The Islands at the End of the World (29 page)

I can’t wait to tell Grandpa about the Orchid and my weird connection to it.

We reach the upper driveway.
Why am I so nervous?
Our old, beat-up Civic and the hybrid and Grandpa’s Tempo are parked in their spots. My legs grow weaker.

They must be here. I can scarcely believe that this moment is finally here.

“Dad, they’re really …?”

He nods, but his eyes are filled with hesitation.

We go up the lanai steps. My palms are clammy. Dad tries the doorknob. It turns. We step inside.

No one in the living room. Without a word, Dad goes upstairs; I drop my Hawaiiana book and the naupaka on the coffee table and head for the dining room. No one.
The garden? I’ll approach softly. They’ll turn, and we’ll rush each other
.

I enter the kitchen, and a strange man peeking into a cupboard barks in surprise. I bark back. He draws a handgun and fires a shot above my head. I scream and dive under the table.

“Get out!” the man shouts. “I was here first!”

Dad bolts down the stairs and into the kitchen and recoils as another shot goes wild. Dad bounds across the kitchen, tackles the trespasser, and pins him to the ground. The gun spins over to the dishwasher. “Where are they?” Dad spits.

“
What
? Who? I don’t know! Please!”

Dad shakes his captive. “Where are my wife and son?”

“Dad!” I crawl out and grab the gun.

He looks up as if in a daze. His eyes seem to clear. He shifts his position and puts one of his knees on the man’s chest.

I’m just realizing that Mom and Kai and Grandpa aren’t here. The house has been empty long enough for a squatter to show up.

My worst fears from the past month are stirring awake.

They’re gone. You’ll never see them again
.

Dad’s voice is strained. “How long have you been in my house?”

“Your …? I’m … I’m sorry. No one was here. I was just—”

“HOW LONG?”

“Just today. Today.”

“What do you mean, no one was here?”

“Nothing. Just … it was empty when I showed up.”

“And all three cars were in the driveway?”

“I guess so. Yeah.” He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know jack. We’re going to have to piece it together some other way. They were supposed to stay here, wait for us.

“What have you touched?” I hover over him. “What have you taken? Did you find any notes?”

The man shakes his head. God, does he smell.
Do I smell that bad, too?
“Nothing. I swear. Just some fresh eggs. In the fridge. Power’s out. Some tomatoes. I’m sorry. I’m just hungry. I’m from New Jersey. I’m just trying to—”

“Shut up.” Dad takes his knee off his chest and rises, takes the gun from me. Mr. New Jersey sits up and scoots against the cabinets.

“They’re around. They have to be,” I say to Dad.

“They haven’t been gone long. Fresh eggs in the dead fridge. And they would have taken some chickens or left a note if they were planning to go far.”

Did they flee for some reason? Did they leave with someone? Are they at a neighbor’s up the road? Out hunting pigs with Grandpa? Mom would have left a note—unless … unless …

Stop it, Lei. Don’t go there
.

“Get out,” Dad says to Mr. New Jersey. He scrambles to his feet and runs out the back door.

Dad holds the pistol tightly. “Look for a note—anything that might suggest where they went.”

We both search. No note. But Mom’s and Kai’s hiking boots and rain jackets are missing from their rooms. I relax a little.

“They’re hunting with Grandpa,” Dad says, running a hand through his hair. “I’d bet the farm on it. Probably nearby. They wouldn’t leave the house unguarded for very long. Maybe we should try to look for them.”

“No,” I say. “Our turn to stay put. No leapfrog.”

Dad clenches his jaw. “Okay. You’re right. Now we wait.”

“How about a bath? Some clean clothes? And some food—I’m so hungry I’ll eat raw eggs like a lizard.”

“Yeah. Go get cleaned up. I’ll put something together.” The water comes out of the faucets just fine. Gotta love our private tank upslope. Dad’s right: maybe life hasn’t been as bad around here as on the other islands.

Even if that’s true, it’ll get worse. After all, if it took
us
this long to get to the Big Island from O`ahu, then it’ll take others even longer. But the hordes are still coming, I bet.

It gets me thinking: What if the sheriff has been keeping the flood of arrivals to a trickle? What if that blockade has kept this house, this area, safer?

