The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy (19 page)

CHAPTER 32
One, Two, It’s All Through

Hannah serves.

I pop the ball back, close to the net.

She springs forward and returns to my off side. I race across the court, sending it back deep. She catches the ball just before a second bounce and drives it between her legs. I dive for it but miss and lie on the ground panting.

She stands over me smiling.

“Good game.”

“Yeah right,” I laugh. “You said the same thing after the last three games you whipped me on.”

She extends a hand, laughing, and helps me to my feet. We walk to the table and sit in the shade. Hannah pours us iced tea.

“Is it hot out here?” I ask, shaking my shirt for some air. “Or is it just me chasing your returns all over the court?”

“No, it’s hot,” she says, “because I’m hot, too, and you barely had me moving at all.”

“Very funny.”

“Well, enjoy it anyway,” she says. “It’s September already and we won’t get many more nice days like this.”

She picks up a fallen leaf from the table, nodding to a small maple nearby, a ring of bright-red leaves around its base.

“Is that a Japanese Maple? I read about them.”

“No,” she says. “It’s called a Fullmoon Maple. See how the leaves are rounder. Mother loves trees and flowers. She brings all kinds of things back from the park. That’s why Daddy built the wall. He said we have to keep things from spreading where they don’t belong.”

I look over the rest of the yard. Gardens of late blooming flowers. A fruit tree. Perfect green grass. Then I see a man on the lawn and he startles me up in my chair until I notice he’s pushing a mechanical mower.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s Tom. Gloria’s brother. And there’s Jimmy, too.”

I follow her gaze and see Jimmy on the edge of the lawn, raking the grass clippings onto a fabric tarp. Jimmy looks good. His weight is back up to normal, his limp nearly gone. Junior is twice the size he was when I saw him last, just a week ago now, and he’s chasing the rake and swatting at it as Jimmy works.

“I’m going to bring them some tea,” I say, taking two clean glasses off the tray and filling them from the pitcher.

Tom sees me coming and stops, wiping his brow with his sleeve and leaning on the mower handle. When I offer the tea, he takes it and drains the glass. He clucks his tongue and hands the glass back.

“Thank you.” Then he leans into the mower and pushes on, leaving me with both glasses, one empty, one full.

I walk across the lawn to Jimmy.

He drops the rake and bends over and gathers up the tarp. Heaving it over his shoulder, he walks right past me without making eye contact and the tarp hits my arm, knocking the glass from my hand. Junior stops to sniff at the tea and lick the wet grass. He looks up at me, his dark eyes showing no recognition, and then he lopes off and follows Jimmy out the open gate without looking back.

“Hey!”

The shout comes from behind me—

“Come give an old man a hand, will you?”

I turn and see Dr. Radcliffe standing at the boat, holding an armload of supplies. Snatching up the fallen glass, I jog to the table and return it. Hannah stands and hugs me.

“Sorry,” she says.

Then we hurry to the dock to help her father unload.

Hannah and I take an armload each and carry them into the kitchen where Gloria inventories the supplies. Dr. Radcliffe brings in the last load as Mrs. Radcliffe appears in the doorway.

“Did you get my medicine?”

“There wasn’t any,” he answers.

“You know I need it, Robert,” she says, her voice irritated. “This headache is making me mad.”

“I said there wasn’t any, dear. The train comes tomorrow.”

“Fine,” she sighs. “I’ll be in bed. Don’t disturb me unless the house catches fire. No, don’t disturb me even then.”

“Oh, Mommy,” Hannah says, frowning. “Let me run you a nice bath and we’ll get you hydrated and tucked in for a nap.”

Hannah takes her mother’s arm and leads her away toward the back of the house.

Gloria opens cupboards, making space for the supplies.

“Come with me, Aubrey,” Dr. Radcliffe says. “I brought a little something back for you.”

I follow him down the hall to my room and into my bathroom. He sets a plastic case on the counter, and stands me in front of the mirror. He’s maybe six inches taller than I am, and a shaft of light streams in the high window and illuminates his white hair, creating the impression of some haloed saint I might have seen in an educational, standing behind me with his hands resting on my shoulders as if in a manner of blessing.

