Isle of Man

Isle of Man - By Ryan Winfield


Part One





CHAPTER 1

Picking up the Pieces



I never meant to kill Hannah’s family.

Or Jimmy’s either. And although I didn’t kill them myself, at least not directly, I can’t help but think that if I’d never left Holocene II, they’d still be alive.

I’m standing on the bluff looking down on Hannah as she picks through what’s left of her childhood home. It isn’t much. I watch her run a hand along the jagged stones that outline the remains of the foundation. She turns toward the water, pressing her palms against the air, as if miming where the living room window had been, the window where her mother would sit and watch the lake from the family rocking chair.

Farther out, along the debris-littered shore, I can just make out Jimmy walking the beach in front of Gloria’s bungalow. Or what was Gloria’s bungalow before the wave came and dragged it out into the lake. Jimmy’s head is bent in mourning. Junior, his fox pup, trails at his heels.

I have no idea where any of us go from here.

By the time I climb down off the bluff, Hannah is standing in the exposed, flooded basement, looking like some exotic red-topped flower with her green dress floating around her waist. She’s lost in her thoughts and doesn’t even notice me wading toward her until I wrap my arms around her from behind.

“I’m sorry, Hannah.”

She leans into me and sighs.

“You did the right thing.”

I’m tempted to tell her that it wasn’t me. That I couldn’t do it. That her mother had been awake, and that she came down and triggered the wave herself, then saved me by locking me away in the safe room. But if I tell her, she’ll know that her mother let the wave take her—that she committed suicide. I won’t risk spoiling Hannah’s memory of her mother.

Hannah moves through the water toward the open door of the safe room. I slosh after her and watch as she peers inside, searching the shadows of the room. Her eyes land on the open safe where her father kept the vials of longevity serum, the genetic elixir that would grant us each a thousand years of life. She sees that it’s empty and frowns. I reach in my pocket and pull out the case of loaded syringes, and Hannah smiles for the first time since seeing that I was alive yesterday. She grabs the clear-plastic case of syringes and holds it up to the light.

“Oh, Aubrey!” she exclaims. “You’ve saved us!” Her voice sounds like an angelic harmony, echoing off the water.

“You sure you wanna do it?”

“Of course,” she says, as if there should be no doubt about it at all. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know. Your mom seemed to have some regrets.”

“She was sick.”

“What happens when we get sick?”

“I would have fixed it for her if I’d had more time.”

“But she had lots of time, Hannah, and she couldn’t fix it. And you’re just sixteen.”

Hannah waves the syringes at me.

“Yes, but my mother taught me well,” she says. “Plus, I only have to pick up where she left off. Science is a relay race, Aubrey, not a marathon.”

“Even so. What will we do with a thousand years?”

“Everything,” she says, leaning in to brush her lips against mine. “And why settle for a thousand? That’s just the start.”

“Just the start?”

“Sure,” she says. “There are three doses here. One for you, one for me, and one left over to study. We can recover the lab at the Foundation and with as much time as we’ll have, I’ll find a way to extend our lives longer. Let’s live forever, Aubrey.”

“But that third dose has to be for Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?” she asks, sounding disappointed.

“Yeah, Jimmy.”

“Of course, you’re right,” she says, frowning and handing me back the syringes. “I’m sorry.”

“Did someone say my name?”

I look back and see Jimmy standing on the steps, holding a stick strung with fish. Junior is crouched at his feet, lapping water from the flooded basement.

We gather wood to the edge of the lake. and Jimmy strikes a fire lit. He wraps the gutted trout in strips of green bark and buries them in a shallow trench beside the fire. Then we wait, sitting in a semi-circle looking at the lake, and listening to the popping wood as Jimmy uses a stick to push coals over the fish. It’s only late morning, but clouds have descended like theatre props in windless skies, bringing an evening gray and the bite of winter’s cold with them.

“I figured the lake would be too stirred up yet to fish,” I say, feeling the need to break our long silence.

“Junior caught ’em,” Jimmy says.

I look over at Junior, gnawing on a fish head.

“Junior?”

Jimmy nods.

