…and a man in a suit, standing by the edge of the trees, looking at us.
I’d scanned right past him. I blinked. Looked back. He was right at the very edge of the forest, standing half in the shadows, blink and you’ll miss him. We were a good kilometre away from the island but I knew I wasn’t dreaming: that was a man, in black pants and white shirt and black jacket, standing at the edge of the trees and looking out at us.
“Rickenbacker!” I said. “Quick, look! Look at this!”
I pushed the binoculars at him and he sat up, blinking in the sunlight, trying to focus on where I was pointing. “I don’t… what do you mean, a suit? Left of what… I can’t see him, man.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, give them back,” I said.
When I focused in on the right area again, the man was gone.
“All right, well, that’s fucking creepy,” I said.
“What’s the big deal?” Rickenbacker said. “There’s probably survivors over there. So what?”
“Why wouldn’t they try to get over here?”
“They might have had bad experiences with the military,” Rickenbacker said. “I mean, last they saw us, we were bombing the shit out of Brisbane.”
“But he was wearing a suit…” I said. Though even as I’d thought that, it wasn’t quite right. He had a scruffy beard, I think he’d been barefoot, there definitely hadn’t been a tie. He’d been a real solid human being, not a surreal vision. It had just been very disconcerting.
I talked to Norton about it later that night during the sitrep, and he dismissed it. “There’s survivors over there for sure,” he said. “There’s survivors in Brisbane, too. I wouldn’t get spooked by it.”
“It was just weird,” I said. “I don’t know. You haven’t sent teams over there to clear the island?”
“Why on earth would we do that?”
Which was a good point. Like Norton says, there’s really no threat over there. We’re sitting on a floating fortress.
It’s just weird to remember that. Ever since the Canberra plucked us out of the Bight, we’ve been inside the sphere of the military. Barton Dam, I suppose, was a survivor stronghold, but it was one of the safest and best-organised I’ve ever seen. That survivor out on the beach today was a glimpse of what life is still like for so many people: barefoot, hiding, hungry, and frightened of everything.
August 5
Five days now and the divers still haven’t entered the carrier. Norton says they’re still going over the internal maps, the blueprints we’ve managed to get from the Americans, trying to figure out the best route through to where they need to go. They’re planning on entering tomorrow, either through an open aircraft elevator shaft, or the breach by the engine room.
The idea of the engine room, with a pair of nuclear reactors sitting in it, still bothers me. “I don’t know why that bugs you,” Rahvi said, when we were sitting around in the ward room playing cards. “We’re sitting on top of a bunch of nuclear warheads as well. Those are designed to go off.”
“Not without the codes, apparently,” I said. “And they didn’t have an explosion next to them. I don’t know. Fukushima melted down because it got breached by water, didn’t it?”
“Fukushima melted down because it got breached by a tsunami, which is a bit different,” Rahvi said. “Besides, it was built in the ‘70s.”
“So was the Abraham Lincoln,” Lomax muttered, cutting the deck.
“It’s been overhauled like a million times since then,” Rahvi said.
“But it’s probably leaking radiation,” I said.
Rahvi went off on a long explanation about how you get radiation from everything, even the deck of cards we were holding, which didn’t ease my concerns. I don’t know. Maybe I just have too much time to sit around and think things over. I didn’t expect to be diving down into the ship myself, but I thought I’d have more to do than sit down for a twenty-minute sitrep with the commodore every night.
August 6
One of the dive teams made the first entry into the carrier today, venturing along an upper corridor after clearing some debris from an aircraft elevator shaft. They made it about thirty metres through, which doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re underwater I guess it’s a different ball game.
There were zombies, unfortunately. Quite a lot of them. The divers are armed with semi-automatic rifles that can fire underwater, plus a sort of cattle-prod bolt gun that’s good for close quarters – even the rifle bullets, apparently, lose most of their velocity after about five or six metres, so it’s all going to be close quarters. Not that clearing the entire carrier is an option. There could still be thousands of undead sailors down in that wreck. The dive commander, a lieutenant named Sullivan, has already recommended the route they took today be abandoned. Norton showed me the incomplete diagram of the carrier, and the places they expect to find both the warheads and the PAL codes. The divers have been split up into two teams, one looking for each.
So, basically, nothing to report, I told Aaron.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, he said.
Have you heard anything on the wire from all the rogue commanders? From New England?
Nothing from New England, Aaron said. Christmas Island got a message from some asshole up near Darwin who knows all about it somehow, says we’re trying to start some kind of nuclear arms race. They don’t believe the stuff about Ballarat, they think it’s a lie or a trick or something.
What the fuck would we want a nuclear weapon for otherwise? I said.
To try to attack them, I guess, which is insane, Aaron said. Don’t ask me to get inside their heads. I mean, that guy in Texas nuked a bunch of cities.
To kill zombies, I said. Not to kill other people.
Well, anyway, Aaron said. Nothing from New England as yet and they’re the only ones who’d have anywhere near the power projection to get over to Brisbane. And even then, they’d have to tangle with the HMAS Canberra.
