14. Kevin Is on Probation
KEVIN IS ON PROBATION
GRACE
The wildlife rescue center is clean, which shouldn't surprise me but does because the rest of the garden part has gone feral and this building is a pocket of maintained order in the middle of the chaos.
The floors are swept. The animal enclosures are organized.
The medical supply cabinets are labeled with handwritten tags in precise, small lettering.
A handwritten feeding schedule is posted on the wall, with days of entries in the same neat script, and every feeding time is logged.
Grant opens his jacket slightly so we can see the wallaby properly.
She's small, gray-brown, with enormous ears that swivel independently like satellite dishes scanning for threats.
She looks at me like she's been on Earth for seven months and is already tired of it.
"She eats every four hours. Specialized marsupial formula. "
He leads us to the main enclosure room. It's large, open, divided into sections with portable fencing and enrichment structures. And inside it are the rest of Grant's charges.
Grant checks the rear holding yard, unlocks the enclosure door, and lets the two round friends inside. They waddle through, settle near the water trough, and resume their life's work of being round. He locks the door behind them.
"Those are the round friends," I tell Grant.
"They are Fernando and Diego," Grant says. "They're brothers. They were part of the ambassador animal program."
In the far enclosure, on a perch, sits a red-tailed hawk with one working eye.
The left eye is clouded, sealed, scarred over from something that happened before the apocalypse and has nothing to do with the current situation.
The right eye is golden and sharp and focused on me with intensity that suggests it evaluated my threat level and found it both negligible and entertaining.
"That's Captain," Grant says. "He was brought in six months ago with a wing injury. He's non-releasable due to the eye. He's... he has a temperament."
"He's an angry pirate bird," I say.
"He's not angry. He's cautious."
Captain, as if to prove a point, lets out a scream that sounds like a velociraptor who's been challenged. The scream echoes through the rescue center. The round friends don't react. Pepper buries deeper into Grant's jacket. Beck takes a step back. Joel doesn't move.
"He's cautious," Grant repeats, in the tone of a parent defending a difficult child at a school conference.
"He's an angry pirate bird and I love him. He's perfect."
In the last enclosure, on a bed of straw and shredded newspaper, is a tortoise.
He's the kind of old that you can see in the rings of his shell and the slow way he turns his head to look at us, taking approximately four full seconds to complete the rotation, as if time is a concept he's heard about but has chosen not to participate in.
His shell is the size of a laundry basket.
His eyes are ancient and wet and deeply unbothered.
"That's Cornelius," Grant says. "He's an African spurred tortoise. He's approximately eighty years old. He's been at WonderSphere since the park opened."
"He's eighty?"
"Approximately. They can live to over a hundred."
"He's lived through everything. He's lived through... wars and presidents and the moon landing and disco and the internet and now this and look at him. He's the most unbothered creature in this building."
Cornelius blinks at me.
"Cornelius is my emotional support tortoise," I announce. "I'm claiming him. Cornelius and I have bonded. Look at his face. He gets me."
Grant's watching me interact with his animals and his face is a window.
Everything he feels moves across his features like weather across a sky, visible, readable, uncontrolled.
Right now the weather is confused, touched, overwhelmed, and cautiously hopeful, which is a lot of weather for one sky but Grant seems to have the capacity.
"We should talk about the plan," Joel says, and I can tell he's been waiting to say this for approximately ten minutes.
"The crayon plan!" I pull the brochure from my pocket and unfold it on Grant's exam table.
Grant reads the list. I watch his eyes move from item to item and I watch his face do its weather thing as he encounters each one. "Churros... if available," he reads.
"Morale item."
"Document all Joel jokes... for the record."
"Historical preservation, Grant. We're building a society."
He looks up at me. The weather on his face has shifted to bewildered warmth. "You drew this in crayon," he says.
"It's the crayon plan. Made with crayons. In the thinking box. On the crime boat."
"The crime boat."
"Where we live. You'll see it. It's great. Beck built it. Well, Beck claimed it. The park built it. Beck improved it."
Grant looks at Beck. Beck gives him a nod and a grin.
Grant looks at Joel. Joel gives him a nod and no grin.
Grant looks at me. I give him the friendship paddle thumbs up, which is a thing I just invented where I hold the paddle in one hand and give a thumbs up with the other and it communicates "everything is fine and also I have an oar. "
"We want to secure Wonder Garden," Joel says. "Clear out any remaining threats. Seal the perimeters. Make the zone safe for the animals and for us."
"There are..." Grant pauses. "There are several of them in the garden. I've been watching from the windows. At least six that I've seen. Maybe more in the buildings."
"We've secured buildings before," Beck says. "Four in Mythic Frontier yesterday. She invented zombie bowling and zombie ballroom."
Grant looks between us.
"We'll clear it tomorrow," Joel says. "Systematic. Zone by zone. Every building."
"I can help," Grant says. "I know the layout. I know which buildings have single entries, which have multiple and where the maintenance access points are."
"You have keys?" Joel asks.
"Veterinary staff had access to all Wonder Garden facilities."
Joel's face does the key thing. Finding another person with keys is, for Joel, the emotional equivalent of finding a soulmate. His keyring has found another keyring in the wild and I think we should give them privacy.
We make our way back to the lobby and its decorative pond.
"Tomorrow," I say. "Then the garden part is ours and the animals are safe and Grant is part of the team."
"I'm part of the team?" Grant says it like he's confirming a diagnosis he wasn't expecting.
