James Patterson - Zoo

MY EYES OPENED I don’t know how many hours later. The room was so dark I almost couldn’t tell whether or not I’d opened my eyes. Not even an orange glow from the city outside. It was as if someone had put blackout curtains on the windows, which I hadn’t remembered doing.

Then: shaking. Some sort of clicking, metallic rattle. My eyes flitted around the dark room. It took me a moment to realize it was the doorknob.

The rattling became louder—and more violent—as if someone were trying to wrench the doorknob out of the door. A grinding, scratching sound soon accompanied it. Then came a tentative whump against the door.

My first thought was that it was one of the other scientists playing a joke. After the meeting, the beer had been flowing like water.

There was a second whump . Harder now. Something big and heavy behind it.

I sat up. I didn’t think it was a joke. It wasn’t funny enough.

The blow that followed made the top of the door crack. I heard wood splintering.

What the hell?

I threw back the sheet and was on my feet as the groaning hinges ripped free from the door frame. The door exploded inward, smashing against the floor.

An enormous shape filled the doorway. Then it didn’t. There was movement in the room. Then another huge shape darkened the door for an instant and was gone, inside the black room.

“Oz? Are you there?”

Behind me, Chloe sat up in the bed, reached over to the bedside lamp, switched it on, and screamed.

They were bears. Two bears—two massive fucking grizzly bears—filled the room, maybe five feet from the bed. The two bears moved forward on stout, powerful legs, their fur rippling over their bodies in waves. Drool swung from their open mouths, and their beady little black eyes stared outward, as blank and indifferent as death.

I could not move. It was as if my feet had been nailed down. There was no thinking. No fight-or-flight. Even my lizard brain had checked out.

Bear One reared back on his hind legs and swiped at me with his paw. I tumbled backward and felt bright hot wetness I knew was blood on my cheek and neck. My hand flew to my face: blood poured between my fingers, covered my face, stung my eyes.

Then I woke up on my back in the bed, screaming. My hands were flailing at the empty air above me. I reached for my neck. No blood. No pain.

It took me a moment to realize Chloe was screaming, too, beside me in the bed.

“Recevez les de moi!” she yelled in the dark.

I grabbed her shoulders.

“Get them off me! No!” Chloe said, pushing me away. Her eyes were open, but still seeing her nightmare.

“It’s okay, Chloe! It’s a dream! Just a dream!”

Her lungs sucked at the air. I held her and felt her body slowly loosen.

“But it was so real. We were sleeping, and then the door broke down and bears rushed in. I watched one of them kill you.”

“What?” I clicked on the light. “You dreamed about bears?”

“Yes. They were huge. Two huge grizzly bears broke down the door and came in the room.”

“Bullshit!” I hopped out of bed and began pacing.

“What is it?”

“I had the same dream. Two grizzly bears knocked down the door and came in, and one of them ripped my face off!”

“How is that possible? How is it possible we both had the same nightmare?”

I had heard of mutual dreaming before, but I’d always been skeptical, never having experienced it. Only in the most extreme cases were there reports of people dreaming the exact same thing. Was it because we were exposed to the same stimuli, or was it something else? Did it have to do with HAC? Surely not…

“ Mon Dieu, ” Chloe said. “What is this? I’m so scared, Oz. What is going on? What is happening to the world?”

A feeling like a vein of ice sliced from my toes to the top of my head.

“I don’t know,” I said, holding my head in my hands.

WHEN MY EYES opened again the next morning, Chloe was curled up against me, her head nestled in my armpit and my hand in her hair. Looking down at her, I thought about the night before. The shared nightmare, dreaming the same dream.

I didn’t know what to think. A definite first for me. Chloe didn’t seem to want to talk about it, either. She didn’t mention it as we got ready and went down to get our cab.

Outside, it was a crisp, sunny summer day. Sharp light, cloudless blue sky. Taxis and bike messengers, businesspeople going to work, sipping coffee, looking at their watches, Kindles out and earbuds in to isolate themselves for the commute. Seeing them made me think of the animals in Sri Lanka heading for the hills days before the tsunami while the people stayed behind, gathering seashells on the newly extended beach and wondering where the elephants went. Chloe and I exchanged a dark look as we rode. We didn’t have to say it. You could practically taste it in the air. Something bad was coming. Something the world had never seen.

The Dirksen Senate Office Building was in the northwest part of the Capitol complex on First Street. I was heartened when I spotted some national media trucks at the curb outside the majestic white marble building. At least we had a shot now at giving people a warning.

I also noticed some familiar faces waiting on the sidewalk beside the building’s steps. I shook hands with my old professors Gail Quinn and Claire Dugard. Dr. Charles Groh was there in his wheelchair. I patted his shoulder and squeezed it.

“Go get ’em, Oz,” Groh said, turning the pat into a hug. “You can do this.”

Chloe and I continued into the building, where white-shirted Capitol cops manned metal detectors. In the sweeping marble atrium behind them, spiffy Senate staffers, lobbyists, and press people swarmed about like bees in a hive, making honey and royal jelly. More shabbily dressed groups of people waited in line behind velvet ropes and looked bored.

As we headed for the security desk, we had to walk around a massive public art installation, a thirty-foot-tall sculpture that looked like a stainless steel oak tree. “Hi, I’m here for the ten o’clock hearing for the Committee on Environment and Public Works,” I said to the cop behind the desk. He was a big handsome black man with a shaved head and a face as hard to crack as a bank safe.

He sighed as he lifted his clipboard. “Name?” he said.

“Jackson Oz,” I said. “ O z , Oscar Zulu.”

He tsk-tsked as he shook his head at his clipboard. “Hmm. No Oz,” he said, and stared back up at me.

“There must be a mix-up,” I said. “I was invited by Senator Gardner yesterday at the last minute. Could you double-check with his office for me?”

The crime dog looked at me as if I’d asked to borrow his gun.

“Please?” tossed in Chloe, sweetening the sauce.

“Fine,” he said, leaning back in his squeaky leather chair and chinning the receiver of the desk phone. “Now I’m a receptionist, I guess.”

He punched some numbers. Then he turned in his chair and mumbled into the phone. He had a slight smirk on his face when he hung up.

“Just what I thought. They told me to watch out for you activist crazies at dispatch. Sorry, buddy. You’re not on the list, and you need to go now.”

My stomach fell inside me like an elevator that had snapped a cable. I exchanged a baffled look with Chloe.

“Did they say why?” I said.

“Don’t push it,” the cop said. “There’s the exit. Use it.”

I thought quickly. “The website said that some seats are open to the public. Can’t we just attend as spectators, then?”

He gave a dismissive noise through his nose, half chuckle and half snort. “How long you been in D.C.?” he said, pointing down the corridor behind him at the line of people behind the velvet rope.