When I found Roy, he was already dead.
A scream rose like bile in my throat.
I swallowed it with a choking gulp.
Making a sound was not an option.
If they hear me, they will find me.
Then I’ll be dead too.
His mouth was frozen in what appeared to be an uncomfortable mix of
smile and scream. It was the type of expression that comes when a close
friend jumps out from behind a corner and yells “Boo!” You know it’s a
joke. You know you are in no real danger. But something inside you –
something primal, something unconscious – believes this could be the
end. Suddenly, you are stripped down to the basic human condition: fear
and confusion.
Where Roy’s eyes had been were now bubbling pits of putrefied gore.
His face was cut to ribbons and deep impact divots had misshapen his
skull into something unrecognizable. Something very close to a
masterpiece, defiled.
Christian radio personality Frank Pastore was able to correctly
announce the way he would die while doing a radio show one afternoon.
Speaking to his adoring listeners, Frank, in a moment of serendipity,
said over the air, “You guys know I ride a motorcycle, right? At any
moment, especially with the idiot people who cross the diamond lane into
my lane, without any blinkers — not that I’m angry about it — at any
minute, I could be spread all over the 210.”
Three hours later, an elderly woman crossed into his lane and Frank Pastore was human mulch.
But, pecked to death by an extinct bird?
There is no way anyone could see that coming.
The four years of work it took bringing Raphus cucullatus, the Dodo
bird, back to life had worn me down. Cracks had begun to form in the
corners of my eyes. When I looked in the mirror every morning, my skin,
my teeth, my nails, seemed be more tarnished than they were on the
previous day’s examination.
The work wasn’t in bringing the birds into the world; that part is
easy enough. A healthy spoonful of Dodo DNA extracted from a preserved
skeleton, a dash of Nicobar Pigeon, Ostrich, and Albatross, a blast of
electricity, and blammo! What once was not, is again. The work is in
keeping them alive, playing the part of overbearing mother, long enough
for them to breed naturally. It makes me sick to my stomach, rumbling
with a combination of pride and revulsion, to think of the hours, the
days, I spent sitting and watching respiration cycles, monitoring
internal temperatures, examining fecal matter.
Now, I’m about to be killed by a marauding flock of the creatures I coddled like my own children.
I just needed a night out. I needed to blow off some steam. Get
drunk. Get laid. Feel taken care of rather than feeling I must take care
of. The office was a place dank enough to keep my colleagues away but
still hip enough to draw in the 20-something frat boys looking to get
wasted on the cheap. Roy had caught my eye when I was three vodka tonics
deep. My low cut dress had caught his.
“Have you ever heard of the Dodo bird?” I asked, as flirty as one can utter that particular phrase.
My guts suddenly turned over the way they turn over when you make snap decision and know there is no turning back.
When Roy asked if he could see the birds, I shot him down at first.
He was buying my drinks, and I was becoming less and less aware of the
flaws in my veneer. Roy put his hand on my lower back and put his mouth
close to my ear. The sensation of his breath against my skin reminded me
of my womanhood.
“C’mon, show me, and then I’ll show you something afterwards,” Roy whispered.
All matriarchal inhibitions dissolved. We left.
The lab was dark when we pulled up. Not just
closed-for-the-night-be-back-at-9-AM dark. Dark dark. Pitch black. I had
figured a fuse had just popped. Inside, the hum of blue-white emergency
lights lead us, stumbling, to the containment area.
The enclosures were empty. Every single male specimen was gone. At
first, I thought it must have been a break in, that a competitor had
caught wind of what we were doing and stolen the Dodos for fame or
glory. Yet, each glass door, easily opened by anyone with at least one opposable thumb, was smashed out from the inside.
“Looks like your extinct birds flew the coop,” Roy said with a chuckle.
“Dodo can’t fly,” I replied. “Stay here, Roy. I’ll be right back.”
That was the last time I saw Roy alive. When I returned from checking
the other offices for any signs of life, poor Roy, his once pretty face
all smashed and bashed and gouged into a thick red stew, was no more.
Signs of panic were all around his body. Perfect red tridactyl imprints
scattered in every direction, fleeing the scene of the crime, creating a
web of violent victory that spread across the room and out the rear
door.
Hhhh-nnawwk.
Hnn-ah-ah-ah-Hnwwkk.
A cacophony of percussive honks and broken glass blared from the
female containment area. Keeping low and quiet, I crept to the viewing
window on the adjoining wall. Inside some 50 or so
supposed-to-be-extinct birds were mingling amongst twinkling bits of
broken glass, honking and preening, courting mates through spastic head
bobs and bounces. For a moment, I forgot all about the dead body that
lay not 10 feet from where I stood, awestruck. I was a witness to a
ritual that had not been viewed in 400 years.
The loneliness of the moment, the recollection of Roy’s touch, the
echo of his laughter in my head, shook me from the state of mesmerized
romanticism. Something had gone terribly wrong in our attempt to cheat
natural selection. Dutch explorers described the Dodo as docile and
fearless to a point of foolishness. Nowhere was it mentioned that they
were blood-hungry.
I crept to the door, just slightly ajar, of the female containment
room. Keeping my eye on the birds through the reinforced glass window, I
pulled the locking mechanism.
CLICK!
50 beady pairs of ink-black eyes were on me at once. The birds stood
frozen in the previous moment of whatever courtship display they had
begun.
I backed up, trembling and sweaty but slightly more at ease now that
my homicidal brood was locked away. I turned my attention back to Roy.
Pitiful, hapless Roy. I would be fired for sure. Not only had I brought a
non-employee to a restricted genetics lab but also said non-employee
was mauled to death by our crowning achievement.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The damn things were flinging themselves at the viewing window.
THUD!THUD!THUD!THUD!THUD!
Before I could really gather what was happening, the glass was
shattered and the birds, all 50 of them, standing three feet tall and
weighing 22 pounds each, had washed over me, a wave of feather and talon
and beak. In a frenzy, they dug and pecked and scratched at my eyes, my
tongue, my neck, opened every main artery.
I was dead.
Extinct.
In my last moments, before the hooked beak of a fledgling to which I
had given countless sleepless nights tore out my right eye, I imagined
the horror and disappointment of my colleagues when they would find me
in a few hours. I saw and felt the grief and anguish of my parents and
friends when they would be telephoned by police bearing bad news.
I thought of rotting Roy lying beside me.
I thought of how some things are really better forgotten.