by Pete Aldin
The only things moving were birds. Birds and a smoky smudge that might have been a cloud of flies. The thirty-odd human corpses around and on the jetty probably accounted for that, giving mute testimony to some past violence. Large pockmarks in the wood and the asphalt indicated one hell of a big gun used against them. A gun rather than a firearm, since only something mounted on a naval vessel or armoured vehicle boasted rounds that large. Sure enough, many of the bodies were chewed into small pieces—a smorgasbord for scavengers.
Nothing was moored to the pier. One car had a boat trailer hooked up, but the trailer was empty. Further down the beach to their right, a wrecked rowboat languished against some rocks. Past that, on a brief curve of sand-beach, a skiff had beached itself like a whale carcass with a motor hanging off the back like loose skin.
He passed the glasses to Heng.
“No one there,” said Heng.
“Except scavengers and bacteria. You bring your face mask? Well never mind.” Elliot nudged the car out onto the road again and let it roll down the hill without touching accelerator. “I've got towels in the back of the car. We'll cover our faces and inspect that skiff on the sand.”
“Boat? Maybe doesn't work.”
“It's not the end if it doesn't.”
“You can swim across?” Heng laughed. Elliot didn't see the humor. “Maybe I sit on your back?”
“If it doesn't work, we check up and down the coast, wise ass. Find another way.”
Heng nodded. “Not bad idea. Not bad. But maybe boat will be okay.”
*
“Boat is shit,” Heng told the others.
The women and Kim spoke in unison as if the line were well-rehearsed. “Swearing. The children.”
“Children fine,” Heng said, but he modified his comment to: “Boat doesn't work.”
“Whichever way he states it, it's true,” Elliot confirmed. “Good news is, the coast looks deserted. No pusbags. Bad news is, no way across to the island.”
He and the Khmers spent the better part of a quarter hour arguing about which direction to go in: up the coast or down it, until Elliot lost patience with the way Lewis sat there shaking his head and wearing a bemused expression.
“What the hell is it?”
Lewis took a deep breath for a theatrical sigh, studying his nails. “Don't you people ever use your eyes?”
“What eye?” Heng snapped.
“Why would we only find boats along beaches?” Lewis pointed back over the hills. “We passed a property about three kays that way with a great big sign on the front gate that said Hammond Bay Fishing Charters.” He looked at each of them in turn with almost comical smugness. “You don't think maybe they have a boat or two? On trailers? In their sheds?”
There was a moment's perplexed silence, then the Cambodians broke up laughing.
“Lewis help us,” Heng said, clapping his shoulder. He nodded at Elliot. “Lewis help like a man.” He lifted the hand to wag an index finger in Lewis's face, smiling coyly. “So if you a man, next time we kill lot of zombie, you help clean up.”
The others laughed again, Lewis joining in. Even Elliot had to smile.
18
The heavens favored the three of them with clear skies and little wind for their trip across the bay. The swell was low, the sun hot enough to burn unprotected skin. Lewis stood at a rail, sketching in one of the girls' notebooks. The chickens clucked and complained from their cage inside the wheelhouse. Heng stood behind the wheel, humming a happy tune. At least, it sounded happy to Elliot.
Leaning beside the young man, looking out across water, he said, “Progress. Finally. Been a helluva long trip but suddenly you're nearly there.”
“Yeah, nearly at a place I don't want to go. You know I still want to go to Minchenbridge, right?”
“And in a year or two—when the dead, er, die off—you can.”
Lewis wiped spray off his cheeks, blew on the notepad and dropped it to his side. “And where will you be then?”
“A long way from here, pal. I'll make sure you and these folks are okay, then I’ll be on my way.”
“You'll blow off a safe island with food and clean water?”
“Probably.” His mind was once more on the wilds of the west. If it was anything like the woods of his boyhood, he'd do fine.
“You really don't like people, do you?”
Elliot turned his back on the wind. “Maybe people don't like me.”
“Wonder why that is.”
