Fierce Kingdom Read online

  There are so many things that did not exist before him.

  There is one thing that Kailynn knows: it is her mother’s fault. If her mother had not snatched away her phone, everything would be different. Kailynn would be standing here calling the police or her dad or anyone. People must be desperate to hear from her. She thinks of how Victoria at school posted a zillion messages after that car wreck when she got a concussion, and everyone was so worried, and that was nothing compared to being trapped in a storage closet at the zoo.

  But, no, just because she overslept three mornings in a row and missed car pool and her mother had to drive her to school, just because of that she has no phone. There is a good chance that her mother will feel so guilty about this whole thing that Kailynn will get a brand-new phone altogether.

  This is almost enough to cheer her, but not quite. The steel door is solid and cold against her hand, and she likes the smooth metal feel of it, so she spreads out her fingers, like she’s making a handprint. Her hand is sticky with ketchup.

  She is the only one here. When she has her phone, she is never the only one.

  Also on that third day she ran late, she looked out her bedroom window and saw the other girls in car pool backing out of her driveway, and she ran down the stairs to catch them. It wasn’t her fault they left so fast. It definitely shouldn’t have counted as being late. But her mother didn’t care.

  Kailynn slides the bolt, cracks open the door, and peers through the thinnest sliver of space. Nothing. No one. She pushes her hair away from her face and bites into an animal cracker. A giraffe. The sugar takes away the cotton taste in her mouth, even though she would rather have onion rings or French fries.

  Food always helps.

  Her dad makes fun of her for not wanting to be alone, for doing her homework in whichever room has somebody else in it—in the den with him watching TV or in the kitchen with her mother cleaning the counters. He says she doesn’t even like to be in her own bedroom by herself, and that must be true, because she shares the bedroom with her sister even though they’ve told her that since she’s the oldest, she can move to the basement. But she likes to hear someone else breathing while she’s trying to fall asleep.

  She wishes her mother were here.

  She is fine. She is in the safest place imaginable, and if anyone comes back, she can deadbolt this door and they will never get to her. It is dumb to be scared. Her father wouldn’t be scared. When he was a kid, he took a pistol into the woods and shot animals and then cut them open to see what was inside. He set a chair on fire just to watch it burn. He never sat around, wishing. He did things.

  She wishes she were someone who did things.

  She eats another animal cracker. A lion.

  Margaret always times her walk so that she gets to the elephants at 5:10 p.m., which is usually when the handlers are out in the feeding pen, calling out commands to make the animals go forward and backward and kneel and lift their feet. The handlers say the end-of-the-day routine is designed to check for issues with joints or hooves, but Margaret suspects they enjoy showing off.

  She likes watching, regardless. It is a free circus show that no one else in the zoo seems to know is taking place, and she cannot imagine what possesses those sad old people in jogging suits to get their exercise by doing laps around a shopping mall. She comes here every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, walking as briskly as she can manage for exactly an hour, just like the doctor recommended. She always heads back to the parking lot after the elephants are led into their metal-and-brick building.

  Margaret is always prompt, but the handlers are not. Sometimes she arrives and the pen is empty of everything but a couple of puzzled elephants. The elephants are more reliable than the handlers. She suspects that the handlers are millennials who care more about yoga and inner peace than about actually doing their jobs.

  So today when she sees an empty pen in front of her, it is not the lack of humans that surprises her but the lack of elephants. She can see them at a distance, lumbering through the landscaped savannah. They are off their routine. She waits for a few minutes, standing in the shade of a huge metal crate. She keeps her headphones on—she is only two chapters from the end of her Patricia Cornwell—and she stares up at the sign on the crate that asks, HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW YOU TRANSPORT AN ELEPHANT?

  She finally takes off her headphones, sliding her MP3 player in her pocket, and she feels the wrongness immediately. She tenses, and there is no clear reason for it. She decides it is only the silence and stillness that is bothering her. She checks her watch, struck by the thought that maybe she has lost track of time. But, no, there are still a few minutes before closing.

  Normally she would see a few other visitors straggling toward the exit. Today she sees no one.

  Of course, she is standing at the bottom of a steepish slope at the edge of the elephants’ territory. Between the hill rising in front of her and the metal crate to her right, she doesn’t have much of a view. She starts up the hill, shaking off her nerves, but before she reaches the top, she hears two quick sounds, little bursts of static or cracks of thunder. Almost at the same time she hears a voice, high-pitched, only a single note. She cannot call it a scream.

  She takes another step, enough that she can see the thatched pavilion of the themed restaurant, and she hears footsteps coming toward her quickly. She can’t say why, but she spins around and starts back down the hill, turning in a way that makes her bad knee buckle. She ignores the pain and hurries through the opening of the big metal crate, which is darker inside than she expected.

  She presses herself against the wall, cold metal against her arms. She feels foolish, but she steps deeper into the shadows, keeping her eyes on the opening of the crate, watching the unchanging view of the sand in the elephant pen. She hears more footsteps, and then she hears hushed voices, and then the footsteps get faster. She hears someone rattle metal or glass. A door slamming. More cracking sounds.

