State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy

by Ryan Winfield

  I watch him walk away, trudging past the piles of earth and the idle machines on his way home for the short time he has left there. Then Bill punches a code into the wall, the giant doors swing closed, and we’re on the other side.

  CHAPTER 11

  Subterrenes and Strange Dreams

  When we enter the tunnelrat den, I notice the smell first.

  Dried urine, or maybe decades of dried sweat.

  Bill leads the way, with Roger close on his heels, and the pathway we walk is illuminated by intermittent red lanterns that are set out on stands, as if to be always ready for relocation as the tunnels change shape. The walls are made of earth, old machine parts, and bits of synthetic fabric all laid long ago to waste. I recognize some ancient cracked and broken reading slates amidst the rubble. There is even an earlier generation zipsuit with the original Foundation crest looking cartoonlike on its faded breast. Here we are, walking inside a time capsule of our nine hundred years living underground. Jimmy looks with great interest at these artifacts, and I can’t help but think that he’s reminded of his own cave of treasures by the cove.

  Soon boisterous grunts and bellows echo through the maze, and then the tunnel opens abruptly onto a large den where the strangest sight I’ve ever seen lays before us like some nightmare painting come to life. Several behemoth tunnelrat mothers, too large to ever exit the tunnel we’ve just passed through, sprawl on junk-piled beds. They are nursing countless infant tunnelrats, hairless and helpless and squirming blindly against one another to get at their milk. Other young tunnelrats lie slumped drunkenly against the walls, sucking on bottles. One particularly plump mother opens a large, milky eye and watches us cross the den with only the mildest interest.

  Another tunnel leads us away from the den. Just as the squealing noise fades completely into the maze behind us, we step out onto a platform where a subterrene idles, its glowing nosecone pointed toward a wall of openings that might lead to any number of deep and dangerous mines. A tunnelrat leans against the contraption, feverishly smoking some kind of tiny cigarette. It sees us, drops the cigarette, and stomps it out with its bare foot.

  “Where ye been now, where ye been?” the tunnelrat asks, opening the subterrene hatch and waving us aboard.

  “Sorry if we’re late,” Bill says. “We really appreciate this.”

  “In ye go now, in ye go.”

  Once inside the subterrene, we take our seats and buckle in for the ride. Bill opens a cubby and produces lunch rations and passes them around. Jimmy and I swig our water and tear into our food, realizing just how long it’s been since we’ve eaten anything. Roger sits across from us, picking at his, a sour look on his face as if someone had purposely prepared him his least favorite food. Bill consults the tunnelrat at the controls.

  “Hey, Roger,” I say. “You ever ridden in one of these?” When he shakes his head no, I continue, “Well, we have, and if your stomach comes out of your mouth, be sure not to bite down on it. Just swallow it again and you’ll be fine.”

  Roger sets his ration aside and begins feverishly twiddling his thumbs. Jimmy elbows me in the ribs, but he still laughs.

  Eventually, Bill buckles in next to Roger, the tunnelrat winds up the subterrene, and we shoot off into the tunnels like some underground missile launched from a slingshot. As the initial inertia of its acceleration wears off, we settle into a smooth ride, lifting softly up and falling softly down, arcing gently left and gently right, as if winding our way through an underground amusement park like I read about growing up.

  The tunnelrat takes its seat next to Jimmy.

  “How fast does this thin’ go?” Jimmy asks.

  “Thousan’ kilometers an hour now,” the tunnelrat says, “thousan’ kilometers an hour.” Then it hauls a large bottle of milk from its pouch and begins drinking.

  Sometime later, as we’re all beginning to drift off to sleep, the tunnelrat gets up to check the controls. Jimmy nudges me and points to the milk bottle sitting in the tunnelrat’s vacated seat. I shrug. Jimmy picks it up, wipes the nipple off with his sleeve, and raises it to his lips. He suckles fast and furious, his cheeks pumping as he mimics the baby tunnelrats we saw, and he looks so suddenly ridiculous that I have to fight back the giggles. When he sets it down again, he has milk on his chin.

  “Not bad,” he mouths silently.

