Ebb Tide: My Boat is my Life

by Jase Kovacs

  He opened the lazarette locker and pulled out his fish cleaning kit. A flat plastic box which opened lengthwise, a chopping board on one side, a selection of filleting and scaling knives on the other. Crouching on the swim platform, he smoothly cleaned the fish. The rainbow runner darting from beneath Voodoo's keel to snatch bits of the guts and skin as they sank into the bay.

  ***

  MATTY.

  I swim up from the darkness reluctantly. Every stroke to the surface an arc of pain. I want to sink down into the cold numbing depths. Insensible.

  But the will is strong. Pain is life. Life is pain.

  MATTY.

  The voice pulls me up. I burst through the membrane.

  ***

  Torture in my back and thighs, an excruciating lightning bolt jolts me awake. I twist, get my feet under me, stand up, my rifle up SEMI and the Surefire on before I even register the agony that surges through me at the sudden movement.

  Drills and routines.

  The torch zaps a mary, the hundred lumen beam hitting it with the force of a firehose. The creature running straight at me. Its wide mouth opens to expose ranks of teeth, layered like a shark's, in an agonized shriek of rage as the torch burns its sensitive blood red eyes. A stunning crack and a flash of flame and its head splits, half of it opening like a bloody orchid as the creature falls, a puppet with its strings cut, matter splattering as momentum carries it forward to measure its length on the ground.

  I swing, barely aware I fired, my ears ringing with the impossible noise of a gunshot contained in a metal box. Bizarrely I hear the tinkle of the spent brass cartridge bouncing across the metal deck and rolling away.

  I spin in a circle, the Surefire sweeping the room. The walls lined with crates secured by ratchet straps. Crudely sawn metal poles stretched up beneath the open doorway and the stairs and gantry lie on their side.

  The door. Blong ducks as I bring the rifle up. I have the briefest impression of his curious face looking down at me, amazed to see me on my feet, before he registers oh shit! she's shooting and now its pointed at me. He disappears and I slam out two shots CRACK CRACK, more out of spite than anything else, the bullets striking the metal door that's swinging back now. It had swung open the whole way, hit the wall behind it and rebounded. That's how fast this action took, the time for a door to swing open and closed.

  Everything done on instinct and drills.

  I crouch, sweeping the room. The crates are stacked and some lie on the ground haphazardly like boulders that have tumbled down a hillside. Spilled in the wrecking of this ship. A thousand places to hide.

  Suddenly everything catches up with me and I realize what just happened. How close to death I just came. It must be seven metres from the door to the deck. As I fell I twisted and my climbing rig, the coil of rope slung over my back, took the brunt of the impact. A inch one way and I would have landed on my bare shoulder, an inch the other and my M4 would have been driven into my side. A foot to the right and I would have impaled myself on a pole.

  As it happens I'm going to have a hell of a bruise where the stainless steel shackle printed my hip.

  I can live with that.

  My breath comes in ragged sobs and the adrenaline makes me feel like throwing up.

  This close. An inch either way. Another metre of falling. Or a second's delay before reacting, and that mary would have had me. Death that close.

  Beneath the agony of my back and the adrenaline sickness that floods me, I feel a loss, a deeper wound as I feel the fading remanent of a instant dream slips from my gasp. Fresh caught fish and my family and...

  ... and Ella was a cornflake girl...

  ...Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, Dormez-vous?

  ... and it's gone.

  A scuttle in the shadows and I swing, the torch picking out a glimpse of a leg disappearing behind a crate, a moment to see a waxy pale heel vanishing. No target.

  And on the other side, a long drawn out scrape. Like nails on a chalkboard, but a thousand times worse because it's something dragging claws along the steel deck, something locked in here with me.

  I turn, the torch picking out crates and boxes and they are there, hiding, considering their move now they have me where they want me. Their first sally, their probing attack lies dead on the deck in front of me.

  I doubt I will be so lucky again.

  Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into.

  Katie. Thank god.

  What about the holes in the roof?

