Wake (4 page)

Bub threw the engine into reverse and opened the throttle right out. The boat chugged back, her flat stern making a wall in the water before it. The bloodied men were nearing the end of the pier. Bub shouted to get the sailboarder's attention, then tossed him the gaff. The sailboarder caught it, but slipped on his own blood and went down on all fours. The bloodied men jumped. One went into the water. The other caught on to the
Champion
's gunwale.

The sailboarder swung the gaff and began to poke at the man, while Bub roared, ‘Smash him!'

The bloodied, smirking man began to clamber on board. But the sailboarder had a last adrenaline-fuelled burst of energy and stabbed the man in the face with the blunt end of the gaff, breaking his nose and tearing his cheek open.

But the man simply ignored his injuries. He swung one foot on board. The sailboarder dropped the gaff and began trying to prise the man's hands free of the rail. The man responded by sinking his already blood-smeared teeth into one of the sailboarder's wrists.

Bub rushed out of the wheelhouse and ran forward. For the next minute he tried to wrench the man's jaw open. He pushed his thumbs into the man's eye sockets, feeling gristly resistance, then wet give. The man would not open his jaws. Finally Bub got his hands around the attacker's neck and squeezed. He waited for the man to let go—of his bite, of his grip on the guard rail. He waited for sane self-preservation, for a sign of pain or weakness, for the reassertion of what Bub knew very well about the world, even the frenzied world of battle—for Bub Lanagan had once been a soldier. But what Bub expected to happen kept refusing to and, finally, after he'd throttled the man to death he still had to extract the man's teeth from the sailboarder's mangled wrist; one tooth, having penetrated bone, remained in the arm after the attacker's face—its pulpy eye sockets wreathed by broken blood vessels—had slipped beneath the waters of the bay.

The sailboarder had collapsed. The deck was wet with blood. Bub knew he must get up. He must break open his first-aid kit and do what he could for the man. He must stand up and steer the boat, which was still chugging steadily backwards towards the mouth of the bay. He must get on the radio and find out
what the fuck
was going on.

But before Bub was able to muster the strength to get up, the
Champion
became sluggish, and then her engine died. For a moment she coasted on across water as flat as that in a bird bath, in air that seemed weirdly airless, like the pressurised air in the cabin of a plane. Then Bub felt something comb through his frame. He felt warm, and numb, and his bones turned to wax. He sprawled, and the last thing he saw was that strangely subdued water slipping by, only a few feet from his eyes.

When Bub came to he found the sailboarder lying against him, as if for warmth. Bub put out a gentle, exploratory hand and touched the man's head. The man's ginger dreadlocks were as thirsty as a sea sponge. Blood welled up under Bub's fingers.

Bub asked the man, ‘What happened?' He waited for an answer, and for a moment he pretended that the sailboarder was still alive, that he'd managed to save him.

Bub lay on his back, shivering, and staring at his hands. He touched his head. It felt fine, no tender spots. He didn't know why he'd passed out.

He sat up and scanned the town. There were several limp bodies floating in the water near the boat ramp.

Bub decided to head around the coast and find help. He went back to the cabin, started the
Champion
's engine again, brought the boat about, and put her full ahead, aiming for the open water. He tried not to look at the body in the bow. He'd not go up there again unless he absolutely had to. That bit of his boat was a crime scene.

The
Champion
charged forward, then her engines suddenly gave out and, once again, something combed through Bub's body removing all his fear, then all his feelings, then all his strength. His legs buckled, his grip of the wheel loosened, and he crumpled to the deck.

Bub had no idea how long he was unconscious. He came to, as he had the first time, feeling perfectly fit and well. It wasn't like being knocked out, as he'd been once when he was a teenager and had run his motorcycle into a stray cow on a dark country road. Nor was it like climbing out of the grey, chemical pit of a general anaesthetic, or waking from a drunken stupor. He simply came awake. The rising tide had carried the
Champion
back towards the shore, and out of the influence of—of
whatever it was
.