"You're the animal doctor."
"I'm a veterinarian."
"Animal doctor." I point around the circle. "Infrastructure. Defense. Animal doctor. Glue."
"Glue?"
"She's the Glue," Beck and Joel say together.
"Okay," he says. "I'm the animal doctor."
"Excellent. Welcome to the…"
The goat hits me from behind.
I don't see it coming because it comes from behind, and also because I'm in the middle of a welcoming speech and my awareness of my surroundings has taken a back seat to my awareness of my own monologue.
The goat, a mid-sized brown-and-white creature with horizontal pupils and the moral compass of a parking meter, walks silently across the floor, which is impressive for a hooved animal and suggests premeditation.
It lowers its head and drives it directly into the backs of my knees with the force and precision of a battering ram operated by an animal that never once questioned whether its actions are appropriate.
My knees buckle. My body goes forward. The friendship paddle goes up. My arms windmill. My center of gravity, my oldest and most reliable enemy, abandons its post entirely.
I pitch forward into the decorative pond.
The decorative pond, a shallow, stone-lined water feature with lily pads and a small fountain that's still running because the pump is solar-powered and the sun doesn't care about the apocalypse.
It's two feet deep, which is more than enough to completely submerge a woman who wasn't expecting to interact with water at this particular juncture.
I go in face-first. The water is cold. The lily pads are slimy. The stone bottom hits my palms and my knees, because my knees are the first responders of every disaster my body produces.
I come up sputtering. Water streaming off my face. Wondie hoodie soaked through. Ponytail upgraded from "gave up structural integrity" to "actively decomposing." And on my head, draped across my hair like a large green beret, is a lily pad.
A goat is standing at the edge of the pond with the expression of an animal that's accomplished exactly what it set out to accomplish and feels no remorse.
"What," I say to the goat.
The goat chews.
"Why."
The goat chews.
"Joel, the goat pushed me."
"I saw."
"Beck, the goat pushed me."
"I also saw."
"Grant, is this your goat? Is this a goat that belongs to you?"
Grant's lips are pressed together. His shoulders are shaking. His eyes are bright behind his taped glasses and he's making a sound that might be crying or might be suffocating or might be the first time he's laughed in days.
"That's Kevin," he manages. "He's... he does that."
"Kevin." I point at the goat. The lily pad slides forward on my head. I push it back. "Kevin, you and I are going to have a conversation about boundaries."
Kevin chews. Kevin doesn't recognize the concept of boundaries.
I climb out of the pond. Water pours off me in sheets. My shoes squelch. The lily pad falls off my head and lands on the floor with a wet slap.
Joel hands me a towel. From where, I don't know. Joel produces the towel from an invisible inventory of useful things that he maintains at all times for reasons that are practical and efficient and make me want to scream.
"Thank you," I say.
"You have pond on you," Beck says.
"I have pond on me, Beck. Thank you for the observation."
Grant is laughing into his hand. His laugh is rusty and helpless and unfairly attractive. Apparently being assaulted by livestock is my contribution to courtship.
I towel off what I can, squeeze water out of my ponytail, and glare at Kevin, who has wandered over to the round friends and is now standing near Fernando with the casual air of a criminal returning to civilian life.
"Kevin is on probation," I announce. "Effective immediately. Kevin is on probation and the terms of his probation include not headbutting the Glue into water features."
"He won't understand that," Grant says.
"Kevin understands everything, Grant. Look at his eyes. Those are the eyes of a creature with full comprehension and zero conscience. Kevin knew what he was doing. Kevin planned this."
Kevin chews. Kevin is the most unapologetic being in the rescue center and that's saying something because Captain the angry pirate bird screamed at me five minutes ago.
"Okay," I say, dripping onto the rescue center floor in a puddle that's expanding around my squelching shoes. "Tomorrow we clear the garden part. Tonight we plan. In the thinking box."
Grant adjusts his taped glasses. "That's on the crime boat?"
Beck grins. "He learns fast."
Grant glances toward the glass front doors. "I don't want to leave them here overnight. The barricade held because nothing found us, but it won't hold if those things gather outside."
"The crime boat has a retractable gangplank," Beck says. "Nothing gets onto the deck unless we let it."
"Then we move the vulnerable ones," Joel says. "I'll sweep the route again. Beck, find transport crates. We use the service corridor and lock every door behind us."
It takes the rest of the afternoon. Grant feeds everyone before we leave.
Beck finds a rolling animal cart and discovers that pushing them at high speed is "apparently discouraged.
" Joel checks the route twice. I'm assigned to hold Pepper's formula and not test the carts recreationally, which feels targeted.
Grant packs formula for Pepper and feed for the round friends. Captain goes into a hooded travel crate because Captain’s authentic self-expression can summon the dead. Cornelius gets a blanket-lined wheelbarrow because he walks at the speed of continental drift.
We leave the rescue center in a procession that looks, from a distance, like the world’s most chaotic evacuation.
Joel leads. Beck pushes the cart carrying Captain’s crate.
Grant carries Pepper and leads Fernando and Diego in their ambassador harnesses.
I bring up the rear with Cornelius, with Pepper’s formula tucked beside him, the friendship paddle laid across the wheelbarrow handles, and approximately half a pond still in my shoes.
Kevin follows at a distance. Kevin wasn’t invited. Kevin doesn’t recognize invitations.
We're going to need more crayons because the plan is getting bigger and the park is getting smaller and we're winning.
We're actually winning.