Ebb Tide: My Boat is my Life

by Jase Kovacs

  I ignore them. That takes some doing. Ignore the bloodthirsty monsters who will tear me to pieces in minutes. But not yet. They can't get to me, not yet. One of the marys tries to get past the Captain, sidle into the hold. Its pressing itself against the wall, trying to edge around the light. Its toes slip, brighten and blacken and it shrieks, pulling back away. The others of the school snapping and biting at it. He smiles at this, watching me, his gaze saying not long now.

  I'm smashing open crates and boxes of cargo like a mad thing. Splitting wood with my pry bar, snipping locks and searching for something, anything that can help me. You know what I've found so far?

  Calculators. Pencils. Whistles and tubes of glitter and gluesticks and staplers and reams of A4 paper and everything I would need to set up a small office. I crack one crate and my heart leaps because its filled to the brim with guns. I blink twice, I can't believe my luck. Dozens and dozens of rifles. It's too good to be true.

  It is. I look again and yes, they are M-16s, but half the size of mine. Made of plastic, cardboard packaging promising REAL FIRING ACTION and REALISTIC NOISES.

  The Captain's real voice is thin and high. A hint of what the man sounded like in life. None of the majesty found when he took me to his dark place between the stars, but still there is power there, authority. "You tire yourself. You struggle. And to what avail? I know you want to let go. To give yourself to us. To surrender to our will and to obey. You will be happy with us. My family will never leave you. They will never die. You will be loved for eternity with us. I promise you."

  I race, pulling crates down, smashing them open, heedless of flying splinters and sharp broken plastic. Blood on my thumb, a gash on the back of my hand, what does it matter? A thousand packaged watches spill, a collection of diaries saying 2019 in cheerful pink letters, packet after packet of plastic cutlery. I'm cursing, I'm swearing and Katie watches me, saying nothing, knowing I am going as fast as I can.

  "I know you want to join us, Matai. I felt it in you, when we were together. I could see it. You want to let go." He pauses and I think maybe he's giving up, knowing that he cannot beat me, that one of these goddamned crates have to hold something useful for christ sakes come on, this one is full of party hats who the fuck needs so many party hats and then he says, "There is no shame in giving up. You will. Your father did."

  It's like he's shot me. I whirl, my hand gripping the pry bar white knuckle tight. A red fire bursts in my chest and I remember the mary I set alight with the flare. That's what I feel now. The creatures cowering at his feet slaver and watch the blood drip from my knuckles with naked hunger.

  The Captain radiates sincerity. "It was cruel of you to snatch him away from us. We could feel him, we can feel everyone as they come into our family. He was right on the brink of our love. And then, you robbed us of him. We feel his lack, as do you."

  "What?" I walk across the hold, raising the pry bar. Katie calls, low, warning me, Matty, the light. But I ignore her. "What did you say to me?"

  "Don't cry Matai. You can't be blamed for what you did. You didn't know."

  "Come here." I spit, something tight in my throat, my face my cheeks my eyes burning. "Come here and I'll fucking I'll—"

  "Kill me? You've already killed one father. Would you kill your second?"

  "Don't you say that. You're a monster, a freak, a disease. You're nothing like him."

  "No one can choose their father, Matai. You are lucky. Not many have the chance of a second."

  MATTY!

  Katie's scream stops me and I look down. I'm right in the middle of the sunlight. Only a metre from the door. He is smiling and beckoning, full of kindness and love, but his creatures, his school of marys can't hide their hunger. They crawl at his feet and peer over his shoulder, snapping jaws and clacking their teeth. Eyes alight with lust and thirst.

  Another step and I would be in their arms.

  He shakes his head, slowly. Regretfully. "Oh Matai. You do hurt me so."

  The light dims for a second, a slow fade down and up like a brownout. Clouds passing over the sun. One of the marys tries its luck, reaching out with a hungry claw and then snatching it back, scalded. Weak sun is still sun.

  He looks to the sky. "Not long, Matai. Fifteen minutes. What do you hope to achieve?" He shakes his head, ruefully, a parent wondering why his child is so upset at something so banal. "Why do you struggle so?"

