The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy (22 page)

CHAPTER 36
You Don’t Look Like an Angel

Mouth on my mouth.

Fists pounding on my chest.

Coughing, spitting, breathe.

Hands rubbing my arms, my legs. Wet sandpaper on my cheek. A fire fades into view. When I sit up, Jimmy and Junior are both looking at me. Jimmy’s stripped to just his underwear, his dry clothes wrapped around me. I see my wet clothes spread on rocks near the fire, drying.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You’s know what happened,” Jimmy says.

“But you don’t look like an angel.”

“You’s dun’ look like much yerself.”

“Did you follow me?”

“No,” he says, “I followed Junior. Junior followed ya.”

Junior sneezes, licks my face again. It doesn’t matter who followed who, I’m just happy that they’re both here. Then I see my father’s pipe resting on a rock beside my clothes, the plastic case of tobacco he gave me just this morning sitting next to it. Seeing them there reminds me of what happened, and tears well up in my eyes. The fire blurs. I shake.

“It’s okay,” Jimmy says. “It’s okay. Jus’ relax.”

He rubs my arms again and I feel the circulation returning in waves of tingling pain. I look down at my hands, white and wrinkled and lifeless in the light of the fire.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Dun’ be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“Oh, yes, there is,” I insist, tears coming fast now, my voice cracking in my swollen throat. “I’m sorry for letting you down. I’m sorry for betraying you, for taking sides with Radcliffe. I’m sorry for your family, for leading the Park Service to them. I’m sorry for everything, Jimmy.”

“So they are the Park Service?”

“That and worse,” I say. “They killed my dad, Jimmy. And I watched it. They cut out his brain. Now they’ve got it kept in some sort of sick torture test. My mother’s, too.”

Jimmy moves down to my legs, kneading them with warm hands. They too begin to ache as the circulation returns.

“I’ve got to do something,” I say. “I’ve got to free them from that terrible place.”

Jimmy looks confused. “Thought you said they’s dead?”

“They are and they aren’t.”

“How can ya be both?”

“That’s the horror of it. They’re not alive, at least not as themselves. But they’re not completely dead, either.” I pause to look into the fire, the flames crackling in the cold air. “Jimmy, why’d you want me to burn the bodies in the cove?”

“To release their souls,” he says.

“You believe in souls?”

“I really dunno,” he says, his eyes wet now, too. “There’s somethin’ leaves us when we die. There jus’ has to be.”

“Will you help me?”

He moves down to my feet, rubbing warmth back into my toes. “Help you with what?”

“Help me set my family free.”

“I’ll never forget what ya did for me,” he says. “You’s jus’ tell me what ya need, buddy, and I’m with ya all the way.”

Junior hops into my lap and looks up at me. I reach to pet him, my arms stiff and slow. He licks my hand.

“Looks like Junior’s with ya, too,” Jimmy says, laughing. “Now let’s get ya back into yer own damn clothes ’fore I freeze my nuts off here and die myself.”

Hannah comes to me in the night.

I wake to find her sitting on the edge of my bed, the silver moon framed in the window, her wavy red hair gray in its light.

When I sit, she startles, as if she was the one sleeping, not me. She turns and smiles. Then she leans down and kisses me on the lips, lingering for a moment before pulling away and touching my cheek.

“Are you all right?” she whispers.

“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I think so.”

“Daddy told me what happened. I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what seeing that must have been like.”

I shrug and look away, not wanting to cry again.

“Why don’t we wait and talk about Eden later when you’re ready,” she says, stroking my hair. “We’ll find a better way.”

I nod and pull her into my arms, never wanting to let her go, but knowing that I might have to. I smell her hair and kiss her head and tell her everything will be okay.

I don’t tell her there’ll be no Eden left to talk about.

CHAPTER 37
How Many Miles Down to Babylon?

“Pisscrap!”

Jimmy punches the locked doorknob.

“Pisscrap?”

“It’s somethin’ my pa said. Ya sure there’s even another’n in there anyhow?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say, trying the boathouse knob myself. “It’s hanging from a lift in the cross beams. I saw it myself.”

Jimmy turns and looks out across the lake.

“Maybe we can make a raft or somethin’?”

“We’d never make it in a raft,” I say. “And how would we work the locks?”

“How do ya work ’em anyway?”

“I don’t know, they just open. Probably a cryptographic signature from the boat.”

“Crypto-what?”

“An electronic signal.”

“Like lightning?”

“Boy, we’ve got a lot to catch you up on.”

