The Islands at the End of the World

by Austin Aslan

  My eyes widen.

  “Some psycho sheriff, he’s gone all Lord of the Flies back there. He’s running the passage like a drug cartel. If you surrender your stuff, they might let you by. They’re taking everything, though. They’ll take the fancy hiking clothes right off your back.” The boy eyes my backpack. His eyes are sunken in and darkly rimmed. His face is pale. He’s probably starving.

  I whip off my pack and hand him an entire stick of salami. He trembles as he takes it, eyes alight with disbelief.

  “Here.” He hands me his machete. I take it from him gently, studying it as if I’m a cavewoman being handed an ereader.

  “Let’s go, folks! All aboard!” the captain shouts.

  “Jason—now!” his mother yells. The boy looks back at me twice as he climbs onto the wa`akaulua. I watch him until Dad and I turn onto the nearby beach road and march away.

  “Dad.”

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “You don’t think Mom and Kai have left home, do you? To come find us?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not? What if …?”

  “Mom knows that we’re on our way home. She’s not going to leave. Remember the rule she taught you?”

  I remember well. We had been in a mall in San Francisco. I was eight, and I got separated from my parents. In a panic, I ran off to find them. A helpful woman and a security guard reunited us. “We knew right where we lost you, honey,” Mom said. “Next time you get lost, stay right where you are. It’ll make it easier to track you down.”

  But I’ll never forget that panic. When it takes hold, all bets are off. Mom’s had a month to constantly second-guess her resolutions.…

  “Let’s not linger on the road,” Dad says. “If the stories about this sheriff are true …”

  This area of Maui is largely farmland, and we stick to the rolling fields where the grasses are tallest, hiking steadily toward the tree line of the unbroken jungle, which will take us most of the day to reach.

  We traverse the township of Haiku nervously, keeping to forested gullies where we can. We find ourselves cautiously climbing over fences and scurrying through a patchwork of fields, yards, and open streets. We see people, but not many. An old man sitting on his porch, who pretends not to notice us. Two kids running across a yard. An occasional old car driving up the hill from the valley. It’s like we’re actually in a haiku. But where has everyone else gone? There’s nowhere to go. I could imagine hordes of city dwellers on the mainland heading for the hills, or the wild lands beyond the highways. But here, we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

  The echo of rapid gunfire comes from somewhere in the direction of Kahului. I look toward the sound and the plume of the pyre still burning hot and fierce near the airport.

  “Come on,” Dad says, following my gaze. “Got to reach the jungle before nightfall.”

  Just as dusk settles over Maui with a breathtaking, bloodred sunset behind us, we move beneath the canopy of full-blown jungle. Now I’m fighting with thorny brambles and giant, hairy ferns and great mops of tangled vine. I use my new machete for the first time, swinging it timidly at first, and then more confidently. “This is going to be miserable.”

  “Let’s stop for the night. My shoulder is done.”

  We pitch our small tent and hop inside, escaping a cloud of mosquitoes. I already have more itchy bites than I can keep track of. Dad’s in a fair amount of pain, but he’s trying to keep it to himself. He swallows down painkillers. We snack briefly on our stores of food, always the same: crushed and stale crackers, dried fruit, and processed meat by-product that’s been stuffed into tubes as rock hard as a billy club.

  We lost our sleeping bags with the suitcases, so we pad the floor of the tent with clothing. I help Dad get his shirt off in our cramped quarters. “Dad, you’re bleeding!”

  “I know. Is it bad?”

  I study his wound. “The stitches look fine.” I re-dress the wound with the first-aid materials the clinic gave us.

  “How’s your forehead?”

  “Itchy,” I say. “No big deal.”

  “Let’s do another mile in the morning. Then I want to lie down and do nothing for at least a couple of days.”

  “Sounds good.”

  * * *

  I take my evening pill. Eighteen left. With luck, I could make it home before I run out.

  * * *

  “Lei. Are you taking the iodide?”

