Bill Broun - Night of the Animals

“Nice one,” said Kieran. “You stupid, stupid fucks. You stupid fucks.”

He began to weep, and he covered his eyes with his hand.

IN THE DAY THE SIX HECTIC LANES OF MARYLEBONE Road — part of the central London Ring Road — presented a hazardous, ugly barrier for any rough beast seeking to cross between Regent’s Park and the rest of the Borough of Westminster. It was the shell of a dying ovum of humane governance, and within lay Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, etc. — none of which much interested any animal apart from Homo sapiens .

Cuthbert himself always made for the zebra crossings, such was the fearful alacrity of the taxigliders, commuters, and coaches on the thoroughfare, many on their way to Euston Station or to trendy Islington. At night, however, the road was sparsely trafficked and superbly desolate. The Green Line within the zoo seemed far, far away. It was just the sort of place a depressed gorilla such as Kibali, the silverback, might take a stand simply to breathe in the air beyond what he regarded as the small “forest” of Regent’s Park.

And he had done just that, testing his new state of autonomy, and only a few shocked drivers passed.

Freedom . He grimaced. He scratched his massive mandible with a long, shiny finger. He felt suspicious of what he saw.

Freedom — and where are the trees?

He was one of thousands of hurting creatures in the metropolis, but no one would ever know his story. He wished he could hide somewhere, under the green trunks of ayous trees. Were the Interahamwe militia nearby? He remembered everything from his last days in the wild. Obscured by foliage, he had seen the fighters cut open brown-eyed little ones, human and gorilla, like they were nothing more than papayas, and toss them aside. He did not expect better treatment here, for even his keepers had not respected him, he felt. They had often spoken to him impatiently. “Get bloo dy up and around, Kibali. Please , cocker.”

And there was something else — a kind of shadow, an umbrageous sleekness, following him. He turned around, several times, to look — nothing.

He finally crossed Marylebone Road to the west of where the chimps and jackals had. He had indeed been followed, too, and by beings not shadowy at all. Behind him, two of the three elephants released — Layang and Mahmoud — were thundering right along, treating him as a sort of guide.

Now he was knucklewalking down the middle of Baker Street, throwing forward his furry black arms, as big and strong as mastiffs, in perfect alternation with his legs. There were no trees on Baker Street, no green lines. He felt disorientated. He looked behind him — the elephants wagged their heads, angry or excited — he did not know, he did not care. He felt angry and unable to catch his breath. There was something more dangerous than these animals. There was a true hunter near — he could smell its hot, sweet urine. Where were the other apes of the zoo he sometimes called to in the night? Where was his old friend, Thin Lips? Where was his cousin, bred in captivity, Small Girl? Were they all dead?

That the jackals could still be mistaken for dogs was understandable, but the sight of a four-hundred-pound ape trailed by two Asian elephants was fairly distinctive outside the Sherlock Holmes Steak House. The light flow of late-night traffic on Baker Street rushed onto the pavements like waters parting. Doors were hurriedly locked, 999 calls breathlessly made, and escape routes worked out. The one exception, the N74 night bosonicabus operator, who truly had seen it all, after trying to Opticall in (the local networks were jammed), managed to navigate carefully around the animals, then speed on, extraordinarily unfazed — she had a schedule, didn’t she, and she ’adn’t time for these scofflaw Hollywood film people you get at night, or whoever it was goofing on her route with animals — without a proper permit, obviously. “Flaming Nora,” she hissed. “What’s all this, now?”

But not a soul dared approach the beasts, who indeed did find themselves without permits.

At Portman Square, Kibali’s pounding heart rose. There were trees, at last. He could hardly catch his breath now, but he wanted to go home, to the northeastern Congo, and at that moment the enormous lime and plane trees seemed the closest thing. Just as he approached, the unpredictable elephant Mahmoud stood back on his haunches and trumpeted the kind of powerscream he had not heard for years.

Kibali whipped around to look, in terror and in glee. Now the fighters would come for him, wherever he went, he thought. Perhaps the shadow-creature he had sensed earlier would make itself known, too — perhaps as an ally, if not a friend. In any case, he felt driven away from Portman Square, and funneled southward, toward the unknown.

As he lurched onward in Baker Street, his chest aching, the confidence of the aristocratic and moneyed world confronted him. There were restaurants called Texture and Blueprint North; a toy shop known as Petit Chou; a beauty shop named Elemis Spa. It all struck him as refined but oddly lifeless. There were no good urine stenches. There was no hair on the necks of the mannequins he saw. Soon, running as fast as he could, he crossed Oxford Street, which was mostly deserted, over to Orchard Street. He could see, farther ahead, a beautiful green-blackness — no gliders, no machines, no buildings, just dark sanctuary. It was Grosvenor Square, of course, the home of the American Embassy. (A replacement chancery had been built in south London in 2017, but it had been twice flattened by terrorists.) Grosvenor was the only other big patch of forest in the vicinity, and beyond it the treetops of two great royal parks, St. James and Hyde, yoked together into a giant green-brown sky-arcade. Follow the Green Line , he found himself thinking, in gorilla, as if the spirer Cuthbert’s thinking was now spreading to other creatures. Mahmoud had stayed at Portman Square, to fight perceived aliens and to trample cars and to bellow for justice (until he was shot by snipers), but Layang had followed Kibali, sensing the growing threat behind their little herd.

CHANDANI AND THE THREE OTHER LIONESSES stalked the central court of their dirty enclosure, cutting back and forth like tongues of blown fire. They looked enlivened by the return of Cuthbert, but angry, too, to be stuck. The haggard male, Arfur, sat in their midst with his paws extended, as smugly inert as they were uneasy. As for St. Cuthbert, he was tired. He felt the stumpy-legged daze of fading Flōt. There was, again, that peculiar, disassociated sense that the entire night was unreal. He leaned up against the main wall of the enclosure.

Behind the enclosure, the gathering lights of dozens of emergency gliders set the lime trees and hazel shrubs and ivy banks aglow like green lamp shades of all sizes and sorts. The entire horizon burned with yellow and blue radiance, and the two colors, striated through the shrubbery, combined into a distinctive emerald green.

Since Cuthbert left them earlier, the lions had also caught glimpses of the Neuters, and instinctively, they recognized them as a somewhat detestable prey for the hunt — but prey indeed.

“I said I would return,” St. Cuthbert was telling the great felines.

“The hour’s late,” said Arfur, shaking his great, tawny head. “Let us out, holy man. The Gate — the Heaven’s Gate — is soon to open.” Arfur jumped to his feet, and he continued: “One side is here, beside us, somewhere in the zoo, and the other is somewhere south — near Grosvenor Square, we are told. Once the Gate opens, it will destroy us all. We must stop it!”