By the light of a lantern, and as if she could read my mind, or at least my interest, she turned around and raised an elegant eyebrow at me. At the same time, I felt a rough shove with the stock of a rifle to my back. I turned to Akela, who gave me stink-eye to da max. Okay, at least one suspicion confirmed.
“Walk with me, Davy, and tell me what your tribe is like,” Shayna said. I was all too eager, but stumbled forward at another push from Akela.
“Lay off, Akela,” Noah said. I turned to Noah, saw him giving me a speculative glance, one of his eyebrows raised, in the same manner as his daughter’s as if to say, “Oh, so that’s how it is?” I just shrugged back at him. Local girls almost always went for local boys, not Cali haoles. Maybe being hapa, she took more after her dad.
Akela backed away from me and Noah both. I wasn’t sure whether his respect was for Noah or the double-barrel shotgun, but it was nice not to have him breathing over my shoulder and cramping my charm style.
“What do you want to know?” I said.
“Everything,” she said.
I admit this wasn’t the first time I felt myself going stupid over a girl, but never one as pretty as this. I knew that I had to keep some things secret, things like where our little garden patches were located, our strength of firearms, and how many fighters we could field.
I decided that if Noah had put her up to this, it might be a more pleasant way of torturing me than turning me over to Akela and Jimmy. They’d rearrange my face. I decided to play along and seek some sort of advantage.
“Tell you what. I’ll answer some of your questions if you answer some of mine.” I smiled at her. By the lantern light I saw a mischievous glint of emerald in her eyes and the smile returned.
“Well, that would depend on what kind of questions you asked now, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded, kept my smile in place. I had to remember that this girl wasn’t just someone you could tell sweet lines or lies to. She also wasn’t like a lot of the local girls in the area—get themselves a guy, get pregnant, and maybe get married. No, I had to keep what I knew of her right in front of me.
What I knew of her, besides her being the daughter of a gun-runner, was that she was very smart. She’d attended Hawaii Preparatory Academy, upcountry in Waimea, before the burning times. HPA, an elite private school, had top scholastic requirements for students. They and Punahou, a private college preparatory school over in Oahu, graduated a lot of the movers and shakers.
For example, a fellow known as Barack Hussein Obama II, forty-fourth president of the United States, graduated from Punahou.
I had seen Shayna a few times surfing at Kawas but always surrounded by a large group of unfriendlies. I also knew she’d played volleyball at HPA.
No, I couldn’t try and snow her. She’d see right through me. I grinned, turned up the charm generator.
“Well, the most obvious question I have is ‘Why kidnap me’? What’s in it for your tribe?”
Shayna looked over at her dad. He nodded an okay. She spoke.
“Daddy has a vision for Hawaii. He wants to make us a strong, sovereign nation once again.”
“Like King Kamehameha, the First, huh?”
Shayna grinned back and nodded. “Hopefully without the wars, though.”
“Yeah, King Kam wasn’t exactly a peacemaker back in his day.” My thoughts jumped ahead. “So, kidnap me to force Mace to capitulate in some way?”
“Bingo. But we were really after Jenny. You were our plan B.”
“I’ll try not to be hurt that I wasn’t number one on your list.”
Shayna laughed, a melodious sound that sent quivery shivers down my spine. Who is charming who?
She gave me a more serious look. “Daddy wants to get everyone on the same page and reestablish connections with the mainland and with other countries.” She checked for her dad’s approval again, got it, continued. “No longer as one of many states of a United States, but as a sovereign land.”
“The Hawaiian Kingdom thing?”
She grinned. “Oh, so you know about that?”
I nodded, grinned back. The Hawaiian Kingdom movement had been gaining popularity among the locals of Hawaiian ancestry and kama’aina (long timers of any race) for several years before the burning time.
Even President Clinton had signed an apology resolution acknowledging that the original Kingdom of Hawaii had been overthrown by the U.S. There was a lot of controversy over this, of course.
A lot of people might have found themselves without clear title to lands acquired and transferred for the last hundred years or so after the takeover of the Hawaiian Kingdom if the U.S. and other nations suddenly recognized Hawaii as a sovereign nation.
