by Sam Gayton
‘How about you don’t make me angry—’ There’s a rustle as the wafters all shudder. The security guard whirls around. ‘What was that?’
‘Ah.’ Vashti winces. ‘Please don’t threaten me either, because the smellies are really protective of...’
She trails off. This isn’t working at all. It’s like saying to someone, ‘Don’t think of a smellephant’. That’s exactly what they just go on and do.
She starts to think that maybe there is something wrong. This guard looks ready to snap. He wasn’t like this when he first zephyred on board.
‘You are winding me tight, woman,’ he growls.
And for whatever reason, this tips the smellephants over into full-on skunk mode.
Vashti sees it coming and buries her nose in her shirtsleeve. She yells at the guard to do the same, but her voice is muffled in the crook of her elbow. Her zookeeper suit has a special wad of odour-neutralising cotton sewn there.
‘What did you just say to me?’ the guard snarls.
‘They’re about to skunk, hold your breath!’ She turns and runs for the red button by the door to trigger the emergency extraction. But running triggers something in the security guard too. A paranoia that has come from nowhere.
‘Hold it right there!’ he bellows, and raises his gun.
Very bad idea.
An orchestra of farts. That’s how Vashti always hears it. Deep parps and high piping squeaks and everything in between. Three waves of the vilest stinks sweep outwards from each smellephant. Bad eggs, rancid meat, chemical fumes. Three gusts of brain-rotting, gut-churning stench. They hit the guard right in the nose.
‘Ugh!’ He reels away, clutching his face as if struck. ‘Oh man. Oh man that smells bad. That—’
Then he pukes.
Then he faints.
In his puke.
Vashti peeks over her arm at him. He’s been skunkfunked good and proper. The stink is so powerful it has knocked him out. Still holding her breath, Vashti feels light-headed too. She slams on the industrial extractors above the enclosure that are designed to suck the smellies’ skunking out of the ark. Then she hauls the security guard up.
He is groaning, still half out of it. She looks at him, frowning. Then she reaches over carefully and ejects the bullet clip from his gun and puts it in her dungarees pocket. Maybe he escorted some Seamers to the island a few days ago, and got himself mind-frayed or something.
The extractors above them whir to a stop. The smellephants cower in the corner. Gradually their frantic skunking starts to slow as they realise they are safe. Then their boulder-shaped bodies rise up on their stubby legs, suddenly curious. The smallest and wrinkliest smelly steps forward, wafters unfurling shyly, and sends out a new aroma. The other two wait a moment, then do the same.
Vashti looks back at them, keeping her face jammed in the crook of her elbow. ‘What are you guys introducing yourselves for? You know me, sillies.’
The three smellies ignore her and patiently repeat their names. Vashti can smell their scents even through her elbow, she knows them so well. The first smellephant’s name is a smoky, charred smell: Old Campfires, the older grandma of the other two.
‘It’s OK.’ Vashti reaches out a hand to stroke the smellephant’s leathery sides. ‘I know. You did right. I don’t know what came over him, pointing his gun like that. Crazy. Like the whole zoo right now.’
The second smellie, fresh and zingy, is called Peppermint. The third, just a babe, has so far called himself Turned Earth. Smellephant names age as they do. Old Campfires had once called herself the scent of Dry Kindling, and one day she might be Embers-and-Ash. Who knows what Turned Earth’s scent will become? A flower? A herb? Something else?
Vashti shakes her head. ‘You three are acting funny too. He won’t remember your names – you’ve put him in a skunkfunk.’
Old Campfires takes another step forward, trundling past Vashti. Her eyes are very small and black and solemn. And they are not looking at Vashti. But at someone else. Something else. There in the enclosure, behind them all.
In a flash of light, they vanish. All three smellephants, gone in an eye blink. Vashti cries out and falls backwards. She is alone in the enclosure, with the unconscious guard and three fast-fading scents. Old Campfires. Peppermint. Turned Earth.
26
BEAST WITH SIXTY EYES
Beside the Quark’s main door, Siskin makes Pia pause.
‘You don’t have to go out there,’ he says. ‘You understand that, don’t you? Look at me and nod.’
