“C-C-Cal-Calvin!” Laura yelled. Her panic did nothing for the splitting headache and body pains that left me unresponsive to her first scream. “C-Cal-Calvin!” She tried again, her hands shaking me.

​

I blinked my eyes open. Laura was looking down at me, brown eyes leaking tears, nose dripping, cute little round face scrunched up in the worst ugly cry I've ever seen. Beyond her head, and her black hair falling over her shoulders in waves, was the blue ceiling.

​

You'd think a blue ceiling would be indicative of where I was lying on the floor, but that wasn't the case on Blue Adventure Isle. Everything was blue here: furniture, rides, buildings, uniforms, souvenirs, and the food.

​

“Can you move?” Laura sniffed, her stuttering falling out of focus while I tried to remember why I ended up on the floor. Slowly I managed to push myself up to a seated position, getting a better look around the room.

​

The fridge, the scattered and shattered plates, bread, and couch reminded me where I was and what I had been doing. I had been in the break room making peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches for the other employees who didn't want to eat at any of the food stalls around the island.

​

“Ugh.” I groaned. Everything hurt, probably because the building had been shaking and the only way I could keep my balance is on a bike so I was knocking into everything. I'm pretty sure I was the one who flung the plates off the counter.

​

“Thank goodness.” She mumbled.

​

“Is the earthquake over?” I reached up to rub my head, pausing when I realized my hand was covered in blue peanut butter.

​

“I think so.” She said. Laura stood, her knees shaking under the edge of her cargo shorts. She moved to the window, black hair swaying. “But... something else is happening out there.” Her thin arms gripped the bottom of the window and she pushed it open, and now I could hear the screams. Distinct words weren't making it to us, out here at the administrative building's break room, but Laura was right.

​

Those weren't the screams of guests getting thrills from the rides.

​

“Um, Laura,” I said. I was looking at the door to the break room staring at the viscous bright green goo leaking in the gap. Part of me was grateful to see a color other than blue in the nearly three months of working here as a water boy and lunch maker for employees. “There is ooze.” Every other part of me was worried about the goo.

 

“Well that's bad.” She crouched next to me.

​

“Nothing in the employee handbook emergency section said anything about ooze!” I hissed.

​

“Don't yell at me.” She grumbled. Arms crossing over her chest, blueberry jam stains on her clothes and skin, she shrunk away from me. Her body shook with sobs. “I just w-wanted to work with kids and b-ecause of my st-stutter they put me in the mascot c-costume!”

​

“Laura-”

​

“And now everything is worse!”

 

“Laura-”

 

“And you're mad at me-”

 

“I'm not mad at you!” I screamed. She hiccupped and buried her head in her knees. “I'm sorry for yelling.” I knew she wasn't good with confrontation. “I'm not mad at you.” She continued to cry. It was the time I accused her of taking my chair at the employee training meeting all over again. Sobbing and stuttering her explanation of me misreading the seating chart.

​

“I, uh,” she gasped. “I know.”

​

“Okay. Let's try to get out of here.” I groaned as I pushed myself up to my feet. I walked to the window, letting Laura sniffle her composure back as I looked out. It wasn't a huge drop to the ground, and despite the screaming coming from the attraction-filled side of the island, rides suitable for all ages, the surrounding trees looked calm.

 

When I looked up, towards the top of the roller coaster and the giant swing that I would stare at multiple times a day, they weren't there. I remembered first seeing them from the ship, awed once more at the crazy idea to spend work at a summer resort on an island. “Laura,” I waved a hand at her. “You have got to see this.”

​

The large umbrella-like top of the swing ride was off the pole, the long chains and swing bottoms moving and walking the top around. I felt Laura's warmth press into my side, her hand gripping mine. The giant swing's top was swishing as it moved. Rarely would we see one of the navy, sky, or royal blue chairs over the tops of the trees before it was lowered once more to the ground.

​

“What the-”

​

Now the trees were shaking, ones closer and closer. There was a screech, not a human sound, but metal scraping.

​

“Move!” I dragged Laura away from the window with me, tripping over the mess. We ended up in a heap on the ground next to the couch as the wall with the window was smashed in with a piece of blue track from the newest world's tallest coaster, Screaming Deamon.

​

“D-did the p-park come to life?” Laura whispered.

​

“Seems like it.” I groaned. Laura was half on me, she was tiny, barely five feet, and maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet. I wasn't groaning from her weight, but groaning about the situation. The metal screeching was closer now. “We gotta get out of here.” I pushed Laura off and we struggled to get to our feet, shaking off drywall dust, some blue from the paint and white. We looked at the door, and the ooze.

​

“Don't like that.” She mumbled.

​

“Yeah.” We turned and climbed onto the track, looking out and seeing it was connected to more tracks, some trees knocked out of the way, leading towards the park. “Use the track to get out the window?” The track shuddered, knocking me right back over, cutting my knee on a bolt.

​

“Calvin!” She grabbed my shirt and yanked me off, as the coaster cars came and screeched to a stop just at the end of the track. The neon paint job, eyes and horns on the front car, and a spiked tail on the back, black designs on the blue cars, moved. The eyes looked over, the horns wiggled like eyebrows, and the tail twitched. The track was shuddering some more, metal screeching, and it was moving, retracting towards the back end of the coaster car.

