by Jase Kovacs
"No, no." But, despite my protests, I lay my rifle down and slump back against the wall. The house sways slightly as the tree moves in the breeze; it's disquieting for a house to move, but it only takes a moment for my inner ear to adjust, as the motion is just like a yacht rocking at anchor. I'm ravenous, and the food tempts me, but I need answers more than sustenance. "What… what are you guys doing here? I mean, who are you?"
"My name is Mrs. Aloysius," says the lady. "Mark has already introduced himself. This is my son, Alfred, and the little lady is Daisy. Weng is outside, on the porch."
The little girl comes through the hatch, standing on the bottom rung of the ladder. Mark suddenly makes out that raising the ladder has been a major effort, puffing and panting as the girl, who can't be more than ten years old, comes up.
"You're getting too big for me, Daisy," says Mark. "Too big and fat! The vampires are gonna eat you up." The girl throws her arms around Mark and whispers something in his ear, staring at me with big, wide eyes the whole time. "Is that true?" Mark asks me. "Was Dieter on the cross? Did they serve him up?"
If the apocalypse taught us one thing, it's how to deliver and take bad news. "The old man? Yes. I'm sorry."
"Oh, dude, that's too bad, man." Mark sounds like an American, but his voice is a slow drawl, as if he has drunk too much fruit wine. "That guy was beautiful. A real beautiful soul."
"Was he eaten?" Mrs. Aloysius' voice trembles with suppressed pain, but her tone and manner are matter-of-fact.
"I don't think they turned him, if that's what you're asking." They're relieved by this small piece of good news. All of us agree on one thing at least; it's better to be food than to become one of them.
Still, my head is spinning to be here, in this tiny house in the sky. "I can't believe it. Have you been here the whole time?"
Mrs. Aloysius nods. "Since Turi came." She looks at Piper curiously. "I know you, don't I?"
"I was a student at the school, Mrs. Aloysius," says Piper. She sounds surprisingly cowed as she explains to me that Mrs. Aloysius was the headmaster of the island primary school when the End came. After a few years, when our world stabilised, she restarted the school at Kulumadau. I'd been wondering at Piper's strange manner, her careful, polite, and precise way of speaking, and I almost laugh out loud when I realise that Piper is afraid of Mrs. Aloysius. She's speaking like a kid scared of getting in trouble with a fair but very strict schoolteacher.
"Ah, now I know you," chuckles Mrs. Aloysius. "Piper, yes, a very naughty girl!"
As much as I enjoy Piper's embarrassment, I have more important fish to fry. Even as this little facet of life from before Woodlark's fall lightens our mood, I wonder, Who is Turi? "Mrs. Aloysius, we can't stay. Our friends are out there somewhere. We have to find them before the cult or the marys do."
"Why do you call them that, man?" asks Mark. "They're vampires, yeah? I used to call 'em zombies, but zombies don’t burn up like the Fourth of July when they get a suntan. Names are important, yeah? You gotta be precise, yeah, you can't be calling 'em one thing and meaning another, 'cause that's how mistakes happen, and when mistakes happen people die, yeah, you see that, yeah, we ain't in this tree house cause we wanna be monkeys, no sir, no ma'am, wow, two ladies, it must be my birthday—"
"Mark!" barks Mrs. Aloysius. Perhaps it's my imagination, but Piper stiffens, her back unconsciously straightening, and I can see a child in a classroom, trying to prevent her teacher's wrath from spreading from her friend to her. "You're getting excited, Mark. Do you need to go sit outside?"
"No, ma'am." Mark holds his palms out as he sits back, smiling peacefully. "I'll just go to my quiet place while you guys talk. It's a beautiful night, yeah."
"Your name is Matty, yes?" asks Mrs. Aloysius. She continues before I can answer. "Piper has told us all about you. I know your friends are out there. But trust me, you can't do anything for them now. If the whites have them, then believe it or not, they are safe. They never offer more than one sacrifice a night. And if they are out in the forest… well, they are in God's hands."
Her calm manner angers me. "We've got torches and guns. We can find them."
"Don't be stupid, girl!" Her sudden reprimand reminds me of when I was five years old and decide to block up the cockpit drains on my family yacht with crayons. Mum and Dad were not pleased. "The night belongs to the masalai."
