Fierce Kingdom

by Gin Phillips

  Destin liked the word “template.”

  Destin said: Templates are dangerous. Templates teach you not to think. History does not repeat itself, Rob. Every second is a new thing.

  Destin said: If you’re someone who sees the truth, you have to try to educate. You show people how limited they are, then maybe they try to get past those limits.

  Robby liked that idea. He wanted to show the others how limited they were.

  They worked it all out. Robby and Mark would come into the zoo quietly, weapons stored away, not giving anyone a reason to notice them. Destin would come in separately, guns out from the beginning, playing the part of a nutjob. He was a good actor. He’d take out a few people right away and then make a show of grabbing hostages and herding them into one of the front offices. Robby and Mark would stay back from the entrance gate so that if anyone did make it out, they wouldn’t have seen the two of them. Destin would convince the police that they were following a certain script, but there actually would be a totally different script.

  Robby and Mark were in charge of that part. While Destin was playing out a hostage situation and keeping all the cops away, Robby and Mark would go hunting. They would have the whole zoo as a playground. They could kill anybody they wanted, however they wanted. No rules. No limits.

  And by the end, the police would see how they had been fooled. They would see how they had sat around and let the slaughter happen. Everyone in front of a laptop or a television would see how the police had been sheep. The entire world would realize, too, that they were all sheep. That they lived their lives like poor dumb animals, never thinking for themselves, and that Destin and Robby and Mark had given them a flash of salvation. A flash of genius. That was the right word for when someone had a vision no one had ever had before.

  Destin was right about every second being a new thing, because here Robby is and he knew this was coming, but he still can hardly make himself believe it. He is still here, and Destin is gone. This was the plan, but it feels different now in this second.

  The smoke is drifting through the air like fog. Robby can smell it.

  The body armor wasn’t to save Destin, of course. It was only to make things last longer. Destin said anything worth anything took sacrifice, just look at Jesus. Just look at Galileo and Lincoln. Yes, Robby thought. Yes. The rest of it was all good and fine, and Destin talked about façades and reality and he talked about a single point of entry and exit and perimeters, but Robby did not care much about the ins and outs of it. It was such an honor to be chosen, and Destin knew everything, and Mark is his best friend, sure. But it was the ending that sold him.

  He will finish this, and it will be the one thing he has done right. Even if he has not been perfect, he will finish this.

  What will it be like, he wonders, and he wonders what it is like for Destin now. He knows people talk about angels or streets of gold, and his mother has said she would like death to feel like sleep, warm in bed, only with people she loves pressed around her, spine to spine, like when he was a baby and slept with her. He wonders if she thinks of his father, the prick, or whether she wants him out of her heaven. Robby does not want to feel anyone around him, though, and he does not want to feel warm or loved or filled with light or any crap like that. He does not want to feel anything. He hopes it is like being in a bathtub, when everything but your nose is underwater and you can’t hear anything or see anything, and you cannot even tell you have a body anymore.

  He hopes what comes next is nothing. That is the most beautiful thing.

  There are people who will miss him. The old man who always remembers his name when he comes to the CVS counter, but Robby wouldn’t see him anymore anyway thanks to his dick boss. The checkout lady at the liquor store always smiles at him. His grandmother doesn’t have any other grandchildren, so that counts for something. Mark, but Mark will not be able to miss him, because he will be gone, too. His mother, who forever ago would take him to go get doughnuts on Saturday mornings when his dad was sleeping in and after doughnuts they would come here to the zoo. She always wanted to see the birds even though the birds were the most boring thing, and she could never remember the difference between sea lions and seals.

  Seals, she would say.

  Sea lions, he would correct, every time.

  It is better not to think of her.

  Mark is saying something. They are at the railroad track, and Mark has been yammering for ages about how they need to follow the stupid track around and get over to whatever street—Cherry? Dogwood?

  None of it matters. It is such a relief that none of it matters. Because despite Mark’s delusional escape plan, the beautiful ending is nearly here, and it will find them, no matter where they go. All Robby has to do is keep the gun in his hand. All he has to do is play his part.

  7:53 p.m.

  A sharp-edged rock slides into Joan’s sandal, and she loses her rhythm for a moment. The pond is behind them now, and a thick wall of bamboo has sprung up along the narrow creek to her left, so she can no longer see the water.

  Kailynn is a few feet behind her. Mrs. Powell is a good ten feet behind the girl. It is clear that the teacher is struggling, even before she calls out, “Go on without me.”

  Joan slows down. She is not that much faster than the teacher, not with Lincoln pulling on every muscle.

  “You’re doing fine,” she calls back.

  She is not sure whether she says it because she wants to encourage the teacher or because she wants to avoid more interminable conversation.

  But the teacher slows to a walk, and Kailynn jogs to a stop. Joan has no choice but to pause.

  “I can’t,” says the teacher. “My knee’s not going to cooperate. I’ll find a spot around here and wait it out.”

  Joan nods and turns.

  “We can’t just leave you,” says Kailynn, unmoving.

