State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy

by Ryan Winfield

  The shelter is quiet, and the air smells stale. She heats water and brews algae tea. The taste sends me right back to Holocene II, making it hard to drink. We sit at the small table and eat meal bars and watch out the window as the surf comes farther up the beach with the tide. We try to make small talk but eventually give up and just sit and eat in silence.

  Then out of nowhere, Hannah says, “There is another option, you know.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “You could come back to the Foundation and run things with me. We could be partners.”

  “Why would you even ask me that?”

  “Because I could use the help. Because it would be better for you than scraping by out there in the wild. And honestly, because I get lonesome sometimes.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed you for the type to feel lonely.”

  “That’s a fair thing to say, I guess,” she replies. “But I do. The professor isn’t the best company, as you know. And he’s been crazier than usual lately. I had him in the chair twice just last week. And, of course, the tunnelrats are nothing much to talk to.” Then she reaches out and takes my hand in hers and says, “If this project takes longer than I had hoped, we might need to have some children after all.”

  I pull my hand from hers. “Gross, Hannah. Even if you weren’t twice my age, and even if you hadn’t lied to me and then tried to kill me, we’re brother and sister.”

  “No, we’re half brother and sister. And so what?”

  “So what? Are you absolutely insane?”

  The smile fades from her face and she stares at me with calculating green eyes. “Do you want the deal or not?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you want to save your friends or not? I offered you your freedom in exchange for the names, but now you want Red and the traitors spared as well. But that’s not how negotiating works, Aubrey. If you want me to give something up, you’ve got to give something back.”

  “I don’t understand what you want from me,” I say.

  “I want what you already have. It isn’t fair to leave me at the Foundation all alone. I have nobody to talk to. Nobody to love me. Nobody but me. I want some company.”

  “Oh, come on, Hannah. Get real.”

  “I am being real. I want those things. And I also want somebody who can carry on the cause after I’m gone.”

  “I’m not coming back with you, Hannah.”

  “You don’t have to,” she says.

  “Then I don’t understand what you’re asking for.”

  “Come on, you’re not a kid any longer, Aubrey. Can’t you read between the lines? This being your birthday and my dad’s handover date aren’t the only reasons I picked today to meet.”

  “Why else did you pick today to meet, then?”

  “Because I’m ovulating.”

  Her words hit me in the chest like a hammer, and I can hardly breathe. I spring up from my chair and bolt for the door. But I hesitate with my hand on the handle, not wanting to spoil any chance for a deal, not ready to say no.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I say. “I need some fresh air.”

  “Fine,” she says. “Think about what I’m offering you, Aubrey. I’ll stay here and turn down the bed.”

  I walk far enough away down the beach to be out of sight from the bungalow. I sit on the sand and watch the storm roll in. The sky fills with dark clouds, and the wind draws whitecaps upon the dusky water. The sand glows almost white against the surf pushing ever further up the sandy beach. Eventually, the tide comes so high up that I have to scoot back to keep from getting soaked. But the sound of the crashing waves is a welcome distraction from the insane argument taking place inside my head.

  There’s no way I can do what Hannah is asking of me. But then there’s no way I can’t do it either. I’m trapped again with an impossible choice. What is wrong with these people, anyway? Radcliffe wanted to exterminate all of humanity, but he loved himself so much he kept having kids with everyone. And here Hannah is doing the same thing. And to think that I’m related to them both, that these people are somehow family. Ugh. The thought makes me want to puke.

  Could I even live with myself, knowing I might possibly have a son or a daughter growing up in that dungeon under the lake and being raised by Hannah to hate all of humankind? But then again could I live with myself knowing I was responsible for killing Red and possibly Mrs. Hightower and Jillian too? No matter what I do, my conscience will already be burdened with leaving the others down in Holocene II, letting them die one by one in Eden. I keep telling myself it’s okay because they don’t know any better, but that’s just a lie and I know it.