  “But Uncle Akoni said—”

  “I don’t care what he said. Nice man, but not all there. Besides, even if he’s right about the radiation—just because they can’t detect it yet, doesn’t mean it’s not coming. Meltdowns are happening. We’re lucky to be in Hawai`i. But it’s only a matter of time before it reaches us.”

  I fish through my bag and open the canister of tablets Aukina gave me. I wonder where he is. Still taking orders on O`ahu? Helping other girls crawl beneath the fences?

  I take a tablet and hand one to Dad. “Here.”

  “No.”

  “What, you’re going to make me take it, but—”

  “There’s not enough, Lei.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Those are for you and Kai. It’s nonnegotiable. Please don’t turn it into a fight.”

  “Dad.”

  He offers a sympathetic smile. He’s quiet for a long time, and then he says, “It’s going to be all right.”

  I turn away and burrow into my bed of clothing.

  I stare up at the Emerald Orchid through the screen mesh of our tent. It’s partially covered by jungle canopy, but it’s clear enough. Very bright tonight, but less crisp, as if a projectionist needs to give the focus knob a half turn out there somewhere. Is it a trick of the hazy atmosphere, the mesh tent fabric above me, or are my eyes crossed with exhaustion?

  “Dad?” I say. “What if that is a spaceship?”

  “Lei, it’s not. Look at it. Looks nothing like—”

  “Oh, I know. I’m just playing it out, you know? Wouldn’t that be nuts? If all the major cities were dealing with an alien invasion? And here we are, out in the ocean, lost in our own little problems, totally clueless.”

  “Little problems?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Dad sighs. “Yeah, that would be wild. But the reality of what’s going on is just as bad, Lei. We don’t need to chase some priest down any rabbit holes to appreciate the severity of our situation.”

  “You don’t have to lecture me.”

  Dad sits up with considerable effort. He looks at me closely. “I just meant … Akoni’s well-meaning, and I’m sure he—”

  “I have been having dreams,” I interrupt him. There, I said it. It feels good to get that off my chest, but now I feel exposed, too. “Stronger than usual.” Dad’s listening. I continue, hesitantly. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted this. It sounds so bizarre out loud. “I’ve been dreaming during my seizures. I don’t remember them well, but … something. A voice.”

  “Alien communiqués? In English?”

  My eyes narrow. “No. Don’t get me wrong; I agree it’s nuts. But … remember how Grandma Lili`u would tell that story about hearing radio transmissions during the Pearl Harbor invasion? Through the filling in her tooth?”

  Dad smiles. “Yeah.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, yeah. There’s a scientific basis for that, though. That’s not an uncommon story.”

  “Well, neither is Uncle Akoni’s. I’ve heard something. He mentioned another epileptic kid, too.”

  “Three people? Come on, Lei. Anecdotal. No evidence there. Remember when I talked about confirmation bias? Sounds like you want to believe this is true.”

  “Sounds like you want to believe it’s not.”

  Dad lies down. “I believe that you’re hearing something. It’s probably a side effect of the drug trial.”

  “Huh,” I say. “What if it’s God?” I ask. “Or akua? Or aumakua—a
family guardian, like Grandma?”

  Dad smiles. “There you go. See! Don’t you want to interpret these voices in a way that means something to you, and not in some paranoid way?”

  We lie in silence, staring up at the Orchid. Just a haze. A fuzzy green cloud. No one would look up at that and think, “UFO.”

  But …

  Maybe Dad’s right: no aliens. Better to believe the gods are speaking to me in my seizures.

  But what are they telling me?

  I shrug and close my eyes. How is it that a priest confused me about this?

  CHAPTER 23

  After we move camp another mile into the forest, Dad rests for three solid days and nights, scarcely moving except to eat. He stays quiet and still, disciplined. “The more I heal now, the faster we’ll go in the end,” he argues. I trust his instinct, but I’m dying to get going. I mostly stay in the tent, too, to avoid the mosquitoes and the occasional rain bursts. I pass the time rereading my water-damaged Hawaiiana book—I’ve kept it through everything—searching for clues about the gods. Nothing new has jumped out at me.

