The Flooded Earth

by Mardi McConnochie

  His other hand had a grip on Essie. He escorted them both, frightened and protesting, through the door that led out to the back bar and into the dingy bistro. She tried to catch Will’s eye, but couldn’t see him through the crowd.

  When they were alone in the empty bistro, the man turned her to face him. “Don’t you know better than to go broadcasting your business in a public bar?” he hissed.

  Annalie stared at him, afraid of what he might be about to do.

  “The Admiralty are looking for him, they’ve impounded his boat. You don’t just go shouting about it in front of a bar full of drunks. You don’t know who could be listening.”

  Belatedly, it dawned on Annalie that this man might actually be trying to help her. “Do you—do you know my dad?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, are you going to tell me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, there’s no way for you to get there. For another, it’s too dangerous.”

  “Where’s he gone?”

  “The Moon Islands.”

  The Moon Islands were a huge archipelago that stretched over many thousands of nautical miles. No one was quite sure how they’d got their name; some said it was because when you looked at the shape they made on a map it looked a little like a crescent moon; others said it was because to the early explorers, the islands seemed as remote as the moon. There were hundreds, possibly even thousands of islands in the region, which was home to all kinds of strange, scary, and desperate people, from pirates and slavers to religious fanatics. It was also far less homogeneous than its name suggested. Before the Flood, the region had been made up of many sovereign island nations. The Flood had put an end to many of them.

  “Can you help us get there?”

  He shook his head with a slow smile. “Absolutely not.”

  “But you helped him—”

  “Let’s get something clear, sister. We helped him because he paid us. And it cost him dear. Unless you’ve got a whole lot of lucre stashed away somewhere too, you’re not going anywhere.”

  “But I have to find him.”

  “The Moon Islands are no place for kids. Stay out of it. When the heat comes off your dad, maybe he’ll be back. Or maybe he’ll send for you, who knows? But in the meantime, my advice to you is, don’t go looking for trouble. All right?”

  “All right,” Annalie said reluctantly.

  The door to the bistro banged open and Will barged through it, looking panicked.

  “What are you doing to my sister?” he roared, although his voice squeaked a little.

  The Kang man looked at him impassively. “If she’s your sister, you might want to start taking better care of her,” he said.

  “It’s all right, Will,” Annalie said. “He’s trying to help us.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” the Kang man said. “I haven’t helped you. I’m not even talking to you. I don’t know you, and I never saw you, and you never saw me.”

  “Of course,” Annalie said. “Sorry.”

  “From now on, keep your mouth shut. About everything and everyone. No one saw nothing, no one told you nothing. There is only nothing.”

  “There is only nothing,” Annalie said, nodding.

  “Cos if the Admiralty even start sniffing in my direction, I’m going to hunt you down and I’m going to cut you,” he said, pleasantly, but with perfect seriousness. “All of you.”

  “Okay,” said Annalie.

  “Good girl. Now piss off.”

  Pursued

  Will, Annalie, and Essie stepped once more into the seaweed stink of the Eddy.

  “Spinner’s gone to the Moon Islands,” Annalie said. “He paid the Kangs to take him there.”

  Will’s shoulders sagged a little at this news. “You mean he’s already gone?” He’d been hoping that Spinner might still be somewhere nearby, and that he might shortly reappear, grinning, ready to fix everything. But if he’d already shipped out, there was little chance of that.

  “Looks that way,” Annalie said. “But why the Moon Islands?”

  “It’s a great place to hide out.”

  They tramped along in silence for a while, mulling it over. Then Annalie remembered something. “Uncle Art lives in the Moon Islands. Maybe that’s where he’s gone.”

  Art was one of Spinner’s dearest friends. He lived with his family in a rambling old house with views over the sea, on an island called Little Lang Lang (it was between Big Lang Lang and Old Lang Lang). Will and Annalie had spent many summers there, swimming with Art’s kids, exploring caves, and hunting for treasure.

  “Hey yeah,” Will said. “I bet that’s where he’s gone. Art would help him hide out for sure.”

  They walked on in silence for a while.

  “He’s in big trouble, isn’t he?” Will said.

  “Beckett was talking about jail time.”

  “But if he’s innocent—”

  “He’d have to be able to prove it.”

  “And if he could prove it, he wouldn’t have had to run away,” Will finished gloomily.

  * * *

  Back at the workshop, they cleared away some of the mess littering the kitchen. By now it was getting on for lunchtime, and everyone was hungry.

  “Was that an actual Kang?” Essie asked Annalie in a low voice, not wanting to seem ignorant in front of Will.

  “Yeah,” Annalie said.

  “So...does that mean you really do know gangsters?”

  “No.”

  “But your dad does?”

  “I didn’t think so, until now,” Annalie said, sounding a little testy. She was still a little sensitive about the suggestion that she and her family might actually be gangsters, even though she knew Essie didn’t really think that.

