Most of all? Sergeant Varley is dead. That irascible, irritable bastard, that man who none of us could stand, that man who nonetheless kept us all together and kept a tight rein over Eucla and worked the roster and whipped the sentries into line and kept us all alive, that man who more than anyone else seemed unkillable, is dead.
I won’t shed any tears for him. I remember what happened at the last, I remember how he left me and Colin and Liana and Lacer, how he wanted to cut Colin loose and for the rest of us to save ourselves. I can’t forget that. But Christ, I still wish he’d made it.
I don’t know who’s in charge now. Geoff, or Alan, or Liana or Anthony or Len. Maybe Colin, when he wakes up. Maybe nobody’s in charge. Or maybe we all are.
The others had already made plans, in any case, while I was asleep. The Maersk is chugging south-east at a very slow pace, to conserve fuel. The best plan we have is Kangaroo Island – a safe zone, last we heard six or eight weeks ago, and in any case we don’t have enough fuel to make for anywhere else. Even if Kangaroo Island isn’t quite as safe as half the people here seem to be fervently praying it will be… well, it can’t be any more dangerous than the mainland. Maybe we can find a port, find some way to fuel up again.
Declan showed me some charts. (He’s avoiding everybody’s eyes when he talks to us. Nobody’s forgotten what happened last night, but we’re all pretending it didn’t.) Even a modern container ship carries paper charts, apparently, as back-up. Nothing particularly detailed for this part of the world, but still not bad. It’s a solid 850 kilometres to Kangaroo Island, south-east across the Great Australian Bight, which will take us a few days at the current rate. Declan’s taking the Maersk as slow as she can possibly go, to conserve our scant fuel reserves.
I studied the maps for a while. Kangaroo Island is bigger than I thought – 150 kilometres long, 50 kilometres wide. Mostly farmland and bushland. Of course if it was a safe zone for any period of time – and it was, I guess, that much we can say for sure, even if it’s dead now – then there might be safe zones within it still, even if the island as a whole is done for. Little fortified towns. Encampments. Fuck knows. We’ve all been stuck out in the desert for months and we have no idea what the hell is happening in the rest of the country.
“What about all these other little islands?” I said, squinting down at the paper under the harsh auxiliary lighting, trying to make them out. The Maersk shipping company hadn’t exactly rated the south coast of Australia as a high priority for high-res maps. “Look, there’s heaps of them. In the Spencer Gulf, south of… what’s this called? The Eyre Peninsula.”
“Just bunches of rocks, probably,” Jonas said, looking over my shoulder.
“I dunno,” I said. “Some of them look pretty big.”
“We’ll have to ask Colin and Liana,” Geoff said. “Or Len, he’s been around, he might know. Where is Len, anyway?”
“He’s down with the container crew,” Jonas said.
I glanced out the forward windows, and noticed them for the first time. It was a cold and drizzly day, the Maersk ploughing through choppy seas, but down near the bow there was a group of people blowtorching through the top of one of the deck containers, that familiar distant glint of phosphorene white.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Seriously? After what happened to the Mundrabilla crew?”
“We have the manifest,” Geoff said. “They didn’t. And there’s a bunch of medical supplies down there. Colin isn’t the only one who needs them.”
I thought about that as I headed down to the bow myself, to help out – didn’t have anything better to do. Thirty-two of us left. Seven are children. A further three are people well into their eighties. That leaves just nineteen of us as able-bodied, theoretical fighters.
I spent the rest of the day with the container crew, Len and Simon and Jonas and Anthony, cutting down into a deeper container and removing all the useless shit inside. It was flowerpots, if you can fathom that. Actual fucking Italian terracotta flowerpots. Why ship that? Did we not have the science available in Australia to make our own goddamn flowerpots? They were easy to bring out, at least. Then there was another container below that one, which reeked horribly as soon as we cut into it with the torch. We knew from the manifest it was nothing dangerous, just commercial dyes and pigments from Belgium. It stank of burning plastic, invading our nostrils even up on the top container where I was standing, surrounded by stacks of displaced flowerpots.