"Vampires," murmurs Mark as he looks innocently out the open doorway that leads onto a balcony.
Mrs. Aloysius continues. "We can do nothing until the morning. Eat your food and sleep, and we will go then."
The little girl whispers in Mark's ear, and he raises his hand. "Mrs. Aloysius?"
"Yes, Mark."
"Daisy says that the crazies caught two white men today. One was tall, and the other's skin was like a 'gator."
"Your friends?"
"That sounds like Zac and Enzo." My heart races at this news, and I hope Mrs. Aloysius is right about the cult only offering one sacrifice a night. "Was there a local man — a black man — and a small boy with them?"
"No," he says, listening intently while Daisy whispers in his ear, as if he is her translator. Despite our tense silence, I can't hear anything Daisy says. She seems to be making no noise as all. "The boy ran off one way, and your friend followed… they… oh." He draws back to look at the girl. "Are you sure?"
She nods intently.
"Well?" I demand. "What?"
"Some vampires attacked them, man, but your friend, he hacked their heads off like he was some kinda ninja, some kinda samurai yeah that's crazy man, no one can fight a vampire, they're too fast yeah your friend must be like Zatoichi but no Daisy says he did it—"
"And the child?" breaks in Mrs. Aloysius sharply.
"Oh man, that's a tragedy, he got taken, they carried him down the cave yeah, carried him off like he was a takeout lunch."
"What!" I'm on my feet before I know it. "Why didn't you fucking idiots say so? Drop this ladder, now!"
"Young lady," snaps Mrs. Aloysius. "You will watch your language!"
"Are you fucking kidding me? This isn't a schoolroom. You're all lunatics, and I'll be damned if I sit around here. What's this cave? Where have they taken him?"
"It's where they all live man, they're like bats yeah, sleeping in there during the day, all huddled together, but deep, oh yeah too deep for us to get at them and—"
"Then drop this fucking ladder and take me there!" I shout. "Do it now!"
The air is tight with static, and the only things moving are our shadows, flickering in the firelight.
"Matty," says Piper carefully. "Lower your weapon."
I can't quite hear her. Sweat stings my eyes, and I tighten my grip to bring the butt in firmly into the hollow of my shoulder. Mark gulps compulsively as he stares at the rifle barrel pressed up against his sternum. "Lower that ladder," I say, my voice seeming to come from a thousand miles away as I grind the flash suppressor against him. His eyes close as his face tightens with pain.
I see Mrs. Aloysius, out of the corner of my eye, standing slowly. Alfred, who has been silent this whole time, stays crouching, as tense as a coiled snake. She places her hand on his shoulder, to bid him to wait, and takes a step towards me. "Listen to your friend, Matty. This is not helping your boy."
"Who the hell are you to say what will help us? You want me to sit up here playing treehouse while he's out there with monsters!"
"I know how you feel, Matty. I've lost children too."
"Who?" I'm sick in my stomach, and my head burns with a fire that is spreading through my skin. My questions are irrational because nothing makes sense. "Who have you lost?"
"All of them. I lost the whole school. Everyone but Daisy here. Look at her, Matty. You're scaring her."
She's right. Mark smiles a crazy, terrified smile to try and placate me, but the child has wrapped herself around him, her face buried under his arm. Mrs. Aloysius moves slowly to one side of me, and Piper comes to the other.
"Matty," she says as she places her hand on my weapon's receiver. "Stand down."
She couldn't know how much she sounds like my father at that moment. I shake my head in denial even as I step back, my rifle lowering, the weapon suddenly weighing a thousand tons. "Oh God," I say. "Oh my God, I'm sorry."
Piper takes my weapon from my unresisting hands as the strength goes out of my legs. I slump back against the wall. Mark pulls himself up, massaging the centre of his chest, while Mrs. Aloysius crouches down to look me in the eyes. She takes my hands in hers and squeezes firmly. "I understand. But you're exhausted. You can do nothing now."
"I'm sorry."
She shakes her head, firmly dismissing my apology. Her dark eyes are compassionate but her voice is firm, and I feel my resistance melting away as sleep comes like rain. She presses her palm against my brow. "You're burning up. Rest. And tomorrow, we will find your boy."