But, even though everyone on all sides of the issue waffled around after the resolution was passed, I’d already made my own decision back then to side with the sovereigns if anything ever came together. What Shayna said made sense. But, another thought struck me.
“So, why does Mace oppose this? You’ve talked to him about it, haven’t you?” I wondered why he hadn’t talked to me about it. Maybe that was why he and Jenny argued a lot of the time. Noah answered before Shayna got the chance to.
“Every time we got together to trade. He opposes it because of all the John Wayne crap he got mind-screwed with when he joined the military. He’s incapable of seeing Hawaii as anything but a place to train United States Army soldiers and a big harbor for its Navy.” Noah sighed.
“We can barely raise twenty states on the mainland on our Ham radios. They certainly aren’t trying to rebuild a United States. It’s everyone for themselves back there. The U.S. is pau,” Noah said.
That got me thinking again. While Mace and I had our touchy moments of relationship with one another, I felt that he would try and do what was best by the tribe. Could it be that this was just a big blind spot for him, like Noah was hinting at? I decided to change the subject and think more about it later, when I had time alone without the distraction of Shayna’s pretty face and figure. I spoke.
“Twenty states? Which ones?” I was thinking of my friends back in Cali.
Noah answered again. “No states from either seaboard. Subs wiped them all out.” He shook his head. “And no states from areas of the country that harbored large military installations. Texas, for example.”
“Who was left, then?” I said, my eyes watering at the fate of my old friends in Cali.
Shayna jumped in. “The Mountain States—the Rockies in the west and the Appalachians in the east. Except for Colorado. With NORAD there, and the military contractor companies around Denver, it got nuked pretty hard.”
False dawn approached as we strolled along at a comfortable pace for me. The air cooled; very chilly breezes blew downslope over us, pushing the cloud cover back out over the ocean. Stars started appearing. It would be a pretty dawn in an hour or so. I wondered if Mace and the other hunters had made it back to camp to find me missing. A thought struck.
“Hey, how are you going to let Mace know you got me?”
“Mitch and Kaipo left a note that we took you. We told Mace to meet us today at the Mauna Loa mac farm edge for a discussion,” Shayna said.
I felt conflicted and worried. Noah’s tribe had a lot more firearms than ours did. If Mace pushed the issue there could be only one outcome, one that would leave our tribe without its leader and me probably dead along with him.
* * *
Mace held his AR-15 rifle loosely across his arms and watched my face carefully for clues that Noah was lying to him. I kept my expression impassive, attempting to keep him believing that everything Noah was telling him was the truth as far as I knew.
Our tribe had sent five men, all heavily armed of course. Rudy was notably absent. Perhaps Mace didn’t trust him to remain calm when it was me in danger. On Noah’s side there was even more firepower and men. I hoped everyone would keep their cool. Noah continued speaking.
“. . . and it’s not like we’d be doing anything different
here in the Sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii than what some of the mainland states are doing. The Western Mountain States are forming a nation called Cascadia. Nothing really new there: Eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho, parts of Utah, Wyoming, and Montana, and the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.”
“Humph, anti-American,” Mace said.
“No, actually, those same states had been pushing Cascadia, even using that name, long prior to the burning time. They believed the governments of the Eastern U.S. and Canada were becoming more disconnected and non-representative of Western State values.”
“Which are?” Mace said. I watched his eyebrows lift. At least he was dialoguing. I held out some hope that things could be resolved peacefully.
“A lot of them, but in a nutshell, freedom and independence from Big Brother.”
Mace looked thoughtful. After a while his expression hardened. He gave Noah a dirty look. “And you’re just the man to lead this new sovereign nation, I suppose?”
Noah held his hands up. “Not me. I’m just the militia guy. The leader of our National Guard, so to speak. No, who I had in mind for leader is someone more like you. A younger man of vision and strong principle.” Noah shifted his glance around, looking at each of us in turn, then back to Mace. “Mace, would you consider becoming the king of Hawaii?”
