State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy

by Ryan Winfield

  “I told you it wasn’t all a wasteland up here,” I say.

  “It’s beautiful,” Roger mumbles, still turning his circles.

  “Like nothing I’ve ever imagined,” Bill says.

  “I can’t see the sky through all the trees,” Roger adds.

  “Well, there aren’t this many trees everywhere,” I tell him. “You’ll see. But right now you both sound like you might have been sipping Gridboy’s milk. Could you tell us what’s next?”

  “We hike it east to the coast,” Bill says. “Your ride will be waiting there.”

  “Jimmy might be able to sight us east by the sun.”

  Bill smiles and reaches into his zipsuit pocket, producing a compass, which seems somewhat odd since we have no need for directions down in Holocene II.

  “We might be rushed and unprepared,” he says. “But I’ve been waiting for years to use my compass. My dad made this.”

  Then Roger drops his gaze from the canopy, looks past me, and screams. I spin around and see Jimmy holding a meter-long snake, the head pinched in his strong fingers. The snake writhes as it hangs from his hand.

  “I caught us breakfast,” he says.

  “Ugh,” Bill says, shaking his head and chewing the last of his ration bar. “No way am I eating that thing.”

  “I remember that feeling too,” I say. “But you’ll change your tune about what you will and will not eat if we run out of rations. Hunger is a powerful thing.”

  “I think I’d rather starve,” Roger replies.

  “Maybe we should skip the snake roast, Jimmy,” I suggest. “We should probably get moving.”

  Jimmy shrugs and tosses the lucky snake on the ground. Roger watches as its tail disappears into a bush.

  “Is that where you found that thing?” Roger asks. “I’m not getting anywhere near a bush if you did.”

  “Oh, they’s ever-where,” Jimmy answers. “I got that one out of the tree jus’ above our shelter.”

  Roger looks like he might cry again he’s so frightened, but Bill tosses him a ration bar, closes up his pack, and stands.

  “Time to get moving,” he says.

  We make slow progress through the thick jungle, using Bill’s compass and doing our best to keep moving east. The problem is that we can’t sight a straight line because we have to constantly go around thick trees, or gnarly bushes, or tangles of hanging vines. And it’s uncomfortably hot too. Sweat drips down and stings my eyes; sweat soaks my zipsuit through. The others are all drenched as well. Jimmy and I try not to drink much, knowing that our water rations will run low. I’m worried that Roger and Bill will get sick if they drink unsterilized water. In fact, I worry that Roger may already be sick, because he keeps swatting at bugs the rest of us can’t see and mumbling to himself about snakes and how he wishes he were back underground.

  The day wears on, with most of us too weary to even talk, and by late afternoon the trees thin, and the jungle opens into a parkland of palms dotted everywhere with strange puddles of blue water. As we get closer to them, I notice that they’re deep pools and not puddles at all.

  “What do you think caused them?” I ask.

  “Maybe meteors,” Bill suggests.

  “Or maybe they’re old dinosaur footprints,” Roger says.

  “Dinosaurs?” Bill laughs. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Roger huffs. “Not any more ridiculous than meteors.”

  Jimmy gets on his knees, leans down, and scoops up a handful of water and smells it. It must smell okay, because then he drinks it. I notice that the pool edges are limestone, and I wonder if we’re not walking over some ancient aquifer exposed by countless sinkholes. The thought makes me nervous.

  “Maybe we should move to higher ground over there on the left,” I suggest.

  Come late afternoon, we make camp on a small rise that overlooks the pools, resting with our backs against a limestone outcropping and sipping our water rations.

  “We better make a shelter,” Jimmy says.

  “Why?” Bill asks, obviously tired. “There’s no rain.”

  “There will be tonight.”

  “How do you know?” Roger asks.

  “Because it rained last night,” Jimmy says.

  “That’s just silly,” Roger replies. “I might have spent my entire life underground, but I know just because it rains one night doesn’t mean it’ll rain on another.”

  “Is that so?” Jimmy asks. “I s’pose you could say the same thin’ about the sun. But it came up this mornin’, and I’m bettin’ it will rise tomorrow too.”

