Zoo Read online

  Zoo

  The Enclosure Chronicles

  Volume 1

  Tara Elizabeth

  Zoo

  Tara Elizabeth

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2013 Tara Elizabeth

  Cover Art by LMS Designs

  indieebookcoversbylmsdesigns.wordpress.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Revised Edition: May 2013

  Also by Tara Elizabeth:

  Exalted

  Coming Soon: DENOUNCED (EXALTED: Book 2)

  Courage does not always roar.

  Sometimes courage is the quiet voice

  at the end of the day saying,

  “I will try again tomorrow.”

  - Mary Anne Radmacher

  THE

  PAST

  BEFORE THE ZOO

  Before dying, being imprisoned in a human zoo, falling in love, being held captive by a King, and witnessing a rebellion, I was living a pretty regular life. Like every senior, high school was totally sucking the life out of me. I was too busy studying than actually having a life. Fortunately, I only had three months left before graduation. I planned on going away to college. I applied to eight out-of-state universities, even one as far away as Hawaii. I couldn’t wait to get away. It wasn’t that I had a bad life or that I was ungrateful, I just wanted to see what else was out there. I wanted to discover who I really was, away from everything I had ever known.

  But I never made it to graduation, because I died. I died from two letters. Two!

  Yep, that’s right. I was one of the unlucky ones that actually got into a car accident while texting. Typical.

  I was average in every way including how I died.

  This is how it happened . . .

  It was a Saturday afternoon around 5:45 pm. I was on my way to my friend Avery’s house to tutor her. And yes, I was actually going to tutor her. I didn’t lie to my parents so I could run off to a party like a “normal” senior. I know it’s shocking, but like I said, I didn’t have much of a life outside of school. Plus, physics was kicking Avery’s ass in a major way. I wanted to help her.

  She sent me a text, asking me to pick up some fast food on the way there. “burgers fries sodas. biatch!” I took my eyes off the road long enough to type “OK.” That’s all it took.

  Screech . . . Smack!

  I had drifted to the right, hopped the curb, and had an impromptu meeting with a telephone pole (whose name I apparently missed).

  The next thing I knew, I was upside down and sort of twisted and wedged between the caved in roof and the smashed dashboard. I kept slipping in and out of consciousness. Each time I woke up, I heard gasping and gurgling. I realized the sounds were coming from me as blood poured from my mouth into my nose. Before my nostrils completely filled with the warm liquid, I could tell that it smelled like pennies, and the air smelled like gasoline.

  There were people screaming, and the emergency vehicles’ sirens were most probably wailing, but it was all muffled to me. My own struggling was the loudest of all the sounds.

  Black.

  Gasping.

  Gurgling.

  Blood on my favorite designer purse, which was next to my face, the contents missing. That was a stain that was never going to come out, and it took me forever to earn the money to buy it.

  I didn’t feel any pain, or maybe the pain was so great that my mind didn’t let me experience it. My mind didn’t really do much of anything. I didn’t even see my short life pass in a movie-like montage. What a rip off.

  Black.

  Black.

  Black.

  I gained consciousness one more time, but that time I was no longer dangling from a seatbelt in a pulverized Honda. I was sitting in a clear, plastic chair that was hovering over an all white floor. It was positioned across from a desk. Behind the desk was a man wearing clothes that belonged in an old black and white detective movie.

  What is going on? I thought to myself.

  THE INTERVIEW AND WELCOME

  I decided to call the man behind the floating desk “Dick”, not only because of his lack of compassion and answers, but because he was dressed like Dick Tracy. My Dad loved Dick Tracy movies. They weren’t terrible, but I had a hard time watching anything without color.

  Dick casually leaned back in his clear, legless chair and folded his arms across his broad chest. He eyed me for several seconds before taking out a tiny notepad and pen from inside his camel colored trench-coat pocket. That seemed strange to me since the hovering desk and chair seemed so futuristic, but I figured his note-taking accessory went with the outfit.

  “Name?” he asked.

  “Am I dead?” I asked in return.

  “Name?” he asked again.

  “Where am I?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Emma David. D-A-V-I-D.” I spelled my last name out for him because it’s pronounced differently than how it’s said aloud. The correct pronunciation is Daa-veed. I’m not sure why I went through the trouble of spelling it out for him. I guess I was just so used to doing it in my past life. Telemarketers always got it wrong.

  Dick scribbled in his infant sized notepad. “Date of birth?” he asked next.

  “May 28, 1995.” I frantically looked around the empty, white room, searching for a way out. “Seriously, where am I?”

  There’s no door!

  “You are at the People’s Past Anthropological Center.” Then, he cleared his throat and turned back to his scribbles without any further explanation. “Do you remember dying and how you came to be that way?”

  “Car accident,” I answered him. Car accident . . . I brought my hands up to my face to feel for scars or some kind of proof that the accident had actually occurred. My skin was smooth and perhaps even a little healthier. My body, arms, and legs all seemed to be fine as well. “Impossible,” I whispered to myself.

