How We Escaped the Abandoned Zoo

Tales from the Road: The Abandoned Zoo Story

Part Three.

(Previously 1) (Previously 2)

When I opened my eyes, I was met with a splitting headache. My brain felt three sizes too big for its cage. My bones hummed. My blood hurt. And it was about all I could do to keep my dinner inside my stomach.

I couldn’t tell how far we were from where we started. This was definitely still the underground hangar. The only thing different about it now was all the bodies.

There were dozens of them down here with us, leaning against the columns, sprawled out on the floors, shoved against the walls–naked, pink-skinned humanoids. The meat golems. It was hard to know for sure just how many of them were down here because, as I had just realized, I was tied in place with my back against one of the concrete cylinder columns.

“He’s awake!” Rosa said.

Across from me, about ten feet away, Jerry was yawning. He, too, was sitting with his back against a column, tied into place. Catty cornered was Rosa, likewise bound. The three of us were in a triangle, facing one another but separated. And in the center of the triangle, another meat golem, face down and immobile.

“What happened?” I asked.

BING!

That sound came from the lamp, which was now lit green, above the metal rectangle in the wall to my left. It rose with the speed of a garage door, slowly revealing the man who had shot us earlier. When the doorway was fully clear, he proceeded into the room, carrying something that resembled an oversized briefcase in one hand. There was a white cloth covering all but the handle grip.

He whistled as he took his spot at the column directly opposite Rosa. There, he set down the sheet-covered item, then turned to face us.

“How are we feeling?” he asked.

Jerry shrugged. “Not too bad.”

“A little groggy,” Rosa added.

My answer was the outlier: “I feel like day-old death after it’s been reheated in the microwave.”

The scientist flinched when I spoke. “You’re awake again?”

“Again?”

“Yes, you kept screaming about ‘skull world.’ We had to shoot you six times just to tie you up! These tranqs are designed to drop a charging elephant. You should be in a coma right now. How are you even alive?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You know you bit one of the soldiers?”

Jerry snickered and gave me a good job head nod.

“Where are we?” Rosa demanded.

The scientist relaxed into a smile. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions. As do we. I’ve convinced the others to let you live, but only as long as you cooperate. First things first: who else knows you’re here?”

This was shaping up to be another classic interrogation. The correct answer to all of his questions was going to be whatever gave them a reason not to kill us.

“Joe,” said Jerry.

“Joe? Joe who?” the man asked.

“Joe Mama.”

“And where might I find this Joe Mama?” He really didn’t seem to get the joke.

Jerry kept going, “He lives down in Ligma.”

“Ligma?” The scientist repeated. “Where is that?”

“Let me just stop you both right there,” I said. I knew if I didn’t intercept the joke, we’d be here all night–or until the scientist snapped and killed us, whichever came first. “You’re not going to get any useful answers from him. He suffers from a mental condition that makes him unable to recall any specific information about anything. In fact, if you let him go right now he’d forget all about this before he reached the exit. Poor thing. We’re always so worried about him.”

Jerry played along, smiling wide and letting drool spill out of his mouth as he looked at me and said, “Who are you? Where am I? What does the fox say?!”

The scientist chuckled. “While I applaud the Hail Mary maneuver, it isn’t going to work. We already know exactly who you are. The United States has dossiers on all three of you.” He approached me first, sized me up, and said, “Jack Townsend–mentally troubled man with a shady past.”

“That’s a bit of an oversimplification,” I mumbled.

He kept going, walking up to Jerry and saying, “Jeremy Pascal–presumed dead former cult leader slash adult film star.”

“Perfect,” Jerry said. “That’s me distilled into nine words.”

He approached Rosa next. “Rosa Vasquez… Actually, you don’t have anything out of the ordinary in your file. I’m wondering, how did you end up with these hooligans?”

“The United States?” Rosa repeated. “So this is some kind of secret government facility? Oh, man, did you hear that, Jack? The Creep Cast guys are going to absolutely love this part!”