  I look up. I'm in the Hold Four. The roof is twisted where scavengers have pried open plates with crowbars. Several shafts of sunlight fall, fat pillars of radiance. Eight, nine metres to daylight, the sunshine bright, fire to the marys, impossible to tolerate. My eyes are adjusting to the gloom and I get peripheral vision as long as I don't look right in the Surefire's circle.

  I sweep arcs like a caffeinated lighthouse as I back up. Crates on the walls and the forward edge of the hold unknown, I withdraw to the aft bulkhead. The stairs lie on the deck, crudely felled with hacksaws. My back to the steel wall again. They can't get around behind me now. Only come from the front.

  A ticking noise fills the air, something annoyed clicking its serpentine tongue against ranks of teeth. And another, answering.

  Okay. Here we go.

  They're not mindless. We learned that quickly. Mad by infection, any sense of their former selves obliterated, driven only by hatred and hunger. But not dumb. Hive animals. Working together. Mum and Dad theorised they share instincts or something like that, reacting in unison so fast you'd think they were of one mind, like a school of fish flashing away as a predator darts and snatches.

  But they are far from clever. Survive one school's attack and you've learned their tricks. First, a mad rush to take you down. Then, a cautious pause as they gauge your defences. Then they try something tricky.

  A flash of movement on the left and the Surefire picks one leaping onto a crate, squatting and gesticulating with elongated fingers ending in ragged claws. I can see the man it used to be, a shaggy black haircut and high cheekbones above a mouth that is an obscene split. I fire once, taking it high in the left shoulder. It tumbles back. Crap shot, rushed it. Not a mortal wound, they're tough to kill. No hearts beating, their blood coagulated paste the virus filling every cell but nerves still need to fire. You need take out the brain or shatter the spine.

  I know this trick, the old bait and switch. I swing right and sure enough, two are coming at me, hurdling over a row of crates like athletes. I take them before their feet touch the ground, one round each. One folding, one keeps coming and I put in three more rounds in it CRACK CRACK CRACK the smell of cordite filling the air now, smothering their rotting miasma, the creature shuddering on the floor as it tries to drive messages down its severed spinal cord: Move, claw, kill the living, before I still it forever with a last mercy to its forehead.

  Breathe.

  Silence for now. At least one more, the one I took in the shoulder. But there are more. There are always more.

  Any bright ideas Katie?

  Clear the room and then we'll talk.

  Fair enough.

  They're predictable predators. We've seen their tactics before. But this is something new.

  Blong. An uninfected.

  Working with them.

  Chapter 10

  Dad had a phrase. Well, he had a hundred phases. Words that meant something beyond their immediate definition. The one that springs to mind now is Reorg. As in short for Reorganisation. It's something he learned in the Army, a stage of an attack, at the end when you've overrun the enemy position, you've had your victory and it's time to consolidate. To reorganise your position to defend against enemy counter attack. To redistribute your stores so soldiers in the attacking element have fresh magazines. To consolidate your wounded and organise evacuation.

  But like so many of these phrases, it takes on additional meanings. He would use it whenever a situation was in danger of spiralling
out of control. It was a way of arresting a freefall. Say he's spent all day hunting an air leak in the fuel line, all day sweating in a crowded, uncomfortable engine bay, struggling with spanners in cramped conditions, hands covered in scratches and spilled diesel. About to lose his shit because it wasn't working right; there was something he was missing, something he couldn't see. He'd mutter reorg and stop. Look at me and smile wanly, because I was always there, watching and learning. Put down the tools. Clean up his workspace, tidy up the fan of spanners that surrounded him, take a step back and re-evaluate his position. And usually, with just that momentary shift in perspective, bam, the answer would come. And he'd chuckle quietly to himself, as was his way when he realised he'd stupidly missed something obvious, and say Matty, get me a 5/16th crescent wrench and we'd go back to work.

  Katie?

  Yeah?

  Reorg.

  About time.

  Tactical situation: I've got my back to the wall in the hold of a shipwreck. Eight, nine metres to the nearest scattering of spilled cargo crates. Thirty metres to the forward bulkhead where I can see the only door out of here, forward into Hold Three. Seven metres over me, a door over sabotaged stairs, a trap set by my little Judas, Blong. The door ajar but unreachable. And nine, ten metres up, the main cargo doors, several panels pried loose. One mary at least in here, probably more. Early in the morning still, plenty of daylight left.

