Pain. That was the first thing that rose from the dark abyss to drag Dawn from a dreamless sleep. It pulsed through the nerves of her battered body into her foggy brain, igniting a spark that lit a petering candle of consciousness. Aches gnawed at her bones, bruises spread like silent wildfires under her skin. Every joint was sore, rusted stiff from a long, awkward, uncomfortable rest slumped over something gnarled and coated in slime. The ewe made no movements, but could feel herself move, bobbing up and down weightlessly while minuscule waves gently lapped against her waist. Her nostrils burned from funneling water out of her sinuses, and with every shallow breath they took in dank, stagnant cave air. An ear twitched as a drop of water fell from somewhere high above and landed in a vast dark lake, echoing out against damp stone.
Dawn's sleep-encrusted lids slowly parted to let her bleary green eyes take in the world. Black midnight shadows greeted her with only the faintest of light to separate them from total darkness. The bottom of her tortoiseshell glasses hung down in her line of sight. They'd somehow endured the flood, half tangled in the wet coif of wool upon her head. The ewe's joints popped as she lifted an arm from the water to straighten them. She peered through the smudged lenses and squinted into the gloom.
Dawn saw now that she was slung over a water-worn log, drifting through a tunnel of concrete and stone, the walls streaked with lime and calcium deposits. Small stalactites hung from the snaking masses of rusting pipes overhead, cobwebs strung crooked between valves and handles. Refuse bobbed alongside her in the inky water; mats of decaying leaves, deteriorating papers washed of their words, plastic bags stretched flat on the oily surface of the water. Aluminum cans glinted dully in the elusive light source, which Dawn could now see came from far ahead. A dim yellow glow crept in from beyond the mouth of the tunnel. She clutched at her log with her tired arms, shivering beneath her waterlogged wool. A current lazily pulled her along toward the archway of the tunnel to where the ewe hoped she might find a way out of the water.
The water became strangely warm as Dawn passed through the tunnel's mouth. Eerie light poured out of a sparse collection of rusted light fixtures that dangled from a cavernous ceiling of rust-encased plumbing and block upon block of elephant-skinned stone to show a vast reservoir of greasy black water fed by a twisted network of drains and tunnels. Litter from decades past drifted about over the lake, collecting on two shadow-shrouded shores made of dirty gray brick on either side of the great lake. The embankment to her left rose to become a platform crowded with snarled piles of larger refuse, and branched out into other rooms through towering arched doorways. A glimmer of hope passed through the ewe's eyes, and she meekly kicked with her limp spindles of legs, resting her upper half on the log. Each splash of her hooves rang out through the cavern, slapping wetly against the slime-covered walls to rebound and echo out over the inky pool.
Somewhere in the gloom something splashed in reply.
Dawn froze; a good thirty feet between her and the embankment. Her chest became tight as she saw ripples rushing past her that had come rolling from the other side of the lake. The tips of the ewe's hoofed fingers sunk like tiny spades into the rotting wood of her log. Stale grotto air ran over her tongue as she sucked in a breath, arms shaking as her heart began to race. The safety of the brick platform seemed miles off.
Dawn looked over her shoulder to the dark corners of the cavern.
Thousands of red eyes glowed on the surface of the Stygian water; a whole universe of stars burning on the backdrop of a clear night sky. They sailed in the sockets of long, terrible skulls sheathed in leathery skin and armed with deadly white cones for teeth. Huge humps covered in thick plates of scaly armor drifted behind them, speckled with swampy greens, midnight blacks, and rusty browns. They seemed to float aimlessly, gliding over the oil-slick surface of the reservoir with the merest twitch of powerful tails scalloped with fin-like spikes. The creatures leered hungrily at the ewe as they skulked in total silence, inching out from the desolate nooks of the cavern, peeking with fiery glass marble eyes from snaking tunnels. Winter filled Dawn's body as she stared with dinner plate eyes, freezing every vein and muscle solid. The cold was tempered by a scalding terror that knifed her stomach and thrust itself upward to touch her stopped heart. It built pressure against her breathless lungs as if it might force a scream out of her parched throat, or burst trying.
