PART ONE
The island still hasn’t recovered from the last time a rabbit escaped. Some sixty years ago, over the course of three days, New Zealand red rabbits popped up all over the island. Thousands of rabbits, decimating the native vegetation, destroying the fruit farms, hopping down the center of Lily Avenue. It was totally inexplicable. The only rabbits at that point were housepets brought by migrants coming from the continental US, and they were required to be neutered. The mayor of Kalima declared a state of emergency and shut down the port to prevent the animals from spreading to another island. The Environmental Integrity Agency flew in and set up a temporary headquarters to deal with the issue and launch an investigation into where these rabbits came from.
Their investigative efforts were mired by the rough terrain of the island. Kalima is the second largest island in the Northern Hawaiian Territories, but thick jungles and extreme terrain prevented most development in the center of the island. The EIA ended up with nothing. They eventually gave the search up and pontificated that the breed was likely smuggled onto the island to be used as a food source by a some hick farmer deep in the heart of the island. Six months in, the EIA pulled out completely. They set up a splinter organization on Kalima, The Compliance for Agricultural Trade and Livestock to protect the biological integrity of the island.
CATL monitors smuggling and works with quarantining inbound pets from the mainland, but the EIA deemed the rabbit problem to be beyond its scope. Instead, they contracted with Puka Ranch, the oldest and largest cattle ranchers on the island. The EIC reasoned that the ranch was able to more efficiently deal with the problem, given that they had an established presence and familiarity with the terrain. Since then, rabbit incursions into Panai City are far and few between.
That was, until now. I came to Kalima from that main island after quickly finding out that there was no work to be found for a graduate with a 2.7 GPA and an associates degree in urban rural studies. I found CATL at a job fair, their booth devoid of any lines and their table still full of the pamphlets printed on computer paper. They were almost more desperate to fill the quarantine supervisor position than I was to find a job, so we were a match made in heaven. I moved to Kalima and started working within a month.
…
And now, nine months later, I’ll be back at a job fair if I can’t find this fucking bunny. An American rabbit, belonging to the Hutchinson family, brought straight to the quarantine facility from the airport. It was too young to be neutered when they came over, and so it was up to me to look over until we could get a vet to castrate the thing.
That morning, the Hutchinsons had stopped by to sign off on the surgery. The rabbit belonged to their young daughter, and she begged to see “Milky” the whole time through the appointment. After the parents signed the papers, I brought the family into the small visitation room, and the girl played with Milky. When I went to return him to his cell, the little girl followed me to watch.
”Why’s his name Milky?” I asked curiously.
”He’s a little bunny and he’s my friend and milk is white.” I looked down at the animal nestled in the crook of my arm. He was a blue.
“Milky is blue though.”
”Bunnies are white.” She spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
I placed him in the cage and walked the family out. After that the office was empty, so I went to the vending machine that stood outside the building and bought a soda. It was still only ten in the morning, but the sun was beating down through the lush trees that hung over top of the CATL building. I finished the can and threw it at the garbage can, but it bounced off and rolled around the corner of the building. When I went to pick it up, my eyes locked on to a little blot.
It was Milky. He was standing near the back of the building, where I had let the door cracked open for airflow. His nose was twitching while he sniffed the air.
My heart sank as I realized I must have forgotten to lock the cage properly. A sexually mature rabbit was now walking free.
”Milky! Milky! Come here!”
Milky responded by turning and leaping into the jungle, disappearing into the foliage. I broke into a dead sprint, following the little blue blob hopping in and out of the leaves. It must’ve been saving all of its energy from its time cooped up in the cell for this exact moment. Whenever I was close enough to grab at it, the rabbit would get a burst of energy and run even faster. This carried on for some twenty minutes, when suddenly Milky froze dead in his tracks. I lunged to grab him, but when he hopped to the side, I realized why he stopped. What I thought was a thick bush in front of me was actually the top of a small tree; he was standing at the edge of a precipice. I plunged over the side, unable to stop myself, my feet flying over my head. As I fell, I saw the little blue spot watching me.
I slammed into the side of the hill and continued down, tumbling. When I finally stopped at the bottom, I looked around to see that I had no idea where I was. In the distance, through the trees, I saw sprawling brown-red dirt— probably a ranch. Maybe Milky would go there to eat crops. Placing a hand on the sore spot of my back, I headed toward the break of the jungle.
Just as I was reaching the border of the forest, a voice shouted out from behind me.
“HALT, NOW! PUT YOUR HANDS UP!” Turning to the source of the sound, I saw a man in tactical military gear over a crisp white uniform, wearing a red beret. He was pointing a rifle towards me.
I threw my hands up.
“State your reason for your presence here.” The uniformed man closed in, barrel still pointed at my chest.
“I was chasing a rabbit and it ran into here. I fell down a hill trying to catch it.” My voice was faltering in fear.
“A rabbit?” His tone was curious.
“I’m a member of CATL. The rabbit escaped the quarantine facility. I swear. I can show you my ID— I didn’t mean to trespass or anything.” He motioned for the ID and I slowly removed the lanyard from around my neck and tossed it to him. He looked it over and aimed the barrel of the gun down at the ground.
