Cut Off (20 page)

But they weren't tourists. They were refugees in potentially hostile territory. She promised herself she would come back and continued down the highway, which squiggled madly around ravines, streams, and waterfalls. Soon, they were forced to stop again: not because the road was cracked or the bridge was out, but because the waterfall across from them was a hundred feet high if it was a foot, dashing down a black cliff into a broad pool. Mist hung in the air, cooling it.

Alden grinned at her. "What if we built a shack right here? I always wanted a pool."

"A little exposed," Tristan said. "Could put it back in the trees. But I don't think we should stop yet. Should scout to the end of the jungle and make sure we're not right next to a settlement—human or alien."

Further on, they ran into a gathering of a dozen houses and collected avocados from a tree whose branches groaned with hundreds of fruit. As with the rest of the trip, the houses appeared long vacant, and probably were: several had holes in their roofs, while others were being devoured by ivy, ferns, grass, bamboo, and vines.

Yet Tristan had the sense of a presence. Maybe this was nothing more than the lushness, vibrancy, and mystery of the jungle manifesting itself in her imagination. The human tendency to anthropomorphize whatever you laid eyes on. You looked at a cloud and saw a face. You looked at a grinning dog and assumed happiness where it might actually be anxious or hot. The jungle was warm, moist, bountiful, and all-surrounding; therefore it must be menacing and full of secrets.

Still, it was hard to imagine there was no one here. It had too many resources, too much easy food, water, and shelter. Beyond that, it was magnetic in a way she had never felt in her life. She felt angry with herself for not having come here sooner. Angry, too, at whoever must be hidden in Hana: she wanted it for herself.

At sunset, they followed a side road to a crooked red house that was hardly any sturdier than the Fallback Shack had been. They swept the leaves from the covered back porch and settled in.

"It's not very loud for a jungle," Alden said. "Kind of spooky, though."

"You scared?"

"Are you kidding? This place is awesome. Why did we waste so much time at the hotels?"

"Too busy to explore, I guess." As soon as she spoke the words, she knew they'd applied to her pre-plague life, too, and the thought she'd repeated them on Maui troubled her deeply. "Let's not let that happen again."

She woke before dawn and discovered herself comically excited to get going. She forced herself to sleep a while longer, but Alden got up while it was still dark and rustled off through the brush, then through his pack. She stretched and got up. They ate and headed on.

Sometimes she could see the ocean below them to the left, or the mountain above them to the right, but for the most part, they walked enclosed by the trees, surrounded by the smell of pollen, fresh water, and rotting leaves. She wasn't certain how far they had traveled into Hana: fifteen miles? Twenty? They had at least that far to go before reaching its end. Once they made their first pass, they'd backtrack along the shore and hunt for a permanent place to stay.

The road cut through a thicket of palms. Ahead, a stone bridge spanned a creek. As they approached, a man shouted from the woods.

Tristan slunk off the road into the trees. Alden moved beside her, unslinging his rifle and holding it upright in front of him. A girl shrieked. Tristan clenched her teeth. Something landed in the water with a resounding splash. Both voices laughed, carrying up the stream bed.

"I thought we were hearing a murder," Alden laughed softly. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"We're scouting for people, aren't we? We just found some."

"They do sound awfully happy for cannibals." Tristan gazed downhill, but the trees were too thick to see past. "Stay behind me."

She wiggled her pistol in its holster, making sure the draw was clear, and headed down the incline, stepping at an angle and holding stray branches for balance. Down in the water, the man said something and the girl laughed. They were still splashing around when Tristan stepped from the woods onto the edge of a cliff.

The water glimmered twelve feet beneath her. The pool was a hundred feet across, fed by a waterfall feeding from another pool on a terrace above it. The ground was solid lava rock. Water spilled from the pool through a shallow stream before stutter-stepping down a quick series of drops and finally meeting the ocean a hundred yards away.

The pair treaded water near the falls, black-haired and brown-skinned, and for a moment Tristan felt guilty to be watching them, as if her presence were an intrusion on something pristine, something that didn't belong to her. Then she felt foolish: these weren't native Polynesians who'd stepped from the past to reclaim what was once theirs. The girl wore a yellow two-piece and the young man, when he waded dripping to shore to find his towel, wore board shorts patterned with fire.