Pia has her ear turned to the door, listening to the crowd outside.
‘Look at me and nod,’ he repeats, his voice hard as iron.
Pia nods. She forces herself to breathe deep. To be cool. Anger won’t help anyone – Ishan, least of all.
‘Is he on deck?’ She glances at Siskin. ‘Is he OK?’
The boss nods. ‘Security drones are monitoring him. You know I can get security to handle this.’
‘No way.’ Pia shakes her head. ‘The last thing anyone needs – Ishan included – is a bunch of bluebottles charging in.’
Siskin concedes the point. ‘We could try and mount an emergency zephyr.’
Pia shook her head. Zephyring yourself might be an easy wish, but zephyring others was much trickier – and more dangerous.
‘That’s a last resort and you know it,’ she states. ‘I’m going out there.’
Siskin still looks unhappy. ‘Threedeep? Link your display with security, so Pia can see for herself what she’s getting into.’
The drone pings a link-up request to one of the bluebottles outside. Siskin authorises it, and suddenly Pia sees the quarantine ark, floating on the nanabug’s screen. On the deck are a crowd of about thirty zoo staff: keepers, admins, ’genieers, and even a few security officers. Pia goosebumps. Does that mean there are guns out there?
‘Zoom,’ Siskin says. ‘Let her see the faces. Let her see the look.’
‘What look?’ But the question dies on Pia’s lips, because it’s there on the screen, in all of their eyes, in everyone.
The exact same look. Like Pia isn’t standing in front of Fay and Britta and Tej and Vivi any more, but just one thing, one big animal with thirty pairs of eyes, and thirty times the anger and thirty times the fear. An animal called a crowd.
And this crowd is like a beast, powerful but stupid, and in its stupidity it could be directed to do terrible things.
And Pia is afraid. Now she knows the reason for Siskin’s skewed tie and missing pocket square. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with the zoo. Not just with the voilà, but with the zookeepers themselves.
‘Are they... doomsick?’ she breathes. She almost can’t believe it. No one at the zoo has ever fallen doomsick. How has this happened? How is it so widespread, and so quickly too?
A sudden possibility sends chills through Pia. Maybe when the Seamstress died, hope died with her.
‘Show me Ishan,’ she says, and he comes up on screen. She breathes out with relief. He doesn’t look hurt in any way. His expression is more confused than anything else.
‘He’s totally surrounded.’ Pia gazes at the screen. ‘There’s no way he’s getting away from them by himself.’
Beyond the doors, she hears a muffled shout, and then a roar of approval. An actual roar, like a Rhinosaurus rex would make. So the crowd is an angry beast too. Pia’s knees are juddering and her heart is thumping and Siskin is watching her.
‘This is not a good idea,’ he says. ‘I can’t let you go out there.’
‘It’s just adrenalin!’ She takes a few deep breaths. ‘I can do this. I can convince them. I need to do this. Whatever the zoo is facing, we won’t survive it if we’re not together. You have to let me try and talk sense to them.’
Siskin stares at her for a long time. ‘I can’t let you go
out there on your own,’ he says at last.
Which is not quite what he said before, and Pia knows she has him.
‘So send me in with backup,’ she says.
Siskin raises his eyebrows. ‘As in, security?’
‘As in,’ Pia corrects, ‘my friends.’
• • •
It takes maybe ten minutes to bring the Rekkers up from the canteen and brief them on what is about to happen. Zugzwang, Wilma and Gowpen share looks with Pia as Siskin speaks. The sort of looks that say: What the actual is going on? And why did you have to drag us into it?
The whole situation feels so weird and tense. Somehow, Pia can’t put her finger on why. She puts it down to the fact that the zoo’s adults have gone crazy and are holding her best friend hostage, whilst believing her to be an evil doppelganger from another dimension. That is probably it... But still. Weirdness.
‘Bottom line: no risks,’ Siskin tells them. He looks at Gowpen. ‘As in, ignore your mother.’ He looks at Wilma. ‘As in, no jokes.’
Wilma rolls her eyes. ‘What if they’re really, really funny, though? Like, legitimate screamers?’ She holds up her hands quickly. ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I’ll shut up. This situation is hilarious enough already, right?’