“You fell down a hill trying to catch a rabbit,” he read my ID again. “Florin?”
“Yeah.” When he said it like that, I realized how stupid I sounded.
“This should say Elmer fucking Fudd,” he laughed and threw the lanyard back to me. “Sorry about pointing a gun at you. Mr. Dahl has been dealing with a lot of trespasser recently. I’m Peters.” He stuck his hand out, and I met it with a weak shake.
“Dahl, as in Drummond Dahl? Is this Puka Ranch?”
“That it is. Do you know of any other Dahl?” He pulled a canteen loose from his hip and took a long drink. An idea popped into my head.
“Are you one of his rabbit hunters? Could you help me look for the bunny?”
Peters gestured towards the military vest.
“Do I look like a fucking bunny hunter? I’m part of the Puka Security Team.” He paused. “We only catch rabbits when the trapping team is busy.”
“Please, I really need help finding it,” I pleaded. “It’s a sexually mature rabbit, and if I don’t return to the office with it by tomorrow I’m going to lose my job. Its getting neutered tomorrow and I need to have it back by then.” Peters shook his head.
“Sorry man, but it’s a pretty bad situation at Puka. I don’t have the time.”
“Bad situation at Puka? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that Little Daisy Dahl was kidnapped from right under our fucking noses last night. It means my job is on the line too if we don’t get her back. Under our fucking noses. If I find out who was on watch…” Peters spat.
My knowledge of the Dahl family was limited to their ranching dynasty. Their presence on the land supposedly stretches back to when the US first arrived at the Northern Hawaiian Islands at the end of the nineteenth century. The family was one of the first from America that ventured out to settle the land, and one of the only ones that did so successfully.
They were one of a handful of families that managed to turn the hostile terrain into arable land. Kalima has remained the only island in the archipelago to have an economy based on agriculture rather than tourism.
“Someone kidnapped Dahl’s granddaughter!?”
Peters blinked at me with his mouth hanging open, stupefied.
“Are you an idiot? Little Daisy Dahl is a milk cow.”
The only living family member I ever heard of was Drummond, and he must have been in his late seventies. I wasn’t sure if he had children, but the “little” made me confident that Daisy would have been his grandchild, if not great grandchild.
“A… cow? Someone kidnapped a cow?”
“Not just someone.” Peters was staring off, irate. “No, it was those bastards at Pasteur do Blonk. They took Little Daisy.”
I assumed he was referring to Pasteur de Blanc— a hotel chain that was successful on every island of the archipelago. They built their first hotel on the island only a year ago, but they already had begun to petition the city council to rezone forested land near the property to expand the hotel.
Peters eyes lit up.
“Hey, come with me to meet Mr. Dahl. I think we can work something mutually beneficial out. To help you find your bunny and bring Daisy home.” Peters began marching to the dirt, not waiting for a reply. Getting help from designated rabbit hunters is the kind of thing I needed, so I followed Peters without objecting.
When we reached the ranch, there were two barns facing each other, one white and one red. The barn seemed to be converted into a barracks with Puka Security personnel milling in and out. The white barn was locked tight with a wooden beam placed across the double doors.
A withered old man sat in between the two barns at a wooden desk set out in the dirt. His back faced the sprawling plantation house that sat at the end of the red dirt road. Two guards stood to either side of him.
“Mr. Dahl, sir,” Peters began, startling the old man who had been looking over a yellowed map that was weighted down to the desk by a shotgun. The old man looked up, but when he saw me, he jumped out of his chair, interrupting Peters.
“Get the fuck off my land,” the old man sputtered. “I want to shoot you.” He grabbed the shotgun off the table and the map instantly flitted away. I realized that this was the second time today I was staring down the barrel of a gun. Peters stepped in front of me, arms outstretched.
“Sir, wait! I felt the same way at first, but he’s not a spy. He’s with CATL!”
“Whassit?” Dahl sniveled.
“I’m looking for a lost bunny,” I said, handing him my ID. “I was hoping that you might be able to help me find a blue rabbit that escaped from quarantine.” Dahl stared at me incredulously. “The rabbit is sexually mature.” I added. He grabbed the ID out of my hand and held it an inch from his face.
“God bless you, man. Thank you for your service.” Dahl was grinning toothlessly now that he had read over my badge.
“My apologies. I thought you were a hotel boy.” Dahl settled back into his chair and grunted. “I’d always help the EIA, you know. Always. But you came to me at a bad time. Little Daisy Dahl was taken by that goddamn bastard Louis and I need to get her back.” He spat at the ground when he said Louis’s name. His two guards and Peters spat as well.
During college, I had done a report about the ongoing zoning dispute between the Panai City Council and Pasteur de Blanc. Louis Pasteur was the owner and namesake of the hotel, and he had personally appeared before the council multiple times to argue for changing the land use designation. I had nothing against Louis, but I spat at the ground too so Dahl would help me.
Peters was the first to speak after the spitting.
