[ WP ] A neurodegenerative virus mutates and crosses species barriers at the local zoo . No entity outside zoo employees finds out until a year after it was initially discovered . What happened over the past year ?

Two kids entered the Rockmount Zoo. Two kids went to the zoo. Two kids went to zoo at around midnight. Two kids went to the zoo at around midnight and the moon was full. Two kids went to the zoo at around midnight and the moon was full, then, the next day, two sets of parents arrived to collect the bodies. Two sets of parents went to the zoo to collect the bodies and vomited at seeing them. 
 
 Two bodies, thrown over the fence, faces twisted and blood mingled old and new. Two puddles of what remained. 
 
 There are moments in time which test one's faith in a sane and rational world. Those bodies shook me. I'd seen cruelty to kids, but I'd never seen their bodies desecrated afterwards to this degree, not for this reason. Not as a warning. My partner did n't see it, but I pointed it out, what was the reason for throwing them over the fence if not for a warning. 
 
 He did n't believe me even when I told him the story. He was new, a transfer in, he laughed when I told me, repeated the words of my story verbatim. Then he laughed at me. So I showed him the gate. Welded shut from the inside. 
 
 ``'Sealed for a little over a year now,''' he said, quoting me. His eyes seemed to flash a certain understanding, like he was finally starting to get it. He was n't. `` Yeah well, maybe they went out of the backdoor?'' 
 
 `` Nobody ever left,'' I told him. `` We interviewed families of the workers. No one who worked that day went home.'' 
 
 `` Huh.'' 
 
 He just stared at me for a minute, then he laughed. 
 
 `` I'm not the new guy anymore,'' he said. `` Been in this shit hole two months.'' 
 
 I grabbed him by the collar. My face twisted into something bestial, not of my own volition but something was twisting in my gut, crying out for me to remember. I pushed him into the gate so hard that it made an audible bang and then I pushed my face so far into his his that I thought he figured out my intention. 
 
 `` You listen to me,'' I said. `` You listen good. I'm not fucking with you. This place is a fucking haunted house. No one has come out of there alive in years, no one.'' 
 
 Detective Roberts was not a bright looking man. He was probably a quarterback at the high school he went to, probably dated the cheerleader. He was older than me but not half as experienced and had missed out on a college education going straight into the force, though he only told me the last part. The rest I kind of gleaned from the way he spoke and the way he treated me. He was a beat cop, a guy who passed off all the weird shit that happened around him off to a detective and skipped off merrily back to Welfare Checks and other Macbre exercises that usually ended with him washing it off in the shower. Me, I came out and promoted early and I was thankful for it, but I had to deal with that weird underbelly of shit that always left you wondering just what was real. Hell, when that was your job, to discover and back up the truth of a story, you began to have a weird relationship with truth, start questioning your own stories. God I wish I had some way to pull this one apart, but I do n't. I really do n't. 
 
 When I was done talking, Roberts pushed me aside and swung for my face. Out of instinct, I ducked but he caught me on the cheek all the same. I tumbled down to the pavement and felt the kiss of concrete as I struck it like a ragdoll. 
 
 `` Get the fuck off me,'' he said. He sounded quite serious. `` What the hell is your problem?'Haunted House'? It's just closed, it was probably shut down because of an accident and they never reported it. Honestly, these doors should have been opened a long fucking time ago but all of you were probably off playing paranormal investigators too chicken shit to do real police work.'' 
 
 As I was getting up, he walked around me, heading over to a police cruiser. I watched him ask for something from a police officer. The officer radioed in that request, whatever it was using the communicator on his dashboard. I caught a very small piece of the conversation: `` requesting to open the Rockmount Zoo.'' I wanted to throw up, but I swallowed back my breakfast. I wiped a little blood off of my lip and tried to find Roberts. By then, he'd wheeled around and headed back to the bodies. He was over there making concessions to the families. Good for him they did n't see our little scuffle and call in to complain about our unprofessional behavior. Good for him they seemed to buy that line we always fed about doing everything within our power. One of the older people muttered something about Satanism in the news or some such. He promised that we would explore every `` avenue of inquiry.'' I looked up at the gate. Leave no stone unturned. I shook a little. The tremors emanated from my spine. 
 
