The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy

by Ryan Winfield

  “You need to pull it together,” I hear Dr. Radcliffe say.

  “What’s that?”

  “You need to focus on what’s important here. We’ve got a job to do, and not much time to prepare. You’ll have the whole planet. You’ll have Hannah. You’ll have as long as it takes to accomplish what needs to be done, and then you’ll have the honor of being the last man.”

  “The last man? Really? That again? What’s the point of such a perfect planet if nobody’s here to enjoy it anyway?”

  “To let some greater thing come to be, of course.”

  “I don’t believe you even know what you’re saying.”

  “You’ve got a lot to learn yet, young man. Why don’t you come with me in the morning? I’m leaving at first light to inspect what murderous things some of your precious humans have been doing up north. I’d like for you to see it yourself.”

  I shake my head.

  “You’ll come around,” he says, picking up his book again. “You’re a smart boy, and there’s no other choice.”

  “I do have one question for you.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Anything.”

  “If you needed me so bad, why weren’t you looking for me after the train crashed?”

  “We did search for you,” he says. “We looked everywhere. We mobilized most of our fleet to the west coast trying to find you. We never thought you’d already look like one of them.”

  “One of who?”

  “Those savages.”

  “What savages?”

  “In that cove,” he says. “I’m just glad you survived.”

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, a new and darker horror grips my heart and rips it from my chest—

  It was me they were looking for. I brought all those drones to the cove. The first fly-by that killed Uncle John. The warship that mowed down the men. The drones that slaughtered the woman and the kids. Me! They were looking for me.

  “Where are you going?” Dr. Radcliffe asks.

  “I need some fresh air.”

  “Good thing there’s a whole world full of it out there,” he says, chuckling. “And put my boat back in the boathouse, will you? Smells like rain tonight.”

  The wooden door closes in the rock wall behind me with a solid and final thud. I pause and consider going back and saying goodbye to Hannah, but decide against it.

  I walk the shore and climb the bluff to where Jimmy and I first saw the lake house. I remember how magical it looked that night with the windows lit and the torches burning. I remember being mesmerized the next morning by Hannah hitting balls. Stopping, I look down at the lawns, the tennis courts, the dock. It doesn’t seem like much of anything to me now.

  Heading into the forest, I find the fallen tree where Jimmy and I spent that night. My old pack is still there, empty and blackened with mildew. I reach down and pick it up, something heavy in its bottom. I reach inside and find Uncle John’s knife. I turn it in my hand, as cold and hard and real as the fact that I drew those drones that murdered him.

  I walk into the forest, down toward the river, retracing the way Jimmy and I came up. My mind wanders and I walk in a trance, navigating by some faded memory of our having come this way before, without actually recognizing anything I pass.

  I think about the horror of that day, the cannons, the men vaporizing into bloody mist. I think about the women, the kids, the bodies stacked on the funeral pyre burning in the night. I think about my father’s lifeless body sliding into that trap, his brain suspended in the mindless grip of that robotic arm. And I think about my mother lost forever in that rancid red soup.

  It’s dusk when I reach the river. The trees are dark, the water black. The only light comes from the sun-bleached stones littering the riverbank where they seem to glow in the shadows of coming night. I bend down and pick one up, cold and heavy in my hand. I hear a branch break and turn toward the sound, listening for a minute, a minute more. But all I hear is the deep river flowing quietly past. Calm comes over me. A kind of peace I haven’t known for a long time. I slip the stone in my pack. Then I choose another and slip it in, too. I bend and pick up stone after stone, adding each to the pack, and when the pack is full, I cinch it closed, and lift it to check the weight. Heavy enough. I swing the pack, hoist it onto my back, slip my arms beneath the straps, and knot the ends tight at my chest.

  I pick Uncle John’s knife from my pocket and pitch it into the river. Then I wade in after it. My legs shiver uncontrollably in the cold, the current tugging my waist, and my breath steams in front of me like some ghost escaping already from my chest. I look up at the dark sky. Not a single star in sight. I guess no one is looking down after all. There’s just me here all alone, looking up, looking around, looking anywhere to avoid looking at this new loneliness I’ve found.

