The Islands at the End of the World

by Austin Aslan

  Voices echo. Flashlight beams whip along the rafters as people jog forward. I slow my breathing, fending off faintness. Keeping low, I poke one eye around the luggage. Soldiers load the trucks with pallets of stacked food. Guards are stationed along either side of the garage doors. Have they been here the whole time? Sleeping? The thought makes me tremble.

  I keep my eyes on them. One soldier pauses, so close. I could reach out and touch his leg.

  Stay calm.

  Dad must be jumping out of his skin. Don’t try anything, I mentally warn him. The door where I told him to wait remains quiet.

  Finally, the soldiers get back into the vehicles, and the rolling steel doors begin to lower. I watch the guards closely while I still have light. They’re standing outside the warehouse, but they don’t move as the door slams shut.

  They would have seen us leaving here for the bay. I shudder. The echoes of the rolling doors still reverberate as I wheel my two suitcases over to the side door. I wait for the lights of the trucks to glide by before opening it.

  As the rumble of the vehicles drifts out of earshot, I press on the door latch, then freeze. An alarm? With the light of the phone, I inspect the doorframe for wires or anything that would indicate a trigger. I don’t see anything.

  Wincing, I press the door open. Slowly. Pause. Nothing. I open it farther. Pause. Finally, I poke my head out.

  Dad stands behind the door with a two-by-four raised in his hands. He sets it down. “Are you out of your mind? What—”

  “Food.” I pull both suitcases into view. “More than we came with.”

  Dad’s eyes widen. I think he’s about to praise me, but he whispers, “How are we supposed to swim all this stuff across the bay? And we can’t wheel all this down the open road past the base’s main gatehouse. You need to consult with your father before breaking into guarded military buildings.”

  I bite my lip. How to get all of our stuff over the water never crossed my mind. We were going to float our backpacks beside us … they’re made for wet canyon hiking and river crossings, with inflatable compartments. But these suitcases?

  Then I see the bus we’re hiding behind.

  “Dad, this is the bus that takes the keikis to the beach, right?”

  “They all look the same.”

  “Can you open these compartments? Boogie boards. Floaties. Things like that.”

  “Ah,” he says, popping open the first compartment under the bus. Nothing. All of the compartments are empty.

  “Lei, let’s go. We’ll keep an eye out.”

  I pull on my pack. “So, do we leave this food here?”

  He eyes me sternly, shakes his head. He picks up both suitcases. I try to grab one.

  “No. I’m balanced this way; it’s actually easier. And I don’t think we should risk the sound of rolling them.”

  “Wait, Dad. Not that way! They’re guarding the front of the warehouse.”

  “When did you become a ninja?” He follows me on a winding route as I carefully scout out the path ahead. We can hear voices and boots on gravel behind buildings up ahead, but our course is remarkably free of patrols, and soldiers.

  Gunfire sounds across the bay, a long, sustained burst. A machine gun? Is the military out on the island, securing the towns?

  Who knows? Doesn’t make any difference right now. I peek around the next corner. We dart for a bit of cover.

  A flurry of flashlights from far behind catches my attention. I glance backward and my heart leaps into my throat: they must’ve discovered the hole in the fence. A dog barks. Another.

  I hate dogs.

  “Lei, go!”

  We scurry into a grove of trees. I can hear the gentle lapping of water ahead. The thin strip of forest abuts some sort of compound, a water-treatment plant, maybe. I can just make out a parking lot through the foliage, and I smile.

  I see the familiar silhouette of a surfboard on a roof rack. I point it out to Dad.

  “Perfect.”

  The barking in the distance becomes more excited.

  Please, God, no dogs.

  We leave our bags and scurry to the SUV, free the longboard with quiet efficiency, and then duck under the trees.

  The strip of forest ends in a pebbly beach, and the bay stretches out before us, only twenty yards away. With the built-in tubes of our backpacks already inflated, we tie the suitcases onto the longboard with my climbing rope.

  Searchlights whip through the sky. The barking grows frantic—and closer.

  “Ready?” Dad asks.

