by Meg Mundell
A fireboat chugged past and disappeared towards the Steadfast’s bow. Jets of water began shooting up the foremast, raining down through the rigging, but the flames persisted. Smoke drifted and belched overhead. People were clambering over the barricades now, making for the lifeboats. I saw the young soldier standing back, gripping his rifle, making no move to quell the crowd. His companions had melted away.
The crowd surged, lost to logic: one group tried in vain to launch a lifeboat, while crewmen scaled the rigging for a better view. Parents crowded the stern, as far as possible from the flames, holding their children out, shouting over the rail, appealing to those in the boats below.
The crew were handing out life jackets; through the smoke I heard shouting, coughing, intermittent sobs and screams. A chopper swooped low overhead, dropping a gutload of water on the fire. The air was rank with the stench of burnt plastic and singed wood.
Warning shots rang out and patrol boats circled, men bellowing across the water through loudhailers: Step back from the rail. Remain calm. Do not attempt to leave the vessel.
At last, as dawn began to leak into the sky, there was a lull. The flames subsided, the smoke dissipating. The fireboat chugged away, a solitary fireman raising his arm in farewell as they passed.
A fresh load of soldiers boarded the ship and swiftly took command: they assured us that the fire was out, that we’d never been in any real danger, that the situation was now resolved. We were ordered to return to our dorms and remain below decks until the breakfast siren sounded. Frightened and exhausted, we did as we were told.
~
The damage was a sobering sight: the foremast charred, the kiosk gutted, a gaping black hole in the foredeck. Melted plastic and scorched wood, the stink burnt into the very bones of the ship. People wandering around, their soot-smudged faces blank with shock.
Police were everywhere. There were more interrogations, and forensics teams sifting through the embers – interference with a crime scene, they were calling it. The looks they gave us left no doubt: we were all potential suspects or accomplices.
The fire had started in a storage space beneath the kiosk. A lazarette, old Delaney called it, or a glory hole – traditionally used to stow bodies, now a place to stash equipment. There was no word on how the fire had started, no clear reason why it would have burst into life of its own accord.
Billie told me the news at breakfast: a crewman had gone AWOL. Slipped away during the chaos of the fire, she said, or perhaps in its aftermath. Sliced open his own flesh with a razor blade, dug out his geotracker, and dropped the blood-stained pellet down the shower drain. Officials armed with wrenches tore the plumbing apart to retrieve it.
By the time his absence was noticed, Marshall was long gone.
Marshall. Images of him were soon posted all over the ship: printouts of his crew ID photo, appeals for information, taped to the walls like old-fashioned ‘wanted’ posters. The face leapt out at me like a slap. All hard lines and shadows: that dark beard, those deep-set eyes.
The ship was abuzz with anxious talk. Knots of people gathered, swapping theories in lowered voices. At first the arson was blamed on local vigilantes, attack drones dispatched by germophobes or migrant-hating nationalists. But once Marshall’s disappearance became common knowledge, suspicion shifted to the absconder, his vanishing act read as an admission of guilt. A shadowy chain of events was now being traced back to one man: the first killing, then the unfolding devastation of the sickness; the second murder, followed swiftly by the fire.
Now I had some hope. If Marshall was indeed guilty – if he was captured, held for questioning, charged with breaching quarantine, or worse – then surely things would change for the rest of us. Blame would cease to be free-floating, would at last have a clear target. We would be taken ashore, as promised. The dominoes would stop tumbling. All this would soon be over.
14
CLEARY
It was the motion of the ship that woke him. That rhythmic heave and sway, a sensation so familiar that at first he’d simply closed his eyes and almost drifted back to sleep. Then it hit him: after all those weeks at anchor, the Steadfast was moving again. They were back at sea.
Drawn to the glow of the kitchenette light, Cleary edged out of the bunk, careful not to wake his ma, grabbed his notebook and hobbled across the cabin. In the kitchen Billie was sitting up with some of the nurses, smoking a cigarette at the table, which was strictly against the rules. Her face was tight and the ashtray was piled high. At the sight of Cleary she crushed her smoke and tipped her wrist so he could check her watch: 2.10 a.m.