  My stores: M4, nine rounds fired, fifty-one remaining. Surefire torch, one battery. Pen flares, climbing rig, medkit, pry bar and bolt cutters, water and food for lunch (let's have a picnic on the wreck, great idea), scavenged bag of flares.

  Assessment: Pretty shit.

  Adrenaline is draining out of my body and the pain, the ache in my hip and back and shoulder is coming in strong. Got to keep moving, not let myself stiffen up.

  Can't let myself be locked in.

  I crouch, keeping my weapon up, pointed out, sweeping the crates and walls. I tip the flarebag out on the deck. A dozen tubes scatter: most handheld red but a couple of big yellow ones that are rocket parachute. Nice. I roll them around with my non-master hand.

  A long scraping noise fills the hold, making the deck shiver. I can't see what it is, but its more than just claws on steel.

  They're up to something, says Katie. Is it just me or are these marys smarter than the average bear?

  I risk a glance down, check the flare expiry dates. The most recent is a para-rocket, October 2021. Years passed. Great.

  The noise comes again, a shifting and we can see it now, one of the crates is moving. Slowly. Inching forward towards us. Then it jerks forward, moving with a sudden explosive burst of energy.

  You've got to be kidding me.

  They're pushing it, using it as a shield to close the open space before me. Shifting it forward a foot at a time. It must weigh three, four hundred kilos but they're shoving it like its empty.

  I think, says Katie, that it's time for some drastic action.

  Too right.

  I ready the para-rocket, fumbling off the red caps at either end and release the safety bale with my thumb on my non-master hand. The small metal trigger pops out the side.

  Katie, watching: Haha, this is going to be good.

  This isn't as easy as it looks, I say as I crouch, my weapon held up in my shoulder one handed, my biceps aching. They're starting to shake from the strain of holding up the rifle one handed. I squat down, with the Surefire off, pointing it at the left hand side of the moving crate. I lay the tube of the flare crosswise over the rifle's receiver, try to sight it on the right hand side of the crate.

  The crate which is five metres away and lurching towards me.

  Katie's voice is a low warning, tense with anticipation. Matty...

  I press the trigger and there is a pop and a fizz and then the back of the flare bursts into flame, right in my hands. Misfire!

  I shove it away with a quick thrust, my hand roaring, burning as the propellant bursts but the rocket doesn't fire, jammed in its tube for some reason.

  I barely have time to recognise the pain before the flare hits the deck. A burst, a detonation and the tube ruptures, the rocket shooting out, hitting the wall behind me and then ricocheting off the bulkhead and shooting over the crate with a horrific screech, shedding sparks of burning magnesium like a rain of fire flowers.

  An answering shriek from behind the crate. The rocket has ignited the flare prematurely and the burning magnesium is brighter than the sun. Crimson light fills the hold, eviscerating every dark place. A pair of hideously misshapen shadows are painted on the deck behind the crate before the marys leap into view, fleeing from the supernova that smashes into the far deck and is now rolling back across the floor towards us, billowing black smoke from a hellfire that bubbles the deck paint.

  This all fills the instant it takes to lift my burned hand to the foregrip of the M4, align the weapon, and sight on the two marys that rush from behind the crate like animals fleeing a burning barn. I hit the first in chest, above where its heart would be and it spins square on and I plant the next right in its head.

  The second mary has time to turn, to bare its gleaming teeth in a snarl of anger, to realise it had been tricked. Its bloody eyes squeezed almost shut from the rocket's red glare.

  It's the one I got earlier, with the black hair, that I shot in the shoulder. I murmur a quick prayer to Mum and Dad, don't let me miss again and shoot it. Its teeth shatter as its head snaps back and it totters, takes a step back before collapsing.

  The rocket splutters and hisses, fizzing smoke that spirals up to the ceiling and vents out the holes.

