Virus

by S. D. Perry

  At least there would be no witnesses to talk about his failure, to tell people what had happened. The Sea Star was still taking on water; he could feel her heaviness, her slow and inevitable settling into the sea. His beautiful little tug was going to sink unless the crew managed to stop it somehow, and they weren’t good enough.

  The crew, his crew. They hated him, but did he care? Jokes, the whole lot. A bitch navigator, an ass-kissing helmsman, a couple of screwed-up deckhands—a primitive with tattoos on his face and a pot-smoking black. And the engineers—he’d expected more from them, the only two he’d worked with before, but they wouldn’t be able to plug a bottle with a cork; pretty boy and his Cuban pal, probably buggered each other anyway.

  He poured the cheap whiskey with shaking hands and a few drops splashed across a snapshot of the Sea Star, taken on the day he’d brought her home. He brushed the liquid off and held it up, studied it. There he was, young and strong, grinning like a man without a care in the world; he was standing in front of the tug proudly and wearing the captain’s hat that his young, pretty wife had bought for him. Sarah had taken the picture, and he could remember her laughing, making him don the cap for the posed shot. She’d been wearing a dress, green with tiny white flowers . . .

  Gone, Sarah, everything’s gone now.

  Everton picked up the glass and downed it, felt the fire pour down his aching throat and loosen the knot in his belly. It would all be over soon, one way or another.

  The captain poured himself another drink and carefully avoided looking at the revolver that lay across one corner of his desk; it wasn’t time, not yet. He wanted to finish the bottle and look through the pictures, remembering what it had been like to still have dreams. He picked up a photo of himself at age eighteen. “I’ve let ya down, lad.”

  • 5 •

  Steve watched for bubbles over the side of the Sea Star and felt his spirits sink lower with each passing minute; he could see the air rising to the surface, Squeak was fine—but the longer he stayed down, the more likely that it wasn’t good news.

  Hiko had laid aside his tools for the moment and started watching with him, his inked face solemn in the morning light. Steve had wondered about the deckhand, about his culture, but hadn’t wanted to ask any intrusive questions; Hiko, like everyone else on board, kept pretty much to himself. And now certainly didn’t seem to be the time for Maori Q and A, with the Sea Star pulling water in the eye of a typhoon.

  Richie joined them, pushed himself up on the rail next to Hiko, and pulled a joint out from behind one ear. He lit up, inhaling the pungent smoke deeply as the three of them waited for Squeaky to surface.

  Steve frowned slightly. It seemed like a monumentally stupid time to get high, but he supposed that everyone had their own way of dealing; for him and Squeaky, it was work. Maybe Richie worked better stoned; he’d known a few guys who could do that . . .

  Hiko looked at Richie, his broad, distinctive features flat and expressionless beneath the etched lines on his face. “You’re a strange duck, Richie,” he said, the New Zealand accent strong in his low voice.

  Richie motioned with the lit smoke at Hiko’s face and arms. “That’s saying something, coming from a human wall of graffiti. I mean, are you people actually under the impression that those things are attractive? And what kind of name is Hiko, anyway?”

  Hiko grinned suddenly, probably realizing that Richie was yanking his chain. He started to rise menacingly, as if to tackle the toking man.

  “Give it a rest,” said Steve, and Hiko sat down again, his grin fading.

  “Hiko is Maori. I am Maori. The tattoos are my spiritual armor.”

  Richie clenched the joint between his teeth and rolled up one sleeve, revealing a U.S. Navy tattoo, complete with anchor. “We do it a little differently where I come from.”

  Steve was surprised. “Navy? Come on . . .”

  Richie nodded, serious. “Six years with the Seventh Fleet. Weapons technology specialist, first class. Graduated top of my class.”

  Steve cocked an eyebrow. “So what happened?”

  Richie took another hit and pushed off the railing, exhaling the answer as he walked away.

  “Drugs.”

  Steve grinned as Hiko turned back to his work, cutting steel plates with an acetylene torch as patches for the hull. The Maori was right, Richie was a strange duck.

