by Jase Kovacs
Now! While they're frozen. I shuffle forward, keeping my feet flat, hoping the others realise what I realise and follow me quickly.
— NAH CAW NAW EM —
I slip by the two and then duck under the uplifted arms of another. Its forearms are peeled bare, and I see sinews sliding like cables as its fingers wiggle like those of an evangelical speaking in tongues.
— SHAB COL NA —
Their chant is about to finish. Will they go through a second time? Or go back to their holding pattern, waiting to be triggered like the sensitive hairs on a venus flytrap? I'm between two of them. The nearest space is two meters away. I slip forward, urging Mark and Alfred to stick close, to follow me into the open space where the marys will not brush us with their swaying.
— DAN CAH
Something bumps me, wet and hard. It's Mark, his blue shirt soaked through with sweat. Alfred is right by him, the three of us squeezing together into the tiny space between creatures.
CHUK CHUK CHUK
The light's moved on, and the marys are back to their waiting dance. We're about ten metres from the yacht now. A web of bowlines, stern lines, and springers are tied off onto boulders and stalagmites, holding the boat about a meter off the shore, where several huge flat boulders form a natural wharf. It's almost too good, too perfect a wharf. I study the cave while I'm waiting for the light — the very faint ambient light which is fading as the day gets on — Christ, how much of this green light do the marys need to keep them entranced? — to hit one and set them off again.
I'm right; the wharf is too perfect, and the path we're following too flat to be natural. Someone, years ago, took jackhammers to flatten the boulders and poured concrete to smooth out the rocks. I'm talking years and years ago. Maybe during the war. Some Japanese soldiers turning this place into a hidden dock, safe from air attack, where a sanpan or a patrol boat could hide out during the day. Or maybe smugglers? Whatever, I'm just trying to keep my mind off the hundred monsters surrounding me.
"Matty," Mark breathes the word so quietly I almost mistake it for a puff of breeze.
I give him my best SHUT THE HELL UP look. He nods slowly but tips his head, directing my attention to the green schooner. I can see the name on its stern now: AOTEA picked out in gold letters against its green hull. I have to admit, she's a pretty beautiful yacht. Her decks, between the random shards of jade, are covered in a thick layer of bat shit, and long streaks of rust dribble from every fitting, but the filth of the ages can't disguise her tastefully curved hull, the fine bowsprit lifting like the head of a spirited horse, her elegantly raked aluminium masts holding a Christmas tree of stainless steel cables, forestays, backstays, and shrouds. She has three roller furlers, stay sail, genoa, and second jib on her main mast, the sails tightly rolled like cigars on the furlers, her running rigging, sheets, and halyards all set up, as if she's just waiting for her master to return and slip the lines.
With a cold start, I realise that's probably the case.
But all of this is just me appraising a vessel with a yachtsman's eye. It's not what Mark is directing my attention towards: which is that Blong is awake, his eyes shimmering as he wiggles in his tight cocoon. He doesn't say anything but jerks his head as if —
For one brief, heart-stopping second, the marys stop their chuks. The daylight filtering through the curtain of vegetation at the far end of the cave dims, and the spears the green shards throw weaken. Then the moment passes, and they're back on track again.
CHUK CHUK CHUK.
I mouth COME ON to the guys and step forward. But I'm stopped. There are a dozen marys on the path, pressed so tightly together that some of them look like they're old-timey slow dancing with each other. Rotting, ruined corpses swaying in time to music only they can hear. One of them is even chowing down on its partner, its snapping jaws closing each time on another's shoulder.
The light fades quickly now. Some of them turn their heads slightly as their senses start to penetrate the ecstatic haze in which they pass the day. I can almost see the thought pass through their slack, corrupt faces: Hey, do you smell something?
Our window of opportunity is closing as the sun drops away.
Blong shakes his head back and forth; whether he's saying no or urging us on, I can't tell. Not that it matters. There's no going back now. Then I see what he's trying to tell me; there's a swim platform at the stern waterline.
