ZULA

1.01

The boy emerges from the scrub-brush unlike any Irregular he has ever seen.

Immediately Clark has him sighted. From his elevated position on West Rip, Clark stares at this sudden presence staring directly into his lens.

No darting to the river or sad scramble up the skraggle rock for this one. Why not?

Shoot on sight is protocol. Irregulars carry Derivative Swap, a lingering contagion of the Currency Wars.

Clark—who up to this point has been a zero-demerit Watch Ranger—freezes.

Green eyes flash from a mud-smudged face. The stillness seems to stretch into forever. Then a shot cracks the silence from one of the fallback positions. The boy’s head becomes a red mist as his small torso falls to the gravel path that still follows the Choke Zone to the confluence of the Great Fork and Blackstone Drainage.

The boy is dead.

Clark knows he will no longer be a zero-demerit Watch Ranger once the report of his hesitation crawls up the chain of command.

*

“Give me the bottle.” Tee-Pee glares his fiercest glare.

“Go fuck yourself,” Hatch replies.

“Yeah? Who got a fiver from that college chick? Me, that’s who. You can’t fly a sign worth a shit, Hatch. Prolly something to do with that angry meat-sack you call a face.”

Tee-Pee pulls a pouch of tobacco from his breast pocket and starts rolling a rolly.

“You don’t want to go down that road, Tee-Pee. If it wasn’t for me, Jaybird would’ve stuck you good. Last I checked dead men don’t drink.”

The incident Hatch is referring to happened years ago in the alley behind the “Brodega” where, in a flurry of rage, Jaybird tried to use the jagged neck of a broken bottle to gut Tee-Pee for laughing at his ring-tone. Were it not for a perfectly timed punch, from Hatch, Tee-Pee would have been in trouble.

Years later, Hatch is still getting mileage from his heroic intervention, using it every chance he gets to put Tee-Pee in his place. Fucking white men, Tee-Pee mutters, always heroes of something in their own mind.

“Tee-Pee! Hide the pint, Zonk alert!” Hatch adds a quick punch to emphasize the need for haste.

Tee-Pee had already spotted Zonk ambling down the sidewalk, bobbing and weaving like someone trying to avoid the blows of an invisible adversary. Sitting atop a grassy embankment with a good vantage point of Zula’s North/South artery feeding vehicles to and from the interstate, both men realize they are exposed.

Simultaneously Hatch and Tee-Pee bow their heads, trying not to be noticed.

Despite being zonked, Zonk jerks his head back, and to the left, directing his bobble-head toward the duo drinking their morning breakfast. Zonk understands the situation immediately.

“TEEEEPEEEEE, HAAAAATCH, HOWTHAFCKKRRYA?” Zonk screams, unaware of two Gothy teenagers on the other side of the street, staring with awed bemusement.

It would be hard to define the assortment of fabric Zonk wears as “pants” and a “shirt”. There is no discernible pattern to the knotted strips of clothing Zonk weaves to cover key parts of his skinny anatomy. Zula locals familiar with Zonk do what they can to help, but band-aids can’t fix train wrecks.

The worst outfit Tee-Pee ever saw Zonk wear happened without his consent on the night before the University’s premier sports program, The Zula Wolf Pack, played for the championship title. Zonk was zonked-out cold by the bronze fish sculpture in Caras Park when some enthusiastic fans found him and decided to spontaneously “donate” a Wolf Pack t-shirt and pair of Wolf Pack panties.

Not surprisingly, Zonk didn’t stir as the three Wolf Pack fans (two guys and a gal) maneuvered the shirt down over his head and the panties just below his knees (a special feature of the Wolf Pack panties: a fake, furry tail stitched to the elastic band).

Guy1 clearly had an idea. Tee-Pee saw it brewing like a cloud of trouble forming over his head. Guy1 walked to a tree, found a low-hanging branch that could be stripped for a good switch, and ripped it off.

Guy1 then informed Guy2 of his brilliant plan.

Guy2 agreed to the terms of the pact with an eager nod, going to work immediately on his zipper.

Then out comes dick, down comes the switch, and it’s all hitting and pissing with Zonk playing his part, leaping into motion, but immediately tripped up by the Wolf Pack panties tangling up his knobby legs.

The gal with the two guys shrieks with amusement, then pulls out her phone and starts recording. She even manages a few slurred shouts of CHASING TAIL!!! CHASING TAIL!!! before a passerby notices and the three assailants flee into the darkness under the bridge.

Tee-Pee has hazy memories of going over to Zonk, to check on his vitals, then...