The Petting Zoos by K.S. Covert

Author:K.S. Covert [Covert, K.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Dystopian
ISBN: 9781459748828
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2022-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

Going to a Rave

NOW THAT I knew they existed, I knew my series on the zoos and the connections people make there wouldn’t have been complete without mentioning the raves. The zoos were for adults — I hadn’t thought about what teenagers needed or how they were getting it. Eleanor and Dan reluctantly agreed to let me in and write about the experience, but only if I disguised the location and all the players, and any details that could lead to them.

The zoos, good food, and regular exercise had taken years off my face and pounds off my body, but even with a decent haircut and new hair colour, I would still be older than even the oldest ravers by at least two decades, and I looked it. Eleanor told me that the kids who came to the raves were re-creating major art pieces on their faces, and she painted a fairly reasonable version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on me, bright circles of yellow on a blue background, which disguised my age to anyone looking at me from a distance. The ravers were still wearing Impermatex clothes — it was really all they’d known; only the very cool kids had fabric like untreated denim. Eleanor instructed me to buy an outfit in a style different from what I’d usually wear — a short skirt and form-fitting crop top whose two buttons both fell below my cleavage. When I raised an eyebrow, she said, “Don’t worry, you can pull it off. You’ve really tightened up since you got the rowing machine.”

“I’m not worried about pulling it off — I’m thinking about how little things change. We come through the apocalypse and girls are still dressing to titillate. What do the boys wear?”

Eleanor shrugged. “Whatever they please. A lot of the girls cover up, too, but when you figure that back in the day, they’d be wearing filmy baby-doll outfits and sucking on pacifiers, this is really quite staid and unexciting. Plus, it’s fun to see you put it all out there for once.” She smiled a little wickedly. “I mean, who knew Impermatex could be sexy?”

When we walked in the neighbourhood, she pointed out to me the coded invitations to the event in what I’d assumed was random anti-BLT graffiti on the sides of buildings. It was illegible to anyone who didn’t know the language. A musical note within a lightbulb inside a circle meant the first Saturday of the month; outside it, with devil horns, meant the second Saturday.

“We try not to create patterns for events that anyone can discern, so it’s not always the first Friday or the second Saturday — we randomize the choices.”

They ran shuttles from downtown. Any teen lucky enough to be able to drive to the venue was instructed to park in the back, where cars couldn’t easily be seen from the road. The warehouse itself was well soundproofed, so not a lot of the noise leaked out, in case there were any passerby even in this remote part of town, surrounded by empty houses and derelict shopping malls.

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