Half-Off Ragnarok
Page 20
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“So I’ve been told. Look, Dee, I hate to ask you this, but . . .”
She put up a hand to cut me off. “No, Alex. I can’t take you home with me. Please don’t ask.”
Pliny’s gorgons tend to live in isolated communities, close enough to human neighborhoods for them to commute, but far enough away to allow them to relax and let their hair down, so to speak. I knew that Dee lived somewhere outside of the city limits with her husband and daughter, as did the rest of their extended clan, although I didn’t have any idea how large the population of their community might be.
“If this happens again, you know I’ll need to ask,” I said, as gently as I could. “And I won’t be able to take no for an answer.”
“I know,” said Dee miserably. “Just please don’t ask me yet if you don’t have to.”
“All right,” I said. “We’ll table it for now. I’m going to go check on the basilisks before the police get here.”
“I’ll get ready,” said Dee, reaching for her wig.
I tried to smile reassuringly. It felt more like a grimace, but I was hoping that the intention would get through even if nothing else did. “We’ll be okay, Dee.”
“Tell that to Andrew.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I unlocked the door at the rear of her office, the one that connected to the back halls of the reptile house, and let myself out.
When I was a kid, I always wondered why buildings at the zoo seemed so much bigger on the outside than they were on the inside. Once I started working in zoos, I realized it was because the part the visitors see—the animal exhibits and the attractively designed public areas—are just the tip of the iceberg. You need feeding pens and bathing areas, storage closets and research labs, places for the animals that aren’t currently on display, the gravid females, eggs or cocoons, and babies too young to handle being stared at all day. The reptile house was unusual because our offices, of which there were three, were connected to both the public and private areas. That was a design choice based on necessity: after all, our offices were where we stored the antivenin.
I moved down the hall to the research labs, pulling the key to lab number two out of my pocket. The door I wanted was locked twice, once with a deadbolt and once with a combination lock. I shielded it with my body as I turned the dial to the appropriate numbers. Not even Dee knew how to get into this lab without me, and that was exactly as I wanted things to be. Gorgons and basilisks don’t get along, and they’re not immune to each other’s abilities.
The inside of the lab was lit only by the red glow of the heat lamps. I shut the door, locking it from the inside, and took down the protective eyewear from the hook by the light switch. The smoked glass lenses would block the effects of the basilisks’ eyes if they were awake. Please let them both be here, and don’t let them be awake, I thought. Please don’t let this be my fault.
Moving the heavy plywood sheet away from the basilisk enclosure was difficult, but I’d done it before, and after a few moments of tugging, I was able to lift it down and lean it up against the wall. I peered through the glass.
It was a good-sized enclosure, about eight feet on all sides, with a twelve-foot vertical clearance. Basilisks liked to roost in trees when they were courting, which just added to their resemblance to weird, scaly chickens. Ferns and other leafy plants surrounded their artificial stream. The trees were empty. As for the basilisks themselves, they were still asleep, curled up in hard little balls of what looked like granite.
This was the dangerous part. I picked up one of the feeding sticks and slid open the hatch at the side of the basilisk enclosure. Neither basilisk moved, not then, and not when I threaded the stick through the opening and used it to nudge them gently. They were both as hard as, well, rocks, and entirely unresponsive. I removed the stick and shut the hatch before allowing myself a very small sigh of relief.
The basilisks hadn’t killed Andrew. Judging solely by their surface hardness, they’d been asleep for months.
My relief passed as quickly as it had come. Dee didn’t kill Andrew. The basilisks didn’t kill Andrew. And since that accounted for all the known petrifactors on the zoo grounds, that raised one very large, very unpleasant question:
If they hadn’t killed him, then who had?
Six
“Everything is dangerous when looked at from the right angle. Mice fear cats, cats fear dogs, dogs fear bears, and bears fear men with guns. It’s often just a matter of perspective.”
—Thomas Price
Ohio’s West Columbus Zoo, attempting to surreptitiously search the zoo grounds for a creature capable of converting living flesh into stone
I WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the path connecting the tiger garden to the main courtyard, trying to keep my eyes on the ground without being too blatant about it. My glasses weren’t helping. I’d swapped my normal pair for a pair with tinted lenses, and the prescription was slightly off, making it harder to be sure of the details in the bushes around me. I made a mental note to visit the optometrist as soon as possible. I hadn’t been hunting petrifactors in the wild since arriving in Ohio, and I’d allowed my tools to get outdated. That was a good way to get myself killed.
My current search was running off one major assumption: that Andrew had been killed by something low to the ground, like a cockatrice, rather than something arboreal, like a basilisk, or something human-shaped, like a gorgon. I was basing that assumption on the area where he’d been found, which had had plenty of bushes, but no trees and very little foot traffic.
We’d be able to narrow down what had killed him after I got a look at the autopsy report. If I was wrong, all I would have lost was a few hours. It was a risk. It was also a necessary short-term decision. If Andrew had been killed by a gorgon, they were probably long gone by now, or else had an agenda I didn’t understand yet. Either way, if our petrifactor was a gorgon, no one else was likely to be in immediate danger.
But if I was right—if the local gorgons were too smart for this kind of stunt, and there was a wild basilisk or cockatrice loose in the zoo—I couldn’t afford to wait for the results. I needed to find the thing that had killed Andrew before anyone else got converted into garden statuary.
At least Lloyd had confirmed my guess about when Andrew arrived at the zoo, and hence when he was likely to have been petrified. The old security guard had looked at me oddly for asking. Hopefully, he wouldn’t tell the police that I’d come to him to tighten up my alibi. And if he did . . .
