Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
It was after midnight when the Headhunters’ cacophony died down to silence. Raven waited another hour, crouched at the foot of the wolves’ den. Every muscle tensed, her heart burning. Anger zapped through her like a live wire.
Fog drifted, snaking between the trees. Luna had finally succumbed to restless sleep inside the den.
Shadow stretched out a few feet from Raven.
He was awake, alert, though his head rested upon his paws.
His ears flicked this way and that as he listened to the animals express their anxiety and confusion.
The bonobos screeched and hooted, pleading and begging for food. Kodiak bellowed hungrily. The remaining timber wolves howled in grief, their keening wail rising toward the sliver of the moon and the hard uncaring stars.
Raven could make out three distinct voices. Three still alive. That meant three of the timber wolves were dead.
She clenched one of the tranquilizer guns in one hand. The hunting rifle was slung over her shoulder. It was fully loaded. She was not completely weaponless.
She would do her best to make sure the rest of Haven’s creatures lived through the night. After that, she didn’t know.
With the world outside dead and dying, maybe there would be enough food for the animals. Without the humans encroaching on their habitats or hunting them to extinction, perhaps the captive zoo animals could survive out there, could finally live in freedom.
Of course, they might eat each other. Or go after the few surviving humans.
There were probably better plans. Smarter ideas. But she was out of time. And she was on her own.
Her dad would have known what to do. Whatever his flaws, he would’ve stood beside her and defended their home. He would’ve done a far better job than she could on her own.
The sudden ache in her chest stole her breath. She missed him with every beat of her heart. The pain of her loss felt like her soul being ripped out of her chest.
Only a few days ago, she couldn’t wait to get away from her father. Now she missed him with an urgent desperation she couldn’t put into adequate words.
She’d be thrilled to see her mother, too. I’ll forgive you. I’ll forgive you if you just come back. Please come back.
But neither of them would ever come back. She was completely alone.
Raven blinked hard and glanced at the big black wolf. No, not completely alone. Not anymore. Whatever the terms of this strange new relationship, the wolf gave a measure of comfort. She would take whatever scraps she could get.
With the wolves nearby, she felt stronger, more courageous.
It was time to be brave.
Raven unbuttoned her raincoat but didn’t remove it. Still crouched, she tugged the hood over her head and hoisted her backpack and the hunting rifle to her shoulders.
“Come with me, Shadow. I want you to live. I want you to be safe. If you stay here, you’ll die like the other wolves that I couldn’t save. Please, follow me and be free.”
His ears twitched, like he was listening. In some strange way, she felt like he could understand her, or at least that he realized she was attempting to help him, that they were on the same side in this battle.
She kept her voice calm and soothing, breathing deeply to settle her heart rate. “Come with me. I’m going to set you and Luna free. This is the only way I can think of to help you, the way you helped me when I needed to hide. Okay? Come with me.”
She rose to her feet and moved for the trees, headed for the gate. She didn’t hear Shadow move, but when she reached the gate, he was right behind her.
Warily, she scanned the grounds outside the enclosure. The fog lay white and dense as a stifling blanket, deadening sound. She could see less than thirty feet in any direction. Her pulse rushed in her ears.
No lights were bobbing through the fog. No murky figures darting in the shadows. An oppressive silence had settled dense and heavy over the sanctuary. She heard no night sounds, not even crickets or the rustle of leaves.
When she was sure the coast was clear, she unlocked the gate with a press of her palm and opened it wide for the hybrids. She stepped through to the second gate and opened that one as well. She turned back to the wolf.
Shadow remained inside the enclosure. He regarded her curiously, his tail half-raised.
She gestured to him to follow her. “You’re free now.”
He made up his mind quickly. He trotted through the gates, sniffing the ground eagerly, taking in all the new, strange scents. His ears pricked, and he turned back toward the enclosure before letting out a series of low yips.
A moment later, Luna appeared out of the mist like a white ghost. She paused at the first gate, hesitating. Shadow yipped to her again as if in encouragement, tail low and gently waving.
Luna whined. Her ears flattened. She certainly didn’t care for this crazy idea.