  This is the problem. They do not have time for consideration and politeness, and they do not have time for talking. It will kill them all—haven’t they learned that already?

  Joan has learned it, and she has learned it well. She will leave them. She is done considering her options. She has covered a few yards of track, has managed not to look back and see if the others are following her, when she hears a gunshot. It makes her jump after the long seconds—minutes?—of quiet. Above her head, one of the looping white lights explodes, and her first ridiculous thought is that the bulb has blown. But then she puts the sound and the broken glass together, and she fits in the fact that she heard wood splinter and a crape myrtle branch over her head is tipping down.

  Robby Montgomery was only playing with them.

  Or Destin the killing machine is hunting them down.

  The specifics do not particularly matter right now.

  There is another sound of wood cracking, and leaves flutter down around them all. She looks behind her. For once, thank God, no one wants to talk—they all know the sound of bullets now, and they are all running again, even Mrs. Powell, whose teeth are digging into her bottom lip. There is pain in every line of the teacher’s face, and there is nothing to be done about it. Joan tries to look beyond Kailynn and the teacher, but the track swerves left and right, and she cannot see very far.

  No more bullets come. She thinks she can hear feet, though.

  In twenty or thirty steps they are coming up to the playground, with its massive rocks and rope bridge. Then the frog and turtle statues that Medusa left behind in her wake. I’m a turtle, I’m a turtle, Lincoln will say when he’s on the toilet, making the toilet seat his shell. Or he will wiggle under an ottoman or put a pillow on his back—I’m a turtle.

  Joan runs faster. Her breath wheezes out, and her lungs burn. The teacher is keeping up, barely. Now they are past the playground, and here comes the splash pad with the fountains still arcing in the air.

  The merry-go-round, animals midprance.

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nbsp; Even over her own harsh breaths, Joan can hear the teacher grunting with each step. She looks behind her again and can see no sign of the gunmen. But, still, there is the far-off grind of gravel. She does not think she is imagining it.

  “Get off the tracks,” she calls over her shoulder to the teacher. “Go behind the merry-go-round. Stay down.”

  “What?” says the teacher.

  “Go on, Mrs. Powell!” she hisses, because she cannot think of the woman’s first name. “Just keep behind the merry-go-round and they won’t see you.”

  There is no time to explain—she cannot see anyone, so hopefully Robby Montgomery or his friend or the killing machine cannot see them, either. But she can hear their feet, so maybe the men will be guided by sound, too, and they will just keep coming down the track, and she owes this teacher something, doesn’t she? Also it will simplify things—it will be one less person slowing her down. Mrs. Powell has stepped off the track, limping and then disappearing behind the rows of wooden horses and giraffes and antelopes.

  The teacher is gone.

  Kailynn is still behind her. Joan rounds a bend and can no longer see the merry-go-round, and then the track curves again and she is beyond everything that she knows, entering the other world of the zoo, the one you only see on the train, and she cannot hear anyone behind them, but she is not sure.

  If you shaved a tiger, the train conductor said one time, you’d find out that their skin is striped, too.

  Everything is blessedly dark. Not the complete dark of the countryside on her childhood camping trips but city dark. Mostly dark. They are on the back side of the exhibits. More bamboo blocks whatever the zebras and ostriches might be doing, and the woods are thick all around her, with occasional light-up decorations hanging from the trees—a glowing ghost, a string of blinking black bats, a laughing skeleton.

  There is no need to stay close to the track anymore. The woods are all shadows and moonlight. They can disappear into the trees.

  “Do you think they—?” she hears Kailynn begin, but the rest of it is lost on the breeze.

  Joan hops off the rails, landing heavily, sandal twisting crookedly on the chunks of gravel, but she catches herself and is off through the weeds and pinecones and rotting chunks of wood. Drifts of dry leaves come halfway up her calves. She cannot see where her feet land.

  There up ahead, closer than she expected, she can see what must be the outer fence of the zoo, almost invisible—not substantial at all—nothing but chain link. It is maybe six feet high, and she could climb it no problem with her shoes off. As she hears Kailynn come to a stop behind her, Joan jogs closer, putting one finger against the fence, not positive that it is not electric—she should put Lincoln down, but there is no time and she touches it so lightly—and the risk pays off. There is no shock.

  They can do this.

  She will boost Lincoln onto the fence and help him wedge his feet into the gaps, getting a good grip with his fingers, and she will climb behind him, and she can hold on with one hand while she helps him climb higher, and it might be slow, but they can do it.

  Then she sees it. At the bottom of the fence, on the outside, there is a ditch at least five feet deep. She cannot make out the bottom of it. And there is no way she can navigate it with Lincoln, not even if she could figure out how to get him over the fence. Her fantasy of climbing with him is deeply flawed, even with Kailynn helping. They would be so easy to shoot, stretched out defenseless on a fence.

  She turns and runs in the other direction, back over the railroad track and toward the animals.