  Calculators and party hats. The only thing I've got what I've brought.

  What do I have?

  Daddy.

  Reorg.

  There's only one way out of here.

  I turn and walk quickly across the room. Him calling after me, and I can hear a questioning note in his voice. Doubt. "Matai, come."

  Katie is there, beneath the hole, beneath the bent and buckled ceiling hatch. Nodding approvingly. Doesn't know what I'm doing yet, cause neither do I. But happy I'm doing something, anything. Drills and instinct. I shrug the climbing rig from my shoulder. Wincing as it slides over my bruised back. I look up. A bent triangle of sky. No way to secure the rig. I usually have to get the line over something with my slingshot, a railing like this morning, to pull it down and tie it off securely. But nothing here. No one up there to tie it down. No one but Blong.

  "Matty, what are you doing?" He's worried. I'm up to something, he knows. "This is your last chance Matty."

  I look over my shoulder at him as my hands unconsciously open the coil and pass it hand over hand, flaking the line on the ground, a job I've done a thousand times. "Only my friends call me Matty."

  Like a trick, like a magic trick, his face changes, as quickly as if I doused him with a bucket of paint. Black skin, red eyes. His lips drawn back and open wide, ranks of teeth. A horrible bestial hiss that rises into a roar that shivers my spine. My lizard brainstem cowering but I'm smiling as the line coils neatly at my feet.

  He's scared. He knows I've got a plan.

  His words are torn like chum ripped by a bait ball. "I know everything about you. I have read your book. Father killer. Murderer. Abandoner."

  Words.

  Nothing but words.

  I come to the end of the line. Take the running end and wrap it three times around my left hand. Ignore the pain. No. Embrace the pain. Feel the burn there, feel my nerves crying, pull the rope tight so the wound weeps clear fluid. Blistered skin bursting.

  All of it signs of life.

  I slip the rope off my hand, three loops made. Pass the standing end around the three loops with another three turns. Moving quickly now, my hands moving of their own accord, I've done this a thousand times. I have three turns, then three turns around them. Making a ball.

  I thread the rope three times around it. Under and over the existing turns. I take the sinker from the end of the fishing line, biting through the plastic thread and slip it into the middle of the rope ball. Working the lines around into a sphere.

  The rope forms and closes like a fist.

  A monkey's fist.

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

  They scream in unison, the Captain and his school, all together. The words reach in and I feel the call, there is a weakness in my guts and a confusing bloom of fire in my loins. Animal instincts. The beast in me wants to go, to join him, to join them and I step back. Whirl the ball around my head on the end of the rope and cast it up.

  Nine metres straight up.

  It rises, rises and perhaps they stop their chant, all of them watching as I do as the ball flies up. The weight of the rope trailing behind it growing every metre it climbs until it slows, stops, and comes back down.

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

  Blong appears in a hole, the same hole that is casting light down into the doorway. He is chanting with them, his eyes blurred, vision slack. Summoned.

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

  And then the boy's gone, he's got his instructions. I coil the line neatly, flaking figure eights, every fold in
the flake has to be perfect, so the line feeds out with no resistance. It's a simple equation. My strength and the ball's inertia verses the line's weight and gravity dragging it down.

  I whirl the ball again, spinning it around on the rope like a hammer thrower at the Olympics, god I can see the light at the door shifting and fading, more clouds. A mary, more daring than the rest, coils and leaps, exploding into movement. Trying to fly through the light to get at me. Bursting into flames, coming out the other side as a fireball, a running inferno that collapses and breaks itself to pieces on the floor and somehow I ignore this bizarre carnival of horrors and throw the ball again.

  It is strong, it is fast, it flies up and hits the ceiling, missing the hole by a metre and falls back.

  They're chanting and so am I and Katie too but our words are different, we speak language, we are human, we chant:

  Come on come on come on.

  I coil the line hand over hand, flake it. Making sure it's done right, slowing myself down. A kink, a twist in the wrong place would be fatal now. Another Dadism: Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

  I'm sorry, Daddy.

