Awake Page 20

  “Aww, look at the little tiger cub!” she said, and Lee knew he had her.

  Lee called Ben and told him about the zoo. “Dammit dude, you know I hate animals!” Ben said.

  “Ask Stella what she thinks about it,” Lee said.

  “You know she’ll be in. Fine, if all you guys want to do that then I guess it’s cool. When do you want to meet up?”

  “I was probably just going to get room service for breakfast, you guys can do whatever you’re going to do for breakfast then give us a call.”

  “Sounds good,” Ben said, and hung up.

  Lee and Ivy called up the room service number and ordered their breakfast. When it came, Lee saw that Ben and Stella had gone with the same option, the room service guy bringing food to both of the rooms at the same time. “So, like half an hour, then?” Ben asked as they met in the hallway to retrieve their food.

  They ate quickly and then met up in the hallway before riding the elevator down to street level and exited the building. There was an free cab idling out front, so they got right into it, and started towards the zoo.

  The cab driver was white, with long hair and a scraggly beard. Lee had lost the latest round of rock paper scissors and was sitting in the front. Glancing at the driver as he drove them to the Bronx, Lee was suddenly seized by the certainty that the man was a mass murderer.

  The rational part of his brain knew it was silly, but still he could see visions of the man murdering unfortunate women who had the bad luck to get into his cab alone at night, strangling them with a length of nylon cord. It wasn’t just women either; the occasional drunk lone male or transient had also had the misfortune of their life ending that way. It was like suddenly remembering something that happened years before, only he wasn’t actually there and was watching the scenes from above as the cabbie brutally murdered person after person.

  Even though he knew it was crazy, the visions disturbed him enough that he nearly told the cabbie to drop them off so they could find a different ride. The only thing that stopped him was his usual fear of the others realizing how much he was losing it.

  “Something wrong buddy?” the cabbie suddenly asked, noticing Lee’s wide-eyed glances.

  “Uh, no,” Lee said. “Sorry, I was just thinking you looked like someone I knew back in Seattle.”

  “Oh, well I’ve never been there,” the cabbie said, shifting his gaze back to the road. “Thought you might have been a crazy person there for a sec, wouldn’t want to have to kill you.” The man laughed loudly, but something in the tone of his voice made Lee even more paranoid. If the others in the back had heard the exchange, they gave no indication of it. They were talking loudly about the movie from the night before.

  Lee wanted the ride to hurry up, but the city’s traffic seemed to be deliberately going even slower than its normal, glacial pace. Not wanting to talk to the cab driver any more, he turned to stare out his window and did his best to ignore the man.

  “So what do you do for a living?” the man asked when the cab came to yet another stop, seemingly impervious to Lee’s signals that he didn’t want to talk any more.

  “I write,” Lee answered, still staring out the window.

  “Oh you do? What’s your name?”

  “Lee Fenton.”

  “Never heard of you.”

  “Well that’s too bad. Say, how long does the trip normally take?” He was starting to get as irritated with the man as he was disturbed by him.

  “My favorite book is called The Eye of Archon, you ever hear of it?” the driver said, completely ignoring Lee’s question.

  Lee was about to answer negatively and repeat his question, when he suddenly realized that he had heard of the book somewhere, though he couldn’t remember where. When he tried to remember he started to get nauseous. “I think I might have heard about it somewhere,” he finally said, a chill going down his spine.

  Thankfully, the man seemed to finally get the hint and didn’t say anything else for the rest of the trip.

  Pulling up in front of the Bronx Zoo after what felt like an eternity, but was probably less than an hour, the others piled out while Lee stayed inside to pay the driver. After running his card and throwing in the standard tip, Lee got out of the cab, thankful to get away from the cabbie.

  Just as he was shutting the door the driver said that sounded like “The demon will get you in the end.” By the time Lee heard it, the door was already closed, and the driver sped away, the traffic suddenly clearing up for a moment.