  Then I think about what Hannah said about the drones. She said she had enough of them on standby to kill us all on the mountain at any time. That not only means me; it means my mother and Jimmy. I really have no choice. I have to say yes. And Hannah knows it. That’s why she pinned me into this decision like she did. How bad can it be anyway? I wonder. I was into her once, wasn’t I? Maybe if I just close my eyes and pretend that I never knew we were related.

  The first raindrop hits me as I’m walking back. By the time I reach the bungalow, it’s a full on downpour and I’m soaked through. The rain pounding on the porch roof masks the sound at first, but as I reach the door I hear screaming inside. Then a chair bounces off the Plexiglas window. Confused and fearing the worst, I pound on the locked door. The door flies open, and Hannah is staring at me with murder in her eyes. I see the overturned table behind her and the chairs on the floor. Then I notice that the wall-mounted LCD screen is turned on and displaying a familiar head of wild hair above wild staring eyes—a video feed of the crazy professor from the Foundation.

  “You little idiot,” Hannah growls. “You just killed yourself and everyone you love.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

  The rain slaps harder on the porch roof, and the wind whips at my back. Hannah’s ponytail has come undone and her hair blows around her face as she stands in the open doorway, the professor leering at me from the screen behind her.

  “What are you talking about, Hannah?”

  She steps aside and turns to address the professor on the screen. “Show him,” she orders.

  The professor’s hand fills the screen as he reaches to turn the camera and when he pulls his hand away again, I see Mrs. Hightower hanging limply in the grip of two tunnelrats, her head bowed and her chin resting on her chest. One of the tunnelrats grips her hair and jerks her head upright. She hardly appears conscious. Her lip is bleeding; her eye is swollen.

  The professor turns the camera back to his face.

  “Good to see you again, Aubrey,” he says. “I’m sorry that your little mutiny didn’t come off exactly as you’d planned it. But I can assure you that your friend here will have a lot of time to think about it while she’s in Eden.”

  I step into the room, closer to the screen.

  “Don’t you dare—”

  “Say goodbye to your little buddy Jimmy for me too,” the professor says, cutting me off. “If you get the chance, that is.” He smiles his lunatic grin, all the more maniacal for his missing front teeth. Then he reaches up and turns the camera off.

  “Hannah, will you tell me what’s going on, please?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Aubrey. Do you expect me to believe it’s a coincidence that our computer system is hacked so your friend and her tunnelrat pals can make a play to take over the Foundation just when I happen to be away and meeting with you? And I was going to agree to your terms, you fool. But now the deal’s off.”

  She storms to the open door and waves me out.

  “Hannah, let’s talk about this,” I plead. “Please.”

  “Get out now or I’ll lock you in here and let you rot.”

  The rain thunders on the porch roof and pours off it in sheets. The wind is catching it and sending sprays of water onto Hannah�
�s face and across the threshold where she stands.

  “I said, GET OUT!” she screams.

  The expression on her face sends me flying past her and out into the rain while I still have a chance. She slams the door closed, punches in a code, and storms past me, heading toward the runway and her drone. I run after her on the path.

  “Just stop and talk to me a minute, Hannah. Let’s just talk. This is all a big misunderstanding.”

  She ignores me and continues marching through the rain, climbing the steps toward the runway. Then she struts across the wet tarmac toward her waiting drone.

  “Hannah, stop! You don’t want to do this.”

  I race after her and grab her shoulder.

  She spins and jabs a Taser into my chest and electrocutes me. I fall to the tarmac and lie on my side, convulsing. Her Taser left behind some kind of electrode stuck in my chest. I clutch and claw to try and remove it as my muscles spasm. My vision fades. My head throbs. My legs kick involuntarily. I’m acutely aware of the rain drops splashing down around me, and I become terrified of them in my delusional agony, as if the drops themselves were shocking me.

