by Jase Kovacs
"You're telling me, kid. Okay, let's do this." I lower my weapon, unconscious drills switching the selector from SEMI to SAFE, and take the wheel in my hands and examine the door. The door swings inward, the hinges on the far side, proof I guess against a catastrophic leak, to stop it flooding the rear of the ship, the in-rushing water pinning the door shut and sealing it. By my estimate we are behind cargo hold number four - since we're starting at the back and working forward. The holds are covered with massive deck hatches what are lifted with the big cranes. The roof of Hold Four torn in places, holes big enough for me to slip through I think, which is something I consider as I feel the stiffness of the wheel, the unyielding of the corrosion. If I can't get it open or it's blocked from the other side then maybe I can come in via the roof, rappel in. Commando style. What did Blong say? Seal Team Six.
Huh. That's weird. How does he know about...
I try the wheel, put my back into it. The ridged steel presses painfully into my palms. My shoulders and biceps tight as I lock myself against the wheel, straighten my back and push, using my legs. I grit my teeth and strain and push. Not with your back, use your legs Dad would say.
Nothing. The wheel is stuck.
"Have you got any WD40?"
"What is?"
"Lubricant. Oil."
He frowns as he considers. "Maybe engine oil?"
"Yeah, no that's not what I want. What about a blowtorch?" Step one with a stuck bolt or wheel: penetrating oil. Step two: apply heat.
He laughs, as if I had just asked him if he had a laser gun. "No no no! I have, I cook birds!"
"Okay." I consider the stuck door. My imagination already conjuring up images of treasure beyond. These rooms are stacked with vital spares, things we desperately need on Madau. God, just a box of fuel filters would put a generator back in action, allow us to clean twenty drums of diesel contaminated with water. A generator means power means light and tools and maybe even radio. The impellers and the diaphragms could service diesels so we aren't always hanging off the wind. There's a crate of stainless steel fittings, genuine 316, that gives me palpitations just to look at.
If this is just the ship stores, imagine what will be in the main hold! Maybe hardwood logs ripped from the rainforest. But maybe more of this. More spares. And even if the hold is full of useless items - what will I find elsewhere in the ship? In other lockers, other floors just like this. The stairs I came down double back and go down in a stairwell. I can see water swilling down the bottom, but there at least three floors beneath this one I can get at. I look around but Katie isn't present. Typical. Just like her to go off sulking when I prove her wrong.
"What I need is a metal pole. Thick. Or an iron bar. About four feet long. A metre and a half." I hold up my hands to demonstrate. What's the saying? Give me a lever long enough and I can move the world? Well, I just need to get this wheel to rotate one inch, break the seal of rust, get things moving again and we're good.
"Okay, I know one! You wait, I find, come back quick!" Blong runs back up the corridor, back towards the stairs where a shaft of light beckons, inviting me back, tempting me to crawl back out of this black mine. But like all people who ventured into holes in the ground hunting riches, the potential of gold forces me to remain.
I call to him just before he disappears up the stairs. "Hey Blong!"
"Yeah?"
"How'd you know about Seal Team Six?"
He looks at me like I'm crazy. Like, why do you waste my time with such stupid questions? "Movies."
"Movies that you watched when you were little?"
"Yeah."
"Before the crew abandoned the ship and you ran onto the reef."
"Uh. Yeah." There it is. A flicker of uncertainty. Am I being paranoid? Maybe he is just confused by my sudden unexpected line of questioning. Or maybe I'm onto something. These are the cracks that keep you alive. A weakness into which you can drive a wedge of suspicion and break open the lie to discover the truth within. Maybe. Or maybe I'm just too damn paranoid when I don't have my imaginary friend around to be my sounding board.
Blong spreads his hands, annoyed and confident, as if to ask if he can go and get on with it. "Wait here lady, I come back."
I nod at him and he turns and runs. Watch his bare, scarred feet run up the stairs out of view. My master hand falls to the grip of my rifle. The smooth knurled metal soothing like cold water in a fever. My thumb, almost unconsciously, moving the selector from SAFE to SEMI.
