Is it just me, or is there something weird about these meat golems?

Cover Art by Clockworkreapers

Tales from the Road: The Abandoned Zoo Story

Part One.

The stench of decay and manure saturated the hot, sticky night air, clinging to our skin like wet Saran wrap as we walked down the broken sidewalk. It assaulted my senses, permeating the fabric of my clothes and mixing into the fresh sweat from our two-mile hike. The only way to get to where we were going was on foot–the unused roads having lost their battle with mother nature and her army of twisted roots and giant sinkholes. The streetlights tilted inward from either side of our path, like giants craning their necks to see what idiots dared to enter their smelly, forgotten domain. Even if there had been power running to them, their bulbs had long-since burned out, replaced by some kind of mossy nests that dangled from the lamp heads like shriveled fingers–the work of rodents or insects or eldritch abominations (there was no way to know which). Jerry and I were in front, his flashlight scanning the pothole-riddled concrete. Behind us, Rosa carried her own light while Cooper carried the conversation.

“If you think this is bad, it’s nothing compared to south Florida. One time, I had to trek twenty miles straight through the glades to get to a job. You guys probably wouldn’t have made it that far. The alligators scare most people off, but they don’t bother me. Never been afraid of gators. I guess I’m just built different.”

I’d been silently listening to Cooper, the newest member of our crew, for some time now. Long enough that I already knew everything I needed to know about him. He was the kind of guy who loved to talk about how smart he was. Or how skilled he was. Or how funny he was.

I never once heard him tell a joke, but he regaled us with countless examples of when he was able to work a crowd and make everybody laugh. Whatever the thing was that you were just talking about, without fail, he just so happened to already be an expert in it (what a coincidence)! And his IQ was (allegedly) off the charts!

Cooper was, no doubt, his own greatest hype man.

We picked him up in Cutoff Cove, on the west bank of Oregon a week earlier. A hot tip sent us that way, thinking we might be of some use. The cove was a quaint little seaside community with a bizarre problem: Once every year, like clockwork, the town was swallowed by a brown fog. When it subsided a few days later, things were different. According to unverified rumors, each time the fog rolled out, it took a few people with it. Yet somehow, the disappearances were never reported.

Jerry booked us a motel room just outside of town, but he made the reservation on one of his “finders-keepers” credit cards, and management caught on before we could even unpack our bags. Thankfully, Rosa was able to do some last-minute networking and discovered a group of vloggers who’d received the same tip as us. 

That’s how we met Cooper.

He was the founder of a group of paranormal researchers looking into the fog disappearances, and when Rosa reached out, they were more than happy to “combine resources.” For us, it meant a place to stay (sharing their Airbnb right on the beach). For them, it meant Jerry cracking open his jar of artisan weed nugs that he’d been saving for a special occasion such as this.

I won’t bore you with all the details of that story. In the end, Rosa did the responsible thing and pulled public records at the county clerk’s office, which is how she discovered the truth–people weren’t just disappearing after each fog. Every year, the entire town–every single person–up and vanished. Then, a new town, full of new seemingly normal people with different names and identities and memories took their place. And somehow, nobody had ever noticed this before.

Where did the old town go each time? We’ll never know. 

Who were all these replacement people? Beats me. 

Is this going to just keep happening every year from now until the end of eternity? Shit, probably, I guess.

Sometimes we’re able to figure things out. Sometimes–not always–we’re even able to help. But this one ended up being another L to cancel out the W’s. We managed to get the hell out of Dodge once the rest of the inhabitants went into their fugue state and began trance-walking towards (and into) the lapping waves of the ocean, never to be seen again. Probably good, too, because the paranormal investigators saw this as their big break, got a little too close to the action, and were likewise never seen again.

Except for Cooper.

Frickin’ Cooper.

With his bleach-blonde boy-band haircut and gray eyes. 

And his smile, which he showed off constantly–a little too perfect to be natural.

Always wearing expensive designer polos that were a size too small. I think he thought it would show off his muscles, but in reality it made him look like a burrito that had been wrapped too tightly and now the fillings were bursting out everywhere.

Frickin’ Cooper…

The morning the fog rolled in, he was too hungover to join his buddies down by the water, and it saved his life. Of course, the way he told the story, his intuition was what kept him in bed that morning. And even though I distinctly remember Rosa being the one to throw a bucket of water onto Jerry to wake him up before corralling us all together and out the door, Cooper had thrown in quite a few self-congratulatory remarks since joining us. Things like, “I still can’t believe I convinced you guys to leave when we did.” or “Good thing y’all listened to me.” or “My old crew got what they deserved for leaving me behind.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the last week with him had been insufferable. Just really really annoying. The world was full of Coopers, and as a former retail associate, I’ve tolerated much worse for much longer. Ironically, the thing that really bothered me about Cooper had nothing to do with him at all. The thing that crawled under my skin and made me want to explode with annoyance and barf all over his stupid face was the mind-boggling fact that the two people whose opinions I valued the most–Jerry and Rosa–actually liked the guy.