“He found ’em anyways. They’s swimming circles in a puddle back there left by the wave. Easiest fishin’ I ever done.”

Hannah tosses a pebble into the water, shaking her head and huffing.

“You could have set them free.”

“Fat chance,” Jimmy says, uncovering the steaming bark with his stick. “I dun’ plan on starvin’.”

“Just try some, Hannah,” I plead with her. “Please. You need to eat. We all need to eat.”

“I’ll eat the bark before I’ll eat the fish.”

Jimmy holds out a blackened strip of tree bark to Hannah, and she turns away. Jimmy winks at me and reaches into his pouch, producing a collection of nuts and roots, leafy greens, and a few mushrooms. He drops them in Hannah’s lap.

“What’s this?” she asks, surprised.

“Pro’lly won’t taste none too good,” Jimmy says, “but it’ll keep ya goin’ for now.”

Hannah picks up a mushroom and smells it, eyeing Jimmy. She bites a corner and chews. Her face goes red, and her eyes bulge as she drops the mushroom and clutches at her throat.

I leap to my feet.

“Hannah!”

She bursts out laughing, and so does Jimmy.

“Ha ha,” I mutter, sitting back down. “Real cute.”

A moment ago I was worried about upsetting Hannah by eating fish, but after that performance I grab a plank and dig in with Jimmy. We finish eating and lean back on our elbows and watch the glowing coals, passing Jimmy’s canteen back and forth. The lake is still as glass. I steal glances at Hannah as she stares across the water, lost in thought, as if she’s seeing some scene play out on its mirror surface. Soon, her eyes well up.

Then, almost to herself, she says: “It’s just so strange. One minute they’re here, the next they’re gone.”

“I’m so sorry, Hannah.”

“I know you are,” she says. “But you lost your dad, too. And I’m sorry for that.” Then after a pause she says: “Jimmy?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry about your family also.”

Jimmy nods, looking down and petting Junior.

“Where do you suppose they go?” I ask, addressing no one in particular. “When they die.”

“Nowhere,” Hannah says.

Jimmy shrugs.

“I ’spose we’ll find out when it’s our turn.”

His comment reminds me about the serum. I reach in my pocket and hand Jimmy the case of syringes. He inspects them. “Might make a good sewing needle,” he says. “But what’s it really for?”

I tap the case. “It’s a syringe. To inject the serum.”

“Inject what?”

“To put that red stuff in your arm.”

“Yeah, but what for?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I ain’t stupid.”

“I know it,” I say, nudging him with my elbow. “I’m just trying to figure out how to explain it.”

Hannah clears her throat.

“It’s a longevity serum, Jimmy. It tells your body how to outsmart its aging process. It means you’ll live for a very, very long time.”

“Am I dyin’ or somethin’?” he asks.

“Well,” Hannah laughs, “we’re all dying. It’s just a matter of how fast, really.”

“What she means,” I interject, “is that if we take the serum now, instead of dying at, say 60, or 70, or even 90, we could live to be 900 or even 1,000 years old.”

“Who’d wanna do that?” Jimmy asks.

“Well, I don’t know,” I say. “Who wouldn’t? Hannah and I want to. And you should too.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Why not ain’t a reason.”

“Don’t you like life, Jimmy?” Hannah asks.

“There’s times I do,” he says.

“Well, don’t you want to experience as much of life as you can then? Don’t you want to keep from getting old and tired?”

Jimmy thinks about it for a moment, then he says: “Guess I jus’ want the normal amount of life. Same as ever-body.”

“Then what?” Hannah asks.

“Then whatever.”

“Then you die.”

“Sure,” he says.

“You’re not afraid to die?” I ask.

Jimmy looks at me and cocks his head, as if he’s just now considering his future death for the first time.

“Seems to me I was dead before I was born, and that wasn’t no trouble.”

“But you believe in something after?” I ask. “Don’t you?”

“After?”

“You know—after you die?”

“I dunno. Sure. I guess. There must be somethin’.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Hannah jumps in.

“Then I guess that’d be jus’ fine too.”

Hannah rolls her eyes.

“You’re impossible. Let’s just do ours, Aubrey. Jimmy can change his mind later if he wants.”

