The Cageless Zoo

By Thomas K. Carpenter

Visiting the galaxy's only Cageless Zoo should be a special treat for Melandre and her children. Except she's still trying to reckon with her husband's recent death and how she's going to raise two highly independent children on her own. As their visit quickly falls to chaos, Melandre learns that family is the only thing left she has to rely on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Carpenter
• Release date: May 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458171405

Thomas K. Carpenter

Thomas K. Carpenter resides in Colorado with his wife Rachel. When he’s not busy writing his next book, he's out hiking or skiing or getting beat by his wife at cards. Visit him online at www.thomaskcarpenter.com, or sign up for his newsletter at https://www.subscribepage.com/trialsofmagic.

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The Cageless Zoo

A Novelette

By

Thomas K. Carpenter

Copyright Information

The Cageless Zoo

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas K. Carpenter

The Cageless Zoo Copyright © 2011

Published by Black Moon Books at Smashwords

www.blackmoonbooks.com

Cover Design Copyright © Rachel J. Carpenter

© Robert King | Dreamstime.com

Discover other titles by this author on:

www.thomaskcarpenter.com

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Cageless Zoo

Copyright

About the Author

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The Cageless Zoo

SEE THE GALAXY’S ONLY CAGELESS ZOO

The glittery sign hung above the rows of vehicles. Melandre gripped Natalya’s slender shoulder and held her tight as a tour bus rumbled past.

GRAB THE LION’S TAIL

Letters scrolled across the hazy morning, right above the weather beaten green-copper domes, scattered across the grounds like giant moss-covered rocks. When they neared the zoo, Andrake had said it looked like a bunch of tortoises waiting to eat the people strolling through the entrance. His sister, Natalya, had told him that tortoises were vegetarian and then they’d argued until Melandre, with hushed intensity, told them to be quiet.

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE CHTHULU-BEAST

Andrake, her eleven-year old son, hung back, fiddling with a hacking wand.

That’s the ambreimareus, her daughter said, indicating the sign with her free hand. And it has tentacles, not hands.

Hmm… Melandre acknowledged the comment, then spun back, yelling at Andrake. Quit dawdling!

She accessed her son's system and sent a flash of light across his eye-screens.

Didn’t have to do that, mum, said Andrake as he shoved the hacking wand in his pocket and rubbed his eyes. I was almost done.

MEET THE GALAXY'S MOST DEADLY PREDATORS ALL IN ONE ZOO

He gave his mother a crooked you’re-always-hassling-me smirk and an eye roll.

Melandre’s heart dropped a few inches. He looked just like his father when he did that and then before she could close that door in her mind she recalled the last time she saw Philippe—walking out the door with a knapsack slung over his shoulder, scruffy black hair barely hiding his gray eyes, smiling and winking as he slid into the Darwin Institute vehicle. He promised he’d be back in three months.

Since his death, she hadn’t been sure she could raise their two children alone. They were still so young.

Who’s dawdling now, mum? Andrake tugged at her shirt.

Natalya gave her hand a squeeze. You need to do this. We all do. Her daughter’s eyes moistened at the corners. Melandre felt her own well up.

Plus, it’ll be fun! And like that, the rainstorm was gone. At least for her daughter.

Natalya ran ahead through the entrance, coffee-skin soaking up the light of the morning sun. Andrake chased his sister and they tumbled into the park, laughing and even holding hands.

Melandre checked the horizon back toward Steelzine. Faint ochre-colored clouds perched above the city. Sand storm coming. Still an hour before it would overtake the zoo.

Around the corner under the first dome, she found Natalya petting a lion laying in the shade of a great arching tree, tail undulating in the manufactured breeze. A few onlookers stood near: Tansies, Church-folk, Hyllers, Earthlings like herself, and the like. Not as many as she thought might visit. Varagen was still a new planet in the Federation.

The way the lion stared peacefully in the distance while her daughter stroked its creamy fur unnerved her. She knew the eye-screens painted an augmented reality overtop to hide them behind. Made them appear as another lion on the savannah or not at all, depending on the program's logic matrix.

But still, adrenaline shot through her veins, making her breath quicken. It’s unnatural to mingle with the beasts, she thought. They used to hunt us. And technology doesn’t always protect us, nor did it protect my husband. That’s when she saw the sign, as if it were waiting for her to remember.

SEE THE FEARSOME HYWAKALAR—THE FLOWER-TOOTHED LIZARD

A full-sized representation painted across her own eye-screens—an advertisement featuring one of the zoo's assorted creatures. Its horrid green body was low to the ground like a speedster. Long protruded nose sported a split-row of teeth that opened like some toothy flower, both horizontally and vertically. The beastie roared and she swore it mocked her.

Turning her back on the phantom Hywakalar, she sensed Andrake causing trouble. She crept around a grove of trees to find him hiding between two colorful booths that printed up trinkets on demand, pointing his hacking wand at an acarnocrat in his thick, layered metallic garments. The man swatted at a giant ghost moth buzzing around his head as her son silently laughed at him from his hiding spot.

Melandre grabbed him by the ear.

Reviews for The Cageless Zoo

[denisa8howe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A delightful… gory surprise.