She put up a hand to cut me off. “No, Alex. I can’t take you home with me. Please don’t ask.”
Pliny’s gorgons tend to live in isolated communities, close enough to human neighborhoods for them to commute, but far enough away to allow them to relax and let their hair down, so to speak. I knew that Dee lived somewhere outside of the city limits with her husband and daughter, as did the rest of their extended clan, although I didn’t have any idea how large the population of their community might be.
“If this happens again, you know I’ll need to ask,” I said, as gently as I could. “And I won’t be able to take no for an answer.”
“I know,” said Dee miserably. “Just please don’t ask me yet if you don’t have to.”
“All right,” I said. “We’ll table it for now. I’m going to go check on the basilisks before the police get here.”
“I’ll get ready,” said Dee, reaching for her wig.
I tried to smile reassuringly. It felt more like a grimace, but I was hoping that the intention would get through even if nothing else did. “We’ll be okay, Dee.”
“Tell that to Andrew.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I unlocked the door at the rear of her office, the one that connected to the back halls of the reptile house, and let myself out.
When I was a kid, I always wondered why buildings at the zoo seemed so much bigger on the outside than they were on the inside. Once I started working in zoos, I realized it was because the part the visitors see—the animal exhibits and the attractively designed public areas—are just the tip of the iceberg. You need feeding pens and bathing areas, storage closets and research labs, places for the animals that aren’t currently on display, the gravid females, eggs or cocoons, and babies too young to handle being stared at all day. The reptile house was unusual because our offices, of which there were three, were connected to both the public and private areas. That was a design choice based on necessity: after all, our offices were where we stored the antivenin.
I moved down the hall to the research labs, pulling the key to lab number two out of my pocket. The door I wanted was locked twice, once with a deadbolt and once with a combination lock. I shielded it with my body as I turned the dial to the appropriate numbers. Not even Dee knew how to get into this lab without me, and that was exactly as I wanted things to be. Gorgons and basilisks don’t get along, and they’re not immune to each other’s abilities.
The inside of the lab was lit only by the red glow of the heat lamps. I shut the door, locking it from the inside, and took down the protective eyewear from the hook by the light switch. The smoked glass lenses would block the effects of the basilisks’ eyes if they were awake. Please let them both be here, and don’t let them be awake, I thought. Please don’t let this be my fault.
Moving the heavy plywood sheet away from the basilisk enclosure was difficult, but I’d done it before, and after a few moments of tugging, I was able to lift it down and lean it up against the wall. I peered through the glass.
It was a good-sized enclosure, about eight feet on all sides, with a twelve-foot vertical clearance. Basilisks liked to roost in trees when they were courting, which just added to their resemblance to weird, scaly chickens. Ferns and other leafy plants surrounded their artificial stream. The trees were empty. As for the basilisks themselves, they were still asleep, curled up in hard little balls of what looked like granite.
This was the dangerous part. I picked up one of the feeding sticks and slid open the hatch at the side of the basilisk enclosure. Neither basilisk moved, not then, and not when I threaded the stick through the opening and used it to nudge them gently. They were both as hard as, well, rocks, and entirely unresponsive. I removed the stick and shut the hatch before allowing myself a very small sigh of relief.
The basilisks hadn’t killed Andrew. Judging solely by their surface hardness, they’d been asleep for months.
My relief passed as quickly as it had come. Dee didn’t kill Andrew. The basilisks didn’t kill Andrew. And since that accounted for all the known petrifactors on the zoo grounds, that raised one very large, very unpleasant question:
If they hadn’t killed him, then who had?
Six
“Everything is dangerous when looked at from the right angle. Mice fear cats, cats fear dogs, dogs fear bears, and bears fear men with guns. It’s often just a matter of perspective.”
—Thomas Price
Ohio’s West Columbus Zoo, attempting to surreptitiously search the zoo grounds for a creature capable of converting living flesh into stone
I WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the path connecting the tiger garden to the main courtyard, trying to keep my eyes on the ground without being too blatant about it. My glasses weren’t helping. I’d swapped my normal pair for a pair with tinted lenses, and the prescription was slightly off, making it harder to be sure of the details in the bushes around me. I made a mental note to visit the optometrist as soon as possible. I hadn’t been hunting petrifactors in the wild since arriving in Ohio, and I’d allowed my tools to get outdated. That was a good way to get myself killed.
My current search was running off one major assumption: that Andrew had been killed by something low to the ground, like a cockatrice, rather than something arboreal, like a basilisk, or something human-shaped, like a gorgon. I was basing that assumption on the area where he’d been found, which had had plenty of bushes, but no trees and very little foot traffic.
We’d be able to narrow down what had killed him after I got a look at the autopsy report. If I was wrong, all I would have lost was a few hours. It was a risk. It was also a necessary short-term decision. If Andrew had been killed by a gorgon, they were probably long gone by now, or else had an agenda I didn’t understand yet. Either way, if our petrifactor was a gorgon, no one else was likely to be in immediate danger.
But if I was right—if the local gorgons were too smart for this kind of stunt, and there was a wild basilisk or cockatrice loose in the zoo—I couldn’t afford to wait for the results. I needed to find the thing that had killed Andrew before anyone else got converted into garden statuary.
At least Lloyd had confirmed my guess about when Andrew arrived at the zoo, and hence when he was likely to have been petrified. The old security guard had looked at me oddly for asking. Hopefully, he wouldn’t tell the police that I’d come to him to tighten up my alibi. And if he did . . .
