The Southwind Saga (Book 2): Slack Water

by Jase Kovacs

  Larry said, "Enzo is on Fidelio." Fidelio was anchored farthest to the south — if anyone had a clear view of the incoming yacht's deck, it would be Enzo.

  "No," Enzo answered when hailed, his accent pure southern French. "I see no one at the helm."

  "Can you see the helm clearly?" clarified Larry.

  "Yes, of course. But there is no one there."

  Duncan nodded, almost relieved at this news. "Okay. Take out the sails."

  Piper's mouth twitched at the corners as she fired. The spinnaker disintegrated into long yellow streamers with the speed of a bursting balloon. A loud, discordant striking noise echoed across the bay — one of the bullets must have punched straight through the aluminium mast. "Good shooting," Duncan said.

  Like an enormous sheet of paper being ripped, the main sail split in two. With its spinnaker in rags and the main torn, the yacht faltered and slowed. It turned slowly around as the wind caught the remains of the mainsail, coming side on as it entered a long curve. We could see its hull now, long and sleek, painted a bright banana yellow. Duncan and Larry watched its course as keenly as a pair of hunting dogs, calculating the probability of it now turning enough to miss the islands. But after a second, they shook their heads, and even I could see that the yacht was in too close — the onshore breeze would shortly drive it onto the reef.

  Duncan said, "Sink it."

  Piper sighed, sounding almost happy as she lowered the gun and sent fifty rounds into the yacht's waterline.

  I was sent out to inspect the wreck later in the afternoon, after it had been burning all day. It didn't sink, despite Piper's on-point shooting. It exploded into flames and drifted, but something on board — empty fuel or water tanks maybe — kept it afloat. Piper had wanted to blast it into driftwood, but Duncan said it would be a waste of ammunition. Within minutes, a tall column of black smoke reached into the sky and we could see his meaning — there was nothing getting off that floating holocaust.

  It went onto the reef on the afternoon high tide. Roman paddled me out when the flames had died. The two of us were the unofficial ambassadors of the twin community of Madau, locals and expats. The boat was nothing but a black shell, burnt to the waterline.

  Both of us were quiet as we looked over the wreck.

  I could see no human remains.

  But I could smell burned meat.

  ***

  I can still smell it this morning, as I sit in the sand and consider what happened. I know my feelings are illogical. Madau Island is one of the few remaining bastions of humanity. The plague that almost wiped our species from the Earth was the apocalypse, pure and simple. The infection and fatality rates were almost absolute. To see your world slipping away in days was terrible enough. But then, the virus mutated and those it killed… started coming back.

  The First World fell so quickly. I was nine years old; I remember it as a series of snapshots, my memories like looking through a photo album, with images and instances sometimes captioned and sometimes mysteriously significant for reasons that I don't understand. I remember my mother covering her mouth with her hands as we watched the riots in New York and London live on Al Jazeera. Mumbai, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Manila, Jakarta… the great cities around the world, on fire.

  I remember us in Uncle Clem's fishing boat, a half-cabin cruiser named Hooked Up. Maybe ten people? When the first cases appeared in Port Moresby and Goroka and then everywhere at once. Panic, running. Gunfire and looting. We had always been taught tsunami survival drills, so we knew to run to the hills when the tide went out and before the flood came. But this flood was a wave of human insanity; instead of seeking higher ground, we found sanctuary on the ocean.

  We idled offshore, in the middle of the lagoon, and watched the smoke rise into the sky. Pyres in Madang, Alexshafin, the tuna factory, the fuel dock. A Ramu Sugar bulk carrier burning like a dirty flare. Mum holding me so tightly that I couldn't breathe. Some locals came out to us in one of the ubiquitous six-metre-long fibreglass dinghies everyone called banana boats. Mum pushed me down into the cabin as Uncle Clem and Dad raised shotguns and there was shooting and then we were going fast for a long time and then days of drifting as the adults argued over what to do.

  We went into a Mobil fuel dock in Alotau, and I remember wondering how we could have gone so far so quickly. Uncle Clem went ashore with Dad, but only Dad came back. By this stage, the other people on the boat had gone, but I don't remember where or when.

