by Jase Kovacs
No.
I was going back at dawn.
Like all great decisions, the agony is in the consideration. The what ifs and the whys and the maybes. Thousands of questions piling up in a cascade. But then, once the decision is made, the choice in the past, you can see there is only one way, there was only ever one way.
Katie still argues.
You have a duty to Madau. They need to know what you found here. What if you die? Who will warn the others of this place?
That's a good point.
What would Mum and Dad think? Would they want you to risk your life like this? Go back to a place you narrowly escaped from? Walking into certain death.
I like to think they would be proud.
You're a wreck. Torn hands, strained back, burned and beaten. You've got the shakes, maybe a fever, god knows, maybe even the plague. You're in no state to pick a fight.
I've never felt better.
They know you're coming. He can feel you. You saw how many creatures there were. How do you think you will prevail? They're waiting for you.
Good. Means I won't need to ferret him out.
Is this your ego speaking? Do you really care about the boy? Or can you just not stand the thought of the Captain not accounting for what he did to you?
Katie. Really. Do you think it matters?
Katie frowns, looks away. Folds her arms. I hope you have a good plan.
I've got a few ideas.
***
A castle of twisted steel and rusted iron piled up on the rocky shore. Somewhere inside is the pale king. Somewhere inside is a scared child. I come down on the ship like a knight of old, riding proud, every sail out, the boat racing downwind. Throwing a bow wave, a fine spray preceding me like heralds announcing my arrival. In the cockpit I sit at the helm. My bandaged hands stiff but painless as the wheel presses gently. A little weatherhelm. But not much, not enough to worry. The jib out, the staysail out, the main over.
I charge.
I have had all night to prepare. To plan. But in the end, my intentions are simple. No sneaking about. No vulturing. No scavenger picking over the ruins of the time before. I am going in hard and fast. Never mind manoeuvres. I'm going straight at him. Seal Team Sixing it. I'm going to kick in his front door and shoot him in the head.
Oh please, says Katie. Who are you trying to impress?
My rifle is clean. I completely disassembled it last night; full strip. Scraped all the carbon residue off, wiped salt crystals away, oiled every working part, no expense spared. Left the Surefire on charge all night. Went through the ammo tin and pressed forty fresh rounds into my two remaining magazines. Filled a plastic container with extra rounds and put it in my drybag. Not that I expect to get a chance to refill mags but you never know. Went through all my supplies and put together a real box of tricks.
Yesterday I boarded Black Harvest geared up as a scavenger. My equipment reflecting that; a Swiss Army kit ready to test and select random equipment for salvage.
Not today. Today I pack for war.
I sit on the windward side of the cockpit. The wind blowing my hair out, flicking it around. The salt tang in the air invigorates me. The rising sun behind me painting the island with gold. Black Harvest waiting for me. As if the Gods favoured me, the clouds are lifting, thinning and patches of blue appear.
It's going to be a beautiful day.
***
My plan came to me, complete and whole in every detail. As if it had been waiting all my life for me to discover it. There was work to be done. My body making do with four hours sleep. When I woke two hours ago and released the helm, Voodoo completed her tack and settling into a downwind run. My body felt grateful for what I had given her. My muscles ached. My hands stiff and sore. My shoulder battered, a ring shaped bruise in my hip where the shackle hit when I landed in the hold.
So much depends on the wind. In fact, everything depends on the wind. Will it hold true? Will it blow strong all day, as I need it to for this to work? Will my namesake serve me as I serve it? So much relies on her loyalty. I trust the wind. For another month at least, she will be true.
I aim Voodoo at Black Harvest's stern, where she comes out off the reef. I wonder if any of them are awake? Has the captain given me up for a lost cause and let his guard down? Or does he feel the tingle of my mind as I approach? Can he feel my confidence? My certainty and my excitement as I bear down on him. I hope he does. I hope he knows I am coming and I hope he is afraid.
