The Pouakai

by Sperry, David;

  “We don’t know for sure.”

  “We know enough.”

  We stood like that for a while, looking at the ocean, contemplating what lay beyond that horizon, literally and figuratively.

  “What do you want to do?” I finally asked. She didn’t reply so I circled around in front of her, and looked into her eyes.

  “What do you want to do?” I repeated.

  She didn’t even appear to see me. Her eyes were focused right through me, into infinity. I held on to her tightly, and we rocked gently with the rhythm of the waves. Then she said something so softly I couldn’t understand.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “I want to leave,” she said.

  “Okay,” I replied quietly, as I picked up my fishing rod. “Let’s go.”

  “No,” she said. “I want to leave. I want to leave Hawaii.”

  I stepped back unsteadily, and closed my eyes. The ocean roared in my ears, and I felt dizzy.

  This had been coming for a long time. Too many of our friends had already left; cousins, neighbors, and co-workers. Now our friends across the street had decided to head to the mainland too. With my airline shrinking, the odds for its long-term survival were not good.

  But this was our home.

  “We don’t know what’s coming,” I insisted. “Colin says it could be years, if ever, before they make it this far north. We shouldn’t rush a decision like this without knowing what’s ahead.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Jennifer shouted at me, taking a step back. “You always do what you want, without listening to anyone else. You think you’re bulletproof, but you’re not. Being a Captain doesn’t mean everything in the world bows to your command!”

  “I don’t do that.”

  She lowered her voice, and looked at the sand. “Yes, you do. You don’t see it, and most of the time it doesn’t matter, but you’ve been doing this since I met you. You try to control what goes on around you, and blast ahead without thinking of the consequences. Maybe it helps you in your job, but not with me.”

  I looked at her, and saw a fear in her eyes I’d never seen before. This was her home too, born and raised here, and it scared her to think of moving away. Yet the fear of what could happen was worse. Those two sides had been pulling on her for much longer than I’d known. Wrapped up in my job, I’d ignored the signs, her changes in mood, and subtle hints. I’d dismissed her discussion of moving in past months as idle talk, brought on by so many of our friends heading away. She’d tried to tell me what she felt, but I’d discounted her words because they’d conflicted with what I wanted, which was to fly. Always and forever I’d been chasing that dream. How much had I missed in that single-minded pursuit? How had Jennifer accepted me putting my career first? How had I not seen what an ass I’d been?

  “You really want to leave here? Move to the mainland?” I asked, voice quavering. She nodded.

  “Lisa offered us her place for as long as we want it,” she said. “It’s plenty big, and we’d only be an hour away from Kelly. Plus Josh would be just a day’s drive away in Missoula.”

  I looked over her head, and up into the hard blue sky.

  “You’d like Denver,” she continued. “It’s not all that bad, just a little cold. You like my cousins. It will be easier this way.”

  I heard the hope in her voice, and it tore at my heart. Had I really been that blind to her wishes? I thought I’d been brave on many occasions in the past, but I finally realized it had been the bravado of someone in control of a situation that might turn unstable. This was very different. For the first time I knew what it meant to be really scared, to face an unknown that you had no control over, or to have choices without a predictable outcome.

  I hugged her, my heart pounding like crazy.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “We’ll go.”

  I looked over my shoulder and across the waves. The Pouakai were out there, somewhere. They’d won again. I felt the old bitterness rising against them, stronger than it had since they smashed into my plane last spring. Now they were forcing this drastic change in my life, and I hated them, more than anything else in my life. Wherever we ended up, I’d find a way to get rid of them for good.

  6

  Colin and I sat in the two remaining recliner chairs in our living room, each of us with a cold beer in hand. The mound of boxes that had started the morning piled against the far wall had grown smaller during the day as we moved them into the portable storage container. Although smaller than the one Colin had used for his Pouakai trap, it still dominated our driveway. Almost done with the big stuff, what remained were mostly personal belongings; photo albums, computers, and clothing we were taking with us to Colorado. Jennifer would take her time packing that away in the next few days.

