Parrothead in Paradise

by PastCat

Chapter 8

You wouldn’t think the distance across a highway overpass would be a stark dividing line between one world and another, but you would be wrong. The other side of the H1 felt very different from the Manoa side. It was eerily quiet and smelled strange. Home Base, as we had started to call our campus campsite, smelled like the sea breeze and the wild hibiscus and other forest flowers that grew with wild abandon over the old buildings. Down here it smelled most strongly of salt and fouled vegetation. The colors seemed washed out and faded.

The sounds of hooves and paws echoed among the stone and concrete buildings around us as we walked. Even the layer of growth couldn’t completely deaden the sounds of our footfalls. This had not exactly been the touristy side of town even when people lived here; it was a place where locals did their little errands like groceries and laundry. No fuss, just practical structures. They had been dwarfed by the towering hotels and skyline of Honolulu to the south of us.That skyline was now truncated, as though some giant hand had swiped across it. Everything still standing slumped towards the sea. By unspoken consent we headed in that direction. Doc led, his nose seeming to point the way towards whatever we could find to use. As Adam had said, there was a thick layer of sand and dirt everywhere. Sickly green-gray vegetation discolored the upper floors and facades above us. As we approached the beach, we could almost reach the second story of the buildings in some places where the dunes had piled up.

We circled around towards Waikiki, keeping the majority of the tallest buildings on our right. In places you could still tell what the buildings had looked like in their prime. Bright paint peeked out from beneath carpets of moss. Signs and building names appeared as indented shapes behind a curtain of lichen or other plants. We eventually stumbled out of the city and onto what had once been one of the world’s premier beaches. The change was astounding.

Where once families had played in the surf and built sand castles, there was now an open wasteland of beach. Instead of bathing beauties in bikini swimsuits and and hunky dudes in speedos playing beach volleyball, there was just that empty stretch of sand. Turning back towards the main thoroughfare, the buildings that had once housed luxury boutiques and tourist sundry shops now leaned drunkenly in multiple directions.If they stood at all. Gaping holes where weaker structures had fallen gave the boardwalk a look like an island tiki’s grin. Those buildings that had lower stories open to the air showed little. Whatever had filled the shelves of these places was long gone. If one went in, it seemed that one would be swallowed whole by the silence. None of us said a word as we walked towards downtown.

Whatever had happened to Honolulu had spared nothing at ground level, it seemed. We looked in through a few doorways and what was not scoured clean was buried. Near the end of the strip of beach between one of the former Hilton hotels and the remnants of the marina, I saw something that made my breath catch in my throat; it was a place that I had been to only once since coming to Hawaii, but it was dear to my heart all the same. I walked towards the remnants of a restaurant. Though the artwork above the entrance had faded to almost nothing, I could still make out the name of the place. I felt a chill go down my spine as I read “Cheeseburger in Paradise”. The words echoed in the space around me as I ducked inside. I barely noticed the others following me and calling for me to wait. I kept moving. The interior had been decorated with the standard tiki bar theme with palm trees and such. Most of that was long gone, but bits of plastic decorations remained here and there. On the far wall behind the bar, a rack of tiki mugs still hung.I found myself looking for something special that felt as though it were a lodestone drawing me forward, deeper into the battered building. A song echoed in my ears that drowned out everything else, seeming to get louder as I continued onwards.

The sand abated somewhat as I neared a set of stairs that led up to the second floor. I climbed up, testing the steps beneath my feet. The wood was surprisingly sturdy, having been preserved by the years of salty breezes blowing through the decaying structure. The dark interior probably helped too, by keeping sunlight out of this area. The second floor was littered with old beat-up furniture. I kept following that memory of a song around the veranda to a door that still had a plaque reading “employees only”. I shoved it open and found myself staring at a room empty of much of anything, save for another door that read “office”. I went in. The office was dark, but dry. The scent of sea salt was fainter here. The desk looked as though the wood would crumble at a touch, but I ignored that as my focus was on something that still somehow hung in a frame behind it. It was a record, its label long gone, but even through the grime I could see the faint lettering inscribed on its surface: a signature. For the first time since coming down to Waikiki, I smiled. The song in my ears reached a frenzied chorus.