  “What’s wrong?” Ivy asked as Lee stared at the rapidly disappearing taxi.

  “Oh, nothing. I thought the driver said something strange as I was closing the door but I must have misheard him,” Lee said, almost believing it.

  “Come on, you guys!” Ben shouted, already walking with Stella up to the zoo’s gates.

  “We’re coming, don’t get your panties in a bunch!” Lee shouted back, as he and Ivy followed.

  They walked together down a long walkway to the ticket office. Lee thought about the driver the entire time, wondering if he’d said what Lee thought he’d said. The guy could have been saying something like “Hey man, have a good time with your friends,” but it really had sounded like “The demon will get you in the end.”

  He knew the idea of some demonic conspiracy against him was completely insane, but he couldn’t stop entertaining the notion, which in itself served to disturb him even more. Maybe this is what it’s like to go crazy, he thought as they reached the ticket office and waited in line .

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Ivy whispered to him as Stella talked Ben’s ear off about how much she loved pandas.

  “I’m wondering if I’m going crazy,” Lee said.

  “Well I think you’re good then. They say wondering if you’re crazy is a sure sign that you’re sane,” she said, which got a chuckle out of Lee.

  “God I hope so,” he said.

  When they got inside the gates there was a large rack of maps. They each grabbed one and studied it, figuring out where they’d start.

  “Well I’m sold on the gorillas, they’re not too far from here,” Lee said as he studied the map. “I don’t think I’ve seen one in real life before.”

  “No way, I want to see the penguins and they’re in the other direction, let’s go there Ben,” Stella said, tugging on Ben’s arm.

  “I, uh,” Ben said, looking back and forth between Lee and Stella.

  “It’s cool,” Lee said, “we can split up and meet up later for lunch like we usually do.”

  “Alright, guess we’re going to see the stupid penguins then,” Ben said, rolling his eyes but smiling. Lee thought that maybe Ben had a thing for penguins as well.

  “You kids have fun now,” Ivy said.

  The route to the gorillas took them by a huge pond filled with flamingos. “Aw, they’re so cute!” Ivy exclaimed when she saw them, and even Lee had to admit they were. Quite a few of them were standing on one foot in the classic garden ornament pose, which he found hilarious for some reason.

  When they got to the gorillas, Lee found that though huge and majestic, the animals looked sad and bored, as they sat around in their large enclosure. “Aw, they look so down,” Ivy voiced Lee’s thoughts.

  “Yeah, at least they’re safe though. Aren’t they endangered?”

  “I’m pretty sure they are.”

  “You know, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I read once that no one in Europe believed that gorillas existed for decades even though several explorers had seen them. It finally took someone killing one and bringing it back with them to get anyone to believe it.”

  “Wow, that’s crazy!”

  “I know, it really makes you wonder these days what exists even though we don’t believe in it.”

  After a few minutes watching the gorillas they moved on, stopping to look at other animals in the area. There were two different kinds of monkeys near the gorillas, and they seemed to be much happier.

  Not al
l of the monkeys were happy, though. One monkey, masturbating with one hand, shat into the other hand, and threw the feces at some tourists who were close to the pen. It hit a woman who was in the process of taking a picture, and when she realized what had happened she ran off towards the bathrooms crying, with a man, presumably her partner, chasing after her.

  Lee and Ivy broke into laughter. As he chuckled, Lee noticed that the sky had temporarily cleared up.

  “Oh my god, that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” Ivy gasped after laughing with Lee uncontrollably for half a minute.

  “I guess even the monkeys here hate tourists,” Lee said, wiping his eyes.

  Moving on, they ended up on a busy path that ran next to an enormous field full of giraffes. Lee had seen a giraffe once as a boy but was blown away all over again at how gigantic they were in real life. One was eating leaves from the top of a tree, and he saw that the creatures’ tongue was black, something he’d forgotten about giraffes.

