Zoo (3 page)

I couldn’t help but wonder
what happened to our world. I asked myself, w
as there a certain point that we became this way? How is
anyone okay with what’s happening here?

Dick strolled back to his chair with a lazy
gait and slowly lowered himself down. He casually leaned back and
unbuttoned his tan trench coat. “Now, here’s what’s going to
happen. You’re going to go back to your enclosure, farm for your
food, milk the cow, and go about your daily business. Don’t talk to
the public, don’t cry outside of your hut, don’t scream so people
can hear you, and don’t look for a way out. There isn’t one.
Understand?”

I didn’t answer him. Instead, I stuck my
tongue out at him from across the table. It was a childish thing to
do, but I couldn’t do much else. I think he got my point.

“
Don’t say I didn’t warn
you, brat.” Dick snapped at me.

Then the chair injected me with something.
The lights went out milliseconds after the sting of the needle.

ROOMIES

After my scolding, I was returned to my
enclosure. The park had closed, and the sky had darkened. Close to
our huts, I sat with Janice around a small fire that was contained
within a circle of fist-sized stones. Every once in awhile, an
artificial breeze would blow through our enclosure and make the
flames dance. Unfortunately, the air wasn’t fresh. It was the same
recycled, stale air that was there when I first woke upon my
arrival. I still favored it over the teasing fragrance of all the
food when the park was open. It was strange—the glass dome was a
barrier, but also wasn’t.

“
Sorry about not warning
you before.” Janice apologized again. “I did the same thing when I
got here, and they took me to that white room. Is that where you
went?”

“
Yes,” I answered. I was
still angry and frightened from being taken.

“
I haven’t done anything
to get in trouble since then. I don’t want to find out what’ll
happen, you know?” She stretched her tanned legs out in front of
her. Her brown sack dress was resting on her slim thighs. I was
envious of her beauty and a little upset about her not warning me,
but not enough to hate my only companion.

Instead, I directed my negative feelings
toward the nightmarish place where I was being imprisoned. I was
seriously pissed, scared out of my mind, and feeling completely
sorry for myself. I went on a blind rant. “This sucks. How am I
supposed to live in a freaking jungle-farm with an opera singer and
cavemen as neighbors? I mean, I was supposed to go to prom and
graduate. My parents were paying for a kick ass senior trip for me
to go to Paris. I was going to move away and go to college. These
clothes are awful. I don’t have any shoes. I have to sleep on the
ground. And how am I going to lose my virginity now? There aren’t
any guys here that I can date, not to mention marry . . . I miss my
life and my family. I miss . . . ” My voice caught in my throat.
Tears were on the verge of spilling from the corners of my
eyes.

Janice interrupted me with giggling. “Wait.
You’re a virgin? That does suck.”

“
Shut up,” I snapped at
her. “I had more important things to worry about than sex with some
loser high school boy. I was trying to earn a scholarship so I
could go to school wherever I wanted.”

“
Actually, you’re luckier
than me. I was so drugged up most of the time, I couldn’t tell you
whom I’d been with.”

I stared at her and shamefully judged her
for her past life, but I also pitied her. It was shocking to me
that Janice was only 16 years old. “Well, you’re lucky then, in the
sense that you get to start that part of your life over. No drugs
or crazy partying to screw you up. I mean don’t get me wrong, this
place is totally screwed up, but I don’t think there’s any drug
runners around here.” I can’t believe I was actually trying to
pretend this place could be a good thing.

“
I know, but I’ll always
have those crappy memories. At least the ones when I wasn’t passed
out or too high to remember.” A deflated laugh escaped her lips as
she nervously twirled her hair around her finger.

Her story made me sad for her. I wanted to
change the subject. “So, what’s with the people dressed in clothing
from all different eras?” I asked.

“
Not sure. It’s weird,
right?” she replied with an empty gaze.

Obviously, Janice wasn’t all that concerned
with what was going on outside of the enclosure, so I asked her
about inside. “You’ve been farming down there in the garden?”

