The Terminals Read online

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Then we’re off.”

  Cam looked down. He was not crazy about heights. “Why go out the window?” he asked, still holding tight despite being roped on.

  The recruiter gave him a serious look. “Because it’s more fun.” Then he laughed. “Besides, we can’t drag you through a building full of witnesses and cameras. I already risked being seen last night. Don’t want them to record me near you at the time of your departure.” He began to ratchet them up the rope using a hand crank.

  Moments later, they were running across the helipad on the hospital roof, the tail of Cam’s hospital gown fluttering open in the morning breeze, making him glad there were no witnesses.

  “Are we getting on that medical helicopter?”

  “Yes, but not really. We just painted it that way.”

  Then they were boarding and strapping in, Cam wedging himself into one of the rear seats and securing the safety belt. The man put on his headset and quickly, but carefully, ran through a checklist. The blades started thumping, accelerating along with Cam’s heart. Soon the sound overwhelmed his ears, like a song by the thrash metal band Demonkeeper. It was scary, but exhilarating too. The chopper lurched, Cam felt weightless for a moment, and then they were airborne and all he could think was, Holy crap, what did I just do?

  As they climbed, his town stretched out below him. First the hospital where he was born, then his neighborhood, his high school, and the sprawling campus of the university. His entire life. For a moment he wondered if he’d already died and if this was his trip to the grand eternity. But he reached up and felt his earbuds still draped around his neck. They were real enough.

  His recruiter advised him to get some sleep. It was going to be a long trip. Cam tried to take one last look back, but there was no rear-facing window. He turned his attention ahead. The sun was rising, and he was flying straight into it.

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  3. SOUL ON A STICK

  by Dog Breath

  4. WELCOME TO THE ZOO

  by The Way Chunky Monkeys

  5. SMELLS LIKE MONDAY

  by Cheez Whiz

  “You all scream like I scream.”

  Cam was shaken awake, both by his recruiter’s hand and the sudden shuddering of the helicopter as it caught a gust of wind. They’d flown straight through the day, stopping occasionally for fuel. He’d awakened during one stop in what looked like a desert village, and then had slept hard again, still exhausted from having tossed and turned the entire previous night.

  The chopper bucked again, and Cam leaned to the window to look out. They were flying high over lush trees and thick brush. A jungle. He could see big water ahead, vast and blue. An ocean. Judging from the sun behind them, the waters he was seeing were to the east. There were no jungles in the continental United States, so it was clear that they’d left the country.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Cam said to his recruiter.

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Is this South America?”

  “Can’t tell you that,” the man said as the helicopter dipped and jumped in the rising wind. “Ask me anything else.”

  “Got any Dramamine?”

  “I like you, Cam,” he said, smiling.

  “You got a name?”

  “Pilot,” the man said. This time he didn’t smile. Cam didn’t push it. They began slowing down. Cam watched their speed steadily decrease from 120 miles per hour until they were nearly hovering.

  “Are we almost there?”

  “Yep.” Pilot pointed out the window.

  Below them, the jungle was a rolling carpet of deep green, but the vast canopy of trees was interrupted by a single, perfectly round blue dot. The dot seemed small from their height, but Cam guessed that it would be more than a hundred feet across at ground level.

  “That’s your target.”

  “Target for what?”

  Pilot handed Cam a pamphlet. “Memorize this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your life depends on it.”

  Cam opened the pamphlet. It said:

  How to Deploy Your Parachute

  Pull the drogue out of the pouch at the bottom of your pack and let go of it. The pilot chute will catch the air and inflate, pulling out the deployment bag. There will be a popping sound.

  The parachute lines are stowed in a zigzag pattern in the deployment bag. As the pilot chute inflates, the lines unfold and stretch out. The wind inflates the main canopy.

  You do not want the canopy to open instantly. If it does, you will decelerate from 120 mph to 10 mph instantly. This will injure you and can rip your lines or the canopy.

  When the parachute is out and open, look up to make sure nothing is tangled. If there is a problem, pull the reserve chute using the two handles on your shoulders.