  I shifted in my seat. “Ow,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Ow,” Colin added as he tried to reach for the bowl of edamame at his feet, but failed. “Seriously,” he said, glaring at me. “How much stuff can one family accumulate?”

  I shook my head. “Not that much, compared to our parents. The longer you stay together, the more you have. It’s a law of physics. I think Einstein discovered it after helping his grandparents move, and came up with the idea of black holes.”

  “Funny,” he said with a straight face.

  Jennifer came over and squeezed into the big recliner with me. She deftly pulled the beer from my hand, and took a long swig. Then she looked at me.

  “You stink,” she said with a grin.

  “You’re not exactly a plumeria blossom yourself, sweetie.” I didn’t have to tell her how good she looked in her shorts and T-shirt. She knew it, and enjoyed letting me ogle her. Even dusty and sweaty she looked a decade younger than her forty-seven years. Ever since I’d agreed to leave Hawaii, the spark of fun had returned to her eyes.

  She took another long pull from the bottle, and then handed it back to me. Her head tilted onto my shoulder, with her smooth legs on top of mine. We sat there for several minutes enjoying the down time.

  “Before I melt into this chair permanently,” Colin said, “is there anything else for me to move?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jennifer replied. “I took a swing through all the rooms before I sat down, and didn’t see anything big or obvious.”

  She gave a little sigh as I ran my fingers through her straight black hair. “If there’s anything left it’ll be small,” she continued. “Mark can stow it himself before they pick up the container tomorrow.”

  “Slave driver,” I said.

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  We sat there for several minutes, enjoying the breeze coming through the open windows, letting the soreness ebb from our muscles. I looked down at the carpet, and traced the indentations from the bookcases. How many years had they sat in that same spot? I’d forgotten how much darker the carpet had been when we’d installed it years ago, but that small patch under the shelves had remained a golden-beige while the rest of the room slowly faded in the sunlight and constant traffic. The books laid out a timeline too, as I’d packed them away a few days earlier: Some kids books left over from when Josh and Kelly were young, novels I’d loved, manuals for airplanes I hadn’t flown in years, and flyers from old vacations. Now they all sat in a couple of dozen boxes inside the shipping container on our driveway, waiting to be taken to a warehouse and stored for…What? Our return? The demise of the Pouakai? Or would they remain there until some natural disaster leveled the warehouse, centuries after mankind had been erased from history?

  “So when do you leave?” Colin’s voice brought me out of my fog.

  “Some time next week,” Jennifer replied.

  “After my last trip.” I added. “One more San Francisco round trip starting tomorrow. I’ll be back Sunday afternoon, and then I’m done.”

  “And then you’re off to the frozen tundra of Colorado,” Colin said with a sad smile.

  I shrugged. “Hopefully it’s only temporary.”

>   “Hopefully,” Colin replied.

  “Hopefully,” Jennifer echoed.

  After another minute of silence I asked Colin, “When do you and Anna leave Hawaii?”

  A grin spread across his face. “When they make us.”

  “You’re really going to stay?” Jennifer asked. “What about Anna? Doesn’t she want to get out of here too?”

  Colin shrugged. “She does, but she wants to stay with me more. She said that if anyone was going to find a way to get rid of these things it was me, and she wanted to stay and let me do that.”

  “Aren’t you going out on the ship soon?”

  Colin nodded. “About ten more days and we should have everything loaded up. The trap is ready, and we’re getting our supplies lined up. Once the Navy is ready to accompany us with their sub, we’re off.”

  “Anna will be here by herself?” Jennifer asked quietly.

  “Her mom is here now. She moved over from the big island last month. They’ll hang out together until I get back.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Brave girl.”

