Chapter Text
It’s still early morning when Ed slips through one of the back gates, keying in the code without looking. His flight had been delayed—unusual weather over the ocean that had every passenger glued to their phones, tracking it—and he’s come straight from the airport. No rest for the fucking wicked, they say, and Ed can only assume that in a past life he was some sort of murdering villain. He’s still late, technically. Everyone else will have arrived two hours before or more, filtering through the staff entrance at the main gates, right at the opposite end of the zoo.
The public aren’t due to be unleashed for another hour, so the background hum is less the hubbub of thronged humanity and more the sound of animals being taken through their morning routines. He crunches his way down the gravel path, bushes looming into it from both sides, to the sound of excited macaques screaming for breakfast The noise rises in volume as a creak signals a gate being opened and the clink of metal feed bowls carries through the air.
He steps out onto the wide, tarmacked, public footpath, flanked on either side by grass verges that sit in front of cages rising far above his head. Ed steps over the wooden railings with signs warning visitors to stay on the path, choosing instead to walk close to the wire mesh of the red panda enclosure. The male, Koda, is lying on a bare tree branch near the front of his cage, his russet fur blending into the background. He opens one eye to glance down at Ed, then closes it again. Ed is both familiar enough not to be novel, and not familiar enough to be a known keeper that would signal food or entertainment, so he’s nothing to the half-metre long mammal.
He carries on, passes by other cages—some with animals, some with keepers in their uniforms who raise a hand briefly between shovelling one pile of droppings and the next—until the scenery to his right drops away into the lake. The American alligators are perfectly at home in their natural environment, separated from their wild cousins by only a scant amount of kilometres, but it never seems to stop the local visitors gawking at them as if they were an alien species. George and Barbara are sunning themselves in the early morning now, converting sunlight to heat in preparation for their big demo later.
It draws the crowds, Ed has to admit, even if it’s right at the edge of acceptable. Jack definitely knows how to put on a show. Not many people do it like that any more; the spectacular animal acts of the past are long gone in places big enough to attract any attention.
The rest of the shallow lake is caged off and netted in, designed to stop its inhabitants from escaping upwards. There are changes along the pathway here; new infographic boards. One promises fun facts about the American Flamingo. Another encourages kids to “ID Our Flamingos!” in a fun font, with several of the most recognisable lake residents displayed with their distinguishing features. “Can you find them all?” it asks.
[Image description: on a pale blue-green background with darker green palm fronds in each corner, a sign reads: ID Our Flamingos! Can you find them all? Six pink flamingos are shown, each on a yellow star, with their names beside them. Arthur, Curtis, Clive, Alma, Brunhilda and Goofus all show their respective personalities.]
Ed can’t find any; the lake seems devoid of life except for one duck, who stares at him defiantly from the centre of the lake.
He’s not the only one searching. A familiar disembodied voice, tone worried, calls out from further on down the trail. “Arthur? Come on, now, don’t be silly!”
Ed’s first instinct is to stand a little taller, raise a hand to his head to check the bedhead his red-eye flight left him with, and hasten towards the voice like a moth to a flame, all ready to get burned by its cheerful indifference.
He takes three steps before his second instinct kicks in; a sixth sense borne of decades working with both captive and wild animals, maybe, or just his normal senses subconsciously processing information before his conscious mind can get involved, warning him of impending danger.
He dodges to the left and hears the sound of a beak clacking against itself fruitlessly.
He turns towards the sound to see a five-foot tall demon extend its pink wings to their full extent, hissing in frustration. Its neck rears back, ready to strike again. Ed doesn’t need the handy infographic to know this flamingo; they’re mostly calm, peaceful birds with the voice of a tone-deaf goose, but this one is some sort of changeling, possessed mainly by rage and a thirst for human blood. He is not allowed at children’s feeding time.
“Arthur!” rings out again, with a strained cheerfulness that wouldn’t convince the deafest of animals.
Arthur doesn’t take his beady eyes off Ed, his beak parting a little as if he’s imagining Ed’s blood between his mandibles. His long leg raises a little, as if he’s considering a charge.
Ed watches warily, ready to grab at the bird if necessary.
Or run. Whatever.
“Arthur, where are y— Ed!”
