Shelley yelled, pulling at her. The
old man held tight. Ella struggled but the man was too strong for
her and Shelley.

“Not until we get some food
or get free!” yelled the old man.

The woman, the one who'd
called the others over, grabbed Ella and pulled against Shelley.
“Not until we get let out of here!”

“Let me go!” yelled Ella,
twisting side to side, trying to pull herself free.

“Let the girl go!” Caleb
shouted, arriving and grabbing Ella's shirt.

“Everyone let me go!”
screamed Ella. The animals behind her roared and howled.

Up front, Lee and the Keepers kept firing into the
crowd. Crowd members jerked and fell. Those left banged on the
doors to the Bites. One door was cracking. The Keepers inside did
their best to hold the crowd off.

A tall muscular man wearing
a thin jacket walked over to a large metal trash can. He picked it
up and turned to the doors. “Everyone out of the way!” he yelled,
lifting the can over his head.

He jerked as a dart thudded into his
back.

“Put it down!” Lee yelled,
cocking the rifle and aiming to fire again.

The man turned to face Lee, still holding
the can over his head. His face was red and the veins in his neck
throbbed. Rain pattered on the can, running down his arms and
shoulders.

“I said put it down!” said
Lee.

The man bellowed and ran at Lee, still
holding the can.

Lee aimed and fired. The dart shot from the
rifle. The man jerked to a stop and his head snapped back. He
slowly lowered his head down. The dart jutted from his eye. The man
blinked his one good eye, then fell over. The can clattered to the
pavement and rolled away.

The crowd had stopped to watch. The old man
let go of Ella. He and the woman stepped away, staring and
open-mouthed in the cold rain. Lee grimly cocked the rifle and
readied it.

Oh shit
, Ella thought.
That wasn't a
mistake. Look at Lee's face.

He meant to do
that
.

The crowd roared and rushed at Lee. Lee and
the Keepers fired into the crowd. People dropped as they ran, not
clutching anything. Lee and the Keepers were shooting to kill.

Shelley came up to Ella.
Ella realized she was shaking and crying. “Are you okay?” Shelley
yelled over the chaos around them.

Ella nodded, shaking in the cold rain.

“We have to get out of
here!” said Caleb.

People around them screamed and fought to get to the
Bites. Fought to get to Lee. Some of them simply began fighting
with each other. Cold rain pounded and the animals roared.

Caleb helped Ella and Shelley away from the
crowd. Once they were clear, they ran.

* * *

Dalton lay on the floor, his head spinning.
His forehead smarted and his ankle throbbed. The corpse whose head
he'd smashed was still, which gave him some solace. He'd been
hearing all manner of chaos coming from outside the room, and the
thought of Mom or Maylee or even Mr. Park dying out there sent a
hot sorrow through him that hurt worse than either his head or
ankle. He wondered if he could stand.

He jerked when the window on one side of the
room broke inward.

“Dalton!” came Maylee's
voice from outside.

“Maylee!” Dalton tried to
yell, surprised at how hoarse he sounded. The groans behind him
were so loud he doubted she could hear him.

“Dalton!” came Maylee's
voice again. Something hit the window screen and it dropped
away.

Then there was yelling outside the window.
Dalton couldn't make it out. The groans behind him were too
loud.

A few seconds later, he heard scraping on
the outside wall and two hands appeared inside the window.

“Maylee!” said Dalton,
feeling like he could cry. She was okay. But was she the only one
who was okay? “Mom?”

The figure in the window pulled itself into
view. It was Mom.

“Mom!” yelled Dalton, trying to sit up.

Mom climbed up over the sill and jumped down
into the room. Her eyes went wide when she saw Dalton on the
floor.

“Dalton!” she cried,
rushing over. “Oh god, Dalton!”

“I'm okay,” he said,
propping himself up on his elbows. He tried to push himself up
farther and fell back down. “I'm fine.”

“Oh shit,” said Mom,
kneeling next to him. That scared Dalton. Mom rarely swore around
him.

“Really, Mom, I'm fine.”
Dalton pushed himself up again. The corpses in the hall banged on
the door.

“Hell you are, Dalton,”
said Mom, frowning and feeling his ankle and head. He was still a
little dizzy and his head throbbed. The pain in his ankle had
subsided to more of a dull pulse. “What happened? Were
you...”

“No, Mom. I'm fine. I'm not
bit. I just fell. I did that.” He pointed at the corpse on the
floor and its cracked skull.

Mom looked back at the
corpse. Then at the bed with its rumpled, dirty sheets. Then at
Dalton. She seemed to figure out what had happened. She let out a
long sigh. “Okay. Can you stand?”

Dalton nodded. Mom grabbed his hands and
helped him to his feet. He winced when his foot landed on the
floor.

“How's your ankle?” said
Mom. “Can you put weight on it?”

He tried. It hurt, but he could. He
nodded.

“Okay,” said Mom. She
looked past him to the door. Dalton could see her picturing the
corpses beyond, filling the hall. She looked back at him. “Come on.
We'll have to go out the window.”

* * *