The Southwind Saga (Book 3): Flood Tide

by Kovacs, Jase

  I recognise him.

  Suddenly, everything makes sense and so nothing does.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ZAC

  The pink dawn mist spilling through the palm trees and down the beach at First Landing makes me think of the ghosts of castaways who waited on deserted islands for a rescue that never came. We stand off, out of the machine gun range, and look for some sign of life from shore, some invitation that we have satisfied quarantine, before we approach.

  But there is none. No movement on shore. Nothing but the ghostly mist.

  After all we've been through, the sail from East Island to Madau was an anticlimax, an easy beam reach that ate up the ninety miles of the journey sometime before midnight. We've waited until dawn revealed us to the Watch.

  Enzo passes the binoculars to me. "Nothing." I glass the shore and agree. There are no fishermen, no children, no beach combers. No one moving in First Landing. And, most significantly, the watch tower is empty.

  I squint, straining my eyes to their limits to be sure. It is hard to tell from a mile out, but after a minute I venture, "The machine gun is not in the tower."

  "What? Are you sure?" asks Rod, taking the binoculars from me. Although he is still distant, his attitude lacks the cold anger he held before my eulogy to Kev. "How can you tell? We're still too far out."

  "I'm pretty sure."

  "Sure enough to approach without clearance?"

  I take the binoculars to examine Queen Victoria. She's locked down – all of her hatches and doors sealed. Then I move to Aotea, the lone yacht, who gleams emerald in the dawnlight. After another minute studying the shore, I say, "I think I should go in with one of the canoes. Confirm things are okay before you all come in."

  "Non," says Enzo. "No more splitting up. When we go, we go in together."

  ***

  It isn't until our anchor chains clatter through the bow rollers that we see men on shore. There are four of them, two black and two white. They stand near the tower at First Landing, the ominously empty tower, and wait while Enzo, Rod and I go in with Jacka and Auntie in a canoe. Abella has stayed behind to watch the wounded, particularly Larry who is still far from safe harbour. I have barely seen Abigail since her decision two nights before. She has kept to herself in a forward bunk, and I have had no wish to open myself further to her.

  The men come down to the waterline to help us drag Jacka's canoe ashore. The first to talk is Locke - but I barely recognise him from the young brawler who was always so eager to cause trouble. His eyes dart nervously, his skin so grimed with dirt that he’s almost black, and his hair pasted down on his head by sweat and oil. All four men have an air of alertness about them – no, more than alertness, they are as nervous as if they were under a sniper's rifle. "Where's Kev?" asks Locke. "Where's Michael?"

  I glance to Enzo, who gestures for me to talk. It is only then that I realise that Abella and I are the only members of the council to return unharmed. "They're gone. Where's everyone, Locke? What's going on?"

  "What do you mean, gone? Where the fuck have they gone?" There is a manic edge to Locke's voice.

  "He means they're fucking dead, mate," says Rod. "Now listen to the bloke. Where is everyone?"

  "Dead? What – where is- wait, where's Shiloh?"

  "I don't have time for this.” I look to the second white man, a middle-aged handyman named Hutch. "What's going on?"

  "We've all moved up to the passage. To the Watch post. Duncan reckons it's more defensible."

  "Against whom?"

  "Livingston and the Losties. They've been bringing zombs across."

  "Can someone here start making sense?"

  "Look, we can't stay. The zombs go to ground at night but the cultists have been picking us off. We need to get up to the passage."

  "No," I say. "You come out to the yachts. Tell us what is going on first."

  "Duncan said—"

  "Duncan can wait.”

  ***

  It is on Fidelio's back deck that Locke and Hutch fill us on the events of the week since we departed. Afterwards, I say to Enzo, "It was a mistake for so many of the leaders to come. It left a vacuum."

  He gives one of his maddeningly philosophical shrugs. "Perhaps. Or perhaps it was for the best."

  The earthquakes and uplifting of Unkinbod bay continued after we left. Masalai were seen prowling on the north side of Madau. Two locals and one expat were killed before the rogue masalai were destroyed. How they made it across was a mystery.

