He was still loyal to the government?
Yes. And then there was…a personal matter.
Personal? Why?
[He skirts the question.]
Have you ever been to Manihi?
[I shake my head.]
You couldn’t ask for a more ideal image of a prewar tropical paradise. Flat, palm-covered islands or “motus” form a ring around a shallow, crystal-clear lagoon. It used to be one of the few places on Earth where they cultured authentic black pearls. I had bought a pair for my wife when we visited Tuamotus for our honeymoon, so my firsthand knowledge made this atoll the most likely destination.
Manihi had changed utterly since I was a newly married ensign. The pearls were gone, the oysters were eaten, and the lagoon was crowded with hundreds of small, private boats. The motus themselves were paved with either tents or ramshackle huts. Dozens of improvised canoes either sailed or rowed back and forth between the outer reef and the dozen or so large ships that were anchored in deeper water. The whole scene was typical of what, I guess, postwar historians are now calling “the Pacific Continent,” the refugee island culture that stretched from Palau to French Polynesia. It was a new society, a new nation, refugees from all over the world uniting under the common flag of survival.
How did you integrate yourself into that society?
Through trade. Trade was the central pillar of the Pacific Continent. If your boat had a large distillery, you sold fresh water. If it had a machine shop, you became a mechanic. The Madrid Spirit, a liquefied natural gas carrier, sold its cargo off for cooking fuel. That was what gave Mister Song his idea for our “market niche.” He was Commander Song’s father, a hedge-fund broker from Shenzhen. He came up with the idea of running floating power lines into the lagoon and leasing the electricity from our reactor.
[He smiles.]
We became millionaires, or…at least the barter equivalent: food, medicine, any spare part we needed or the raw materials to manufacture them. We got our greenhouse, along with a miniature waste recovery plant to turn our own night soil into valuable fertilizer. We “bought” equipment for a gymnasium, a full wet bar, and home entertainment systems for both the enlisted mess and wardroom. The children were lavished with toys and candy, whatever was left, and most importantly, continuing education from several of the barges that had been converted into international schools. We were welcomed into any home, onto any boat. Our enlisted men, and even some of the officers, were given free credit on any one of the five “comfort” boats anchored in the lagoon. And why not? We lit up their nights, we powered their machinery. We brought back long forgotten luxuries like air conditioners and refrigerators. We brought computers back online and gave most of them the first hot shower they’d had in months. We were so successful that the island council even allowed us a reprieve, although we politely refused, from taking part in the island’s perimeter security.
Against seaborne zombies?
They were always a danger. Every night they would wander up onto the motus or try to drag themselves up the anchor line of a low-lying boat. Part of the “citizenship dues” for staying at Manihi was to help patrol the beaches and boats for zombies.
You mentioned anchor lines. Aren’t zombies poor climbers?
Not when water counteracts gravity. Most of them only have to follow an anchor chain up to the surface. If that chain leads to a boat whose deck is only centimeters above the water line…there were at least as many lagoon as beach attacks. Nights were always worse. That was another reason we were so welcome. We could take back the darkness, both above and below the surface. It is a chilling sight to point a flashlight at the water and see the bluish-green outline of a zombie crawling up an anchor line.
Wouldn’t the light tend to attract even more of them?
Yes, definitely. Night attacks almost doubled once mariners began leaving their lights on. The civilians never complained though, and neither did the island’s council. I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.
How long did you stay in Manihi?
Several months. I don’t know if you would call them the best months of our lives, but at the time it certainly felt that way. We began to let our guard down, to stop thinking of ourselves as fugitives. There were even some Chinese families, not Diaspora or Taiwanese, but real citizens of the People’s Republic. They told us that the situation had gotten so bad that the government was barely keeping the country together. They couldn’t see how, when over half the population was infected and the army’s reserves were continuing to evaporate, they had the time or assets to devote any energy to find one lost sub. For a little while, it looked as if we could make this small island community our home, reside here until the end of the crisis or, perhaps, the end of the world.