I lifted the record off the wall and held it in my talons. The light revealed that it had been decorated with a sketch of a parrot alongside the signature. I tucked it under my wing to bring with me to where I could hear someone calling my name downstairs. Emerging from the stairwell, I was immediately face to face with a very annoyed herd of ponies. Adam was glaring the hardest. “What was that you said about safety in numbers and not wandering off?” He sneered. “What on Earth were you thinking going up there?” The song in my head died mid-verse.

I shrunk back and fell butt-first onto the steps. “Sorry. I… I just… I don’t know what came over me. I saw the sign and… and…” I blinked. “It was like I was being called by someone. Or something.” I felt the weight of the record under one wing. I pulled it out carefully and held it out in front of me. “It was… this, I think. It was almost like it was calling me from… some other place … or maybe some other time.” Emmy grasped it in her magic. I did not want to let go.

“I won’t drop it or anything, really, Zoe. Just let me see and I’ll give it back, okay?” Reluctantly I let go. She lifted it into the light to examine it for a bit before passing it back to me. “Are you saying that you ran all the way up there and took this silly risk just to get a record autographed by Jimmy Buffett?” She raised an eyebrow.

I shuffled awkwardly. “Well, since you put it that way, yeah I did. I can’t really explain it, but I saw the name of the restaurant and it reminded me of him and his music.” I didn’t mention the phantom music that had led me to the record, not when I couldn’t think of a way to explain it. I trailed off and looked up into the eyes of the ponies and dog around me. Trish kept my gaze the longest. She of all ponies was like me in the sense that music was in her blood. And on her butt mark. She was the one who gestured for me to tuck it back under my wing. She mouthed at me “we’ll talk later.” I nodded slightly.

“Just take it with you. You can make it up to us by seeing if the kitchen here has anything intact, okay?” Trish said out loud. She turned to the others. “If any of us feels a compulsion like this, we should follow whoever has it just in case they get into trouble. Zoe was lucky in that the floor and stairs stayed intact, but I really don’t want to find out by experiment if ponies can get gangrene and survive amputations. Now, let’s see about that kitchen.”

The kitchen of Cheeseburger in Paradise had made the standard burger and fries fare that the name implied. The grills were rusted clean through, though the stainless steel sinks in the dishroom were still completely intact. Shuffling around brought out some skewers that could still be usable as well as a few smaller pans. We headed back outside with our stuff. A few more former eateries along the beach yielded some metal spatulas and spoons as well as more pots. No big dutch oven appeared, but there was a hibachi place that resulted in three large woks that had Emmy over the moon. We used those to carry our findings back towards the H1, as it was nearing sunset. Despite my distraction, we managed to make it back to Base before nightfall. We spent the evening around the fire discussing plans for where to visit next. The best possibility seemed to be the enormous mall at the west end of Waikiki. It was two storeys, somehow seemed to be in one piece as best we could tell, and had housed loads of places to eat. It also helped that there had been a Wal-Mart on the inland side as well, so that was added to our list of shopping destinations too.

One thing that we decided that we needed before going back down was a way of carrying our new finds. The woks had worked alright for this first trip, but if Emmy wanted to use them for cooking, we needed something better. Gambling that we would find something else down there tomorrow was risky, but none of us could think of anything up here that would be simple to make and easy to transport, especially if we had to get it through that narrow culvert. Finding an alternate route to get from Base to Honolulu would be part of tomorrow’s task. If we could get under the H1 on the west side of campus, we might be able to hack a trail through the jungle (come to think of it, hadn’t the van done just that when we Returned?) Encouraged by our adventures, everyone headed to their sleeping places one by one.

I stayed by the fire alone for a little while longer, turning the record over and over in my claws. The signature and the sketch flickered in the light cast by the fire. For a moment, I could have sworn I saw the parrot smile. I guess having a beak myself made reading the bird’s expression easier or something. There was no way to tell which of his albums the JB had signed, but I would have bet my last strip of jerky that it had been Cheeseburger in Paradise. As I traced the signature, I realized that this was as close as I had ever been to seeing Jimmy Buffett perform in person. My dad had been a huge fan and had seen him in concert. I looked up at the stars, so many more visible now that the lights had gone out. “Wherever you are, whenever you are, whatever you are, Jimmy, I hope you are still strumming your tunes.” I whispered into the starlight. A meteor streaked across the night sky as I watched. I said goodnight and carried my signed album to my nest and fell asleep with it under one wing.

