16. The Stabby Fork Dies a Warrior
THE STABBY FORK DIES A WARRIOR
GRANT
The petting zoo is next. The fences are open, the animals scattered, but the structures are all clearable.
Joel and Beck have already reached us. The restaurant is sealed.
The gift shop is sealed. Joel has keys for the petting zoo structures.
Beck found one infected inside the feed barn and handled it before we arrived.
Kevin's here.
He's been maintaining a distance of approximately fifteen feet, which is close enough to observe and far enough to pretend he's not observing.
He's also eating a decorative shrub that costs the park approximately two hundred dollars to maintain.
Kevin doesn't care about the park's landscaping budget.
"Kevin is following us," Grace says.
"Kevin does what Kevin wants," I say.
"I issued a probation and Kevin is violating it. Kevin is in contempt of Glue and I want that on the record."
Beck looks at the smear on the friendship paddle. "Did something happen?"
"No," Grace says.
I say, "Yes."
Grace turns to me. "Animal doctor. Betrayal."
Beck lights up. "What kind of something?"
"Door nap," I say before I can stop myself.
Grace closes her eyes. "Your joke privileges are revoked."
Beck whispers, "Door kill."
She's walking ahead of me now, toward the interaction pavilion, friendship paddle in one hand, tote bag on her shoulder, and I'm behind her.
Beck reaches for her, casually. He's going to tap her shoulder, redirect her attention toward something he's spotted near the pavilion entrance. His hand moves toward her, fast, the way people move when they're comfortable with each other.
Grace flinches.
It's faster than a conscious response. Her shoulder pulls in, her head dips, her body contracts toward its center, preparing for impact.
It lasts less than a second. She recovers immediately, turns, sees Beck's hand, registers what it was actually doing, and relaxes.
The whole sequence takes maybe two seconds.
Beck's attention is on the pavilion entrance, his hand reaching her shoulder after the flinch resolves. He points at the thing he wanted to show her and they keep talking and the moment passes.
I don't know whether that response is older than Thursday. I'm not going to ask. I know what to do. Announce my presence before I'm close. Give her the space to see me coming so she can choose whether to stay.
I follow her toward the pavilion.
We clear the interaction pavilion. Empty. The veterinary substation, also empty. We're moving fast, ahead of Captain's twenty-minute window, and the group is developing a rhythm, a clearing pattern that's becoming automatic. Joel locks, Beck sweeps, Grace directs, I watch.
We're on the last stretch. The path between the petting zoo and the aviary. Captain's screams are still coming from the east perimeter, fainter now, which means his vocal energy is diminishing. We have maybe five minutes before the infected start drifting back.
The path runs through the garden section. Raised flower beds. Decorative stone paths. And a garden hose running along the ground near the irrigation control panel that someone left out when they evacuated.
Grace walks toward the hose.
I open my mouth to say something.
Grace's foot catches the hose. Her ankle rolls.
Her body pitches forward with catastrophic enthusiasm.
The tote bag swings. The friendship paddle goes wide.
And the foam trident dislodges from its drawstring binding and launches forward like a javelin thrown by an athlete who didn't know they were competing.
There's an infected in the flower bed, lying among the overgrown plants, motionless, hidden by the dense ornamental foliage.
The trident hits the infected in the face. The decorative foam splits, exposing a rigid plastic support beneath it. Grace’s falling tote drives the prong into the left eye.
The plastic handle snaps at the joint.
The infected jerks once and stops moving.
Grace is on the ground face down in the garden path, arms splayed, friendship paddle three feet away, and tote bag contents spilling across the stones.
She lifts her head. There's dirt on her chin and a leaf in her hair. "No," she says.
"Yes," Beck says. He's standing six feet away. His face is incandescent. "Grace. You just threw a foam trident into a zombie's eye while falling down."
"I didn't throw it. I fell and it fell and we fell in the same direction and it's not…"
"That's a trident kill. Has anyone in history ever gotten a trident kill?"
"It's not a kill, it's a... I tripped on a hose." Grace sits up. She looks at the foam trident. "The stabby fork," she says quietly.
"The stabby fork," Beck confirms.
"It's dead."
"It went out like a warrior. The stabby fork scored the kill of a lifetime and retired on top. Athletes dream of that."
Grace stands up. Slowly. She brushes the dirt off her knees and retrieves the trident handle. The glitter catches the light.
"Goodbye, stabby fork," she says. She places the broken handle on the edge of the flower bed, gently, the way you'd place flowers on a grave. "You were the first weapon I ever had."
Beck puts his hand over his heart. Joel is focused on Grace in a way that isn't about monitoring or protecting.
Grace picks up the friendship paddle. She catches me watching. "You okay, animal doctor?"
"I'm fine."
"You're staring."
"I'm observing."
"Is that a vet thing? The observing?"
"It's a me thing."
She holds my gaze for a moment. "You can observe," she says. "But if you see something weird, tell me. I can't always tell when I'm being weird because weird is my baseline and I've lost the reference point."
"You're not weird," I say. "You're associative. Your brain makes connections that skip the conventional path between points. You get to the same destination, you just take a route that nobody else would map."
