//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: Parrothead in Paradise // by PastCat //------------------------------// The next morning, Adam was nowhere to be seen. The rest of us had gathered as usual around the fire pit for breakfast and to make plans for the next round of scavenging, but he was gone. Doc was probably the most annoyed out of all of us. Adam had been his primary partner in the hunt for useful stuff. He declared that he would track down the wayward pegasus before he went out alone and got himself eaten or something similar. After a statement like that, there was no way we were going to let him go by himself. In the end, we split up into two groups. Doc and Emmy headed out in search of Adam, while Trish, Nic, and I headed out in search of a better shelter than the battered university buildings. Nic had remembered something about there being old military bunkers left over from World War II being scattered around the island. Some of them would have been still in use by the U.S. military at the time of the Change, but others fell into disuse, or at least civilian hands. If we could get our hooves and claws into one, it could prove useful for storage and shelter from any storms that came in off the Pacific. If we got desperate, I knew there was one with a pretty hefty metal door at Kualoa Ranch, where we had been surveying. Unfortunately that was on the other side of the mountains and not within easy reach. The fact that the tunnel on the Pali highway had collapsed wouldn’t help matters if we had to get there in a hurry. We had not managed to find a suitable place on our side of the mountains by the time we returned to our base on campus for lunch. There was no sign of Doc, but Emmy came back to report that he had tracked Adam to a gully that went under the H1, but had lost the scent due to the fact that there was a stream of water running through the culvert. He had decided to wait for the wayward pegasus there and would be back before nightfall. I guess he wanted to do some scenting down there to see what he could find food-wise. If there was something worth trapping, we would try and set snares again. When we went out again in search of a bunker, Emmy went with us and Trish went out to join Doc. Emmy gave her directions to the culvert and Trish promised to meet us back at base in time to help with dinner, hopefully with Doc and Adam in tow. This time, heading in a different direction than we’d gone in the morning, Nic, Emmy and I followed streams up towards the mountains in the hopes that the higher elevation might give us a better view of the lay of the land. As we climbed, the air became somewhat thinner, but never lost that fresh scent of the ocean. Back when there had been lots of cars crowding the roads below us, it would have been tinged with exhaust. Nasty. At one point, we stumbled onto the remnants of a set of stairs accompanied by rusty handrails. Emmy got excited and said that this was one of the best hiking trails on the island, but that it had been closed for a while when we had been doing our survey work before the Change. Locals called it the Sleeping Giant. The problem had been something about the trailhead being on private property rather than in the forest reserve below. Whatever; it made the going a bit easier as trees had not completely taken over the former trail. The view at the top was… well, spectacular. We could see the beach at Kailua in one direction, and the remnants of Honolulu in the other. Emmy seemed puzzled by something in the view though. “Something is not right about the forest down there.” Emmy said after a few minutes of admiring the view. “It’s… different somehow.” She seemed at a loss for words. “What do you mean?” Nic asked. “It all looks like forest to me. Trees that way” he gestured “and more trees down there.” “That’s not what I meant. There’s a difference in the foliage. It is not as obvious at ground level, but up here you can see it. Below a certain, uh, altitude, you don’t see any of those big trees, you know, like the one Zoe has her nest in. Everything is smaller and kind of a greyish green instead of the vibrant color we see closer to our base.” Emmy pointed with a hoof to show what she meant. “Could it be because it’s all growing over the places where people lived? I mean, concrete and asphalt are not exactly kind to plant life.” Emmy shook her head. “Could be, but I don’t think that’s right. If it were, the color would be more patchy. Down there it looks more uniform, as though someone took a broom and swept the entire coastline clean.” “Huh.” Nic tilted his head. “You know, I think I see what you mean. Do you think something could have happened, like a rogue wave or big storm?” “Might could be.” Emmy said vaguely. Her eyes were distant as she thought. We followed another trail down towards what had been Kailua and Kaneohe. Nic’s map showed an Air Force installation just east of the town further down the coast, so it seemed like a place with a potential for more substantial structures. “I don’t… think… we will want … to climb like this… with stuff… on our backs.” Emmy panted after a while. I didn’t feel the greatest either, but the open air at the peak of the trail had invigorated me. Nic shrugged. He showed no ill effects and in fact looked as though he had been strolling along a city street. “We will have to go back over that trail later.” Nic said. “Either that or we take the long way around by…” He checked his map, “Waimanalo