by Jase Kovacs
God is the Dark Star.
I have the sense of an immense sentience, a great being of incredible power. In the darkness, where I cannot see, not because it hides, but because it knows that my pitiful human mind could not comprehend its majesty.
"I am his Messenger, chosen by God to select the Disciples who will bear his word. And I have chosen you, Matai of Voodoo, the Solo Hand, brave hunter of the ruins of the old world, prophet of the next."
I want to fall to my knees and grasp his legs and sob thank you thank you but he smiles to let me know that such gestures are not necessary. Instead I ask, "Why now?"
"Why now?" He is surprised, his head cocked as he tries to understand my question.
"Why now - after everyone is dead? Why is God coming now?"
He laughs again, as a parent would to a child who has asked a naive, but true, question. "Why now? It is the end times, Matai. Those of us who remain are God's chosen people. Who have been selected to serve in the new dusk that is coming, who will reign in the long night. But there are those yet who hide, who reject his blessing. The people you serve, Matai. You are the guardian of heretics. Who fear and reject his glorious kiss. But do not despair. His love is infinite, his forgiveness as great as the void through which he journeys. All he asks is that you carry unto them his gift, so that they will not be denied their Ascension."
MATTY
He frowns in annoyance. An icicle of fear spikes me, I know who that is, she will ruin everything. I rush forward, gratitude bubbling within. "Thank you for choosing me, oh Captain, thank you-"
His hand up. "Who is that?"
No one, no one I want to say but there she is, standing between us, her arms out, holding me back. Matty, she says. This is not real. None of this is real. Fight him, Matty. Please fight him.
His raised hand stills my words, my pleas, what was I about to say? Proclaim innocence? I am glad he stopped me, for I had only lies to offer, ungrateful lies.
"You harbour doubt, Matai? Don't be afraid, my child. You are human, for now. It is human to fear. It is human to doubt, and deny the blessings of the divine. That is why I offer you something more. Something true and pure. But first, you must purge yourself. Prove your love for your brothers and sisters. Prove your love for me. Prove your love to God. Purge yourself of doubt and embrace the truth found in death."
How great his mercy, how infinite his wisdom, how miraculous his forgiveness. I am a sinner and a denier of faith and my unbelieving self dares to proclaim her heresies before the face of the Lord's chosen messenger. I proclaim my faith, I will show him my love by shouting down my Judas. "Katie, look where we are. Can't you feel him? The Dark Star is coming, Kate. We have been chosen as his servants, his prophets. We, of all who wander the oceans, chosen to carry his blessing to the heretics of Madau—"
Katie grips my shoulders and I smile beatifically to show her I am not afraid of her doubt.
Matty, this is not real, none of this is real. He's a monster, just like all the rest.
"You are the monster. Look where we are. He has carried us into the void between stars, where God comes."
You're in a hold you're in a ship's hold, in a charnel house, in a slaughter pit and the pale king of this madness is reaching into your mind, these words are his, he is putting them in you—
Her despairing words cut off as the Captain comes behind her and wraps his arm around her shoulder, as gently as a lover. She doesn't resist, she can't resist, because she is of me and I crave his tender kiss. He presses her forehead back, tilting her head so her neck is bared to me.
"You know what to do, Matai of Voodoo. Take the blade and end your doubt. Show me your love."
I look to Katie, who would have me deny him, and then to the blade in my hand. A long curved hook of gleaming obsidian. Its handle silver, the pommel a skull, a knife heavy with meaning and portents. A blade hungry for heretic's blood. It is the end of days and it is time for the new dusk. A new beginning.
The Dark Star is coming.
The end of loneliness. That is what Katie would deny me. She would have me return to my solo wandering, my lonely life, a empty struggle for survival in a dying world.
They need you, she says and I shake my head no no no, be still with your lies, do not deny me his great love.
They need you, she insists. Trade keeps them alive. You keep them alive. You and all the other wanderers who go out beyond the horizon and return with cargo, with stories, with wonders.