“Not necessarily,” I responded. “They really hate slow villain reveals.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “But you can probably just leave out all this boring stuff when you write about it later. Right?”

I shook my head. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

“Yo!” Jerry yelled, getting everyone’s attention. “If you’re going to kill us, would you at least tell us what the hell is going on here first?”

The mad scientist laughed to himself as he finished walking the circle, ending right back where he started, next to that small case under the white sheet. Then, he did that thing that mad scientists are wont to do: he monologued.

“My name is Doctor Gordon Orson. And I was hired by your government to fight a secret war you people don’t even realize is occurring. There’s a cultural shift underfoot. China, Russia, all the superpowers have been experimenting with this technology for decades. But it wasn’t until recently that the new arms race–one the likes of which our planet has never seen–really began. The world is changing whether we’re prepared for it or not. But it was Thailand, of all countries, that launched the first attack. And then, in turn, Scotland entered the battlefield.”

“Wait,” I said. “Surely, you’re not talking about-”

“Of course I am!” he exclaimed.

At this point, he bent down and ripped the sheet off of the kennel cage. Now, we could all see the tiny creature waddling back and forth in the most adorable way possible.

“Awwww,” said Rosa involuntarily. She couldn’t help herself. The power of its cuteness was too overwhelming. 

“Fuck,” said Jerry. “What a shitty time to not be recording for social media.”

I looked at Gordon in disbelief. Then, I looked back at the creature. Then, back at Gordon.

“A baby hippo?!” I asked.

Jerry corrected me, “Actually, dude. I think that’s a baby pygmy hippo.”

“You fools!” shouted Doctor Gordon. “There’s no such thing as a pygmy hippo! You think God, in his infinite wisdom, would create such a stunted beast? No, this was the work of science. Commitment. Obsession.”

“Our tax dollars hard at work,” I muttered.

“That,” Jerry added, “is precisely why I don’t pay taxes.”

“Can I pet him?” Rosa asked.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” cried Gordon, growing increasingly manic and unhinged with each passing second. “This chimera is an intricately woven masterpiece of what shouldn’t be but is. I had to patch the amino acids together myself using DNA samples from vampire bats, mosquitos, sharks, piranhas, dinosaurs, and at least one serial killer. The result was this. A perfect apex predator. A brand new species. I call them ‘the Orse.’”

I rolled my eyes. “You named the species after yourself?”

“Awe,” Jerry said, walking towards the tank. “Lookit him’s lil snoot. Someone wants a boopin.”

The scientist continued, “The first few experiments were total failures. But then this little girl came along. I knew she was special the moment her egg hatched, and not just because her skin was several shades darker than the rest of her siblings. I instantly looked at her and said… Well that’s an Orse of a different color.”

Rosa’s cuteness-confusion broke. She looked back at the scientist and screamed, “NOOO! DON’T SAY THAT! THE CREEP CAST GUYS ARE GOING TO SHIT A BRICK!”

“What about the meat golems?” I asked. “Why are there so many of them? Are they going to wake up and murder us or what?”

“Don’t worry about them,” he answered. “They’re unfeeling, unsentient bodies of muscle tissue and meat. They serve two functions: the first is so we can harvest stem cells and organs from a living colony.”

“And the second?”

“Isn’t it obvious? The Orse have magnificent appetites. They need food. And… well… they’re carnivores. You three are about to be the first of many to witness the strength of these creatures. Their potential for destruction. I’ve coined a phrase for it that I’m actually quite pleased with. Would you like to hear it?”

The three of us answered at the same time. We also answered differently.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” said Jerry.

“Is it going to be a pun?” asked Rosa.

“I call it…” he said, pausing for emphasis, “Orse power.”

“You son of a bitch,” Rosa shouted. “I’ll kill you!”

With that, Dr. Orson unlatched the pygmy hippo’s cage. It immediately sprang into action, busting the door open and galloping adorably to the meat golem in the center of us. I watched with morbid fascination and horror as the tiny, five-pound-looking hippoling went to town. Its appetite was voracious, like a little demon Pacman. It chomp-chomp-chomped until there was nothing left of the body but crumbs.