Elliot had never felt much like explaining himself. When under army disciplinary action, he would simply nod and accept whatever penalty was dealt him, deserved or otherwise. When Uncle John had dealt it out, he’d learned to take it without a sound. School teachers had never cared for excuses. And he never much liked blaming others for his own behavior. And yet, from time to time a comment like this would unsettle him, would remind him of origins, of events that set a person on a path they could never quite pull themselves back from.
“Not everyone gets the chance to start life on a good road.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we get dealt our roles in this life and we just play 'em out until the story's done.”
Lewis was quiet a moment then he said, “Sometimes you talk a lot of crap, you know that?”
Elliot chuckled. “Proves my point, don't it?”
“You're saying I was destined to be nice and make friends and you weren't?”
“Well, not like that, but you have to admit, you started out with better chances than me. At least you had a good family. My Dad cut and ran when I was born. My Mom did the same when I was seven, left me with an asshat trucker named John.”
“Oh. I didn't know that. I'm sorry. But … my parents were useless. They couldn't survive in this world.”
Elliot frowned at him. It was the last thing he'd expect Lewis to say. “Survived longer than ninety-nine per cent of the world's population. They did their best, pal.”
“And made sure I got left here without knowing what to do. If you weren't around …” He slapped the notepad against his left thigh. “Dad didn't teach me anything useful.”
“He taught you to take responsibility. And your mom taught you first aid and some herbal medicine. That'll be damn useful from now on.” Lewis didn't respond. “Your dad gave you an education. He paid for your school books so you could learn to read, so you could learn to keep on learning. He didn't take a belt to you whenever you looked at him wrong. He didn't call you names. I'd say you got a lot to be grateful for there. Honor the man's memory. Your mom too. They were good people. Smart people. I'd say they served you well.”
There was silence, a silence revealing the voice of the planet itself: wind and water and the hopeful cry of gulls. A conversation millions of years in the making.
When Elliot looked down, the knuckles of Lewis' right hand were white on the handrail.
“What is it, pal?”
Lewis lifted the notebook, handed it to him. He'd drawn two people, adults judging by the clothes, seated on a couch, holding hands. There was blank page where the heads should be.
“I can't remember what they look like. When I try to imagine them, I can … picture their clothes, that's all. What's wrong with me?”
Elliot—who had a perfect recall for the size and shape of body parts he'd picked up from conflict zones and the wounds he'd treated, but had a similar block in remembering dead comrades' faces—said, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“I can't even see Birdy's.”
Me neither.
Elliot said, “You carry them in your heart. The mind's a screwed up thing. Plays tricks on you all the time. But your heart—your heart, Lewis—can carry a lot of people.”
“My heart is a mess,” he said softly.
“Your heart is a whole lot cleaner and clearer than most. Trust me. And no matter what anybody says, even me, you listen to your heart. You trust it. You follow it. If you can do that, your family lives on in you. And you
'll do fine, whatever world we end up with here.”
*
The island didn't rise much above sea level; the ground was low beyond the stone breakwaters on one side of the pier and shallow sand beach on the other. Two small recreational boats had been tied up on the beach side, mirrored on the breakwater side by a larger rigid-hulled inflatable boat, a Navy boarding vessel, twenty-five feet long. Stenciled on the gunwhal: HMAS AUBURN. The mother ship would no doubt be anchored on the far side of the island away from prying eyes, and its deckgun was no doubt what had chewed up the deaders back on the shore.
“Maybe someone official's here,” Elliot told Heng. “And maybe that'll actually be good.”
Beyond and around the dock, the commercial and parking area came into focus: a service kiosk, a boat ramp and some storage buildings surrounded by chainlink plus enough space for twenty cars to park. The boat juddered as Heng cut the engine. It coasted toward the inflatable boat, slowing. He'd timed it well and as it drew alongside the pier, it was a simple thing for Elliot to toss a rope over a cleat post and cinch it off quickly. The hull bumped against a pontoon, bounced away in slow motion, was pulled back there by the tautness of the line and the laws of physics.
