Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (21 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Annaliese didn’t get going right
away.  She and Mike took Shawcross up on his offer of finding them weapons
first.  The man was at the rear of the building, rooting around the staff
access that ran behind the exhibits.

“Here, take this,” he said, handing Annaliese a long
metal pole with a kink at the end.  It was a pole used for dealing with
the exhibit’s many snakes.  Mike found himself a shovel and weighted it up
in his hands.

“So what’s your plan?” Shawcross asked.  “You know,
eventually your luck is going to run out, taking all these risks?”

She glared at him.  He seemed perfectly happy to
let her take all those risks when they benefited him.  “If nobody does
anything, then we’re up shit creek with only half a paddle.  I don’t want
to go out there, but somebody has to.  If you’re worried about me so much,
why don’t you go out and close the doors?”

Shawcross gave her a thin-lipped smile.  “I’m
needed here.  Guest welfare is still my responsibility.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mike.  “I think you’re
officially off-duty, mate.”

“I’m never off-duty.  Ripley Hall is my building
and these are my guests.”

Annaliese looked at the gathering of shell-shocked
survivors.  There was less than a dozen of them in total, an even mix of
men and women.  Their faces were starkly pale in the dim light of the
reptile house.

“Fine,” she said.  “Then you carry on playing host
while we go and risk our necks.”  She turned to Mike.  “You ready?”

He nodded.  The two of them headed back over to the
building’s exit.

“Should we try heading out through a different door?” he
asked her.  “They could still be right outside where we came in.”

Annaliese thought about it.  “To be honest, I don’t
think we’re going to be safe coming out of any door.  At least we know
what to expect by heading out of this one.  There’s the one that attacked
us right outside and then I know there’s at least one more – a guy with a
busted ankle.”

Mike hefted the shovel up and held it in front of
him.  “Okay, I’m ready when you are.”

“Just remember,” said Annaliese.  “Don’t let them
bite you.”

“Hey, I stopped getting hickeys at fifteen.  Not
about to start again now.”

Annaliese stepped up to the doorway and grasped the
handle.  She held the steel pole tightly in her right hand, reassured by
its balanced weight.  Shawcross and the others were stood several meters
back, hushed in anticipation.

“Here goes,” she said, then eased open the door, peering
outside carefully.  Once she felt safe enough, she opened it wider and
stepped through.

In just the last fifteen minutes, dawn had turned fully
into day.  The autumn sunshine painted everything with shades of orange
and the moist green grass of the park’s numerous embankments seemed to glisten
and sparkle.  To her right, multi-coloured macaws had awoken in an aviary.

“It looks all clear,” said Mike, stepping out ahead of
her and looking around.  “Wonder where he went?”

“He’ll be around here somewhere.  Stay alert. 
We need to get to the house.”

Annaliese took cover behind the concrete chameleon
statue and checked up ahead.  Past the trees of the lawn, Ripley Hall was
silent.  Its doors remained open and its lights were still on, but all was
quiet.

“Come on,” she said, ushering Mike to follow.

They kept low and raced towards the lawn, cutting a path
through the sycamore trees.  The man that had attacked Bradley, and the woman
he had killed, were still lying in the grass.  Annaliese barely even
noticed them now – they were just another part of the landscaping.

Garden gnomes from Hell.

Through the open doorway up ahead, Ripley Hall’s foyer
was now overly-lit, what with the sun now fully risen and reflecting off the
tiles.  It made it hard to see anything inside in detail. 

Mike moved up beside her.  “What do you see?” he
whispered.

“Nothing.  I think it’s safe.  I’m going to
head up and close the doors.”

“I’ll watch your back.”

Annaliese gripped her steel pole tightly and made her
way forward.  She listened out intently as she took each step, ready for
the first sign of danger.  As she got closer, the odour of blood wafted
over her.  The stench of rot and open gut-wounds had taken over the
building.  She was grateful she didn’t have to go inside.

