Sophie-Louise Donkely couldn't recall the last time being out alone at dusk had filled her with so much dread.

She glanced at the large gun by her side, the long barrel shining slightly red in the dying sunlight, and swallowed down her fear as she drove her truck down one of the two roads that cut through Braithwaite National Park. It was a large area that covered the southern thirty percent of the Floraglades. Something very wrong was happening in these emerald tropical wetlands, and she was going to find out what. She owed this place that much.

Becoming the Floraglades' first jennet park ranger had become a dream job that she hadn't aspired. She'd joined the Miami PD as soon as she was old enough, for the wrong reasons now that she'd thought about it, but she'd experienced so much dumb-ass stereotyping on the job that she'd quit after only two years. After a month of moping a buddy of hers, a Phillipine Pangolin who'd moved here from Zootopia, had suggested that she join him on a volunteering gig to get her out of her funk. For two years she and Ruben Agbayani had helped to maintain the tropical wetlands of Braithwaite National Park, and she'd fallen so deeply in love with the place that she'd signed up to be a park ranger the first chance she got.

Twelve years had passed since then, twelve years of handling permits, educating visitors and conducting patrols on the road and on the water. Nothing really dangerous, unless you count the reptiles, but even then, they were perfectly safe to be around if you knew what not to do. Then this morning, Agbayani had gone on patrol on this same road. Five miles into his usual route, a porcupine that had burst out the foliage and into the truck's path. Agbayani had hit the brakes, stopping short of the mammal by inches, and got out to investigate. Immediately, he had seen that this was no wayward tourist. The porcupine had been carrying a harpoon, and he had lost a lot of blood from some deep claw marks on his chest and stomach. His jacket had been ripped open, the shirt beneath shredded. Agbayani had searched the wounded mammal and found a pocket full of high-calibre rounds on his person; combined with the harpoon, this was classic poaching equipment. Agbayani arrested him on the spot and brought him back to base.

The moment she took on her shift and heard that there were poachers in her wetlands, Donkely had immediately requested permission to take a gun and go search for the bastards. "Not in my backyard." were the exact words she'd used to argue her case. Permission was granted, and now here she was, a Thompson Center Contender rifle in the seat next to her, fast approaching the spot where Agbayani had made his arrest.

The sun was setting, the sky blood red when she reached the location and got out the truck. In the middle of the road she saw a couple of drops of blood, left behind by the wounded mammal. After taking a quick look around, she turned her attention to the side of the road where Agbayani reported the porcupine had emerged from. She spotted some flattened wiregrass smeared with blood where the porcupine had pushed it aside.

"Waits, I'm at the location where Agbayani found the porcupine. I'll try and retrace his movements." Donkely reported to her superior through her radio. With the rifle in hoof, she began her trek into the feral terrain beyond the road.

Tracking a mammal's movements in the wetlands usually took a lot more work than this, especially when you were following those tracks in reverse, but in this case, she just had to follow the blood. There wasn't too much of it, but it was easy to spot the distinctive crimson against the greens and browns. It was still moist, unable to dry quickly in this humidity. The porcupine had been taken away into police custody by the time she'd started her shift, so she'd had to imagine what his wounds had looked like. When she did, she envisioned long deep gashes, the kind inflicted by Howlywood abominations. She couldn't think of any creature around these parts that could do that to a full-grown pincushion, even the large ambush predators that never strayed far from the water.

Then she thought of Zootopia. The infamous and bloody savage attacks that brought the world's biggest city to its knees. She stopped in the middle of the jungle and contemplated turning back.

She exhaled heavily to calm herself. That was highly unlikely. Not here in the wetlands, where Night Howlers could not survive.

An hour passed since she left the road. The sky turned darker and redder. Donkely would have to get her flashlight out soon.

Then her feet suddenly found the edge of a marsh and sank ankle deep into the murky water.

The incredible hazard of her position hit her like a torpedo. She panicked, stumbling away from the water until she lost her balance and fell back onto solid land, flattening the tall grass. She scrambled further back until she hit a tree and stared at the water with grey eyes wide with fright. She breathed heavily, filling her nostrils with the countless odors of the marshlands.

"Fuck me." She whispered hoarsely. She blinked and realised how dark it now was. Only the faintest shimmer of the water's edge was visible.

