Akshay slid out from underneath the golf cart. A film of dust covered his palms, his eyes were red, and his knees stung as if he’d run them back and forth over a cheese grater. His tongue felt dry in his mouth; it ached for a Coke.
The next thing he noticed was that he was alone.
He pulled himself back onto his feet. He did not mind the dust. Crawling around in the dirt came second nature to him – he was ten years old, fond of football and army games, and by far the best of his friends at hide and seek.
Perhaps this is why when the first explosion sounded, he crawled beneath the golf cart while the rest of his family ran.
Akshay began to walk. He focused on the sound his Hi-Zip Vans made on the pathway – the barely audible tapping of soft rubber soles against cobblestone. His footsteps sounded especially loud. It seemed like only moments ago when the park had been alive with shrieking, giggling, screaming from the top of the wooden roller coaster, distant laughter from the fun house and Hall of Mirrors. It seemed like no time at all since the explosion had passed, or if it had, only the time it takes to finish an ice cream cone. His footsteps had been a single set of footsteps in a swirling sea of footsteps. Now it was all he could hear.
Akshay paused to take stock. He had a strip of arcade tickets in his back pocket, a DreamLand Amusements ball cap on his head, and in his hand, a pop gun his father had won him from the Ye Old Shooting Range in the Wild West section of the park. He would’ve had his phone, too, he realized, but he’d passed it off to his baby sister when she’d started to fuss while waiting in line for the spinning teacups.
It was a perfect day for a family of four at the theme park – the sky carried only a handful of clouds, and tickets were half-price for children under twelve. It was perhaps three o’ clock in the afternoon, and might’ve been hot if not for a cool September breeze rolling in off the lake.
DreamLand Park had been strategically built on the shores of Lake Warren, placing it only a short tram ride away from Boston, and right in the middle of the boating and restaurant goldmine of the waterfront. From anywhere in DreamLand one could take in all Lake Warren’s stunning views had to offer: historic sailing ships, endangered wildlife, natural beaches or – as in the case of today – military helicopters on the horizon.
The further down the path Akshay wandered, the more things he began to step on. At first it was only popcorn and popcorn kernels, or else the occasional grease-sodden carton of French fries. Now more and more balloons began to appear. They were tangled in telephone wires, deflating on the ground, snagged on topiaries, or else floating away over the park and the lake – away, caught in an updraft, growing fainter and fainter until they were nothing but specks on the horizon. There might’ve been a thousand of them. His sister’s had had one with Mickey Mouse ears, Akshay remembered. He became angry when a piece of gum stuck to his shoe.
There were more things around the next bend. Part of a character costume lay discarded on the ground – a giant chipmunk head. He saw a wind breaker, a wallet, a diaper bag, a shoe. Akshay waded through the litter and passed a gift shop. The front windows had shattered and the alarm was going off. He stepped over the empty windowsill, taking care not to tread on any glass , and picked a glitter pen out of the wreckage. He didn’t really want it, but it was free.
He exited through the emergency exit of the gift shop, then tread across a green lawn toward the fountain marking the entrance to Jungle Town. The pathway was lined with garden lights; drum music sounded from speakers hidden inside rows of ferns. He crossed a wooden bridge over an artificial waterfall. The air grew humid. He looked down over the railing, into the clouds of steam below, and saw that all the fish were floating belly-up. The air smelled overwhelmingly of garlic.
On the other side of the bridge, Akshay spied a booth advertising fried dough and funnel cakes. His stomach growled. As he drew closer, a thin trail of piss colored smoke came pouring out of the window beneath the awning. Someone had left the deep fryer running. Dangerous, he thought, remembering how his mother would scold him for leaving the oven on. He pushed aside the cash register and tip jar, leaped over the counter, and landed neatly on the other side.
