The sun sets on our way back. The sky explodes with pink light that seems to make everything seem farther away and more beautiful. We wade across the river and walk across the valley. I feel guilty for the peaceful feeling I have, knowing that this had been the scene of such horror just a few nights before. My mother seems to feel it too, because she smiles at me and takes my hand in hers without a word.
The sun, on its way to light some new day, is dragging the pink down out of the sky as we enter the hidden valley. In the soft light of dusk, with the bodies gone and covered up, the destruction seems almost necessary somehow for the birth of a new beginning. Someone has laid salvaged timbers across the burned bridge. We cross it and walk the path through the ruined camp. When my foot lands in the old man’s sand, I stop in my tracks. My mother halts and turns back.
“Is everything okay, Aubrey?” she asks.
“You said Hannah needs to be stopped.”
“Yes,” she says, “I did.”
“To what lengths would you go to stop her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you stop her at any cost?” I ask.
“I don’t understand your question, but the answer’s yes. I would stop her at any cost. Wouldn’t you, if there was a way?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding. “And maybe there is a way.”
“What are you thinking, Aubrey?”
“Dust to dust. What if the end is in the beginning?”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Son.”
“Mom,” I say, looking up from the spilled sand, “exactly how much do you know about thermonuclear weapons?”
Her weary eyes widen, and she asks, “Do you mean like the hydrogen bombs that were used in the War?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I know a little. Why?”
“I have an idea, although it might kill us if this works.”
CHAPTER 30
This Had Better Work
“Show me again exactly where it is.”
My mother holds the lamp up over my shoulder so she can see in the dim cave. The boy, the warrior, and the three sisters crowd around her, looking too. I brush the old man’s sand clear and draw for them again the mountain crater that Jimmy and I crossed so long ago now, sketching the missile hanging from the ice ceiling above its hidden lake.
“I fell in here. And the missile is maybe five meters or so from the shore in the ceiling here. And most of it is in the ice, but the front part is exposed.”
I look up. They’re all nodding, even though my mother is the only one who can understand what I’m saying.
“And you’re sure it looked intact?” she asks.
“Oh, yes. You could still see the strange characters written on it. But how would we fix it, since it was a dud?”
“It’s not a dud, Son.”
“Then why didn’t it go off?”
“Because it never got low enough. The mountain stopped it before it reached its targeted elevation.”
“Don’t they explode when they hit something?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Too much of the explosion would be absorbed by the ground and wasted. These hydrogen bombs were designed to detonate at a particular altitude above their target. My guess is that this one was aimed at the Foundation, which was then a secret military base. It must have missed its mark and buried itself in the ice on the mountain’s summit.”
“But would it still be any good?”
“I don’t see why not,” she says. “It’s been frozen in there all this time. The warhead should be fine. These things weren’t designed to expire, you know. I think plutonium has a half-life of over twenty thousand years.”
The warrior nods, the sisters whisper to one another, and the boy presses his open palms together and bows for some strange reason. I wonder what it is they think we’re discussing.
“How do you know so much about these things, Mom?”
She shrugs. “We were still dismantling some of the arsenal at the Foundation when I arrived. We even used a few nukes to help open the canal that you passed through in the submarine on your way to the Isle of Man.”
“Well, even if it is still good,” I say, reaching to brush the sand clear, “it’s probably no use anyway. That thing is way too big to get on our drone.”
“You’re wrong,” my mother says.
She takes the stick from my hand and draws a missile in the sand, dividing it into sections.
“Look, only this front part here is the warhead. The missile itself was just used to fly it. We don’t need that now. If we can separate the warhead somehow, based on how you described it, it would only weigh several hundred pounds. The drone could carry that. And wouldn’t it be poetic justice to deliver it to Hannah in the same carrier that she used to send Red and Beth’s bodies to us? You’re really onto something here, Aubrey. This could be it. This could be the way to finally end this.”
