Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel(47)

She glanced at her watch: it was 6AM. The birth had been a long one, even if not particularly complicated. She hoped she wasn’t too tired to drive. Rush hour would be approaching soon and she was feeling like a zombie, dead on her feet.

Let’s just be honest. I’m hungover.

What Annaliese had not told Bradley was the reason she had gotten so little sleep in the first place. She had passed out drunk at 1AM, alone in her flat, not even making it to her bed from the couch. It was the same way she ended most evenings, but they didn’t usually result in her being called out two hours later to attend a birth.

Why am I such a mess?

Huh, like I don’t know the answer to that question.

Still, it’s been three years…

It was her own fault. Annaliese had been a vet for seven years now and should have been used to being on call. It was part of her vocation. No different to a plumber getting shit on his hands. Just one of the downsides. All jobs had them.

She gave her shoulders a vigorous rub and got going. The sun was balancing on the horizon, chasing away the darkness with its amber glow. The various enclosures of the petting zoo were filled with sleeping animals that would soon awaken, or nocturnal species that were preparing for slumber. The silence of the night would soon give way to the snuffling of pigs and the bleating of goats. Not to mention the motorised whirring of the fairground rides that littered the park and would be operating soon.

Up ahead were the zoo’s only truly exotic inhabitants: a small family of orang-utans that had been donated to the park several years ago by a failing Scottish zoo. It was a mystery why the owners had ever accepted to house the pair of primates when all they were prepared for at the time were the various domestic animals at the petting zoo. Annaliese imagined they saw it as a lucrative tourist attraction to compliment the park’s various rides and amusements. It was an immoral way to view such magnificent creatures, but at least time and money had been spent ensuring the orang-utans were given a suitable habitat. Their half-acre plot at Ripley Heights put their former Scottish habitat to shame. Eventually the two primates had even been content enough to breed. They had a one-year old infant male with them now.

They’re a little family, she thought with a degree of melancholy that could even have been jealousy.

Jealous of an orang-utan. That’s a new low.

She decided to stop for a moment and take in the beauty of the animals before she reached her car and headed home. The female, Lily, was currently awake. She was cradling her sleeping infant on the large, grassy mound that sloped down on all sides into a dug-out moat. It was landscaped in such a way as to prevent escape. The walls around the moat were a good fifteen feet high from inside the enclosure. At the rear of the space was a green-painted bungalow that offered the primates a warmer refuge during winter and was also an ingress point for the zoo’s staff to enter the enclosure.

Annaliese waved at Lily and was moved when the female orang-utan waved right back at her. It wasn’t so much a surprise, as Lily was often receptive to humans, happy to interact, but it was still a heart-warming experience to be looked upon and acknowledged by such a magnificent being.

She scanned the enclosure for Lily’s mate, Brick, and found him sprawled out in the habitat’s mangrove tree. He was sleeping soundly and every few seconds one of his limp legs would flinch and jump. His snores filled the air.

Lily gave Annaliese a bemused look as she held her baby that seemed to suggest she was thinking, men, huh?

Annalise grinned. I hear ya.

Her Prius was located in the staff car park that was up top, rather than the public one down below by the Rainforest Café. She hated the narrow, two mile road that would take her down the hill and back to the lower altitudes of the nearby villages. She wanted to get going sooner rather than later to tackle it. The longer she waited the more tired she would become.

As she headed towards the upper car park, which was located behind the park’s Jacobean manor house, Ripley Hall, Annaliese spotted a pair of young lovers amongst the sycamore trees on the lawn. They had obviously spilled out of the manor after some boozy function or wedding party.

Half the money that the park made was from hiring out the many rooms and facilities of Ripley Hall and its grounds. There was a lot of profit to be made by supplying yuppies with ample amounts of booze and a warm bed for the night. From what Annaliese gathered from members of the house-staff, most of the bosses who hired the property out for their functions were only interested in playing away from home with whatever colleague had been catching their eye most recently. Most of the snooty soirees eventually devolved into the kind of drunken debauchery that would have been right at home in ancient Rome. It made Annaliese feel embarrassed. Embarrassed for those people and their lack of priorities.

People like these two, snogging each other’s faces off in the freezing cold.

Annaliese cleared her throat loudly as she neared the two lovers on the lawn. There was no way to avoid them on her way to her car, and she was damned if she was going to be the one who felt uncomfortable. Let them be the ones to feel awkward.

But the young lovers ignored Annaliese’s approach. The male of the pair was really going for it; nuzzling at the woman’s neck with animalistic passion. She could hear the wet, slopping sounds from several feet away.

Charming. I’d say go get a room, but you already have one. So maybe you should go use it!

Annaliese had seen quite enough. She didn’t mind a bit of passion, but she wasn’t about to accept their rudeness of ignoring her presence.