Something quietly began to rise out of the water a mere foot away from her.
The scream broke free and echoed again and again through all the sewers of Zootopia as an enormous saurian head oozed to the surface, water parting and running over olive green pea-gravel scales back into the lake. All the ewe could do was float and gawk in mortified awe at the creature's sheer size. It grinned at her with an enormous mouth lined with ivory daggers as transparent membranes flicked forward and uncovered algae colored eyes; the two slit pupils dilating as they fixed themselves upon her. Dawn felt a fine mist fleck her face as the nostrils flexed and exhaled noxious steam, sending droplets out over the water. The jaws began to open up into a cavern of cadaverous grayish-pink flesh, the teeth becoming jagged rock formations.
"Well, well, well, what have we here?"
Dawn's jaw dropped as she heard a deep, dulcet voice echo out of a throat lined with the cold, stony walls of a bottomless well.
Reptiles couldn't talk. When mammals had cast off the yolk of savagery and began to think, reason, and build, their scaly foes were still crawling through the primordial ooze; still preying upon one another as they always had. And yet this thing, this creature that had remained unchanged for millions of years, whose gaping jaws still lurked in the subconscious fears of mammals since time immemorial, had spoken to her. She could see now that its eyes weren't the glassy, feral eyes of a dumb beast—they twinkled bright in the dark with thoughts and emotions produced by a brain as sly and cunning as the ewe's own.
Dawn became aware her mouth was moving, letting pitiful whimpering sounds that were trying to be words flutter like idiot moths into the musty air. The creature's smile grew wider as it let out an amused chuckle, the water fizzing around its mouth.
"Why, it's an itty, bitty, little lamb," its voice rumbled from deep inside its chest, "Well, what brings ya all the way down here?" The reptile began to inch forward, the rest of his titanic body rising from the depths. A wall of gravelly scales slithered around the ewe, her log bobbing gently on malicious ripples generated by a tail sheathed in segmented leather plating. She felt the monster's eyes picking her apart as it circled her, taking in the terror plastered to her face, examining the way she floated in the water, sizing up her shivering skeleton and carefully measuring every ounce of flesh that clung to it.
"Hold the phone…"
Dawn's stomach churned bile to a sickly froth as the great beast came to a stop, the waves sloshing the fluids of her innards as she struggled to keep a steady eye on the creature. It presented its head to her again, the tip of its wrinkled snout brushing inches away from her muzzle. Its narrowed gaze suddenly widened, and the ewe saw a devious flash in its pupils; a snapshot of some secret thought to be stored and hidden away for later.
"Dawn Bellwether!" it howled, water dancing over the huge field of scutes that plated its back as it chortled heartily, "Well, this is a surprise, ain't it, folks?" A sheet of greasy water smacked the ewe's face as the creature swung its gigantic skull around to face the others. They stared back blankly, a few of them vanishing beneath the surface. Dawn cringed as the reptile turned back to her with its crooked grin, its tail lashing thoughtfully behind it to send whitecapped waves crashing into the walls.
The ewe quaked breathless in the water and blanched at the beast. Her name had passed through the lipless maw of the leviathan. She could hear the recognition in its voice; read it in the subtle shifting of its smile. If it knew who she was, it had to also know what she had done, and what she had planned to do. Dawn felt her heart drop into her boiling stomach.
"Seems it's my lucky day," the creature said, its rancid breath flecking her glasses with spittle, "Or rather, our lucky day." Dawn barely had time to blink before it lunged forward and rammed its snout into her log, pushing her toward the embankment. She cried out as her back collided with solid rock, the log slipping out of her grasp and teetering away on her wake. The ewe squealed and thrashed blindly until her hooves clamped onto the layers of swamp-scented slime caked over dark masonry, chest heaving as she scrambled to pull herself up. Her toes at last slipped into a foothold, and the ewe hurled her body onto trash-strewn brick, her water-soaked wool squelching like a damp sponge beneath her jumpsuit. Dawn lay still and panted as the water leaked into the mortar joints in the floor, running out to dribble back into the lake.
