Day Zero

Ramona unwraps a piece of gum and places it on her tongue. Her fingers leave brown ovals on the inner liner of the wrapper which she notices for a second before discarding it back in her pocket. Ray lays on the rock across from her, panting like a tired old dog. In five minutes they’ll have to get back in the golf cart and pick up feces from the bison, then the bears. But for now, they enjoy the vanilla scent of ponderosa, the quiet of a sparse forest interrupted only by the caw of a wren.

“Too hot,” Ray says.

“Too dry,” Ramona answers. They both sigh.

Back in the golf cart, Ramona sucks the remaining peppermint from her gum.

“What do you make of all this?” She asks Ray.

“All what?”

“You know.”

“I lived in Baton Rouge for seven years,” Ray says, “I’m familiar with false alarms.”

“Don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf, though.”

“Huh?”

“You know. He cried for help, but only wanted attention. Then when he actually needed help, no one came?”

Ray laughs. “I survived six hurricanes including Katrina without leaving my house.”

“You’re lucky,” Ramona says, “Not everyone is so lucky.”

Ray scratches the back of his head and dandruff falls onto the shoulder of his park uniform.

Once they’re done with the larger mammals, Ray and Ramona drive to the birds of prey exhibit. As a girl, Ramona’s father took her to the Grand Canyon, where she watched condors and vultures, pygmy owls and osprey dive down the edge of the canyon walls, inhibited by nothing. Here, the birds are bound in all directions by man-made netting. Abner, in charge of the birds, who the employees refer to as “bird guy,” who “might as well have a beak,” is standing against the utility shed, head tilted back against the wall, eyes to the sky.

He opens his eyes as Ramona and Ray walk over to the shed then grunts.

“I know,” Ramona responds. Ray grabs a scrubbing brush and starts in on the bird posts. When he’s out of earshot, Abner says to Ramona, “We’re meeting at the spot tonight. Same time as usual.” Ramona nods and kicks the toe of her boot into the dirt. A rock pangs on the metal siding of the building. 

“The spot” is a poorly constructed lean-to on the most southern edge of the park. Several of Ramona’s coworkers had been meeting at the spot on a semi-regular basis since they found out about Day Zero of the water supply. Tacked to one of the logs is a calendar countdown.

“Seven days,” Abner says. There are a few groans from the group of six. Delilah hangs her head in her hands. “We have a lot to get done and we need all hands on deck.”

So far they’d only smuggled three animals out of the park. “We’re behind on our goal and running out of time. We need a more aggressive plan.”

“How?” Delilah asks. “The guards have been here every night, monitoring the cameras. Security was supposed to be more lax, but it isn’t.”

“There’s still a gap in cam coverage in the Northeast corridor,” Cameron says.

“But there’s no direct path from any of the pens to the northeast corridor,” Delilah snaps. Abner puts his hands up and the group audibly shifts in their seats.

“What if we redirect cam coverage, like cross the wires or something?” Ramona asks. Abner looks toward her, but not directly at her, and nods.

“Anyone know how to do that?”

Nobody does. Cameron suggests they move the direction of the cameras instead.

“We all know how to climb trees,” he says.

“And we have the equipment to access higher cameras in the utility shed,” Abner says, then follows with, “This is good,” and looks at the ceiling.

They’re all quiet, waiting on instructions from Abner, but it seems Abner is somewhere not here.

Just as Delilah moves to say something, Abner returns with a plan. Tomorrow everyone will adjust the cameras in their division. Ramona in large mammals, Abner in birds, Delilah in reptiles, Cameron in ungulates, Ted at the entrance and exit, and Jori at big cats. Tomorrow night, they’ll rescue five, the following night, 10, and by Day Zero they’ll have saved at least seventy animals.

“Any word from Maggie?” Abner asks Delilah.

“She was in a meeting with the board last night,” Delilah pauses. Abner shifts forward in his seat. “And?”

“And they’re still going through with it. Says there’s no use trying to keep animals alive in a desert with no water.”

Ramona wraps her arms around her waist and leans forward. “Is there any way we can avoid Day Zero? Water anywhere we could import?”

Ted mentions the Lake Powell Pipeline, the Transcontinental Pipeline, and the Lower Basin Pipeline are all down to lazy, low-lying trickles.

“I’ve heard the same about the Upper Basin and Mexico pipelines,” Delilah adds.

There’s nothing to say. 

After a few moments of silence, Abner says, “Trucks will be here on Day Zero with enough gasoline and water to transport the animals to Salem. And,” Abner pauses, lifts his arms up at his sides, “Enough for all of us too.”

Delilah gasps then claps her hands, Ted smiles. Cameron is still.

“What about our families?” Jori asks.

“Yes,” Abner says, “Your families too.”

Ramona is in shock. She joined the group of six because she knew she wouldn’t be able to save herself, so instead, she would save the animals. Now Abner is saving her. 

Salem, the utopia. Where food grows from the soil and rivers are so deep you can’t see the bottom from the surface. Ramona could build a new life in Salem. She could have hope there.

“If you decide to join me in Salem, which I hope you all will, you have a week to get everything in order. There is no future here. We all know that.” He looks directly at Ramona. She nods back to him. And when he smiles she can see the gap between his back molars.

In the golf cart the next day Ramona sucks on her peppermint gum and asks Ray what he’s going to do on Day Zero.

“What do you mean what am I going to do?”