Two containers down: through the cleared mass of pots, then down through a shaft cleared by lifting the sealed buckets of dye out. The medical container, in the end, was three levels down, and the effect was like peering down into a well. Still – we came out with IV packets and antibiotics and gauze and painkillers and a dozen other wondrous things.
The day went by and the sun lowered itself into the western ocean. We’re well out of sight of land now. Declan says we’re roughly on longitude with Yalata, some other no-name flyspeck on the Nullarbor, or about one third of the way to Kangaroo Island. GPS still works. It feels weird to think of all those satellites up there, thousands and thousands of them, bleeping and blooping away for the next few centuries while we’re all down here descending into savagery.
I ate dinner in the mess with the others before walking out on the deck, doing a few circuits of the ship, trying to calm my constantly gnawing nerves. It was so easy to become complacent in Eucla. So easy to go to sleep in the same bed every night, to sit on sentry duty every third day. Even when the Maersk showed up we slipped into a routine. I forgot the hard lessons of the road. Take nothing for granted. Expect catastrophe every day. Remember that the people around you could die, at any moment. Remember that you could die.
Actually that one I don’t think I ever forgot. Not really. Not after Pete, in the office, back in Perth.
At least the weather is on our side so far. The rain’s stopped and the sea’s calm – almost flat, in fact. It’s like the Maersk is cutting through a gigantic swimming pool. Given our recent luck I’m sure tomorrow a tropical cyclone will somehow manifest at these latitudes and sink us like a bathtub toy.
May 28
The day dawned clear and silent. The sky was overcast and the sea was flat and sullen, the horizon blurred and invisible. It seemed like the Maersk was floating in an infinite grey void. I woke early, walked out into the deck with a blanket wrapped around me, watched the Maersk gently surging through the water, pushing fronds of morning fog out of its way.
As the sun rose higher into the sky it burned off the fog. Still we were in the middle of the sea, no land anywhere in sight, Declan assuring us that all was well. We could have been halfway to Antarctica for all I knew.
There was a meeting in the mess around midday. It was a surprise to see Colin there, up and about, Liana with a hand on his shoulder as he eased himself into an armchair. Somebody had found him a walking stick – the stairs must have been torture. Still, we were all happy to see him up and about, a general round of cheers and back slapping.
Geoff chaired the meeting, maybe a de facto leadership role, I don’t know. We’ve done a weapons count – not much to speak of, we lost a lot back at Eucla. Now we have just one M4, two Steyr Augs, a smattering of bolt-action rifles and shotguns and handguns. Not much ammunition. I am of course the one who brought that M4 back to the Maersk, and Geoff is of course the one who came to my cabin and took it off me last night. Whatever. Still got the Glock.
We ran down the containers – what we’ve recovered, what we’re doing, what’s next to come. Then there was the most important order of business: where the fuck we’re going.
Len’s worked in the RFDS for ten years and is pretty familiar with the whole Bight, from Esperance to the Coorong. He’s not 100% sure but he thinks some of the larger islands off the Eyre Peninsula might be habitable – a few sheep farms, wheat farms, sources of fresh water. But he can’t remember which ones, and the Maersk charts aren’t detailed enough to specify anything like that. So the gene
ral agreement was that Kangaroo Island is our best bet for now.
We have the ship’s radio, too. We’re monitoring all the channels all the time. But we haven’t broadcast any messages ourselves. Sitting and listening in the dark is a very different thing to shouting for help – and maybe attracting unwanted attention.
But we’ve heard nothing, so far. Nothing.
May 29
We caught sight of land today – some of those tiny islands off the south tip of the Eyre Peninsula. Just rocky little wastelands you could throw a stone across, gulls wheeling and screeching above them, one of them covered in what looked for a moment like moving rocks until I realised they were fur seals.
