Page 4 of The Last Sanctuary

“That’s what I thought. I’m the only one who feeds you treats, remember? What would you do without me?”

Vlad blinked one yellow eye.

“That’s right. No more attitude from you, big boy.”

He chuffed again. It almost sounded like he was chuckling, like he was as amused by her as she was by him.

She lowered her voice. “I’m going to miss you most of all. Don’t you dare tell anyone?—”

A loud shout splintered the air.

Raven jerked her head up, stiffening, expecting a lecture from her father for shirking her responsibilities for ten minutes to play with the tiger again.

But the shout hadn’t come from her father. In the distance, the head zookeeper, Zachariah Harris, approached from the stone pathway that circled the perimeter of Haven Wildlife Refuge.

Zachariah was hunched over. He stumbled along the path near the bobcat enclosure, about one hundred yards from where she stood next to the tiger house.

Raven hadn’t seen him in days, not since he first started coughing. He’d immediately quarantined himself, holing up in his loft above the Grizzly Grill, Haven Wildlife Refuge’s only restaurant.

Her father had claimed it was only the flu. Not the other kind of sickness. The kind he didn’t want to talk about or acknowledge. He’d insisted the refuge was still safe, that everything was fine.

Everything was about as far from fine as one could get.

Shielding her eyes with her hand, she watched in alarm as Zachariah moved toward her. He faltered, regained his footing. Kept moving.

Instinctively, she took a step backward, off the path, toward the fence line. She yanked the wrinkled mask from her cargo pocket and slipped it over her nose and mouth, hooking the straps behind her ears. It felt incredibly flimsy. She cursed herself for leaving her latex gloves in her room.

“Zachariah, you’re sick! You need to stay away—” Her voice broke off, her throat closing like a fist.

Zachariah had worked at Haven as head zookeeper for fifteen years, as much a fixture as Vlad the tiger or Electra, the park’s old arthritic bobcat. The Zachariah she knew was a spry and cheerful white-haired man in his late sixties, his face scored with deep wrinkles, his eyes always sparkling with good humor.

This Zachariah was something different.

His bloodshot eyes bulged. The veins in his eyes had burst; his eyeballs glistened crimson. Blood smeared below his eyes and marred his slack mouth. His skin was gray.

Raven took another step back. A small part of her registered that she was too near the fence, Vlad pacing in his cage at herback. The horror of Zachariah’s condition blotted out everything else.

Zachariah shuffled closer. Fifteen feet away now.

“Stay back!” Her spine bumped against the fence. Frantic, she glanced to the right and left for an escape route.

Behind her, Vlad stalked angrily, his tail twitching. He gave a low uneasy growl. To her left was the deep moat where Alex, the twelve-foot alligator, lounged in his large pond. Only his prehistoric predator eyes and broad snout appeared above the waterline.

To her right, Zachariah blocked her path to the rest of the refuge. She glanced back at the tiger house, at the tree she used to scale the roof—surely, an old man couldn’t climb up after her—but he moved too quickly and cut off that avenue of escape, too.

She was effectively trapped.

And he was coming straight for her.

She shrank back. “Stay away!”

Zachariah lunged at her.

For an old, sick man, he was impossibly fast. Before she could react, he seized her arms with an iron grip.

“Help me!” Zachariah shouted inches from her face. Blood-flecked spittle struck her cheeks, landing on her eyelashes. “Please! Help!”

His hot hands burned her bare arms. His whole body radiated a terrible heat, as if his insides had burst into flame. She tried to wrench from his grasp. He was strong, impossibly strong.