I don’t really know anything about the Canberra’s defences, but I assume a ship this big, a helicopter carrier, is bristling with missiles and AA guns and all kinds of stuff. And we still have our own choppers – more than the ship had when Aaron and I were aboard back in Melbourne, since they evacuated some of those bases and assets on the way past New South Wales. I guess the notion that any of the military has gone rogue at all is what pisses me off, when I see the sailors and technicians working here, when I see all those Army guys and their families who waited patiently for evacuation.
I guess there were those guys at Puckapunyal, though. I guess if those soldiers I see in the cafeteria every day had been offered an airlift for their wives and kids by General Draeger instead of Commodore Norton, they would have taken that too.
No point thinking about it.
August 7
We usually have the ward room to ourselves during the day, but in the evening the officers are off duty and come back up and the place gets a bit more crowded and convivial. They watch a lot of movies – there’s a huge DVD collection. Rickenbacker, as well, has taken to watching a lot of box sets and TV shows during the day.
I can’t do it. Some of them are all right; mostly pure fantasy stuff, like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. But anything that’s set in the real world, or in the past or the future, I just can’t watch. I don’t know how the others can. Some of the officers are going through The Sopranos and all I can do is look at this late ‘90s world of New Jersey and New York, Italian-American families and bars and grimy industrial neighbourhoods and all I think is: yes, another part of humanity that’s gone. A few days ago they were watching one of the Bourne movies and I thought: yep, Europe, all those wintry cities and old buildings and cafes and cobblestoned streets, I’ll never get to see those. Rickenbacker was watching Cool Runnings today, but there’s no more Jamaican shanties and bright Caribbean islands anymore, just an archipelago of the dead.
That was the point at which I decided I needed to stop hanging around in the
ward room half-watching old movies and TV shows with the others: the point at which fucking Cool Runnings made me depressed.
I’ve been reading a bit, sometimes in the cabin, sometimes up on the deck in the sun. Reading a lot of history, which for some reason doesn’t bother me as much as watching a Hollywood movie set in the past. Real history doesn’t have neat stories or neat resolutions. I’ve been reading a lot of military history books, since the Navy tends for a certain slant when stocking its shelves. Books about World War I, World War II, Vietnam. Not much about Iraq or Afghanistan, except for feel-good inspiring memoirs the Navy probably didn’t need to spend much time checking for problematic political content.
Maybe war stories make me feel better. Wars can be won. Wars end.
August 8
I was in a dark corridor somewhere, being dragged along by other men. Black boots on rough concrete, the harsh light of bare bulbs. In the distance I could hear muffled wailing or crying.
A steel door was unlocked in front of me. A bare concrete room, a single light bulb, a metal chair in the middle. Leather restraints on the arms, and the concrete floor beneath it stained with overlapping patterns of dried blood.
I screamed.
And then I woke up, and I was still screaming, and the others were woken up, scrambling out of their bunks, tumbling over each other in the dark, someone turning the light switch on. I’d already dragged myself to my feet and stumbled out of the cabin, down the hall, towards the bathrooms, panicking. I stood over the sink in the tiny head and tried to calm my breathing, fighting the urge to vomit, forehead beaded with sweat.
There was commotion outside in the corridor – I hadn’t just woken up my own bunkmates but other people up and down the hall. I could hear Sergeant Blake’s voice outside: “Just a bad dreams, folks, just a nightmare, back to bed.” I closed my eyes and pressed my head against the mirror.
Corporal Rahvi’s hand on my shoulder. “You all right, man?”
“It was just a bad dream,” I murmured. “Everybody has them.”
“Sounded pretty fucking bad,” he said.
I opened my eyes. Rahvi was behind me, Sergeant Blake standing by the door, both looking concerned. “I’m fine,” I said. “Please, just… go back to bed.”
They frowned, but went. I sat on the toilet for a while, wishing my stomach would stop feeling so queasy.
That blood. On the concrete floor. In different patterns, overlaid, different shades of red. Blood that had built up over time. That room, that chair, had seen others before me.
But it was just a dream. Right?
August 10
I was sitting on the deck today, reading an American Vietnam War memoir, about 150 pages in and wondering if they were ever going to mention Australia or if the average American even knew that Australia sent troops to Vietnam, when I saw him again.
I’d been taking a break, scanning the divers’ pontoon with the binoculars to see if they’d dredged up anything interesting yet, then scanning the shoreline of Moreton Island.
And there he was: lurking at the edge of the trees, hiding in the shadow of the foliage, looking at us. Ragged black trousers, still with his suit jacket on – wasn’t he hot? – with some kind of yellow bands near the wrists, scruffy beard, shirt with what looked like bloodstains. Those were vague impressions – he was still pretty far away. But it was him.
And he was looking at us. Looking at me.
I lowered the binoculars. I waved at him. When I raised the binoculars again, he was gone.
“He’s looking at us,” I told Commodore Norton later that night. “He’s checking us out. He’s probably doing it every day.”
“Of course he is,” Norton said. “Who wouldn’t be? We’re the most interesting thing in the bay.”
“We’ve had refugees come in, haven’t we?” I asked. “Sergeant Blake was talking about it the other day.”
