The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy by Ryan Winfield
Authors: Ryan Winfield
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shore and quickly pull on our clothes just as the waking children come scrambling down the beach, screaming. We share a silent smile above their heads and then head up to camp for breakfast.
Jimmy says I take to the water like a baby seal.
He gradually leads me from the cove and into deeper water where we spend mornings diving for mollusks. When the sea is calm and the water clear, I can see an entire underworld—jellies rising and falling on invisible currents, colorful fish patrolling reefs, beautiful plants waving from rocky shelves.
We drag nets of oysters onto shore and shuck them in the sun, sucking them from their shells and swallowing them raw. Afternoons, I float on the surface with my head underwater and watch as Jimmy holds his breath and walks on the sea floor with a spear gun he’s carved from ash wood and stretched with sinewy tendons stripped from a deer. He’s a dead-on shot, too. He hands the speared fish off to me, and I hook them through the gills and swim them to shore, carrying them into camp to clean them, their panicked hearts still beating in my hand.
My skin is almost as dark as Jimmy’s now, and I’m filling out more every week. I do my daily pushups and Jimmy shows me how to do pullups from a tree limb. I cut the legs off my jumpsuit, making them little more than a patched pair of zip-up shorts, the Foundation crest so faded you can hardly see it.
One afternoon while the men are inland hunting, Jimmy takes me out in one of the boats. Keeping the cove in sight, we row into deep water and drop nets. Then we lie on our backs in the bottom of the boat, rocking gently, listening to the waves lap against the wooden hull.
I remember lying on the beach that Sunday before my test, I remember dreaming about escaping that life down there. I’ve come a long way from five miles underground. I feel a pang of guilt about my father, about not making an effort to get news to him, but I do my best to push the thoughts away, pushing the guilt away with them.
A gull arcs across the blue dome of sky above. Then I see a flock of much larger birds silhouetted against the sun. But as they approach overhead it becomes clear they’re no birds made of feather and flesh. They’re too perfect, too smooth, too slick. They come rushing in on silent wing in perfect formation.
“What are those?” I ask, pointing.
Jimmy lifts his hand to shade the sun, following my finger with his eyes. Without a word he grips the edge of the boat and throws his weight into the sidewall and tips us over. When I emerge from the water, coughing, everything is dark.
“What happened? Why’d you tip the boat?”
Jimmy clamps his hand on my mouth.
We tread water beneath the boat, rising and falling on the waves. After a minute, Jimmy peers out. Without saying a word, he slips beneath the capsized boat and swims fast for shore.
He’s much too fast to keep up with.
When I finally get to shore and race into camp, I find him hustling the women and children to the back of the cove and into the cave where they store the boats.
“What is it?” I ask, stopping at the cave entrance to catch my breath. Two dozen staring eyes blink back from the dark. Jimmy grabs my arm and pulls me into the shadows.
“Drones,” is all he says.
And that’s enough.
Later that afternoon, the men come stumbling into camp carrying a body on a makeshift stretcher. What remains is not much more than a mangled pile of charred flesh, and I have to look at the pallbearers faces and count them off by name to see who it is they carry. The only one missing is Uncle John.
Nobody talks that evening as we work to gather wood. We disperse in silent groups of twos and threes, carrying back what dry driftwood we can find and dragging it up the path, out of the cove, and stacking it two meters high at the top of the bluff.
If anyone is worried about the fire betraying our location to the Park Service, nobody shows it. We lie outside our tents and watch the flames
Jimmy says I take to the water like a baby seal.
He gradually leads me from the cove and into deeper water where we spend mornings diving for mollusks. When the sea is calm and the water clear, I can see an entire underworld—jellies rising and falling on invisible currents, colorful fish patrolling reefs, beautiful plants waving from rocky shelves.
We drag nets of oysters onto shore and shuck them in the sun, sucking them from their shells and swallowing them raw. Afternoons, I float on the surface with my head underwater and watch as Jimmy holds his breath and walks on the sea floor with a spear gun he’s carved from ash wood and stretched with sinewy tendons stripped from a deer. He’s a dead-on shot, too. He hands the speared fish off to me, and I hook them through the gills and swim them to shore, carrying them into camp to clean them, their panicked hearts still beating in my hand.
My skin is almost as dark as Jimmy’s now, and I’m filling out more every week. I do my daily pushups and Jimmy shows me how to do pullups from a tree limb. I cut the legs off my jumpsuit, making them little more than a patched pair of zip-up shorts, the Foundation crest so faded you can hardly see it.
One afternoon while the men are inland hunting, Jimmy takes me out in one of the boats. Keeping the cove in sight, we row into deep water and drop nets. Then we lie on our backs in the bottom of the boat, rocking gently, listening to the waves lap against the wooden hull.
I remember lying on the beach that Sunday before my test, I remember dreaming about escaping that life down there. I’ve come a long way from five miles underground. I feel a pang of guilt about my father, about not making an effort to get news to him, but I do my best to push the thoughts away, pushing the guilt away with them.
A gull arcs across the blue dome of sky above. Then I see a flock of much larger birds silhouetted against the sun. But as they approach overhead it becomes clear they’re no birds made of feather and flesh. They’re too perfect, too smooth, too slick. They come rushing in on silent wing in perfect formation.
“What are those?” I ask, pointing.
Jimmy lifts his hand to shade the sun, following my finger with his eyes. Without a word he grips the edge of the boat and throws his weight into the sidewall and tips us over. When I emerge from the water, coughing, everything is dark.
“What happened? Why’d you tip the boat?”
Jimmy clamps his hand on my mouth.
We tread water beneath the boat, rising and falling on the waves. After a minute, Jimmy peers out. Without saying a word, he slips beneath the capsized boat and swims fast for shore.
He’s much too fast to keep up with.
When I finally get to shore and race into camp, I find him hustling the women and children to the back of the cove and into the cave where they store the boats.
“What is it?” I ask, stopping at the cave entrance to catch my breath. Two dozen staring eyes blink back from the dark. Jimmy grabs my arm and pulls me into the shadows.
“Drones,” is all he says.
And that’s enough.
Later that afternoon, the men come stumbling into camp carrying a body on a makeshift stretcher. What remains is not much more than a mangled pile of charred flesh, and I have to look at the pallbearers faces and count them off by name to see who it is they carry. The only one missing is Uncle John.
Nobody talks that evening as we work to gather wood. We disperse in silent groups of twos and threes, carrying back what dry driftwood we can find and dragging it up the path, out of the cove, and stacking it two meters high at the top of the bluff.
If anyone is worried about the fire betraying our location to the Park Service, nobody shows it. We lie outside our tents and watch the flames
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