She turned her head as an avalanche of garbage tumbled to the floor nearby, spent soda cans and emptied bottles clunking and ringing down the mounds of shifting trash. Her eyes stretched open in horror as she saw the creature slithering out of the water. Droplets flecked from the lopsided coif of wool on her head as she weakly pushed herself up and crawled backwards, unable to pry her gaze from the beast. Scaly clawed feet slapped against the stone as they hauled a long, serpentine body from the water. The ewe curled up smaller open as more and more of the seemingly endless creature rose from the pool, plowing through the piles of refuse like a dragon through its hoard. Her heart jumped as the reptile slowly began to rise from the ground like a serpent, a deep rattling growl sounding off in its chest as the top of its head grew closer to the ceiling. Its powerful legs bowed as they supported its bulk, its tail swaying in the water behind it.
The world grew dark as a behemoth shadow eclipsed the flickering lights. Dawn found herself staring up into the face of a monstrous crocodile; a towering prehistoric giant so huge it rivaled an elephant in height. A claw shot out to snatch a dirty bundle of cloth hung on the wall. There was a snap of fabric and dust as he shook it out and slipped it over his shoulders, sliding his arms into sleeves stitched with twine. It was something like an enormous trench coat patched together with scraps of grimy tarp, with two wing-like coattails to allow his tail to trail behind. Loose garbage trembled on the floor as he began to swagger toward the sheep; the pale scutes of his underside showing like a wall of dirty marble blocks.
Several times Dawn tried to speak, but her thoughts were consumed by the sight of the gargantuan jaws grinning far above her head; about how easily they could shatter bone and rend flesh into paste. At last she found her voice cowering and curled deep in a dark little nook of her mind. She forced it out into the world in a hoarse croak.
"What are you going to do to me?!" A dented can of bolts spilled over her shoulder as she tried forcing herself even further back, the whole scrap pile resettling itself with a clatter that pierced the eerie stillness of the cavern.
"Oh, don't worry, Ms. Bellwether, I got no intention of doin' ya any harm. You're a guest in my humble abode. And 'sides," he chimed, "Ya should be askin' me what I can do for you." His double rows of ivory spikes parted in a laugh as he looked down into the dumbfounded stare on the ewe's face. Dawn swallowed the sticky lump of terror in her throat and breathed in sewer damp with raspy lungs.
"…Who are you?"
The crocodile flashed a thousand teeth in his smile and bowed his spine to thrust a gigantic leathery claw at the ewe. She nearly screamed as she felt the rough fingers close over her hoof, her arm flopping limply as he gave it a vigorous shake.
"Oh, of course. Where's my manners? 'Round here I'm known as 'Crocodile King' or 'Overlord of the Underground', or 'Sultan of the Sewers', though I 'spose those are more whats. As for the who," his free hand drummed its digits against his chest, "Call me Stubbs." Disgusted tremors corkscrewed up and down Dawn's body as she yanked her hand out of the reptile's clammy grasp and scraped it across the floor with a shudder. Something slithered behind her back as the crocodile returned to his full height and prompted a mortified squeal from the ewe. A tail crested with scalloped scales drew itself tight around her middle and squeezed water from her wool. Her eyes bulged from their sockets as she was lifted clear from the ground and brought close toward Stubbs' saurian smile.
"Don't eat me!" Dawn's wail became a panicked bleat as she squirmed in the crocodile's tail, thrashing her limbs and clawing at his snout. Her tiny balled fists thudded dully against wet, stony skin and the bedrock skull beneath it. The wildfire fear in her veins slowly burnt itself out as she saw the puckish gleam in the reptile's eyes, her arms falling lifeless at her side. The great jaws opened in a guffaw and unleashed a cloud of rotten air into the ewe's face, her eyes watering as the sickening scent of decay filled her wrinkling nostrils.