“
It’s not like they make
it out to be. Although they don’t technically put a cooked meal out
here for us, they still provide us with food. Everything is
replenished right away. When you take a vegetable out of the
ground, another one pops up in its place. The same thing happens
with the apple tree. I have no clue how they do it, but I swear
that’s what happens. And I’ve milked Betsy, the cow, a couple of
times. It really creeps me out.”

“
What about meat? We
aren’t supposed to kill the cow are we?” I was suddenly panicked
and grossed out by the thought of butchering a cow. That would be
enough to make a vegetarian out of me.

Janice nodded her head toward the left,
motioning toward the rock wall. “There’s fish in the little pond
over there. Pretty easy to catch them.”

Maybe I would turn vegetarian after all. I
couldn’t see myself gutting a fish.

Janice shrugged her shoulders in response to
the face I made. She’d been in the enclosure long enough to get
over such things. A month. I wondered what I would be like after a
month. Right then, I was scared and angry, but I was still hopeful.
I’d always been able to work my way out of a bad situation. So, I
was convinced it would be the same in the human zoo. It had to
be.

I was feeling the conversation had run its
course, so I stood up and excused myself. “Going to grab an apple
and take a shower. See ya in the morning.” I turned to leave, but
stopped when I realized something horrible. I glanced back at
Janice. “They can’t see us showering or using the bathroom, can
they?”

“
I know the public can’t,
since the latrine is inside that hut and the waterfall is
surrounded by the jungle. But I don’t know about the people that
run this place. Who knows what they can see. I mean, they come into
the enclosure out of thin air. So maybe they
can
see us without us seeing them.
Best not to think about it.”

Fabulous.

THE KEEPERS

“
Whoa, who are they?” I
asked Janice about the Keepers, since it was the first time I had
experienced them making their rounds through our enclosure. They
were wearing white coveralls that even covered their heads. A clear
shield protected their eyes, probably because they got tired of all
the people spitting in their faces and wised up. Too bad for
me.

“
Those are the
Keepers—like Zoo Keepers. They come by every seven days to do
maintenance checks or something. It’s the only day of the week that
the park is closed. I guess that means it’s probably Sunday. Oh,
and they scan us with that thing that’s floating around. Not sure
what it tells them because they’ve never told me when I’ve asked.”
Janice answered me, while pulling weeds out of our little garden.
You’d think the place would have taken care of that since they
seemed to take care of everything else.

The Keepers didn’t
acknowledge our presence, not like we were people anyway. They
spoke to each other with hushed voices, and pointed at things here
and there. They used the floating device to test the water and air.
They even scanned the glass dome. They made notes on the clear
screen that followed them around in the air.
It was so sci-fi.

One of the Keepers used his index finger to
drag the clear screen in front of Betsy. He pressed something of
the screen. It lit up with images of the cow’s organs as he moved
it along the animal’s entire body. When the scan was complete, he
flicked the screen in front of me. I backed up and away from the
strange thing; afraid it might hurt me or inject me with something
to knock me out. It followed me. When I moved left, it moved left.
When I moved right, it moved right. It followed me all the way to
the enclosure’s side rock wall. I couldn’t back away any further,
so I just closed my eyes and waited.

Nothing happened. I opened one eye and then
the other. I saw that Janice was being scanned, and I was standing
there alone. She didn’t appear to be distressed or even mind that
they were doing whatever it was they were doing. She kept on
plucking away at the weeds.

The Keepers finally left after checking
stuff out in the back of the jungle area. I crept through the thick
foliage and watched them as they departed. A door in the rock wall
appeared out of nowhere, almost like a shimmering portal with a
faint outline. It was just like Janice had described. They walked
straight through the wall. Of course, I ran toward it right after
they passed through, but all I found were rough boulders. No door.
No cracks. Nothing. I beat my fist against the rock wall in
frustration. I even kicked the hard surface, which was a huge
mistake because Janice and I weren’t provided with shoes.