Katie is silent. What is there to be said? I am certain. I am ready. Black Harvest fills my view. We are making seven, eight knots. My sails set perfectly. The bow wave spreading like a fan. I am wearing fingerless gloves this morning, Dad's old line handling gloves, big on my hands but tight over my bandaged palms. I feel the quivering shimmer of water rushing over the rudder under the tips of my fingers resting lightly on the wheel. Voodoo balanced perfectly.
The bruce, the big twenty five kilo anchor, my only one remaining, rests on the anchor roller on the bow, half out, hanging loose. Held in only by a rope I have tied to its shank and run back to the cockpit. So I can release it from where I sit, let it go at just the right moment. A moment that is fast approaching.
At the last second before striking, when the ship's hull looms over me like a mountain, I steer upwind. Bring the wind to my beam, turning inside of Black Harvest. Sailing into the graveyard. The great iron hull suddenly a wall running down my starboard side. Ahead the calm bay shimmers mirror bright in the dawnlight. The positions of sunken ships clear in my memory. The roof of the Malaysian fishing boat's bridge breaks the surface halfway along Black Harvest, beneath the rungs that climb up her hull.
Every day the tide comes an hour later. I'm at the end of the flood tide, the water about to reach its highest point. An hour to slack water. And then the tide will begin to fall. Much relies on me catching that tide.
Everything is happening so quickly now. The wall of Black Harvest coming closer as my leeway pushes me downwind. I stand on the windward side of the boat, watching the fishing boat's bridge approaching. Fast. So fast. Everything coming together now. Coming together in this instant.
And then the wheel is in my hands and I am spinning it to windward as fast I can. The rudder twists and catches the water. Voodoo's stern whips around, a great knot of turbulence rolling out behind her. We slew around, sliding sideways, coming up into the wind. Trying to remember exactly where Wet Dream was sunk, making sure I don't run full tilt into the wreck.
I slip the rope running to the anchor, which drops, splashes into the water, chain clattering out as it plunges to the bottom. The jib flaps, hangs loose and then backs as the bow passes through the wind. The jib presses against the mast and fills the wrong way, acting a giant brake. Chain running out the bow and Voodoo slows and stops. And then, the jib fills like a parachute and it pushes. We start to go backwards.
I look behind me. The fishing boat's bridge only twenty metres away. Fifteen. Ten. Come on, it's the big anchor, bite you bastard, bite into the rock and coral down there. Hook onto something before I run hard into the shipwreck, into Black Harvest, crunching my rudder, destroying my stern, my mad stupid rescue mission over before it began. The chain rushes out and stops suddenly as it reaches the bitter end, the last link tied to a line that I've run over the windlass, so I can adjust my final length.
God loves fools and sailors. I say this as Voodoo jerks. The chain rises as the anchor catches on something. Then slips, the bow comes down, we're going back again. Five meters to the shipwreck. The black wall of iron filling my eyes, filling my mind like a final stop marked THE END.
The bow jerks and Voodoo slips sideways. We're moving, not backwards anymore, but sideways. Pivoting on the length of chain that rises from the water, taut, taking Voodoo's weight as the wind presses her in. I rush out of the cockpit and kick the three tires I use as fenders over the port side. My swing is speeding up, the jib fully backed, catching all the wind and I start winching it in madly,
hauling on the bow furler, not caring for the strain, the pain in my hands, my sore back, all just noise as I look up, my eyes bright, my heart hammering with excitement, gauging the distance, the band of water that separates Voodoo and Black Harvest. The ever diminishing moat, going, going, gone.
We hit side on. The fenders taking the blow as Voodoo swings in hard against Black Harvest. Striking the wreck like a hammer hitting a gong. The jib gone, rolled back up, disappeared like a handkerchief up a sleeve. The main flapping loosely after I let the sheet fly. I run back to the stern. The bridge of the sunken ship is right there, two metres away. I throw a light fisherman's anchor, a grapnel that lands on the roof and I haul it tight but it's not necessary. I don't need a stern anchor to hold position. The wind presses me against Black Harvest. Two meters from the fishing boat, two meters from the iron rungs that climb up Black Harvest's side.
