The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy

Now the hiss of hydraulic brakes, the ticking blinker, the whine of straining gears as the bus disappears down the city hill like some mechanical land-whale sounding in a concrete sea.

A young soldier stands alone on the curb. She thumbs her earbuds in, cranks her music up, slings her service pack on and walks the empty morning sidewalk toward home.

Passing a pawnshop, she spots her reflection in the glass and stops to look—

Taller, broader, her hair shorter than before—she isn’t sure who she is, who she has become. All she knows for sure is she isn’t who she was when she left.

Nobody is, and nobody ever will be.

The streets are quiet, even for the early hour.

A digital clock on an unfinished bank building behind her blinks mindlessly, the red numbers reversed in the glass. She’s turning to read the time when she’s caught by the flash.

A bright magnesium burn in the corner of the gray sky.

Bright and then brighter.

Then the heat hits.

She stiffens, her skin crawling with searing pain.

Weightless now, she’s floating above the blinding street, a garbage can suspended beside her, its contents already aflame. When she hits the pavement she feels the thunder of buildings collapsing around her, the tumbling stone, the falling glass.

All is black now, but black as only hell can be. She hears a distant fire bell. Then muffled screams. Shrieks of pain, moans of agony.

A voice calling softly—“Mother.”

Another, more distant, mumbling some memorized prayer, strangely comforting in its innocence, despite the irony there. She smells sulfur, the dust of concrete, the pungent odor of cooking meat. She sits up and shrugs off her flaming pack. She strips free of her jacket, peels her shirt over her head, wincing as her skin tears away with it. Then the darkness lightens to a red haze that clears in a sweltering breeze. And from the haze a naked man stumbles toward her, his pale arms uplifted as if pleading to the burning sky, his quivering mouth agape in a silent scream. She watches with curious horror as he passes her by, his backside burned to muscle, to bone, the gushing blood running down his legs to leave a trail in the dusty street.

She closes her eyes for a minute, maybe two.

She opens them again.

Beneath the billowing mushroom cloud rising above the ruined city, the morning sunshine breaks through in beautiful beams of rainbow color down to where she sits in the middle of the street. She tries to stand but discovers her legs crushed beneath a giant granite cornerstone, the date carved on its face like a tombstone already on top of her—

ERECTED 2012.

Then her left earbud fades back in and her music plays on as before, the voice of some pop past echoing in her ear from a world already gone. She almost reaches to pull the bud free, but decides to leave it in. And so she sits, pinned and watching, with an oddly fitting soundtrack as the wild tornado of fire rips up the street toward her, setting everything it touches ablaze, melting light posts, incinerating corpses, cleaning the street and making way for the gathering clouds of black rain.

This street, every street—

The world will never be the same.

Part One

CHAPTER 1
Tomorrow’s the Big Day

I stir awake.

I listen to the gentle waves lapping at the shore, smell the saltwater breeze, feel the sun on my closed eyelids, and I grasp at my daydreams as they drift like clouds across my mind.

A dark shadow flutters above, lands.

Something brushes my throat.

My eyes pop open.

The gull opens its beak and screeches in my face. I lift my arm to knock it away, but my arm won’t budge. It’s trapped, I’m trapped. Buried. A mound of sand rises above my chest, only my head and neck are free. The gull pecks at my throat again. Another gull lands and nips me with its beak, too. More gulls circle overhead. I struggle, I kick—nothing gives.

I’m frozen in the concrete grip of wet sand.

I open my mouth to scream, but stop when I hear them laughing. I can’t show them I’m scared. I won’t. I will myself to relax, to be calm and take whatever comes, and I lie there in my tomb feeling the weight of the sand above me and the sharp brush of beaks snatching crackers off my baited head.

The laughing stops. I hear their footsteps padding away on the wet sand. Then the gulls take flight, too. A moment later Bill’s smiling face appears in the blue sky above me.

“I’ve never seen a beached seal,” he says, laughing. “But I was sure they’d be better looking than you are.”

“Stop making fun and dig me out.”

“You need to learn to watch your back with those bullies,” he says, dropping to his knees and scooping the sand away.

“Isn’t that your job?” I reply, sarcastically.

“It’s my job to make sure you don’t drown.”

I want to ask him who could drown in just a half meter of water, but I don’t. Free of my confinement, I stand and brush the sand from my arms and chest, revealing my pale flesh. I’m self-conscious standing next to Bill with his olive skin and his electric-sun bleached hair. I smile nervously, buying time to come up with a self-deprecating joke, but before I can think of anything, the sun clicks off, the blue sky disappears.

“Looks like rec time’s over,” he says, his voice echoing in the sudden silence.

What were miles of sunny beach and a blue-ocean horizon are now just a cavernous sand-filled room and a shallow, artificial reservoir gleaming gray in the overhead LED glow.

Bill walks me past the life-guard station to the locker room door. I smile up at him in silent thanks.

“Hey, isn’t tomorrow the big day?” he asks.

I nod, not happy to be reminded.

“Boy, I’m sure glad I never have to go through that again,” he says, shaking his head.

“That bad?”

He flashes me a smile. “Not for smart kids like you.”