* * *
Mace was on the tiller of our small sailboat, Noah beside him, giving him pointers as we crossed the channel between the Big Island of Hawaii and Maui.
Jenny nursed little Mana'olana, their daughter, in the sailboat’s cabin while Shayna rubbed our own baby bulge.
I had one arm around her shoulders and watched the Maui coastland as it grew ever closer.
Mace had been won over. After our two tribes became one, we traveled to meet with the Naalehu tribe, who joined us quickly, also. We next met with the three other main tribes on the island and all acknowledged Mace as king and made our small sailboat crew diplomats to Maui.
We don’t know what kind of reception we’ll meet up with there. We were able to radio a tribe in Kahalui, Maui, with our nation proposal and ask permission to visit with them to discuss it.
We carried no guns with us, just a few spears and fishing equipment to take care of our own needs.
Mana'olana, Mace and Jenny’s child. The word means hope, faith, or confidence in the Hawaiian language and is given to both girl and boy babies. Kailua-Kona’s chieftainess, Iolani, carried a daughter in her arms of the same name. It has become a very popular baby name since the burning.
Rudy came out of the cabin, dripping sweat. He threw a smelly mess from a pan over the side, choking back a gag. He’d been below, sponging down Ku’uipo’s forehead and holding her over the pan while she puked. Morning sickness and seasickness, a yucky combination. All of us felt sympathetic, but we also knew we would harbor today so her misery wouldn’t last. The couple was going to name their baby Mana'olana also, whatever sex it turned out to be.
That’s how we will meet with the Kahalui, Maui, chiefs, the new ali’i of their island. With babies named hope and with welcoming arms, confident in faith that we’ll all be able to work together.
Shayna is already talking about naming our child Mana'olana also. But I kind of like Dennis, if it’s a boy. That was my dad’s name and a good one.
The Zoo of All Things
Geneve Flynn
Editor: Who says that fitness is a survival trait?
“When was the last time you had a seizure?”
“Uh, a week . . .” Azra swallowed with a dry click and started again. “It was two weeks ago. Just a brief absence one.”
Mal nodded and scratched his scalp through his bleach-tipped hair. He held up both the EEG and the MRI charts and studied them. “These are pretty good readings. What meds are you on?”
“Carbamazepine.” Azra swallowed again and surreptitiously blotted his damp palms on his pants. “I haven’t had anything for months. Seizures, I mean. I take my meds every morning and night.”
The Zoo manager laid the charts down and frowned at Azra. “Why do you want to work here? What can you bring to the role?”
Sweat sprang up on Azra’s bottom lip and he resisted the urge to wipe it away. “I want to help. My brother was killed by an H.I.; plus, I’ve never had a job before.” He lifted his eyes and tried to hold Mal’s gaze. “This seemed like something I could do.”
Mal pursed his lips and glanced down at the jagged lines on the EEG and the white mass on the MRI. Azra blushed hard. He felt like his brain was laid out on the table.
“Well”—Mal gestured to the charts—“these certainly qualify you. Let’s see if you can pass the probation.” He slapped the arms of his chair with a grin. His hand was rough and strong when Azra took it and shook.
* * *
Azra extended his hand another couple of inches into the enclosure. His heart hammered in his throat and he fought the screaming urge to snatch his fingers away.
“Go on,” Mal said. “The worst part is the wait. You’ll see. The bite’s no more than a nip when they’re that young.”
The H.I. in the 5’ by 5’ Perspex cage was a girl, about five years old. Her tiny arms and legs rippled with muscle and sinew. She edged towards Azra’s trembling fingers, her nostrils flaring and twitching. He saw with a wrench that silvery strings of saliva trickled down her chin onto her tattered shirt. She sniffed, turned her head away, dropped to all fours and arched her back up, performing a perfect downward dog.
Azra looked back at Mal. “She’s not—shit! Ow!” Azra yanked free of her clawed grip and inspected the row of teeth marks on his forefinger. The girl pawed at the gap, trying to reach him.
Mal threw his head back, roaring with laughter. “Lesson one,” he gasped when he’d caught his breath again, “never take your eyes off them.”