He gave her a quizzical look, slid his notebook across to her.
We’re going ashore, she wrote. A new place. She pulled an excited face.
Cleary drank a mug of milk and watched the women talk. Their words seemed jumbled and anxious – too weak to fight them, Holly was saying, or perhaps it was two weeks to find them – but he didn’t care where they were headed. Tomorrow was Christmas Day, and Blackbeard was gone. Billie had promised: the man was no longer on the ship. Cleary was safe.
But checking over your shoulder wasn’t an easy habit to break. Your body gets trained for danger, like a soldier – always alert, ready to run or fight. It forgets how to relax.
Laughing, Holly grabbed his foot and tied a loop of silver tinsel around his ankle.
So Santa can find you, she scribbled. Better get back to sleep before he comes.
~
The morning broke clear and warm. The Steadfast was slicing fast through choppy waves, and at first Cleary was puzzled to see her sails furled tight against the masts. Then he noticed the grey bulk of the warship forging ahead of them, and realised they were being towed.
The warship was vast, the size of an entire city block, its flanks dwarfing the Steadfast as she bobbed obediently in its wake. The cable that ran between them was as thick as Cleary’s arm. Spray twanged off it as they churned through the swells.
They passed a sparsely populated island, then a more solid land mass began assembling in the distance. People squinted into the wind and sea-spray, trying to make out their destination. Crewmen wandered the deck, looking lost, their hands dangling loose – nothing to do, just passengers now.
Cleary saw a flinch pass through the crowd, and turned to see a soldier lowering his rifle as a wounded drone plunged into the waves.
His knee was still tender, but the crutches were not much use on a moving deck, so he was trying to work his limp into a kind of sailor’s swagger. The kiosk had been demolished, the charred hole in the deck now boarded over. He peered up into the masts, but saw no birds.
This morning at breakfast the guards had handed each child a single present from a sack. Cleary had unwrapped the exact same gift as other kids: a miniature bear with clip-on paws, wearing a waistcoat and waving a flag: Merry Xmas from Australia! All over the ship identical koalas were clamped to the children’s clothing, hanging on for dear life, like tiny jockeys.
Still, the other presents had made up for it: a stash of chocolate from Billie, and a magnetic chess set from his ma, carried secretly in her luggage all the way from Dublin. Another present coming, she’d scribbled in his notebook. Just need to get to the shops!
As the land drew closer Cleary joined his mother at the rail, binoculars aloft, seeking a glimpse of their new home. The screens in the saloon were black, no maps to plot this journey, but he sensed that they were heading south. Recalled seeing this land mass, a heart-shaped wedge below the mainland, surrounded by sea, but its name eluded him.
For hours they skirted a rocky coastline, past barren cliffs, steep hillsides thick with trees. Scant signs of human life: a lonely stand of wind turbines, a patch of razed forest, a cluster of buildings overlooking an empty beach. The wind tore through the rigging, and where land met sea white breakers shattered on the rocks in ragged lines.
They pl
oughed on. No city emerged from the landscape. The sun sank low and the wind grew colder, a new bite to the air.
As night fell the land slipped away behind them. Ahead loomed the pale mass of the warship, and beyond that a dark immensity of open sea.
~
Daylight revealed a bleak vista: a low slab of rock, treeless and scrub-flecked, its soil scoured away by a ceaseless wind. The island dropped steeply into the sea. Cleary trained his binoculars on a stony beach, a zigzag path climbing the rockface, a huddle of buildings perched atop cliffs.
All morning boats ferried their human cargo back and forth, the soldiers stacking luggage and passing out life jackets. It was almost noon when their turn finally came.
A strange feeling, to set your feet on dry land after all this time. Cleary and his ma stepped off the boat together, right foot first, for luck. But at the end of the pier the rich grass of his daydreams was replaced by splintered scree, the flinty smell of rock dust, gnarled shrubs clinging like bonsai to the cliffs. And a restless wind, pushing itself into every crevice.