They liked listening to him. They liked spending time with him. They hung on his every word, enough to let him be the one to point us towards the next job.

And despite all my misgivings, my perpetual anxiety, even my self-respect (or whatever you want to call it), I agreed to go with the wisdom of the majority. After all, he was the expert at the one thing none of us had any clue about: 

Monetization.

I couldn’t argue with that. We were flat broke. Not a penny to our collective names. The only things in our possession worth pawning were the forty-eight souvenir teaspoons Jerry had stolen from each of the states we’d visited so far.

Cooper was a business-bro through and through. He was the one who found and courted all of his team’s sponsors, set up their streams, coded their SEO floopdedoop, Zoogled their whatsabutts, and optimized their bleep-blop accounts. If it sounds like I didn’t understand a word he was saying when he first explained it, that’s because I don’t care about any of that stuff. All I know is that there is theoretically a way to use the internet to turn words into food… It seemed like chaos magic to me–random and uncontrollable. But Cooper swore he could divine the algorithm for us. All we had to do was listen to him and do whatever he said.

The night before the foggening™, he smoked a blunt and laid out the keys to monetary success in the age of internet content. He called it the three s’s: 

1. Sensationalism

2. Sexiness

3. And shit-tons of output. 

   
   

You only need two of those three to hit it big, he said, and I used what little credibility I had as our group’s founding member to veto option number two.

Regarding component number three–output–Cooper wanted to know why I had a blog that I hadn’t updated in months. I tried to explain how I don’t really have time to spend chronicling my misadventures anymore. And how I only ever really did that in the first place as a means of therapy. And to be honest, there was a strange new factor since the “success” of the blog from years ago… how now I was wary to post anything new for fear of not matching the perceived quality of what came before… How I truly feared sequel creep. How the only way to preserve the dignity of what I had created was by leaving it alone. And most of all, how I didn’t know if anything new would be regarded as “good enough.”

His response to these concerns was both annoying and insightful: “Nobody even knows who you are anymore, dude. The internet’s attention span can only be measured in nano-seconds. You need to pivot with the new literature landscape.”

He advised me to forget all about the blog and instead focus on where the “real” money was–short form videos and micro vlogs, which led us to the component of success number one–sensationalism.

As Cooper put it, we could drive traffic and engagement through a number of different techniques–the easiest being something called “rage bait.” But I didn’t have the emotional energy nor moral bankruptcy necessary for that. Instead, he suggested something a little closer to what we were already engaged in: stylized fear-mongering.

And that’s how we ended up here–a week later, in Bumphoque, Mississippi, outside of a zoo that hadn’t been operational since a hurricane flooded the county somewhere back in the late 20th century. We were decked out in our best breaking-and-entering gear and garb, ready to video ourselves for a new Youtube channel about urban exploration–a final desperate attempt to parlay our experience and expertise into something we could use to pay the bills.

There was no tangible reason to expect things to go sideways tonight. But given our history, it would be irresponsible not to acknowledge the possibility that something horrendous and supernatural was waiting for us inside. And if that ended up being the case, Jerry would be ready to film it for those sweet sweet internet points.

“Now remember, guys,” Cooper said as we finally reached the exterior wall of the abandoned zoo, “you want to be able to cut as many clips as possible from this. No long, meandering sentences (looking at you, Jack). Keep it short. But not quippy.”

“No quips,” I repeated.

“That’s right!” Rosa added. “Remember how much those Creep Cast guys hated the quips?”

(For those out of the loop, she was referring to a recent review of my early blog by a couple of professional blog reviewers. They seemed to think my experience with the Dark God back at my hometown gas station a few years ago was a piece of fiction. That, I decided, was probably for the best.)

Cooper continued, “Alright, start rolling.”

We each took out our phones and began recording video. Jerry, without hesitation, charged up to the six foot wall and scaled over it with ease. I panned my phone back to Rosa, then pointed it at Cooper. As soon as he saw me, he snatched the phone out of my hand.

“How many times do I have to tell you?!” he snapped. “Portrait! Not landscape! You’re not Akira fucking Kurusawa. Okay? This isn’t a cinematic experience. Vertical video only!”

