Reef of Death (The Zone Unknown) Read online

  “They probably paid off some politician, like everyone else does in this country.”

  “Will anyone come for you? Your father?”

  “Not for a while.” Maruul thought of her village and couldn’t find words. Arnhem was gone. She had failed her father and family, the elders and her village.

  Arukas. She and Arnhem were supposed to be the great arukas. “What’s going to happen to my people? There is dysentery. Children’s bellies are sore, swollen with disease. The shaman, our village holy man…”

  “Cliff told me he was kidnapped,” PC said.

  She looked away, then found her voice again.

  “A few days after he was first missing, a child brought a basket to the village. A girl. Six or seven years old. There was blood on her hands. She said a white man had given her the basket. In it was a still-warm human heart.”

  It was an hour before they found the approach to the Cape Tribulation marina. PC slowed the boat through the NO WAKE zone, guided it to its berth. He’d had a chance to think ahead. “If we report Cliff’s death to the Coast Guard now, they’ll take whatever he owns. Confiscate it. The skiff. Diving equipment. His gear at the mooring platform. They could do anything. Sell his boat at some rigged auction. The harbor police in Cancún cheated Cliff out of everything he owned.”

  “And they’ll put you on the next plane back to San Francisco,” Maruul said.

  “You got it.” PC jumped onto the dock to tie the bowline.

  “We have to talk to Wally W.,” Maruul said.

  “Wally who?”

  “A friend. An Aboriginal man who left my village many years ago. Wally Wallygong. He’s old now, but the elders told me I can trust him. His nephew owns the dive shop that outfitted Cliff’s skiff and mooring platform.” She swung open a storage compartment under the rear bench on the skiff. “We have to tell him everything,” she said, lifting out her blue-metal suitcase.

  Maruul led the way down the dock to a cluster of stores and thatched-roof huts. Beyond, in a clearing, was the Cape Dive Shop—walls of rainbow-painted concrete block fractured by jalousied windows. A BACK AT 3 sign hung on the front door.

  “Wally lives around back,” Maruul said.

  A bank of smoke from a massive junked ship’s boiler socked into them. The top had been cut, riveted, and hinged to make a lid. PC choked, kept clear of the smells and fumes. He rubbed at his eyes and glimpsed a ramshackle bungalow with an old black man sitting on the front porch.

  “Hello,” Wally Wallygong called out. He was skinny, naked except for tight black corduroy shorts. An explosion of gray hair and a galloping beard framed scars on his nose, badges from his younger life in the bush and on a cattle ranch.

  He smiled, leaped up, and gave Maruul a big hug. “Just in time for barbecue, eh. You like yams? Fish, black snake, and lizard?”

  “This is my friend—PC,” Maruul said.

  Wally grabbed PC’s hand and pumped it like he was drawing water up from a well.

  “Something’s happened, eh.…” Wally caught the fear in Maruul’s eyes. “In that case, I fix you plates of crispy bushtucker. Diet Cokes. You tell me your story, eh,” Wally said. He swung open the top of the fiery boiler. PC looked in at the racks of sizzling tubers and charred four-legged carcasses.

  “Yams and a Coke for me,” PC said.

  As they ate, Maruul told Wally about Cliff. The creature. The freighter. The treasure. She showed him the map. Told him the riddle.

  He knew about Arnhem. “Sailors, Coast Guard white men stop at dive shop and want barbecue,” Wally said. “Can’t keep mouths shut. They chatter like chookie chicken birds, eh.” He watched them eat as they related their story. When they finished, Wally sat cross-legged in front of them.

  “Now it is my turn to talk,” Wally said. “Cliff. Arnhem. No need to worry about them.

  Marrawuti, the sea eagle, has taken their spirits. Marrawuti circles in the skies, sees all who fade beneath the ocean. He lifts them up. Takes them where they must go, eh.”

  “We didn’t come to you for stories about Marrawuti, the sea eagle,” Maruul said.

  “I forgot you are modern Aboriginal woman,” Wally said. “Forgive me. I know the reef where you lost Cliff and Arnhem. My nephew and I did many dives there. Took many fish. The place of the chalk cliff and the anger of the volcano, eh. It is known as a place of danger and death. There are many creatures like the one you have seen. Demons that live nowhere else. Sailors—Javanese and Borneo men—from the Anemone freighter are frightened. They say white men on the ship do terrible experiments. They find small, hairy arms and hands of monkeys floating in water. Other dead animals. Freighter do evil, blood ceremonies.”