“Got-damn!” Jerry shouted. “I guess she really was hungry hungry.”

Why? I lamented. Why couldn’t it have just been demons?

Rosa shot Gordon her best judgment stare and said, “So you created those poor creatures just so they can be dissected and eaten?”

With a smile, Gordon explained, “It’s actually the most humane thing we do here. They don’t have minds, you see. Their brains are the size of marbles, operating only at the minimum level to keep a circulatory system running. Otherwise, they’re husks. The late, great French philosopher Descartes was the one who said ‘I think, therefore I am.’ And if that’s true, then these creatures are not. Forgive me, I would have explained what they were before I introduced you to my creation, except, well…”

He chuckled to himself before finishing the thought.

“...that would have been putting Descartes before the Orse.”

Rosa actually managed to work off one of her shoes, which she then kicked at the scientist. It narrowly whizzed past his head by a matter of inches.

The Orse turned in a circle a few times, then plopped onto its side and closed its eyes.

Gordon started back towards the open door he’d come from. “Well, it’s been an interesting experience. You should be happy your deaths won’t be for nothing. The immobile meat men are one thing, but I can’t wait to see just how effective the Orse are at devouring a more tactical prey.”

As he passed the doorway, I looked back and yelled, “Are you seriously going to leave us in here with that thing?”

“Oh, no, you don’t understand,” he responded. As the door slowly closed, he finished his thought. “I’m seriously going to leave you in there with hundreds of those things.”

The door closed. The green light went off.

Then.

BING.

The light over the next door flashed on. Except this one was red. It slowly began to open-

BING.

And then another.

BING. BING. BING.

Oh shit.

BING. BING. BING. BING. BING. BING. BING. BING. BING.

I could see the Orse waddling into the space, congregating, joining forces into a mob that pitter pattered together, closing in on the smell of food. And I could hear them crunching into the golems. Munching the bodies. Fighting each other over the limited resources. And they were closing in.

Jerry struggled fiercely against his ropes, but it was no use. “Guys,” he said. “I know it’s bad luck to say this, but we might not get out of here alive. Any last words, just in case?”

“I’m really sorry I’ve been such a downer the last week,” I said.

“Yeah, what was up with that?” Rosa asked as the hippos devoured the last of the easy meals.

I sighed and explained, “I just think Cooper is a huge piece of shit.”

Rosa’s reaction was sharp and immediate. “What the fork?! Why would you want to spend your last moments alive saying something awful like that?”

“Yeah man,” Jerry added. “It’s weird that you let him get under your skin so much. Time to let it go!”

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I’m pissed that he’s probably out there filming something that’s gonna get him rich while we’re in here about to be Orse-feed.”

“Nah, he’s probably dead,” Jerry responded.

Well, I thought. At least I can take some comfort in that.

“You’re right,” I conceded. “I’m sorry. And this might just be the gallon of elephant tranquilizers talking, but… I love you guys. I guess I thought that maybe y’all were replacing me. And as far as replacements go, I feel like you could have done a lot better. Because the truth is, you look to your friends in times of uncertainty to help make sense of the world, and it’s deeply unsettling to learn that your peers have such wildly differing opinions about someone who you know is just the worst kind of person, and when I OH MY GOD ONE OF THEM IS BITING ME!”

An Orseling was chomping down on my leg. I braced for the pain, but it never came. Instead, the creature backed up, shook its head, and pounced again, taking my leg into its tiny, powerful, flapping jaws, shredding my jeans in the process until the only thing that showed was metal.

Oh, right, I remembered. I was already dispossessed of that leg in an unrelated accident. As luck (if you want to call it that) would have it, the not-hippo had bitten into my prosthetic limb first–a choice it seemed to be regretting. But it wouldn’t be long before the rest of them reached me. And then Rosa and Jerry. They were all closing in fast. I was out of ideas, out of hope, and almost out of time.

“SURPRISE, motha-fuckas!”

