The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy by Ryan Winfield Read Free Book Online Page B

confusion.
    What just happened? The cold metal floor presses against my cheek; something hard is crushing my hip. My fingers move, searching—my face, my chest, my legs. Wet pants. Is it blood? No, it’s urine. I’ve wet myself. I wiggle my toes, bend my knee. Throbbing pain. My hands find a lump on my forehead, but no blood. My foot finds a surface, I push my hip free from where it’s wedged. When I sit up, the entire blind Earth seems to spin fast and in the wrong direction.
    Hearing a soft whistle coming from the front of the dark car, I shimmy free and crawl toward it. The car must be on its side because the seat backs now hang from the side wall, and I grab them one by one and pull myself along. The whistle grows louder as I move forward, and I feel a cold blast of air against my face. Must be a ventilation fan. I grab for another seatback and my hand lands on stone. Hard, cold stone. I turn my face toward the rush of air and see a gash in the car illuminated by sparkling benitoite outside. Must be a cavern out there.
    I scramble to my feet and use the seatbacks to climb the wall toward the opening. Easing my head out, I look out on an immense darkness, cold and crisp, the blue-jewel cavern ceiling glinting on the metal surface of the tipped train.
    “Hello!”
    Hello, hello, hello ... my voice comes echoing back.
    Carefully, I hoist myself from the crippled car and stand outside. A cold blast hits my face, and I look away, blinking to clear my watering eyes. When I look back, I see the shadowed cavern spread out before me.
    It’s gorgeous! Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I can feel the size of it. The emptiness, the space. The ceiling is high, its blackness punctuated by a million luminescent jewels. It’s cold here. And it smells funny, too. Or maybe it just seems like it because it doesn’t smell—at least not like conditioned air.
    From somewhere out of the blackness below, a strange but beautiful song erupts. A high and tiny warbled kind of birdsong like I’ve heard in educationals. Another joins in. And another. A whole chorus now of pitch-perfect birds singing in the dark below. Then, as if responding to the singing, an orange glow fades slowly brighter on my right. A light unlike any light I’ve ever seen. Not the dead white glare of light-emitting diodes, not the blue-black flicker of ultraviolet, but a soft golden glow.
    The birdsong rises, and the orange glow comes on fast, the fading sky-hung jewels shrinking from the advancing orange into a deep, deep blue, a blue like I’ve never dreamed.
    Then, from between two jagged peaks in the wall, a yellow fireball climbs into view, blinding me. I turn away and face the fresh breeze, looking out on the twinkling stars of forgotten constellations sinking in the deep-blue horizon, sent back into the blackness of space by the sun rising over the world.
    I’ve died and gone to Eden.

Part Two

 

CHAPTER 6
What in the World Happened?
    Sunlight on my face ...
    For the first time ever in my life.
    I’m standing on top of the wrecked train car, its front half pinned beneath a rockslide at the entrance of a tunnel, its back half lying free on a steel trestle spanning a deep canyon.
    The trestle connects two mountainside tunnels, the one caved in ahead, and one lower behind. I feel bad for those few retirees ahead of me, crushed beneath the stones, but I feel lucky that I moved seats and survived.
    I look out and devour the view—
    The canyon leads down to a pine forest. A real forest, just like my name—Van Houten. The sky is full blue now and the singing birds have ceased, the only sound that of the wind whipping up the mountain slope. Cool wind on my cheeks, warm sun on my neck—so unlike anything I ever imagined.
    I’m seeing everything I’ve read about for the first time. A distant bird circling above the trees, its flapless wings riding an invisible current. A green valley below the forest, a silver river snaking through its center. And beyond