Convenience store were nice places. Little oasis in the urban jungle, were you could stop for a moment and breath the smell of smog that came from the streets, drink some disgusting beverage that would've killed the few neurons still alive in your brain and buy a couple of packet of the most disgusting and carcinogen mark of cigarettes you could find.
They had just one little, tiny flaw. They closed too early.
It was a dark night, in Zootopia. Black clouds in the sky covered the stars and kept splitting and throwing up water and hail in a continuous loop on the town's streets. The stars were not a problem: with all the pollutions produced by factories and industries 24 hours a day in the suburbs of the city, nobody could've see them anyway. The problem was that were almost three days that the storm was raging over the city, and if the weather wouldn't have changed in the next few hours, Zootopia should have declared to be on natural disaster alert.
Nick was walking on a sidewalk, moving as close as possible to the wall at his left, trying to avoid taking in full muzzle the buckets of water that were falling from the sky.
He wasn't doing a good job. To testify that there was his green-death-frog trench coat, already soaked and covered in folds. Honestly, the trench coat was not his: it was his father's trench coat. He had crocheted it by himself more than thirty years ago, when Nick was just a little fox cub.
But Jonathan Piberius Wilde was dead now, and the little fox cub was getting old.
Ten years ago, Nick could've ran naked under the storm completely drunk and then come back to home to fuck with some vixen just picked up by the highways, just for waking up at the sunshine of the next day already prepared for another round.
Now the only thing that pushed him to get out under a rain like that was his need of a couple of cigarette packets to cool down in preparation for Judy's Birthday. The doe was 32 years old by now.
At the police station, they had decided to organize a party in her honor. It was a Benjamin's idea. Nick told him that Judy was not the kind of girl for these things, but he'd been irremovable. He talked about it even with some detective of the bureau were Nick was working, and they all decided that a party with the ex-coworkers of detective Nick Wilde would have been fucking cool. All but Nick, which just wanted to spend an evening with the company of his girlfriend that would've surely ended in a wild fuck on the couch, and not a wild party with police officers and a mad bunny that would've surely ended in a monstrous hangover the next morning.
Like it was not enough, the fox had to pretend all the week that he had forgotten her birthday.
Now, he was in a random street desperately searching for a still open convenience store, hoping to find it just in time to come back to home, upload a menstruating and mentally disturbed bunny on his car and bring her at a police station where the party would've finally started, giving peace at his bloody headache.
After other ten minutes of wandering in the town like the ghost of the past smoke, the fox finally found the damned mini-mart. It was not that much, but he had to buy his cigarettes.
The fox approached at it and started to enter. Then, he saw the mark on the front door.
There was a sign made with a marker:
"Fox not allowed".
Nick looked at the sign, his inexpressive muzzle wet for the rain and the bloodshot eyes half-closed by the heavy eyelids, almost as if he was expecting the sign to answer at his look. Then he placed a paw on the glass and pushed.
Just walked in, his detective-sense immediately started to knock at the back of his skull. Truth said, he didn't even know why. The mini-mart looked like one of those shitty market placed in the furthest areas of the city. Row after row of useless stuff that nobody would have ever used stacked up on the walls and many bad marks of food in the way. Nick's eyes stopped on the pickles.
Once he had tried the mini-mart pickles. He had been sick for three days.
The fox shook his head and walked to the counter, ignoring anything around him.
The guy behind the counter was a pig. Not that sort of pig, like a pervert or something. Just a pig. Short and fat, with a white shirt covered in snot and mayonnaise, the old ungulate was just sitting on an old seat almost as old as he, reading a dirty magazine.
So he was a pervert, too. Nice.
Nick bend his head on one side and read the inscription on the cover. The name of the magazine was "Furhouse". Under the title there was an advertisement that said "how to prolong your dick of four inches".
How to prolong your dick of four inches. Hard literature always killed him.
Nick, that luckily didn't need to prolong his dick, puffed.
"Evening" he said, with emotionless voice "I'd want two packet of M.A.".
The pig snorted, then raised up the magazine he was holding in his paws and shook it a little.
"I'm reading" he said. Istinctively, Nick just curved his lips in a half-smile. The fox scratched his right ear.
"I didn't know that pussies have to be read".
