by Kovacs, Jase
"Wouldn't a psychopath be drawn to books like that anyway?"
"That's not my point. I'm no psychologist but these logbooks— for all their vitriol and disgusting imagery — just read as… fake. Like the author was writing that way not because he truly believed these things, but because he thought this was the way he should write."
"So, for the price of your mental well-being, you’ve deduced that the Green Lord is a shitty, derivative writer? How does that help us?"
"I don't know yet."
***
I was ten years old when Australian fighter jets strafed my father's boat and painted my back and arm with fire. I drifted in a limbo of salt and pain, auraed with agony as my burns cooked to a new tenderness under the baking tropical sun. I don't know how long I spent in that in-between place, drifting on the horizon between life and death as I floated between sea and sky.
But I do remember the cool sip of coconut water and the woman who raised the half-shell to my lips. Her skin was as dark and smooth as melted chocolate. Her hair was a halo of night and her hard brow softened with love when I opened my eyes. She said to call her Auntie.
The children of the island called me puk-puk mangi, the crocodile boy. For them, the strangest thing about me was not my white skin but my pebbled burns. Their words were not cruel but instead carried a strange reserve, a concern that I was more than I seemed. Crocodiles were a beast of the mainland and only found on Madau when one risked the hundred and thirty mile swim from the coast. In a way they represented all the threats that came from over the horizon, and so it was only fitting that I wore that name.
Matty once told me of a lesson her father taught her: that a single event could define a life. He was a sergeant in the Australian Army in the Time Before and had seen too many of his colleagues lose themselves in an endless revisiting of the worst days of their life; when a friend was rendered into red mist by an IED or the horror of discovering that the car they had just brassed up for running their checkpoint had children in the back seat. He had seen men he had loved, men of duty and honour, for whom all their accomplishments, their medals and fine homes and growing children, were destroyed by their inability to prevent a nightmare bleeding from the past into their waking life.
War had come to our little island, and every night I found myself back in that first opening skirmish on Woodlark. I wondered, if I kept losing myself in the beginning, then how could I have the strength for the battles to come?
***
I'm rowing us back when we hear shouting from on shore. The high sun beats down hard. Larry wears a handkerchief on his head, and my brow runs with sweat as I dip the oars in water as still and blue as a sapphire. Thin shouts of anger float across the surface, and Larry half rises from his seat, shielding his eyes against the noon glare as he sees local children running down the beach. Moments later white men burst from the treeline in hot pursuit.
"Ahhhh, shit," says Larry. "Those kids are coming from the solar farm."
The situation is well on its way to becoming a riot when the dinghy's keel grinds against sand. The white men chased the local kids across the narrow creek which is the border between the local and the expat communities. Local men have come out of the jungle or leapt ashore from fishing canoes and halted the white men in their tracks and now the two groups are right up against each other, with angry fingers jabbing at chests and voices raised high, screeching like a pressure valve on a boiling kettle.
In the centre of the disturbance, surrounded by a rapidly growing crowd as more men and women run in from both sides of the creek, are two young white men named Rod and Jarrod. Rod has a short mane of blond hair that sticks up like dried grass. His nose is crooked from an old break and his mouth is full of teeth and curses. Jarrod lets his ginger hair and spade shaped beard grow long despite the heat and humidity, and both of their hard, tanned backs are covered with crude tribal tattoos of their own design and execution.
Facing them are three local men, equally as lean and tough. I only recognise one, a fisherman name Solomon who has never given me a hard look. Now spittle leaps from his wide spaced teeth and his long, knurled fingers jab accusingly like forks of lightning.
All five seek to overwhelm the others in a flood of invective. The shouting summons people from both communities who spill out of the jungle like water cresting a dam. I see Abigail, the closest thing the Lost Tribers have to a leader, hanging back on the edge of the palm tree line. Her eyes meet mine across the mass. Her alarmed expression causes me to suspect that the confrontation has brought to her mind the same thing it does in me - when the bloody standoff between her church and my crewmates was interrupted by a deluge of undead horrors.
