Gunflower by Laura Jean McKay

Author:Laura Jean McKay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC029000, FIC019000, FIC037000, FIC077000, FIC087000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2023-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Marg believed that walking around was good for cramping, and Hannah didn’t dispute it, so I followed Marg down to the engine room, its oily lack of air. Three days ago, this would have made me ill. Now I perched gingerly on a plastic crate and watched Marg send out a warning over the speaker system, hit an alarm. There was a millionth of a second of darkness before the orange glow of the safety lights seeped over us. Marg used the walkie-talkie to confirm again with the bridge, then rebooted the system. This would take around thirty seconds, she explained, and we waited in the relative silence left by the lack of engine roar, the water muttering around the keel.

‘Are we below the water level now?’

‘We are,’ she said. ‘Deep in the beast.’ She asked me if I’d read Moby Dick. I hadn’t. She hadn’t either but said she often thought about it in moments like these.

‘I spend all my time down here,’ she said. ‘I don’t see much of the patients. So when the engine is out or getting restarted I realise what we are: a tin can floating on a powerful entity with little control.’ She gave a squeak when, right at that moment, the system came back to life.

‘All systems go,’ Marg told Hannah.

A pause. ‘Not exactly. The radar is still out.’

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