Heat

Heat Part 1

Zoo keeper, Helen MacKenzie approached the wooden fence of the elephant enclosure at Taronga Zoo, Mosman, her baby elephant, Snaffles, trailing listlessly behind her. Her boss leaned over the fence snarling, the broken capillaries in his eyes deleted all the color. It had been three months since the contagion started and communication had died soon after. When contracted, people seemed to lose their minds and became braindead, their bodies decaying like meat left out in the harsh midday sun. That would have been okay if they hadn't also craved flesh: human flesh. Her flesh. Of the ten zoo keepers who had volunteered to stay in the zoo when the contagion had spread throughout Sydney, only she remained. Helen edged closer and steeled herself, her fingers gripping the sharpened stick, determined to kill this time. Her boss moaned reaching over the fence, his jaws snapping.

To her left lay the moat that enclosed most of the elephant area and she kept one eye on it, because a small crocodile had slipped in recently and she didn't want to get bitten. Fear rippled up her spine as she approached. Her boss' arms waved at her, his blackened, rotting fingers stretching out. With desperate determination, she shoved the sharpened stick into his eye and through to his brain. He dropped and Helen backed away sinking onto a boulder.

The more of the braindeads she killed, the better chance she had of surviving, if one of the zoo creatures or starvation didn't get her first. The fruit she'd stockpiled for Snaffles was gone. All canned food stores eaten and anything she could raid from the zoo restaurant, between fleeing the savage braindeads, finished long ago. There wasn't much hay left in the elephant enclosure and stomach pinched with hunger, Helen had resorted to chewing on it like a horse eating its cud.

A two foot reddish snake slid past her boot. Helen froze, her mind racing with snake identification facts. Pseudechis Colletti. A Collett's snake. Deadly. It raised its head and puffed up its body, its brown beady eyes staring at her. It gave a short hiss. "Fuck!" She didn't know who'd let all the snakes out of the reptile house but the bushland surrounding the elephant enclosure was alive with the rustling sound of them.

She heard gunfire and the sound of footfall but she didn't dare let her gaze drift. Her heartbeat rose into her throat in a delirious combination of hope for a rescue and terror of the serpent. The snake lowered its forebody back to the ground. "Slither off you bastard."

Snaffles put his trunk over her shoulder. The snake raised itself again giving out a series of short, sharp hisses. "Double fuck," Helen cried out. It was getting nervous.

A braindead at the corner of her vision moaned and shuffled toward her enclosure. Thank goodness the things couldn't climb the fence. A blast of gunfire made her jaw clench. She watched what used to be the seal trainer drop. The seal trainer had adored fur seals. Pinnipeds. Otariidae. Then he'd turned and tried to eat them.

"Ma'am?" A male voice called out from the left of her. "We're here to help."

Back frozen as hard as obsidian, Helen didn't dare take her gaze off the serpent. "Snake. In front of me," she said, her voice raspy.

Another gunshot rang out leaving the snake headless, its body twitching. Helen slumped and turned toward where the shot had emanated. An ebony-haired soldier strode along the paved footpath toward her, a cocky grin on his handsome, tanned face. "Corporal Peter Clark, sniper, at your service."

"Thank you. Oh thank you. I prayed someone would come," Helen cried. She shimmied off the bolder and ran toward the enclosure gate. On opening it, she threw herself into his arms. His body was big and rock hard and he enclosed his arms around her.

"You're safe now," he said, his voice soothing.

"Fantastic. A live woman. I'll let the captain know." Another soldier came striding down the footpath toward her, tall, blond, with the looks of a movie star and a nametag that read Armstrong. He took an energy bar out of his pack and handed it to her.