The Islands at the End of the World Read online

  Dad and I meet in the corridor, race down the long hallway to the farthest stairwell, and spiral down toward the lobby, our bags banging after us. As we pass the fifth floor, I hear gunfire behind the stairwell door. I yelp. Dad and I pick up our pace and catch up to a logjam of people trying to pour through the final door into the lobby.

  We heave forward, struggling to stay upright with our things. Unseen smoke burns my throat. In the lobby the crowd thins, and we race for the garage. Men near the main entrance tackle people as if they’re felling stampeding wildebeests. Locals. Tribal tattoos. One tosses a bag of pretzels atop a cart loaded with groceries and toilet paper.

  Some sort of gang raid?

  We leap across the hallway, fly down the last stairs, and run to our car.

  Seconds later we’re dodging other cars. Dad squeezes my hand as the truck ahead of us jumps the curb and speeds across the gardens. We pull forward and flee over the canal.

  I silently study the destruction that has taken root in every direction as we slip into the dawn of a new Hawai`i. The glow of morning illuminates the city. Smoke rises like columns holding up the sky. Abandoned cars, shattered and burnt to smoldering shells, are scattered everywhere. Trash bins spill their guts upon streets and sidewalks. Storefronts are cavities of empty racks and shattered glass. All that remains are the postcards and souvenirs lining ABC Store shelves. The beach is empty, and the bay contains only a few coast guard vessels.

  “Has it really only been a week?” I marvel.

  “We’re all werewolves under a green full moon.”

  “It’s going to get much worse.” I try on the words. As unwelcome as they are, they feel right. I’m haunted by the tribal tattoos of those men. Several races—haoles among them—but all locals. Attacking tourists. Attacking me. Almost certainly gangbangers, but still. I shiver and run my hand through my smoky hair.

  “Lei.” Dad shakes his head. “You were amazing up there. I don’t think I could have done it. You’re a hero, you know that?”

  I feel my cheeks grow warm. “Heroine.” Adrenaline still simmers in my veins. I feel powerful, angry.

  One week.

  Right before my eyes, my beautiful islands are changing forever.

  And so am I.

  CHAPTER 11

  The rising sun turns our broken windshield into a hundred glinting shards. The haze has intensified. For the third day since we left Honolulu, we are camped out in our car, slowly weaving south over crowded roads littered with abandoned vehicles.

  Because of the reports of tsunami damage to boats moored along the north and east coasts, we’ve focused our attempt to charter a ride south of Honolulu, along a bay called Kaupa Pond. It’s rimmed with houses, each with a dock. There must be a pier along here that will offer us a way off O`ahu. But the only boat traffic beneath the bridge that leads to the open ocean belongs to coast guard patrols, which intercept unofficial ships like sparrow-hungry hawks, commandeer gasoline, and turn sailboats back to shore.

  Dad pulls into a strip mall, zigzags across the untidy parking lot, and stops in front of a busted-out grocery store. “Give it a try. Quick.”

  I jump out and trot over to the newspaper vending machines. We’re scavenging for information. But every rack is empty. How did things unravel so fast? No news. No food. No medicine. We’ve tried seven different pharmacies in the past forty-eight hours, all ransacked, nobody on duty. I have enough pills to last the month, and a few dozen more back home, but what happens when they run out?

  I return to the car and shake my head. We pull back onto the main road.

  I glance at our gas needle: down to a third of a tank.

  Why are there so many ditched vehicles? Have the cars run out of gas? Or have the drivers run out of steam, tired of circling?

  Most of the abandoned cars seem newer. Too many electronic parts? Our no-frills rental is acting strange: radio dead, but all the warning lights lit up. We have to pull over when it rains, because the wipers don’t work. The headlights randomly flicker or dim at night. Dad’s worried about the fuel pump. He closes his eyes and whispers something every time he starts the car.

  To my left, the caldera of an extinct volcano sinks into the ocean, creating a deep-blue bay teeming with coral. Straight ahead, singed by a crown of fiery morning light, is the tall peak of another cinder cone, Koko Head.

