That Thing At the Zoo - 01 Read Free Page A

twice.”
    “Beauregard get his panties in a wad over them like he has these?”
    The golf cart pulled to a stop back in front of the administration building for the zoo. Its solid rubber tires chirped like baby birds. He turned, looking at me with one squinted eye. “Mr. Beauregard’s alright. He’s gotta keep the place makin’ money in a crappy economy. So far he’s done that without laying anybody off, but if he’s gotta replace a lion, a zebra, and a gorilla…. Well, that could be somebody’s salary.”
    I nodded because I had no response to that. I hadn’t seen much of Beauregard, but what I had seen had not impressed me. Standing up out of the small cart, I stretched my back. My hand closed on the camera Jimmy the zookeeper had used to take pictures of the kill scene. Lifting it from the cart’s seat I held it up. “There wouldn’t happen to be pictures of the zebra and gorilla on here, would there?”
    “S’matter of fact I think there are.”
    I smiled. “Good.” I started walking towards the administration building in search of a computer. “You done good, Jimmy.”
    “Where you goin’?”
    I turned. “To send these to my people and see if they can identify what we are dealing with.”
    “I thought you was the weird-shit expert.”
    “My people figure out what it is; I make it go away. That’s my expertise.”
    “What if it is a pterodactyl?”
    I started walking again, throwing back my best Roy Scheider impression.
    “Then we’re gonna need a bigger gun.”

4
     
    The computer in front of me hummed slightly. It was fairly new, but a cheap model. It had been updated with new software, though, and I only had a few moments wait as the teleconferencing program loaded up and connected. I leaned back in the chair, reaching out to adjust the tiny webcam so it broadcast my face and not my chest. It felt delicate in my hand, like an eggshell or a spun-sugar ornament.
    I looked around the office while I waited. I didn’t know whom it belonged to, but everything in the room was there for a purpose. Desk, chair, filing cabinet, bookshelf full of binders with white labels on the spines. It wasn’t exactly cold, but there was no individuality to be found.
    Even before my life exploded five years ago I wasn’t made for office work. I can see the appeal of it. You go in, you do three hours of real work, four hours of looking like you work, with one hour of breaks and lunch, and you go home. Work is done the moment you leave your office. I get it; it just isn’t me. Before I became an Occult Bounty Hunter I split my time between tattooing at the shop I owned and bouncing at a club two nights a week.
    The screen blipped to life as the connection was made, monitor filling with a pretty face. Thick, bone-straight blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail to reveal a nice smooth jawline, full lips under a straight nose, and a pair of topaz-green eyes glinting with seriousness.
    Kat is manager of Polecats, the strip club I own to finance my war on monsters, and the one who keeps me organized and together. She’s the reason I even have the ability to teleconference. Left to my own devices I would be passing notes in crayon written on leftover construction paper. I’m not technophobic. I can work a search engine and most basic computer programs, but Kat is downright damn savant with it.
    A few years back, I rescued her from a sick vampire bastard named Darius, who had enslaved her for months. She survived things that would have destroyed a lesser woman. With my help she killed his ass real good. Now she worked with me, fighting the good fight. Leaning in toward her camera made her face grow past the edges of the screen.
    “Can you hear me?” Her voice through the speakers attached to the computer was slightly tinny.
    “Yep.”
    She sat back. “Have you looked at the pictures you sent over yet?”
    Jimmy the zookeeper was a good photographer. His pictures were clear. The wounds were in high-definition,