Apocalypse

Two shapes are standing in the dark on the edge of the beach, looking out over the bay. The sky and the sea are black and inscrutinable. Overhead the cloud cover of the wet season is hiding the stars and the last remaining sliver of the crescent moon. When it does make a brief appearance it hangs in the far eastern sky like a smily face. It is incongruent in the current circumstances.

The two shapes are having a spirited but subdued discussion, taking care to maintain a distance of 1.5 metres between them.

‘Between Italy and Spain more than a thousand people died last night,’offers the Baboon, looking grim.

‘It’s unbelievable,’ agrees the Snake Catcher, ‘and we all still insist on pretending life will go on as normal.’

They nod in unison in quiet commiseration. Behind them the carpark is silent and abandoned. Many of the usual crew have opted out, though it’s not clear whether it’s because of the increasing stranglehold that the pandemic is exerting on their daily lives, or because they didn’t think the surf report looked too promising. It’s hard to tell.

‘What we have to do is put the whole country in full lockdown,’exclaims the Snake Catcher forcefully, ‘and the whole thing would be over in a month or six weeks.’

‘That’s exactly right,’the baboon concurs. ‘Stay home, and stay put. What is it we don’t understand. How fucking stupid are we.’

They sigh and stare out at the water. In the middle distance a wave breaks alluringly, enticing them with the prospect of finding temporary distraction from the woes of the world. They turn on their heels and disappear into the darkness to fetch their equipment, re-emerging five minutes later carrying surfboards. The luke-warm water of the early wet season gently laps around them as they wade out to waist depth and then lunge forwards on their boards and strike out for the open ocean. One, two, one two, arms rhythmically rising and falling, pulling through the water. One crest of a wave rolls underneath them, the second one starts to crumble at the high point as they breach its crest, landing with a soft thud on the other side, and the third one breaks on their heads. They don’t mind. The water of the sea is soft and warm and salty and silky, spinning a cocoon of temporary security and comfort in a world gone mad.

Before long they have negotiated the breakers and, pushing right through to the very edge of the bay, pull up at the furthest point. Here is where the free-moving water of the wide ocean brushes up against the restrictions of the accumulated sand, built up around the rocks jutting out into the sea, and finds itself pushed up high to the sky, up to the point where it collapses forwards into a rideable slope, and unfurls itself down the bay. The Snake Catcher cops an unlucky back-drag from a rogue breaker, and the Baboon pulls into a wave first, dropping steeply and steering hard right, keeping the nose up out of the water. He disappears into the night.

In between waves they sit on their boards and peer pensively into the night. While they have a long-standing habit of surfing well before daylight in the earliest moments of the dawn, there is something different about this day. There is an invisible pall hanging in the air, a hush, an awaiting, as if the whole world is holding its breath with trepidation, worried about what the day might bring. Even the birds, normally waking up with the first light, are laying low. They’ve heard of avian flu and chicken flu, and are not taking any chances. The resident feral rooster of the national park has put a pillow over his head and a wing over the beak of his bed companion, a bush turkey. There’ll be no singing out into the bright morning today.

For a long time they sit there by themselves, taking it in turns to ride the waves that arrive in semi-regular sets. The rides are quite short, but the drops are nice and deep and steep, and they’re not complaining. They’re powerfully aware of the fact that, to date, they still have the ability to breathe without a machine. The same cannot be said of thousands of people around the world, battling for their lives on life-support. Doctors and nurses in faraway countries are dying on their feet. How long till the disease ravages their own country? The question hangs in the air, unspoken. No other people turn up for almost an hour, an event that’s almost unheard of in the history of their break. Worldclass and easily accessible it habitually gets overrun 24-7. Not so today.

Eventually, after a plenitude of uncrowded waves, two other surfers venture out into the water, almost-clear silhouettes in the dawn twilight. Both unknown, they approach cautiously, looking for a spot in the line-up of two. One paddles over to where the Snake Catcher and the Baboon are riding the swell, gently bobbing up and down between sets and talking quietly.

The newly arrived Unknown Person paddles up to the outside of the Snake Catcher. The Snake Catcher looks him up and down speculatively, with a suspicious glint in his left eye.

‘Goodday, how are yous,’ says the would-be wave-catcher unsuspectingly, with a foreign accent.

‘Yeah, not too bad, mate,’replies the Snake Catcher. Then, apparently having reached a decision, he makes a great show of sneezing.

‘Achoo!’His head jerks forward violently, and shudders with a series of spasms. He snorts with a death rattle, hawks like the souls of the doomed rattling their chains in the deepest abyss of hell, and makes a great show of spitting in the water.

‘Heuuurrggh! Spfllrrrt!’ He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and shoots out another imaginary glob of infected phlegm, for good measure.

‘Sorry mate, we just got back from overseas and I don’t feel well,’ he then adds amicably. ‘I’m pretty sure I had a fever last night, and my throat is killing me.‘

The poor old innocent Blow-In flinches like he’s been hit in the face and blanches visibly. He almost falls off his board in his mad panic to paddle backwards and away, out of reach of the two pestilential creatures in front of him. He turns tail and flails madly and ineffectively at the frothing water in his frantic frenzy to get out of there, not stopping until he’s at least thirty metres away from the other two.

They grin at each other and keep a perfectly straight face until he’s out of earshot. The Baboon carefully buries his head in the water and blows jacuzzi bubbles until the mad fits of laughter have subsided, noiselessly, into the great chasm of the ocean.

It’s not funny, but it is. There are increasingly fewer things to laugh at, in the big scheme of things. A joke is good for morale. At least for theirs; not so good for the Unknown Person’s morale, presumably.

They surf the steep waves at the point for a while in peace and quiet. Eventually they are joined by other members of the crew, who have finally decided to step out. The Crocodile is there, attacking the waves in his characteristic inimitable style strongly reminiscent of a saltwater crocodile crawling to the edge of the water and sliding in it, belly first. He is a highly experienced and skilled surfer of long standing, but against all expectations he provides a bit of welcome involuntary comic relief and entertainment by stacking it in grand style on his first wave. It is very unlike him. Are people more nervous than they are letting on? His mate Ciderman, possessed of super-heroic powers when it comes to putting away cider and other related alcoholic drinks, has no discernible compunctions and happily paddles for the next wave that turns up, keen as mustard. He takes off on a long and deep one, only very narrowly avoiding running over another hapless surfer who has just now taken a chance on the water.

It’s time to relinquish their position at the point to the newly arrived and give them a turn, so the Baboon and the Snake Catcher ride waves in, back to the beach.

On dry land, the carpark is near-empty, the beach as good as deserted. The two surfers split up and get into their cars. The cafes are shut. There is nowhere to go for a cup of tea. Their friends who work in the cafes and restaurants are out of work, lining up around the block to sign on for unemployment benefits and assistance with their survival. Social gatherings are discouraged. Word has it that, when Stage III restrictions come in, groups of more than two people will be outlawed. Society is grinding to a halt, the entire world is coming to a stand still.

Their cars disappear over the hill.

The south-easterly wind blows gently through the ghost-like carpark. Pandanus leaves rustle and rattle ominously in the breeze. An insomniac fruitbat squeaks forlornly, out of synch, out of place. It is sounding out a warning: “we invented this thing, all of you humans better watch out.”

Two hours later council trucks stop at the beaches of the seaside town. Workers jump out and pull out heavy orange barriers. They drag them around until they block off all beach access. Beach-going is banned.

On the other side of the world, in Italy, a convoy of army trucks drives slowly through streets devoid of all life, till it arrives at the gates of a cemetery. They drive through the gates and start to off-load their cargo of coffins.