  According to one of my favorite Hawaiian myths, it was at Koko Head that Pele made her last stand on O`ahu. I try to remember the whole story.

  Pele seduced the husband of her sister, Nā-maka-o-Kaha`i, the goddess of water and of the sea, so she fled to the Hawaiian Islands. Pele thrust down her o`o, her shovel, in Kaua`i, claiming the land as her home, but her sister flung the sea at her. Waves filled the fiery hole made by Pele’s o`o, and she escaped to O`ahu.

  Each time Pele dug a new fire pit to call home, Nā-maka-o-Kaha`i commanded the rain to wash her away. Koko Head was her final dwelling on O`ahu.

  Finally, she arrived on Hawai`i. She ascended Mauna Kea, the world’s tallest mountain measured from seafloor, and dug her o`o on the summit, far beyond the sea’s reach.

  Nā-maka-o-Kaha`i used Poli`ahu, the goddess of snow, to best Pele on the mountaintop by freezing her out, and Pele retreated one last time to neighboring Mauna Loa.

  The Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes remain her active homes to this day. Mauna Loa last erupted in the 1980s, almost erasing Hilo. Pele could command the lava to bubble out of there again at any moment.

  I feel closer to her than ever. She was kicked off each island, not accepted anywhere. Even on the Big Island, she was forced to fight for her place. But she won her home. And now she belongs. She’s the pride of the island, the envy of the entire archipelago.

  When I get home, I will follow her lead. Fight back. Stake my claim.

  “Oh, crap.” Dad taps on the brakes, and I jolt in my seat.

  “Military checkpoint.”

  I stick my head out to get a clear view. We’ve slowed to a complete stop. A fleet of military vehicles crowds the road; armed military police patrol the line of cars.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Tightening their grip.” Dad tightens his own grip on the wheel.

  Behind us, a truck does a U-turn. The driver is pursued by a camouflaged army van waiting along the shoulder of the road. Our view of their encounter is blocked by a bend in the highway.

  “So much for that idea.” Dad straightens up.

  MPs stop at each car as they advance along the road. Most cars are released after a brief interrogation. One vehicle ahead of us has a square of colored paper tucked beneath the windshield wiper, and an MP motions for it to pull forward into the parking lot of Maunalua Bay Beach Park.

  “Let me do the talking, Lei.”

  I stiffen. We pull forward and an MP leans into Dad’s window.

  “Good morning, Officer,” Dad offers.

  “What happened here?” the MP asks, tapping on our shattered windshield.

  “Looters.”

  The MP nods. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  Dad points off to the left. “Home.”

  “What’s your address?”

  Dad doesn’t hesitate. “Nineteen-oh-one Apoke Street.”

  The MP looks through the back passenger window, studying our backpacks. “What day of the week is your trash pickup?” Dad scoffs. “Never, I’m guessing.”

  The MP cracks a smile. “Well, what day of the week was your trash pickup?”

  “Tuesdays.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “Her mom’s house.” Dad indicates me with his chin. “What’s her address?”

  “Twenty-one ten Kanini Drive.”

  “What are the backpacks for?”

  Dad pauses for a second, then says, “Look, we’re just staying prepared. It’s food and stuff. I want it all packed up in case we have to leave the car in a hurry. We don’t know what the hell is goin
g to happen next.”

  “I understand. Any weapons?”

  “No. A couple utility knives.”

  “May I have your driver’s license and registration?”

  My heartbeat picks up. I bounce my knee up and down, force myself to stop.

  “Sure.” Dad reaches awkwardly into the pocket of his shorts. “The looters cleaned everything out. But I have my ID still.” He hands the driver’s license over to the MP with a hesitant smile.

  “This has your address as Hilo.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Dad answers. “I’m a professor at UH Manoa. I recently moved from UH Hilo. You won’t be the first person to give me stink-eye for not getting to the DMV.”

  The MP is very still. He studies my father and me with a trained eye. “If you’re trying to get to Hilo, you should just report to the right. We’re making arrangements for civilian transport at the Marine Corps Base.”

  “No, sir, that’s all right.”

