~~~

It wasn’t easy to find your way around Bambamboo Park, especially at night when the lights often broke. Or were broken on purpose. Hard to know which when gang activity was so high.

The best thing to do was to stick to the path[1] as that’s where the most reliable lamps were, so that’s what the three novice investigators did. They dodged puddles and dog shit [left by drunken dogs], other shit [species type unidentifiable], and followed the slightly worn path all the way to Four Duck Pond.

Zade and Cha Cha both stopped and looked around for a sign of the noise makers but neither of them could see much of anything.

‘They’re probably hiding in those trees,’ said Luco, squinting.

‘Or they ran off,’ said Zade.

‘Or they jumped in the pond and are using those thin pieces of grass to breathe…what do you call them…leeds?’

‘Reeds,’ corrected Cha Cha, looking up at the canopy. ‘And I think hiding in the trees makes a little more sense.’

‘This isn’t about sense,’ said Luco, following up with a very faint repeat of reeds, which was in turn trailed by another, softer whoosh sound, and an almost wisp-like cry.

‘Over there…’ said Cha Cha, pointing vaguely into the dark.

‘Where?’

‘There, the trees.’

‘Ha, I told you,’ said Luco, slapping Zade on the ear again. ‘Had to be the forest.’

‘It seems farther away than it was before,’ replied the tiger, weary.

‘Ka, they must’ve moved.’

‘Maybe they’re trying to lead us into a trap?’

‘Which could be how they got Dog Lee,’ added Luco, squinting at silhouettes that were most likely swaying branches. ‘A trained martial artist like him couldn’t just be taken head on, face to face. Someone must’ve tricked him into it.’

‘Should we keep going?’ asked Cha Cha, looking at Zade.

‘Nuut kaata.’

‘Of course we keep going,’ said Luco, his voice overwhelming Zade’s low grumble. ‘But we need to get off this path.’

‘You think?’

‘And head directly into the tree area.’

‘Nuut kaata,’ tried Zade a second time.

Another woosh, another cry, both of them much louder. All three amateur detectives looked confused. It was as if someone were messing with the volume on the remote control.

‘Now it doesn’t seem that far,’ muttered Cha Cha, looking behind her just in case.

‘Definitely within twenty five metres,’ agreed Zade.

‘That’s weirdly precise…’

‘Tigers are good at measuring distances.’ Another whoosh, another cry. ‘Make that fifteen metres.’

‘What should we do?’ asked Cha Cha, looking back the way they came again.

‘Go into the woods, obviously.’

‘Wait…’ said Zade, still squinting at the trees.

‘Dog Lee could be in danger…or someone connected to him…nuut, no waiting, move.’

‘Nuut kaata.’

Luco hunched his shoulders and made an argh noise. ‘Stop thinking so much. You’re the one who got us over here.’

‘He’s kind of right, Zade. Both sentences.’

‘You think?’

‘Someone could die because of us. If we don’t get over there right now and do something...’

‘Into the pitch black trees?’

‘Now, Zade,' cut in Luco, shout-whispering. 'Move.’

‘Okay, okay…I’m moving. Relax.’

Zade and Cha Cha resumed their race, jogging like tired uncles around Four Duck Pond, then off the path and into the dense mass of murky trees. It was impossible to see anything at first, with Zade managing to trip on some loose tree roots and send Luco crashing to the ground, but Cha Cha sniffed around a bit, picked up a scent and said, ‘left, left.’

Recovering their previous positions, Zade and Luco followed at a decent pace until they could see another set of lamps about fifty yards ahead. Only these ones were low down, almost as if a group of local citizens were carrying them on their shoes.

‘Stop a sec…’ said Zade, slowing to the speed of a pensioner’s power walk.

‘Again?’ asked Cha Cha, puzzled.

‘We don’t know how many there are. Or who they are. Or what they’re doing here.’

‘That’s why we have to keep going,’ said Luco, jabbing Zade in the neck. ‘To find out all that.’

‘Good point,’ said Cha Cha, speeding up.

‘Stop…Cha Cha, don’t-…’

Zade braked suddenly, instinctively catching Luco as he was thrown forward off his shoulder, and then dropping him gently on the ground. Cha Cha, however, clearly didn’t get the message and ran straight into the small circle of lamps.

Whoosh…

An arrow shot past the top of her head, somehow picking up a clotted lump of her fur and dragging her backwards onto the trunk of a tree.

‘Woahhhh, cut! Cut, cut, cut…’ shouted a booming voice.

Zade and Luco ran forward again, claws drawn and ready to scratch, but when they got to the lamps, they froze, glanced around at all the dog faces staring back at them, all the filming equipment, the two amplifiers responsible for the constant whooshing noises, the security guards edging towards them, and eventually managed to sputter out a ‘wah...’

‘Who are they?’ screamed a bulky dog perched on the edge of a high chair, with a microphone in his paw and a cowboy hat slanted backwards on his head. ‘What are drunks doing on my set?’

