Stepping through the front doors of the clinic, I felt the humid night air hit my skin, and invisible fingers of the wind ruffled the nearby grass. Nine-foot-tall woven wire fences lined the little gravel driveway that ran past the two-story clinic building, reminding me of the time I’d gone to the Cincinnati Zoo. A nearby wooden sign bore green painted arrows pointing in different directions, two oriented right for ‘Maintenance’ and ‘Carnivore Cove’ while a third pointed left for ‘Herbivore Barns’. A hundred yards away, I could see a tall, dark structure that stretched in both directions, jagged and black against the night sky, with spools of razor wire all along the top of it.
A wall. Wow. It must be, what, sixteen feet tall, maybe twenty?
Cool whispers of a breeze brushed across my face, a welcome reprieve on an early September evening, heavy with the sweet aroma of flowers. I didn’t know much about plants, but it smelled amazing, like vanilla and lemon with orange and lavender thrown in. Overhead, a dazzling tapestry of dark navy blue stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, coated with millions of shining stars, and the silver moon hung right overhead. I’d never seen a sky so dark, so clear of intrusive light, and it took my breath away. All around, I could hear the low hum of nocturnal life, some of which I recognized, like the chirping of crickets, croaking of frogs, or the hoot of a distant owl. Others were far more bizarre, unplaceable in my head, like the roar of something reptilian, or the scream of what sounded like an elk, but deeper. Several of the cries, especially the ones furthest away, almost seemed human in their tone, the primal shrieks sending a chill down my spine.
Jamie waited next to a small side-by-side ATV, its red paint half covered in chunks of dried mud.
Seeing me gawking, she waved toward the sky. “I know, right? Like the world’s biggest light show. Wait until your first thunderstorm, those are wild here.”
I trudged over to the ATV, still taking everything in, the world lit by the soft glow of moonlight. “It’s incredible. I never saw this many stars in Louisville.”
Something in Jamie’s face fell, her smile fading into a jaded half-grin. “Yeah, well, when you lose three-quarters of your population, the world gets a whole lot darker.”
Wait, what?
My eyes must have been big as footballs, because Jamie sighed, and jerked her thumb towards the ATV. “Come on, I’ll explain as we go. It’s been a quiet night, so we won’t have to rush.”
I climbed into the little cart beside her, Jamie’s AK and nylon chest rig snuggled between us like a loyal dog. She flipped a switch, and we started to roll with a low electric whine.
“Nice.” I nodded at the cart, in a weak attempt to break the silence. “Battery powered?”
Jamie’s carefree expression returned, and she pushed the accelerator down to speed on to the left of the signpost. “Uh huh. Ethan Sanderson, our chief mechanic, rigged up a bunch of our old vehicles for electric power. The entire park was refitted to run off solar and geothermal power a few years ago, so we’ve got juice to spare as long as the batteries hold out. Good thing too, since fuel is getting harder to find, and we have to save it for patrols.”
We bumped over a few potholes and whizzed between a line of tall fences. I glimpsed eyes watching us from inside the paddocks, antelope, zebras, and hefty rhinos with their ears flicked our way. The scent of dried grass and manure blew past my face, and four buildings loomed from the dark, two on each side of the road. They were massive sheet metal pole barns, with small slits of yellow light peeking from between numerous square windows higher up, cloth drapes cutting off the rest of the lights. I caught the low hum of human voices from inside as we drove past, and the faint echo of a guitar.
“What is this place?” I craned my neck at the barns as we passed, curious.
“We’re kind of like a big, open-air zoo.” Jamie pushed some stray golden hairs from her face. “I used to be a tour guide, drove buses, and talked about conservation. But ever since February, things have been crazy around here.”
Clinging to a handle welded to the roll cage, I thought back to what I’d seen in the forest. “I take it that’s when those creatures showed up?”
The tires of the ATV crunched on the gravel around a little bend in the drive, and Jamie gave a small nod. “By the dozens. I’ve seen plenty of weird stuff out there since it all went to hell. Brain Shredders, Puppets, Ringer-heads, there’s no end to the freaks that crawl out of the woodwork. Some of them aren’t so bad, like the deer with glow-in-the-dark antlers. But the others . . .”
My skin crawled at the expression of hatred and fear that mixed on Jamie’s face. She struck me as the strong, confident type, the kind of person who didn’t get rattled easily . . . all things I lacked.
“Are we safe here?” I eyed the rifle wedged between us.
Jamie pointed without even looking at the shadow of the big wall to our right, which ran parallel to the road we drove on. “As long as that stays up, we are. I helped build it, took us weeks of work. Most things that could fly over it are small, so we’re good.”
Most?
Swallowing hard, I tugged at my seatbelt, and eyed the wall. “Where did they come from?”
“It’s called the Breach.” Jamie scratched at the back of her head, as casual in her tone as if talking about a bad day at work. “Dr. O’Brian thinks it’s some kind of hole in our reality, putting out all kinds of radiation and electro-magnetic energy. According to her, since nature always seeks balance, the energy tries to imitate the world around it, but end’s up producing freaks instead of good copies.”
The air ached inside my lungs, and I winced at a bump in the road, my ribs still sore. “So, those things that attacked me . . . they were people?”
Jamie shook her head, a half-curious, half-morbid grin on her face. “Technically no. I mean, yeah, they look just like us, but if you cut one open, on the inside they’re all wood, rot, and black goo like plant sap. All Organics are made like that, half-flesh, half-plant. The Technos are the ones that look like machines, but if you look close enough, there’s the same black stuff inside them too, only it’s closer to meat than plant. That’s why they can feed on each other for energy, when they don’t have humans or normal animals to hunt.”