  He leans in on the window and peers sternly at Dad. “Everything’s different now, Dr. Milton. You’ll get instructions up ahead. Stability is our primary concern. If everybody follows instructions, we’ll all get through this.”

  He puts a red card on our windshield.

  “Wait a second!” Dad raises his voice.

  The MP walks away. Another MP urgently motions us into the right lane.

  “Shit,” Dad gasps. “What do we do?”

  My cheeks are cold as death. I don’t even know why.

  The MP in front of us beckons again. Dad obeys, staring forward, in shock.

  “Maybe it’s okay, Dad. We’ve tried on our own long enough. What if they are sending people home?”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Dad veers to the right. We continue into a parking lot full of military buses. A chill goes down my spine: dozens of reluctant people are being herded aboard the transports, and there are men with guns at every corner.

  We park as an MP approaches. “Come right this way, please.”

  “Hold on,” Dad grumbles. “Our bags.”

  He hands them out as I struggle to buckle my backpack. The MP looms over us.

  “Now, please. The bus is waiting.” The MP shuts the hatch, stepping between the vehicle and us. Dad takes a step backward. We’re shepherded away from the car, dragging all our stuff.

  “Hey, we don’t even know what this is about,” says Dad.

  “You’re being taxied over to the Marine Corps Base. What’s your destination?”

  Dad hesitates. I pray that he won’t lie.

  “Hilo.”

  The MP nods. “Lots of folks were caught on the wrong island. We’re sorting it out, though.”

  “That’s not what I heard.” Dad tries a smile.

  The MP escorts us across the length of the parking lot to the waiting buses as other soldiers siphon gasoline from cars with hand pumps.

  “Have you heard about the two hundred sea rescues the coast guard has done in the past week?” The MP’s voice carries an edge. “They’re about done with that nonsense. You weren’t planning on taking your daughter out on the ocean alone, were you?”

  Dad remains quiet, steaming mad.

  We board the bus as the driver turns on the engine. The first-row bench is waiting for us. The rest of the bus is full. I steal a look at the endless rows of apprehensive people, luggage piled on their laps.

  Soldiers with automatic rifles stand in the aisle.

  Dad and I take our seats and hug our backpacks and duffel bags. A soldier storms up the steps and takes a waiting handset from the driver. “I’ll keep this brief, ladies and gentlemen; gas is wasting. Whether or not you believe you’re being inconvenienced right now, you are on your way home. Our mission is your safety and security.”

  “You can’t keep us here,” someone shouts.

  “Efforts to find your own way off this island are ill-advised. You are not Sinbad of the Seven Seas,” the soldier answers, his Southern drawl thick. He gestures at the driver. “These soldiers could be AWOL with their own wives and children. Instead, they’re doing their duty to God and country, whatever’s left of each, and you need to buck up and do the same. We’ll all get through this if we work together. Aloha.”

  He tosses the handset back to the driver and steps off the bus.

  People begin shouting, in English, Japanese, and a couple of other languages.

  “Asshole.”

  “Hey, what’s happening? What’s the Emerald Orchid?”

  “But my FAMILY! We’ve been separated! I have to find them first!”

  “This is unbelievable!”

  “When will it get back to normal?”

  “You can’t do this to us!”

  “Why won’t you tell us what happened?”

  Dad releases the bag on his lap and puts his arm around me, squeezing me tight. “Stay together, okay?” he whispers. “No matter what.”

  “Maybe if you smelled better.”

  He offers me a wry smile. “You’re not a rose garden yourself right now, either.”

  Dad’s right: I haven’t really scrubbed clean in days.

  I’m not really sure how bad I look, but I doubt I’m as well off as Dad. He always looks a bit scraggly with his ancient T-shirts, five o’clock shadow, and sandy mop.

  The bus pulls forward and the voices dwindle and fall silent. Someone is weeping behind me. I don’t turn around to investigate. I don’t think I could manage to move my head if I wanted to; we’re stuffed in tight. It’s almost comforting. The floundering freedom of the past week has been a disaster.

  Maybe our luck has finally turned.