  I peer across the dark at a few distant fires burning in Kāne`ohe. Calm as this bay is, protected from the ocean by the large promontory of the military base, it’s still two miles across. Our plan is to arc to the left beyond the tidal sandbars in the mid distance and scope out a safe place to beach along the foot of the peninsula that connects the base to the rest of O`ahu.

  The barking is nearer.

  We sneak out into the water, carrying the suitcase-laden surfboard into chest-deep water. We remove our packs. Lying flat on the surface of the water, they bob gently on our little waves. We dog-paddle farther out into the gentle surf, pushing the floating packs and surfboard ahead of us.

  Five minutes later, a pair of flashlights appear along the shore, accompanied by excited barking. The flashlights scan the bay, but we’re out of range on the mild waves. After a few minutes, our trackers move back toward the base.

  “First thing. When we get to the beach.” Dad’s teeth chatter. “We eat. Real food.”

  We pause intermittently to gather our strength as we dodge tsunami debris—mostly plastic trash—and then turn left, heading for the nearby shore. At one point I almost tip the suitcases.

  “Don’t soak our steaks,” Dad jokes. It makes me wonder if the tins of tablets are waterproof. I should have checked.

  Our feet touch the nearest beach of Kāne`ohe, still very dark. We haul our belongings up the beach and into the trees, free the suitcases, and ditch the longboard. Wordlessly, dripping wet, we each scarf down half a stick of salami and some dried fruit.

  “Dad,” I whisper, forcing down a strip of leathery mango the best I can without any water. “What’s potassium iodide?” He raises a dramatic eyebrow. “Nothing we want to be dealing with.”

  “Why?”

  “It prevents radiation sickness during nuclear disasters.”

  “What?” I listen in cold shock.

  “Iodine is processed by our thyroid glands, in our necks. Nuclear meltdowns produce radioactive iodine isotopes, and they enter our bodies through the thyroid. If you take potassium iodide, though, your thyroid glands can only process so much iodine at a time, so you coat the glands with safe iodine. The radioactive stuff won’t enter the bloodstream. It can burn your mouth and throat and stomach, but it beats getting cancer. Why do you ask?”

  It takes me a moment to find words. “Aukina gave me some, told us to take them. All the soldiers are taking it. I found boxes and boxes of the stuff in the warehouse, and I grabbed a bunch.”

  Dad is silent.

  I whisper, “Was this whole thing … a nuclear war?”

  Dad doesn’t answer for a long time, but he finally shakes his head. “There are over five hundred nuclear plants around the world, Lei. Not to mention submarines and aircraft carriers. If the power is out everywhere … it would be hard to pump fresh water into cooling tanks. With that many chances for something to go wrong, it could—somewhere—only take a couple weeks for used fuel to become exposed and sizzle through containment structures. Gas generators could hold off the situation for a while, but what happens when the gas is gone? A lot of plants could already be melting down. The radiation could render parts of the earth uninhabitable for millions of years.”

  I stop chewing.

  Dad brushes sand off his hands. “The Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 was caused by a stupid pipe valve. Fresh water couldn’t enter the cooling tanks, and fifteen minutes later the core was exposed. It turned into �
� it was like volcano lava. Oozed down to the bottom of the tanks and melted through six inches of solid carbon steel before anyone noticed. A few more minutes and there would have been an explosion that ripped the dome apart. It could have scorched the entire region. Something similar happened at Chernobyl in 1986, but they didn’t contain it in time. It did explode. Parts of that region are still radioactive. And the Russians actually prevented the worst-case scenario.

  “Can you imagine what’s happening to all those five hundred plants without power? Without hundreds of employees running around at each of them turning dials and rerouting systems?”

  “Stop. Please.”

  He pauses. “Hawai`i’s probably the safest place on the globe, if it comes to that.”

  “Aukina said—” I cough, wishing desperately for water. “Aukina said something about aircraft carriers and subs ‘in the neighborhood’ dealing with issues.”

  “What kind of issues?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Start taking the iodide,” Dad says a minute later.

