Bill Broun - Night of the Animals

Still, he would forsake jackals in a second for a chance to visit otters. Neither he nor the public at large could get even a glimpse of otters from outside the zoo. To Cuthbert, they were the most English, most sacred, most miraculous wild animals still on earth (he didn’t realize that the zoo’s Asian species actually came from an annoyed flax farmer in Thailand who had grudgingly decided not to poison them).

CUTHBERT’S PLAN, IF one could call it such, was to set free a single jackal at first, then go from there. The lions and the otters could not be first, as they presented many logistical challenges. The idea of releasing other animals tantalized him, but even for Cuthbert, that also seemed, as of now, a bit crazy. He was no activist, no animal sentimentalist, no mere vandal. He was not trying to “make a statement” but to let select animals craft their own.

However things unfolded after that, the one thing Cuthbert knew he must accomplish, at any cost, was to free the otters. If they did know where to find Drystan, they held in their black claws, in his view, the future of all Britain — of all Earth.

He heard them then, in a susurrus of watersongs: gagoga gagoga gagoga miltsung miltsung miltsung .

“I am coming,” he said. “You’ll see.”

A lone jackal was watching him, watching him talk to himself.

“Don’t mind this dotty fool,” he said to the jackal. “I’ve got otters on the brain.” The jackal tilted his head to one side, then the other, puzzling over the old man.

Cuthbert imagined it running across the great dark spaces of the Regent’s Park as joyfully as it might have, long ago, on the savannas of Ngorongoro. Releasing it would be a sort of ritual of atonement, of hope. He’d been able to watch these creatures all winter, as carefully as any nonpaying observer could, sizing up security issues, obtaining any necessary equipment. The jackals were by far the easiest choice, much simpler than the otters. They also struck him as oddly innocent in their messages to him. They were just dogs, he said to himself. Little ones, too. They called themselves lies, as though they genuinely didn’t believe in their right to exist. They only want to run about the park. They had asked, calmly and without unctuousness, for a simple release. That’s what any dog wants and needs, he felt.

Just one, they had said. Just two, just three, let us free!

AFTER HALF AN HOUR or so of dazed staring, Cuthbert took a packet of diatom-and-cinnamon chewing gum from his pocket and put a piece into his mouth. Already, he could feel a distant nervousness again, a thunder-footed jackboot of Flōt withdrawal on the far edges of his being but tramping toward him brutally with tiny, hard limbs. He got the orb back out. He took another belt off it, screwed the cap back on, and hid it beneath the shirt fragment.

The zoo’s lights were beginning to pop on like an outbreak of giant orange flowers. The activity within the zoo seemed to be winding down, and finally he decided — making a woeful error — that it must be closed.

“Time now,” he whispered. He wondered whether he might just not pick up a bottle again — ever. He smiled. Could it be that easy? Could he follow the otters and lions to a new life on the other side of Flōt, one in which he might see Drystan again? It was always easy to “quit” when he was kaylied.

He used his elbows and toes to shimmy forward, dragging his bolt cutters after him. Oh bloody hell, how his liver hurt, he thought.

Coated in a glossy black paint, the main zoo perimeter fence, inside and up against the hedge barrier, was a heavy iron affair with spiked pickets as well as the mild-steel mesh backing. But a few wide gaps between some of the section posts existed, and one of these fell beside Cuthbert’s hiding spot, which is partly why he’d chosen it. Here, as elsewhere, only the mesh backing protected the gap, and Cuthbert had already tested the bolt cutters on this obstruction. He had been stunned by the ease with which the cutters went through steel mesh, like scissors snipping spaghetti.

He got to the place where he had fashioned an oval breach a few days before. It was time to crack on, he said to himself. As he stuck his head in, the hole seemed barely wide enough for him, and it was placed awkwardly high. Great stalks of holly entirely enveloped the other side of the fence hole, adding to the nettlesome task ahead. He first had to squeeze into the barbed gap itself, tugging his limbs while trying to keep himself above the ground. A few prongs of galvanized steel dug into his torso like fangs rising out of the ground from hell. His buffer caught, too, and its hissing rips distressed him.

But he kept pushing in. A spiny leaf of holly which had fallen to the ground got stuck into his palm and he let out a small cry. He stopped where he was, midway through the fence hole, and pulled the leaf off. He scrubbed his palm on his other arm to loosen the tiny thorns. It was all awful and he wanted to wail out for help. But he began shoving forward again. At one point, his foot seemed caught, and he thought he was trapped for good, and then, as if some iron-toothed chimera had deigned to free him from its jaws, the foot came free and Cuthbert Handley was in, bolt cutters in hand.

Even in his Flōt haze, as he stood up and surveyed this hidden area of the zoo, he could see he’d made an enormous error — the kind of stupid slipup Flōt engendered like clouds did rain. It was late in the day, but in fact, the zoo wasn’t quite closed. Visitors still strolled about. He couldn’t free anything yet unless he wanted to end up in a Calm House before the first animal escaped. Cuthbert thought of going back to his grotto but changed his mind, thinking it would only risk more attention. After a few seconds, he pushed the bolt cutters back through the hole in the fence. He couldn’t very bloody well be seen with them . But why not have a look around? he thought. You’re in.

“Oi’m in,” he said to himself aloud. “Fuck it. I’ll nip back later tonight and open the whole focking shite-stand.”

Not a few people were still sauntering quite unhurriedly along the walkways and gazing at exhibits. Zoo workers scurried about — carrying boxes for restocking, sweeping, gathering rubbish bin liners — carrying out their usual closing jobs. All the people ought to have represented a huge risk for Cuthbert; a single message sent to the Red Watch, and Cuthbert would be detained. But he was now too intoxicated to grasp any of that. He only saw the silent jackals, in their enclosure, and he felt a shrieking desire to get closer to them. We’re lie, they said to him. Lie.

CUTHBERT HAD SEEN AN OTTER ONCE BEFORE IN his life — or so he thought.

It happened more than eighty years before, on a scalding summer afternoon, in 1968. His family — Drystan, his mum and dad, and his maternal grandmother, Winefride, who lived with them — had driven from Birmingham to an area well west of the Black Country, not far from the Welsh Marches of Worcestershire, to visit a few elderly relatives on his father’s side. It was Cuthbert and his older brother Drystan’s first trip to a region their gran had told them strange tales about from their earliest years.

The visitors were first taking an early tea in their relatives’ cottage, and everyone — the boys, their parents and Gran, the old Handley aunties and a great-uncle — crowded a dark sitting room. Cuthbert and Drystan were unable to sit. They kept begging to ramble off by themselves into the nearby Wyre Forest, a radiant remnant of primeval woodland near the ancient settlements of Wribbenhall and Bewdley town.