The Pouakai

by Sperry, David;

  After four days underwater, we approached Nanumea. Captain Baker had been extra cautious about losing our tail, so we’d sailed the wrong way for half a day before turning back southwest. Once we reached Nanumea, he had us sit still for six hours, listening for any other subs in the area. My patience with this cat-and-mouse game had worn thin. We had a job to do too.

  We surfaced two hours before sunrise. The Captain hadn’t detected any other subs in the area, but he didn’t want to be on the surface during daylight either. He would drop us off, and then stay submerged until after sunset, when he’d send the inflatable to get us.

  When we popped above the surface, we had a few minutes to check the web while the sailors got the inflatable ready. All over the world, mass die-offs of the Roc had sent people into a frenzy of both happiness and worry. The news sites had reached a fever pitch; one side screaming that the Rocs were dead while saner heads said it was too early to know, but they were drowned out by the near-hysteria of relief.

  Cloud cover had prevented the satellites from taking any survey photos of Nanumea. The Captain would let us go ashore, but he’d only risk his inflatables in the early morning hours, since we couldn’t be sure if the Pouakai were here or not.

  Colin brought his satellite phone with him, along with a laptop, so he could continue the email discussion with colleagues around the world. The five of us, plus two sailors, slid down the side of the sub in the pre-dawn darkness, and into the inflatable boat. I stumbled on the way down, almost ending up in the ocean. Without even a cup of coffee at this early hour, I really dragged.

  “How can he see where we’re going?” Steve asked in a whisper, nodding toward the sailor steering the inflatable. I shrugged. Then the sailor put on a pair of night-vision goggles, and we started on our way.

  A second inflatable was tied up to the sub too. I made out the shapes of more men on the deck of the sub, lowering gear into the boat.

  “What’s up with that?” I asked Colin, while pointing at the other inflatable.

  “The SEALs are coming too. For our protection,” he added, rolling his eyes.

  “Baker’s idea?”

  “Yep.”

  The sea felt calm in the pre-dawn darkness, the island a black line in the faint starlight. A quiet rush of the sea as small swells broke on the reef. The sound got louder as we passed into the narrow cut in the reef and motored into the lagoon. We pulled up to the beach behind the village a few minutes later. Somewhere to the left, invisible in the darkness, lay the wreckage of my plane, probably now corroding away in the saltwater of the Pacific.

  As soon as we got ourselves and our gear out of the inflatable, it pulled back into the lagoon, headed for the Ohio. The other inflatable arrived and the SEALs slipped onto the shore, all black shadows and silent movement.

  “Split up into small groups,” Colin told everyone, once we’d gathered on the beach. “Remember how we did it when we were here before. No more than four people together, and walk slowly, keep quiet. If you see a Pouakai, just sit quietly and wait for it to go away.”

  “Should we go into the village now?” Alan asked.

  “No. Spread out along the beach, and wait for first light. When I stand up, you can follow, but try to keep each group separated. Don’t form a big mass of people.”

  Colin motioned to me, and to Lieutenant Hanson. We sat down next to the path leading to the village. The others broke into small groups, with at least one SEAL in each group.

  We sat in the cool, damp sand waiting. Sooner than I expected, the first tinge of violet rose in the eastern sky, and the rapid tropical dawn rolled toward us. Within minutes I could make out the tail of my wrecked 767, jutting into the air above the lagoon. It still looked clean, with the airline’s logo untouched. I fought back a wave of sadness about everything that had changed since that day.

  As the violet sky turned to deep red and orange, Colin stood up.

  “Let’s go.” He waved to the other groups scattered along the beach, and we began to walk inland.

  The silence struck me first. When we’d been there earlier in the year, you would hear roosters crowing and people moving about by this time of the morning. Today though, it was deathly still. It didn’t feel right. We walked slowly along the path, trying to be as quiet as possible. A bird fluttered overhead, and we stopped for a moment, until we were sure it wasn’t a Pouakai. We passed several small homes, all empty.