"That never gets any warmer!" he declared, pulling his towel around his shoulders and huddling up.

The girl paddled toward the falls. "Maybe you just need to get braver."

"If brave means you could use my nuts to make iced tea, then fuck brave." He glanced up the short cliff and his face went slack. "Run! Right now!"

The girl in the water looked up in confusion. The boy spun and dug into a pack beside his shirt and sandals. Tristan went for her pistol.

"Hang on!" Alden said, sliding the rifle from his shoulder and letting it hang from his hand by the strap. "We're not here to hurt anyone." He let the gun fall to the dirt. "We're just here to find a home."

"Ke?" the girl said.

Beside the pool, Ke froze, hand hidden in his pack. "And where does spying on us fit into that?"

"We're not spying," Tristan said. "We heard your voices. Now get your hand off that gun. If we want it, we've got the drop on you."

Ke bit his lip, showing his teeth, and stood. "What do you want?"

"To know more about this place. Can we come down and talk?"

He glanced at the girl. It was a protective look, not permission-seeking, but the girl tipped her face forward and gave him a look. Ke flexed his jaw and flicked his eyes back to Tristan. "Anything weird, and you never make it out of this jungle."

Annoyance flared in Tristan's chest, but she nodded and moved her hand from her hip. It took a minute to find a path down the miniature cliff. She let Alden lead, keeping one eye on Ke. And the girl, who got out of the water and toweled off briskly. Alden got down to the smooth rock surrounding the pool and stopped ten feet from the strangers. The girl had draped her towel over one shoulder and Alden was forcing himself to keep his eyes on hers. Tristan pegged her for her late teens or early twenties.

"I'm Alden," he said. "What's your name?"

"Don't tell him," the young man said.

She rolled her eyes. "Robi. This is my brother Ke."

"Cool names," Alden said. "Are you from here? I mean, did you always live here, or did you move after the plague?"

"Honolulu," Robi said. "We came here when things started getting bad."

"Same here. We had to sail all the way from California."

"By yourselves?"

"Yeah. We almost died about three times, though."

"We've been living in Lahaina," Tristan said, her amusement with the conversation fading rapidly. "Three days ago, the aliens wiped it out."

"Ones from the volcano?" Ke said. "What did you do to them?"

"I think someone from town stumbled into them. Disturbed them." She moved ahead before he could ask more. "You know about them? Do they know about
you
?"

Ke shrugged. He was lean and he had an aster-shaped scar on his shoulder from an old gunshot. "If so, they leave us be. Fly south every week or two, that's it. You came here to escape?"

"It seemed more prudent than getting bombed." Most of the trek through the jungle had been in shade, but the pool created a gap in the canopy and the sunlight was hot and direct. Tristan reached for her pocket. Ke flinched. She withdrew a cloth and dabbed her brow. "Are there more of you here?"

"What does it matter?"

"I'd prefer to make my new home on ground that someone else doesn't consider theirs."

"Then keep moving," Ke said.

"Ke," Robi said. She gave him a dirty look, then turned to Tristan. "You want to know what's up, go talk to Papa Ohe'o. He lives right down the coast. Cross the stream and follow the shore like a quarter mile and you can't miss it."

"Will he be open to visitors?" Tristan said.

"He'll probably be napping," she said. "But that never stops anyone from bugging him."

"Thanks." Tristan smiled slightly and glanced at Ke. "And thanks for not making me shoot you."

His expression clouded. Alden smiled at Robi and gave a little wave. "See you."

They walked down the stream. Before it began its fall down the smooth stone slope and into the sea, the waters spread twenty feet wide and less than two feet deep. Natural stepping stones broke the surface and they followed them to the other side, careful not to slip, then climbed a stone staircase leading from the pools.

A trail was worn into the turf a few feet from the rocky beach. Waves banged the shore, churning up a pleasant mist. Palm fronds hissed in the wind. Tristan soon spotted a house and a detached garage in a clearing beside an old maintenance road. The house's paint was peeling; it was small, with a simple pitched roof and attached porch with rickety frame supporting a blue canvas cover. Pineapple, melons, and taro fought for space with the weeds.