  They managed to assemble a lunch out of what the Admiralty henchmen hadn’t strewn across the floor, and the four of them—Will, Annalie, Essie, and Graham—sat down to eat together.

  “So I guess you girls’ll be heading back this afternoon,” Will said, when he’d satisfied the worst of his hunger.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, we know where Spinner’s gone now, so job done,” Will said.

  “Well, not really,” Annalie said.

  “He’s gone to the Moon Islands to lie low for a while. What more do you want to know?”

  “I want to know why the Admiralty are trying to arrest him, for a start!” Annalie cried.

  “Don’t reckon we’ll be getting answers to that anytime soon.”

  “But isn’t it driving you crazy?” Annalie asked. “Don’t you want to know too?”

  “Of course I do,” Will said. “But it’s pretty obvious Spinner didn’t want to tell us.”

  “Someone must know something,” Annalie said.

  “I’ve been asking around,” Will said. “If anyone knows, they’re not talking.”

  “Maybe if I tried—”

  “Annalie,” Will said, “I asked, okay? No one knows anything.” He paused, studying her. “Don’t you want to go back to school or something?”

  Annalie fiddled with her water glass.

  “You do want to go back, don’t you?” Essie said.

  “I thought you loved it there,” Will said, looking at her searchingly.

  “Love is a strong word,” Annalie said, with a dry little laugh, but before either of them could probe any further, Graham let out an ear-splitting squawk.

  Annalie jumped. “What is it, Graham?”

  “Black car,” Graham said.

  His sharp hearing had picked up the rumble of an electric engine; now, they heard it too.

  “They’re coming back!” Will said. />
  “How do they know we’re here?” Annalie asked.

  “Maybe someone’s watching the place,” Will said.

  Essie had a terrible thought. “Give me your shell, quick!”

  Annalie handed it to her, and Essie quickly powered it down, then switched off her own shell too. Her headpiece went dark. “If you’re on the network, they can use it to track you down.”

  Will and Annalie looked at each other in dismay. That would never have occurred to either of them.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Annalie said.

  “But where can we go?” asked Essie.

  “It’s best if we split up,” Will said to Annalie. “You take her, I’ll lead them away.”

  “Don’t do that, just get away!” Annalie cried, exasperated.

  “All right fine. Meet you at the Eddy, okay?”

  “Why there?” Annalie asked suspiciously.

  “Don’t argue, just go!”

  The two girls got up and grabbed their bags. “We’ll go out the back way. And Will—don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  “Never,” laughed Will.

  The girls hurried out the back door. Left alone, Will began hastily gathering provisions, jamming them into an old army kit bag along with a few useful-looking tools that had been left behind in the workshop. The car was getting closer—he could hear the engine growl as it bumped its way up the street and stopped right out front.

  Doors slammed—one, two, three, four. So there were at least four of them. Will crept backwards from the workshop into the living room, careful not to trip over the ankle-turning mess. Escaping through the front door was impossible—he would have to follow the girls out the back way. Behind the workshop was a vegetable garden, backed by a rusting corrugated-iron fence. Over the fence was a maze of houses, some inhabited, some not.

  The front door of the workshop creaked, and he heard the first footsteps. No one had spoken a word. Hardly daring to breathe, he crept toward the back door—and then heard a clatter from the side of the house. Someone had tripped over the ladder. That meant they were coming round the back to cut him off.

  There was nowhere to go but up.

  Will darted toward the stairs and climbed up them, Graham flying ahead of him. He looked around for a hiding place, knowing already that there weren’t any. Downstairs he could hear them poking around, looking into cupboards.

  “Workshop clear,” someone called.

  “Kitchen clear,” said a second voice.

  He heard someone else call, more distantly, “No one here either.” They had checked the washhouse too.

  There was only one more place to look. He heard the sound of feet coming up the stairs—not so stealthy now. Will dived under the ruins of the mattress, hoping they wouldn’t search too thoroughly.

  The feet stopped at the door. There was a silence as someone searched the room. Will held his breath. The feet began to move on—then stopped and came back. Will’s heart was beating so fast he thought it was going to explode out of his chest. The feet came into the room, toward his hiding place—

  “Argh!” The man cried out in surprise as a squawking, flapping parrot came at him.

  “What’s going on up there?” someone shouted from below.

  Will grabbed his chance. He pushed the mattress off himself so it flopped between him and the man, who was still angrily trying to fend off Graham. The man was huge and dark, dressed in a leather jacket, and seemed to fill the doorway.

  “You! Stay right where you are!” the man shouted.

  Will threw open the sash window and tossed the kitbag out onto the roof of the washhouse, jumping out after it.

  “He’s here!” the man roared.

  The washhouse roof buckled under Will’s feet and he feared he was going to go right through it, but somehow it held. The kitbag slid along the tin and dropped off the end, and he followed it, landing on the ground hard, jarring his ankles.

  Will glanced back and saw the big man trying to follow him out the window. “Quick—out the back—after him!” the man called.

