State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Read online

  State of Nature

  Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy

  By Ryan Winfield

  For Great Big Little Panther

  Because even the best of boys must someday grow up

  Part One

  CHAPTER 1

  The Return

  My father said there’s no revenge as sweet as forgiveness.

  Even so, part of me would like to watch Hannah die for what she did. But in the end, my father’s wisdom wins.

  Jimmy’s not feeling as forgiving, however, and if we didn’t need the professor to pilot the submarine, I’m afraid he might have tossed him overboard days ago.

  Our time on the Isle of Man seems like a dream already; or perhaps a waking nightmare. We talk little and eat even less. The professor’s mouth is a swollen mess, most of his teeth having been knocked loose by Jimmy’s heel, and despite Jimmy’s suggestion to let him starve, I heat him algae broth on the stove and watch him wince with pain as he sips it. He’s fallen into one of his moods now, wavering between mumbling obscure obscenities and staring cross-eyed at the controls. But he seems to be guiding us in the right direction as we retrace our journey, re-crossing the Panama Canal, then turning north to follow the coastline toward the Foundation.

  I’d say toward home, but it feels like anything but.

  I keep having conversations with Hannah in my head, rehearsing the things I want to say to her and trying to guess her responses. It’s crazy-making, really, but the silence of the submarine is deafening, and I can’t help myself. I know she’ll rationalize having faked giving Jimmy the longevity serum by saying that she wanted to reproduce it in her lab and then give it to him. But I can’t imagine how she’ll explain sending us out blind and then slaughtering all those people with the antimatter bomb. I suppose it doesn’t matter what she says anyway, because when we return, she’s done—Jimmy and I are in charge now. She’s going to extract that encryption key from the DNA in Finn’s severed hand, and we’re going to take control of the drones and free my people from Holocene II.

  No compromises, no discussion.

  End of story.

  And Jimmy’s getting that serum, too.

  A hand on my shoulder snaps me away from my thoughts. It’s Jimmy come to relieve me from guarding the professor.

  “Did you get any rest?” I ask.

  “A little,” he says, taking the knife from my hand.

  “One more sleep and we should be back.”

  “Good,” he says, sitting down. “It’ll be nice when we ain’t gotta stare at the back of this creep’s ugly head all the time.”

  The professor sighs but doesn’t respond.

  I head for the bunkroom and strip out of my clothes and take a hot shower. The Park Service crest that Finn carved into my chest is healing, but I know there will be scars beneath the scabs. I think about how close I came to dying, and how much I regretted having never told Jimmy what he really means to me. But now that the crisis is over, the timing doesn’t seem right. Plus, Jimmy’s understandably depressed about losing Junior and Bree. Junior meant a lot to both of us, but Jimmy had a special bond with him. And with Bree too.

  After my shower, I wash Finn’s pants and shirt that I’ve been wearing since we left. Then I wrap a towel around my waist and carry the wet clothes with me out onto the submarine deck to dry them. I wrap them around the open hatch handle and let them flap in the breeze while I sit with my back against the sail and watch the scenery slide by. It’s full on winter now, and the air has a bite to it, but the cold feels good against my naked skin. Something about the cold air makes everything seem clear and close, and I can see the rocky cliffs and white bursts of spray from waves crashing against the distant shore. Behind that, hills of green and gold, and even farther, snow-covered mountains. It’s wild and wonderful and somehow more majestic without any people to spoil the view. I wonder what it will look like in another thousand years, after we free the people of Holocene II. I hope we’ve learned our lesson.

  The cold finally raises bird bumps on my skin and starts me shivering, so I stand and grab my clothes to head in. I freeze when I see the ship—tall and gray, a warship just like the one that slaughtered Jimmy’s family in the cove—so close behind us that it’s throwing a shadow onto the submarine deck. I dive inside and seal the hatch, rushing into the control room with my towel still tied around my waist.

  “Take us down!”

  “Why should I?” the professor mumbles.

  “Jimmy, grab him, will you?”

  Jimmy gladly grabs the professor, jerks him from the pilot chair, and forces him against the wall, holding his knife blade just inches from the professor’s throat. I take the controls and flood the ballasts, dropping us beneath the waves. Then I steer us hard to port, planning to come around in a long arc behind the warship.

  “How do I launch a torpedo?”

  “We’re not launching anything,” the professor replies.

  “Jimmy, if he doesn’t answer my questions, cut him.”

  “I’ll be more’n happy to,” Jimmy says.

  “Now, where are the torpedo switches?”

  “The red button there on your left,” the professor says.

  I hit the button and an LCD screen slides up with an aerial rendering of the submarine and its surroundings. The ship is outlined on our rear starboard side, its shape unmistakable.

  “What’s that?” Jimmy asks.

  “A drone warship.”

  “Like the one that killed my family?”

  “Just like that one.”

  “What are you planning to do?” the professor asks.

  “Sink it.”

  “But why? It’s no threat to us as long as you’re not up top. It’s programmed to hunt humans, you fool, not submarines.”

  “Well, it’s about to see what’s it’s like to be hunted itself,” I say. “How do I launch a torpedo?”

  The professor doesn’t answer.

