The Southwind Saga (Book 2): Slack Water Read online

  "Turi has led the Jade People in battle against the Obsidian Tribe since the great fish swam in the sky," shouts Deborah. "He will lead us in the final battle and wipe your tribes from the Earth!"

  "Why wait for the final battle?" Roman gestures with his blade, as if to ask, Who's first?

  No one on Deborah's side moves. Most, if not all, of their attention is on the two dead men lying in the mud, their blood slowly draining into the rushing creek. The breeze sets me to shivering despite the warm glow of the afternoon sun breaking through the clearing clouds. Enzo hooks my arm over his shoulders and lifts me up. I try to say something, and he shushes me. "Is okay, we go now."

  My legs refuse to attend, but I finally find my words. "Deborah, you're infected with an insane monster's delusions. You are the leader of these people. Reject his call, for their sakes."

  "You cannot escape your reckoning," says Deborah, her lower lip trembling in fury. Whether it is at us or at her flock, who press against one another like a herd of sheep stricken by a single prowling wolf, I cannot tell. "Run and cower on your island. We will come for you."

  "Come on," says Enzo gently in my ear. "There is no cure for her sickness."

  We cross the kunai field, watched by a pale multitude whose priest's rants are as empty as the echoes of a stone clattering down a canyon. Our feet are heavy with clay, and the thin, sharp-edged grass scores our legs like blows from a fine lash. Mist fills the air, smoke from a fire that won't catch.

  Roman leads us into the trees, where we find the power behind his avenging finger. Piper leans against a tree, as still as a statue, watching the camp through her rifle's scope. Deborah's followers drift slowly back into the buildings, no doubt wondering how the damned will react to an empty cross and a broken covenant.

  Piper breaks her position and turns to us. I flinch at what I see. The left side of her face is swollen and dark with a mottled purple stain. She has a black cloth bound tightly around her brow, and magenta streaks seep down her cheek. Her green eyes hold the implacable wisdom of a person who knows her exact role in this world. "We have to get moving. We only have an hour or so until the masalai rise."

  "Where is everybody? Where is Matty?" demands Enzo.

  "Later. We need to reach the bay before dark."

  ***

  This is what Piper tells me.

  At first, she thought that someone had clubbed her behind the ear with a branch. There had been a bright flash, as if lightning had struck at her feet and blasted her into a bower of ferns. Lying on her back, she found herself floating in a strange, abridged state of being. Each beat of her heart brought a surge of deep pain in her ear but was a unique event divorced from the rest of reality. She found herself caught in a unending cycle of pain and relief that seemed to have no end and no beginning. The ferns were wet and soft, and she had the uncanny feeling that she had missed something important, as if remembering a time that she had been late for school.

  Then a crazy American geologist named Mark was pouring antiseptic powder over her face and wrapping her head with Matty's bandanna. Roman was there as well; he had traced the damned who had carried Blong to the cave but had been cut off by the cult's hunting parties, who were combing the hills. He was trying to warn Matty of the sniper's presence — while avoiding becoming a target himself — when the sniper struck.

  The bullet scored the side of Piper's head, starting on her left brow and trimming her eartip, leaving a faint white line of bone and scorched scalp at the base of a furrow ploughed in her red hair. She had a thundering headache, but I think her main grievance was that she had fallen and missed the subsequent gunfight that left old Mrs. Aloysius, who I had thought dead these last four years, floating lifeless in a pool at the mouth of a cave.

  There was nothing to be done for Mrs. Aloysius. By the time Piper was treated and they had pulled Mrs. Aloysius's body from the water, it was midafternoon. It was clear to Matty that recovering both Blong and freeing Enzo and myself before the sun set and the damned rose in force was now impossible. So she sent Roman, Piper, and the child, Daisy, to recover us while she, Mark, and Alfred went after Blong.

  We're moving quickly through the jungle as we talk. We're heading up the hill, led by a child: a bizarre elfin creature daubed in faded skeletal war paint.

  "But why did she take those strangers and not you and Roman?" I ask.

  "Because the strangers know the cave. And she needs us to prepare Excelsior to leave."