  Colin reached back and adjusted a plastic bag strapped to his backpack.

  “What’s that?” I whispered.

  “A makana for the Chief. I got some fresh pineapple and canned ham from the sub’s galley.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. Even out here, he was a model of politeness.

  Lieutenant Hanson put his hand on Colin’s shoulder, making him jump.

  “Sorry,” Hanson whispered. He motioned for us to stand behind him, and he continued forward, silently unslinging his rifle. We followed, not quite so silently, behind him.

  The Lieutenant stopped moving a few hundred yards from the center of the village, as we entered the same clearing where Brett had been sliced up by the Pouakai the day we’d arrived. The Lieutenant leveled his rifle and dropped to one knee. Colin stopped and knelt. I couldn’t see past the Lieutenant and Colin, but knelt down too.

  After a few seconds, the Lieutenant stood up, and we followed him into the clearing. At least a hundred freshly dug mounds of dirty sand covered the area. Graves. Rough crosses stood at one end of each mound.

  “What happened?” I whispered, aghast at the evidence of carnage.

  The Lieutenant didn’t respond as he swept the area with the muzzle of his rifle. Nothing moved. We turned onto the road toward the Quonset hut, slowing as we approached. My heart beat faster. What had happened? They couldn’t have all died, since someone had to dig those graves.

  The metal grate barred the entrance to the hut, and a large piece of cloth covered the inside of the doorway, so we couldn’t see in. Lieutenant Hanson looked back at Colin, tilting his head toward the door. Colin nodded, and stepped up to the grate.

  “Hello? Anyone there?”

  After a moment’s silence, footsteps, and then the cloth moved aside. A local looked at us, wide-eyed, and unlocked the grate.

  The Quonset hut was filled with people, huddling together on the floor. There were several times as many people crammed into the hut as there had been when my crew and passengers were there. With barely any room to walk around, we stood at the entrance, gasping at the stench of all these people in such a small space.

  “Where is the Chief?” I asked the local who let us in.

  He looked at us, puzzled, and shook his head. He didn’t understand English. Then he looked at Colin and me again, closer, and nodded. He waved at someone, who stood and approached us.

  “Captain Boonie, it is good to see you,” the new arrival said. I recognized Fatakolonga, who had gone fishing with me several times.

  “It’s good to see you too, Fata, but what happened? Where is the Chief?”

  He led us to the back corner of the hut. Chief Kalahamotu lay on the ground, a bad gash across his stomach. A few tattered rags lay over the wound.

  “Chief,” Fatakolonga said, “Captain Boonie is here.”

  The Chief raised his head, and looked at me and then at Colin, before lying back on the ground. I knelt beside him.

  “Chief, we came back to see how you are doing, but didn’t expect this. What happened?”

  “The Pouakai changed,” he said in a whisper. “They attacked us.”

  “When?” Colin asked.

  “Ten days ago, I think. I do not know what day it is now.”

  Fatakolonga nodded. “Yes, it was ten days ago when the change happened.”

  “What did the Pouakai do?”

  The Chief raised his head again, but Fatakolonga put a hand on his shoulder, and continued the story. “The Pouakai came in a thick cloud. Angry. They attacked everything, even people standing still.
The Pouakai were not right in their head. They were crazy. They attacked people, buildings, animals, trees. Then they died.”

  “All at once?”

  “No, it took a few days. The Pouakai did not leave Nanumea. They stayed on the ground and water, but did not fly. Some would start shaking, and even attacking other Pouakai. Then they would lie on the ground and stop moving. After that they would die. By the time two days were gone, all the Pouakai were dead.”

  “You came in here for safety?” I asked.

  “Yes, but there were many of our people dead outside. After the Pouakai had died, a few went out to bury our people, then came back here.”

  “Why come back to the hut?”