He reaches around and twists the hot water tap on.

“Wet your face good,” he says. “Open up those pores.”

I cup my hands and fill them with hot water and lean forward and splash it on my face. When I look up again, he’s whipping soap with a brush in a small stone pestle. He puts two fingers beneath my chin, lifts my dripping face, and applies the lather to my cheeks, my lip, my jaw. When he releases my chin, I look at my white-soap beard in the mirror. Then he snaps the case open and plucks out a razor and turns my hand over and slaps the razor in my palm.

“Draw it down slow, not too much pressure.”

“But I don’t have any whiskers yet,” I say.

“If you don’t, you will soon,” he says, waving his finger in an indication for me to continue. “My father taught me when I was your age. Besides, we can’t have you running around here looking like a savage.”

I bring the razor to my lathered cheek and draw it down slow, cutting a clean path in the cream.

“Be careful around the chin,” he warns.

Steam rises on the mirror as I shave, never quite blocking my face, but obscuring Dr. Radcliffe’s reflection and creating the appearance of another me, alone, shaving in another world, on the other side of the foggy glass.

When I finish, Dr. Radcliffe wets a towel in the hot water, rings it out, and hands it to me. I hold the towel to my face, breathing in the hot damp air. Then I pull the towel away and look at myself in the mirror. I look the same as when we started, other than a spot of blood where I nicked my chin.

Dr. Radcliffe pats me on the back.

“Well done, well done. Now you’re a man. The kit’s yours to keep. Come with me. I want to show you something.”

The basement is quiet, the laboratory dark.

I follow Dr. Radcliffe across the tile floor to the far wall where he stops and lifts the lid on a keypad, its electric glow washing his face an eerie blue in the shadows of the lab. He looks at me, hesitating. I look away. I hear him punch in four numbers. Then, with a series of clicks, a panel in the wall pops out and slides open, revealing a large room lit with LED lights.

I follow him inside and watch as he slaps a red button with his palm and the door slides shut and seals.

The room is five meters across and five meters deep, with walls made of polished steel, a toilet shielded by a partition, and several wall-mounted cots. But what interests me is the farthest wall and a built-in command center. A desktop, a chair. A panel of controls and switches, a joystick of sorts. Mounted above the desk, a dozen screens show various live video feeds from around the park. Aerial images from cameras mounted on high-flying drones. Shoreline images from ships patrolling the coasts. Snowy regions, arid regions, tropical regions—all trapped like spooky movie sets in the silent monitors there.

“Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Dr. Radcliffe says.

My eyes dart from screen to screen.

Screen one: a drone drills down its camera on a herd of elk, their velvet heads lifted toward two males facing off, their antlers raised, their lips curled as if bugling.

Screen two: a ship’s camera pans fast, focusing a telephoto lens on sea lions hauling out of the surf onto a rocky shore.

Screen three: a drone glides over a forest fire, glimpses of flames between plumes of black smoke.

“Do you put out the fires?”

“Not when they’re started by lightning,” he says.

“What is this place?”

“Well, it’s half control room, half safe room.”

“Safe room?”

“For protection,” he says. “Drones patrol the mountains and the perimeter of the lake pretty close, but the lake and its shores are a safe zone. I’m actually surprised you and your friend made it through. We retreat down here in case hostiles show up. Steel walls over reinforced concrete, two-inch solid Kevlar door, thousand P.S.I. electromagnetic locks—nothing gets in here. Food and water for a month over there. Batteries, too. You can hide in here and guide in the drones and take out whatever threat is above.”

“Have you ever had to use it?”

He shakes his head. “Not really. We did have a bear once.”

“A bear?”

“Yeah, before the wall. Marched right into the house and joined us for supper. You should have seen Catherine’s face.”

“Did you kill it?”

“Of course not,” he says, obviously offended. “We waited down here for it to leave, then waited some more just to be safe. I’d already planned to build the wall with all these invasive plants my wife brings home. But that’s not really why we’re down here today.” He slides the chair out. “Have a seat?”

“You want me to sit?”

“Well, who else would I be talking to?” he says, chuckling. “One of my other personalities?”