​

“To the ooze!” I hated it. Stumbling over the broken plates and the overturned furniture towards the bright, possibly glowing, substance. But it had to be better than getting run over or crushed by a roller coaster come to life.

​

Laura was the one to pull the door open, and the goo rushed over our feet. It seeped into my socks, and my feet burned. We ran down the hall, through the strange goo. My foot hit an uneven part in the floor, and I crashed face first into it. Everything burned now, an alcoholic burn in my mouth with a strong taste of fermented fish. The splash next to me told me I hadn't let go of Laura when I fell, rather dragged her down with me.

​

She was up faster, spitting and coughing while she pulled with all her strength at my arm. The blue walls and floor were shaking again, and we started hearing more crashing down around us as the track started rebuilding through the building.

​

The handbook may not have said anything about ooze, but there were pages on the evacuation protocol. The  evacuation point was the docks at the midpoint of the island..

​

We stumbled our way outside. Glancing back at the building for a moment we saw the track winding its way in and out of the building. Then we heard the rushing of the car as it followed the track to the top, the building collapsing in a heap.

​

Laura and I ran. We saw plenty more cracks in the ground, lots more ooze glowing where the fissures occurred. Our hands were still locked as our feet pounded the blue painted pavement path weaving between trees. It should have been easier to run than the windy hiking trails, but I managed to stumble on every other crack, dragging Laura down with me. I gave her an opportunity to let go and run ahead without me, but her fingers only clutched mine tighter as she pulled me to my feet.

​

She may have an issue with stuttering, but she was always nice. After upsetting her during orientation, I found her during free time to apologize. She was sitting in the corner of the outdoor theater, holding a packet of information about Blau, the blue cat mascot she would be this summer. She forgave me and turned back to her papers. When I made a joke about everything being blue, she chuckled.

​

“I k-know right?” She stared at me with wide eyes for a moment. When I didn't react to her stutter, she continued. “I'm n-not sure having everything b-b-blue is as c-calming as the website claims.”

​

“Exactly!” I laughed. It was the beginning of friendship between the weirdest employees here.

​

Blue Adventure Isle wasn't a big island, but it felt like forever to get halfway across. The sun was still out, so it really wasn't that long. We saw guests and employees alike mingling on the docks and beach, panicked voices from nearly everyone.

​

One thing was clear, the boats the entertainment group owned for a purpose such as this, in all its sky blue glory, were useless, half sunk in the shallow water near the docks. People looked at us and the panic over the boats stopped and new whispers began. We were the only ones half coated in green.

​

Laura started pulling me towards a collection of nearby employees, including the head honcho, a tall bearded man who was scowling right now. “Houston,” I called out to him, “we have a big, big problem.” The retired principal had never laughed at that joke, and his head whipped over to me, first his scowl deepening, but after a brief moment, he just sighed.

​

“We have many problems.” He grumbled. “But at least we have another two survivors.” He nodded to Laura and I.

 

“Do you know what happened?” I asked. “How did the rides come to life?”

 

“Kid,” I was not a kid (well, almost), but Houston addressed everyone like that, must be a manly fifty-something thing. “From what Lucy over there can piece together on the bursts of radio signal she can get,” Lucy was perched on the top of the tallest of the half sunken ships, climbing gear rigged up and a few employees with the safety ropes, “turns out this island used to have nuclear power plants on it. Destroyed by some storms, the previous owners just buried everything. Now, decades later,” He pointed to the green soaking into Laura and I's clothes, “the contaminated water is being regurgitated back up like acid reflux.”

​

“You're telling me,” I tugged at my soaked polo, “Laura and I, are coated in radioactive island vomit!”

​

The whispers finally stopped, all eyes, even Lucy's over at us. “Yeah.” Houston dragged out the words. “Maybe you two should get out of those.”

​

Laura and I stripped behind separate rocks, extra clothes from unclaimed baggage for some reason being stored on the ships, and were given to us. It was the first time I wasn't wearing blue since I arrived. A green muscle shirt, not that I had muscles to show, and black basketball shorts. Laura was given a purple strapless sundress. It was the first time I saw her curves accented, and she kept crossing her arms over her chest and hiding behind me.

 

“So, how are you two feeling?” Houston insisted we sit down at the makeshift campfire. The beach stretched out into the darkness, all the survivors in the circle of light, or hovering on the edge. It seemed the screaming was over, just the strange mechanical sounds from the other side of the island.

​

“I feel okay.” I was exhausted, but that had to be normal, running for your life should do that to you. From our vantage point it looked like the swing ride and the roller coaster were focusing on destroying the buildings, hopefully they wouldn't come to the beach.

​

“Tired.” Laura mumbled. She pulled herself closer to me, ducking her face behind my shoulder.

​

“What's the plan now Houston?” I asked.

​

“Lucy and a few other techies managed to send an SOS, but who knows if anyone is going to send help. Or when.”

​

“We're doomed.” Laura mumbled.

​

My stomach growled. I didn't bother asking, and no one offered anything to eat. Food was going to be tightly rationed, whatever emergency supplies we could get off the ships. “Couldn't have waited until after lunch.”

Gritty sand was stuck to my hands, so I tried to rub it away. It wasn't going anywhere, and it was...

 

“Calvin,” Houston blinked, “your hands.” I looked down. My hands were sticky, covered in sand and... and... carefully I used one hand to scrape the layer of sand and some of the thick sticky substance off. Blue peanut butter. I watched my hand secrete another layer of blue peanut butter.