For the first time since I've met her, Grace is completely still. "That's..." She blinks. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about my brain."
"It's an observation."
"Joel says that too. When he says something nice and doesn't want credit for it." She smiles. "You're all going to make me think I'm normal."
"You're not normal. Normal is a herd behavior. You're something else."
Kevin walks into the center of the group, stands directly between Grace and the flower bed, and begins eating the decorative flowers that Grace placed the broken trident on.
"Kevin."
Kevin chews.
"Kevin, that's a memorial. That's the stabby fork's grave and you're eating it."
He's located the newest emotional landmark in Wonder Garden and begun consuming it. This is, in my professional opinion, deliberate. Kevin is magnificent.
"Grant, your goat is desecrating a weapon's funeral."
"He's not my goat."
"He's your goat. He's a garden part animal. You're the garden part vet. Kevin is your jurisdictional responsibility."
"Kevin transcends jurisdiction."
"Kevin transcends nothing. Kevin is a criminal."
Captain screams from the east perimeter. One last scream, fainter now, signaling the end of his shift. The infected will start drifting back. We need to move.
I whistle. Two short notes.
Captain launches from the lamppost, a dark shape against the morning sky, and glides back to us in a descending spiral that's efficient and beautiful and makes Beck say "oh sick" which I'm learning is Beck's default response to anything that impresses him, because Beck has maintained the capacity for wonder in a world that's actively discouraging it.
I find that remarkable.
Captain lands on my glove. Settles. His working eye surveys the group, the garden.
"He's done," Grace says. "So the wrong people are going to start wandering back."
"Yes."
"I hate that yes."
Joel already has the map open. "East perimeter."
Grace looks at him. "That sounded like a plan voice."
"It is. Grant said they cluster at the sound. We use the cluster."
"The goat barn," I say.
They all look at me.
"It isn't a goat barn," I clarify. "It's a quarantine holding yard. High fencing. Double gate. Concrete floor. It's where we isolate large animals during intake."
Grace stares at me. "Animal jail."
"Quarantine holding yard."
"Animal jail with a medical degree."
By the time we reach the east perimeter, the infected are clustered below the lamppost where Captain had been screaming. Seven of them. They drift in uneven circles, bumping the fence, bumping one another, stimulus gone and purpose gone with it.
The quarantine holding yard sits ten yards beyond them, gate open, chain hanging loose.
Joel sees it. "Can we move them?" he asks.
"Yes," I say.
Grace tightens her grip on the friendship paddle. "I dislike the word move in this context."
"We don't fight them," Joel says. "We guide them."
Beck picks up a metal feed bucket and looks at me.
I nod.
He grins. "Zombie cowbell."
"No," Grace says immediately.
He hits the bucket with the back of his axe. The sound cracks across the yard.
Every infected turns.
"Zombie cowbell," Beck whispers, but his face is all seriousness.
The infected move toward the sound. Beck backs toward the open gate, hitting the bucket every few steps. Joel stays at the hinge side. Grace and I take the flank, which is a sentence that sounds professional until Kevin chooses that exact moment to stand in the path and eat a leaf.
"Kevin," Grace hisses. "Not now."
Kevin chews.
The lead infected veers toward him.
Grace grabs the nearest feed scoop and throws it at the far wall of the holding yard. It clatters against the concrete with a bright metallic bang.
The infected turns toward the sound.
Kevin continues eating because Kevin fears neither death nor consequences.
The last infected crosses the threshold.
"Now," Joel says.
Beck drops the bucket and throws his shoulder into the gate. Joel catches the chain, wraps it once, twice, and snaps the padlock shut.
Seven infected hit the fence from the inside.
The metal rattles.
Grace stands very still beside me, breathing hard. "So," she says. "Animal jail works on wrong people."
"Quarantine holding yard," I say.
"Wrong people timeout," Beck says.
"That one." Grace points at him. "The garden part is mostly clear. We seal the rest of the perimeter today, finish the small buildings, and then we plan the big middle."
Joel pulls out the map. He unfolds it on a garden bench. Grace adds seafoam green X's to the secured buildings. She adds a small drawing next to the petting zoo. It has horns and an expression of malice. It's the most accurate portrait of Kevin I've ever seen.
Then she adds a box around the east holding yard and writes WRONG PEOPLE TIMEOUT in block letters.
Joel looks at it. "It's a containment zone," he says.
"It's a timeout for wrong people."
"They're not being disciplined."
"They tried to eat Kevin. They are absolutely being disciplined."
Kevin chews a flower beside us, ungrateful and alive.
"To the thinking box," Grace says. "For planning. And funnel cake. And the stabby fork memorial service."
We walk back toward Mythic Frontier. Kevin follows everyone from fifteen feet. Captain rides my arm.
I walk at the back. Grace stumbles on a cobblestone, catches herself, and keeps walking without looking back.
Joel's hand twitch when she stumbles. Beck's hand twitch when she stumbles.
Neither of them reaches. But they twitch. Both of them. Every time.
I'm watching, learning the group.
And somewhere in the watching, I became part of it.