“I know, I get it. We have to take the risk. It’s the only way.”
Shadow loped over to the white wolf and nuzzled her neck with his muzzle, as if to offer reassurance. He strode a few yards past the gate and turned, looking over his shoulder with that same encouraging gaze he’d given to Raven.
Luna’s tail lifted. She took a hesitant step outside the enclosure. She raised her head, sniffing, her ears lifting tentatively.
“It’s okay,” Raven whispered.
Luna jerked her head in Raven’s direction and growled.
Raven raised her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I won’t talk to you or look at you. I get it.”
Seemingly reassured that Luna would follow in her own time, Shadow bounded off toward the bears with great enthusiasm. Luna moved slowly, warily, investigating every scent and object before moving on.
They loped toward the center of the park, headed toward the walk-in enclosure with the lake and the flamingos.
“That’s the wrong way,” she whispered as loud as she dared. “Shadow! Luna! Come back. The woods are this way.”
They didn’t listen, didn’t even bother with an ear twitch or tail wag. They were wolves, after all. The alpha pair. They obeyed no one, especially not a teenage girl.
Raven watched them go, a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t actually believed they would follow her around like faithful companions, had she?
They weren’t dogs. They were wild creatures. The king and queen of the forest.
She knew that. Yet she’d somehow expected that they would willingly follow her to safety, that she would save them, and miraculously, they would understand and appreciate what she’d done.
Instead, they’d loped off in the opposite direction of safety. She had no way to call them back or redirect them. She could only pray they’d make it out on their own.
She wasn’t a praying type of girl, but she prayed then. Fervently, with her whole heart and soul.
A mournful howl split the silence. A second and then a third joined the chorus. The hairs on Raven’s arms stood on end. The surviving timber wolves needed her now, too.
No time to waste on self-pity and worry. There was too much to do.
First, she made for the back gate of the wildlife refuge to open it for the animals to escape.
Using the bioscanner to unlock it, she swung the gates wide and disengaged the electrified wires along the entire exterior perimeter fence.
Without the electrified top wires, the tiger, zebra, and wolves could leap the wrought-iron fence at any point along the perimeter.
The bears and bonobos could clamber over it, while the foxes—Zoe, Zelda, and Magnus—and the otters could squeeze through the bars.
The remaining animals would have to find the open gate to get out.
After propping open the rear gate with a rock, Raven moved stealthily back to the timber wolves’ paddock. On a normal night, they’d be locked in their night house. This was no normal night.
Even through the mist, she could see their filmy shapes in the center of their clearing. They sat on their haunches, heads thrown back as they howled their sorrow at the sky. It was a beautiful, tragic, haunting song that filled her heart with grief.
Moving quickly, her eyes stinging, she unlocked the gates and flung them open. Suki, Loki, and Aspen were the only ones left. She scanned the grounds for the bodies of the other three. Several patches of blood gleamed in the moonlight. The bodies were gone.
The Headhunters must have shorted out the electrified top wires of the fence with a branch or something similar, then climbed inside to retrieve the carcasses of the dead wolves, since they couldn’t open the gates. Sour-sick nausea sloshed in her stomach.
“The gate is open,” she whispered. She pushed the heartache somewhere down deep. She couldn’t think about the dead. She had to focus on the living. “Come on, Suki. Let’s go, Loki. I’m sorry for your pack. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save them. It’s time to go.”
The wolves’ howls ceased abruptly. They rose to their feet and padded toward her on silent paws, their heads and tails low.
Her brain told her she should feel fear, but she didn’t. Not after her terrifying night with the hybrids. Compared to them, the timber wolves seemed practically tame. They knew her. They had known her father.
Still, caution was needed. Stupid gets you killed every time, her dad used to say.
Raven pulled the gate back against the fence so that it made a triangular shape with her body safely inside it, the gate between her and the timber wolves. It wasn’t much protection, but the wolves had more important matters on their minds than bothering with her—like escape.
Escape they did. Loki and Aspen galloped out of the enclosure. They took off in the direction of the lodge. Perhaps they scented the meat left in the rendering shed. Or the lingering scents of the Headhunters who’d slaughtered their pack.
