Zod Wallop Read Online Free PDF Page A

Allan,” Rene said. She was still dressed in the overalls and yellow tank top, and she held a blue backpack in her left hand. “I’m ready.” She slipped out into the hall and pulling her door closed behind her.
    Allan would have liked to ask her how she had known to be ready and for what, but he decided to save the questions for later. They crept down the hall and into the courtyard.
    Harwood Psychiatric was not a high-security institution. It was an expensive, private asylum, and most of those within its walls had no intention of fleeing. This was their refuge, in fact, from the larger, hostile world. But in recent years, a growing adolescent population had required Harwood to acknowledge some security measures. Young men and women had been placed in Harwood by exasperated parents, and these kids were inclined to bolt if the opportunity presented itself. So Harwood had acquired additional security guards, electronically locked doors, and the gray walls surrounding the courtyard had been raised. Those trees abutting the walls had been removed.
    A full moon hovered overhead, so bright that the grass looked as though it had been spray-painted silver. Arbus darted across the grass, past the gurgling fountain, and Allan and Rene followed.
    “All right!” Rene said. “All right, Raymond!”
    Allan and Rene watched Arbus scramble up a swinging ladder made of rope and wooden slats. The monkey reached the top and turned, squatting on the wall. It spread its arms and grinned, as though expecting applause.
    “You first,” Allan said, but he needn’t have bothered. Rene had slipped the backpack on and was briskly negotiating the ladder, an athletic girl whose retreating buttocks, despite being shrouded in shapeless overalls, filled Allan’s heart with the full meaning and exhilaration of the word escape.
    A voice behind Allan shouted, “Stop!”
    Allan saw Baker running across the grass. Allan turned, grabbed the first rung of the dancing ladder, and hauled himself up.
    Negotiating the ladder was a shaky business. Rungs were not necessarily where feet could find them, but Allan floundered his way to the top and prepared to haul himself up when a hand suddenly hooked his foot.
    Allan looked down to see the orderly, whose bandaged face was sweaty with determination. Allan kicked out, but in so doing lost his balance and leaned back into the terrible hollow of empty space, the moon falling toward him, his ears filling with his own shout of terror.
    Allan hit the ground on his back, a whump of suddenness as though a circuit had been banged shut on the engines of gravity. He couldn’t move.
    He saw Baker towering over him. The orderly was grinning, arms folded across his chest. His bandaged nose lent an outlaw aspect to his demeanor. He was saying something, but Allan couldn’t make it out.
    And then, a trick of the shadows, Allan saw a yellow toothy smile floating in the dark foliage of the tree behind Baker, saw the smile drift forward, as though propelled by a gentle breeze, and saw the simian features of Arbus take shape behind the large, piano-key grin.
    Baker must have sensed the approach of those teeth. Perhaps his nose signaled some telepathic warning to his brain. Whatever. It was too late. He began to turn just as Arbus craned forward, hooted mightily, and struck.
    Baker screamed, and Allan, in the one brief instant before he rolled over, righted himself, and scrambled up the ladder and over the wall, saw Baker execute a rapid pirouette that spun the monkey from him and removed, in accordance with the laws of physics, a substantial portion of the his ear.
 
     
    Raymond was waiting for Allan on the other side and hugged him. “Lord Allan,” Raymond said. “I trust you are unharmed.” Arbus, also unharmed, leapt from the top of the wall to join them.
    “We had best be on our way,” Raymond said.
    Allan followed Raymond to the car, where Emily and Rene awaited them.
    It was only after they were out on the