Outbreak: The Hunger by Scott Shoyer

out of the corner of my eye.  My eyes grow wide when I am able to focus on the image about fifteen feet to the left of where we are.  “Come here, sweetie,” I say to Fi as I hug her close, making sure her head is pressed against my chest.  She doesn’t need to see what I am looking at.
    Off to the left, in a little clearing, are about eight to ten animals.  I assume they are laying down, just as I assume they are real.  What I am looking at are the missing tigers, the bear, and the monkeys , but they all look dead.  The other parents on the train aren’t as quick, and their kids start noticing the animals.
    “Look at all the animals over there, Mommy,” one little boy says.  “Why are they all asleep?”  His mom just stares, thinking what every other parent must be:  What the hell are tigers, a bear, and some monkeys doing all the way out here?  Are they dead?
    When Fi hears the other kids asking questions, she looks up just in time to see the train passing the animals.  “Is that a new display, Daddy?” she asks.  “Why is it so far away that we can’t see it better?”
    A new display?  That must be it.  Austin is full of local artists and maybe one of them donated their time and skills to creating a realistic animal scene for the train ride.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the artist re-created the exact animals that were missing from their cages and displays.
    Artist my ass .  Those animals sure looked real . 
    “Daddy,” Fi says. “Are those animals injured?”
    “No, sweetie.  They probably got out of their cages when the volunteers were cleaning them.  Then when the volunteers found them they shot them with a dart to make them fall asleep.” 
    What bullshit .  Those animals were real, and they looked dead.
    About ten feet in front of us there is a small clearing, and if you look back at the right moment, you’d be able to see that clearing with all the animals littered about.  I turn to Fi and, ask her what she wants to do after we leave the zoo to preoccupy her.  It’s my last chance to see into that clearing.  Talking to Fi, I let my eyes drift to the clearing.  A split second later, we are past it, but it’s too late.  All the hair stands on my arms.  I could have sworn that the dead animals were all gone.  That was impossible.  I would have seen at least one or two volunteers dragging the bodies away.
    Adrenaline starts pumping through my veins as panic kicks in.  I look down at Fi and am positive that we aren’t safe.  I don’t know what the threat is, but I know there is one.  I want to get off this train and out of the zoo, but now we are stuck and there’s an awful lot of weird shit going on.  I turn around to look at the floppy-hatted girl.  She is staring right at me, her cell phone five inches from her ear.  She was making a phone call when she saw the exact same thing. The apparently-dead animals that, moments ago, were strewn all over the clearing, are now gone.
     
    6
    I’m glad Fi and I are facing backwards.  I can hear the other parents behind us talking and wondering what exactly they saw in that clearing.  I can tell that most of the families didn’t walk around the zoo before the train ride.  They probably arrived ten minutes to eleven o’clock and came straight to the train depot.  They didn’t know all the weird shit that was going on all morning long.  The aggressive animals, the abduction of a zoo volunteer by the military, and all the missing animals.  They only saw the one isolated incident of the animals lying dead-like out in that field.
    The train continues.
    The sun is strong and bright now.  Much hotter out today than the news said it would be.  Sunlight really isn’t my friend anymore, not after my eye surgery.  Even though I only had a corneal graft to treat keratoconus in my left eye, the procedure made both eyes extremely sensitive to light.
     
    Fantastic , I think. This is just what I need.  Something bad