by Kovacs, Jase
For the second time in as many minutes, I'm left speechless. Finally, I manage to say, "What are you talking about?"
"Well, I think it's time we faced facts. We can't hide here forever. Sooner or later we're going to run out of bullets or batteries or medicine. Or whatever. I think we need to send to stop wasting time with these silly patrols, these little sailing holidays your friends go on, and get them working for us again."
"Us being?"
"The council, obviously."
I tent my fingers against my brow. "I can't believe your audacity. You're just going to reverse your position and pretend we're the ones trying to close the borders?"
"You argued for the patrol. Using one of our valuable yachts to watch for some phantom navy of mysterious red sails, that only your special gang of friends have seen? And what is a patrol, but a means to close our borders?"
His smile is so disingenuous that I feel like I want to vomit. I force myself to speak calmly. "It's just you and me here now, Michael. What are you trying to do?"
His brow furrows in confusion. "The same as always. The right thing."
***
Arguments with Michael always leave me dissatisfied with myself; the man's complete moral turpitude means my commitment to facts is frequently inconsequential.
I barely have time to marshal my thoughts after Michael leaves before an American geologist named Mark comes to my door. We found him on Woodlark island, another refugee from the far side of midnight, his soul as fragile as spun glass after years watching his friends be picked off one by one. The months here on Madau have soothed him; words no longer flow from his mouth in a panicked torrent, and his eyes have lost some of their haunted darkness. "Zac, you gotta come see this, man. It's freakin' crazy."
His constant companion is a six-year-old child named Daisy. She and Mark survived three long years together, hiding from the damned that hunted them ceaselessly. When we found her, she was as thin as a rail, and her black skin was daubed in white clay that traced her bones so she appeared as a skeleton. She still rarely speaks or plays with the other children, but at least now her health has improved and there is some light in her eyes.
Again, my nose wrinkles as a foul rotting stench wafts through First Landing. "What is that smell?"
"That's what I'm talking about, dude. Just come and check it out. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you."
I follow Mark and Daisy through First Landing and onto one of the innumerable tracks that thread the jungle of Madau island. Mark is somewhere between forty and sixty years old, but his seamed, tanned face, and boyish features make it impossible to guess his true age. His hair is bleached and fused into thin dreadlocks by sun and surf. He wears a pair of faded red denim shorts, and his back is a wild smear of tattoos so faded and blotched with age that they look like a newspaper that had be left out in the rain. Before the Fall he worked in the mining industry and still possesses a keen intellect when his personal demons are at bay.
The stink intensifies as we head across the narrow neck of the island. The air is thick with midges and small, stingless bees that love to crawl into your ears and nostrils, infuriating you with their never-ending thirst for your sweat.
"Do we really have to go to the mangroves?" I ask. "We all know they stink."
"Baby, you got no idea. No idea. This is gonna rock your world, man, ha-ha. There's been a bit of that going around, and that's the problem, don't you see, man?" I sense another of Mark's free-associating rants coming up, but I lack the will to head it off. "For thirty years the company sends me around the world to tell them where the gold is, where they can find that funny special metal. And oil and gemstones all the colours of the rainbow, shining like stars, but yeah it’s that gold, that special gold that drives men crazy, sends them dilly-o more than any chicka or sweet broad. The men in suits, they send me out and tell me to find the gold, but they don’t know, the earth, man, the earth, she is a living breathing creature. I don't find the gold, man. I go where Mother Earth tells me, and she gives it too me, lifting it up out of the mantle and the magma and—"
"Mark."
"—and we pluck up the treasures, snatch them up, but no one says thank you, ma'am, thank you for the pretties you giving us and—"
"Mark."
"—They think the earth is dead and solid, all rocks and mountains and granite, but they don’t realize it's all just an ocean, man, an ocean whose waves are beyond our perception. The land rises and falls like a sea whose waves have peaks a million years apart. What is the lifetime of a stone? What are we to that? And then—"
"Mark!" I grab his arm and pull him up short. He turns to me, surprised to find another person with him and looks down at where I hold his elbow.