  A great clang make me jump, almost makes me drop the rope. There is a shift in the light and I look up, to the shaft over the door and see it has shrunk a little. How? A long scrape of metal on metal and the hole is getting smaller. Disappearing like the sun in an eclipse.

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

  Blong flits into sight, looking into the hold, gauging the light cast by the hole. A reverse shadow. He holds a long pole, like I used to pry open the door to this trap, his mind subsumed by the chant, his muscles given alien strength. He slips the pole beneath a solid steel plate that must weigh a hundred kilos, and levers it, shoving it an inch or two over the hole. Slowly closing the skylight. Slowly cutting off the light.

  I PROMISE YOU NOTHING BUT PAIN

  The words bloom in my mind, the Captain beyond humanity now, his true self, his true hunger naked for me.

  I'm screaming, staggering, over balanced, everything in this throw. Come on come on, chants Katie and the rope flies oh god it soars. Every part of me rises with the rope, rises with the monkey's fist, this is what it comes to. We take a rope. Mum teaches me a knot, a way to turn a long piece of fibre and nylon into a tool, into something to save my life, we teach each other tricks on how to survive, this is what brought us out of the caves and into the world, this is humanity, this is how we will survive and—

  and the rope rises–

  and it–

  the monkey's fist is through.

  It's gone through the hole. Lands with a thump, somewhere up there.

  Somewhere outside.

  The Captain shrieks, they all shriek, nightmares and wraiths, craving me. Love and hunger and terrible desire.

  Now. Now is the most dangerous moment. The weight of the rope, nine metres of line between me and the ceiling. It is too heavy, heavier than the monkey's fist. The rope slides back down, coming back into the hold, gravity pulling it as smoothly like a snake, piling up on the deck like a strand of spaghetti. I flick my wrist, sending a wave up the rope, a turn cast just so, the rope shifts and it comes down in the bent corner of the hole. The rope slows, the friction of the torn metal pinching it. I pull at it slowly and it slows and then it stops.

  The rope stops moving.

  I laugh, a laugh, no its a sob, it's a laugh and a sob, god I'm so close, please let this work, it's my last hope. This is the loneliest place.

  The monkey's fist is wedged somewhere up there. Maybe in the torn metal around the bent edges of the hole. Maybe under a pipe. Or stuck on a deck fitting. Who knows?

  I yank on it hard and no movement.

  Maybe it's secure.

  Maybe it's just jammed. Ready to pop loose as soon as I begin to climb.

  Blong is up there. Maybe he'll realise and cut it. Maybe the Captain has already told him to do so. They are all chanting and chattering like a troop of agitated chimps.

  Maybe maybe maybe.

  Another scrape and clang. The hole over the door is almost gone. The creatures dance and caper madly on the other side of the light, desperately hungry, ready to move, the burning body of the first daring mary a warning that they will soon ignore. The hole is almost closed and they will try again.

  And in the middle, more bestial, more horrible than the rest, the Captain crouches, utterly still, his only movement the hungry flicker in his eyes as he waits, like a sprinter at the blocks, waiting for the instant he can come. Blong screaming, all of them in unison chanting.

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

  I look up the rope. Yank it one more time. A triangle of sky calling me. Blue sky. Life. Climb towards the blue, Matty.

  No time for the rig. Desperate measures.

  The blue sky calls me. I reach up for it, close my hands around the rope and I climb.

  Chapter 18

  The Captain roars as soon as my feet leave the ground. I can't help looking, I twist my head, my arms screaming in sympathy as I force my aching battered muscles to pull me up. I struggle, twisting the rope around my legs, trying to get purchase there. Feel a tightness around my calf as the line wraps. I lock it in with other ankle. Feel the purchase. That's how you can climb these ropes. Your arms don't lift you. You use your legs.