  However, the mystery was soon solved. Father Livingston, the fiery local priest, had found common ground with members of the Lost Tribe who had been less than enthusiastic followers of Abigail. With Abigail, Jacka and Auntie Ruthie away, the more imaginative members of both camps had started to preach the earthquakes were a sign of the final apocalypse. For the Lost Tribe, it wasn't difficult for them to return to their early belief that the masalai must be appeased with sacrifice.

  This appealed to Father Livingstone and they started kidnapping members of both communities to offer them to the increasing swarms of masalai roaming the far shore. Hundreds could be seen at night, swaying and snapping at the faint, alluring scents of warm life drifting across the passage.

  Duncan didn't need much prompting. With the long held borders now undermined from within, the council decided that First Landing and the local villages were too open to mass attack. So everyone moved up to the Dilkiwau passage a few days earlier, which concentrated both the people who needed protection and the weapons with which they would be protected.

  "Duncan told us to wait for your return," finishes Locke. "He said to bring you straight to the new camp."

  "And leave the yachts here, their skeleton crews isolated?" I ask. "No, I think not. Enzo, Jacka, what is the anchorage like up the passage?"

  "For my canoes? No problem," says Jacka.

  "Yes, but the bay, she is uplifted—" begins Enzo.

  "I'm not talking about Unkinbod bay. What about the north side of the passage?"

  "It is very open. If a storm comes from the north, we will be pinned to a lee shore."

  "But for tonight? Maybe tomorrow?"

  "Oh, for a short time, I think it is okay. Some reef, but nothing too difficult."

  "Okay, then. Let's get going." I savour the phrase that Matty loves, that I now can utter myself in context. "There is not a moment to be lost."

  ***

  The short sail around the northern point of Madau island and down to the passage only takes us two hours – two hours that pass in a blur to me, overtaken as I am by a nervous excitement at these new developments. It is clear to me that the situation on Madau is desperate, and it is vital that we provide Duncan aid.

  I sit and watch Larry sleep. He has not stirred since his operation, and Abella and Auntie Ruthie are deeply concerned by his condition. I find him breathing gently but steadily, at peace. The cool cabin is kept dark by heavy curtains over the portholes, but still my throat burns. I feel a great weight in my chest and my heavy eyelids dip. It is not exhaustion which weighs them down, but the yearning for darkness, to shut out the outside world and all the guilt inducing truths it contains. Truths that I now confess to my unconscious friend.

  "How am I going to tell them? Michael's wife. Kev's guys. How am I going to tell Duncan about you? And everyone else who we left behind. What a fool I am. What a fool we all were, to think we could catch the Green Lord by surprise.

  "We were led by our noses into a trap. We lost so much and gained nothing. The Green Lord is still out there, free to continue his plans. It was my fault— I should've convinced the council it was too dangerous. That—"

  A catch in Larry's breathing brings me up short. For a second, I fear a new crisis, and I rise from my seat to call Abella. But then, in a voice as thin as a wraith, he says, "No. Not your fault."

  His eyes are closed, and he still seems deep in slumber. But his forehead is creased in concentration, and the way he licks his dry lips tells me that, if he is not consc
ious, then at least some of him is awake in there.

  "It is my fault, Larry. I supported Matty blindly. I should have played devil's advocate. A better friend than I would have."

  "No," says Larry, insistently, even angrily. "Orders. We had orders."

  "The council gives no orders. We decided as a body—"

  His bushy eyebrows draw down as he frowns deeply. "No, stupid. Orders from higher. The battalion. Orders. What Matty said didn't matter. It just helped."

  I stand slowly. "What orders? What are you talking about?"

  "Orders.” His voice fades as he falls back down into the well of unconsciousness. "We had.... orders."

  When he opens his mouth again, it is to utter a thin, yet fully formed, snore, the first sign of natural sleep seen since his injury. But I don't care about his recovery. Instead I watch him, my mind whirling, questions boiling.