  The food in my belly and the motion of the speeding subterrene lulls me to sleep, and as I drift off I dream I’m being swallowed by a snake—

  I’m being swallowed by a snake, and it’s surprisingly comforting. The unhinged jaw stretches over my head and the throat of the serpent slides over me like a second skin, protecting me from the harsh realities of the world. I come to rest in the warmth of its stomach, our shapes entwined now as one. The digestive juices there begin their work, breaking down my fear and my identity until I know I will be absorbed into this creature that has no need to ponder the existence of stars, or its existence, or anything’s existence—just a mindless, legless mouth, roaming the dark places and seeking out other beings to add to itself in a never-ending circle of life; mouth to tail, tail to mouth.

  Jimmy is stoned when I wake. I rub the sleep from my eyes and watch him.

  He lurches about the subterrene, bouncing off the walls and laughing hysterically, as if listening to some private joke.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Bill asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Unless it’s that milk he drank.”

  Bill leaps to his feet, grabs Jimmy, and settles him back into his seat. “Help me hold him, quick. Roger, see if there’s any active charcoal in the first aid kit. Now, Roger! Hurry.”

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “Fentanyl,” Bill says. “That milk is laced with it.”

  I look at the tunnelrat sleeping soundly in its seat and say, “But the tunnelrat was sucking it down like nobody’s business.”

  “Yeah, and he has been since he was born. Jimmy doesn’t have any tolerance. Here, hand me that charcoal.”

  While Bill mixes the charcoal powder with the water in his ration bottle, Jimmy sways back and forth in his seat.

  “Hold him upright,” Bill says. “See if he can he talk.”

  “He couldn’t hardly talk before,” Roger says.

  “If you’re not going to help,” Bill snaps at him, “then sit down and shut up, Roger.”

  I try to get Jimmy to focus on me.

  “Jimmy? Can you hear me, Jimmy?” His eyes open slightly and he smiles. “Well, he’s not coherent,” I say, “but he’s in there somewhere.”

  Bill hands me the bottle of liquid charcoal. “You’ve got to get him to drink it himself. We can’t risk him aspirating it.”

  I crouch down and look Jimmy in the eyes. His pupils are constricted to just tiny dots in his beautiful blue-gray irises.

  “You need to drink this for me, Jimmy. Can you do that?”

  “I dun’ need no water,” he slurs, pushing it away. “I need some more milk.”

  “The milk is what got you into trouble in the first place.”

  “Milk, milk, milk,” he mumbles. “Good for the tummy.”

  Then I get an idea. I step over and lift the milk bottle from the sleeping tunnelrat’s hand. It stirs but doesn’t wake. I twist off the top and pour the last of the milk onto the floor, rinsing the empty bottle with my water ration and dumping that out too. Then I pour the liquid charcoal into the bottle, screw the top back on, and hand it to Jimmy.

  “Here, Jimmy. Drink this.”

  He clutches the bottle in both hands, tips his head back, and sucks it down. When he finishes, he smiles at us and drops the bottle on the floor. Then he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

  “Will he be alright?” I ask.

  “He should be,” Bill says. “Just let him sleep it off now. The charcoal will help.”

  Four hours later we arrive at the Yucatan mines.

  The tunnelrat wakes, as if responding to some internal alarm, and reaches for its
bottle. When it finds that the bottle is empty, it seems momentarily puzzled before appearing to decide that it must have drank it itself. It slips the empty bottle into its pouch. Then it steps up to the controls and brings us in and slows the subterrene to a stop.

  I reach over and shake Jimmy awake.

  “What’s the score?” he asks.

  “The score?”

  “Guess I was dreamin’,” he replies. “We’s playin’ handball against Bree and Finn. Junior was yelpin’ for us to win.”

  “That sounds like a good dream,” I say.

  He’s a little wobbly yet when he stands, and the crooked smile on his face tells me that he might be slightly stoned still, but he manages to walk without aid. We follow the tunnelrat out the open hatch with the rest of them.

  The subterrene is stopped in an enormous cavern lit with the same red lights that were in the tunnelrats’ den. The light doesn’t reach the upper limits of the cavern, and the pillars of stone left to support the ceiling seem to rise up and disappear into the void above. The cavern wall in front of the subterrene is streaked with thick veins of silver that reflect the red light.

