Jane told them about the raft. He said they would have to go back through the tunnels because these doors had been locked so long they might well have sealed themselves shut. They stood and applauded him, and he began to cry, surrounded by shades, all of them weeping with gratitude, all of them missing somebody. Everyone was the same. Everyone sought solace of one kind or another.
He looked around for Stanley as they filed past him, but he knew there would be nobody here who reminded him of his son. He had seen a ghost, that was all, a bruise in his memory. Stanley was still with him, in one way or another. There was no point in getting excited every time it happened. It was just his way of saying hi. It was the son in his blood. He would never leave him to be on his own.
But then he saw him again a couple of hours later. A little boy, in blue-striped pyjamas plated with dry mud. A soft toy clutched in one hand. Hair mussed as if he’d just got out of bed. He was running along Primrose Hill Road, just north of Regent’s Park, legs barely bending as he ran, leaning over so far it seemed he must trip and fall headlong, just the way that Stanley ran when he saw his dad approaching the house from a long shift on the rigs. Jane pursued. It could not be Stanley. Stanley had not been trapped at the age of five all this time. It didn’t matter. The child still needed to be taken care of.
He lost sight of the boy as he reached Albert Road. One moment he’d been there – Jane was sure he wasn’t aware that he was being followed, he hadn’t seen his head turn, he would have loved to glimpse the face, just to convince the old romantic, the gullible sap wishing for the impossible, in him – the next moment he was gone. There were plenty of hiding places. Jane didn’t know where to start. He could be looking for him for an hour and the boy would be on the south side of the park, heading down Portland Place.
Jane crossed the road and nipped through the park’s exterior to the Outer Circle where the main entrance to London Zoo was located. He walked straight through the open gates. In. Pass on the details. Out. Job done. On to the next and then find Becky and scram.
He marched along the zoo’s paths trying to work out where everyone would be congregating. Every cage he walked past bore a sign that had been burned clean of information. Sometimes there was a body, an animal carcass beyond identification, trapped inside the bars, passed unsuitable for Skinner invasion or devourment. More often than not the cages were empty, whatever had lived within having bent the bars open in order to escape, once consumed by their Skinner hijacker. Behind him the great nets of the Snowdon aviary had collapsed; scorched patches of it lay flapping around like failed spiders’ webs. Cairns of dried shit were the only pointer to any kind of animal habitation now. Jane wondered where they had all gone.
He checked the vivarium and aquarium, but both were empty, their glass tanks smashed, the animals within now gone, perhaps taken for food. He headed south-east, towards a shattered fountain, past areas where African birds had been kept, pygmy hippos, bearded pigs. He dug in his memory for what these creatures looked like.
He stopped, his heart suddenly reminding him it was still beating, as a filthy, limping rhinoceros plodded across the wasteland of a former picnic area, its head swinging around as if trying to rid itself of a pain or a cloud of irritating insects. It paused and turned Jane’s way. There was a Skinner inside it, he was certain of that. The poor animal was a shadow of what its genes had meant for it to be. Its face was slack, the tough hide turned in places to elastic bars, showing glimpses of the awful thing that dwelled within. Its great horn had sheared through like a lopped branch; the stump was cracked and sore-looking, surrounded with a collar of crusted pus. The black dinner plates of its eyes seemed without edge, a shadow that might keep on growing until it was totally consumed. Jane tensed himself, ready to make a run for it if the Skinner considered charging, but clearly it was unhappy within the body it had invaded; it turned its back on him and staggered away.
Jane waited, watching the animal move slowly past the sinkhole of the old flamingo pond. He thought that maybe there was nobody left here now. Orange zone suddenly turned blue. It gave him a nasty jolt. He’d been stupid, brazen, to come here without checking the perimeter first. He resumed his walk through the grounds, but now his eye was caught by something to his left, a shapeless mass on an area of pathway between a children’s cratered playground and the dry, weathered edifice of the penguins’ fake iceberg.
Jane approached, leaning over slightly as if he might be able to identify what it was before he got too close. He saw the flap and curl of torn clothing. He saw a separated blue-white hand lying on its knuckles like a dead crab, a few feet away from the main salmagundi of body parts. He thought he saw a swatch of striped pyjama in there but closed his mind to it, turned away. He was close enough now to see steam rising, to smell the rich, sour odours of fear and adrenaline that seamed the meat. He thought of his own teeth slicing through cooked flesh, tattooed skin crisped on a griddle. He put a brake on his bile before it could leap from his throat.
He heard the guttural, drool-laced rattle of something big nearby. It came again, each breath transformed into a wet snarl of aggression, catching in the throat. It sounded like the starter motor to some velvety engine. It was a beautiful, terrifying sound.
Jane backed away from the butchery as the tiger emerged from the collapsed north wall of a café, twenty yards away. It was deteriorating. Its once proud, blocky head was a cheap Halloween mask. The ears might have been flattened back in a classic intimidatory pose but they had frayed to nubs of gristle. Its fur was losing the stripe of a man-eater, gradually fading back into the insipid, featureless colour that death preserves for all. Its chipped, split claws scratched at the path, reminding Jane of the sound of skipping ropes in school playgrounds. The tail had long since worn away to a chewed, twitching stick barely two inches long.
It padded towards him, steam wreathing a grimace filled with black teeth. Its hollowed eyes were mesmerising; Jane could almost believe they were Jane-shaped, designed at the very moment of conception only to focus on him. They were full of him now, despite the blindness of the Skinner. The tiger was locked on.
Jane backed away. Nowhere to go. The zoo was an open arena. He raised the rifle and flicked off the safety catch. He shouldered the weapon and drew a bead. He shot the tiger in the centre of the chest when it lifted its head to check his scent. The tiger staggered back onto its haunches, a phut of complaint whiffling its chops. Its teeth oozed into view again, the eyes screwing up in a blind reflex of hatred and rage. The black corkscrews of its whiskers turned towards him as he was drawn into its olfactory glands. If the tiger was in pain, it wasn’t showing it. A fresh sheet of drool unfolded itself from the open mouth. The wound was bloodless.
The tiger found its feet again and came on.
Jane ran. He did not look back, despite the roar, despite the spattering claws now sounding like grit tossed on an ice-covered pavement. He ran to the southern point of the zoo and clambered over and through what remained of the perimeter wall. The park beyond it was a morass of churned mud. He felt sudden, massive heat across the back of his left thigh, and then he was jumping. He was caught in the mud almost immediately. One boot was sucked from his foot. He turned to try to retrieve it and went down on his side, his arm disappearing almost to the shoulder. The tiger was struggling too. It was twelve feet shy of him; Jane could smell the baking, rancid heat that powered from its jaws. It lurched, trying to spring, but succeeded only in burying its hind legs more deeply. Jane forced himself flat on his stomach and wriggled clear, trying to swim across the surface of the mud, wriggling like a soldier, his gun held in front of him, across no-man’s-land.