The Southwind Saga (Book 3): Flood Tide

by Kovacs, Jase

  "For standing against the flood," she says. She kisses me quickly, her lips cool and dry.

  She crosses to the far hull and disappears down the fore hatch. I stand there, looking out to the sea, the dark night sea, as if my eyes could pierce the gloom and see all the way to the south. Back to Dalbarade where I hope – no, I know – Matty still fights.

  I head back to the helm to see if Enzo needs help.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MATTY

  It takes me an hour to reach the peak. The path is broad and clear but covered with fine grains of ash that slide like ball bearings, so that for three steps forward, I fall one back. The air is thick with noxious gasses spilling down from the summit. My thighs burn and my chest aches from coughing.

  The clouds boil around the peak and every now and then I stop to catch my breath and watch the light playing up there. A live volcano. And here I am, climbing to its peak, where even the cultists fear to go.

  Blong. Zac. Mum. Dad. Katie. Jayden. And other names float into my mind, ones I don't expect. Rod, for some reason, keeps coming to me as I climb. His stupid confident grin, his ridiculous sunburned chest. Piper of course, odd angry Piper, burning up with a fire kindled as a child, her only peace found in the odd angry shot.

  I stop on the crater's lip. The bowl is wide and irregular in shape, dipping in on one side like a kidney. A pool of molten fire boils below, sending up wafts of heat that I flinch from as I would a bonfire bursting with sparks. Several hut sized boulders cast long shadows that dance in the flickering hell light.

  The rising moon silhouettes a line of crosses on the far side of the crater. They rise twice the height of a man and each is mercifully empty. I turn away, both from this sight and the unbearable heat lifting from the lava below. As I do so, the nearest boulder shifts, and I realise he is there, in the rock's lee, sitting with his legs drawn up against his chest and his head on his knees. So massive and still that I mistook him for the rock.

  He leans forward and the lavalight dances in his black eyes. He is swathed in shadows as if he was draped in a cloak of night. All I see are his eyes, filled with fire.

  "I am so... glad."

  His voice is as deep and powerful as it was in my dreams. A flicker of déjà vu runs through me like a shiver when someone walks over your grave.

  "Glad?"

  "So glad you are finally here. I have waited. It seems like I have waited for centuries. Mere words cannot capture the emptiness of those eons. All things come to those who wait. You know that saying, don't you? But they don't tell you of the price you must pay. The time you spend. The only thing that can be truly lost is time. Do you understand – truly understand – the value of time?"

  "I know I have come a long way to stop you."

  "Is that what you want? To stop me?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why would you stop me? What am I doing that you find so... objectionable?"

  "You are the heart of a disease that drowned our world. That is clawing at our home—"

  "What your failure is — which I do not condemn you for — is a lack of perspective. 'Our world'? The world does not belong to humanity. Any more than a body belongs to a cancer."

  "Eight billion people have died. And you want to consume those left."

  "Is that why you fight me?"

  "I fight to protect my friends."

  "No, you fight because it is in your nature to fight. You fight because you are human, and humanity is a voracious maw that can never be satisfied. Do you think the accident of your birth makes you somehow more worthy of existence than I?"

  "You’re just a corpse animated by a virus, speaking words that are nothing but echoes."

  "And you are humanity, destroyer of worlds. Ponder this as you approach your ascension. Six hundred million years. That is how long living creatures swam and crawled and flew on this blue marble. Life — unaware, insentient, unintelligent — carrying out its dance of birth and death. All in balance. And it took humanity barely a century to plunge that system into crisis. To fill the air with poison and choke the sea with plastic. To spread, to replicate, to fill every corner of the world—"

  Now it's my turn to interrupt, and I am pleased by the flash of indignation in his eyes that my words kindle. "Yeah, yeah. Humanity is the real virus. That's a hot take. Really original. I've heard it all before. Spare me your cheap rhetoric. I don't care. I don't care about the time before or what brought me here. All I care about is killing you.