She placed a foot onto the front steps of the house and
put herself in the open doorway.  She could hear the infected milling
about in the depths of the building, but the foyer seemed empty.

They must all be upstairs where I led them.

Good.

She reached forward for the door handle.  She
imagined a spark of electricity as she wrapped her hand around it, but there
was none.  She had the handle in her grasp and now all she had to do was
close the door.

“Look out,” Mike shouted.

Annaliese stumbled backwards off the steps as a woman
lurched out of the foyer and collapsed on top of her.  It was the
maid.  The one she had tied up with the keyboard at the reception
desk.  Now the keyboard swung from the woman’s neck, banging against her
hip like a weird purse.  The cord wrapped around her neck was frayed from
where it had snapped free of the desk.

Annaliese forced herself to stay calm.  The maid
was no longer erratic and wild; she was slow and clumsy.  The cord around
her neck had throttled the life out of her and now she had become one of the
stumbling dead.  Her flesh was grey and mottled, just like the hanging
businessman that Shawcross had shown her in the kitchen pantry.

She shrugged loose of the maid’s uncoordinated grasp and
stepped backwards. 

“Get away from her,” Mike urged.

“I got this.”  She gripped her steel pole with both
hands.  Her injured pinkie finger cried out in pain.

As the maid stumbled towards her, moaning and grasping
at thin air, Annaliese brought the pole up over her shoulder.  Then she
shoved it forward like a pike.  The tip entered over the dead maid’s heart
and sent her reeling backwards on her heels.  Annaliese put her weight behind
the pole and shoved harder.  She cringed at the wet, sucking sound it
made, but was surprised by how easily the steel passed through flesh –
dead
flesh.

The woman didn’t go down.  She clawed and grasped
at Annaliese, even with the steel pole through her chest.  It was as if
the eviscerating wound failed to even register.

Annaliese yanked on the pole and tried to retrieve it,
but it was stuck.  The blood and leaking organs must have caused an
airtight seal.  It was clear that the chest wound was not sufficient to
put an end to the maid.  Now she had no weapon to inflict an additional
killing blow.  She did have control over the woman, though, via the steel
pole jutting out of her chest like a lever.  

As the dead woman struggled and writhed on the end of
the pole, unable to get free, Annaliese had an idea.  Mike rushed up to
help her, but she put a hand up to tell him to stay back.  Then she
returned both hands to the pole and shoved it upwards sharply.  The maid
went staggering backwards.  Then she shoved the pole downwards, towards
the ground.

The spike hit the mud and broke the surface, delving
into the turgid soil beneath.  Annaliese bore down on the pole, shoving it
deeper and deeper into the earth.  The maid fell onto her back, the metal
shaft running right through her chest and into the ground.  With one last
push, Annaliese forced the pole deep enough into the mud to anchor the woman
down permanently.  The pole still jutted out the maid’s chest by a good
two feet, long enough to prevent her from pulling herself free.

Annaliese stepped away, huffing and puffing.  Her
palms flared in pain, a layer of skin shorn away by her struggle with the
pole.  The maid lay pinned to the ground, reaching up at her and snatching
at the air.  Her moans were distorted by the steel passing through her
lungs and came out as a tinny vibrato.

Mike stepped up to the woman and raised his shovel above
his head.

“Don’t,” said Annaliese.  “I’m seen enough blood
spilt for one day.  Just leave her there.  She isn’t going anywhere.”

Mike looked at Annaliese for a moment, as if he didn’t
understand, but then, slowly, he lowered the shovel and shoved it down into the
dirt, deep enough that he was able to leave it standing up on its own.

Annaliese headed back up the steps to Ripley Hall and
carefully closed the front doors.  The sound of the lock catching was like
an audible victory, one that had been quite easily achieved if she was
honest.  She had expected worse. 

Am I getting used to this? 

The thought worried her; that she might no longer be
frightened of monsters, and was now ready to face them in a calm and pragmatic
manner.  She wondered if it meant she was becoming a monster
herself.  If she had adapted this quickly in a matter of hours, she
dreaded to think what would become of her if the situation continued for an
extended length of time.  A Nietzsche quote from her college reading days
popped into her head.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster,
and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into
you.      