“Whatever. We jus’ better do somethin’ ’fore the rest of the house wakes up. When did the creepy old man leave?”

I look back at the sleeping house, a single light burning in the kitchen window. “I’m not sure. He said yesterday he was heading out at first light. His bed was empty when I checked.”

“What about his wife?”

“She has her own room.”

“They sleep separate?”

“She’s sick a lot.”

“Hannah?”

“Sleeping like a princess.”

Jimmy steps away from the locked door, and walks farther down the dock, peering around at the front of the boathouse. “I’ve got an idea,” he says. Then he jumps in the water.

I see right away what his plan is. My breath catches as I lower myself into the cold lake, joining Jimmy where he treads water in front of the boathouse.

“Ready?” he says, “One, two, three.”

We gulp in breaths, dive underwater and swim beneath the doors. When we surface inside the shadowed boathouse, Jimmy climbs up on the dock, and reaches a hand to help me up after him. He looks funny in his dripping clothes, and I must too.

“Double pisscrap,” he says. “He ain’t even gone yet.”

The wooden boat floats beside the dock, the carbon fiber boat suspended above it. I stand there, looking at the boats, wondering what to do. Water drips down my face, tickling my nose. I smell the varnish, the wet stone. Then I hear the jingle of approaching keys. Jimmy grabs my arm, his eyes wide with panic. Frantic, I look for a place to hide. Stepping into the boat, I scurry beneath the cockpit and open a panel, hoping that the storage bay is big enough to fit us. We scramble inside the bow, and I close the panel just as the boathouse door opens.

We lie perfectly still amidst the life vests and coils of rope. My heart hammers. I breathe slow, trying to not make a sound. I can feel Jimmy’s chest rise and fall beside me in the dark.

The boat rocks when Dr. Radcliffe steps aboard, and I just hope he didn’t see our wet footprints on the dock, or hear us crawling in here to hide. I breathe a little easier when I feel the electric engines spin on. Then the boat moves gently forward, and I know we’ve exited the boathouse because a crack of light shows around the edges of the closed panel. Jimmy pats my back as a silent good job. I smile even though he can’t see it.

The boat accelerates across the lake, rising and falling over waves, the hull slapping the surface of the water, jostling Jimmy and I woodenly in the dark. It takes a long time crossing, or at least it seems like it does, confined in a crawlspace just on the other side of Dr. Radcliffe’s feet.

At last, the boat slows, and I know we’ve cruised inside the locks because the crack of light around the panel disappears again. Jimmy grips my arm when he feels the boat dropping. I pat his hand to let him know everything is okay. As the boat lowers into the deep locks, Dr. Radcliffe begins to sing, his words echoing off the walls of the concrete shaft—

How many miles down to Babylon? / Three score miles more and ten. / Can I find my way by candle-light? / Yes, there and maybe back again. / For if your hull is nimble and your oars light, / You may just get there by candle-light.

It must be some childhood nursery rhyme he remembers, and I’m embarrassed listening to him sing it—feels as if we’re eavesdropping on a private moment.

We reach the bottom of the locks. I hear the lower gates open on their gears, and I feel the boat glide forward into the underground channel. Dr. Radcliffe doesn’t sing again, and I’m glad for the silence, even though we nearly have to hold our breath it’s so quiet. A few minutes later, we slow to a stop, and I hear the step plate fold out and clamp onto the dock. Then the motors shut off, and the boat rocks as Dr. Radcliffe steps out of it, his footsteps retreating up the dock.

Jimmy and I lie there for five minutes, maybe ten. Finally deciding there’s nothing to be gained by waiting any longer, I pop the panel free and climb out into the dim red glow of the underground cavern. Jimmy climbs out behind me and looks around, his head turning slowly, his eyes fast and furtive.

“What is this place?”

“It’s the Foundation headquarters.”

“Foundation?”

I drop my eyes from his, the full connection hitting me for the first time. “The Park Service,” I say.

Keeping low and out of sight, we tiptoe up the docks onto the shore. When we arrive at the locked metal door of the sintering plant, I stop and look at the keypad.

“What’s the plan?” Jimmy asks, scanning the buildings.

“We’re going to blow up Eden,” I say.

“I figured that,” he says, looking at me like I’m stupid.

“You got your strike-a-light?”

“Yer gonna blow up Eden with a pyrite and flint?”

“Just give it to me.”