"Already said I wasn't going to. C'mon, Ms. Bellwether, put aside your prejudices and hear me out." His laughter died down into a coy giggle that sieved its way through his teeth as he turned away. Dawn's line of vision lurched violently as the crocodile broke into a lumbering gait, his viperous tail swaying behind him as his colossus of a body tilted from side to side. Tremors shook their way up his pitted scales and rattled the ewe's bones every time his lizard-clawed feet stomped against the brick floor. She hung limp as a rag doll in the as he carried her over the litter of thousands of streets, toppling stacks of damp, melting newspapers that spanned decades, slogging through piles of tangled and rotting twine, scattering buckets of bolts rusted to a powdery orange.
"You're the first mammal to make it down here," sang Stubbs, his smooth voice ringing off ancient masonry to lurk in dark forgotten corners, "'Here' bein' Reptopia; my own little kingdom beneath your city." Dawn gritted her teeth as she was swung towards a wall, peering through her dirty glasses at a metal sign hung crooked on the bricks. It was an old road sign that had once greeted travelers into the city; 'Welcome to Zootopia'. The blue paint had chipped and peeled away at the edges as rust ate it away, but the white lettering was untouched save for three red letters scrawled over 'Zoo'.
"I know; it ain't much," continued the crocodile as he strode deeper into the chamber, "'Specially when ya compare it to what ya got on the surface. But I think you'll find it's got all it needs." Mold spores and mortar dust breezed over the ewe as once more she was swung through the air to face a collection of grotesquely aged machines that shuddered in their scratched and dented casings. They hungrily sucked power from thick cables that snaked from jagged holes in the wall and hummed with purloined electricity. The ewe was yanked onward before she could even guess their purpose.
"I make do with what I can get my hands on," purred Stubbs as he tugged the lapels of his billowing coat with pride, "And I can get my hands on a lot." Another twist of his tail sent Dawn lurching to the left and knocked her glasses askew. She hastily straightened them to see a crude shelf lined with radio guts and clock innards; primitive but lasting electrical components laid out in cluttered rows among half-finished projects and secondhand tools. But it was what lay beneath them that made the ewe gawk. Mud-caked broaches glittered beside golden wire wrought into necklace chain and rings studded with dusty jewels in metal bins on the floor, sharing their space with tarnished coins and crumpled, bleached bills worn down to fibers.
Dawn's gaze was torn away from the derelict treasures as the crocodile's tail suddenly opened. She landed with a plunk onto a makeshift table, sending vibrations over oxidized sheet metal to rattle loose junk scattered across its surface. Quick as lightning she rolled over and sat up, wincing as a dozen aches and pains cried out all over her body. Stubbs loomed before her with his great green oil lamps of eyes glowing with thought in the dim lighting.
"But clever as I am, for well, a crocodile, I find I'm lackin' in certain…" he twiddled a claw through the air, "We'll just say 'knowledge' that I need to complete my goals." A chill passed over Dawn as she pondered his words, and that dreaded feeling of helplessness that had been growing in her gut since she awoke reached a terrifying peak.
"Goals?" Her voice quivered as it echoed the word on dry lips.
"Exactly," answered Stubbs with a crisp snap of his jaws, "'Matter of fact, they ain't that different from yours." A cryptic smirk crept over his craggy precipice of a snout as he watched confusion bloom on the ewe's face. "Ya wanted to make the world a better place for little guys like yourself, didn't ya?"
Something twisted itself into infinite knots in the pit of Dawn's stomach as memories of better times flittered across her glistening eyes.
"I-I did," she murmured, "But what does that have to do with your, uh…goals?" She clenched her teeth at the way Stubbs' eyes lit up.
