BEGINNINGS
7 – A Family Favor
"Why in the bloody dazes are you sending him here, then?" Muldoon was talking on the warden office phone and sounding irritated. Pet watched him from where she sat nearby and wondered what was going on. "Bobbi, I can't stop everything I'm doing for two months and watch him." Muldoon leaned onto his desk and grumbled. "If he needs behavioral adjustment, then send him to a-" He stopped in mid-sentence to slam his hand down. "Damn it! There have to be other options!" Pet's gaze drifted over to where Jophrey sat. They exchanged frowns. "Fine, but the second he sets one foot out of bounds, he's out of here! Got it?" His slamming the phone back down on its receiver rattled the desk.
Pet quickly snapped her attention back to her book before she got caught staring.
Jophrey questioned. "What's gotten you all riled up, over there, Robert?"
Muldoon got up and strode over to the office fridge to retrieve a bottle of water. "Apparently my nephew, Derek, is getting into trouble and my little sister, Barbara, thinks sending him down here to work during the summer will straighten him out."
Jophrey chuckled. "Eh...it's probably a phase he's going through for his age. He's seventeen, right?" Muldoon nodded. "All kids go through that rebellious age. It's just something he has to grow out of."
Muldoon stood upright and scowled at the second leading game warden. "He thinks he's a damn bounty hunter. Not to mention the two counts of criminal mischief and four shoplifting charges added with the several tickets against him for reckless driving and excessive speeding. There are other things as well, but that's mostly at home. Here last week, Bobbi was telling me how he stole money out of her wallet and took off with his father's car." Muldoon aimed a finger at Pet and continued. "Consider this your first and only warning, Pet. Should you dare set a claw out of line and get into legal trouble, I'll personally kick your ass!"
The hybrid sinisterly growled behind a scowl. Jophrey questioned. "What does the boy's father think of this?"
Muldoon plopped down in his desk chair. "He doesn't have any place to complain, seeing how he spends more time in jail than anywhere else. The bloke is a piece of shit if you ask me, always taking the rent money to get drunk at the pub. Then stumbles around town making a complete wanker of himself because he's piss drunk. Bobbi was smart to divorce him some years back. First thing she did afterwards was go back to her maiden name. Even Derek willingly pushed for a legal name change from Boswick to Muldoon." The senior game warden took his computer out of sleep mode and sat back in his chair to review the day's work schedule.
"Wow..." Pet sighed out. "You'd know all about being a drunk ass, hmm?"
Muldoon was at his feet and lunging towards the hybrid when Jophrey stopped him. "Whoa, Robert!" The assistant warden cut his eyes over to the hybrid. "Why did you have to say that?" Jophrey was doing it best to restrain the man until the struggling subsided. The senior warden jerked himself out of the other man's grasp and stormed back over to his desk. Jophrey shook his head to the hybrid before returning to his own seat.
A little while later and after the warden shack had fallen quiet, Muldoon's desk phone rang again. He took his eyes off his computer and to the offensively blaring object. He answered it, finding it to be his sister again. "What do you mean he was just arrested for carrying a handgun around?" The man sank in his chair in dread as the hybrid smirked a bit.
Fifteen minutes later, the conversation was still going on strong as profane rants slew from the senior warden. They were even enough to make Jophrey feel uncomfortable. He closed down his computer and collected his rifle from its leaning against a wall. "Come on, Pet." He tapped on her shoulder to get her attention. "Let's go. We've got a few things to do."
The hybrid hung her head low and closed her book. "One of those few things wouldn't involve that croc would it?"
The look in Jophrey's expression gave the hybrid her answer. "Don't worry. I got your back." Grumbling, the teenager got to her feet and followed her friend and co-worker outside and to the zoo's game warden Jeep.
Pet panted for breath and sloshed her way out of the crocodile enclosure's waterhole. She was completely drenched and wearing a disapproving scowl. "There," she grumbled, "I got the bloody croc's nose restrained." Her raptor-like eyes squared down on Jophrey. "Your turn to do some work."
The African man laughed and patted the hybrid on the shoulder. He and a veterinarian waded into the water and began harnessing the tranquilized reptile for transport. The animal was almost wholly loaded onto a transport trailer when Muldoon finally arrived. It would've helped to have the Jeep, but since he didn't, he had to walk and the distance wasn't exactly short.
He took one look at Pet and huffed a semi-laugh. After the crocodile was secured, the wardens loaded back up in the Jeep and followed the veterinarian to the central facility.
Muldoon spoke. "In three days, I'm supposed to go pick up my little shit of a nephew from the airport. Before then, though, I need to talk with Hammond about the work details he can do." He stretched out in the driver's seat. "I'm thinking of having him on zoo pen clean up. Nothing like cleaning piles of shit to ruin someone's day."
Jophrey laughed to himself. "Oh boy. He's going to love the ape pens, then."
A sly smile crept across Muldoon's face. "I'm looking forward to it already."
Pet's eyes widened, and she whimpered. She remembered when she had to clean the pens as a punishment for talking back. A shudder ran down her spine and she sank lower in the backseat in an attempt to hide her horror-stricken face behind her book.
Once they arrived at the central facility, Muldoon dropped off Jophrey and Pet to assist the veterinarians. Afterwards, he drove to the building housing Hammond's office. Hopefully the man would be where Muldoon hoped he was and not somewhere else.
It wasn't until later that evening that Pet saw her guardian and friend again. In his hand were rolled up pieces of paper stapled at one of the corners. The hybrid was curious to know what it was. She planned to take a peek at it the first chance she got once Muldoon's back was turned.
That wasn't for another twenty minutes after returning to the warden shack when he excused himself to the restroom. Pet quietly slid out of her chair at the break table and read over a few of the details on the first page of the stapled stack.