“I don’t see any more of them around,” Mike said. 
“Not even the one we were looking out for.  Where did he go?

As if to answer his question, a beastly cry erupted from
within the zoo.  The one thing Annaliese recognised immediately was that
the sounds were not human.

Chapter Nineteen

“What is that?” Mike asked Annaliese
as he spun around on the spot. 

“It’s coming from deeper in the zoo,” she said.  “Over
there.”  She pointed.

“Well, should we go check it out?”

Annaliese looked back at Ripley Hall.  The doors were
closed and a majority of the windows were obscured by curtains.  With the
additional cover of the sycamore trees on the lawn, the infected people in the
house should not be able to see outside.  If everyone kept their distance,
then the infected people in the house should pose no risk.  But there were
still infected people outside the house, wandering the grounds of the zoo and
park.  As long as they were around, it still wasn’t safe – they would all
be forced to hole up inside the reptile house and would be no better off than
they had been in the kitchen.

With adrenaline still coursing through her veins, Annaliese
made a decision.  “Let’s go find out what it is.  We need to know
what we’re up against.”

Mike seemed to be in a similar state of mind as she
was.  He nodded grimly, a look of determined resolution etched across his
increasingly handsome features.

She honed in on the direction of the commotion – which was
getting louder and more frenzied – and headed towards the far side of the zoo.

“What do you think it is?” Mike asked.  “That
sound.
 
It’s like a monster or something.”

“It’s not a monster,” she said, recognising the noises.

Mike asked her what she meant, but she ignored him. 
She picked up speed and headed deeper into the zoo.  Once she knew exactly
where the noises were coming from, she made a beeline for the source.  The
various animals in their exhibits were awake, disturbed by the commotion and
making sounds of their own.  A sty full of pigs squealed as she passed by.

But there were no infected people anywhere.

“Where are we heading?” Mike asked her as he struggled to
keep up.

She didn’t need to answer his question because they were
already there.  She stumbled against a nearby bin as she looked on at the
carnage in front of her.

“Yikes,” said Mike.

Half-a-dozen infected, including the one that had attacked
her earlier, had scaled the walls of the orang-utan enclosure.  They were
attacking the primates inside. 

Annaliese watched in horror as Lily placed her baby in the
elevated safety of the habitat’s mangrove tree.  She swiped and hissed at
the infected as they closed in on her and her child.  The male orang-utan,
Brick, was rushing back and forth, clubbing the invaders whenever they got
close enough.  He let out an ear-splitting screech with every blow, his
animalistic rage overcoming him as he fought to protect his family.  As
Annaliese stared harder, she noticed that the male primate held a fist-sized
rock in his palm and was using it to bludgeon his attackers.

“How do we help?” Mike asked her.

Annaliese shrugged.  It hurt her heart to say so, but
there was nothing they could do.  “We can’t do anything,” she said. 
“The drop over those walls is fifteen foot to the moat on the other side. 
We’ll break our legs.  Just look at the people inside.”

All of the infected in the enclosure sported broken legs,
arms or ribs, depending on how they’d landed.  Bones jutted from broken
skin and bled profusely.  Of course, the injuries were ignored by them – their
ability to feel pain completely absent – and they attacked regardless.

“Do you think that’s all of them?” Mike asked.

“I think so.  This must be all of the ones that
followed me through the window, or maybe one or two that wondered out the house
before we closed the doors.  It’s strange.”

“What is?”

“They must have stumbled past a dozen different animal
enclosures on their way here, but they only chose this one to invade. 
They ignored the pigs, the birds, the horses.”

“Maybe they only attack people.  Maybe orang-utans are
close enough to confuse them.”

Annaliese thought about it.  “Maybe.”

