The Only Ones (12 page)

“Hey, Wendy,” Martin once heard Darla holler from the steps. “A girl with your complexion should stick to the earth tones. Calls less attention to the acne, don’t you think?”

Only Lane, whose spectacular shows used to be Xibalba’s nightly entertainment, gave up the work of her former life. “Thanks to your solar panels,” she told Martin, “no one cares about live entertainment anymore. Video games and DVDs. The wave of the future.”

Martin felt guilty, of course, but he didn’t know what to do. Every time he tried to reach out to Lane, she gave him the cold shoulder. Other than contributing to the conversations that building the machine required, she remained silent on most evenings. It was strange that she even wanted to help. Still, she was always there. She always worked hard.

The plan was to make the machine twenty times as big as the one Martin had built with his father. It seemed ludicrous when Martin first thought of it, but when they put it into action, he saw how achievable it was. He was not limited by materials. The colossal rides at Impossible Island provided more than enough gears and knobs and metallic casings. He was also not slowed by the constant need for redesign. In all the years that Martin’s father had been working on the
machine, he had tinkered and adjusted and rebuilt over and over again. But by the time of his departure, the machine had basically been completed. That was the machine Martin had studied, the machine that was only missing that final piece.

That final piece. That was another thing Martin kept to himself: he still didn’t know what it was. He had hoped either Lane or Chet would naturally figure out what it might be, but as both of them were willing to admit, they didn’t understand the machine beyond what Martin told them.

“Hey, chief, I’m far from a rocket scientist, but I’m still curious as to how this birdy’s gonna fly,” Chet once joked.

Martin was curious too. The machine looked like a giant bullet, and he could picture it ripping and flaming through the atmosphere. The only problems were it didn’t seem suited to the harsh environment of outer space and there wasn’t any logical place to put fuel. Martin tried to push these worries aside. His father had told him the machine was magic. After all Martin had experienced, after all the world had experienced, he was willing to believe in a little magic.

I
t was late in the fall. The fireworks of color that were the autumnal forest had finished their show. The trees were now bare, and the air crisp. Snow hadn’t taken to the ground yet, but Martin would occasionally feel tiny swarms of cold crystals against his cheek. The shell of the machine was complete. When the winter did come, which it would, they’d be sheltered. It would be cold, but they could work.

It was warm on the evening Darla dropped them off at Impossible Island and set out on a mission to find blowtorches. When she left, she was her chatty self, and if asked, Martin wouldn’t have been able to recall what she had said. It was probably no different from any other evening.

The big project of the night involved attaching the interior door. There were two doors in the machine. There was the exterior one, which was constructed from sturdy sheets of steel sandwiched into multiple layers and bolted together to
keep the weather out. There was also the interior one, which went next to the control panel and divided the machine into two chambers. In the original version of the machine, the interior door was only three feet high and a couple of feet wide, but it was an essential piece. Martin’s father had always said it opened the machine’s heart. For the supersized edition, they were going with a massive fifteen-foot-tall slab of glass that had served as the entrance to the park’s cafeteria.

“Not sure why you sent the fattest one,” Chet joked as he climbed onto the roof of the cafeteria and got down on his hands and knees so he could remove the last set of screws that held the hinges near the top of the door. Dangling a few feet above him was an oval gondola that was part of the Skyway, the park’s cable-supported transportation system. Twenty feet below him were Lane and Martin, holding the door steady.

“It’s almost out,” Chet announced, one hand on top of the door, the other manning a screwdriver. “Careful now.”

As the door came off the top hinge, Martin could feel its immense weight pressing against him. His shoulder began to ache, and he figured that Lane needed to get in a better position so she could bear more of the weight. “Don’t let it go yet,” he told Chet. “We’re not ready.”

Martin motioned with his head for Lane to move around to the other side. She nodded and let the door go.

The moment her fingers released the glass, it became apparent that Lane had been holding up more than her share. The door began to tip. Its bottom began to slide along the gravelly ground and emit the awful shriek that comes from scratching glass.