“We had one boatload come in from Deception Bay a few days after we arrived,” Norton said. “A couple of families. We took them aboard, we’ve got the space. If we had a rush we might have to turn survivors away, but as long as we can handle them, we’ll take them.”
“So why hasn’t he tried to come over?” I pressed. “He could swim that far.”
“Well, why haven’t plenty of people tried to come over?” Norton said. “There’s more people in the city than just the group from Deception Bay. There’s probably more people on the island, too. But they want to stick to themselves. Which is fine by me. This isn’t a rescue mission.”
“He’s all alone out there, though,” I said. “Or it looks like he is, anyway. And he keeps watching us.”
Norton put down the paper he was looking at. “Matt, why are you obsessing over this? It’s just one survivor.”
“I don’t know,” I said. Which was the truth. Something just struck me as off about the guy. Maybe because I was going nuts with boredom, maybe because I’m frustrated I’m not doing more to help – I’m not stupid, I know my own mental biases.
But there’s something else down in there as well. Some little gut feeling. The same kind of thing Aaron and I both had about going to find the Endeavour. Some niggling sense that it’s important.
Not much that can be done about it except sitting up on the deck and looking out for him, since nobody else cares. And even if I keep seeing him, so what? What are Norton or Blake going to do about it?
August 12
I was on deck when it happened. I was always going to be on deck when it happened.
The divers have moved closer to the Canberra in the last few days. They’ve secured a couple of entry points, they’re moving through the Abraham Lincoln, into the flooded maze of crippled bulkheads and unsecured debris and leaking chemicals and flesh-eating zombies. Sometimes they’re a hundred metres away, sometimes they’re a stone’s throw from the deck of the Canberra.
I was sitting near the superstructure, talking to Lomax and Dresner, still occasionally scanning Moreton Island for signs of life. It was Lomax who spotted it first, a simple “What the fuck?”
Down below us, the steady belch of regulator bubbles was increasing. The water was fizzing, like a bottle of mineral water with the pop topped off. I felt my stomach twist. A moment later a face emerged from the water, a diver spitting his regulator out, screaming in agony – and the water around him blossomed red with blood.
People were shouting, yelling. A boat had detached from the pontoon and was powering over to him. A sailor had jumped from the lower deck, fully dressed, plunging into the water beside him. Still the diver screamed on and on and on.
I felt sick. I turned and stumbled inside. I made my way through the corridors, to the bathroom in our sector, stood above the toilet and waited to vomit.
I didn’t, in the end. I was still covered in sweat, the knot in my stomach twisting. I went and lay on my bunk.
Sergeant Blake came by an hour later, sat on the bunk opposite. “Petty Officer Sam Khoury. He didn’t get bit. They were shifting debris to open a passage near the engine room, something came loose, crushed his leg. He got out, bolted for the surface – they’re patching him up in the decompression chamber now. He’ll be fine.”
I was staring at the bunk above me.
“Matt? I said he’ll be fine.”
“Good for him.”
Sergeant Blake grunted something, and left.
It’s true. They’re going to come true.
Somewhere below me – through all those bulkheads and cabins and galleys and armouries and supply rooms – is the HMAS Canberra’s decompression chamber. Petty Officer Sam Khoury is getting patched up in there, getting the bends sucked out of him – or whatever the fuck decompression chambers do. Petty Officer Sam Khoury is going to be just fine.
Somewhere else in the world, there’s a concrete room with a bloodstained floor and a chair with leather straps waiting for me.
August 13
It doesn’t have to mean anything, Aaron implored me. If you think abou
t it, it’s a 50/50 chance, right? Something might happen. Or it might not. Schrodinger’s cat. This thing happened. That doesn’t mean it had to happen.
What does the Endeavour think?
The Endeavour doesn’t know. This doesn’t normally happen with Telepaths. You know that.
I was quiet for a while. Have you had any other dreams lately?
Aaron hesitated. Yes.
Well, go on then.
I’m in a chopper, Aaron says. Another military chopper, I guess. And we’re landing in a field. And it’s loud, real fucking loud, you know how it is. And we land and some soldiers are jumping out and I’m jumping out, and we’re fanning into this field, and the field is, like – it’s covered in flowers, purple flowers, like some weed or whatever. And the wind from the rotors is blasting it all up in the air, and it’s like a snowstorm of purple flower petals. And I’m charging through that, and we’re there because we’re looking for someone. And I don’t know why, but I already feel like it’s too late.
And then what? I pressed.
I don’t know, Aaron said. I woke up.
Great, I said. Dancing in flower petals. You have fun with the hippies, I’ll have fun in the interrogation chamber.
Matt… Aaron said.
But I’d already cut the connection. Talking to him wasn’t making me feel better. I left the cabin, walked around the ship, went up on deck, looked at the stars. Nothing made me feel better. There was a gnawing sense in my gut, and I knew what it was, I knew how to string it loose from any other kind of fear or anxiety or worry I’d had this year, learning all their complex flavours.
It was the feeling I’d last had in Kalgoorlie.
It was the feeling of knowing that I wasn’t in control of my own fate. That I was at the mercy of other men. That they were going to hurt me.
End Times (Book 4): Destroyer of Worlds Page 16