  Each day Dad and I make and remake plans.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to get through this jungle,” I say. “What if we went around the dry side?”

  “Too exposed. That sheriff talk worries me. They could have all our stuff in an instant.”

  “We should just give it to him. Get on with it. Make our way through.”

  “There’s no way to smuggle that much iodide. And I won’t surrender it.”

  “Well, how will we get away from Hana, Dad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Just like O`ahu all over again: back to floundering, waiting for the right moment. We grow silent, listening to the distant squawks of more birds inexplicably flocking west in huge clouds across Hawai`i.

  I never get more than three or four hours of sleep without waking up from a nightmare. Sometimes they involve reliving the worst of our experiences. Sometimes I awake from imagined gunfire or the smell of burning flesh. Sometimes it’s the white lights blinding me in a dark city. I don’t know what meltdowns actually look like, but in my dreams they’re always like nuclear bombs from the movies. Sometimes pale aliens with big balloon heads are banging at the door of the presidential bunker. I lie awake, trying to figure out what’s going on in the rest of the world. It’s easier than thinking about my family, but it’s still hard. I spend hours thinking about what it feels like. I don’t know how to say it. We’re so cut off from the globe. I’ve grown up at a time where news pours in constantly from every corner of the world. If my parents weren’t talking about it, it was on TV, it was on the radio, it was on my computer, it was on my phone, it was at the airport, it was in the waiting room, it was at school, at the restaurant, at the grocery-store checkout line, at the gas-station pump … News from everywhere, all at once, all the time. I never really noticed it. Maybe it would feel like this to suddenly go deaf in one ear. Like something you always took for granted has left you crippled and spinning in its absence.

  * * *

  On Thursday I count pills. Only twelve left. Should I start taking only one each day? I think. I doubt it would be enough. I need the full dosage for it to work.

  I swallow my evening dose.

  I must get home. This week.

  * * *

  On Friday morning we pack up the tent. I cough blood for the first time. My throat stings. I take my next iodide tablet in a bit of a stupor, wiping the blood spatter off my hands so Dad won’t see it. Is this what I’m fighting for? A lifelong struggle to stay one step ahead of an invisible monster that’ll still be around millions of years after I’m gone? Kai and I watch Mom and Dad and Grandpa waste away and die while we figure out how to fend for ourselves? I grabbed tons of this stuff, but it will eventually run out. What then? Will we be the only two civilians left on the islands?

  “You okay?” Dad asks.

  I nod, change the subject. “You know what today is?”

  Dad searches, shakes his head. “No idea.”

  “Last day of school.”

  “Really?” Dad looks up, the calculator in his head churning away. “Wow, Lei. Congrats. You’re a senior.”

  “Thanks. Where’s my new car?”

  Dad sits down. He buries his head in his hands. “Dad? I was just making a joke.”

  “We were going to get you one,” he says.

  “What?”

  “A car. Not a new one. Something used. You were going to pick it out.” He still won’t look up at me.

  A car. I don’t know what to say. I sit down cross-legged next to him. He’s crying. I wrap my arm around him, rest my head on his shoulder.

  “Thank you.” I have to whisper it so my voice doesn’t crack.

  He wipes his tears away. “It’s the thought that counts, right?” His grin is sheepish.

  “Something like that,” I say.

  * * *

  “Look at this,” says Dad. Our packs are cinched, and we’re ready to press through the jungle toward Hana. He’s holding out a compass and giving it the stink-eye. I glance at the instrument. The needle won’t settle into one position. It spins, hesitates, and then continues to rotate in an endless search for polarity. It’s as if Dad is moving a magnet around beneath the compass.

  “Lovely. How are we going to navigate?”

  Dad shrugs, pocketing the compass. “We’re not as easily had as geese. We’re on a slope that drops into the sea. We’ll just cross every river and gully in a perpendicular fashion, and make sure the ocean’s to our left whenever we can catch a glimpse of it.”

