The Last Zoo

by Sam Gayton

  At once, they are done with discussions. Pia has just split the Rekkers and maybe ruined her friendship with Ishan again, but there is no time to talk about it. They are beyond that now. Her heart hammers with adrenalin as she throws herself behind the barricade of crates. Threedeep displays the message BE CAREFUL in big neon letters across her screen. Pia tries to steady her breathing. She shares a look with Gowpen. With Wilma. With Weevis. With Ishan.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she starts to say. ‘I was wrong. I know you didn’t do it. Bagrin spoke and I—’

  The lights go out. Only the glow of the genies and Threedeep’s screen in the otherwise pitch-dark corridor.

  They’ve cut power, Threedeep chats, somewhat obviously. Pia hauls the drone on to the top crate, and her numinous lamp cuts a beam of violet light, straight ahead. Above Pia’s head, her halo casts a golden glow.

  ‘Quick, take a wish-script, take a wish-script!’ Weevis waves the scrip frantically in his fist. Pia snatches a random one and strains to read Weevis’s writing in the dark. It seems to be a wish that increases an object’s slipperiness. Suddenly she realises she doesn’t have a genie.

  She scrabbles for the rusty bike bell from the floor, and wakes Kadabra. Somewhere ahead she can hear the slamming of doors, the echo of feet on stairs. The doomers are coming.

  ‘Come on, Kadabra, wake up, wake up.’

  The ancient genie crawls out, a feeble candle-sized flame. He looks around in bewilderment. He is so old that his chin is completely bald, and he only has a couple of wisps of moustache hairs. Barely any wish-power there at all.

  Blom is talking to the other genies: some stirring speech in Tellish. Whatever he is saying is getting through – Solomon’s and Bertoldo’s faces burn brighter, and even Kadabra lets out a few sparks.

  ‘Here they come!’ Wilma yells.

  A silhouette comes running down the corridor towards them.

  And yelling out: ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!’

  It is Zugzwang, pale and sweating. He leaps back over the barricade, chest heaving, face twisted with misery in the numinous light.

  ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,’ he gasps.

  Then the doomers rush down the corridor after him and the battle begins.

  • • •

  The doomers wear cloaks of genie-woven shadows. They come in a slow wave, shoulder to shoulder, one mass silhouetted shape of doom. It seems as if darkness itself charges towards the barricade.

  Pia stares at Kadabra and starts to go through her wish-script. Slowly, clearly. Praying the genie can hear and understand. He’d been a mighty genie in his day. A powerful wish-granter. She hopes he still remembers that.

  ‘How do I set the parameters of my wish?’ Wilma is yelling. ‘I can’t see who anyone is!’

  The doomers keep coming, shrouded beneath their pitch-dark cloaks.

  ‘Facepalm facepalm facepalm,’ Gowpen mutters.

  Zugzwang peers over the top of the barricade and fires his T-shirt cannon. A red T-shirt flies out in a tightly-packed roll. It hits a doomer in the face. The doomer falls over, their shadow tangling about their shoulders. It’s the ravioli guy from the canteen, holding a shovel as a weapon.

  ‘Anyone know Pasta La Vista’s actual name?’ Wilma yells.

  Weevis shouts back something that Pia doesn’t catch. Wilma and Gowpen rattle through their wishes. Before the doomer can get up, the two wishes are granted: Pasta’s shovel zephyrs from his hands, and he falls fast asleep.

  The other doomers just stagger over him.

  One down, fifty plus to go.

  Zugzwang fires his T-shirt cannon again. It doings off someone’s shoulder harmlessly.

  Pia, says a whisper.

  It’s hopeless.

  Give up now, and we will make sure the doomers don’t hurt you.

  Deal?

  Deal?

  Do we have a deal?

  Then Pia finishes her wish-script: ‘. . . all this, I wish.’

  Kadabra peers up at her with eyes crusted with years-worth of ash.

  And nods his head.

  And grants the wish.

  A whirl of upwards motion, as if the doomers have all turned to ravens, flapping their wings. Then the thumps and thuds as they fall back down in a tangle of legs and arms, their cloaks pooling around them like an oil slick.

