The Pouakai

  “All aircraft, Honolulu will take you now. Be sure to land as short as possible and avoid the rescue efforts at the east end of the runway.”

  “Thank God,” Jeff muttered.

  Another string of rapid-fire instructions followed to get us in some semblance of order and heading in line back toward the airport.

  Jeff reprogrammed the computer with our new route.

  “How does the fuel look?” I asked.

  “Marginal, but okay. Don’t do any more go-arounds though.”

  “Got it.” After holding for an hour while the air traffic controllers figured out what to do with us when we first arrived in the islands, our fuel reserves had dwindled to the bare minimum.

  We lined up five miles behind the United 777 and followed the directions from the controller. Jeff called the company operations center to tell them we were coming in, but nobody answered. Hopefully someone knew we were coming and would have a crew ready to meet us. If the Pouakai were in the area though, they may all be in a shelter somewhere, unable to help us. We flew west along the Honolulu shoreline low and slow, burning up even more precious fuel. The controllers wouldn’t let us out of line from behind the United, however.

  “Keep your eyes open,” I said. Jeff nodded. He didn’t have to be told what to look out for. We’d both seen Pouakai from the air.

  “Caution all aircraft, fighters launching from the Air Guard base in three minutes.”

  “Seriously?” Jeff asked as we made the turn to cross the west shoreline of Oahu. “That’s right when we get there.”

  “Approach, Palm Tree twenty-two. We don’t have the fuel for a go-around, no matter what the fighters are doing.”

  “Palm Tree, we’re letting you in here against all normal regulations. Just be glad we let you in at all.”

  Jeff and I looked at each other. “And fuck you very much,” Jeff said, pretending to key the microphone. “Asshole.”

  We configured for landing, trying to remain close to the United jet ahead of us. In the distance, beyond the rising smoke from the burning plane, were the verdant ridges at the east end of Honolulu. Jennifer was just over that last ridge, hopefully hiding someplace safe inside our house. We hadn’t been able to get details on how long the alert had been out, or how many Pouakai had actually been sighted in Honolulu. Our operations frequency remained frustratingly quiet.

  The approach controller turned us over to the tower, who cleared us to land. The United landed hard, two puffs of tire smoke curling in its wake as it hit the concrete. We bounced in the normal tradewind turbulence; the blue of the ocean to our right and green trees below felt unnaturally bright, as if mocking our grim situation.

  “Any Pouakai in sight?” I asked.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Five hundred feet above the ground we crossed the entrance channel to Pearl Harbor, emptied now of almost all Navy vessels.

  “Dammit,” said Jeff. “Here come the Guard fighters.”

  I looked to the right of the runway. Six F-22s were taxiing at high speed toward our runway, and it looked like we’d meet at the same place and time. As if on cue, the tower called.

  “Palm Tree twenty-two, go around for fighter departure. Turn right heading one four zero, maintain three thousand feet.”

  I keyed the mike. “Unable. We’ve declared a low fuel emergency.”

  “Palm Tree twenty-two, the Guard has emergency priority. A large swarm of Rocs is at the east shore, and they have to go now!”

  “Unless you want two hundred and fifty dead people on your hands, we’re landing now. The fighters will have to wait just a few seconds, that’s all.”

  “Palm Tree, go around!”

  We crossed the threshold of the runway.

  “Hold on, Jeff.”

  The lead fighter crossed the hold-short line on the taxiway ahead of me, and bobbed to a stop as the pilot stomped on his brakes. I eased my plane to the left side of the runway as I flared for the landing, flashing past the fighters, just a couple of dozen feet from my right wingtip. Years of practice took over and I made the landing, possibly my last ever, as smooth as glass. Then I jumped on the brakes and slowed quickly, turning off at my normal spot.

  “Tell the fighters, thank you,” I said to the tower.

  “The FAA will be contacting you,” came the icy reply.

  I turned to Jeff. “What are they going to do? Pull my license?”

  He grinned as he switched to the ground frequency. They directed us to a nearby gate. There wasn’t anyone to marshal us in, but I’d done it so many times I didn’t need them. I stopped when I pulled even with the jetway and shut down the engines.