  We could be back home by tonight, I tell myself over and over again. I know it’s wishful thinking, but I can’t stop the voice. Even tomorrow, or the next day. We’re going home.

  The bus takes us around the westernmost point of O`ahu and turns. Twice, the steel-plated monster carrying us pushes abandoned cars out of the way. One tumbles down a cliff to the sea.

  The sky is a mellow orange, and the bronze disk of the sun is soft—I can stare at it through the bus’s tinted windshield. I feel like I’m stuck in an old, grainy movie where the film itself has started to fade.

  “Hey, what’s going on? Do you know? What’s happening on the mainland?” I quietly ask the driver.

  He’s wearing sunglasses, but I see his eyes drift toward the rearview mirror. He studies me and returns to the road. He says, “If I knew the answer to that question, do you think I’d be sitting here on this bus with you?”

  “Does anybody in the military know?”

  The driver shrugs. “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  Ma’am?

  “I honestly don’t know.” Now he’s rueful.

  I turn to Dad with a whisper. “Dad, why is the sky doing that? Is the Orchid doing it?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. The Orchid’s in space. It set before dawn. It’s not surrounding us, at least not its visible features.”

  “Could be more meteor blasts. Hitting land. Or volcanic eruptions.”

  “Lei, stop. Try not to worry about it. Did you know that the Big Island is where climate scientists measure the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide? It’s because there’s no cleaner air on the Earth—”

  “Unless Mauna Loa exploded,” I say. “It’s overdue, isn’t it? All these meteor strikes could have jarred it awake. Or what if it’s radioactive fallout? Or—”

  Dad sighs. “No. Please, Lei. Stop.”

  We enter the town of Kailua. As we drive by the beaches, I see where tsunami waves tore through the eastern coast. My view is partially blocked by buildings and trees, but I can see overturned boats, giant tree skeletons, driftwood, and endless trash.

  I remember Kailua Bay full of paddleboarders, rowers, kite surfers, and surfboarders. Today, a few fishermen stand in the surf, casting nets among waterlogged boat hulls and tangled globs of plastic.

  The bus stops at a gatehouse and then passes over a grassy field i
nto the Marine Corps Base on the bay. The tsunami left low-lying areas flooded or trashed. Crews of soldiers gather junk into large piles.

  With rib-cage-rattling intensity, a cargo plane rises swiftly into the air, heading out over the ocean in the direction of the Big Island. The aircraft looks old, maybe even World War II era. I tap Dad’s shoulder. “Off to Hilo.”

  Dad shrugs. “We’ll see, honey. I hope so.”

  We pull into an open area with baseball fields, a football field and a track, and several tennis courts. Everything is compartmentalized with chain-link fence. Big canopy tents have been erected at large intervals and are connected with orange netting and long rope barricades. The grass has been trodden into great bogs of mud.

  A collective gasp runs through the bus.

  CHAPTER 12

  The entire complex of sports fields and parking lots and roads is swarming with people, most milling about in small areas or sitting on cots and overturned buckets. Long lines of waiting zombies curve toward the large tents and around buildings in the near distance.

  We stop. I step off the bus and my hiking boots sink into the black soup of mud. A faint odor of ammonia eddies through the wind. A soldier behind a long table instructs me to spread out my bags and open them for inspection. Another soldier pats us down.

  The private glances at our duffel bags, half-stuffed with food, and confiscates them.

  “Hey! You can’t take that,” Dad barks. “That’s ours.”

  The private ignores him, already making motions to pull another of our duffels off the table. Dad snatches one of the straps and begins a tug-of-war. The officer wins.

  “Stop it!” Dad is shaking. He pulls back the last of our food bags before the officer can react. People disembarking from the bus slow and stare.

  “Sir, calm down. Food items are not allowed within the waiting areas. It’s for your safety. The bags are still yours. Meals are provided while your travel arrangements are processed.”

  Dad studies his adversary. He glances at me. I realize that I’m staring at him wide-eyed and temper my expression.

  “Lance Corporal!” the private shouts to another soldier overseeing an inspection far to the right. The soldier turns, sees Dad clenching his food bags, and strides over.