  ‘Yes!’ Wilma fist-pumps, and falls flat on her face too. Ishan wobbles and goes down and starts spinning on the floor like he’s a malfunctioning game character. The slipperiness of the entire corridor floor has increased a thousand times. They’re all on their butts, Pia included. They flounder there like fish out of water. It probably looks hilarious.

  In her hand, the rusty bike bell is cooling. Kadabra has gone out with a bow, and one final, crazy wish-granting.

  Pia tries to clamber on to one of the crates. As soon as she pushes against it, it drifts away from the barricade. Pia hauls herself on as it floats across the floor like a giant hockey puck, towards the doomers.

  It doesn’t matter. Pia can see the fight is over. A few doomers are shouting and cursing and trying to get back to their feet, but most are just lying there. It took so little to defeat them. With their cloaks gone, Pia can see why.

  It was all an illusion. The cloaks made it seem like they were an army, but really the doomers are a wretched bunch. They moan and thrash on the floor. Some still mumble incoherent chants, others cough or retch or sit drooling into their laps. A few are lying flat out, chests rising and falling rapidly in a really scary-looking way.

  Pia gulps. It looks like humans can’t live without hope any more than angels can. For the first time, she starts to see the doomers for what they are: not an enemy, but sick people who need help.

  Eventually, Weevis and Blom manage to wish the lights back on. Pia looks out at the mass of bodies carpeting the corridor. There has to be a hundred of them there now. Zookeepers, ’genieers, security guards, admin staff. Practically every adult in the zoo. Pia can see Gowpen’s parents, and Britta and Vivi and Donna and Wanda and Arlo and Vashti. Even Siskin is there. He must have caught doomsickness in the crowd, or maybe even before it. Perhaps that was why he struck out at Urette. Either way, he wasn’t himself when Weevis tried to zephyr him. Was that why the wish couldn’t find him?

  For a few minutes, Wilma and Gowpen slide clumsily back and forth across the floor, Solomon’s and Bertoldo’s lamps in their laps. They zephyr away the doomer weapons and send them all to sleep one by one.

  Pia just stares at Zugzwang. He won’t meet her eye. Just like she won’t meet Ishan’s.

  ‘We need to zephyr these people to the mainland,’ Weevis says. ‘They need a hospital.’

  Pia looked at him. ‘Can Blom handle everyone over that distance?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Won’t they just turn all the doctors doomsick too?’ Ishan says. ‘You’ve seen how quick this thing spreads.’

  Weevis narrows his eyes. ‘So we just leave them here, to die?’

  ‘No!’ Gowpen is by his mum and dad, trying to get Solomon to thrint some water for them to drink.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ says Ishan. ‘I just don’t think introducing this thing to the sprawl, if it’s a virus like Pia says, is a good idea.’

  ‘What do you think, Zugzwang?’ Pia snaps. ‘How about a whole city of two hundred million people all falling sick to your worm?’

  Zugzwang puts his hands over his eyes like they are goggles, and doesn’t answer.

  Pia looks away in disgust. Now she knows the answer to the mystery, some things are starting to fall into place – but what good is that? The angels are still gone. The Seamstress is still gone. The voilà are still gone. Pia hasn’t saved any of them. How is she going to save the doomsick around her?

  Her cheek grows warm again.<
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  If it makes the boy feel better, you can tell Zugzwang that his solution certainly worked out for Bagrin.

  ‘You’re staying in your prism,’ Pia mutters at him. ‘We beat your doomers and it was easy, even with your distraction.’

  Ah, but the doomers were Bagrin’s distraction. From the zephyring that happened just behind you.

  A great licking grin of fire flares up in Pia’s head.

  Bagrin’s voice fades to silence.

  ‘Guys?’ Pia looks around, panic rising up. ‘Can anyone see Urette?’

  She scans the sleeping doomers.

  Uh-oh.

  ‘Anyone?’

  The others are looking from face to face, but no one shouts out.

  ‘Maybe she waited behind,’ Gowpen says. ‘Like a general sending out troops.’

  ‘Or maybe...’ Pia feels a heat building up behind her. ‘Maybe Bagrin sent her on ahead.’