  “Now what?” Jeff asked.

  “Call ops, see if they can get someone up here to move the jetway for us.”

  Nobody answered in ops. Just before I went to blow the escape slide for everyone to exit down however, a young agent showed up in the jetway and moved it toward the plane.

  When she opened the door I could tell she had been crying. A look of fear filled her eyes.

  “Thanks for moving the jetway,” I said.

  “The Rocs are coming,” she replied, “I saw you pull in and didn’t want to leave you out here, but you have to get everyone to safety.” She dashed down the jetway.

  “Wait! Where should we all go?”

  “Everyone is in the main concourse, hiding. I have to go, please. I don’t want them to get me…”

  She turned and ran back into the terminal.

  “Get everyone off the plane and into the terminal,” I said quietly to the lead flight attendant.

  The passengers streamed off the plane, most with fear in their eyes or tears on their faces. I wanted to comfort them, to tell them it would be all right, but one overriding thought raced through my head.

  Jennifer.

  9

  The terminal had been sealed tight by airport security. I managed to make it to the crewroom with my ID, but couldn’t get outside to the parking lot. There was no way to get home. Jeff and I stood with a couple of other pilots that had made it in, and watched the TV news.

  “Remember the most important measures, in case you see a Roc in the vicinity,” said an overly-caffeinated local newsreader. “Stay quiet. If you’re in your car, pull to the shoulder and shut everything off. Stay inside and don’t move. If you’re outside on foot, slowly and quietly make your way to shelter. Don’t run, and don’t scream.”

  Jeff groaned. “Here’s where they pull out the old footage of us.” As if on cue one of the many interviews Jeff and I did after returning to Oahu appeared on the screen.

  “Yep. Always refer to the experts.” I rolled my eyes at Jeff, and he grimly shook his head.

  “Remember,” said the TV anchor, “people have survived around the Rocs before. Here is an interview with Captain Mark Boone and Co-Pilot Jeff Lee who kept most of their passengers alive after crashing onto a Roc-infested island in the South Pacific a few months ago.”

  Jeff and I both walked away from the TV. We’d seen that interview too many times already. The other pilots in the room knew enough not to kid us about it like they had in the past.

  I phoned home again. About half my tries had been met with a fast busy signal, and those that had gone through ended up at the answering machine. Jennifer’s cell phone went straight to voicemail. She was either hiding, or at a friend’s house. At least, I hoped so.

  I got the answering machine again. “Dammit.”

  Fear for Jennifer kept me pacing as if I were a caged animal. Airport security had an armed guard posted at every exit, and they were deadly serious about not letting anyone outside. I turned to the TV again.

  “HPD has closed off all streets and freeways,” said the TV newsreader. “Remain where you are until the all-clear has sounded.”

  “Yeah right,” said Jeff. “You think the police are sitting outside with those things around?”

  I thought about that for a minute. “You may be right.”

  “Huh
?”

  “If I could get outside, I don’t think anyone would stop me from getting home.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Boonie. There could be roadblocks, or accidents, or you could get stuck in traffic with the other loons and be a sitting target for the Pouakai.”

  “Look at the traffic cams,” I said, pointing to the status monitors at the back of the crew room. “Nobody’s out there. They’re all holed up somewhere. But there’s no Pouakai showing up here either. If I could just get to my car I could get home and make sure Jennifer is safe, instead of sitting here, being useless.”

  “All it takes is one Pouakai for you to have a really bad day. Remember what happened to Brett.”

  I shrugged, but couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to get home.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Jeff continued. “You can’t get out of the terminal.”

  “There’s got to be a way, somehow,” I said quietly.

  I left the crew room and wandered around, my mind spinning. I went to the Chief Pilot’s office, but it being Sunday, the door was locked. The main lounge had several leather sofas and chairs, computers for pulling up flight plans, and the TV. Jeff and the others huddled around the set, watching the unfolding drama. So far though, nothing had happened in Honolulu. The only action was the sinking of the Navy ship off the coast of the Big Island, well south of us. A huge swarm of Pouakai was out there, somewhere around the east end of our island. According to the TV however, nobody had reported seeing more than a couple of Pouakai in Honolulu yet.