The pig snorted again, this time harder. Then he putted down the journal and without even looking at Nick he made some steps to his right, where were lied at least thirty types of cigarettes.
"M.A?".
"Yes".
"With filter or unfiltered?".
"Unfiltered".
The pig grumbed and pushed up his arm. With extreme difficulty, he reached his paw toward the two types of M.A. in the collection and took two packets of the unfiltered type. In the meanwhile, Nick caught a lighter from its box and pulled out his wallet. He lowered his head to take twenty dollars and then just put it back in his pocket.
When he raised up his muzzle, the pig was just looking at him, paralyzed like a salt-statue. The only thing that came to Nick's mind was looking at him in response.
After a while they were playing that game, the fox let the money on the counter and pushed them toward him.
"Can I have my cigarettes, now?".
"What the fuck are you doing here?".
From the tone he said it, you could've expected that the presence of Nick in that market was normal like the Mayor's presence in a kink club. The fox pointed his finger at the money.
"I'm trying to buy cigarettes. I know that smoke hurts, but I am a big fox. I think laws will let me do it".
"You didn't see the sign?".
Nick turned his head toward the door. Then he looked again at the pig.
"Oh, I didn't take it personally".
The pig snorted. With another, nauseating grunt, the ungulate took back the cigarettes and gave him a look that could have burnt down an entire forest.
"There's absolutely nothing funny about that" he answered, putting the cigarettes back to their place "we don't serve foxes here".
"Then let's pretend I'm a stoat".
The pig narrowed his eyes. This time his look was less evil and more confused. He couldn't understand what the fox was doing. Nick held back a laugh. It was always funny to fuck around some racist son of a bitch.
"Listen, waste of spunk" he started, leaning toward him "I've the right of don't serve every fucking mammal I don't want to serve. It means that if I do not want to sell my stuff, I do not sell my stuff. So you can return to the gutter where you belong and never come back to my fucking marketplace".
Nick raised an eyebrow.
"I thought my money were good like the ones of every other mammal".
"Keep your bloody money" he replied, taking the bill with two fingers and giving it to him "I should make you pay just to be here".
Nick reached his paw and took the bill from his fingers.
"I bet I remember you somebody you were used to be beaten off" he said, putting the banknote in his wallet.
A deep wrinkle of nerves made its way for skin and fur between the pig's eyebrows. The fat pig grinded his little dirty fangs.
"Get out of here".
For a moment, Nick considered the possibility of grabbing that little shit toward him and kicking him in the teeth until he just vomited his brain, and then show him his badge just for reassure him that he couldn't do absolutely nothing to get a revenge.
Then the fox remembered he was not a motherfucker, and just give him his back and walked out of the mini-mart.
Out there, the rainstorm wasn't ended. Nick didn't even have the time to dry up that now he was soaked under the rain again, the green-dead-frog almost completely useless and the water penetrated to his underwear.
He didn't try to find a cover from the rain. He just didn't have the will. His head was buzzing like a mad bee and he had to fight to doesn't grind his fangs. He was tired, hungry, and for the next twelve hours, with no cigarettes.
He was just going to come back to home, but his phone started to vibrate in his pocket.
"Shit" he murmured. He stretched his paw in the pocket, searching for it. When he pulled it out, he put it on speakerphone and neared it to his muzzle, just to avoid wetting the precious object too much.
"Hi".
"Wilde?" croaked a male voice.
Nick raised an eyebrow. He knew that voice, and the mammal whose it belonged was the last person he expected to hear.
Billy Bud was a jackal. Big, bad and with a thing to break muzzles. Anyway, the most important thing to know about him was that he was a moron. He worked like bouncer for a shitty strip club, just because he was the niece of the owner.
He and Nick had nothing in common. Not even the species. But they know each other because Billy was a sucker for gambling and once a while he just went for a trip in the lowest parts of Zootopia. It was not all: he was so stupid he really thought he was something as a poker player, and every time Nick kicked him like a soccer ball he just justified himself saying he was a little sick.
Truth was, Nick was a shitty poker player too. He was just really good at cheating.
It was almost eight years that Nick didn't hear his voice. Eight years since the last time they spoke. Since when he and Judy solved the case of the nighthowler serum. When they still frequented each other, Nick always met him drunk and grinning. Now the voice of the jackal was broke by the fear. The mammal was terrified. He was crying like a little kit.