I feel a weight on my shoulders, as if a strap digs in there. I feel the comforting smooth grip of the blade in my right hand. Katie waits, her mouth parted, her eyes pleading for mercy, but I know what I have to do. What I have been taught to do, what I have was born to do.
I lift the blade high. It hangs in the immeasurable void, its dark edge gleaming in crimson light. A burning crimson that reminds me of—
—reminds me—
"Matai, would you deny your God a second time?" asks the Captain, his kind voice hardening with displeasure.
Katie begs me with her eyes and I see her doubt as she knows how deeply the Captain has touched me. How much I desire his gift.
The artery in her neck beats, throbs, imploring me to slice it, to lance, to cut, to let the pressure and the pain go.
I am so thirsty.
I raise my free hand and interweave my fingers around the blade's hilt. A throbbing floods down my free—
—my non-master—
—hand and I pause. Where does this pain come from? I look at the blade, the puissance it contains bleeding through the gaps between dimensions, a pale fire, like phosphorescence—
—spluttering crimson flare
—phosphorescence in my yacht's wake
—Voodoo where my soul sleeps
—a pale king waiting on a throne of corpses
—how copy?
—a great white lord of the ocean leading a shark's crusade
—lies all lies, he says, they are the corruption of the flesh, the vanities of the old world, burn them, purge yourself of the lie of life and accept the truth found in death
—and my soul answers: I do
—weapon fires, weapon stops
—and I bring the knife down.
Chapter 14
A terrible scream fills my skull as my blade sinks into flesh. I feel the blow in my bones, as my knife slides deep into meat. The crimson star snaps off, the stars cut out. My vision stolen as if a hood had been dropped over my head. The impossible dream, of the Captain hanging between stars, vanishes and in its place is a darkness as deep as ink, as complete that as found in the deepest cave. My hands ring with an electric shock. The force of the blow sends tremors through my arms like the peeling of a great cathedral bell. I fly backwards, a blow to my chest hurling me through the air.
I am in darkness, falling through the void, falling forever, my mind adrift in a strange and limitless sea, a sea of absence a sea of loss.
I fall forever and more and then—
I crash against the ground.
The screaming continues, a long high shriek of — not pain, no nothing so simple or human as pain — the scream is one of betrayal and indignant rage. A scream that demands: how dare you? A scream that promises its agony will be transferred, that the inflictor of this pain will suffer outrages a million times worse.
My mind races, tumbles but my hands move, my hands go to the places they know they will find what they need.
Drills.
The wind has been driven from my body and I hiss recovery breaths, as Calypso and Mum taught.
My master hand falls to my side, to my hip where the M4 lies, secured to my body by the three point sling Dad made. So that when I faded, when the carnage and horror and that voice, that horrible seductive voice called me and my will and muscles slackened, the rifle did not clatter to the ground and be left forgotten. It fell to my side, to rest until it was needed again.
Drills. To keep my body on course when my mind is adrift.
My parents, reaching across the years, to keep me safe.
I lie full length on the ground and I point my weapon and thumb the Surefire on, all without thinking, muscle memory, drummed into me by countless repetitions, programmed actions: there is a noise, it could be a target, align the weapon and illuminate.
The creature is bent, its spaded claws scrabbling at the hilt buried in its shoulder, the blade spearing and pinning a tattered epaulette to flesh. The rotten golden thread of the four bands barely glimmer in the torchlight, so greatly are they crusted with filth and rusted blood. Thin streaks of hair slick against its skull, its scalp white with a grave pallor, threaded with clotted black veins. The uniform it wears was white once but now is black with obscene matter. It succeeds in hooking a claw around the hilt of my folding lockblade and it draws it as easily as I might pull a splinter from my palm.
It drops the knife and looks up, straight into the torch, its eyes narrow crimson slits that burn with the radiance of a star, a faint shimmer of beard crusting its jaw as its mouth splits wide open, its thin lips stretching almost back to its ears. Rows upon rows of teeth and a hiss, a horrible hiss as the Captain screeches at me, his body tenses as he crouches to leap.