  We each dry-swallow an iodide tablet—each fortunately sealed within a waterproof blister pack. I can feel a headache coming on. How will we find fresh water to drink?

  “Lei, you snagged enough of this stuff to last us a year.”

  “Bleeding throats for a whole year. Yay.”

  “You might have just inadvertently gotten us our tickets home.”

  “What?”

  Dad rubs a hand through my sopping wet hair. “Something to trade for passage. Infinitely more valuable than an effing Rolex.”

  The thought makes perfect sense. It lifts my spirits, in a mad sort of way. I wonder: Is that what we’re doing? Are we trading cancer prevention to get home? So that the five of us can slowly die together?

  CHAPTER 17

  We work our way through the houses along the beach to the nearest road. In spite of the tremendous effort that went into our escape, the entrance to the Marine Corps Base is only three-quarters of a mile away, across a thin causeway that stretches over the bay. We were so intent on getting out that I never really thought about the next steps. Get off the island … but how, exactly?

  “I know where we should go,” Dad says as we head inland along the side of the road. “It’s in Kailua, but it’s in the same direction as the beaches there. I think we can get there before morning. We hole up for a day and find a way off this rock.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  We march along the outskirts of Kāne`ohe, staying within sight of the road to Kailua but sticking to the bushy slopes of the hills that separate the two towns. Cars occasionally putter along the road. After grueling hours of hauling our gear, we come upon a flickering glow in the woods.

  Cautiously, we approach the edge of a steeply sloped clearing—and then we stumble back in shock. A pile of three bodies lie in flames at the center of a bonfire. As we watch, a fourth, naked corpse is tossed onto the pyre by four men. I turn away, shutting my eyes tightly, but not before I see a bullet hole right between the eyes of the final body.

  “Lei, you all right?” Dad pulls me close.

  “I don’t …”

  “Stay with me, hon. Breathe.” He looks into my eyes.

  “It’s not that, Dad.”

  “Follow me.” We back away, lifting the suitcases as the powerful roar of a vehicle comes from up ahead. Lights jostle into view over the nearest hill, scattering the shadows of trees like elongating claws. We dash into the brush as a van rockets past. A half-dozen men burst from the van with handguns and fire on the pyre builders.

  The four pyre builders dash for their weapons. Within seconds they crumple, dead.

  The newcomers race toward the pyre; they struggle to pull out the burning bodies and beat out the flames.

  I’m frozen in place, and my headache throbs with my pulse. It looks like they’re trying to rescue people they know. Others raid the enemy truck, hauling away milk crates filled with food.

  “Come on. Now.” Dad takes my hand and we scurry away until we’re over the next hill. As we slide down, Dad whispers, “You okay?”

  “What the hell …” I catch my breath, dizzy.

  “Christ—that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” says Dad.

  Why did we leave the base? I want to scream. My headache tempers my panic, though. Focus on that pain, not what you just saw. We march onward, jumping at every shadow and sound. Finally, we arrive on the streets of what used to be a well-to-do neighborhood on the slopes of Kailua. With the sky already pink with approaching sunrise, Dad weaves us through trash heaps and burnt-out car shells with the same caution we used to escape the base.

  Just as the sun peeks over the edge of the ocean, Dad relaxes his white-knuckled grip on the suitcase handles. “Here we are. Quick,” he whispers, and tells me that we’re at the O`ahu home of the chancellor of UH Hilo. Dad’s been here. The chancellor and his wife were in Hilo when we left. The place should be empty.

  Dad cautiously knocks on the front door of the little yellow bungalow. “Hello?” No answer. We slip into the backyard, broad leaves and tall ginger blooms providing cover.

  Dad snatches up a garden gnome near the back lanai and punches the red pointy hat through the window of the porch door. Carefully, he reaches through and unlocks the door.

  “Dad, I need water so bad.”

  “We’ll find some in here.”

  In the kitchen he opens the fridge and steps back, holding his nose. “So much for that.” He slams the door. “Try the cabinets.”