  “Jimmy ...”

  Jimmy pushes his knife against the professor’s throat, the blade sinking into his saggy, whiskered flesh.

  “Fine, fine. Just touch on the target.” Then he adds under his breath to Jimmy, “Ficklefrick! Easy with the knife.”

  I tap my finger on the outline of the ship, pulling up a full screen rendering.

  “Tap it again,” he says.

  Red crosshairs show up on the midpoint of its lower hull.

  “What now?”

  “Hit the blue button to flood the tube. When it’s flooded the red button will illuminate and you can press it to fire.”

  “But I want to see it on the screen.”

  “You want to see it sink?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re so sentimental. Press the periscope switch.”

  The periscope rises, and the camera zeros in on the ship, showing the live video image on the main screen. I notice Jimmy shudder slightly at the sight.

  “You come and do it, Jimmy.”

  When Jimmy releases the professor, the old man sinks to the floor and sits staring at us with a defeated look on his bruised face. Jimmy steps over and peers at the ship on the screen, its side coming more into view every second as we turn. He rests his palm on the fire switch. His eyes narrow, and I’m reminded of his laser-like focus when I watched him poised with a harpoon and ready to leap onto the back of that whale. That was the day that this ship, or at least some other ship just like it, showed up and gunned his family down.

  Jimmy slaps the switch.

  For several seconds nothing happens.

  We watch and wait.

  Then
there’s a burst of white water, and the ship buckles in the center and jumps beneath a fiery explosion. Just as it’s dropping again, a secondary explosion tears it fully in two and the ship slams down, the twisted and torn halves turning in on themselves and sinking in a boil of white water. Jimmy stands entranced, a look of satisfaction on his face, as the last of the ship’s upturned bow descends beneath the waves and the water closes over it and settles, as if the ship had never even been there at all. I grab him and hug him, watching over his shoulder as the professor scowls at us from the floor. Despite what my dad said, revenge feels good. Even if it is just against a brainless drone carrying out the commands of evil humans.

  The next morning we arrive at the tunnel that leads to the locks and the Foundation. We make the professor drop anchor and then, using wire from the engine room, we bind his hands and feet and leave him lying stretched out on a bunk while we climb out onto the submarine deck to make a plan in private. We’re anchored several hundred meters from the entrance, the tunnel beyond cast in pitch black shadow, and I don’t think either of us is ready to leave behind the open air view for the claustrophobic darkness that waits beyond.

  “You promise you won’t hurt Hannah?” I ask.

  “I’m leavin’ her to you,” Jimmy says. “All I wanna do is get this over with so’s we can stop the rest of them damn drones and get back above ground.”

  “What about the professor?”

  “I dun’ care nothin’ ’bout him either.”

  “Well, let’s leave him tied up anyway, just in case. Besides, I’m sure he could use some rest.”

  We turn and look back at the shimmering ocean meeting blue, cloudless skies. It’s a hard view to part with. I look at Jimmy standing next to me, tall and proud, his hair tousled in the breeze, his jaw set and his eyes focused on some distant hope only he can see. Perhaps a wish to someday be reunited with his family. Perhaps just a wish to someday live free. I hope he gets it—whatever it is he desires—and I hope maybe, just maybe, his wish somehow includes me.

  Jimmy stays on deck to drink in the last of the view while I return to the control room to start our ascent. From the pilot chair, I can see the pool of sunlight from the open hatch slowly disappear from the passageway floor as we pass beneath the overhang and enter the tunnel. I set our speed for ten knots and recline in the seat, preparing for the sixteen hour trip.

  I guess I should spend the time planning how I want to confront Hannah with her betrayal. And revenge or not, maybe what her punishment should be.

  CHAPTER 2

  Hannah, How Could You?

  I can hardly keep my eyes open, but I don’t dare sleep.

  Eventually, Jimmy relieves me from the controls.

  I skip the bunkroom where the professor lies bound, going out instead to sit on the deck. The submarine’s shadow is cast by green light onto the tunnel walls, where it passes like some half-submerged monster from the depths returning to its cave. The journey up the escalator locks is seamless, with one stretch of water rising to meet the next, and I rest my head on the cool metal deck and watch the green light dapple the distant cavern ceiling. It reminds me of my days spent down in Holocene II, looking up at our own sparkling ceiling and imagining a world of adventure waiting above. I sure found it. I just never could have imagined it being so beautiful and cruel at the same time.

  I close my eyes and try to think of something good. Junior comes to mind. I see him as a pup, trotting along behind us as we walked that river toward the lake house. I see him growing bigger and following Jimmy everywhere he went, always on his heel. I see him saving us from the pig people. I see him running with deer hounds while Jimmy and I follow on horseback. He’ll forever be in those high, heather-covered hills for me.

  Some netherworld nightmare wakes me.

  By the pain in my back and the cold metal deck, I assume I must have been sleeping awhile. I sit up and notice that we’re in the last stretch of locks, cruising toward the Foundation cavern bay, and that the familiar red glow is once again illuminating the opening, as if the Foundation was on fire. I get up and walk to the forward deck and watch. The entrance grows and the red light slowly envelops the tunnel and then the submarine. We cruise into the cavern, awash in the red glow of Eden’s dome.

