A howl beneath the tree made her shiver. She stared down into a black mouth filled with yellow teeth.
“Hunger! Hunger!” howled the mouth.
She scrambled higher up into the tree, which began to shake dangerously and bend with her weight. Above. a pale, thin moon was rising. She reached one hand up, tried to pluck the moon as if it were a piece of fruit, using her tail for balance. When her fingers closed on nothing. she chittered unhappily. By her third attempt she was tired of the game and, seeing no danger lingering at the tree’s base, climbed down.
The meadow grass was high, and tickled as she ran. Near her, others were scampering. but none reeked of predator and she moved rapidly alongside them, all heading in one direction—toward the smell of water.
The water was in a murky stream. Reaching it, she bent over and drank directly, lapping and sipping in equal measure. The water was cold and sour with urine. She spit it out and looked up. On the other side of the stream was a small copse of trees.
Trees! sang out her monkey mind.
However, she would not wade through the water. Finding a series of rocks, she jumped eagerly stone-to-stone-to-stone. When she got to the other side, she shook her hands and feet vigorously, then gave her tail a shake as well. She did not like the feel of the water. When she was dry enough, she headed for the trees.
At the foot of one tree was a body, human, but crumpled as if it were a pile of old clothes. Green face paint mixed with blood. She touched the leg, then the shoulder, and whimpered. A name came to her. Marnie? Then it faded. She touched the unfamiliar face. It was still warm, blood still flowing. Somewhere in the back part of her mind, the human part, she knew she should be doing something. But what seemed muddled and far away. She sat by the side of the body, shivering uncontrollably, will-less.
Suddenly there was a deep, low growl behind her and she leaped up, all unthinking, and headed toward the tree. Something caught her tail and pulled. She screamed, high, piercing. And then knifing through her mind, sharp and keen, was a human thought. Flight. She turned and kicked out at whatever had hold of her.
All she could see was a dark face with a wide hole for a mouth, and staring blue eyes. Then the creature was on top of her and all her kicking did not seem to be able to stop it at all.
The black face was so close she could smell its breath, hot and carnal. With one final human effort, she reached up to scratch the face and was startled because it did not feel at all like flesh. Mask, her human mind said, and then all her human senses flooded back. The park was suddenly less close, less alive. Sounds once so clear were muddied. Smells faded. But she knew what to do about her attacker. She ripped the mask from his face.
He blinked his blue eyes in surprise, his pale face splotchy with anger. For a moment he was stunned, watching her change beneath him, no longer a monkey, now a strong girl. A strong, screaming girl. She kicked again, straight up.
This time he was the one to scream.
It was all the screaming, not her kicking, that saved her. Suddenly there were a half-dozen men in camouflage around her. Men—not animals. She could scarcely understand where they’d come from. But they grabbed her attacker and carried him off. Only two of them stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.
“I don’t get it,” Zena said when at last she could sit up in the hospital bed. She ached everywhere, but she was alive.
“Without your collar,” the man by her bedside said, “it’s almost impossible to flash back to being human. You’d normally have had to wait out the entire five hours of Wilding. No shortcuts back.”
“I know that,” Zena said. It came out sharper than she meant, so she added, “I know you, too. You were one of my . . . rescuers.”
He nodded. “You were lucky. Usually only the dead flash back that fast.”
“So that’s what happened to that . . .”
“Her name was Sandra Maharish.”
“Oh,”
“She’d been foolish enough to leave off her collar, too. Only she hadn’t the will you have, the will to flash and fight. It’s what saved you.”
Zena’s mind went, Will/won’t. Will/won’t.
“What?” the man asked. Evidently she had said it aloud.
“Will,” Zena whispered. “Only I didn’t save me. You did.”
“No, Zena, we could never have gotten to you in time if you hadn’t screamed. Without the collar, Wild Wood Central can’t track you. He counted on that.”
“Track me?” Zena, unthinking, put a hand to her neck, found a bandage there.
“We try to keep a careful accounting of everything that goes on in the park,” the man said. He looked, Zena thought, pretty coolish in his camouflage. Interesting looking, too, his face all planes and angles, with a wild, brushy orange mustache. Almost like one of those old pirates.
“Why?” she asked.
“Now that the city is safe everywhere else, people go Wilding just to feel that little shiver of fear. Just to get in touch with their primal selves.”
“‘Mime the prime,’” Zena said, remembering one of the old commercials.
“Exactly.” He smiled. It was a very coolish smile. “And it’s our job to make that fear safe. Control the chaos. Keep prime time clean.”
“Then that guy . . .” Zena began, shuddering as she recalled the black mask, the hands around her neck.
“He’d actually killed three other girls, the Maharish girl being his latest. All girls without their collars who didn’t have the human fight-back knowhow. He’d gotten in unchanged through one of the old tunnels that we should have had blocked. ‘Those wild girls,’ he called his victims. Thanks to you, we caught him.”
“Are you a cop?” Zena wrinkled her nose a bit.
“Nope. I’m a Max,” he said, giving her a long, slow wink.
“A Max?”
“We control the Wild Things!” When she looked blank, he said, “It’s an old story.” He handed her a card. “In case you want to know more.”
Zena looked at the card. It was embellished with holograms, front and back, of extinct animals. His name, Carl Barkham, was emblazoned in red across the elephant.
Just then her mother came in. Barkham greeted her with a mock salute and left. He walked down the hall with a deliberate, rangy stride that made him look, Zena thought, a lot like a powerful animal. A lion. Or a tiger.
“Princess!” her mother cried. “I came as soon as I heard.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Zena said, not even wincing at the old nickname.
Behind her were Marnie, Lazlo, and Nick. They stood silently by the bed. At last Nick whispered, “You okay?” Somehow he seemed small, young, boneless. He was glancing nervously at Zena, at her mother, then back again. It was very uncoolish.
“I’m fine,” Zena said. “Just a little achy.” If Barkham was a tiger, then Nick was just a cub. “But I realize now that going collarless was really dumb. I was plain lucky.”
“Coolish,” Nick said.
But it wasn’t. The Max was coolish. Nick was just . . . just . . . foolish.
“I’m ready to go home, Mom,” Zena said. “I’ve got a lot of homework.”