  We trudge through the tropical forest for two days. The going is torturous, especially the endless chore of climbing down deeply gouged ravines, crossing angry streams and rivers, and then struggling up their far sides as bursts of rain pelt us. We have run out of mosquito repellent. I think briefly of that mother and her kids in the military camp, but I can’t regret trying to help them. We would have run out eventually anyway. At least we escaped.

  Where are those kids now? I push away the thought.

  I do all of the machete chopping; if Dad’s wound were to reopen, tropical microbes could spell his doom. I shouldn’t, but I pick at my itchy forehead. I have no idea how far we’ve come, and I’ve all but forgotten why we felt we needed to slog through the rain forest instead of sticking to the road, when we arrive at a river crossing and stumble upon the bloated and naked body of a woman floating in a rocky pool. Facedown, she twists in lazy circles, her skull brushing the edges of rocks as she turns. The long shaft of an arrow protrudes from her neck.

  “Oh, no.” I drop to my knees. We’re looking down at the body from a five-foot-high ledge above the pool. Water rushes along the center of the river, but here, near the bank, it trickles, filling dozens of babbling pools along its meandering course. The woman’s back and legs are puffy and purple, cracked open in places. Flies feast in busy clouds. I turn away.

  Dad runs a hand through his hair. Words fail him.

  “They just shot her and left her? They couldn’t even collect the body?”

  “She probably fell into the water and was carried away. Come on.”

  “Shouldn’t we … bury her, or something?” I whisper.

  Dad’s voice is soft. “I wish we could. But no. Come on.” Dad looks about nervously, and I feel unseen eyes spying on me from every tree trunk and fern.

  We walk upstream to cross the river and fill up on water, clambering up a steep rock face above a short waterfall. We’re going to have to get wet to cross this time; the water here is deep and swift. A taller waterfall gushes farther upstream.

  We take a moment to guzzle from our water bottles and refill them, always glancing around. I know we’re upstream from the body, but it must have passed by here at some point, and the thought of drinking from this river at all turns my stomach. Still, I know that with all of our sweating, we can’t afford to pass up any water.

  I wade across the rive
r, submerged up to my chest. We rest the packs on our heads to keep them dry as we cross and quickly strap them back on once we’re safe on the far side. Ahead of us the foliage is thick, brambly, steeply sloped. I unsheathe my machete.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Dad says. I begin hacking away at the thorny plants choking our way forward.

  I hear the growl of a dog. Close.

  We freeze. The dog barks. A brown blur materializes out of the trembling underbrush and I fall, a searing, white-hot pain ripping into my thigh. I’m screaming. Dad is screaming. A pile of hell-bent muscle writhes on top of me, razor-sharp teeth clamped into my leg. I bring the machete up and around as hard as I can. The dog yelps and recoils. My blade slices farther through its shoulder, and it whimpers and slinks into the underbrush.

  “Lei!”

  Another dog attacks Dad from the other side. I swing around and swipe with my machete. Adrenaline and rage guide my weapon down on top of the dog’s back. Blade meets bone. Vertebrae snap. The dog crumples, its back legs limp, and convulses in agony, yelping wildly.

  Someone above us curses.

  More barking dogs fan out in a great arc around us. A whoosh near my head. Another. An arrow sings to a halt in my backpack.

  I’m stunned. Is that me laughing?

  “Sheriff’s Department! You’re surrounded. Surrender.”

  “The river!” Dad seizes my hand and whips me forward.

  A warm pain throbs along my thigh, but I race beside Dad, hunted like a wild pig.

  “Stop now!”

  We hurtle blindly back along the path I’ve cut, the dogs growing nearer. We come upon the rocky bank of the river and leap, packs and all, and then swim with the current toward the short waterfall. A single gunshot rings out above. The current draws us to the edge of the waterfall.

  My hands reach for something to grab, dropping the machete, but my pack is too bulky and the water too strong—I tumble over. Nothing I can do but brace to be dashed against the shallow boulders below.

  The pool directly beneath the waterfall has been gouged deep by thousands of years of water. I disappear under the water with flailing arms. A great weight crashes down on top of me, sending me farther down. Dad has fallen on me.