He gave me my phone back and didn’t wait for a response before running and charging over the wall behind Jerry. 

Now, it was just me and Rosa. She was looking towards where he had just jumped the perimeter, smiling with something akin to admiration. The same look she had when she watched him eat. Or sleep. Or say stupid things that boggled my mind… When she caught my eye, she lowered her phone and asked, “You good?” 

I suddenly realized that my teeth were clenched. I relaxed my jaw and stopped the recording long enough to answer. 

“Yeah, I just… To be honest, I’m a little annoyed that we have to do this.”

“We don’t ‘have’ to do anything,” she declared, matter-of-factly.

“I mean, this whole thing, it’s not really what we do. The breaking into a spooky place and getting into stupid trouble, sure. That’s our brand. There’s just something inherently gross about pandering for internet engagement so the tech oligarchs will give us a turn at the revenue teet. I mean, we’ve faced down literal gods and nearly watched the world end, and I still believe there’s nothing more inherently destructive to culture and society than the infinite-scroll doom machine that we’re currently bolstering with our own participation.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Seems a bit egotistical to think that our contribution is going to make any difference.”

“And maybe that’s part of it, too. The idea that we as individuals don’t have any power to stop the monster. And if we don’t dance, then we starve. Is there any ethical way to exist in this late-stage capitalistic techno-dystopian hellscape? Or are we just destined to be the cogs in a-”

“HEY!”

I turned to see Cooper sitting on the edge of the wall, filming me.

“Put a cork in it, Helen Caldicott! These monkey ghosts ain’t gonna film themselves!”

Rosa let out a short laugh as he fell out of view behind the wall. It wasn’t until a second later that I realized I was groaning involuntarily.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I couldn’t believe she of all people didn’t already know.

“Nothing,” I said, turning on my camera (vertical mode). “The coliseum wants to watch us perform. Let’s go perform.”

I was soon humbled to learn just how bad I am scaling a simple six-foot wall. Rosa and Cooper were both waiting for me on the other side, cameras rolling as I plopped inelegantly onto the ground. After righting myself, I took a quick head count of the group and asked, “Where’s Jerry?”

“He wanted to see if there was anything cool left in the reptile house,” Rosa answered.

Cooper pointed at my phone and commanded, “Film.”

I begrudgingly did as I was told. Then, we were off. Cooper led the way while Rosa lagged behind with me, one hand on her flashlight and the other keeping a video record of the entire proceeding. She whispered into my ear, “No, really, what’s wrong?”

There was an uncomfortable and unspoken feeling between the two of us. But I’m not good at opening up even when there isn’t a video recording my every thought and action. I’d be damned before I bore my feelings into the camera just so Cooper could splice it up as drama farming. So, I simply put on a fake smile and said, “I’ve got a really bad vibe about this place.”

Yeah, I thought. That ought to edit well into a TikTok.

The walk through the abandoned zoo went about as I expected–broken glass littered the asphalt. Doors were bolted shut. Vegetation covered every surface. Once you’ve seen a few dozen abandoned locations, you’ve pretty much seen them all. However, I did clock the absence of graffiti and the lack of any signs of prior vandalism. It was almost a charming notion that we might have been the very first ones to break into this place.

We approached a fork in the path–the reptile house to the immediate left, clearly labeled with a giant metal snake dangling from the eave. A winding road to the right, leading who knows where. Rosa broke from her long standing tradition of being the voice of reason and rationality, saying, “We should split up.”

“What?” I asked.

“You know, for the video. Raise the stakes a bit.”

Cooper stopped, turned, and gave her a smirk. “I like the sound of that.”

With three people and two possible paths, there weren’t a whole lot of combinations. Of them, one sucked the most–Cooper and Rosa going off on their own while I was left to film B-roll by myself.

“How about you and me stick together?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager. “I think our resident expert can fend for himself.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“Hey,” Cooper said, giving me the disgruntled stink-eye. “My expertise would be wasted. I’m here to teach you guys, remember?”

I did not remember. In fact, this felt like the first time I’d heard those words.

“Okay then,” I said, trying for the second least sucky combination. “Let’s split up by gender. Rosa, you go find Jerry. In the meantime, we’ll see if there’s anything worth filming up the loop. Meet back here in ten?”

I knew Cooper was going to protest, but before he could, Rosa said, “Okay. That sounds good. Be careful, both of you.”

“Careful don’t get the clicks,” Cooper responded with a wink.

As Rosa walked away, Cooper nudged me on the hip and said, “Man, that chick is crazy.”

