ZooFall Read online

  Chapter 2

  SOMETHING WAS TERRIBLY WRONG. Diana wasn't sure of much, but of that, she felt certain. She'd been drifting through a grey twilight between waking and sleeping for a long time. She felt as cold and immobile as a Popsicle. Sometimes she was aware of noises or a breeze on her face or being cold. Sometimes, her thoughts coalesced and she wondered about the nightmarish images of doctors and nurses coughing and doubling up with pain – a nightmare that seemed a shade too real – while other times her thoughts dissipated into fragments and she was hardly aware of where or even who she was.

  It had been dark for a while – she was sure of that – and now it was light. Sunlight, she was sure, from the hint of warmth on her chilled right side. She was lying down. Something itched on her right wrist. She shifted her body on the hospital bed. Had something gone wrong during the operation? Was she in a recovery room or intensive care?

  Despite her conscious thoughts, Diana found it difficult and strangely painful to make her eyes open, as if they'd been superglued shut. Several tries and her eyelids opened a crack – wide enough to see the cheery off-white walls of the surgery room. Was the operation over? The pain in her right side was gone. She craned her head a couple of inches off the pillow. A sheet covered her. An IV line was still attached to her right wrist. Maybe post-operation painkillers?

  There was a funny, foul smell in the air, like meat that had been left out overnight. She wrinkled her nose.

  Then Diana noticed a nurse flopped on the floor below the window now ushering sunlight into the room. Adrenaline crackled through her. She sat up – too fast. The room spun and nausea slapped her. She swallowed down an urge to retch and waited for the room to steady.

  The floor was covered with bodies – or unconscious people who looked very dead. Dr. Cranston, the anesthesiologist, Dr. Winger, and at least four nurses. Nausea returned. Her stomach knotted up like the time she'd eaten some unidentifiable mess of meat and vegetables in Syria under the smiling encouragement of her field manager, the prick. But she'd held it down then, and she'd hold it down again. Not that there was much to hold down after a day of pre-surgery fasting.

  Diana swiveled stiffly to the edge of the bed. She tore off the tape and dressing and eased out the IV line, pressing a corner of the sheet on the insertion site to staunch the small dribble of blood. That act had a calming effect as she studied the bodies and considered the implications. This wasn't the first time she'd seen a mass of dead people up close. The people they'd worked with and supplied in Syria had provided plenty of those. But then the explanation was clear. Now she hadn't a clue. The closest event to what she was seeing here was when they'd staged a nerve gas attack in Syria for the international media, but most of those people had only been pretending to be dead.

  Nerve gas or a fast-acting biological agent were the only possibilities that came to mind. Neither one made much sense. Nerve gas would've killed her, too. So would any lethal biological agent. It wasn't as if the anesthetics they'd used on her would strengthen her immune system.

  And yet, here she was. That was undeniable. The general anesthetic had protected her somehow. That was the good news. The room full of dead people was the bad news. But just how bad was it and how far did this disaster extend?

  Diana slid off the bed onto her feet. She felt surprisingly stable, strong even. No soreness in her right side at all. She lifted her hospital gown. No incision had been made. Of course, they hadn't got that far. Her appendix must've settled down on its own.

  She stepped around the bodies to the windows, which faced out on the east end of Main Street and Lake Winneska. At first, she didn't spot anything unusual. Then she noticed a single car parked near the center of the street. Not a delivery vehicle – just a generic van, its doors thrown open. She pressed her face to the window, peering further down Main Street. Two more cars were abandoned in the street. Apprehension prickled through her. The town's been hit. But why would anyone target the somnolent little city of Glenwald, Minnesota?

  Don't get ahead of yourself. Check things out, first. She'd learned firsthand that things weren't always as they seemed. In fact, her job had been all about creating illusions. But this...none of it was adding up.

  First thing was finding her clothes. Who could think clearly in a hospital gown?

