Pokemón : The Price of caution

"Fuck! Did EVERYONE have the same idea?!"

Lee raises his arm and almost dashes the smartphone across the ground, but controls his temper at the last moment with a deep, heaving breath. He drops the now useless device into his pocket and grips his head in his hands, tears of both fear and frustration stinging his eyes. "Fuck fuck fuck..."

He raises his head, seeing everyone else isn't coping much better. Most fill the room with screams and muttered prayers asking God to save them. One poor intern has the cashier girl in a death grip of a hug, crying large, ugly tears as the shell-shocked girl rubs his back absently. Several of the keepers slip out the door, probably to go see their animals one last time.

BANG!

Everyone jumps and screams.

Lee stares at the slumped form of the on-site police officer. He's wide-eyed and bleeding from a hole in the side of his cranium, his Glock pistol held in limp fingers. The wall to his side is painted a morbid red. The man's mouth opens and closes several times before his eyes unfocus and he goes limp.

Lee quashes the temptation to take the gun and follow the man into the afterlife. Someone else, an older man in overalls with a tool belt picks up the gun and drops the magazine, looking at it with shaky hands. "There are sixteen more bullets if anyone wants to go on their own terms..." he says quietly, placing the gun on a table after putting the magazine back in. 'Impending death does things to people. Really reveals who they are.' Swear rolls down Lee's forehead and into his eye, stinging him.

The crying intern wipes away his tears and steps towards the gun, a sudden calmness to him.

Lee screws his eyes shut and plugs his ears.

BANG! Red splatters across the ceiling and another one moves on.

The crying and panic calms in favor of numb shock, everyone now too overloaded to process everything at once. All the remaining people in the lounge slowly settle into a small group along the floor and the chatter dies down to silence. Everyone is content to wait, and no words are needed to communicate that. Outside, only the wails of the sirens remain. The cries of the guests are gone, and in their place is the distant beeping of car horns.

Lee looks down at his phone, now noticing it has no signal at all. With a sigh, he opens Pokemon Emerald again in a vain attempt to distract himself. "The front gate is probably clogged to all hell..." Lee murmurs, hugging his knees to his chest with his free arm. "Glad I'm not on parking lot duty today."

A few people chuckle and the maintenance man who set the gun aside even says; "Hear hear, brother." Quiet falls over the group again and goes unbroken for a few only sound comes from Lee's phone as he takes his character back to Littleroot Town.

"So how long until..." Someone trails off.

"That was a good 20 minutes of freakout," someone else says. "It's can't be long now, people. If you've got any regrets, out with it now."

No one speaks up and the second speaker scoffs. "Of course..."

Lee sighs and leans his head back, praying to whatever power that is listening to make sure the coming doom is quick, both for him and all the animals. The thought of Makiri, the cubs, Mara and her mate Jupiter, or ANY of the animals he'd come to love like people suffering fills him with a nameless dread. Why should they be killed for the mistakes of people?

"They shouldn't. They're the biggest victims here, being condemned to die because forces they can't comprehend or control don't even consider them in the collateral damage."

"My one regret," Lee begins, making all eyes turn to him. "Was that I could never properly tell all my charges how much I love them. I went to school and came here to learn all about animals of all sorts, and I can gauge how much they like me thanks to those lessons, but I never had a good way to tell them. The curse of a language barrier that can't be breached I guess."

"Jesus Lee, make the rest of us feel bad why don't you."

Lee turns to the speaker to retort, but stops and screams when a 2nd sun blooms in the distance. The flood of white light through the south window blinds, instantly burning lines into the left side of his face so fast he can't even scream.

The screaming begins again as everyone scrambles to cover their eyes. Hardly a second later, the shockwave hits. All the windows shatter into slivers of razor-sharp glass and shoot northward. Several lodge themselves into Lee's side or fly by and open gashes, making him cry out at the sharp agony. His own scream and the rest of the world goes silent as his ears pop from the pressure. The whole room shakes and cracks like an earthquake struck the entire zoo.

And then, FIRE

THE FIRE THE FIRE THE FIRE THE FIRE EVERYTHING HURTS EVERYTHING BURNS MAKE IT STOP MOMMY GOD JESUS ANYONE PLEASE MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT GO AWAY MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP STOP An instant later, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium is no more.

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