  I do remember Dad shaking as his eyes filled with blood, babbling that corpses were walking, how they tore Uncle Clem to pieces in front of him. Mum screamed as he clasped the anchor to his chest and threw himself overboard. I slipped her grasp and dived after him, but he sank faster than I could swim. Holding the anchor, he looked up at me as he sank with eyes clouded with blood and regret.

  That's a memory I would be fine with losing, but it's the strongest and most vivid of them all.

  Then there was just me and Mum, and she kept talking about a place called Cooktown. We were out in the middle of the Coral Sea; Mum had just realised we didn't have enough fuel to make it when the jet fighters appeared. They came in low and lined up with the boat, and then everything was on fire and I was in the water and I remember, so clearly, the red kangaroo painted on the fighters' wings as they streaked overhead.

  I drifted on wreckage for a long time. Blind, burnt, blistered, more a piece of roast pork crackling than a boy. Then into my dark world came the taste of coconut and a woman singing hymns in pidgin:

  God you givim laif long mi

  na mi carry hevi long yu…

  ***

  I look out to the smouldering wreckage of the yacht. Waves beat against it, grinding fibreglass against coral. Larry told me that it would be washed off the reef soon — the coming full moon will bring a king tide that will ease the yacht into the deep water of the bay. If it doesn't, I'm sure that Duncan will send out canoes to help it on its way. Some of the more militant of the expats argue that we should leave the wreck out there, visible on the reef as a warning to others. But they're in the minority. Most of us don't need or want the reminder of what this world has made us.

  I think that is what bothers me about this situation. I understand why quarantine is vital. We tried to hail them. We fired warning shots. Which, I will say, is more than I ever got on Hooked Up. But my mind hates me and keep inventing scenarios where the crew were entirely innocent. What if they were belowdecks, cooking breakfast? What if they had fallen asleep and were off course?

  What if, what if, what if.

  What if I was kept up all night by these stupid thoughts, my subconscious acting as my own worst enemy?

  Logically I can accept what my emotions can't. But, equally as logically, I can't ignore the irony of it all. The human race is on the edge of extinction. It seems perverse to cull our own numbers because some were ignorant of procedure.

  ***

  I'm still squatting on the beach long after the breakfast cook fires have been lit. That's where Roman finds me; he drops to sit next to me after his usual silent approach. We both look out to the wreck wordlessly. The air still. No breeze this morning. I can hear the sound of children playing in the jungle — a mix of expat and local kids, judging from the melody of English, pidgin, and tok ples cries and shouts. After a while, as if he's loathe to intrude upon my thoughts, Roman cautiously says, "Auntie would like to see you."

  "Me? Not Duncan?"

  "No. Just you. Nothing official. She just wants to chat."

  I stand slowly and follow Roman as he leads me down the beach and into the jungle. The path we follow is a well-trod one. Like most locals, Roman doesn't go anywhere without his machete, and he swings idly at any tree branch encroaching on the path. I don't come this way often; the locals have their side of the island and we have ours and, in the interests of harmony, we try to keep out of each other's backyards.

  Roman sings as we walk along the path. He doesn't seem bothered by the native bees — stingle
ss, mindless little things that descend on us in droves, lapping up the sweat that springs up as soon as we enter the fetid, humid shadows of the jungle. I suspect that Roman's singing serves a dual purpose. It alerts anyone in our path that we are coming and stops me from asking any idle questions.

  Not that I have them. I mean, I have questions, but they are not idle. Auntie summoning one of us like this is rare — in fact, I can't recall it ever happening before. Usually, everything goes through Duncan, Abella, or some other senior on the Council. We have our protocols and formalities, like two little nations on the one island, with boundaries between our communities that are usually respected.

  It wasn't always like this. In the years following the Great Dying, the locals took in any expats that made it to their shores, making them part of the family. But tensions rose over a variety of petty disputes, and wiser, cooler heads decided that it would be best if the expatriates — the outsiders, the foreigners, the refugees — lived in their own community.

