Day 131 - Babel - Chapter 27 (1628 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 27

The ground was weakening, it was suffering from whatever propulsion or mechanism of physics that kept the saucer in the air. The land around the airport was mostly open and unused, abandoned for some time and no living people there, some wild animals and rodents had taken over the flat, sparsely fenced, barely above water level acreage that formed around the entrance to the Manukau Harbour, where the airport lay to one side and the western black sand beaches lay to the other.

Benny had lived in the bush before, before the Babel and before the arrival of the giant hovering ships that bookmarked the water entrances, the thin saddle of Auckland City lay between them. He had missed the epidemic flu that swept the world, the Babel had passed him by but the lasting effects of it were not lost on him. For years he had hidden himself away in a powerless cabin, deep in the bush away from every and all human contact. His cabin was well concealed, half in a cave and under the trees that surrounded the outcropping that hid him from the road and the air.

He came out of hiding every few years, bedraggled and wild eyed, like a caged and desperate animal to remind himself of why he was so far removed from his fellow humans. The noise, the babbling brook of incessant chatter that came with society, the need to express so aggressively at him by any and all was a pain in his side, one he could avoid by avoiding all of humanity. He hid away, he would forage in the bush, trapping and subsisting on what eh could find. He lived a basic life, at one with nature in one way, but as alone when it came to his place in nature as he was alone in his separation from his fellow human beings.

The light from the city dimmed, not in one night, but progressively over a few weeks and months, and he would walk through the bush, to the look out above Waterfall Bay and try to comprehend what it was that was causing this change in human behaviour. The usual cacophony of planes and boats, he had not seen or heard any for some weeks now and their absence made him happier than he ever thought he could be. This was as close to being in the mix with humanity as he could stand, but it came at a price, the overflowing light and energy that poured out of the city, even at the extremes was a constant reminder that they were there.

Then it had stopped, diminished and dimmed to the point where he wondered if he was finally alone. The harbour was black at night, there were boats moored, he could see even at the large amount of space between them was huge, it was mostly water across the Manukau, and he had a decent height advantage to peer over everything between. There were lights, but even Benny could tell that they were underpowered lights, they were candles and fires, and few and far between in some areas. There were communities, he guessed, that had centralised and grouped people together, but somewhat smaller than the over one million people that had lived in the city last time he had been in it.

He watched for days, which turned into weeks but by the seasons turn he took it for granted, losing interest in whatever problems humanity had, without power and civilisation he may finally find some peace in this world, but he felt no need to add or subtract from that equation. He found that birds, creatures of the bush thrived in this new balance of ecology with man depleted and lessening their impact on the wildlife. The cats came not long after, wild feral creatures obviously abandoned by the humans as the world changed on them and the dependency of domestic animals. Benny trapped them, killing them rather than releasing them elsewhere as he had though initially. They had come in waves, many more than he could handle, but he culled the ones that came into his area.

He had traps, he had made from the materials in the bush, knives and some basic tools he had in his cabin, but his pits, springs and nooses were all made in the bush from the bush. Flax, vines and sapling trees all put to good use, the spikes and pits he created and dotted about the place as pitfalls for the unwary. The plaintive cry and mewling of the animals as they fell prey to his precautions weighed heavy on him at first, but soon he could see that the birds, which he also ate, would have been wiped out if the plethora of now wild cats were allowed to run free. He suspected that in other areas they already were out of control, and he hoped that nature would find a balance, but in his mind this could have been the eventual placement of the cat at the top of the bush food chain.

He had eaten a few, but the dreams of doe-eyed kittens and cultural symbolism left over from his childhood of rediscovered picture books, stuffed toys with pupil-less eyes invaded his dreams, edging out the sudden addition of lean, strained red meat to his diet. It was more than indigestion and less than a philosophical stance to draw back to berries and birds, but he still did it none the less. Dogs, they turned up with less frequency, and one had lived with him for a few months before it died, the companionship did not satisfy him, but something about what it needed from him did not offend him enough to try and kill it, send it away or remove it from his area. It came to the woods to die, but not alone and not without purpose.

When the ship arrived though, his paradise was upturned and untenable for him. The scale of the ship was mind numbing to him, it was denying physics and nature to just be there, almost immobile, moving so very slowly into place above the land across the Manukau. It took days for the skywards beast to settle into place, Benny could see that while it was in one general area it was moving subtly a little at each time, as if every movement took a long time to execute. When someone sits in a chair, settling their cheeks, the way the body folds into the palm of the seat itself, that was what the giant saucer thing was doing, but over a number of days. Once it found the spot, that was it and it did not move again.

The locals went nuts, the rodents and bugs disturbed from their homes, from their burrows and fleeing over the hills where Benny and they had made a home, heading up the coast or over the ridges to Karekare and away from the now omnipresent Alien craft, hanging impossibly in the sky day and night.

It affected his dreams, he fancied it was talking to him but he could not understand it, it made him feel unsafe, he could not sleep and the food chain was upset, the birds fled immediately and scampering along the ground everything else. Even the cats, wild feral and unpredictable as they were all could not wait to get out from this proximity to the ship. They were not directly under it, the beast was huge and a giant umbrella over most of the land, part of the harbour entrance and the airport, but it did not cover where Benny's cabin was.

Benny came down from his perch, the fauna having left there was little there for him, and he wanted to get closer to see the thing as close as he could. He crossed the roads, empty and gravelled that run around the coast, dropping into the cliffs of the bays that guarded the entrance to the Southern Auckland port. The outer edge of the saucer cast a shadow on the water, not by much, as it was mostly on the land on the other side of the channel, barely casting itself on the waters surface, but it was a crescent presence there at the edge.

The odd thing was effect it had at the periphery, close by to the giant shadowy circle it cast, outside of that like a projecting energy field from all sides, the areas within a few hundred meters below and outside the circumference were acting in odd ways. From his eagle's eyed view above the bush, from his home he could see a murky, dusty ground where there should have been an iron sandy beach. When he got closer he saw why it was hard to define at a distance, the sand itself was dancing, suspended and moving, jiggling as if on top of the skin of a bass speaker, somersaulting a foot or more above where gravity should have placed it normally.

As he walked onto the beach he could see the effect gradually increased at the outer edge of the saucers field of energy, the sand rising furtherest off the ground close to the middle point between where the effect had started and where the water put a stop to it. The closer the sand got to the salty brine of the Tasman Sea, the lesser the effect on the black, iron sand. The incessant buzzing in his head got louder, and more pressing as he walked through the peak of the dancing sand effect, but it dissipated as he got closer to the waters edge.

It disappeared altogether when he waded out waist deep into the harbour's cold enveloping grip.