No way past the guys in front of us, no way to cut in on their dance, and I don't want to wait and see if we get another interlude of NAW EM SHABs. I nod down to the river and step off the path. The water is shockingly cold. I take two steps, and it's already up to my thighs. The river flows around my legs in a firm push, and the idea comes all at once: if we cut the mooring lines…
Mark shakes his head, his eyes wide, a man on the brink of falling into a well of mindless terror. I beckon him to hand over his rifle, which he does with glacial reluctance. PUSH ME, I mouth to Alfred, who is right next to me, ready to follow. He nods, and I lie back in the water, as if accepting a baptism, holding the two rifles up to keep them dry.
My feet leave the ground, and immediately the river catches me. Alfred sinks to his neck, and his hands take my hips as he pushes me before him, guiding me over to the yacht like a canoe. I concentrate on keeping myself buoyant, my lungs full, the weight of the two rifles wanting to push me shoulder first under water. More hands reach under me as Mark comes alongside. Both of them swim carefully, silently.
My arm brushes a stern line, and then I come up against the stern with a hard bump. I carefully lower the rifles onto the swim platform. As I do so, my centre of buoyancy shifts, and my head goes underwater. Cold water fills my sinuses, and my throat closes up in shock. Dimly, the sound muffled under the water, I hear a bell toll as a gun barrel strikes the stainless steel frame of the swim platform.
I come up to exactly what I expect: Mark and Alfred in the water with me, frozen in fear as the marys on shore twitch, their faces heaving with tics and tremors as they wake, the clear peal of metal on metal summoning them from torpor. The only sound is the rush of the river around the yacht's stern and the fast gasps of Alfred's and Mark's frightened breathing.
No more chuks. It's wakey-wakey time.
"Get on the boat!" I whisper.
Alfred heaves himself on first and then grabs my outstretched arm and lifts me on board as if I were nothing more than a sack of rice. He turns to lift Mark; I'm already up over the transom and onto the stern deck, bending over Blong. He's lashed tightly into his hammock, crudely bound with dozens of ropes wrapped inexpertly around him. There's an old saying: if you don’t know knots, tie lots. A foul smell fills my nose; he has been here for almost thirty-six hours, and nature has taken its course. "Lady," he breathes, his voice light, his brow burning with fever. "Sorry, lady, sorry."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I say, holding him to me, my body ready to heave with tears that are gathering like a sudden afternoon storm. But I press them back, I press them down, now is not the time, now we have to move. "Blong, I'm gonna free you. But first—"
"Yes, yes!" he gasps, looking over my shoulder at the creatures that gather on shore as their minds shake off the green light that has intoxicated them all day. "I see! Go!"
"Drop all the lines, start at the front and work your way back" I tell Alfred and Mark as they come up. "Let the river carry us out. And push off on anything that comes too close."
"You want me to push vamps off?" Mark is incredulous.
"I mean rocks. I'll take care of the marys." I shoulder my M4, the Ruger at my feet. The marys are moving on shore, still drugged, more like curious onlookers than hungry sharks scenting blood. My mind runs over the logistics of getting out. Fifteen rounds, one full mag, and the Ruger. That's what I've got. The river flow comes from astern. The guys forward, undoing the lines. Good. If we dropped the stern lines first, the river would catch the stern, pivot us around on the bow lines and press us against the rocks. So we must drop bow lines an
d then springers and then release the port and starboard stern lines simultaneously.
"Matty!" squeaks Blong. His voice is so tight and high; he must be dying of thirst. "They are waking up."
"I know, kid!" I point my rifle at the closest, my eyes both open, the red dot sight on the one I think is going first.
"The green light puts them to sleep!" he says.
"Yeah, but the sun is going down."
Blong may be bound up like a spider's lunch, swaddled in his own filth and suffering from severe dehydration, but that doesn't stop his voice from letting me know just how stupid he thinks I can be. "Your flashlights, lady! Use them!"
