I almost cracked from longing for the convenience of central heat, hot meals, fresh laundry. Electricity. I’d installed solar panels and a wind turbine on Flotsamland to power the fridge I’d found in a crate of appliances, but it had crapped out months earlier and was now a part of the appliance archipelago.
Seeing Koo watching from the ship gave me courage to say, “I’ll get by. A case of Korean army rations floated in this spring, enough to hold me for the winter, along with the fish and sea birds I can catch. You haven’t lived until you’ve roasted an Auk.”
Pam, resigned to my decision, lowered the few supplies they had brought, mostly magazines, and flew away with the understanding that they would return in April, come hell or high water.
I’d never felt more alone.
§
I wasn’t alone for long, though. That evening the sky cleared and the sea smoothed over. The water was already noticeably cooler, on its way down to its winter temperature of 55 degrees. My feet were beginning to ache from the cold every time I sat in my kayak.
The harvest moon that night was full and almost bright enough to read a magazine by, so I spotted Koo as she pulled up to Baggie Beach and dragged her boat onto shore. She removed a large backpack from the luggage hatch and slowly hiked up Mount Détritus to the shack. Since I had a tarp for a door, she knocked on the eye of the wooden Cyclops, a ship’s figurehead, that I’d used to frame the entrance.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You want to borrow a cup of sugar.”
She stepped into the shack, dropped her bag next to the small fire burning in the fireplace I’d made of an old oven, and squatted, rubbing her hands over the flames. “Qué onda?”
She’d lost weight in the short time since her last visit, and there were bags under her eyes. Her hands were cracked and dry, the curse of saltwater.
“Nada. You okay?” I said.
She laughed bitterly. “I used to think I could find the good in anyone, but Goodale is dead to me, after he killed that whale. I spent a year in grad school following that pod through their migration. They pass through here twice a year, from Hawai‘i to the Alaskan coast and back. I knew that calf’s mother.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I pointed to her bags. “You’re planning to stay?”
“I’m requesting political asylum.”
“No problem,” I sat upright. “Place your hand on your heart.”
She pressed her palm to her bosom.
“Do you promise to uphold the laws and defend the honour of Flotsamland against any and all foes? And obey the monarchy?”
“I do.” A slight smile broke through her distress.
“Then I hereby welcome you as a loyal subject of Flotsamland.”
“My liege,” she said, and curtsied.
“Later that night, she made an assault on the crown. I didn’t object.
§
The weather was boisterous for the next week, and we took the opportunity to repair some of the damage the harvester had made over the summer. When the weather finally settled down enough for Midas to resume its attack, Koo joined in Flotsamland’s defence with gusto.
The doubled size of our fleet made it easier to parry Goodale’s harvester thrusts. Fortunately, a North Pacific high also stalled over us until almost Christmas, with a cloudless sky that kept us in clear view of the CNN audience. And when the clouds finally returned, so did the waves.
Goodale was indefatigable, though, spending every possible daylight hour at the helm of the harvester, stalking our perimeter like a caged cat. Several times, he sent the rest of the crew in the lifeboat to box us in, but they rowed with the enthusiasm of ill-treated slaves and we easily avoided them
Not all was right in Flotsamland, though, even with our increased population. The supplies adequate for me alone were diminishing quickly when split two ways. The pile of dried driftwood dwindled, and the old saw, which I’d found trapped in one of the logs, was so dull it could barely cut plastic.
Koo and I filled the empty hours getting to know one another. I told her about how I came to volunteer for Fair Share Gaea (pretty girls, too much beer), about my dead-end job pressing tofu, my university days leading to an utterly useless degree in geography, and my boyhood, a different home on a different military base every twelve months.
She described her fieldwork in marine biology. I also learned that she had been a star diver in college, in high school, in grade school, an almost-Olympic talent, thrilling to her parents, who were unhappy unless they were pursing unattainable goals.
Neither of us talked about our old romances. I’d had very few, and handled them badly. Fear of commitment on my part was often cited as the reason for the failure.
§
On Christmas Day, a smudge of sun far to the south, dim as a 15-watt bulb, backlit thick grey clouds. No satellite coverage, for sure. The sea was mirror-calm.
“This is trouble,” I said to Koo. Shaking her awake. I quickly pulled on my clothes and wrapped a wool rug over top like a serape.
Goodale had the harvester headed for Cape Cardboard. We hurriedly launched the fleet and paddled like hell, managing to pull in front of the harvester as it closed to within 50 yards of the mainland.
Goodale was puffing on a cigar the size of a barracuda. He waved us aside, and kept coming. Waved again, kept coming. Koo looked at me, eyebrows raised.
I picked up my speaking tube. “Get out of the way,” I shouted to her. “No need for both of us to go in harm’s way.”