Larry barges though the crowd, pushing back Rod and Jarrod, a big bear-like mitt on each of their chests. The lads have laughter in their taunts as the local men lose themselves in their anger, their speech slipping from English and pidgin into the local language of tokples. Occasionally, I catch a word like thieves amid the swearing and insults spilling from the white men and the local men shouting go away and go back to where you came from.
Rod and Jarrod’s boss, Big Kev and Duncan arrive almost together, their faces scarlet from running through the steaming jungle. They plunge right into the crowd to reinforce Larry who has got Rod and Jarrod back across the stream but now must contend with more expat men swelling their ranks.
At the same time, I see Jacka and Ivan Bossman, two local leaders, wade into their own ranks with fists flying, shoving the hotheads back. They shout about respect and charity, words that should quench the flames but today, act as gasoline as the younger men turn furiously on their elders.
But beyond the crowd of young angry men and their older fathers and uncles who try to separate them, I see other men, from both sides on the creek, who stand in the treeline, watching the confrontation with a cool, satisfied reserve.
***
"This island is a pressure cooker. It's a pressure cooker and it's about to explode!"
As Duncan says this, I worry it's not the island that's about to explode, but him. His face blazes red beneath his greying beard and the whole hut trembles as he strides up and down the length of the bamboo floor. I hover near the door, unsure how to approach him in his uncharacteristic display of emotion. Larry who knows him better, walks right up to him, grabs him by the shoulders and says, low and significantly, "Duncan."
That catches his attention, and he breaks off. His massive shoulders stay tense with anger, but his eyes clear as Larry nods to the wide-open windows, through which we can see the expats of First Landing gathering. Duncan takes Larry's meaning; this is not the time or the place for a noisy venting of frustration. He nods and forces his breathing to slow. When he is calm, he heads out the door.
We follow him out onto the porch. There are perhaps two dozen expats gathered, a cluster of tanned Caucasian and Asian faces. I spot Abella, her soulful eyes dark with concern, and Abigail who still looks upset from the confrontation on the beach. But I also see some of the agitators, clustered around Jarrod, wearing expressions of smug satisfaction that sparks a hot bloom in my chest.
"Right," says Duncan before anyone can speak. "Who is going to tell me what happened?" His question may have been addressed to the crowd, but he looks directly at Jarrod as he speaks.
"We found the little buggers sneaking around the solar trying to steal some wire," says Jarrod. He slouches against a tree trunk, affecting casual disinterest. “They took off as soon as we saw them."
"We being?"
"Me and Rod."
Duncan nods, as if thinking about this. "How old were they?"
"Who can tell with these black kids? Maybe ten? Why's that matter?"
"So, they're children. Did they have any tools? Anything to cut this phantom wire?"
Jarrod looks away. "They don't need tools to break a panel or rip out wires."
"No tools then. Had they even damaged anything?"
Jarrod looks back to Duncan and squares
his jaw as he sees where Duncan's questions are heading. "It don't matter. The little bastards were north of the creek. That's our territory."
"Only by courtesy," says Duncan. "Remember that. We are guests in these people's land. The land that they have held for generations. We're refugees, granted sanctuary by their compassion. How compassionate do you think you looked this morning, two grown men chasing some ten-year-old kids?"
Jarrod's lip curls. "What's the point of having rules if we don't enforce them? North of the creek is ours. Been that way since the beginning."
One of his mates, a stocky man named Locke, says, "Let the blacks try and get rid of us. We've got the guns, we've got the—"
A fist strikes Locke behind his ear. The sudden violence brings gasps from the crowd. Locke drops to his knees, revealing Big Kev. His huge belly swells over his denim shorts, and he is otherwise unclothed apart from an ancient forage cap perched on his cannonball head. His face is pink beneath its tan, and his fat, stubby finger shakes as he jabs at the man on the ground. "Shut. Your. Mouth," he says, every word landing like an additional blow.