And then, after a seconds pause, to AUTO.
Chapter 8
I was fourteen when I gave up. Ready to let go of life. Ready to die. Wondering, why don't I just go over? What is there to stay for? A life alone? Love is gone, slipped through my fingers like a fading sunset, twilight over, a long impossible night ahead. Mum dead. Jayden dead. Dad infected, turning before my eyes, my big strong father in the depths of the fever delirium saying words he would never say otherwise begging me please...
No. Don't go there.
A forlorn hope. Every day at 2230 Greenwich Mean Time. Which means sometime after dawn where I was in south east Asia. Come up on HF, Channel 12356. All stations all stations, this is Voodoo, whiskey delta x-ray four four five seven. Anyone on this channel? Is anyone out there?
Nothing but pops and crackles and once or twice a voice oh god a sudden spark of hope, a red fire bursting in my heart THIS IS SEVEN TWO ONE but it's just an automated weather beacon NO UPDATES bleeding over from a different frequency and I pound the nav station in frustration hot tears leaking.
How many days could you wait on an empty highway for a lift that will never come?
For me it was two years. Two years after Dad died, two years after Voodoo became mine. Two years of sailing alone, keeping the boat running, daily maintenance, daily routine filling the minutes hours days weeks years my entire life, every day marked by ticks on a checklist. My legacy as the youngest, perhaps only, solo sailor on Earth would be a well maintained logbook.
Then one morning I broke. I was still trying to keep up power, keep up systems, keep up appearances. The deception of normality in a world gone mad. A single stray wire my undoing. I ran the engine to charge the batteries, gotta keep em above sixty percent or they deep cycle and it shortens their life. Wouldn't want the batteries to die on me, not like everyone else. The field wire on the alternator had corroded, inside the heatshrink sealing so I couldn't see it, not daring to cut the precious wrapping of plastic to inspect it properly. The wire snapping loose as the engine shuddered into life and touching the shell of the alternator. FLASH POP FIZZ. That's all it was, a tiny wire earthing the alternator, not much of a short but enough to blow the elderly diodes and that was it. Gone. No alternator no spares no way of fixing.
In of itself it was not a major calamity. I lost my big charger. So what. I've survived the five years since then just fine. But I was fourteen, alone for two years, having no one no people no one but infected and the murderously mad, the only survivors in the abyss those who have become monsters themselves.
Perspective and perception conspiring to kill me. I lay in my bunk for three days. No strength, no will. What was the point? Then I stepped off Voodoo and let myself sink. Falling into the blue, hoping it would take me, hoping I could pass over and enter into the ocean finally, become one with it, my flesh sustenance for its creatures, closing the link in the food chain that widened every time I opened a tin of sardines.
Four minutes thirty seconds, forty seconds, fifty three; I couldn't bring myself to open my mouth and breath in the water, take the salt into my body. My blood and tears holding the same percentage of salt as the ocean, the womb that nurtured all life, so is it any wonder I wanted to return?
I broke the surface and drew in a shuddering pained breath that was a sob of rage at my body's betrayal. I found myself performing my recovery breaths as Calypso had taught me, as Mum has always insisted, instinctive drills drummed into me so many times that I performed them with the same unconscious rhythm that
made my heart beat. The same unconscious rhythm, muscle memory, that Dad beat into me with his weapon lessons, going full drill sergeant mode: WEAPON FIRES WEAPON STOPS! IMMEDIATE ACTION! CLEAR THE WEAPON! REALIGN AND KEEP FIRING! WEAPON FIRES WEAPON STOPS!
The same instincts that now cause me to switch the weapon from SAFE to SEMI (one squeeze on the trigger, one shot) to AUTO. Drills. They're what kept me alive.
My parents had taught me these things, had drilled me, so that when my mind had gone my body carried on. Like a well founded ship in a storm, my body would carry me to safe harbour, where I could rest until my mind was strong enough to continue on.
Somehow it was the sharks that did it. The sharks saved me. Ha, I bet that's a sentence that has never before been uttered. Hanging below, freeing the anchor chain, not because I wanted to keep going but because I had to, it wasn't my choice, who would look after Voodoo if I was gone?