She stuck out her tongue and made a few quick pry strokes to bring her boat closer to mine. Goodale was now only twenty yards away. The knife-edged, stainless-steel screw thread that chewed up the material gathered by the harvester’s front-end scoop was already feasting on material floating loose in the waters around our shoreline. Bushels of squid were being pureed.
Ten yards. We back-paddled. Goodale kept coming. We backed up some more. The stern of my boat struck the shore. Goodale kept coming, a smile on his face. The screw thread made a whining sound as it spun.
I chickened out.
“Retreat!” I yelled to Koo as I took three quick strokes, carrying me beyond the machine’s scoop.
I turned to make sure Koo had followed, but she hadn’t moved. Instead, she gave Goodale the finger as her kayak was dragged into the scoop. The screw grabbed the prow of her boat and remorselessly sucked it in. Her boat was suddenly jerked vertical, catapulting Koo out of the cockpit, still holding on to her paddle, over the scoop and into the ocean.
The awful screech of the harvester as it began to chew up the shoreline drowned out any other noise, but Goodale laughed as I frantically circled the harvester. As soon as I cleared the hopper, I spotted Koo, floating and shivering. I prayed that the commotion would keep Mr Pepsodent away.
To my relief, there was no sign of the shark, but Koo had lost control of her limbs in the cold seawater, and I had to dead-lift her onto my deck. I ripped off her PFD and shirt, as well as my own, threw the rug over both of us and hugged her fiercely.
She stopped shivering after ten minutes, and was finally able to speak. The first thing she said was, “Get me to shore.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s get to a fire.”
She shook her head. “Put me there.” She pointed to a narrow defile formed by an old lifeguard tower and a pile of deck chairs, twenty yards to one side of the path Goodale was chewing into the island.
“Hurry,” she said.
I figured that, once on shore, I could carry/drag Koo to the shack before she caught pneumonia. As soon as I landed where she indicated, though, she crawled out of the boat. She staggered for a few steps before strength returned to her legs.
As I made my way to the bow of the boat and precariously stepped onto land, Koo made a beeline toward the Anchor Alps. There, she grabbed two of the largest plough anchors, forty pounds each. One in each hand, she limped toward the harvester, now ten yards into the mainland and gobbling up more of the island by the minute.
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Goodale had turned to watch the digested debris fill the hopper, and didn’t see Koo come up alongside the scoop. She dropped one anchor, grabbed the other with both hands, and heaved it into the screw. She picked up the second anchor and repeated the motion, then backed away quickly.
A second later, an ear-piercing screech filled the air. I clapped my hands to my ears as the rear end of the harvester raised slightly, like a bee sucking pollen, then crashed back to the sea. Smoke poured from the engine compartment under the bridge. Goodale stared in disbelief for a moment before killing the engines.
I grabbed Koo in my arms and lifted her off the ground. Straining to find words strong enough to indicate my awe, I said, “God, I love you!”
She hugged me back, but her teeth were chattering too hard to speak.
That night, as I tried to make hot soup out of a can of army rations that might have been dog food, she explained that a section had broken from the leading edge of the screw thread weeks before, leaving a gap they’d intended to repair while in dry dock over the winter. She estimated the damage caused by carefully dropping the anchors into that gap would take months to repair.
§
Those were the worst months of my life. At first, Koo discounted her sniffles as a cold that would soon pass. However, the weather turned piercingly cold, with a persistent arctic wind and fog, so the damp was unavoidable. At first, I spent my daylight hours filling the bite the harvester had taken out of the island. On the horizon, I could occasionally see the star-like lights of welding torches as Goodale and his people worked to repair the harvester.
When Koo began hacking up yellow sputum, I put aside my work and huddled with her under a thick pile of rugs, sail cloth and awnings, creating our own body-heat sweat lodge. We passed the long nights in intimate conversation. I’d always believed that inside each of us are a few ugly rooms best left unexplored, but I opened mine for her, and she didn’t flinch. The memories she was most reluctant to reveal, I found touching.
When she began coughing blood, I did the only thing I could. I paddled out to the cargo ship.
The crew watched from the railing as I approached a steel cliff two stories high.
Goodale let me bob there for a couple of hours, futilely hailing the ship, before finally deigning to appear.
When his head appeared over the rail, I said, “I want to make a trade.”
He spat, but the wind took it well clear of my boat. “What do you want?”
“I want antibiotics. Koo is really sick.”
“In return for what?”
“The island.” My kingdom for a horse.
He rubbed his chin. “But it’s not your island to trade, kid.”
“Whatever. I won’t stand in your way, as long as you leave enough land for us to live on until we can be rescued.”
“Nope,” he said.
“What do you want?” I said. “Anything.”
He smiled. “You got nothing to bargain with, kid. I’m going to get the island whether you like it or not.”
I bit back my anger, on Koo’s account. “You can’t just let her die.”