Jophrey mouthed, "What is it?"
To which Pet mouthed back, "A chore list."
She returned to her seat as quietly as she got up the moment she heard the toilet flush. There was no doubt in her mind the chore list was meant for Muldoon's troublesome nephew and grimaced at some of the chores. Some of them included scraping old gum from underneath all the picnic tables, scrubbing all the toilets, emptying the zoo's many trash cans, picking up trash carelessly discarded on the zoo grounds as well as her least favorite chore, animal pen cleanup. Pet heard Muldoon wash his hands and then exit the restroom while drying his hands off on a paper towel.
Muldoon gave no visual acknowledgment to the hybrid, sitting at the table and pretending to read, as he spoke. "Just for being a little snoop, you get to show Derek how to properly do the chores for the first few days."
Pet snapped her head away from her book and to her guardian in horror. "Wait, how did you know I snooped around and looked at the list?"
"I didn't," the man coolly replied. "You just ratted yourself out by asking how I knew."
"Bu-wha-" Pet gave a frustrated hiss of a screech.
"I keep telling you to keep your nose in your business." Muldoon grinned at the angry flustered hybrid.
Under the surface of his scheming façade, however, was genuine fear he refused to let anyone see. He was terrified how his nephew would take Pet. Would Derek be afraid and thus, run around screaming about what she was? Or would he accept her and even come to protect her from the evils of InGen and the rest of the world?
Friends and family were all Muldoon had to live for. He had pretty much given up when his wife divorced him, leaving him with a hell of a life he wasn't prepared for. Then came Pet four years later and for the first time in a long time, he felt he had a purpose in life, again. It was for that reason, his purpose to protect his little Pet, that he feared every day would be his last day with her. Losing her to an animal on the job was the least of his concerns. It was more the people in fancy suits and lab coats that kept his blood running cold. He could only hope and pray Derek wouldn't contribute to her potential bad fate at the hands of InGen.
The morning of Derek's arrival came sooner than desired for Muldoon. It was five-o-clock in the morning and Derek's flight was expected to land at approximately eight twenty-five. Getting up this early wasn't the problem; it was having to deal with the morning traffic in Nairobi. He hated driving in traffic and always pawned off the task for supply pick up in the city on Jophrey.
Muldoon slid out of bed and shuffled to the trailer's bathroom down the hallway. His unintentionally slamming the door behind him jostled Pet out of her pleasant sleep.
She cracked a raptor eye open and looked around her bedroom. Was it really time to get up already? It was still dark. In order to check the time on her nightstand's alarm clock, she needed to roll over first. Pet debated on that. She was extremely comfortable where she was and refused to move. If it was time to get up, Robert would have to drag her out of bed kicking and screeching. With that, the hybrid drifted back to sleep.
Muldoon finished his shower, got dressed and ready for another day. He poked his head into Pet's room to find her buried under a pile of blankets and a down comforter. All that could be seen of her was a tuft of messy hair at one end of the bed and a clawed foot poking out of the blankets at the other end. It was still too early for her to wake up, as their day really didn't start till six-thirty, but he needed to wake her up.
Muldoon was still deciding what to do with her for the day. Did he want to chance fate by bringing her with him to the airport to pick up Derek? Or did he want to leave her at the zoo while he discussed things over with his nephew as preparation before his meeting the hybrid? The mental debate was incredibly tough. The last time he left Pet at the zoo, trusting Jophrey to keep watch on her, she did nothing but grief Hammond.
Making up his mind, Muldoon banged on the hybrid's open bedroom door with the side of his fist. "Get your ass out of bed, Pet!" She grumbled something inaudible beneath the covers. "Next time I'm telling you, it's going to involve ice cold water poured on you." Still she didn't move. "You have five minutes or else." Muldoon checked the time on his wrist watch and strode back down the hallway, calling behind him, "Consider yourself warned."
In those five minutes, Muldoon prepared a glass of ice water and made him two pieces of toast while a fresh pot of coffee brewed. Every time he poured him a cup, all he could hear was Jophrey's voice teasing him about him being the only Brit he knew that drank coffee. It was whatever to the senior game warden. At the end of the five minutes, there was still no sign of the hybrid attempting to wake up. So be it.
Muldoon took the glass of ice water in one hand as he munched on a piece of toast in the other. He towered in the doorway to Pet's room to see her just as he left her. The last bite of toast was shoved into his mouth before he reached down to yank the blankets off the sleeping hybrid.
Pet hissed a snort in annoyance when splash! The sudden assault of ice-cold water on her head, shoulders and back shot her upright in the bed and falling to the floor in a series of hisses, screeches, shrills and barks.
Muldoon swallowed his bite of breakfast and stated, "I warned you." No sooner did he turn to walk back to the kitchen when he was tackled from behind by the furious hybrid. He really couldn't say he was surprised and was mostly prepared for it.
Regardless, the force of her impacting him still brought him to a knee. She shrilled out and hooked a sickle claw into his belt. Muldoon took hold of her ankle and pried her toe's claw out of his belt while her hands lightly clawed his chest.
"Pet, you git!" The game warden struggled with the hybrid for a few minutes to loosen her grip off of him. He slammed her onto her stomach on the floor and bent one of her arms behind her as he brought his weight down on a leg to pin hers down. "I don't have time for this shit." Pet snorted a bark. "Now if you're done being a brat, get dressed and be ready to leave in ten minutes."
Muldoon got off the hybrid and stepped over her frustrated form to continue his trek to the kitchen.
Pet glared at him and shook against the icy chill that had set into her from her drenched pajamas. She snarled, "Bastard," under her breath and got up.
