“Um.” Laura held up her hands, fingers hanging down, and dripping from the tips of her fingers, were thick globs of blueberry jam. “This is gross.”
​
“Well,” Houston pressed his lips together for a moment, “maybe you two will solve our food problem.” And then he burst out laughing.
​
“Would this stuff even be edible?” It was blue, but so was the ingredients I had been making the sandwiches out of. “I mean, wouldn't it be radioactive?” Houston shrugged. I stared at my hand, the one that didn't have a palm full of sand anymore. Considering I had been drenched in ooze, a little more radioactive activity shouldn't hurt. I licked my palm. It was thick, it was sticky, and it tasted exactly like the blue peanut butter I had been eating all summer. I had to smack my tongue against the roof of my mouth to get all the peanut butter down. “Tastes normal.”
​
“Really, you had to just... lick your hand?” Houston rolled his eyes. “Do you expect everyone to lick your palms?”
“No?” I said what I'm sure he wanted me to say. “I can scrape my palms onto bread, or plates, or... their hands?” I nudged Laura's arm and when she looked over at me I tilted my head back.
“Uh.”
​
“Jam me.” I wiggled and got my head under her outstretched hands, opening my mouth and sticking out my tongue like I was trying to catch a snowflake.
​
“At least you aren't licking me.” She mumbled as a glob of jam from her middle finger landed on my tongue. It slid down to the back of my throat and I swallowed.
​
“That tastes normal too.”
​
“Well I'm glad it tastes normal to you, though you might just be radioactive freaks.”
​
“Thanks Houston.” I grumbled. “No peanut butter for you.” He didn't take me seriously, just telling Laura and I to figure out a way to stop secreting the insides of America's favorite sandwich (at least before peanut allergies gripped the nation).
​
Laura figured out pretty quickly that keeping her hands closed stopped the globs of jam from dripping out of her fingers. That trick didn't work for me. Peanut butter seeped out from between my fingers.
“You know,” I told Laura after scraping some built up peanut butter on a large rock. “When my mother said she was worried I'd become a fat, food-stain-and-crumb-covered, lazy, couch surfer if I didn't build a work ethic, I don't think anyone expected the stickiest food to be leaking from my palms.”
She giggled, the tiny smile lingering for a moment before she glanced out towards the slow moving machines in the distance. I turned as well, spotting the bright blue movement easily against the darkening sky. The coaster was currently looping its track around the top of the swing machine.
“It's only a matter of time, isn't it?” She whispered. I'm not sure if she didn't stutter, or if I was getting better at ignoring it.
​
“Probably.” Of course the rides would come after us. Now that they've smashed every building on the island, all us survivors were clustered together, with nowhere to run.
“Hey guys.” Lucy came over, face and legs a deep red. “We got confirmation of rescue coming, but it will be two days. The nearest islands also suffered from the earthquake so rescue boats are way further out.”
“Do you think they'll ignore us for two days?” I pointed to the quiet whirring rides as another pile of peanut butter sloughed off my hand at Lucy's feet.
“No idea. Person on the other end of the radio, he thinks the original owners of the islands, the ones who built the nuclear power plants, mistreated the native people, and got most of them killed when the plants failed.”
“So, the local legends of angry spirits waiting for the perfect time to strike isn't just a gimmick for the haunted house?”
“Guess not.” Lucy shrugged. “It would explain the machines coming to life.”
It made sense, in a crazy way. Like it made sense that Laura could secrete jam because she had splotches of it on her clothes and skin when she fell into the ooze. And my hands had been sticky with peanut butter, obviously having touched the incomplete sandwiches during the initial earthquake.
“Oh, and Houston is going to set up a night watch schedule, so let's go.” Lucy walked away without even making sure we would follow, but that was just Lucy.
“I guess we are still working.” I grumbled. “Since radioactivity, rides coming to life, and new food producing abilities aren't anywhere in the contract section on being able to stop working before the end of summer.”
“Come on.” Laura grabbed my sticky hand. “Maybe Houston had a plan to deal with the rides.”
Houston may have been the man who solved the great water bottle shortage two weeks into summer, and the great power outage at four weeks, rumored to stop bullies in their tracks with just a look, but nope, he didn't have a plan to combat the rides coming to life week ten of our summer contracts.
I'm not sure any of the grumbling surrounding Houston's admission to not knowing what to do was actually all that serious. How does one prepare for the inevitable machines powered by nuclear waste and angry spirits uprising against the species of their creators? Like I said, it's not covered in the employee handbook, of which I'm sure Houston had memorized after working here twelve consecutive summers.
When no one actually decided to start a mutiny while Houston let us comprehend his lack of knowledge, he gave out the schedule of the night watch and told everyone else to try to get some sleep.
“Hey,” I approached Houston as he and Lucy settled down on the edge of the campfire light to take first watch. “Um, you didn't give Laura or I any watch shifts.” And this was the guy who rotated me through every job Blue Zone offered before admitting I was too clumsy to properly pull my weight, and if I wasn't making the bare minimum wage he said he would've docked my pay.