It sends a thrill through Ed to hear Stede’s tone change from its previous exasperated tone. It shouldn’t. Stede sounds like that about everyone. Stede sounds like that about the slightly dry tuna mayonnaise sandwiches at the monthly meeting.
“Hey.”
Stede is wearing his zoo-issued polo, of course, the logo new and crisp, barely out of the plastic wrapper, and his khaki shorts are pretty standard, but his wellies are nearly the same pink as the flamboyance of flamingos trailing behind him, with added sparkle.
Ed doesn’t smile when he sees them. The corners of his mouth might turn up, but that’s different. He’s been away for a month and he’s missed anyone being so inescapably Stede, with his flamingos gathered around him loosely, and lovingly eyeing the feed bucket he’s carrying.
Well, most of them. Arthur still has his eyes on Ed, and another has wandered away from the group to illicitly supplement its carefully controlled diet with something out of a random bush, pecking frantically before it can be discovered.
He lets his focus slip back at Stede, sees him looking expectantly, and realises he’s been asked a question.
“Is she pleased to see you?” Stede repeats.
“Not seen her yet,” Ed admits. Doesn’t need to say that she’s the only reason he’s here today instead of blowing off the whole thing and rolling into bed; Stede gets it. Without her, there’s no fucking way he’d be pulling a day shift after a night flight on top of a day’s work. But he can’t let her down; she’s the only thing in his fucking life that thinks he wouldn’t let her down. “Flight only just landed.”
“Oh—the storm?” Stede asks. “They did say it’s tracking much further north than normal.”
“Yeah, had to divert around it. Fucking glad I was flying without him and in the seats this time.”
“How did it go with him?”
Ed shrugs, drags his mind back through a sleep-ridden haze to the previous few weeks. “They’ve got a fantastic set up, all ready to go. Ned just strolled right out into it and tucked into his chicken. Barely needed me.” It’s hard not to sound a little bitter at that, despite his best efforts, because Stede doesn’t need to know this shit.
“I’m sure they found your expertise invaluable.”
And Stede’s very fucking kind—to everyone, another thing that Ed isn’t going to think too closely about—but he’s also talking out his arse. At one point, Ed would have been essential to any of these transfers; the guy with the magic touch. He’s been all over the world delivering jaguars and other panthers on the cusp of adulthood into collections around the world, mixing up gene pools. But these days everything’s so slick and standardised that he barely has to do anything.
“Honestly, mate, been sat on my arse for the last month, twiddling my thumbs while the machine did its thing.” He’d been there just in case. A back up. A redundancy. “Fucking waste of time. I was just a ghost. No chaos, no drama, no fucking life.”
And maybe he shouldn’t have let that slip out to Stede, who is still starry-eyed about this whole industry—still starry-eyed about Ed, a little. And maybe he shouldn’t want chaos, not in those situations, but fucking hell those are the only times he feels alive. Those are the only times where it’s worth all the shit of being him, to be the guy in the room that makes it happen.
“You sound ready to retire from that.”
And there’s the question. Because he is, isn’t he? He thinks he could walk away from this right now, and never look back. Except, he couldn’t. It’s who he is. It’s what he lives, breathes, exists for. Without this, what the fuck does he have? Who the fuck is he even? And he’s not even sure what bit of this he hates any more—whether it’s the specific bullshit that he exists in right now, or whether he’s just changed and reached a point where it would be draining the life out of him even if everything was perfect.
He barks a laugh. “Retirement? Never heard of her. Anyway, you can talk.”
Stede ostensibly did retire, from his first job. And it wasn’t a totally unheard of thing, but normally these second-chancers had saved their way through dead-end jobs to complete their qualifications to get to where they needed to be—a lifetime’s dream achieved, just the long way round. Stede had—according to rumour—walked out of a high-powered city life, given everything up, and just applied for the job on a whim.
“Well, it wouldn’t suit me.”
“Yeah, you’ve got it all sussed out.” Stede’s got his infographics boards, and his little flock of lake birds, even a winged pink Satan on two sticks, currently silent and nonplussed at being ignored, and he seems as happy as fucking Larry.
There’s a pause so brief that Ed might have imagined it before Stede rallies back into his cheerfulness. “Well, I wouldn’t say that! But I certainly try!”
