boxing at the zoo // rook & ele

I stare at the toaster.

It's old, faded cream paint, with four slots and two black knobs that you push down to start toasting your bread. I don't know why I'm explaining what a toaster is, everyone knows what a toaster is. But the odd thing about this toaster is that a page torn from a notebook has been crudely taped to the side, with big blue letters chicken-scratched on the paper. A warning.

LEFT SIDE ONLY.

So don't pull the right lever basically, because it's rigged to explode five seconds after you do. Y'know, in case you ever need to throw an exploding toaster at someone in your kitchen, and you're out of hand grenades which can be a situation that you get yourself into I guess, but not one I've ever found myself in. Be prepared, that's what Nick always shouts, and I don't suppose he's wrong.

I drop two slices of bread, a few days past their best and stale at the edges down into the slots on the left and after a moment's hesitation, pull the left lever. I'm not dead five seconds later so that's a success story if I ever heard one. Not dead yet.

The kitchen's a mess, but there isn't a room in this place that isn't. Since his father skipped down, drowned, got shot, arrested, or whatever else could have happened, Nick's let this place turn into a dump - which is apt when you remember that we're actually in a dump. Actually. I'm not using that word to describe it, it is by definition a dumping ground/scrapyard whatever you wanna call it. A dump.

Half drank glasses of milk now stink up the sink area, and there's more unfinished food that should have been binned days ago lying around. I'll do it later, even though I said I'd do it yesterday, and not that Nick cares but if I don't do it then one of us is going to fall ill and that'll be another problem on our long list of problems that just seems to keep growing by the day. Leaky ceiling, low supplies, stupid cat on the broken hovercraft again.

I don't like windows. Seen a guy two feet from me get a bullet in his head through one - it was a sniper across the street. His head exploded like a watermelon, like something out of a fucking movie. Ever since I said no to the wrong people and went on the lamb (that's fancy talk for being on the run) I've tried to stay away from windows. But Nick's got this big ass window in the kitchen that's like three times the size of any other window and I'm wondering why you'd ever need a window so big, especially when your garden view ain't much of a garden and instead of bushes or trees you got big piles of scrap and metal, and old diggers and cranes and shit.

I'd rather brick it up, one less way to get shot.

The only nice thing to look at whilst I'm waiting for my toast to toast. (No, idiot. Toast don't toast, bread toasts. You don't put toast in a toaster.) The only nice thing to look at is the flower-beds - clusters of nice daisies between us and the entrance to the yard. Except there's landmines underneath them, so they're for looking at only, that's what Nick says. The red ones are booby trapped, but the yellow ones are fine. Yellow's mellow, red you're dead. Easy to remember. (Wait was it the other way around?)

Nick's incredibly irritating alarm blares through the house, making me jump in my skin, and his cracking voice carries too, asking me to help him out with his shots again. I head downstairs (yes the kitchen is upstairs, I stopped asking questions after I was told about the three tripwires in the bathroom). There he is with his red hair and his sleeve rolled up and holding a needle and smiling at me like an innocent puppy that could start barking viciously at any second, and he sets me on edge because I've only known him a month or so but I kind of like him.

And then he yells, screams body at the walls, and he's clearly having another episode where he says a lotta shit that don't make no sense to anybody, so I sigh.

"Ain't no god-damn body." I reach for the needle, but he recoils, pointing to the television and begging me to look. Why does he always make this hard? Scared of needles and always trying to distract me or change the subject, just sit down and take the shot like you're supposed to.

"Listen, ain't no god-damn body, man." Fucking idiot, no fuckin' god-damn body on the television. Chatting bullshit again after he just called me down to do this one favour for him, and now he's shouting in my ear and I wanna smack him in the face and just give him the damn not.

And I turn and I look, and, what the hell is that on the screen? A small dark-green blob on a light-green fuzzy display - but it's distorted and the quality is bad, and it's not the best hack into the feed and there's probably delay.

"That ain't no god-damn body." I squint a little, and he tells me to really look and, well. I'm not sure at first, but I see it's arms, and it's legs (I think?) And it's got a head and that's definitely blood, so

"...Oh wow. That's a god-damn body."

His blind passion has him out of his seat and his finger is pressed against the fuzzy LED screen so hard I think his whole arm's gonna go right through, and he's tap tap tapping against it like he can interact with the body and he's poking it and trying to get it to wake up.

And then he mentions them and points his hand like a gun at me, so I slap it away.

"Cut it out, idiot." I snap.

It could be them, of course it could. They usually take you out in one shot, and there's not usually that much blood, and if you look at the screen there's a trail like they weren't killed instantly and were able to crawl away a little, which isn't their style.

