Monster Island by Wellington, David
Chapter One
Osman leaned over the rail and spat into the grey sea before turning again to shout orders at his first mate Yusuf. The GPS had died two months out to sea and in the fog we would be lucky not to crash into the side ofManhattan at full speed. With no harbor lights to follow and nothing at all on the radio he could only rely on dead reckoning and intuition. He shot me an anxious look. “Naga amus, Dekalb,” he said, shut up, though I hadn’t said a word.
He ran from one side of the deck to the other, pushing girls out of his way. I could barely see him through the mist when he reached the starboard rail, ropy coils of vapor wrapping around his feet, splattering the wood and glass of the foredeck with tiny beads of dew. The girls chattered and shrieked like they always did but in the claustrophobic fog they sounded like carrion birds squabbling over some prize giblets.
Yusuf shouted something from the wheelhouse, something Osman clearly didn’t want to hear.“Hooyaa da was!” the captain screamed back. Then, in English, “quarter steam! Bring her down to quarter steam!” He must have sensed something out in the murk.
For whatever reason I turned then to look ahead and to port. The only thing over that way was a trio of the girls. In their uniforms they looked like a girl band gone horribly wrong. Grey headscarves, navy school blazers, plaid miniskirts, combat boots. AK-47s slung over their shoulders. Sixteen years old and armed to the teeth, the Glorious Girl Army of the Women’sRepublicofSomaliland. One of the girls raised her arm, pointed at something. She looked back at me as if for validation but I couldn’t see anything out there. Then I did and I nodded agreeably. A hand rising from high above the sea. A bloated, enormous green hand holding a giant torch, the gold at the top dull in the fog.
“This isNew York, yes, Mr. Dekalb? That is the famous Statue of Liberty.” Ayaan didn’t look me in the eye but she wasn’t looking at the statue, either. She had the most English of any of the girls so she’d acted as my interpreter on the voyage but we weren’t exactly what you’d call close. Ayaan wasn’t close with anybody, unless you counted Mama Halima, the Warlady and President-for-Life of the WRS. She was supposed to be a crack shot with an AK and a ruthless killer. She still couldn’t help but remind me of my daughter Sarah and the maniacs I’d left her with back inMogadishu. At least Sarah would only have to worry about human dangers. I had a personal guarantee from Mama Halima that she would be protected from the supernatural. Ayaan ignored my stare. “They showed us the picture of the statue, in the madrassa. They made us spit on the picture.”
I ignored her as best I could and watched as the statue materialized out of the fog. Lady Liberty looked alright, about like how I’d left her five years before. Long before the Epidemic began. I guess I’d been expecting to see something, some sign of damage or decay but she had already rusted green before I was born. In the distance through the mist I could make out the pediment, the star-shaped base of the statue. It seemed impossibly real, hallucinatorily perfect and unblemished. InAfrica I’d seen so much horror I think I’d forgotten what the West could be like with its sheen of normalcy and health.