And Ed doesn’t know Stede well enough to probe at that—Stede’s been at the zoo for nearly a year, now, and has remained chirpily tight-lipped on his own life, even if he seems happy to chat to Ed when they bump into each other—and he can’t even try, because Stede’s radio crackles into life.
“If anyone has eyes on Teach, tell him to stop malingering and get the fuck up here.”
Izzy sounds fed up. Izzy sounds bored. Izzy sounds on the edge of a mental breakdown.
Normal day, then.
Stede’s eyes meet Ed’s, sparkling with mischief. “It can be our secret?” he offers, as if harbouring a zoo employee from management is the worst crime he’s ever committed.
For all Ed knows it could be.
“Could be dangerous,” Ed muses, although he knows his face has to match Stede’s expression. It’s hard to not, when it’s Stede. “They say two can only keep a secret if one of them is dead.”
“Oh,” Stede says. “But say you found the absolutely two perfect people, then they could potentially—“
“Co-conspirators?” they say at the same time, and Ed finds himself wildly grinning at Stede, heart beating a little more rapidly. He can’t fucking help it; the guy gets him every time. Lifts him up in a way that makes nothing feel like everything. And that’s not something that happens to Ed.
“They wouldn’t get anything out of me,” Stede says earnestly.
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
Stede nods solemnly. The flamingos chatter their beaks, and Arthur hisses at them.
“He’s a little grouchy today,” Stede explains, as if that differs from any other day. Arthur, to Ed’s knowledge, has been partially or wholly responsible for three different resignations or transfers. Drove that one kid right out of animal care—last Ed heard, he worked in an office. Stede lowers his voice. “Curtis is expecting.”
He nods towards the reeds, where, now Ed really looks, he can see one lone flamingo head popping up, looking anxiously towards them.
“Expecting what?”
“Well, that we’re not sure about!” Stede’s bucket rattles a little as he rubs his hands together, creating a small ruckus in his gathering of followers. “We’re pretty sure none of the females have laid eggs,”—because none of the flamingos at Queen Anne Zoo have bred for decades, as far as Ed can remember—“and we’re not able to get close enough to examine the nest to see what they’re incubating, so it’ll be a surprise!”
Whatever it is—baseball, trash, duck egg—its father will raise it in his own demonic image, Ed is sure.
“But being away from Curtis really plays into his expectant father nerves right now, and he’s a little antsy.” Stede smiles at Arthur indulgently, reaches out to pat the flamingo, then hastily snaps his hand back as Arthur strikes out. He glances at his watch.
“Better get the kids back to bed before the gates open?” Ed asks, and Stede nods before turning away. Ed’s not sure how long they’ve been stood here, but he knows that it takes the birds a while to be corralled back into their pen after their walks.
Just because he notices things. Not because he watches Stede whenever he can. He can sort of see the area where Stede does his daily keeper talks from the big cat house, and if he times his chores so he’s looking in the right direction at the right time, well, it just sort of lines up nicely in his day, is all.
And Stede is wild. He has the same enthusiasm as a kid on a sugar drink—one of the blue ones, full of E numbers—and more facts than a three am wikipedia rabbit hole. He even does the voices. It would put Ed’s efforts to shame, if he had any of that left.
Even now, Stede’s chivvying his little gang with small encouragements, and Ed has to force himself to look away before he’s caught with a stupid grin on his face.
He turns to find Olu watching him with a knowing look.
“Fuck off,” he says.
“Never said nothing,” Olu replies, easily. “But we all heard the call, mate. And he’s proper got one on him today.”
“Yeah, yeah.” There aren’t many times when Izzy’s not in a snit, these days. Gets worse and worse with each passing month.
It doesn’t make Ed happy about dragging his arse into the main building and up the staff stairs to the admin area. The droppings of mud—maybe mud—on the stairs suggest he’s not the only keeper that’s been up here today.
He doesn’t knock before he pushes his way into Izzy’s office, and Izzy looks up, startled, then clicks away from the weather app he’s got open on his pc screen.
“Everything go okay?” he asks brusquely.
Ed doesn’t mention the flight delay, doesn’t mention that he’s not slept in thirty-six hours—it won’t matter to Izzy. It’s just an expected thing, to push through, push on, get the job done. That’s what this job is, Izzy has complained at Ed more than once. You get it, I get it, these fucking kids don’t, and that’s why they’ll flake out.