  “I think they know about the treasure,” PC said. “It’s no coincidence they’re drilling out there.”

  Blood rushed to Maruul’s face. “But how could they know? It is sacred and secret to my village.”

  “Sailors say there is someone from your clan aboard,” Wally explained. “A Morga who knows your map and secret ceremonies better than you do.”

  “That can’t be,” Maruul said. “Who?”

  “You told me the village shaman was missing—about the child bringing you his heart in a basket,” Wally said. “When I was living in the village, I never believed in that shaman. I think he had a screw loose.”

  “Are you saying he could have told someone about the treasure?” PC asked.

  “All I’m saying is that he was a faker. He always did a trick with dead dogs. When the young men in the village ever didn’t want to do what he told them to, he would find a dead dog. He’d say the dog died of evil and perform a ritual, eh. It was a scary ceremony. He would dance around with fire torches and rub his lips over the body of the dead dog. Suddenly his lips would stop over one part, and he’d take a bite out of the dog. He’d say he had the evil spirit in his mouth and he’d start screaming and shaking and scaring everyone. Then he’d spit the mouthful out into his hand, and we’d see some kind of a lump. He’d jump up and down yelling, ‘It’s the evil spirit. It’s the evil spirit!’ He’d run to a hole in the ground, throw the thing in, and bury it.”

  “How did you know for sure he was a faker?” PC asked.

  “Because a friend and I used to dig up all the ‘evil spirits’ he spit in the ground. It was always an old tooth or piece of broken crockery or some other kind of junk.”

  “What about the heart in the box?” Maruul wanted to know.

  Wally laughed. “I think that shaman would have cut out his mother’s heart if he needed it.”

  “Well, whoever it is, we have to tell somebody who’ll stop them,” PC said.

  Wally looked to PC. “We believe in many spirits. Earth, the mother. Stone and Kangaroo. Lightning man. Owl man. The honey-eater bird whose cry is the spirit of a woman calling out for her lover.”

  “Wally,” Maruul said, interrupting, “my village needs money. We have to find the treasure, if there is one. We don’t want to be cheated anymore. We’re not going to sit around waiting for old spirits to help us. We’re being robbed and threatened and wiped out. We’re going to fight the corporate swindlers! We’re going to fight them! The Aboriginal lands are being stolen from us!”

  Wally went silent. He stared at Maruul as though really seeing her for the first time. “They are stealing your heritage, too, eh,” he finally said.

  Maruul felt hopelessness crowding in on her again. The fire in her eyes disappeared and was replaced by fear. “What can we do?” she asked softly.

  Wally was silent again for a long while. Finally, he spoke.

  “You must go back to the reef,” he said. “This time with the best guide between Cooktown and Cairns. A guide who, like Arnhem, has the water dreaming. He knows the secrets of the sharks and devilfish, eh. He’ll lead you. Make you find the Morga treasure, for small commission. He’ll protect you from screaming freighters.”

  Wally Wallygong stood up and disappeared into the shack. When he came back, he carried a m
ask and fins. “I am excellent guide. I will go with you,” he said. He took a pair of blackened steel tongs, shoved them deep into the hot coals of the barbecue pit, and extracted a steaming, oval-shaped clump. “We take tonight’s savory dinner with us. We enjoy on mooring platform out at reef,” Wally said. “Nice roasted turtle.”

  “How old is he?” PC whispered to Maruul, as Wally Wallygong went to slip a note under the door of the dive shop.

  “Seventy-four or seventy-nine,” Maruul said. “He doesn’t know. Old Aboriginal men don’t keep track of those things.”

  They had watched Wally Wallygong scribble on a piece of stained, ripped paper.

  Dear Nephew,

  I have gone fishing for few days. Call Budget Rent-a-Car Tell to pick up Cliff’s Mercedes. He not need. You and grandchildren eat all delicious barbecue bushtucker.

