Austin Aslan - The Islands at the End of the World

“You okay?” Dad asks.

I nod, change the subject. “You know what today is?”

Dad searches, shakes his head. “No idea.”

“Last day of school.”

“Really?” Dad looks up, the calculator in his head churning away. “Wow, Lei. Congrats. You’re a senior.”

“Thanks. Where’s my new car?”

Dad sits down. He buries his head in his hands. “Dad? I was just making a joke.”

“We were going to get you one,” he says.

“What?”

“A car. Not a new one. Something used. You were going to pick it out.” He still won’t look up at me.

A car. I don’t know what to say. I sit down cross-legged next to him. He’s crying. I wrap my arm around him, rest my head on his shoulder.

“Thank you.” I have to whisper it so my voice doesn’t crack.

He wipes his tears away. “It’s the thought that counts, right?” His grin is sheepish.

“Something like that,” I say.

“Look at this,” says Dad. Our packs are cinched, and we’re ready to press through the jungle toward Hana. He’s holding out a compass and giving it the stink-eye. I glance at the instrument. The needle won’t settle into one position. It spins, hesitates, and then continues to rotate in an endless search for polarity. It’s as if Dad is moving a magnet around beneath the compass.

“Lovely. How are we going to navigate?”

Dad shrugs, pocketing the compass. “We’re not as easily had as geese. We’re on a slope that drops into the sea. We’ll just cross every river and gully in a perpendicular fashion, and make sure the ocean’s to our left whenever we can catch a glimpse of it.”

We trudge through the tropical forest for two days. The going is torturous, especially the endless chore of climbing down deeply gouged ravines, crossing angry streams and rivers, and then struggling up their far sides as bursts of rain pelt us. We have run out of mosquito repellent. I think briefly of that mother and her kids in the military camp, but I can’t regret trying to help them. We would have run out eventually anyway. At least we escaped.

Where are those kids now? I push away the thought.

I do all of the machete chopping; if Dad’s wound were to reopen, tropical microbes could spell his doom. I shouldn’t, but I pick at my itchy forehead. I have no idea how far we’ve come, and I’ve all but forgotten why we felt we needed to slog through the rain forest instead of sticking to the road, when we arrive at a river crossing and stumble upon the bloated and naked body of a woman floating in a rocky pool. Facedown, she twists in lazy circles, her skull brushing the edges of rocks as she turns. The long shaft of an arrow protrudes from her neck.

“Oh, no.” I drop to my knees. We’re looking down at the body from a five-foot-high ledge above the pool. Water rushes along the center of the river, but here, near the bank, it trickles, filling dozens of babbling pools along its meandering course. The woman’s back and legs are puffy and purple, cracked open in places. Flies feast in busy clouds. I turn away.

Dad runs a hand through his hair. Words fail him.

“They just shot her and left her? They couldn’t even collect the body?”

“She probably fell into the water and was carried away. Come on.”

“Shouldn’t we … bury her, or something?” I whisper.

Dad’s voice is soft. “I wish we could. But no. Come on.” Dad looks about nervously, and I feel unseen eyes spying on me from every tree trunk and fern.

We walk upstream to cross the river and fill up on water, clambering up a steep rock face above a short waterfall. We’re going to have to get wet to cross this time; the water here is deep and swift. A taller waterfall gushes farther upstream.

We take a moment to guzzle from our water bottles and refill them, always glancing around. I know we’re upstream from the body, but it must have passed by here at some point, and the thought of drinking from this river at all turns my stomach. Still, I know that with all of our sweating, we can’t afford to pass up any water.

I wade across the river, submerged up to my chest. We rest the packs on our heads to keep them dry as we cross and quickly strap them back on once we’re safe on the far side. Ahead of us the foliage is thick, brambly, steeply sloped. I unsheathe my machete.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dad says. I begin hacking away at the thorny plants choking our way forward.

I hear the growl of a dog. Close.

We freeze. The dog barks. A brown blur materializes out of the trembling underbrush and I fall, a searing, white-hot pain ripping into my thigh. I’m screaming. Dad is screaming. A pile of hell-bent muscle writhes on top of me, razor-sharp teeth clamped into my leg. I bring the machete up and around as hard as I can. The dog yelps and recoils. My blade slices farther through its shoulder, and it whimpers and slinks into the underbrush.

“Lei!”

Another dog attacks Dad from the other side. I swing around and swipe with my machete. Adrenaline and rage guide my weapon down on top of the dog’s back. Blade meets bone. Vertebrae snap. The dog crumples, its back legs limp, and convulses in agony, yelping wildly.

Someone above us curses.

More barking dogs fan out in a great arc around us. A whoosh near my head. Another. An arrow sings to a halt in my backpack.

I’m stunned. Is that me laughing?

“Sheriff’s Department! You’re surrounded. Surrender.”

“The river!” Dad seizes my hand and whips me forward.

A warm pain throbs along my thigh, but I race beside Dad, hunted like a wild pig.

“Stop now !”

We hurtle blindly back along the path I’ve cut, the dogs growing nearer. We come upon the rocky bank of the river and leap, packs and all, and then swim with the current toward the short waterfall. A single gunshot rings out above. The current draws us to the edge of the waterfall.

My hands reach for something to grab, dropping the machete, but my pack is too bulky and the water too strong—I tumble over. Nothing I can do but brace to be dashed against the shallow boulders below.

The pool directly beneath the waterfall has been gouged deep by thousands of years of water. I disappear under the water with flailing arms. A great weight crashes down on top of me, sending me farther down. Dad has fallen on me.

My lungs burning for breath, I push for the surface, dragging my pack with me, and finally arise, gasping.

“Lei!” Dad yelps. I clear my eyes and follow his voice. We’re pushed farther downstream by the current. Suddenly my feet are brushing against the boulders of the bottom. Behind Dad I see a dog scrambling down the steep slope of the embankment, growling and barking, delighted by the hunt. Dad and I swim frantically downstream.

Two other dogs join the first. All three of them stop before the body of the woman turning aimlessly in the water. The dogs are torn—inspect their earlier prey or pursue us? One jumps into the river and paddles toward us with patient desire, eyes on us as it concentrates on its difficult task. It could almost be returning a tennis ball to me. But it wants to retrieve me for its master.

Dad plants his feet into the pebbly floor as if applying brakes. He grips me by the shaft of the arrow protruding from my pack and steadies me. The dog overshoots us and begins to paddle against the current in vain. The current will carry it away any second.

Now there’s shouting above the waterfall. Dad shakes my shoulder. He snaps the arrow loose and discards it. “Play dead.”

I go limp, letting the swift current drag me into another accelerating funnel. I see four men rise into view, silhouetted against the ledge of the waterfall. The second man holds a compound bow. He points at us and shouts orders. The fourth man lifts a handgun and fires at us. I don’t move. There’s nothing I can do.