Only shy, meek Suki remained inside. She whimpered, lowering her furry belly inches from the ground, her tail curled beneath her.
“It’s okay, Suki,” Raven murmured.
Suki had been brought to Haven as a young pup after the mother had abandoned her lone surviving offspring.
The long nights cradling Suki’s tiny, shivering form against her chest for warmth.
The hours spent bottle-feeding her. Sometimes, Suki had suckled the milk from her fingers, her tiny teeth pricking Raven’s skin.
Suki inched closer to Raven. She whined unhappily. Something dark stained her muzzle. Raven couldn’t see clearly in the night, but she knew what it was. Blood. Suki must have nuzzled Echo or Titus as they lay wounded and dying.
“Come on, girl,” Raven said. “You have to come out now. You have to run away. We both do. I know this is your home. It’s mine, too. But this is the only way.”
Suki wouldn’t come. Her whine deepened into a frantic, bewildered growl. The hackles on her spine raised in alarm. The wolf was confused and petrified. She responded to her terror with aggression.
No matter what Raven tried, she couldn’t coax Suki from the enclosure. After more time than she could afford to lose, she gave up. She had too many tasks tonight. She couldn’t force Suki to leave her paddock. She could only hope the wolf would work up the courage to escape.
Raven left with the gate propped open with a stick.
As the bleak mist continued to envelop everything in its path, she crept to the bear habitat. Kodiak and Sage were napping. They looked like great black humps in the gray murk.
Quietly, she opened the service door and then the night house drop gate, careful not to wake them. Unlike the wolves, she wasn’t dumb enough to think they might listen to her. Hopefully, they’d figure it out on their own when they awoke in an hour or so.
After the bears, she went to the bonobos. When they spotted her, they hooted and hollered, swinging frantically from their rope netting. Gizmo puffed up his chest, grabbed a handful of excrement, and threw it at her. It struck the viewing window with a splat and oozed down the glass.
He huffed a hoarse, goofy laugh, then grinned in delight.
“That was so classy, Gizmo.” She opened the metal door inside their night house. “You’re pissed you haven’t been fed in a while. I get it, buddy.”
Bonobos weren’t as strong or as aggressive as chimps, but they could be dangerous without meaning to be, though the two female bonobos had never shown any inclination toward violence, and Newton was the calmest of the bunch.
Gizmo, though, was the excitable one. She wasn’t sure what he was capable of when he was agitated, or if she could adequately keep him calm.
In the same way as with the timber wolves, she opened the gate fully while backing herself into the space between the wall and the door, using the gate as a shield.
Like the wolves, the bonobos were much more interested in escape than in pestering a boring human.
Gizmo was the first to leave. He whooped to the others as he scampered out of the enclosure onto the flagstone path.
Pepper and Newton followed, with Zephyr, who was older and slower, taking up the rear.
The four bonobos immediately charged the snack house, hooting joyously. They’d spent years watching humans relish delectable treats. Now they were determined to obtain those treats for themselves.
Next, Raven opened Hera’s cage. Her wings were clipped, but Raven freed her anyway, because she had to. Then she opened the door to the otters’ habitat, too. There was a river less than three miles away, though she doubted the otters would be able to find it.
But she couldn’t worry about the next steps, only the here and now.
She freed the tortoises and the ostriches. Maybe it made her an awful person, but she left Winston the boa constrictor in his glass aquarium. He might outlive them all.
When she invaded the porcupines' paddock, the porcupines, Duke and Duchess, waddled toward her in outraged fury. They turned their backsides toward her in warning, wiggling their sharpened quills. She exited swiftly with the door left open and left them to their own devices.
After pausing to check for danger, Raven kept moving.
She circled to the western side of the park.
She freed Sal, the zebra, and the leopard, who was conveniently napping, so she could slip away silently.
Then the foxes, who scurried between her legs and streaked to freedom.
Electra the bobcat gave her a moody stare from her perch atop a faux-rock outcropping, her black-fringed ears flicking grumpily.
Finally, there was only one animal left.