The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy (24 page)

CHAPTER 41
The Wave

Smoke sucking through the ceiling vent.

My hammering heart slows, my breathing relaxes.

I look back at the monitors and see a terrible sight—

The boat speeds across the lake toward the dam, piloted by Gloria’s brother Tom, Dr. Radcliffe sitting behind him with the gun trained on his head. I replay his parting words:

“You think I don’t have other ways to flood you parasites out? You think I’m that stupid?”

He’s going down to the Foundation to flood Holocene II. The moment that it hits me, I know what I need to do. My eyes jump to the toggles, remembering his doomsday directions: Phase 1 floods Holocene II, Phase 2 floods the Foundation and triggers the explosion that sets off the tsunami. The only way to stop Dr. Radcliffe from getting to the Foundation and flooding Holocene II, is to trip the Phase 2 toggle, detonating the wave. That must be why he brought Tom along. It’s another moral dilemma from the doctor of doom himself.

Tap-tap-tap—

Someone’s knocking on the safe room door.

“Aubrey? Are you in there?”

Oh, no, Hannah! How had I forgotten about Hannah? And Jimmy, too. I palm the green button, opening the door. Hannah rushes into my arms. When I pull her away and look into her eyes, they’re red from crying, but determined.

“Daddy’s on the boat,” she says. “We have to stop him.”

“I know,” I say, nodding to the monitor where the boat speeds toward the dam. “You have any ideas?”

She looks past me to the switches.

“There’s only one way.”

“You know about the wave?”

“Of course I know,” she says. “My mother didn’t raise me to be a dummy.”

“What about your mother?”

Hannah’s face drops. “She’ll be dead soon either way.”

“What about Tom?”

She frowns.

“Collateral damage.”

“That’s sounds like something your dad would say.”

“I know,” she says. “But we don’t have a choice.”

Looking at the monitor, I watch the boat speed toward the dam, skipping across the lake, getting smaller by the minute. I look back to Hannah and cup her beautiful face in my hands, wiping blood away from the gash on her chin.

“Are you sure?”

“We need to hurry,” she says.

“Okay, we’ll do it. But here’s the deal. You run to Gloria’s and get Jimmy. Have him take you up to the bluff where I first saw you. Don’t tell him why or he’ll want to come down here.”

“No way,” she says, shaking her head. “You go get Jimmy, I’ll stay here and pull the switch.”

“No deal. These are my people down there, Hannah. And I need to stay behind and do it.”

“What if you can’t get out in time?”

“I’ll get out in time.”

“You promise.”

“I promise. Now please hurry. Find Jimmy, and get to high ground. I’ll meet you there.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

I take her in my arms and kiss her.

“Don’t worry,” I say, pulling free. “I’ll see you in a few minutes on the bluff.”

She wipes a tear from my cheek.

“Not if I see you first.”

I watch her run across the dark lab, her silhouette rising against the rectangle of light coming down the stairs. She stops, hesitates, and turns.

“Aubrey ...”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”

“Yes, I do. Now go on and get my friend to safety.”

She laughs, shaking her red hair and flashing me a smile, then she turns and disappears up the stairs.

The minutes crawl by, the boat crawls across the monitor toward the dam. I have no way of knowing when Hannah and Jimmy are safe, so I wait. I wait and I watch the screens.

Hazy red smoke fills the Foundation cavern, and I know the scientists are down there still struggling to put out the fire Jimmy and I set. The Holocene II Transfer Station is dimmed for rest hours now, the machines parked, the men gone back to their living quarters. On the third screen, the sun glints off the lacquered boat approaching the dam, the monolith of stone hanging precariously above it to the right.

I look at the toggles tucked away in their panel, violent in their simplicity, only their clear-plastic safety covers between fatal disasters for all three of these separate screens.

I plan to leave Phase 1 untouched, protecting Holocene II. I’ll toggle Phase 2, flooding the Foundation and setting off the blast that will free the landslide and raise the wave. I’ll twist the key free, deactivating the panel, and race for the bluff.