  Wally set the pace heading down the dock for the skiff. PC and Maruul ran after him. Soon they had boarded and PC had the throttle of the boat wide open. Maruul shivered from the wind as the sun began to sink behind the mountains of the rain forest. Wally Wallygong placed a blanket around her shoulders. He sat on the foredeck and sang out loud over the roar of the skiff’s engine:

  “Yea, though I walk through

  the Valley of Death,

  I shall fear no evil,

  la la—

  for I am Wally Wallygong,

  the meanest kangaroo in the navy,

  la la…”

  His eyes rolled, shone out from under his gray, crinkled hair. He lifted his arms high as though embracing everything. The lagoon. The sunset. Maruul and PC.

  PC decided to test Wally. “What do you think of the riddle?”

  “I am good at riddles,” the old man said. He turned to Maruul. “Sing it again.” She sang softly into his ear:

  “Night will bring the mystery

  Moonlight points the way.

  Sunset hides beneath the sea,

  But dawn the beast will slay.”

  “I put it on Ratboy,” PC said. “Checked synonyms. The baby hands on the map show location, but we haven’t been able to catch the connection between night, moonlight, sunset, and dawn.”

  “Have you tried colors?” Wally shot at them. “Moonlight is silver. Map has silver hands. Night is black. Black Aboriginal person must bring mystery map. Is easy riddle.”

  “What about sunset?” PC asked.

  “Color of the fortune. Could be red garnets. Blue diamonds. Silver.”

  “Take the wheel,” PC told Maruul. She slid into the pilot seat. He got his dive vest, opened the Velcro pocket. He took out the thin strip of metal he had scraped from the reef. “What do you think of this? Is it silver?”

  Wally took the shard, turned it over in his palm. He bit on it, looked to see his deep teeth marks. “Not fortune. Magnesium, like in firecrackers and sparklers, eh.” He pointed to the throttle. “Shut down boat. We make sure.” He waited until the boat was silent, floating. He got matches from the galley, cupped a hand, and struck one of them. He held the strip over the side and lit it. It burst into white-hot fire, violent, throwing off sparks like a fuse. He dropped the burning metal into the lagoon. It turned in circles, sputtered, then sank toward the bottom, still burning.

  “It burns underwater?” Maruul said.

  “Magnesium is crazy metal,” Wally said. “Still not treasure.”

  They hung over the railing until the burning strip disappeared. PC brushed his shock of hair from his eyes, slid behind the wheel, and opened the throttle wide. The propellers shrieked, rushed the boat forward.

  Maruul still thought of the riddle. “What does the last line of the riddle mean—Dawn the beast will slay?” she asked.

  Wally Wallygong threw open his arms again, this time to a squawking brown gull. “Who knows?” he shouted. “But I bet we find out, eh!”

  That night PC checked out the storage drawers and bins on the mooring platform. He found a couple of dive watches with timer buttons. He took one, put it on his wrist. There were several belt knives and an industrial camcorder. A Nikonos-V camera lay inside an underwater shoot bag. He opened the Ziploc, lifted the camera out to check the speed of the lens. He thought of Ratboy and went to get it from the cabana.

  The laptop fit easily into the empty transparent shoot bag. He slipped his hands into the pair of gloves molded into the sides of the bag, opened the computer, and turned it on. It worked. Ratboy was going diving.

  PC stayed up long after Wally and Maruul had crashed in the skiff bunks. He’d found a box of adapters, and he ran the platform generator to recharge a double set of Ratboy’s batteries. He pulled up a program with a list of Australian expressions: “billy tea,” tea boiled over an open fire; “bonnet,” hood of a car; “dunny,” slang for toilet, but really an outhouse; “esky,” Styrofoam cooler; “knickers,” underwear…

  The list on Ratboy’s screen was long. PC’s eyes began to tire. He turned the laptop off. For a while his mind drifted in the shadows of the cabana. He thought about Cliff and Arnhem. The horror of being devoured alive.

  And something else. Himself. There were changes going on inside him. Somehow he felt different from when he’d gotten on the plane in San Francisco. Each sense was alert, processing data in a new way. Images. Waves moving across the reef to slap the pontoons beneath the platform. Fish jumping. He heard a cat’s-paw of wind creeping through the sheets of white canvas. Smells. Damp rope. Stinging salt lifting high into his nostrils.

  And he found himself thinking of Maruul.

  Her hair. The beauty of her face. Her voice. He fell asleep.

  It was early in the morning when PC heard the racket. He thought he was seeing things: an old man with dreadlocks shouting and banging a pair of frying pans together.