He knows the drill. If he doesn’t like the hand he’s been dealt, there’s a thousand other eager kids all waiting and ready to take his place and they’re happy to cycle through the quitters to find the ones stupid enough to stick it out.
“Ned’s settled,” he says instead. “New keepers have all the info. Just got to see if he delivers the goods.” Something they won’t know for months, until their female comes into heat. But that’s not Ed’s fucking problem any more. He’s done his part.
“You know what happens now,” Izzy says.
Yeah, Ed does. He doesn’t want to fucking talk about it, though. It’s been talked to death. Key attraction and conservation and responsibility to the continental programme have all been thrown around at him, and he still fucking hates it, and it still doesn’t fucking matter.
“Do you need anything else from me?” he asks instead.
It throws Izzy, who is clearly braced for a fight. He blinks, like his programming has been disrupted. Probably has. Doesn’t matter which of the never-ending sequence of fuckers own the zoo this week, or what they throw at him, Izzy implements it like a good little automaton. Doesn’t matter how hard Ed pushes back, or how stupid a fucking thing it is. It’s a miracle nothing has affected the animals too detrimentally.
“I need the expenses from your trip,” he says, when his fucking system has rebooted itself. “And the keynote speech you’re planning for the conference next month. And a draft apology for the parent who complained about you swearing.”
“It’s nothing that fucking kid hadn’t heard before.”
“She says otherwise.” He sighs. “Just fucking do it, Ed. Please.”
Ed holds his gaze until Izzy looks away, fidgets nervously with his computer, flicking onto the weather app and then off again. There’s a splash of colour, over the ocean, and a projected path that’s trending further north than it had done when Ed had last seen it, on the plane.
Izzy notices his gaze. “It’s fine,” he says, clicking off it. “Those things are never right.”
He doesn’t close the page down.
But, Izzy worries about everything. Izzy worries about the price of hay. Doesn’t mean shit.
Ed puts it to the back of his mind as he gets changed into his uniform, grabs his radio, scrolls through the app to check his rota and his timetable. The first set of visitors are filtering through by the time he leaves, and he weaves among them until he finds the smaller paths back towards the lake. His building—the jaguar house he hasn’t seen for a month—is the same as it’s looked for the last twenty years with its square, painted outer face. He pushes the handle—the code lock hasn’t worked for three years—and lets himself in.
Despite the public in the rest of the zoo, this part is quiet. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here to draw anyone in right now. A large store room sits to the side of the kitchen, and the window from both of them offers a view of the lake. The flamingos are back out in force on the water, so Stede must have wrangled them back inside their cage.
Ed isn’t responsible for the day-to-day care a lot of days, not any more, but he still likes coming down here. It’s his, and has been for over a decade, since he’d fought his way up under Hornigold’s regime. His handwriting on the charts over the chest freezer, updating and correcting the feeding formulae, is fading from age. There’s a dent in the counter where he and Jack goofed around a little too hard.
He wouldn’t normally, even after being away—but something compels him to check through everything. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the kids, it’s more that they see him float through life and assume that they can too. They forget he’s doing it on an autopilot twenty years in the making.
The freezer is fine—full of meat—and the fridge would be sort of acceptable, if you ignored that it was full of Monster cans instead of jaguar food. The medication cabinet is a fucking mess, still. Ed’s pretty sure he thought about clearing it out the last time he did this, and fuck knows when that was. But it’s easy to just reach in, grab her arthritis medication, and forget about the chaos behind it. The SOP sheets, well, Ed can fucking forget about them. No-one’s ever used a standard operating procedure in this place. They sit on a shelf, waiting for someone to give a shit.
Ed doesn’t. He can hear the sound of movement from next door. She’ll have heard him. She’ll know he’s back.
She looks up as he enters the off-exhibit area, and Ed would swear blind that she’s as close to smiling as a cat can get.
“Hey, babe.”
She rumbles gently in return. Pads to the front of the cage, her black paws making no sound on the concrete. Looks at him expectantly.
He shouldn’t do this. Not anymore. These days, there are strict guidelines on how keepers should interact with big carnivores, guidelines built on accident after accident. Jaguars are the third largest cat in the world, only lions and tigers bigger, and he shouldn’t take chances with one of the largest females in captivity. Even if this place doesn’t care, he should.
