The Prisoner's Gold

24

Jerry Westbrook was running for his life.

But he didn’t know why.

He had first spotted the tail as he left the airport on Thursday. The black SUV with the tinted windows had followed him for several miles, careful to never get too close. When it disappeared thirty minutes later, Westbrook had begun to wonder if he had only been imagining things. For all he knew, Jean-Marc Papineau was nothing more than an unscrupulous businessman. Surely nothing in his investigation would warrant this type of attention.

His opinion had changed earlier that night.

That’s when the same SUV had reappeared.

Westbrook had driven all around the city for hours trying to lose them; but each time he’d been successful at slipping a tail, a new follow vehicle would appear. With each new tail, he was able to eliminate another possibility. Amateurs wouldn’t be so coordinated. Gangsters, mobsters, and other unsavory types would have been more brazen and reckless. A military or government agency could have taken him anytime, anywhere — they didn’t need to fool around with car chases.

He couldn’t say who they were, but he definitely knew the type.

They were private contractors and extremely well funded.

With his sedan running low on gas, Westbrook made a last-ditch gambit. He sped up, putting some distance between himself and the nearest car, and headed toward the San Diego Zoo: one of the largest wildlife parks in the world. The main entrance was barricaded with wooden sawhorses painted in cheerful orange and white stripes, but he had no problem smashing through them with his car.

He shot across the empty parking lot and hastily parked in the row nearest the grounds. From the glove box he grabbed the vehicle’s registration card and his proof of insurance — papers that listed both his name and current address. He stuffed them in his pocket as he leaped out and sprinted for the closest point of access. After scaling a wall and dropping to the ground beyond, he crept off into the zoo.

He could hear the squeal of tires behind him as his pursuers gave chase.

Westbrook had been to the zoo dozens of times but never when it was deserted. Without the steady murmur of the usual crowds, the sound of his shoes slapping on the asphalt pathways rang out like gunshots in his ears. To limit the noise, he slipped off the track and onto the sandy soil at the side of it. He darted between trees, vaulted over obstacles, and ducked under low-hanging branches. He deliberately careened through the landscaping off the beaten trail, hoping the others wouldn’t be able to follow.

Out of breath, he stopped and took cover behind a huge bush. The shrub easily concealed his frame, giving him a moment to consider his predicament. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked around, peering intently at the dark shadows pooling between the far-too-distant street lamps that lit the trails. One thing was clear: the zoo had not been designed for a nighttime audience.

The heat of the night was stifling. He wondered if it was just unseasonably warm or whether he was badly out of shape. In either case, the random scents of animals — both those free to wander their paddocks and those caged in more confining containers — filled the night air like the cologne of the damned. It was a rich, meaty stink. Westbrook had never experienced allergies before, but now he found it difficult to breathe in the stench.

After a minute of silence, he pushed deeper into the park. There were exits at each end, and exits meant roads. With any luck he could flag someone down and hitch a ride. He rehearsed a convincing story as he ran, but he never had a chance to use it.

The six-seat golf cart, used to transport employees and customers around the park, bore down on him like a runaway train. The powerful electric motor propelled the vehicle silently on its collision course until it made contact with the unsuspecting jogger. The first thing Westbrook heard was the sound of the cart hitting him.

The hit wasn’t lethal, but it was hard enough to send him flying through the air. He barely had time to see the darkened world flutter past him in slow motion before time sped up and his body slammed into the ground. He rolled a few times, and then started to get up, marveling that the only injuries he noticed were small patches of road rash on his wrists and palms.

Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come.

Suddenly rough hands were grabbing him and dragging him to his feet. He could hear questions, but the voices sounded blurred, like adults in a Charlie Brown special.

Despite the dull throbbing in his head, Westbrook opened his eyes as his three assailants tossed him up against a fence. They slapped him across the face a few times to ensure that they had his full attention. As his senses returned, Westbrook realized that only one man was talking.

‘Who paid you?’ the man demanded. He wore a dark suit, and his head seemed to shimmer in the moonlight.

As Westbrook’s vision adjusted to the darkness, he could see that his interrogator was not simply bald, he was completely hairless.

‘Hey man, relax.’ Westbrook’s own voice sounded strange to him; it was thick and slurring. He realized something was wrong with his ear when he touched it and felt blood. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know. The money wasn’t that good.’

The man moved uncomfortably close to Westbrook. Without lashes, his jet-black eyes took on a hollow, vacant stare. Instead of eyebrows, he had only the thick, bony protrusions of his orbital ridge. He looked like a skeletal ghoul, wrapped in barely enough flesh to pass for human.

His face wasn’t just menacing, it was haunting.

‘Give me a name,’ the demon demanded.

Westbrook sensed this was a man who plowed through every obstacle in life, rather than using finesse. ‘Harry Reynolds … I think he’s English or something.’ Westbrook started to wobble on his feet. His balance suddenly gone, the world started spinning upward and to his left. ‘I think … I think I might need some help.’

‘Give him a hand,’ the man said as he turned and walked away. The other two men, similarly dressed and shorn with military-style crew cuts, stepped forward at his command. One grabbed Westbrook’s arms, the other Westbrook’s legs, and with a single easy motion they tossed him over the fence.

His body hit a grassy slope and slid down sideways until he landed in a shallow pool. He sputtered and thrashed in the water for a moment until he realized that the pool wasn’t deep. He stood up and then immediately fell down again. His balance was shot.

Vertigo was making his stomach queasy.

Then, even through his shattered eardrum, he registered the roar.

The bass of it reverberated in his sternum. The hair on his arms stood on end, his body reacting with primal fear to the new life-threatening menace. He turned slowly in the water to see the approaching behemoth.

Jerry Westbrook screamed long and loud.

He was still screaming when the polar bear began to eat him.