The marks were already fading from Azra’s finger, but his heart still felt like it was trying to jump out of his throat. Mal squeezed past, shoved the girl’s hands back inside, and slid the lid shut. The girl bared her teeth at them and paced in a circle on all fours. Her hair was a wiry, filthy tangle about her head and the smell of stale urine and old meat still lingered in the air. Azra suppressed a shiver. “I won’t get the virus?”
Mal tapped the side of Azra’s head, right where the MRI showed the lesion on his brain. “Nope. It doesn’t take anything but the healthiest people. Only the best. The rest of us defects are safe as houses.”
* * *
“This is where we hold our educational talks,” Mal said as he led Azra into a wide amphitheatre. “Schools and families come in here and we show them how to stay clear of the H.I.s, how to spot someone turning, and tell them a little about the research.” Curving rows of concrete benches marched upward from a circular wooden stage. A set of three Perspex enclosures were concealed by a rendered brick wall at the back. A mural of a happy family was painted on the wall. The acoustics were excellent. Azra could hear every growl and frothing snap of the fully grown male H.I. in the first enclosure.
“Let’s see how you do with an audience.” Mal keyed in the button on his walkie-talkie. “Right folks, come on in.”
Five other zoo employees: three women and two men, filed in from the side entrance. Each wore the khaki uniform with the broken DNA symbol over the left breast to show that they too, were immune to infection. Apart from the one guy who stared suspiciously over the top of Azra’s head, they all looked normal. “Everybody, say ‘hi’ to Azra. He’s our newest candidate.” After a chorus of greetings, Mal led Azra back around to the enclosure where the H.I. now crouched, watching them approach with shaded eyes. “I won’t bother introducing the rest till later,” Mal muttered, “just in case, eh?”
Azra paused. “In case of what?”
Mal grinned. “Just kidding; you’ll be right.” He picked up the pole with the loop tether on the end. “Better grab the other one. Bob’s a strong bastard.” He unlocked a small window at the front of the cage and fed his pole through
.
Azra swiped his greasy palms on his pants again and picked up the second pole. Together, they managed to pin Bob hard against the back wall, tethers drawn tight around his neck. The flesh under his jaw was purple as he lunged and snapped. His garbled roaring sounded almost like words. Azra glanced across at Mal, uncertain what to do next. Mal grinned, his ruddy face lit with a type of mad joy and Azra wondered what neuro-disease bought his immunity. “Right,” Mal yelled over the sound of Bob’s struggles, “we’ll bring him out to the stage and you have a go at giving a spiel.”
“A spiel?” Azra asked faintly. His mind went blank and for a panicky moment, he thought he was going to white out. The seizure two weeks ago had been a split-second snowy blizzard. Not now. Not now.
“Ready?” Mal called.
Azra snapped back. “Uh, yeah. Okay.”
They wrestled Bob out of his enclosure and onto the stage. The other zoo employees shifted around to watch as Mal gave Azra a one-handed thumbs up. Azra turned back to the audience and blinked. “Uh, welcome to the Zoo. We are the centre for research to find a cure for the Maass–Hinkler virus. This—this is Bob. He is a male Healthy Infected.”
“Doing great!” Mal whispered.
“Uh, the best way to, um, avoid them is to . . . to . . . uh, stay inside the Wall. Keep children and elderly clear of any possible H.I.s.” Azra tried to remember the lecture he’d heard every year since he was a little kid. “To, uh, to spot someone who is turning, watch for changes in feeding, muscle tone—”
Bob lunged for Azra. Azra gaped, lax with surprise as he saw Mal with his hands up, the same crazy glee on his face and the second tether pole clattering loose behind Bob. Azra snapped the tether tight just before Bob’s teeth clacked shut in front of his face. He pistoned Bob backwards with the pole, fighting to keep him away. Mal whooped. “Never take your eyes off them, Azra!” he yelled. “What are you gonna do? You won’t always have a helper and they break loose every now and again. Go on! Show us what you got!”
Enter the Rebirth (Enter the... Book 3) Page 37