  I force myself to breath and I watch as Hannah climbs into her drone and closes the glass observation bubble. Her face looks somehow sad, and she reaches forward from her seat and lightly touches her fingers to the glass, as if some small part of her regrets how things have turned out between us.

  Then her drone is gone in a flash. Her image lingers for a few moments in the falling rain before fading away as I close my eyes and pass out from the pain.

  CHAPTER 28

  The High Cost of Betrayal

  When I come to, the rain has stopped.

  Mist rises off the runway, shimmering in the red sunset.

  I peel myself off the pavement and stumble to my drone. My vision is still foggy as I watch the bungalow and the beach fade away beneath me. I know I have a lot to think about at the moment, but I hardly slept on the flight in, and now I can’t keep my eyes from closing. When I open them again, my aching legs tell me many hours have passed, and I’m now far out over the Pacific. But even so, a red rim remains on the horizon, as if the sun had only just now set. I guess I’m racing it west.

  The sky above the fading horizon is deep blue and already punctuated with stars. Later, when it’s finally dark, I see a satellite go streaming by overhead. I wonder how long it’s been in orbit. Certainly since before the war. Here a thousand years have gone by, and Earth has erased from its surface nearly all evidence of humankind’s reign, save a few Mayan pyramids, a stretch of ancient Chinese wall, and our leftover satellites circling on the timeless edge of space. I wonder who will be here to see them when we’re all gone.

  Whatever happened back there at the bungalow, I have a feeling that the result of it is a death sentence for all of us. A sense of overwhelming dread haunts me the entire flight. The only thing I can think is that my mother took advantage of Hannah’s absence from the Foundation and went behind my back to try and launch some kind of takeover operation. And here I had Hannah on the verge of agreeing to make a deal. My diplomacy was destroyed by my mother’s betrayal. I’d be even more furious with her than I am if I weren’t so worried.

  I see the fires from a long ways off.

  High clouds hover over our burning mountain hideaway, catching the firelight and reflecting it back so that a second fire seems to burn there upside down in the night sky. The horror of what I’m seeing takes several seconds to sink in, and then I’m pounding on the cockpit glass as the drone descends.

  “Let me out!” I shout. “Let me out now! Oh, God, please let my mother and Jimmy be okay. Please.”

  As the drone approaches, I glimpse just how bad it is. The shelter walls are gone, and the exposed living space is engulfed in flames. The watchtower is burning too. Smaller fires dot the dark landscape on either side, and a few fires even dance like windblown torches on top of the wall. It looks as if some kind of burning accelerant were dropped from the sky. Then the view is wiped from my window as the drone sinks beneath the flames to enter the hidden runway underneath it. If the door even opens, I’m fully expecting to land in a furnace and cook to death where I sit in this stupid cockpit. I even brace for it.

  But the door opens, and the drone comes to a halt in the untouched hangar. No flames, no destruction. The canopy lifts open, and I leap from the drone and race for the ladder. I’m halfway up it when I realize that the hatch leading to the shelter above is closed. There’s a keypad on the ceiling next to it, but I have no idea what the code is. Then I hear crying coming from somewhere below. I look down from the ladder and see feet sticking out beneath a spare portion of drone wing that’s leaned against the hangar wall. I drop to the floor and rush over and pull the wing away.

  My mother sits with her back to the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her head is down and she’s sobbing. I drop to my knees in front of her and gently lift her head up. Her face is covered with black soot, and her eyes are red from crying. She looks surprised, as if she doesn’t believe she’s really seeing me, but then she throws her arms around my neck, pulls me to her, and clings to me as if her life depended on it.

  “Where’s Jimmy, Mom?”

  Her muffled sobs continue. She doesn’t answer.

  “Mom, where’s Jimmy? I need to know where Jimmy is.”

  When she still won’t answer me, I pry her arms loose from my neck, pull away, and look her in the eyes.

  “Damn it, Mom. I asked you where Jimmy is.”

  She cocks her head as if she didn’t understand what I said. Then I see why. Blood trickles from each of her ears.