  “There were more Pouakai in the next few days. Only one or two at a time, but they were crazy too. It was not safe outside. It has been five days since the last one. We don’t know if the Pouakai are coming back. Except for when we buried our people, we stay here. If they did come back when we were outside, we could be killed too.”

  I looked around the shelter. There wasn’t much food on the table, and no water. Something would have to give, and soon.

  “The Pouakai are dying everywhere,” Colin said to Fatakolonga. “All around the world, at about the same time as yours here.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know. It’s all very sudden, and we’re trying to figure it out.”

  “There will be more,” the Chief whispered from the ground. We knelt next to him.

  “Why do you say that?” Colin asked.

  “The Pouakai finished their job. Something else is coming now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It is what we have done for three years, watch the Pouakai. We watched them, and learned from them. They were here for a reason. One I do not know yet. They would not go away unless their reason for being here is done.”

  Colin looked at me with a small shrug.

  “Chief,” I said. “How did you get hurt?”

  “My wife was killed by a Pouakai. I went to get her. A Pouakai was on the ground next to her. I thought it was dead, but when I got there it started shaking again. I was too close, and its spear hit me.”

  “I’m sorry Chief. About your wife, and your injury.”

  The Chief nodded, laying his head back on the ground.

  We stood up, and returned to the entrance. The rest of our group and the SEALs stood just outside, waiting. We explained what we found, and then Colin turned to Fatakolonga.

  “Fata, we think the danger from the Pouakai is over.”

  “It may be, but we have to stay safe. The Chief will tell us when we can go out again.”

  “I understand. Would you mind if we walked around the island, and checked it out ourselves? We could let you know if there are any Pouakai in the area.”

  Fata glanced back at the hut, before nodding.

  “Okay everyone,” Colin said. “Just like we did at Palmyra. I want a good survey of what’s here, and how many Pouakai remains you find. Report back here in four hours. That’s 1pm, Hawaii time.”

  We broke into small groups and agreed on which areas to cover. As we turned to leave, an electronic chirping noise sounded. We stopped and looked around, puzzled, except for Colin, who extracted the satellite phone from his backpack.

  “Hello?”

  I had an odd feeling, watching Colin talk calmly on the phone while standing on a remote island in the South Pacific. For a moment, I wished he’d had that phone when we were here the first time.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, “I’m going to put this on the speaker. I want everyone to hear.”

  He laid the phone on a stump of a coconut tree and turned up the volume.

  “Go ahead Matt. My team is listening.”

  A tinny voice emitted from the phone speaker. “Hello everyone. This is Matt Barrow, Colin’s assistant here in Honolulu. I called because things have really gotten crazy in the last couple of hours, and we think we may have found Pouakai signatures in new satellite photos.”

  “Where?” Colin asked.

  “How?” Alan asked at the same time.

  “I just got the call from the NRO about ten minutes ago. They sent the photos, and I forwarded them on to your email, Colin.”

  “Why didn’t they see the signatures before? I thought all traces of the Pouakai had disappeared a few days ago.”

  “They had, but the NRO has been retuning the satellites, to see if there were Pouakai signatures at different frequencies of the spectrum. They caught these late yesterday, your time, and sent them on to me.”

  “I don’t get it,” Alan said.

  “The frequencies that allowed the satellites to identify the Pouakai now show nothing, as if there’s no Pouakai left.”

  “That’s what we found out here,” Colin said. “The Pouakai are all gone.”

  “Yes, but the NRO has been scanning up and down the frequency range, looking for other signatures, and found these new ones. The good news is that it’s only in two tiny clusters, southwest from your position on Nanumea.”

  “They think it’s Pouakai?”

  “It’s not anything they’ve encountered before They said it strongly resembles the signature of the Pouakai, just at a slightly different frequency, as if the color they were looking for had changed.”

  “Where are these signatures?”

  “One cluster is on Anuta island, about six hundred miles southwest of Nanumea. That’s at the far east end of the Solomon Islands. The other cluster is over the ocean, about thirty miles south of Anuta.”

  “That all?”