“Is that right? You’re the one to tell me what I can and can’t do?” He shook his head. “Company medicines aren’t for traitors.” He pointed toward the horizon. “You best get home. Looks to me like a gale’s coming.”
§
I sewed Koo in a cocoon of Tyvek, which claims to be highly water resistant. I weighed her down with a hundred pounds of anchors. Five thousand feet to the sea floor. From there, she’d never be able to witness the destruction of her adopted homeland.
§
I spent the second half of the winter lying in the shack, too dispirited to even build a fire most of the time. Occasionally, I’d screw up enough initiative to dress and walk down to the Bay of Boxes and watch Mr Pepsodent swim back and forth. I wondered how long it would take him to devour me.
§
The harvester repairs were completed just in time for the first overcast, calm day, a harbinger of the spring climbing the latitudes toward us. I was gumming something cloyingly sweet and brown. The packaging, in Chinese, featured a grinning family, but it wasn’t bringing me any joy.
I heard the diesels start up a quarter of a mile away, followed quickly by the smell of exhaust. The wind was out of the east.
I threw off my rugs and stood, my joints creaking from the effort. In the moment of clarity that accompanies a sea change, I saw my shack through a stranger’s eyes: a hovel of junk, the type of mean existence that presages life at the end of human history.
I found scissors and trimmed my beard as much as possible, then shaved off the rest. I cut my bangs so they didn’t hang over my eyes, brushed my teeth, cleaned out my ears. Took a teeth-chattering sponge bath. Ripped open a plastic bag containing a white captain’s uniform from a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. The harvester was closing quickly.
I saluted the shack, then descended Mount Détritus. Goodale was headed toward Koo’s Cove, but I was able to beat him there, even walking at a funeral pace. I grabbed a plastic deck chair along the way. When I reached the shore, I took a seat, facing the harvester.
Goodale was smoking again. He looked calm, almost bored, altering his course slightly so that I was dead-centre in his path.
I turned to look over my kingdom. Where Goodale saw billions of dollars in plastics and other recyclables, I saw the only real home I’d ever known. The Christmas tree of aluminium foil that Koo and I had erected. The basketball court, fishing net hung from a hoop that once held a wooden barrel together. The Air Mail mailbox I’d fixed to the top of a mast high in the air above my shack.
Until that moment, I never truly understood why my parents had been willing to die for their country.
Mr Pepsodent, prescient, appeared, swimming laps along the shore. Goodale was now so close I could see the gravy stain on his lapel. He obviously had no intention of stopping. I closed my eyes and thought of Koo.
Then the engine sound changed pitch. I opened my eyes to an amazing sight—the harvester rising from the sea. Goodale clung to the ship’s wheel as it rose higher, higher, until I could see that it was being carried on the broad white jaws of a pair of humpback whales. At apogee, the whales flicked their heads in unison, tossing the harvester free. It flipped once before smashing into the water, upside down. Immediately, more whales came flying across the surface of the sea, smashing into the harvester with their jaws. A huge hole appeared in the hull and water began to pour in. Again, the harvester was lifted, and this time, as it went flying, Goodale, with a death grip on a life preserver, was tossed free. He landed twenty yards clear of the wreck, which the whales continued to pound.
Goodale looked my way, terror and pleading in his eyes, and began frantically swimming toward Flotsamland.
Mr Pepsodent met him halfway there.
§
Fair Share Gaea returned two weeks later, just as I’d finished constructing Harvester Harbour from Goodale’s wreckage. They came by ship, this time, a small cruise ship, and not alone.
Pamela came ashore first.
“You made it,” she said, relieved, and gave me a hug.
“I hope you have good news about our sovereignty,” I said. “We have our first martyr.” I told her what had happened in her absence.
She put her arm around me in sympathy, then pointed to the ship. The railing was crowded with people. “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Harry. The courts nullified the contract with Midas last Monday, and boy, did we celebrate. We didn’t know that the UN had already promised the island away.”
My eyes were watering in the ocean wind.
She nodded toward the onlookers. “The NPC took these people’s island away to build a wave power collector farm. They demanded another island as compensation, so Flotsamland is what they were given. Some deal, huh?”
I guess the Cherokee wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Still,” she said, “it’s not all bad news. You’ve done
your job, Harry. You get to go home.”
So I abdicated the throne, and followed her back to the cruise ship. Later, as we sailed away, I realised that Pam was wrong about one thing.
I wasn’t returning home. I was leaving it.
* * *
About Tom Barlow
Tom Barlow is an Ohio, USA writer. He is the author of the science fiction novel I’ll Meet You Yesterday, and his work has been featured in anthologies including Best American Mystery Stories 2013, Hard-Boiled Horror, Best of Crossed Genres #2, Battlespace, and Desolate Places, as well as many magazines including The Intergalactic Medicine Show, Digital Science Fiction, Coyote Wild, and Encounters.
Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction Page 30