Free Isle of Man (The Park Service Trilogy #2) by Ryan Winfield Page B

could’ve damn near spit and hit the underside of a drone. I swear it was brushin’ the treetops. Evil lookin’, I tell ya. And I ain’t too proud to say I’s scared. I’s scared as I ever been. And the first thin’ I thought, before I even thought about dyin’, was I thought how much I wished you was there.”
    Now my eyes well up.
    “I had the same feeling here,” I say, my voice cracking a little. “I’m glad you’re back.”
    “You forgive me?” he asks.
    “I couldn’t ever not forgive you,” I say.
    Jimmy laughs.
    “I think you jus’ said you’d forgive me, but I ain’t quite sure about it the way it come out.”
    We both laugh, then an uncomfortable silence follows—nothing more to say. We stand there looking after Red, as he kneels on the ground, trying to wrestle the rabbit fur from Junior’s mouth.
    After a minute or so, Jimmy says: “We’d better get on and catch up ’fore ol’ Junior there decides he likes the taste of Red better’n those awful algaecrisps.”
    The next two days pass in a blur of boredom.
    The professor spends most of his time locked away in the command center, messing with the computers. Whenever he does come out to use the restroom or get some food, we can hear a string of muffled profanities echoing across the cavern as he moves. Red proves very useful busying himself with loading the supplies into the storeroom, even though he does eat almost as much as he manages to organize. Jimmy and Hannah seem to get on fine, both treating the other with a polite distance at meal times, but I feel as though something has come between Hannah and myself. Deciding the submarine was too cramped, she moved into a sleeping room next to the professor’s, which is still just too creepy for me, since we found dead people in there, and she spends most of her awake time working alone in the lab.
    Today, I find the lab door locked as usual, and I knock for three minutes.
    “What’s up?” she says, finally opening the door, but not inviting me in.
    “Nothing. I just wanted to talk.”
    “I’m kind of busy right now. Can we talk later?”
    “Actually, I thought maybe we could get away for a bit.”
    “Get away? Where?”
    “Come on,” I say, my tone bordering on pleading. “Just say yes. It won’t take long.”
    She takes a deep breath then lets it out in a sigh.
    “Okay, but I need a few minutes to wrap up here.”
    “Cool. Just meet me at the dock.”
    Her few minutes turns into more than half an hour, and I have everything ready and am waiting long before she arrives at the dock. She sees the boat and stops.
    “Where are we going?”
    “Just out for a little picnic.”
    “A picnic? Up top?”
    “Yes, up top. I need a little break from all this gray down here. And I’m sure you could use one, too.”
    Hannah hesitates, looking across the bay at the tunnel leading to the locks.
    “Fine,” she says. “But only if you promise we won’t be gone long.”
    We don’t say much until we’re out above, cruising on the lake. Most of the snow has melted away, replaced with a winter frost that catches the setting sun and sparkles like pink and gold ornaments on the trees that line the shores. The lake is calm, almost like an inverted second sky over which we fly, breaking the clouds into ripples and sending them rolling in our wake. Both our moods begin to lift, and Hannah remarks about how beautiful everything is.
    I purposely take us away from the lake house site, toward the eastern shore where I run the boat up on a bank far enough for us to step out onto dry ground. It’s cold, but invigorating. I lay out one of the foil emergency blankets and gesture for Hannah to sit down. Then I wrap another blanket around her shoulders and ask her to wait while I run for wood.
    “I’ll help,” she says.
    “No. Stay here. I’ll be fast.”
    The wave’s line of destruction is littered with limbs left behind, and although covered in a light frost, they seem to be mostly dry. When I