  Eden? I don’t understand—Eden was destroyed.

  “What’s that thing doing all lit up again?”

  I jump at Jimmy’s voice. Then I feel panicked, wondering who’s navigating the submarine.

  “You didn’t free the professor, did you?”

  “No,” Jimmy says, “but I gave him some tea.”

  “Well, who’s piloting the submarine?”

  “It’s steerin’ itself,” he says. “Some kinda computer voice came on and said autopilot was takin’ over.”

  A clamor echoes across the cavern to us—the clang of metal being hammered, the whine of a drill. I smell iron oxides and some kind of gas. Shadows move on Eden’s roof. We watch from the deck as the submarine approaches the docks.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Jimmy asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, that ain’t Hannah and Red raisin’ all that ruckus.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head, “it sure isn’t.”

  The submarine guides itself deftly into the open slip from which we departed and eases to a stop by reversing the screw. We open the deck hatches that hide the ropes, reel them out, jump onto the dock, and tie them to cleats. And that’s it—we’re back, once again standing on the same dock where we said goodbye to Hannah and Red all those weeks ago.

  “Not quite the homecoming I was expecting,” I say.

  “Whaddya want?” Jimmy asks. “A hug? She killed Junior.”

  “I know, I know. I just thought somebody would be here to greet us. Let’s go see what all this noise is about.”

  We walk up the dock, past the sintering plant we broke into to get the chemicals to burn Eden. It seems so long ago already, and I know a lot has changed since then, but I’m not at all prepared for what I see when we round the living quarters and step out onto the walkway that leads to Eden.

  Strange men scale Eden’s roof, lurching along the dome’s perimeter, or hunched over halfway up, working. They look like medieval roofers retiling some building down in hell, their odd features appearing in the pulse of red light and then retreating again into shadow. And that’s not all. On the train platform is parked an enormous machine that looks as if it would hardly fit in the tunnel from which the tracks arrive: a long, cylindrical land-borne submarine with a missile-shaped nose made of some fantastic alloy that seems to glow.

  “What’s that?” Jimmy asks.

  “I think it’s a subterrene.”

  “A what?”

  “A nuclear boring machine. I’ve only read about them, but it’s what they use to make the train tunnels and how we mine for minerals in the deep south.”

  “And what are them there, then?”

  He points to a group of strange albino men who emerge from the rear subterrene hatch and go grunting down the path, snorting and snickering and slapping one another on their hunched and hairless backs. They have an air about them of workers taking a break.

  “Those must be tunnelrats,” I say.

  “Tunnelrats?”

  “Yeah. I’ve never seen them in person either, but they work the mines.”

  “Well, what are they doin’ here?”

  “I have no idea. I wonder if Hannah and Red are alright. Let’s go see if we can find them and get some answers.”

  “Where should we look?”

  “Let’s start with the control room.”

  We thread our way along the path, staying as close to the buildings and as far out of sight as possible. When we reach the control room, the Park Service mission statement engraved above its door reminds me of this place and its evil purpose.

  MISSION STATEMENT

  THE PARK SERVICE THUS ESTABLISHED SHALL PROTECT AND CONSERVE THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF THE
EARTH BY EMPLOYING ALL AVAILABLE MEANS TO ERADICATE FROM THE PLANET THE VIRAL SPECIES KNOWN AS HUMANKIND.

  I punch in the code, but I either misremember it or it’s been changed. I’m about to turn to Jimmy and suggest that we return to the submarine and force the professor to retell us the code, when the door opens and a tunnelrat walks right into me. The force of the blow nearly knocks me over, but Jimmy grabs me and stands me back up. My eyes rake up the tunnelrat’s nearly naked body, landing on its albino chest. Its skin is near translucent, and I can see the spidery web of blue veins pulsing with every heartbeat across its flesh. Then I lift my gaze to its face. Reptilian eyes, red and milky, flickering as a membrane closes and opens like a horizontal shutter.

  I take this all in in the blink of an eye, and before either of us knows what to make of the other, I hear a female voice moan from inside the room. Without thinking, I shove the tunnelrat hard to the side and force my way past. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the bright LED lights, and then I see Hannah’s red hair draped over the back of a control chair and the outline of another tunnelrat kneeling at her feet. I rush toward her, ready to pull her attacker away, but then I stop myself when she comes fully into view. She’s leaned back in the chair with her eyes closed, enjoying its massage feature while the tunnelrat kneeling at her feet files her toenails.

  “Get your hands off me!” Jimmy shouts, appearing beside me, wresting to free himself from the grip of the tunnelrat.

  Hannah’s eyes snap open at the sound of his voice, and she slowly turns her head. The tunnelrat kneeling at her feet stops filing and watches us too.

  “Look who’s here,” Hannah says.

  “Are you surprised?” I ask.

  “Of course not,” she says, waving the tunnelrat away from her feet and sitting up. She looks behind me, probably to see if anyone else is with us.

  “Are you looking for the professor?” I ask.

  “Isn’t he with you?”

  “He’s catching up on his rest in the submarine.”