‘Sorry, we didn’t…’ started Zade, but quickly got interrupted by Luco, who was pointing at another dog, this one wearing a green hooded cloak.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

‘I know that guy,’ shouted Luco, to pretty much the whole park.

The dog in the green hooded cloak pulled something out from behind his back, clearly his alternative to answering verbally.

‘Luco…’ said Zade, nudging his friend in the foot.

‘No, I do, I know him. It’s Dog Hood…’

‘Stop shouting.’

‘…Dog Lee’s enemy. I’m not even joking, he’s evil, really messed up in the head. Seriously. His school taught those two psycho dogs, the ones on the news…remember? They went into Maw Gug Mall and started shooting at people with arrows[2]…’

Zade looked at the dog in the green-hooded cloak, noticing that the thing in his paw was an arrow and the thing in his other paw was a very large, very purple bow.

‘We’ve gotta get him…he shot Dog Lee, he must’ve…just shot Cha Cha too. Get him, Zade.’

‘Nuut kaata,’ mumbled a very reluctant, embarrassed tiger, trying not to think about everyone staring at them.

‘Zade, wake up! Get him, break his shooting arm!’

‘Err…’

‘What are you blathering about, hamster?’ cut in the bulky dog, still stuck to his high chair. ‘This is a closed set. We’re making a commercial.’

‘Says you…’

Dog Hood smirked and threaded the arrow onto his bow. He aimed at Zade first, then switched to Luco [when the hamster started talking again] and fired…just as a paw swooped across and knocked him in the shoulder.

The bow bent upward and the arrow flew into the sky, far and high, potentially landing on a beggar’s head.

Dog Hood took another arrow from his back, threaded it into the bow string and turned to face the owner of the mysterious paw all in one impossibly swift movement.

‘You…’ he growled when he saw who it was.

‘Don’t shoot,’ said Wu Dog Yan, putting her paws up.

‘The hamster could be dangerous,’ said Dog Hood, lowering his bow a little. ‘He broke onto the set, with a tiger.’

‘He’s not.’

‘You know it?’

‘Kind of.’

‘And the tiger?’

‘Not really.’

‘Aha…so it’s a trap.’ Dog Hood spun round again and pointed his arrow at Zade, who had used the time gained from Wu Dog Yan’s distraction to pick up a large twig to potentially swat the arrow away with. But then everyone started staring at him again, so he dropped it and prepared to be shot.

‘Wait, stop…’ shouted Wu Dog Yan, stepping close to but not quite in front of the bow.

‘I’m tired of stopping,’ said Dog Hood, adjusting his line of sight an inch.

‘He’s friends with the hamster. So is that dog over there, the one you almost killed just now.’

Dog Hood glanced over at Cha Cha, who was trying to untangle her head fur from the arrow that had pinned her to the tree trunk. It wasn’t easy, probably because she hadn’t shampooed her fur in a week. Not her fault though, she’d been distracted by the dog drama on TV, and the Snack language lessons online, and all those videos she’d been watching about knife crime in Dogyo.

‘I didn’t almost kill anyone…’

‘That’s a lie,’ shouted Luco, regaining his confidence. ‘Your arrow was half an inch from hitting her brain.’

‘That was my intention, hamster.’

‘Liar.’

‘I never lie.’

‘You probably kidnapped Dog Lee too, didn’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t deny it, everyone knows you hate him and want to take all his students…but you’re too scared to fight him face to face…so you kidnapped him. Probably. Or got someone else to do it.’

‘Is this a prank of some kind?’

‘The cats…ka, you got the cats to do it. They hate him too. You and the cats trying to take over and…I’m right, aren’t I? That’s why you’re not saying anything.’

‘Luco…’ whispered Zade.

‘That’s why you’re looking so weird facially…so blank. Blankness is the sign of guilt. Every hamster knows that.’

Dog Hood looked at Wu Dog Yan then at the bulky dog in the high chair, who nodded back at him. ‘This is a closed set, hamster. Leave now…you and your friends…or I’ll call the police.’

‘You have five seconds,’ said Dog Hood, raising his bow and arrow again.

‘Okay, okay, we’re going,’ said Zade, quickly running over to Cha Cha and pulling her off the tree trunk. ‘Luco…’

‘Don’t think this is over, Hood,’ said Luco, walking over to Zade’s leg for cover. ‘I know what you did to my Satfu.’

‘Two seconds,’ said Dog Hood, pulling the arrow tight.

Luco tried to continue the argument, but Zade picked him up and put a paw over his mouth. ‘Sorry for the trouble…’

‘One second…’

‘Ka, we’re going, we’re going. Please don’t call the police…’

‘0.5 seconds…’

‘…thanks.’

Zade turned and, with Luco in a fairly tight headlock, ran quickly back into the dense forest they’d come from. No arrows followed them, luckily, though Cha Cha did manage to wave at Wu Dog Yan and shout, ‘No Heart Doctor was great, your acting is great, bye.’