  “Mom, are you okay?” I ask, mouthing the words clearly so she can read my lips. She nods that she is. “Where’s Jimmy?” She shakes her head. “Mother, tell me where Jimmy is.” When she still doesn’t answer me, I scream at her. “Tell me, dammit!”

  “He went to warn them,” she says. “I tried to stop him.”

  “Warn who? The Motars? At their camp?” When she nods yes, I point up to the closed hatch. “What’s the code?”

  She reaches for my neck again, but I push her hands away.

  “Tell me the code or I’ll jump out the damn hangar door.”

  She drops her chin to her chest. Then she raises her hand in front of her bowed head and holds up three fingers, then two, then five, then three again. I let go of her shoulders and race up the ladder.

  As I punch in the code, I hear her say, “Be careful.”

  The flames whip wildly in the wind, showing a path then covering it up again. I weave my way across the ruined shelter, dodging the fire, and emerge on the other side unscathed. I can smell burning flesh from our meat locker and my own singed hair. On the path now, running—down and up and over. Quiet your mind, Aubrey, focus on the task. The clouds reflect back the fire that I’m heading for and illuminate the mountains like a strange hellscape I might have run through in a nightmare. I hear distant explosions and faint screams. In the glow of this dreamy apocalypse, I see drones flitting across the red sky above the Motar’s hidden valley, like enormous bats or sky-bound Manta rays, ejecting bombs from their bellies and then banking left or right to make way for more of their kind. For one brief moment those burning clouds twist in my frantic mind to become waves of red hair, and I see Hannah’s face leering at me from the night sky like some she-devil risen from the depths of hell to claim as her dominion the mountains and the night and each of our sad souls.

  We should have killed her when we could.

  I ford the river at a dead run. I know the water must be cold, but I can’t feel it. The drones have finished their work, and by the time I arrive only a few glide overhead, their silhouettes black against the burnt sky. I pay them no mind. The valley leading to the hidden camp is dotted with flaming carcasses of horses and of men. I zigzag between them, checking for Jimmy. I come on sights of horror where horse and rider have melted together into one pile of burning flesh. I see a man with a perfectly rou
nd hole blown in his chest and just the fatty edges of it rimmed with sizzling blue fire as he lies on his back, staring with frozen bewilderment at the burning sky as if to ask it why. I see another without his head. Two charred women are laid out arm in arm on the ground, as if they’d spontaneously combusted while embracing there. I wander through this scene of senseless slaughter, stopping at each new sight of gore just long enough to make sure it isn’t Jimmy before moving on again. One man clutches my ankle as I try to walk away, but he’s lying in soil drenched with his own blood. The last of his life is leaking out of him in weak spurts from his two severed legs. There’s nothing I or anyone can do. I jerk my foot away and keep moving.

  As I approach the cliff that leads to the hidden camp, my panic is replaced by a slowly building horror. I pass through the secret entrance and walk toward the blind bend, expecting the worst. The worst I can imagine turns out to not be bad enough though. The waterfall reflects back the fire and seems itself to be made of liquid flames. The channel of black water passes beneath the remnant embers of the bridges, and the framework of tents stand strangely intact and still burning. Nothing is left untouched by fire. It smells sweet and putrid and nauseatingly like charcoal. There are bodies here too, but mostly those of women and children. I wonder if the men had mounted their horses in an attempt to lead the drones away.

  Then I see him standing in the middle of the burning camp, wide-eyed and naked as if he himself had just been born from the flames. If he sees me, it does not register on his face. I wade into the channel, swim across, climb out the other side, and run to him where he stands.

  “Where’s Jimmy?” I ask. “Where’s my friend?”

  The boy just looks at me queerly.

  I strip off my wet shirt and cover him. Then I walk him toward the exit, but he plants his feet and pulls away from me.

  “Come on, we’ve got to get you out of here,” I say, my voice drowned out by the waterfall and the crackling flames.