  Once you begin to glide, grab the two toggles and steer the parachute to the target.

  “Wow. That’s cool,” Cam said. “So that’s the training area where I’m going to learn to skydive?”

  “You just learned.” Pilot handed Cam a heavy pack with sturdy straps. “There’s a diagram that shows you how to fasten the buckles and where the handles are.”

  The diagram was simple. Just the basics. Easy to memorize. His recruiter had done his homework—Cam paid attention and followed directions well. He’d never been a back-of-the-class, spit-wad-shooting, note-passing goof-off.

  Cam looked up. He had a sinking feeling, but didn’t have to say so. His expression spoke for him.

  The recruiter nodded. “Yep. This is the ‘jump out of planes’ part.”

  “It’s a helicopter.”

  “Detail-oriented. Good. We like that. Now listen up.” Pilot pointed to the chute in Cam’s lap. “Buckles across the chest. Primary rip cord on the right, secondary on the shoulders. Count to ten and yank. Pull the left tether to fly left, right to fly right. Head for the center of the big blue circle. When you can make out blades of grass, release the primary chute and drop into the drink without it. You don’t want to have the parachute land on you in the water. It can drown you if you get tangled in it. Got all that?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Pilot released the latch on Cam’s door, and it jerked open. The wind from the vast open sky and the blast of air from the chopper blades whipped Cam’s straight blond hair back and forth across his face. A week ago his mom had told him he needed a haircut. She was right, he thought.

  Cam began to put on the chute, checking each step against the diagram. It went on easily, and too quickly for his liking. They were hovering now, but the helicopter still shucked and jived in the wind.

  “Any questions?” Pilot asked.

  “About a million.”

  “About the jump procedures.”

  Cam took a deep breath. He’d paid attention. He’d followed directions. He was detail-oriented. He had no questions about the procedures. He shook his head.

  “All right, we’re here,” Pilot said. “Hop out.”

  Cam grabbed the doorjamb as though he were confident and ready. All he needed to do was scoot over one foot and he’d be on his way. But he found that it was a long twelve inches between his seat and the yawning door.

  Pilot frowned at his hesitation. “This is your stop. I’m going to land somewhere you can’t go.”

  Cam grimaced. “Out? Seriously?”

  “Out.”

  Cam scooted over. Then he was flying.

  The helicopter was instantly too far above for him to hear it anymore. The air rushing past filled his ears. He’d told himself he wouldn’t scream, but he did, long and loud, like a wailing siren.

  Then he realized he was clutching the rip cord and counting to ten. He was already on six. The ground hurried toward him, getting bigger as though he were zooming in on it through a camera lens. It seemed to approach faster as it grew closer. The blue dot is a lake, he decided. Perfectly round. No, wait, it’s a sinkhole
. He’d read about sinkholes. Collapsed underground caverns of limestone or quartzite that filled with water.

  “… nine, ten.” He pulled.

  There was a nasty pop. Cam remembered that this was a good thing. The main canopy deployed, his body jerked as the straps bit into it, and the world suddenly slowed down. He was drifting. It was strangely quiet. He could hear the distant thumping of the chopper blades now, but they were fading away. Again came the feeling that he’d crossed over into some strange afterlife. In a way, he thought, I have.

  He looked up. No tangled lines. He groped for the toggles. Pull left to go left, he remembered. Right to go right. Drop into the water when you see the grass. Simple enough. Falling from a great height had a way of focusing one’s thoughts, he decided.

  The sinkhole waited below and ahead of him. Apart from a large clearing a few miles to the southwest, it was the only open area in the forest. He was gliding in the right direction, sort of. Steering was more difficult than Pilot had made it sound. Cam yanked too hard left, then overcorrected to the right. Oh no! he thought. I’m going to miss it. He pulled steadily back to the left, a lucky gust of wind helped, and soon he glided out over the blue pool.

