The blond handler gave Rafe a prod with his baton, leaving the other man to deal with the feral.
I needed to shut out the hyena-man’s screams and focus on escape. But I still didn’t understand how the handlers had known we were here. “What were you doing at the house back there?” I asked.
The handler shot me a suspicious look. I must have appeared harmless enough, though, because after a moment he shrugged. “The guys on watch reported the blaze last night, so we swung by to see what burned down.”
A horned bull-man, brawny and impassive, set down the long poles attached to the rickshaw and knelt by my side. A heavy leather chest plate and harness encased his upper body and a collar encircled his thick neck.
“Get on up,” the handler directed.
I looked back at him. With my hands tied, exactly how was I supposed to climb up to the padded bench? “I can’t step up that high.”
“There’s your stool.” He pointed to the bull-man’s thigh. “Irving doesn’t mind. Do you, Irv?”
The bull-man grunted in answer. Still, I hesitated. My boots were heavy and lug soled. Plus, I didn’t exactly weigh nothing. Before the handler could bark at me, Rafe put a booted foot onto the bull-man’s thigh and hefted himself up to the rickshaw’s padded bench. The bull-man didn’t so much as flinch. I shot Rafe an annoyed look. “Thanks for the demonstration.”
Omar sat alone in the first rickshaw. When we were all in — me squeezed between Rafe and the blond handler on the bench — the bull-man lifted the poles from the mud. He then pulled our rickshaw along behind Omar’s. The other two rickshaws, which were loaded up with handlers, fell into line behind us. The hideous, tusked hyboars loped alongside of us and kept me from even thinking about jumping out.
Our odd procession rolled through the dead city along a street that was bounded with piled cars. I kept my eyes on the buildings and side roads, noting every sign and distinct feature the way I had learned in orienteering. Most likely Rafe and I were going to have to find our way back to the jeep in the dark. Hopefully, Everson and Cosmo were there now, awaiting Cosmo’s mother. If Rafe and I didn’t make it back by midnight, they were supposed to leave without us. I wondered if Everson would stick to the plan. I hoped so. If they tried to rescue us from the compound, they’d just get “arrested” too. I glanced at Rafe, who’d settled into a corner of the padded bench as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He caught my look. “Sweet ride.”
“How is this sweet?” I demanded, not caring that the handler was listening. “There is a man in a harness breaking his back to pull us around.” The manimal might be massive, but our combined weight had him huffing like a steam engine.
“You sure know how to suck the fun out of life,” Rafe grouched.
As we traveled east, rain pattered on the roof of the rickshaw, and another sound rose on the air, a low, resonant moan that sent a cold wind over my skin. The sound grew louder as we turned south and rode along an iron fence, the area beyond it obscured by trees and brush. I caught flashes of stone buildings, clawed hands gripping iron bars.
“The zoo?” I asked the handler, who nodded.
“They do that every time we take a feral out of there,” he said, sounding annoyed.
The lament intensified, turning ferocious. The infected people in their cages were keening. The hair on my arms stood on end. Rafe shifted uncomfortably next to me. There was something powerful and dangerous to the noise and it seeped into me like a threat.
The sound faded as we rolled farther south. The buildings sprouted to fifty stories and more and blocked out the light of the sky. The bull-man struggled to heave the rickshaw across the metal mesh surface of a bridge, overgrown with vines. I felt terrible for him, but my hands were literally tied and the stitches in my calf had reached an epic level of throb, which would make walking torturous. There was nothing I could do but stay put as the feeling of helplessness burned a hole in my gut.
On the other side of the river gleamed the razor-wire fence that encircled the Chicago compound. So much of this scene reminded me of Arsenal Island — the gate at the end of the bridge and guards standing by. Only instead of gray camouflage, these men wore leather aprons. The rain had stopped. In a way, I missed it. I liked having the sky cry, since I wouldn’t let myself. My trip into the Feral Zone had yielded nothing but ash — a total failure by anyone’s definition. Standing in Director Spurling’s burned-out living room, I’d thought I’d hit bottom. Silly me.
I estimated we’d gone over three miles when we stopped at the perimeter of yet another fence, this one a tall briar hedge, thorns and all — trained to grow around coils of barbed wire. Beyond the brambles of metal and wood stood a pale limestone building that took up the entire city block. A section of the briar hedge swung in, and the rickshaw rolled through. We halted in the middle of a lush garden. An enormous caged enclosure took up one corner of the grounds. I jumped down from the rickshaw, gasping as pain ripped up my calf. I desperately hoped I hadn’t torn open the stitches. I leaned against a life-sized bronze bull to steady myself and then noticed that, despite being green with age, the statue was uncomfortably similar in looks to Irving, the manimal standing beside it.
Rafe landed next to me and eyed the caged area. “This just keeps getting better,” he muttered.
The building before us — the castle — could have been an armed fort. Handlers with guns stood on either side of the front door. Others ran to unhitch the feral who’d been trailing behind us. The hunched, shaggy man slowly pulled himself to full height with bared fangs like stalactites in his gaping mouth. “Get him primed,” Omar ordered.
One of the handlers extended his baton and beat the hyena-man until he fell to his knees. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be a hunter — someone who saw ferals as a payday, nothing more. I grit my teeth as the handler forced the feral to crawl across the yard to a dog run, where a metal collar dangled from a high wire. It took three handlers to get the collar snapped around the feral’s neck.
“What does that mean?” I asked our handler. “Get him primed?”
“They beat him to get him worked up,” he replied. “Not enough to do real damage. We want a good fight.”
“Someone is going to fight the feral?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Best way to know if a new handler is ready for the job.”
Now that the feral was collared and chained, he couldn’t escape their blows, and yet the handlers beat him until he was bellowing with rage and swiping his clawed hands at them. I couldn’t look on any longer. I spun away to find Omar watching me.
A smirk spread over his wrecked face. “A hunter, are you?” He shifted his gaze onto our handler. “Keep them in the yard while I inform the queen of our visitors.” He swept up the stairs and disappeared through the mammoth front door of the castle. Nearby, the handlers continued to hit the feral with their batons, making him roar. I stalked away. “Hey,” the young handler called.
“Do you think I can climb a fence with my hands tied?” I snapped over my shoulder. That must have satisfied him because he stayed put as I headed over to the caged area.
Rafe caught up with me. “Getting a little feral yourself, aren’t you?”
Now that I’d seen a real feral up close, I didn’t ever want to joke about it. I ignored him and studied the enclosure. Not surprisingly, it was furnished for human occupants. A table and upholstered chairs had been dragged into a sunny patch while tents took up two corners of the caged area. Not weatherproof tarps like what I’d learned to set up in my survival skills class. These could have housed an Arabian prince.