  She walked down the hallway toward the room where she'd been scheduled to spend the night post-operation. More nurses lay dead on the floor, along with a couple of patients. Peeking through the door windows revealed a few people lying motionless in their beds. One older woman was crumpled over her walker. A white-faced woman with short reddish brown hair who could've been a younger version of herself was stretched out under a white sheet, blank eyes staring at the ceiling with a slight frown, as if something puzzled her. Diana recognized her – thought she might be the one with terminal cancer she'd overheard a few people talking about – but couldn't place her name. That was the case with most people in the area. She and her husband had kept their distance from the community. An easy task if you didn't have children or relatives here and didn't attend church or other local events. That was the way they wanted it. A small city – but not so small that everyone knew your name, or too large for peace and quiet – that suited her husband's Midwestern upbringing. A place where you didn't have to worry about crime or disasters natural or unnatural. Ha. She knew Dean would've appreciated the irony.

  Diana flipped the light switch in her recovery room. The darkness persisted. She backed into the hall and tried some other switches. Nothing. She hadn't expected that, but somehow it wasn't surprising. She located her clothes in the closet – tennis shoes, jeans, undershirt, light sweater, a windbreaker – and got dressed.

  She fished out her cell phone. Dead. Odd, since she'd recharged it before coming to the hospital.

  In the hallway, she called out a couple of times: "Hello! Anyone here alive?" No response. She picked up the phone at the nearest nurse station, where a woman in street clothes lay curled up on the floor by a computer chair. The phone was also dead. Seemed to be a lot of that going around.

  An EMP attack? The only thing she could think of that might explain both the dead battery in her cell and the lack of electricity, if not the dead people. Neutron bomb? That would've fried her, too, and besides, no one showed any signs of being fried. From what she remembered, people got sick, which suggested a nerve or biological agent. But she was getting ahead of herself. First, she had to see how far the damage extended.

  The dead young man in the stairway didn't surprise her – on his belly with one hand stretched to the top step, an expression of determination preserved in death – but the sheer number of bodies in the lobby area froze her in shock for a moment. People had obviously flocked there from elsewhere in town when they started getting sick. She called out again but received the same non-reply.

  Diana moved to entrance glass doors facing out on the last stores of town and the eastern shores of Lake Winneska. An elderly woman sat slumped in a wheelchair in the parking lot, a man of similar age sprawled on the asphalt beside her. They'd never made it to the hospital. Diana felt a wave of sadness accompanied by a strange sense of relief. If Dean was still alive, she'd be desperate with panic right now, rushing out to grab the nearest car and race out to their home just outside town. As it was, she had no attachment to anyone here. Maybe that made her a terrible human being, but right now she was deeply grateful for that.

  An object appeared in the sky over the lake. Her first thought – rescue helicopter! – was dashed as the craft assumed a strange cylindrical shape. It looked like some giant grey vitamin pill descending from the clouds. Diana's mind went blank with incomprehension. Nothing of what she was seeing matched any referents in her head. Rumors about advanced covert military craft circulated in the Agency, but they'd never held any interest for her. Now she wished she'd paid more attention.

  The flying cylinder, as though responding to her wish, drew closer, expanding to the size of a wingless C-5 Sup
er Galaxy transport plane, if not bigger. Diana was past feeling surprise – in fact, she felt a sense of perverse destiny – when the cylinder settled down not more than a half-mile from her on Lake Winneska's beach. There was, of course, no way this could be happening except for in some silly science fiction UFO or invasion movie, but there it was – a huge, unknown craft sitting on the sandy shores of their local lake.

  But when a door opened in the object, an invading horde of well-armed alien soldiers did not emerge. Instead, a group of something that resembled balding gnomes bounded out, running with hunched backs, hands on the ground – sparse, stringy grey-brown hair flying over their shoulders.

  The gnome-creatures had scarcely disappeared into the adjacent woods when something that looked like a giant wolf strode out – on two legs. A single leap and a brief fluttering of bat-like wings propelled it to the top of the cylinder. Wings. After surveying the area, the "wolf" leaped again – this time fully extending its wings and soaring high over the town out of her view.

  A swarm of what appeared to be large rodents flowed out of the cylinder and ran off along the beach.