“What if she floods Holocene II?” I ask.
“She won’t even have a chance to. No way. And if she has some doomsday backup in place to do it for her, then there’s nothing we can do about that anyway. But this bomb would destroy the Foundation for sure, Son. No Foundation, no Park Service. No Park Service, no drones. No drones and we’re all free. Don’t you see?”
I kneel and scoop the sand back into the chest.
“We can think about it,” I say. “But we can’t go now. Not until Jimmy’s okay.”
“We have to do it now,” she says. “We can’t wait, Aubrey. We have no idea when Hannah will send drones again. Or what all she has planned for us.”
“I said not now, Mom.”
“Aubrey, you’re being silly. We cannot wait.”
I close the lid on the chest and pick it up.
“Let’s just talk about it later, okay?”
She reaches out, places her hand on my shoulder, and says, “There may not be a later, Son. We have to try this now.”
She’s right and I know it. But I also know that there’s only room for two in our drone and I’m not willing to leave Jimmy.
“I won’t leave Jimmy behind,” I say.
“What if I want you to go?”
We all turn to look at Jimmy when he speaks.
He’s propped up on his elbow. His face is half-covered in yellowed-cloth bandages, giving him the appearance of a mummy having risen from its tomb. I set the chest down, cross to him, and kneel beside the bed.
“How you feeling, buddy?”
“I feel like hell,” he says. “But I think them pills you gave me a while ago are kickin’ in. I’m kinda floatin’ a little.”
“Good. Now you just let me know when the pain gets too bad again, and we’ll give you another one. Okay?”
“You have to go, Aubrey.”
“Let’s talk about that later.”
“No. Your mom’s right. There might not be a later.”
“I don’t want to leave you. Not now. Not like this.”
“I know it,” he replies. “But you have to go. You told me yourself that we got a duty to do what we can. That’s what makes us human, remember?”
“I never said that.”
“You did so.”
“When?”
“In the pool that day before you left to meet Hannah.”
“Well, I went, didn’t I? I did my duty. I tried.”
“You ain’t tried this.”
“Come on, Jimmy ...”
“Come on nothin’. You gotta go do this, Aubrey.”
“But it’s risky.”
“So what? Ever-thin’s a risk. Do it for Junior and for Bree. Do it for what Hannah did to Finn—her own brother, your brother. Do it for the whole Isle of Man. Do it for these people here.” He nods to the boy and the others. “And do it for your dad, Aubrey. And for my family too. And if for nothin’ else, you gotta do it for me. Look at what she did to me.”
When he finishes, his good eye wells up, and a tear slides down his cheek. I can’t quite tell
if he’s crying from the pain of having spoken so much or because of the list he just rattled off.
“You’re going to be fine,” I say.
“I’ll live,” he replies. “But I seen the way you looked at me when you was bandaging me up. I was out of it, but I still seen the horror on your face. And I’ve seen burns before, Aubrey. I know how they heal. She mutilated me.”
“You look fine,” I say.
“No, I don’t,” he says, shaking his head.
“Maybe not now, but you will.”
“Dun’ lie to me, Aubrey. Please.”
I drop my head. “Well, you’ll always look just fine to me.”
“Jus’ go do what’s gotta be done, Aubrey. Put a stop to all of this. I’m askin’ you. Now, if you dun’ mind maybe you could bring me my bottle if it’s still around, ’cause I gotta pee.”
I look at his bandaged face, knowing full well that he’s right about what he’ll look like once he’s healed. The anger that rises in me is enough to make me kill Hannah with my hands.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll do it. But then I’m coming back for you, and we’re finally going to be able to live without these drones over our heads. It’ll be perfect. You’ll see.”
He smiles, even though it obviously causes him pain.