But it’s her.
He mirrors her actions. Steps to the front of the cage, and watches her rise to her hind legs, placing one giant paw on the bars, level with his shoulders.
She could crush him with a single blow.
Instead, she rumbles chuffs of greeting as he places a hand over her paw, and presses her forehead against his through the bars. The noise vibrates in pulses through his skull and through his bones, filling his body and soul with her contentment. She breathes out, and he breathes it in. Returns it. For a moment, they just exist, exchange life.
[Image Description: in an indoor zoo setting with a green wall in the background and a brown floor, a black jaguar stands on her hind legs with her right front paw pressed against vertical iron bars for balance. Zookeeper Ed Teach, wearing all black and with his greying hair half up, touches her paw around the bar, and presses his forehead to hers. Both look happy.]
“Kia ora,” he says, as he withdraws half a step and she drops to all fours.
Kiri looks grizzled, and her condition suggests she’s not bouncing back from the rambunctious adolescent cub that Ed removed a month ago as well as she used to. If she misses her medication, she moves stiffly these days. But she still regards him as keenly as she ever has done, tawny eyes piercing into him.
“He’s doing okay,” Ed says, although he suspects she doesn’t care. She’s raised dozens of cubs over the last decade or so, and despite being one of the best at producing and rearing her babies, she’s never missed them after weaning. Animals don’t live for yesterday, just today, and the only thing that matters to her is right now. “Reckon you’ll have even more grandcubs coming along soon.”
She rubs herself along the cage bars, inviting, and he gives into the urge to crouch and dig his fingers into the thick fur, leaning into her body warmth. This close, he can see her hidden self; the near-invisible spots that every panther hides with their black fur. No-one else gets this. Only Ed.
For now, anyway. She might not know what’s coming, but Ed does.
She doesn’t grumble when he shuts her into her private area; she knows the drill. Ed rarely does the routine shit these days, leaves it to the boys, but it’s mindlessly soothing to let muscle memory take over; check the perimeters inside and out, take the wheelbarrow and shovel around. He checks his watch, but he doesn’t need to. A small crowd has gathered already, eager and anticipatory.
This is the bit that got him hiked up the ladder. This is the bit he loves. This is the bit he hates. The small crowd watches his every move as he sets up, tension mounting. He chases bigger highs these days—conference applause, lecture theatres, TV—but he’d be lying if he claimed that this does nothing for him any more, good and bad.
He bounds out, in front of the cage this time, and brings them under his spell. Wows them with the Amazon, and the jungle of Central America, skirts past the fact that Kiri was born in Iowa. Gets them eating out of his hand.
When he releases her into the enclosure, she bounds out with a roar that shakes the ground. Makes for the bare tree trunk and climbs it, muscles rippling and claws gripping either side until she can grab the hunk of meat—some sort of leg—and leap down onto her feet.
His girl’s a showgirl, after all.
Ed picks it back up smoothly as she settles down, a seamless transition honed over the years.
He carries on talking, lets his attention wander over the crowd. The generic mid-term crowd of toddlers, retirees and young couples. Nothing interesting there at all. If he turns a little, subtly, he can sort of see the lake, but not really enough to see the lake.
He answers their questions on auto-pilot—nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing that makes his brain kick into gear. Just the same fucking shit over and over. What’s the difference between a panther and a jaguar? Where does the meat come from? Could they be vegetarian?
“Where are the other jaguars?”
Ed focuses on the small child of indeterminate gender that has asked, via their mother. “Until last month, Kiri had her cub, Ned, living with her, but he was relocated to Berlin Zoo in the hope that he’ll become part of their conservation programme there. In total, she has fifteen cubs across four continents, and her descendants make up around five per cent of all jaguars held in zoos associated with the international breeding programme.”
He’s about to move on, when the kid pipes up over its mother’s hushing, “Is she lonely?”
“Some animals are solitary by nature, so they like living alone. Sometimes it works out better that way—nobody to bother them, nobody to hassle them. They get annoyed if anyone is in their space too long, so she’s actually happier by herself.”
No cubs to bother her, either.