The climb was steep, his knee shooting out warning pains; his ma lagged behind, pale and short of breath. A soldier grabbed Cleary and swung him onto his back like a rucksack, charging uphill as if the boy weighed nothing. At each hairpin turn Cleary tugged at the man’s collar and pointed back, worried his ma would be left behind.
On a barren plain crouched a cinderblock building, enclosed by a razor-wire fence. They passed beneath an archway marked with faded letters: Flint Island Processing Centre.
Locked gates, a jerky turnstile. Unsmiling guards in khaki uniforms watched them file past. The building’s interior was all pale green walls, brown linoleum, grey concrete. Their dorm felt oddly spacious after the confines of the ship. Rows of identical bunks, salt-crusted windows with a limitless view of nothing. A kip of a place.
Cleary’s ma sank onto a bed and motioned for him to lie beside her, although he wasn’t tired, was itching to explore. The bed was narrow, the mattress hard. She clasped him tight and stroked his hair, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, as families fussed around them, unpacking bags and peering into lockers, negotiating over beds. After a while she became so still he wondered if she’d fallen asleep, but each time he checked her eyes were open, and her hand recommenced its automatic petting motions, stroking his hair, as if she was in some kind of trance. Don’t worry, she signed each time. Don’t worry.
~
It was several days before Cleary realised they weren’t alone on the island. He was outside with some of the kids, kicking a ball around the dusty concrete yard, when something caught his eye. Pausing at the boundary fence, he looked across the wide asphalt road that ran down the centre of the island.
Small and slight, the figure stood motionless behind a high fence encircling a cluster of run-down buildings. Black hair, brown skin, clothes the colour of dust; a shadow child, with thin dark limbs and indistinguishable features.
Cleary leant against his own fence. The child in the far compound raised its arm, and he waved back. He’d left his binoculars inside, and from this distance he couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.
One by one Declan and the other kids abandoned their game and drifted over to join him, peering into the wind at this dusty apparition. A second figure emerged from the far-off buildings, a taller version of the first kid, this one most likely a girl, with long dark hair that streamed out sideways in the wind. She did not wave, just watched them awhile, then took the smaller child’s hand and led it back inside.
~
After that they saw the shadow children most days, wandering aimlessly along the razor wire or kicking a ball around the far compound. One day there’d be no sign of life beyond the wire, the next there’d be ten or fifteen kids ranged along the fence-line, staring back at them. Occasionally an adult would appear to distribute water or summon them inside, but for the most part they seemed to be unsupervised.
Cleary studied their faces through his binoculars: the children seemed solemn and dispirited, lacking in energy, as if the constant wind had worn them down. Reading their lips was impossible. When Declan clowned around for them – hung off the fence upside down, or did a silly dance – there was little response. The shadow children made Cleary uneasy, but he couldn’t have said exactly why.
Meals at this new place were awful: bland and repetitive, worse than on the ship, and despite rationing attempts his Christmas chocolate was soon gone. The flickstream in the rec room was locked to one news channel, nothing worth watching. The soldiers had brought the toys and games across from the ship, the Lego and art supplies and storybooks, but Cleary found himself restless, fidgety. The island was pockmarked with scrub and rocky outcrops, its surface all dips and hollows – perfect for hide-and-seek. But they were not allowed out there. As far as he could tell there were no wolves or bears on the loose, and no way off the island. What was the point of the fence?
One afternoon, while his ma slept, he sat with Billie in the rec room, drawing pictures. There were birds living here, light-boned creatures that huddled on the plain or were tossed around the sky by the erratic winds. He drew the island, the rocky beach, the seabirds; the black dividing line, the two compounds on either side of it. Then he paused, unsure how to tackle all that empty space around them. He tapped Billie’s arm, flicked open his notebook.
Where are we?