  Jimmy seems not to notice how peculiar our surroundings are as he reaches into his pocket, pulls out the game ball that Finn gave him, and starts playing catch with himself.

  “I don’t like it here,” Roger says.

  “You think I do?” Bill replies. “We’re here to do a job.”

  The tunnelrat grabs a chunk of silver off the ground, steps over to Jimmy, and thrusts it at him.

  “Trade, now,” it says. “Trade.”

  “What’s that?” Jimmy asks.

  “He wants to trade with you,” Bill says. “For your ball.”

  “But I dun’ wanna trade,” Jimmy says.

  The tunnelrat presses the silver against Jimmy’s chest.

  Jimmy pushes it away. “Forceful, ain’t he?”

  “Just trade with him for now,” Bill says. “Something else will catch his eye and he’ll drop it. Or else he’ll forget why he even wanted it, and you can trade him back.”

  Jimmy shrugs and hands him the ball, taking the silver.

  Bill walks us up to the wall and lays his open palm against the thick vein of silver there, bowing his head and closing his eyes for a moment, as if in prayer.

  “So this is it,” he says, turning to address the tunnelrat. “This is really the way out?”

  The tunnelrat nods. Then it notices another, larger hunk of silver on the ground and drops Jimmy’s ball to pick it up. When I nudge Jimmy and point, he scurries over and snatches his abandoned ball off the ground.

  “How far to the other side?” Bill asks.

  “No more than three hundred meters now,” the tunnelrat says. “Three hundred meters and no more.”

  “I think it’s too risky,” Roger says, twiddling his thumbs again. “Maybe we should go back.”

  Bill ignores Roger and turns to Jimmy and me and says, “You two have been out there. What should we expect?”

  “It’s nothing like they told us it was,” I say. “It’s clear skies and no ice, and the sun in the sky and everything. You’ll be fine. You really will. Won’t they, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy’s busy tossing his ball again. The tunnel rat notices, walks over, and thrusts the larger piece of silver at Jimmy.

  “Shoot,” Jimmy says. “This again?”

  After the exchange, Jimmy has two hunks of silver and the tunnel rat has the ball again.

  “Will you be able to keep it open?” Bill asks the tunnelrat.

  The tunnelrat shrugs. “Not sure, now. Not sure.”

  As we return to the subterrene, Bill takes the silver hunks from Jimmy’s hand and tosses them in the path in front of the tunnelrat. When the tunnelrat drops the ball and picks up the silver, Bill snatches the ball and hands it back to Jimmy.

  “Now keep it in your pocket this time.”

  We pile back into the subterrene and close the hatch. The tunnelrat fires up the machine. It hits a switch and we rise on some kind of landing gear, or maybe traction belts, since we’re leaving the tracks behind here. Then the machine whines loudly and begins to crawl forward. When we hit the wall, there’s a brief jolt. Then we ease into the rock as if cutting through algaebutter, the resistance melting away against the advancing point of superheated metal. The tunnelrat is deeply focused on its work, reading gauges and moving levers, nosing us up at a gentle angle as we melt through the rock. I realize that despite their odd manners and lack of communication skills, these tunnelrats are very good at what they do.

  The closer we get to breaking out, the better I feel. My relief does not appear to be shared by Roger, however, because he’s sweating and twiddling his thumbs as if trying to start a fire with them. Bill has his head bowed and his eyes closed in meditation, the moment obviously a personal one for him. Jimmy is grinning beside me, still in his fentanyl stupor.

  And then it happens—the resistance gives, the subterrene lurches forward, brakes, and comes to a stop. We look at one another, silently acknowledging the importance of the moment.

  Bill pats Roger’s knee. “You ready, Rogg? I know you’re nervous, but it’s been a long time dreaming about this for us.”

  “Yes, it has been”—Roger nods—“a long, long time.”

  Bill stands and talks quietly with the tunnelrat. I hear him mention not wanting to be trapped outside, and I wonder why he would ever want to get back in. Then Bill opens a cubby and hands us each a backpack filled with water and food rations.

  “Okay,” he says, “as soon as we open that hatch, we’ve got to get out of this thing fast. Gridboy here isn’t too fond of the open air, as you can imagine, and he’s got to get back to his post before he’s missed. We all owe him a huge thank you.”

