The Southwind Saga (Book 3): Flood Tide

by Kovacs, Jase

  "I'm just trying to make sense of his grand plan’s grandeur."

  "No, no, no. You must think I'm pretty stupid. You're baiting me, aren't you? Just like my daughter used to. Trying to trick me. She loved it when I lashed out. Made me look bad in front of her mother." He wags his finger at me. His cheeks are sallow, and his eyes water. "You listen, missy. You may have pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, but you don't fool me with your insolent slut simper. If I had my way, I'd leave you here tomorrow. See how clever you are when this volcano erupts."

  "Is that likely to happen?"

  He exhales out his nose, as if the stress of dealing with me has pushed him beyond all reasonable limits. "You idiot, you don't have to be a geologist to see the quakes are coming faster. The crater has flowing lava. Sea water is still flooding—" He stops abruptly, and his face looks as if I had just shoved a flaming brand against his belly. "Oh, you little shit. I know what you're doing! You fucking—"

  He utters a scream of incoherent rage and rushes at me. I take his fist in my shoulder. It is not a hard blow, but I feel it all the same. I twist away as he whirls and crouches. His breath billows out of angry gasps and his hands flex as if he can already feel them around my neck.

  I hadn't expected him to erupt so soon, and I let my bewilderment come through as I say, "What did I say? Why are you so angry!? What did I do wrong?"

  Inside I'm thinking: don't think, just talk. Tell me more. You want to tell me. You think I'm just a stupid woman who understands nothing.

  "You're just like all the rest of them. Trying to make everything my fault!" His mouth is filmed with white foam, and he rushes at me. I dance away again, backing up the corridor to avoid getting boxed in. I fight the urge to draw my sword. I want him to keep talking.

  "That's because you're a failure!" It's not hard to summon these taunts. The hard part has been keeping my contempt in check. "A weakling. A joke. You’ll never be one of them!"

  Tell me everything you know.

  "Fuck you!" he hisses. His breath comes in wheezing gasps from his purple lips. "You bitch."

  "Katya and the others – they're laughing at you. Playing you!"

  He snarls and leaps at me. I get an impression of his dirty, filed teeth and the whites of his straining eyes as I duck. He trips and tumbles down the irregular concrete stairs. A short sharp scream and he is still.

  I know before I inspect him that he is dead. His head twists at an obscene angle with the stub of his broken neck poking against his skin.

  I wait, counting breaths, reaching out in the silence between each thud of my racing heart. No one comes by the time I reach a hundred. I drag him back into the arming room and shove him behind the bench.

  I get to work. Quickly. But carefully. It wouldn't do to slip up now. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, as my dad used to say.

  I have less than an hour.

  ***

  NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH

  The chant rises up the stairs like a victory cries of a barbarian army laying claim to the field of battle. The masalai are dumb, feral, without pride or triumph. But their ranks are swelled by the Lost Tribe who join them in perfect synchronicity and lift their voice with the righteousness of those convinced they follow the true path.

  NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH

  The air reeks of sulphur. Sweat soaks my shirt, and the walls are hot to the touch. Is it the temperature that increases or is it a fire within me? I feel as light as a piece of paper caught in the wind. Have I been exposed? Did the Green Lord lie to me? Did he become impatient and infect me with a flick of sweat or a drop of blood while I was out of my mind?

  Or is this whole place about to erupt?

  NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH

  The image of Michael bursting into flame fills my mind. His last affirmation. His final decision as a human, to deny the void and reject the maelstrom’s call.

  NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH

  The chants suddenly cut off, replaced with a pregnant silence. I hurry forward, down the stairs to the dock level. A green light spills down the corridor from the dock.

  I run past my cell. The radioman's watch is in my pocket, and I fancy I can feel each tick of the second hand's advance.

  The Green Lord's voice fills the air so completely that it seems that cave itself is his voice box. "FROM THE DARKNESS I CAME. TO TAKE THIS WORLD INTO A NEW DAWN."

  The chant rises in one complete verse, full of frenzied passion.

  NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH

  "COME WITH ME, MY FRIENDS. SAIL WITH ME AND TAKE OUR GIFT TO THOSE WHO DENY US!"

  The tunnel opens up into the dock. People are everywhere. People and masalai, all facing the great pahi. The water of the dock is crowded with smaller canoes, each with its crew sitting in their places, waiting for the order to set sail. Other people line the stone quay, with mooring lines in hand, ready to cast off.

  The Green Lord stands on the pahi, his hands held high as if he was to embrace the whole world. Katya, Graeme and Nevil hold floodlights. Thin lenses of jade colour the light with the sickly jungle tint that bewitches the masalai, leaving them swaying gently, like seaweed in the swell. On the other hand, the Lost Tribers don't need any green lights to bewitch them. Their ecstasy, the pleasure and love that fills them, draws from their god’s love.

  He pauses his speech and points at me. "NOW, MATTY! WILL YOU JOIN ME? SAIL AT MY SIDE, AND WE WILL BLESS ALL THE LANDS!"

  I step away from him. I keep my eyes on him so he knows this is deliberate. I step back, down the jetty. I walk backwards towards the cave's entrance.

  "BOSS!" The radio man bursts from the tunnel. "We got a problem, boss! Someone's been messing with the radio! The speakers aren't working!"

  "IT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE. WE DON'T NEED IT ANYMORE," roars the Green Lord. But he looks questioningly at me rather than the man speaking to him.

  "Yeah, but there's extra wires, boss! Running down the elevator shaft! Think it might be a booby trap."

  Suspicion flickers across Green Lord's face. "Matty?"

  I draw my sword. I hold it out straight with my right hand, pointing its tip as the nearest Lost Triber, who happens to be the radio man. With my left hand I reach into my pocket and pull out his watch.

  Twenty seconds.

  "It wasn't BauBau," I say, loud enough to reach over the angry murmuring rising from the Lost Tribers.

  The confused suspicion in his voice is deeply gratifying. "What?"

  "My mother and brother died in BauBau. But not my father. He was infected in Ambon. You may wear his skin. But you are not him."

  Ten seconds.

  The Green Lord frowns and something like fear flickers on his face, like a flag catching the first breaths of a typhoon. "Matty, what have you done?"

  I turn and dive into the water.

  Somewhere in the world someone raises a radio mike to his mouth and says, "Madau, this is Zero Alpha." Those words turn into radio waves and cross the oceans at the speed of light to be caught by the antenna rising above this island. The signal races through the HF's circuitry and is routed to the speaker to become words again.

  Except that they don't go to the speaker. The electrical wires instead take this signal on a new path, through the wires I dropped down the elevator shaft and into the detonator of an armed shell.

  The whole world leaps and turns into light. A wall of sound smashed through me and casts me into darkness.

  I float in a darkness complete. I find myself surrounded by stars. Hands rise up beneath me. Above me is a swirl of flame, like a galaxy in the infinite.

  I am in my nightmares. I am in my dreams. The maelstrom. The vortex. The painting on the wall and the sketches in the book.

  I am at the centre of all things. The galaxy rings as if a bell is struck in its black heart. Bubbles force their way from my throat.

  I remember the crusade of sharks and the purity of their
purpose lifts me up. I finally understand why they brought me back from the edge.

  They kept swimming because otherwise they'd die.

  I break the surface and draw in an aching breath tasting of fire and salt. The cavern is a scene from hell. The earth shakes constantly. Rocks fall and crush fleeing people and masalai alike. Flames swallow the red sails on canoes and the pahi.

  People stagger about, blood streaming from their ears and noses. The shell worked better than I expected. It must have detonated the entire magazine, sending a great wave of pressure and heat down the corridor into the dock.

  I reach the dock and drag myself out of the water. A scream spins me on my heels. The radioman comes at me, stabbing with a screwdriver. Without thinking I step back and swing my katana. I step away from his falling body to avoid the blood jetting from his neck.

