Chum

There are only so many times you can walk around a zoo before you memorize everything. At first, it was about mapping the place in my head, you know, figuring out all the paths and shortcuts. Where the snack stands are, where the bathrooms are. Which enclosures are closest to the exits, and which ones are hidden in weird little corners. That kind of thing. But now I've been here so much, I've started noticing stuff that I bet even the zookeepers miss. Like the way the flamingos don't actually stand on one leg when it's cold out. Or the exact number of times the big male orangutan in the Primate Reserve throws his banana peel before he loses interest and just eats it.

Three. It's always three.

After Thanksgiving, it became kind of a routine. School, zoo, home, repeat. Every day I'd find something new to focus on, something to keep my brain busy while I watched. The animals were part of it, but mostly I was watching the people. The workers, the families, the couples on dates who thought they were the only ones who came up with the idea of a romantic zoo trip. And the construction crews. Those guys have been here since before Thanksgiving, moving bricks and tools and doing, like, construction things. I'm not an architect. And they sure are legitimately building shit in this here zoo.

The first day I came, I thought I was being ridiculous. Who spends their afternoons watching construction workers? Me, apparently. I couldn't help it. It's not like they were doing anything suspicious. They were just fixing a wall or something near the Reptile House. But the way they moved, the way they looked around--like they were waiting for something--made my skin crawl. I've been around enough shady people to recognize the signs.

Or at least I think I have.

Maybe I'm just paranoid. But when you've fought a guy who turns bricks into shrapnel, you start to notice weird things about construction sites.

Every day, after school, I'd head straight to the zoo. No stopping for snacks, no hanging out with friends. Just straight there, past the front gate, nodding to the same bored security guards who probably thought I was some kind of zoo superfan. By the third day, they barely even looked at me when I came in. I guess when a teenager shows up at a zoo every day, it stops being interesting.

I spent a lot of time in Bear Country. Mostly because it's quiet over there, tucked away from the main paths, and the bears are always out. Even when it's freezing. There's something about the way they move, slow and heavy, like nothing bothers them. It's calming, in a weird way. I could watch them for hours. And sometimes I did. Just sitting there, watching them lumber around, wondering what it would be like to be a bear for a day. Probably a lot simpler.

But even with the bears, I couldn't shake that feeling in the back of my mind. That something was about to happen. That the Kingdom was watching, waiting, just like me. I tried to keep it together, to act like this was just some weird hobby I picked up, but every time I saw a new face or a group of guys in hard hats, my heart would start racing, like I was waiting for them to pull out guns or something. They never did.

The penguins were another favorite. I'd go to Penguin Point when I needed to cool off. No pun intended. There's something about watching a bunch of birds in tuxedos waddle around that makes you forget about, well, everything else. And when they dive into the water and pop back up like little rockets? It's like they don't even care how ridiculous they look. I admire that about penguins.

On the third day, I started counting how many times the zookeepers came by to feed them. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon. Like clockwork. I made sure to note it. In case it ever became relevant. I wasn't sure how it could be relevant, but when you're scoping out a potential heist, you never know what details are going to matter. Maybe the Kingdom's plan involved penguins. Maybe I was going insane.

Most of the time, I tried not to let it get to me. The waiting. The feeling of impending doom. I'd walk from the rhino enclosure to the Reptile House and back, keeping an eye on everything, but pretending I was just a normal kid enjoying the zoo. I'd even stop to talk to the keepers sometimes, just to seem less suspicious. Most of them didn't pay much attention to me. Except for Mack.

Mack was one of those guys who was always around but never in a rush. Like, no matter what was happening, he had time to chat. I think that's why I liked him. He was the kind of person who made you feel like there wasn't anything urgent happening, even when you knew there was. I spent a lot of time pretending to be interested in the bears just so I could stand near him, listening to him talk about their hibernation schedules or how much they ate in the winter. It was weirdly comforting.

One time, I asked him if the bears ever noticed when the zoo was empty. He just shrugged and said, "Bears don't care about people, kid. They care about food and sleeping. And maybe the occasional tree to scratch their backs on." I guess that's true. But I couldn't help wondering if the animals knew something was up, too.

The rhinos were a different story. I never really liked the rhino enclosure. There was something too... exposed about it. The fence was too low, the animals too big. It felt like one wrong move and they'd just barrel through the wall and into the city. I knew that wasn't going to happen, obviously, but that didn't stop me from feeling uneasy every time I walked by. And then there were the construction guys. Always hanging around, moving bricks, building things that never seemed to get finished. It was like they were waiting for something, but I didn't know what.