I slide into the chair and sit at the controls.

“This is a miniature command center,” he says. “We have bigger ones at the Foundation. The drones are all programmed with flight plans and auto-targeting features, so there’s really nothing to do. But you can override the programs and pilot a drone or a ship remote from here. Sometimes just to look around, sometimes to neutralize an abnormal threat.”

“What’s an abnormal threat?”

“Oh, things the drones don’t look for. In the early years packs of wild dogs, or livestock. Things like that. Not so much anymore. Most species that remain are native. Except humans, of course. But the drones target them without prompting.”

“How do they target humans?”

He reaches over my shoulder and taps a key, then another. One of the screens switches to a nighttime scene where two infrared silhouettes walk across a dark field, one bulky, one small and bent, walking with a strange padding gate.

“This was just the other week,” he says. “It’s all automatic. Watch. Thermal imaging, mainly. Humans have unique infrared signatures. Sometimes mutations or strange clothing cause us problems, but the drones can map movement and compare it to a database. Not much is hot like a human, but nothing walks like one. Not even this funny specimen.”

I watch the screen. The man seems to sense something, stops and turns. The smaller man keeps going until he hits the end of his leash and jerks back around. I recognize them now. Then two blasts of bright light fill the dark screen, and when they fade, the two men lie in heaps with the red draining out of them. My legs twitch; I want to stand and leave

Dr. Radcliffe taps another key and the horrific scene is replaced by a graph.

“As you can see,” he says, “we’ve had both successes and setbacks over the years.”

With bold red characters, the graph shows the current estimated above ground world populations at 25,754. It graphs the history, too, showing decades as high as 350,000, and others much lower, one as low as 2,900. As we watch, the count drops by three to 25,751.

“These are only estimates, of course,” Dr. Radcliffe says, pointing to the bottom of the graph where the margin of error is displayed. “But we track land covered, drone sightings, kill data. And the algorithms are usually pretty damn close.”

He taps another key, another graph—

This one says at the current pace, total extermination will be achieved in 357 years.

“But don’t be fooled,” he says. “these numbers can change fast. The Americas are largely under control. But other places remain problematic.”

“What places?”

“Well, strange things are happening in China, for example. We lost a drone there, and when we sent another to retrieve its weapons, we lost that one, too. What we need is a new strategy, my boy. We need fresh blood, fresh ideas. We need you.”

“Me? What am I supposed to do?”

He spins the chair so I’m facing him and he reaches down and taps his finger against my breastplate.

“First, when I know you’re really ready, we get you off this terrible clock that’s ticking inside of you.”

“And how do we do that?”

“I’m glad you asked.”

He steps over to a locked refrigerator, punches in another code, and the door pops loose. He opens it and pulls out a clear case of preloaded syringes. Opening the case, he removes a syringe, and holds it up to the LED light. The red fluid inside shimmers with a life of its own.

“This makes you a god, Aubrey,” he says, holding it out to me. “At least as close to one as there ever will be.”

I reach for the syringe, but he pulls it back.

“Not yet, young man.” He says, giving me a subtle head shake and a grin. “Not until I’m convinced that you’re ready.”

“That’s all it takes?” I ask. “One shot?”

“That’s it,” he says, tucking the syringe back in its case and putting the case back in the refrigerator. “Your body does the rest. Everything you need, you already have. This unlocks it.”

He shuts the refrigerator door. The lock clicks closed.

“Once I take that, then what?”

“Then we need to get you and Hannah working on some kids. She’ll be mature in another year or two.”

“You said I’m not ready?”

“I said: I’m not convinced you’re ready.”

“How do I get ready?”

“Now there’s the bright young man I’ve been looking for. I like the way you think, Aubrey. I knew we chose right when we chose you.” He points to the screen. “We need to come up with an actionable plan to get that number to absolute zero.”

“And once it’s at zero, what will you do?” I ask.

“No, you mean what will you do?” he corrects. “I’ll be long gone, unfortunately.”

“Well, what will I do then?”

He slides the chair out, with me in it, lifts me to my feet and lays his arm over my shoulder.

“What I’m about to show you,” he says, “no one else has seen, not even my wife.”