The boat jerks as the guys drop the springers. Only two stern lines remain. The boat swings slightly as the pressure comes on and the river hits it in a different way. But its hull is like a wind vane in the breeze, the river and the lines keeping her pointing downstream. I look along the boat. The jade scales are thin shards, like stone-knapped blades found in a prehistoric cave, and polished until they gleam. They're glued or jammed onto nearly every surface of the yacht, along the rails and the cabin and the bimini and the arch. It must have taken someone years to collect, polish, and attach these stones.
Yeah. Probably about four years.
Mark and Alfred are coming back to me, ready for their next job. A slow hiss gathers on shore, from one throat as a mary finally realises that there are creatures of warm flesh and blood on their master's yacht. The hiss rises like an alarmed snake and then spreads out, rippling through the cave from mouth to mouth. I feel their attention, a hundred alien minds driven by a virus of insatiable hunger, turn to us.
"Alfred! Shine your torch on the green stones!"
His torch is many times brighter than the little sun that leaked through the green curtain. A hundred pieces of jade catch his light and gleam like translucent pools of vivid green, as if the jungle is somehow molten, glistening with a sleek intensity that draws our eyes.
The hiss abruptly dies away, like an emptying balloon. There is a long pregnant pause as I turn on my Surefire and play it along the boat and then aim it directly through one larger piece of jade mounted on the cockpit, so it shines out like an emerald spotlight.
The hiss rises again, and I think somehow we're wrong, that this has been a colossal miscalculation. But it's not a hiss. It's a sigh. And then a snapping of jaws as the crowd starts to sway back and forth.
CHUK CHUK CHUK.
"Mark, hold the two torches on the stones. Keep it moving, they seem to like the moving lights. Alfred, come to the stern. I'm going to take off the port stern line. As soon as I do, you chop through the starboard line. We have to let go right at the same moment — or we'll swing into those rocks."
Mark waves the torches over the decks, sending light in all directions. Faintly I can hear him making laser noises with his mouth: pew pew. Christ, he's going to get along with Blong. Alfred crouches by the starboard stern cleat, his machete raised over the tight mooring line. I crouch by the port; whoever moored this boat knew what they were doing — no bungle of granny knots like on the hammock. The starboard is tied off with a neat cleat knot, just as I would.
"Who the fuck are you?" I murmur aloud, addressing the absent Green Lord.
CHUK CHUK CHUK.
"Now?" asks Alfred.
"Wait." I slip the knot, noting tiny mounds of dirt gathered in the rope's folds as the line comes off the cleat. As soon as the pressure on the line is released, the schooner starts to swing. "Now!"
Alfred's machete flashes down, and the line springs back. The yacht immediately begins to glide along with the river.
"Matty!" cries Mark. "Steer the boat around those rocks."
"I can't steer. We're being carried by the current; there's no relative water flow over the rudder. Grab anything long you can and push off on any rocks."
Alfred scoops up a boat hook and trots forward. We're sliding faster and faster as the river carries us towards the entrance, where the jungle vines spill over the cave mouth like a frozen waterfall. A long scrape shivers through the boat, and I look up as some metal parts come tinkling down; we've clipped a stalactite with the tip of the mast.
Come on, you bastard, don't let us get stuck now.
After the scrape, I realise the CHUKs have stopped. Mark drops the torches and leans over the side, frantically pawing at the black, slick walls of the cleft, pushing the boat away as we move farther down. Alfred joins him, pushing off with a pole.
"Alfred, push off at the stern, otherwise you'll spin us around." I say this distractedly as I look at the monsters on shore. Part of my mind is working on ways to keep the boat running straight as the river carries us down; I can't steer because we're moving at the same speed as the river so there is no waterflow over the rudder. But I could drop a small anchor or some tethered weights over the stern to act as a drogue and keep us pointing the right way. Of course, I would have to find them. That's the problem jumping on someone else's yacht — everyone's got their own bloody way of storing things.
But the greater part of my mind is watching the marys with increasing alarm. They aren't CHUKing, but they aren't staring at us either. Instead, a shudder runs through them, an electric charge that makes them shiver. I feel the shock that passes through them, like a cold stone running down my back.
Something important just happened.
The marys shake their heads and look to one another before turning to us. The spell is broken, and they will charge, leaping from the shore and crashing down on us like a flock of petrels diving on a hapless school of fish.