  “So far, yes, but those may be the only photos we get.”

  “Why?”

  “After the satellite sent the pictures to the NRO office, it stopped working.”

  “The satellite broke?”

  “Yes. That’s what’s really causing the uproar here. The satellite was hit by unidentified fire, followed by the downing of more satellites. They are being targeted with a high-powered energy beam, taking them out.”

  “Holy shit,” Lieutenant Hanson said. “Where from?”

  “They don’t know. The Russians have lost satellites too, as well as the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and European Space Agency. Any satellite capable of imaging the Earth has been hit. It’s ratcheting up the global tension. Every country is blaming another for the attacks. It’s getting ugly really quickly.”

  “Is there any pattern to which satellites were hit?”

  “They’ve all been on one hemisphere of the world when hit, roughly centered on the southwest Pacific basin. That’s all the NRO would tell me though. Hang on, something is flashing on the news.”

  We waited for Matt to continue. The morning sun slanted through the coconut palms, and I could tell it was going to be a scorcher of a day. The wind drifted around us lightly, the sky a clear blue infinity.

  “They got the international space station,” he finally said. We gasped.

  “They’re saying they got a few seconds of garbled transmission from the astronauts aboard, before all communication quit. An Air Force tracking station in Hawaii says there’s multiple targets now where the station should be. I think whatever it is just killed our people up there.”

  Colin dropped to his knees, and plugged his laptop into the data port on the phone. “Matt, did you already email me those photos?”

  “Yes, you should have them in your inbox.”

  Colin tapped on the laptop, and a few moments later, a photo showed up on the screen. We clustered around him to see the photo, while the SEALs conferred a few feet away. The photo showed a small circular island, in the same false-color I’d seen in the other satellite images. A group of greenish dots were at the center of the island. Colin brought up a second photo, which showed the same island, but with a much larger scale. Below the island, in the middle of the ocean, was another spot of green.

  “I have the photos Matt. Is there anything else you can send?”

  “Not at the moment. I’
m trying to get through to Washington, but there’s been trouble with the phone systems since…”

  A burst of static sounded and we all jumped.

  “Matt?” Colin unplugged his laptop, picked up the phone, and then handed it to me. The display said ‘Searching for signal’. I couldn’t get anything out of it either. I looked at Colin, and shook my head.

  “What happened?” Mina asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The signal from the phone just died. It’s trying to find another satellite to lock onto, but nothing’s there.”

  “Whoever is knocking down the surveillance satellites must have taken out the phone sats too,” Lieutenant Hanson said, as he joined our group.

  “Why?”

  “That’s how it’s done in war. If you take out the enemy’s ability to communicate, they can’t mount an effective defense against you.”

  “Who are we fighting against? Who declared war on us, and why now?”

  “It could be anyone. The Russians, Chinese, North Koreans.”

  “Or the Pouakai,” Colin said quietly.

  The Lieutenant shook his head. “That’s a stretch. You said yourself the Pouakai are all gone. So there aren’t any Pouakai left down here, and we’ve never seen anything resembling technology related to them anyway. They are just animals. It would make sense for one of those other countries to take advantage of the confusion of the Pouakai disappearance to mount an attack like this.”

  “Lieutenant,” Colin said. “You may honestly believe that, but I don’t. Matt said that all those countries reported their own satellites had been hit too. It has to be more than other countries gunning for war.”

  “They could be lying, distracting us from the truth.”

  “To what end? What could they gain from this?”

  “Power, domination of this part of the world.”

  I snorted, and everyone looked at me. “Sorry Lieutenant,” I said, “but there’s nothing down here that I’d give a nickel for, and neither would any of those other countries. Colin, I understand where the Lieutenant is coming from. I’ve been part of that military mind myself. Today, Lieutenant, I think you’re wrong. Look at the timeline. We take a photo of a possible new flock of Pouakai, our ability to track them is removed. After that, communications are destroyed; if it’s true that the phone sats have been shot down too.”