  She turns her face towards the lead door just as it flies open and Bagrin breaks free. The mirror above his prison swings down and shatters. A glare passes over them. A blue flaming eye, a mouth of roaring teeth. A smell of sulphur and hot metal and burnt nylon.

  Goodbye, Pia. It’s time for us to take our business elsewhere. There’re ten billion potential deals out there in the world, just waiting to be struck. If you ever need us... just call. Or, even better... whisper.

  Above Pia is a small round circle of sky. The devil burned a hole through the corridor’s ceiling on his way out. Strings of melted plastic ooze down the vaporised edges like slime.

  They find Urette down in the devil’s enclosure, standing by the shattered infernal prism with a hammer in her hand. Not a hair singed on her head. Bagrin has been as good as his word.

  ‘He let me go,’ Urette says weakly to them. Then she faints amongst the crates of smiling Dibsys.

  31

  LOOSE THREADS

  They stand in the waiting area outside Siskin’s office, all of them: Wilma, Weevis, Gowpen, Ishan, Zugzwang, Urette and Pia. Threedeep hovers beside them. They wait for her ping.

  None of them talk. There has been enough of talking, these past two weeks. First the debrief, then the inquest, then the psych tests, then the further questioning. It took a long time.

  Time is something everyone has a lot of, though, now the voilà are gone.

  Sixty-four species, mined from the Seam. Angels, devils, hummingdragons, megabunnies, Fabergé chickens, smellephants, salamadders, phoenixes, singing hippos, gargantulas, the doomsickness worm, the genies and more besides.

  All vanished, one after the other.

  Even the ghosts are gone. Estival and Yisel have left Pia for a second, final time.

  It isn’t like before, though. There’s no grief, or anger. She’d been so mad back then: at Gotrob, at Siskin, but most of all at her parents. How dare they leave her.

  This time, it feels like a release. Not just for Pia. For her parents too. They are finally free of their endless loop.

  Threedeep pings at last, pulling Pia from her thoughts.

  Director Siskin will see you now.

  And then, in super small font, she adds: Good luck.

  Pia looks down at the floor as they troop in, one after the other. They don’t need luck, they need a miracle. But the miracles are all gone.

  Siskin stands behind his desk. It looks even emptier than usual. Not even the standard scattering of slim pink files. His antique lamp is packed up in a cardboard box.

  Siskin looks different too. He’s not wearing his suit – just a T-shirt and jeans. Pia has never seen him dressed so casually. It is weirdly disconcerting – the equivalent of seeing someone else arrive for work in their pyjamas.

  As they enter, Siskin is taking the picture frames off his wall. The black and white portraits of voilà and zookeepers and arks and the island. They leave dark beige squares on the office wall. Like ghosts of pictures. Again, Pia thinks of her parents, and where they are now. Lately, that question of Estival’s has been keeping her awake again. Where else do we go?

  Siskin turns his head towards them. ‘Come in,’ he says. ‘As in, don’t be shy.’

  They all crowd around his desk. There’s nowhere to sit. Everyone stands, looking nervous. Even Weevis. Especially Zugzwang. He stands apart from the rest of them, gaze focused on the floor.

  Pia wonders what it’s like to have Siskin for a father. It’s hard. She pretty much said that to Zugzwang himself once. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have the boss as your dad. Zugzwang’s answer has been in her mind a lot recently. The way he just shrugged and said: ‘He’s mainly dad to the zoo.’

  She has tried to remember that over the last few weeks of questioning. It helps soften her feelings towards Zugzwang a little. Towards what he’s done. Pia knows what it feels like to have parents who don’t see you. She can imagine how that feeling might build up, years and years of it. How it might drive a kid to do something stupid and dangerous. Just to make them, just for once, just notice.

  ‘You’ll be pleased to know,’ Siskin tells them, ‘that the Free State of California holds none of you responsible for the incidents of two weeks ago.’

  He waits for their collective sigh of relief before continuing. Ishan, ever the doomsayer, has been predicting trials, prison, public-shaming. Gowpen got so worried about it Wilma had to promise him she would get them all diplomatic immunity via her parents.

  ‘In fact,’ Siskin continues, ‘you are to be commended on your creative thinking that enabled you to save the lives of your fellow zookeepers, admin staff, security officers, ’genieers... and director.’