The sharks, acting in unison, behaviour that was outside their experience, that their evolution had never prepared them for, banding together and swimming on into the blue as one, somehow that brought me back.
If the sharks could adapt then why couldn't I?
The next morning, 2230 Greenwich Mean Time, as unconscious an action as breathing, as heart beating: All stations all stations, this is Voodoo, whiskey delta x-ray four four five seven—-
Break in transmission, a deadening of static as someone comes on frequency: JESUS FUCKING CHRIST VOODOO IS THAT YOU? HOW COPY?
Impossible. An English accent. A real voice. My hands shake so hard I can barely press TRANSMIT to respond. It's the damn Limey fruit, the English boozer. Larry in Razzmatazz.
Alive.
His voice jumping with excitement, the HF channel barely able to contain it, the levels maxing out with static as he says STANDBY FOR POSITION.
And he rattles off thirteen numbers, six latitude and seven longitude, south and east.
I scribble them down and grab the chart. My grubby finger leaves a smear as I run it across the surface, in seconds covering the ground it will take me a week to sail.
To where he promises good people are waiting.
Madau island.
***
Drills. Drills are what kept me alive. Drills and hard routine. I squat down my back against the bulkhead, the cold steel somehow comforting and threatening at once and keep my weapon sighted on the stairs. Now. If this was a trap and the boy the bait, then now, this is when they would come. When they have me boxed in, cornered, a rat. How many pirates will swarm down the stairs, knives in their teeth, the boy congratulated for luring another into this trap?
A shadow darkens the stairs. I sight, tuck the stock into the small of my shoulder, press my cheek down, the first one to come, hell, the first twenty, will get a high velocity welcome wagon.
A heavy bang as metal strikes metal almost makes me fire early. And then Blong comes running down the stairs and damnit if I almost shoot the kid again. The bang was the end of the long steel pipe he's struggling with, almost too big to fit down the corridor, holding it at high point arms as if he was a marksman on parade, the end donging against the steel wall, scraping paint as he runs towards me. "Hey Matty! Look, look what I found."
The moment passed. My thumb swings the selector to SAFE. I stand, sling the weapon.
"Good work kid."
***
He's almost too good, the pipe too long. Its two inches in diameter, the sort of thing you would mount a roadsign on in the Time Before. I put it through the spokes of the wheel carefully. It takes a few goes until I get the angle just right, until I can fit it in between the ceiling and the wheel and then I find the magic spot and in it slides.
"Okay kid, stand back." I get my shoulder under it, as far up as I can reach and I pull down. Anticlockwise to open. I grit my teeth and pull and nothing.
No movement.
I wedge myself in between the wall and the pipe. Square my shoulders and brace my legs against the far wall so I can pull down with everything I've got, not my back, use my legs.
The pole flexes a centimetre in my hands. I let go and it springs back.
Blong looks on, his hands on his hips. "You want help?"
Smartass. "Just stand back, kid."
Okay. Work smart not hard. Yep, another Dadism. I push the pole through the wheel so the long end is on the downside. It's always better to push than pull. I can get behind it, on the side with the hinges, opposite the lock. I wedge myself in between the door and the wall again and this time I push.
The wheel...
Legs iron hard.
The wheel... shifts.
A tiny amount - and then stops.
Steady pressure doesn't work. If you want to break something, you don't press it. You smash it. You jerk it. Short sharp shocks. That will get this bastard moving. I count one two and then put full force for a second. Feel like I'm going to burst something. Relax. One two, hard as I can. It isn't moving, but I can sense it weakening. One more, one more short sharp shock. I strain and grit my teeth and suck in a big breath and ONE TWO give it everything I've got.
The wheel GIVES but it doesn't let go with the slow reluctant grind of rust being forced open. It gives suddenly as if a rope has broken or epoxy has failed and the door, the rusted shut door, it...