And just like that, I realized things really could get worse.

That obnoxious battle cry came from the idiot running up next to me. He punted the pygmy hippo on my leg with enough force to send it flying. The other animals froze at the sight of him.

“I came here to take names, and kick Orse!” said Cooper, bluff charging at the creatures. They immediately spun around and ran in the opposite direction.

I stole a look in Rosa’s direction. She seemed positively elated to see him.

Oh, I guess we’re okay with puns now?

“Yes!” she shouted. “I knew you’d come back!”

Jerry did a little dance, or at least he did the best version he could do while completely tied to a column, and cheered Cooper on with, “That’s my dawg right there!”

Cooper raced around in the circle. Somehow, just the sight of him was enough to make the Orse turn tail and run. Whatever supernatural charm powers he had seemed to cross the interspecies barrier.

Whatever. Not my preferred savior, but I guess it beats getting eaten alive by piranha-hippos.

And then, the most unexpected and horrendous thing happened.

Cooper fucking peed on me!

“WHAT THE UNHOLY FUCKING SHIT, DUDE!” I screamed.

Jerry and Rosa laughed.

“Calm down,” said Jerry. “He’s just marking you so the Orse know you belong to him.”

“How is this even reality?!” I screamed. “I can understand the monster swarm of government-engineered pygmy hippos. But you three are acting so fucking weird!” 

Almost as if to demonstrate my point, Cooper got down on all fours and started biting at the ropes around Rosa. “I mean, look at him! What is he even doing right now?”

“He’s trying to free me,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Jerry spoke next. He sounded embarrassed, “Oh my God, you guys. I’m so sorry. I just remembered, I do actually have another pocket knife. They missed the one in my boxers. I think, if I can just shift slightly, I might be, able to, reach, it-” He grunted and shifted.

“Why bother? Just let Cooper untie you,” I said.

Jerry stopped struggling. He and Rosa shared a confused look.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

Rosa was the one to answer. “Jack… Why do you keep talking about Cooper like he’s here with us?”

I looked at Cooper. He didn’t acknowledge the conversation at all.

“Because… he is?”

They shared that same look again.

“...isn’t he?”

The Orse swarm had regrouped. The circle was closing in. Cooper ran at them. Their perimeter fell back each time he charged, but not quite as quickly as before. Like they were getting braver. Or maybe hungrier. Cooper’s intimidation factor was wearing off quickly, and the circle was shrinking. It wouldn’t be much longer before the bubble popped and we were overrun.

“Jack,” Rosa shouted. “I think we’ve had a tragic breakdown in communication over the last week, and we all need to own our parts of it. But right now, we need to stay sane long enough to escape from certain death.”

“Understood,” I said. “I’m ready to ignore my perceived reality long enough to fight another day. But when this is over and the dust has settled, I will have so many questions.”

“Yatta!” Jerry exclaimed, jumping up and away from the column and the severed rope, holding his pocket knife triumphantly in the air like Lady Liberty’s torch.

As he went to retrieve Rosa’s lost shoe, one of the Orse broke from the front line and raced up to him. Jerry immediately sent it flying like a kickball. 

“Oh man,” Jerry said as he raced over to cut Rosa free. “They’re so cute I almost feel bad about this.”

The word “almost” was quite the load-bearing adverb, considering he totally punted a few more of them on his way to remove my binds. Once the four of us were up, moving together, I finally saw just how many of those things were down here. Hundreds, maybe thousands of vicious, precious baby monsters, snortling, waddling, flapping their mouths open and shut like a Langolier feeding-frenzy.

I also saw something else among the sea of Orse. 

“There!” I pointed. About twenty yards ahead:

The golf cart.

“Don’t worry,” Cooper declared. “I’ll clear us a path!”

I couldn’t believe it. He charged into the thick blanket of Orse, waving his hands and screaming. Even more surprising, they actually got out of his way. The swarm parted like the Red Sea. I had to give credit where it was due. That was enormously brave. And effective. And stupid.

