"Hey, Murdoch." "What's the matter, boy?" "What are you looking at?" "Hey, shh..." "It's okay, there's nothing out there." "Hey, Dock." "Come on, hey, quit your whimpering, eh?" "Let's get back to camp." "Come on." "Come on, Dock." "Hey, Dock, come on." "For centuries, mankind has been the dominant species." "We've domesticated animals, locked them up, killed them for sport." "But what if, all across the globe, the animals decided, "No more"?" "What if they finally decided to fight back?" "Get ready to have a good day." "Five accepted mass extinction events." "What are you doing?" "Did he say you could look at that?" "No." "He's out cold with a hangover." "Go and get the trucks ready." "Rise and shine, Jackson." "We have a dozen impatient Swedes waiting for us to show them the rhino." "Go away." "The dinosaurs sensed the impending devastation." "You're not going away, are you?" "Major biotic crises-- volcanic, glacial, oceanic." "Global de-evolution, extinction events." "Catastrophic." "Devastating." "What if, prior to any of these events, the animals knew what was coming?" "Though we may be too ignorant, too unwilling to recognize it, we can even ignore the... the defiant pupil." "Denial is..." "What does your father mean, Jackson?" "I'm confused." "Of course you are, little man." "It's gibberish." "What does he mean when he says" ""The defiant pupil"?" "I don't know." "He was a professor." "He had a student who wouldn't listen." "Defiant, like you, Daniel." "Now, go see to the trucks and put the radio parts on the plane." "We'll bring them out to Simon this afternoon." " Radio parts?" " The radio at Simon's camp is on the blink." "I thought we could fly out there and help them fix it." "I haven't been able to reach him for two days." "What is this?" "A potion." "To help remedy the effects of drinking with the Swedes." "Come on." "Don't be such a coward." "It's just lemon, nutmeg, grape seed oil, herbs." "And two heaping tablespoons of baboon dung." "This delta is an actual oasis in an arid climate." "There have been over 70 species of fish that have been catalogued to live in this delta." "Now, the thing to remember about the black rhino, which is why they're tricky to find, is that they live in transitional habitats." "What the hell'd you do that for?" "!" "We are opposed to animal murder in this zip code." "I have a valid license to hunt that rhino." "Well, just because it's legal doesn't make it right." "Are you kidding me?" "I paid 200 grand for that license." "Well, I paid nine dollars for this hat." "Seems like we both got ripped off." "We have a problem here?" "N-No problem, Rafiki." "What do you mean "No problem"?" "Trust me, Mr. Weber." "There is no problem." "Enjoy the beautiful day." "She really said she wants an open relationship?" " Yeah, she did." " That is kind of awesome, no?" "Uh... sure." "Until you factor in the secondary component." " Which is?" " So can she." "So can she what?" "Sleep with anybody she wants to." " And I can't get mad." "Really?" "Really." "Can I have her cell phone number?" "I got to be honest, the moment she said that," "I lost all interest in other women." "It's like when you're a kid and your ma says you can have all the French fries you want." "Then suddenly you don't want French fries." "You know what I mean, dude?" "Three dead and five others wounded as a pair of lions escaped City of Angels Zoo and made their way into the crowded Mid-Wilshire section of Hollywood, where they killed two more men in an alley." "It took LAPD and Animal Control Services till nearly sunrise to take them down." "Yes, I understand." "You said that." "And please tell Mr. Fremer that I do not accept that explanation." "Why?" "Well, for one thing, those lions behaved entirely out of character." "They escaped the zoo by killing their trainer, a trainer who had been with them for years, since they were cubs." "They've had a regular routine for all of that time, until eight months ago when the zoo began feeding its animals" " with food from Reiden Global." " Campbell." "So for Mr. Fremer to say that there's no correlation..." "Campbell." " She wants to see you." " I got a thing." "Yeah, she doesn't care about your thing." "Now." "First, let me direct you to the masthead." "This paper's masthead." "My paper's masthead." "Which indicates it's owned by..." "GDJ International." "Now I'd like to direct your attention to this." "It's a blog." "It's called Somewhat Damaged." "And it's written by a person who calls herself the Girl with the Genie Tattoo." "Never heard of it." "No?" "Oh, it's your typical noisy, nosy firebrand crap." "Raging at injustice and corporate misconduct." "But the Girl with the Genie Tattoo has a specific hatred for a particular