I just hope I can make it in time.

Lifting the safety cover, I slide my trembling finger over the Phase 2 toggle, the plastic smooth and cold. I look in the monitor at the receding boat, an outline of Tom’s torso barely visible at the wheel.

“I’m really sorry Tom.”

I look in the other monitor at the hazy Foundation cavern where two white-coated scientists stand on the path observing the smoke rising from Eden.

“I’m sorry for you guys, too. Even though you deserve it.”

I close my eyes, preparing to pull the switch. I’m reminded of the last question on my Foundation test, seemingly so very long ago now—an impossible choice between sealing off a lower level to save Holocene II, or letting fate take its course by doing nothing. I remember closing my eyes and making a blind choice, a choice I now know was the wrong one. I think about Mrs. Radcliffe lying in her bed, dying but not dead yet. I think about the scientists down in their cavern. I think about Tom driving that boat with a gun to his head. I open my eyes.

The steps are steep, my feet heavy as lead.

I cross the living room and step out onto the terrace. The water is calm, not a ripple on its surface. Far across the lake, the boat is just a distant speck of color against the gray face of the dam. I’m numb and unsure. I’m sad. I don’t know whether I made the right choice or not. I doubt I’ll ever know.

Just as I’m turning away, a silent puff of powder bursts from the mountainside. Confused, I stand and watch. Several seconds pass and then a terrible explosion reaches my ears, and the granite monolith slides down the mountain in a mammoth tumble of dust and broken stone.

But I didn’t touch anything, I didn’t throw the switch!

The boat arcs left, turning away from the landslide.

A gray wall of water rises up—way, way up.

The wooden boat lifts, tossed like a tiny fallen leaf riding the monster surf, and then it disappears forever beneath the crushing white-cap break, rolling and thundering as it rises into the sky high enough to hide the entire dam from my view.

I’m mesmerized by its magnificence, frozen by its horror, and in the sheer gray face of the advancing wave, I see a mirrored silhouette of the bluff behind me, the tips of pine trees, the mountains beyond, as if the wave itself were a canvas upon which the setting sun is painting the landscape ahead, recording it there one final time before the wall of water rolls on and devours it forever.

You fool, I think. No man could outrun this wave.

Holocene II! The thought smashes into my consciousness, waking me from my trance. I have to know if Holocene II was saved. I have to know or my last thought will be a thought of failure. I have to know if I’ve died for any reason at all.

I turn from the wave, run inside the house, sprint across the living room, and race down the stairs to find her in the safe room, pale as a corpse, looking into the monitor, staring at the wave. Stepping up beside her, I look at the toggles—

The key is removed, the panel closed.

I look at the third monitor—the Transfer Station lights are still dim, the machines still quiet, nothing looks disturbed.

She speaks without looking away from the wave:

“The water will drain from the Foundation. When it does, you and Hannah will need to begin again. The right way.”

Me and Hannah? Does she not see the wave, I wonder.

She grabs my hand, pressing something cold into my palm. I look down and see a clear-plastic case filled with syringes of red serum, the same syringes that Dr. Radcliffe showed me. I look over and see the open refrigerator. When I look back, the safe room door is closing, sealing, the loud metallic click of the electromagnetic locks, and Mrs. Radcliffe is gone.

My eyes dart to the monitors, the transmissions dead, the screens completely black. Air rushes in from the ceiling vent, the walls vibrate, something slams against the metal door. My ears pop from the increased pressure. Then the water comes. It streams up from the toilet, leaks down from the ceiling, gushes through the cracks in the locked door. It pours in, covering my feet, swirling in a whirlpool on the floor. I stuff the syringes in my pocket and jump onto the desk. The water keeps coming. The walls vibrate again, harder. The ceiling vent breaks open, funneling a wide stream of water into the safe room, rising to cover the chair, the desk, the controls.