"Billy?" Nick said. Initially, the fox's tone was joyful. He was happy to hear an old friend, after so much time. Then he noticed his voice.
"Bill, what's going on?".
A void. A gap. A moment of pause, the rain as only audible sound around him. Nick heard him sniffing a couple of times. Then he said:
"Nick, I think my family is dead".
The jackal's words entered in his brain and cut off his synapsis. It took at least thirty seconds to re-build the connections between neurons.
"Billy, I don't think I get it".
"My family is dead" he repeated, sobbing. Nick sighed and passed a paw on his eyes.
He know Billy's family. The jackal invited him for lunch, a couple of times. Principally to try to take back some dollars that he had lost playing poker. He had a thing for his wife and daughter. His wife was a little nevrotic, but sweet and cooked very well. His daughter was smart and clever and played poker better than his father.
"Billy, I think you just exaggerated a little with the bourbon" he answered, shrugging "take a shower and go to sleep".
The voice on the phone sobbed again, and then started to cry harder.
"Nick, my wife and daughter are in the kitchen. They're not breathing and their brain is all over the pavement".
Silence. The fox didn't answer. The wind around him blew it loud, throwing more water on his muzzle. Nick threw out a puff of vapor with his nose. The puff of vapor started to climb upwards, dancing among the raindrops.
Billy didn't seem drunk. He was destroyed and sobbing and he was crying like a kit without his mom, his voice was drunken slur and blown by hiccups, but Nick had seen him drunk. And Billy was not like that, when he was drunk.
It was not good.
"Billy?" Nick called. No answer.
"Billy" he repeated "Billy, are you there?".
Of course he was there. He could hear him cry. He just wanted to hear his voice.
There were some other instants of silence, heavy like a dinner in a Greek restaurant.
"I'm here" the other answered at the end. At least he was still able to speak.
"Do you still live at Myfeslayne, 13?".
"Yes".
"Then hold on. I'm coming".
Billy's apartment was settled in an old, desolated wreck of palace, placed in the lowest part of the city. The wall of the construction were falling apart, while wooden boards blocked most of the windows.
That evening, all the building's lights were turned off. Even the one of the old sociopathic maniac at the last floor, the scumbag who just placed with binoculars near his window and spied the poor fuckers in the street. Once Nick had caught him. The sociopathic just smiled. Nick promised himself to kill him one day.
But this time, nothing. No cries of terror. No maniac placed at his window with his dick spread of Vaseline. No bloody robbers in the shadow kicking the shit out of some old bitch.
Just the noises of the rainfall and the possibility of a double homicide committed by one of his oldest friends just four floor above him.
Nick was almost certain that Billy was drunk, or just planning him a huge joke. But if he'd have been drunk, he'd have noticed it. He could've heard his voice and be sure that he was drunk even from the other side of the phone. He should have heard his wife's scream, threating with divorce if he didn't stop drinking. If it was a joke, then he'd have heard the laughs of his daughter.
But he didn't hear screams, or laughs. He didn't hear anything, apart Billy's pathetic sobs.
So, Nick was starting to ask himself if he wasn't going to really ruin the evening.
The fox moved toward the door and thought of how to enter in the building. The interphone was broken and there was no trace of the janitor. He even thought about forcing the lock, but he discovered that someone had preceded him. The spring lock was broken as much as the interphone.
Good news. Less work for Nick.
The fox pushed the heavy front door and stepped toward the hallway, then he let it go.
There was no living soul in the main corridor. The lights weren't working really good. He didn't care about it, considering that foxes had a good nocturnal view. But after a while these repeated lightening started to piss him off.
He went for the stars. The fox gave a rapid look at the damaged bottoms and decided that if he survived to that stair, he would not have to demonstrate his bravery in any other ways. They seemed to be in the point of falling apart just looking at them.
He started to climb, and the steps started to creak like old bones.
First steps.
"Scric".
Another step.
"Scrac".
Third steps.
"Sbrang!".
Nick pushed too hard on the third bottom, and that crashed as if it was made of paper. The fox cursed and tried to free his foot. At the end, it went free, but the nails stuffed in the wood took a piece of his trousers and even some inches of his fur.
