Kat Falls - Inhuman

“The queens …” Dromo gasped and dropped the shovel he’d been holding. “What have you done?”

“I set them free.” I lifted my chin, daring him to berate me, but then I noticed the mound of freshly turned dirt behind them. My breath caught. “Cosmo?” When Dromo nodded, I flinched and very nearly bolted. But I wouldn’t let myself run away from Cosmo. Couldn’t. I dragged my wet palms down my dress and ventured closer to the small unmarked grave.

“The queens will … They’ll” — Penny dropped her voice to a whisper — “go after the handlers. They’ll kill them all.”

“They’ll try,” Dromo agreed. “We have to tell the others.”

I sank beside the mound of fresh earth, pulled down by the heaviness in my chest, and began patting the loose soil into place.

“With the queens free, we have a chance,” Dromo went on, his voice rising. “More than a chance.” I glanced back to see him unbuckle his collar. “We serve no more,” he declared and threw his collar to the ground. Penny dropped hers too, though with less fire.

I gave the dirt one last pat. “I’m so glad I got to know you,” I whispered to the small mound. “Good-bye, Cosmo.”

I rose and cut past the others. “Good luck.”

“Where are you going?” Dromo asked.

“The zoo.”

“You can’t,” he sputtered. “The queens have gone to free their followers — friends and family who were rounded up and infected after each divorce. No human will make it out of there alive.”

I stared at him, aghast. “Rafe!” I took off running for the bridge.

“Wait!” Dromo shouted, but I didn’t.

When I reached the bridge that crossed the Chicago River, I heard a clatter of wheels behind me. I turned to see the bull-man, Irving, trotting up with the rickshaw. “Dromo sent me,” he said. “I can get you there faster.”

“Thank you.” I scrambled onto the padded seat and felt no guilt about being hauled around by a manimal this time. Nor did I feel guilty to see that the queens had taken down the guards who patrolled the gate.

When we arrived at the south entrance to the zoo, Irv stopped the rickshaw by an iron fence. I climbed down, feeling shaky. “Will you wait for me?”

“You can’t go back to the castle.”

“I have to. A hovercopter is going to pick us up off the roof.”

He shook his immense head. “You’d never make it to the roof. Tonight we’re declaring war on the handlers. The smartest thing a human can do is stay away from the castle. Better yet, get out of Chicago for good.”

“But I have another friend who’s still in the castle.”

“Then you better pray for him.” Irv dropped the rickshaw poles and strode back toward the compound.

I slipped past the freestanding cages inside the entrance, which contained mongrels, each stranger than the last. I slunk up the brightly lit path toward the stone animal houses in the main part of the zoo. It was all so quiet. Maybe Mahari and the other lion-women had run off and not caused the distraction as promised or even freed their followers as Dromo had predicted.

I arrived at a row of cages along the outside wall of the primate house. Each enclosure contained at least one person, all in advanced states of mutation. Some growled as I hurried past, others hunkered down, moaning and rocking. Most were wild-eyed and foamy-mouthed — well into stage three of Ferae. A girl with spines down her back gnawed on her fist and licked off the blood. A dark figure hurtled out of the shadows of the next enclosure to mash his bumpy face against the steel wires. “Taaassste.” He grabbed for me. I whipped away, feeling hot claws drag over my back.

In the next cage, a ghostly woman crouched. She was completely hairless — nothing on her head, no eyebrows, no lashes. Her skin was so white, her veins showed through. She scratched her fingernails across the cement floor. “Why are you here?” she rasped.

She could talk. Good. “Which one of these buildings is the one they call the feral house?” I asked.

“Let me out and I’ll take you.” She rose on twisted legs, her eyes glinting.

“I’ll find it myself.” I moved on.

“The lion house,” she called after me. “That’s where the king keeps the most feral of us all.”

I turned back. Did I believe her?

“De nada,” she said with a flick of her forked tongue. I broke into a run.

The infected people paced alongside me as I passed their cages. They were so mutated and animalistic, they barely looked human. If Rafe had been shoved into a cage with one of them, given the battered state that he was in, he’d never be able to defend himself.

Voices came from around the bend. I ducked behind a tree, just as a group of handlers appeared, along with several hyboars. I scrambled up the back of the tree and perched on a thick branch, praying that the hyboars wouldn’t pick out my scent from all the other smells in the zoo.

There was a sharp bark. I twisted on my branch but saw nothing. Then I heard another cry — an animal screech. I crept out farther on my branch and looked down to see Charmaine slinking between the bushes. She was stalking the handlers. More bushes rustled. The handlers jerked to a stop, turning in place as roars welled up around them. Branches cracked as the lion-women burst out of the brush, racing for the handlers.

The men shouted and the hyboars leapt at the lion-women. Mahari raked at a hyboar’s face and sent it skittering back with a canine yelp. Two more lunged at her, squealing with rage. The handlers fired flares into the sky to call for backup. But it was too late. Growling lionesses took them down.

I should have felt sorry for the men, but all the pity had been wrung out of my heart when Cosmo died. The handlers had beaten him to death without a moment’s hesitation. Who knew how many other manimals had suffered at their hands?

The ferals in the nearby cages grew frenzied. Shifting back and forth, they slammed the bars of their cages, scratched at their own flesh, and beat their chests. The lionesses roared and the caged ferals responded in kind. Mahari bent over the dead handlers, plucking keys from their aprons, which she threw to Charmaine and Neve. “Free them all!”

“No,” I yelled, but the word was drowned in the bestial sounds thundering through the zoo. If the queens freed these ferals, Rafe and I would never make it out of the zoo alive.

The lion-women raced from cage to cage, unlocking them faster than I could follow with my eyes. The most savage ferals pounced from their enclosures while the timid hung back.

More handlers and hyboars ran up the path. They must have seen the flares. A wolf-man launched himself at the handler in the lead. The handler aimed his gun at the creature and pulled the trigger. The gun jumped in his hands, yet the wolf-man was upon him, ripping the gun away as his jaws closed on the man’s face. He whipped him from side to side. The handler went limp and the feral dropped him, threw back his head, and howled.

And then he noticed me.

He bounded for my tree and leapt into the air, trying to catch hold of my foot. I drew up into a crouch on my branch as the wolf-man jumped at me again, his eyes red with hate. But this time when he dropped, he collapsed on the ground in a heap. His clawed hand moved over his ribs and then stilled. Blood seeped under his fingers and his hand fell away, revealing the gunshot wound in his chest.

I dropped out of the tree and took a path that the lionesses hadn’t. I ran in a mindless haze, ignoring the searing pain in my calf. I paused when I heard a shrill chittering. A hunchbacked, rodenty-looking man jumped down from an ancient carousel and ran at me. I screeched at him and he veered off.

I whirled to try another path but a large brick building loomed before me. Mosaic lions decorated either side of the arching glass door. The feral house! The queens had said that the handlers would put Rafe in the enclosure outside or the small cage inside.