Austin Aslan - The Islands at the End of the World

We lost our sleeping bags with the suitcases, so we pad the floor of the tent with clothing. I help Dad get his shirt off in our cramped quarters. “Dad, you’re bleeding!”

“I know. Is it bad?”

I study his wound. “The stitches look fine.” I re-dress the wound with the first-aid materials the clinic gave us.

“How’s your forehead?”

“Itchy,” I say. “No big deal.”

“Let’s do another mile in the morning. Then I want to lie down and do nothing for at least a couple of days.”

“Sounds good.”

I take my evening pill. Eighteen left. With luck, I could make it home before I run out.

“Lei. Are you taking the iodide?”

“But Uncle Akoni said—”

“I don’t care what he said. Nice man, but not all there. Besides, even if he’s right about the radiation—just because they can’t detect it yet, doesn’t mean it’s not coming. Meltdowns are happening. We’re lucky to be in Hawai`i. But it’s only a matter of time before it reaches us.”

I fish through my bag and open the canister of tablets Aukina gave me. I wonder where he is. Still taking orders on O`ahu? Helping other girls crawl beneath the fences?

I take a tablet and hand one to Dad. “Here.”

“No.”

“What, you’re going to make me take it, but—”

“There’s not enough, Lei.”

“You’re joking.”

“Those are for you and Kai. It’s nonnegotiable. Please don’t turn it into a fight.”

“Dad.”

He offers a sympathetic smile. He’s quiet for a long time, and then he says, “It’s going to be all right.”

I turn away and burrow into my bed of clothing.

I stare up at the Emerald Orchid through the screen mesh of our tent. It’s partially covered by jungle canopy, but it’s clear enough. Very bright tonight, but less crisp, as if a projectionist needs to give the focus knob a half turn out there somewhere. Is it a trick of the hazy atmosphere, the mesh tent fabric above me, or are my eyes crossed with exhaustion?

“Dad?” I say. “What if that is a spaceship?”

“Lei, it’s not. Look at it. Looks nothing like—”

“Oh, I know. I’m just playing it out, you know? Wouldn’t that be nuts? If all the major cities were dealing with an alien invasion? And here we are, out in the ocean, lost in our own little problems, totally clueless.”

“ Little problems?”

“You know what I mean.”

Dad sighs. “Yeah, that would be wild. But the reality of what’s going on is just as bad, Lei. We don’t need to chase some priest down any rabbit holes to appreciate the severity of our situation.”

“You don’t have to lecture me.”

Dad sits up with considerable effort. He looks at me closely. “I just meant … Akoni’s well-meaning, and I’m sure he—”

“I have been having dreams,” I interrupt him. There, I said it . It feels good to get that off my chest, but now I feel exposed, too. “Stronger than usual.” Dad’s listening. I continue, hesitantly. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted this. It sounds so bizarre out loud. “I’ve been dreaming during my seizures. I don’t remember them well, but … something . A voice.”

“Alien communiqués? In English?”

My eyes narrow. “No. Don’t get me wrong; I agree it’s nuts. But … remember how Grandma Lili`u would tell that story about hearing radio transmissions during the Pearl Harbor invasion? Through the filling in her tooth?”

Dad smiles. “Yeah.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I don’t know. I think so, yeah. There’s a scientific basis for that, though. That’s not an uncommon story.”

“Well, neither is Uncle Akoni’s. I’ve heard something. He mentioned another epileptic kid, too.”

“Three people? Come on, Lei. Anecdotal. No evidence there. Remember when I talked about confirmation bias? Sounds like you want to believe this is true.”

“Sounds like you want to believe it’s not.”

Dad lies down. “I believe that you’re hearing something. It’s probably a side effect of the drug trial.”

“Huh,” I say. “What if it’s God?” I ask. “Or akua? Or aumakua—a family guardian, like Grandma?”

Dad smiles. “There you go. See! Don’t you want to interpret these voices in a way that means something to you, and not in some paranoid way?”

We lie in silence, staring up at the Orchid. Just a haze. A fuzzy green cloud. No one would look up at that and think, “UFO.”

But …

Maybe Dad’s right: no aliens. Better to believe the gods are speaking to me in my seizures.

But what are they telling me?

I shrug and close my eyes. How is it that a priest confused me about this?

After we move camp another mile into the forest, Dad rests for three solid days and nights, scarcely moving except to eat. He stays quiet and still, disciplined. “The more I heal now, the faster we’ll go in the end,” he argues. I trust his instinct, but I’m dying to get going. I mostly stay in the tent, too, to avoid the mosquitoes and the occasional rain bursts. I pass the time rereading my water-damaged Hawaiiana book—I’ve kept it through everything—searching for clues about the gods. Nothing new has jumped out at me.

Each day Dad and I make and remake plans.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get through this jungle,” I say. “What if we went around the dry side?”

“Too exposed. That sheriff talk worries me. They could have all our stuff in an instant.”

“We should just give it to him. Get on with it. Make our way through.”

“There’s no way to smuggle that much iodide. And I won’t surrender it.”

“Well, how will we get away from Hana, Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

Just like O`ahu all over again: back to floundering, waiting for the right moment. We grow silent, listening to the distant squawks of more birds inexplicably flocking west in huge clouds across Hawai`i.

I never get more than three or four hours of sleep without waking up from a nightmare. Sometimes they involve reliving the worst of our experiences. Sometimes I awake from imagined gunfire or the smell of burning flesh. Sometimes it’s the white lights blinding me in a dark city. I don’t know what meltdowns actually look like, but in my dreams they’re always like nuclear bombs from the movies. Sometimes pale aliens with big balloon heads are banging at the door of the presidential bunker. I lie awake, trying to figure out what’s going on in the rest of the world. It’s easier than thinking about my family, but it’s still hard. I spend hours thinking about what it feels like. I don’t know how to say it. We’re so cut off from the globe. I’ve grown up at a time where news pours in constantly from every corner of the world. If my parents weren’t talking about it, it was on TV, it was on the radio, it was on my computer, it was on my phone, it was at the airport, it was in the waiting room, it was at school, at the restaurant, at the grocery-store checkout line, at the gas-station pump … News from everywhere, all at once, all the time. I never really noticed it. Maybe it would feel like this to suddenly go deaf in one ear. Like something you always took for granted has left you crippled and spinning in its absence.

On Thursday I count pills. Only twelve left. Should I start taking only one each day? I think. I doubt it would be enough. I need the full dosage for it to work .

I swallow my evening dose.

I must get home. This week .

On Friday morning we pack up the tent. I cough blood for the first time. My throat stings. I take my next iodide tablet in a bit of a stupor, wiping the blood spatter off my hands so Dad won’t see it. Is this what I’m fighting for? A lifelong struggle to stay one step ahead of an invisible monster that’ll still be around millions of years after I’m gone? Kai and I watch Mom and Dad and Grandpa waste away and die while we figure out how to fend for ourselves? I grabbed tons of this stuff, but it will eventually run out. What then? Will we be the only two civilians left on the islands?