  She vaults over a dead log, grunting, and she will not try that again, not with the forty-pound weight on her hip. There are unexpected dips in the ground, and Lincoln cries out when his chin bangs against her shoulder. There are logs everywhere, dead trees decaying into mulch, and the leaves are still thick and deep, and there are more light-up bats dangling. She sees the silhouette of giraffes off to their left, inside fences that are surely eight feet tall.

  She feels Kailynn’s hand tangled in the back of her shirt again, pulling the material tight. She can hear the girl breathing. She has not heard more gunshots, and that bodes well for Mrs. Powell. But there are other sounds: now that she and Kailynn are awash in leaves, their steps brittle and snapping, she can distinguish the grinding of other shoes on rocks. And if she can hear the men, they can probably hear her.

  If she slows down, her footsteps will be softer. But if she slows down, they will only catch her faster.

  “They’re behind us,” she wheezes to Kailynn, turning her head.

  Her shirt loosens as the girl lets go of her. And then, without a word, Kailynn is sprinting off to the left, taking an angle toward the giraffes, and it is a good idea for the girl to try a different direction, because they are a bigger target together. There is no safety in numbers at all. In fact, she has wanted to get rid of Kailynn, hasn’t she? The teacher and the girl were both more trouble than they were worth.

  It is simpler when it is only her and Lincoln. It is safer.

  So Joan does not say a word as the distance between them widens. She can still make out the girl’s zigzagging shape at the moment when her own foot catches—maybe her sandal finally breaks and the ruined shoe causes her to trip, or maybe the strap snaps as she falls, she never knows—but there is a long moment of falling, of panic, of feeling Lincoln slipping from her arms and hearing her own high-pitched yelp. She tightens one arm around him even as she tries to twist so that she won’t land on him. Don’t drop him don’t drop him don’t drop him, she is thinking all the way down. She somehow manages to turn enough that he is half on her back when she hits the ground, but her elbow slams down hard, and the impact makes her arms fly up, and he is flying up, too, no matter what she has told herself, and she watches him fall, his head bouncing against the leaves.

  She has landed entirely on her left shoulder and elbow, hand bent back against her side—and she’s sunk her teeth into her lip. She licks off blood. She tries to make her arm work as she reaches for her son, and her arm does what she wants it to do, but her hand does not.

  He is not crying. This panics her. She cannot see his face in the darkness, only the outline of him. But then he is moving, pushing himself up, stuck on his back like a turtle for a moment.

  “Lincoln,” she whispers.

  “We fell,” he says.

  “You okay?” she asks, crawling toward him, scooping him toward her with her good arm.

  “I’m okay,” he says, reaching out one hand, touching her. “Your face is wet.”

  She wipes at her bloody mouth, listening.

  Voices.

  Not too close but close enough.

  Her right shoe is gone, as vanished as the girl. Her knee is bleeding, and her hand is still just hanging limp, although it doesn’t hurt much. Could she have sprained her wrist?

  She cannot carry him if her hand doesn’t work.

  She hears something else in the trees behind them. A branch moving. The crackling of pine straw or leaves. Small movements, maybe only the wind, only none is blowing now. A squirrel, possibly.

  She pushes herself to her knees, stifling a gasp as her weight hits her injured knee, and then she gets to her feet. The ground is cold and not quite solid. She wiggles her toes and considers kicking off her left shoe, too, but the ground is full of sharp things, and she thinks it is better to have one foot protected. She steps toward Lincoln, bracing herself, and still her knee buckles and she nearly hits the ground again.

  The sounds behind her change: there is not a crackling anymore. There are steps, slow and cautious.

  The men are coming, and she has no idea if they are ten steps behind her or an acre away, and the police still do not actually exist here. Her knee will barely hold her weight, and her wrist is not working, and she cannot move fast enough. Prickly edges stab into the sole of her bare foot.
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br />   They are about to die, she thinks, and she hates herself for the thought.

  No. She is not an animal. She has more in her than fight or flight. She takes Lincoln’s hand and whispers that the men with guns are coming, and he is running with her, only he is so loud, crashing through the leaves, and he is slow. They cannot do this.

  They cannot outrun the killers.

  Footsteps, footsteps.

  She hears the creek again, somewhere close, water against rocks, splashing. Lincoln missteps, nearly falling, and she lifts him by his one hand, swinging him forward, easing him down lightly onto both feet as she keeps them going.

  She looks up, considering the trees. They could climb—more than one of these oaks have spreading branches and forks that lead up to the dark sky. But if she is wrong, if they are spotted, there is no escape, and she is not sure she can lift him, and she does not have time to think about this, but lifting him—lifting him. She thinks of it, of placing him somewhere safe.

  Not the trees. She swerves, still keeping their momentum but studying the landscape, all shadows and moonlight and occasional dangling decorations. There is a shrub ahead, as high as her shoulder, and it is thick with leaves. She leads him to it, and she runs a hand through the branches to feel for thorns before she lifts the lower branches and makes a space underneath.

  “Stay here,” she tells him, her limp hand pressing lightly against his back, steering him. “Get down on your belly and crawl in. Be completely quiet. Do not call my name. Do not say a word. And I will be right back, but if you make any noise, they’ll kill you.”