It makes me realise how huge this place is. It’s one thing to sit in a car and drive over the landscape, staring out the window. It’s another to be sitting on a ship, constantly checking the map, trying to figure out which tiny dot of an island you’re near. On the charts these islands look like they’re basically right next to the mainland, but they’re not. You can’t even see it. We could just as easily be in the middle of a vast ocean with only those tiny little rocks and the seals for company.
Declan cut the engines in the afternoon, and the rhythmic vibration we’ve felt underfoot for the last few days vanished. The Maersk went silent once more. We were just about running on fumes, and Declan wants to preserve the last of the fuel in case we need to manoeuvre into a harbour somewhere – that faint, last hope we have that we might refuel. We can drift east on the current for a while, the same way the Maersk showed up at Eucla in the first place.
At sunset we got our first glimpse of Kangaroo Island off to the south-east. Barren bluffs and rocky beaches, the hint of trees and forest above the headland, the cliffs stretching far away over the horizon. So big that if I didn’t have my bearings, I would have thought we’d switched around and were looking north at the mainland again. Some of us gathered to watch it along the starboard bow: a line of slate-grey cliffs, birds wheeling above the high-up treetops, more seals barking and wriggling on the beaches. Then the sun slipped into the ocean behind us and the world was shrouded in darkness again.
Declan dropped the anchors. Now that we’re in the Spencer Gulf, now that we’re drifting, it’s shallower and more treacherous water. He doesn’t want to risk hitting a reef. Tomorrow we’ll haul anchor again, drift along the northern coastline of the island, firing up the engines to course correct if necessary. The only settlement of any size is the town of Kingscote, on the east end of the island, which should at the very least have a ferry dock. That’s all we have to go on – no idea whether it will be large enough to accommodate a container ship like the Maersk, or whether we’ll find any fuel there. No idea whether it will be alive and thriving, or dead and deserted – although I know what my money’s on.
Looking out at Kangaroo Island tonight I can’t see a single speck of light. No glimmers along the clifftops, no electric lights or flashlights or campfires. It’s the western half of the island, though, which looks pretty green on the map. Maybe it’s all national park and wilderness. Maybe the farms and the villages are on the eastern half.
Or maybe not.
May 30
2.00pm
We weighed anchor at dawn. The weather had turned – not a storm or anything, but those flat, glassy days on the Bight were over. The skies were overcast and the wind was stirring up choppy waters. Declan had to start the engines five times as we drifted along the northern coast of the island, to prevent the Maersk drifting too close to the shore. Somewhere off to the west the clouds were thicker, and a thunderstorm was brewing. We prayed that it would pass us by to the north, or at least hold off until we could get to Kingscote.
Declan started the ship’s engines as we came around the north-east point of the island, the morning sun well up in the sky at this point. I stood up along the bridge with a dozen others; everyone else was down on the deck. It looked chilly out there, the wind whipping spume up from beyond the deck, darker clouds prowling along the horizon.
We caught our first glimpse of Kingscote itself, a cluster of small buildings along a distant shoreline. Alan was peering out the windows with our only pair of binoculars. Nobody spoke. Declan’s hands were on the controls, hunched over and fixated on the little town on the horizon.
As we rounded the headland the engines began to shudder. The auxiliary lights flickered. A moment later they went out entirely, the ship’s engines cut out, and the bridge was plunged back into the gloom of a heavily overcast morning.
“Fuck,” Declan said. “Well, that’s it.”
“What about reserve fuel?” Geoff said.
“That was the reserve fuel.”
“We’d better put the anchors down,” Colin said.
“Just wait,” Declan said. “Give it a bit. We’ve got momentum still, we can drift in the bay and ride out that storm if it comes up.”
Everyone on the bridge was silent, watching and thinking as we drifted slowly closer to Kingscote. If we couldn’t find any fuel there, it was going to more than just the coming storm we had to ride out. This would be the final port of call for the Regina Maersk, and we’d all be stuck here on Kangaroo Island, for better or for worse.
We watched, and we waited. And then about ten minutes after the engines had cut out, the Maersk hit something with a shuddering stagger that threw all of us off our feet.