“Come again?”

“I’m just saying, she’s been after me since Cutoff Cove.”

I didn’t care for how chummy he had suddenly become. But I also couldn’t entirely deny that Rosa had shown an attraction to him that I found completely baffling. She’d let it slip a couple of times since he joined us, like it was no big deal. She told me in passing that she thought he was “cute.” Even when he was just acting like a complete idiot, behaving in ways that made me embarrassed for him, she would simply watch and smile. Like he had some kind of spell over her.

Still, it was a step too far to call my friend “crazy.”

“She’s a sweet person. She’s really trusting and caring-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he interrupted. “She wants the D, Jack. Admit it. I’m right.” I reflexively clenched my fist. He didn’t seem to notice. “She strikes me as a clinger, though. Know what I mean?”

“No.”

“Like, she’d probably start planning our wedding before I could get my pants back on.”

“Dude,” I said. “That’s my friend you’re talking about.”

“Lighten up,” he said, as if that sentence had ever accomplished its goal in the history of spoken language. “I was just messing around. What, did you call dibs on her or something?”

“What? Did I call dibs-”

“You’re not about to tell me that ploser Jerry called dibs on her, are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Ploser? It means poser and loser at the same time. See, when you mix words together like that-”

“I know what a portmanteau is.”

“I mean, just between you and me, Jerry’s a bit of a try-hard. Don’t you think? Like, he’s constantly worried about what other people think. It’s just so… pathetic.”

“Are we talking about the same Jerry?”

Suddenly, my phone started to ring. It was only at this point that I realized I’d forgotten to film anything. No matter. As far as I was concerned, that entire conversation was better left forgotten.

When I checked the caller ID, it said “Jesus Christ.”

That could only mean one thing: Jerry had changed his name in my contacts again. I answered and put him on speaker.

“Hey man. What’s up?”

“Heyyy, uh, dude? Y’all may want to come join us at the reptile house. We found something.”

Cooper and I shared a look. “Okay, we’re on our way.”

“Wait!” he said in an urgent voice.

“What is it?”

“Rosa told me I have to do that line again. The lighting wasn’t right on that take. Alright, line it up. From the top, okay? Heyyy, dude? Y’all may want to come join us-”

I hung up the call and started up the path to the others.

The door to the reptile house was, surprisingly, unlocked. Cooper followed me inside, through a lobby that smelled suspiciously of cinnamon, down a hallway, and into the room at the end where Jerry was still doing retakes.

“We found something!” he cried in a Shakespearean affectation. “Y’all should joineth us!” He dropped the accent and said, “Oh, hey Jack!”

Rosa lowered her phone. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

“What is it?”

Jerry looked at Rosa and said, “Make sure you film the reaction shot.”

She aimed her camera at me as Jerry slipped past, went up to the doorway, and flicked the light switch. Suddenly, the room was bright as day.

Cooper immediately blurted out, “What the fuck?”

“Yeah!” Jerry said. “Start charging your phones, because this place has free electricity!”

I studied our surroundings, taking it all in a piece at a time. This was an office of some sort. The desktop computer in the corner looked way too modern to have been around when the zoo shut down. The filing cabinets were clean. The rug beneath our feet felt bouncy and distinctly mold-spore-free.

Finally, I asked, “Are we positive this place is abandoned?”

“Ooh, that was a good delivery!” exclaimed Rosa. “Put that in the preview.”

“We should probably get out of here,” I said.

“Yes, I totally agree,” said Jerry. “We’ve seen everything there is to see in this room. Now it’s time to go further down the rabbit hole.”

“That’s not what I meant-”

But it was too late, Jerry had already left the office. Cooper was next out, followed by Rosa. Finally, I picked up the tail of the adventuring party. By the time I reached the hallway, Jerry had already flicked on the overhead lights and begun going door to door, opening and illuminating the building one room at a time. I was already eager to pack it in and call it a day, but it wasn’t until he reached the door at the very end of the hall that I realized just how much I missed the luxury of a boring life.

That door didn’t open.

In the back of an unlocked building in an abandoned zoo in the middle of nowhere, someone took the time to lock up something. Something more valuable than computers and office equipment. Something we didn’t need to discover. But, as I watched Jerry bashing a fire extinguisher against the doorknob, I understood that it was too late to stop what was happening.

It was all I could do to watch the broken lock fall to the ground. Jerry took one step back, made sure we were still filming, then charged and kicked the door wide open.

Cooper scoffed and said, “I could have picked that lock in ten seconds if I had my tools on me. No big deal.”

