by Isabelle Sorrells
A hairy beast sat upon a branch overlooking the roads of a foreign land, the crisp night air wisping through his fur in a sensation he had not felt in a long time. He had escaped his imprisonment and forced his way out into the open where a cacophony of strange sounds and lights awaited him. He searched for a way home among the chaos but could not recognize or understand anything he saw, so he found higher ground. From there he was able to recognize a familiar animal rushing toward him on its spinning rubber feet. Fear of being bound back into his cage lit up his mind in an incomprehensible madness. Because of this and the stress of this alien environment, the beast issued a vicious roar deep from his belly and beyond his bared fangs as he launched from his branch onto the blackened path below. The barbaric animals around him roared and cast their blinding lights upon him, narrowly stampeding past him. To keep from being trampled, the beast leapt onto one of the foreign animals’ flat back with a thump, who then unknowingly carried him away.
Agents Jones and Lupiac pursued the anxious wild thing as he bounded from car to car, barely steering clear of surprised drivers and swerving desperately between the lanes to catch up.
“It’s ridiculous that the fate of the human race depends on a single monkey,” Agent Jones lamented, yanking the wheel to the right to avoid a merging car.
“He’s an ape, “Agent Lupiac corrected, grunting as he was thrown into the door as the car swerved again, fingers fumbling to load the tranquilizer into his gun. “If we don’t catch him soon I’m more afraid he’ll get caught under a set of tires, because if he dies then all chances for a cure would be gone, and we truly will be doomed.”
“Don’t worry,” Agent Jones assured him. “I’ve almost got him.”
As they were almost upon the creature it landed on the hood of a car, blocking the driver’s view. The woman who was behind the wheel shrieked in surprise. The car swerved uncontrollably, colliding into a few others until it finally slammed into the guardrail, tossing the ape through the windshield with a shower of glass, and flipped over the hill into the wilds beyond.
The agents quickly pulled over and leaped out of their car before it came to a full stop, rushing after the wrecked vehicle and praying its inhabitants were both unharmed. The car’s momentum was halted by the woods, entangling it among the brush. The agents rushed to the driver’s side and helped the woman out who was still conscious and not severely injured.
“Was that a monkey?” The woman asked incredulously. “In Chicago?”
“No, ma’am. That was an ape,” Agent Lupiac responded politely as he called the ambulance.
“Did you see where it went?” Agent Jones asked as she crouched next to the woman.
The woman pointed an unsteady finger toward a rustling in the trees where the ape swung through the branches toward towers of light in the darkness, already swinging too far away for them to catch.
“Is that Chicago?” Agent Jones asked, gesturing toward the lights.
The woman nodded.
“God help us all…” Agent Jones gasped. She stepped out into the woods, catching glimpses of the beast before it disappeared, the sounds of an ambulance growing louder in the distance – it’s lights still unseen. “It’s all our fault.”
Because of the woman’s confused and worried eyes, partly dazed from her crash, Agent Lupiac resignedly explained, “That ape must be stopped, because if it isn’t, the virus it carries will spread over the entire city like radiation, wreaking havoc through all of civilization, infecting the country, then the entire continent, until there is nothing left. Once it’s begun, it is a nuclear bomb with a fallout no one can escape.”
Words Worth While 