The booth was empty. Someone had left an xtra-large DreamLand t-shirt on the ground. The register was open but empty of cash, and flour dusted the counters. Akshay had never been behind the counter of a store or restaurant before, and despite being undeniably alone, could not shake the feeling that he was doing something wrong. He walked past a shelf bearing bags of powdered sugar and squeeze-bottles of honey and stopped in front of the sizzling fryer. Akshay reached out his hand to turn it off.
Something skittered behind him.
Akshay froze. He raised the pop gun slowly out in front of him, forcing it to stay level despite his shaking hands. Something had knocked over a garbage can under the counter, spilling an avalanche of trash across the floor. He could hear the crumpling of paper, the tinkling of glass, a wet-sounding snuffle. Something small and brown was hunched over the fallen trash can. He took a step closer, craning his neck to see. A head shot up. A pair of yellow, humanoid eyes met Akshay’s. The boy yelled, scrambling backwards, the pop gun slipping out of his hands. The monkey’s hackles shot into the air; its lips curled back in a tiger-like snarl.
Akshay vaulted over the counter to escape the same way he’d come in. A second monkey emerged from behind a cooler. It looked as large as Akshay. As the boy crawled back through the window, he turned around and locked eyes with the creature. Blisters had broken out under its muzzle. The fur along its nostrils was sticky with funnel cake batter and blood. Its eyes were red and swollen, streaming with tears that trickled all the way down to its neck and matted its mane. It stared at him, hissing, tensing its back muscles to leap. Akshay could not move. He had only ever seen a baboon in the zoo, but here, its gaze held a kind of power it had never had behind bars or glass.
A chatter from above broke the spell. A third monkey, this one no bigger than a kitten, dropped down from the ceiling fan and landed with a splash into the deep fryer. Sizzling and high screaming filled the air. Akshay yelled again and ducked as boiling oil droplets flew in all directions, pricking his bare arms. He watched from his place on the counter as a paw emerged from the oil, reaching for nothing, A volcanic amount of smoke poured out from the metal baskets. The first monkey dashed into the trash can for cover, while the enormous baboon howled in fury as a splatter of hot oil landed on its shoulder. The smell reminded Akshay of a BBQ on the 4th of July. Through the smoke screen, Akshay thought he saw a flash of the little monkey, sodden, pulling itself out of the wire basket and falling in a heap onto the countertop, but he had already jumped out of the booth and did not waste any time looking back.
Akshay landed in the grass on the other side of the window. He landed so hard he nearly twisted his ankle. There were more monkeys loose outside, he realized, milling around in the sunlight and rolling through the automatic sprinkler system. He saw a second baboon ripping stuffed animals down from the Ring-Toss booth, and another giving its baby a piggy back ride across the lawn. Two more had opened up a popsicle cart and were pulling out fudgesicles and rocketpops.
Akshay ran past them. He couldn’t remember when he’d started running. He couldn’t a time when his lungs had ever felt like this, as if they were water balloons filling up too much under a spigot. A monkey hissed at him as he ran passed – he’d somehow stepped on its tail. The ground started to rumble, and the jungle-view monorail came into view, rolling by on an elevated track. He looked up and saw a wink of silver and heard a roar of wind, before watching as it slid back into the jungle canopy. The windows had been dark.
Akshay kept running. He ran past a public restroom, past a playground, past an insect house and the stage where they held the monkey demonstrations. He passed a café where flies were beginning to buzz around plates left out on the patio tables, he passed an overturned stroller he did not stop to look into, and he passed a carousel that was – inexplicably – still turning. When he finally stopped, he stopped because his lungs felt as if they were burning twin holes through his chest, stopped blood had begun to trickle down from his nose, onto his shirt. He bent over his knees, gasping for breath, coughing into his sleeve. There was blood in his spit. He thought, for a moment, that he could hear police sirens in the distance. His heart beat faster. He began to walk towards the noise, only to realize it was the alarm from the gift-shop. The only other sounds were the monkeys chattering in the distance, and a distant calliope playing on a loop. The air smelled overwhelmingly of garlic.