“HOLY roly poly fuckin’ cannoli, you guys!” Jerry said, half excited, half confused, half overfilled with emotion.

We followed him into the newly unlocked room where he was facing a tableau straight from a cheap science-fiction television show. There was the regular accoutrement, of course: beakers and test tubes, wires and gizmos, light panels and stacks of paper readouts that someone much smarter than me might be able to identify. But all that was lagniappe. The focus of this room was in front of Jerry: three large vats of vibrant green liquid taking up the entirety of the wall. They were all wider than a phone booth, with glass windows from floor to ceiling. And suspended inside each: An animal? Creature? Thing? I couldn’t decide what to call them. They were bipedal, made up of wrinkled folds of pink matter similar in texture to raw hamburger. Wider than an average human. Maybe seven or eight feet tall. They didn’t have necks; instead, muscle tissue connected the shoulder lumps to the round bowling-ball shaped protuberances where the faces lived. No noses, just tubes connecting nasal holes to fixtures at the backs of the tanks. Their eyes were shut. The mouths were widened, lipless slits trapped in an eternal look of pure disinterest.

I couldn’t look away. A voice inside my head held me hostage, swearing that if I broke, if I blinked, if I breathed too loudly, the eyes on these things would pop open. And then… Well, my imagination had a choose-your-own-adventure book of horrible possibilities of what might happen after that.

But eventually, as these things tend to go, I began to realize that reality was no match for my imagination. If these things slept through Jerry Kool-Aid Manning his way into the room and shining his flashlight right at their faces, then they probably weren’t going to wake up any time soon.

Jerry finally broke the silence.

“Is it just me, or is there something really weird about these meat golems?”

“Ah!” I said, reflexively. “Meat golems. Yes. That’s what they are. Why not?”

Jerry paused his video long enough to take a few selfies with the floating abominations while I took in the rest of the space. No security cameras. No guards. Probably a bit too late to worry about booby traps.

“What do you guys think is going on here?” Rosa asked.

Jerry posited a theory: “Is there a chance this was part of the zoo that they forgot to clear out, and it’s just been running nonstop this entire time?”

“Anything’s possible,” Cooper said, contributing nothing of value to the conversation.

I opened a filing cabinet and thumbed through some medical documents, observing, “This part of the building feels new. It’s definitely been updated and used recently.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Cooper teased. “And in other news, toasters toast toast.”

“Hey, look at this!” Rosa said, pointing her flashlight at the floor next to a wall of built-in shelves packed to the brim with binders. I didn’t see what the “this” was right away. But once I walked up to her side and leaned in, I detected the faint shape of a quarter circle in the carpet pile.

“Secret door?” I guessed.

Jerry took it upon himself to rip every single binder off the shelf until he found the one that triggered the opening mechanism. With a click, a section of wall the size of a doorway disconnected and swung outwards.

“Okay,” I said. “If the meat golem tanks weren’t worth hiding in a secret room, then what the hell is?”

Jerry grinned excitedly and peeled the door the rest of the way open. “Let’s go find out.”

“Is this really a good idea?” I asked. “I don’t want to be a wet blanket or anything, but don’t we already have enough footage? I mean, let’s face it, whatever’s behind that door is probably going to be fucked up and dangerous. We might get trapped in there. Or worse.”

Rosa’s response really surprised me. 

“We’ll stay here.”

I turned to see that she had her hand on Cooper’s shoulder. He grinned at me.

“Huh?” I asked.

“We’ll stay and watch the door. You two go ahead. If something happens, scream for help. If we see someone trying to sneak up on your six, we’ll alert you first.”

I couldn’t help but clock the way her fingers moved on his shoulder. It was subtle, but undeniably affectionate. 

And no, dear reader. Let me stop you right there before you draw the wrong conclusion. I was not jealous. I was simply worried for my friend. The same way I’d be worried for anybody who thought Cooper was someone worth spending time in a haunted zoo with. I get that everyone has preferences. Everybody has their own flavor... But nobody’s flavor should be asshole!

“Sounds good,” Jerry answered on my behalf. Before I knew it, he’d already slipped through the mystery doorway.

Before I followed, I looked Rosa dead in the eyes and said, “Be careful.”

“You too.”

I nearly busted my ass on the first step. With all the other distractions, I missed the fact that the secret door actually opened up to a set of secret stairs descending downwards to a secret cavern below the zoo. The only reason I didn’t go full human-slinky and hit every step on the way down was because Jerry had the wherewithal to catch me and put me back on my feet.

