Looking back, Ethan didn’t know which terrified him more, the sight of the apes ripping each other apart, or the casual annoyance on the faces of his father and sister.

  They had visited the Natural Bridge Caverns Wildlife Ranch just north of San Antonio, Texas on his father’s weekend visitation. The bright, sunny spring day in Central Texas was perfect for being outside to see African wildlife in the Texas Hill Country.

  His sister, Emily, resented being there. She never enjoyed the outdoors and stopped choosing any kind of outdoor activity ever since she got serious about gymnastics. She’d wanted to see a movie, probably some silly romantic comedy senior girls liked. But Ethan’s father stated this weekend’s activities were for Ethan to decide as Emily chose last time.

  Ethan was always much more interested in the outdoors and science than the usual sophomore boys in his school. His love of the outdoors wasn’t just an interest. It influenced his style. He wore hiking shoes with blue jeans and a T-shirt and brown hoodie, which hung from his slim frame. His short, blond hair was usually unkempt, unlike his sister’s bright blonde hair.

  He picked the wildlife ranch because he had visited the San Antonio Zoo many times before but never made the trip to the ranch. Ethan’s sister complained about the idea the whole way from Austin to San Antonio as their mother drove them to their scheduled visitation with their father.

  Later, Ethan would think on how different his life would have been if the events of that day had unfolded while trapped inside a crowded movie theater rather than visiting the outskirts of town where he could escape easily.

  They had just arrived at the gibbon enclosure, a large circular pavilion with a cage around it to prevent the gibbons from escaping. The pen had plenty of branches and perches above the ground where the gibbons could swing and climb only stopping to hold out their hands through the bars for food from the watching crowd. On this day, they were quite active, swinging obsessively from one side of the pavilion to the other, never stopping or resting.

  “A gibbon’s ability to swing through the trees is called brachiation. They spend almost all of their lives in the branches of trees where they eat a diet primarily of fruits and leaves” Ethan read from a brochure that he picked up in the visitor center. When he looked up, he noticed his sister was glaring at one of the gibbons as it hooted loudly at her. She looked annoyed, but she wore that look most of the time.

  Ethan’s father seemed a bit bored, as well. That was unusual as his father at least attempted to encourage Ethan’s interests. After all, his father took him on all of those camping trips and even convinced his mother to let him join the Boy Scouts.

  “Fruits and leaves, huh?” Emily smirked as she watched the gibbons.

  Ethan’s eyes followed hers as painful shrieks replaced excited hoots. One of the large gibbons grabbed a smaller one and sunk its fangs into its back. The other gibbons panicked, leaping away from the vicious attack.

  Then their panic changed into a mass assault as other gibbons grabbed the nearest one within reach. It didn’t matter the size or age of the ape; young killed old, old killed young, strong ripped into weak. Those who didn’t join in on the fight slammed their bodies against the cage in an attempt to escape. The loud clangs of muscle against steel were drowned out by cries of pain.

  Ethan stood there in shock at what he saw. He wasn’t bothered by the blood. He had been hunting and fishing many times before, and the sight of blood and organs didn’t affect him.

  What shocked him was the sudden and inexplicable violence in animals that were docile just moments ago. He felt he should do something to help the weaker ones escape, but all he could do was watch helplessly as the blood dripped to the concrete floor.

  “Ugh. Let’s go. I’m hungry,” Ethan’s father said casually before walking away from the screams of dying primates and the roars of their assailants. Emily sighed and followed their father, her blonde ponytail bobbing behind her.

  Ethan looked around. “What…?”

  He noticed their family scene played out around the enclosure. Others seemed to be horrified at what they were watching. More seemed annoyed and wandered away. A mother left her crying toddler, and another child giggled as she hurled peanuts at the body of a dead gibbon, oblivious to the carnage just in front of her.

  Ethan turned and walked quickly to catch up to his father and sister. Emily, a competitive gymnast, was always able to move faster than Ethan. As they walked back to the visitor center, Ethan could see that the violence from the gibbon enclosure was playing out again and again in the wildlife ranch.

  To the right, goats rammed their horns repeatedly into each other until one horn snapped off and blood streamed over their faces. Across the parking lot, a male rhino charged through the open field, threatening other animals with its long horn. All around them were scenes of inexplicable carnage, and yet Ethan’s family seemed not to notice or care about it.

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  They entered the visitor center and walked past the rows of cheap stuffed animals and even cheaper T-shirts with the ranch’s logo printed on them. Ethan’s father strode up to the counter where snacks were sold, attended by a very bored-looking college-aged man with his back to the family and staring up at a clock on the wall.

  Even through the walls, Ethan could hear the screams of innocent animals and the cries of scared people. The sounds became more distinct as the doors of the visitor center were opened repeatedly as more and more people entered. Apparently, his family wasn’t the only ones who had become suddenly hungry.

