Big Game

by Stuart Gibbs

  While I could still hear elephants trumpeting from elsewhere in FunJungle—as well as the occasional crash of another souvenir kiosk being trampled—life at SafariLand looked exactly like it usually did. The animals were grazing calmly. Unlike the elephants, they either hadn’t been upset by the gunshot—or they’d already forgotten about it.

  The humans in the area were doing considerably worse. Five people had already gathered at Kololo, and they seemed far more freaked out than the animals. Two of them were keepers, two were security guards, and one was a maintenance man. They were all arguing about what should be done. Everyone looked relieved to see Athmani arrive, pleased that someone in authority was there to make decisions for them.

  “Were any of the animals hurt?” Athmani asked.

  “We don’t know,” admitted one of the keepers. The name patch on her uniform said SANDRA, and she had short blond hair. “We haven’t seen anything, but we haven’t had a chance to search the whole exhibit yet.”

  “Did anyone see the shooter?” Dad asked.

  Everyone started talking at once. None of them had seen the shooter, but each had a completely different idea of where they might have been.

  Athmani had to whistle to get their attention. “We need to do a thorough sweep of this exhibit right now, end to end, before the park opens. The Fitzroys and I will start in the Asian Plains.” He pointed to the keepers and told them, “You start at the north end of Africa and work your way across.” He then turned to the security guards. “You two get a rover and go check the outside perimeter of the park. See if there’s any breaches in the fence—or, who knows, maybe you’ll even spot our hunter out there.”

  Everyone nodded and ran off, except the maintenance man, who asked, “Need anything from me?”

  “Stay up here,” Athmani told him. “Keep your eyes peeled. If you see a wounded animal or someone down in the exhibit who doesn’t look like they’re supposed to be there, radio me.”

  The maintenance man saluted as though Athmani were an army general, then went to the railing and stared vigilantly across the exhibit.

  Dad and I started toward the employee entrance to the Asian Plains, but Athmani held up a hand to stop us. “Wait,” he said. “Can you see all the rhinos?”

  Dad and I turned back to the exhibit. It might seem odd that, out of the dozens of species of animal in SafariLand, Athmani was concerned about only one, but the Asian greater one-horned rhinos were among the most endangered animals in all of FunJungle. There were fewer than twenty-five hundred of them left in the world. Sadly, there are rhino species that are even more endangered—the Javan and Sumatran rhinos are extinct in the wild, and there are only five African northern white rhinos left on earth—but still, every Asian greater one-horned rhino is extremely precious. We had five at FunJungle.

  Luckily, the rhinos were also the biggest animals in the Asian Plains and thus the easiest to spot.

  “There’s two,” Dad said, pointing. From where we stood, the rhinos were merely dark lumps in the distance, but I could still tell they were up on their feet and grazing, alive and well.

  “And there’s two more,” Athmani reported, pointing at another pair of lumps under a distant tree.

  “That just leaves Rhonda,” I said.

  Dad and Athmani looked at each other, suddenly worried. “Rhonda!” they exclaimed, and took off running as fast as they could go.

  I did my best to keep up with them, aware why they were so concerned. Rhonda was even more precious than any of the other rhinos. She was pregnant.

  The public didn’t know this yet. FunJungle was keeping it a secret. An Asian rhino is pregnant for almost sixteen months, and the publicity department feared that the public’s interest would fade if the news was released too early. It was better for park promotion—and luring tourists—to make a surprise announcement once the baby was born. In truth, no one was exactly sure how long Rhonda had been pregnant. It’s not that easy to tell when a four-ton animal is getting a little heavier, and unlike pregnant humans, pregnant rhinos don’t suddenly start feeling nauseated. A pregnant rhino behaves exactly like a nonpregnant rhino. However, it was now evident that Rhonda was in the later stages of pregnancy. Her belly was swollen and dipping so far down, it was only a few inches above the ground.