  I don't expect Deborah to allow our escape so easily, so I ask, "Then why aren't we going to the harbour?"

  "We have one to pick up."

  ***

  It's fair to say the last thirty-six hours has been bad. But even with everything that has happened — the mistakes, the beatings, the horrible acceptance that my own execution was rushing down upon me — I am relieved that I can retain some capacity for wonder. The treehouse, glowing golden in late-afternoon sunlight, fills me with a nostalgic yearning for the innocence of childhood, for the simple world of the first ten years of my life where death was an abstract, even irrelevant, concept, and my greatest fear was missing out on dessert.

  We wait on the jungle floor while Daisy and Roman ascend the rope ladder. Enzo and I are in no state to climb. In fact, it's a minor miracle we can walk at all, with barely a square inch of our bodies unmarked by the cult's wrath. I put it down to the fact we haven't stopped moving. As Enzo says as he paces up and down, through the rhododendron bushes that cluster around the ironwood's trunk, "If I stop, I no start again."

  I'm in not much of a state to protest about anyone slowing us down. But I do wonder how we will make it when Roman descends with an eighty-year-old Chinese man clinging to his back. The man's skin is parchment smooth, and his wispy, thin hair doesn't hide the liver spots that blotch his head like continents on a globe. "Who all this?" he demands in the cantankerous tone of someone who needs a nap. "Where the crazy girl? What we doing?"

  Roman rolls his eyes, letting us know that he has already endured a barrage of these questions just getting him to the ground. Thankfully, he has no intention of letting the old man, whose name is Weng, proceed under his own power; he's going to piggyback him the whole way down.

  We're halfway down the hill, skirting around a strand of wait-a-while vines, when an angry blur whizzes through our group to embed itself in the trunk of a tree not six inches from Piper's head. The arrow thrums like an angry snake denied its prey.

  Piper drops to a knee and snaps off a shot that strobes the forest like lightning, and I see the archer fall from a ridgeline some thirty metres away. Another man comes over the rise, crouched over low as he runs, a long, hooked blade in his hand. Enzo fires his shotgun, the gun's voice a throaty roar compared to the hard, thin crack of Piper's rifle. The man stumbles, his arm and side speckled with red dots as if he has been splattered with paint.

  Then he rises and comes on, and others come over the ridge: three men with spears, four, then seven, now a dozen men running, and then more coming — gaunt, angry people. In the middle of them is the man in white; Reuben strides like the master of the hunt surrounded by his baying hounds. He lifts his hand, and my Chinese pistol begins spitting fire.

  Piper chambers a fresh round, but we can all do the maths quick enough; one unspent shotgun barrel and her lever-action rifle versus a charging horde of cultists leave us with a single option. "RUN!" she yells.

  What follows is a strange stop-start chase. On one hand, my battered party: a child, two beaten men, a strong warrior burdened with an old man, and a young woman suffering a head wound. But our pursuers are not much better: thin, malnourished, afflicted with the diseases of poor diet and poverty and armed with hand weapons. All apart from Reuben, but he lacks the skill to fire accurately. He wears my gunbelt, so I know that he only has two magazines of ammunition unless the cult had a secret stock of 9 mm rounds. He wastes bullets with the profligacy of a man who believes himself divinely guided.

  The jungle's floor is carpe
ted in a thick layer of leaves that runs with water from the afternoon's downpour. All of us, including the cultists, constantly stumble on this slippery surface, and the whole chase develops a farcical air as we struggle to remain upright and moving. Daisy leads the way; Piper brings up the rear. We're silent for the most part, focusing on our footwork, as a single fall could be disastrous on the wet slope. Reuben's people shout and whoop to each other, egging themselves on and enjoying the primal thrill of hunting a dangerous quarry in this primeval setting.

  Piper is the only one of us who still has her backpack from the day before. Her scoped hunting rifle only has five rounds in the magazine, but she has a box of .30-30 in her bag. She occasionally stops to snap off a shot at Reuben's people. But they have spread out in a wide crescent, darting and ducking from cover to cover, so only a few of her shots go home for sure.