My mother and I spend the next seven days preparing to leave. We pick through the burned camp and collect anything that might prove useful. We salvage lengths of rope, unburned animal hides, and metal tools. Then we recover what we can from the shelter too. The container that Hannah sent the bodies in is too large to fit down the hatch, so we rig ropes through pulleys, lower it down the mountainside, and pull it into the main entrance of the hangar. We raise the drone with the same ropes, tuck the landing gear, and set it down onto the container, which attaches magnetically to the body of the drone. But the container is meant for much larger drones, and there is no way to drop the landing gear with it attached.
“How are we going to take off and land without wheels?”
“Where we’re going,” she says, “We don’t need wheels.”
“We don’t?”
“No. We need a ski.”
My mother breaks out her tools and spends the afternoon using an electric plasma torch to craft a ski from the salvaged wing of the old drone she shot down. When we run the hangar battery dead, she uses the drone’s battery to power the welder and attach the ski to the bottom of the carrier. She only has one shield, and I stand back and try not to look as she welds, but it’s amazing to watch her work. When she’s finished, the modified drone looks like a giant bumblebee sculpture that will never to be able to get off the ground.
“You sure this thing can even make it that far?” I ask.
“I hope so,” she says. “But even if it does, it won’t be able to fly fast, so we can plan on a long trip.”
Then something else occurs to me as I’m looking at it.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I say. “If we plan to load the warhead into the carrier and drop the carrier over the Foundation at the Dam, won’t our ski drop with it?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” she says. “We won’t be going back to the mountain anyway. Without the carrier attached the landing gear will be free to come down.”
I nod, admiring her engineering skills. “Smart.”
She smiles. “Radcliffe didn’t call me up for nothing.”
Next we fill the carrier with anything we think we might need—ropes, cable, tools, spare drone parts, extra clothes—everything that will fit, we stuff inside. We load in the last of the ration bars, not knowing how long it will take us to dismantle and deliver the warhead. Since water’s heavy, we decide not to bring extra beyond what we’ll need on the flight, figuring instead that we can melt snow at the mountain.
With the drone buttoned up and ready to go, we close the hangar hatch and head back for our last night in the cave.
Jimmy is feeling much better, although he’s still in a lot of pain. We sit around his bed and eat a meal of fresh venison and potato soup made from the cave’s stash of supplies. We’ve learned that the boy’s name is Ananda, and that the warrior is called Gazan. The three sisters are Naron, Saron, and Talmon, although they all look so alike I can’t keep them straight.
Gazan points to Jimmy’s uneaten venison and asks him something in his native language.
Jimmy makes a show of taking a big bite. “Good, yes,” he says. “Very good. It jus’ hurts still to chew.”
The warrior nods as if he understands.
When we’re finished eating, the boy stands in the middle of the cave and performs a song for us. His voice is so beautiful that I soon forget where we are. I see nothing but the boy in the soft lamplight, singing us his story. Even though I can’t understand the words, his mimes, gestures, and melody lead me to believe that the song is one about the sunrise and new beginnings. It’s a song I need to hear, a song we all need to hear. He finishes with a bow.
I make my bed of furs for the night on the cave floor next to Jimmy. I’m more aware now than ever that he’s been by my side almost constantly since these crazy adventures began. I can’t imagine leaving him in the morning. Long after the lamps have been blown out, I lie awake in the dark and listen to him breathe. Once he stirs and says my name, but when I answer and he doesn’t reply, I realize that he must just be talking in his sleep. Later, I hear Gazan get up and leave the cave, probably to go pee. Then he comes back again, and by the sound of his breathing, falls almost immediately back asleep.
In the profound and absolute darkness, I lie awake and remember everything Jimmy and I have been through together. I remember those fun days in the cove and the horrible ones that followed. I remember crossing the mountain. I remember finding Junior. I remember the lake house and meeting Hannah, Gloria, and Mrs. Radcliffe. I remember the professor, the Isle of Man, and our adventures there. And I remember the escape from Holocene II and being in the jungle with Jimmy, Bill, and Roger. I remember first meeting my mother—the shock of it, the joy of it now. I remember getting to know her and coming to love her like I do. Then I laugh out loud when I remember Jimmy lying in that hole and trapping his eagle. I remember the dinner we had with the Motars and how lovely it was with my belly full, smoking my father’s pipe. It’s strange, because as horrible as everything has been at times, and as terrible as things have turned out, I already feel nostalgia for these days gone by.