“Look alive, bro,” he said. “I need you conscious if you’re going to film me kicking the ass of whatever basement-dwelling monster is hiding at the bottom of these stairs.”

“Right,” I said.

We went the rest of the way down in silence.

Not a normal silence, though.

One of those extra meaningful silences. An irregular pace. A heavier than normal breath here and there. A vibe that one can’t necessarily put into words, but was so palpable as to be distracting. I wasn’t even looking when Jerry opened the door at the bottom. My eyes were pointed back up the steps.

Jerry yanked me through the door and into an enormous, manmade structure. It was like an airplane hanger, complete with floodlights, shiny floors, and rows and rows of concrete cylinders spaced out every ten feet or so, stretching for miles in both directions. Along the walls for as far as I could see, there were a series of rectangular pieces of metal, roughly the size and shape of a door, only they had no handles or hinges. A covered lamp protruded from the walls a few inches above each door. The markings on the ground made me think of traffic lines, like this was how they got from one secret lab to another… whoever the hell “they” were.

I took a few steps into the space, surprised by the unnerving absence of any echoes. 

“Whatcha think?” Jerry whispered. His voice didn’t sound right. I expected some kind of reverb, but the acoustics in here were wonky, like the space was absorbing the extra sound. Or maybe there just wasn’t anything to bounce off of. No matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t see either end of the hall.

BING.

Somewhere up ahead, maybe a hundred yards or so, one of the lamps above one of the rectangles lit up green. Then, the rectangle beneath it started to slide upwards, opening, revealing a new room. I tried to rush back the way we came, but Jerry ran past me, seeking the hiding spot behind a column, I pivoted and ran towards the column right as he turned and ran back towards the stairway, then we both traded spaces again, then, in a final pathetic attempt at coordination, we collided directly into one another and collapsed onto the ground.

Shit, I thought. I hope we didn’t catch that on film.

Up ahead, a man stepped out from the newly revealed room. He was dressed head-to-toe in camo tactical gear and body armor. A matching helmet strapped to his head. In his hands, an assault rifle. Had he turned even slightly, he may have seen us laying flat in the middle of the pathway. But he didn’t. Instead, he just crossed to the wall on the other side, where another rectangle was opening below another green lamp. After he stepped through, both rectangle doors reclosed. Then, I let out the breath I’d been holding.

Dammit, I thought. Why couldn’t it have been demons?

Demons are easy.

Not to sound too reductive, but it’s true. With a few notable exceptions, demons are among the simplest encounterees we’ve crossed paths with. Most of the time, they can’t even physically interact with our world unless they’re using a host of some sort. Same argument applies to ghosts, spirits, and other phantasmagoria. The thing about non-corporeal entities is that, without the corporeal part, they can’t really hurt you.

All you need is a quick ceremony, or some holy water, or a Latin incantation, or some salt… honestly, when you consider the number of weaknesses demons have in our world, it’s a wonder they keep trying to break through.

The last time we faced demons was the day after Cutoff Cove, when we were still breaking in our newest member. We dropped by a rest stop barbeque place called “Sticky’s” that, unbeknownst to us, had been built over the mass grave of a bunch of Spanish Conquistadors. I’ll just leave Jerry’s Yelp review right here to serve as testimony of how that all went down:

“Food was mid. Atmosphere was out of this world… As in, there was something otherworldly about it. Waiter was hot. Fries were cold. There was a portal to another dimension in the men’s bathroom. Everybody almost died. Good ribs, though. 4/7 stars.”

• Jerry P. Narnia, USA 

It was a fast and messy episode. We had to use Rosa’s legal power as an internet-ordained priestess to bless the hot sauce, which we then used to vanquish the nest of demons. When it was over, Cooper was the only one not covered in sauce and ectoplasm. He was quick to take credit for fending off the demons and “protecting” me from danger, but as I recall he spent the whole time cowering in a corner, whimpering.

All that to say this: Demons are easy compared to most of our jobs.

Maybe one day we'll encounter a demon with a gun, or maybe a rifle that's been possessed by a serial killer. But until then, a dude with an AR is probably the scariest thing we could have possibly encountered down here in this sanctum beneath the abandoned zoo.

I pushed myself up. Jerry found where we’d dropped our phones and collected them while I started back for the stairway.

“Time to go,” I said.

“Wait just a sec.”

“No, Jerry. That guy had a gun, which tells me one of two things: Either he’s ready to shoot and kill trespassers, or he’s carrying it around for protection from something else down here. Either way, we have all the footage we need for a decent episode. Right?”

“Dude, what’s wrong?” Jerry asked, bluntly.

