Vox(76)

I meet Lorenzo’s eyes, my own filled with questions mixed with fear mixed with defeat, as the door slides open. He puts a hand on the small of my back, steadying me, and we follow Morgan out the door, the soldier still and quiet, but very definitely present, behind us.





SIXTY-FOUR




If our own lab and office floors were lonely tombs, the sub-basement is a buzzing hive of activity. Cubicles housing two men each sit crammed side by side, their flimsy shoulder-height walls allowing no privacy, only constant observation by the uniformed guards patrolling the corridors. I count twelve of them, each as devoid of any outward signs of jocularity as the man now walking behind me, close enough for me to get a whiff of some sickeningly sweet aftershave, tobacco, and burnt coffee. Not a single cubicle occupant raises his head as we move by; their heads are down, poring over stacks of Excel charts and handwritten formulas, or staring blankly at computer screens.

There must be fifty people in this windowless, airless room. Some of them—most of them—are young, barely out of college.

I pause and peer into one of the cubicles, thinking I recognize Lin’s handwriting. Morgan snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Eyes ahead, Jean.”

The aftershave, tobacco, and coffee mixture is hot on the back of my neck. Lorenzo’s hand brushes against mine, lingering, reminding me I’m not alone in this.

We pass through the bank of cubicles and reach the far end of the hive. Morgan inserts his key card into another slot, and double doors open to a room not different from the rodent and rabbit den one floor above us. Here, instead of squeaking mice and sniffing cottontails, the cages house primates. Great apes, to be specific. Three rows of wire doors line the walls to my right and left, each labeled with an identification number and four rows of data: age, species, date of experiment, overseeing technician. The hoots and grunts of chimpanzees as we enter are deafening.

But this isn’t what bothers me.

Three-quarters of the cages are empty. Labels remain on their doors: BONOBO, GORILLA, ORANGUTAN—three of the five great apes. The screeching chimpanzees make four, and half of them are already gone.

I swallow drily and look over at Lorenzo, who is pale enough to blend in with the lab’s white walls. Of course he is; he’s thinking the same thought I am.

They’re working their way through the apes, one species at a time, and they’ve saved the chimps, the closest human relative, for last.

Or next to last. There’s a fifth great ape not in the cages, not yet, one they haven’t gotten around to. All the blood in my veins chills to ice.

The fifth species of great ape is us. Human.

My knees buckle, and I stumble to my left, hurtling into the cage of Experiment Number 412, a male chimpanzee that must outweigh me by seventy-five pounds. Lin’s repeated warnings sound in my head like a klaxon.

“Never, Jean, and I mean never, get close to them. We have techs and handlers for that. Don’t feed them, don’t try to pet them, don’t even get within spitting distance of the cages. Stay in the middle. These guys have a reach of three feet, and, believe me, they’re not cute,” Lin said on our first tour of the lab, a few months after her grant funding came through and allowed us to purchase two chimps.

“They look cute,” I said. “Check that one out.” Mason, a four-foot-tall diaper-clad male, was sucking on a Popsicle in a nearby cage.

“Wait until he bares his canines, honey,” Lin said. “These guys are time bombs with no set timer. A pro wrestler couldn’t hold one still if he tried. You ever hear of Charla Nash?”

I shook my head. “Do I want to?”

“No. Tell you what, you think about that Hannibal Lecter dude. Think about what he did to that nice nurse when they forgot to put the weird hockey mask on him. Compared to a chimp, Lecter’s harmless as a kitten under anesthesia. And you’ll never know what hit you.”

What hits me now is a swat to the face and the bitter taste of iron on my lips. Part of my scalp—the part Number 412 is pulling with the force of a monster truck in a redneck tractor-pull contest—has been either set on fire or pierced with the ugly end of a pickax. My knees sing high C when bone meets tile as two opposing forces act on me: gravity drawing me down, the chimp trying to heave me up by my hair.

Lorenzo’s voice, faint and far away, calls out. “Do something, for fuck’s sake. Do something!”

Is he talking to me? I reach up to the fire on my head, and a hand that’s not a hand but a claw grabs it with a vise grip. Charla Nash, Charla Nash, Charla Nash, I think, the name screaming inside me along with pictures of her missing eyes, her hands that looked as if they’d been fed into a meat grinder, the gash in her face where a mouth should be.

A single shot buzzes in the air over my head, and I float down.





SIXTY-FIVE




I’m not unconscious. If I were, I wouldn’t feel fingers working their way through my tangled hair, putting out the fire of pain. I wouldn’t be adding zoos and safaris and childhood fantasies of Jane Goodall to my list of things never to think about again. I wouldn’t hear Morgan yelling like a petulant child who has just had his pacifier plucked from his mouth.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he says.

I open my eyes and see the soldier, gun hand still trembling after what might have been his first kill, looking from me to Lorenzo to Morgan to the dead Number 412 in the cage above me. Before he can answer, Morgan opens his mouth again.