  She wonders if elephants ever feel claustrophobic. The turquoise stone in her necklace is chill against her skin, and she touches it with her fingers. She bought it because it was the exact color of her fleece. There is still a satisfaction in the perfect match.

  She does not know how many minutes have passed. She has not moved, because, whatever is happening, Margaret doesn’t believe in acting too quickly. She likes to consider the full context of a problem. This served her well in lightening her hair to a honey blond that doesn’t show gray, and it served her in buying a newish but uninteresting townhome instead of the pretty Art Deco cottage with roof issues, and it served her in keeping her mouth shut when her daughter decided to homeschool her grandson, who, God knows, could use some social interaction.

  Margaret thinks of her daughter’s face, always tired-looking because she refuses to put on lipstick when she leaves the house.

  A gnat dives into the crate and gets lost in the dark. She has not heard any noise for quite a while. What felt so real for a moment now seems like some sort of panic attack, and she feels a familiar, clinical kind of concern about early-onset Alzheimer’s or a brain tumor. There are all kinds of explanations for running and faraway screaming. Teenagers, likely. It is possible that she is already locked inside the zoo, bound to run into a very condescending employee, and she cannot bring herself to stand here any longer, hiding in a giant box.

  So she steps outside, noticing how the sun has disappeared behind the line of trees. She slowly walks to the top of the hill, giving her knee a chance to loosen: standing still is the worst thing for it. She sees nothing but the same old exhibits—the playground off to her right and the monkeys swinging on their ropes at the primate house.

  She has become a nervous old woman.

  She looks down the walkway and heads toward the Sahara Snack Hut or whatever it’s called. She can hear her rubber soles on the concrete, and the air smells strange and smoky. She accidentally ki
cks a baby’s cup that has been left on the ground. She passes under the thatched roof of the restaurant pavilion, and as she steps out from under its shadow, she sees a movement through a hedge of jungle plants. The vending machines are blocking her view. It could have been the plants shifting in the wind, but it might have been a person on one of the other pathways. An employee? She might as well face him.

  She starts across the concrete, angling toward the Coke machine. There is a door leading into the restaurant, though, just before she reaches the vending machines.

  She only notices the door as she is passing it.

  She only notices it as it opens.

  She only notices it as a hand flashes from inside, pulling her backward.

  He has lost Mark. Robby does not know what to do now, standing here by himself, staring at hogs. Mark would know what to do, surely, and he cannot have just vanished. He is so quiet, though, Mark. That is the problem. He can slip away without you noticing.

  No one ever says Robby is too quiet.

  He and Mark were standing by the lake, right next to each other, as the first shots sprayed through the air—you couldn’t see the actual bullets, but you could see brick shards and bits of leaves and branches from the parrot habitat and also feathers, bright ones, and the air was churned up and crowded like in the middle of a storm only faster and no one had ever told him guns could make it like that. There was screaming, the wordless kind, and also a lot of people’s names being yelled—“Elizabeth!” over and over. There was a moment when he was frozen by all of it, and then he and Mark started running, following the few people who could still move—a dozen or so were on the ground by then, faceup and facedown, and he stepped over a woman whispering nothing as he rushed up the hill and they tried the restaurant at the top of the hill but there was no luck there, and then they headed toward the jungle cats, and Mark was still right next to him. But then Robby looked over his shoulder, and Mark was gone. So Robby stopped here in this shaded gazebo by the wild hogs, only the sign calls them boars.

  It is a pretty good place, because there are walls around him, so you can’t see him from a distance, but he can look through the slits between the boards and watch the walkways. The boars are snuffling around the dirt in their pen, tusks filthy. They don’t care about guns and bullets. He can tell that for sure.

  Robby does not know if he should keep moving or wait here. Should he call out and hope that the wrong people don’t hear him?

  It is easier to wait. To watch. He is good at watching.

  There are not so many things he is good at. He thinks of a birthday party from a long time ago, and he does not want to think of it—he tries to focus on the boars, on the size of their heads and how they do not have necks and, no, he will not think of the birthday, but he is somehow firing the wrong neuron, one that does not delete but instead bolds: the day when he walked into Aidan’s party, the one where his mother told him that there would be s’mores, and he loved s’mores, and Aidan’s mother answered the door and gave him a hug and showed him how she had set up a tent in the den.

  Aidan’s mother was pretty, dark hair so long, and she was especially nice and agreed with him about how the Raiders had the scariest NFL logo. In his memory, he is having a good time talking to Aidan’s mother, and it was so nice that someone was listening, and the other kids were doing something else—some sort of fishing game with clothespins and string?—and then he needed to go to the bathroom. When he was coming back down the hallway, he heard Aidan’s mom talking.

  “I have something to say to all of you,” she was saying, and her voice was very serious, and he’d sped up because he did not want to miss any instructions about graham crackers and chocolate.

  “I want you to be nice to Robby,” she said just as he was getting to the doorway, just as he was pressing himself against the wall and making himself invisible. “He’s unique. That’s all.”