  After I finished checking myself out, Dick said, “Got you all patched up. Good as new.” He leaned forward over the clear desk and tapped his finger on the smooth surface. An image popped up like it would on a computer screen. With a flick of his finger, he spun it around so I could see it.

  It was a newspaper article with my photograph and a headline that read, “Teen Girl Dies While Texting and Driving.” I figured they had to have pulled my phone records to know that. There was also a picture of my car. It was upside down and wrapped around a telephone pole.

  At that moment, all I could think about was my mother and father, and how much I wanted to be at home with them. “But I’m alive!” I cried out. “Bring me home! Why am I in this room with you?” My voice trembled from the desperation and fear that coursed through my body. What was happening was unimaginable, and I wasn’t even sure what that was.

  “You would have died in your time. We saved you. Healed you. You will have a new life now.” Dick spewed a rehearsed line of crap to me. He looked at me with a face full of annoyance.

  “In your time . . .” I repeated back to him, obviously confused.

  Dick ignored my comment. “Watch this.” He tapped the desk again and a video popped up on the flat surface.

  A woman dressed in a 1920’s gold flapper dress appeared on the screen, standing in front of what appeared to be a zoo. She had short, black hair that was cut into a flirty bob and bright red lipstick that exaggerated her ridiculous smile. Her movements and gestures were comically exaggerated as well.

  The female flapper said with a wave and a flick of her heel, “Welcome to the People’s Past Anthropological Center!”

  I looked up at Dick who was fli
pping through his notepad, neither paying attention to me nor the video.

  The woman on the screen cheerfully continued on, “You have been chosen and saved to be part of an exhibit. We have a wide variety of exhibits with people of varying ages from many different times. Our park was the first of its kind and one of the largest in the area. It’s visited by hundreds of people everyday.”

  Images of families pointing at people under glass domes zoomed in and out behind the spokeswoman. Everyone looked happy and amazed by the silly humans.

  My stomach started to clench, and my heart pounded as my situation unfolded. The words “zoo”, “prisoner”, and “captive” flashed through my mind. Well, more like slapped me in the face.

  “Scientists worked for many years to discover the secrets of time travel. In 2216 they were finally successful, but the Global Government deemed it illegal. The effects of one person going to the past or future could be extremely damaging. But we fought hard to be able to use this amazing, scientific discovery for good. Eventually an amendment was made, allowing us to save people that were otherwise going to die without our intervention. The amendment also required that these individuals not be allowed to directly interact with the present day public, as it could alter our futures. So we created The People’s Past Anthropological Center, and from it many more Centers have been built.” She smiled again, clearly pleased with her speech.

  The woman opened her arms wide and then pointed at the camera. “We are your future and you are our past. Let’s learn from each other.” Then she ended her speech with a little kiss on the palm of her hand that she blew toward the camera.

  I wanted to barf. Was that for real?

  “I don’t understand,” I pled with him. “Why can’t I just go home? Where are my parents? What year is this?” I reverted back to being a 5 year old and started to cry. By that point, my arms and legs were visibly trembling and snot was trickling out of my nostrils.

  “The year is 2282. We will be transferring you to your new enclosure momentarily. Under no circumstances are you to interact with the public. You are to behave, follow orders should there be any, get along with your enclosure-mate, and even try to be a little entertaining for the public. If you choose not to heed my warnings, there will be consequences. Now, please sit back in your seat so we can prepare you for the move.”

  Dick was a total dick.

  I threw myself out of the hovering chair and across the surface of the desk toward him. Dick’s chair shifted to the right, and I slid right off the other side of the desk and onto the floor with a loud smack. I scrambled to my feet and beat my fists against the empty walls, searching for a way out. There were no creases in the walls or buttons or anything, but I kept pounding away.

  That was my first unsuccessful attempt to flee.

  Eventually, I caved and sat in the chair, which unexpectedly pricked my arm and knocked me out with some sort of sedative.

  DAY ONE – THE ENCLOSURE

  When I woke up, I saw green, lots and lots of green. There were green plants, green trees, and green moss covered rocks. Underneath me was a cushion of green grass. I heard rushing water coming from somewhere nearby, but the pounding in my head dulled the pleasant sound. They drugged me, and my body did not like whatever they gave me. I stayed stretched out on the soft carpet of grass, trying to adjust to my surroundings.

  “Hi there! About time you woke up,” a breezy, female voice chirped.

  I slowly rolled my head in the direction of the voice. A girl about my age was sitting on a boulder staring at me. Her blonde hair was wild, like she took the time to tease it but used a twig to do it. Her eyes were a cool blue like a clear sky. Her dress was plain. It was made from what looked like burlap or some other horrible fabric (if you could even call it fabric). It looked completely out of place on her.

  I was thinking about how awful it would be to wear something like that while I was scratching at my own skin. And sure enough, I had the same horrible fabric on. I was so mortified. I was wearing a brown sack that came to about mid-thigh, and when I checked, I discovered that I also had on tiny, bikini-cut panties. I was more of a boy short kind of girl.

