Isle of Man (The Park Service Trilogy #2) by Ryan Winfield Read Free Book Online

sophisticated. It has a concave wall lined with LCD screens in front of several cockpit-style chairs, complete with joysticks for controlling drones and fire switches to release weapons.
    I sit in one of the chairs and notice that the seating surface is heated with buttons for vibration-massage settings, just in case you need to relax a little between kills, I guess. I imagine Dr. Radcliffe and his team of environmental terrorists spending countless hours down here “working.” I wonder if they enjoyed the hunt. I wonder if they kept score of their kills. The thought of it makes me really dislike the professor, and I wouldn’t be able to forgive him except he claims the command center was off limits to everyone except Radcliffe and a select few others, and I’m tempted to believe him because he doesn’t seem very familiar with the room.
    After mumbling many pseudo-profanities, the professor finally locates the mainframe racked up in a server closet and tells us to hope for the best while he reboots the “Big Iron.”
    The computers are noiseless. The screens flicker, then run a dizzying display of code before going dark and coming back on again with a patchwork of vibrant scenes from around the park: a snowy sunset high in the Himalayas; a gorgeous view of blue ocean waves breaking on a tropical coast; a prairie caught in the gold light of sunrise; a billowing dust storm in a desert; a peekaboo view of reflected moonlight in a tangled marshland as a drone glides on its mindless midnight mission. Lowlands and highlands, rivers and lakes—it’s an orgy for my tired eyes, which have been four days in this gray and dreary underworld looking for bloated cadavers in the dark.
    “Is all this happening somewhere right now?” Jimmy asks, stepping forward and reaching out to touch a screen.
    “Yes,” I say, reminding myself that he’s never seen a video image before. “These are from cameras mounted on drones.”
    The screens change to new images every sixty seconds or so, and with the third changeover something terrible happens. All at once, the screens combine to create one image the size of the entire wall. The scene is of an ice sheet in the permanent twilight of early arctic winter. Several seal groups huddle beside blocks of ice next to their breathing holes. A handful of fur-clad hunters inches toward them, hidden behind a white, skin-covered blind that they push ahead of themselves on the ice. When they’re close, the hunters spring out from behind the blind and rush to the seals and crush their skulls with clubs.
    “Oh, no!” Hannah exclaims, beside me.
    A few of the white pups rush for the breathing hole but are caught up and clubbed, then hung from hooks on the wood framing of the blind, and bled. Several moments of butchery follow, and an impressive radius of ice around the scene turns blood-red. Just as I’m about to ask how far away the camera is, crosshairs appear on the screen. A few seconds later, two of the seal hunters explode, their severed limbs skittering, along with hunks of blubber, across the bloody ice. Another hunter is left in the frigid water, clinging to the icy edge of the hole blasted by the bombs. He struggles and kicks to climb out, scrambling up and running across the barren ice. The camera follows him, the crosshairs zero in again. One moment he’s running for his life, the next moment he’s a pink mist, and only a blood-stained hole is left in the ice to mark his life.
    The gory scene disappears as the screens change over to various peaceful views of the park. When I peel my eyes away and look around the room, I notice Jimmy clutching the back of a command chair, his face frozen in an ashen stare.
    “What’s wrong with him?” the professor asks.
    I put my hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.
    “He’s upset because he’s seen this before in person.”
    “Ah ... ,” the professor sighs, “it never gets any easier to watch. Especially when they club the little