  His body shakes. The dark silhouette shudders as his powerful shoulders heave. Again, I am struck by his incredible size. The masalai are gaunt. The Pale King was a wasted shadow of the man he once was. Nothing but bones and sinew and the shreds of muscles consumed by the ravenous virus that filled their nerves like lightning fills a tree struck during a storm.

  But the virus has had the opposite effect on the Green Lord. He is grotesque. Muscle that piles upon muscle like tumours. He dips his head to hide his face in his hands and the band of light illuminates the old blotchy tattoos that swirl on his brow and fingers and the back of his hands.

  A deep rumbling fills the crater, and I glance down at the lava, expecting to see a fresh frenzy of bubbles. But then I turn back to the Green Lord and realise the truth.

  He is laughing.

  He drops his hands and lifts his face to me. Now the band of light falls across his mouth only. His pale lips are tattooed with dark lines that flow into his mouth when his smile exposes row after row of jagged teeth.

  "I have missed you, Matai. You have grown up just as I wished. You have certainly made the waiting worthwhile. My brother underestimated you to his loss. I have one question: why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why do you think you are here?"

  "I am here to destroy you."

  "I'm not asking why you came. I am asking why you are here, now, in front of me. Let me rephrase that. After my chosen people repealed your amateurish sally, why did I bring you here, before me?" He rocks back on his heels and lifts his hands from the shadow. His elongated fingers end in thick horny nails that curve into claws. They catch the lava light and cast long shadows that reach up to brush my feet. "I could crush your skull with one hand. I could fling you into the fire below with a flick of my wrist. Or have my people defile you in the worst ways."

  "Rape threats? That is truly pathetic."

  "I don't mean defile physically. You haven’t answered me. Why have I brought you here?"

  I turn away and walk back up to the rim of the crater. I can feel his eyes on my back, but he does not move. I stop at the cusp. My face feels cool despite the heat boiling up from the lava. "You brought me here to be your queen. Or your executioner. I don't know, and I don't care. I don't think you even know which you'd prefer. But the truth is that I'm neither."

  His voice, when it finally comes, is halting, as if he is now picking his words with great care. "What are you then?"

  "I’m someone who fixes broken things.”

  I leave him in the crater, hiding behind his rock. The moon is high behind me, and my own shadow stretches down the mountain side and hides the path, so I step into darkness with every step I take. I cannot see the way ahead, but when I lift my eyes to the offing, I see the limitless ocean stretching in all directions to a horizon you can never reach.

  ***

  Well, what did you expect?

  Katie sits above the cave, on a small lip of stone projecting like a table out over the cliff edge. Firelight and shadows paint the slope below, showing people waiting in the cave for our return. I realise here is the only space where I will be alone... well, alone enough to talk to my imaginary friend.

  I look carefully on the lip of stone where Katie sits. The only thing between Katie's dangling feet and the jungle below is two hundred metres of open air.

  Is that thing safe? I ask her.

  It supports me.

  Ha ha.

  I sit down next to her. Let my f
eet dangle too. The jungle below is silver in the moonlight. The night is still and quiet. A dark V of birds circle below us.

  Is it weird to say I'm disappointed? Somehow, after all this time and build up, I expected something more.

  He brought you up onto a volcano and ranted philosophy at you. Seems pretty dramatic to me.

  That's just it. It seemed... so contrived. The lava. The speech. It made me think of something Zac said to me once, about the Green Lord's journals. Is this guy truly insane – or is he acting this way because he thinks it's the way an insane monster should act?

  You're worried about his motivations? I doubt that would make much difference if he decided to throw you into that lava. Or he turned you over to the Tribe.

  That's what's getting me. He doesn't know what he wants. For all of his 'I've been waiting for you' bullshit. I'm here now. He's caught me. And he doesn't know what to do next.

  No, I think he knows. He just isn't ready. I get the feeling... that there is two people in him. At war with each other.

  I smirk. Two people in one body? What a weirdo.

  Don’t be mean. What's the plan, girl?