I shake the thought away as I stand beneath my cold shower.
Don’t dare be grateful. Not even secretly. Remember the
woman floating facedown in the river. He would have murdered Dad
.

I haven’t had any medicine since the morning of the chase, and I left my pills on Maui. I rummage through my sink drawer and find two more bottles, each containing a dozen or so.

I’ll run out in a few weeks. So that’s it? Wear a helmet for the rest of my life? I swallow one and then head downstairs.

Dad and I chomp on fresh lettuce and tomatoes and scrape fresh, fried eggs off our plates.

“How much propane is left? Do you know?” I scoop up another bite of hot egg.

“About half. It’s down from when we left. More evidence that they’ve been around until recently.”

Another hour goes by. The worry gnaws at me. Dad’s doing what he can to keep busy.

“Should we try the Millers?” I ask.

“Maybe tomorrow. Their gate’s locked. I just want to stay here in case they come home. I don’t have the energy to trudge up to the house. If I see one of the Millers coming, I’ll flag them down.”

“Okay.” Our nearest neighbors live more than two miles up a private drive.

Evening comes. The coqui frogs start:

Coqui? Coqui?

We sit on the lanai through the evening, willing headlights, flashlights—anything!—to come winding up the driveway. I use a candle to page through my book until my eyes grow strained. Aside from my clothes, this is my only
possession that made it home. It feels too valuable to read anymore. I’ll put it away somewhere safe—a trophy.

If we live through this, I’ll read it once a year, gently. Add my own story to it. Then I’ll pass it on when I’m old and gray, full of
mo`olelo
for a new generation.

Dad guards his new pistol in his hands and constantly scans the perimeter of the property. Nothing. It grows dark as we wait.

The stars are brilliant, brighter than they’ve been since the hotel in Waikīkī. It only takes me a second to figure out why: the Emerald Orchids look just a little bit smaller in their corner of the sky, casting less of a green glow through the haze of the atmosphere. The haze itself has improved steadily over the days. The Orchids are still aligned in a way that would fool most eyes: one of them is directly in front of the other, so that you might think they were a single object.

“Well, isn’t that something?” Dad marvels. “A cloudless night in Hilo. Great view. They’re even smaller tonight. That’s the third night in a row.”

“Wait. What?”

“I wonder if they’re actually going away now. Could you imagine?”

“No,” I say, standing up. Once again memories from my blackout come flooding back. “They can’t!”

“What is it?”

“They can’t go away! They can’t!”

“Sure they can. Why not?” Dad places his gun on the railing and rises to meet me. “I’m not—”

“Dad! I heard the Orchid again. The mother. I heard it when I was out. Twice. I tried to talk to it, but it was useless.”

“Sweetheart—”

“No! Don’t sweetheart me! They
are
going away. It said they were going to. Beyond the dark. Another … another
galaxy
.”

Dad sits down.

“Dad! That sheriff took our stuff. He kept the iodide.” Dad nods slowly.

“The Orchid and the newborn are feeding on the radiation. If they go, won’t our atmosphere be filled with it?”

“Hon,” Dad begins softly. I bristle. His tone suggests that I need to be gently reasoned with. “Akoni was wrong about his alien-invasion theory. Why should we take his ‘radiation mop’ talk to heart?”

“Please. The meltdowns are everywhere. They’re still happening, right? One after another for months, yeah? But these creatures are somehow sponging up the radiation. This isn’t a
theory
. It’s true.”

“But how can you know that?”

“BECAUSE I CAN HEAR THE ORCHID’S THOUGHTS!”

Dad leans forward on his porch chair, rubbing his forehead. “Okay. Just … just give me a second.” He holds his head in his hands. Finally, he looks back up at me in the soft, green darkness. “So you’re telling me those things really were preventing nuclear fallout? All over the globe?”

“I—I really think so.”

“What if … I mean, how can you be sure how much fallout there is?”

“Enough that it’s taken notice. It likes it. It’ll come back for it. But not for a long time.”

“Dad … It’s taking its baby to another galaxy. The Orchids aren’t coming back in our lifetime.”

“Another
galaxy
?”

“Far, far away.” And then it hits me. My thoughts tumble away. Dad had talked about how some turtle species that once crossed straits were fooled, over centuries, into crossing oceans. But these Orchids … 
They’ve been fooled, over eons, into crossing between drifting
galaxies.

