Page 102 of Tiger Queen
“And he’s got his gun…”
“Gun! Aw shit…” Bobby John looked in both directions and then took off at a dead sprint down the road, in the opposite direction of Carl. I couldn’t blame him.
“We should have gotten some weapons out of the supply shed,” Jake said.
“And do what with them? Shoot dad?” David demanded.
“Right now, after hearing what he did to Rachel?” Jake replied. “I’m not opposed to it.”
Carl’s left arm hung limply at his side and blood trickled from a dozen cuts. His red mohawk was bent over, like a wave about to crash. He stopped a hundred feet away and raised the gun.
“Get out of the truck!”
“The police should be on their way,” David whispered. “If we can stall him…”
“Stay inside,” Jake told me, and then the three of them climbed out.
“Nice to see you, dad,” David said bitterly.
“I need that truck,” Carl replied. His words were slurred, and he swayed on his feet.
“That’s it?” David shouted. “We thought you were dead, and the first thing you say to us is that you need Jake’s truck?”
“Kind of fitting,” Jake said, voice taut with rage. “Never been much of a father. No reason to start now.”
“How could you, dad?” Anthony demanded. I thought he meant the whole faking-his-death thing, but then he added, “How could you threaten Rachel like that?”
Carl turned his head and spat. “That’s what I think of your girlfriend. Tearing down my zoo. My legacy!”
David spread his arms with exasperation. “What’d you expect us to do? You left us with a bankrupt zoo and hundreds of animals to feed and care for. Moving them to real zoos and sanctuaries was the best thing for everyone.”
“That zoo was for you,” Carl replied. “All of you. Everything I did was for you! My boys! I cared about you…”
“You never cared about us!” Anthony said in a voice that was so anguished that it made my heart ache. “You treated us like unpaid labor you could boss around. Sixteen hour days until we were old enough to leave. You used me as bait to catch a tiger, dad! Don’t deny it—don’t you dare try to deny it. I was eight years old and Hans escaped, and you used me as fucking bait so you could tranq him. That’s how much you cared about us!”
Carl still held the gun in our general direction, but his arm was shaking. “Because you three were the most ungrateful, spoiled brats. None of you wanted to work at the zoo! You abandoned me as soon as you were old enough! Leaving me to die in that zoo!”
“I stayed for years,” Jake shot back. “Five years I remained as your whipping boy.”
Carl scoffed. “And yet you still left. Just like them. You left your zoo to struggle and go bankrupt…”
“It was your zoo,” Jake shot back. “Not ours. It was your shitty zoo with illegal breeding and terrible living conditions and drugged up animals taking photos for people to post on Facebook and Instagram. You chose to make it what it was. We never had a choice.”
Carl trembled with rage, or anguish, or maybe adrenaline. “I got a choice now. Give me your truck.”
“No, dad.”
“I said give me your goddamn truck or I’m gonna fucking shoot somebody.”
Headlights shone behind us as a car came around the corner. I prayed that it was the police, but they wouldn’t have been coming from that direction, and there were no lights or sirens. It was an old Volkswagen Beetle with so much rust you couldn’t see the paint. It pulled to a stop next to our truck and the driver hopped out.
“Mary Beth?” Anthony said.
I scrambled to roll down the window. “RUN! Mary Beth, get out of here! You have to go!”
She stood there with a confused look on her face. Like she didn’t understand what the big deal was, even though there were two wrecked vehicles, a man holding a gun, and thousands of pounds of frozen meat all over the road.
“Mary Beth, please, you have to listen to me…” I begged.