“I mean, you’ll be out of a job. How will you make money?”

He shrugs. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You’re not worried at all?” 

“Look Ramona, I’d bet you anything the taps still run after this so-called ‘Day Zero.’ They’re just trying to scare us and I don’t buy into fear tactics.”

Ramona shifts in her seat and directs her whole body toward him. “Ray, this isn’t some crazy conspiracy theory. You’ve seen the inside of those pipelines on the news. They’re bone dry.”

“You can photoshop anything nowadays.”

“I’ve seen it myself. I went out to Lake Powell and I saw it for myself. The dam isn’t running. It’s a dead pool. There’s no more water going into that pipeline.”

“Yeah because they’re building an underground reservoir to prevent seepage. That’s what I heard.”

Ramona faces forward and holds her body rigid. “There’s no underground reservoir, Ray. This is really it.”

He laughs. “Yeah, we’ll see.”

That night Ramona drops Ray off at the entrance and tells him she’s working overtime then directs the golf cart back to large mammals. She knows exactly where the cameras are and exactly what direction they need to face. Last night, she stayed up tracing and re-tracing the steps between trees in her head, calculating the time it would take to reach one camera, shift it, then reach the next and do the same.

Ramona executes her plan with precision and is at the spot five minutes ahead of schedule. When she arrives Abner is sitting up in a tree, perched, on watch for his cohort. Ramona waves to him then Abner swings down from the branch and lands a few feet in front of Ramona.

He takes a step closer and asks how it went.

“Everything’s in place now,” she says. He pulls her in for a hug, which is stiff, not unlike the hugs she used to receive from her father.

Everyone makes it back to the spot within minutes of each other.

“Did you grab the tranquilizer, Jori?” Abner asks. Jori nods then reaches in her backpack to show the group. Beyond the lean-to, a limb falls from a tree and the group of six starts. Abner puts his hands out in front of him and waves them down as if he were fanning a flame. “It’s fine,” he says, “we’re fine.”

After a few deep breaths, Abner looks at each person in front of him and says, “Are we ready to do this?”

By 9:00 pm the group of six has loaded two small black bears, a bobcat, and two mule deer. By 9:10 pm Ramona is thinking about all the ways their operation could backfire. And by 9:30 pm they’re driving out the delivery entrance in a truck so similar to Call of the Wildlife’s food delivery truck the security guards will never know the difference.

“No one celebrates yet,” Abner warns. “We need to make it back and unload these animals before they wake up.” 

No one was celebrating.

Abner lives only ten miles from the park, but the drive takes twenty minutes on dirt roads. Delilah chews the meat around her fingernails and Jori’s knee bobs up and down against the passenger door. Cameron and Ted volunteered to ride in the back in case any of the animals woke up and needed to be put back to sleep.

They pull into Abner’s house, kill the engine, and get to work. The animals are easy to carry with the gurney, but the six are exhausted. Cameron leans against the truck between each transfer, and Ted shakes out his leg as if jostling might make it feel twenty years younger. Ramona is sweating and Delilah is close to tears.

With the bobcat, black bears, and two of the deer transferred to their holding pins, Abner thanks everyone for their dedication and the remaining five load into the truck and returns to their vehicles, then home for the night.

The next morning, Ramona walks into the bathroom to brush her teeth, but the faucet won’t turn on. She yanks on the handle but nothing comes out. She hurries to the kitchen sink and grabs the handle like a bottle of ketchup and a puff of air escapes from the pipes. She returns to the bathroom and tries the shower. She flushes the toilet then realizes what she’s done. She plunges her cupped hands into the toilet bowl and tries to save even an ounce of water, but instead, she watches it slosh over the side of the bowl and then vanish down the drain.

Ramona gets in her truck and speeds toward Call of the Wildlife. A line of cars moves at a crawl in the northbound lanes and Ramona feels her truck sway as she passes each one. The cacophony of horns bounces around in her chest.

She turns off the highway and spots Abner’s Civic parked directly in front of the gates. Then she spots Abner, sitting on the ground where the two gates meet, arms on his knees, head on his arms. As she gets closer she can see his shoulders rise and fall, can almost feel his despair as a bubble surrounding them, the park, the animals still inside.

Ramona’s truck skids to a stop and she jumps out. “What happened?” She’s out of breath, she’s been sitting. Nothing is right. Abner lifts up his hands as if to say, how should I know? But he should know. He’s been in charge all along.

“Day Zero came six days early,” he says.

“How?” She asks. He shrugs. She gets down on his level and shakes his shoulders.

“How!” She says. His eyes are red. How long has he known?

“Look, Ramona, it’s over. There’s nothing we can do.” 

Ramona shakes her head. “No, there has to be something we can do. Can we get inside?”

Abner sticks his index fingers in the corner of his eyes. “You don’t want to go inside, Ramona,” he says.

Ramona shakes her head, repeats no as methodically as waves breaking on the shore. Abner stares at the dirt, sinks further into the earth. “They didn’t even let the birds go,” he says. “I thought they’d at least set them free.”

At this, Ramona stiffens. She thinks about the men in the board room, talking about euthanizing these animals as if they were discontinued items, no longer in stock. She thinks about picking up animal shit for $9.50 an hour. She thinks about the animals being fed a diet meager enough to satiate them, but never to satisfy them. And then it makes sense to her. 

“Of course not,” she says, “They know nothing of chains.”