  It's a strange stalemate. We have the firepower, but they have the numbers, and the terrain favours them — a tactical situation that many colonial armies have found themselves in to their detriment. You don't need to be a student of history to know that, if they are patient, they can pick us off one by one.

  But even so, I feel that they are holding back.

  Enzo, hot on Daisy's heels, shouts, "Here!" We follow him through a curtain of vines, bursting out of the jungle into the field behind the dock. The sun rests just above the ridgeline, filling Kwaipan harbour with a golden hue so that Excelsior looks frozen in amber.

  We have come out behind the old warehouses, ruins of rusted beams and fallen tin sheets choked with a high tide of kunai grass. Enzo leads the way, slashing wildly at the grass with Roman's machete, carving a route across the green sea like Moses parting the Red.

  Piper is last, her rifle on her shoulder, ready to fire at the first man to break cover. She has been grimly silent throughout the whole escape, leaving the leadership to Enzo, speaking only through her weapon. She swings right and left as she backs up, every swaying branch or rustling bush a potential target.

  Enzo reaches the road, and we spill out of the grass as if we are water breaking through a dam. "Up there!" He points to a group of the Lost Tribe marching down the road. Even at this distance, I can see Deborah at the fore.

  "The wharf!" shouts Enzo.

  "No!" snaps Piper, her attention not wavering from the route behind us. "The dinghy's gone! Check the warehouses!"

  I follow Enzo into the first building on our left. It is open to the sky, and sheets of roof tin spill haphazardly on the ground like a great deck of corrugated playing cards. The walls slump like the shoulders of a disappointed father, and every window has been smashed out. The warehouse is open to the front, looking straight onto the wharf. There are several shipping containers on the north side of the warehouse — these are open and long since looted. A six-metre-long fibreglass boat full of rainwater sits on a trailer.

  The rest of our party follows us into the warehouse. Piper stands to the side of the door, her eyes on the forest behind us. Roman lowers Weng gently by the containers. "This is not acceptable! I am not luggage! Mrs. Aloysius will hear of this," he squeaks in his high, reedy voice.

  Roman goes to the open front of the building and looks up the road. "Deborah will be here soon," he says.

  "Help me get this undone," says Enzo, leaning into the boat. The drainage bung is choked with leaves. The water is stained dark brown and full of wriggling mosquito larvae. Swarms of gnats cluster around my face, and Enzo's arms and back are dotted with mosquitoes settling to feed. I grope in the muck that fills the boat, years of rotten leaves forming a foul, black slime.

  "Ah!" cries Enzo with satisfaction as a trickle of water spills from the boat's stern. It steadies into a strong flow before slowing as fresh muck clogs the drain. "I keep clearing!"

  "Can't we just tip the water out?"

  "No, stupid. Hundreds of litres of water. Too heavy." He is up to his shoulders, pulling out handfuls of black gunk that he flings on the ground. Water starts to drain again, but the hole needs constant clearing.

  The trailer's wheels are rotten and flat. I point this out to him, saying, "Then how will we get the boat into the water?"

  He emits a snort of annoyance. "Be useful. Find oar or something, yes?"

  The building reverberates with a great clang, like we are on the inside of a drum, as a thrown stone strikes the outside wall. "Goddamnit," says Piper. "I can't see from this angle." She pulls back into the building and comes over to us. "I've got no fields of fire in here. We're going to be surrounded."

  "The boat is too heavy. Full of water," says Enzo.

  "Then find some buckets or something and start bailing." She pushes past him, moving to the front to join Roman.

  "Is too fucking slow!" Enzo spits in frustration.

  I drag back a piece of two-by-four plank about two metres long. "How about this?"

  He says something foul in French. "It's too long for oar!"

  "No, a lever, to tip the boat and—"

  He understands faster than I can explain. He grabs the plank from my hand and slides it between the trailer and the boat's keel. "Come on, come on, is good idea," he says as he gets his shoulder beneath the far end. "We tip it, yes?"

  I get under the plank, the harsh, unfinished wood tearing my skin with sharp splinters. Earlier, I lay across another plank, facing crucifixion. It's ironic that now this one may be the tool of our salvation.

