by Kovacs, Jase
SLACK WATER
BOOK THREE of the SOUTHWIND SAGA
Written by Jase Kovacs.
FIRST EDITION. February 03 2020.
Copyright © 2020 Jase Kovacs.
Edited by Kristin Masbaum of MOONLIGHT PROOFREADING.
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
Get a free story available nowhere else. Sign up to my new releases mailing list and receive a free copy of The Fisherman's Son - the story of how Blong came to be on the Black Harvest. You'll also receive the occasional email talking about my other stories.
Available nowhere else.
PRESS HERE TO SIGN UP: https://tinyletter.com/jasekovacs
"Harmony, like a following breeze at sea, is the exception."
—Tuning the Rig, Harvey Oxenhorn
Contents
CHAPTER ONE: ZAC
CHAPTER TWO: MATTY
CHAPTER THREE: ZAC
CHAPTER FOUR: MATTY
CHAPTER FIVE: ZAC
CHAPTER SIX: MATTY
CHAPTER SEVEN: ZAC
CHAPTER EIGHT: MATTY
CHAPTER NINE: ZAC
CHAPTER TEN: MATTY
CHAPTER ELEVEN: ZAC
CHAPTER TWELVE: MATTY
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ZAC
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MATTY
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ZAC
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MATTY
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: ZAC
CHAPTER ONE: ZAC
Dawn finds the bay capped with a low grey haze. The wind died sometime in the night, and the sea is as smooth and white as a salt desert burnished to a gleaming lustre by eons of dry wind. The yachts moored in the harbour at First Landing look like shards of bone littering the same salt desert, the last remnants of a culture and community whose time on the Earth has passed. They are dinosaurs who have witnessed fire fall from the sky and now can either evolve or pass into the echoing halls of eternity.
There is one lone emerald in this field of bones: the green schooner called Aotea. She had been studded with shards of jade when we found her, hidden away in a flooded cave on neighbouring Woodlark island. Her peculiar decorations were a means to entrance a horde of the damned who would otherwise have wandered the jungle like an army of crusading fire ants. We've since cleared away most of these shards and smoothed down the deck so that we can move around the schooner without being grated raw. But the stones had been embedded with epoxy and the stubs that remain flicker green, like an alluring far off planet twinkling in the void.
I slept poorly last night, as I have not slept well in the months since we returned from our misadventure on Woodlark island with a demon’s boat and two dozen refugees of an apocalyptic cult. Our community's medic, a Chilean woman named Abella, says that dreams are where we catalogue our experiences and evolve our character. If so, my sleeping brain is still at full capacity processing our three mad days on Woodlark. My attempts to attribute meaning to that bloody episode have been fruitless. History can only be organised into neat chapters when the chroniclers sit at their desks and the heroes they revise have long slumbered in the grave.
I sit above the high tide line in the shade of coconut palms and consider this as the sun crawls into the sky. My reverie is interrupted when Larry drops beside me with all the thudding grace of a falling coconut. He is a stout fifty-year-old Englishman whose sloop Razzmatazz is one of the dinosaur bones dotting the bay. His hairy belly spills over his faded canvas shorts and a broad hat of woven palm fronds shades his wind burnt face. He wears a wide, disarming grin that easily outshines the recalcitrant dawn. "You keep up these early hours and we'll put you on the Watch," he says, his voice gruff from years spent shouting over North Sea gales.
I glance past him, up to the tall bamboo tower where a heavy machine gun juts like a malignant praying mantis. A slim figure leans against the rail, glassing a whirling mass of birds far out to sea. "Who is on duty? Piper?"
"No, she stands at the Passage. She can have a crack at the deadies there. That up there is one of Martha's lads."
"I'm surprised you aren't still twiddling your dials on the HF." Night is the best time to scan the radio waves, when the sun's interference is minimised and it’s rare to see Larry out and about during the day. He's turned nocturnal ever since the Council decided that long range communications was again a priority.