  But I can't help stopping to look at the Captain as he screams. The square of light blocking the door barely there. He pounds one of his creatures on its back and it leaps, bursting into the light, bursting into smoke, bursting into flame but still coming. It races towards me, its skin trailing sheets of fire, a mad flare screaming, getting close before it goes down, crashes to the ground as violently as a fuel laden jet. Behind it, another leaps, pushes its way through the door, smoke, it singes and flickers with flaring light but it's through and coming for me.

  The hole in the ceiling is gone. Just like that, it disappears. Blong has done it, he has levered the metal into place, sealed the shaft, sealing my doom. Goddamnit, why didn't I listen to Katie, why didn't I shoot that little bastard in the head when I had the chance?

  I curse and scream as I haul myself up the rope, my shoulders on fire. My burned hand is in absolute agony as I try and get traction on the rope. My hand weeping clear fluid, slipping on the rope, the rope cutting into my burn. I have never felt pain this bad and I scream but the monsters are coming now, they're through the door and crossing the floor and I haul myself up.

  The pain is good. The pain is weakness leaving my body. Every screaming, agonizing moment of it. I kick out, the rope slipping over my legs, burning them as I keep it tight around my calves. It would easier if I ditched the rifle, ditched my kit but no, there is never a question of that, I will keep my rifle I will take my gear with me. I will survive and I will need them tomorrow. To lose them now would be to admit that there would be no tomorrow.

  I have the rope around my legs and I try to keep it tight. There is five or six metres of it coiled on the ground but I have no chance of pulling it up. But what am I worried about? That they would try to scamper up the rope after me? These things don't need to climb.

  They can jump.

  The first one, the smoking sizzling mess that is the first who survive the door, comes streaking out of the air like a malevolent heat seeking missile locked on me. I see it leap, its arm spread, its mouth wide, rows of teeth coming and I jerk my back out, throwing myself to the side to swing. It comes in hard, but thrown off by my jinx, it slams into me and careens off, leaving me spinning, the rope slips in my wounded hand. I yell at it in defiance and it feels good, the pain becomes anger and it fuels me.

  I don't climb to survive. I don't climb because I crave tomorrow. I don't climb because I am afraid to die.

  I climb because fuck these guys. I have lived hard and had too many people die to bring me here to let these abominations win. These creatures are diseased freaks and I will not surrender my life to them. They are not worthy of me.

  H
alf way now. A weight hits me, another leaping creature coming from the side, I didn't even know it was there. It hits me but they're too fast, too hungry, too rushed to do it properly. It slams into me and I almost slip, I almost let go. But it misses its mark, its claws do not find purchase and it falls to the deck below.

  How many more strikes will I survive? How much luck do I have left?

  Three metres to go. Goddamn it yes I am over half way goddamn them all they will not have me they will not be the ones who will still my heart. I could not end my own life. No one else will take that privilege from me Christ I am so close Mother Father I am coming I am going to make it.

  Blong appears at the hole. His black matted hair a dark aura filling the blue sky. His teeth bared in feral rage. His eyes black and soulless, the dark button eyes of a shark. He crouches at the edge of the hold and reaches in.

  Hand over hand, I come up. No Katie no guide no help. This climb is mine alone.

  He holds a knife in his hand. A small kitchen blade. Its tip broken. The edge nicked with small dents. I have a flash of intuition, remember our conversation:

  What have you been eating?

  Tins.

  His can opening knife. He hisses as he runs the knife under my rope and begins sawing. The line is iron tight with my weight, swinging back and forth as I come up, swinging like a mad bell ringer.

  Good honest multibraid rope. 12mm 32-double braid polyester. Dozens of strands overlaying each other in a complex weave. Not the easiest thing in the world to climb. Got to have the right technique. You know who taught me. But still, part of me amazed I am doing this. Both my palms screaming in pain, blood is running freely now. The line is slick and slipping, I'm sinking six inches down for every foot I go up.

  He whips his knife back and forth, it is blunt and ruined from opening tins but in his frenzy it doesn't matter, he is still cutting the rope. Strands fray and split, the rope lurches, I don't have long, I am going to fall. He is going to cut or I am going to slip or a mary will knock me down and it will be all over.