SAFE SEMI AUTO and I squeeze.
An impossible noise fills the room, no limitless void this, a cargo hold with walls of steel that capture and contain the twenty staccato explosions that burst from my weapon and return a thousand fold. I go deaf in an instant, the soaring stuttering flame burns a hole in my eyes in the second it lives and the creature shudders, shatters, falling away, its flesh churned, a dozen impacts ripping it, blasting cloth and meat, shattering bones and it falls away out of the light.
Matty, RUN!
I gather my feet under me and spring upright. I release the magazine, fumble and drop it. It clatters, where did it go? No time. My non-master hand falls to my belt, unerringly finding its mate, plucking the fresh magazine from the shingle and slamming it into the receiver. Release the working parts and realign, confirm the target is down.
It is not.
He crouches and raises his face to me, his mouth still open, a long thin tongue flickering over teeth as if tasting his pain. His knees are splayed and his hands press against the ground, squatting like a demon. His skull split where a bullet tore a furrow, one eye gone but the remaining burns even more brightly. The hiss comes again and in it I find a word as he screeches, "Biiiiittttch."
I snap off a short burst, five rounds plunking into his body but he stretches and rises and I realise he suffers the light, he bears the bullets, he is stronger than the rest and he is coming for me.
The furrow in his skull goes, the flesh of his eye closes and then opens and a second flame kindles. He rises, not a tall man but a great presence, with a majesty that threatens to destroy my resolve. His mind, his domineering eyes reach for me, seeking to hold me and seduce me and take me back into his confidence.
But I have broken his spell. I have survived, once again, thanks to what my parents taught me, reaching from the great beyond and guiding me in this life from the next. I remember my dad, as he saw his last sunset, turning to me and whispering, "Whatever happens, Matty, we will be with you, always."
The monster rises, restored.
My rifle falls to its sling and I pull a pencil flare from my belt and yank the toggle. My own crimson star bursts into life and he flinches but does not stop and I hold the flare up as I turn and run. The door to Hold Two stands open and through it, as if I was looking down a kaleidoscope, I can see the layered doors, Two, Three, Four, all standing open, lit from beyond by the shaft of sunlight in Hold Four.
I leap across the threshold and back into the charnel house. I must have walked through here while I was entranced. While that creature held my mind, dominated me as if I was as weak as a wet paper bag. I remember kisses and caresses and dear god what were they doing to me? What does it say about me, that it was able to control me so easily? What—
NOT NOW MATTY. Katie stands in the light, in the far door and beckons, calling to me, NOT NOW RUN JUST RUN!
From left and right, they come. Rising from the piles of the dead, discarding corpses, slithering from under rotten meat, standing erect on mounds of the fallen. A dozen, no, more, a score, god more of them, coming from under the carpet of bodies like ants swarming from their nest. I see black men in tattered shorts and Indonesian Marines in camouflaged coveralls split over distended muscles and a pair of white haired monsters in stained shirts reading SAIL MALAYSIA 2017. They gather and crouch and—
NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH
I skid to a stop. There's no way I can run this gauntlet. The door thirty metres away. I drop the flare and my hands find my weapon and it comes up and I snap shots, double taps CRACK CRACK my hearing gone perhaps forever but my skills good my drills good, bullets thudding into skulls and necks and brainstems and creatures fall.
The monsters posture and gather to leap and I pick them out and knock them down. Double taps, good shots, my Dad saying on the rifle range we built on the beach GOOD SHOT, MAINTAIN.
I sweep the room, my torch picking out the corpses, the same charnel reek filling my nostrils, the sick smell clogging my throat and threatening to—
No. Not again. I can bear this. I will not succumb to his will. To his caressing seductive tendrils that even now I feel sliding across my mind. I am strong. I am not alone. I love Mum, I love Dad, I love Jayden, I love Katie.