I look from Hannah to Jimmy, then to the case of syringes in my hand.

“No,” I shake my head. “It’s all of us or nothing.”

“That’s not fair, Aubrey!”

I stuff the case of syringes back in my pocket.

“Let’s talk about it later then.”

“And what if it doesn’t keep?” Hannah asks.

“It’ll keep,” I answer.

“Might not.”

“If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant,” she says, sarcastically.

Not wanting to argue, I leave the fire and walk to the edge of the lake and rinse my hands in the water. When I stand up again, I see something dark floating in the distance—a hump cutting above the water like a rock.

“Can you guys see that?”

“See what?”

“Out there. On the water.”

Jimmy appears at my elbow.

“Yeah, I seen it earlier. But it’s closer now.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I dunno,” he says. “Hard to believe it survived the wave.”

“Only one way to be sure,” I say, unbuttoning my shirt.

Jimmy smiles and peels off his clothes, too.

I step out of my pants and toss them with my shirt in a pile next to Hannah.

“You coming?”

She shakes her head.

“I’ll watch. Be careful.”

Jimmy and I rush into the cold water and dive in. It feels just like old times swimming beside Jimmy. Feeling competitive with Hannah watching, I kick up my speed and pull ahead. But Jimmy easily catches up and smirks at me. I take a deep breath and drop my head and give it all I have, racing through the cold water, my strokes strong, my kicks quick. When I come up for air, Jimmy is five body lengths ahead of me, treading water and laughing. I remember him teaching me to swim in the cove, and how patient he was with me then. I can’t help but grin as I paddle toward him. We look back. Our little race brought us farther out than I thought, and Hannah is just a speck on the beach now, the fire sparking up as she adds wood.

“Think we’re almost there?” I ask.

Jimmy kicks himself out of the water like a dancing seal, trying to get a view.

“Not far now.”

Another few minutes breast stroking, and the black hump rises in the still water before us. Jimmy touches it first, stopping and smiling back at me, his hot breath steaming.

“Damn if it ain’t afloat,” he says.

“Maybe we can tow it back and right it.”

“You pull, I’ll push,” Jimmy says, before disappearing to the other side.

It’s slow progress swimming the turtled boat in. I keep a decent grip on a bow edge and kick wildly and paddle with my free arm, but the beach seems a long way off. I can see the fire, its light periodically interrupted by Junior’s shadow as he paces the shore, waiting for us to return.

“Keep her pointed true,” Jimmy calls from the other side.

I remember seeing this carbon-fiber boat for the first time when I snuck into Dr. Radcliffe’s boathouse on my way to visit my dad at Eden. Hard to believe it was only a few days ago now—the day he died, my dad. A horror grips me when I think about it, so I push the thought away. It’s too late for my dad, but this boat might just hold the key to setting my people free. It drives me mad to think of them working away five miles underground and not knowing the world is up here, waiting. That they could be breathing fresh air, gazing at the actual stars. Maybe after I free them they’ll call me a hero or something, and I can give the credit to my dad.

The boat scrapes on gravel when we hit shallow water. After catching our breath, Jimmy and I each take a side and get our feet on the bottom. We rock the boat, seesawing it back and forth, trying to right it. As momentum builds, we work our way toward the bow to stay clear of the enclosed cabin. Just as the boat rocks onto its side, with me stretched tall and pushing, Jimmy leaps and grabs the upper wall, hanging for a moment with only his feet left in the water; then the boat flips over on top of him, throwing me back toward shore. Jimmy comes up coughing, takes my offered hand, and we stand in waist deep water and look at the righted boat.

“Good work,” Jimmy says.

“We’re just lucky the cockpit’s sealed,” I say. “Otherwise it never would have flipped.”

The lake is dead calm, the ripples created by our efforts rushing in arcs away from the boat to be swallowed in the still water. We drag the boat several feet onto the shore, then we scamper up to the fire to get warm. Hannah sits where we left her with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head down. Before I can ask her what’s wrong, I hear Jimmy ask:

“What the hell happened here?”