"I've been at it for the last twelve hours. But, like usual, there's nothing but snap, crackle and pop," he says with a heavy sigh that turns into a yawn. "Anyway, this cloud cover plays havoc with comms." Larry is usually a talkative fellow, so I don’t miss the significance of his long pauses between sentences, as if inviting me to fill them by sharing my thoughts.
"I'm all right, you know," I say.
"I'm sure you are. As all right as anyone can be in this day and age. But madness is contagious and insane ideas can have a strange allure." He looks past me, and I follow his gaze to where two members of the Lost Tribe are wandering along the high tide line with the bemused vacancy of the recently awoken. "Just ask those guys."
"The green schooner’s logbooks are an insight into his mind. I'm certain they hold the answer."
"I'm sure they do, lad. But to what question?"
Such thoughts fill my late hours. "For thirteen years we have been fighting a disease, a faceless, invisible enemy that murdered our world. Everyone and everything we held dear taken from us. But now, for the first time, we have a face for the plague. A name for our opponent."
"The Green Lord isn't the disease. He's just another victim who has somehow ended up smarter than the average deadie."
I shrug, a weak acknowledgement of my argument’s inherent futility. Even so, I say, "The more I read, the better I understand his mind. A mind that has been indelibly marked by the plague."
"Aye, and a mind that will mark you too, if you let it. There's a dead German fella who said a few things about gazing into the abyss - about how the abyss looks back into you. You ought to heed his warning."
"Yeah." I blink and in that flick of darkness I see the wave of the damned bursting from the jungle and spilling from the warehouses in Kwaipan harbour, their rotting fingers and jagged teeth tearing the Lost Tribe apart. That memory dissolves into one where I am laid down on a wooden cross. A man raises a hammer, ready to drive four inch nails through my wrist, my crucifixion an offering to the monsters scratching at their door.
If those are the images that fill the instant of a blink, you can imagine the way my mind unravels during its long journeys through sleep.
Somehow, Larry senses the depths of feeling contained within my single word answer. He squeezes my shoulder and nods slowly as he perceives that the only way for me to process my trauma is to understand its instigator. The answers I need are found on the green schooner.
"Tell you what," he says. "How about I keep you company out on Aotea? Take notes and what not."
Despite my mood, I find myself grinning. "No offence, but I can't see you as a secretary."
His eyes widen in mock offence. He slaps his belly, making his flesh jiggle. "Are saying I don't have the figure for it? You'll be hearing from HR about this!"
"Who’s that?"
Larry's eyes cloud as he looks away. I feel a pang as I realise I've inadvertently referred to something from the Time Before, some concept or idea that is no longer relevant to our lives, a reminder of all we have lost. There is a catch in his v
oice when he says, "Come on. Let's go for a row."
Larry's rolling shoulders drive us across the rippling water with powerful strokes of his dinghy's oars. The bay shimmers like a turquoise jewel as the rising sun burns away the haze. All the boats swing on their mooring to face the gentle breeze rising from the south, as if they were supplicants turning to greet the wind that gives them life.
Furthest away is the old ferry Queen Victoria, which started life in Kowloon Bay before plying the passenger routes between the remote islands of New Britain province. Overladen, overworked, and under maintained, at her best she was a death-trap, ready to capsize on the first rogue wave she met. But when the plague drowned the world in madness, she became an unlikely ark, carrying over two hundred refugees across the waves to Madau. Now, with her white hull tiger-striped with rust and her waterline encrusted with a thick shell of marine growth, she serves as our floating storehouse.