But when they spring into movement, it is not at us.
Instead, they race up, deeper into the cave, piling onto one another in a mad frenzy to go up the tunnel, others disappearing into side passages that we didn't know about, all of them fighting to go back to the surface. Snarls of anger and rage fill the cave, echoing back and forth until it is a thunder of alien fury. And then it tapers off as the cave empties.
Mark, Alfred, and I look at each other, finding no answers in any of our faces. Blong, lost in a feverish delirium, sings quietly to himself. The bowsprit pierces the green curtain, shouldering the vines aside as if they are tall green waves, and Aotea passes from out of the ground and into its native element, the late afternoon sun blinding us as if the veils of perception had been lifted from our eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ISAAC
The eastern sky is the ugly purple of a bruise, dotted with the first pinprick stars. The wind blows red dust down the road and flattens the kunai grass. Dark clouds appear from over the hills, rolling ominously over the ridgeline like the boil of a river in flood.
No one moves. Blood pools around Deborah's head in a dark halo, pulsing from her neck, but still no one moves. The Lost Tribe stares with awe, as if Deborah's passing was an approaching tsunami that could not be halted or shaped, only met with prayers for salvation and mercy.
Reuben looks at me, seemingly craving explanation or even absolution. He searches for words to explain emotions that he doesn't understand or, perhaps, can't fathom. There is something indescribably sad in his face. He holds the pistol by his side, and he raises his other hand, empty palm upward, as if offering me something. Slowly, his fingers close until he is pointing at me. "You… " he breathes, his voice almost lost in the gathering wind. "You did this."
"Reuben, this has gone far enough," I say.
But he shakes his head as he lets his anger drown his doubt and confusion. "No. No! You and your people did this. You killed our kin, and you sowed corruption in our garden." His face crumples as tears run down his cheeks. "Why did you come here?"
The Lost Tribe have drawn back from us. I remember that they crucified Deborah and then had her come back, reborn as a prophet guiding them into the Green Lord's service. For a people for whom the mere act of existing holds spiritual significance, what must they think about the drama that plays out before them now? Do they understand they are present at the writing of their own scrip
ture?
But one of them is not frozen. Abigail, the girl who showed me kindness while I was their prisoner, pushes through. "Let me past!"
Reuben's men look to him for guidance, but he still accuses me with his trembling hand, waiting for my answer. Abigail crouches by Deborah, cradling her head as her lifeblood spills on the ground. Deborah weakly tries to touch Abigail's face, but she lacks the strength. Abigail takes Deborah's hand in her own and guides it to her cheek.
"Reuben," I say carefully, as if a gentle tone can prevent this powder keg from exploding. "We have medicines. Bandages. Let me help Deborah."
"Merde!" cries Enzo. He has his shotgun on Reuben, his finger curled around the unfired trigger. "Are you crazy? I shoot this asshole and we go!"
"Shut the hell up, Enzo!" I'm astonished at the emotion that cracks my voice. I'm not the only one: Enzo, Piper, and even Reuben look surprised at my sudden vehemence. "We have to stop killing each other! For God's sake! These people have been led astray by a monster, a monster who will consume us all! And what are we doing about it? We tear each other to pieces. We do his work for him! It has to stop."
"The Green Lord is the new dawn," says Reuben. But his voice lacks Deborah's conviction, the inherit belief that her existence is the true path, even as he parrots her words. Reuben's strength comes only from preaching hate. "Under his dominion will come a fresh day for his true followers."
Deborah gathers her strength and lifts her head. She struggles to sounds words but can only raise a shallow gurgle from her ruined throat. Her eyes rage with the indignation of a prophet silenced.
"He brought you here to feed his army while he is off recruiting new forces," I say. "That's it! All you are to him is cattle."
The air vibrates with the energy of the coming storm. No one wants to move, to be the one who breaks this spell.
"Let me treat Deborah," I say.
Reuben shakes his head as he shifts his grip on the pistol, as if it is a spiked cactus digging into his palm. "I can't. She has to go. It is time for you to pay."