  Further down the road Lee noticed that there was another herd of a different variety of giraffe, down the field, separated from their cousins by a large fence. They had a different color to their spots, and the pattern of them was different. “There’s more than one kind of giraffe? I feel like an idiot for not knowing that,” Lee said.

  “I knew that, but don’t feel bad. I had to do a huge report on them in 5th grade, or I probably wouldn’t have known either.”

  The lions were a bit further down, and were easily Lee’s favorite part about the zoo. Though the females seemed a bit sad like the gorillas had been, the male that was there seemed amazingly happy. He had the look that house cats get when you scratch behind their ears.

  “Well of course he’s happy, he’s got all the women and food he wants and he doesn’t have to do anything,” Ivy said when Lee commented on it. “Though to be fair, that’s pretty much the same way he’d be living if he were in Africa, the females do all the hunting.”

  “It sounds like you’ve done your research” Lee said, putting his arm around her.

  “I wanted to be a zoologist when I was growing up, but then I decided to put off college for a year while I worked and saved up some money. That became two years, then three, and now here we are,” she said.

  “You can still go to school, it’s not like we’re old or anything,” Lee said.

  “I’m not complaining about the way things have gone,” she said. “If things had gone differently I probably wouldn’t be here with you.”

  “Good point. But I still think you should follow your career dreams.”

  They walked a bit further, but they were both getting tired from walking, so when they ran into a tram station that could take them to other parts of the zoo they got in line for it. The tram came by within minutes, and they took a short, crowded, uncomfortable trip on the tram to the next stop, which was near the bear exhibit.

  As Lee and Ivy were looked at the polar bears, Lee heard Ben calling him and looked over to find him and Stella twenty feet away. “Hey, Ben and Stella are here too!” he said to Ivy, and called them over.

  “Oh hey man, fancy meeting you guys here,” Ben said. “The zoo’s so big I didn’t think we’d cross paths.”

  “Yeah it’s gigantic. What have you guys seen?” Lee said.

  “We saw the tigers and rhinos, but we spent a ton of time looking at the penguins first. The little guys turned out to be badass,” Ben said.

  “Oh my god, they were so cute I almost cried,” Stella said.

  “You did cry,” Ben corrected her.

  Ivy laughed. “Aw Stella, are those motherly instincts coming out with a little penguin assistance?”

  “Shut up, you’d love them too. They were adorable,” Stella said.

  “They actually were,” Ben said.

  “If we can ease off the penguin talk for a second, I was wondering if we could go grab a bite to eat now,” Lee said. “All this talk about penguins is making me hungry.”

  There was a burger place just fifty feet from them that Lee had looked up back at the hotel, so they walked over there and picked up some food. They sat in the crowded outdoor seating area adjacent to the food pickup and started eating.

  “Good thing they had veggie burgers, I don’t think I’m ever going back to meat after seeing all of those cute little animals,” Stella said as they ate. Lee rolled his eyes and took a bite from his cheeseburger.

  “I’m thinking about easing back too,” Ben said.

  “Are you serious?” Lee said to Ben, incredulous. “That doesn’t sound like you at all. And you’re eating a chicken sandwich.”

  “It’s actually a fish sandwich. There’s nothing I could see that could make me give a shit about fish,” Ben said.

  “Fine, but I’m not sure if I like this new you,” Lee said.

  “Hey, I’m a half-vegetarian too!” Ivy said.

  “Fine, fine, I take it all back. Just don’t you try and get me to eat less meat,” Lee said.

  “Okay, but only if you…” Ivy said, but suddenly stopped and looked at something behind Lee with a quizzical look that quickly turned into a look of shock. Stella, facing the same direction, screamed and jumped up.

  “What is it?” Lee asked, jumping up and spinning around as Ben did the same.

  It was a gorilla, perhaps two hundred feet away, running free down the trail towards them. For a moment Lee thought that it was a man in a suit, but then a person got in the way of its run and was swatted aside like a rag doll. A woman screamed, and then several others soon joined in. Lee knew then that it was real.