  ***

  I find Dilkawau much changed from my last visit, where I lay with Piper and watched her shoot masalai across the water. The finger of land reaching out from Madau is barely two hundred metres wide and a kilometre long. People have been busy; palm trunks stacked into a wall protects the rear. Between the landward wall and the original bunker is concentrated perhaps five hundred people, all the expats and a great many locals, who work constantly building shelters.

  After the eerie silence of First Landing, to find such a burst of life up here lifts my heart from the doldrums where it has been wallowing since Larry's delirious statements. But his words are still at the forefront of my mind as we come ashore to be met by Duncan, Martha, Cynthia and young Ivan. All of them are tired, dreadfully tired but happy to see us. Yet, as we come ashore and climb the beach, their smiles fade as they search for familiar faces and find them lacking.

  "Zac, where are the others?" asks Duncan. "Are they still on Shiloh? Perhaps—"

  "Larry is here. He's been badly hurt. But Duncan... Shiloh. Kev, Michael, Dolf and many others. They're gone, Duncan."

  "Oh Christ," says Duncan. "Oh— but Matty, she's aboard Excelsior?"

  "I'm so sorry, Duncan."

  ***

  Cynthia, the council member responsible for planning, explains that the camp is a temporary security measure – until the massing damned across the passage disperse and the actions of Father Livingstone and his followers are curtailed. We all remember Arthur Moody and his Unascended, a death cult that sprang up five years ago and siphoned away dozens of lives to a bloody murder suicide spree.

  She passes me a tin mug of island tea. Duncan has gone out to Fidelio to see Larry and help Abella unload the wounded. Auntie Ruthie and Jacka are with their own people, breaking news of their losses and consoling the families of those who did not return. For the moment, it is just Cynthia and I sitting together. I've given her the baldest summary of our expedition and she listens without interruption or indeed much reaction apart from narrowing her eyebrows when it’s clear that we walked into a trap.

  "It must be frustrating to you though," she says when I have finished. "To have come so close."

  "Close to what?"

  "Winning."

  "Didn't you hear me? We barely escaped with our lives. Many didn't."

  “What if Shiloh hadn't gone on the reef? All the boats would have been out, and we would have come away with so much information and such a little cost. It was only that simple mistake – and I'll be clear, a very understandable mistake– that makes you think you failed."

  "But I did."

  "Because you carry the burden. You’ve returned with priceless intelligence. We now know the Green Lord is cunning, that he has a fleet, that he has heavy weaponry, and that he plans a campaign of conquest. Without your mission, we would have been sitting here waiting, still under peacetime quarantine procedures, when his war canoes came over the horizon. Imagine if he had landed undetected and came at us in the night?"

  "But it feels..."

  She smiles consolingly, but I can see wheels turning behind her eyes. "It's okay. You’ve performed wonders, Zac. Rest now. You've earned it."

  I drink the rest of my brew and shake the last bitter drops from the cup onto the sandy ground. "Yeah. There's something I need to do first.”

  ***

  I find him sitting in the rock pools at the eastern edge of the point, where the passage opens to the ocean. It is late in the afternoon and the waxing moon rises over Woodlark. Shadows move under the trees across the passage. The tidal current rips through the fifty metre wide gap, fast enough that there are steps in the water, where the tide stacks faster than it can drain. Whirlpools form and collapse and form again, and I think of the spirals that fixate the Green Lord and his followers. It’s so strange the way an adrift mind will latch onto a signal in the noise, a message from the chaos that suggests order can arise spontaneously from turbulence.

  He lies on his belly, poking into a rock pool full of seaweed with a long stick. A cluster of anenomies have hidden their tentacles away as the seawater evaporates, to protect their delicate feathery limbs until the tide returns.

  When I sit next to him, he has induced a crab to clamp down on the end of his stick with its large orange claw.

  "Hey there, mate," I say. I sound uncomfortable but I don’t try to hide it. Children see right through an adult's artifice.