  No. Diana rubbed her forehead for a moment before slapping herself on the face. Wake up. Or maybe she shouldn't try to wake up. Right now she could still be under anesthesia. Did people dream under anesthesia? Everything she knew indicated they didn't. It was just lights out and lights back on.

  Okay, I'll play. Most of the people in town are dead. Probably not all, because if I'm alive, because of my anesthesia or some other freak lucky break, then someone else is alive, too. So something lethal was dropped on the town. Gas, biological, or other. Followed by –

  Another group of freakish creatures emerged from the cylinder. They looked like a bunch of young girls dressed up in fairy costumes, complete with fast-beating transparent wings. They moved with some caution – the main group pausing in the sand by the craft while a few others sprang off in other directions and swiveled around as if testing the air.

  An Army experiment involving animal mutations and a lethal atmospheric agent? That would explain the small town – and isolated place where the effects could be easily observed and controlled. Diana released a disbelieving grunt.

  "Not a fucking chance," she said.

  The fairy-costume girls jogged off the beach. If they were girls, they had to be elite athletes, perhaps professional gymnasts, given the speed of their movement and their three or four-meter strides. Diana shook her head. Trust your own eyes, Di. Those are not girls. They aren't even human beings.

  Diana held very still as the "girls" sprinted onto Main Street, running along the sidewalk past the hardware store on the other side of the street. Diana released her breath. They didn't strike her as the vanguard of an invading alien civilization. Something predatory, animalistic, about them. The same applied to the winged wolf. Everything in her gut told her these were animals. Alien animals, perhaps, but still animals.

  Diana regarded her SUV, which was parked only a few spaces out from the front doors. Once home, she could power up her cell. If the electricity was out there, she always had Dean's ham radio, which could be run by a hand-cranked generator, if need be.

  She strode out to her teal green Buick Enclave, keys in hand, pressing the unlock button. As was becoming a pattern, nothing happened. Crap. She released a frustrated breath. Of course, if her cell battery was dead, why not her key battery? She inserted the key into the door but turning it had no effect. Naturally, since the locking mechanism was electronically powered. She peered in through the driver's side window. It took a moment to register that the clock face was dark. The clock was always on, even with the ignition switched off.

  The car battery's dead, then. No point in trying to break in and start it.

  Diana leaned against her SUV, telling herself to stay calm, rational, to think through her next step. Across the street and to her left, Orchard Hardware caught her eye. Orchard carried guns. Lots of guns – tucked out of sight at the back of the store. She and her husband had purchased a couple of shotguns and pistols there in addition to their unregistered weapons.

  Would Orchard Hardware be open? The "Event," whatever it was, had happened Friday mid-afternoon. No reason for the stores on Main Street not to be open. She just needed to haul ass over there before any creature from the cylinder spotted her.

  She pushed off the car – and froze. A pair of young, blond-haired girls rode past the hospital parking lot on bikes, heading into town, their faces set in determination. They glanced at her but didn't pause. On a mission. Nothing in their expressions made Diana think they were aware of the creatures that had just emerged from the cylinder or the scope of what had just happened here.

  "Hey!" Diana shouted, raising a hand. "Hold on!"

  The two girls, perhaps ten or eleven, slowed their pedaling, looking back at her warily. Diana jogged after them.

  "It's not safe out here!" she called. "Go into the hardware store. We'll talk there."

  The girls stopped a few blocks up Main Street fifty or sixty yards from her, exchanging uncertain glances as if unsure they should obey this strange woman. Diana jogged toward them.

  The fairy-costume girls appeared with startling suddenness – a pair on the bank roof, three stepping out from around the far side of the building, another four springing from an alley across the street toward the cyclists. Those four spotted Diana and veered in her direction. Diana pulled up, searching for an escape route or some defensive resource. The creatures might be harmless, simply curious, but her evolutionary-biological senses were screaming otherwise.

