1. Reincarnation

Skipper just saw the light and endless infinity of radiant harmony. He felt that warmth streamed through his body and gave him new strength. Since he was dead, the leader was in a kind of an endless sleep. No sound could be heard and everything around him was like a sea of blazing light beams.

Skipper felt perfect, emotional emptiness, and yet he could remember everything that happened before his death. He remembered his friends, his team, his family. Skipper had to leave them behind grieving and through this he felt an infinite misery. The leader felt guilty because he wasn´t able to help them in their grief. He couldn´t do anything anymore.

But as those bitter thoughts came back to his consciousness, he heard a distant cry. Resounding cries of the small Private, who had repeatedly screamed after him, since he had entered the realm of the dead. Skipper had died too early that he was totally aware of. In fact, he was still in his prime and was unexpectedly pulled out of life. For no reason.

Suddenly the scene changed and he heard Private´s calling even louder. This had never happened since he had landed in the afterlife. He felt alive again and the bright light became more and more to a deep black darkness. Skipper couldn´t see where his journey led him now, but he knew that something would happen, he never would have expected. He would return to the realm of the living.

The leader was lying on his stomach and felt the cold floor underneath him. Dusty air surounded him and he heard all sorts of noises. Dazed, Skipper opened his eyes and saw everything blurred at first. It was night in Central Park, which was the only thing that he was able to recognize.

He felt as if he had slept for months. Dazed and dizzy Skipper tried to turn his head slightly and his body obeyed him immediately. The leader was alive again. After a few minutes his sight became clearer. He was lying on the mound of earth, of his own grave. Skipper saw Marlene's lovingly decorated grave stone and suddenly he felt his senses came back to life again. "Where ... am ... I?" muttered the leader weak and tried to get a clear head. Gradually, his mind returned again and Skipper knew that he had returned precisely to the place where he died.

With trembling wings he tried to push himself up from the ground, but somehow his muscles were too weak and he fell down on his belly again. Skipper rolled onto his back and wanted to look at the starry sky, like he used to did somtimes.

But where once was a clear night sky the leader saw just black mist and green haze which were probably caused by the lights of New York. But something was different than he remembered. He heard no sounds familiar, but a frightening silence, which he didn´t know.

Usually a few isolated voices of the zoo inhabitants could be heard at night, or the typical background noise of the city. But nothing of all that Skipper heard now fit into this familiar pattern. The leader felt as his strength increased and he was was able to sit up again, but what he saw then, he had certainly not expected.

Skipper looked around and all he saw was a mess. Central Park was no longer a sea of green meadows and trees, but a dry ground and dry thickets that once were the magnificent beech and pine trees. Skipper felt how his heart wrenched and he didn´t want to even think about how the zoo looked like now.

But he couldn´t resist the temptation and got up slowly. A strange musty smell rose in his nostrils. The smell of death and devastation. The leader wasn´t even sure about beeing in New York after all, because everything had changed so much. Skipper turned around and wanted to go to the zoo, hoping to find answers there.

But he discovered with horror that the entire zoo was just a ruin. The walls were torn down and all the habitats looked as if they had been hit by a bomb. "Oh, no. This can´t be true." Skipper muttered horrofied and slid on his belly towards the entrance. But the gates didn´t exist anymore, but just a bunch of rust and rubble lying next to the former entrance.

The bell tower was completely destroyed and the clock laid torn on the dusty ground. Skipper felt a cold shiver down his spine and he tried to suppress his fear. When he entered the zoo, he realized that no one lived here anymore. Everything was deserted and isolated traces of blood were seen on the muddy, cobbled floor. Skipper was hyperventilating because he simply could not grasp from this shock.

As fast as he could he ran to the penguin habitat, which was once a beautiful home. But even from a distance the penguin saw, that half of the concrete island had been blown up, so that their HQ was completely vulnerable now. Even the fence that had surrounded their habitat had disappeared and their nice pool was dryed out.

Skipper got into a panic because he didn´t know what disaster awaited him inside. He quickly climbed up the remnants of the island, looking from the top of their now exposed HQ. But it was so dark, he could hardly see anything and so he decided to climb down there to look for clues. He carefully climbed down the ladder and the penguin had to be careful that he doesn´t fall down, because some of the steps had been taken out of the wall.

When he set foot on the ground, a dense cloud of dust whirled and Skipper coughed. After the dust had settled, he realized that no one besides him was pesent here anymore. "Kowalski? Rico? Private?" cried the leader into the darkness, but his voice just echoed from the walls and no one answered him. Skipper looked around.

Everything was completely destroyed. Their soft pillows were completely ripped to shreds on the floor, their TV screen was cracked and all the furniture were scattered in the whole room. Skipper got an unpleasant stinging in his stomach, because he would not even imagine what had happened to his friends after he saw the chaos down here.

But he had to do something, Skipper would look for them until he found his team. The leader sighed and looked sadly at the last remnants of his once beautiful home. The penguin didn´t know where he should start searching. He had no choice but to search the city for them. He slowly climbed the ladder again and went outside.

Everything was shrouded in an unnatural darkness and it was so quiet that he could hear his heart beat. Again and again Skipper tried to listen to any single noise, that would give him a clue, but the only thing he heard out here, was a bitterly cold wind, that made the penguin freezing. Skipper couldn´t explain what had happened.

With a heavy heart, he headed to the city and hoped to find answers. He didn´t know what would await him there, or what was left of the metropolis. Quickly he crept through the park to the main road, where not just one car could be seen. Skipper looked to be the proud skyscrapers that are now deserted and eerily. Not a single light was visible, that somehow gave him the feeling that anyone was alive here. But despite of all the silence, Skipper felt something watching him.