Wake (42 page)

Bub glowered.

‘—you and Sam have to find Warren. We can't just abandon him. William can't exert himself. I shouldn't put this on Oscar, and right now I have to stay with Theresa. I can't leave her till she wakes up.'

‘Okay, okay,' Bub said. ‘Once Belle's asleep I'll go and look. But that fucker better pray that Sam finds him before I do.'

‘Bub,' Jacob warned. ‘He's still my friend.'

Belle grunted and slapped one hand on the tabletop. Bub realised what she wanted. He found a pad and pen and gave them to her. She wrote
Kakapo! Cats!
Then stabbed the pen into the paper several times and cried so hard her lips unsealed with a sticky ripping noise and a combination of saliva and blood clots dribbled out of her mouth.

Bub stared at her. His face emptied of expression. Then he said, ‘It's okay, babe. I'll do whatever needs to be done.'

It was Sam who found Warren. She followed her wind to where he was. Her wind was being mild, she thought. Warren had summoned it, and it had come at speed, like a dog racing off to find a thing it has great hopes of—something to play with, or eat—something it then noses and rejects, before gambolling back to its master.

Warren was kneeling, defeated, in the disturbed leaves by the bloodstained tree where he'd found Dan and the balloon. When Sam came into the clearing the wind shifted from him and came over to her.

‘Hello,' Sam said, to the wind.

Warren looked up. ‘Hello.'

‘Are you all right?' Sam said, this time to Warren.

‘How could I possibly be?' Then, ‘Don't bother answering.'

Sam said, ‘My old ladies would always say “Can't complain”, whenever I asked them how they were.' She then said to Warren what she'd always say to her old ladies. ‘But is there anything I can do for you
right now
?'

‘Well—I guess you could try listening to me for a change. Or rather you could make your pointless listening face, since you won't follow what I have to say.' Warren paused and looked suspicious. ‘That is still
you
, isn't it?'

‘Yes. I'm Samantha. You have to come back with me, Warren. We're all worried about you.'

‘I don't believe it. There's a whole lot of other things you're more worried about. Same with
those
people.' He indicated the place where the balloon had landed.

Sam said, ‘Jacob is very worried. He sent me.'

‘Oh—so it's Jacob now.'

‘What?' Sam was confused.

‘It's Jacob who's in charge.'

‘Why do you always talk about who's in charge? He's upset. I've found you, and you're all right. Come back with me, Warren. Jacob isn't angry.'

‘Do you know why I did it? Pulled down the fence?'

Sam was quiet. Warren would tell her anyway. People never waited for her to say she was listening, they just told her what was on their minds.

Warren gestured around the clearing. ‘Those kakapo are more important to the people out there than we are. And to Belle—the blameless Belle. When Bub brought in the feed, she looked happy. Dan was dead, and she looked happy. Imagine caring more about birds than people.'

‘We just found the wrong balloon for us. One that was just for the kakapo.'

Warren started shouting at her. ‘How thick can you be? There would have been messages with every balloon, if there were any at all! The people out there aren't stupid, they just don't care!'

Sam was a little alarmed by Warren—but she had been raged at by unhappy and confused rest home residents, so she did what she always did when dealing with them; she was firm, and gently scolding. ‘Now now, that's quite enough of that,' she said.

The wind thought it wasn't enough. Sam could feel its attention wandering. It was passing back and forth through Warren and pushing him, like a cat bored and disgusted by a half-dead mouse. Sam was so puzzled by its behaviour that she said out loud, to Warren, ‘What's wrong with your feelings?'

Then the wind suddenly gave a seismic twitch and began again with its momentous revolutions as Bub ran into the clearing.

‘I'm okay,' Sam said. ‘Warren is just cross.' Then, ‘Bub. You shouldn't get overexcited.'

Warren retreated to the bloodstained tree. Sam saw that the blood seemed to be running upward. Then she realised it wasn't blood—the blood had long since dried. It was a thick, glistening column of ants trooping up the tree trunk, to a dense, black gathering where the crusted blood and other matter was. The ants exploded away from Warren as he backed against them, then, in their confusion, began to climb into his collar and hair.