  Roger and Bill begrudgingly agree to collect firewood while Jimmy and I construct the shelter in the lee of the limestone overhang, weaving branches and fronds into the vines that cover the rock. I don’t think Roger wanders far or does much searching, though, because he returns an hour later with two pathetic branches and a lone piece of bark. Fortunately, Bill has a better haul, and within minutes we have a small fire going. We all sit down, exhausted, to enjoy it.

  Turns out Jimmy has been filling his pockets with small lizards that he’s snatched and brained along the way, and he spears them on sticks and roasts them in the fire. They sizzle and pop, shrinking until they’re not much more than gnarled kabobs of skin and soft bone. They have a nice crunch. They actually taste pretty good. Roger and Bill elect to pass on the protein, eating algaecrisps instead. I remember my first time eating meat too. They’ll get over it.

  After we’ve all eaten and drunk our fill, we sit with our backs against the warm limestone and watch as the setting sun casts the sky shades of orange, the likes of which I’ve never seen. The high clouds collect the light, and the countless pools below reflect them back. This creates the illusion of another sky beneath us, seen through windows bored into the slab of earth on which we sit, so that up is down and down is up. It gives me an unsettling feeling of hurling through space, which, of course, we are. For some reason the idea of it makes me think of the professor and his lecture on the submarine about subatomic particles and shooting stars.

  The fire burns down, the orange sky fades, and some kind animal begins to call out in the darkening jungle.

  “So,” Bill says, breaking our long silence, “is it always this unfriendly and this beautiful up here all in the same day?”

  “I had the same feeling when I first came out,” I reply. “I remember how gorgeous and wild everything felt. Like it had been painted from my dreams or something. I would have been okay if I could have just sat and looked at it. But I was in it, you know? And it nearly killed me. Jimmy here saved my life. That’s the only reason I’m here. Isn’t it, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy turns over a coal with one of his lizard sticks.

  “You saved my life too,” he says. “Couple times now.”

  “I don’t like a place where people have to be saved all the time,” Roger says. “It isn’t civilized.”

  “And you think Eden’s civilized?” I ask.

  “No,” he answers, “I didn’t say that. I just think there are advantages to living underground, and I’m not sure we should be throwing all that away.”

  “What about you, Bill?” I ask. “Do you feel the same?”

  “No way,” Bill says. “I’m all for us getting out and living free. Look at all this. It’s paradise. We’re lucky we all haven’t turned into tunnelrats, we’ve been underground so long.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you where tunnelrats came from in the first place,” I say, thinking of it now that he’s brought them up. “And why does Hannah have control of them?”

  “I think they were bred in the basements even before the Foundation,” Bill says. “Some kind of experiment in the deep labs. I heard they have to drug the babies or else they kill one another in the womb. At least that’s what Beth says.”

  “Who’s Beth?”

  “Mrs. Hightower. Her first name’s Beth. She says that the babies are born addicted. The Foundation controls them by doling out fentanyl in their milk.”


  “That stuff’s no joke,” Jimmy says. “My hands are still a little numb.”

  Something woos and barks from nearby trees.

  “What was that?” Roger asks, his voice quaking with fear.

  “Probably one of your dinosaurs whose footprints we saw earlier today,” Bill jokes.

  “Very funny,” Roger says. “Should we build the fire up?”

  “Why?” Jimmy asks. “You hungry? I might have another lizard here somewhere, if you want it.”

  Roger just leans back and twiddles his thumbs. I know it’s his nervous habit, but I don’t see how it could help, because it causes me anxiety just to watch him do it.

  “Bill, you know what I always wanted to ask you?”

  “What’s that, Aubrey?”

  “How come you never married? I mean almost everyone on our level had a family, but you didn’t.”

  “Most of us thought it would be too difficult to try and keep our secret from a spouse,” Bill says. “It was just easier to stay single. Beth was married, though, until her husband had cancer and went to Eden. That was rough, because she knew and couldn’t tell him. And Seth had a wife once too.”

  “So you don’t have anyone either, Roger?”

  Bill laughs. “Who would have him?”