biotechnology company." "Okay." "This is her latest entry." "Perhaps you'd like to read the highlighted part out loud." ""Lawrence Fremer, Chairman of the L.A. Parks Services," ""is the latest to fall prey" ""to the evil agrochemical company's pettifoggery" ""when he agreed to a service contract with Reiden Global," ""and, as a consequence, two lions ran amok, killing three people."" "And can you guess who owns Reiden Global?" "GDJ International." "Okay." "What does any of this have to do with me?" "Come on, Jamie." "Don't take us for fools." "I've been editing your copy for two years now." "And you've used the word "pettifoggery" on several occasions." "I know, because I had to look it up." "And based on that flimsy logic, you think I'm the person who's writing this blog?" "Are you gonna force me to ask you to strip down so we can see whether or not somewhere on your body is the tattoo of a genie?" "When we get to Simon's camp," "I'm going to talk to him about Daniel." "He has big dreams." "He wishes to be a scientist, like the great Robert Oz." "He's always asking why." "Why is the sky blue?" "Why does the plane fly?" "Why does the lion roar?" "Me, I'm a man of pleasure." "I prefer "when."" "When is my next meal?" "When is my next drink?" "When is my next woman?" "And I prefer "how,"" "as in how will I get you to stop talking?" "Besides, if Daniel really wants to be a scientist, he shouldn't be watching those tapes." "They're nonsense." "Extinction events and dinosaurs and..." "All those tapes really document is a brilliant man coming unhinged." "As you have said," ""all men are unknowable." "But with animals you know where you stand."" "My friend, Jackson Oz, the philosopher of the Okavango Delta." "Animals are predictable." "They want food." "They want shelter." "They don't have egos." "They don't have insecurities." "They don't kill themselves." "No." "They don't do that either." "Where are the kuwakaribisha girls, with their welcomes and hot towels and cold lemonade?" "Maybe they're just over you and your excessive flirting." "Well, the safari vehicles are out." "But the cook staff?" "Housekeeping?" "They never leave." "Bandits?" "There's been no report of bandit activity in this area in years." "I'm sure there's a simple explanation for all this, Abe." "The radio's working." "Simon had said they were having issues with it, but... since I couldn't raise him over the past few days," "I assumed he had given up the ghost." "But..." "You got to see this." "What is it?" "Me and Hoon here are too damn sunburned." "Much as we both like that French chick." "There's always tonight." "What is it?" "Lion dung." "And there are tracks." "The tracks of a single lion." "Yeah, but a single lion coming into camp wouldn't scare everybody off, especially not with your cousin presiding over things here." "No." "But what did?" "And now, in international news, tonight experts are gathering in the Philippines to discuss what they say may be the largest volcanic eruption in the last 100 years." "While no one can say for sure, predictions are that Mount Hana will erupt sometime in the next nine months." "Earlier today, the government has declared" " a state of emergency..." " Pettifoggery." "... and has begun the first phase in what is expected to be a full-scale evacuation of the island." "Earlier today..." "Really, dude?" ""Don't take us for fools, Jamie"?" "What was I supposed to say?" "I don't know, maybe a single word in my defense." "Your defense?" "Jamie, I've been telling you for a year now that this blog is idiotic, that eventually you were gonna get caught." "You could've said something in support of me, no?" "No, I couldn't." "Because we both agreed it's in neither of our best interests to have our situation known." "What situation is that, Ethan?" "If you're referring to the situation in which you're having sex with a junior reporter under your purview," "I can assure you that situation has been twice-nullified." "Because I'm no longer under your purview," " and you're no longer going to have sex with me." " Jamie, just be accountable, okay?" "Stop chasing the unicorn that killed Kennedy." ""Unicorn that killed Kennedy"?" "How long have you been saving that one up, Ethan?" "You have such a driving desire to unearth some vast conspiracy, that you impose it on nothing." "There's no proof, none, that Reiden had anything..." "Do not do that, Ethan." "Do not." "You know what happened in Folsom." "It is one thing to tell me I'm wrong," " but don't you dare question my motives." " Jamie..." " Don't you dare disparage my integrity!" " I'm not suggesting that you're not a good journalist." "I mean, everyone knows that you're..." "Uh, we are in the midst of an active investigation into