~~~

After muttering to himself about all the possible ways Dog Hood could’ve managed to beat Dog Lee and get him into a van, Luco blinked, looked up and realised they weren’t back outside Dog Lee’s school, but were instead at the ticket gate in Bambamboo Park DTR station.

‘Zade, what are you…we have to go back, search for clues.’

‘Not tonight.’

‘But we haven’t even-…’

‘We’re going home.’

‘But…’

‘Cha Cha?’

The Wu Dog Yan super fan still had a dreamy look on her face, so dreamy and distant that Zade had to take out her Spidero card[3] and swipe her through the ticket gate himself.

Luco continued to complain, but he was stuck in the grip of Zade’s paw and couldn’t do anything to get out of it. In fact, Zade waited until they were sitting on the platform bench before finally, reluctantly releasing him.

‘Congratulations, Zade. You’ve just killed my Satfu.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic.’

‘Dog Hood will know we’re onto him now and will probably go back and kill Dog Lee tonight. And it’s all your fault.’

‘I stopped you from getting an arrow in the face…’

‘Fault? All yours.’

‘…remember that?’

‘Nuut, don’t care. I’ll never forgive you for this. Never. As long as I breathe.’

Luco jumped off the bench and traipsed angrily all the way down to the other end of the platform.

Cha Cha leaned over to Zade’s ear and whispered, ‘can’t believe I saw Wu Dog Yan. Again.’

‘How are you so calm, Cha Cha?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You almost got an arrow in the brain.’

‘It’s okay, they said it was for a commercial.’

‘What? Nuut, they didn’t-…it was a real arrow.’

‘Nuut, it wasn’t.’

‘Ka, it was.’

‘Nuut, it-…’ She paused, rubbing the top of her head. ‘Was it?’

‘Ka.’

‘But the whoosh noise was so loud, like a fake computer effect.’

‘Ka, an effect. The arrow was still real though.’

‘Real…you mean, I almost died?’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

Cha Cha’s face almost turned green, and her throat made an actual, audible gulping sound as if she were about to throw up. Zade reached out with his left paw to rub the back of her neck. ‘It’s okay, it’s over now. We’re in the train station, no one’s gonna fire any-…’

‘Freeze!’

The voice came from nearby on the platform and sounded a bit like the rough, gravelly voice of Brude Furhide from the dog TV Drama they’d watched the night before.

‘On the ground, tiger, paws away from the girl, now.’

Zade stopped rubbing Cha Cha’s neck.

‘Paws where I can see them, no moving, paws up, on the ground.’

Zade didn’t need to turn all the way around to know who was yelling at him. It was a subway cop. A very tense, very aggressive, very real subway cop.

‘Don’t look at me, don’t turn, on the ground, down on the ground, tiger, paws up, paws up now, no looking, don’t look at me, down on the ground.’

Zade didn’t try to face the cop, he just slowly moved his paw from Cha Cha’s neck and raised it in the air, along with the other one.

‘On the ground, don’t move, don’t speak, on the ground, you make one wrong move, I’ll shoot, I swear to the sky orbs I will.’

‘Officer, I…’ Zade started, but stopped quickly when he heard the subway cop take another step forward, his breathing loud and jagged like an arthritic hippo.

‘I said do not speak, not a word, don’t say anything, no words, got it? No speaking, no moving, on the ground.’

Zade looked at the black line on the platform, the text that said queue here, and started to bend down, making sure his paws were way above his head.

‘No moves, stop moving, paws in the air, don’t move, don’t speak, no sudden moves, that’s it, that’s it, on the ground, slowly, don’t test me, tiger, don’t try it, keep those paws up, keep them up, down on the ground, start moving, ground, nuut, don’t look at me, on the ground, ground, on the ground, I said don’t look at me, tiger, don’t fucking look at me, eyes on the ground, keep your paws up, no sudden moves, on the ground, slowly…’

Zade tried to process all the contradictory things coming out of the police officer’s mouth, but then realised something. If you looked at his own face from the side, at his thinking tiger face, it would seem to someone who didn’t know him that he was a bit…

‘I said don’t look at me…’

‘Wait, I-…’

The gun went off and, half a second later, Zade dropped to the ground, just as the train rushed into the station.

Cha Cha heard the bullet and screamed. Saw her comrade collapsed below and screamed again.

'On the ground...' shouted the cop, gun still pointed at the motionless tiger, eyes manic. 'Don't move or I'll-...'

A beeping noise cut in.

The train doors opened and the passengers inside stared out as a captured still-life. A few gasps, a few fucks. Then the beeping noise started again and the doors slid shut.

No one got off.

~~~

----------------------------------------

[1] The real best thing to do was not go into the park, but we need a plot so in they go

[2] It’s true, in 2016, two of Dog Hood’s students took some drug grown in Snack, picked up their bows and arrows, and went shopping in MUKO Mall. The result: two killed, seventeen seriously wounded. Dog Hood blamed it all on the drug, saying the two dogs had only been at his school for three lessons before quitting, and he never really spoke to them anyway.

[3] Kind of like an octopus card or oyster card or whatever name your city gives the card that can pay for anything.