Authors: Everett Peacock
“
Get
on the radio and have the watch boat tell me who is on the beach with
that crazy old witch.” The leader was angry for two good
reasons obvious to the other three officers. First, they were being
outsmarted by an obviously mentally ill woman, and second, they had
yet to even spot her.
“
No
one there but the one lady sir.”
“
Shit!
OK, lets get up to the Volcanoes Observatory. We might see her on
the road.”
A
minute later both cars were rocketing up toward the belt highway,
leaving the jungle and the lava to its devices.
Janet
was hyperventilating, her knees deep in the mud and ferns, her hands
up against her head trying desperately to push the static noise out.
With the exit of the police she finally broke, sobbing
uncontrollably.
“
Goddammit
Star! I tried!” Janet screamed into the empty jungle. “I
can't help you now...” She rolled onto her side, sinking a few
inches into the jungle muck. With the police hot on her trail her
options were narrowing. “Star! Starshine!”
Janet
opened her eyes in a few moments, gazing blankly through the jungle
and out to the cinder cone. It was turning paradise into a mass of
gray and black rock, destroying everything that might have saved her,
destroying the heart of her most amazing friend. Star, Janet knew,
was all alone in her fight to save her home beach, her last remaining
slice of all that was fabulous and happy and hers.
The
cinder cone was belching large balls of smoke up into the sky, angry
at
something
.
It spat in disgust at
something
.
It would continue to destroy this wonderful place because of
something
.
If nothing changed, this island would indeed be just another rock in
the darkness of space. The volcano was angry at
something
,
and Janet was beginning to understand what.
~~~
Wally
approached the beach quickly, beaching his boat and running over to
Star, who was staring at the breakout of lava at the southern end of
her little cove.
“
Starshine!
Come on, we gotta go! Look, your ahu is gone and it's gonna wrap
around from the south.”
Star
moved away from Wally and walked briskly over to the now covered ahu
and the new a'a rocks starting to stack themselves up. She grabbed a
handful of wet sand and threw it at the new land, in anger, in fear.
It steamed its nonchalance.
“
Stay
away from my beach!”
Helicopters
hovered overhead getting it all on camera. Star looked up and
flipped them off, with both hands. “You, too!”
Wally
wasn't sure when it would be appropriate to just pick her up John
Wayne style and throw her in the boat. If not right now, really
soon.
Star
walked back over to him, and his boat. He reached out to take her
hand.
“
No,
Wally.” She implored him with her great big green eyes. “Wait
here with me.” She took his hand then. “Please?”
Wally
looked at her closely. She wasn't out of her mind, she wasn't being
anything other than herself. She was brave and resolute and if she
was wrong, he would just have to be there for her. “No worries
babe, I'm gonna wait right here, with you.”
Star
gently let his hand go. Walking slowly over to a higher part of the
beach, she knelt down to both knees, put her forehead down into the
sand and kissed the earth.
“
Pretty
please...” she whispered.
~~~
The
static in Janet's head had finally overwhelmed any defenses she might
have had left to mount. The battle she had attempted to wage had
only made it chaotic inside her mind. Now, with no choices, no
options to weigh, one thing became clear. The static moved into the
background, replaced with a very soothing voice. It sounded so much
like the old lady she had met in the hospital, Memitim.
Pushing
the mud covered moped out of the jungle and back onto the road almost
exhausted her. Not bothering to shed any of the mud from her own
clothes she mounted the machine. However, she couldn't start the
machine pointing uphill. Rolling it back around to face the lava
wall toward the ocean she let the machine roll downhill picking up
speed before popping the clutch and kick starting it.
Moving
toward the lava, drawn to its glow, its texture of consumption seemed
the right thing to do. She hit the leading edge of the already
cooled layer with her front tire and immediately stalled, the machine
falling off to the side.
“
Damn
it!”
This
didn't seem quite right. Her new master, her new voice in a head
finally relieved of the static said try again, try again elsewhere.
Janet got up, turned the moped back uphill and pushed it to where she
had started.
As
she looked back downhill again, toward the lava, she grinned,
squinting her eyes, unaware of the drool moving down her chin. She
let the moped roll toward the lava again, popped the clutch and
immediately got on her brakes. Slowly turning the machine back
uphill she spun the accelerator back toward her and went as fast as
she could uphill to the belt highway.