  I step up and shake Gridboy’s huge hand, thanking him. Now that I know his name, he seems less like a thing and more like a friend. He smiles and bobs his head as if it were nothing. Jimmy steps up next and hands Gridboy his game ball.

  “I want you to have it,” he says, as Gridboy looks around for something to trade. “Jus’ dun’ drop it somewhere.”

  Gridboy nods, making a show of placing the ball carefully in his pouch. Then he pats Jimmy on the shoulder and nearly knocks him over. Our goodbyes said, he returns to the controls and prepares to reverse the subterrene back the way we came. Bill grabs the lever for the hatch and takes a deep breath.

  “You know what, Aubrey?” he says, pausing with his hand on the open lever. “After all those years lifeguarding on that fake beach, this will be the first real sky I’ve seen. I can’t wait.”

  He smiles and opens the hatch.

  As soon as he releases the lever, the hatch is yanked open and slammed against the exterior of the subterrene with a metal boom that sounds like an explosion. Bill’s face goes blank as something dark tries to force its way into the opening.

  Then Roger begins to scream.

  Part Two

  CHAPTER 12

  The Jungle

  Hurricane winds, driving rain, and lashing leaves.

  That’s what greets all four of our faces as we cram them into the hatch opening and look out of the subterrene.

  It appears as if we’ve broken ground halfway up a lush hill. Once we clear the windblown foliage from the open hatch, we’re looking down into the nearly pitch black night. Then a streak of lightning illuminates the scene, and I see a vast jungle spreading out beneath us, its thrashing canopy swaying back and forth in the wild wind, as if warning us to go away before it retreats back into darkness again.

  Bill pulls us back inside the subterrene for a huddle.

  “We have to go now,” he says. “We can’t stay here and hold up Gridboy any longer, or they’ll find us out for sure.”

  The brief exposure to cold wind and rain must have sobered Jimmy, because he takes charge and lays out a plan.

  “I saw a way down the hill to our left,” he says. “We can go single file, usin’ the lightnin’ for sig
ht. Once we hit the tree cover, we can make a shelter and ride out the storm.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I say.

  Roger tries to shake his head no, but Bill shoulders his pack and shoves him ahead, out into the wind. I’m the last one out. I turn to close the hatch, but Gridboy has already shut it. I watch as the subterrene’s shadow reverses out of sight, swallowed by the lush hill. By the time the next lightning flash comes, not only is the subterrene gone, but the windblown hill has already covered up the tunnel from which it had come.

  The wind is too wicked to talk at all, so we follow Jimmy down the hill in stops and starts, navigating by lightning. A flash lights the jungle ahead, and Jimmy leads us ten or twenty meters. Then we stop and wait for another. I’m soaked in seconds. We lurch on in the dark like this for a long time, and when we reach the bottom of the hill and find cover in the trees, Roger is crying. I couldn’t hear him out in the wind, but protected now by the trees, his sobbing carries above the sound of the crashing canopy above. When lightning flashes again, I see him sitting on the ground with his face buried in his hands. Bill attempts to comfort him while Jimmy and I hunt up blown down branches and fronds and begin to fashion a makeshift shelter for the night.

  It takes us an hour of steady work, but we weave a lean-to shelter against the gnarled base of a large tree. The four of us huddle inside it to wait out the storm. Roger’s sobbing has turned to just a whimper, and I hear Bill’s voice occasionally soothing him. Jimmy and I lean into one another for warmth, our shoulders touching, our heads resting on our knees.

  Eventually, the wind above lulls us all to sleep.

  When Jimmy nudges me awake, the first thing I notice is the steam. I can see beyond the branches of our shelter that the green jungle lies dappled in golden sunlight, and a shimmering veil of steam rises off the jungle floor. I rise from the shelter and find Bill already up and sitting with his back against a tree, eating a meal ration and looking around as if gladdened by the endless hues of green surrounding us. Roger is standing several meters away, turning slow circles with his head leaned back and his mouth open, as if in some kind of trance, or perhaps angling to catch one of the droplets of water dripping from the canopy of leaves. I remember how it was for me the first time I saw the forest. Watching them reminds me how beautiful everything is.