My mind flashed back to the floating ball of shoes, the way it caught and reeled in each of the moon-eyed people and crunched them into dust like a giant set of teeth. I remembered that enormous eye in the middle of all that sinew, the slithering tendrils, and how it watched me with a detached glare. Monsters. After years and years of pretending, I’d somehow stumbled upon real-life monsters.
“So, what’s your deal?” Jamie caught me off guard, cocking her blonde head to one side as we drove on. “I mean, no one in their right mind would come this far if they honestly knew what was happening. What’s a girl from big-city Kentucky doing way out here?”
My face flooded with embarrassed heat. “I, uh . . . I was with my friends, filming a blog.”
“Oof.” Jamie threw me a sympathetic grimace. “Let me guess, when things went down, they—”
“Ran and left me to die.” I cringed at the memory, and let a shock of loose hair hide my burning face.
Once a loser, always a loser.
For a moment, neither of us said anything, loose gravel pinging under the cart as we zoomed along.
“You know,” Jamie broke the silence, with her pointer finger in the air like some esteemed professor. “It is said that he who runs first has the smallest member. Sounds like your friends were operating under major teeny-wiener energy.”
Stunned, I blinked at her, but Jamie just raised one eyebrow as if what she’d said was straight out of a textbook, and wriggled her pinky finger in a suggestive manner.
A ticklish sensation welled up inside my chest . . . and I started to chuckle.
Jamie laughed with me, the two of us giggling up a storm as we drove along, and even though it hurt, it was the best feeling in the world.
Crazy. One of my first friends here, and she’s totally crazy.
The road opened up into a wider asphalt parking lot, with faded white painted lines and cracks etched by months of weathering. To my right, the wall came into focus now, a huge main gate made from welded plates of thick steel, guarded by men with rifles who paced on the ramparts like old school cavalry troopers. Long wooden logs made up the wall, buried vertically into the ground, their ends sharpened to points in the air, with walkways bolted to the inside. Towers made from old shipping containers stood every hundred feet or so, and two circular sandbag rings lay in the center of the parking lot, with blue plastic tarps covering whatever was inside them. On the left, a long, rectangular one-story building squatted with a red roof and brown stucco walls. A sign next to the double front doors read ‘Visitor’s Center’, and Jamie parked next to four other ATVs.
“Alright” She pulled the handbrake with a swift click and grabbed her equipment from the seat. “Let’s get you checked in.”
I followed her up a small footpath that snaked between a row of cherry trees, still dotted with a late crop of crimson berries. On the other side of the little orchard, a beautiful three-story timber-framed building stood tall, carved from ornate logs, and finished like a gargantuan log cabin. It sported a forest-green sheet metal roof and an upper deck, with balconies on the third floor that seemed to be a blend of princess castle and rustic outpost. Warm yellow lights flickered in many of the windows, and a row of wide steps led up to the polished oak double doors, with a sign to one side that read, ‘Elk Ridge Lodge’.
“This is us.” Jamie tromped up the steps ahead of me. “Hope you don’t mind stairs, our elevator has been broken since May. First world problems, right?”
Jamie held one of the front doors open, and I shuddered in pleasure at the sensation of chilly air conditioning on my skin, before the room beyond stopped me dead in my tracks.
It looked like one of those luxury resorts all the ultra-pretty girls from social media went to, a place my mom would call ‘golden toilet rich’. Lush rugs covered the polished hard wood floorboards, with bear, elk, and owl designs woven into them. A chandelier fashioned from antlers hung overhead, with electric lights that flickered just like real candles, and a swirling staircase nearby arched into the floor above with shining pine handrails, held in place by bronze fittings. Satin curtains were draped around the many windows, though I noticed they were all pulled shut, dark green like the rooftop.
“Wow.” I gasped, and Jamie made a modest shrug.
“Perks of being a ranger. We get the best beds, and the most graves. But it gets hot as hell in here during the day since we only turn the AC on at night. Gotta take it easy on our power grid.”
“Still.” Shaking my head, I turned in a half-circle, and took everything in with hungry eyes. “It’s gorgeous.”
Jamie sighed, in the same, somewhat sad way she had back at the clinic, her green eyes staring into space. “You should have seen it before. I had my 21st birthday party here. Back when things were normal . . .”
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, and yet any words of condolence stuck in my throat. This place baffled me. On one hand, there were exotic animals, beautiful buildings, and state-of-the-art equipment, enough to make me wish I could buy a ticket for the next tour bus. On the other hand, a palisade wall now ringed everything, manned by men with guns, and my newest friend never went anywhere without an AK at her side. It felt like a twisted, upside-down bizarro world, a mix between the upscale US and third world Africa. I stood there, frozen in the luxurious foyer of the lodge, and wondered what I’d gotten myself into.
At last, Jamie seemed to shake herself from whatever thought she’d been stuck on.
“Come on, Sean’s office is this way.” She sauntered toward the hallway on the right side of the elegant stairwell, the lights reflecting off the dull blued finish of her rifle.
I can’t go back. Matt and Carla wouldn’t come back for me, even if I called and pleaded on hands and knees. I’m stuck here, stuck in this place where those things are still out—
“Hey, you coming or what?”
Snapped from my musings, I nodded at Jamie, who stood waiting by the hallway, and forced my legs to move. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.”
With that, I followed the blonde ranger into a maze of carved wooden doorways and Indian-weave carpets, my anxious heart beating a steady toll against my sore ribcage.