"Jesus, Kev," whines Locke as he rubs his ear. "Hit a man from behind, why don’t ya?"
"I didn't hit a man. I cuffed a mouthy bitch." Big Kev glares at Locke until the fallen man drops his gaze to the ground. Then he turns to look at the rest of his crew. "All of you know better than running bullshit like that in public. Get back up the farm and conduct a complete inventory. Inspect all of the panels. Do your damned jobs. Make sure those bloody kids didn't break anything."
He watches his men leave, frowning like a father whose sons have shamed him, before turning to Duncan. "Michael wants a meeting."
"He knows where I live. Tell him to come—"
"Not that. He wants a council meeting. Immediately." Big Kev shifts his gaze, bringing his grey eyes to rest on me. I see distain and contempt there. "We want to talk about the current state of liaison."
***
That night I visit the Passage, where, beneath a pale crescent moon, I watch Piper shoot the damned.
Madau Island is shaped like a horseshoe; the wide-open mouth of Unkinbod bay is open to the south and east. To the east is the much larger – and once more populated – Woodlark island. Back in the Time Before it featured a prosperous gold mine as well as numerous sea farming ventures. But now it is given over to the damned, those victims of the great plague for whom death was not a release, but instead a gateway to a new kind of horror.
Dilkawau Passage is where the northern arm of Madau almost touches Woodlark. The channel that separates the two islands is barely fifty metres wide. Given the number of monsters that roam Woodlark, the barrier could never be wide enough. But the channel is steep, and the vicious tidal current, that runs at all times apart from a brief slack water at high and low tides, would wash them out to sea.
Even so, we maintain an armed watch up here at all times. When the wind is from the west, as it is tonight, it carries our scent across the bay and draws the eternally hungry. Often we see them, swaying on the far beach, sniffing the air and snapping their elongated jaws in frustration at the prey they can sense just beyond their reach.
We built a low wall from coconut palm trunks along the shore. The passage itself is only two hundred metres long and a defensive bunker dating from the Second World War, dominates the shoreline. Piper and I lie on the roof as she scans the far beach through her rifle scope. The thin sliver of moon casts barely more light than the wide belt of the Milky Way, but still I can catch occasional glimpses of jerky movement in the deep jungle shadows on Woodlark.
"I heard you got raked over the coals today," says Piper out the side of the mouth. She speaks quietly, not for fear of attracting any damned, but so we are not overheard by the other members of the Watch snoozing inside the bunker.
I rub my thumb on the harsh concrete. I can still feel the whorls and jagged edges of the tiny broken shells that make up the mix. Tiny creatures spent untold millennium building this limestone from their own bodies.
"Michael is making a mountain out of a molehill," I say. "He’s leveraging this situation to gain an advantage over the locals."
"Did the kids even take anything?"
"Not that we can tell."
"Big Kev didn’t cook the books to help out Michael?"
"I'm no fan of Big Kev. He's a sexist, racist, old dinosaur. But, for his many faults, a lack of integrity is not one of them. He himself said in the meeting that it’s likely the kids were just dared to go across the river, the same way we, as children, might have dared a friend to sneak into a spooky old house."
"Is that what you did for fun in the Time Before?" Before I can answer Piper stiffens as if she catches a scent. She squints with her good eye down the scope. Her breathing slows then stops; the sound suddenly noticeable by its absence. Then, after a second, she relaxes. "No, not good enough for a shot."
I can't see what got her attention. "You guys are that careful with bullets?"
"It's not like we can restock at the local Guns'n'Ammo. What we have is what we have. They can only be fired once."
"You can't reload them?"
"Sure, we keep the brass cartridges. But proper propellant and projectiles? Look. You know what our stocks are like. They're low. And I don't know when we'll get more, now you lot have Matty on sea patrol rather than out scrounging in the Old World."