The next morning we all met up by the campfire with determined looks on our faces. Our priorities: find an easier way to carry stuff from Honolulu than tying containers to our backs with rope (it chafes rather horribly), get whatever survival gear we could acquire, obtain more cooking gear, and keep an eye open for evidence of any kind that someone of any sentient species was living around here. Heck, we were archaeology students; we would take evidence of anyone who had recently inhabited the area and then left. With that in mind, we took the underpass along University Avenue (partially collapsed, but useable) into Honolulu. Our goal today was the Ala Moana shopping center and whatever was left of the nearby Walmart. There was no way of knowing just how much usable stuff we would be able to find there, but we are all children of the Mainland; Walmart was basically a god of commerce at whose altar we worshipped.

The going was still tough through the jungle in order to get to the underpass. We passed the van’s stripped remains on our way down. It wasn’t entirely in pieces, but anything useful that we could pry out had already been carried to Home Base. By now, most of us could navigate the jungle around us fairly well (though Emmy still had trouble with directions). There is a certain trick to getting through the dense foliage. You basically have to look through the stuff instead of at it. The goal is to find openings that you can use when walking through. As long as you don’t get yourself caught up in any plants with thorns or vines it’s pretty easy..

The underpass had a small stream going through it. It was bigger than the one at the culvert, but since there was more room, it was easy to avoid by taking a path around the edge. The six of us kept going along what used to be University before following the breaks in the forest to Kapiolani Boulevard. The remnants of the roads made getting through the trees and plants here easier. So did the fact that the pattern of growth down here was less dense than it was at Home Base. The remnants of the city around us were still eerily quiet. Our footsteps along here did not echo as much as they had down by Waikiki due to the muffling of the denser plant life that sprawled over the surrounding buildings. It looked like a modern Angkor Wat with roots prying their way into the masonry structures. The masonry was crumbling as a result. We steered clear of the weakened facades.

It took us about half an hour to navigate our way to the old mall. There was no traffic, of course, but we had to weave our way through the labyrinth of what used to be hotels and such. None of us said much. We were all feeling rather subdued by the taller silent buildings. This had been a place where people had gone by the thousands on vacation, but now it was nothing more than a ghost town with spires that were slowly being eaten away by a dense forest.

We finally made it to the Ala Moana mall. The seaward side was sagging heavily around the remnants of the parking structure, so we agreed to avoid that area and focus our efforts on the landward side when we got inside the mall. The Wal-Mart was on the sheltered side, so we hit that up first. It was not in the best shape, but still looked relatively intact. Most of the shelves were empty and falling over. The few that were not sagged under the weight of whatever had once been there. We paired off and split up to find whatever we could. Trish and I found ourselves in what had been sporting goods. I doubted we could find guns or something like that here, but camping supplies have to be durable, as do fishing poles and lines. If Doc and I needed to supplement our diets with meat of some kind, fishing would probably be our best bet here. Fishing line would be stronger than my inexpertly-made rope for snares too.

Evidently someone else who had gotten here first had had similar ideas. There were no poles of the kind I had hoped for and learned with when fishing back home. We did manage to find a couple skeins of fishing line though. There were also a few canvas covers that had once covered one of the storage racks that seemed to be intact enough to use. I don’t know what else was usable there. Most everything was either too fragile to touch without making it crumble or too rusted and heavy to be moved. I admit I cast longing looks at what was left of some of those hammocks people would hang between palm trees, but the fabric had deteriorated to the point where it would not have survived the rough route back to Home Base. We carried our finds back to the entryway to meet up with the others.

Emmy and Nic were probably the most successful. Nic had taken her over to the section with automotive stuff and home improvement things. They came out like bandits loaded with plastic buckets and cords of various extension and bungee varieties. Apparently plastic works wonders when it comes to keeping things intact when kept out of the sunlight. Nic had also managed to find one of those big kiddie swimming pools, you know the plastic ones about a yard across and a foot deep? His idea was to add skids or wheels to it from one of the automotive wheel sales areas and use that to transport stuff back to Home Base. They had also found plastic containers that we could use for storage of whatever else we could find if we could not carry it all in one trip.