But his flesh, his flesh is also strong. Behind me, I feel him, moving slowly but gathering speed as bullet holes close and bones mend. His body rent by my shots but driven by an infernal anger that would bring him clawing up from the gates of Hell. His bestial screeching liquefying my spine, terror flooding me and over it comes his voice, his mercurial seductive voice. MATAI. YOUR AGONY WILL BE EXQUISITE.
Weapon fires weapon stops. Empty magazine. Those marys still standing fall back, confused, a dozen down, the remainder pausing as their master bursts into the room behind me, seeming to swell, the creatures ducking their eyes to avoid his furious gaze.
I reload. Mag out, don't drop it, stuff it into an empty shingle, my last magazine slams into the receiver.
I don't wait for them to recover from my onslaught.
I run. Leaving the spluttering flare behind me, its red light filling the hold, I hurdle the obscenities scattered across the floor. I dodge swiping claws and reaching arms. A scratch as jaws close millimetres from my throat as I dive, the tip of a tooth scoring my ear lobe. Christ, this is all the virus needs, blood sickness, an open wound to infect, no, too late for that, keep running.
I fly through the door. Turning and up, my rifle in my shoulder CRACK CRACK into the face of the white haired woman behind me, bullets blasting her palate out the back of her head. She falls back and I reach back in, grab the wheel and pull. Blong, thank god for your grease gun, the door swings shut and slams with the solemn dignity of a keystone sealing a tomb.
Spin the wheel and the tongues lock home as a great weight strikes the other side, as if a truck was driven at full speed into the wall. But the iron is thick and does not buckle. An enraged strike and then-
Katie says Quick, he's smart, lock it. Jam the wheel.
I look around and there, in a glass fronted cabinet mounted on the wall, is what I seek. I smash the glass with the M4's stock. Ignoring the brass nozzle of the hose and the red extinguisher, I snatch up the long handled fire axe. Bright red, its metal edge gleaming, the handle cold and hard in my hands.
The wheel is just beginning to turn as I shove the handle through the spokes. Pinning it against the bulkhead, locking it in.
A terrific pounding strikes the door. Hammer blows of rage striking it again and again and I laugh at their impotent fury. The monsters are locked inside.
And then the enormity of what just happened swells up within me and I fall back, my knees gone, my strength gone. I sink to the floor, my back against the door. The concussive blows wea
ken, slow and then stop. Long thin hard nails scratch along the edges of the door, exploring its seams, looking for weakness.
But I know there is none.
The only weakness is the one within me.
Chapter 15
The metal door cool against my back. Or not cool, just cooler than the stifling air in Hold Two, the ceiling frypan hot in the midday sun. Sweat courses down my brow and my shirt reeks with the fresh scents I have gathered and I start to shake and I just can't stop. As always, the shakes bring the fear, is this the fever? Is it my time finally? But then I lean over - still have the sense to aim on the down sloping side of the deck and I give in to what my body has threatened, has promised, to do for an hour now. I vomit.
Afterwards I feel better. Still shattered, emotionally and physically, still in a million pieces. But at least I'm not sick.
No, I'm just weak.
You want to know the really weird thing? I mean, weirder than meeting monster Jesus in deep space.
This island shouldn't even be here.
Navigation used to be so easy. Once, it was an art; an arcane skill to bring a ship across a featureless ocean to safe harbour. But then science and technology killed all mysteries.
When I was a kid, all you needed were a computer, a GPS and an autopilot. Drop a waypoint on the computer, upload to the GPS and hit GO TO on the autopilot. Hell, a lot of people had chartplotters that did all three things in one.
You read sailing memoirs from before the 1980s and you realise just how accessible GPS made ocean sailing to ordinary people. I mean, the ones who don't have the time or learning or smarts to sit there with a sextant taking daily readings as the sun climbs to its zenith at noon and then sit down and work out the cosine of the tangent and cross references with Book of Tables and whatever the hell.