But maybe.

"Grab my shotgun. Let's go see." I grab my keys from the table.

I'm waiting with what little patience I can muster up. Nick's flat-footed footsteps bound above me. The floorboards groan as I hear him move from room to room, searching in crates and under the bed and behind the sink and god knows where else, and then I hear a brief moment of precious silence before he hurries back down the stairs with thunderous enthusiasm, shotgun in hand an a stupid grin on his face.

He tosses it up horizontally and I reach out with my left hand to snatch it out of the air, tucking it under my armpit as I scour the living area (which ain't much good for living in, by the way) for spare shotgun bucks. I swipe a littering of 9mm bullets onto the floor and dig into the biscuit tin, finding a couple of gauges which I stuff into the pockets of my tan cargo shorts.

Shotgun ain't gonna be much use against them if I'm being honest with myself, they'd snipe me from half a kilometre away, but it makes Nick feel safer if I look like I'm in control - which I'm not - and if it seems like I know what I'm doing - I sure as hell don't. I figure we got a hell of a lot more to worry about than the trigger happy ghosts of my past, like trespassers, Peacekeepers, raiders, or just straight up assholes - all of which a shotgun is useful against.

We head outside and Nick starts humming that song again, and it's a song I've heard before but I can't quite put my finger on where I've heard it before, so I just figure the only place I've heard it before is from this asshole, so I shake my head as we be careful to avoid the red flower beds and the three tripwires near the generator as we head along the chain fence to the main gate.

Nick starts rambling on again, and I swear he's high all the time but I ain't see him do drugs today or ever coming to think of it, he's like this crackhead who's actually sober which is probably worse than being an addict if you're in a permanent state of being a crackhead

"I'm the only Matt you know, dickhead." I step sideways and barge into him with my shoulder, which is enough to knock him off balance but not enough to knock him over, and I smirk.

Logan comes bounding over to us, his big pitbull smile beaming as he pants, little legs waddling and a loving drool coming from his mouth. I reach down and scratch behind his ears as he greets me with an affectionate lick on the wrist. He jumps up on his hind legs and his sharp front claws dig into my hips as he starts sniffing in my pocket.

"Alright, alright. Down, boy!" He gets down and lips his chops as I take out a few doggy biscuits and throw them in the grass. He bounds ahead and chomps them down gratefully as Nick and I take a walk down the path.

We walk for a little while, through the grass field to the old parking lot where screen five's camera is set up. It's abandoned, old dry tarmac with white lines painted from before the war. Back when every person had a vehicle - imagine that. So many vehicles that you'd have to park them all in a row outside of every building. Crazy.

I raise my hand for Nick to stop as we approach the blood trail. At it's tail is a bear trap, clamped shut, a horrid metal venus plant, and what's in it's jaws is even more horrific: a human leg. I have a strong stomach for this stuff, so I walk up and crouch down beside the bear trap as Nick keeps watch.

Well, this ain't their style, and this ain't one of our traps, not this far out. It's right by the District perimeter, past the old cars and the big field, not far at all from our junkyard, but far enough away that it's probably a Peacekeeper trap or maybe some asshole just put it there. I take a knife from my belt and stick it into the trap, pulling back until my arm starts to shake from the effort. Slowly the trap opens, so I drop the shotgun and pull out the leg, letting go of the knife as the bear trap snaps shut with a CLANK.

"Catch." I throw the leg at Nick, then kneeling to collect my shotgun and pushing myself back up to my feet.

Whoever got caught in here sawed their fucking leg off to get free. That's fucking impressive in itself. Looking at the hole in the fence, I guess whoever it was wanted to skip town, but got caught in someone's trap, and thought their best option was to take the leg off? Maybe they'd been here for days or something, maybe it was that or die of dehydration. Nah, we would have seen that on the screens yesterday, right? (I don't watch them like I'm supposed to)

The trail of blood leads directly the the car, where Nick nods. What, asshole? You want me to check it out? Fuckin' nerve of this guy, dragging me out in the open where I could easily be sniped by the assholes after me just to check out a body and he's too scared to approach the car himself. Sure, I got a shotgun but I was expecting him to take the lead on this one at least.

Fine. I'll do it myself.

I cock my shotgun as I approach the car, where the blood trail ends and the body begins. I point the gun at the bloody mess of a twitching person, wondering how in the hell they're still alive and haven't passed out from the blood loss. Two feral eyes stare back at me, hellfire red hair and a pale, bloodless face. It's a girl, and she's not in a good way.

"We found your leg." I say.

Maybe I should put her out of her misery.