  My legs stop trembling and I feel my thoughts numb.

  I step farther into the river and give myself to the current, my feet dragging on the bottom for a moment before slipping into the depths. Then I lean back and let the heavy pack take me down.

  It’s peaceful—the silence, the cold.

  I feel the pack knock against the rocky riverbed, drag along the bottom, catch a snag and then stop.

  I’m weightless. I open my eyes and watch the shadows of my life rippling away on the dark surface above. I exhale my last breath and empty my lungs, the bubbles carried away in the swift current. I close my eyes and imagine my father cupping my head in his hands, kissing my hair, telling me he loves me.

  Then I open my mouth to fill my lungs—

  I can’t do it. My body won’t respond to my command, my lungs won’t inhale. Panic overtakes me—survival instinct, maybe even regret. I twist and turn in the straps, kicking my legs, flailing my arms. Then I hear my father’s words, “Breathe good energy in, breath bad energy out,” and I relax and settle into my fate, my arms going limp and dangling in the current at my side. I laugh inside to think that this is where everything led. Somehow it all seems unimportant to me now, even silly. But here it is for real, the final moment, my last mistake.

  My lungs give up their fight. I gasp the cold river in.

  CHAPTER 36

  You Don’t Look Like an Angel

  Mouth on my mouth.

  Fists pounding on my chest.

  Coughing, spitting, breathe.

  Hands rubbing my arms, my legs. Wet sandpaper on my cheek. A fire fades into view. When I sit up, Jimmy and Junior are both looking at me. Jimmy’s stripped to just his underwear, his dry clothes wrapped around me. I see my wet clothes spread on rocks near the fire, drying.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “You’s know what happened,” Jimmy says.

  “But you don’t look like an angel.”

  “You’s dun’ look like much yerself.”

  “Did you follow me?”

  “No,” he says, “I followed Junior. Junior followed ya.”

  Junior sneezes, licks my face again. It doesn’t matter who followed who, I’m just happy that they’re both here. Then I see my father’s pipe resting on a rock beside my clothes, the plastic case of tobacco he gave me just this morning sitting next to it. Seeing them there reminds me of what happened, and tears well up in my eyes. The fire blurs. I shake.

  “It’s okay,” Jimmy says. “It’s okay. Jus’ relax.”

  He rubs my arms again and I feel the circulation returning in waves of tingling pain. I look down at my hands, white and wrinkled and lifeless in the light of the fire.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Dun’ be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Oh, yes, there is,” I insist, tears coming fast now, my voice cracking in my swollen throat. “I’m sorry for letting you down. I’m sorry for betraying you, for taking sides with Radcliffe. I’m sorry for your family, for leading the Park Service to them. I’m sorry for everything, Jimmy.”

  “So they are the Park Service?”

  “That and worse,” I say. �
��They killed my dad, Jimmy. And I watched it. They cut out his brain. Now they’ve got it kept in some sort of sick torture test. My mother’s, too.”

  Jimmy moves down to my legs, kneading them with warm hands. They too begin to ache as the circulation returns.

  “I’ve got to do something,” I say. “I’ve got to free them from that terrible place.”

  Jimmy looks confused. “Thought you said they’s dead?”

  “They are and they aren’t.”

  “How can ya be both?”

  “That’s the horror of it. They’re not alive, at least not as themselves. But they’re not completely dead, either.” I pause to look into the fire, the flames crackling in the cold air. “Jimmy, why’d you want me to burn the bodies in the cove?”

  “To release their souls,” he says.

  “You believe in souls?”

  “I really dunno,” he says, his eyes wet now, too. “There’s somethin’ leaves us when we die. There jus’ has to be.”

  “Will you help me?”

  He moves down to my feet, rubbing warmth back into my toes. “Help you with what?”

  “Help me set my family free.”