  I walked through the locker room and into the bathroom, needing to relieve myself. As I stood at the urinal, I glanced over at the wall next to me. The passenger parking lot sat on the other side of that wall, and beyond that, the employee lot with my car, ready to take me to Jennifer. If I could only get past that concrete barrier, I could get to her.

  I looked up, and took in a breath. An old louver window was set into the wall. Welded shut and painted over years ago, I’d never really noticed it before. Without even washing my hands, I zipped up and climbed onto the bench below the window. The louvers were held shut with a steel bar welded into the frame, but the frame itself was screwed into the wall with what looked like standard Phillips-head screws.

  Feeling like I had a secret nobody else knew, I walked back to the crew room, looking for the tool kit we used for fixing broken suitcases and headsets. I hadn’t pulled it out in years, and wondered if there would be a screwdriver big enough. The rusty red case had a thick coating of dust on it, but inside sat a decent sized screwdriver. I palmed it, and nonchalantly wandered back to the bathroom, my heart pounding.

  I climbed back up on the bench to work on the six screws standing between me and Jennifer. The first one had several coats of paint over it, but the moist tropical environment had softened the layers, and they peeled off easily. The screw was tight, but I got it out, and started on the second.

  “This looks like a bad prison movie,” Jeff said from behind me. I jumped and almost dropped the screwdriver.

  “Shit. Don’t scare me like that.”

  “You were way too obvious in trying to be casual. I could tell something was up. Are you really going to drive home with the Pouakai out there?”

  “I have to make sure Jennifer is okay. She’s not answering the phone and I can’t take just sitting here.”

  “Well, hell, hang on,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye out for anyone else on this side. If I cough, get down and pee or something.”

  “Thanks.” I got back to digging out the ancient window frame. A few minutes later the screws were out and I jiggled the window. It didn’t budge, but the welded bar made a nice handhold. I grabbed it and yanked harder. With a grinding scrape the window moved back an inch.

  “So much for the TSA’s security,” Jeff said from the bathroom doorway. “Be careful Boonie. I know you’ve been around these things before, but this isn’t Nanumea. They could act a lot different here.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be careful, and I’ll give you a call once I get home, let you know I made it safely. Just help me here, and put this thing back in place after I’m out.”

  Jeff and I pulled the window out of the frame. It felt a lot heavier than I’d expected, but we caught it, and set it on the bench. I poked my head out into the hot and humid air. Nobody was around, so I scrambled through the opening and dropped to the ground in the planter bed that lined the wall. I heard Jeff grunting, and then the scraping sound of the window as it slid into place. I was on my own.

  10

  I ripped down the empty freeway toward Honolulu doing ninety, about as fast as my little econobox could go. The wind roared outside the open passenger window like a hurricane. I passed two on-ramps with police cruisers sitting on them, but their lights were off, and nobody followed me. The Honolulu traffic had eased over the past year as people moved away, but I had never seen the freeway so completely deserted like this.

  The radio blasted another high-pitched warning signal, and a scratchy voice came on.

  “This is a statement from the joint emergency preparedness office. A large swarm of Rocs has been positively identified over east Oahu, extending from Makapuu Point to Hawaii Kai. The Rocs are heading west, toward downtown Honolulu. Everyone take shelter now, remain quiet and keep listening for further updates.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I mumbled. If the Pouakai kept closing in like that, I’d have to stop and hide before I got home.

  I hadn’t been looking in my rear-view mirror, concentrating instead on the freeway ahead. So I got a jolt of adrenaline as a police cruiser blasted past me, doing well over a hundred. For a moment I thought he would try to pull me over, but he kept on moving, raising a cloud of dust every time he bounced through a dip in the road. His lights and sirens were off; a good idea since they’d attract the Pouakai that much faster. Maybe he was trying to get home like me.

