The Spy's Little Zonbi by Cole Alpaugh Read Free Book Online Page B

getting hurt is no good, although you might be back at square one with a news photo. A kid being loaded on a stretcher next to an ambulance is a one news photo. Now, if the kid dies from getting hit, then you may have a three, but they may not run the picture at all. This is a small town. Displaying pictures of dead children is frowned upon by local advertisers.”
    â€œ So we have to come up with a front page feature photo every day?” Chase fiddled with the camera in his lap, still trying to grasp the f-stop versus shutter speed conundrum. “One per day and it may or may not get bumped to section two if there’s spot news?”
    But Limp had apparently decided he’d covered enough details. He closed his eyes and held an index finger to his lips for Chase to be quiet then adjusted the seat for a nap. Chase rolled down his window and felt the cool air trapped in this shady ravine. The air smelled like a circus, with hay and animals and something sweet like cotton candy. There were happy screams and gentle conversations as people milled about. The half dozen picnic tables just outside the zoo entrance were crammed with families.
    Limp began to snore so, camera in hand, Chase carefully escaped the Accord and found a spot on a long log converted into a bench.
    One little boy, maybe three years old, dropped and retrieved his popsicle, meticulously picking away bits of dirt and dry leaves. A couple lay tangled on a blanket in a narrow spot of sunshine. Using his belly as a pillow, she read a book, while he faced the passing clouds. An old man fed squirrels from a baggie, but they kept returning to empty peanut shells, apparently spoiled by other treats.
    Chase figured Limp would rate these all a one as far as feature pictures went. Then he heard the sounds of some commotion—urgent voices—coming from the direction of the zoo entrance. Families from the picnic tables paused to look up. Chase was preparing to investigate the racket when he recognized laughter mixed in with the angry shouts. He held his ground when he realized the ruckus was coming toward him.
    The laughter and screams came from fifteen or so children moving in an excited group. They half-surrounded an elderly zoo volunteer carrying a whisk broom, attempting to herd an uncooperative litter of pink piglets back to the enclosure they’d apparently escaped from.
    The litter of ten moved in unison, with fish school precision. They brazenly rushed the frustrated woman, nipping at her boot toes, then wheeled about toward the children, who backed into one another with shrill screams. The wall of kids would re-form as the woman steered the litter with the broom, and the little pigs again found her boots interesting, possibly edible.
    Chase crept toward the scene, set his exposure to automatic, and manually advanced to a new frame. He knelt ten feet from the woman, who was trying to brush the piglets in a new direction they didn’t want to go. He squeezed off a frame, advanced, and took another. The woman’s monogrammed zoo cap was askew, and she wielded the broom with no sense of menace. The background of these images was the smiling faces, the pointing fingers of the children. Chase took frame after frame, shifting to stay at a distance, kneeling for a better perspective. Then from back inside the zoo came a loud grunt and two high-pitched squeals, as the mother pig apparently had woken alone. The tiny herd immediately altered course and sped full throttle in retreat. The spectacle was over. All that was left was frozen, Chase hoped, among the millions of light-sensitive silver halide crystals that made up the film in his camera.
    Chase caught up to the woman before she could disappear back into the zoo, and she was happy to give him her name and confirm she lived here in town. She’d been volunteering at the zoo since losing her husband to cancer in the summer of seventy-five. “You better have gotten my good side,”