***
I wake before sunrise. The treehouse is quiet — the only noises are the sounds of the others' slumber and the gentle creaks of the great tree swaying in the wind. The fire is nothing but a few glowing embers, and I shiver, the breeze at this height sapping heat from my bones. My memories of falling asleep last night — of everything after my episode — are foggy. Alfred singing softly as he filled the wound in my side with chewed-up herbs. Mrs. Aloysius laying a thin sheet over me. Piper holding my hand as I fell away into darkness.
I go out onto the porch, a narrow platform of woven bamboo. It has no guardrails, and the sweeping vista of jungle spreading out below is dizzying. I can see both the northern and southern shores of Woodlark, the grey sea glowing red in the east like newly forged steel. Kwaipan harbour, over ten kilometres away, is a thin fold of water cupped in the hills of the bay, and in that fold I see my ship, Excelsior, a tiny speck glowing white in the faint light of the setting moon.
"Takes your breath away, eh?" The voice almost makes me leap off the platform in surprise. An old Asian man, his face worn smooth by time, grins from within an old pile of sacks. He has a scraggly white beard, and his teeth are a row of fallen gravestones. "Quite a view! What a way to start the day!" He cackles to himself as he pats the deck invitingly.
I sit next to him. He's clearly another madman, but there is something grandfatherly about him that I find reassuring. "You're Weng? I'm Matty."
"Yes, yes, I hear last night. You got a temper, eh? I think Mark shit himself." He cackles again, his creaking laugh as harsh as a crow's caw. "I am old man, cannot shit no more. Maybe I get you to do that to me. Scare the shit out! Ha ha ha! You come from Madau? I tell the others, must be people there. But old Weng is too old to run through the jungle. And they are stupid! Won't leave me behind. An old man! What can I do? If I was braver, I throw myself off this platform so they have to worry. But what can I do? I am afraid of height."
I blink, bemused, trying to find a way though the tangled thicket of his conversation. "What did you do before?"
"Trader! I export sea cucumber to Taiwan. That's where I am from. Mother, yes, father, he was born here but he is Chinese too. Now I am retired, ha ha ha. What a retirement, eh?"
I think of Black Harvest's logbook, written in Chinese, which lies wrapped in plastic sheeting in the bottom of my locker on Excelsior. "So you speak Chinese? Read it?"
"Read it? Ha ha ha. Not for long time now. Why, you got a book?" His eyes glint with avarice. "I not read a book in a long time. My favourite was Harry Potter. You read this one? Such good story. Ron Weasley, ha ha ha. What a dickhead."
"Can't say I know that story." People are waking inside the hut. Alfred crouches over the fire, breathing softly and carefully on the coals to coax them back to life. "You'll have to come with me, though."
"Your ship, eh? You take us all? We leave Woodlark?"
"Yep. All of us are leaving Woodlark."
"Good." He nods, satisfied. "I'm sick of this fucking place."
***
When I go back inside, Mark, Alfred, and Daisy are climbing down the ladder. Piper has her rifle slung over her shoulder. "They're doing a clearing patrol. Checking below the trees. Can I go?"
I nod, and she drops through the trapdoor after them. Mrs. Aloysius hands me the half coconut of food I didn't eat last night. "It'll taste no worse today," she says.
The food is a white paste of sago and forest tubers garnished with stringy grey meat. I raise my eyebrows questioningly, and she smirks. "Fruit bat."
"I've had worse," I admit. After forcing a spoonful down, I add, "But not by much."
"You get used to it."
An awkward pause. "Look, about last night—"
She turns from me. "Alfred and I have been shepherding madmen for the last four years. I've seen worse."
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"Since Turi came? Or since the Lost Tribe arrived?"
"Whatever you think is important."
"I'll be brief. Mark will be finished shortly, and then we'll go to the cave."
There's an etiquette we've developed as survivors. Asking "What happened here?" is usually asking someone, "Tell me about the worst day of your life, when your whole society was ruined and all you loved destroyed." If you want precise facts, you need to talk to the mad, people whose minds float still in the tsunami of horror that washed their worlds away. Mark and Weng — I think they could tell me everything that happened the day the green schooner came to Woodlark. You have to skimp on details unless you want to drown in them. You have to focus on the broad strokes, the facts, the headlines, and the bullet points. It's the only way to remain sane.
