The Pouakai

  A loud screech echoed under the freeway, sounding like the creatures were beginning another attack. Then I recognized the noise as tires squealing. The mass of Pouakai on top of my car flew off in a rush of wind, and I dared to peek out from under the towel. Someone else had done the same thing I did, hiding themselves inside their car in the mall parking lot. Instead of staying hidden though, they must have thought they could outrun the creatures. They peeled out of the mall lot and onto the freeway, several thousand Pouakai in furious pursuit.

  The air cleared of most of the creatures, and soon the only sound was the hiss of steam from under the hood of my wounded car. A few Pouakai stragglers flew westward over the mall until the skies emptied. I waited another ten minutes, but the sky remained clear.

  Gingerly, I pulled the towel off of me, soaking wet from sweat. Little bits of glass rolled onto the floor around my feet. I sat up, and bumped my head into the roof that had been shoved down by the fighting Pouakai. My door wouldn’t open, but the window still rolled down, so I climbed out that way. My heart pounded as I looked for any sign of the creatures.

  The air stunk of engine coolant and steam, and a large puddle of green water flowed from under my car. Oil mixed in too, giving it a rainbow sheen. My car was most definitely dead.

  A four-foot piece of rusty steel pipe lay in the gutter next to my car. I picked it up as a weapon, but deep down I knew it wouldn’t do more than delay my demise by a few seconds if the Pouakai returned.

  It was just over four miles from the mall to my house, a route I’d driven hundreds of times in the past. I’d never walked it though, and in the sweltering midday heat, it would take over an hour. Too drained to jog the distance, I set a steady brisk pace toward home, the rusty pipe swinging close by my side. My head swiveling back and forth, I emerged from under the freeway and followed the sidewalk eastward. Nothing moved, and an eerie quiet blanketed the city. Only the blustery tradewind made a sound as it passed through the palm trees.

  The cloud of Pouakai had disappeared already, not even visible on the eastern horizon. The empty streets looked odd. I caught a glimpse of two people peeking out of an apartment window, but they dove inside when they saw me. I stepped over the broken bottles and trash alongside the road, jumping every time I heard a noise. Even the wind made me think of the whoosh of a Pouakai’s wings.

  Passing the Waialae golf club, I realized that the greens weren’t mowed, while leaves and branches covered the fairways. So many people had left Honolulu that the club had closed. We were falling ever deeper into a state of abandonment, tipping into a bottomless pit of hopelessness. The Pouakai were turning us into an empty shell of what we had been.

  Crack. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled around, pipe in hand, ready to smash a Pouakai. Instead, a tiny old Japanese man crossed the street behind me, his dog on a leash. He’d stepped on a downed palm frond. He looked at me and bowed slightly under his wide straw hat. I nodded back, breathing hard, before turning and continuing toward my neighborhood. Didn’t he know about the Pouakai, or did he simply not care?

  The highway paralleled the ocean along the south shore of Oahu, and a perfect set of mid-sized waves rolled over the reef. At least the hardcore surfers hadn’t risked themselves to enjoy the waves as the water was completely empty. Or, more likely, the Pouakai had already taken out any surfers that had been in the water.

  I passed several more neighborhoods and I sped up my pace. Nobody was outside, but the all-clear sirens hadn’t sounded yet either. There had to be thousands of people holed up inside their houses here, but from what I was seeing, the entire island could be lifeless.

  Sweat rolled off my forehead as I turned up the hill into my neighborhood in the Niu Valley. I started a moderate jog up the road toward home. Seven blocks to go as I ran; six; five. I broke into a dash and dropped the rusty pipe with a loud clang.

  The road turned and I saw my house a couple of blocks up the hill, looking peaceful. Jen’s car sat in the driveway, undamaged. Good. It looked like the swarm had missed this area.

  I dashed up the last steep incline and into my driveway.

  “Jen!” I called through the door. “Jen, I’m here!”

  I fumbled for my keys, but then I saw the front door was ajar. I pushed it open.

  “Jen? I’m home! Where are you?”

  Silence. The answering machine in the hallway blinked with seven new messages; probably all the ones I’d left for her.

  I walked into the kitchen and something crunched underfoot. I picked up my foot and saw shards of broken glass.

  “Jenn!”

  An electrical cord stretched from the kitchen wall into the living room. The floor lamp lay on its side and more broken glass littered the floor. A big brown stain covered the carpet as I turned into the room. Jennifer lay at one end of the stain, her arms and legs twisted into a grotesque position.

  “JEN!”

  I dashed in and dropped to the floor next to her, turning her head toward me. Her eyes were open but lifeless, her hands and face cold. A huge gash opened across her stomach, blood crusted around the edges. More blood was smeared across her legs, arms, and face.

  “No, no,” I cried, cradling her head, and bursting into tears. “No, no, no.”

  I rocked back and forth for a long time, my mind hit by shocks every time I opened my eyes. The shattered remains of the big picture window at the far end of the living room were piled on the floor, and both recliners lay on their backs, the fabric torn to shreds.

  “What happened?” I whispered. “What happened?” It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t be gone.