I must fall asleep at some point, because the next thing I know the cave is washed in the gray light of dawn. Gazan and the boy are gone, probably out hunting. I get up and step quietly past the sleeping sisters and my mom and walk outside to relieve myself. When I turn around, Jimmy is standing in the entrance to the cave with a blanket over his shoulders.
“You shouldn’t be up,” I say.
“I’m fine,” he says. “I had a dream last night.”
“You did. What about?”
“About us.”
“Was it good or bad?” I ask. “Because I don’t know if I can stand to hear about it if it was bad.”
“No,” he says. “It was good.”
“Well, what was it about?”
“It’s hard to explain,” he says. “Maybe ’cause it’s a dream. But we was in this valley, and there was water. Like the waterfall out here, but maybe a river or maybe a stream. I dunno. But we was sittin’ there watchin’ the sunset, and all this wheat out in the valley jus’ turned to gold. And the breeze was dancin’ across it. And Junior was there with us.”
“He was?”
“Yeah, he was leapin’ through the grass, chasin’ a moth or somthin’. But he’d stop ever once in a while and look back—you know, like he used to do, makin’ sure we was still there. But that was the thing about it. We wasn’t goin’ nowhere no more, ’cause wherever it was, we was finally home.”
He finishes recounting his dream. I look at him there, standing wrapped in his blanket, half his face bandaged and the other half fixed in a peaceful smil
e. Neither of us speaks for a while as we listen to the relaxing sound of water bubbling by.
I don’t care anymore if it feels awkward or not, I cross to him and hug him, being careful not to pull at his bandages. He hugs me back, and it feels good. When I pull away, I hold him by the shoulders and look into his face.
“It’s not just a dream, Jimmy. I know it’s not. And it isn’t a picture of heaven or some afterlife either. I’m coming back, I promise you. I’m coming back, and we’ll find that valley and make our home there and settle down.”
“No more runnin’?” he asks.
“No more running,” I say.
He looks beyond me at the gray sky with a sort of wistful expression on his face. Then he sighs softly.
“I’d like that.”
Despite both my mother and me protesting loudly, Jimmy insists on making the trip to see us off. The three sisters stay behind, but they redo Jimmy’s bandages and generally fuss over him as they have been since arriving. Then they demand that he drink an entire pot of tea before they’ll let him leave. After loading my mother and me up with supplies for the trip, they see us off from the cave entrance.
The boy and his guardian follow behind us, but they keep at a distance and speak only occasionally to one another in their native tongue, blending into the surroundings so that it seems like just the three of us together making the trek.
We cross the valley, the river, and the hills beyond. I watch the steam rise and disappear into the morning air as we pass by the hot springs. I remember bathing with my mom and with Jimmy, and I wish we weren’t leaving and could instead all relax in the pools and talk until the end of days. But I know this may in fact be the end, and that I may never get that chance again.
Jimmy shakes his head when he sees the destroyed shelter, hardly recognizable now with most of the walls gone and piles of ashen debris on the exposed floor. I point out to him where we buried Red and Mrs. Hightower. He nods and says that we picked a perfect place.
The climb down into the hangar is even harder than I had imagined it might be. As I help Jimmy off the ladder, the look on his face tells me this is just as hard for him too. When Gazan and the boy come down and see the drone, they shy away and crouch against the wall like frightened horses. But we all reassure them, and they eventually step forward and walk around it in awe, touching the smooth metal with their fingers as if reading something there by braille My mother loads the supplies given to us by the sisters into the carrier, seals it shut again, and gives the drone one last inspection.
State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Page 24