Bub decided not to repeat the experiment. He wasn't going to risk letting the tide carry him right out into that.

From landward there sounded a sharp blast of a horn. Bub scrambled to the wheelhouse to answer it. He spotted the woman in the meadow behind the spa. She was on her knees next to a quad bike, near the first fire. Bub lifted his arm and waved to her. She waved back.

A few minutes later the
Champion
's radio made some throat-clearing crackles. Bub snatched it up. He tried not to yell. ‘
Champion
here. This is Bub Lanagan. Is this the police? Over.'

‘Constable Grey, from Richmond. Are you okay, Mr Lanagan? Over.'

Bub told the cop that someone had been killed. Murdered. Then he remembered what he'd done himself, and for a moment was too perplexed to speak.

‘Mr Lanagan?'

‘There are crazy people,' Bub went on, then gave a rushed, breathless account of everything abnormal he could see. Eventually he made himself stop, which was a mistake, since he hadn't got to the
thing
.

‘Mr Lanagan,' said the constable. ‘Do you think you could go for help? I'm at the bypass turnoff and heading west on Highway 60. There'll be help in Motueka. But you should take your boat around Matarau Point and see why no one has come from the Nelson end.'

Bub listened to the constable's very reasonable request. He stared at the dead sailboarder and whispered, ‘What can I tell her?' Then, he told her that he was going in to check on his friend George.

The cop's voice was tremulous, squeezed, wavering in volume. She once again advised Bub to stay out on the water. She said the streets were very dangerous. She talked about possible contaminants.

Bub glanced at the horizon, and saw only the horizon, to the north out to sea a line where one blue met another, and east, Pepin Island, at the end of the long arm of the Richmond Range. There was no water traffic in sight.

Bub's radio coughed. ‘Mr Lanagan?'

‘I'm here. Can we hook up? Over.'

She screamed at him. ‘
Are you listening to me at all?
'

‘Look,' said Bub, and was pleased to hear resolve in his own voice. ‘I'm going to do a quick scout for my mate, George. After that I'm heading over to try to do something about the fire near the petrol station. When I've seen to that I'll come and find you. Over and out.'

She was still protesting when he signed off.

The Smokehouse Café had eleven bodies in its dining area. Bub found his friend George doubled over the deep fryer, his head and arms immersed in boiling fat.

Bub shoved the fire doors open and threw himself out into the parking lot. He doubled over, retching, then sagged, and sat down on the ground. He stayed there for a time, till the wind shifted and a gust of hot, metallic smoke wafted over him.

He got up and went back into the restaurant. He turned off the deep fryer, let the range hood run for a minute, then switched it off too. When he left the kitchen the fat was still singing its elastic song.

Bub knew there was something else he'd meant to do. He leaned against a wheelie bin, breathing in through his mouth and out through his nostrils until he'd pumped the stink of fat out of the immediate air around his face. Then it came back to him—what he should at least
try
to do.

He set off across the carpark and came out on Haven Road, a short distance from the intersection filled with the now blackened wreck of the burning truck. Though the awnings of a pub near the corner had burned away, the building itself hadn't caught. But the pub's collection of folding tables and chairs were on fire, and the fire had communicated itself to the potted box trees on either side of the entrance to the neighbouring real estate agents, and from those had progressed to the wheelchair ramp at the front of the pharmacy. Beyond that, the fringed yellow canvas awning of the local craft gallery was newly ablaze, and the breeze now and then chopped off rags of flame, which drifted across the wide road and fortunately faded before they touched the high shelter of the service station forecourt.

Bub stood for a moment, steeling himself, shielding his watering eyes and watching the progress of the fire. Then he made his creeping way around the burning truck. He averted his eyes from the sight of the charred frame of a baby stroller, and broke into a jog. He hurried into the service station—looked at the blood and bodies near the counter only long enough to check for movement. There was no movement.

Bub found the fire extinguishers next to the smoke alarms and first-aid kits and tow ropes. He took as many as he could carry. He left the service station and dropped the cans onto the road. They rolled into the gutter behind him. Bub peered at the one he held, trying to make sense of its instructions for use. His eyes jittered; wouldn't move from word to word. There were diagrams, but they didn't look like the extinguisher.