  A firelight grows by the second as if an army of flames marches down the corridor to the dock. The air is thick with screams. Without the bewitching green jade torches, the masalai attack the Lost Tribers.

  I stagger as the tremors reach a fresh peak. A man bursts from the corridor, his entire body on fire. He runs past me in a blind rush and dives into the water. He does not come up.

  I run down the jetty, to where the last canoe sits. Balus Pis. Which brought me here. I am about to step aboard when he comes.

  The Green Lord leaps from the pahi onto the dock. His face is peppered with green shards where the overpressure exploded the floodlight lenses. He strides towards me, his powerful hands out as if he was about to embrace me.

  "MATAI! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?"

  The red light of the corridor rises like the coming of the dawn. The Green Lord hesitates as he approaches the passage. He simmers, like the beach on a hot summer day, as waves of heat pour from the tunnel.

  This is something I didn't expect.

  "Why have you done this?" he demands. "I am saving the world!"

  The temperature spikes as a river of lava jets from the corridor into the harbour. The water boils furiously and flashes to steam which rolls out in a white cloud stained by fire to swallow masalai and Lost Triber alike. Globules of burning rock splatter in all directions.

  The Green Lord charges but the cloud is too quick. It billows around him. His voice rises in one high protesting shriek that I imagine is my name before it drowns in the roar of the mountain finally releasing the pressure that has long built in its heart.

  I slash at the dock lines to free my canoe. The boiling water and the foul gases pouring up the corridor cause a stiff outgoing wind which drives the canoe away from the dock.

  I am about to step aboard when I am violently cast against the wall and to the ground. My breath is driven out by the blow. I struggle to rise. The ceiling of the cave roils with steam and sheets of flame. The ocean screams as the earth’s blood is cooled to rock.

  The Green Lord stands over me. The skin on his chest and face hangs in loose sheets, so that his tattoos run like ink on water soaked paper. His teeth are bare, and his cheekbones gleam as if polished. He wraps one hand around my throat and lifts me up into the air. My legs windmill wildly as I struggle against his grasp. I remember his logbook, filled with inscriptions, that I flung from Aotea an eternity ago.

  His voice, when it comes, is a perfect facsimile of my father's. "What do details matter? I swallowed your father's soul, as I swallowed everyone's. He lives in me as do they all. All you have done is—"

  I reach deep within me and summon my strength. I go back to the well as I have done so many times before to find the fire that carried me alone through the years. That showed me the way on the Black Harvest. That guided me through the caves in Kulumadau. The fire that brought me to this shore.

  I take that strength and swing the katana. I jerk my body to the side, working against his own iron hand around my neck, so I can get my weight behind the blow.

  The blade stops with a force enough to jar it from my grip. It is buried half through his forearm. The blade is caught in his bones.

  It wasn't enough.

  I was not strong enough.

  But still his fingers slacken and open one by one. I fall as he steps back, looking at his arm as if puzzled by the three feet of Japanese steel that crossed a century of time to sever his tendons.

  The fingers of his hand hang open and useless. He pulls the sword out and flings it to clatter on the dock behind me.

  The ground leaps again, and he drops to one knee. I slide away as the whole dock rises at the far end. A great groaning rises as the stone protests this cruelty and a fresh jet of lava shrieks and screams into the water.

  The Green Lord does not come at me. Instead he shakes his head. He looks puzzled by my continued defiance. In that moment, I realise that, for all his alien intelligence, he will never understand my rejection. He will never understand what it is to be human.

  "All you have done is drowned this island in fire," he says. "A fire will swallow you and your friends. This volcano will kill them all. And for what?"

  The cooled finger of rock is growing into a fist with every fresh jet of lava that rolls left and right down the jetty, framing the Green Lord against a backdrop of molten earth.

  Something alien and terrible and hard crosses his face, and I know that there is a gulf between us that cannot be bridged. "I ride within a million still. Your people are nothing but smoke yet to rise. And still you fight. You destroy all I have built. You are not worthy of my gifts. None of you are."