  He studied the tattooed man, looking down at the small club tucked into Hiko’s belt. It looked like a tribal thing, and he decided that there was no time like the present; hell, he might not have another chance.

  “You really a Maori warrior, Hiko? Is that why you carry that club?”

  Hiko didn’t even look up. “It’s a wahaika.”

  “A what?”

  “A wahaika. My grandfather gave it to me.” He pulled it from his belt, holding it out so that Steve could take a closer look. It was smooth and solid-looking, with intricate artwork carved into one side. A nice piece of work.

  Hiko went on, quite seriously. “It carries the name of one of my ancestors, ‘Hiko.’ My grandfather reckons whoever carries the name Hiko and this wahaika can face his greatest fear and will not die.”

  Steve smiled. “Know what my greatest fear is? Women. Let one get under your skin and all of a sudden you have three kids and a twenty-year mortgage. Not me, I’m seein’ the world. So what’s yours?”

  Hiko didn’t smile. “Water,” he said, and went back to cutting the thick metal without another word.

  Steve swallowed heavily, reminded of where they were and what they were up against. It occurred to him that he didn’t really believe they were going to sink, that he hadn’t accepted it as a likely outcome in spite of the facts. Watching Hiko so intent on his work made him realize that he was being foolishly naive.

  Come up with a smile, Squeaky, he pleaded silently, and went back to watching the bubbles.

  One by one, all of the crew assembled out on the deck to wait for the engineer to give them the word—except for Captain Everton, but Foster wasn’t particularly surprised. A little curious maybe, but not surprised.

  Probably off mourning the loss of his money, she thought. What an asshole. His ship was sinking and he was off crying about lost merchandise, maybe hiding from the crew that he may have doomed to a watery grave; some captain.

  She sipped at her coffee and waited quietly with the others, feeling pretty good, all things considered. Neither Richie nor Woods would look at her, but Steve had given her a friendly nod and Hiko had smiled when she’d walked out on deck.

  Terrific. We may be going under, but at least I’m not a social outcast anymore.

  She knew it was stupid, but it didn’t affect her good mood; the Sea Star was in easy waters, at least for a while, and she had a strong feeling that everything was going to work out. Just being alive after the night they’d had felt like an omen; surviving a typhoon was a miracle all by itself.

  There was a sudden rush of bubbles over the side of the deck and the engineer surfaced, treading water easily. He lifted his face mask up and looked at them, his expression grim behind a dripping beard.

  “It’s bad,” he said, and Foster felt her good mood melt away at his tone of voice—there was a finality to it, cold and unconditional.

  “Define bad,” said Steve.

  Squeaky shook his head and caught on to the deck. “We’re sinking.”

  “That’s bad,” mumbled Richie. Even from five feet away, Foster could smell the heavy scent of marijuana on his breath.

  Hiko turned towards her, his mild brown eyes unhappy. “How far to the nearest beach?”

  “Eighteen to twenty hours to the Kermadec Islands,” she said quietly.

  Steve frowned. “I can squeeze an hour out of that engine, tops.”

  Hiko stared out at Leiah’s churning wall in the distance, his low voice hollow and bleak. “We’re never gonna make it.”

  Richie turned his stoned, red-rimmed gaze to Foster. “So what do we do now? You got a suggesti
on, princess?”

  He didn’t even sound malicious, just scared, and Foster looked at the empty mount where the lifeboat had been and shook her head slowly.

  So much for women’s intuition.

  The long-range was down, the engine was going under, and Leiah wasn’t going to sit still while they floundered. It was no longer just a possibility; unless they came up with something fast, they were going to die out here.

  Hiko Alailima stared out at the storm and was afraid, but he refused to let that fear get the better of him. He sat cross-legged on the deck, alone; the Pakeha had gone inside, to search for a solution to the problem of death. They were afraid, too, and he hoped they would find an answer—but death would still be there, whether the sinking boat made it to land or not. Hiko knew it and wanted to be at peace with the prospect, especially now that it was so close. Besides, he was a deckhand; there wasn’t anything he could do on the bridge that would make a difference.