  Diana backed toward a blue sedan parked on the curb. A glance in the driver's side window revealed a keychain with a fluffy pink ball hanging from the ignition. The four fairy-things closed in, but not too fast or too close. They split up on the far side of the sidewalk, three forming a semi-circle while the fourth hopped up on the car's hood. Diana continued backing into the door, feeling for the handle.

  As they maneuvered around her, any possibility of the creatures being harmless or merely curious vanished from Diana's mind. Their faces and heads were narrow, feral, yet oddly feminine as if a teenage girl's face had been compressed until it projected outward into a wolverine-like wedge, ending in thin-lipped mouths parted in what appeared to be smiles. Smiles teeming with sharp grey teeth. Their feet and hands (paws?) sported claws that matched the yellowish fur that covered most of their bodies. Their red and black eyes looked to Diana as if they'd been grafted on from a spider or a bee.

  And they all were sporting what appeared to be full-sized male erections. Were they intending to sexually assault her? But on a closer look, she noted the thick needle-like projection glistening at the end of the erect furry appendages. Stingers?

  Diana squeezed the car door handle, but as the door popped open one of them rushed her. She swiveled, preparing a sidekick. The creature backed off. Another sprang in closer, dancing away as Diana launched a short kick toward its midsection. She quickly judged that her years of on-again, off-again martial arts training wouldn't fare well against these creatures. Her bare hands and feet were no match for their claws, teeth, and stingers.

  A quick glance up the sidewalk showed the two girls huddled against each other with their bikes held out as barricades while five or six of the fairy things danced in a circle around them as if hearing bad Celtic music in their heads.

  Diana's concern for the girls was cut short by a clawed hand closing on her right shoulder from behind. The fairy on the hood! Diana was swinging her left fist even before seeing the gaping jaws and glaring red-black eyes descending over her right shoulder. Her timing was excellent – or lucky – as her left fist connected with the descending head right between its eyes. The creature fell off the car, but somehow maintained its grip on her right shoulder. Another rushed in – Diana sensed the motion and snapped a kick that caught it near the throat. It backed off making choking sounds, but two others sprang in from either side.

  Diana whipped th
e creature clinging to her around into their path, fumbling the door mostly open. She punched the still-attached fairy in the throat, but while its eyes seemed to lose focus it wouldn't let go. Diana squeezed through the partly open door into the car, dropping down in the front seat. She yanked the door inward, pinning the upper half of the fairy inside the car with her.

  Being crushed in the door seemed to wake the thing up. It made a noise halfway between a whine and a hiss and reached for her. Diana ducked back, maintaining her grip on the door handle. The fluffy keychain batted her face. I can take a clue. She jerked the keys from the ignition and jammed the longest one into the creature's right eye. The fairy released its hold with a buzzing shriek, jerking backward. Diana released tension on the door, letting it squirm free and flop on out on the sidewalk. She slammed the door shut.

  Diana straightened up in the front seat. Two fairies peered in at her but kept their distance, showing no interest in getting to her. Could they open a car door? She guessed not. They might look halfway human – they might be intelligent – but they were still animals.

  Up the sidewalk, forty or fifty feet away, fairies had latched onto each girl and were gyrating their hips as if pantomiming sexual intercourse. Diana stuck the now-bloody key back into the ignition and twisted. As she expected, not a sound – not even a futile battery-clicking.

  She watched the girls slump in the creatures' arms, their heads lolling backward. The fairies were feeding. Blood gushed and spurted as they buried their heads in the girls' necks and torsos while the girls twitched and feebly batted at them.

  No. For several moments Diana found it impossible to accept this as real. But as the fairies continued feeding, she saw no choice to accept this wasn't a hallucination.

  She was forty or fifty yards from Orchard Hardware. The fairies were forty or fifty feet from her. They were busy feeding and might not bother coming after her if she exited the car. Or they might. She couldn't out-sprint them, even with that lead and over such a short distance. She noted a pickup with a gun in its rack almost directly across the street. Thank God for hunters, whom she usually detested. Hypocritically detested, because she and her husband had been hunters as well, but people lacked the innocence of animals. Present animal company excepted.