Doc and Adam took the longest. None of us could quite figure out why, especially when Adam came back empty-hooved. Doc had a sort of glazed look in his eyes as he cradled something in his paws. “We ran into… something that that stupid Guidebook failed to mention.” Adam said, rolling his eyes. “Apparently the reason why Doc’s poochy kind is called Diamond Dogs is that they are instinctively drawn to precious stones and metals. Apparently it makes them go absolutely gaga.” He sighed. “One more thing we need to add to the list, I guess. The jewelry section in its entirety.” He gestured a little with a wing. “I don’t think he’ll leave this building without it.” Nic chuckled and pulled one of the plastic containers over to Adam and Doc.

“Here, dude. Go fill it up with whatever he wants. Who knows, there might be something useful to us as a whole, or at least to Doc. Maybe we can use the less valuable sparklies as fishing lures or something. After all, play jewelry earrings already have hooks built in.” Adam actually smiled at that. Dragging the container behind him, he led Doc back to the jewelry counter.

“We still need an easy way to get stuff back to Home Base.” Trish said. “No offense intended, Nic, but I am not sure your kiddie pool idea will work. It’s too big and hard to move. We would need an actual wagon or something of that sort.”

“Did anyone check toys?” I asked. “There might be a kids wagon over there, or maybe just parts for bicycles that we could work with to make something useful.”

As a group we wandered in that direction. There didn’t seem to be anything intact with the bicycles themselves, though I did find an air pump that we could use if we did find anything with intact tires. The main toy section was nothing much to speak of, but Emmy spotted a door that led to the stockrooms in the back. We went through and found the room to be cavernous and rather dark. “Hold on.” Emmy grunted with effort a little before managing to light our way into the room with her horn. The bright blue glow was enough to let us see shapes at least. A couple of them nearly made us break out in cheers.

In what had been the section with gardening supplies, we found three hefty wheelbarrows with big wheels made for rough ground. Between the four of us, we hauled all three of them through the store and to the main entrance with the rest of our stuff. It took some experimenting, but we eventually figured out a way to make a sort of harness out of bungee cords and canvas that allowed us to pull the ‘barrows behind whoever was wearing the thing. Since Trish and Nic were the strongest, they each laid claim to one of the ‘barrows. Emmy and I would work with the other, though we could not seem to manage a harness that didn’t get in the way of wings. I would end up pushing from behind unless Doc was around to use it as a real wheelbarrow.

Speaking of Doc, he and Adam appeared a few minutes later. Doc was cradling the plastic container of jewelry to his chest like it was a small child. I could have sworn he was even crooning to it like he was singing it to sleep. He stopped when he saw us. He even growled a little. Adam slapped his face with a wing to get his attention. “Doc, heel. These are our friends, remember?” He somehow managed to pull the box out of Doc’s grip and put it into one of the wheelbarrows. To our surprise, he then dumped a bottle of what looked like perfume or shampoo or something like that over the thing. Whatever it was, it still smelled strongly of flowers. Doc reeled away, whimpering. Adam turned to us. “I know it doesn’t look nice, but it’s the only way he won’t get territorial over his gems and gold. Once his sensitive nose gets used to the smell he’ll be back for it, but I figure it will give us enough time to get all of this back to Home Base. We can work on the mall another day. Doc needs to get his stash home first.” We were a bit perplexed, but willing to test out our new wheelbarrow wagons on the jungle ground. Emmy took first turn at our barrow and Trish and Nic took theirs. Adam helped Doc back to his feet and the two of them took up the rear of our little column. We followed the roads back to Home Base with little difficulty until we hit the denser jungle on the inland side of the H1. It was harder to keep the barrows moving there, but we managed to haul them through with a lot of grunting and probably turning the plants around us blue with our language. After a few spots of Emmy shooing me away from pushing while she pulled, I kind of floated between all three pullers, helping out wherever needed and getting them unstuck whenever there was a particularly troublesome branch or other obstacle.

Tired but content, we brought our finds back to Home Base. Doc was still somewhat glassy-eyed, so Adam gave him his happy box and Doc ambled off to where he slept. We could hear him picking through the box’s contents once his nose recovered enough to open it (Adam had doused the interior pretty thoroughly too). With Doc distracted and Nic and Emmy making lunch, Adam, Trish, and I debated what else to do. We didn’t want to go back to the area of Ala Moana without the rest of the group and Adam still smelled like the stinky sweet whatever he had used to distract Doc.