  “Do you have any real food or just this crap?” his father demanded from the man, tossing a bag of potato chips onto the counter.

  Emily stood behind her father with her arms crossed against her chest and glared at the man. Her face tilted down slightly, and her blue eyes flickered over the man’s back. Ethan studied her face for a moment. She didn’t look like the entitled sister he tried to love despite their differences. She looked like a predator sizing up its prey.

  “Emily, are you OK?” Ethan whispered to his sister.

  She didn’t respond, and soon there was a crowd forming around the counter demanding food or looking on confused and frightened. The angry shouts rose up until they eventually drowned out the sounds of shrieking animals and crying children outside.

  The young man behind the counter finally turned to face the crowd, and he had the same bored, slightly annoyed look on his face as his family had expressed moments ago. “We have what we have. What the fuck do you want me to do about it?”

  His indifferent response enraged one of the men standing near Ethan’s father, and the man leaned over the counter to grab at the young man. This movement jostled Ethan’s father, which caused his father to go into a rage.

  “Watch what you’re doing, shit head!”

  The man then turned his attention to Ethan’s father, who shoved him back into the other people. The momentary tussle caused a cascade of pushing in the crowd.

  “Dad!” Ethan shouted, wanting all of this to stop.

  A number of people were spurred on by the violence and grabbed and shoved others in the crowd while others looked on in stunned fear as they saw their loved ones join in the fight over nothing. Mothers, fathers, children, and siblings attacked the nearest person to them though there didn’t seem to be any cause.

  A woman, not much older than Emily, with mousey brown hair and wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt, grabbed Ethan by the shoulders, and shook him. She was shouting into his face, “Do you know how long I have been waiting? I need me time! Me time!”

  Ethan was so confused and frightened by the whole scene that all he could do was look into her screaming face as he tried to figure out what he did to make her so angry. Behind her, he could see his father, scratching and clawing at a pudgy middle-aged Hispanic woman’s face.

  “Dad, stop it!” Ethan cried out, trying to get his father’s attention.

  The woman shaking Ethan reared her head back and howled, which was interrupted by Emily’s fist as she punched the woman right across the jaw. “Get your fucking hands off my brother!” Her tone wasn’t so much concern for Ethan, but an imperious tone of someone who felt insulted that a lesser being would dare cross them.

  The woman pushed Ethan away from her as she returned the attack to Emily, trying to grab at Emily’s hair. Ethan stumbled and tripped over a purse, which had been dropped in the fight. He toppled backward.

  The sounds of people screaming and cursing, pleading for the violence to stop, reverberated off the walls of the small visitor center. Ethan rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled out of the center towards the open door.

  Others fled the center, clutching purses and small children, trying to save what they could from the rabid crowd of relatives and loved ones.

  Loud cracks of gunfire, which made Ethan’s ears ring, broke over the cacophony of the riot. Someone had drawn a pistol and fired into the ceiling. The screams rose higher into a full-blown panic in some, and in others, the gunshots only seemed to spur them on.

  Ethan reached the door and pulled himself to his feet but was pushed out by an overweight man carrying an armful of candy bars. Once clear of the door, Ethan turned to see if his father or sister were following him.

  The man with a pistol fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Bleeding people writhed on the floor, either from gunshots or injuries from the angry mob. Emily straddled the clerk, pinning him on the floor. His head in her hands, she grinned as she pounded the back of his skull into the tile floor.

  A thin stream of blood ran in the grout of the tile floor as his feet twitched uncontrollably. Ethan saw his father just as a bullet went through the back of his skull, blasting his forehead all over the face of the middle-aged woman who he was trying to strangle.

  Ethan turned to run but was knocked off-balance. This time, not by a panicked victim trying to escape, but by a sudden lurch of the earth, which threw him down to his hands and knees. A loud explosion behind him followed the earthquake. A rain of soil and rocks showered down and triggered all the car alarms in the parking lot, adding to the sounds of screams, shouts, shots, and pleas.

  Ethan looked behind him at the source of the explosion and saw that a hole large enough to drive a big rig truck through had opened up just a football field’s distance away in the middle of the park across the lot, where people desperately tried to start their cars to get away. He huddled against the wall, peering around the corner to see what was happening at that pit.

  Though his lizard brain told him to run towards safety, if there was such a thing, his innate curiosity held him in place. Through the sight of large chunks of rock and a swirling cloud of dust, he could see something moving out of the pit.

  As the dust slowly settled, he saw the silhouette of a man clamber up to stand on top of a large rock, which had been thrust into the air from the explosion. The man reached behind him and pulled out what appeared to Ethan like an old war horn as he had seen in many documentaries on Vikings.

  The man tilted his head back and blew, sending out a loud blast that overwhelmed the sounds of the chaos which only began to die down.