When he opens the door, I step into the shower room. He must see the worry written on my face because he lingers in the doorway before closing it. “You’ll do fine,” he says. “Just relax and follow directions. You don’t want to end up like me, spending your career sifting sand for gull shit and buried boys.”

Bill’s smile disappears as the door seals shut.

I strip off my shorts and toss them in the hamper. When the hamper closes, the jets turn on, and I’m blasted from every angle with hot water. The water turns off just long enough for me to lather my body with a pump of soap before it turns on again and rinses me clean. I raise my arms for the blowers, then exit into the locker room.

I step onto the scale—no gain. Same as last week. I get identical food rations as every fifteen-year-old, but I can’t seem to put on a gram. Two weeks ago Tuesday was my birthday. I’d asked for a weight set, I got a graphing calculator instead. My dad says my brain’s the most important muscle anyway. I say nonsense. Besides, everyone knows the brain’s not a muscle.

As I dress, I’m half hoping I do get sent to another level tomorrow, just so I can wear something different. The same gray jumpsuit every day gets old. I pull my hoody over my head and push from the bright locker room into the dim hall.

My steps echo off the polished-stone tunnel walls and the LED lights cast two eerie shadow twins on either side of me, so I imagine I’m actually a gang of three brothers heading to find that bully Red and teach him and his brainless buddies a lesson.

But I don’t have any brothers, and I never will.

The tunnel widens as it joins with the others. Following it to the outlook, I stop and gaze over the parapet and admire the Valley, or what some of us sometimes affectionately refer to as the “Anthill.” It’s a seven story drop to the cavern floor and the buildings that make up Level 3 of Holocene II. The walls are lined with stacked housing units where we live, seven families on top of one another. Today is Sunday, so people are in their quarters and a thousand yellow windows glow against the dark rock. Maybe it’s because of the unchanging view of laboratory rooftops, but I’ve spent at least a thousand hours looking out my bedroom window, and I’ve never seen another face looking back. Well, except maybe that bully Red when he sneaks out to go make-out with his sour-faced girlfriend, which is against the rules because we’re not allowed to date until we test.

I look up at the cavern ceiling, the blue-glowing benitoite shining there like jewels embedded in the rocky sky. My dad says our ancestors used to look up and see the Milky Way—no ceiling, just four-hundred-billion stars twinkling in the endless night. It’s never night or day here—just productive hours and rest hours, and the only difference are the levels of ultraviolet light that help us produce vitamin D. It’s the UV lights that are sparking the blue benitoite on the cavern ceiling now.

I know from my lessons that our generators harness the Earth’s electromagnetic field to power the lights and the fans that filter and condition our air. I asked my dad once why it’s never warm here and he told me to just be happy I’m not on the surface, where the air is so thin and cold that my blood would boil then freeze in 60 seconds flat. But I think it would be worth it just to see the sky for a minute before I die.

I take the lift down to the Valley floor and weave my way through the deserted pathways toward our quarters. As I pass the food engineering lab, I get an idea. I check the door—it’s open. My father works here to make our underground crops nutritious and visually appealing. Trying to remember where they keep the food coloring, I search the cabinets.

“Here it is. This should do the trick.”

I stuff a bottle of green coloring dye in my jacket.

When I reach our quarters, I hear voices inside and stop short of entering. My dad never has company. I put my ear to the metal door and listen to the muffled conversation inside:

“He’s a smart boy,” I hear my dad say. “I’m sure he’ll be staying on here. I’m sure enough, I’m certain.”

“You just never can tell anymore with these new tests, Mr. Van Houten. But I’m sure you’re right.”

It’s strange to hear my dad addressed by our last name—Van Houten. He says it means “of the forest.” I never thought of it before now, but I guess it’s a little weird being named after something that’s been extinct for over 900 years.

“Well, he’s a smart boy, my son is.”

Checking to make sure the dye isn’t visible, I push open the door and enter our small quarters. My father sees me and smiles. He’s sitting at the table across from a young man in a white lab coat, a man I recognize from around the Valley.

“There you are,” my dad says. “At the beach again today? This is Mr. Zales. He’s here to take a sample for tomorrow.”

The man rises. “Just a quick draw. Won’t take a minute.”

I approach the table and sit in the vacated chair, pushing my sleeve up and exposing my arm. The man snaps open his black case, lifts out a needle and strips the plastic from its tip.

“Just a little sip, my good man, just a little sip” he says, his smile too big for the small room. A quick swab of iodine and then he plunges the needle into the crook of my arm and draws out a vial of my blood. My dad sees me wince and starts talking:

“You know, I can remember when you were testing age yourself, Bobby Zales. The boy whose parents earned their way up from Level 4. People were sure you’d be going down again, but I knew you’d make the grade. You’re a smart boy, Bobby. I mean, Mr. Zales. A smart boy, just like my son.”

“Thank you, sir,” he says, removing the needle, capping it, and placing it back in his case before snapping it closed again. “Well, that’s all we need for now. A few more ‘fifteens’ to prick yet, and I’ll be getting on to quarters myself. Good luck tomorrow, Aubrey.” He pauses at the door and looks back. “Could I ask you a favor, Mr. Van Houten?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“You retire soon, don’t you?”