Beach. At least there was a road, but it will take longer. It looks like it went through this area with some golf courses and then connected to the H1. We could follow that back.” Emmy and I glanced at each other. She looked pretty beat, and, well, I don’t think that griffons were really meant for walking long distances. (Not that I had had any luck figuring out flying yet, but, hey, I kept trying the Guide’s exercises). “Let’s rest on this side for a while before we do either of them.” I said at last. “Going either way will take a while if we want to be back by supper, but no matter which way we choose, I need a breather.” “Same here.” Emmy said. We paused for a little while and ate a snack; the ponies had some fruit while I munched on one of my few remaining strips of jerky. I tried to eat downwind of everybody else out of courtesy, but I could see Emmy wrinkle her nose anyway. After a brief rest we decided to take the long way around. The old road would make things somewhat easier, and we would be going past Bellows Air Force Station. We figured this route would give us a better idea as to whether we would find any old bunkers or useable structures over on this side of the island. The walk was certainly easier on the legs down here, especially since we stuck to the former road for the most part. There was not much of a breeze though. It made it feel more sticky and warm than on the Waikiki side of the mountains. I tried to distract myself by looking at the foliage that Emmy had noticed earlier. I saw lots of trees, but none of them were the giants like “my” tree back at base. Sure enough, something had scoured the area clean of vegetation at some point before we got there. There was also more sand down here than deeper into the forest. I felt it between my toes among the leaf litter. For the most part the walk was uneventful. Bellows AFS proved to have a lot of open space, but a lot of the buildings had crumbled in the tropical wet. Most of the remainder were covered in a layer of sand that would not be easy to remove, even with our stash of shovels and Doc’s enormous paws. We ended up following the road all the way around and made it back to our base at around sundown. Doc was there, as was Trish. Adam was not. After such a long trek, I was exhausted. Even so, that night I worried myself to sleep. What in the world had Adam been thinking, going off alone like that? There is safety in numbers, and the last thing we needed was to lose somebody when there were only the six of us. He also was the only one of us who knew about radios and his flying drones… That night I dreamed of flying. It wasn’t just me in the air though. I found myself keeping pace with one of the quadcopter drones we had been using to take aerial photos with. It matched me, move for move, as I twisted and dove through the air. I did not mind. It was almost friendly, like a mechanical dog with wings. I was flapping lazily when I heard a tinny voice from the quadcopter say “base to Parrothead, base to Parrothead, come in please.” I reached for the drone, but it moved away. I tried to catch it so I could respond to the call, but every time it was just out of my reach. The third attempt resulted in me waking up after falling out of my hammock and onto the ground a few feet below. “Ooof.” I grunted. I was the only one awake; the fire had died down to embers. I poked it with a stick and added a little bit of kindling to help me think. Adam was not stupid. In fact, he was probably the most logical out of our entire group. Unfortunately, that also meant that he was the least accepting of his current equine state. Why would he have wandered off alone, then? Unless… I headed towards the place where we had been storing most of the equipment we were determined to keep dry. Among those items were the walkie-talkies we had used to communicate between the survey sites. Luckily for us, their chargers were solar-powered, so we could still use them (if with difficulty for the ponies). There had been four of them in the van. Now there were three. I facepalmed. Of all the things to forget… I turned one on and turned the volume way down. “Parrothead to Birdbrain, come in please. Parrothead to Birdbrain, if you can hear me please respond.” I said in a low voice. I crossed my talons for luck. The silence seemed to stretch as all I could hear were the sounds of my pony friends breathing and the snores of Doc. I waited for a few minutes. Just as I was about to give up and try again in the morning, I heard a crackly voice on the radio. “About time one of you thought to turn on a walkie. Adam here, and don’t you dare call me a bird brain again, Zoe.” I grinned before pushing the transmit button and sassing him back. “Until you prove otherwise, your little jaunt today earned you that title. It was pretty bird-brained of you to not even leave us a message to say you had a radio. You coming back?” “Yeah, sometime tomorrow. Tell you all what I found down here. Now can I please get some shut eye, Parrothead?” Adam’s voice was muffled and he sounded tired. “Yeah sure.” I said grudgingly. “See you tomorrow, and you had better have an explanation for us.” “Yes mother. Out.” I turned off the radio and left it back with the others. No use leaving it on all night. I used a chunk of charcoal to write out a short note on some bark saying that Adam had a radio and would be back tomorrow. Then I returned to my hammock and once again slipped into a sleep filled with dreams of flying.