  “What do we do?” Ivy said as she stared horrified at the approaching gorilla.

  “Run!” Lee shouted, grabbing Ivy’s wrist and lightly pulling her along. She got the message, and ran with him, as Ben and Stella followed close behind.

  Going with the flow of the other patrons running away from the gorilla, the group ran, not knowing where they were heading, but presuming the rest of the crowd knew the way to go.

  The intercoms across the park began blaring the voice of a park ranger, saying some variation of “We seem to be experiencing a problem in the zoo. Please make your way to the nearest exit as quickly as possible and save your ticket stub for re-entrance at a further date,” over and over.

  Lee heard people screaming, and then a rumbling almost directly behind him that he was sure was the gorilla catching up. Still clutching Ivy’s hand, he didn’t dare look back even to see if Ben and Stella were still with them.

  Several people ahead of Lee and Ivy turned and started breaking to the sides of the path. Lee followed their lead and ran to the grass to the side of the path. He finally dared to look behind him. The gorilla was continuing to run down the trail, nearing the exit that the crowd was heading to.

  As it ran by Lee and the others, including Ben and Stella, much to Lee’s relief, the gorilla turned and glanced at Lee. He saw it had a look of sheer desperation, a longing for freedom. It knew it wouldn’t make it out, but it had to try. It was as if Lee could read its mind.

  “Poor thing,” Lee said quietly.

  The beast neared the gate, the swell of people dissolving in front of it as if the beast was surrounded by an invisible force field. For a moment it looked like the animal would make good on its escape, but then a swarm of park rangers with tranquilizer guns appeared in front of the gates as if out of nowhere, surrounding the gorilla.

  As if preparing to go down fighting, the gorilla stood up on its hind legs and raised both arms into the air as if to start swatting, but the park rangers with tranquilizer guns opened up on the beast at once.

  It lowered its hands to grab at the many darts stuck to it and took a drunken step, starting to wobble almost instantly. Lee didn’t know much about tranquilizer guns, but he thought that with the amount of darts the gorilla had been shot with, and the speed the drugs were taking effect, that the creature would surely die.

  “What the hell guys?” the ranger who seemed to be in charge said. “Y
ou weren’t all supposed to shoot.”

  “It was about to attack, I panicked,” one of the men with tranquilizer guns said.

  The beast tried one more step, but the step was doomed from the start. Its leg buckled and it collapsed to the ground, its face pointed towards the crowd Lee and the others were standing in. From the glassy look in the animals eyes Lee knew it was already dead.

  And then in an instant the officials had a tarp over the body and were securing it to carry off to wherever they took dead gorillas. The crowd instantly became more relaxed, and people even began laughing and chatting as they made their way out of the park, the message to leave continuing to blare over the park’s loudspeakers.

  20

  “Holy fucking shit, that was insane,” Ben said after they’d composed themselves and started following the crowd out of the zoo.

  “That was fucking scary,” Stella said.

  “I feel bad for the gorilla. It didn’t know what it was doing. Do you think it will be okay?” Ivy asked, looking at Lee.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Lee said, thinking that maybe some lies might be okay after all.

  “I don’t know, did you see its eyes when it fell?” Ben said. Lee discretely kicked him in the side of the leg. Ben shot him an irritated look, but didn’t say any more.

  When they got outside of the zoo they found the street was a mess of emergency response vehicles, police cars and reporters. Several news people were calling out to the people coming out of the zoo to come over for an interview. Lee and his group ignored them and walked down the street to try and find a taxi.

  “Man, that really sucked, I didn’t even get to finish half of my food,” Ben complained as they walked.

  “I don’t know if I’m hungry anymore,” Stella said, still upset. Ivy didn’t look great either, but not as bad as Stella.

  “Well I am,” Ben said.

  “Me too,” Lee said.

  “Let’s just get to a cab and go to a restaurant, I’m still hungry too. You might not be hungry Stella, but I’m sure you could use a drink,” Ivy said.