  Colin nodded. He reached down and snagged the bowl of edamame. He had again remembered to bring makana, a gift, when he came over. The bowl of fresh-cooked soybeans with a little garlic and sesame oil made a perfect snack on a day like this. One of these days I’d remember to bring something when I went to their house. Maybe.

  “Aren’t you scared,” Jennifer finally asked.

  Colin nodded again. “Sure. I’ve seen what the Pouakai can do. But someone has to stop them. I guess I’m in the right position for it now.” He put a couple of empty soybean pods back into the bowl and took out another one. “It’s not like I volunteered for this. I’d much rather be going over data from the planet finder satellites. Sometimes though, you just have things thrust on you, and you deal with what you’ve got.” He dropped several more soybeans in his mouth, and smiled.

  I never knew Colin was that brave. Either that or he really didn’t understand the dangers. I chose to believe the first one.

  “If you guys don’t have anything more to move, I should be going,” he said, struggling out of the recliner.

  “No, that should do it,” I said.

  We shook hands, and then hugged. Jennifer reached in and hugged both of us.

  “You be careful,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. I’m more of a coward than either of you. I’ll be hiding inside that nice steel tube of a submarine most of the time. It’ll be cramped, but safe.”

  “Tell Anna to call us anytime. Please,” Jennifer said.

  “You too,” I added. “I want to hear how the great Pouakai hunt is going.”

  “Sure thing. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. We’ll get it figured out soon, then things will be back to normal.”

  “We’re counting on it.”

  Colin took off down the hill, in his rusty old Toyota. We stood in the doorway for a long time after that, listening to the sounds of the world; the tradewinds blowing down the valley, the distant surf at the beach, birds in the trees.

  “He’s a brave man,” Jennifer finally said.

  “Yeah, he is,” I added. We needed more like him, but I had a feeling that trying to eliminate the Pouakai was like shooting arrows into the dark; you might hit your target, but just as likely you’d end up nailing a friend instead. I hugged Jennifer, who stood up on her tiptoes to kiss me.

  I felt horrible about leaving Hawaii, but we had to do it. My first duty was to my family. The rest of the world came second. If that made me a coward and Colin a hero, so be it. Soon enough we’d be on the mainland, away from any immediate danger. Then, maybe, I could find some way to help.

  At least we’d be safe in Colorado, I thought.

  7

  Sunlight reflected off of the low scattered clouds and ocean swells of the Pacific, a sight I’d never gotten tired of. The view out the cockpit window took on a more melancholy tone though, as it might be many years, if ever, before I saw it again.

  My last flight: I never thought it would come this soon. I had been planning to fly until mandatory retirement at sixty-five, nearly fifteen years in the future. For now though, this was it.

  We’d taken off from San Francisco into the typical summer morning fog, and popped up through it to a brilliant blue sky. The towers of the Golden Gate Bridge stood out of the fog like two orange spikes, signposts for what lay beneath. Now, four hours into the flight, I had just an hour left in my career as a pilot, and try as I might, I couldn’t shake the feeling of failure.

  Jeff Lee was my co-pilot, the first time we’d flown together since crashing on Nanumea in the spring. He offered to let me fly both legs, but with his furlough coming in another week, I said no. He flew into SFO while I took the leg home. We’d chatted all the way over the previous afternoon, but this last leg was mostly in silence. We both had a lot to think about.

  We passed the last waypoint before calling Honolulu center on the radio, and Jeff sent our position report.

  “Last time for that too,” he said with a smile. Trying to talk to controllers in San Francisco over the High Frequency radio was the equivalent of shouting to your neighbor across the street during a windstorm. The technology hadn’t changed much since the 1930s, and sometimes the static made meaningful communications impossible.

  “Any plans after you get moved?” he asked.

  “No, not really. Just hunker down and see what happens, I guess. You?”

  “Alaska. I’ve got a cabin outside of Fairbanks that I usually go to in the summer for fishing and hunting. I’ll just hang out there until things calm down.”

  “Not much of a party scene for you out there,” I said with a grin.