  The sides of the sinkhole were sheer solid stone. It looked to Cam like giant aliens had punched a perfect circle in the bedrock with a hundred-foot-wide drill. The water waited, dead calm twenty feet below ground level. There seemed no way to climb the smooth walls. Cam couldn’t help imagining himself in a jar where cruel boys killed insects, their legs scrabbling against the slick sides in vain until they gave up. I can’t drop, Cam thought. I’ll tread water until I drown. Suddenly, he could see the grass rimming the hole. It occurred to him that perhaps his recruiter had brought him here to die, and he hesitated. Then he saw a dangling rope ladder across the pit. But now it was too late to drop—his momentum would hurl him into the rock wall. How do I pull up? he thought madly. There was nothing in the instructions about that!

  Cam hit the trees that lined the top of the sinkhole at full speed. Branches beat and raked his body as he crashed through them, and leaves obscured his vision so that he couldn’t tell if he was going to smash his head open against a trunk. Finally, he was yanked to a jarring stop. Lots of scratches. No trunk. He dangled, swinging back and forth.

  “Okay,” he mumbled, “that sucked.”

  He hadn’t broken any bones that he could tell, but he’d been well punished for doubting his guide. He’d bruise badly for sure, and he was bleeding in several places. Cam looked up. The chute was fouled among the branches above him.

  Cam groaned and pulled himself atop a big limb, where he released the lines with a click. One stray cord was still hopelessly tangled around his leg. He pulled himself to a sitting position to get his bearings.

  He was high in a massive, gnarled tree, perhaps twenty feet off the ground. He glanced about. The tree had huge seedpods and gray-brown bark on its spindly trunk. A kapok? He remembered the strange kapok tree’s distinctively large seedpods. He’d read about them in a copy of Extreme Nature magazine in his dentist’s office. They grew in the Amazon jungle and Africa, and their silky floss was used to wrap poison darts for blowguns. He surely wasn’t in Africa. So this has to be South America, he decided. But where in South America? The middle of nowhere, Cam thought, that’s where.

  The first order of business was to get down. Once on solid ground, he could start by investigating the rope ladder that was obviously intended for people who dropped into the water properly, which he hadn’t.

  But before he could try to untangle himself there was a rustling in the brush. A man with a machete stepped through the forest understory at the base of the tree.

  The man was hard-looking and sun-browned, well equipped with a canteen, a loop of rope, and a bowie knife on his belt. Militant? Smuggler? Cam hoped not.

  As Cam sat there hoping, the man looked up and frowned, seeming to reconstruct in his mind what must have happened. Then he came up, climbing hand-over-hand with the dexterity of a gymnast. He was strong. His cantaloupe-thick upper arms bulged as though his muscles had muscles. When he reached Cam’s branch, he drew the machete again. Cam cringed as it rose, prepared for the worst, then it fell on the line tangled around his leg, cutting his cord.

  The man tucked the machete away. “So, did you scream on the way down?”

  Cam didn’t answer.

  “It’s okay.” The man laughed. “You all do.”

  “Who are you?” Cam asked.

  “Me? I’m your personal trainer.…”

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  4. WELCOME TO THE ZOO

  by The Way Chunky Monkeys

  5. SMELLS LIKE MONDAY

  by Cheez Whiz

  6. THE OATH

  by Slinky

  “You fling poo. That’s whatcha do.”

  “Leave the chute, Cam,” his personal trainer said when they reached the bottom of the tree. “It has served its purpose and graduated, and we have to get moving.”

  Cam nodded, stretching his legs to make sure he hadn’t cracked bones or torn muscles. He seemed to be more or less intact.

  “So, what did you learn from that, Cam?”

  “Follow the directions?”

  “Bingo. First lesson. Follow directions.”

  “Is it all right if I call you something normal, like Bob or Frank, or are you all named after your jobs?”

  “Right to business, eh? I’m Ward. But no last name, in case you were about to ask.”

  Ward faced him, but didn’t extend a hand to shake. Instead, he pulled a tube of ointment from one of his many pockets and quickly smeared it on Cam’s arms where he’d been slashed by the branches, and on a gash in Cam’s face he didn’t realize he had. Then Ward strapped bandages across the wounds.

  “There. You look better already. Come on.”

