by Kovacs, Jase
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Are you sure? Do you want to think some more before answering? I want you to be completely confident in your answer."
"You better watch your tone, laddie. I know you've had a hard week, but you are close to an indiscretion."
"Duncan, I want you to listen to me. You think about what I have just been through. My friends I've lost. What I've seen. What makes you think I give a damn about being indiscrete?"
"What you've been through? This man lying here is the love of my life, and you dare think yourself special?"
"So, to be clear, you're saying you know nothing about any battalion?"
"Nothing whatsoever. And if you're done, you can get the fuck out of here."
I nod and stand. I feel both a sense of loss and a liberating lightness as I see the dark fury filling Duncan's face harden and settle. "All right. You’re afraid for Larry. I believe that. But I’ll tell you something mate – it's the only thing I believe about you right now."
***
The moon is so bright that I could read a book by it. I sit on the bunker with Piper and stare out across the passage. The far shore is filled – absolutely filled – with masalai standing shoulder to shoulder. They come right down to the waterline but no further, almost as if they fear wetting their feet. I remember the way the solo masalai Piper shot before my departure swayed and snapped at the air as if it could bite our scent. These do no such thing. They just stand, utterly still, utterly intent, staring across the passage like a mass congregation awaiting the coming of their Lord.
"That..." I say, "Is about the most disconcerting thing ever."
She snorts. "It's funny how soon you get used to it. Mind you," she says, patting the heavy machinegun from First Landing’s watch tower, "having Ma Deuce here is pretty reassuring."
"Ma Deuce?"
She colours, her cheeks flushing as red as her hair. "That's what the old timers call it."
"Why don't you just let her rip?"
"I'm all for it. But we've only got about five hundred rounds. And there are at least a thousand over there right now."
"What, are you worried about provoking an attack?"
"I said I'm all for firing now. Those things are coming anyway. Why not thin out the crowd a little? Hell, I can fire single shots, aimed, take out two or three with each bullet. But Duncan and the others say no."
"I don't get it."
"They say we need the ammunition for other purposes."
I think about my plan to return to Dalbarade. "That may be true."
"Do you know something I don't?"
"I'm just remembering the conversation we had before – about how once the bullet is fired, it's gone. That we don't have any fresh stocks."
"Yeah, well, we'll feel pretty stupid if those things tear us apart because we're saving our ammo for a rainy day."
"Piper, have you ever heard talk of a battalion?"
"In general or specifically?"
"As in one we have been talking to on the radio."
"We haven’t been talking to anyone on the radios."
"Say I wanted to find out. Confirm radio traffic. Where are Larry’s logbooks? Did they get brought up?"
"No. They're back at First Landing. Maybe we can get them tomorrow?"
"Yeah, sounds like a plan."
"Maybe Weng could help you."
The name catches me by surprise. I hadn't thought about Weng, the old Chinese man we rescued from Woodlark. I've seen him here and there, in the background, often with Mark and Daisy, his companions from their long years in isolation hiding in their tree house from the masalai. "Why him?"
"Matty gave him the captain's log from the Black Harvest to translate. Nothing ever came of it, not that I know of at least, but maybe there might be something helpful for you in there."
***
I am looking for Weng when a commotion on the landward wall gets my attention. People loiter around their tents and shelters, exhausted by the day but unwilling to go into the solitude of sleep. The first shouts bring people to their feet in alarm, but after a second the tension slackens. It is not the general clamour of a call to arms, but a single woman, loudly protesting. Most people turn back to their spluttering campfires and simple meals, but not I. I recognise her voice.
The wall is waist high and thrown across the narrowed part of the peninsula, where the shorelines are separated by no more than seventy metres. The far side is a denuded strip of no-man's land of coconut stumps and hastily cleared kunai grass. The air is filled with hordes of winged ants awoken by the abrupt opening of their worlds to the sky.
Men and women of both communities stand guard. Cynthia told me that both communities’ leaders tried to enforce traditional separation, but it turned out that the shorthanded soldiers on the ground didn't care about political divides.
Half a dozen of these guards are clustered around Abigail. She wears a dark shirt, patched army pants and a satchel bag slung over her hip. Her face and arms are darkened with coconut ash, but her camouflage is streaked with tears of frustration. But her tears are only a sign of physical exhaustion, not spiritual weakness, and she spits out her words with a fury that seems to have her interrogator, Duncan, on the back step.
"You people have no idea what they're going through. How vulnerable they are. They need help, not to be hunted like rats," she is saying as I come up.
"What they need is irrelevant," replies Duncan. “We have a dawn to dusk curfew."
"Zac, tell these fools that they have no right to stop me."
Duncan doesn't acknowledge either her appeal or my presence. "There are still deadies out there, on our side of the bay, thanks to your friends. If you want to kill yourself, do it on your own time. I won't have you on my conscious."
"My friends... I should never have left them. They've been led astray. I can convince them to end this madness."
"Duncan is right," I say. "It's too dangerous to go now. Rest and we'll go in the morning."
"Zac. Please. Let me go. They won't hurt me. I'm one of them. You know this."