“Why not try the paths around Diamond Head? I mean, there are the remnants of some of the old military stuff there from World War Two. Maybe there is something we can use as an emergency shelter or something like that there.” Trish suggested. I shrugged. It was as good an idea as any. Adam seemed interested too, if for no other reason than to get away from Doc once the diamond dog realized who had been behind the overly enthusiastic perfuming of his hoard. We grabbed some fruit kabobs from Emmy and headed off towards the southeast corner of the island.

There had been several hiking trails around Diamond Head before we had Returned, so it seemed to me that there would be a few places where we could get through. We slipped under the H1 using the culvert exit and wandered our way towards the landmark. This area had been more residential than anything else, so there were few tall buildings around us as we found our way to the old trailhead. There was a path cut into the side of the mountain with the remnants of a trail, so we followed that up and into the monolith.

For those who do not know, Diamond head is an old volcanic crater. It is that iconic mountain that shows up in all the touristy postcards in the background. Where there were still people here, there would be lines of them climbing up the hiking trails to get a view of Waikiki from what was practically a bird’s eye view. Well now we decided to get a real bird's’ eye view, at least in my case. Inside the crater the environment is vastly different then it is outside. It is much drier inside and there is more scrub grass than jungle. It reminded me more of the drier parts of southern California, or maybe even where I was born in Colorado. The humidity was the same as everywhere else though.

We ran across the remnant of the park’s ranger station in the middle of the crater. The buildings had crumbled, but we could still tell that they had been buildings. We even went inside the one that was partially intact. No one was there of course, but it was interesting as we could look at an old map that showed the many hiking trails and access roads that went around the state park. One of the ones that looked promising was a tunnel dug into the rock wall of the old crater. We decided to check it out.

It was dark once we got past the entrance, with the basalt walls seeming to eat away at the light from the flashlight I had in my pack, but about halfway in, we noticed something strange. At around eye level for a pony, there were marks cut into the walls. I would have guessed that they were from back when tourists throunged the area and left graffiti, but a closer look showed that the names were not entirely human. Nor would humans have written the same kinds of descriptions that were next to each name. Here is what a few of them said:

Amos Windsor, age 28, London England. unicorn, crimson and white

Roslynn Salama, age 15, Los Angeles California USA. pegasus, blue and green

Jim Andrews, age 12, Honolulu Hawaii USA, zebra

Sarah Beeman, age 36, Helena Montana, USA, pony, brown and gray

Jennifer Carlisle, age 27, Manoa Hawaii USA, diamond dog

There were about two dozen more that we could see, just like that, in English. On another wall, there were similar markings cut in what looked like Chinese or maybe Japanese. It wasn’t something I could read, but I thought Emmy could try to puzzle them out. She had taken Japanese as her foreign language at University of California. As faded as the etching was, it would not be easy. Overall there looked to be about fifty names. Judging by how far back the names went into the cave and how faded the deepest ones were, ponies who Returned had been coming here for years to add their names, hometowns and descriptions into the record. If nothing else, that told us that we were far from the first ones to make it here. Yet we still had not found any of the people themselves. Where had they gone? Honolulu had had a population in the hundreds of thousands and had hosted millions of visitors as well. Yet there were only fifty individuals who recorded their names for posterity here? It was a disquieting thought.

Trish, Adam and I retreated in silence. As we stepped out into the sun, we all let out a sigh of relief that none of us knew we had been holding in. As we headed up the trail to the main lookout point, Trish broke the silence. “Well, we know we weren’t the first ones here now.“

“Yeah,” Adam said, kicking away a tumbleweed that had blown onto the trail. “So what? None of them are here now, obviously. So what the heck happened? You would think they would have left some kind of note saying where they went if they went anywhere and we have found nothing like that. Zero. Zilch. Nada.”

“Maybe something big happened, like whatever changed the vegetation on the ocean side of the H1. If the last ponies here settled down by Waikiki or something, anything the ocean threw at them would be pretty rough on them. After all you guys saw that tv footage of that tsunami that hit a while back, right? Something like that or one of the hurricanes they get in the Caribbean could wipe a bunch of makeshift shelters clean off the map.” I said.