  The men ran out the back door, but Will had a head start. He tossed the kitbag over the top of the fence and squeezed through a gap where the two sheets had come apart. He darted into the back of the house that lay directly behind the workshop—it was empty, its floor half-rotted away, but he knew where it was safe to walk. He scampered through, avoiding the holes and pitfalls, and slipped out the side door. He stopped to listen for a moment. The men had made it through the fence and were following him into the house. A crash and a cry told him one of them had discovered the state of the floors the hard way.

  He crept through the hole in the next fence and began threading through the backyards: the one with the rusty swing set, the one with the swimming pool full of stinky green water, the one with the chickens. When he reached the one with the chickens, he stopped again and listened.

  “Are they still coming?” he whispered to Graham. Graham took off and did some aerial reconnaissance.

  “Look! It’s that damn bird!” someone shouted.

  “Guess they still are,” Will said. He hurried through the muck of the chicken pen, went over to the fence, and pressed the sole of his mucky sneaker on the fence to make it look as if he’d climbed over. Then he scooped up a handful of rocks from the ground and began to pitch them at the chickens.

  “Bad Will!” Graham said disapprovingly.

  The chickens began squawking, as he’d known they would. He slipped up the side of the house and dived into the bushes to hide.

  The men came vaulting over the fence into the backyard.

  “Can you see him?”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “Look—there!”

  He heard them climbing the fence into the next backyard. They’d taken the bait. Will slipped out of the bushes and into the street. For a moment he heard nothing, and then there was a growl, followed by a frenzy of barking and shouting and then, horrifyingly, shots were fired. Will kept running, afraid of what he might have done. The backyard next to the chickens held a huge market garden guarded by several ferocious dogs—that’s why he’d sent his pursuers in there. He hadn’t been expecting guns. He wondered if they belonged to the men who’d been chasing him or the people who kept the garden.

  There were no further sounds of pursuit and he hoped that meant that he’d lost them. He crossed the street and slowed to a walk, his heart thudding in his chest. But then he heard the sudden roar of an engine, and threw himself off the footpath into some overgrown shrubbery just as the black car came screeching round the corner. It did a lap of the street, lurching in the massive potholes. Men—bloody but alive—came staggering out from the house with the dogs. The car stopped for them and as they clambered in, the big man himself got out of the passenger seat and scanned the street, his eyes like laser beams. Will shrank down as small as he could behind the bush, fearing that those eyes would discover his hiding place. But the man’s gaze traveled on without detecting him, and after a moment, he dropped back into the car and it disappeared up the street.

  The Admiralty oath

  Safe at the Eddy, Annalie and Essie waited on a quiet back step for Will to arrive.

  “He should be here by now,” Annalie fretted.

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Essie said.

  “You don’t know my brother,” said Annalie. “He won’t have just snuck away and gone a different way from us. He always has to do something smart that’ll get him into trouble.”

  Essie felt the flicker of anxiety. “But neither of you have done anything wrong. Why would you get into trouble?”

  “What do you think’s going to happen to us if they catch us? Our mother’s dead, our dad’s on the run. They’ll probably try and put us in a home. Or worse.”

  “They might try and send you back to school,
” Essie joked.

  “Maybe,” Annalie said. “I just don’t trust that Beckett guy. I don’t know what he’ll do if he catches me again.”

  “He’s not going to do anything bad to you!” Essie said. “He’s Admiralty!”

  Annalie gave Essie an ironic look. “And?”

  “They’re the good guys!” Essie said. She quoted the oath that they recited every morning: “We live to serve upon the sea, upon the land and shore. For order and prosperity we’ll fight forever more. We have no fear of water, of tempest, and of wave. The Admiralty protects us all with power strong to save.”

  Essie had grown up on stories of the brave men and women of the Admiralty who’d saved the world from chaos after the Flood. They’d rescued people from floodwaters, brought supplies to the starving, scooped countless refugees from brimming oceans and half-submerged cities. Only the Admiralty had had the ships, the personnel, and the discipline required to hold the world together. It had just made sense for them to form government—after all, no civilian government could rule without their support. She knew some people said the crisis had passed and the military ought to get out of government. But even today, the world was still a wild and dangerous place; the ships of the Admiralty were still needed.

  “You know that’s not actually true, right?” Annalie said. “The bit about protecting us all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They don’t protect anyone who lives here, for a start,” Annalie said, gesturing about her at the Eddy.

  “Yes, but—”

  “But they’re gangsters and illegals and they don’t count?” Annalie said challengingly. Then she relented. “You’re used to being on the inside. But you’re on the outside now. And things are different here.”

  Essie’s thoughts were still scrambling to keep up. She believed in the Admiralty with all her heart: their mission, the great work they’d done and were still doing every day. Work she would do herself one day (although right now she couldn’t imagine what that would be). What was Annalie even doing at Triumph if she didn’t believe in it too? But she only had to look around her to know that the world Annalie lived in was not at all like her own. So she said nothing.