"Well, I want the same for my subjects," he answered, "These poor, unfortunate souls are trapped beneath a city that abandoned them." He pointed his snout to the dark lake beyond the hills of garbage where the red eyes still shone. "Pets, Ms. Bellwether," he added, "Pets and decorations that outgrew their welcome, and then flushed down the drains." Dawn tensed at the somber steel that had slipped beneath the velvet of the crocodile's voice, clutching at her jumpsuit as his dark slits flickered in her direction. "They didn't ask to be brought here. So I think we're owed a little somethin' for our troubles." The ewe sat quietly while cold metal bit at her legs. The seconds ticked by as Stubbs drummed his claws on the table, ensnaring the ex-politician with a wry glint in his gaze. Dawn felt her fingers close around her shoulders.
"…What do you want?" A shudder shook her spine as the reptile's beastly grin laced itself along his jaws with deadly civility.
"A place on the surface for all my crocodilian comrades," he replied, the jovial tilt returning to his tone. "Somewhere we can set up our own little district. 'Reptopia II', if you will." Dawn searched his leathery features, and in spite of how playfully they glowed she could find no hint he was joking.
"That's a very nice idea," she peeped, "But I don't think, ah, I could, well…help." She flinched as the crocodile suddenly leaned across the table and prodded her temple with a gnarled digit.
"On the contrary," he sang, "What I need is right there in your big, beautiful brain." His jaws lurched closer to the panicked ewe, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but as assistant Mayor I'm willin' to bet all legislation went through you, right?"
"Th-that's true," gulped Dawn, "But-"
"And I 'spose you went through all the paperwork for city planin' and infrastructure?"
"Well, yes, but that's-"
"Which would include recent updates to sewers, subways, and those wonderful climate-maintainers all across the city?" The crocodile's foul breath fogged the ewe's glasses, but through the rancid steam she could see his teeth just about to touch the lenses.
"…Y-yes." Her heart jumped as the reptile suddenly drew back and clucked in the back of his throat.
"Then," he purred, "We're in business. That is, if you're willin' to help me."
Dawn quietly stared at the creature and choked on the sickly glob of fear she couldn't swallow.
"And…if I'm not?"
"Then ya don't have to," shrugged Stubbs, his fingers intertwining themselves behind his back as he turned and gravely marched back into the shadows, "I'll take ya to the surface and that'll be the end of it." The ewe's eyes welled with skepticism as she watched his tail swish and creep over the floor. "I know what it's like to be forced into somethin', Ms. Bellwether, and I know ya do as well, and I'd never, ever wanna do that to ya." A sigh wheezed out from powerful lungs to shake dust from stone and loosen dirt caked in mortared joints. "But, that bein' said, I think it'd be a mistake."
Dawn's nose twitched as she peered at the half-hidden giant. Anxiety conjured up twisted spiders to scuttle about inside her body and scratch and jab at her ribs with needle-sharp legs. She wanted to leave now more than she ever wanted anything in her life. And yet the reptile's last sentence had rooted her to the spot; hinted at some terrible secret he was hiding from her.
"Why?"
The crocodile's silhouette shifted its head over its shoulder to look back at her.
"Because, Ms. Bellwether," he murmured, "There's nothin' to go back to." A fine layer of silt was ground between brick and leathery soles as the he pivoted around. "Where ya gonna go? Back to prison? Or ya gonna try your luck on the road, always runnin' to the next town and hope the law don't catch up with ya?" An uneasy tightness seized the ewe's chest with icy claws and forced her spine rigid, her gaze locked ahead as the dull green pebbles of the creature's snout ventured out of the darkness. There hadn't been time to consider her next move since she'd awoken. But Stubbs had brought up a point she'd eventually arrive at. The police would be on high alert for Zootopia's greatest criminal, and would hunt her down until she was caught or dead. There was nowhere she could hide, no one who would hide her. Dawn slumped and shrank into herself as a horrific realization sank into her brain.
The police wouldn't be the only ones after her.
The very thought chilled her to the bone. In prison there had been guards to keep mammals from ripping her apart. There wouldn't be any on dark street corners, in back allies, or anywhere else she could think to hide. She was no safer in the city than she was among the cold-blooded beasts that skulked beneath it.
"I don't know…" Her shoulders heaved with an icy shudder.