~~~
Larry
and Shirley were still cleaning up broken window glass when he got a
call from Jack at the Observatory.
“
Howzit
going Larry?”
Larry
put down his broom and walked outside for a better signal. “Good
Jack, how about you guys?”
The
Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory was operational again, as long as it
didn't rain too hard. Many windows were still missing but plywood
was going up where it could and plastic sheeting where the plywood
couldn't.
“
We'll
manage. Hey, look, Larry, you feel like a short observation flight?
You know, something to get you out of housework?”
Larry
grinned. Of course. “Sure Jack, what's the mission this
time?”
Shirley
stood up straight from her sweeping and looked at her husband with a
bit of a scowl. If he was going to go flying she was going to sit
down with her current book, In the Middle of the Third Planet's Most
Wonderful of Oceans. Its feel good theme about life on Maui would
take her mind off the mess here.
“
Great
Larry. We just need a survey of the roads surrounding Halema'uma'u.
The trails as well. We want to send some rangers out but need to
know what they might expect in country.”
“
No
problem,” Larry held a thumbs up to Shirley. She gave him one
back. “I can get airborne in ten.”
~~~
The
military police hunting Janet had run through the few roads they
could navigate in the National Park. Nothing, no one. They had even
looked inside the Lava Lounge. Only the bartender was there,
sweeping up broken bottles.
The
leader was beginning to question the anonymous tip they had received.
They had not seen anyone on a moped, much less the redheaded woman
they were seeking.
They
made their way back out to the belt highway. At the intersection, as
they were turning left, Janet came screaming around the corner on her
muddy moped, heading into the National Park.
She
looked at the officers for the briefest of moments, her face a
maddened, wide eyed mess.
“
Shit,
is that her?” The younger officer said over the radio.
Everyone
turned in their seats to see the rapidly disappearing moped rider.
“
Has
to be right? Only moped for miles. Let's go!”
The
wet jungle mud on either side of the asphalt forced them all into
four point turns. By the time they were headed after Janet, she was
out of sight. Both cars put their sirens on as well as their lights.
Janet
heard the banshee behind her, the screams of the monster with the
flashing blue eyes. The new voice in her mind told her to look for a
side trail, to get off of the road. She did, finding one that ran
the edge of the vast crater wall of Kilauea caldera. She hugged the
railing as she rocketed down the little paved tourist pathway.
The
police cars kept heading down the road.
“
I'm
going to slow down and look around these side trails. You guys head
to the lookout and the trail head,” the leader told the other
car of officers.
“
Roger
that, sir.” The young officer was excited to be in an honest
to god suspect chase.
“
Finally,
eh?” he said, turning to his partner. “We get to
actually apprehend a live one!”
“
Yeah,
well, sonny,” the seasoned partner deadpanned. “It's the
crazy ones that will hurt you the worse. Biting, spitting, who knows
what they'll do.” He looked out the window trying to find a
clue to Janet's position. “Personally, I prefer the ones that
are already passed out.”
Janet's
trail was going to intersect the trailhead down into the crater in a
few yards, right where the second police car would be in moments. As
she saw the parking area appear from behind the rapidly thinning Ohia
trees she caught a glimpse of Halema'uma'u's plume in the distance -
the lava pit within the massive Kilauea caldera, the same lava pit
where she had taken Jimmy Turner.
She
knew the trail head was there, could see it just on the other side of
the park garbage cans. The jungle path that wound down from here to
the floor of the massive crater would be a perfect place to escape
the screaming banshee chasing her.
Except
now there was one pulling into the parking area, ahead of her. Her
mind froze into a single determination. She would not stop for them,
convinced they would certainly eat her very skin, which the voice was
insisting they would do.
As
the young officer and his partner pulled up into the lot, sitting
comfortably in their car, Janet sped right past their front
windshield, headed down the trail head.
“
Oh
shit, there she goes!” The young officer leaped out of his
seat and half ran after her.
“
Suspect
in sight, headed down the trail into the crater. On her moped!”
The older officer reported on the radio.