Free The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan Page B

sweat off his brow.
    “I’m fine. You?”
    Dad turns on the car and cranks up the AC. He bouncesin his seat for a second and then pounds the steering wheel. “Dammit!” he shouts. “Son of a bitch!” He wipes his forehead and leans close to the air vent.
    I don’t say anything. He shifts the car into drive and bangs out a ten-point exit. We leave the airport.
    He turns the AC off and rolls down the windows. “
Everyone
wants to be voted off the island.”
    “I’m really sorry,” I croak.
    “No. Stop. That’s not what I meant. Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty, right? We would have been acting crazy if we had upped and fled a couple days ago. We may be crazy now. All of this may still end at any moment.”
    And what?
I think.
We all just wake up and look around at each other and scratch our heads? We just agree to forget this ever happened? I wasn’t really robbing a grocery store at gunpoint. Can I have my Rolex back?
    We drive in silence. On our way back into Honolulu, we pass by Pearl Harbor again. A battleship and an aircraft carrier creep toward the bay from the open ocean.
    “Maybe they know what’s really happening,” I say. “They’re in contact with the mainland, and they’re just not telling anyone.”
    “I can guarantee you that they have a good idea what’s
going
to happen.”
    “I wonder if that carrier is coming from the mainland.”
    “A little soon for that, maybe. They’re probably returning to port from somewhere here in the Pacific.” Dad is silent for a while, but then he says, “I doubt they know what’shappened. It’s been five days. The panic is coming fast. If the government knew what this Emerald Orchid was about, they would have announced when things would be returning to normal, to keep everyone calm. If they knew things weren’t going to get better, they would have declared martial law by now.”
    “What’s that?”
    “When the military says, ‘We’re in charge now, folks! Fall in line! What’s that you say? You have
rights
? No, you don’t!’ ”
    “Sounds like they’re already doing things their own way,” I point out.
    “Ten percent of this island is armed forces. That guy who told us to stay away from there is totally right. He was an angel come from heaven. We just avoided a colossal mistake.”
    My guess is that while all of these terrible scenarios
could
happen, the military is filled with normal people, in the end. People like Grandpa. They’re
Americans
, after all. They’re not going to be monsters.
    Right?

CHAPTER 9
    We turn back into Waikīkī shaken. Silent. We’re going to see if anyone will take us to the Big Island on a yacht or sailboat.
    It’s either that or take up paddling.
    The Pacific Ocean builds so much force between Alaska and here. All that power grows and grows, pushed by strong winds, pulled by the moon, fed by currents, and then it hits these islands in the middle of nowhere. The only place that energy has to flow is between the islands. You don’t mess with that power unless you know what you’re doing.
    Really strong athletes sometimes row from Moloka`i to O`ahu—Grandpa did it once, long before I was born. But the current’s in their favor. No one rows in the direction we need to go. Dad once said we’d need tons of training before attempting something like that.
    We approach a park swarming with pedestrians, cyclists, and clogged traffic, prophets with placards commanding
Repent
, and large prayer circles. Police and National Guardsmen patrol. Makeshift canvas tents have been set up in every direction, offering medical care, palm readings, cash for gold, emergency kits, political flyers, dried ahi, poi. Three separate guys are selling toilet paper for five bucks a roll, and people are buying. One guy is even selling silk-screened T-shirts of the Emerald Orchid. Someone who was trying to sell guns out of the back of his truck has been pinned to the ground by guardsmen. He screams about his Second Amendment rights.