exactly what caused this morning's lion attack." "Well, we know what happened, dipstick." "You hired Reiden and people died." " Jamie." " Our primary concern, as always, is with the safety of the general public." "You can let yourself out, Ethan." "I got unicorns to chase." "This devastating incident..." "Well, I parboil them first, you know?" "That's two whole days." "And then-- and this is, uh, this is the key" "I wrap..." "I'll be right back." "Thanks." "What the hell are you doing here?" "At my house?" "Really?" "I came to ask you a few questions-- the last thing I expected to find was you having a party one day after three people died on your watch." "Look, like I've told you, we're doing everything we possibly can to see what brought about that lion attack." "Well, then would you care to comment on information we have in regards to the zoo's choice of food suppliers being adjusted due to budgetary restrictions?" "Information culled from where, Ms. Campbell?" "Our previous vendors?" "Our previous, disgruntled vendors?" "That doesn't sound like a denial." "Our supplier was changed because we're moving to a more environmentally-safe food source, that is all." "So you will continue to feed the animals with food supplied by Reiden?" "As do more than half the zoos in the country." "Reiden isn't the culprit." "Maybe that's a story you should be following with that dogged journalistic paranoia of yours." "What story?" "Oh, someone's been abducting the cats in the neighborhood." "Dozens have gone missing in the last few weeks, and just last night they took my daughter's cat," "Cupcake." "So if you don't mind, Ms. Campbell..." "Who would steal cats?" "I have no idea." "But when you find him, let me know, because I want to smash his face in." "Get the hell off my property." "I've been thinking about what you once told me about the URA." "The rebel army." "Yes, what of them?" "You said that when they raid a village, they all go in single file, so as to only leave one set of footprints so that no one would ever know how many of them had been present at the attack." " Yeah?" " Yes." "So?" "Well, what if... what if it wasn't one lion in Simon's camp that scared everybody off, but many?" "In single file." "Sure." "And they all played musical chairs." "Yeah." "Yeah, you're right, that's, uh, that's ridiculous." "What's that?" "That's one of Simon's vehicles." "Stay here." "Keep me covered." "Hujambo!" "Mtu yeyote huko?" "What happened?" "Are you all right?" "I don't know what you're saying." "Do you speak English?" "Abraham!" "Abraham!" "Abraham!" "We have to go!" " We have to go!" " Abraham!" "We have to go!" "Come on!" "Here." "Drink this." "It's Kentucky bourbon." "My name's Jackson." "Chloe." "Chloe." "Okay." "Can you tell me what happened, Chloe?" "We were out..." "We were looking for animals." "There were perhaps 15 of us." "There was a Japanese couple and a group of Russian tourists." "And-and the guide-- he... he-he wanted us to-to go see some gazelles, and so we got off the car, we got closer to-to the gazelles, and-and... and then" "I-I heard a noise." "I looked back and... it was the bus driver." "He was getting attacked." "And something fell down on us from a tree." "It was a lion, and then a second lion and a third lion..." "Simon tried to fire at them with his gun." "But the lions got to him first." "I-I tried to help the others, but" "I knew I was gonna die, and..." "How does that even happen?" "At what point do you die?" "How does one get eaten to death?" "I don't know." "They do good work in Kentucky." "Yeah." "Excuse me." "Mitch Morgan?" "I'm Jamie Campbell." "We spoke on the phone." "Right." "L.A. Telegraph." "Yeah." "That's right." "What can I do for you?" "Uh, you're the animal coroner?" "Veterinary pathologist." "I'm sorry?" "Pathologist, not coroner." "I specialize in diagnosing animal disease through examination of their tissue, bodily fluids." "Other stuff." ""Coroner" suggests that they have to be dead to be of interest to me." "They do not." "You want to know what incited the lions to kill the zookeeper?" "And the men downtown, yeah." "Well... that makes two of us." "Where'd you grow up?" "Pardon?" "Where's home?" "Why is that important right now?" "I don't know." "I think it's called friendly chitchat." "Louisiana, originally." "I love Louisiana." "Spent a year there." "Studying the nutria." "Big old river rats." "Saw a lot of swamps." "Ate a lot of jambalaya." "All right, this is Nick." "And Eddie." "Oh, sorry." "Kind of gross, I know." "No, it's, uh... it's fine." "They were siblings." "Captured in the Serengeti at about eight months old." "And they've been living without incident in that enclosure for the last 14 years." "Body fat content was