  He doesn't reply. He works the stick back and forth, to force the recalcitrant crab into performing a strange side to side waltz as it tries to crush the annoying prodder.

  When I speak to him, I speak as I wish someone had spoken to me, all those years ago, when I was pulled from the ocean. "Rod said he told you about Matty. He said you were angry. He says I shouldn’t have let Matty go. But I think you know Matty better than Rod, don't you?"

  The crab twists its claw suddenly and snaps the end of the stick. It scuttles triumphantly behind a rock, its trophy held aloft. Blong drops the stick with no apparent interest and watches the water churning through the passage.

  "You remember when she found you, don't you? On the Black Harvest. You and I are the only ones who know the full story, you know that? It's our secret. We're the only ones she trusted. She escaped and was sailing away. Then she turned around and came back. To save you. This is like that. Except this time, she had to save us all."

  He says something but his voice is whisper thin and I can't hear it above the rushing water's song. "What was that, mate?" I ask.

  "I'm not stupid. I know why Matty stayed behind."

  "Rod said you were mad at him—"

  "I’m mad at Matty. She said, no more leaving me behind. And mad at you too."

  "I couldn't stop her going."

  He glares at me. "You should’ve gone with her. Now she's all alone."

  I think of the Green Lord and Rueben and his followers and I think Christ, I hope she's all alone.

  "Matty loves you, Blong. She had to go somewhere you couldn't follow. Where none of us could follow. But she left us with important jobs to do. I can't do mine alone. Can I ask you to do something for me? Help me."

  Blong picks up his stick. For a minute he holds it, as if looking for more crabs to harass. Then he snaps it in two, places those two pieces together and snaps them again. He throws the sticks into the churning current and watches as they are quickly swept away. "Okay."

  ***

  I find Duncan sitting by Larry's bed in the new hospital tent. Our casualties have joined several others wounded by the spears and machetes of Father Livingstone's followers. The seams in Duncan's cheeks, the legacy of a lifetime spent in the sun, seem deeper and broader than I've ever noticed before.

  "Any change?" I ask.

  "They say he's sleeping. So that's good."

  "Have you thought about what happens next?"

  "This camp is just until this situation resolves. Our biggest problem at the moment is the solar farm. We have some panels up here, to keep the Watch's lights charged, but there's a lot of infrastructure at the farm to be left unprotected. I expect Livingstone to destroy it out
of spite."

  "They say that there are more masalai at the passage each day."

  "You'll see as soon as it gets dark. I'm not sure if Father Livingstone and the others are somehow calling them. Maybe the people they've attacked already are stirring them up, like chum in the water attracting sharks."

  "Well, you have concentrated everyone just fifty metres from the damned shore. It's no wonder they're swarming."

  "It's the best defensive position on the island. They can’t cross the passage without wings."

  "I'm not criticising."

  "To answer your question, now that you're back, I want to deal with Livingstone and his people. You have most of our weapons, and most of our soldiers. We remove the wolf at our back and then we can think about our next step."

  "We’ll do that tomorrow. Then, the next day, we set sail."

  For the first time he turns away from Larry and looks at me. There is a wariness about him that I haven't seen before. "Sail? For where?"

  "Dalbarade. We're going back to get Matty."

  He nods, slowly, digesting this. He looks around the shelter. Abella is working with some aides at the other end of the row of stretches and the nearby patients are asleep or unconscious. There is no one to overhear us. His voice is conspicuously neutral when he asks, "Do you think she's still alive?"

  I thought I was going to say of course or the Green Lord wants to win her over – that won't happen in a day. Instead I ask, "Who’s the battalion?"

  Duncan slowly straightens on his stool. "What battalion?"

  "The one that gave the order to go to Dalbarade."

  "Zac, what are you talking about?"

  "It's a simple question."

  "And I want to know where it comes from."

  His look is hard. His jaw is tight, and his eyes glimmer with a growing anger. But then they change, as I meet his glare and return it, and I see something not unlike surprise there as I reply, just as firmly, "Are you going to answer me or not?"