“Mutha!” Chet bellowed. He lost his grip. The door was
sure to fall on Martin. Chet dove forward, snagging the corner just in time and leaving the front half of his body hanging precariously over the edge. He reached his free hand up and grabbed a rail that ran along the bottom of the gondola. The gondola tipped. Its door flew open. From inside, a nasty snarl escaped.

A raccoon jumped out from the gondola and down onto Chet’s back.

“Get it off me! Get it off me!” Chet screamed, letting go of the door and swatting at the raccoon. The raccoon hissed and swatted back. Its fangs were drawn and its head was cocked, ready to strike.

Martin couldn’t hold the entire weight of the door and jumped away. The glass struck the ground, let out a monumental boom, and shattered into hundreds of sharp little cubes.

The sound stole the raccoon’s attention for a moment. It was enough time for Chet to deliver the decisive blow, knocking the animal with his elbow down into the pile of glass. The momentum from the melee might have sent Chet down into the glass too, but his grip on the gondola was firm, even as the cable that held it dipped, then sprang back, causing the gondola to jump away from the roof.

The raccoon, its fur now decorated with bits of glass, locked eyes with Lane. She didn’t hesitate. Lane lunged at the creature—fingers poised, chest unleashing a primal scream. The raccoon did the smart thing. It scurried into the darkness.

Chet, on the other hand, remained where he was, hanging from the gondola, twenty feet off the ground. “Sonuva …,” he panted as he got both hands on the rail and rocked back and forth in the air.

“Holy cow, are you okay?” Lane asked.

“I … think … so,” Chet said between breaths. “Dirty rascal was going … was going for the throat.”

“He’s gone now,” Martin assured him.

The gondola was swinging like a pendulum, but its arc was gradually getting smaller. Chet looked down over his shoulder and saw the twinkling galaxy of glass that had once been the door.

“Sorry, pals,” he called down. “Didn’t mean to wreck it.”

“It’s okay,” Martin said. “There are plenty of other doors out there.”

“Gonna have to say,
did not
see that one coming,” Chet said, chuckling.

“You were lucky,” Lane replied. “I guess Henry isn’t so crazy, always out there on coon patrol.”

“Am I too high to jump down?” Chet asked.

“Probably,” Martin said. “Let me get the ladder. It’s over by the Gravitron.”

“No rush,” Chet joked. “Enjoying the view up here.”

Afterward, Martin would play the next moment over in his head countless times. It was a quick succession of events, but he was sure he could have done something differently.

It started when he turned. That was when he heard the creaking sound. He thought nothing of it. He took a few steps away. Next came the snap and the ghostly howl whipping through the air. That was when he turned back. That was when he looked up. The cable had broken.

Instead of trying to break Chet’s fall, Martin went straight for Lane, knocking her from the path of the falling gondola. As his shoulder drove into her, he felt a rush of air behind him. Then he was lying on top of her.

At the same moment, Chet landed on his back, right in the glass. There wasn’t time for him even to blink his eyes, let alone sit up or slide over. Because the gondola landed square on Chet. As it crushed his chest, it forced all the wind from his lungs. “Pffffaaaa …” was the only sound that came out of his mouth. Then there was silence.

“Chet. Chet. Chet,” Lane said softly, her mouth right next to Martin’s ear. It sounded less like she was calling for him than it did like she was trying to calm herself down. Her heart was pounding ferociously; Martin could feel it against his shoulder.

Martin rolled off her and onto his back. He sat bolt upright. Chet’s head was just inches from his feet. His face was turned toward Martin.

“Chet. Chet. Chet.”

Blood was leaking from Chet’s mouth onto the cubes of glass. His eyes were open, and they were blinking. He was still conscious, but he wasn’t saying anything.

As Martin reached forward to touch him, a glob of snowflakes, plump and wet, landed on his hand.

T
he invasion of snow came fast. It was like a switch had been turned, shutting off the world’s thermostat and opening up the clouds. There was no wind, only a downward tirade of flakes.

However much the gondola weighed was too much. Martin and Lane couldn’t move it an inch. Even with a lever, fashioned from some two-by-fours, they couldn’t begin to lift it off Chet. They couldn’t get access to his hands or feet. They could touch only his face.