  With that, Ward glided into the jungle understory like a panther. Cam had no choice but to plunge in after him. He struggled to keep up. Pilot had given Cam baggy gray sweatpants, a T-shirt with a picture of a howler monkey that said WHATEVER, and light canvas boots that seemed to be one-size-fits-all.

  If I die now, Cam thought, at least I won’t be found in that ridiculous gown. In fact, I probably won’t be found at all.

  They circled the rim of the sinkhole, and Cam glanced down into the crystalline stillness of the lake each time they stepped close to the edge. Sunk in the earth and with the cover of trees all around, no wind disturbed it. There were no ripples. The surface could have been a sheet of glass. Cam kicked a rock over the edge. It hit with a violent splash. The water opened up for an instant, then closed over the stone and calmed as though the rock had never existed.

  Ward watched him out of the corner of his eye. “Only about half of you hit the water, in case that’s what you were thinking about.”

  “I was thinking that this lake is kinda creepy.”

  “And kinda beautiful, eh?”

  “I suppose. Anyone die in there?”

  “Not yet.”

  They reached the area above the rope ladder and turned into the trees, where the heavy heat of the forest bathed them in a warm layer of instant sweat. Ward seemed to glisten, while Cam simply dripped like a melting candle. When he wiped his face with his shirt, he found the cotton fabric already saturated. Curious yellow flies buzzed around him in a cloud, like insect groupies excited by his arrival. They discovered every exposed patch of skin, and each bite left a pinpoint of blood where they’d worshiped him. They seemed to ignore Ward. Perhaps the familiarity of his flavor bored them, Cam thought. He, on the other hand, was tasty new cuisine.

  Cam was pleasantly surprised that Ward spouted information like a happy tour guide as they trudged through the dim understory of the forest. Pilot had told him almost zilch. Ward confirmed Cam’s suspicion that he’d landed in a kapok tree, explained why the flies liked him so much—Cam’s U.S. diet probably included a lot of sugar and salt, which made his sweat smell especially tasty to them—and he po
inted out various flora and fauna as they passed or trod upon it. Cam heard monkeys chattering in the distance, and birds called to each other in full, rich voices unmuted by fear of humans, telling him that he was the stranger here.

  “What’s the most exotic place you’ve ever been, Cam?”

  “The Tiki Room. Frontierland. Space Mountain. A lot like this place, only with paved paths and hot dog stands.”

  Ward laughed loudly.

  They walked for miles, or at least it felt like miles—the terrain was difficult, and as much time was spent crawling over downed trees and wriggling through thick brush as walking. The beauty of the jungle was wearing off. Cam was hungry, tired, and could feel a blister starting on his left heel.

  “When do we get where we’re going, anyway?”

  “Now,” Ward said as he hacked a path through a wall of thorny bushes with his machete.

  Beyond the bushes, the world opened up. Light streamed in, and Cam found himself peering out over vast open water. The ocean. They stood atop a high cliff.

  “Down there,” Ward said, pointing to the beach below.

  Cam could see faint dots in the distance spaced at intervals too regular to be natural. Some sort of man-made structures.

  “How do we get down?”

  “We climb.” Ward pulled off his pack and began to unload rope and harnesses. “There’s no path to the beach. It’s safer that way.”

  Cam wondered what was safer about climbing down a cliff to get to their destination, and then realized that Ward must mean the destination was safer from others trying to get to it.

  Ward secured the rope to a sturdy tree, strapped himself in, and motioned for Cam to follow his lead. Cam stepped into the harness, fiddled with its straps and buckles, and then looked up at Ward.

  “Is this good?”

  “Good enough. Let the rope out gradually as you descend.” With that, Ward stepped backward over the edge of the cliff.

  Cam was a good athlete, and he could already bench-press fifty pounds more than the year before. But halfway down his teeth were gritted, his fingers were cramping, and his biceps burned. He clung to mouse-sized handholds, not trusting the rope, and the toes of his unsized boots were jammed into cavities in the cliff surface or crowded onto tiny rock protrusions.