 About ten minutes later, a police work vehicle appeared. A Ford rolled up to the gates carrying an acetylene torch. A guy in overalls hopped out and powered up the cutter. He took the hose up to the gate and pulled the trigger. He started from as high as he could reach and worked his way down to the ground. When that was done, he gave the door a small shove but it would not budge. So he went back to the truck and grabbed a ladder. 
 
 `` Hey buddy, could you come hold this?'' he said. 
 
 I walked over and set myself up, holding the base of the ladder as he ascended it. He got to the top and slowly started his way down again. I pulled my face back when I heard the sparks and kept my eyes closed to prevent any serious injury. At around the third rung from the top, he started to have trouble. I looked up to see him wobbling. He called out for me to hold it steadier. I put my back into it. The gate shook slightly behind me. A guttural, throaty noise came from the closed portal and I stared into it. It was like an ape howling but not right, more like the sound of a human trying to imitate an ape with a practiced cadence but the wrong vocal chords to do so. 
 
 As I stared into the gate, my grip relaxed and the ladder began to wobble again. The man cried out but as I tried to tighten my grip, I was shoved aside. The story came together pretty quickly after that. Detective Roberts had pushed me aside in order to save the man with the acetylene torch and was now glaring at me. I opened my mouth to protest the opening of the gates when I heard a slow creak. I snapped my head around to see a man with blackened eyes and a body painted in reds. Scraps of a brown uniform hung from his scrawny frame as if it had been torn off of him piece by piece until this was all that remained. His eyes were wild and seemed to understand little of the acetylene torch, the opening of the gate or me. 
 
 He let loose a cry. It was long and shrill, an alarm? No, a war cry. The door swung the rest of the way open and as I fell against it, I felt hands reach around my throat, my arms, and my mouth. I was hoisted inside by the occupants of the zoo. I found it hard to breathe. The scent of dung and unwashed men and animals filled my nostrils. What little I saw of blackened and diseased flesh is etched into my memory. As is the feeling of the club as it was brought down on my forehead. 
 
 *** 
 
 My head swam like it was in an ocean of ether. I awoke in spurts. First as I was being dragged after being hit by the club. I heard Roberts screaming and fighting. When I turned though, I only saw bacteria-eaten flesh. Pockmarks on backs and greening skin where there was less human and more bacteria. I thought they might be zombies at first, but that was only the screaming of a damaged brain dreaming nightmares as my body refused to move. I awoke again to find myself face to face with the head of a panda. My head could n't comprehend what I was seeing so my stomach reacted instead. I threw up. And then I passed out again. 
 
 When my consciousness finally returned, I found myself lying on a bed of sand. There was pressure on my wrist when I finally managed to rise up out of the dirt. I looked to my wrist to find I had been handcuffed to some sort of pipe. My next instinct was to check my surroundings: a dug out section of concrete with dying plants and a place in the concrete stained with minerals from years of water flowing through it. I was in an exhibit, down in a pit. But a pit for what? 
 
 I stood up straight. Something brushed behind my back and I felt powerful, terrible muscles raking against my frame. It had a hobbled walk as though it were trying to convince me that it was n't so sure in its walk but it was having trouble concealing its sure-footedness. I saw orange and black and I screamed, falling again and nearly taking my arm off in the process. Backing away, it advanced, teeth bared. A Bengal tiger. 
 
 `` Enough!'' I heard the roar. 
 
 I stared into the eyes of the tiger for a while. At first I thought some man was behind it and I merely could not see him, but there was a cool restraint to this animal. A certain almost human quality to the way it moved and looked at me. 
 
 `` What... did...?'' 
 
 `` No,'' it said. `` You heard. I spoke.'' 
 
 My breaths came shakily now. I tried to rationalize it by the bump on my head. 
 
 `` Relax,'' it said. `` The virus is taking shape. You can hear me.'' 
 
 `` How.'' 
 
 `` Humans trained their minds to ignore animals millions of years ago. The virus breaks that part of the brain down first.'' 
 
 My eyes widened. I started shaking again, started to pull at the chain. It was suddenly as if I could feel the virus eating away at my brain and I had to hold my head to prevent the leaking of my gray matter. Then I howled. It was rhythmic, concentrated, animal. The noise scared me. I clutched at my chest and shook. 
 
 `` No, no, no,'' I said. 
 
 The tiger growled and put its foot on my chest, knocking me to the dirt. 
 
 `` Yes!'' It seemed to cry.