  It wasn’t death that frightened him, it was how he died. His parents had both drowned off the north coast of Aotearoa when he was still a child, leaving him and his sister, Kukupa, to be raised by their grandparents; both of his tipuna had been warm and loving, instilling a strong sense of cultural pride and history in their wards, but Hiko had never forgiven the sea for taking his mother and father. And he had grown to believe that the moana wanted to take him, too; he’d suffered terrible nightmares as a child, of being dragged down into the silent, terrible dark, unable to breathe, the corpses of his family and friends hovering beneath the waves and beckoning to him with pale arms . . .

  He held the wahaika in his hands, drawing strength from the smooth, heavy stone that had belonged to another Hiko, nine generations before. It was strange, that the club felt so powerful to him; he was proud to be a Maori, proud to bear the moko on his face and body—but he was also a grown man of the late twentieth century. A lot of people saw the Maori markings and assumed that he ran around naked and howling when the moon was full, beating on drums and performing heathen rituals to make the rain fall or the sun shine; ridiculous. Being proud of his heritage didn’t make him an idiot.

  That made it all the stranger, that he was here at all. He’d worked as an arc welder with a construction company for years, helped put his little sister through college and had a comfortable apartment not far from his grandparents’ pa~. He had been happy, or at least content.

  When his grandmother had died last year of a stroke, the nightmares of his youth had returned with a vengeance; it had gotten so bad that he had started drinking heavily, just to get to sleep at night. His work had suffered, he’d lost weight—and his grandfather had suggested that he face his fears, not from Maori tradition but from a talk show he’d watched about phobias.

  Hiko smiled, thinking about his family, his whanau. Kukupa had told him he was crazy to go out on the water; she said his night terrors would be better handled by a shrink, that the idea was so much macho bullshit. She was a smart cookie, his tuahine, and he’d felt like an idiot explaining his decision to her. Looking out at the eye wall of the terrible a~wha~, he almost wished he had taken her advice.

  And yet . . .

  The dreams had stopped when he’d signed up for his first run as a deckhand, nine months ago. He was still afraid of the water, but he could sleep again and he’d given up drinking; he’d made plans to return home, having faced his fear successfully. Just one last run, on a small tug that was headed for Aotearoa, to a port not far from where he’d grown up. He’d taken the job on the Sea Star rather than fly, a final proof of his personal victory . . .

  Can’t get any more final than this, can it?

  Hiko watched the waters lapping at the deck, definitely higher than they had been only a few hours before, and wondered at the irony of it. And he wondered at the very strangest thing, the thing that had led him to sit here and think about fear and death and what his life had been about.

  In spite of the seeming futility of the Sea Star’s current situation, when he held the wahaika, he honestly felt that he wouldn’t drown—that he couldn’t, that the spirit of his namesake watched over him and would keep him safe. The club felt right in his hands, it felt like taonga—more than just an heirloom, it held a spiritual power for him that he couldn’t deny. Maybe it was primitive to believe in such things, but right now it was all he had.

  So is it real or do I just want it to be?

  He didn’t know the answer to that, but he suspected he was going to find out very soon. And he was afraid, but he would put a warrior’s face on because he was Maori, and strength of character was as important to him as knowing the names of his ancestors. He realized now that he had not faced his fears and won; he had only stopped the nightmares, and pretended that it was over.

  The true test was almost here. Hiko stared out at the waters and wondered who the victor would be.

  • 6 •

  “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is MV Sea Star Uniform Foxtrot Juliet India, latitude twenty-nine degrees forty minutes south, longitude one seventy-nine degrees fifteen minutes east. Taking on water in heavy seas . . .”

  Foster clicked to receive, and Steve held his breath, hoping desperately to hear something, anything—but there was only static, the same as for the last half hour. The two of them were alone on the bridge, but neither spoke, still searching for a human voice in the haze of crackling radio silence.