  Robby had known already that he was not quite the same as the others. But it changed things to hear the words announced. Aidan’s mom was trying to make it sound like she was giving him a compliment, but it was not one, and he knew that and so did everyone else. And now here he is, nothing but wild pigs for company, and they are covered in mud and shit, disgusting, and today was supposed to be different, wasn’t it? Finally. He was part of something. He fit. But maybe the others were only being patient, and maybe they planned this the whole time. No, that doesn’t make sense.

  He rubs his hands against his pants. Opens and closes his fingers. Sweaty hands. That was another problem with kid parties—too many hand-holding games, and they’d say, Oh, your hands, and once even a grown-up called him that sweaty kid. But the breeze is helping, drying his palms, and he can’t just stand here, pussing out. He has to think, even though he is better at feeling, well, not great exactly, but he feels plenty. He feels too much. More than other people feel, and he tells them that sometimes, but they don’t understand.

  He is supposed to be paying attention. He looks left and right, focusing on anything moving. He needs to be looking for people. There is a swish of the tails from the zebra exhibit farther down the walkway. The railroad track. Trees. Squirrels in the branches, running after each other. He tries to look at all of it.

  Before Robby lost Mark, he heard him say that they will die if they don’t get out of here. He looks at the boars again. He thinks of the whispering woman he stepped over while he was running. She had on a khaki zoo uniform, and almost exactly half of her shirt had turned purplish-red. He watches the boars and thinks how it would be to have one for a pet, and he thinks the same thing about the squirrels, about pets, but also about the two squirrels chasing each other, whether it is a game or something serious, and how do these squirrels feel about each other?

  Think.

  Think.

  Is it so hard for everyone else to make the right thoughts stay lined up, one following the other, train cars hooked together? He is always veering off, and the feelings are pushing up again. Where is Mark? Will he be standing here alone until men with guns come in and shoot him dead, and was it the biggest mistake he’s ever made to come to the zoo today? Was he stupid? He is stupid, mostly. Sometimes he is sure of it, and his mother always hates it when he says that, and his mother—He closes his eyes, tries to catch his breath. Why does he do this? Why does he always wind up, too late, wishing he could undo things, wishing he could start over, hating how he screwed up, knowing he will screw up again?

  One of the boars is taking a leak on the ground. They are gross animals, ugly and stupid-looking, and why did they let themselves get caught in a cage in the first place?

  He raises the gun in his hand, settling the barrel into his palm, lifting it over the fencing. He pulls the trigger. His hearing has been off, muzzy, since they came through the entrance, and he wishes they’d thought to bring ears with them, but now the shots don’t sound as loud. He goes for speed instead of accuracy, aiming at head, belly, and tail: he would like to shoot off the tail. He’s only a couple of yards away instead of forty or fifty yards, like at the range, and this target isn’t moving like the people, so he’s surprised by the damage he does. The first pig is ripped open, everything spilling out of its belly into the dirt, steaming, and the second boar is dead, too, and he backs out of the gazebo before the smell gets to him.

  No one ever mentioned the smells.

  He keeps his fingers curved around the trigger of his Bushmaster, a classic, and he feels solid again. He’s gotten the thoughts and the feelings under control. He doesn’t know why Mark gives him crap about how he needed an adjustment to the handle, how the extended back strap would give him a better angle. He likes it just like it is. It feels good in his hand.

  He hears footsteps. He turns, gun ready.

  “Calm down, moron!” yells Mark, ducking so low he is nearly on his knees. He has his Glock in his hand and a Smith & Wesson in his holster.

 
Robby lowers the gun. “Where have you been?”

  “Hunting. I thought you were right behind me. You ready?”

  Robby nods.

  6:00 p.m.

  Joan is not sure she has ever been so attentive to the shifting of the sky. The one fiery stripe she could see right after the sun vanished has spread and deepened. The entire sky is striated now, the color of a peeled peach. The colors are only intensifying.

  She hears a sound from inside the Primate Zone. Something heavy slamming, either a door closing or something being dropped. The popping sound of not-balloons again—the rhythm of it like fingernails tapping fast on a desk—and then the shattering of glass. A high-pitched squeal, not human.

  It is all muted, like the volume turned slightly too low, but clearly someone is moving through the building. Someone who is not afraid of being heard.

  “Shhh,” she whispers to Lincoln. “Don’t say a word. Be still like a statue. He’s coming.”

  Lincoln does not ask her who.

  “Put your arms around me,” she whispers. “Close your eyes and disappear.”

  She wants to close her eyes, too, but does not. Instead she times her breaths to his. She feels his hands tangle in her hair and press against her neck. She can feel him against her, from his feet to his forehead.

  He is not standoffish like some little boys. He is a warm mass of affection. He knows that he has permission to come climb in their bed at seven thirty in the morning—seven-three-zero, he calls it—and he respects these terms diligently. No matter how early he wakes up, he’ll sing away in his bed until the precise time, and then he will grab an armload of stuffed animals and push open their bedroom door, announcing, It’s seven-three-zero. I’m here to snuggle.