Sara Gruen - Ape House

“Try to run over some protesters while you’re at it,” said Isabel.

“There’s nobody out there,” said Celia.

“Really?” said Isabel. There had been a gaggle of protesters outside the gates every day for almost a year, silently holding placards that showed great apes undergoing terrible procedures. Since the protesters obviously had no clue as to the nature of the work being done at the language lab, Isabel always ignored them.

Celia opened the viewfinder of the video camera and then flicked the switch to check its battery. “Larry-Harry-Gary and Green-Haired Freaky Dude were there before dinner but they were gone when I went out for a smoke.”

“‘Green-Haired Freaky Dude’? This from the girl with hot pink hair?”

“It is not hot pink,” Celia said, fingering a pixie curl in front of her ear. “It’s fuchsia. And I have nothing against his hair color. I just think he, himself, is an asshat.”

“Celia! Language!” Isabel whipped her head around and noted with relief that Bonzi had wandered back into the TV room, thereby missing this opportunity to enrich her vocabulary. “You have got to be more careful. I’m serious.”

Celia shrugged. “What? They didn’t hear me.”

Isabel felt her eyes wander over to Celia again. The intern’s body art fascinated and repulsed Isabel almost equally. A labyrinthine swirl of nudes and mermaids tumbled down her shoulders and frolicked along her forearms, their hair and breasts entwined with the scaly limbs and tails of creatures borne from hell. A smattering of horseshoes and daisy-eyed skulls rained down on the whole, which was sharply rendered in reddish pinks, yellows, purples, and ghostly bluish greens. Isabel was only eight years older than Celia, but her own brand of rebellion had been to bury her nose in books and ride the scholarship train away from home as far and fast as possible.

“Okay. I’m off,” Celia declared, tucking the video camera under her arm. Isabel went back to the dishes, listening as Celia’s footsteps receded down the hallway.

A moment later, the door creaked open. Isabel spun on her heels. “Wait! You do have a valid driver’s-”

The door slammed shut. Isabel stared at it for a moment, then tucked a bottle of Lubriderm under her arm and went in to watch the end of the movie.

Sam had reasserted ownership of the ball, and Mbongo was sulking in his nest, the picture of desolation. He wore his new backpack, whose concave shape betrayed the ball’s absence. His shoulders slumped forward, and he hugged his arms across his chest. Isabel knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Did Sam take his ball back?” she asked, signing and speaking at the same time.

Mbongo stared forlornly ahead.

“Do you need a hug?” asked Isabel.

At first he didn’t respond. Then he signed with a flurry: KISS HUG, KISS HUG.

Isabel leaned in and took his head in both hands. She kissed his creased forehead and straightened his long black hair. “Poor Mbongo,” she said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow I’ll get you another ball. But don’t carry this one in your teeth. Okay?”

The bonobo pulled his lips back in a smile and nodded quickly.

“Do you need some oil? Let me check your hands,” said Isabel, reaching for his arm.

Mbongo obligingly stretched it toward her. Isabel took his hand and ran her fingers over it. Although the lab had humidifiers going all the time in the winter, the air still couldn’t compete with that of the bonobos’ native Congo Basin.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. She squeezed a glob of Lubriderm onto her palm and massaged it into his long, heavily knuckled hand.

As one, the bonobos turned to face the hallway.

“What is it?” Isabel looked from face to face, puzzled.

VISITOR, signed Bonzi. The rest of the apes remained motionless, their eyes trained on the door.

“No, not a visitor. The visitors left. The visitors are gone,” said Isabel.

The apes continued to stare down the hallway. Sam’s hair rose until it stood on end, and a pricking like tiny spiders crept over Isabel’s neck and scalp. She rose and muted the TV.

Finally she heard it-a muffled rustling.

Sam pulled his lips back and screamed, “Whah! Whah! Whah!” Bonzi scooped baby Lola under her arm, grabbed a hanging fire hose with the other, and swung onto the lowest of the platforms that jutted from the walls at various heights. Makena joined them, grinning nervously, clinging to the other females.

The rustling stopped, but all eyes-human and ape-remained on the hallway. After a moment, the rustling was replaced by a muted jiggling.

Sam’s nostrils flared. He turned to Isabel and signed urgently, VISITOR, SMOKE.

“No, not a visitor. It’s probably just Celia,” Isabel said, although she couldn’t hide the apprehension in her voice. Celia hadn’t had time to get the coffee and return. Besides, Celia would just come in.

Sam stood up and swaggered a few bipedal steps.

The females swung to an even higher perch and backed against the wall. Mbongo and Jelani darted around the corners of the room on all fours.

Isabel let herself out through the partition that defined the bonobos’ inner sanctum and stopped to check that it was locked behind her. In eight years of daily contact, she’d never seen the bonobos act like this. Their adrenaline was contagious.

She flicked on the light. The hallway looked as it always did. The noise, whatever it was, had stopped.

“Celia?” Isabel asked tentatively. There was no answer.

She walked toward the door that led to the parking lot. When she glanced behind her, Sam galloped silently past the doorway of the group room, a dark and muscled mass.

Isabel reached for the doorknob and then retracted her hand. She leaned in close to the door, her forehead nearly touching it.

“Celia? Is that-”

The explosion blasted the door entirely out of its frame. As it carried her backward, she processed that she and the door were being propelled down the hall by a billowing, rolling wall of fire. She felt lucid and detached, parsing the events as though examining consecutive frames of a video. Since there was no time to react, she recorded.

When she slammed into the wall, she noted that her skull stopped moving before her brain did. When the door came to a stop against her, trapping her upright, she observed that the left side of her face-the side she’d had pressed against the door-took the brunt of the impact. When her eyes filled with stars and her mouth with blood, she filed these facts away for future reference. She watched helplessly as the fireball whooshed past the door and rolled onward toward the apes. When the door finally tipped forward and released her, she crumpled to the ground. She couldn’t breathe, but she did not appear to be on fire. Her eyes shifted to the empty doorway.

Shadowy figures in black clothes and balaclavas swarmed in and spread out, strangely, frighteningly silent.

Crowbars swung and glass flew, but the people didn’t speak. It wasn’t until one of them knelt briefly by her head, with oversized rubber-band lips mouthing the word “Shit!” that she realized she couldn’t hear. And still she couldn’t breathe. She fought to keep her eyes open, fought the crushing weight in her chest.

Black-and-white static, the roar of a million bees interrupted by the fluttering of her own eyelids. A vision of boots running past her. She lay on her back with her head tilted to the right. She moved her tongue, fat as a sea slug, and pushed one, two, and then three teeth from the corner of her mouth. More static, longer this time. Then blinding light and crushing pain. She was suffocating. Her eyes drifted shut.