The battle inside the primate habitat continued.  Lily
continued to swipe and claw at anyone that got too near but, for the most part,
Brick was the one keeping them at bay.  He stood tall in front of Lily and
bludgeoned the skull of any infected person that came within range.  A
couple already lay dead, their brains spilling out onto the grass like
glistening pools of lumpy soup. 

But Brick was coming off badly, too.  A jagged wound
had been opened beneath the fur of his left shoulder, torn open by vicious
teeth.  Annaliese held her breath as an infected girl, in a torn cocktail
dress and broken stilettos, leapt up onto the male orang-utan’s back and began
chomping at his neck.

Brick wailed.  He managed to drag the infected woman
off his back and slam her to the floor like a rag doll.  Her dress rode
up, exposing her lack of underwear.  Brick raised the bloody rock in his
hand and brought it down so hard that it spilt the woman’s face clean in two.

There were only three infected people left now, the one’s
most injured from their fall over the barriers and therefore the slowest to
join the attack.  One sported a broken femur that stuck out like a
spear.  Another had two snapped arms that hung limply at his sides. 
Brick wasted no time in engaging them. 

He smashed in the skull of the nearest one and then tossed
the man with the broken femur to the ground.  Finally he leapt at the
infected man with two broken arms and pinned him to the ground.  He
clutched at the man’s head and began wrenching and pulling.  In an
unbelievable display of strength, Brick pulled the infected man’s head clear
from his shoulders, yanking and twisting it until it snapped free of the
spine.  Then the mighty orang-utan tossed the head aside like a punctured
football.

The chaos that had filled the zoo finally ceased.  A
quiet stillness gradually grew and expanded.  Annaliese stood by and
stared into the enclosure with a mixture of both awe and horror spiralling
through her guts.  She felt sick.

Lily began to make a sobbing noise as Brick fell to the
floor, panting and wheezing.  Blood spilled from his various wounds and,
now that the fight was over, his body had finally given in.  Lily cradled
him in her arms and stroked at his face.  His mighty chest heaved up and
down in great gasps of air.  From the nearby mangrove tree, Lily’s infant
made frightened squeals.

Annaliese knew that Brick was dying.  He had only
minutes left as blood leaked from a severed artery in his neck.  As a vet,
she couldn’t help but be fascinated by what she had just witnessed.  Brick
had protected Lily and her infant bravely, like any human father would. 
Now that he was mortally wounded, Lily held him in her long arms like a loving
partner.  Her pained hoots and wails made her grief plain to see. 

I guess tragedy isn’t exclusive to the human race.

The infant orang-utan began to climb down the tree, hanging
from a branch and then swinging to a lower one, before dropping the last few
feet to the ground.  Lily craned her neck and hooted at her baby.  It
sounded like a warning to be cautious, but the infant started towards its
mother anyway, bounding along on its tiny fists.

Annaliese was the first to notice the danger, even before
Lily did.  “Look out,” she cried, trying to communicate across
species.  But it was no good.

It was too late.

The infected man with the broken femur was still moving,
crawling along on his belly.  He lay right in the path of the approaching
infant.  By the time the baby orang-utan realised the danger it was
already beyond escape.  The infected man reached up and caught a hold of
the squealing infant, pinning it down and sinking his teeth into its belly.

The baby ape squealed in terror and agony.

Lily let go of Brick and bellowed like a bass drum. 
She leapt the distance between herself and her baby in one urgent leap. 
She landed beside the infected man and twisted his head around, breaking the
neck with a single vicious flick.  The man went still, face down in the
grass.

Lily picked up her bleeding infant and rocked it
desperately, patted its head and swung it to and fro. 

But the baby was dead.

The pain on Lily’s face was human in every way.  Her
whimpers pierced the air like a siren.

Annaliese felt tears stream down her face as she watched the
female orang-utan lollop back over to Brick with her dead baby held tightly in
her arms.  When it became clear that he, too, was dead, Lily let free a
deep and endless wail. 

When it finally stopped, Annaliese wiped the tears from her
face and left Lily alone.  There was nothing that could be done. 
Death was everywhere.