Bub advanced on Warren, stood over him, and raised his fist. It was only a threat, but Warren began to shout. ‘Yes, why not?' He was weeping with fury. ‘I always knew it would come to this—you fucking bashing me!'

‘What do you mean?' Bub's anger was mounting. ‘Why specially me?' Bub grabbed the front of Warren's shirt and shook him, thumping him back against the tree trunk.

‘That's right!' Warren shouted. ‘I made your girlfriend cry. That's all it takes for you, isn't it? But when you were carrying bodies, I was too. What did Belle do? She carried a mop!'

Bub continued to shake Warren, really angry now. ‘It's weeks since the burials, and all you've done since is climb in a bottle, and make Jacob miserable! And what do you mean saying “my girlfriend” as if Belle isn't someone in herself? She's gutted! She's asked me to kill all the cats, for Christ's sakes. The poor cats.' Bub began to cry too. He slammed Warren hard into the tree, and then dropped him. Warren slumped, his head lolling.

Sam lunged at Bub and seized his arm. She pleaded with him to stop, and he did step back. He was up on his toes. It was as if he couldn't set his heels down. His fists were clenched and bouncing. To Sam it looked as if Bub wanted more to show Warren that he wanted to hit him, than actually do it. She relaxed a little. She tried to think of something to say to coax Bub away. He'd calm down. He was Bub. Bub was good.

But then Bub looked at Warren and seemed to see something further to offend him. He hauled off and kicked Warren once, hard, then flicked Sam off his arm. She fell back onto the mussed ground. She was looking up at the sky, past leaves interleaved with leaf shadows, a pattern in many shades of green. She heard the rubbery impact of Bub's boot on a fleshy portion of Warren's body. She thought how upset Jacob would be. She had to stop this. She needed to be stronger.

Bub heard Sam behind him. Her voice was a croak. ‘No, no, no,' she said. ‘That was supposed to make a difference.'

Warren was scrambling to safety, moving around the trunk of the tree. Bub followed him and swept his legs out from under him. Warren sprawled, and this time sensibly stayed down.

Bub checked behind him. Sam was curled up, gripping her guts. She was white, and her lips were grey. Bub was positive he'd only knocked her off-balance. He wouldn't have hurt her.

Then he saw what was happening. ‘Oh Jesus,' he said and, paying no further attention to the felled Warren, he scooped Sam up and sprinted off through the forest.

When Bub came running with Sam, shouting that she'd switched over and needed help, Jacob didn't pause to ask questions. Once they had Sam settled in her room, Jacob dismissed Bub and went straight to work, treating Sam with the atropine eye drops and alupent. He kept his finger on her pulse for a whole three hours, and felt it gradually pick up its pace. Then he just sat with her.

Oscar appeared with coffee and pot noodles. Jacob asked him whether there was any sign of Warren.

Oscar shook his head. ‘And Bub has gone to sleep, so I can't ask. But Bub would have said if he'd found Warren, right?'

Jacob looked at Sam. ‘Maybe Sam saw him.'

‘How long till she wakes up?'

‘I don't want to disturb her,' Jacob said. ‘It can wait.'

Bub woke with a start. He dropped Belle's hand. They'd been holding hands, and he was in a chair by her bed. The curtains weren't drawn, and the window glass was black.

Belle was fast asleep, on her back. She'd been sleeping fitfully—every time she turned over a jolt of pain from her shoulder would wake her. Jacob had given her some more painkillers an hour ago, and she was finally far down, motionless, breathing deeply and peacefully.

Bub left Belle, quietly closing the bedroom door. He wanted to see whether Warren had dared to come back. He wouldn't, Bub thought. He'd be holed up in some abandoned house, working his way through its liquor cabinet and feeling aggrieved.

Bub was a little worried about Warren—and guilty that he hadn't done as Jacob had charged and brought the man back into the fold. ‘It's us against
it
,' Jacob had reminded Bub. ‘We can't let it divide us.'

Fine, thought Bub. Warren could be drunk all the time, dice with his health, OD, refuse to listen to any of his friends' advice and finally stuff up big time, but he, Bub, was supposed to behave with unwavering altruism.

Bub went to find Jacob, but he found William instead, sitting by Sam's bed. ‘Jacob is with Theresa,' William said, ‘seeing if she's got movement in all the right places. She woke up.'