We followed closely, quickly. The creatures nipped at our heels, but we managed to stay just out of biting range long enough to pile onto the motorized vehicle. Rosa and Jerry fell into the front, he took the wheel, while Cooper and I secured ourselves in the back-facing seats.

“Hold on!” Rosa shouted.

Jerry cranked the battery powered engine and kicked the golf cart into gear, speeding us through the swarm at a relaxed five miles per hour.

Bump! Bump! Bump! Bump!

The cart shook back and forth like we were off-roading with a broken suspension. Jerry beeped the horn, but it didn’t really do much. The only option was to drive forward and try not to think about how many monster babies we squished along the way.

In a matter of minutes, the bumping stopped, and we hit solid pavement. Then, the vehicle climbed up to a much more cruisy speed of ten miles per hour. I watched the Orse horde shrink as the distance between us grew. I didn’t know where we were going, but I was happy to finally be putting some distance between us and them. If sleep were an option, I probably would have passed out right then and there.

“What now?” Rosa asked.

“Now we drive until we see an open door,” Jerry answered.

“What if we never find an open door?” she asked.

“Then we drive until the battery dies.”

He didn’t speak again until a couple minutes later, when he said, “Huh. That’s weird.”

I turned in my seat to get a good look. It was a subtle distinction in the otherwise continuous corridor, but it became clearer as we approached. There was a clear angle in the wall, a break from the flatness. Somewhere between a forced left turn and a left veer, and then the hall continued.

A couple minutes later, we encountered another.

A couple minutes later, it happened again.

We were all pretty tired and worn out and focused on finding a single open door amidst the monotony of closed doors, so when we came up on the next angle, none of us were really doing the math.

It wasn’t until the fifth angle in our path that any of us realized we’d actually just driven in an enormous circle. (if you want to be pedantic, a 540 degree, self-enclosing shape is technically a pentagram… but the important thing to note was that we were right back where we started.) As soon as we took the last angle, we saw rows of open doors. We also saw one of the three soldiers from before, except instead of a gun, he was armed with a push broom. When we came upon him, he was sweeping the bodies of flattened hippos into a big, bloody pile.

The soldier looked quite surprised to see us back again so soon. He blinked at us. Then turned his head. We followed his gaze to the wall where he had propped up his assault rifle. We were all about the same distance from the weapon. A twenty yard dash, approximately the length of a bowling lane, and the first one to the finish line might be the last one standing.

That’s when the battery on the cart finally died.

“Cheeze it!” Jerry yelled, leaping out of the driver’s seat and racing for the closest open door–the opposite direction from the gun. Rosa jumped off after him. The soldier was already sprinting full speed before the handle of his broom clacked against the floor, but he wasn’t going for an interception. He was running away from them. He was going for the weapon. 

Jerry and Rosa looked like they had a shot of escape, but it would be close. Me with my bum leg on the other hand… I knew I didn’t stand a chance. So I ran the odds and settled on a new strategy. If I could charge the man before he could aim down his sights, it might give my friends an extra second or two to get out in time.

“Keep going!” I shouted, rushing away from them, to the same destination as the man in tactical gear. Short of an absolute miracle, I wasn’t going to walk away from this.

But then, out of nowhere, Cooper zoomed past me. He was hoofing it faster than any human I’d ever seen. As soon as the soldier bent down to retrieve his weapon, Cooper pounced and ferociously sank his teeth into the man’s jugular. Blood sprayed in every direction as the man flopped to the ground, scream-gurgling and trying to push Cooper away. The struggle only lasted for a few seconds before the man went limp and quiet.

“JACK!” Jerry screamed from behind me. I turned to see him standing in the open doorway, throwing something over his shoulder and waving me to come on.

I didn’t have time to properly process whatever the frick that was. I just turned and ran.

Did Cooper just… ?

The door led to another set of stairs. 

Jerry saw that too, right? I didn’t just imagine it?

Those stairs led to another lab full of meat golems. 

That was not normal. We should not normalize that kind of behavior.