“Sir, I brought Florin here because I thought of a mutually beneficial plan. Florin requires the prowess of the Puka Trapping Command to catch the bunny. We need to march on the hotel where Little Daisy Dahl is likely being held. With an agent of CATL, we can legitimize this use of force and bring her home.“ Dahl was listening intently, and started nodding excitedly.
“Yes, yes… Peters is correct. If we are to storm Pasteur Le Blanc, an agent of CATL would be indispensable. Livestock falls under their purview.”
“Mr. Dahl, you plan to occupy the hotel with your security team?” I thought they were joking.
“You don’t suppose they’ll just hand her back to us, do you? Yes, we need to storm that damn building.” Dahl spoke with righteous indignation. “God damn that hotel.” He stared angrily into the sky for a moment before turning back to look at me. “So will you accompany us then? You don’t need to do much more than flash your badge.”
“If I may ask—“
“You may.” Dahl said curtly.
“What makes you so sure that Daisy is in the hotel?”
“Leverage, of course. Leverage. I’ll tell you, giving him the land to build that monstrosity in the first place was a mistake. But I learned. Dahls are shrewd.” He tapped his head. “I paid the council to vote against any further proposal the second he started eyeing up more land. Put some of my own in there too. Fucker’ll never get it approved and he knows. So he took my Little Daisy Dahl hostage. I’ll be damned if he thinks he can take her without retribution.”
This lined up with what I read in college. Puka Ranch sent its legal team to advocate against both the hotel and its expansion. They argued that Pasteur and his affiliates wanted to turn Kalima into a tourist destination, which would ruin the agricultural industry.
“I really need the rabbit today though. It’s getting neutered tomorrow and I need to have it back in time.” I was growing concerned that Milky had got itself killed. “I’m just going to look for it in the woods, if that's fine with you.”
“It’s not. We need your help. I’ll send the whole of my hunting team to catch your little pet in time to chop his balls.” Dahl was staring intensely at me again. I turned to look at Peters and he gave me a reassuring nod.
”Okay, I’ll go with you. Just tell them it needs to be captured alive, and uninjured.” I relented. Dahl roared in excitement and smacked his palm against my arm.
”Good man! Peters, you look over him during the mission. See to it that he stays safe. Go and get some food before the mission starts.” Peters straightened up and gave a quick salute. I followed behind him as we walked to the red barn.
”Oh and Peters,” Dahl shouted from across the farm. “No milk for Florin. We can’t spare any until we get Little Daisy Dahl back.”
Inside, the barn had rows of bunk beds close together. As we wove through, the far end housed a few picnic tables arranged around a metal tap.
“Here, sit. I’ll get you some water.” I sat down and watched as Peters gave orders to another security guard that was wearing an apron over his tactical vest. Before returning to the table, he pulled a metal canteen out of a hip pocket and turned on the tap. Milk poured out, and after turning it off, he wiped the drop that was forming on the end of the tap off and sucked it off his finger. Then he sat.
”You’ll be safe and sound, Florin, don’t you worry about that. Dahl is stomping mad, as are we all. But we’re an elite force, y’know. We’ll be in and out of that shithole in a flash.” He tipped the cup back and drank the whole thing in one gulp. He swiped the bubbles that remained up with his finger and licked it.
”You must really like milk.”
“We all do here. I would give you some to try, but we’re rationing it.”
“Thanks, but I’ve had Puka Milk in the store before.” Peters shook his head.
”No, not like this you haven’t. You don’t understand.” He paused as the aproned guard place a canteen of water and an unwrapped granola bar directly on the table for me. When the guard left, Peters leaned back in and whispered.
”I’m telling you because you’re a part of this now— our ally. The milk from Little Daisy Dahl is special.”
”Special?”
“Special. Little Daisy Dahl is an old cow, Florin. Really old.”
”Is she twenty-five?” I had no idea what the lifespan of a cow was, so I took a shot in the dark.
”Try three times that. Maybe more. You see, when the Dahl’s came to Kalima, they brought their cattle with them on this very same land. Except, something different was here than the other plots.”
“If Daisy was in her seventies she would be as old as Drummond.” I don’t know how stupid Peters thought I was.
”Older. In the first generation of calves born on the island, one was different. She was… well a more perfect calf. When she grew older…” he leaned even closer. “The patriarch at the time had cancer, or at least thats what they think it was. And the milk helped cure it. He lived to a hundred-and-one.”
I would’ve told Peters to fuck off, save from the look on his face.
”You really believe this, don’t you? You’re going to storm a hotel because of magic milk?”
“Florin, I’ve seen what it's done for people. What it's done for me. It’s made me stronger, smarter. More alive. And Little Daisy Dahl was the last cow that can make the milk. None of her calves ever did. No other cow has.”
”What makes her so different?”
“I don’t know for sure. Some of the older ranchhands say the mother of the first cow grazed a certain plant, or patch of grass, or ate some fruit. But if thats the case, the plant is gone now. Doesn’t exist.”
I sipped at the water, which had a metal tang, distinct from the cup. One of the personal guards from before approached us.
”It’s time to head out.”