Buddy reached up to touch the queen’s head. She looked to him so peaceful, sleepy, and empathetic. These were things he did not associate with humans, whom Buddy saw as, above all, intruders in the chimp heart.
Ollie was beginning to bark nervously.
“Buddy,” said Kieran, aiming the gun at his face, approaching. “We can help you, Buddy. Buddy, Buddy—”
But Ollie, fatally, started hopping violently and screeching, and in doing so, he knocked forward a recently debuted wax monster named The Crick from the new Andrew Lake series. Misty red fear-bubbles actually sizzled into the air above and around The Crick, causing marked anxiety to all nearby. It was the kind of cheap thrill Tussauds depended on these days. Buddy went bonkers, and one of the younger officers reacted, too. A long, thunderous burst of rounds was choked from his neuralzinger, and then the other specialists let loose. Buddy crouched into a pathetic ball as the rounds tore into him. Ollie, terrorized, tried to reach for Kieran but went down with a round to the mouth. The muzzle-flashes lit the Chamber of Horrors like lightning.
“Nice one,” said Kieran. “You stupid, stupid fucks. You stupid fucks.”
He began to weep, and he covered his eyes with his hand.
deep in the paved forests
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 bloody 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?”