"Hey, man. Don't touch the merchandise." He smiles uncertainly, but I see a certain hardness, an anger even, gathering at the corners of his eyes. Daisy draws in close to him, her gaze flat, and I remember that I have seen this adorable child once use a paring knife to stab a man so many times that blood flowed from him like water through a sieve.
I let go and step back. "Sorry, Mark. But it's humid and it stinks, and these bees are driving me crazy. And I've got a heap of shit to deal with today. Can you just tell me what's got you so excited?"
He shakes his head. "It's just over this rise." He points up the path, which climbs to a low ridgeline.
The top of the ridge is only ten metres above sea level, but a break in the jungle affords us a good view of Unkinbod bay, the wide, shallow mouth of Madau Island's horseshoe. The bay is maybe five metres deep in most places, except for the far side where a deep underwater chasm forms a natural submerged barrier that stretches up to the Dilkawau passage at the northern tip of Madau, to where Piper stands watch. We always thought the damned's aversion to water was the reason they had never reached Madau. But Matty discovered that the dead can cross the ocean floor if driven by an Alpha. Now I believe it is the depth of the Dilkawau passage – and the fast flowing tidal current that rips through its narrow mouth – that stops them from crossing over to us.
There is something strange about the bay this morning though. The breeze slaps me in the face with the stench of rotting vegetation, and I gag as I look out and try to understand what I'm seeing. We don't often come over this side as it is rimmed with thick mangroves and deep swamps of cloying mud. But I can see beyond the mangroves where the bay is dotted with dozens of rocks and dark patches of weed. Strange creatures wade out there, moving through the water as if on stilts. Then I realize they are just local people spearing fish trapped in pools, and the strangeness was that they are wading through water that should be metres deep.
"What— Why is the tide so low this morning?" I ask.
"That's the problem, man. Your perception. You don’t perceive the problem. You can't, cause its outside of your experience. People aren't asking questions like that, are they, man? They ain't askin’ questions. You know why?" Mark laughs then slaps his thigh when it develops a maniacal edge. "Look at them all, fishin’, collectin' sea cucumbers. They're all happy, man. They don't know, man. They don’t know what this means."
"Mark, why is the tide so low?"
"Oh man, you ain't got it yet, have you? It ain’t the tide that's low. It’s the seabed that's risen."
***
Noon finds the sky dotted with white, fluffy clouds that sail across the azure dome with a serenity that makes me think of vast whales migrating stoically from one end of the earth to the other. The steady, gentle trade winds give every leaf and tree branch a voice, as if the tall coconut palms were an audience commenting on our little theatre that plays out in the main hall of First Landing.
News of the uplifted bay has spread like wildfire. Children from both communities already scamper across the denuded sea floor. Pragmatic fishermen sweep rock pools and set nets at chokepoints where the falling water funnels trapped fish.
The Council gathered at noon as planned, but Michael's agenda is thrown out the window as we listen to
Mark try to explain what happened. There are nine members in the Council, each responsible for a facet of life on Madau. My background growing up with the locals made me responsible for liaison. Michael looks after Administration, a day to day management role in which he admittedly thrives. Duncan is the current Chairman and Larry looks after Operations and Communications – which means yachts and radios. Chilean doctor Abella is in charge of health. Martha, a former headmistress of a boarding college in Port Moresby, administers our supplies. Big Kev handles Infrastructure, overseeing construction and the provision of basic services like water and power. Our records are managed by a former librarian named Sandra and finally Cynthia, who worked in the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby, handles Planning, a job that looks at long range strategies and forecasts.