  Normally, Rhonda was allowed out with all the other animals in the Asian Plains, where rhinos were the most popular species on display. While all rhinos are fascinating, Asian ones are surprisingly docile and can be quite friendly. You could pay extra at FunJungle to feed them apples, which was fun—as long as you didn’t mind ending up with a hand covered in rhino slobber. However, to keep Rhonda safe and relaxed during the end of her pregnancy, she had been taken off exhibit. She was now living in a special building inside the Asian Plains, rather than out in the open.

  Dad, Athmani, and I ducked down a path behind the SafariLand Snack Shack, slipped through a gate marked EMPLOYEES ONLY into the backstage area of FunJungle, then arrived at a far more secure gate that led into the Asian Plains. This one was topped with barbed wire and had an electronic lock with a keypad entry. Athmani entered that day’s code, and the lock clicked open.

  The Asian Plains was the second-largest animal enclosure at FunJungle, after the African Savanna next door. It was two hundred and fifty acres of grassland, dotted with a few groves of trees and populated by more than three hundred and twenty separate animals. Despite this, it was one of the most ignored exhibits at the park. The Asian Plains residents were mostly antelope and deer, and for some reason, tourists didn’t seem nearly as interested in them as they were in the giraffes, zebra, and Cape buffalo in the African Savanna. Sure, they rode the SafariLand monorail around the exhibit, but that was only because they had to do that to get to Africa. There were rarely ever crowds at the viewpoints unless an Asian rhino happened to be close by.

  This was a shame, because all the other animals were really fascinating: nilgai antelope as big as oxen, sambar deer sporting dense manes of hair, saiga antelope with freakish noses that looked like lopped-off elephants’ trunks, not to mention chital deer, hog deer, muntjacs, Przewalski’s horses, and oryx. At the very least, I would have expected people to be interested in the gaurs, wild cattle that were some of the largest, and most dangerous, land animals on earth—but the gaurs usually got lumped in with the rest of the hoofstock and ignored. The guests would look right past male sambars butting heads or frolicking chital fawns to get a glimpse of a sleeping rhino, which essentially looked like a rock.

  A herd of muntjacs that had been browsing close to the gate scattered as we entered the exhibit. Muntjacs bark when they’re frightened, which was always a little disconcerting. The noise seemed bizarre coming from an antelope. They sounded like a pack of dogs as they bounded away.

  Rhonda Rhino’s temporary home was only a short walk from the entry gate: a squat cement building with a walled yard attached. It was designed to give her privacy during her pregnancy; tourists couldn’t visit it—or even see over the wall from the monorail. The yard had a tree for shade and a pool for wallowing—when it’s hot, Asian rhinos really like the water—along with a hay trough and a large pile of poop. Rhinos often poop communally, creating large piles known as middens, which act as olfactory message boards. Rhinos can tell which other rhino has been there from the smell. It’s like an extremely disgusting form of texting. Even when alone, rhinos form middens, so the keepers always had to leave some poop around, rather than cleaning it all out.

  Given the cold weather, Rhonda was still inside. There were heaters in there, keeping her nice and warm while she was pregnant. The main door had another security keypad. Athmani was about to enter the code when his radio buzzed.

  “Athmani! This is Chief Hoenekker. Where are you?”

  Chuck Hoenekker had been hired by J.J. McCracken to replace Marge O’Malley as FunJungle’s head of security after Marge had botched the investigation of the stolen koala. (Sadly, Marge hadn’t been fired; she’d merely been d
emoted, which meant she was still around to cause trouble for me.) Park Security was FunJungle’s police force—although originally, no one had expected they’d have to handle any crime more serious than shoplifting. But now, after a murdered hippo and a poached koala, J.J. had brought in Hoenekker. Neither of them would say what Hoenekker’s background was—only that it was “in security”—but my parents suspected he’d either been in the military or had worked as a spy. Whatever the case, he acted like he was in the military, always insisting that we call him “Chief Hoenekker” and parading around the park in his uniform.

  Athmani frowned before answering the radio, as though he didn’t like Chief Hoenekker much. “I’m about to check on Rhonda Rhino, Chuck.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d address me as ‘Chief Hoenekker.’ Has the rhino been harmed?”

