Zoo 2 Read online

  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 JACKSON OZ.

  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.”

  Chapter 35

  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.

  Chapter 36

  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 give
n 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.”

  Chapter 37

  All five of us—Chloe, Eli, Sarah, David, and myself—race up the stairs and outside. It’s the first time we’ve stepped foot out of the lab in days. The sun is setting and the mostly empty campus is bathed in eerie, shadowy orange light. Only eerie, shadowy orange light. It looks like the entire school has lost power.

  Scratch that. Glancing around in every direction, I see that the blackout stretches across the entire city of Las Vegas.

  I also see the source of those feral war cries.

  A band of rabid humans is stalking across the campus—a dozen, at least, maybe more, chasing and ferociously attacking everyone they encounter. They’re also a distorted reflection of Vegas society. One is wearing the black vest and green visor of a blackjack dealer. Another, the heavy makeup and skimpy dress of a cocktail waitress or maybe a prostitute. Another is a Vegas cop, in uniform, firing his sidearm.

  “What do we do?” asks Sarah, panicking.

  The truth is, I have no goddamn idea.

  We can’t just stand here, but we don’t have a plan, either. We don’t have a new safe destination. And we don’t have any weapons.

  All we’ve got is a wrecked government Jeep with a quarter tank of gas. A single nasal injector with an antidote that might work. And each other.

  The most important thing of all.

  “What do we do? We run!”

  Scooping up my son and pulling my wife along by the hand, we rush to the Jeep still parked not far from the lab entrance. We pile inside and peel out.

  By the time we get off campus, we spot another cluster of feral humans coming from the other direction—the Strip, its famous casinos and hotels all scarily dark. One of them wears the uniform of a hotel housekeeper. Another, a burly bald man wielding a shotgun, has on the shiny black suit of a casino bouncer.

  They catch sight of our speeding Jeep and decide to pursue. As they pick up speed, the bouncer fires at us, spiderwebbing our rear windshield with buckshot.

  “Go faster, Oz!” Chloe shouts from the backseat.

  So I do. And soon we’re whizzing down one of the city’s wide boulevards, littered with trash and abandoned cars and the occasional non-feral person running for his or her life.

  We seem to have lost the second pack of rabid humans, but more keep popping up around every corner. A Chinese tourist hurls a concrete cinder-block at us with incredible strength, leaving a divot in the hood. Even a feral Elvis impersonator leaps in front of the Jeep and bashes one of the headlights with a baseball bat.

  “Merde!” Chloe exclaims. “Goddamn you, Oz! I said faster! Why can’t you ever do anything right?”

  “Hey, I’m trying my best here!” I call back to her, almost more freaked out by her angry tone of voice than by the rabid humans we’re trying to avoid.

  When I suddenly realize…holy shit…

  I turn around in my seat to look at Chloe. Her forehead is drenched. Her cheeks are deep crimson. She’s holding Eli in her lap, but clutching onto him so tightly that his skin his turning white—and she’s digging her nails into his flesh a bit, making him cry.

  Please. God, no…it can’t be…

  Chloe lets loose a bloodcurdling primal roar and grabs me from behind.

  She—not Sarah—is the one who’s been going feral!

  Our car fills with screaming and mayhem as Chloe attacks me like a maniac, clawing at my face and neck from behind, quickly drawing blood.

  Stunned, Sarah and David scramble to yank her off while I try to keep the car moving and under control. We swerve wildly—sideswiping a telephone pole, scraping the roof of an overturned tour bus, just narrowly avoiding being hit by a flaming Molotov cocktail hurled by a feral human on a rooftop I can’t even see.

  As the fight continues—me resisting and struggling and gurgling on my own blood—I see David pull the nasal injector from his pocket. He rips off the cap with his teeth, yanks Chloe’s head back by her hair, jams the injector up her nostril, and depresses the trigger.

  Chloe gasps and screams. She starts to writhe and seize, shaking horribly and frothing at the mouth. It’s an awful, agonizing sight…

  But it’s over in just a few seconds.

  Chloe releases her grip on me and slumps back in her seat. Slowly, her breathing and complexion return to normal. Her muscles relax.

  Before our eyes, she becomes a healthy human being again!

  “What…what just…did I…?” is all she can manage to croak.

  “It’s okay, Chloe,” I whisper, tears of relief streaming down my bloodied face.

  Sarah, David, little Eli—they’re overwhelmed as well.

  I refocus o
n the road ahead. I press down on the gas even harder and squeal onto a highway on-ramp.

  Behind me, through my rearview mirror as we drive farther and farther away, I can see columns of smoke rising. Sin City’s been turned into a war zone.

  But at least we saved my wife.

  And thanks to our antidote, we might save humanity, too.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I say again. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Epilogue

  RAVEN ROCK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX

  BLUE RIDGE SUMMIT, PENNSYLVANIA

  “As of today, Madam President, the vaccination rate stands at seventy-three percent. That includes all major urban populations of one million or more—”

  “What about the remaining twenty-seven percent of Americans, Dr. Freitas?”

  President Hardinson glares at Freitas, who’s one of the many advisors, military leaders, and scientists—Chloe and I among them—seated around this giant polished conference table. He gulps.

  “We’re working on it, ma’am.”

  He can say that again.

  Over the past three months since we developed the antihistamine antidote to human pheromonal rabidity, or HPR, as I’ve dubbed it, in that musty Las Vegas lab, I’ve been helping the government mass-produce and disseminate it as quickly and widely as possible. Given the strained state of the country—and the world—the progress we’ve made has been remarkable, even for a cynic like yours truly.

  But I hear the president’s concern loud and clear. A quarter of the country has yet to be inoculated.

  That’s eighty million new potential feral humans. A staggering thought.

  Clearly we have our work cut out for us.

  The meeting of the newly re-formed and renamed Animal & Human Crisis Task Force ends, and Chloe and I start to leave. We find ourselves exiting alongside Freitas, who’s pushing himself along in his wheelchair. The plane crash left his face badly scarred, and he’s still too weak to walk—but he’s alive, miraculously.

  “Chloe, Oz, I meant to ask you both,” he says. “How are you finding the accommodations?”

  “This isn’t the first time we’ve lived in seclusion with the leader of the free world,” I say. Just a few weeks ago, the White House was evacuated for the second time in eight months. The threat of feral human attacks was just too great. “It ain’t the Ritz,” I continue. “But living underground sure beats living in the Arctic.”