Free Ashton Memorial by Kody Boye, Robert R. Best, Laura Best, Deedee Davies

here.”
    “I'll go with you,” said
Lori.
    “Sure,” said Mom, smiling.
She looked at Ella. “You coming, El?”
    Ella thought about it, then
made the decision that would later make her chest hurt. “Nope. I'll
wait here.”
    So off they went. Ella spent a good thirty
minutes making Caleb switch the view screens from camera to camera
so she could look at the different animals. Then Lee ran in from
the breakroom, pale and wide-eyed.
    “There's something bad on
the news,” he said. Ella and the others followed Lee back to the
breakroom and crowded around the small TV.
    They saw a group of people holding down a
screaming woman in front of a grocery store. The woman grunted and
jerked, trying to pull free. A cop ran over, the news camera
jerking to follow him, and pulled the people off her. He bent down
to help her up and she bit into the cop's neck. The cop pulled
away, clutching his neck in shock as blood ran through his fingers.
He fell to his knees as the woman crawled to him. The group ran,
knocking the camera over.
    Within a few minutes of channel surfing,
they had gleaned what was happening. Corpses were moving and
indiscriminately eating. Clip after clip of people running or
dying. Sometimes both. And the ones that were dead got up and
attacked. Caleb flipped to another local channel and they watched
the grocery store footage again.
    “Wait,” said Shelley,
leaning in closer to the TV. “Oh my god, I know that store. It's
three blocks away.”
    They all rushed back to the Communications
Office. Caleb switched on as many screens as he could at once. The
cameras outside the zoo all showed corpses gathering. Mangled and
misshapen people, bent and torn and gnashing their rotten teeth.
The cameras inside the zoo showed no sign of them. Just visitors
wandering the zoo, most of them oblivious. A few were on cell
phones and looking very worried.
    “Lock it down!” yelled Tom.
“Before those fuckers get in!”
    “But Mom!” said Ella.
“Lori!”
    Caleb looked at Tom, then
at Ella. “I'm sorry, Ella. Your mom has a keycard for when they get
back.”
    He flipped open the panel that controlled
the electronic locking system Gregory had recently installed.
Another of his advances he was so proud of. The panel had two lines
of switches. The ones for the animal cages were lit up red. The
ones for the doors were lit up green. Caleb flipped all the door
switches to red, using his palms to flip as many at once as he
could.
    “No!” said Ella, stepping
back and biting her thumb. She reached in her jeans pocket for her
cell phone. Her heart dropped when the pocket was empty. She'd left
her phone at home. She'd complained about it all day at school. It
was a minor annoyance then. Now it was devastating
    Caleb looked at her and
shook his head. “I'm sorry. We have to keep everyone
safe.”
    The TV showed increasingly worse images,
culminating in graveyards filled with holes, some with corpses
still clawing their way out. Any graveyard anywhere could easily
produce hundreds of the things at once. Almost everywhere was
overrun within hours.
    As the night went on, they slowly lost all
contact with the outside world. The TV channels went out one by
one. Then the radio channels followed. Finally, the Keepers were no
longer able to reach loved ones on their cell phones.
    Finally, somewhere around 3 A.M., Gregory's
voice came over the speakers. He said everything was fine, he was
in the zoo and he would share more later. Before he clicked off,
Ella thought she heard Lori screaming.
    “Where did he call from?”
Ella said, rushing over to the controls.
    Caleb looked at screens
Ella didn't understand. He frowned. “I can't tell. That's weird. I
should be able to tell.”
    Then nothing the rest of the night nor into
the morning, until the second call from Gregory came. The one where
he told Ella her mother was dead and he had her sister. He had her
sister and wouldn't tell her where. He'd hung up after she'd
screamed at him. Again,