  I struggle to breathe the sulphureous air. I want nothing more than to turn and dive into the water. To swim to the drifting canoe and set its sail before the volcano erupts in earnest.

  If it isn't already too late.

  Instead I stand and watch him.

  He walks towards the lava. His hair smokes and his skin bursts into flames. He lifts his good arm and watches the fire coil around him. His essence rises in swirls of smoke. The lava boils and spills in eddies and coils. He watches with eyes that have seen things beyond my comprehension.

  He reaches into the lava.

  All at once, he ignites into a pyre of white fire. Smoke billows in great vortexes to merge with the maelstroms filling the cavern's void, reaching out and filling every space, smoke that finally sends me, gasping and coughing, into the water.

  I find my canoe drifting beneath a night sky aflame with a hundred falling stars. I remember the relief I felt when I killed the Pale King. The choking freedom that I relieved in great wrenching sobs while Blong held me.

  I don't feel anything like that now. No weakness or freedom or triumph. Nothing but a void inside. Still, for the moment, I can rest. The stars fall around me. Perhaps one will crush my canoe. Perhaps the volcano will blow its top and a great pyroclastic flow will spill out and drown me in hot ash. I am too tired to care. I lean back against the mast and watch as the volcano is crowned with a great false dawn.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: ZAC

  Thunder splits the sky and fire crawls across the sea to taste my skin. Chunks of fibreglass splash down around me, and I scream as the ocean fills my wounds with acid. Smoke closes the sky, and my mother calls my name out there somewhere in the oily, burning sea, and I shriek in answer, my ten-year-old voice breaking with pain and panic. She calls out "Swim to me, Isaac! Swim to the life raft!" I thrash across the surface, following her voice through the smoke to safety.

  The rising heat parts the black clouds and I see the angels fall. They line up with the burning wreckage of the boat as deliberately as a snake eying a mouse. The sea erupts in tall columns of spray, and the whole world shivers with the fury of their passing, so low and fast that they whip the smoke away. I catch a glimpse of the life raft torn to shreds, capsizing and sinking, swallowed by the ocean.

  I scream and scream for my mother and there is no answer but the crackle of drifting fire.

  ***

  And now, a lifetime later, again the black sky is full of falling angels and fire. The masalai gather themselves at the
passage edge, crouch and then leap into the air. They rise from the far shore, their arms spread like Christ. Three, four, now half a dozen are in the air and behind them come the rest of their kind. They shriek as they spring into the air, rising in a high arc, their faces sickly in the pale green light. Their eyes glitter with the ungodly hunger that defines their existence.

  We pour gunfire into the massed horde. The masalai are riven with twin impulses; on the far shore their consuming hunger overcame the weak light of the torches, but now they land with heavy thuds on our shore, where the torches are stronger. They raise their twisted heads to us, and their eyes fill with jade light. They hesitate, their mouths slackening as they fall into the light.

  It is into the growing beachhead that Piper aims the machine gun. "HOLD THE LIGHTS!" she screams as she fills the night with lead.

  Everything slows down as the fire, the screams, the monsters, the night, the jade light, all these stimuli flood my senses. I am a witness. That is my role. I am always the witness, and this is what I see.

  The gun spits empty brass cylinders that glimmering like broken glass catching the sun. They spray across the concrete roof, hit the sandbags and flitter off into the night. Coils of gunsmoke spill from the cartridges' lips as they fly, so the air is filled with minute corkscrew clouds that linger for less than a second before dissipating into nothing.

  The gun's cone of fire strobes and stutters so that the attack dissolves into a stream of images like the pages of a book flipping under a sliding thumb. The masalai land, their deformed feet kicking up plumes of sand. Piper's fire plunges into their massed bodies and does its work with horrific abandon. Bullets rip through body after body, bone and sinew and organ parting without resistance, so that each shot may split a dozen creatures before finding its final rest. Bone shatters and rotting flesh disintegrates into clouds of corrupt matter that splatters their brothers and sisters with gore that should be long slumbering in the grave.