She hadn't thought this through. She should have considered how many hours of daylight she had left when she decided to go off road. If she didn't find the poacher's cohorts in ten minutes, she was going to call it quits.

First Donkeley retreated a little further from the water's edge, aware that the creatures that dwelled in the marsh were most active at dusk. Then she took out her flashlight and searched for the blood traces she'd been following from the beginning. She found the trail in the flattened vegetation. She slowly turned the flashlight upward, using the beam to follow the blood safely without straying too close to the water again.

The blood stopped at the water. The light travelled upward, looking for any signs of the poacher's friends. Or his attacker. She searched specifically for glowing red lights, small and far apart, poking out of the water.

Donkely paused, spotting something else roughly ten meters from her position. A small dinghy with an outboard floated in place, barely making a ripple. There was a small stack of harpoons and a duffle bag full of supplies, but no mammals. Through her sense of deep unease, she felt some contempt for the owner of that boat. These clowns had clearly thought that it would be a good idea to take a submerged propeller into an underwater forest of plants, getting stuck when the propeller was inevitably entangled. There were two bag packs in the boat as well, which meant two poachers at least. Donkely doubted that the porcupine's accomplice was still alive.

She looked further up the marsh with her light. If the attacker had possession of a body, it was unlikely to still be in the area, but she had to be sure.

She froze when the beam of her flashlight found the eyes, twenty, twenty-five meters from her position. Large, yellow-white, and close together. Like camera backscatter those delusional ghost hunters liked to misinterpret as 'orbs.'

Hell, no.

Donkely took a step back. As she stared, the orbs got bigger. Closer.

No, no, no.

She hit the tree again and moved around it, retreating further into the grass. The eyes kept moving toward her.

Get out of there.

Instead she aimed her rifle, even as her instincts screamed at her to get out. If she didn't leave right now, she was going to die. She aimed at the darkness between the eyes, where a brain surely lay. Her hoof closed over the customised trigger.

The eyes vanished.

Her hoof pulled the trigger before she could stop it.

The gunshot exploded through the silent night as the bullet hit the water and shattered on impact.

Donkely stayed where she was for only a moment. She saw no sign of whatever the hell those eyes had belonged to.

To hell with this. She was getting out of here, back to the truck and back to the station. She wished she'd never come. She turned tail and left, using her flashlight to follow the blood trail back through the forest.

She never heard the creature resurface and leave the water.

Donkeley ran through the claustrophobic undergrowth, feeling the chill from her soaking clothes. What the hell was that thing? It can't be… it can't be, the eyes are too close together! What was that?

She forced herself to calm down and slowed to a stop. There was no breeze to rustle the leaves and grass. The plants she'd disturbed settled into stillness. Donkely listened for anything that could be following her. The Floraglades were silent.

Donkely started walking. When her flashlight caught the far glint of her truck's windshield, she slung the rifle's strap over her shoulder so she could grab her radio, using her other hoof to hold her flashlight. "Waits, it's Donkely! Call the police, we have a-"

She felt claws grab her upper arm, jerking her to a stop, and felt teeth sink into her shoulder. It took two seconds for her brain to register the assault, and then she screamed, swinging her elbow up behind her. She hit hard muscle and felt the teeth and claws part ways with her flesh. She ran, leaving her flashlight behind, stumbling onto the road within two minutes. Waits shouted from her radio, demanding to know what the hell was happening. Donkely was too panicked to answer. The bite on her shoulder felt like pins and needles. She tore the door open, clambered into the truck and sped off without looking back.

She drove at top speed for a few minutes, one hoof on the wheel while she clutched her bleeding shoulder. Ten miles from the station she calmed enough to slow down to thirty miles an hour. She'd been wrong. It was a savage predator, just like the ones that attacked Zootopia two years ago. What else could it have been.

She realised something was very wrong when her grip on the wheel began to weaken. The muscles in her injured arm were relaxing. The next thing she knew the arm had gone limp, and she struggled to raise her other arm to grab the wheel.

As the station came into view, a horrible thought struck her, and she looked down at the bite on her shoulder. Beneath her short hair and blood, the skin surrounded teeth marks was inflamed and bruised.

"Common symptoms of a venomous snake bite include severe pain, redness, swelling, or bruising around the bite." She explained this to a group of volunteers only last week.

Her vision doubled. Her hoof fell from the wheel. And her truck swerved off the road and careened through the front entrance of the station.