  It's the Black Harvest all over again. Let's get back to basics. Just you and me and our wits against a den of monsters.

  Time to get to work?

  Time to get to work.

  ***

  The Englishman and the scarred woman and the others stand at the entrance to the cave like a group of hungry children awaiting the return of a late parent. They look at me carefully, as if unsure what I bring down the mountain.

  The woman steps forward. Flickering flaming torches make her scars as pink and fat as worms brought to the surface by heavy rain. Pain creases her face as she tries to find the words. Then she reaches out and takes my cheek in her palm, so she touches my lips with her thumb and my ear with the tips of her fingers. "Your skin is... so smooth. So soft."

  I repress a shudder and step away. The Englishman is off to the side, cowed by this woman and her two companions, tall thin men that could be Rueben's uncles. The woman drops her hand, disappointed and angry at my rejection. Her mouth sets in a fine line and she says, "He granted you an audience. You are blessed, my child. He accepted you. You are one of us now."

  "How do you know?"

  She smiles, a hungry, cruel smile that betrays her lust and the power she wields by her association with the beast. "You returned."

  One of the tall thin men says, "Did he say if you were to be marked?"

  "Don't be stupid," says the woman. "Of course she must be marked. She has been accepted, hasn't she?"

  It is then I realise the man holds a flensing knife, the kind you would use to skin an animal. I remember the fresh wounds on the prisoner I captured off Woodlark. Behind them is a table, cleared but for the ropes piled at each corner.

  "No," I say calmly as I lift my hand to stop their approach. "No, I am not to be marked."

  "You must," she insists. "You are of the Tribe. You are one of us now."

  "It's okay to be afraid," says the man. "But pain is temporary. And after the first few cuts, you will feel... You will feel the beauty and..."

  "Euphoria," says the other man. His eyes are distant, and his smile is troubling in its vacancy. "The rush... the pleasure! It is his gift to us. Trust me; you will be sad when there is no more fresh skin to cut!"

  The woman laughs as she turns over her arms to inspect the thick lines there. "Then you will go back, over and over them. Until you are truly beautiful." She drops her hands and her face hardens. "If you are not to be marked, then you are not of the Tribe. And those who reject the Tribe are fodder for its children."

  "I am not to be marked... by you. The Green Lord himself wishes to write his sacrament upon me."

  This invention has the desired effect on the three. The men look to each other uncertainly and the woman's frown deepens. "You are truly blessed then," she says, her obvious resentment belying her words.

  Careful, Matty. If they're really linked to the Green Lord, they will see through this ruse.

  Exactly.

  The man with the knife slips it back into a sheath on his belt. "Did our Lord say when you are to be blessed?"

  "No. He remains in seclusion at the peak," I say.

  "He will return before dawn. Then we will have the truth of it," says the woman. I see questions behind her eyes that she isn't ready to voice.

  The men look ready to believe and I turn to them. "May I rest? My journey home has been long and difficult."

  "I would've thought you had spent enough time lying down in your cell," says the woman.

  "That cell was hardly a feather bed," I say to the man with a laugh.

  His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Of course. Take more food, more water. Then Jeff will show you where you can rest." He half turns his head, to speak over his shoulder at the Englishman. "You'll look after our sister, won't you?"

  The Englishman, Jeff, cringes. "Of course, brother."

  ***

  I try to visualise the base’s layout as Jeff leads me back down the stairs. The flooded cave where the canoes docked faced west, as did the cave where we ate. The high cave was two hundred metres above sea level. The stairs we descend, through the vault rift, are steep. I count them now as I fill in my mind map. There is the room with the sealed doors and the naval cannon, which I think faces south. But the whole complex doesn't girdle the mountain like a belt. Instead, the way the stairs twist and turn back on themselves tells me that the whole system is in the large ridge that dominates the western side of the volcano.

  "This place is amazing," I say. "Did you people carve it?"

  He grunts and looks at me with a mix of suspicion and jealous anger. But he does not answer.