  The freeway curved sharply onto an overpass as it went by the University. Just beyond the crest of the overpass a plume of dust billowed skyward. I slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid a pile of three cars smashed into each other, including the police car that had just passed me. Flames burst from the wreckage as I veered around the twisted metal scattered across the only open lane. If the police car hadn’t passed me, it might have been me that plowed into the two vehicles already smashed up on the freeway.

  I didn’t look into any of the cars as I went by, and a feeling of shame washed over me. I should have stopped to see if anyone had survived. One part of my mind screamed to go help them, but the other forced me to continue because I didn’t know where Jennifer was. I drove on.

  I soared over another rise less than a minute later, and I saw the Pouakai, the same gray cloud that I’d seen from my plane over Nanumea.

  “Son of a bitch,” I shouted, and hit the steering wheel with my palm. I slammed on the brakes and slewed over to the exit I was just passing. My car screamed down the ramp and across the intersection, all against red lights. I pulled onto the road that ran under the elevated freeway, and skidded to a stop next to the Kahala mall. I stopped under the cover of the freeway, protected from whatever flew directly above me, but I could still see out to either side of the road. The mall sat to the right, and a residential neighborhood to the left.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” I whispered to myself. The overworked engine pinged and hissed quietly as I waited. I dialed my home number, but got the fast-busy signal. I tried again and it started ringing.

  “Come on Jen,” I whispered to myself, “answer the phone.”

  “Hi, you’ve reached Mark and Jennifer. Please leave…” I hung up, and hit the steering wheel several times.

  “God dammit. Answer the fucking phone!”

  A quiet whoosh outside the passenger window startled me. A black triangle streaked by, not a hundred feet away. My heart pounded as I leaned over and rolled up the window. I hunkered down in my seat, wanting to disappear from view. A large towel lay folded on the rear se
at from an aborted day at the beach several weeks ago. I pulled it over myself, hoping that if a Pouakai didn’t see a person inside, they might not attack the car. I wrapped the end of the towel around my head, leaving an opening for my eyes, and scrunched as low as I could into the driver’s seat. It quickly warmed up inside my cocoon, but I didn’t dare open a window.

  Several minutes went by with no movement outside. Then a Pouakai appeared in the distance over the mall, and then another. Within seconds a huge swarm of them wheeled about in the sky. Several flew under the freeway and over my car. I slid further down in the seat, my knees against the bolster.

  Wham. I stifled a scream as a Pouakai bounced off the top of my car. It flew down the road, bouncing its way along the abandoned cars under the freeway. Wham again, as another Pouakai slammed the roof of my car, caving in the thin sheet metal. A rough scraping noise came from overhead. The thing was still there. Its wings drooped over both sides of the car windows, blocking out some of the light. High-pitched whistles came through the roof in a couple of different tones. There were two of the monsters on top of my car. They shook and rattled the vehicle, and I hoped they didn’t work themselves into a rage on their own. Fly away, fly away, I thought. Just get the hell off of my car.

  Crash. One of the Pouakai smashed its long spike onto my windshield, shattering the safety glass. It held in place, but little bits of glass rained down on the towel. I held the car keys in my hand, desperately wanting to get out of this spot. If I did anything though, I’d be killed in seconds by this flock of frenzied Pouakai.

  A louder screech pierced the air, and several more Pouakai flew in to land on my car. The suspension creaked under the load, and the car rocked at they fought. Two creatures rolled off the roof and onto the hood, pushing the shattered windshield in that much more. I peeked out with one eye at the ebon monsters wrestling right in front of me. Go away. Go away. Go away. A third Pouakai dove in from the side, and buried its spike through the hood and into the engine compartment. A cloud of steam billowed out from underneath, and the Pouakai all whistled as the one pulled its spike out and shook like a dog. The wing that had been covering the passenger window lifted, revealing a ghastly flock of Pouakai, as thick as bees around a hive, circling the mall parking lot. Several seemed to be heading toward my car. I’m going to die here, and Jennifer will never know what happened. She’ll never know I did this for her. Why didn’t I listen to Jeff…?