  I want to know why I've been summoned and what Auntie could possibly want to talk about — but I know that Roman would tell me if he wanted to. So I keep my mouth shut and try to ignore the infuriating bees that crawl along my hairline and around my ears and nostrils, undaunted by my slaps and brushing hands.

  Another local appears farther down the path, walking towards us. I don't know his name, but I recognise him as one of the fishermen who come daily to the reef. He's in his early twenties, his skin dark even by local standards. He wears ratty purple shorts and an old baseball cap, faded to a delicate pink, the word MAROONS faintly legible on the brow. He carries a pair of fishing spears on his shoulder. His step falters when he sees us coming — when he sees me coming — but he quickly recovers and comes on. He shakes hands with Roman, local style, a gentle grasping of Roman's first two fingers, and speaks quietly to him. They speak Muyuw, the local language. They've avoided teaching us expats the language, but I've picked up a little over the years, and I catch the words for meeting and territory and Auntie's local name.

  I make room on the path to let the fisherman pass, and he ignores my smile and good morning. We push on, and I wait until we've gone around a corner in the path before saying, "He didn't seem very friendly today."

  "Fishermen think too many people fishing on the reef," says Roman with a shrug. "It's okay. Fishermen always think this."

  "Too many people or too many expats?"

  "I'm not sure," says Roman. Meaning, of course, too many expats.

  The path opens out into a clearing of black earth stamped concrete hard by generations of bare feet. Children see me coming and run squealing into the thatched huts that rise along the far side of the clearing. An old man cuts the already stubble-short grass with expert, sweeping swings of his machete, and a group of women sit under the raised big hut, making rope by rolling coconut fibre on their thighs. They call out cheekily to Roman, friendly and curious about why I am coming down this way, and he answers with a florid, lyrical answer that makes them all laugh.

  We head through gardens of taro, cabbage, and sweet potato before we arrive at the main village. I love the way the locals build their houses. People hear about huts and think they must be crude affairs, but the houses of the locals are skilfully built of rainforest hardwood frames with walls woven from pandan palm leaves and bamboo, split lengthwise into flat planks for the floors. They're raised high enough that you can walk upright beneath them. Dozens of people, men and women, sit around under their houses, working on a variety of community tasks such as weaving baskets and husking coconuts. A group of men, who have the lean physiques of hunters and farmers, harden spears in a bed of hot coals. All of them pause their work to watch us pass, fixing me with hard, unpleasant expressions.

  Auntie's house is the only Western-style building in the village. It was once the government aid post, a fibreboard building on a concrete foundation with a tin roof, long rusted and replaced with palm thatch. Auntie herself sits on the front porch with two of her sisters, all of them chewing on the local narcotic betel nut, talking and laughing amongst themselves, pausing only to discreetly spit streams of red saliva into bamboo cups.

  Auntie heaves her bulky frame upright as we come up to her house. She wears a bright-purple dress, and her long kinky hair rises in a dark afro. She gives me a wide smile; her teeth, like those of so many of her kin, are stained black from years of chewing betel nut, a sight that never fails to unsettle newcomers. "Little Isaac, my ocean son. You have grown so much!"

  "Auntie, it is good to see you," I say as we hug. "Thank you for this invitation."

  "It is too long since you visited."

  Her sisters murmur amongst themselves in Muyuw; I catch the words handsome crocodile, and they all laugh. Auntie shushes them and says, "Roman, fetch Auntie my walking stick. I want to see the gardens."

  She leads me down a jungle path running from behind her hut. The path leads back to the gardens — it doesn't escape my notice that this route avoids walking back through the main village. Auntie takes her time getting to the point as she tuts over grubs eating the leaves of the taro plants. "Look at these little rascals," she says as she flicks the grubs away, frowning at the group of farmers who follow us as at a respectful distance. "They should be checking the plants every day!" Her dark face grows even darker with anger before suddenly clearing, her smile like the sun breaking through the clouds. "How long has it been since I pulled you from the sea? Ten years?"

  "It's been thirteen years since the Great Dying."

  "Thirteen years… tell me, do you still believe it was the Rapture — that we were left behind?"