I smile. Turn to Katie. Touchdown.
Promise me, she says, that you will never do anything like that again.
Chapter 24
It's an hour after dawn. I have eleven hours until sunset - the days in the tropics equal to the nights. Mostly. Eleven hours to action my plan.
Which is? asks Katie, as I let out the line attached to the anchor chain's bitter end, adding two metres so Voodoo's stern comes right up on the roof of the sunken Malaysian fishing boat. So I can step simply from my dive platform to the ship and then up the side of Black Harvest.
Which is what?
Your plan. You're being very cagey about the details.
Well. Okay. Step one. Come down with all sail, club haul the boat at the last second and come alongside under the ship's ladder.
Yes. I was here for that part. It was very dramatic. What's step two?
I cinch my belt rig tight and sling my drybag over my shoulder. It clinks, heavy with tools and equipment. I check the magazine on my M4, sling that too, barrel down across my back.
Step two? Guess you could say we improvise.
You can't be serious. We get this far and—
Look, I say. I'm not sure what we're going to find working up there. So I'm going to try options. Do what I do.
Which is?
Trouble shoot this son of a bitch.
You do remember what we saw last night? At sunset. At least a hundred marys. Now, all below decks, waiting for us. How do you think you're going to get past them, to the Captain and the boy?
She assumes what I assume: that the Captain knows we're coming for Blong and will use him as bait. It's what I would do if the situation was reversed.
I've got eleven hours to work something out.
I step carefully from Voodoo onto the Malaysian boat. The wooden roof is old, rotten and awash. The edge a thick beam six by six, which I step lightly on, as if a careful step will make me weightless. Then I reach the ladder running up the side of Black Harvest and start to climb.
I hook the rungs under my wrists, to spare my aching hands. It's a long way up. But it's not a hard climb, considering everything else, and I have the benefit of a second wind, my confidence lending me energy. I have to make hay while the sun shines and this knowledge gives me a light spring that helps drive me up the side. Black Harvest lists to starboard, so it's a little easier coming up the portside. The metal of the rungs and hull is cool as yet, and I want to get as much done as possible before the day heats up properly.
Katie's right though. They are alert for me now. Probably waiting in every room, lurking, ready to pounce as soon as I leave the sunlight. So that limits my options.
I plan to create new ones.
At the top of the ladder I swing up over the railing. More quickly than yesterday. Yesterday I thought there would be people, pirates and raiders, dangerous people on board and so I cleared the ship, treating the exterior as carefully as the interior. But now, I know there is only the boy, surrounded by a horde that cannot bear the light. So I rush. Making hay while the sun shines indeed.
I sit on the railing and scan the ship, fore and aft, looking through my rifle's red dot sight. There are the four big holds that I worked my way through yesterday. Not that I think my recollection of Hold One was accurate. But there are four cranes also - and they are usually located between holds so they can work either side.
In front of the first crane are six containers, in a single row. Their doors facing aft open, crates and boxes scattered and spilling on the deck.
I look up at the bridge, at the superstructure and glass it slowly with my binos. I can feel them watching me. Lurking in the shadows, deep inside the rooms, looking out through blown out portholes and shattered windows. I'm amazed he hasn't tried to reach out to me yet. Try to invade my mind, to poison my thoughts, to plant doubt and fear. His servants watching me, so I assume he must know my every move. So I know he is up to something. This silence is a gambit, a ruse.
Gotta play this one close to my chest. Not give him much time to react when I reveal my hand.
First though, let's survey the playing field.
I've got to clear the deck. Mindful of the suicidal charges I faced yesterday, when marys dove through the shaft of sunlight blocking their way, his will driving them at me, bursting into flames yet still coming. I may be on the top deck, under a relentless sun, but there are plenty of nooks and crannies from where one of them could strike, from under piping or the crane gantries or out of a ventilation shaft. I don't let my guard down, I keep my rifle up as I walk quickly along the portside gangway towards the front of the ship.