  “I actually quite like being alone,” Roger says. “I find that it’s comforting. But no, I don’t have anyone special. I’m a plant engineer on 6 and I enjoy my job.”

  “You’re on 6?” I ask. “You don’t seem stupid.”

  “Gee,” he says, “thanks. Not everyone down there is low IQ. Someone needs to run things you know. And besides, I was educated on Level 3 just like you. I volunteered for 6 when I was fifteen because the Chief needed someone down there to access the basement.”

  “You’ve been to the basement?” I ask.

  “Of course,” he says.

  “I’ve been down there too,” I say. “It’s creepy.”

  I expect them to ask me when I was in the basements, but they don’t. Perhaps they already know. The sky has grown dark and so has the jungle surrounding us, but the pools still glow against the blackness, somehow holding onto the last of the reflected light a little longer than everything else. A log pops and a coal rolls out of the fire. I kick it back, thankful for Seth’s shoes. For some reason my hand moves to my pocket to make sure I still have my father’s pipe. I pull it out and run my fingers over the butterflies engraved on the stone pipe bowl.

  “So are you all the only ones who know? The truth, I mean. About the surface and about Eden?”

  “We’re the only ones,” Bill replies.

  “So my father didn’t know any of this?”

  Bill shakes his head. “No, he was kept in the dark. That’s the way the Chief wanted it.”

  “So what all do you get out of the deal?”

  “What deal?” Bill asks.

  “Well, you’re staying single, keeping secrets, and now you’re out here risking your life, all for this Chief.”

  “Yeah,” Bill says, “so what?”

  “So what do you get out of it?”

  “Isn’t our freedom enough?” he asks.

  “Maybe,” I say. “Is that all he promised you?”

  Neither of them answers me and we sit in silence, listening to wild jungle calls echo in the blackness. Even the pools have now disappeared into the night.

  “There’s the rain,” Jimmy says.

  “What rain?” Bill asks.

  “I don’t hear it either,” Roger says.

  They hardly get the words out when a downpour drops all at once, the last of the coals hissing and going out. We scamper into the shelter, and the sound of the rain hammering the roof and pounding the ground outside makes any further discussion nearly impossible. One by one, we find comfortable positions in which to hope for sleep as we pass the night.

  I have questions running through my mind like so many veins of silver in the tunnelrat mines. I want to know who this Chief is and what his interest is in me. And why China? I mean, it’s practically the other side of the world. And maybe I’m just jaded, but I don’t believe that these people would sacrifice so much for me and for Holocene II, just because it’s the right thing to do. So what’s in it for them?

  Space is tight in the shelter, and Jimmy lies next to me on his back with his arms clasped on his chest. The sound of the rain outside soothes me into a welcome rest. My thoughts drift to the Foundation and to Hannah and the professor. I wonder how they’re getting on and what they’re doing. I know they’re the enemy now, but a small part of me still misses that companionship we all had when we shared the goal of setting out to get the encryption code from the Isle of Man. Where did everything go so terribly wrong? And what kind of monsters must they be to have destroyed everyone on that island? And to have locked Red away like that with no food and no water?

  I bolt upright in the dark, my breath caught in my chest. Red! I forgot about Red. I lean over and shake Jimmy.

  “Jimmy, we forgot about Red. We have to go back.”

  Jimmy groans and knocks my hand away. “Can we talk about it in the mornin’?” he asks. “I jus’ got to sleep.”

  I reach past him and poke Bill. “Bill, we have to go back. We left Red at the Foundation with Hannah. Wake up, Bill.”

  There’s a great rustling from the other end of the shelter as Roger thrashes around wildly, nearly taking off the shelter roof. “What is it?” he calls. “Another snake?”

  “Relax, Roger,” Bill says. “It’s just Aubrey.”

  “We need to go back and rescue Red,” I say. “I shouldn’t have ever left him.”

  “There’s nothing you can do now, Aubrey,” Bill replies. “Maybe the Chief can help.”

  “I’m sick of hearing about this Chief already. It’s Chief this and Chief that. Who the hell is he anyway?”