  The cabinets are empty. I glance at the door to the garage. Pried open. “We’re not the first people to snoop around in here.” I pointlessly twist the faucet.

  “You’re dehydrated,” he says.

  “I think so.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  I shrug. “You’d’ve had me licking leaves or something.”

  “You’re right.” He snaps his fingers together. “I’ve got a better idea.”

  He snatches an empty water bottle from his pack and walks into the bathroom.

  He lifts the toilet-seat lid and stares at the water in the bowl.

  “Dad. You have got to be …”

  “Just teasing.” He drops the seat cover and removes the lid along the tank. “Bingo!”

  He dips the water bottle into the back of the toilet and presents it to me as if he’s offering frankincense to baby Jesus. I stare at it, and then I guzzle down the water. Once I’ve emptied it, Dad refills it for himself. He fills it again and hands it back to me.

  He checks the medicine cabinet and tosses a big bottle of aspirin to me. I greedily flush two tablets down.

  “Don’t ever tell anyone about this,” I command. “Ever.”

  “Not a word.”

  We go into the master bedroom. Dad ducks under the bed and surfaces with a black security box. It’s locked. “Whoever broke in didn’t know to look here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Something John shared with me. At the time, I did not approve.”

  He hefts the box, places it on the bed, scratches his head. We find a hammer in a kitchen drawer. Dad claws at the box. Useless, I wander the rooms. I take off my shoes and socks and curl my toes against the soft throw rugs. Just to be indoors—a roof to block the sun, no mud on the ground, warm colors on the walls—I could be in Buckingham Palace. I roam, savoring every moment, studying the photographs of Hawaiian flowers and coral reefs and the portraits of the chancellor and his family.

  What I wouldn’t give just to see a picture of Mom and Kai. I grab my phone to look through my pics—and remember that it’s zapped. My longing hits me like a bout of nausea. I pace the hall. Not even a hundred miles between us.

  I’m coming, Mom. Kai. Grandpa. Be strong. I blink back tears.

  Dad is still working.

  I return to the bathroom. A clean toilet seat: I imagine it’s like a first-class bed-chair on a long flight. I’ve never enjoyed sitting on
porcelain so much. I feel like a queen. I turn to flush and stop just in time. Do we need that water?

  When I see myself in the mirror, I gasp. I look like what an Egyptologist might see when she unwraps a mummy. Thin. Disheveled, tangled hair. Dirt—everywhere—mixed with scratches and endless mosquito bites …

  Aukina called this “eye-catching”?

  You’d think I’d recently had several seizures, jumped from a burning building, languished in a prison, broken out of a military complex, death-marched through the jungle, and survived the OK Corral. I shouldn’t be so surprised. I find a brush, go to wet my hair, and then stare at the brush. I need water. Such a basic thing, just one turn of a knob away. Dip the brush in the toilet tank? No. That’s our drinking water.

  I can’t even brush my hair anymore.

  A dismal understanding begins to descend. Brushing my hair—it’s nothing, really. But I finally see that this disaster is going to have consequences I haven’t even dreamed of.

  Numbness settles in. My entire future—gone.

  If the world really is broken, I’ll never go to prom. I’ll never finish watching Star Trek with Dad. I’ll never pass a driver’s test, go to college, or have a boyfriend. I’ll never backpack in Europe. I’ll never have another ice shave.

  I’ll never refill my seizure medication.

  Dad cries, “Aha!” I run to see.

  He holds a large pistol.

  “I’ve never seen you with a gun,” I say in a near whisper. “It … doesn’t look right.”

  “I’m from New Mexico, hon. My childhood had plenty of guns.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in violence.”

  “I never believed in Armageddon, either, but guess what?”

  “It believed in you?” I offer.

  Dad laughs, then grows somber. “If God won’t play by the rules, then I don’t have to, either.”

  I watch him, incredulous. He cocks the hammer, flips open the chamber, loads the gun, and snaps the chamber back into place. He knows what he’s doing.

  “Won’t that … make us less safe?” I say.

  His eyes are stern. “My only concern is your safety.”