“I know.” Houston sighed and rubbed his temples. “Don't rub it into the others taking extra. But as much as it pains me to admit, you and Laura are our best bet for survival, so you need to be well rested.”
I snorted. Then started laughing, even grabbing at my stomach as I doubled over laughing. My shirt was going to be sticky now, but maybe I should just get used to being sticky, since I had yet to be able to stop the slow secretion of peanut butter.
“Yeah,” Houston brought out his famous off duty sarcastic voice, “real awesome that our survival may rest in the sticky hands of the clumsiest seventeen year old alive and the shy introvert mess because they can now make a sandwich needing only bread supplied to them.”
It sank in then. If rescue didn't get here before the rides decided to finish the rest of us off, we were doomed.
Laura was sitting on the opposite far end of the circle of light, her back towards everyone. She was curled up, arms wrapped around her knees when I sat down next to her.
“What do we do Calvin?” Her voice was shaky and thin, a string about to break. “I'm scared.” And then it snapped, and she was sobbing into her knees again.
I certainly didn't know what to do. There was nothing I could say to reassure Laura that wasn't a lie, and what the hell could peanut butter and jam do against living machines.
“I wish I knew.” I had to say something. She cried harder and threw her arms around me, sobbing into my shoulder now. I wished she wasn't crying, but somewhere between the craziness, it wasn't all terrible. Laura's arms around me felt warm. I had been amazed at her determination not to leave me behind, despite my clumsiness slowing us down. I had always been impressed at how she handled children as a mascot without words. And even being sweaty and red faced at the end of her shifts, she was always smiling.
I fell into an uneasy sleep, Laura nestled up against me, literally crying herself to sleep. While I couldn't say for sure, I doubted any of the other survivors got much sleep either.
Morning came and the one bright side the rising sun showed us was the coaster and the swings were still just hanging out together on the park side of the island.
Houston divided some of the emergency cracker rations and Laura and I helped make them little sandwiches. Peanut butter and jam crackers were a better way to start using our rations than the crackers alone. Well, everyone except Ricky. The smallest of the child survivors, he was also unfortunately allergic to peanut butter. Laura gave him lots of extra jam. Ricky's mother didn't stop glaring at me through the whole meal. Like I chose to leak a deadly allergen from my hands without any control over it.
Laura at least was able to stop the jam flow, me, I just kept leaving globs of the blue goo anywhere I went. Some of the kids, not Ricky, started using the peanut butter mixed with sand to build elaborate castles, animals, people, and they even started building a wall between our beach and the strip of trees keeping the park and the administrative buildings separate.
No one wanted to crush the kids' dreams. If the ants didn't eat the wall, peanut butter and sand weren't going to be enough to protect us.
“Calvin and Laura come here!” Houston called from the boat we managed to get a radio signal from. He was leaning against the lower railing, lower because the boat was tilted, with another man next to him. “This is Bobby.” He nodded to the shorter, pudgier, and more balding man. “He's a mechanical engineer, and he might have an idea to stop those.” He said. Then nodded towards the metal scraping that was so constant now, I almost forgot about it.
I looked over my shoulder to see that the coaster had moved closer to us, circling a group of trees while the swing ride lumbered after it. A big glob of peanut butter made a splat sound on the deck; I thought it summed up my thoughts nicely on the matter.
“I was hoping they'd just run out of power,” Bobby's voice was the most nasally monotone I had ever heard. “But since that doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon...” Another glob of peanut butter hit the deck. “Our best bet might be you two,” Bobby nodded to me and Laura, who by now had half hidden herself behind me again. “Gumming up the works.”
“What?” I thought I knew what he meant, but I asked for two reasons, one, I really wanted to make sure I heard him right, and two, if I did, not only would it mean Laura and I facing the rides in order to stop them with our strange new abilities, it also meant he was missing a perfect pun opportunity and I wanted to see if he would rectify it.
“Seizing up the gears.” Bobby clarified. When neither myself nor Laura made any acknowledgement of understanding what he was saying, Bobby continued. “Breaking the mechanical movement. Sticking the moving parts. Um,” Bobby ran a hand over his almost hairless head.
“Oh,” I tried to snap my fingers, but the only sound I ended up making was another two squelches of the smaller chunks of peanut butter hitting the deck. “You mean jamming up the works?” Houston put his palm across his face. Bobby blinked, sniffed, and then sighed the kind of disappointed sigh I was used to hearing from my parents whenever I brought home a bad grade or broke something from being clumsy, both frequent occurrences.
“D-do you really think it will work?” Laura stood besides me now, one hand gripping my wrist.
“Well...” Bobby dragged out the word until Houston cut him off.
“It might be our only hope.” I felt Laura's arm shake my arm, another plop of peanut butter falling, this time onto my shoe.
“Well, it is certainly better than my plan.”
“What is your plan?” Houston took the bait.
“Hoping at least one of the machines, or spirits possessing them, or whatever, is allergic to peanuts, or blueberries, or both.” Houston didn't look like he was going to respond, but I heard an angry grunt from the dock. “No offense to Ricky or his mother!” I called out. That earned me a little giggle from Laura, and her fingers loosening a little around my wrist.