I was so annoyed, and my big toe was
bleeding, but damn it, I was going to get out one way or
another.

ESCAPE PLAN (OR LACK THERE OF)

“
Janice!” I yelled out to
my only companion, as I made my way down to the vegetable garden.
“Hey, we need to talk.”

She was still crouched down, like she was
when the Keepers came through for their inspection. It was so
strange to see her like that. Patient. Calm. Levelheaded. Not at
all like what she described her former druggy self to be like. At
least not what I would have thought she’d be like. It was nice to
see her well.

“
Yeah?” she answered
without looking at me.

I stooped down next to her and whispered,
“We need to get out of here. I can’t take this.”

“
We can’t get out genius,”
Janice responded, clearly annoyed. “There are no doors. Not ones we
can access anyways.”

“
What if we wait for them
next week when they come back, and we rush them? We could do it. We
could make some weapons and ambush them.” I sure did think I was a
genius. At the time, I thought it was a great plan and well thought
out.

Janice stopped her mindless task of weeding
and considered my idea. I could see the wheels turning in her
pretty head. “I don’t know. What if we don’t succeed? They’ll
probably punish us. And what if we do? Then what? We have no clue
what will be on the other side of that door,” she argued.

“
Well, we’ll never find
out if we don’t try. Do you really want to spend the rest of your
life stuck in here?” I asked her.

Janice glanced at the glass dome. I could
tell she was thinking about the daily crowds that watch us, and
that she’d never be able to be out there with them enjoying life to
the fullest. I’d thought about that myself. Even if I couldn’t go
back to my time, I still deserved freedom. We all deserved it—even
the creepy cavemen.

She finally answered me, very quietly, like
she was afraid of being overheard, “No, I don’t want to be stuck in
here alone my whole life. I want a chance to start over. Live my
life right. Have a family. You know . . . be normal.”

“
Good, then we’ll make
some weapons, and when they come next week, we’ll be ready for
them. Sound like a plan?”

“
Sure. I’ll make a spear
or something. We’ve got some good branches around here for that.”
She looked toward the jungle as she made plans for her weapon’s
construction.

I wasn’t going to waste my time. A good rock
would do the trick. Now I just had to sit back and wait for our
golden opportunity.

BLAH.

Why did the week take so long to pass? I
mean seriously. I was anxious to escape, and I was bored out of my
mind. I spent Monday people watching. There was a school field
trip. Dozens of groups of children passed our enclosure all day.
They seemed just like the children from my time—snotty nosed,
whiney, and loud. A couple of them even threw food on our glass.
Some kind of blue gunk dribbled down the slick surface, which
caused them all to laugh hysterically like a bunch of hyenas. I
wished I could have thrown something back at them. Of course their
teachers scolded them, which gave me some satisfaction.

I actually enjoyed
watching the women that came through, who were wearing all
different styles of clothing. My favorites were the women that
dressed like Jackie O., with their pearls, oversized sunglasses,
and designer dresses. I was always under the belief that every girl
should know who Jackie O. is. Focusing on fashion was one of the
things that helped me get through American History class.
Really.

The strangest ensemble, however, was on a
man. He was of average height with a firm build. I believe he was
in his early twenties, and he was dressed like a hula dancer. He
must have been imitating native Hawaiians or Polynesians or
something. It was almost comical to see him walking around with no
shirt and a grass skirt. He had tons of black tattoos swirling all
over his body and something pierced through his nose. It looked
like a tiny bone.

He stood in front of our enclosure for a
while with his arms crossed over his chest, watching us. Well,
mostly watching me. He creeped me out enough to make me move back
into the shelter of the jungle foliage. I found a spot where I
could watch him. I was able to pull back a few large leaves so I
could see him without him seeing me. He didn’t move from his spot.
He kept a lookout for me while I stayed hidden. There was something
about his eyes that was so familiar . . .