  "Haven't you been here for long? Is that why you don't have scars of your own?"

  Although I expected his anger – I am counting on it – the amount of vitriol in his reply surprises me. "That cunt up there says I'm not worthy of an audience. Fucking cunts are all the same. I should know better."

  "Is it just her though? What about the other two?"

  "Graeme and Nevil are puppets – caught up with Katya's tricks and her—" He stops himself and looks at me with a sly smile. "Well. It's not for me to say to you. Not until you are really one of us."

  "Sure, sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

  "I'm not upset! Why would I be upset? I've been here longer than any of them. Why would I be upset?"

  "So you know a lot about this place? Did you help build it?"

  He laughs, an arrogant mocking sound, as he rolls his eyes at me. "You kids never read a book do you?"

  "I can only read what I've found."

  "Yeah, well, you still don't pay attention. This place, it was the Japs that built it. Back during the War. World War Two," he says, drawing out the words sarcastically. "You've heard of that, right?"

  "Yes. I've heard of that."

  "The Japs were good at enlarging natural caves into island fortresses. Lot of good it did them. The Allies bypassed them whenever possible. It was only strategic islands like Iwo Jima that were invaded. But for every Iwo Jima there were a dozen other fortresses, like Rabaul or Kavieng or here, where thousands of soldiers waited for an invasion that never came." His voice is high and pinched as if explaining such obvious concepts causes him physical pain.

  "But surely the guns were all collected up after the war. The government wouldn't have let machine guns sit around."

  He scoffs as the tunnel levels off and he leads me down a passage. We have already passed through the cannon room and the radio room. We're now on a passage new to me. In my mind's eye I can picture us about midway between the top cave and the dock.

  "Obviously they collected up the guns they could find. Wouldn't do to let the kanakas get hold of them. But they missed a lot. My dad had a Jap machine gun over the bar at the Madang Fishing Club. The ones we've got now, well we had to go digging for them. Excavate a couple of tunnels that collaps
ed. But we've had plenty of time. And the creepers don't need rest breaks. The Japs, they were planning for a long war. They knew how to store their guns and ammo just right. Sealed in oil cloths so they'd last."

  "But why would the Japanese build all this in an active volcano?"

  He looks at me with real anger, and I realise I'm treading on dangerous ground. "You ask a lot of questions. Like my daughter. Stepdaughter. She never would shut up. Drove me mad. Drove me to distraction. Here's the beds. Shut up and get some sleep. Don't make me give you a hiding."

  We have entered a low, long room carved out of the living rock of the volcano. There is no light in here except for the flaming brand Jeff carries. A dozen camp beds are laid out in ranks. "This is where you stay until we come back."

  He turns to go, and the room is instantly plunged into shadow as his body occludes the torch. "Can't you leave me a light?" I ask.

  "So you can go running around? Not likely. You wait here. You sleep. We'll come get you later. You're lucky I'm not putting you back in your cell."

  "That wasn't luck, was it? That was their orders."

  "You're just like my daughter." He gives me one last hateful look before he leaves, taking the torch with him.

  I stand there in the darkness for a long time. The air is cool and smells of mildew. I feel the faint rumble of distant machinery through my soles. Finally, I pull from my pocket the flashlight I stole from the radio room.

  Shall we go for a walk? I ask Katie.

  Let's.

  The torch is a type commonly found throughout remote communities during the time before. It has a rechargeable battery and the handle is covered with solar cells. I cup the LED bulb with my fingers when I turn it on. My precautions are unnecessary as the light is weak, the bulb well beyond its lifespan. But its faint flow is enough to see a metre or so in front of me, enough so I won't fall down any unseen hole. No other passages lead from this room, so I head back to the stairs.

  Up or down?

  Below us is the dock and the cells and the drainage passage from where I heard the man screaming about his burns. Above us is the radio room and the cannon and the cave. There were many cultists and masalai wandering the lower levels – but I feel I have already seen everything above us.