Next are a pair of catamarans, Fidelio and Shiloh, whose skippers could not be more different. Fidelio's owner is Enzo, a Frenchman whose body and wit are as lean and dry as jerky, his skin tanned leathery from a lifetime spent at sea. He is as comfortable afloat as Nemo, the sort of man who would rather spend days in a rough anchorage than deal with the petty intricacies of social life ashore. Despite his dislike of human society, which can be misanthropic in its intensity, he is married to Abella, for whom service to humanity is an obligation that approaches a spiritual intensity. Raised in a remote Chilean mountain community, she found her calling as a first aid clinic's doctor, before meeting Enzo during one of his rare sojourns on shore. Then followed half a dozen years of blissful Pacific cruising aboard Fidelio before circumstances dictated that their complimentary skills, his nautical and her medical, made them perfectly suited to survive the Fall. Fidelio is like her owners; lean, practical, and elegant.
On the other hand, Shiloh is a classic wealthy retiree's boat - or at least she was thirteen years ago. Fitted out with all the latest gadgets and equipment, she had just arrived in Papua New Guinean waters when the plague struck, having carried her owners, Michael and Sandy Cotton, on a leisurely amble across the Pacific. Michael made his fortune in oil; and although concepts like fortunes are archaic and irrelevant to our lives now on Madau, but he still carries himself as if his earlier wealth means something. I cannot speak of his seamanship; Shiloh has not moved since it first arrived in Madau. Their lives are firmly rooted in the community, as he has taken the council position for Administration. However, I can speak about his instincts as a politician, which are pragmatic, shrewd and, in my opinion, entirely self-serving. He has a knack for convincing people that what he wants is what they wanted all along.
Closest to shore is Larry's own yacht, a sleek racing vessel Razzmatazz. Larry was a solo sailor before he arrived in Madau, having come all the way from Portsmouth in England. He learned the ropes in the Soylent and honed his skills in the Fastnet race, winning line honours when he was thirty-one years old. The glow of his glory days lingers in his sunny personality, and his eyes crinkle as we row past his old boat, as if it was an old lover who will always hold a special place in his heart.
His smile wavers as we pass an empty stretch in the anchorage where Duncan's yacht, Excelsior, is usually moored. Duncan is back on land, but his boat is out on patrol, skippered by Matty as part of the new patrols we've implemented since the discovery of the Green Lord and his designs on our home.
Matty is a young sailor of rare talent and our concern springs not from a lack of faith in her abilities. Instead, she carries a deep and profound anger that drives her to feats of reckless bravery. Still, the responsibility of the sea patrol has tempered her more impetuous instincts, and I fear less for her and more for those enemies who have the misfortune to cross her path.
***
The smell always gets me.
Aotea was built for speed; flush decked, with twin raked masts and long sleek narrow hull. She is a relic from a more gentlemanly age of evening sundowners and Sunday races. Her portholes were painted over from the inside long ago with thick desperate splashes by a man for whom the sun had become a burning death. Every table, bulkhead and wall is covered in spirals, drawn at first with ink and paint and then - when I assume his supplies ran out - etched into the fibreglass with a sharp point until every surface is covered with whorls that make me think of a shivering sea.
When we captured this yacht, its upholstery was black with mould. The forepeak was stacked deep with human heads, mummified by some eldritch method that saw them shrunk to half their size, so that, if it were not for their ghastly grins, you would think they were some strange withered fruit. They were of every race and nation but they were alike in that their cheeks had been carved with the same spirals that decorated the schooner's interior.
We burned the upholstery and took the heads ashore, where those of us who still clung to faith held a service for their departed souls. But, apart from that, I insisted we leave the boat as we found her, as if we might have preserved a crime scene in the Time Before. All yachts reflect the mindset of their skippers. A methodical man will have a neat, organised boat. An alcoholic’s boat will be a mess of poorly sorted lockers and half completed projects. I hoped the insanity within Aotea would give me insight into the monster who brought death to our neighbouring shores.
I stand at the foot of the companionway stairs and look forward into the saloon. Larry cracks the forepeak hatch to spill a shaft of light within. The lifting hatch catches the breeze and stirs the lingering musk. I feel, as always, as if I am opening a tomb - the scent of corruption triggers an ancient instinct that learned in prehistoric times to avoid the aroma of decay.