  “I don’t know,” Athmani replied. “We haven’t gone inside her quarters yet.”

  “Then don’t. That’s a potential crime scene and, as you are not official FunJungle Security personnel, I would prefer that you not compromise it.”

  Dad and Athmani both rolled their eyes at this. Then Athmani got back on the radio. “Rhonda’s life could be in danger. And I am official security personnel. . . .”

  “J.J. McCracken hired you as a consultant, not as an enforcement agent.”

  Athmani sighed with exasperation. “We only want to check on Rhonda and make sure she isn’t injured.”

  “If she is, then it’s my job to investigate,” Hoenekker said. “Not yours. Do not enter that building.”

  I looked to my father, confused. “What’s going on here?”

  “J.J. hired Athmani without asking Hoenekker first,” Dad explained. “Hoenekker wasn’t happy about it. He claimed he didn’t need any help protecting the animals.”

  I frowned. It sounded to me like Hoenekker cared more about zoo politics than Rhonda’s safety.

  Luckily, Athmani had hatched a plan to deal with him. He winked at Dad and me, wanting us to play along, then spoke into the radio. “I’m sorry, Chief. I didn’t quite catch the last thing you said. The muntjacs are making a lot of noise. Could you repeat that?”

  Dad instantly started barking the way the muntjacs had, making a big racket. I followed his lead and joined in too.

  “I said that you are not to enter the building,” Hoenekker replied.

  “Enter the building?” Athmani asked. “Okay. Will do.”

  “Do not enter!” Hoenekker screamed. “Do not!”

  Dad and I barked even louder.

  “I can’t hear you,” Athmani told Hoenekker. “I’ll call back in a bit, after I enter the building.” Then he turned off the radio and entered the key code for the rhino house.

  Dad turned to me. “Stay back here, Teddy. This could be dangerous.”

  I was pretty sure this was a lie. Rhonda was one of the friendliest animals I’d ever met. She was like a four-ton golden retriever. I think my father was really concerned that she might be dead and he didn’t want me to see it. I didn’t really want to see a dead rhino either, so I held back.

  Athmani slid the door open, then heaved a sigh of relief. “She’s okay.”

  Dad slipped inside behind him. “Are you sure?”

  “Doesn’t look like she’s hurt,” Athmani replied.

  I peered around the door. The room was a cement box divided in half by a thick metal fence. One half was the “bedroom”—the place where Rhonda lived—while the other half was for the keepers. The fence was only four feet high, which meant Rhonda could easily poke her head over it, as she was six feet tall. Because the room was cement, it wasn’t exactly pretty—but then, cement is extremely easy to clean; you simply hose it down—and rhinos aren’t very picky about home decor.

  Rhonda stood by the fence, directly below the heat lamps, like she was one of the burgers in the warming tray at the Gorilla Grill. Asian rhinos differ from other rhinos in that their thick skin has folds, which kind of makes it look like the rhino is wearing a suit of armor. Rhonda was big for a female—and she had an unusually large horn as well, a spike rising more than a foot from the tip of her nose. It wasn’t a perfect cone, as Rhonda had banged it up over the years; it was covered with scrapes and gouges, revealing some of the fibrous keratin it was made of—but it was still impressive. Meanwhile, Rhonda’s swollen belly hung so low that, if she’d been a car, she could have gotten stuck on a speed bump. She didn’t seem to be in any pain, or upset in any way. If anything, she looked happy to see Athmani, snuffling excitedly and wagging her thick tail.

  “Sorry. I don’t have any treats for you,” Athmani told her. “I just came here to see if you were all right.”

  Rhonda didn’t seem to believe him. Instead, she sniffed him carefully, trying to see if he was hiding food in his pockets. When she didn’t find anything, she snorted in annoyance, nailing him in the face with a big glob of rhino snot.

  Dad and I both laughed at this. Even Athmani recognized it was funny. “Thanks a lot,” he muttered, wiping the goo off his cheek. “That’s what I get for checking on you?”