  “I see them! I see them!” Wally cried out.

  PC stumbled out of the cabana. Maruul mustered on the skiff. Wally dropped the frying pans, returned to peering through a telescope. “They’re at the Anemone,” he said.

  PC rubbed at his eyes. “Who?”

  “The Coast Guard! We hurry, eh. Snoop. Nephew and I dive all the time at chalk cliff when Coast Guard visit freighter. Giant clams. Hammerheads. Freighter never make sounds then. Just worry about great white sharks. Hurry. We kill two birds with one stone and spy on freighter.”

  PC looked to Maruul. She was excited. He knew the treasure hunt was on.

  6

  INTO THE ABYSS

  PC ran the skiff south to the chalk wall, beyond the ledge where they’d lost Cliff, and dropped anchor. The Anemone was three hundred yards off in open water. Up close, it looked shabbier, diminished by complete neglect. The antiseptic white Coast Guard craft was moored at the freighter’s boarding platform.

  Wally Wallygong was the first into his wet suit.

  “You’re diving?” PC asked. “You think it’s okay?”

  “I have lungs like crocodile,” Wally said. “Kick like boxing kangaroo, eh.”

  PC searched for bang sticks. There were none. Not even a speargun. Maruul tested her gear. She noticed the laptop in the shoot bag strapped to PC’s tank.

  “Ratboy’s coming with us?”

  “Yes.”

  Maruul checked the water for movement and lurking dark shadows as she climbed onto the stern platform. She dropped into the water, bobbed to the top, and peered out from her mask. Wally and PC regulated their breathers. They spit in their masks to minimize fogging, then plunged in.

  The trio stayed close to the chalk wall. Deep. Deeper. Blood-red fans and white brain coral protruded from patch rock. The silver band of magnesium snaked down through the whiteness—down as far as they could see.

  Down.

  At the bottom, they reached the edge of a dead volcanic mound. Wally led them across the strange seascape where tiny orange and red polyps had begun to thrive, extending the base of the reef. Black-and-yellow-spotted fish peered out from a jungle of undulating seaweed.

  Wally slowed his kicking and began turning in small
circles. He paused at every shrimp, cuttlefish, and sea cucumber. PC took Maruul’s arm, brought his face smack up to hers. “What’s he doing?” he said without removing his mouthpiece. She was able to hear and understood his garbled sounds. She stayed close to his ear so he could hear her respond. “Apologizing to the fish for us being here,” she said. “Old Aboriginal men—fishermen and hunters—do that.”

  She watched his face behind his mask. He smiled and waved that he understood.

  Wally motioned them to stay clear of a cluster of large speckled eels. “Electric eel fish. Give good shock,” Wally said in PC’s ear. PC looked closer at their markings. He’d seen electric eels only off Venezuela, but he realized volcanic vents had probably spawned their own.

  “Shock in tails,” Wally said. “Nephew touch tail by mistake.”

  PC motioned Maruul past Wally. He knew they needed to cover ground fast if they were going to check out the freighter. A school of large fish cruised near the surface like ghosts against a burning canopy. Maruul pointed up to them.

  “Barracudas,” PC mouthed.

  Maruul understood and shuddered. PC swam on. The freighter’s hull was hidden by a curtain of gases rising from volcanic vents. Towering chimneys spewed out plumes of dark minerals and swirling, hot water. Maruul slowed. Wally swam past her. He caught up with PC and showed him something in his hand.

  “Clam,” Wally said. He took the knife from PC’s belt and began to pry the shellfish open. “Delicious, eh. We eat.”

  Maruul watched from a distance, annoyed Wally and PC were wasting time trying to eat a clam underwater. She settled down to rest on a rock. A piece of exotic seaweed floated up between her legs and crept around her thigh. She tried to brush it away, but another coarser piece curled around her left calf. She slapped at the weeds, but they didn’t budge.

  A pillow.

  She reached down, felt a puffy, amorphous swelling. She listed slowly to the right and saw that the salt-and-pepper camouflage beneath her was a blob with white, angry eyes. Maruul knew the ugly, living sack wasn’t large enough to kill her, but its mouth was nibbling at her diving suit. Its tentacles clung to her legs like giant leeches. She kicked, then swam with the hump of hungry gook clinging to her.