I turn to see Jimmy holding his canteen by its neck and inspecting its underside. The canteen is blackened by fire and Jimmy’s hand is smeared with charcoal where he picked it up.

“Must’ve rolled in the fire,” I suggest.

“I used it to boil water,” Hannah says, behind me.

“Shit,” Jimmy says. “There’s better ways to do it than burnin’ up my canteen.”

“Why’d you boil water?” I ask her.

Hannah doesn’t look up. Her hands are still wrapping her knees, her red hair spilling over her arms. Something’s wrong.

“Why did you boil water, Hannah?”

Without lifting her head, she holds out her right arm for us to see. Her freckled skin is pale, and the bruise in the crook of her arm is impossible to miss.

I stride to my clothes pile beside Hannah and fish the case of syringes from my pants pocket. Sure enough, there are two syringes filled with serum and one empty.

“How could you?”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, you’re not!”

“Well, one was mine anyway.”

“We agreed to wait.”

“No, you said we’d wait. I didn’t agree.”

“I can’t believe you, Hannah.”

“I said I’m sorry,” she says, again. Then her eyes harden, and she juts her chin at me. “Besides, I could claim them all if I wanted to. Since you took them from my father’s safe.”

I stand there shivering, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m half naked and wet, or because I’m furious with her. I don’t know what to feel. I’m tempted to tell her that I didn’t take them. That her mother gave them to me just before she killed herself because she couldn’t live another day after the same serum tortured her for almost a thousand years. But as mad as I am, I won’t use her mother’s memory against her. I just won’t. I storm off with my clothes to dry and dress in private.

We spend the afternoon working separately. Jimmy heads off to hunt up some food. Hannah collects wood for the fire. I climb the bluff and break pine branches and build a lean-to shelter in the exposed root cavity of a tree stripped from the ground by the wave. It’s a perfect spot, halfway up the slope, protected from the wind, where we can look down and keep the beached boat in sight.

Just as I’m weaving in the last branch, I hear Hannah drop another armload of wood behind me. A minute later, she sighs, letting me know she’s still standing there, waiting for me to say something. I keep my back turned and pretend to be working.

“Shelter looks good,” she finally says.

I feign dissatisfaction with the last branch and pull it free and begin weaving it in again.

“You could say something,” she says, “couldn’t you?”

“I don’t feel like it right now.”

“Will you be mad forever?”

I turn around to face her.

“You betrayed me, Hannah.”

“Well, that’s a little dramatic,” she says.

“Really?” I ask, offended that she’s putting this off on me. “You can’t just go around doing whatever you want, you know. Maybe you could while you were spoiled here at the house, but you don’t know anything about surviving out in the real world.”

“And you do?” she asks.

“I know we have to trust one another.”

“Like you and Jimmy do?”

“Is that what this is about? You’re jealous of Jimmy?”

“Maybe,” she says.

“Why?”

She steps up next to me and picks idly at the lean-to roof. “I don’t know,” she says, cutely.

“Why, Hannah?”

“Maybe because you wouldn’t commit to spending forever with me unless Jimmy took the serum, too.”

“Jimmy’s my best friend.”

“Shouldn’t I be your best friend?”

The look of sadness on her face melts my anger, and I reach over and lift her chin.

“Look at me. You need to listen. I’m not going to fight with you about Jimmy all the time. You got that? You need to ease up on him already. Okay? We’ve been through some tough stuff together, that’s all.”

She nods.

“Can you forgive me?”

“Can you stop being a brat?”

“If you’ll forgive me.”

“Maybe you can talk to Jimmy?”

“About what?” she asks.

“Convince him to take the serum.”

“Would you forgive me then?”

“Maybe.”

She lifts an eyebrow and bites her lip.

“Yes, I’d forgive you then.”

She smiles. Then she throws her arms around me and hugs her head to my chest.

“Have I told you you’re the best boy in the whole world, Aubrey Van Houten?”

“I’m not a boy,” I say. “I’m almost sixteen.”

“Well, you’re the best man in the world then.”

I laugh.

“Compared to all the other men out here?”

“I’d have chosen you if there were a million men.”