Piper speaks in a calm, measured manner that belies her sixteen years. A quiet child growing into a serious woman was made all the more serious by her experiences on Woodlark Island six months earlier. A sniper's bullet left a long thin furrow of scar tissue from her brow to behind her ear. When her hair grew back, it came as a stripe of pure white. She only has partial vision in her left eye, but she likes to grimly joke she only needs one eye for her rifle's scope.
"That's what I don't get. What's his end game?"
I'm momentarily confused by her question before I realise she's returned to our earlier topic. When I answer, it's with the candour of sharing a secret opinion with someone to whom you owe your life. "Michael wants to be the big man. He's a politician whose platform is contrariness. Since Duncan advocates diplomacy and respectful relations with the locals, Michael pushes for a confrontation."
"He can't really want a shooting war?"
"I don't think he's that crazy. But he wants more territory for us and less power from the locals. A lot of his supporters are from the older generation who remember when New Guinea was an Australian territory."
"Translation: the old white men want to be in charge again."
"Yeah. Personally, I think many of them are just trying to feel control in a world that has taken everything from them."
Piper snorts in derision. I know she has no time for those who seek power for its own sake – or as a panacea against their own loss. "Those poor babies. So, what does he gain by giving you a spray?"
"I'm our ambassador to the locals. Sometimes I think they see me as a local playing fancy dress."
"Plus, Duncan has your loyalty."
I make a non-committal sound.
"I don't know how you put up with those assholes. I'd—" She breaks off as something catches her eye. A gaunt figure crawls out onto the beach on Woodlark. It moves on all fours with a scuttling motion that makes me think of a giant spider. It comes down to the shoreline and dips its head to the water, as if it is about to lap.
"Shine that spotlight on it," says Piper. "I want to show you something."
I feel around at my side until my fingers close around a plastic handle. It is one of our few working torches, carefully maintained over the years by Big Kev's best technicians and recharged each day at the solar farm. It feels heavy and unbalanced in my hand. I brush my hand across the lens and hiss with surprise as thin, sharp stones rasp at my palm. "What—"
"Just shine it."
I flick the switch and a cone of pale green light leaps across the channel. The light is scattered and muted by the thin flakes of knapp
ed jade that Piper has carefully glued across the lens. But enough reaches the channel that the damned immediately snaps its head up to look at its source. It slowly rises from its crouch, its shoulders and arms twitching as the alien virus sends misfiring signals down rotting synapses. Its red eyes glimmer peculiarly in the pale sickly green light, and its mouth hangs dully open, exposing row after row of hooked teeth. Then its slack jaw tightens as its split mouth draws back into—
I shake my head in disbelief.
"Hold the light steady!" Piper draws the rifle stock tight against her cheek.
"Is it smiling?" The virus causes uncontrolled tooth growth, swelling their jaw and splitting the victim's cheeks until their mouths stretch from ear to ear. I see the gleam of enamel right up against the creature's lobes as it begins to sway slowly, as if dancing to a song only it can hear.
Then its head is gone in a shower of bone and splatter. The echo of the rifle shot rolls across the bay, caressing the far mountains before coming back to us in echoes like the ripples of water on a pond. The damned falls into the sand where it lies twitching as the random nodes of virus in its system struggle to coordinate without the brain's infrastructure.
"They sure do love that jade," Piper says.
CHAPTER TWO: MATTY
EXCERPTS FROM THE LOG OF EXCELSIOR, THIRD PATROL. YEAR THIRTEEN
SKIPPER MATAI BENNETT
BOSUN ENZO SUZANNE
1ST CREW ALAN HARDY
2nd CREW BLONG BENNETT
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1
Compass Course: 80.
Wind: SE 10-15 kn.
Boat Speed: 5-7kn.
Weather: Clear, high cloud.
Remarks: Case #3 pandan cakes mouldy. Discarded. Enzo blames water contamination during packing. Reprimanded Alan for drinking swipe on watch. I don't know where he hides it. Tacked 2300hrs to E-W leg. No vessels sighted.