The cranes are split, two portside, two starboard. Their arms locked out, first one pointing aft, the second forward and so on, so they are balanced. They tower over me as I move past them, about six metres from the base of the gantry where they are mounted to the control cockpit where the operator sits.
How easy do you think it is to drive one of those? I ask Katie, conversationally as I go forward.
You ever been in one before?
You know I haven't.
Yeah I do. Remember what you said yesterday when we first considered the cranes? You could use them, if we had power. Do you think anything is still going to work?
Only one way to find out.
They're electric hydraulic. I can see that at least. Hydraulics used to raise and lower the arms, electrical winch for the cable, motors to turn them left and right. I guess the ship would need to have her big engines running to power them. Not exactly something I could hotwire, modify to run off a little old portable genset. Not that I have one of those. And it's not like I could get the ship's systems running again, not in a single day.
Katie, as much as she hates it when I freeform troubleshoot like this, can't help but say: you're making a lot of assumptions here.
True. Let's just finish clearing the deck first.
But I can feel it. The seed of an idea. Coming to me.
The forward part of the deck is buckled and bent. Driven upwards by the force of the ship's grounding. The metal geography twisted into directions as plates bulged and rivets failed and splits opened in the ship's side. Bulk Carriers built after 1991 are required to have double hulls. But the crawl spaces, the keel, the side passageways are torn and exposed to air and water. I look down the side of the ship and it's like I am looking into a great wound, bones and musculature and veins laid bare. I move carefully, around the warped holes and pits that opened when the bow rose and never came down again.
I reach the containers. Each one twelve metres long. Their doors wide open. A whistling noise as the wind catches and rushes through tight places. Plastic sheets and wrapping wafting like seaweed fanning back and forth. I go around the front of them, clear to the bow of the ship. Climbing up the forward stairs to the forepeak, where great winches lie at rest, never to be used again to raise and lower the ship's anchors.
The containers are full of boxes - electrical whitegoods. This is going to be great when I get married and need to set up a bridal registry, I say as I look them over. I gesture at the cargo for Katie. All the blen
ders and breadmakers a girl could ever want. Not being serious of course, but if you can't laugh, you know. I lift one box and read the label carefully. What the hell is a cuisinart?
You expect me to know? replies Katie. She's looking back at the bridge. You can feel him, can't you?
I look where Katie is looking - back, eighty metres away, up at the bridge. Where Blong first hid, where I sat in the Captain's chair while I waited for the boy to stop crying.
Yeah. I can feel him.
Want to go get him?
Nah. Not yet. Let him wonder what I'm up to for a while.
And what are you up to?
I toss the box back into the container, hundreds of artefacts of another world, all completely useless to me.
I haven't the faintest idea.
Clever, says Katie sardonically. That way he can't read your mind and work it out.
Yeah, that's it. My cunning plan: no plan. I'm very zen like that, you know.
Matty.
Yeah?
Promise me one thing. If you don't have him by the time the sun is setting, we leave. Don't make this ship your tomb. You don't need to redeem yourself. You need to live - for Mum, for Dad, for the people of Madau. They need sailors like you.
I turn away from her and go down the starboard walkway, towards the stern. Come on, I say to her. Let's check out these cranes.
I'm not the first one to think of this. The inspection panel in the base of the first crane has been removed, the innards opened. I crouch and examine it and I feel the first small glimmer of hope. The crane are a modular design - as in they are a separate unit, attached onto the deck of the ship with bolts as thick as my fist. But each one independently powered, so they could run with the mains system offline, and so they could be easily swapped in and out in case of failure.
Behind the inspection hatch, at the base of the crane, is a large diesel generator. My hope flickers - a flame in the wind - when I see that my unknown predecessor had different intentions in mind. The engine has been cannibalised; the starter gone, hoses stripped and wiring torn loose. No chance of getting this guy going again, not even if the fuel tanks weren't hopelessly gummed up with rotten diesel, no chance of good diesel being on this ship anyway, and —