She looks at Gowpen, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off Threedeep’s screen. A grainy image of Fay’s face stares back at him.
‘Mum was fine this morning,’ he says, then reconsiders. ‘Well, maybe not fine. But she wasn’t like this...’ He trails off, staring. Fay stands in the crowd, cheeks marked with make-up and tears, her eyes vacant.
‘Fay loved those Fabergé chickens almost as much as you, Gowpy,’ Wilma says. ‘Now they’re gone, her chickens have literally left the roost – sorry, Gow. That wasn’t funny. I am actually shutting up now.’
Siskin looks at Pia. ‘Are you positive you want them with you?’
‘Positive. I want them with me. They’re my best friends, Siskin.’
Siskin hands out the breathers, and slips his own over his face. ‘Are you ready?’
Pia breathes deep. ‘I think so.’
‘Remember what I said.’
‘I remember.’
‘They’re acting strangely. They’re not themselves.’
‘I know.’
‘If you—’
‘I know.’
Siskin frowns, like he’s giving this idea one final assessment in his mind.
‘I’m proud of your bravery, Pia. And you, Wilma. And you, Gowpen.’
Then he authorises the door open and steps through. The noise and anger of the crowd floods in and it washes over them like a wave.
And Pia finally realises what the weirdness was. All through that whole discussion, Siskin didn’t so much as look at his son. Zugzwang has his goggles pulled up on his forehead, but as Pia glances over at him, he pulls them down, like he doesn’t want Pia to see what’s in his eyes.
She takes a deep breath, and leaves quarantine, out into a world of hysterical mobs and unseen monsters.
Yay, freedom.
It is sunny outside. Strong and warm and beaming. The kind of day angels love weaving halos out of. Around the quarantine ship, the sea is blue and calm. So unlike the seething crowd on the deck of the Quark.
Siskin stands beside her, with Threedeep and the Rekkers. Bluebottles hover above with their jabbers out, ready to swoop, but Pia is still scared. She looks for Ishan, but she can’t see him. Not at the front of the crowd, anyway.
The crowd simmers down to silence as Urette steps forward. Every beast has a head, and here is the crowd’s. Urette looks unrecognisable from the sweet, lonely lady Pia accidentally had tea with only two nights ago, like her personality has disappeared the same way the Fabergé chickens and the megabunnies have, and someone else has moved in. Someone crueller and colder.
‘We only want to know the truth. That’s all. The truth.’ Urette pauses, and the crowd mutter yeah behind her in a way that makes everything she just said into some kind of threat. ‘We think we deserve that much. After what we’ve lost. After the directives we’ve been given. After the lies we’ve been told.’
Urette turns her gaze to Siskin. He flinches. Actually flinches. Everybody sees it, and it puts a smirk on the lips of the crowd. Weevis, that horrible twerp of a secretary, has the widest and nastiest smile of all. Pia might have known he would join this bunch of crazies.
‘There’s a darkness come into our zoo,’ Urette says, almost chanting the words. ‘We all feel it. Even out here, in the sunshine. It’s a darkness that only the truth can light up.’ She looks at Pia. Everything else about her is crumbling and cobwebby, but her eyes are quick and dazzling. And there is something else in them too. Something Pia recognises. What is it?
‘And so I’ll ask you. Just this one time. What have you done? What did you do to them?’
Pia doesn’t reply. Not immediately. If the crowd is a beast, then words are the only way to tame it. She weighs up each one before she speaks it. Takes a deep breath.
‘I’m hearing a kind of truth in this silence,’ Urette interrupts, before Pia has a chance to speak. ‘Because truth is simple, isn’t it? Truth just needs to be said. You only have to wait and think about what to say if you’re about to lie.’
The crowd nods and scowls. Pia inwardly facepalms. She walked straight into Urette’s trap, there.
‘No, listen,’ she blurts. ‘You have to listen. You’re right – there is some sort of darkness in the zoo, but—’
‘She admits it!’ Urette’s bony finger points at Pia, and her voice begins to rise up, like a kettle boiling on a hob, like a preacher at the end of a sermon. ‘There is a darkness! There is! You heard her say it! And how does she know? Because she loves the darkness, because she serves the darkness, because she is the darkness!’