On the island, a thin ribbon of aged asphalt led from the dock's small parking lot through the storage buildings, disappearing into waist-high scrub. No one greeted them. No one was anywhere to be seen. No corpses, moving or not. The island was two miles long he knew, so a small population could be anywhere. Or they might all be various shades of dead. Wind made banshee noises through the trees and the service kiosk eaves. Down in the water, a bottle clinked against a pier stanchion. Three seagulls hopped up the pier toward them, carping for a feed.
“Didn't get the email, fellas?” Elliot said. “Feast's on the other side of the bay.”
The three men stood at the edge of the boat and exchanged nervous smiles.
“Who first?” Heng finally asked.
“That'll be me.” Elliot got a foot on the bulwark, stuffed a tire iron he'd brought along through his belt, then stepped over. Lewis handed Heng Jock's rifle, then Heng handed over his cricket bat. Elliot helped Lewis across, the SIG waggling precariously in the back of the young man's waistband.
Shit, don't lose that on me.
As Elliot turned toward Heng, he heard the unmistakable sound of a car approaching at moderate speed. No, not a car; several cars. He motioned Heng back from the bulwark. “Maybe stay there a little longer, Mr Heng. And close to the wheel. Lewis, stay close enough to jump over if you need to.” He picked up the cricket bat and took a step closer to the post where he'd tied off the boat.
A late-model white Mazda came into view around the bend through the trees, followed closely by an electric motor scooter ridden by a fat man, and then after a moment, a flat-bed ute-pickup with three figures—a dog sitting in the back and two people in the cab. The bike peeled off near the storage sheds and parked there, facing back the way it'd come. The other vehicles came to a stop at the top of the pier, disgorging passengers, all of whom swung around to the far side of the cars. The dog remained where it was, barking once to get its point across before planting its ass. The helmetless motorcyclist killed his engine and pulled a .22 from a makeshift holster on the motor housing. The passengers also sported non-automatic rifles. The male and the female drivers straightened their polo shirts over their jeans and stepped onto the very end of the pier. Both were tall. The woman raised an arm and beckoned him and Lewis forward.
None of the gun-toters pointed weapons at him. Not exactly. The bike rider had settled into a kneel behind the bike, elbows braced on the saddle and the barrel pointed out to sea to Elliot's right.
“Your call, Lewis. We go say hi. Or we wave goodbye and get back on the boat.”
“If they're bad guys, we're screwed either way, eh? So let's say hi. Smiling all the way.”
Elliot liked that and grunted a laugh. He leaned across the water, handed Heng back the cricket bat. “Can you get out of here if you need to?”
Heng nodded, face taut. He had a knife in his back pocket and could cut the mooring line in a pinch.
Elliot painted a smile on his face and started down the dock after Lewis, picked up his pace to catch up. As they approached, something in the lead couple's body language told Elliot the woman was in charge here. She was strong-featured, the well-defined muscles of her arms showed beneath her sleeves. Her hair was growing out of a short, utilitarian cut—like Elliot's. When the red-haired man beside her flicked her a glance she didn't return, Elliot was sure she was the boss. She watched them approach with her hands clasped behind her butt. Definitely from the naval vessel and an officer; it was still there in her posture, the tilt of her head, the set of her eyes.
At thirty feet away, Elliot murmured, “She's in charge.”
“Don't say anything derogatory,” replied Lewis.
“My, how our vocabulary is coming along.”
“You know what I mean. We don't need your rudeness toward women.”
“I wasn't rude to Birdy.”
“That's different.”
“I'll behave, Pops. Promise.”
“Get stuffed.”
“Thought you learned to swear better.”
“That's close enough,” said the woman when ten pier boards lay between them.
Lewis jerked to a halt and Elliot came to rest beside him, mirroring the woman's stance.
“Hey there,” Lewis said. “Permission to come aboard?”
Her mouth flicked up in a half smile, quickly gone. “Not just yet. Weapons on the deck.”