The light glimmers on dozens of metal edges. Blades, saws, long screwdrivers and harsh rasping files have crudely nailed to the walls. The fibreglass is starred from many hammer blows that missed their mark. The tool's oiled blades gleam dully.
Larry enters, looking warily at the etched walls and gleaming tools. Random detritus spills out across the floor; bizarre salvage covered in dust and the leavings of insects and small mammals. I step carefully over coils of telephone wire and a sheath of plastic flowers. A child's tricycle is wedged under the saloon table.
"Are those the log books?" Larry asks, gesturing at the milk crate filled with black hardback notebooks.
I nod. "I've found sixty-three so far. Going back twenty years. They were scattered around the boat randomly. A couple at the nav station where you would expect. But one was jammed up under the rudder post. Another was buried beneath the anchor chain. Some were washed blank by water or torn to pieces by mice and roaches. I’ve only kept the legible ones."
"Sixty-three... what do they say?"
I read from the book open on the table. "'I thought it was a sandbank, but upon approach, I saw a whale bloated with rot. Its back was scored deep with the parallel grooves of a prop strike. Another victim of man's impatience. A beautiful creature, killed because we won't wait for wind. I ate its flesh and felt the ancient beast's strength fill me. I felt righteous anger at its murderers. The sooner the flood comes and washes our stain away the better it will be for Gaia. We are a virus and viruses only die when their host is consumed. It is in our nature to burn until all is ash. My own continuing life is hypocrisy but how else can I begin my work?’"
Larry ponders this for a moment. "Many people lost their minds… if only for a little while… after the Fall."
I flip the book closed so he can see the date on its cover. "This is from 2017. From before the Fall. When he was still a man. Or, at least, unmarked by the plague. His writings don’t truly take off until after he was infected." I search through the stack of notebooks. "I'm guessing it happened in year two. Until then things were organised - if not entirely lucid. But after then, it is just page after page of thoughts spilled out onto paper. No dates. No locations. Listen to this. 'Every family had its spirit totem to which sacrifices are offered and mana harvested, and I perceive now that the earth is a spirit tot
em of its own pinnacle for which we must heap the living and force them to be the vessel of their own unbecoming, for what other way can man pay for its crimes but by choking on the same plastic with which they choked the seas and lift them up on crosses of their own mistakes, nailing them up high so that they witness the oiling cusp of the world and the sanctify—'"
Larry holds up his hand. His face pinches as if he had just tasted bad meat. He looks away, like he is afraid of catching something from me. "Why don't you bring the logs on shore at least? Get out of this foul air."
I look around. A chart of New Zealand is framed above the navstation. The glass has been shattered, and the words KIA ORA smeared across the paper in finger smears.
"It's all here," I say. "I'm in the middle of the puzzle and these diaries are just half the pieces."
"Zac, you're sounding a little cryptic yourself."
"No, bear with me here. These writings, what he says — what does it remind you of?"
"Besides a loony?"
"Thing about it. Something specific."
Larry raises his eyebrows when he sees I'm serious. When I don’t say anything further, he looks out the hatch at the sky. "Okay," he says abruptly, as the thought comes to him. "You know the old detective paperbacks where a serial killer is taunting the investigators with notes and messages and he's all so crazy and scary?" I'm already nodding, and he warms to the idea. "It's like that, these logs sounds like one of those cheesy serial killer books."
"That's exactly what I was thinking. Have you had a look at the forepeak bookshelf?"
He blanches at the memory. "Not since we cleaned out all those skulls."
"The bookshelf has dozens of murder mysteries - things like Silence of the Lambs and Kathy Reichs sort of stuff. I've seen a few books like that at your place."
"I like Patricia Cornwell more myself but I get what you mean."
"The question is: are these logbooks written by a psychopath or by someone copying the way he thinks a psychopath writes?"