“There’s a bunch of meatball monsters and armed guards and-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, the guns and the spooky and the whatever. But for real, though. You’ve been acting mopey for days now. We’ve been trying to give you space thinking maybe it was just, like, intestinal problems or something, but clearly that isn’t the case. So what’s really bothering you?”

I checked to make sure his camera was put away, but still didn’t answer truthfully.

“It’s nothing.”

“Bruh.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that.

I shook my head and said, “You really can’t tell?”

He shook his head (slightly faster) and said, “No.”

“THAT makes it so much worse!”

“Dude, if I were a mind reader I wouldn’t have spent three months learning how to cheat at poker, now would I?”

“Huh?”

“Just tell me already, would ya?”

“It’s Cooper!” I blurted out, perhaps a bit too loud. I looked back at the open door to the steps, wondered if he might have heard me, then decided I didn’t care and added, “Obviously.”

Jerry’s face contorted into a look of confusion. “What? Why? How is that obvious?”

“I find him to be obnoxious. And I don’t have to like him.”

“No, of course you don’t. However, (and please don’t take this the wrong way) don’t you think you’re being a little too hard on him? I mean, he did give us some really good financial advice. Didn’t he?”

“You mean this? Filming ourselves in hopes of getting a sponsorship deal with NordVPN or Dollar Shave Club or one of those stupid fake cell phone games?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with Dollar Shave Club? They send you high quality razors to your doorstep every month for a fraction of the cost of traditional-”

“That’s not the point!”

“Well I would certainly hope not.”

Right then, I heard something coming from the hallway behind me. Something that put me into high-alert. I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like a yelp of distress. I held up a hand, palm outward–the universal sign of shut-up-for-a-second. And I listened closely.

“No! Stop that!”

It was Rosa.

I raced up the stairs as fast as my body would let me. 

“Get off of me!”

When I reached the top, what I saw there made my blood boil.

Cooper, with his arms around her, was leaning in for a kiss.

“I said ‘quit it’!” she reiterated with a playful giggle.

“HEY!” I yelled. Cooper let go, took a step back, and raised his hands in surrender. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Jack,” she said. “Calm down, okay?”

It was only at that moment, with my heart beating loudly in my chest and the room spinning around me that my eyes, conscious, and subconscious all caught up to one another, colliding in an awkward jumble like the three stooges racing to catch the same fly ball. What I was seeing wasn’t what I thought I was seeing. Yeah, he had his arms around her, but she also had her arms around him… and when I came rushing into the room, she was smiling.

But not anymore.

“Yeah man,” Cooper repeated. “Calm down. We were just messing around.”

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

She sounded surprised. “You know, I was about to ask you the same question.”

He leaned in, rested his chin against her shoulder, and locked eyes with me. She gently pushed him away and said in a soft voice, “Not now.”

He laughed obnoxiously.

I know I’m famously terrible at reading the room, at understanding interpersonal relationships. But this, whatever it was, made zero sense to me. As he leaned back in to make contact with her again, I stepped forward and said. “She told you to back off!” 

“Whoa, there, cowboy!” Cooper warned. “You don’t want to come for me. I have a black belt in jiu jitsu!”

Jerry finally reached the top of the steps behind me. Panting, he looked at the rest of us, then asked, “What happened?”

I tried to form a coherent answer, but with the adrenaline spike wearing off faster than I was used to, the only thing I could do was point at Cooper and say, “This asshole!”

Rosa stepped towards me, took my hands in hers, and used her calm, concerned voice to say, “Take a breath. You’re overreacting.”

“Overreacting?”

“Classic Jack,” Cooper teased, walking up behind her. “Captain buzzkill. This is why nobody likes you.” He put one hand around her waist and squared up right in front of me. I looked at him. Then at her.

“Is there… actually something going on between the two of you?”

“Huh?” Rosa asked.

“Let me take this one, babe,” Cooper said. “Jack, I’m gonna explain this in a way you’ll understand. We’re all getting kinda sick of you. Always whining and moping and using weird french words like ‘portmanteau’ to try and sound smart. And frankly, there’s no need for two alpha males in the pack. So why don’t you do the honorable thing and leave? We’re just… how do I put this? We’re better off without you.”

I counted to five.

That was more than enough time for the others to step in and say or do something. But they didn’t. They let those words linger in the air like they weren’t devastatingly calculated to make me feel worthless. Five seconds was about all I could stand. With tears welling up in my eyes, I decided that if they weren’t going to say something in five seconds, then it was too late. The damage was done. And now it was up to me to make the next move.