  I stepped inside the rhino house. Some big animals can be skittish or aggressive around people they aren’t familiar with, but Asian rhinos will take food from almost anyone, and they love to be petted. Rhonda stuck her giant head over the rail to see if I had anything to eat, but I gave her a scratch behind the ears instead. She enjoyed that and sidled up against the bars so that I could pat her whole body. Her skin was thick and rough, like she was covered by one giant callus, but inside the folds, it was soft and warm, like a well-oiled baseball mitt.

  “We ought to go check the rest of the exhibit,” Dad said. “Make sure none of the other animals were hit.”

  “Yes,” Athmani agreed. “See you later, Rhonda.” He gave the rhino a final pat, then started for the door.

  I was about to follow them when something caught my eye in the window closest to Rhonda’s yard. All the windows in the building were very small, as windows were expensive and animals never complain about their view. The windows were all set rather high in the wall, near the ceiling, designed to let light in rather than let Rhonda see out. One of them was broken, but in an odd way. Cracks were radiating out from around a small circle.

  “Is that a bullet hole?” I asked.

  Athmani and Dad froze on their way to the door, then looked the way I was pointing. Up to that moment, there had been a noticeable sense of relief at finding Rhonda was unhurt. Now it instantly vanished.

  “It definitely looks like a bullet hole,” Dad observed, concern in his voice. Then he told Rhonda, “Turn around.”

  The rhino obeyed. Like many of the large mammals, she had been trained to follow some simple commands to aid the keepers and vets in taking care of her. It’s easier to ask a rhino to lift her leg than it is to try to lift it for her. Dad and Athmani quickly examined Rhonda’s other side. Thankfully, there wasn’t a bullet wound anywhere.

  “She wasn’t hit,” Athmani said gratefully.

  “Then where’d the bullet go?” I asked.

  Before anyone could answer, a FunJungle safari rover roared up outside. The muntjacs we’d startled before scattered once again, barking up a storm. The rover skidded to a stop next to the rhino house, and Chief Chuck Hoenekker clambered out.

  Even though it was still well before eight a.m., Hoenekker was dressed impeccably in his security uniform. His shoes were polished. His tie was crisply knotted. His pants and jacket were ironed. Hoenekker also sported a military crew cut, and his muscles bulged beneath his starched shirt. He gave me a hot stare as he entered the building and said, “It’s a violation of security protocol for you to be in here.”

  “We have bigger problems,” Athmani told him. “Someone fired a shot into this room.”

  Hoenekker’s eyes widened in surprise. “Was the rhino hurt?”

  “No,” Dad said, then added, “Looks like she got lucky.”

  Annoyance crept back into Hoenekker’s gaze. “I told you
both not to enter this room. This is now a crime scene, and you have compromised it.”

  “We were worried that Rhonda might be wounded,” Athmani said. “Or worse. We didn’t have time to wait for you.” Rather than facing Hoenekker, he was staring at the bullet hole in the glass. Keeping his eyes locked on it, he walked around the room as though imagining the path the bullet had taken.

  “Well, as chief of security, I’m now in charge,” Hoenekker said. “My men and I will handle this investigation. So if you’d kindly leave the premises . . .”

  “J.J. McCracken hired me to advise you on security issues,” Athmani interrupted.

  “I didn’t ask him to do that,” Hoenekker growled. “I know how to run an investigation. I don’t need your help.”

  “You might,” Athmani countered. “I’ve dealt with rhino poachers in Africa too many times to count.”

  “Well, this isn’t Africa.” Hoenekker stepped into Athmani’s path. “I’m in charge here, and you are interfering with my job. Don’t make me pull rank on you.”

  Athmani didn’t answer him. Instead, he pointed at a divot in the cement wall, near Rhonda’s side of the metal fence. It was down by the floor, and there was a round hole in the middle of it. “That’s where the bullet hit.”

  “Am I going to have to physically remove you from these premises?” Hoenekker asked.

  Now Athmani met his gaze, glaring angrily. “Maybe you ought to care a little bit less about your job and a little bit more about this rhino.”