  “Just me and the ptarmigan, bears, and moose,” he laughed. “I need some down time anyway.” He placed the flight plan and report sheets into the envelope for our dispatch office records.

  The ACARS chime dinged, signaling that we had a text message from our dispatch office. I was getting my approach charts for Honolulu out and arranged, so Jeff printed the message and started reading it out loud.

  “Attention all aircraft inbound Hawaii,” he began, and then went silent. I turned to him and all I saw was a blank stare on his face.

  “What is it?”

  He handed me the message:

  ATTN ALL ACFT INBOUND HAWAII. ROCS POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED WEST OF KONA MOVING NORTH. ONE NAVY DESTROYER SUNK. IF YOU HAVE NOT REACHED ETP, RETURN TO MAINLAND. IF YOU ARE PAST ETP, CONTINUE INBOUND. BE PREPARED FOR DIVERSION. DISPATCH. HOLLY.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Here we go again,” Jeff added, his face a ghostly pale color. I probably looked the same.

  One thought overwhelmed my mind; Jennifer. If the Pouakai were around, I hoped she would remember to be quiet, and stay hidden. If she’d been listening to my stories from Nanumea, she would.

  8

  “All aircraft just shut up!”

  I’d never heard an air traffic controller use language like that, but I’d never been in a situation like this, either. We were descending toward Honolulu, all eyes searching for Pouakai. Seventeen aircraft had been enroute to Hawaii and too far to turn around. The military had wanted to make us all turn back, but saner heads prevailed, since most of us would have run out of fuel short of the mainland.

  “No more replies unless it’s an emergency,” the approach controller continued, obviously stressed by the situation. “United eighty-five, turn right heading three-five-zero, cleared for approach runway eight left, American two fifteen, descend and maintain three thousand.” His rapid-fire directions were an attempt to clear the skies as soon as possible. We’d just watched another airline’s plane make a sharp turn and steep descent into the airport.

  “Jeez, he’s going fast,” Jeff said, while looking at that plane.

  “Everyone’s in panic mode.”

  “They’d better keep it together. No use in banging up an airplane by hurrying.”

  After a couple of interminabl
e minutes, the controller turned us toward the airport. “Palm Tree twenty-two turn right heading three-five-zero, cleared for visual approach, runway eight left.”

  I turned the plane right, and as we rolled level Jeff said, “Oh shit.”

  Adrenaline kicked in, and my heart raced. “Pouakai?”

  “No, look.” He pointed toward the airport. A thick column of black smoke rose from the far end of the runway.

  “Son of a bitch. Did the Pouakai get him?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s the guy we saw making a steep approach. He was going too fast and ran off the end of the runway.”

  Just then I heard the United ahead of us call approach control. “There’s an overrun at the airport. It looks like the runway is closed.”

  “No shit,” Jeff said under his breath.

  “All aircraft maintain altitude, approach clearances cancelled.”

  I leveled off and overflew the runway. Another airline’s 767 sat nose down in the grass at the end of the runway. The escape slides were out with a horde of people standing on the taxiway nearby. The right wingtip had broken off and flames engulfed the wing and grass. “At least it looks like most of them got out,” I said.

  Decision time.

  “Approach, Palm Tree twenty-two,” I said. “We’re declaring a fuel emergency. We need an immediate approach.”

  “Unable, Palm Tree. The tower called and said the field is closed to civilian traffic because of the overrun. They’ve got a ton of rescue equipment down at the far end of the runway. The only open airport is Lihue.”

  “Lihue is twenty minutes away,” I replied, trying to hold my voice steady. “Unless you want the rest of us to go and ditch these planes, I’d suggest letting us land.”

  The radio stayed silent for what seemed like an eternity. Finally I keyed the mike.

  “Approach, you still there?”

  “Standby.”

  After another few moments of silence, I was about to turn for Honolulu, controllers be dammed, when the radio came alive.