Lewis pulled Kim's pocket knife from a hip pocket and dropped it, shrugged as if to say Not much, I know. Elliot hesitated then tossed the tire iron, wondering if he should've kept the SIG for himself. It still made a slight bulge beneath the back of Lewis's baggy tee—a risk, but so far it was unnoticed. He didn't mention the lock blade in his side pocket.
“Thank you,” she said. “Hope your friend on the boat's smart enough to not point that rifle this way.”
Names humanized people, as he knew. It hadn't quite worked with the trio at the train wreck but it was always worth a shot, so he offered, “His name's Heng. I'm Elliot and this is Lewis. You are?”
“Not important,” she replied.
“Get rid of 'em, Meg,” called an old man behind the car. She blinked once and slowly in obvious displeasure, but slow breathed it away.
Well, that's one name at least.
Elliot got a good look at the speaker when the old man came around the car. His skin was ruddied from years in the sun, wrinkled like crushed linen. He'd shaved his head to a shiny pate, but his long white beard rivaled Santa's. Or Ned Kelly.
She raised one hand to shut him up without turning. “Your business here?” she asked.
Elliot gave up the smile. “Hoping for sanctuary. Got a healthy young man here. I'm healthy too. Friend on the boat is a resourceful guy.”
Santa-beard piped up: “We got enough resourceful people here.”
Meg's mouth puckered in mild sympathy. “Afraid he's right.”
The red-haired man shifted his weight from foot to foot beside her. Nervous. Maybe. Or guilty. He kept his gaze moving between Elliot's midriff and Heng on the boat, avoiding eye contact. Definitely feeling guilty.
Elliot scanned the small crowd—a dozen people, all male but for Meg. Was she the island's only woman? Testing dynamics, he said, “We have more people a short way from here. Two women, two men, all young and fit. Plus two young girls. Children.”
Not a flicker from the men at that. Not a sign of lust; that was good. But not a sign of compassion either; not so good. Except for Red Head: he dropped his gaze to the toes of his own sneakers.
Meg puckered her lips again and shrugged like What's that to me?
“We don't want any of them here,” said Santa Claus Beard. “Not these people.”
“I know, Bill, I know,” she replied.
He went on, and she roll
ed her eyes, enduring it. “Look at 'em: a Yank, a towel-head and a gook back there. First the gooks came and took Australian jobs away from Australians. Then the Muslims did. No way they're gonna take Australian food away from Australian mouths here.” A chorus of “Too right” and “Yeah, mate” from the crowd behind him.
“Keep a lid on it,” said the woman. “Still thinking it through.”
Bill sucked at his teeth in displeasure but obeyed her. What she had over them Elliot couldn't tell. Maybe just the ability to make good decisions in a crisis? And maybe Lewis was right about Elliot, that he was rude to women. What did it matter which chromosomes she'd received at conception? A leader was a leader.
He was doing pretty well, he felt, keeping his temper under control, forcing his patience while Meg's gaze kept tracking across the three of them. And then Bill put his fingers to his eyes and pulled them sideways in a Vaudeville caricature of Asians, playing for the crowd.
“Have some respect,” Elliot said. “You've only been through one holocaust. This is Heng's second.” Ignorant Bill blinked at him, not getting it, so Elliot tried a frontal assault. “This gook's more of a man than you'll ever be, Santa.”
Bill puffed his chest out baboon-like, used little jabs to the air with his rifle to punctuate a sudden tirade. “You're just lucky Meg's a soft touch, or we'd have shot you three and been bloody well done with it. You stole that boat and all.”
Someone behind him added, “That's Reg Davies' boat.”
Meg ignored everything happening behind her, assessing Elliot with a cool eye. She said, “Here's my offer. You, we'll take. You look like you could do a hard day's work. You get a three month trial. The kid can get back on the boat and they can both piss off. We see them again, we shoot.”
Elliot rubbed at his jaw stubble. “Let me get this straight. Meg. You want me to join a bunch of people who'd throw an old man and a teenager out on their asses?”