“Well,” I started. “That’s a pretty bold proclamation for someone within smackin’ distance.”

I pulled my hands free from Rosa’s, reared back, and swung at his face as hard as I could. Of course, the problem with announcing your intention beforehand is that it really telegraphs the next move. Cooper was able to dodge my fist easily.

The others both screamed at me to stop, but in that moment I didn’t care. I lunged at him and tried again. And he dodged again. I kept swinging, and he kept maneuvering. And then, right when I started losing steam, Cooper turned back the way we came and raced down the hallway and out the door. After all that bluster, he really was just a coward. Good thing, too, because I probably would have lost that fight. 

“What the ugly duckling are you doing?!” Rosa screamed. “You scared him off!”

“Exactly,” I said, pretending that was my plan all along.

“Jack,” Jerry said, using his dad-voice (the one he so rarely used in moments of seriousness). “You gotta go find him and apologize.”

“Why should I apologize? He’s the one who sucks!”

Rosa pointed after him. “He might get hurt out there on his own!”

“I don’t care!” I screamed. “I don’t want him in our group anymore! He’s an abusive, selfish, mean asshole! Why am I the only one who sees that? No, seriously, please explain it to me! Ever since he joined up with us, it’s like the two of you have been enamored with him. Or hypnotized! Is that it? Does he have some kind of weird mind control thing going on? Please tell me because that would make so much more sense!”

“Ahem.”

The man in tactical gear cleared his throat.

It was the same soldier we’d seen earlier, now standing in the secret doorway. At least, I assumed it was the same soldier. He was wearing the same uniform. And he had the same gun. Only this time, his finger was tense on the trigger.

Oh, that’s right! I thought to myself. Probably not a good idea to be screaming so loudly at a time and place like these.

“Are you done?” the soldier asked.

I looked back in the direction where Cooper had fled, but he was long gone. When I looked back at the soldier, there were two more men dressed just like him rushing through the secret stairs door. 

“Heyyy there,” I said, searching for anything that resembled a good idea. “I’m glad we found you. We were just looking for the bathroom. Maybe you can point us in the right direction?”

It was a bold gambit that, unsurprisingly, didn’t work. 

First, they searched us for weapons. After collecting our cell phones and Jerry’s ten different pocket knives, they marched us down the stairs at gunpoint. As soon as the three of us were back in the underground garage, they smashed our phones to pieces.

Great, I thought. Now, if we survive, the only way anyone’s going to know our story is if I write a blog post and nobody’s gonna think it’s real.

They lined us up against the wall and instructed us to keep our hands up and mouths shut. I don’t know if any of you have ever had to keep your hands in the air for more than five minutes, but there comes a point where you start to wonder if it would be easier to just let them shoot you. Finally, after what felt like ages, we discovered what they were waiting for:

A golf cart whirred up the hallway, closing the distance at ten miles per hour. When it finally came to a stop in front of us, I was surprised by the appearance of the man driving. Whatever this group was, they were clearly disciplined, trained, and well funded. But Mister golf cart looked like a cartoon character come to life. Safety goggles pressed back his wild gray hair. A short, patchy beard poked out of his face like cotton candy. He wore a lab coat, khaki’s, and a white button-up shirt that was only half tucked in and spotted with ink stains. When he disembarked his vehicle, the three other men snapped to attention and saluted him.

He returned the gesture half-heartedly, then looked at us.

“And who are these lovely intruders?”

One of the men barked back, “Civilians, sir.”

“How did they get past the locked door?”

Jerry answered, “That door was already busted open with a fire extinguisher when we got here.”

“Hmm,” the scientist grunted. “Fascinating.”

“Thanks,” Jerry responded. “You, too.”

The man grinned. Jerry grinned back. And not for the first time tonight, I found myself confused and scared and wondering: Is there something going on between the two of you?

“Well then,” the scientist said. “Hop on, and I’ll give you a tour of the facility. That will explain everything.”

“I’m not getting on that thing,” Rosa said.

I echoed her sentiment, “Yeah, me neither. I know how this works. You take us deeper into this place and we’ll never get out.”

“I’ll do it,” Jerry offered. “But only if I get to drive.”

The walking, talking mad scientist caricature ran a hand through his beard, studied each of our faces for a few seconds, then opened a compartment on the back of the vehicle and pulled out a plain white backpack. We watched as he unzipped the pack, dug around inside, then retrieved a device that I wish I didn’t recognize.

“Wait,” I said immediately. “I changed my mind!”

But it was too late.

He shot all three of us in turn with the tranquilizer gun.

*************

(Part Two)

(Part Three)