The hall is an airy space, cooled by its raised bamboo floor and wide open windows through which I can see curious eavesdroppers loitering. Geckos rustle in the sago palm thatch roof and fat blowflies zoom in lazy circles. We sit on wooden stools in a rough semicircle. Mark is cross-legged on the floor in front of us, rocking back and forth as he explains how the earth tremor caused a localised shift in the seabed. Usually half of the group would be fighting to speak over each other but the bizarre situation has cowed even Michael.
That isn't to say people have forgotten who they are. And Mark is hardly the most compelling or coherent speaker. At one point, Michael interrupts. "This island— in fact all of these islands — are mountain tops. Half a mile off shore the water is over fifteen hundred feet deep. Are you trying to have us believe that the whole earth leapt up in one little tremor?"
"Man, you just go over the side of the island, man, you'll see with your own eyes."
"I'm not doubting my eyes — or my nose, goodness me, that stench is awful — just your interpretation of the facts. I went to the beach before this meeting, and I don't see any difference."
Larry leans forward, rubbing his face as if he can't believe he has to explain something so basic to another sailor. "You went to the western beach, right? That faces out to sea."
Michael laughs. "You expect me to go for my swim in the mangroves?"
"The depth off the First Landing reef is five hundred metres. But Unkinbod bay is four, five metres deep in most places. There's an old coral reef, long since choked by the mangroves, that makes it even shallower in most places. That's what's risen, not the whole island."
"So it's a localised rise?"
"Yeah." Mark has retreated, leaning back on his straightened arms and staring at the coconut palm ceiling. "Literally what I'm sayin'."
"Do we have any idea how this has affected Dilkawau passage?" Duncan asks Larry.
"First impressions are that it hasn't. But low tide isn't until after sundown."
"We need to make sure the passage is still a barrier," says Michael.
There are more than a few eyes rolled at this obvious statement, but Larry just nods curtly. "I have the Watch surveying the passage as we speak. If there are any new fords or shallows, they'll find them."
Cynthia clears her throat. She spent over thirty years before the Fall working in Government and is adept at making herself heard in a room full of blustering politicians. "It would be prudent to revisit our defensive measures immediately. The passage is a good six kilometres from here – we won't have much time to re-posture if they find a weakness."
"Move the machinegun?" suggests Larry. We have a scattering of firearms, mostly civilian rifles and shotguns held by the watch. Our heavy artillery is a .50 cal. machine gun mounted in the watchtower that overlooks the western approach to the island. Previously we were worried about infected vessels coming from the west. But that has changed.
"That would be prudent."
"Hold on now," says Sandra. She is heavyset and her curly black ringlets speak of her Pacific heritage. She is usually charming and sociable but I find her conservative and strident when she perceives a risk. "That gun is there for a reason. It's the best defence for the community here."
"The .50 cal. is good when you've got clear fields of fire," says Big Kev. "But we're surrounded by jungle. We're toast if the zombs get across the Passage. They'll swarm us. I reckon Cynthia's right. We've gotta stop the bastards on the beaches."
"Okay, but we don't even know how far the new shallows stretch." Larry looks to Mark for some sort of guidance, but Mark just shrugs while gnawing on his thumbnail.
"What working guns do we have anyway?" asks Sandra, looking to Martha.
"The sea patrol has Matty's M4 rifle and pistol," says Martha. "The Watch at Dilkawau have both .45 pistols and the Marlin hunting rifle. In the armoury on QV, we have three more centrefire rifles, a .22 rimfire that's next to useless against the infected and three shotguns, two double barrel, one pump."
"And we have another pistol and two rifles in the Watch house here in First Landing," says Larry, glancing at Duncan who gives him a curt confirming nod. Larry continues, "Okay, I say we activate all members of the Watch for immediate duty and issue all firearms. We put an extra team on the passage, put two teams on a roaming patrol on the eastern shoreline and have the rest of the Watch members on standby in First Landing as a ready reserve."
Most heads around the room are nodding as he speaks, and there is no dissent when Duncan asks, "Any objections?" He then turns to Big Kev. "I want us to use full comms and lights. Can we sustain that?"