George's head had looked like a potato roasted in its jacket.

‘Fucking pull yourself together!' Bub yelled. He found the trigger guard and flipped it.

Someone came up behind him.

Bub whirled, raised the can, and pressed the trigger. The spray seemed to form a momentary halo around the man's head, the cloud of particles billowing backwards as if the spray had hit a pane of glass. Then it drifted down to settle on the man's neck and shoulders. It shone, fizzing white, on his black clothes and black skin. The man's eyes were black too, and their whites creamy. He looked wary, but not alarmed. He kept his eyes on Bub as he squatted and groped for another of the cans. He located one and straightened slowly, still keeping his eyes on Bub. It was Bub who looked away, down at the man's hands. The guy activated the extinguisher by touch alone, and stepped past Bub to aim at the awning. The extinguisher released a stream of foam. Bub joined the man. They worked on the awning, exhausted their cans, and fetched more. They put out the ramp, the burning tables and chairs. When they got to the truck, the man went one way around it while Bub went the other. The truck's tyres and upholstery were still alight. Bub put them out, and finished by smothering the fire under the truck's gaping hood. When he stepped away from the wreck, the intersection was filled with a hissing quiet. Bub looked for the man. He made a circuit of the wreck. He found the last exhausted extinguisher set neatly upright on the kerb at the base of a power pole. But the man had vanished.

Before Bub went in search of the police officer he wrapped his jacket around his fist, broke the window of a parked car, popped its boot, and armed himself with a jack handle. Then he set off along Haven Road towards the patch of blue light in the smoke.

The patrol car had a body in its back seat. Bub switched off the car's lights and continued westward. He saw no one alive. After a time he stopped checking for signs of life, stopped
looking
, because he wasn't ready to digest what he was seeing.

Bub reached the end of the settlement and slogged up into the cutting. There he found the road partly blocked by an abandoned tanker and a Holden Captiva. He also found Constable Grey, and an older man.

The man was sitting on the open hatch of a Volvo station wagon, cradling an injured woman who was lying in the car. The young police officer was talking to someone on her radio. She was speaking slowly, her voice low and dull. She had a split lip, a black eye, and there were bloody grazes on her chin and hands. ‘I tried it twice,' she was saying. ‘Both times Mr Haines had to haul me out by my leg.'

When Bub appeared carrying his jack handle, Constable Grey pointed her gun at him. Bub raised his hands and explained that he was the skipper of the trawler. ‘We spoke,' he said, like someone reminding someone else of an appointment in a more ordinary world.

The person on the radio had heard the flurry and was in a panic. Her shouts were distorted into a series of squawks and pops. Constable Grey handed the radio to the older man, saying, ‘Please try to calm her.' Then she gave Bub her full attention. ‘Why didn't you set off out to sea to look for help?'

Bub held up a hand to stop her. ‘Because there's some kind of engine-stopping, sleep-making
thing
strung across the mouth of the bay, like a shark net.'

For a second Constable Grey just looked at him blankly, and then her knees folded. She sat down hard on the tarseal. She wiped her eyes with her right forearm, smearing tears which cleared the blood from her auburn eyebrows and made a pale band across her lightly freckled cheekbones.

The older man said to Bub, ‘We hoped it was only local.' He kept patting the woman as if blessing her over and over. Bub saw that the woman was dead and beginning to grow livid.

It began to rain. Bub put up the hood of his parka. He studied the two distraught people. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘I'll feel safer when I'm back on my boat. You should join me. We'll leave your car at the jetty.' He extended a hand to the constable. She took it and let him help her to her feet. Bub put an arm around the older man's waist and got him up too, then carefully tucked some stray locks of the dead woman's swishy grey bob back against her head so they wouldn't get caught in the Volvo's hatch when he closed it. He looked at the man for approval. The man nodded. Bub fastened the hatch, then took the guy's arm and settled him in the back seat.