"Abby, your friends follow whoever indulges their hunger for annihilation." I can imagine what would happen if she left: Abigail delivering a speech to her former tribe. Father Livingstone watching impassively. And then, with a flick of one gnarled finger, setting them upon her. "You need rest. You need to recover. We're going to First Landing in the morning. Come with us and—"
"By morning? It could be too late by then!" Then she stops. The sound of her breathing fills the night and fresh sweat beads on her forehead. She gives a slow weary shake of her head. "Zac, this is different from before. This is not the time to... what, are you trying to impress me?"
"I'm stopping you from making a mistake."
"Like you stopped Matty? Oh, right, I forgot. You didn't stop her, did you? But with me, you'll man up."
"Abby, surely you can see that running around the jungle in the middle of the night is a bad idea."
"You can't stop me from going."
"Well, I can. And will, if you make me."
She steps back, her arms crossed. I can see the worry hidden from others by her smirk. "Go on then."
The Watchman by her side is Hutch, the carpenter who met us this morning at First Landing. He raises an eyebrow when I say, "Lock her up in the old bunker."
Hutch looks to Duncan who somehow manages to look even more surprised than Abigail. He quickly recovers and shrugs at Hutch, saying, "You heard the man."
"I can't believe you're doing this," says Abby as she's led away.
I don’t say you’re the one who taught me how.
For long minutes I stand at the parapet, trying to bring my breathing under control. To quiet my racing heart and dispel the sick churning in my belly. My throat feels tight as if I had been breathing smoke. I am only dimly aware of Duncan besides me — until he drops his hand on my shoulder.
"I'm proud of you, laddie."
I twist out
from under his hand like it was a venomous snake. "I don't give a damn, Duncan."
"Look, I know you're under a lot of stress right now. But—"
His objection is cut off by my raised hand. I point across the felled coconut plantation, to the far jungle trees. "Can you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"There's..." Actually, I'm not sure what there is. I don't know what caught my attention. I just know that something about the night's character has abruptly changed, as if someone had just turned a key. "Everything is silent. The animals... the insects."
Duncan listens for a second. "You're right.”
A low moaning fills the silence like a rising wind. But the air is still, and it only takes us a second to realise the moan comes from the passage. A moan that grows in breadth as we realise it comes from hundreds of voices at once.
Then abruptly the stillness is shattered as, with a harsh cacophony of squawks and shrieks, it seems like every parrot on the island takes to the air at once. They rise quickly into the night sky, in panicked spirals climbing like smoke above a fast growing inferno.
"Zac, I think we need to get to the Passage," says Duncan.
"Look at that." The imagery of the birds rising like smoke from an inferno is not just poetic license on my behalf. A faint orange glow rims the southern sky, as if the jungle on the far side of the island had caught ablaze. "Is that... First Landing?"
"I'm not sure," says Duncan. "Whatever it is—"
The ground heaves and throws us down. I fall hard against Duncan, and he collapses against the parapet. I roll away and onto my knees but can't go any further as the land settles into a prolonged shuddering. Screams rise from within the camp, both noises of animal panic and the urgent calling of loved ones’ names.
This is by far the worst earthquake we've suffered – much worse than the tremor which uplifted sections of Unkinbod bay before we departed. Duncan grabs my arm. "Get away from the parapet!" he shouts.
We crawl clear, and I rise to my knees and look across the camp. This quake may be worse, but I'm not too worried about our people. There are no tall trees in the camp to fall, no buildings to collapse. A couple of the tents and shelters crumple, but we'll soon have them upright again. As terrifying as the quake is, I know it's just a minor distraction to the real threat; the glow to the south which makes me think the whole jungle is afire down there.
"Maybe it's Father Lawrence.” Duncan shouts over the panicked tumult.“Maybe they're taking care of themselves."
"Yeah. I just hope that isn't First Landing... or Christ, the solar farm."
"No, it's the wrong direction for the solar farm. And further away. Maybe one of the local villages?"
Then, just as quickly as it came, the tremor ends. Duncan's last words were delivered in a shout, a shout that now fills the abruptly empty night air and is lost in the general confusion of hundreds of scared people.
We help each other to our feet. "Good thing there's no buildings to collapse," I say. "I guess we better go around and reassure people."
"That is kind of the job." He chews his lip for a moment, working out how he can continue the speech he was about to deliver before the quake struck. I have no intention of letting him begin some rehearsed statement – I still intend to make my way to First Landing tomorrow to check the radio logs and don't want to give him a chance to weaken my resolve. So I turn quickly away and walk back into the camp.
But it seems that no one much needs consoling. The quake was sudden and shocking, but like I predicted, the damage is limited to people's sleep and the dignity of some of the more easily startled. Still, we make our rounds, sharing a few smiles and laughs with those who need it, and consoling words with those for whom the shaking earth is another portent of doom.
We're talking to Auntie and Cynthia, about establishing a better water supply, when Hutch appears on the outskirts of our little circle. He catches my eye before jerking his head significantly in the passage's direction. Duncan is in the middle of alternating between entertaining and terrifying a group of children by removing his false teeth, so I slip away without any notice.
"What is it?" I ask him as we walk along.