"I might." The crocodile slithered further into the light. "Ms. Bellwether, I gotta stress again, I won't make ya do anythin' ya don't want to." His smile shone as brightly as his eyes. "On the contrary, I'll help ya with anythin' ya need or want." Dawn looked up at the reptile as he drifted through the stagnant air towards her, tiny granules of dirt crunching beneath his webbed feet. Her face became a jumbled mess of anxiety and cynicism.
"But why would you after I…"
The words spilled out past her teeth before she even realized she'd spoken. She clapped a hoof to her mouth as if she could still stop them, eyes stretched wide and brimming with mortified regret. But Stubbs' smile never faltered.
"Oh, that?" he chuckled, "Don't worry 'bout it. Fact is, that's the reason I know I can trust ya." Another laugh wormed its way out of his throat as he looked down at the confusion on the ewe's face. "That whole thing showed me ya were different; different from all the other mammals in the city. Ya saw what they couldn't. Ya knew things weren't fair, and tried to change 'em. But they didn't understand, did they?"
Dawn gingerly raised her hoof to touch where a cloven hoof had struck the back of her head a day before; by another sheep, no less.
"Well, no, I can't say they did," she chuffed.
"That's gratitude for ya," continued the crocodile, his scaly palms slapping down on the table, "Can't say I'm surprised. But what really gets me is how easy everyone else got off. That bunny got her job back after blowin' up that subway car on public property; that con artist fox got off for his scams…They even put Lionheart back in after all he did."
Bitter embers ignited and began thawing the fearful frost around Dawn's heart. Her tiny hooves seized up into fists as she looked away. Ever the politician, Lionheart had been able to turn his situation around almost immediately after she'd been caught. Locking away the savage predators had suddenly become her idea. It was Dawn's idea, he'd told the press, to keep the crisis a secret. His testimony had been used against her in court, and everyone had bought it. There was some truth to it, and in a twisted way he'd finally given her credit for something. She'd subtly left documents about Cliffside on his desk after the first attacks began and kept innocently mentioning issues with his public image to make him afraid. He'd perfectly fallen into her trap, but with the meddling of Judy and that crook of a fox he'd weaseled out of it. The same night Lionheart was celebrating his reinstatement, she'd been laid up in the prison's infirmary with a broken arm.
"I'm aware," the ewe mumbled.
"Is there anythin' you'd like to do about it?"
She looked back to the crocodile, who grinned broadly as his tail swayed and cast serpentine shadows on the wall. A familiar dark curiosity rose from the back of her mind and wrestled with the layers of terror and mistrust that had locked into place since she'd laid eyes on the reptile. Pearly teeth clenched in her soft white muzzle before it opened again, her hooves nervously clasping together and pressing against her chest.
"If I said yes," she breathed, "What exactly could be done about it?" She suppressed a shudder as a strange fire blazed in the crocodile's eyes.
"Why, a whole lotta things," answered Stubbs, "Anythin' ya can come up with, really. Same goes for that fox and bunny." Dawn's fingers clenched around her palms. Temptation fluttered forth and teased her brain with visions of a broken lion pulled from office by a frenzied mob; a speechless fox and a sobbing rabbit disgraced and thrown behind bars. Baleful eyes twinkled behind oversized glasses as her lips curved into the ghost of a smile. They had passed through her mind before, but only as bitter fantasies borne of spite. The mere possibility that she could make them reality pulled at every fiber of her being. They'd taken everything from her. If there was any way of getting back at them, making them suffer like she had...
Her train of thought skidded to a halt as she looked up at Stubbs, her gaze turned shrewd and filled with suspicion.
"You're sure you could make…something happen?" The crocodile leaned forward over the table and winked a leathery lid over an oily marble eye.