“Do you think that could happen to us too?” Trish asked with a slight shiver. “It’s not something I care to think about.”
“As long as we keep Home Base where it is for now, it should be okay, at least in the case of a tsunami or rogue wave. Storm surge too. I would want a more secure place in case of a big storm though. Those winds can be wicked.” I said.

“How do you know all that?” Adam asked. “You’re from the Midwest. Since when have you been through a hurricane?”

“I haven’t. A hurricane, any ways. I have had to shelter from tornadoes a few times though. A few of my friends went storm chasing every spring. I picked up a lot from them and dabbled in a meteorology class for a while. Wish it had taught me more about tropical weather in retrospect.” I scuffed a foot in the dust. “We’re almost at the top. Let’s keep going so we can see the view and be back to Home Base before sunset. I really don’t want to be out here after dark.” The others nodded their agreement and we started up the last stretch of trail towards the summit.

When we reached the observation area at the peak, we all three sat down to have a breather. It was not nearly as high as when Nic, Emmy, and I had climbed the Sleeping Giant, but the view was even better, as the sky around us was clear. We could see all along the coast almost to Pearl Harbor from here. The military base in the distance was a dark shadow; we put its appearance to the back of our minds for now as we looked over Honolulu. Below us, the beach was patchy and there was not much left of the breakwater that had helped protect Waikiki, but the terrain could easily have come off any number of movies from the “shipwrecked on a deserted island” category. We could see a little bit of smoke further inland from whatever Emmy and Nic were cooking, but that was the only visible evidence of someone living here.

For me, the wind at the top of Diamond Head felt like heaven against my wings. I opened them up to let the salty sea air waft through my feathers. After a moment’s hesitation, Adam did the same. I watched as he seemed to feel the air currents and shifted his wings. I don’t think he was even aware of it, but it seemed like the stronger gusts were playing with his feathers, trying to lift him off the ground from where he stood. Adam opened his eyes and noticed. He frowned and closed his wings. “We should go back down. I don’t want to be blown off the mountain.” He turned and trotted towards the trail. Trish turned to follow. “You coming?” She asked.

“I’ll catch up to you in a minute. Go ahead. I just want to feel the wind for a little while longer.” I said. She started down the narrow trail. I faced the wind again and opened my wings wide, attempting a few of the lift exercises that the Guide had included for pegasi and griffons. For a moment, I almost felt the wind lifting me off the ground before releasing the air pressure and settling me down again. I sighed and privately promised myself that I would come up here again to chase the wind.

Comments

[Dances With Unicorns]

What gets me is the lack of any sign of prolonged inhabitation in any of the places that our protagonists have visited so far. We have the names of fifty individuals written on the walls. So, where did those earlier returnees live, grow crops, and have a school for the younger returnees? While that small group of friends can’t check every building, they can look for a returnee settlement’s garbage dump and compost heap that would be a short walk from, but not next to their settlement. Yet, a garbage dump and a compost heap being in a settlement’s back yard most likely would not be visible from the streets or highways. That’s why their group needs to get their winged members into the air to search for those artifacts and ecofacts associated with post-Event occupation.

[Dances With Unicorns]

I have just realized that this group of friends has all of Honolulu’s beaches all to themselves, yet no one has gone surfing yet! Many of us have seen dog surfing videos, so why not allow us to read about another dog surfing the waves of Honolulu’s beaches?

[Dances With Unicorns]

“Yeah,” Adam said, kicking away a tumbleweed that had blown onto the trail. “So what? None of them are here now, obviously. So what the heck happened? You would think they would have left some kind of note saying where they went if they went anywhere and we have found nothing like that. Zero. Zilch. Nada.”

Zoe could say “Come to think of it, we are not acting any differently than those people who came before us who left no notes on where they setup their camp and where they are now. We have not been writing any notes for those returnees who will come back in the future, or even tomorrow morning, telling them where we are. Shouldn’t we put up a few notes telling them where we are now? Maybe, we can find a local sign shop that has those temporary, roadside message boards with reusable letters? You know those signs we have all seen outside retail stores advertising their holiday sales. We can then search the highway department to find electronic safety signs brought back to life with come to life spells cast on them?”