normal." "No signs of abuse." "No lacerations, no bruising." "They were healthy, well-fed, well-adjusted creatures." "But they were raised in cages, so, in a way they're kind of the victims here." "Oh, you're one of those." "One of what?" "One of those scientists who prefers animals to humans." "Well, I don't just prefer animals to humans, Ms. Campbell." "I also prefer pizza and beer to humans." "Torrential rain storms." "Traffic..." "The zoo recently changed their food." "They switched to a meat supplier that uses D-grade beef from a feedlot that raises their cattle on grain treated with pesticides." "Pesticides?" " You mean Reiden Global." " Yes!" "Yes, that's it." " You don't want to see these anymore, right?" " No." "Reiden sells products all over the world." "Who knows what kind of damage they're doing?" "It wasn't the food." "I mean, it might've constipated them, cancer worst case, but... it wouldn't have changed their behavior." "Okay, but this doesn't just happen." "Sadly, sometimes it does." "Nine times." "There are 350 zoos in the United States that attract 175 million visitors a year." "The first one opened in 1874." "That's 141 years." "And in all that time, there are only nine documented cases of unprovoked zoo lions killing humans." "More people died choking on hot dogs than lion attacks." "It doesn't just happen." "Something caused this." "How bad is that cut?" "I think it's okay." "Here." "Try that." " Thank you." " Yeah?" "This is my honeymoon." "Your honeymoon?" "Was your husband...?" "No, my husband is back in Paris." "Although he never became my husband." "Five weeks before we were gonna get married," "I learned he was having an affair." "I'm sorry to hear that." "That must've been a shock." "Yeah, it was." "French men typically wait until after the wedding to begin their sleeping around." "So, the wedding was canceled, but the safari honeymoon was planned." "And I decided to come on my own." "You know, I needed to be as far away from Paris as possible." "The guide from my camp, he-he was your friend?" "Yes." "And his cousin Abraham is... was my best friend." "The man who went into the bus." "The man who went into the bus." "Hold on, hold on, hold on." "What's wrong?" "!" "What's wrong?" "It seems that the lions got to the radiator." "Okay, so what do we do?" "Well, camp is barely six miles from here." " Six miles?" "!" " With the radio that we can use to call for help." "Y-You're not suggesting that..." "Yeah, yeah." "We walk." "We're not walking, okay?" "I'm staying here in this car." "If we move at a healthy clip, we can make Simon's camp before dark." "No, I..." "I'm not getting out." "Chloe, I can't think of anything that I want to do less than climb out of this car right now." "So do not!" "Free will is what separates us from the animals!" "Free will and this truck!" "Okay, listen to me." "Listen to me." "I know one thing about lions, all right?" "They recently fed." "They won't be doing any long trekking in search of dinner." "I promise you, we will be fine." "You're lying to me." "I can see the look in your eyes." "Okay." "Something clearly is not right here." "Exactly." "Back at the vehicles, there were at least five male lions." "All right, they never travel like that." "The typical pride consists of... females, their offspring, and one or at most... two males." "Look, I don't know what's going on here." "But I do know that we do not want to be here when night falls." "So, what now?" "Now?" "Now I drop these samples at the lab, head home, try to write up a lesson plan." "I teach a little at UCLA." "Yeah." "But don't you want to know what happened?" "So it doesn't happen again?" "Well, the good news is, if your statistics hold true, it'll be another 15.6 years before anything like this does happen again." "Oh, maybe you're right." "Maybe I'm just chasing the unicorns that killed Kennedy." "Should I know what that means?" " Is that, like, a saying?" " No." "I'm sorry I couldn't give you what you wanted, all right?" "Sometimes a mystery is just a mystery." "Yeah, like missing cats in Brentwood." "That's a saying." "No." "Apparently there's a rash of missing cats in Brentwood." "How do they know they're missing?" "Maybe they just couldn't get into a good private school." "Here, my cell's on there." "You know, usually when a girl gives me her phone number, it doesn't have anything to do with rampaging lions." "It's in case something occurs to you." "Fair enough." "See you around." "There's a stepped slope over there, and that'll take us down to the water." " Staying on the move is safest." " Okay." "So you've been here a long time?" "Africa?" "A little more than 12 years." "From Boston originally." "This is a long way from Boston." "Why Africa?" "I