The Player's Twins (Book Two of The Great Age Plague series)

Chapter Seven

Back when the plague first started, people forgot about the zoos. With loved ones dying at home, people were far too preoccupied about the outcome of human kind and not so much with it's furry, healthy counterparts. It wasn't until videos of wolves escaping their confines and elephants wandering Central Park surfaced that people realized that our zoos, like the rest of our society, needed attention.

Soldiers were appointed to maintaining zoos, but unfortunately many animals died from inadequate care. Eventually, students only a few years into animal science majors were appointed to leave college early to take care of these animals. As a result, the local zoo in my town was run by a slew of twenty-something's with varying degrees of animal knowledge.

I bring all this up because Josh's surprise was a zoo trip. While part of me was excited because I loved animals so much, part of me was also disappointed. All the drama for this? Couldn't we have just as easily gone on the weekend? Furthermore, I was still stinging from Josh's comments from earlier.

When we arrived at the zoo, Josh helped me out of the car and took my hand as we walked up to the entrance. He was silent, jaw tense, and a wave of nervousness ebbed and flowed in my stomach like the tide. An arch soared overhead, covered in thorny vines, shining in the sun while also still maintaining an air of dilapidation. It was a bright, sunny day, yet a chill still bit at the air. Of course, the zoo was abandoned at the time, not only because it was cold but also because it was in the middle of the school day. Josh paid for our tickets and led me into the park, the squeak of the push-bar echoing off the silent walls.

First we went to the big cat house, Josh's favorite. As we walked through, Josh made little comments about the tigers and the lions scaring him as a child, but also amazing him because they were powerful. I watched the sleeping lion lounging in the indoor cage, eyes lazily looking at the entrance to the outside, but instead of the usual glee I felt, all I could think about were the tests I was missing. I nodded as Josh spoke but after a while he shut up, sensing something was wrong. We exited the cat house in silence, the grey light that filtered in from the outside being our only companion.

After that we went to the next nearest house. It was called the swamp, and when we entered in from the front there was a short segment of the house completely dark, with the sounds of crickets and alligator growls coming from the speakers. It was suppose to set up ambiance, but I remembered distinctly being afraid of that when I was a child, so whenever I went around that part the fear still lingered. If I had been in a decent mood, I would have told Josh that, grabbing his arm and cuddling his shoulder as we entered. Instead, I set my jaw in a hard line and walked bravely through the dark.

Some things were more scary than alligators and the dark swamp.

I kept hearing his words in my mind, rolling around like change stuck in the bottom of a washing machine. The words "You're not going to college" clattered around nosily, making me walk zombie-like past the beautiful pythons and intimidating alligators. The alligators sat in the water just as lazily as the tigers, but their eyes watched us distinctly as we exited past the river otters and back into the cold, grey-tinted, lonely zoo.

It truly felt like the apocalypse as we made our way through the zoo. It was as if we were the last people on earth, too tired from the weight of our loss to even speak.

Did he not think we had a future? What about our dreams? What about our children?

All I could think about were Josh's dreams, not even my own. What had happened to the stars?

As we entered the monkey house, I turned around and took a good look at him. As he stared down at the gorillas, I saw nothing in his eyes. It was like coming outside to see the crescent moon, but instead getting a grey, cloudy sky, hiding the stars behind a luminescent sheet lit by the streetlights miles away. The stars in Josh's eyes had died. It was in that moment I realized that the monster of addiction had taken my husband away, and only I could get him back. That meant I had one thing left to do.