  More stones strike the walls, each one as loud as a hammer striking an empty fifty-five-gallon drum. A shattering sound announces that they found an unbroken window.

  "Deborah's people are coming down the road!" calls Piper.

  "The rocks are from Reuben's hunters!" I shout back.

  "Yeah, no shit!" She looks back at us. "Wait, where the hell is Daisy?"

  The kid. She's not in the warehouse. I've got no idea where she is. We don't have time or the manpower to go looking for her. Enzo shakes his head at me and works the plank onto his shoulder, spreading his legs to get a comfortable stance. "With legs, eh?" he says, slapping his thighs.

  We straighten up, and the plank bends alarmingly. "Stop, stop!" cries Enzo, seeing that we're about to snap the plank in half. The boat itself weighs only two or three hundred kilos, but it holds at least half a ton of water. "We turn the plank, on its side. Is stronger."

  "Piper!" I shout. "We need a little help here."

  She's aiming her rifle down the road. "Gonna thin out the herd a little first," she says. But for some reason, she doesn't fire.

  Roman runs to the shipping containers, appearing a moment later with a long metal pipe. Enzo and I rotate the plank so the thin edge now is on our shoulders. The water trickles from the drain, but not fast enough.

  More stones strike the walls, the blows coming faster and faster, building to a constant cacophonous hammering. One or two land with a clatter inside as the cultists realise there is no roof and they can lob rocks over the walls like mortar rounds. The stones hit the ground hard; they'll split our skulls open if we're unlucky.

  Roman slides his pipe under the boat alongside our plank. "Okay, strong now!" he says, and we all lift together. My back tightens and screams, a scream that rises through my viscera and spills from my throat. The boat tips, and a little water slops out the far side.

  "That's it!" says Enzo. "Not all the way! Not roll over. But jerk little bits, no?"

  We get what he's saying. If we roll the boat off the trailer, we'll have just as much trouble getting it out the door. But if we just rock the boat, the water will slop back and forth, each wave building momentum until its own weight spills it over the sides.

  "One, two, go!" The three of us lift and drop our levers in unison. Not big pushes, just small, easy movements that slop the water back and forth. I remember Uncle Samson panning for gold. Waves bounce back and forth, building in size at each repetition. "Is good, keep going!"

  "PIPER!" shrieks Weng, his voice as high pitched as a child's. She turns from the entrance and sees the man comin
g in the back door. His chest is a mosaic of blotched jailhouse tats, and he lifts a sledgehammer as he runs towards us. A strange multilimbed blob is drawn on his chest; it could be a spider, it could be an octopus. I feel like I'm outside of my own body as I read the words PURPLE PEOPLE EATER written across his stomach.

  Piper fires, the gunshot filling the warehouse with a thunder that leaves our ears ringing.

  The man tumbles and falls, the hammer spilling in the dust. "Christ a'mighty!" he screams, his hands around what remains of his left thigh, a good chunk of it ruined by Piper's shot.

  A second man appears in the doorway. Piper smoothly works the lever action on her rifle, ejecting the spent cartridge, but before she can level and fire again, a dark blur flies from outside the building onto the second man's back. He roars as a small arm rises and falls with the speed and power of an industrial sewing machine. He spins wildly around, his hands struggling to get a good hold of Daisy, who has one of her arms around his throat, her feet in the small of his back, while she stabs at his face and chest with a paring knife. He manages to grab a fistful of her wiry hair and fling her off. She goes sprawling on the ground, and he stumbles back, blood jetting and welling and spilling from a dozen small wounds. He falls out the door, shouting incoherently, his fingers trying to plug his leaking throat.

  Daisy rushes at the first man, a high scream of fury spilling from her. The tattooed man struggles to backpedal with only one working leg. "Daisy!" yells Piper, her command as useless as if she was trying to heel a rabid dog. Daisy leaps onto the man, her little knife working past his lifted arms to find its way to his eyes and throat.

  This horrific attack is a surreal backdrop to myself, Enzo, and Roman playing rock the boat. More water splashes over the gunnels every time we work our levers. Most of the water has been spilled. "Get a bucket!" Enzo says to me.