It doesn’t seem to satisfy the kid, but the mom has found a sweet from somewhere, so there’s no further follow up questions, thank fuck. He’s not really had enough sleep to go that deep into a cat’s psyche in explain-like-I’m-five terms.
He answers the final few questions, gives the time for the next talk, hopes to fuck that the schedule hasn’t changed in the last few months, or that Olu is willing to go with the flow if they all turn up at Hoofstock unexpectedly. It won’t have changed. Nothing ever fucking changes.
Watches them all fuck off with a sigh of relief.
He should go back to the office. Izzy would want him to. So he finds excuses to stay where he is, the only humans bothering him the incessant and intermittent chatter over the radios.
Sits and eats his lunch in the off-exhibit corridor, even though Kiri is outside sunning herself.
And if he happens to be organising the next day’s meal at a point where he can watch Stede’s talk, well, coincidences happen all the time. Life’s got to have a little bit of the good shit in.
He checks his phone, on a whim. Checks the weather app.
So when the radio crackles, he doesn’t flinch. Nor when the first syllable makes it clear that it’s Izzy, calling someone back up to the office. He likes bollocking people.
Attention all staff: meeting at five pm for everyone in the main foyer.
There’s no further information. No reason. And everyone knows with Izzy, it could be anything from ire at improperly loading the dishwasher upwards.
Doesn’t have to be an impending natural disaster.
Ed has been awake now for thirty-nine hours, with the time difference. He wants, desperately, to go home. To sleep.
But he’s not fucking stupid. He knows what this is.
He goes.
There are definitely others who are aggrieved at a meeting after their shift ends; Archie very clearly mutters fucking bullshit to Jim, somewhere behind Ed.
But there’s a sea change at play; the atmosphere crackles with static. There’s not much in the way of idle chatter.
It’s tense. No calm here.
Izzy has found some sort of box to stand on, staring out over the crowds. Well, glaring until everyone shuts up.
“I’m sure you all know why I’ve called you here,” he starts. About three quarters of the people nod, Stede included. Some of the older hands look to Ed to check his reaction; he shrugs noncommittally.
“We’ve got confirmation that Hurricane Jeff is going to make landfall and the county has declared a state of emergency.”
“What the fuck,” Archie says from next to him, drawing out the last word. “Fucking bullshit wind.”
“There is no need,” Izzy says, raising his voice over the hubbub of chatter as tension spikes through the room like lightning. “There is no need to panic. We have an emergency plan. You should all have your SOPs ready. I will be asking for volunteers to wait out the storm with the animals, and the rest of you will shelter in your own homes.”
The way he catches Ed’s eye makes it clear that volunteering will be mandatory for some.
“When you come in tomorrow the zoo will be closed to the public and we will be completing preparations—if you are not sure, ask your team lead. If you’re a team lead and you’re not sure, try being better at your fucking job.”
The hubbub rises almost immediately. Izzy’s trying to say something, but he’s drowned out. No-one’s listening. People are trying to figure out who is staying, who is not. How any of this works.
“Where do the cars go?” he hears the Swede ask someone. “When we are here?”
Jim is pushing past, muttering about changing their drugs order. Shit. Medications for Jim to dispense, sure, but bedding, waste, food for a thousand or more animals with specialist needs.
“Exciting, isn’t it?” Stede doesn’t look petrified or worried. Stede looks alive. “I’m sure once everyone has a moment to get over it, we’ll all pull together and get through this!”
He’s a fucking lunatic. He makes Ed feel better just by existing. There’s no way anything he’s saying is in any way going to happen.
“You in for the duration?” Ed asks.
“Volunteered immediately! You?”
“Oh sure, yeah.” He doesn’t have a choice, not when Izzy’ll be breathing down his neck. Not when he’s been away for a month.
Stede brightens even further. “Sleepover buddies!”
He sounds pleased about it. It’s hard not to read anything into it. Ed knows there’s nothing to be read. “Yeah,” Ed says. “Looking forward to it, mate.”
He claps Stede on the arm, and ducks further into the crowd.
Izzy is being surrounded by a dozen people demanding answers. Even if people knew before—anyone with a push notification, anyone who checks the news—it’s different when it’s real. Because everyone knows that the plans are just for show. Everyone knows that hurricanes don’t come this far north.
Except this one does.