Flies open. Flies open on hinges oiled to perfection, swinging open with the smooth sudden elegance of a magician revealing his trick with a flourish and me, I've got my whole weight on it, my entire body forcing it open.
And that's how it opens with the sudden spring of a...
I can hear Katie's words in my mind.
The sudden spring of a trap.
Because that's what happens, my whole weight behind it as the door suddenly opens inwards and I follow. I tumble through the open bulkhead and where there should be a floor or stairs or a platform on the other side, there is nothing.
And I'm falling.
This is not like sinking into the blue, into the ocean which cushions and comforts me. I fall into an empty black space nothing to catch me nothing to soften the blow as I fall I am speeding up. I twist-
And then it comes.
Hard iron darkness.
Chapter 9
The sun was a falling ball of fire on the horizon when Art Bennett fired up the Yamaha outboard and headed back to the anchorage. The ocean was as flat as a billiard table and the sun painted a wide orange road across its glassy surface. The granite boulders of the headland that his daughter, Matai, had christened Lobster Point glowed pink with the sunset and peeled back, revealing the long deep bay into which he had brought Voodoo that morning.
The kids had spent the day with Cath onshore, several narrow beaches perfect jumping off points to snorkel the coral reefs that fringed the bay. He had taken the dinghy out to Lobster Point in the late afternoon; he had seen schooling pelagics feeding there on their last visit and he wanted to try out his new Black Widow fishing rod he had recently bought in Kudat. The two fat Golden Trevally lying in the bottom of the dinghy were a testament either to his skill or their lack of distinction come feeding time. Not the best eating fish, but delicious when cooked in a light coconut broth. He was sure that Cath would work her usual magic in the galley.
A gentle breeze blew from the north, barely noticeable and he considered that the monsoon was coming. It was time for them to head around Malaysia to the west coast. Before the monsoon came in force and turned the South China Sea into a rolling mess, a thousand mile fetch allowing the winds, which blew all the way from southern China, to build up waves five metres high, that would march forward in ranks to flood the east coast of Peninsula Malaysia. In a week or so, they would head south, down around Singapore and then up the Straits of Malacca to Langkawi where they would spend the next four months. Matai was five and, despite her protests otherwise, it was time for her to start school. But for now, they would enjoy the last days of the east coast cruising season.
Singapore and the Straits were some of the busiest shipping
lanes in the world; hundreds of vessels transiting the narrow channel daily and many sailors spoke of the tides and the traffic with dread. It didn't bother Art much; provided you knew what you were doing, it was no more dangerous than walking along the side of a busy highway.
He came up to the stern of Voodoo, easing back on the throttle as he approached so he would glide to the stop and gently kiss the wooden swim platform with the dinghy's bow. His son Jayden sat there, dangling his long gangly legs in the water. The boy frowned as he studied the concentric rings rolling out from his own line, the reel gripped tightly in his left hand, his right jiggling the lure back and forth as he tried to tempt something hiding under the keel. When he saw his father approach, he rolled the line in smoothly and stood up, ready to grab the painter.
"Anything biting?" Art asked after he cut the engine and coasted in, handing his son the three braid nylon rope painter. On the boat, he could hear music. Cath listening to some early Tori Amos and, behind that, perched on the stainless steel bow pulpit, his daughters, Katie and Matty, singing some song, a French playground rhyme they must have learned from Calypso, that involved a complicated routine of claps and slapped palms.
"Nup. There's a rainbow runner down there but he ain't interested."
"'Isn't interested,' and what do you want to bother him for? Seems a bit rude, trying to catch a fish that's made a home under your house."
"How'd you go, Dad?"
Art grasped the fish by their tails and hefted them. Plump fish, each about three kilos in weight, their slick scales gleaming in the last of the day's light. "Check out these beauties."
"Whoa! Those are great!"
"Jump up and let your mother know I've got a pair of trevally."
The boy was gone in a flash, scampering into the cockpit and down the companion way with the fluid elegance of an orang-utan moving in the jungle. Utterly at home on the boat. Art realised he was smiling as his son went. A calm anchorage, happy children, fat fish for dinner. This was the way life was meant to be.