A Woodland Park

Heather trekked up Dexter Avenue under a sunless sky. The ash from the first bombing wave still clung to the troposphere, despite how long it had been since the war began. She passed buildings that had been reduced to rubble, fully aware that beneath the cement and rebar were the bodies of the people that used to live here.

She'd been logged out for a week.

Her tummy grumbled for the fifth time since she'd left the relative safety of her hideout (a concrete room inside the ruins of the once towering Space Needle), and she echoed the grumble audibly as she reached the Aurora Bridge.

It had been blown up. Debris still littered the area, charred skeletons of cars lined before an abandoned military checkpoint. The middle of the bridge was a gaping maw, two school buses wide, for the hungry black river below that flowed slowly, clogged with soot and muck from the eroding boardwalk.

"Shit," she thought out loud. Even the foundations had been ripped out by ordinance.

Luckily for her, this wasn't the only bridge in Seattle.

The Fremont Drawbridge was still there, and miraculously still down and crossable. As Heather made her way there, via a pile of rubble that formed a convenient climbable path, she hoped she wouldn't run into anyone as she crossed. Once again she counted her blessings as she started to cross, and there were no other souls as far as she could see.

Below the bridge was a derelict fishing trawler, trapped in the Seattle River by the closed drawbridge. Heather tried not to think about the people on the ship that hadn't made it out, but couldn't help herself. She kept looking over at it as she crossed.

The deck has scorch marks and the superstructure was riddled with bullet holes. Smoke still plumed from the embered stern. Whoever had manned the vessel had likely been shot long before they had time to worry about bridges.

"Alright, you got this, man," Heather said to herself, as she made it to the other side of the river. She passed a blooming yellow flower that stuck out of the rubble. Half an hour more up Fremont Avenue. She was halfway there.

Woodland Park was the last place to launch a military strike. There was no tactical advantage to holding the area, no significant way to defend the area, and no weapons to speak of outside of bolt-action rifles - which weren't as useful when people were killing each other with drones. But most importantly, things still grew here.

The Woodland Park Zoo was one of the last places Heather had seen to be largely untouched by the fighting. It was still different to how she remembered it from before, but different in the opposite direction to the rest of her city. Instead of being a site of destruction, its most significant change was a lack of human involvement.

WOODLAND PARK ZOO

Vines covered the sign. The once well-kept grounds grew unchecked, creating pocket-forests of tall grass that inched their way out of their concrete boundaries through cracks in the cement. The once dormant creek of the Australasia Exhibit had broken out of its man-made restraints and flowed freely through the park, spreading even more natural life through the heart of Seattle.

Heather skipped over the stream happily. She looked up at some signage that hung loosely over the exhibit, over the Australian Saltwater Crocodile enclosure, and absent-mindedly read the informative blurb.

Say Hello to Snappy!

This Saltwater Croc originally came from the waterways of the Northern Territory.
The Woodland Park Zoo was happy to take him as a little baby,
but we expect him to grow to a full-sized Croc soon!
This little guy spends most of his time dozing in his creek,
which is kept at a standard 30 degrees to maintain his preferred body temperature.
We hope Snappy likes his new home!

Next to the blurb was a little cartoon crocodile, its mouth in an open grin, its eyes happy.

"Rawr," Heather said, quietly grinning back.

As she moved through the park, she heard rustling as animals moved around her. The strangest part was, they didn't run away from her. It made sense, really; years of seeing humans gawking at them had made the animals completely ambivalent to their presence.

The Greenhouses were her target. Most zoos got their produce imported, but the Woodland Park made a lot of their food in-house (for their herbivore population, anyway). After the war broke out, seeds had spread far from their initial burial grounds, making the surrounding area a veritable farmland.

Heather picked carrots, onions, beans. She filled her bag with pears and oranges and great big mangoes that hung ripe from overgrown branches. She chowed down immediately on an apple, and her growling stomach was sated for now.

Her task was done. Now all she had to do was get back. But not before something special caught her eye.

Through a chain link fence she saw perfect yellow bananas growing from a tree. She wasn't sure what exhibit it was, but was confident that an entire banana tree wouldn't have sprouted out of the ground of a carnivore exhibit, so she started to climb and immediately regretted weighing herself down with fruit.

She hit the ground with a thud and a sign of accomplishment and strode toward the banana tree. She reached up to pick a bunch when she heard him.

"Ook?"

Heather turned.

A small gibbon sat about a metre away from her, tilting its head with curiosity. It didn't seem afraid of her at all, and frowned as she slowly placed the bananas in her backpack.

"Hey, little guy," she said as she zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulders. She inched closer, not wanting to spook him, but he seemed unflappable despite how near she'd already become.

"Ook?" He scratched at his little ears. His big eyes reflected hers, and she kneeled down and stretched out her hand.

The gibbon looked at her hand, and then back at her. He leaned forward, sniffing the air, and then held out his hand to meet her.

"Hey, baby," said Heather.

The gibbon suddenly pulled his hand back. He sat bolt upright and fear flashed across his eyes. He sprinted into the tall grass.

Then the world exploded.

The chain link fence Heather had climbed went soaring through the air as a grenade ripped it from its foundations and sent it flying. A man yelled to open fire. Another yelled out in pain.

Heather hadn't been the only one who decided to come for supplies. Rebels and Loyalists clashed in the overgrown Woodland Park. Heather couldn't tell the difference as shots rang out and leaves were shaken from their branches from the shockwaves. Bullets tore through fruit, and boots mulched the vegetables as the soldiers trod and shot their way unknowingly and uncaringly through all that had grown in their absence.

Heather dove headfirst into the tall grass.

A medic yelled for supplies as they tried to save a life.

A drone went crashing to the ground in a hail of bullets.

A mammoth sized saltwater crocodile dragged a screaming man into the greenhouse.

Heather gripped the grass with her hands and the fighting raged. A gecko leapt up and crawled over her, fleeing the noise and the chaos. Heather looked for the gibbon, but couldn't see anything past the smoke, and couldn't hear anything for the gunfire. So she closed her eyes and found herself in an ocean of darkness.

She hoped, more than anything, that the little guy would make it away from the violence.

She wanted to save him, more than she cared about anything else in the world.

She wrenched the grass out of the ground as she got to her feet.

She had to get back to her bunker.

She had to get back to UNOVR.