From the shade of the porch, a man walked out to meet them on the unkempt lawn. He was a white man, largely bald, with a salt and pepper goatee. Reading glasses dangled from a chain around his neck. A belly showed beneath his pink Hawaiian shirt.

"Do I see new people?" he said in a querulous New York accent. "I haven't seen new people in months and months."

"Maybe it's the skull and the sign warning everyone to keep out." Tristan halted ten feet from him. "We're looking for Papa Ohe'o. We were told he lives here."

"I sure do."

She smiled, momentarily confused: she'd been expecting a Hawaiian man. In fact, her imagination had been curiously specific, picturing him as older, heavyset, wise wrinkles around his eyes. A Hawaiian shirt worn open over a bare chest, ukelele leaned against his chair. A man who laughed easily and was constitutionally incapable of being offended. It was quite an elaborate stereotype, now that she examined it, and for a moment she was silent with embarrassment, reminded of how little she knew of the people and culture that had made these islands home prior to the Panhandler.

"Expecting someone less Jewish?" he said, guessing her train of thought. His eyes twinkled. "The moniker started off as a joke behind my back. But I say a new age deserves new names. Anyway, it's a good one, don't you think? Musical."

"Have you got a moment?"

"That's about the only thing I
do
have. Am I to take it you'd like one of them?"

Tristan smiled. "Maybe two."

"Then come on in and let's get started." He opened the door leading in from the porch, then smiled sheepishly. "Would you mind leaving your weapons outside? I know it's the fashion to travel with an armory on your back, but those things give me the creeps."

"Just the guns?" Tristan said. "Or the knives, too?"

"Or the knives, too!" Papa Ohe'o laughed, shaking his head. "To think that's a legitimate question. Just the guns, if you please."

They leaned their rifles on the porch and parted the velcro on their holsters, setting the pistols down with a thunk. Tristan watched the old man's face, but she saw nothing eager or ill-minded in it. Inside, the house was cozy with wicker furniture and bookshelves. French doors stood open to the wind. He gestured them to red-cushioned chairs and went to the kitchen. Tristan kept her eyes on him, but the only thing he returned with was a tray of reddish juice.

"Homemade," he joked, as if they were back in a time when that had been the exception. "What brings you here?"

The juice was sweet and thick, guava and pineapple. Tristan recapped the attack on Lahaina.

"My God," Papa Ohe'o said. "Did anyone else make it out?"

"I don't know. All we could do was run. We came here, thinking the jungle would keep us safe. From the look of things, it's treating you well enough."

"Either that or we're next."

"Who exactly is 'we'?"

He shrugged. "Our survivors."

"How many people do you have here?"

"Do you consider that your business?"

Tristan turned her glass between her fingers. "That depends. What are your requirements for citizenship?"

"Requirements?"

"Surely you don't allow anyone to move in wherever they want. You have a
skull
on the road."

"Well, I certainly didn't put that there. Can't stand the dead." He shuddered, then collected himself and chuckled. "As for those who show up here, I should evict them? I lived in Manhattan until I retired. Believe me, I've had worse neighbors."

"Why can't you order them out of town? Aren't you the..?"

"Guy who everyone foists the decisions off on?" Papa Ohe'o laughed, a high-pitched honk. "I'm not the mayor or some banana republic dictator." He wrinkled his brow. "Is that what you call them? Whatever they are, I'm not one of them."

"So what are you, then?" Tristan gestured inland. "What is
this
?"

"Should I ask if you're a spy? Then again, you have legs. If you want to see, you can see for yourself. This is Hana. Home to forty souls, maybe fifty; I don't know, they keep to themselves. We have three rules: no killing, no stealing, and no peeing in the stream."

Alden laughed. "So we could move in today."

"Who's going to stop you? I'm afraid Oprah's house has been taken, but I could show you some other places."

"Hang on," Tristan said. "I came here to learn where your borders are. Whether you're serious about your signage. We're not ready to move in."

"Why not?" Alden said.