That lab led to another abandoned zoo building (the monkey house) which led us out into the warm night air. 

Somehow, Cooper caught up with the rest of us in a flash, blood smeared all over his smiling face. And then, we ran back the way we came.

On the way to the wall, I noticed exactly what Jerry had grabbed from the underground room. It was the scientist’s white backpack–the one from the golf cart. There wasn’t any time to ask about it, though. We just needed to escape and sort out all the facts later.

We leapt over the wall, hit the other side, then, FINALLY, took a collective breath of relief.

We’d done it.

We survived the zoo.

***

We took the first mile back in silence. Jerry and Rosa watched the path for potholes and other tripping hazards. It was a lot harder to see without flashlights, but the moon gave us just enough to go off of. Cooper walked next to me, his face coated with drying soldier blood.

I kept waiting for someone else to say something. But at long last, I was the one to break. He had saved my life. Maybe it was time to show some grace.

“I guess I owe you an apology, Cooper. You saved our lives back there.”

Rosa stopped walking so suddenly that I collided with her. She turned around and glared at me.

“Okay, that’s it! Stop! Everybody! We gotta hash this out right now.”

“Nothing to hash out,” I said. “I apologized. We’re cool. Right, Cooper?”

Jerry tucked his thumbs beneath the straps of his newly acquired backpack, crinkled his nose at me, and asked, “So, uh… Is Cooper here with us right now?”

I returned his look of confusion, darted my eyes between the three of them, and waited to see if Cooper was going to respond.

He didn’t.

“Yes?” I answered.

“And how long has Cooper been with us?” Rosa asked.

“Ever since we left the Cove?”

Cooper bit his lip. “Ah Jeez. This is about to get awkward.”

Rosa shook her head. “No, Jack. We left Cooper at the Airbnb. Remember? He said he was too hungover to get out of bed?”

I did remember that. But… then he was there. In our group. They had been interacting with him this whole time. I couldn’t have imagined all of that!

“M’kay,” Jerry added. “Where is he now, exactly?”

“He’s… right there.”

I pointed at Cooper.

Jerry gave me a look that I can only describe as cautiously optimistic. “Ah,” he said. “Let the record reflect that Jack is pointing at our dog, Gaston.”

“What?!”

I looked at Cooper. Blonde hair. Gray eyes. Six feet tall. Cooper.

And then, it hit me.

Cooper was a douchey tech-bro. How the hell did he know who Kurusawa or Helen Caldicott were?

How did he know that the creatures were called “the Orse” when he wasn’t there for the explanation? 

And where the hell was Gaston this whole time?

The last place I remembered interacting with Gaston was……….

OH SHIT!

A week ago! After we left the Cove!

Gaston was with us when we went to Sticky’s barbeque!

It all came flooding back to me.

The barbeque place was infested with demons! We vanquished them, then fed them to Gaston’s spirit void!

I thought Rosa got them all with her holy hot-sauce, but it seemed that one of them was a bit of a clinger.

Not to get too technical, but here’s what we figured out must have happened: This demon got caught halfway between our world and the spirit void inside of the dog. Turns out, demons are a lot like turds. Sometimes it takes two or three flushes to get them all the way down. Gaston had been semi-possessed for the last week by an entity that manifested in my mind as the most recent annoying person I’d encountered. And even though Gaston looked perfectly normal to everyone else, I was seeing him as Cooper. And he was feeding off of my negative energy…

Suddenly, a lot of things made a lot more sense. 

“So when Gaston was jumping all over me and trying to lick my face,” Rosa said through a laugh of pure relief. “You thought that was Cooper?!”

Jerry laughed along, “And when I let Gaston sit in my lap and eat French fries out of my mouth momma-bird-to-baby-bird-style, you thought I was letting Cooper eat fries out of my mouth?”

“I told you guys! I thought you were acting weird!”

“Oh!” Jerry snapped his fingers. “And that time Gaston shit in the back of the van. You thought Cooper shit in the back of the van?!”