I’m surprisingly calm—maybe because I’ve drowned already once before. As the water rises to my chest, I stretch up and breathe in the shrinking pocket of air. Then I’m swept off my feet and pulled into the pool, paddling to stay afloat. The LED lights go dark; the safe room turns as black as any grave. I tread water, bumping into walls, kicking submerged supplies, listening to the water pour in from the blown-out ceiling vent. Then the flow of water slows to a trickle and stops.

I slow my paddling and float, listening ...

Heavy silence punctuated by my breath. Dripping water echoing off the walls. Floating blind, I paddle around the room feeling for the door. I find it. I stretch my foot down into the depths and kick the wall, aiming for the Door Open button. I’m not sure it will even work, but I’m betting the battery’s still functioning or the electromagnetic locks shouldn’t be holding at all. I feel something—yes, there it is. I tap it with my toe, but nothing happens. Then I remember there are two buttons, left one green, right one red. I move my toe left and kick again. The door springs open and the water rushes out, carrying me with it into the flooded daylight of the basement, or what would be the basement if there were any house left at all.

The ceiling is gone, the walls too. Just a gray open-air pool cut into the ground, the remaining lake house foundation encircling it above like jagged teeth made of stone. The water comes only to my waist, though the lip of the pool is far above my head. I turn and look at the steel safe room, stripped of its coverings, standing exposed against the barren concrete wall.

It held—the damn thing held after all.

CHAPTER 42
One Last Night

Washed clean.

Everything.

I can’t imagine the brute force of a wave that sweeps away an entire house and everything in it. I think of Mrs. Radcliffe locking me in the safe room and stepping out to meet her fate, and I remember our conversation about suicide in the kitchen that day. I guess she chose to end it herself after all.

Reaching the edge of the pool, I climb a set of crude stone steps that must have led to some ancient cellar long before the Radcliffes rebuilt. I step onto the peninsula and stand dripping on the bare rock where the lake house had been.

Other than the few foundation stones, nothing remains.

No floors, no walls. Not a blade of grass, not a flower. The dock and the boathouse are gone. The red-clay tennis court is stripped to just a smooth pad of concrete. The garden wall is erased, a shallow trench where it once stood. I look up to the bluff and gape at the destruction. The hillside stripped bare, the raw clay and exposed rock dripping. It looks like the wave ran several hundred meters up the slope, snapping pine trees like twigs and carrying them away in its retreat. All around the lake, an enormous ring of destruction rises up the banks. I look back at the water, strangely calm. A few floating trees, a few bobbing boathouse timbers.

A sparrow circles then swoops down, looking for its nest. It lands not far from where I stand, jerks its curious head left and right, and then it accepts the new surroundings and dabs its beak in a puddle and begins cleaning itself.

Life goes on, I guess.

I walk to where the garden wall had been. I remember Jimmy boosting me to look over, I remember Hannah standing there with her hands on her hips and telling me that the door wasn’t locked. There’s no door now. I step across the narrow trench and head up the bluff to look for Hannah and Jimmy.

It feels like climbing a mountain on Mars, everything a wasteland, even the topsoil gone. As the bluff levels off, I pass splintered stumps of enormous pine trees and craters where others were ripped right out from the ground, roots and all.

Arriving at the edge of the wave’s reach, I hop over a few trees left lying in my path, and scramble up the steep rise that leads the last several yards to the top. I look around.

Then I see Hannah running toward me through the trees, her red hair bouncing around her shoulders. We come together in a wild tangle of arms and tears and kisses, and we stand meshed together in a tight embrace, turning a slow circle on the edge of the bluff, kissing and caressing one another.

“I was sure you were dead,” she says.

“Yeah, me too,” I say. “Where were you?”

“We ran,” she says, nodding behind her. “I wanted to stay and wait for you, but Jimmy made me run. We’re just working our way back now. I’m so glad you’re alive.”

I feel something brush against my leg, look down, and see Junior jumping with excitement. When I look up again, Jimmy is walking toward us, a wide grin stretched across his face.