The green schooner carried a monster — the patriarch of the first wave of marys that surged over the island. It killed and ate and infected. Mrs. Aloysius doesn't dwell on the details of those first days, weeks, and months. She doesn't need to. We all know the horrors suggested by the phrase the island fell.
Some of the survivors made it to Madau. Many did not. There is twenty kilometres of jungle between Kulumadau and the Dilkawau passage, so thick and overgrown that no one can pass it between dawn and dusk. And in many places, the canopy is so thick that the marys can roam all day and night.
After a month, perhaps twenty people remained, sleeping in trees and scavenging for food. These were the ones who could not or would not attempt to reach Madau. The old or young or mad or those who cared for them. Mrs. Aloysius thinks the monster, the alpha that she calls Turi, was not interested in them. "I dreamed about him. We all did. Turi the Green Lord. Some of us could not resist his call and went to him. But after a while, the dreams stopped. As if he had grown bored."
"But he's a mary? A vampire or zombie or whatever you call them?"
"Yes — but a clever one. The masalai are just sharks. They kill and eat because it is in their nature. But Turi is a devil who thinks himself a prophet. You can't begin to imagine—"
"I can. I faced one like him."
Her eyes gleam at this news. "And?"
"And I am here and he is not."
"You killed him?" She wets her lips, leaning in eagerly. "They… they can be killed?"
"It isn't easy." I remember the steel cable snapping as Black Harvest ripped in two, the incredible strain of the sinking stern whipping the cable across the ship's deck at chest height, scything the Pale King in two. "But it can be done."
Something passes between us now, a look that sparks a knowing, an understanding that we have found in the other an equal of ability and character. An ally. If this were ancient days and we were hairy chieftains facing down an invading army, there would be a feast and pledges and manly speeches of duty and honour and other such dick measuring. But, circumstances what they are and that we're a pair of women in a tight spot, we settle for a small nod and a few more bites of my fruit bat muck.
"We have a thousand questions for each other, I know," says Mrs. Aloysius. "But the day is only so long."
One question burns in my mind, brighter than all the rest. "Deborah… the cult. How long have they been h
ere?"
"Two months. They call themselves the Lost Tribe. But we knew they were not lost, not at all. They had been called, by him. They came in two big canoes. They hunted us during the day. Two months ago, there were nine of us. Any they capture… end up like poor Dieter. But they will sacrifice their own people when they cannot find one of ours. One canoe left, about a month ago. Turi left with them."
A month ago. When I returned to Madau. "What colour were the canoes' sails?"
She gives me a curious look. "Red."
Daisy's bird call announces their return, and the hut shakes as Mark rattles the ladder. "Come on," says Mrs. Aloysius. "Let's find your boy."
***
Mark seems almost normal this morning. No crazy free associating ad libs. Only his wild, darting glances and his forever-shaking hands betray his inner turmoil. All of us, save for Weng, are down on the forest floor. Mark lays it out. He was a geologist working with the mining company before the Fall. "There's a series of limestone caves five kilometres away, on the river that drains into Sulugo Bay. I did some spelunking back in the old days. Crazy beautiful inside, man, stalactites, even helectites, man, you wouldn't believe it. I got back, man, must have been half a mile into the hillside. The river, it goes right down through the caves to the sea. That's where the vamps sleep. That's where they took the boy. "
"We're going to have to move quickly," I say. "We've got ten hours to make a lot of things happen. We need get around the cult, find Blong and Roman, rescue Zac and Enzo, get Weng, and be back on board Excelsior before sunset."
"That's ambitious, man. Crazy ambitious." Mark's face splits in a wide, delighted grin. "I love it."
"I could take Weng," says Mrs. Aloysius. "Maybe with Alfred. We know this island better than anyone. We could meet you down at the wharf this evening."
"No." I don't leave any room for argument. "I split the group yesterday, and it was a disaster. Weng is safe here. You either come with us or you stay here. No third option."
I look from one to another, waiting for someone to object. When no one does, I continue. "One other thing. They have a rifleman. A damn good one too. They almost took my head off yesterday."