  “Where am I?” I asked the blonde girl.

  “Didn’t they show you the film?”

  “Yeah, but . . . ”

  “Well, you’re in your new home.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and I almost expected her to start smacking on some gum.

  I sat up and looked around. There was a small jungle toward the back of the enclosure with the rest of the area being flat land. The jungle was thick with ferns and trees. I could see a hint of a waterfall over some low hanging vines. At the front of the enclosure, on the flat land, I could see a small vegetable garden, a fruit tree, and a cow tied to a post. Half of the space was surrounded by a rock-wall, and the rest was encased by a glass-dome.

  “This isn’t anything like where I came from,” I said aloud to myself and to the girl.

  “Yeah, me neither. All I can figure is that they want to experiment by putting us in different environments and then seeing what happens.” The girl shrugged her shoulders. “So, what’s your name?”

  “Emma David. You?”

  The girl spewed a ton of information at me all at once. “Janice Hall. Grew up in Manhattan. Got into partying young. Overdosed on cocaine in a nightclub. Been in here alone for about a month. It’s good to have some company. I started talking to the cow a few days ago. Can you believe that? They could have at least put me in one of these things with some good neighbors or something.”

  She completely overwhelmed me, and I didn’t know what to say in response. The thing that stuck out the most about her little speech was that she said she had overdosed. She looked too young to have had an overdose. “How old are you?” I finally asked her.

  “Sixteen,” she answered nonchalantly, while inspecting her cuticles. Then she dropped down next to me and grabbed my hand to have a look at my nails. She was behaving like a monkey. I could recall watching them at a regular zoo. They would sit and pick at each other, searching for bugs or whatever nasty things inhabited their fur. It made me uncomfortable, but I was so focused on figuring her out, that I let her continue for a while longer.

  Janice was so young and beautiful, and she was probably wealthy if she grew up in Manhattan. I’ve seen plenty of famous socialites on cable TV hit rock bottom before they hit 18. What a waste. Drugs were one thing that I never messed with, and she was a prime example of why.

  “What year are you from?” I could tell she wasn’t from my time, even though we were dressed the same. There was something about her that was different, besides the New York accent.

  She continued to look over my cuticles. I let her because it seemed to calm her down, which also helped my own nervous energy. She answered, “I was born in 1962. They ‘saved’ me in 1978.” She made air quotes with her fingers as she said the word “saved.” Then she asked me, “What about you?”

  The time travel crap was starting to weird me out. I felt like my head was going to explode, but I held myself together long enough to answer her. “Um, I’m 17. I was born in 1995 and they ‘saved’ me in 2013 . . . This is crazy!” Nope. I couldn’t keep it together after all. Why was I sitting there making small talk with a strange girl? I needed to get the hell out of my new prison.

  I ran over to the rock wall, searching for a door. Nothing. After I reached the glass front of our enclosure, where the public would be observing us from the other side, I beat my fists against the hard surface. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Then, I screamed some more.

  “Tried that already. It’s no use. Besides, the park’s not even open. Nobody’s here, silly,” Janice told me. She stood behind me, next to the cow, with her hand on her hip. I noticed she had fashionably tied some kind of vine around her waist to accentuate her curves under the hideous sack dress.

  I didn’t care what she said, so I ignored her and kept beating the glass wall from one
side all the way to the other. I went on that way until I reached a point where I could see into the enclosure next door. What I saw was unexpected.

  ECCENTRIC OR CRAZY

  I climbed up a couple of the rocks and boulders that lined the side of our enclosure to get a better view of our neighbor. Some of the boulders were rough, while others were slick. Some were moss and ivy covered, making the wall green in places. Our enclosure seemed to be pie shaped, and from what I could tell, our space was a quarter of one of those domes on the video. The boulders made a rock wall that covered the entire back of the pie-shaped enclosure, all the way up to the top of the dome. As the wall got closer to the front of the enclosure, it dropped down a few feet, leaving room to see next door.

  Anyway, what I saw over the rock wall was unexpected.

  A mature woman—as my mother said older women prefer to be called—was stretched out on a chaise lounge, fanning herself with a delicate and highly decorated fan. Her hair was silver, and her cheeks were tinted with a circle of pink blush that stood out against her overly powdered, white face. The gown she wore was extravagant, like she fell out of a Victorian era movie’s ballroom.

  The same glass as everywhere else separated the space between our two enclosures. Surprisingly, I could hear her when she spoke. With an English accent, she said, “Oh my. Had I known I’d be having guests, I would have dressed in something more proper.” She sat up and scooted to the end of her lounge chair, fluffing her skirts.

  “Have you come to hear me sing, young lady?” she asked me.

  “Good job,” Janice grumbled below me. “It’s horrible, and now she’ll be at it all night. I’ll never get any sleep.” She stomped off to someplace in the jungle portion of our enclosure.