We sit together on the edge of the bluff looking out over the lake. The sun has dropped behind the mountains at our backs, and I know it must be setting over the ocean now, setting on that cove of so long ago. I look at Jimmy, idly petting Junior beside him. His eye is swollen shut from the explosion at Eden, his ear still caked with dried blood. I look at Hannah, her green eyes staring off across the water. The cut her father gave her is sure to leave a scar on her chin. I think about everything that we’ve been through, everything that we’ve lost—especially the people we each loved. I think about our adventures, and about the strange events that brought us all together.

Hannah lays her head in my lap, I lean down and kiss the cut on her chin. A long time passes without a word between us. The coming night drops a blue blanket of stars down in the east, the dark mountains cutting a black outline against it. The lake holds the last of the day’s light and gives it back in silvery purples—hues that reflect the mood.

By and by, I hear a click and catch a spark. Turning, I see Jimmy lighting a fire made of broken limbs that he’s gathered. He blows it lit, builds it up, and soon the flames are licking at the dark, popping and shooting red sparks rising into the night.

I reach to my neck and remove my father’s pipe. Then I dip in my pocket for the tobacco canister, unseal it, and stuff the pipe full. Leaning over, I grab a stick and stretch it into the fire, being careful not to wake Hannah sleeping in my lap. Then I draw the flaming tip slowly to the pipe and puff the pipe lit.

I cradle the pipe in my palm, just like my father used to do, and I roll the sweet smoke around my mouth, then blow it out and watch it coil away and disappear into the night.

Hannah sits up and rubs her eyes.

“That stinks,” she says, scrunching up her nose.

Jimmy stirs the fire.

“Give ’em a break. It was his father’s.”

“I know it,” Hannah snaps back. “I’m not stupid.”

And here I was worried about them and they’re back to their old selves and fighting again already. Jimmy stretches out on his back, resting his head in his hands, and Junior lies down beside him, resting his head on his paws.

“We’d better get us some sleep,” Jimmy says, after several minutes. “Gotta get up early and hunt up somethin’ to eat.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m eating meat,” Hannah says.

“Ya hearin’ this over here, Aubrey?” Jimmy calls, laughing. “Yer little princess wants pancakes fer breakfast.”

“You’re a jerk,” she says.

“Yeah, well you’s spoiled rotten.”

Hannah turns to me.

“You’re not going to let him talk to me like that, are you?”

“I’m not getting involved,” I say, puffing my pipe.

Hannah crosses her arms and turns her head away.

Several quiet minutes pass. I think about what Hannah’s mother said, about us starting over and doing things right this time. I only wish I knew what the right thing was.

I reach into my pocket and feel the case of syringes there. Do I even want to live for a thousand years? And what about Mrs. Radcliffe’s warning? Can you really love someone for that long? What about Holocene II? She said the water will recede, and I know we need to get down to the Foundation before the next train arrives for Eden, but I have no idea what to do then. Can you just free thousands of people who’ve been used to living a certain way for centuries? And if we do, how will we prevent them from destroying the world again?

Then I think about the drones, the submarines, the ships. I’ve no idea how to stop their targeting of humans, or if I even should. What am I thinking? Of course I should. I must. But what about violent people? Enemies? What about the rest of the world out there? What about all those curious other places that Dr. Radcliffe never got to tell me about?

I’m tempted to tell Hannah and Jimmy about the forever serum in my pocket, to inject ourselves with it right here, right now. To put our three heads together and make a plan for the Park Service, a plan for Holocene II.

I pull the pipe from my mouth to tell them, but before I can say anything, Hannah huffs at Jimmy over her shoulder.

“Savage,” she says.

“Snob,” Jimmy shoots back.

I clamp the pipe between my teeth again, look into the fire and laugh to myself. I wonder if they’d argue like this for a thousand years. I decide our planning can wait until morning.

For just one last night, I want to be a kid.

THE END
of
BOOK ONE