  A despairing shriek fills the room. A horrible anguished cry that pinches my spine and makes me think here comes another one.

  But it's no monster, it's the boy, Blong. He's looking in through the roof, lying flat, looking in through a hole and his face is etched with disbelief. "No, Daddy, no!" he cries before he starts babbling in Tagalog, a mix of anguished pleas and ranting cursing that I realise is directed at me. But he isn't even looking at me, he's looking at the mary I just shot, the monster that lies on the deck, surrounded by a halo of broken teeth, slow thick matter oozing from the holes in its shoulder and back of its head.

  What can I say? No, kid, that's not your Daddy, your daddy is dead. That was the monster that wore his skin. Trust me, I killed him, it's for the best.

  Don't think about that, says Katie, her voice firm, a low warning. That's two more down. Clear the room while the flare is burning.

  Right. I pick myself up. My hand is smarting but not too badly, I must have thrown the rocket just in time, before the main propellant charge blasted flesh from bone. I move quickly, sweeping the room, section and clear. FISH and CHIPS.

  A heavy monkey wrench, its handle a metre long, hits the deck near me with a hollow clang that makes me jump. I bring my rifle up and Blong is spitting curses at me, his lips flecked with foam. He hefts a spanner, taking aim.

  "I'll shoot you kid," I shout. "Don't make me do it."

  He brings his arm back and I say, hating myself, "Shoot you like I shot your daddy!"

  And the strength goes out of him and I see him crumple inside, his face folding and he's just a poor little boy, stranded, alone on a ship filled with horrors. But then something happens, something weird, something new. His eyes glaze and his mouth drops slack for a moment, his whole face loose as if he has just had a stroke. And then his jaw snaps closed and he says "NAW EM SHAB NAH CAW NAW EM SHAB COL NA DAN CAH," a rolling chant of short noises, nonsense like he's speaking in tongues.

  A shiver crawls up my spine. Somehow the words have reached inside me and tickled some ancient, basic place. A deep unease flowers within me, a peculiar fear that is intensely primal. I feel like a caveman, looking up from a spitting campfire to see a sabre tooth tiger at the door.

  He disappears, gone from the ceiling hole as quickly as a torch being snapped off.

  What the hell was that all about?

  Don'
t worry about it, says Katie. This room is clear now. Five marys down, not bad.

  Yeah. I know. That was the kid's dad.

  Forget it. Check the door. Stay alive.

  The bulkhead forward is secured by a large red wheel. The rocket has faded and died but a shaft of sunlight falls directly over the door. Feeling intense deja vu, I take it in my hands and spin. I expect resistance, it to fight me like the door above did, but it rotates easily, the axle oiled, the pinions greased. The tongues retract smoothly with a metal click.

  Okay. Ready steady, says Katie. Let's go.

  Chapter 11

  At first I think I've found a tomb. A row of plastic wrapped corpses, shrink wrapped mummies, lying on trestles that stretch away through Hold Three.

  It wouldn't be the first time. We missed the Great Dying, the two weeks it took for all of humanity to fall into the mire of history. We came in, survivors of the cataclysm, to find the world we knew gone. Late to the party, with just the mess left behind to clean up.

  At first, as far as we could tell, things were managed. Chuck's flu spreading quickly, a mild yet very infectious illness that suddenly mutated after a week into something deadly. People died faster than the authorities could cope. When the hospitals and the morgues were full, people just collected wherever they could.

  Then, at the end, when the infected started to rise, to run, to slay and kill and feast, great pits were dug and all corpses burned. The final desperate attempt to contain the plague, a firebreak against the extinction of the human race.

  Many people, defying curfew and quarantine, collected in public places. Malls and shopping centres the worst; of course they would be, they're the places I am most interested in. A mall in Cairns, where there was a yacht chandlery. The journey a dangerous waste, the mall a blackened ruin, smoke etching the windows like drunken mascara. Spray painted on the walls: Last one here turn off the lights!

  In death, people were pulled to the places they felt most comfortable in life. I never go near any Church I see because a cross or a minaret means: here are the faithful, stacked like cordwood, waiting their God's mercy.