As evening falls we build a fire just outside the lean-to. Hannah managed to collect a surprising amount of wood, and even Jimmy is impressed with her. We sit inside and watch the sky go dark beyond the fire, eating a light dinner of more fish for us and more foraged plants and mushrooms for Hannah.

“I’d give anything for some algaecrisps right now,” I say.

Hannah must be thinking the same thing, because I see her eyeing our fish as she gnaws on yet another root. I hold a hunk of pink trout meat out to her. She shakes her head.

“Come on,” I say. “Just a taste.”

“I don’t like killing things.”

“It’s already dead whether you taste it or not.”

To my surprise, she plucks the fish from my palm. Jimmy’s eyes widen, his curiosity pricked. Hannah brings the fish to her nose and smells it. Then she bites off a tiny piece and quickly chews it with her eyes closed. I see her swallow, then she sticks out her tongue and shakes her head.

“Ahk! No thanks.”

Jimmy and I laugh. Hannah holds the rest of her uneaten fish out to Junior, and he rises from beside the fire, walks over, and scarfs it down, then licks her fingers. She pulls him onto her lap and pets him, his tired eyes closing with each stroke then opening again. Jimmy pulls around his netted sack and dumps out a pile of enormous pine cones that he collected. He begins plucking nuts from their spikey bodies and cracking them open between two stones. He eats a pine nut then hands one to me. Then he eats another pine nut and hands one to Hannah. The fire crackles, Junior’s eyes open and close as Hannah pets him, and the quiet night is punctuated by the methodical cracking as Jimmy pounds open the pine nuts.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I say, coming out of a near trance. “You’re doing sneaky middles.”

Jimmy looks confused. “Sneaky what?”

“Sneaky middles.”

“I dunno what yer talkin’ about,” he says, cracking open another pine nut.

“Yes, you do. You eat one then you give me one. Then you eat another, and you give Hannah one. Then you eat one again. You’re getting two nuts for every one nut we get.”

Jimmy laughs and pops a nut in his mouth.

“You wanna crack ’em then?”

I shake my head and smile. I catch Hannah’s eye and nod, signaling that now’s a good time for her talk. Then I palm her the case of syringes and scoot toward the door.

“Where ya goin’?” Jimmy asks, holding out a nut.

“I’m full,” I say, waving it away. “I’m gonna go down and check on the boat.”

Jimmy starts to rise.

“I’ll go with ya.”

“No, you stay. I want to be alone for a bit.”

Jimmy turns back to his pine cones and lets me leave.

The boat is just a dark silhouette now against the near black sky, and a gentle breeze drives small waves to lap against its side. I can hear Jimmy in the distance clacking his rocks together, splitting the pine nuts. I hope Hannah knows what to say. I sit on the edge of the small peninsula, where the grass used to be before the wave came, and look past the boat to the dark shadow of the dam far on the other side of the lake.

It’s strange to think of those scientists entombed in the flooded Foundation beneath the dam. I try to picture it. The closed locks. Water to the ceiling. The sealed train tunnel gates. Then I think about those subterranean tracks leading south, where my people work away right now as I sit here, nearly five miles underground and still in absolute ignorance of what really lies above their heads. It’s hard to imagine just how much I didn’t know. I wonder how much I still don’t.

I reach into my pocket and pull out my father’s pipe. I’ve got some of his tobacco left, but I don’t feel like smoking it tonight. Instead, I just sit in the dark and feel the weight of the stone pipe in my hand, smelling the cool pine breeze and listening to Jimmy’s clacking stones as I try to remember my father’s face. It’s harder to do than you might think. Mostly, I see his hands—strong and veiny, the fingers wrapped around his work reader, or maybe, on Sundays, wrapped around the bowl of his pipe. This pipe. My pipe.

I wonder where it is we do go when we leave this world, or if Hannah’s right about there being nothing. Growing up, we were taught that we’d be together forever in Eden, so I guess I never gave any other afterlife much thought. I’d like to believe I’ll be reunited with my dad some faraway day. My mom, too.

Even so, I hope Jimmy decides to take the serum, because although I’m curious about what waits for me on the other side of this life, I’m in absolutely no rush to find out.