"You mean all lights on, use the radios, get the spotlights out?"
"Yep."
"Look, my boys are good with our maintenance schedules, but there's always a risk of a short circuit. We can only work with what we've got. But yeah, despite the last few cloudy days, the battery banks are good condition and can give us full lighting for a couple of nights. There's already one spotlight at the passage, not counting the handheld torches. I can shift another spotlight out of storage. Maybe put one out to cover the new shoreline as well."
"Sounds good," says Larry. I can't help but smile as our usual petty personal dislikes and issues take a backseat; we have a clear problem, and I'm happy as everyone works on a solution.
Duncan turns to me and says, "I need you to reach out across the creek ASAP. Make sure Ruthie knows what all this means. I don’t want any locals starting rumours that we're up to something. Explain that our new defensive posture has nothing to do with the incident yesterday. It's purely a precaution due to the uplift."
I nod emphatically. "Absolutely. People across the creek are suspicious of us already. We have to make sure that this arming up isn't taken out of context. And I need assurances from everyone here that they will impress upon their teams the need for diplomacy and good relations with our neighbours — especially now, when we are unsure how this earthquake has affected the barrier between us and the damned."
Michael frowns as if I had just accused him of a personal impropriety, and Sandra makes a small dismissive grunt before saying, "The locals don't seem suspicious when they come crawling to us for medicine or fish hooks or tools."
"They're perfectly entitled to medicine," says Abella sharply. "And everything else is traded! It's the least we can do; we're guests on their land."
"Their land? What rubbish," says Sandra. "No one was living here before we came."
"This village was here."
"And it was empty."
"Because they had all fled to the southern settlements for security!"
"What gets me," says Big Kev, seeming to swell as he leans back in his chair. He pushes his forage cap back on his crown as he speaks, exposing a brow that gets redder by the second. "What gets me is the implication that my lads were somehow out of line for chasing the little buggers off."
"They didn't chase them out of the farm, they hunted them to the border and nearly sparked an incident!" I say.
"No, Zac! You're wrong," interrupts Duncan. I am surprised at his rebuke but then he continues. "They did cause an incident. My god, we haven't had punches flying like that in years. Not since Woodlark fe
ll." He sweeps his hand to the open windows, both to remind us of what is at stake and that what we are effectively in a public forum. "Now, of all times, we need to put aside these petty differences and remember that black or white, local or expat, we are all in this together. We need to work with the other humans if we want to survive."
"Of course, Duncan. No one is arguing that," says Michael, his palms out consolingly, as if Duncan is the unreasonable one. "But we've seen the reports from Supply. The writing is on the wall; we can't sustain this population."
Cynthia slaps her open palm on her thigh, a sharp gesture that emphasises her measured tone. "That's not what my reports are saying. It's virtually the exact opposite of what I said, which was that we need more supplies not less people."
"Talk about splitting hairs," says Kev.
"My god, Kev, you yourself tell us that the batteries aren't going to last forever. Have you worked out a way to make new ones out of coconuts?"
"This is all a distraction from the real issue," starts Duncan, but then he is interrupted by a shout outside. We turn to the door just as a man is shoved in. He stumbles and falls hard enough to make the building shake. His hands are tied behind him with rough fibrous rope, and his back is a splatter of bleeding sunburn. He wears old torn shorts, and his bare feet work to try and roll himself over onto his back.
Matty follows him into the room. She is barefoot and wears a black singlet and cut off army shorts. She has her M4 slung barrel down over her shoulder, and her shoulder length, roughly chopped black hair is held back by a bandana. Her tanned skin glows with youth, but the lines around her dark eyes betray the trauma packed into her twenty years. She doesn't spare us a glance as she grabs the man's dreadlocks and pulls him into a crouch, twisting his head so we can see the freshly etched tattoos that cover his cheeks and brow, a swirling mass of arrows and fish. The ground drops away beneath me and the hook, that paralysed me before Abigail, sets again in my heart.