Dad’s voice pulls me back. He shakes his head. “I’d convinced myself that the iodide wasn’t a big deal, that we weren’t really going to need it after all. Either way, what good is cancer prevention if food stops growing?”

I shake my head. “If they leave now, we’re all dead. Other parts of the world might already be in trouble. We’re isolated. Maybe we’re safe for now, but … didn’t Akoni mention there were enough meltdowns to eventually sterilize a lot of the planet? The aircraft carriers around here, the submarines—would they eventually melt down? What if that’s why the military bolted?”

“Akoni and his ‘calculations,’ ” Dad says.

“Well, let’s see your numbers. What does
your
global network of ham radio operators think? You said this could be a problem before we even met Uncle Akoni. And … don’t you remember? The night all this began, you were making popcorn in the microwave. But it wouldn’t pop.”

Dad falls silent for a moment. “Because … there was no radiation in the microwave.”

He’s starting to understand.

“But … if you’re right … what do you want me to do? If radiation levels are rising again, now that the Orchids are leaving, how would
we
ever measure it?”

My legs grow weak. The iodide is gone.
It’s over, isn’t it? It’s all over. Unless …

“What if I called them back? Got them to stay?”

I shiver.
Why would I even think such a thing?
They’ve done us so much harm. Turned us wild. Into killers. Erased a century of technology in the blink of an eye. If they were to go, maybe we could get that back—not all of it, but most of it. It’s not too late to pick up the pieces.

But if the threat of global radiation
is
real … it would all be over anyway, wouldn’t it? We’d turn on our toys just in time to be buried with them. That wouldn’t make any sense at all, would it? Maybe crews could contain the fallout once the power comes back on. Maybe the Orchids could stay just for a few months. Just long enough for us to get the word out and make sure all nuclear materials are stored somewhere safe. “How would you call them?” Dad asks.

I shrug, but even as I do, the answer comes to me:

“We have to go up to Mauna Kea,” I say. “We should try.”

Dad is silent; then: “When?”

I shrug again. “Now? They’re leaving. We don’t have much time.”

“Tonight? Lei, what about our family?”

Where
are
they? Why can’t they just
be
here? When will this nightmare end?

This is ridiculous. What am I proposing? “I don’t know. I don’t know what we’d do, anyway.”

Dad changes his tone. “The scientist in me needs more proof, Lei. But I’m going to take that hat off, okay? The Dad in me has faith in you.”

“Really?”

“We’ll go in the morning. We’ll find a way. But we’ll go at first light, okay? It’s insane, but … I’d rather try and
know
than watch you all get sick, wondering.”

“Thank you,” I say.

I awaken from a sound sleep just after dawn. Strangely, I was dreaming of Aukina. We were holding hands on the beach. I shake the image away.
Aukina’s on his way to the mainland right now. Forget about him
.

Dad is already up, working on various projects. Mom and Kai and Grandpa have not magically appeared, and I steel myself against a growing sense of panic. The sunrise is beautiful through our broad living-room windows, casting a pink ribbon across the distant ocean horizon, but I have no room for joy.

They’re okay. They’re not far. Don’t worry
.

I see the T-shirt Dad’s wearing and bark with laughter. He grins. It’s the exact same grin Kai gets after he makes me laugh.

“You’re sick, you know that?”

The shirt is printed with a windy, jungle-covered road. Bright green letters say
I SURVIVED THE ROAD TO HANA
.

We eat fast, leave a note, and pile into the hybrid. I’m wearing fresh clothes. They feel glorious, even though the shirt hangs on me and I need a belt to keep my pants up. A warm jacket sits bundled on my lap; the cold on top of Mauna Kea is a force of its own. I frown absently. The note we left might as well have read:

Hi, Mom! We’re back. Everything’s okay, but we had to run off for a bit. I can talk to the Emerald Orchid. Turns out it’s an alien, and it thrives on cosmic radiation. It has a soft spot for our atmosphere and for thermal nuclear meltdowns—which are happening all over the globe, btw. We’re heading up to the summit to try to convince it to stick around for several hundred million years—or at least long enough for people to fix nuclear power plants around the world. You know, save all life on Earth and all that. Wish me luck! Brb
.