Bub went and watched Jacob and Theresa. She was swivelling her feet and pressing back on Jacob's hands as he put pressure on her toes. She was saying, ‘I don't think anything's broken. I have the bones of a horse.' She tried to smile at Bub, then aborted the smile when the scabs on her cheek rumpled. ‘How's Belle?'

‘She's fast asleep,' Bub said.

‘I've got her rinsing her mouth every few hours with warm salt water. I don't know what else to do.' Jacob looked drawn with worry. He asked Bub whether Warren had turned up.

Bub shook his head.

‘Was there no sign of him?'

Bub tried to keep a straight face. ‘I saw him. Then Sam got into difficulties, and I had to see to her instead.'

Jacob made a list of who was fully fit. ‘Just you, me, and Oscar. And I have to stay with my patients. I blinked with Curtis. I'm not going to with Belle and Theresa. I need you to go looking for Warren again tomorrow, Bub. You and Oscar have to do it. You can split up. You have to persuade him to come back and be looked after. He's not safe out there alone.'

‘No one gets left behind,' Theresa growled, like someone in the movies. Then, ‘Can you mend the fence?'

Bub said, ‘I'll have to try patching it somehow. But Belle wants me to deal with the cats.'

Theresa was horrified. ‘You mean kill them? No!'

‘Belle and I used to count them when we fed them, and their numbers were never stable. We wondered if they were picking and choosing which feeding spot to come to. But then we figured some were just too freaked out by things and had gone feral. And you know we hear them fighting at night—territorial disputes from all quarters.'

‘But—no,' Theresa said. ‘She can't ask anyone to do that.'

‘She's right, Theresa,' Bub said. ‘I'd rather poke out my own eyes than kill the cats—but Belle's right. It's the sort of decision the Department of Conservation makes all the time when it clears offshore islands of pests, or culls Kaimanawa horses. You do know that absolutely everything that isn't indigenous is here on sufferance? It's just that now—here—there's no one else to do the dirty work we expect done. It's not all that different from having to bury people.'

William arrived in the doorway. ‘Raised voices,' he said. ‘I think we're supposed to guard against that.'

‘Get William to do it, Bub,' Jacob said. Then to William, ‘Belle thinks it's necessary to kill the cats. And you're not soft-hearted.'

There was a silence, then, ‘Okay. That's something I can do,' William said.

‘You can fix yourself later,' Jacob said, and touched his own heart.

Bub was thinking about the cats, in their daily clusters, their eager trotting, and pert tails, and tiptoe smooching.

‘But what about the rats?' Theresa said. ‘Don't the cats keep the rats down? Aren't the rats just as dangerous to the kakapo?'

‘To eggs and chicks, not adult birds,' Bub said. ‘That's my understanding. And there are no eggs or chicks at the moment.'

Theresa asked whether anyone had been watching for messages.

‘Oscar's on night duty. So—actually—he'll be sleeping tomorrow. He won't be any use looking for Warren.'

‘There aren't enough of us now to run our lives,' William said. ‘To mend fences, watch the skies, defend the nests, and bring black sheep back into the fold—to make an archetypal list.'

Bub promised Jacob he'd spend a couple of hours looking for Warren, starting as soon as it was light. And later in the afternoon, when Oscar was up, they could try to mend the fence.

William listened as Bub organised himself and made promises to Jacob. Theresa was insisting that she could help. Surely she could do something. No one spoke to him again and he understood that he'd been handed the job of getting rid of the cats, and they didn't want to hear about it. Now they wouldn't even look at him. It wasn't that he was a pariah—more like a condemned man, or a sacrifice. He was in some kind of sacred space. But the task was a technical as well as a moral one, and William didn't have the first idea about how to kill cats. He was thinking poison, because they were numerous, and wary, and individualistic, and agile. He'd seen them being fed, and knew they didn't all crowd in at once. There was a hierarchy, and some animals waited till the others had finished. Anything fast-acting would warn them. Anything slower acting and he'd never be sure it had worked.

He went downstairs and peered into the filing cabinet in the manager's office at Jacob's collection of medications, many of which had doses dangerous to humans. But which drug, and how much would he need, and how could he disguise its taste?