Jimmy stuffs his hand in his pocket and pulls out a small leather case, still damp from our swim. He opens it and empties the round flint and flat pyrite stone into my palm. I strip my father’s pipe off my neck, pull out the plastic tobacco canister he gave me, thankful that it’s water tight, and load the stringy tobacco in the bowl.

“Fine time for a smoke,” Jimmy says, shaking his head.

I stuff the canister back in my pocket, put the loaded pipe in my mouth, and strike the flint on the pyrite over the bowl, sucking air through to coax the spark to take. Three, four, five loud strikes in the quiet cavern. and then a curl of smoke rises from the bed of tobacco. Several short puffs get it going, and I turn away and cover my cough, handing the pipe to Jimmy.

“Smoke it.”

“What?”

“Puff it fast,” I say. “We need to burn the tobacco down.”

We pass the pipe back and forth, puffing until we’re both green. When the tobacco is burned down and blackened, I use the round flint stone to grind the ash to a fine powder inside the bowl. Then I lean down with the pipe in my mouth, tilt the bowl to the keypad and blow. Black charcoal powder plumes out and settles on the keypad in an almost unnoticeable film.

“Come on,” I say, grabbing Jimmy and pulling him away from the door. “Let’s hide.”

We retreat toward the docks and duck behind the base of a gantry crane used for pulling big boats out of the water. I hang the pipe around my neck, peek around the crane, and watch our cloud of tobacco smoke dissipate into the red shadows.

“You think anyone will come?” Jimmy asks.

“Someone has to go in there eventually,” I say.

“Who all’s down in this creepy place?”

“Just a bunch of old scientists, mostly.”

“What’s inside the door?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Wouldn’t you?” he says, huffing.

A half hour later, we get lucky. An old man in a white lab coat shuffles up to the door and punches in his code without even looking down at the keypad. I’m sure he’s done it ten thousand times by now. We wait ten minutes until he comes out again, and then we wait another ten just to be sure he isn’t coming back before we sneak up to the door. I bend down and look at the keypad. Of the nine possible numbers, 3, 4, 5, and 7 have been wiped free of their tobacco-dust coating. It doesn’t tell the code, but now I have it narrowed down to 24 possible combinations of these four numbers. I try the easy one first: 3457. Nothing. I reverse it: 7543. This could take a while. On my fifteenth try, I get it: 5734—the door slides open.

Jimmy and I step inside and walk past the window looking in on the atomic diffusion machines, their lasers building silicon computer chips now and dropping them on the conveyor belt. The door at the end of the hall is unlocked, and we enter the dark munitions room. I head to the far wall and look over the canisters of chemicals.

“This is what we need,” I say, turning around. I stop when I see Jimmy standing at a table with a silver missile in his hand. “Jimmy?” He doesn’t answer. I step over and lay my hand on his shoulder. “I know,” I say, “I feel it, too. I’m sorry.”

He sets the missile down, his trance broken.

“What?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“No,” he says, “ya said you’s found what we need.”

“Yeah, over here.” I lead him to the stack of canisters and point to the white lettering—

POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE.

“Ya know I cain’t read,” he says.

“My dad called them Condy’s Crystals,” I say. “We used them underground for treating our water.”

“Treatin’ water? What good’s that do us?”

“That’s not all they do,” I say, righting one of the canisters and screwing off the lid. “You mix this stuff with glycerin and you got yourself a rocket to the moon.”

“Is that glycerin over there?” Jimmy points to the glowing vault marked ANTIMATTER.

“No, that’s not glycerin.”

Jimmy eyes the blue pulsing window.

“Well, what is it?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“Well, is there glycerin somewhere else here?”

“Not here, no. But the pool at Eden is filled with it. And probably glucose, too. I figure if we dump enough of these potassium crystals in there, we’ll start a chemical reaction that will light the whole thing up and free the brains.”

“Like the funeral fire?”

“Just like the funeral fire.”

We exit the munitions room carrying two canisters each, one on either shoulder. We pass through the courtyard with its hologram starscape hovering over the fountain, and creep past the scaffolding on the scientists’ living quarters. Everything is eerily quiet. We pass under the archway onto the main path, and I lead Jimmy to the door that I burst out of just yesterday after watching them kill my father. We step over my dry puke, still visible on the ground.

I lower one of my canisters, freeing my hand, and look for the keypad but there isn’t one.

“Great,” I say, frustrated. “Just great. What’s that word your dad used to say? Pisscrap?”

Jimmy sets down one of his canisters, reaches out, and pulls the door open. He smirks at me as we shoulder our loads again and walk through the door into Eden.