‘What the actual?’ Wilma mutters.
ヾ(ツ) Excuse me? Threedeep buzzes in between Pia and the crowd. I am compelled to remind you that doomsay, especially directed towards an individual, is discouraged under directive SIS: 0004. You should know better. Pia is a child.
‘That,’ Urette said, looking at Pia, ‘is not a child. It is a demon, come from the Seam to cause our doom.’
‘Okaaaay,’ Wilma says sideways at Siskin. ‘I know I promised to shut up, but: can you put us back in the crazy ship now?’
‘We stand against the darkness!’ Urette cries at the doomers, never once taking her eyes off Pia. ‘We are the light!’
‘Mum?’ Gowpen steps forward, tears in his eyes. ‘Mum, where are you? Stop this, it’s crazy.’
‘You are full-on mind-frayed!’ Wilma says in disgust. ‘Doomers, all of you! Nothing but doomers!’
‘Wilma, shut up!’ Pia elbows her. Things are spiralling out of control. She can feel the hysteria on the deck rising. Gowpen’s crying for his mum, and Wilma is hurling insults into the crowd like they’re stones, and Zugzwang unbelievably is on his goggles, watching a vid.
We seem like the crazy ones, Pia thinks, looking around.
‘That’s enough!’ Siskin strides forward, face full of fury. ‘Urette, the rest of you, back to your arks.’
Urette just babbles nonsense. About dark and doom and death and decay, and Siskin starts bellowing back at her, spit flecking from his mouth.
‘As in, LEAVE!’ he yells. ‘As in, GO! As in, NOW!’
But Urette steps closer to him, and the crowd moves with her, shuffling on its sixty legs, clenching its sixty fists. And Siskin looks almost deranged with anger, because no one has ever disobeyed him before, not ever, and yet here is Urette, frail and old and unpopular, defying him. Not just that – goading him.
Cold, clear-thinking, keen-edged, implacable: Siskin is ice, through and through.
But rigid too. Stubborn to his core. Ice is brittle; it breaks before it bends.
When it happens, it happens fast. Siskin takes Urette by the arm and twists her round towards quarantine. Maybe he is trying to break up the crowd: knock out its head in the hope its body will scatter.
Or maybe he has just had enough. Maybe he has snapped.
The crowd rushes forward. Fay gets there first. Fay, the most timid woman in the zoo, whom Wilma reduced to tears during a chicken-naming contest. Now she runs at Siskin, fists flying. She isn’t that big or strong. Doesn’t have to be, when running at that speed.
She tackles Siskin to the ground, and Urette falls too. The three of them collapse on the deck in a furious tangle of arms and kicking legs.
The roaring crowd surges over them. Pia catches a last glimpse of Siskin, struggling up, arms reaching out like a man drowning.
‘Ishan!’ Pia screams. ‘Ishan!’
Wailing their sirens, the bluebottles swoop down and fire into the crowd. There are screams. People start to slide unconscious on to the deck. Stun darts. They hit with hollow slapping sounds.
Something metal spins through the air to them. A wrench. It clips the rotor of one drone. There’s a crack and a metallic whine and the bluebottle spins down into the waves.
Wait – the crowd has brought weapons?
Pia grabs hold of Wilma and throws her towards the entrance to the Quark. She takes Gowpen too and drags him back. Zugzwang is watching the deck like it’s a level on a video game, all bug-eyed and gawping. Pia yells at him, then joins Wilma and Gowpen in hammering on the metal door. They have to get away before the doomers remember her. Without Urette, focus is scattered. Half of the crowd are trying to bring down the bluebottles by hurling bottles, kitchen knives, tools. The other half seethe around where Siskin fell.
Pia catches a glimpse of Urette as the crowd haul her up. Her mouth is bloody from the fall. An expression is fixed on her face: she wears it, like a horror mask.
It is delight.
She wanted this to happen.
A hand takes Pia by the wrist. She kicks out, feels her boot connect with a shin, and twists free of the grip. It was Tej, who just yesterday had been smiling and joking with her. Now his face is glazed with madness. He bear hugs her and hurls her on the floor.