suppose because it's a long way from Boston." "Don't move." "Just get behind me." "Slowly get behind me." "The defiant..." "Hey, you okay?" "You okay?" "You got it, come on, just walk." "We're here, so what's wrong?" "You're thinking about something." "My father..." "My father was a scientist, okay?" "He had all these theories about animal behavior." "Some of it was some very far out-there stuff." "But what does this mean, "Far out-there stuff"?" "Well, uh, for instance, he wondered why animals, uh, continue to live in fear of their predators, when in theory... right?" "In theory, they have the ability to coordinate and kill whatever species is a threat." "But his theories, they... they never quite added up, which nearly drove him crazy." "Not nearly-- actually." "It actually drove him crazy." "I'm sorry." "Anyway, my, uh... my father made all these tapes." "His manifesto of sorts." "And I have them back at the camp." "Now, sometimes when he's rambling, he talks about a defiant pupil." "That this defiant pupil is the indisputable proof that his theory was correct." "What is this "Defiant pupil"?" "Well, that's just it." "Up until today, I thought it was a student." "But now I think..." "I think that what he was talking about..." "I saw back there in that lion's left eye." "Right before we fell." "And I think maybe my father wasn't entirely crazy." "Botswana Center, this is Jackson Oz." "I'm calling from Msisimko Safari Camp." "We have multiple missing persons." "We need a search-and-rescue team out here immediately." "I talked to Brenda, and she's agreed to reinstate you." "Conditionally." "I have to shut down my site." "Which is no great tragedy, Jamie." "I mean, come on, your blog gets 24,000 unique eyeballs." "The paper has 4.2 million readers." "I like my unique eyeballs." "Look, why don't we take a vacation?" "You and me, we'll go up to Ojai for the weekend." "I don't need a vacation;" "I need a reset." "Who's Mitch Morgan?" "He's just a guy." "I hope he's not part of your reset." "Come on, Jamie." "Ojai." "Some wine, some massages-- what do you say?" "I say I just lost my job." "And I don't know if this thing we've been doing for the past year even has a name, but I can't say I feel good about it." "Look, Jamie." "This is an opportunity for a do-over here." "On both fronts." "I mean, you come back to work, and we take our thing to the next level." "I don't want to lose you in either." "What do you say?" "This is me hoping" ""I found the cats" isn't a line you use on the girls in the bars." "I don't go to bars." "Right, you don't like people." "I like people." "Just prefer it when they're not around." "You found the cats?" "Well, I got to thinking about what you said." "Dozens of missing cats just seemed so, you know, odd." "Domestic cats will wander, but they'll always come back to their food source." "And a mass cat-kidnapping seemed to defy reason." "So..." "I thought maybe there was a predator." "Okay." "Figured I'd drive around the neighborhood a bit, see if I saw anything." "You went on a cat stakeout?" "I did." "Uh, one crossed the road" " Siamese, which means somebody's pet." "So I followed it." "The cat stakeout turned into a cat pursuit." "Yeah." "Look, you're kind of freaking me out right now." "So what happened?" "Where's the cat?" "You got to see for yourself." "I made some coffee." "Hope you like it black and bitter 'cause it's all we got here." "Thank you." "That was fast." " Jackson Oz?" " Yes!" "You're under arrest." " For what?" " Interference... with lawful hunting." "Oh." "Listen to me, man." "Hey, hey, I called you guys." "No..." "Oh, you got to, you've got to be kidding me!" "This is a joke!" "Listen to me, listen to me." "I got to get back to my camp, okay?" "There's something going on with the lions!" " Get inside." " Hey, listen to what I'm telling you." "We got a big problem here!" "Our ability to think." "To interpret, to imagine." "In the end, that's what distinguishes humans from other animals." "Abstract thought." "Poetry." "Analogy." "But what's the measure of our cognitive advantage over the lesser species?" "Humanity's progress has guided our world to the edge of destruction." "But consider the birds and the bees." "The bears." "The barracuda." "As mankind sails the world toward the tip of the iceberg, what survival strategy will they employ?" "Will they man the lifeboats and die on the stormy seas?" "Or will they perhaps take matters into their own hands and toss overboard the captain of the ship?" "If you're planning on showing me a dead cat," "I have better things I can be doing." "Okay." "Oh, hey, you found a few of them." "This is an elementary school." "Yeah." "But in the summer it's a day camp." "And camp starts tomorrow."