  The truth lay in my arms, a cold and bitter reminder.

  Her iPod still strapped around her bicep, the thin wires for the ear buds twisted around her arm and neck. She wore a T-shirt and jogging shorts. Had she been exercising? The vacuum lay in a corner, its cord stretching into the kitchen. Jen often wore her exercise clothes and listened to music while doing housework. She must have been trying to finish the clean-up before we left for the mainland.

  I held her head tight to my chest. “No, no,” I sobbed over and over. My fault, I thought. My fault. I should have been home. I should have listened to her long ago, when she wanted to leave.

  What had happened? I stood up, and pain shot through my left knee. I’d knelt down in the broken glass and cut myself. I ignored the gash and looked around. The front window was smashed, the glass mostly inside the living room. Something had come in that way. The furniture tossed and torn, it showed there had been a huge struggle. Jen wasn’t a weak woman.

  The vacuum lay behind one of the fallen recliners. I looked at it again, and took in a sharp breath. Something else lay behind the recliner too, besides the vacuum. It looked like a sheet of black goo spread over the suction end of the machine. I took two steps toward it then stopped. It was the remains of a Pouakai.

  “God dammit!” I backed up and shouted. “You son of a bitch! You fucking alien bastard! Why here? Why the hell did you have to come here?”

  I staggered back, and the picture suddenly came into view. Jenn had been cleaning in preparation for us leaving Hawaii. She’d had her iPod buds in her ears, and she rarely watched TV, so she wouldn’t have known about the Pouakai swarm unless someone told her. She’d been vacuuming, and the noise had attracted the Pouakai. The struggle had killed both of them.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered as I looked at her. “Jen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I sank to the floor again, and held her hand in mine, wishing I could change what had happened. But there was no change, and as the light slowly faded into evening, I sat on the floor, crying as never before.

  11

  Night had already fallen when I heard a car drive up to the house, and a door slam.

  “Boonie?”

  I sat on the floor, Jen’s head in my lap. The voice didn’t register.

  “Boonie? Jennifer? You guys here?”

  I looked up. Something clicked; the door bein
g pushed open.

  “In here,” I croaked.

  “That you, Boonie?” the voice asked.

  “In here,” I repeated. Footsteps, and then someone at the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Oh my god, what the hell…” It was Jeff Lee. He ran into the living room and stopped just past the entrance.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said quietly. “What happened?”

  “Too late, too late,” I whispered. “We were too late, Jeff. When we landed, we were already too late.”

  “Boonie, I’m so sorry,” he said, kneeling down next to me. “You didn’t call to tell me you were okay and I got worried. When they let us leave the airport…”

  “Too late,” I whispered again, rocking gently with Jennifer’s cold head in my lap. Jeff backed out to the kitchen, and I heard the quiet beeps of a cell phone. The rest of the evening was a blur to me. I remember a lot of waiting, and I remember the police showing up well after midnight. There were a lot of people coming and going, and a harried police counselor tried to talk me out of following the ambulance carrying Jennifer away. She won out, and after a sergeant spent half an hour questioning me and Jeff, she left me with a card and phone number to call. I could find out what had happened with Jennifer later in the morning. I don’t remember calling anyone, though it may have been Jeff’s doing, but soon there were several friends in the house helping clean up the mess, including the puddle of Pouakai goo.

  The sun had just come up over the hills when Colin and Anna showed up. They were both crying, and we all sat together, not saying anything, just buried in our grief.

  Then came the hardest part, calling Kelly and Josh, telling them their mother was dead. Kelly wouldn’t stop crying, and it took Anna’s soothing voice to get her to calm down enough to talk to me again. Josh sounded like his usual stoic self, even though I could tell he was crying too. I spent over an hour on the phone with each of them, as friends came and went from our house. Someone put a sheet of plywood over the broken window, and others picked up the mess in the living room. Even the puddle of blood had disappeared; the carpet just damp, and smelling of disinfectant. Who had done all this for me? I couldn’t remember. Lots of familiar faces, but faces that I couldn’t name just then.

  Colin and Anna stayed, and while Anna busied herself in the kitchen, Colin sat with me in the living room, neither of us talking.

  We turned on the TV, and watched the nonstop news as the local stations cataloged the damage. At least two hundred and fifty dead, many more still unaccounted for. There was minimal damage at the airport, since we’d all had time to shut the planes down and leave them inert. Heavy damage was reported at a wastewater treatment plant, which had still been running when the attack started, and at a power plant that hadn’t been able to shut down in time. Oddly enough, a lot of the damage had been concentrated at the military’s satellite tracking antennas at Kaena Point. There were a number of vehicle wrecks on the island’s highways and side roads, the source of most of the fatalities. About twenty homes had been invaded, like mine, and the death toll there was at least forty.

  Anna brought in three bowls of chicken stir-fry and rice. I ate slowly, without tasting it. Colin and Anna talked quietly in the kitchen while I finished eating, but I couldn’t hear what they were discussing.

  I felt numb, and infinitely tired. The clock said three pm, and all I wanted to do was climb into bed. I mumbled something to Colin that must have made sense, and worked my way to the back of the house. I closed the door to my room and crawled onto the bed without taking anything off.