Dad’s face brightens. “Yes, I do. 123 days.”

“Will you say hello to my folks for me?”

“I sure will, Bobby. I sure will.”

The man smiles. A smaller smile, but a real smile this time. A smile that makes him appear young for a moment. Then he thanks my father and closes the door, leaving us alone.

My dad leans back and looks me over. “Nervous?”

I pull my sleeve down, covering the blood-specked spot of iodine. “Maybe a little.”

“Well, it’s nothing at all to worry about. Just remember what always works for me when I need to relax: breathe good energy in and breathe bad energy out.”

I nod, taking a deep breath and letting it out.

“You’ve got good genes, son, and a great work ethic. Plus, you’ve studied more than any boy in the Valley. All you can do is the best you can. And that’s enough. I’m proud, no matter what happens. Darn proud. And your mother would be, too.”

At his mention of my mother, my father’s eyes get wet, and he stares off to some distant place only he can see. She left the same day I came. That’s where I got my name—Aubrey. When I was young, my father said that even before he met her, he loved my mother’s name. Said he loves it more now that it’s my name, too. But we don’t talk like that much these days.

“You think Mom will recognize you after all these years?” I ask. “I mean, she hasn’t aged, but you have.”

“I’m sure she will,” he says, his gaze coming back to me. “And you can bet I’ll tell her what a smart, wonderful young man you’ve become. I wish you’d known her, son. I wish she’d known you. She was so beautiful. Almost too beautiful for this place. Maybe that’s why she left us so early.”

“Was it my fault, Dad?”

“Was what your fault?”

“Her leaving us.”

“Why would you say that?”’

I shrug. “Some of the kids say it was my fault. They say that I killed her coming out.”

He reaches across the table and grips my hand. I notice the veins snaking across the back of his hand and running like ropes up his forearm.

“Now you listen to me,” he says. “Your mother had an infected appendix. Had nothing to do with you. In the old days, above, they’d have fixed her up no problem. Like that!” He snaps his fingers with his free hand to make the point. “But things are different down here. The Foundation decided long ago that it doesn’t make sense to invest in those costly medical treatments. When it’s your time, it’s your time—whether you make it to 35 or head for the horizon early.” He squeezes my hand harder. “She’s in a better place, anyway. You’ll see. We’ll all be together soon.” Releasing my hand, he dismisses the conversation with a wave.

He reaches across the table for his trusty tea tin, pulls it to him, opens it, and lifts out his pipe—just as I’ve seen him do every Sunday since I can remember. Smoking is supposed to be prohibited in the Valley, but my dad’s lab work in underground agriculture development allows him to always manage a steady supply of tobacco from Level 5, where they grow it for nicotine to use as an organic pesticide against the insects we cultivate to pollinate and manage the vast underground fields.

“Did I ever tell you about this pipe?” he asks, as he packs the stringy tobacco into the bowl with his thumb.

When I shake my head, he continues in his serious tone:

“It’s from up there.” He lifts his eyes to the ceiling. “From before the War. Your forty-third ... no, must be your forty-fourth great-grandfather now, carved this pipe himself. Carved it under the actual sun. Look here. See that design.”

He holds the pipe out to me and I take it in my hand. It’s heavier than it looks; the carbon fiber stem cool on my fingers, the yellowed-stone bowl soft and warm in my palm.

“See the butterflies there?”

I look and notice for the first time the intricate detail work, worn thin by almost a thousand years of fingers and thumbs, but still visible. Beautiful butterflies. Butterflies beginning big at the base of the bowl then shrinking as they increase in number, creating the illusion of a rabble rising toward the pipe lip.

“The stem there’s been replaced a few times, of course,” he says, nodding, “but the soapstone bowl was quarried right in our family’s backyard in a state called Georgia.”

“I thought you said our ancestors came from a country called Holland? Not Georgia?”

“And they did, they did. Sailed to early America from Holland and migrated down south. But I never told you that generations later, one of your great-grandfathers grew up on a butterfly conservatory there. Real live butterflies, son. Just like the ones you’ve studied in lessons. You know, they’re the one thing I really wish I could see. Wish we had a few down in Agri. But not one, not a single butterfly survived ...”

His voice trails off, his eyes on the pipe in my hand.

“... I love the idea of butterflies,” he continues after a pause. “I love their color, their metamorphosis, their freedom.”

He shakes his head, as if waking from a daydream.

“Anyway, I guess it was the butterfly breeding that inspired your great-grandfather Eli’s interest in genetics and led him to a career with the U.S. Department of Defense. He came west to work in the labs down here, forty-some generations ago now, and he brought his beloved father’s butterfly pipe with him. It’s been passed down to the eldest child ever since. Father to son, sometimes mother to daughter. But it was always passed down, passed at last on to me. I plan to pass it to you when I retire.”

I notice the weight of the pipe, the centuries of history trapped like resin in its chambers, and I don’t ever want it to be mine. I don’t want my dad to retire, to render his body to the machine. I don’t want him to leave me alone.

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