Zoo II by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

the perks of traveling on a government plane is that you get to use your government cellphone during the flight.
    Not that it does me any good at the moment.
    I’ve been calling the Tousignant apartment hourly since we took off, but no one’s answering. Which happens again this time. The landline rings and rings, and then the answering machine kicks in. I’ve already left a few increasingly nervous messages, so I hang up. Just for the heck of it, I dial Chloe’s old American cellphone number, which we shut off after moving to the Arctic. I’m not surprised when I get an automated message telling me the number’s no longer in service, but it still feels a little ominous.
    I close my eyes for a moment, desperate to calm my nerves and push the creeping fear I’m feeling out of my mind. There must be a simple explanation, right? Maybe the neighborhood’s phone lines are down. Maybe the power’s out. Maybe Chloe and her family left for an even safer location. Or maybe…maybe…
    I guess I dozed off there for a little while, because when I open my eyes again I see Freitas, Sarah, and the others all buckling their seat belts for landing.
    I look out my window. We’re coming up fast on our destination: Johannesburg. A sprawling metropolis flanked by an enormous nature preserve to the south and teeming slums to the west.
    We’ve come here, Freitas explained before takeoff, because unlike Bali, it’s a major urban area facing a markedly high rate of animal attacks, and he wants us to conduct a series of parallel tests and experiments for comparison.
    But I’m not sure I buy that. In fact, I think there’s something he’s not telling us.
    Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, Sydney—these are all big cities that also have high rates of animal attacks, and each is a much shorter trip from Bali than Johannesburg is. Flying all the way across the Indian Ocean to South Africa took us nearly fifteen hours. Freitas knows one of the most precious resources we have in our hunt for a solution to HAC is time. He wouldn’t waste it without a very good reason.
    Still peering out my window, I think I’ve just spotted it.
    A massive, swirling flock of birds—they look like white-backed vultures, or maybe falcons—seems to be heading right for us like an airborne tornado.
    Some of the other scientists notice it, too, and like me are gripping their armrests, bracing for an attack…
    That never comes. Instead, as the birds pass close by our plane, I realize a few of them don’t look like any I’ve ever seen before—except maybe in Jurassic Park .
    Did I just glimpse some scales? Beaks lined with sharp teeth? Reptilian heads?
    If I didn’t know better, I’d say some of them looked positively… prehistoric.

Chapter 14
    I’m hanging on with all my might as our convoy of SUVs weaves along this rough, badly potholed road. Our vehicle is topping forty, maybe fifty miles per hour, tossing us around inside like ice cubes in a cocktail shaker.
    But I don’t want to slow down one bit. In fact, I wish we’d speed up.
    We’re cruising along Bertha Street, a major downtown Johannesburg thoroughfare, and the chaos outside is some of the most appalling I’ve seen.
    Gray-furred vervet monkeys are swinging from power lines, hooting and screeching. Leopards are leaping from abandoned car to abandoned car. A flock of goshawks is circling and cawing overhead. Giant baboons are scaling darkened skyscrapers. Military Humvees are overturned, hastily built barricades sit abandoned. Bloody, rotting human carcasses litter the streets. The few living souls I spot are crouched on terraces and rooftops, firing off high-powered rifles at any and all creatures they can—the final holdouts, desperately defending their homes, refusing to surrender.
    The entire city center of Johannesburg has been overrun by wildlife. The phrase “concrete jungle” suddenly has a whole new meaning. I’m speechless.
    Freitas is sitting in the front seat. “This place,” he