  “I’ll never forget what ya did for me,” he says. “You’s jus’ tell me what ya need, buddy, and I’m with ya all the way.”

  Junior hops into my lap and looks up at me. I reach to pet him, my arms stiff and slow. He licks my hand.

  “Looks like Junior’s with ya, too,” Jimmy says, laughing. “Now let’s get ya back into yer own damn clothes ’fore I freeze my nuts off here and die myself.”

  Hannah comes to me in the night.

  I wake to find her sitting on the edge of my bed, the silver moon framed in the window, her wavy red hair gray in its light.

  When I sit, she startles, as if she was the one sleeping, not me. She turns and smiles. Then she leans down and kisses me on the lips, lingering for a moment before pulling away and touching my cheek.

  “Are you all right?” she whispers.

  “I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I think so.”

  “Daddy told me what happened. I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what seeing that must have been like.”

  I shrug and look away, not wanting to cry again.

  “Why don’t we wait and talk about Eden later when you’re ready,” she says, stroking my hair. “We’ll find a better way.”

  I nod and pull her into my arms, never wanting to let her go, but knowing that I might have to. I smell her hair and kiss her head and tell her everything will be okay.

  I don’t tell her there’ll be no Eden left to talk about.

  CHAPTER 37

  How Many Miles Down to Babylon?

  “Pisscrap!”

  Jimmy punches the locked doorknob.

  “Pisscrap?”

  “It’s somethin’ my pa said. Ya sure there’s even another’n in there anyhow?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I say, trying the boathouse knob myself. “It’s hanging from a lift in the cross beams. I saw it myself.”

  Jimmy turns and looks out across the lake.

  “Maybe we can make a raft or somethin’?”

  “We’d never make it in a raft,” I say. “And how would we work the locks?”

  “How do ya work ’em anyway?”

  “I don’t know, they just open. Probably a cryptographic signature from the boat.”

  “Crypto-what?”

  “An electronic signal.”

  “Like lightning?”

  “Boy, we’ve got a lot to catch you up on.”

  “Whatever. We jus’ better do somethin’ ’fore the rest of the house wakes up. When did the creepy old man leave?”

  I look back at the sleeping house, a single light burning in the kitchen window. “I’m not sure. He said yesterday he was heading out at first light. His bed was empty when I checked.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “She has her own room.”

  “They sleep separate?”

  “She’s sick a lot.”

  “Hannah?”

  “Sleeping like a princess.”

  Jimmy steps away from the locked door, and walks farther down the dock, peering around at the front of the boathouse. “I’ve got an idea,” he says. Then he jumps in the water.

  I see right away what his plan is. My breath catches as I lower myself into the cold lake, joining Jimmy where he treads water in front of the boathouse.

  “Ready?” he says, “One, two, three.”

  We gulp in breaths, dive underwater and swim beneath the doors. When we surface inside the shadowed boathouse, Jimmy climbs up on the dock, and reaches a hand to help me up after him. He looks funny in his dripping clothes, and I must too.

  “Double pisscrap,” he says. “He ain’t even gone yet.”

  The wooden boat floats beside the dock, the carbon fiber boat suspended above it. I stand there, looking at the boats, wondering what to do. Water drips down my face, tickling my nose. I smell the varnish, the wet stone. Then I hear the jingle of approaching keys. Jimmy grabs my arm, his eyes wide with panic. Frantic, I look for a place to hide. Stepping into the boat, I scurry beneath the cockpit and open a panel, hoping that the storage bay is big enough to fit us. We scramble inside the bow, and I close the panel just as the boathouse door opens.

  We lie perfectly still amidst the life vests and coils of rope. My heart hammers. I breathe slow, trying to not make a sound. I can feel Jimmy’s chest rise and fall beside me in the dark.

  The boat rocks when Dr. Radcliffe steps aboard, and I just hope he didn’t see our wet footprints on the dock, or hear us crawling in here to hide. I breathe a little easier when I feel the electric engines spin on. Then the boat moves gently forward, and I know we’ve exited the boathouse because a crack of light shows around the edges of the closed panel. Jimmy pats my back as a silent good job. I smile even though he can’t see it.