"Ah, great" he murmured, raising his lip "I just needed to die of tetanus".
Finally, the fox arrived at the landing, safe from the great menace of the crumbling tops. He found himself in a long corridor that brought at one door sunken in the wall. Around him, just two row of locked doors.
The smell of blood tickled his nose. He raised the muzzle and then breathed again, almost mechanically. Ferric smell, penetrating and persistent. His nose started to twitch.
At the academy, the instructors explained that if you were a canine with a good sense of smell, you could be someone in the force. If you were a canine with a good sense of smell, they said, you were useful for the force. They would've send you first on ahead. You could have been capable to individuate eventual assaulters or civilian in need of assistance. You could have been capable to discover dead bodies or fugitives.
During the six months of trainings that he had made as a cadet, he'd been placed near a lot of corpses. The trainer said that they couldn't become police officers and then puke on their first case of rape with evisceration. They had to getting used to horror.
So they sited him in front of a female ocelot with a hole in her womb and told him to look. Then they put away the corpse and took another. And another. And another.
Every week, on a specific day, he had to site in front of a dead body and look at it.
They taught to him how to discern the smell of a species from another one. The smell of a female and the smell of a male. The smell of a cub and the smell of an old mammal. The smell of a pregnant woman and the smell of sickness.
They said "this is male gazelle's blood, this is male zebra's blood. This is female wolf's blood, this is lion's blood. This is lion's blood too, but this one had HIV. Can you feel the smell of rotten food? That's the HIV".
Nick walked straight to the door, paws in his pockets and lowered head.
During the training, they teach you that when adrenaline starts to run in your body and dopamine starts to hit your brain you must learn to control yourself. A bad choice and you can fuck up your and your partner's life. So the trainer put him in situations of psychological stress, and he had to learn how to control himself.
Now he didn't feel adrenaline. He didn't feel psychological stress. He was a little nervous, but compulsive smoker are always nervous.
They had taught him very well.
Then the fox went to the door and knocked. Nobody answered.
The foxed pushed the door and looked in the apartment.
Billy's place was exactly as he remembered. An old middle size apartment. Just come in, Nick found himself in the "dining room". The table was not a table, but a pic-nic table, one of those tables you can fold and bring to the park. The seats were plastic seats, because that was the only type of seats they could afford. The walls were falling apart, cracks making their appearance every three or four inches.
Scent like death. Vague smell of piss on clothes.
Billy was throw up against a wall behind the table. Blood was running over his body, over his brown fur, his clothes, ending up on the pavement. A little string of saliva was rolling down his muzzle. He was crying.
A big spot of piss was spreading on his trousers.
"Hi, Billy".
The jackal pointed his head on the fox's way. His eyes were red and his muzzle was wide open.
"What took you so long?" he asked. Nick barely understood what he said. The mammal was talking a new language where you had to but a sob every two words.
"I was trying to remember the way" he lied. The fox was supposed to be sorry, but it didn't look like he was sorry.
"What is this story about your family death?".
The jackal pointed at something behind him.
"There".
Nick came back to his steps and placed on the kitchen's door. It was a side scroll door. It was open.
The bodies of the two females were lying one against the other, their heads supported by the tiny banged up oven. Blood was dripping out of their skulls, collecting itself in one giant puddle of red around them. A bit of brain's pulp completed the picture.
The smell was disgusting. Nick forced himself to breath with the mouth and went near the bodies. He got on his knees to examine them.
You didn't need a doctor to understand why they were dead. Crushed skull. The fox raised up the mother's arm to see an old baseball bat covered in blood.
That's it. Just them, the bat and the Pepperoni pizza he was going to vomit.
The fox got out of the room and reprised the urge to vomit that was climbing over his throat. It was not the view, but the smell. The smell of a dead body is always worse than the look. Absolutely worse.
Nick snorted, and then placed a paw on the wall near him to support himself. He raised up his muzzle and looked at Billy.
"Who killed them?".
Billy's sobs turned in cries. The jackal raised his paws and started to scratch his own cheeks, angrily, repeatedly. Nick gnashed his fangs and passed a paw over his head, trying to fight his own tears. The fox closed the kitchen's door, hoping that closing it the smell of the females would have decreased. Of course, it didn't.