"Maybe nothing. But Piper wanted me to get you."
"Abby?"
"Nah, nothing to do with her." He grins. "Although I wouldn't go into her cell alone if I were you."
"It's not a cell. She's just restrained for her own safety."
"Mate, I'm not the one you need to convince."
Piper stands on the bunker with a group of the Watch. They all have binoculars or jade lensed torches in their hands. I don't need either to see what has them alarmed — the crowd of masalai on the shore has somehow grown. The shore, which was crowded before, is now packed with hundreds, if not thousands, of the undead. "Yeah," says Piper. "They've been arriving ever since that quake. Just pouring out of the trees. And you should've heard them just before the quake struck."
I remember the strange wind. "They were moaning?"
She glances sideways at me. "I knew it was loud but... you want to know the really weird thing?"
"Weirder than a vast swarm of zombies at the beach?"
"The tide has reversed."
"What do you mean?"
"It should be flowing from south to north through the passage. It was, until the quake. Now..." She shines a torch onto the racing torrent that tears down the passage. The white water flow is incredibly violent, with a whole palm tree spinning in a whirlpool like a stick.
"Piper, stop moving your torch," I say, annoyed. "I'm trying get an idea of the water flow."
"I'm not moving the torch."
"Well, what was water a moment ago is now sand..." My voice falters as I consider what I am seeing. The circle of light now illuminates bare rock. "Someone should go get Mark. I think we need a geologist up here."
"Uh, Piper," says Locke. "The tide is falling."
"Yeah, I know."
"No. Like, really fast."
Locke points to the south, where vast stretches of Unkinbod bay is now bare rock and sand and naked coral reef gleaming silver in the moonlight. My stomach plunges as I undestand what we’re seeing. "The quake... is causing a tsunami."
"A tsunami?" asks Locke.
"A tidal wave – damnit how can you live on an island and not know that? The water is falling now – but in five minutes it's going to come rushing back in a giant wave. We need to get to high ground."
Locke sweeps Madau's flat shoreline with his arm – a shoreline that is growing by the second. "What high ground?"
"Yeah," says Piper, her voice flat. "I think we've got a bigger problem."
She has her spotlight trained on the passage. As we watch, the rapid current ebbs, and even grow gentle. Her spotlight must be losing its power, as the circle of light is dim and small. Then I realise it's not the circle that has shrunk, but the width of the passage. Water is draining out of the bay to the south faster than it can flow through the pinched gap to the north.
The passage is emptying.
"But that doesn't make sense..." I say. "If anything, the current should increase..."
I turn the spotlight to the northern end of the passage, where I see rock, ripped and lifted by the quake, blocking the end. I play the spotlight along the far shore – the suddenly close far shore, as the damned press against the receding water so that now only ten metres separate us. Ten metres... now nine.
Eight.
The masalai’s eyes gleam and their mouths droop as their long tantalising prey comes within reach.
"Goddamnit," says Piper. She grabs the charging handle of the .50 cal. Muscles bulge in her back and shoulders as she racks it twice. "I hate being right."
Then the chanting begins —
NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH
— and gunfire tears the night in half.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MATTY
The Green Lord crouches into the corridor. Every inch of his naked skin is covered in black
tattoos; spirals and whorls, triangles and interlocking diamonds, teeth and claws. His knotted muscles twist back on themselves like a pile of old ropes. He leans forward, a massive, looming presence that encourages the insane thoughts chasing themselves through my mind.
His face is long and broad, and his hair falls to his shoulders in thick, matted dreadlocks. His eye sockets are so deep that his amber irises burn like fires set in the mouth of caves. The feral arrogance that confronted me on the volcano’s summit been joined by something else. He seems to prompt me. To admit and give voice to the insanity — no, not insanity... the blasphemy — that runs through my mind.
I can't though. It would be a final madness in a world defined by insanity. I find my voice, and it gives shape to the thoughts which I deny. "You can't be him. I saved him. It took everything I had but I saved him."
His lips peel back in a grin that stretches to the holes where his ears should be. His mouth is filled with far too many teeth, each as long as my finger. He speaks without his lips or jaw moving, as if there was a second mouth within doing his talking. "It is impossible for you to conceive. But it is true."
This monster can't be him. His eyes are fire. His teeth are shards of bone. A stench worse than the village dead rolls from his throat. His body is an abomination against nature, rotting and growing at the same time.
My voice cracks. "It's impossible. I shot you. I saved you. You were sick and changing and I... I finished... I saved—"
"I know it’s hard, Matai. I hoped you would come to this on your own. But it’s better this way. Now you see. Now you know."
"It’s not possible.”
"We're special. You and I. Different." He waves one finger dismissively at the masalai that stand enthralled behind us. "When the Dark Star first fell from the void, it... didn't understand humanity. Our biology. Its attempts to meld were... unsuccessful. It leapt from host to host but it took time to adapt. To evolve."
"How... what are you saying? It evolved?"
"Eventually. It failed about... oh, seven or eight billion times. But now it knows. It learned how to meld with us. Not everyone. Only some of us can do it. Others end up... like them. The masalai. But those of us who were untouched by the initial plague – we can meld. And ascend."