Rosa chimed in, “No wonder you were freaking out so much about that!”

“I know, right?!” I laughed, barely holding back the tears. “You guys acted like I was being crazy!”

Sometimes, laughter really is the best medicine, and we all had a good, hearty chuckle when we finally figured it out. Well, all of us except for the demon, who begged me not to send him the rest of the way to the void. But that’s just what demons do. We took a moment so Rosa could bless a nearby puddle, then doused our dog in the holy water, sending the Cooper-imposter demon the rest of the way out of our realm. I felt better instantly. To celebrate, I gave Gaston a big hug and even let him lick my face.

“I’m really happy that worked out. But don’t forget,” Rosa cautioned, “he’s still covered in stagnant water and human blood.”

“I don’t even care,” I said. “I’m just so happy things are back to normal. Except for, you know, the part where we’re all broke.”

With an ominous smile, Jerry announced, “I might have something to help with that.”

“Oh?” asked Rosa.

“Yeah, I took a little souvenir from Dr. Gordon’s golf cart.” With that, he slid one arm out from the backpack strap and spun it around.

“Well, well, well. I was wondering where my bag went.” The voice from the treeline caught us all off guard. We turned to see that this entire celebration had been premature.

Doctor Gordon “the Orse-man” Orson was standing there, pointing a gun at us. 

Not a tranquilizer gun, but an honest-to-goodness Glock. 

His white coat was smattered red with fresh blood. The look on his face was somewhere between bemusement and rage.

“How the hell did you beat us here?” I asked.

“Are you serious?” he answered. “I have an underground city and so many golf carts! I’ve been waiting for you next to your car for half an hour! I got bored and came to find out what was taking so long.”

I explained, “Our dog had half a demon stuck.”

Doctor Gordon took a long, deep breath through his nose, then asked, “What?”

Jerry reiterated, “What part of ‘Our dog had half a demon stuck’ don’t you understand?”

“Nevermind,” the scientist said. “I’m just going to kill you.”

“Wait!” Jerry shouted, unzipping the bag. “You can’t shoot us.”

“Why not, Mr. Pascal?”

“Because I have some very important information you’ll want to hear.”

“You’re stalling.”

“No, I’m not. I can prove it.”

“Fine. What is the information?”

“First, you’re going to want to know where I heard this information.”

“I haven’t got all night!”

“It came from an extremely reliable source.”

Oh god, I thought. Is this going where I think it’s going?

“Rosa!” I whisper-yelled. “Cover your ears!”

“What source?” the scientist asked, impatiently. “Where did this information come from?”

Jerry reached into the backpack, looked up, and said, “Straight from the Orse’s mouth!”

With that, he pulled out the still-sleeping Orse-creature. Doctor Gordon lowered his weapon and shrieked, “My baby!”

“Catch!” Jerry yelled, tossing it into the air.

In the half-second between the moment it went airborne and the moment it latched onto the mad scientist’s face, the pygmy-hippo monster awakened and went into feeding-mode. The scientist screamed and tried to grab it off, but the Orse made quick work of its creator, monch-monch-monching away through skin and bone and brain.

By the time the scientist’s body landed, the hippo had already consumed his entire head.

Rosa punched Jerry hard in the arm, exclaiming, “You had that in your backpack this entire time?!”

 “I thought it would be useful,” Jerry explained. “And I guess I was right.”

The Orse stopped chewing, then turned to face us. We collectively flinched. With a sickening burp, an eyeball popped out of its throat and rolled across the dirty road. With that, the Orse waddled away from the headless Orse-man and over to an open sewer drain against the sidewalk where it quickly squeezed on through, never to be seen again.

“Oh.” I said. “That… could be really bad for the local ecosystem.”

“What now?” asked Rosa.

Jerry walked over to the doctor’s beheaded body, picked up his gun, then fished out his wallet. There was about six hundred dollars cash inside, along with four new finders-keepers credit cards, which we would end up using to replace our phones.

“Now,” Jerry answered, “we get the hell out of this one-Orse town.”