  Like all of the islanders, Auntie was raised in a Christian community, presided over by an expatriate Lutheran priest. However, having the apocalypse come and go has shattered all traditional beliefs, and many people have developed a highly variable, very fluid relationship with God over the years. I answer cautiously, "Who are we to question the will of God?"

  She grunts, annoyed at my ambiguous response, so I take the risk of giving her my opinion instead. "What happened was not as the Bible described the End Times. The Old Testament is rife with plagues and great calamities striking those who displeased the Lord. God said that the next flood would not be water, but fire. Perhaps the Rapture is yet to come. Perhaps the ungodly have been punished, and we were chosen."

  She nods slowly. "There are those who say that God has forsaken us. Or that heaven is empty."

  "Auntie, there is what I was taught, and there is what I have seen with my own eyes. I don't think what has happened to us was foretold in any book. I don't think the plague was God's punishment."

  "Why?"

  "Look to our neighbours. Six thousand souls taken on Woodlark in a matter of days. Why would God forsake them and spare us? Our friends and neighbours. Our children went to Mrs. Aloysius's school — I went to her school. I do not believe the Lord to be capricious."

  "Talk like that is why some people say we should drive you expats away. You know that, don't you?"

  "I do. As I know that there are many in your community — as in ours — who wish for nothing more than harmony. The world outside has died. But on Madau, there is life still. Let us keep it that way."

  "Let us indeed. It is such a pity that our communities cannot be more open. We are all God's children, living here in paradise. But there was a serpent even in Eden. I need to remind myself it is all according to God's plan, even the most petty of jealousies."

  I'm not sure what she's referring to exactly, if it's the old problems or some new situation I know nothing about, so I just nod noncommittally and say, "Indeed, but is it not human nature to struggle on the path to grace?"

  She waves her hand airily, dismissing my attempt to engage in theology. She pinches a fat caterpillar from a taro leaf and directs an angry blast back at her followers, speaking pidgin so I know her displeasure has nothing to do with me. I can't help but smile at her honest outrage at the grubs and her threats to feed the crin
ging farmers to her dog. She's all smiles when she turns back to me. "It's true what you say about seeing with your own eyes. I have never seen the dead rise. But so many of my people tell me what happened on Woodlark that I must believe it to be true. At some point faith becomes inevitable."

  "But there is a difference between true faith and blind faith."

  She grunts and walks on for a while. She whirls to me, surprisingly spry for a woman of her bulk, and fixes me with a penetrating eye. "You speak Muyuw."

  "I know a little."

  She waves her hand in dismissal. "Don't kid me, child. I pulled you from the water as Moses was pulled from the reeds. I didn't bring you here to be sneaky. Answer honestly or not at all. You speak our language, although you pretend you do not. Don't worry, I will not let the others know. You have many tok pleses?"

  Tok ples means a local language. "Mum taught me a little French. I speak pidgin of course."

  "Motu?" The language of the south coast of the mainland.

  "Yes, pretty well."

  "And what about Kilivila?"

  Now I'm really cautious when I answer. "The language of the Trobriand Islands? Yes, I have a little, picked up from trading boats."

  "You should learn some more. How long do you think it will be before there is another fight?"

  The abrupt change in the course of her questioning catches me off guard, and it is a moment before I respond. A dog is barking angrily at something, and the hot midmorning air is heavy with the buzz of insects. "It's inevitable. A month, a year? I don't know when. But sooner or later there will be another fight — over a woman or a theft or something. And then everything will break open."

  She nods slowly, pleased that I have understood yet a little sad at our shared pessimism. "You would think this island was big enough for all of us. But even in paradise, there is never enough space. You have heard the talk that we should sink the boats?"

  I hide my surprise; the subject is almost taboo. "There are those in our camp that fear our traders and scavengers will bring the plague. But most understand that we need supplies. The risk is minimal provided we follow quarantine." Both of us understand that this is one of the causes of tension. The local sailing canoes can island-hop across surprising distances — but to get Western supplies like technology or medicine or machinery requires two things: oceangoing yachts and guns. And the expats control both.