  The boat accelerates across the lake, rising and falling over waves, the hull slapping the surface of the water, jostling Jimmy and I woodenly in the dark. It takes a long time crossing, or at least it seems like it does, confined in a crawlspace just on the other side of Dr. Radcliffe’s feet.

  At last, the boat slows, and I know we’ve cruised inside the locks because the crack of light around the panel disappears again. Jimmy grips my arm when he feels the boat dropping. I pat his hand to let him know everything is okay. As the boat lowers into the deep locks, Dr. Radcliffe begins to sing, his words echoing off the walls of the concrete shaft—

  How many miles down to Babylon? / Three score miles more and ten. Can I find my way by candlelight? Yes, there and maybe back again. For if your hull is nimble and your oars light, You may just get there by candlelight.

  It must be some childhood nursery rhyme he remembers, and I’m embarrassed listening to him sing it—feels as if we’re eavesdropping on a private moment.

  We reach the bottom of the locks. I hear the lower gates open on their gears, and I feel the boat glide forward into the underground channel. Dr. Radcliffe doesn’t sing again, and I’m glad for the silence, even though we nearly have to hold our breath it’s so quiet. A few minutes later, we slow to a stop, and I hear the step plate fold out and clamp onto the dock. Then the motors shut off, and the boat rocks as Dr. Radcliffe steps out of it, his footsteps retreating up the dock.

  Jimmy and I lie there for five minutes, maybe ten. Finally deciding there’s nothing to be gained by waiting any longer, I pop the panel free and climb out into the dim red glow of the underground cavern. Jimmy climbs out behind me and looks around, his head turning slowly, his eyes fast and furtive.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s the Foundation headquarters.”

  “Foundation?”

  I drop my eyes from his, the full connection hitting me for the first time. “The Park Service,” I say.

  Keeping low and out of sight, we tiptoe up the docks onto the shore. When we arrive at the locked metal door of the s
intering plant, I stop and look at the keypad.

  “What’s the plan?” Jimmy asks, scanning the buildings.

  “We’re going to blow up Eden,” I say.

  “I figured that,” he says, looking at me like I’m stupid.

  “You got your strike-a-light?”

  “Yer gonna blow up Eden with a pyrite and flint?”

  “Just give it to me.”

  Jimmy stuffs his hand in his pocket and pulls out a small leather case, still damp from our swim. He opens it and empties the round flint and flat pyrite stone into my palm. I strip my father’s pipe off my neck, pull out the plastic tobacco canister he gave me, thankful that it’s water tight, and load the stringy tobacco in the bowl.

  “Fine time for a smoke,” Jimmy says, shaking his head.

  I stuff the canister back in my pocket, put the loaded pipe in my mouth, and strike the flint on the pyrite over the bowl, sucking air through to coax the spark to take. Three, four, five loud strikes in the quiet cavern. and then a curl of smoke rises from the bed of tobacco. Several short puffs get it going, and I turn away and cover my cough, handing the pipe to Jimmy.

  “Smoke it.”

  “What?”

  “Puff it fast,” I say. “We need to burn the tobacco down.”

  We pass the pipe back and forth, puffing until we’re both green. When the tobacco is burned down and blackened, I use the round flint stone to grind the ash to a fine powder inside the bowl. Then I lean down with the pipe in my mouth, tilt the bowl to the keypad and blow. Black charcoal powder plumes out and settles on the keypad in an almost unnoticeable film.

  “Come on,” I say, grabbing Jimmy and pulling him away from the door. “Let’s hide.”

  We retreat toward the docks and duck behind the base of a gantry crane used for pulling big boats out of the water. I hang the pipe around my neck, peek around the crane, and watch our cloud of tobacco smoke dissipate into the red shadows.

  “You think anyone will come?” Jimmy asks.

  “Someone has to go in there eventually,” I say.

  “Who all’s down in this creepy place?”