Pack Animals by Peter Anghelides

whether his shout would cause the man to panic and the tiger to locate him. He reached to his belt for the walkie-talkie, and cursed under his breath when his hand found nothing. He’d left it on his desk back in the administration building. Even in the biting cold of the morning, a colder chill ran through him.
    He couldn’t leave the man in there. Berkley ran at full pelt around the enclosure, skittering on the gravel pathway, hurrying to the keeper’s entry for the enclosure. He had his security keycard, thank God. Berkley fumbled it into the access mechanism, and slipped softly through. He swiftly negotiated the outer gates, and snatched up a bucket of ready-prepared ground beef. He might need that to distract the big cat and get the man out to safety.
    The inner door creaked on its unoiled hinge, a hideously penetrating noise in this freezing air. Amur’s head twisted round; she recognised the sound.
    ‘Get over here!’ snapped Berkley to the intruder.
    The intruder turned to face him. Berkley felt his own cold fear turn to hot anger. It was Gareth!
    ‘Gareth, what the hell are you doing? Walk over here now! Don’t dawdle, but don’t run. You must remember the drill?’
    Gareth just stood and smiled. He was three or four years older than Berkley remembered. Longer hair, shabbier appearance. But still recognisably the summer student who’d worked at Torlannau.
    ‘Mr Berkley.’ Gareth’s laconic, mocking words showed a disturbing lack of concern.
    ‘Are you on drugs?’ hissed Berkley.
    Gareth waved his mobile phone at Berkley. It looked like an ugly, clunky, old-fashioned model.
    Berkley stared. ‘You’ll get yourself killed. Maybe both of us! That tiger hasn’t been fed today…’
    ‘What tiger?’ Gareth put his hand to his forehead and peered around him, for all the world like an old-fashioned sailor looking out to sea.
    Berkley checked to see where Amur was. Not in sight. Not behind the narrow bole of the single tree. He whipped his head from side to side, disbelieving. No sign of the big striped cat. Could she have slipped down into the moat? That would only allow her access via a ramped tunnel on the far side and back into the main exhibit area. Amur wouldn’t try to leap the moat because on the far side of it there was only the ninety-degree vertical of smooth concrete and glass that Berkley checked daily for defects.
    No, that couldn’t be right. He could see straight across into the visitor area of the zoo. The smooth wall had simply vanished. The tiger could have leaped that gap.
    The trespasser walked across to the zookeeper. That thing in his hand wasn’t a mobile phone. The shape was too irregular, the flashing lights too bizarre.
    ‘What’s going on, Gareth?’
    The young man made a flicking gesture at him. A flat piece of card spun from Gareth’s fingers, and the zookeeper flinched involuntarily. It looked like a photograph of some kind, maybe one of the big postcards they sold in the zoo shop. Berkley grew angry. He stooped to pick the card up from the sandy ground, and saw it wasn’t a photo but a line drawing of a monstrous creature, accompanied by some sort of numerical assessment.
    Berkley considered the intruder with contempt. ‘Stop playing games, Gareth. You were bugger all use when you were on work experience, but surely you remember the rules about the large cats?’
    ‘Solitary animals,’ Gareth smiled. ‘They don’t run with the pack. I like that about them.’
    ‘This isn’t funny, Gareth.’
    ‘But you like a joke, don’t you, Mr Berkley?’ sneered Gareth. ‘Do you remember how I learned about the big cats? How you thought it was such fun to let me through the outer gate and then lock me in. Before I knew there was an inner safety gate, of course. You let me crap myself with fear. I literally crapped myself. Did you know that, Mr Berkley? Did you?’
    The man had lost his mind, thought Berkley. No matter what gags the zoo staff played on the students, that