“Hang in there,” Lane said as she ran her hand across his cheek. The snow was piling up, and Lane was doing her best to keep Chet from getting covered. He was still conscious, but only barely. His lips were a straight line. His eyes were struggling to stay open.

“I found these shovels and a tarp,” Martin said. “But there’s nothing to warm him up quickly. We already used all the propane.”

“Darla should be here any minute,” Lane said, checking her watch.

“Right, good,” Martin said, and he busied himself with clearing all the snow that had collected on the ground around them.

“He’s so cold, Martin,” Lane whispered, as if Chet couldn’t hear her. Both of her hands were now petting his cheeks.

“Keep doing what you’re doing,” Martin said as he shoveled. It was the best advice he could give. After all, what he was doing certainly wasn’t making much of a difference. Each time he turned around, the spot he had just shoveled was already covered in a skin of snow.

The snow was at least two feet high on the gondola, and every so often a hunk would slide down and land on Lane’s back or, worse, Chet’s face. Martin was tempted to knock some of it off the other side, but it had the potential to cause an avalanche and only make matters worse. He contemplated building some sort of a shelter around them, but the snow was coming fast and he didn’t want to leave Lane and Chet alone while he was collecting supplies.

Instead, he set the shovel down. He sat next to Lane. He took the blue plastic tarp he had found and pulled it over them.

“I’m here,” he said, placing his hand on Chet’s forehead. Chet’s eyes had finally closed. Lane waved her palm in front of his nose.

“He’s still breathing,” she said.

“Huddle in close,” Martin said.

The two curled up shoulder to shoulder to create more shelter with their bodies. They switched back and forth: one
would rub both hands together while the other placed warm fingers on Chet’s face.

“We should keep talking. Give him something to listen to,” Martin suggested.

“What do you want to talk about?” Lane asked.

“I don’t know,” Martin said. “Books. Do you read books?”

“I’ve read books.”

“What type do you like? Mystery? Comedy? Sometimes I can’t tell the difference,” Martin said.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“I guess so.”

“You’re not funny, Martin,” Lane said delicately. “That’s one thing about you. You’ve never been funny.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not your fault. Being funny takes experience.”

“I’ve read a lot of books.”

“And you’ve built a lot of machines, evidently,” Lane said. “Not the same as living.”

“Just one other,” Martin admitted.

“What?”

“I’ve only built one other machine.”

“Okay,” Lane said. “And did that one work?”

Martin didn’t answer.

Lane filled in the blank by saying, “And this one won’t either.”

Until that point, Martin had only been annoyed by Lane’s cynicism. Now he found himself legitimately angry.

“Then why are you helping me?” he asked.

“Have you ever wondered why we’re the only ones left?” she responded.

“All the time.”

“But you haven’t figured it out?”

“ ’Cause we’re lucky?”

“No. ’Cause we’re awful,” Lane said plainly. “None of us really care that everyone is gone. We only care about ourselves.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Martin said, though he did understand her point.

“And you’re different,” Lane said. “That’s why I’m helping. You’re the only kid in the world who wants to do something big. There must be a reason why that is. If I hitch myself to your post, things will happen to me. Things I can’t do for myself. Even when this machine doesn’t work.”

Martin blew into his hands and rubbed them together. As he placed them on Chet’s face, Lane took her hands away. Their eyes met for a moment. Over the last couple of months, Martin had gotten better at reading people. While he couldn’t tell for sure if Lane was lying, he could see in those brilliant silver eyes that she wasn’t telling him everything.

“I had one friend on the island,” Martin said. “His name was George. And I had my father. All I want to do is see them again. Maybe I’m as selfish as everyone else.”

“Maybe,” she said.

The tarp began to sag under the weight of the snow, so the two huddled even closer.

Chet died sometime around five a.m. His breathing slowed, then stopped, and no matter how much they rubbed their hands, they couldn’t bring the warmth back to his face. A couple more feet of snow had collected on the tarp and the
gondola. From the outside, they must have seemed like nothing but a few bumps along the wintery landscape. Lane and Martin didn’t say anything to each other. They just took their hands off Chet’s face and stood up. The cocoon of white broke open.