  When I woke it was dark again outside. My shoes and socks were off, but I still wore my blood-crusted uniform. The clock said four thirty, and I realized it was early morning. I’d been asleep for more than twelve hours. I padded out to the living room in my bare feet and heard snoring. I found Colin curled up in one of the shredded recliners, an old blanket from the guest room tangled around his legs.

  I stood in the doorway, and looked the room over. It was too neat and orderly, with a disinfectant smell in the air, and plywood over the window.

  Jen was gone.

  My mouth tasted like an old garbage can. I couldn’t shake the draggy feeling in my bones, as I stood over the damp spot in the carpet and looked down. She was gone, and it hurt like hell, as if someone had poured hot oil onto my soul. I remembered the drive home, the escape from the Pouakai, the discovery, and everything that came after; the people showing up, helping, cleaning, holding, crying. I remembered it now, even if it didn’t register at the time.

  “How are you doing?” Colin said from behind me.

  He was still in the chair, looking at me with the disheveled hair and skewed glasses I remembered from college.

  “Numb, I guess.”

  He nodded and stood up, folding the blanket.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Anna and I have been trading shifts. We didn’t think you should be alone right now.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, we did.” He gave me a firm stare.

  Yes, I guess they did.

  12

  Jennifer’s funeral, five days later, was another rough day. The government had clamped a travel ban inbound to Hawaii, so Josh and Kelly couldn’t get in for the service. I begged and pleaded right to the top, even calling the Governor’s office. In the end he said no, so it was just me and a small group of our friends on a sunny, crystal clear morning that said goodbye to my love.

  We gathered at my house afterwards, not for a formal wake, but just as a group of friends, holding each other together. Eventually most of them drifted off, needing to get home before the sunset curfew. Colin and Anna stayed behind as they had every night since the attack. I’d tried to tell them they didn’t have to stay, but I didn’t try too hard. So we sat on the back deck, listening to the breeze, not saying much. Finally, Colin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

  “We caught one, you know,” he said.

  “One what?”

  “A Pouakai.”

  It took me a moment to sift through what he said, before it hit me.

  “Wait a minute. Are you talking about your trap? The shipping container?”

  Colin nodded.

  “I didn’t want to tell you right after the attack, because of what happened to Jennifer. But when we knew the swarm was coming, Alan and I ran down to the docks, armed the trap, and hid out in the ship. It worked perfectly, and we now have a living subject.”

  Anger raged up inside me, and caught me completely unaware.

  “Fucking murderers,” I said too loudly. Anna and Colin both looked away, and as quickly as it rose, the anger faded. I didn’t like being this out of control, but had no idea how to handle it. Embarrassed, I quietly said, “Sorry.”

  “Mark,” Anna replied, “if you didn’t have an angry reaction to these things, I’d be a lot more worried about you.”

  I nodded grimly.

  “Boonie,” Colin said, “I know it’s only been a short time, but have you thought about what’s next?”

  “For me?”

  He nodded.

  I took a deep breath, and stared at the floor. “My job is over. I’ve already quit, and the paperwork is in and signed. Anyway, I don’t think the airline would let me back into the cockpit for a while after what’s happened this week.”

  Colin looked at Anna, and after a moment, she gave him a slight nod of the head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Boonie, there’s something we’ve been talking about for a few days, that I want to ask you.”

  “Something from you and Anna?”

  “No,” he said, “but she knows about it, and I wanted her approval before we talked.”

  I felt a little numb and confused. None of this made sense.

  “Just tell me.”

  Anna gave another nod, and Colin smiled.

  “First off, things have been moving pretty fast here the last few days.” />
  Anna added, “Yeah, I don’t think he’s been home more than five minutes all week.”

  “I told you guys you didn’t have to stay with me.”

  “No, no,” Colin said, hands waving in front of him. “It’s not that. Being here has been the most restful part of our days. What I’m talking about is the Pouakai, the one we caught.”

  “You’ve learned something?”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. The government saw how easily we caught the Pouakai with our trap, and has agreed to fund us as much as we need. The trip down south with the ship, trap, and sub is on for next week.”

  “Congrats,” I said quietly. “I’ll miss you.”

  “You don’t have to miss me. I want you to join us.”

  After a long pause, “You want me to what?”

  “I know it’s too soon, but our schedule is set and we’re leaving next week. I’d rather you had some time to regroup and get it together, but we don’t have that option. I think you should come with us, Boonie, down to the South Pacific.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “For a lot of reasons. You and Alan and I each have more experience dealing with the Pouakai than the rest of the crew combined. I trust you and your judgment. You’ve been in the military, and you’ve ridden on this sub so you know what to expect. I think you’d be an asset to the trip. Finally, both Anna and I think it would be good for you to get out of here. There’s nothing you can do here in Hawaii, but you can do a lot of good if you come with me.”

  I stared into space for a long minute.

  “Why would the Navy let me come along?” I finally asked.

  “Because I’m in charge of the mission, and what I say goes. Technically, the University is in charge, but that means me. The Navy is just giving us a ride wherever we need to go.”