I stumbled against the bulkhead, slipping and falling and smashing my hip on the deck. Colin dropped his walking stick and fell to the ground. Geoff had banged his head on a console and got a nasty lump over his eye. Once our collective swearing and yelling died down, we picked ourselves up and took stock. “What the fuck just happened?” Matt said. Looking out the bridge windows, it seemed like we were still in open water a few kays away from Kingscote.
“We’re aground,” Declan said grimly.
We all went down onto deck, mixed with the others, looked out over the bay. The tide was going out, and within a couple of hours – as the Maersk shifted and settled, and we saw more of what was around us – it became perfectly clear what had happened. The bay around Kingscote was half-covered by a long, curling spit of sand. Far too small to be noted on the Maersk’s large charts of the Great Australian Bight, but large enough to bring us – literally – to a grinding halt, only a few kilometres from Kingscote.
Declan took some people belowdecks to check for hull breaches, although it looked like we’d probably be fine; it was mostly sand. The rest of us stood on deck, eyeing off the darker clouds to the west and trying to look for any movement along the wharves and esplanades of Kingscote. “We can float off at high tide, right?” I said.
“And then what?” Alan said, scanning the shore with his binoculars. “We got no fuel. So what’s gonna happen? Probably just drift right back onto it.”
I didn’t say anything. In the back of my mind I didn’t really think this could be the end of the line for the Maersk. Matt and I needed to get to the Snowy Mountains; the Maersk had drifted up on our doorstep once we knew that; ergo, the Maersk’s arrival had been ordained fate and some kind of deliverance would come along for its fuel reservoirs. I’d been pinning everything on the Maersk for nearly a month now, even as reality continually crashed the party.
“There’s got to be something it that town,” I said. “Look at it.”
“I am looking at it, mate,” Alan said. “I see a little ferry dock and some grain silos. Not exactly a thriving hub.”
“Wait till we get in there,” I said sulkily. “You can’t see shit from here.” What can Alan see, anyway? He’s like a hundred years old.
After Declan had checked the state of the hull we had a meeting in the mess. “All right, so, we’re stuck here for the moment,” Geoff said. “Kingscote looks empty right now but that’s a risk we can’t take. Anyone for miles around will be able to see this thing’s washed up, and they’ll do exactly what we did when it showed up in Eucla. Besides which, if we’re moving on, we need to find bunker fuel
in that port. So we’ll get on the front foot, take the boats, scope the place out, figure out what’s what. If there’s anyone hostile there we can fall back to the Maersk and we’ll be in a more defensible position.”
“Why don’t we just wait for them?” Jennifer said. “If you think we have to fall back here, why not just stay here to begin with?”
“Because there’s a storm coming,” Colin said. He was sitting in a weathered old armchair by the mess’ shitty TV and shelf of plastic-coated DVDs, holding on to his walking stick, looking tired. “There’s a storm blowing up, and if it hits us while we’re on the sandbar…” He looked at Declan.
The navigator frowned. “It can’t be that bad. We’re not in the bloody Arctic.”
“Didn’t say we were,” Colin said. “We still get storms. And if it’s bad?”
“But, well, yeah… I mean, we might get pushed off the sandbar. Which would be good. But then, if we’re drifted out to sea and a bad storm comes up and we can’t steer into the waves – which we can’t, obviously, without fuel… I mean, we get hit by a broadside, we could… um. Capsize, theoretically.”
A murmur ran around the mess.
“That’s not going to happen!” Declan said hastily. “That’s a worst-case scenario. I mean, we’re fine here, we’re probably fine…”
But everybody by now in Eucla has come to know Declan, and everybody knows how heavily his thumb is on the scale with regards to remaining at sea at all costs. I can’t really blame him, all things considered. But I don’t trust his judgement, either, and neither does anyone else.
“This place was supposed to be safe,” Mrs Rotherham said – one of the pensioners, well into her eighties. “That was what they said on the bloody radio, wasn’t it? A military safe zone. Army, Navy, all of that. What do we pay our bloody taxes for? They said it was safe!”
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 52