"Absolutely," he sang, "I have my ways." The table trembled as he pushed himself away and swaggered over to the wall. "I got a few systems worked out. Lemme show ya somethin'." The titanic reptile slunk over to something that had evaded Dawn's eyes until now. What appeared to be the remains of a payphone had been mounted high on the stone wall, the casing broken and beaten with age and surrounded by bundled masses of frayed wires that trailed off into the darkness of the chamber's vaulted ceiling. Stubbs pulled the phone off of the hook—or at least, part of it. The old black handled thing had been cut in half, jury-rigged into something reminiscent of the earliest telephones. The stiff ringlets of plastic wire stretched as the crocodile raised it to his ear, turning his snout to the speaker and carefully needling the tips of his digits over a tarnished keypad.
Dawn was honestly surprised when she heard a faint ring buzzing from the machine. Stubbs grinned as someone picked up, and heartily pouring his honeyed voice into the speaker.
"Hello there, Mr. Weselton…" He paused for a moment. "Yes, Weaselton. I apologize."
Dawn's ears rose at the name, eyes flashing in recognition. She hadn't heard what had become of Doug's supplier aside from a few mentions in news stories of how she'd been thwarted.
"I have a guest with me today, and was wondering if ya could pick up somethin' for 'em. Hold on." An eager ivory grin swung back to face Dawn. "What would ya like to eat?"
The mere mention of food made Dawn's stomach cringe with a hollowness she hadn't noticed until now. The ewe stared dumbly at the crocodile for a moment as she tried to find words. For the first time in almost a year she had a choice in what she ate, and now that she did hundreds of options sprang up at once, each one as tantalizing from the last, all screaming out to be picked.
"Uh…A-a grass-burger…"
"From where?"
"Mcdoenalds!" the ewe suddenly blurted, crawling over the table to its edge on shaking limbs, "A number one, extra large, extra fries, ketchup and a large Cola! Please!" Dawn gritted her teeth and looked away to hide the faint redness of her cheeks. She hadn't meant to sound so desperate. But she felt ravenous, and the aspect of eating something that wasn't prison food greatly appealed to her. Stubbs smiled and turned back to the phone.
"Gonna need ya to go down to McDoenalds, Mr. Weaselton, and get us a Number one, extra large, extra fries, ketchup, aaand~…a large Cola." His claw slithered down into one of the many pockets on his coat and pulled out a polished piece of brass; an old alarm clock that had been reworked into something like a pocket watch and hung from a length of chain. "And could ya get that to us in…ten or fifteen minutes. Take that to the spot on Moss Boulevard. Thanks. Goodbye." The receiver clanged as Stubbs hung up and shifted his gaze back to his guest.
"I got some connections," he said, sliding back up to the table, "Not many, but enough."
"You said that was Weselton," The ewe slowly backed away from the edge, not taking her narrowing eyes off of the reptile, "How do you know him?" The crocodile leaned over and perched an elbow on the table, meeting her gaze with a cunning grin.
"Well now, that's somethin' I gotta thank ya for," he answered, "Saw his name in the paper after all was said and done about what ya did. Figured he could use a helpin' hand after all he'd been through." Dawn's mouth opened, but Stubbs chuckled before she could utter a single word. "And don't worry; he ain't gonna rat no one out this time."
"How do you know?"
"'Cause he don't who I am," laughed Stubbs, "Ya think I let every mammal know there's a talkin' croc under the city?" Realization quickly bloomed on Dawn's face.
"Drop points?"
"E~xactly," chimed the crocodile, "All over the city." His tail glided across the floor to the boxes underneath the shelves, the tip curling around a wad of tattered bills. A sudden flick of armored muscles landed them into the reptile's hand where powerful claws began to count them out.
"Please excuse me, Ms. Bellwether," he said, "Gotta go leave some incentive for Mr. Weselton. I'll be back shortly with your supper." The table shook as he turned away, his heavy steps carrying him off into the darkness. Dawn watched silently and clasped her fidgeting hands, her mind racing at a million miles a minute with everything that had just happened to her.
"…Mr. Stubbs…" Her plaintive voice wavered through the stagnant air and reached the crocodile, his great obelisk of a body coming to a halt.
"Yes?"
An eternity passed before Dawn spoke again.
"I'll do it."
A smile that would have chilled her blood formed itself in the shadows.