"Christ" he said, eyes closed "Jesus Christ".
The fox raised his head.
"Why?".
Silence. The jackal kept going wit his own tears, without looking at him. Nick walked toward him, cutting of the distance between them. Then grabbed him for the collar and took him off the wall.
"Look at me, you piece of shit!" he commanded "fucking look at me! You killed your own family, and I want to know why! Tell me!".
The jackal murmured something. Something that Nick didn't understood. The fox planted a punch in the middle of his muzzle.
"I can't understand you! say it again!".
"She cheated on me" he answered, his face cowered in tears.
Something in Nick's eyes sparkled.
"What?".
"She said she was going to a cooking lesson" he murmured, without stopping crying "I remembered that she wasn't in any cooking lessons, but she thought I was too stupid to remember. Today I followed her and when she came back at home, I…I…".
"You killed her!" Nick growled, hitting him again "You killed her! Not the fucker who just screwed with her! You killed your wife, you useless cuck!".
Nick let him go. Billy kept crying, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles like a kid who's just been scolded by the mother. The fox growled again and placed a paw over his muzzle, as if he was trying to keep away the terrible smells of blood.
"And your daughter?" he answered, furiously "why the fuck did you kill her? Were you angry? Or has she fucked with some other male, too? She was sixteen years old. Sixteen years old, for God's sake!".
"She was the daughter of a slut. She would have become a slut too".
Nick snarled again.
"Why the fuck did you call me, Billy? Why the fuck you just didn't cut off your own throat?".
"You're a police officer" the jackal said, sniffling "you can help me".
Nick blocked.
"What the fuck did you just said?".
"Nick" he begged, reaching a paw toward him "Nick, w-we're friends. How much have we b-been friends? A lot, am I right? We've been friend for a lot. I didn't want to do it, Nick. I really didn't. You have to help me, Nick. I…I need help".
The fox looked at him, a disgusted expression running over his face. After some seconds, the fox took his phone from his pocket.
"What…what are you doing?".
"Shut up, asshole".
"What are you doing?!".
"I said shut the fuck up!".
The voice of a girl started to flow from the phone.
"NO!".
The jackal jumped on him. Nick's cellphone flied off his paw, to end up crashing against the pavement and exploding in a thousand of fragments.
The two canines rolled against the wall, and Billy's right paw closed on Nick's neck.
"MOTHERFUCKER!" he screamed, furious "FUCKING TRAITOR! I TRUSTED YOU, AND YOU TRIED TO FUCK ME IN THE ASS!".
One of his paw kept pushing on his neck, while the other started to hit the fox in the face repeatedly.
There was a reason why the jackal was a bouncer, after all. Nick's blood started to spurt from his nose like a waterfall, and two teeth skipped out of his muzzle as if they were trying an Olympic discipline.
There was no time to think. The fox gave him a knee in the stomach, making him lose his grip. Then pulled away the jackal's paws and opened his mouth.
Before Billy could even realize what was going to happen, the jaws of the fox closed on the jackal's windpipe.
Something in Nick's instinct seemed to recognize the death rattle of the other predator was producing.
With one last struggle, the fox shook his head toward his left, rip open the jackal's throat. A red fountain splashed against his face, and a little reddish tube started to squirm over his muzzle like an abominable cub's toy.
Nick pushed the jackal away. For two or three seconds, Billy kept bleeding and squirming, desperately trying to breath. Thirty seconds later, the lack of oxygen started to do its job.
Two minutes later the jackal was shitting himself on the floor, lifeless.
The time seemed to slowdown. Nick's mad heart kept pumping blood, as it was the last thing he had to do, the adrenaline still running in his cardiovascular system replaced by other in prevision of a new fight. The fox started to breath slowly, trying to calm down the pulses of his heart.
Stop. That's all. He had won.
He repeated hit on himself, again and again, breathing deeply. He didn't care for the fact that he had just killed another mammal. He didn't care about being a murderer. He had just killed a bastard and avenged two innocents. He had just fought against a bigger predator, and he had won. He was the alpha male of the day.
Then something started to knock against the back of his skull.
"Oh, fuck" he said "I'm late for Carrot's birthday".