  That was all down to Urette. After they found her beside the infernal prism, released from Bagrin’s control (he’d terminated her contract, apparently), Urette observed that she was the only non-doomsick adult in the entire zoo. Yet she’d been around the doomers more than anyone.

  It hadn’t taken them long to figure out why. Weevis and Blom zephyred small amounts of cobmist into the corridor, and they let the gargantula’s ultra-powerful antibodies get to work on the virus. Most of the doomers were awake again a few hours later, all paranoid madness wiped from their minds.

  By that time, though, it was too late. All the voilà were gone. Even Blom and the genies.

  ‘So,’ Siskin says with a brief smile. ‘Your futures look bright. The future of our zoo, however, is considerably less so. The arks will be leaving the island and sailing back to San Silicio today.’ He holds up a hand to stop their protests. ‘As in,’ he says, ‘the decision is final. A zoo without animals is not a zoo. Unless you can convince my superiors otherwise.’

  ‘We’ll get more voilà,’ Ishan says. ‘From the Seam.’

  Siskin’s eyes go shiny, and Pia is astonished to see him wipe away tears. His famous stare has gone the way of the ice caps, and melted.

  ‘None of the twelve missions we have conducted to the Seam since Pia’s visit there have yielded any voilà,’ he says. ‘It has been concluded that the unreality has become too unstable for any new extractions. All visits there will cease.’

  Pia feels a lump in her throat. It can’t end. The zoo is the only home she’s ever known. Sometimes, it has even felt like an enclosure itself. How will she survive in the jungle of the sprawl, amongst the shantyscrapers and failing ohtwo factories?

  ‘What happens to us?’ she asks. ‘Where else do we go?’

  Siskin resumes taking the remaining pictures from the wall. ‘Back to your families.’

  Pia’s eyes brim with tears. ‘This is my family.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Gowpen is crying with her. ‘My family is here.’

  Zugzwang speaks, very quietly. ‘So is mine.’

  ‘I’ve not been informed of all the details,’ Siskin snaps, some of his old frostiness coming back. ‘The zoo project has been terminated. So has my directorship.’
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  ‘But what about the voilà?’ Urette says. ‘They’re missing, we have to search for them—’

  ‘No one in San Silicio cares about the voilà,’ Siskin says, voice rising. ‘The voilà failed. Every one of them. Every species. None of them were a solution. Most of them weren’t even useful.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have to be useful,’ Urette snaps back at him. ‘They’re living creatures—’

  ‘Were living creatures,’ Siskin corrects. ‘As in, you have no evidence that any of the voilà are alive now.’

  No one has an answer to that.

  ‘This is your fault,’ Urette mutters at Siskin. ‘This whole experiment was yours. It was sick. It was cruel. It wasn’t a zoo – it was a laboratory, a factory. All you were interested in was your precious solution.’

  Siskin, facing the wall, slumps his shoulders. His head hangs down, staring at a photo of Zafira, the first genie to voilà, all those years ago. It is hard to imagine that time now. When the Seam was full of possibility, instead of empty and silent. A time when the world might be saved.

  ‘Well,’ Siskin says, ‘you are right, Urette. I did only care about a solution. We shall see how the world gets along without one in the years to come.’

  ‘Badly,’ says Urette flatly. ‘Some mistakes you can’t fix.’

  Siskin looks at her, and Zugzwang, and Pia. ‘I think we’ve all learned that,’ he says. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an office to pack.’

  ‘Hold on hold on hold on.’ Wilma puts her hands up. ‘You’re saying that no one is paying for any of what happened?’ She points at Zugzwang. ‘Not even him?’

  Unlike Pia, Wilma has not softened towards Zugzwang over the last two weeks. If anything, she has hardened. Perhaps other voilà might have survived somewhere, but not the mirrorangutans. During the doomsickness, whilst the Rekkers were in the hummingdragon aviary, someone destroyed their generator, plunging the mirrorangutans into darkness and snuffing out the creatures that lived in light in an eye-blink.

  No one remembers who’d done it, or how. Wilma says it doesn’t matter, that Zugzwang is to blame regardless. She hasn’t spoken to him for a week now. Neither, in solidarity, has Gowpen.