At first, I tried to tell myself it was just a coincidence. Maybe the zoo really did need this much construction work. Maybe it was just a busy season for renovations. But the longer I watched, the more I couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't here for the zoo at all.

I started keeping track of the workers, too. How many there were, what they looked like, when they showed up. There were always about ten of them, give or take. Same faces, same uniforms. Except for one day, when there were eleven. A new guy. He was shorter than the others, kept his head down, didn't talk to anyone. I watched him for almost an hour, just to see if he'd do something suspicious. But all he did was move bricks, and stack them, in the way that a construction worker probably does. Still, I wrote it down. Just in case.

Diane would love to see my notes on this surveillance.

The Reptile House was another spot I kept an eye on. It wasn't as busy as the other parts of the zoo, especially in the winter. People don't seem to care as much about snakes and lizards when it's freezing outside. But I cared. I spent a lot of time in there, pretending to be interested in the animals, but really just watching the door.

It was always warm in there, though, which made it a good place to thaw out after spending too much time outside. The snakes would just lie there, motionless, like they were conserving energy for something big. Maybe they were. I started wondering if the Kingdom would go after the reptiles. Stealing a bunch of snakes instead. To do what, assassinate someone? That's stupid, surely they have better ways of doing this.

A week. I'll give it one more week, I told myself. One more week, and if nothing still happens, I'd cut my losses.

It doesn't have to be me. There are other heroes out there.

That's what I told myself.

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point, I started getting paranoid about the animals themselves. Like, what if the Kingdom wasn't here to steal something? What if they were here to use the animals? What if Mrs. Xenograft was going to show up, fuse something crazy to something else crazy, and send it on a murder spree? I spent an entire afternoon watching the orangutans, waiting for one of them to start acting weird. But they didn't. They just threw banana peels. Three times, like always.

I even started keeping track of which animals seemed more active on certain days. The bears were always out, like I said, but the big cats? They barely moved when it got cold. I'd watch the tigers for hours, waiting for one of them to do something interesting, but they mostly just slept. Maybe they knew something I didn't. Maybe they were just lazy and cold.

And then there were the flamingos. I never spent much time watching them before, but after a week of coming to the zoo, I started noticing how they all stood in a circle when it snowed, like they were huddling together for warmth. I'm pretty sure that's not a normal flamingo thing. I made a note of it, just in case. I don't know what's a normal flamingo behavior and what isn't.

The zookeepers probably thought I was weird. I'd spend hours just wandering from one exhibit to the next, not really saying anything, just watching, occasionally writing things down, always bundled up for the snow. I tried to blend in, to act like I was just another visitor, but after a while, I'm sure they noticed. I wasn't exactly subtle about it.

Mack was the only one who ever asked me what I was really doing there. "You're not just here for the animals, are you, kid?" he said one day, leaning against the fence of the rhino enclosure. I shrugged, trying to play it off. "Maybe I just like zoos." He gave me this look, like he knew exactly what I was up to but didn't feel like calling me out on it. "Well, if you're planning to liberate the penguins or something, just let me know so I can take my break."

I laughed, but it didn't reach my eyes. I wasn't planning to liberate the penguins. I was planning to catch a bunch of criminals in the act. But I couldn't exactly say that. So I just kept coming back, every day, waiting for something to happen.

By the time December rolled around, I was on edge all the time. Every little thing set me off. A new face in the crowd, a delivery truck that seemed out of place, a bird flying too close to the rhino enclosure. I couldn't shake the feeling that something big was coming, and I wasn't ready for it.

I tried to keep my distance from the construction workers, but they were everywhere. No matter where I went, I could see them. Moving bricks, carrying tools, talking in low voices that I couldn't quite hear. I started getting this sick feeling in my stomach every time I saw them. Like they were watching me, too.

The worst part was that I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't just walk up to them and ask what they were doing. I couldn't call the cops, because what was I going to say? "Hey, I think these construction workers are planning something shady because they look suspicious and move bricks weird"? Yeah, that wasn't going to fly.

So I just kept waiting. And watching. And writing everything down. The number of workers, the times they showed up, the routes they took through the zoo. I even started drawing little maps in my notebook, marking the spots where they seemed to linger the longest. The Reptile House, the rhino enclosure, the entrance near the Bear Country.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Maybe a big announcement over the zoo's PA system, like "Attention visitors, please evacuate immediately, a gang of supervillains is about to steal a rhinoceros." But it never happened. The days passed, and nothing changed.

I can't tell you why, but I know that today is different.