  “Let’s talk about it over breakfast,” Bill says. “Now go back to sleep. Please.”

  Frustrated, I storm out of the shelter and into the pouring rain. As I stand there getting soaked in the dark, my anger subsides. I realize how silly it was to come outside in the middle of the night. Still, I’m too proud to go back in now, so I plop down against the limestone where I’ll at least have a little cover, cross my arms, and grit my teeth to wait for sunrise.

  There’s no wind tonight, and the rain falls down steady and straight. The jungle in front of me is nothing but shades of darkness out of which my mind makes a mural of monsters, all set upon tormenting me. My eyes droop and close. When they open again, the rain has stopped, and a sliver of moon hangs low above the treetops beyond the pools. I’m not sure why, but I stand and walk several feet to the edge of our camp and take in the quiet view.

  A black jaguar crouches at the base of the hill. Its shiny coat glistens in the moonlight. The monochrome spots are just barely visible on its powerful hindquarters, and its sharp shoulders support its reach as it laps up water from the pool. It raises its head to look at me. In that moment I know what it means to be at the mercy of another creature’s whim.

  It licks its dripping chops, turns slowly, and trots away into the jungle without looking back.

  CHAPTER 13

  Monkeys, Skulls, and Blue Holes

  “I’ve never seen so many shades of green.”

  That’s what Bill says when he steps from the shelter into the golden glow of a glorious sunrise.

  I must have fallen asleep, because I’m lying on the rocky ground. My back is sore. I notice the fire burning with fresh wood, which tells me Jimmy’s already up too. Sure enough, he appears from the jungle just a few minutes later, stopping to rinse something in one of the pools before carrying it up to us.

  “A fella could get fat livin’ ’round here,” he says.

  He displays two pink rodents that may have been squirrels when they still had their skins. The moment he holds them up, Roger appears from the shelter rubbing his eyes and runs into them. He veers, leans over, and begins to retch.

  “Ma
n,” Jimmy says, spearing the rodents on his lizard sticks, “these two are bigger wimps than you was, Aubrey.”

  After everyone has done their morning business, we sit around the fire and eat while watching the shadows disappear back into the jungle as the sun climbs above the trees.

  “What was all this barking last night about Red?” Bill asks.

  “We left him up there,” I say. “With Hannah.”

  “Didn’t he used to bully you all the time?”

  “Yeah, but we made up. He’s actually a pretty good guy. We can’t just leave him behind.”

  “I think Aubrey’s right for once,” Roger says. “We need to go back right away.”

  “Oh, be quiet, Roger,” Bill says. Then he turns to me. “We can’t go back. Hannah will kill you, Jimmy, and Red.”

  Jimmy cracks a bone and sucks the marrow. Roger winces.

  “I’m up for whatever you decide, Aubrey,” Jimmy says. “My loyalty is with you, not this Chief they keep talkin’ about.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy. But now that I’ve slept on it, I know Bill is right. Even if we got back to Holocene II, and even if we made it to the Foundation, Hannah would surely kill us anyway. Our only hope is to hurry and get to this Chief and see if he can help us somehow. Can you promise me he’ll help, Bill?”

  “If anyone will know what to do,” he says, “it’s the Chief.”

  I lick the last of the squirrel fat off my fingers and wipe my hands on my zipsuit. “Well, let’s get moving then.”

  Before we leave, Jimmy crushes up charcoal from our fire in a limestone hollow and mixes it with water from one of the pools. Then he calls Roger and Bill over and smears it with his fingers on their faces, covering almost all of their exposed skin. Sometimes I wish I were as smart as him.

  We trudge east all morning and all afternoon. The jungle thickens then thins; the pools disappear then reappear again. When it gets hot, I unzip my suit and peel the upper half off and let it hang, walking bareback. Roger cringes when he sees the valknut scar on my chest, but he doesn’t ask anything about it. He does do plenty of complaining, however. He looks like some mad mud person spit out of the Earth and trying to find his way back—the whites of his eyes are staring wildly out from his dark, charcoal-smeared face, and his lips are quivering as he mutters endlessly about how happy he’d been underground.