  He closed his eyes, amazed at man’s deep capacity for optimism in the face of disaster. With the long-range down, they had a snowball’s chance that anyone would hear them—and yet he still half expected to hear a response each time Foster pushed that button, still felt his gut knot in disappointment with every fruitless attempt.

  Optimism or stupidity, maybe. Either way, he needed to get some air or he was going to start breaking shit, he was that agitated. She started again, her voice low and clear in spite of the strain that he saw in her face and in her tight shoulders.

  “Mayday, Mayday, this is MV Sea Star . . .”

  Steve walked out onto the raised wing bridge to stand with Squeak and Richie, the two men staring out at Leiah through the thickening fog. Woods would be up in a minute to give Foster a break; Steve had seen the helmsman in the galley, stocking up on liquor. Everton still hadn’t bothered to show his face, which was fine with Steve; he didn’t want to waste one minute of whatever time they had left breathing the same air as that nut-ball.

  Squeaky looked away from the distant storm and nodded tensely as Steve joined them. “She gettin’ anything on the radio?”

  Steve shook his head. “VHF only has a fifty-mile range. Better break out the survival gear.”

  Richie looked fuzzy, out of it. “Where the hell’s the captain?”

  It was a rhetorical question, and neither Steve nor Squeaky bothered answering. They stood silently, watching the storm, and Steve wondered how much time they had left.

  They hadn’t actually discussed the options as a crew, probably because they all knew what would happen. Steve figured they could afford to keep hailing for maybe another half hour or so, then they’d have to move the Sea Star before the engine went under. They’d head for the eye wall opposite to the storm’s direction, put on the jackets, and wait, maybe an hour or two, hailing until water hit the bridge. When she went under, they’d bob helplessly along until Leiah swept over them, separated them—

  —and then we die; the end to a perfect day.

  He’d been thinking about the obvious alternative he supposed they all had; faced with the particularly nasty thrill ride that Leiah offered, you’d have to be crazy not to consider it—opting out early, taking a deep breath before the storm hit and then taking off your life jacket. Not a nice thought, but maybe better than the prospect of being battered to death by raging waters, drowned by rain, or forced under to drown anyway.

  Steve didn’t think he could do it. It wasn’t that he relished the idea of the struggle, he just didn’t think he had it in him to give up, no matter how much the o
dds were against his survival. He’d always believed that while there was still life, there was hope—and the thought of letting himself slip beneath the waves, to die without a fight . . . he couldn’t imagine it. As far-fetched as it was, there was always that one-in-a-million chance that the storm could blow out, another ship could happen along—hell, the hand of God could reach down and pull them all to safety, for that matter. He wouldn’t take off his life jacket for the same reason he’d never seriously considered suicide, even in the worst of times; things could always change. He glanced over his shoulder, saw Woods and Hiko walk onto the bridge. Foster let Woods take her seat, moving over to the navigator’s console. She had a nice body, well endowed but athletic, tight; a strong, intelligent face. Great eyes. He thought about what he’d said to Hiko earlier about women, and wondered why he didn’t feel that way when he looked at Foster . . .

  He shook his head; it didn’t matter now, did it? Richie and Squeak were heading in to join the others, and Steve followed, still hoping somehow that their call for help would be answered and still struggling to accept that it was highly fuckin’ unlikely.

  Foster stared down at the radar screen blankly, listening to Woods’s growing frustration with the VHF radio. The bridge was tense, the crew standing around silently, mulling over their predicament while the helmsman SOS’d into dead air. She wondered if anyone had told Everton about the situation, not that it would make a difference. At least she wasn’t alone in her dislike for the man anymore; everyone in the room knew what had happened . . .

  The radar still worked, for what it was worth. All the receiver had to say was that they were surrounded by a typhoon, at least in the range that the CW was set for. Foster tapped at the keys in front of her, widening the scope; she hadn’t thoroughly checked out the eye for a few hours; maybe there was something new to see.