She sketched a rudimentary map: the solid wedge of Australia above them, slender New Zealand off to one side, and below them the great white expanse of Antarctica. He copied these land masses, then added penguins, whales, icebergs breaking off and floating north. He knew that people lived down there, on that icy continent – scientists, explorers. They were not the only humans at the bottom of the world. Billie took a pencil and drew cross-eyes on one of his seabirds. In retaliation he drew a hairy tarantula across the back of her hand, its fangs buried in her knuckles, while she squirmed and pulled terrified faces. Billie wasn’t scared of much, but spiders put the heart crossways in her.
Days passed, one much like the next. A storm rolled through, no-one but them to witness it. A week or so into their stay Teach made an announcement: they were heading out, an expedition down to the beach. Cleary’s knee was almost better, the limp all but gone, and he kept pace with the others as they navigated the steep track down to the shoreline, two bored guards bringing up the rear. Clouds tumbled across the sky and the briny scent of the ocean rose to meet them.
For hours the children combed the stony beach for treasure, collecting and comparing finds: broken shoes and frayed tufts of rope, skeins of kelp and sea-worn shells. A crab’s claw, hooked like the beak of some strange parrot, a bird skeleton tangled in a web of fishing line. Dried starfish, sun-bleached bones, an old brick. Plastic bottles with the labels worn off, bearing a residue of silt and tiny shells. No messages inside: he checked them all.
So absorbed was he in beachcombing, so relieved to be roaming free of the camp, that it was some time before he noticed. Before he scanned the empty bay, the unbroken horizon, and realised that the Steadfast was gone.
BILLIE
The battery died three days after they came ashore. She had smuggled the device off the ship by tucking it inside her bra, worried the wardens would search her and seize it, charge her with some unspecified crime. But the guards showed no interest in searching their luggage, or their bodies. Nobody was going anywhere.
Her last few messages to Mitch remained unanswered: Where are you? What’s happening? She’d sent him the name of this godforsaken island, but hadn’t risked a photo: there were cameras all over the compound. Each day, conscious of the battery draining, she’d locked the bathroom door and checked the stream compulsively, sifting quickly through the flotsam, waiting for the story to break. Nothing: no new dispatches from Mitch. No word at all about Scoot’s death. Not a single mention of Marshall or his disappearance, no hint that he’d been paid to
set the sickness loose. The crewman seemed to have vanished from the world entirely.
Mitch had gone dark on her before, she reasoned. No doubt he was busy collecting evidence, firming up the story. But a voice kept niggling at her, saying she’d been a sucker to fall for his good looks and charm, a fool to trust that the journalist would follow through on what he’d promised, help get them released.
Had Mitch been genuine? She replayed their encounters, rehashing every conversation word for word. He’d been cocky, sure, and jumpy at times, perhaps out of his depth. But he hadn’t struck her as a liar or a conman, someone out to take advantage. At gut level, he’d rung true.
But there was the catch: if he was truly a journalist – the one who’d argued so passionately in their favour in those articles – then Mitch was indeed a liar, and a skilful one. Had lied his way onto the ship using a fake name and identity, hungry for a story. Fooled the authorities, which was no easy task.
This silence – there must be a reason for it. Perhaps he’d simply got the facts wrong, or realised the evidence would not hold up. Dropped the story altogether, moved on to other topics. Abandoned them to this miserable windblown rock in some forgotten corner of the map.
‘Can’t get much further south than this,’ said Robbie, surveying the wasteland beyond the razor wire. ‘Last patch of ground before Antarctica.’ You could feel it in the air: a chill edge, a proximity to ice.
Here the uniforms were khaki, and had a military look. The guards were not all bad, in Robbie’s view, but they tended to clam up if you asked too many questions. He’d befriended one already, of course – Tucker, a sunburnt behemoth of a man, with forearms like smoked hams and a disconcertingly soft voice. Mona had reservations, said the crew apparently had reason to be wary of their new overseers, her husband should steer clear, but Robbie had waved this off, said there was no harm in having the guards onside.