Wake (9 page)

Curtis had refused to leave Adele's body behind in his car. When they crammed into the shelter of the cabin to eat, they were sitting with their toes pressed against the blanket-wrapped bundle. Now and then Curtis would reach out to brush dropped flakes of fish from the blanket.

After they'd eaten, Theresa and Bub went to the bow to check the anchor and have a whispered consultation.

‘We'll need that blanket if it gets any colder,' Bub said.

Theresa shook her head. ‘I'm not going to ask him for it. Look, we'll take turns keeping watch—you and me. Whoever is up can have your jacket and my gun. Mr Haines can make do with the tarp.'

‘Fair enough,' said Bub.

Theresa radioed Belle, who took her time picking up. By the time she did, Theresa was tramping in small circles in the
Champion
's stern, setting the boat into a mild rolling motion.

Belle said she'd shut herself in the reserve's storage shed. It was windowless, and there was no room to stretch out, but it was dry. She'd drifted off—she said—and didn't know where she was when the radio woke her. ‘I've opened the door now. It was getting stuffy.'

Theresa explained that she was on Bub's boat, and said she'd be up to fetch Belle come morning. ‘Just keep the gate locked.'

Belle promised, and then said, ‘Why isn't there any sign of help?'

Theresa considered her response. She watched Bub, who was leaning over the side, rinsing his frying pan. He straightened, seawater dripping from his broad forearms and making a pool on the deck. The water was black in the radiance of the sharp white running light at the top of the short mast. Only the boat and a circle of choppy waves were visible. Beyond that there was nothing till the lamps, shining like safety among the sleek flaxes along the shoreline walkway. There were very few houselights—but of course none of them would have been on in the late morning when all this started. But as Theresa watched, a light shone, then went out, in the windows of a house on the point.

Bub came to stand beside her. ‘There's someone over there.'

Theresa lifted the radio to her mouth and pressed the talk button.

‘Listen,' said Bub.

Theresa released the button and strained her ears. She thought she heard a faint droning sound. It was very far away. She glanced at Bub and saw a spark of green in his dark eyes—a reflected light. She turned to where he was looking and saw the plane, or at least made out its shape from the port and starboard lights on its wingtips. She held her breath.

The droning stopped, and the lights winked out. A moment later, beyond the headland to the west, flames bloomed in the air—billowed out, and then retracted. For a few seconds the headland was sharply delineated by the fire's glow. Then—all at once—the fire went out, as if smothered by a great, invisible hand.

‘They'd better not try that again,' Bub said. Then, ‘That's our help.'

‘That was pretty far off, I think.' Theresa hoped she sounded just as calm as he did. ‘What was it? An Air Force Orion?'

‘I reckon. Poor bastards.'

The radio crackled. ‘Tre?' said Belle. ‘What was that?'

‘I think that—
thing
—I told you about has us completely cut off.'

‘
You
got here,' said Belle.

Theresa said to her friend, ‘I'm in the dark, Belle. But I'm coming to get you first thing tomorrow. Till then just stay put, and keep warm.'

‘She's right, you know,' Bub said, once Theresa had signed off. ‘You got in.'

‘Perhaps I was the last,' she said. Then, ‘I'll take the first watch.'

William prowled about the house for a time, before stretching out in the bach's only bed, beside Sam, but on top of the covers.

Sam didn't quite cry herself to sleep. She lay on her side, her back to William, and alternately wept and held her breath. William supposed that, in her silences, she was trying to suppress her tears, trying to get a hold of herself. He could feel her ferocious concentration, feel her summoning her strength. Or summoning
something
. ‘Perhaps she's praying,' he thought, though he couldn't hear words, or detect the little breaths and wet clicks of supplications only mouthed.

The rain stopped. Somewhere further along Matarau Point an outdoor security light activated. It illuminated the mature kowhai at Sam's gate. The kowhai's bright yellow blossoms were drenched, closed, hanging heavy in their sockets of bronze.

Sam stirred and rolled over, whimpering in pain. She sat up and pulled off her camisole, making small gasps and whines of distress.

‘Be quiet, would you?' William hissed, and she froze. William watched the window. The sky beyond the glass was the warm grainy grey of streetlight reflected on low cloud. He thought he heard someone out on the road. Then the light switched itself off again.

William turned to regard Sam. Her head was free of her top, though her arms were not. Her lean form looked surprisingly strong, but at the same time abject and vulnerable, her shoulders folded forward and arms bound.

William pulled the top free. He looked at the blood-darkened bandage that entirely covered one of Sam's small breasts. There was a long streak of dried blood running from the bottom of the bandage onto her flat stomach.

‘Lie back down,' William instructed. ‘I'll see to that once it gets light.'

Sam lay down. ‘I was told to have someone help me change the dressing,' she said.

She was told, so had injured herself
before
everyone went crazy. ‘Were you already injured?' William asked.

‘No.' Sam's voice came out as if wrung tight. ‘I saw what I did,' she said. ‘It was me.'

‘You're not making any sense.'

‘I don't have to. I'm not ever to try to.'

William frowned at the patchily lit blur of bare flesh that was the young woman beside him. ‘You've had quite a few instructions, haven't you? I do hope you're not still getting them.'

‘No,' she said, despairing.

Lily, for all her fright, simply slept. She'd run thirty miles and her body—attuned to its frequent crises of overexercise—seemed to decide that fear was just another crisis, like a hundred-kilometre race.

But her sleep wasn't dreamless. In Lily's dream it was an early autumn evening. She and her boyfriend were on their way to a dinner party, in Pukerua Bay, in one of the houses right on the beach. They were on the path that went along the top of the sea wall, which ran between the beach and the low breeze-block fences of the little houses. There'd been a storm three days before, and floods in the Manawatu and Horowhenua. The sea was still wild, frothy with river mud. The floods had stripped the fertile plains and carried the crops out to sea, before depositing them on shores further south. The beach was littered with carrots and onions, and dead sheep, stiff-legged like grisly piñata. In her dream Lily turned to her boyfriend to remark, ‘Here's the makings of Irish stew.' Then she felt a pang of guilt for the poor people whose job it would be to bury all those bloated fleecy bodies—

Lily woke, and cried out in horror. She remembered what had happened, but didn't know where she was. There was a lumpy foam-chip cushion beneath her head. It smelled faintly of perished rubber. She fumbled about her for her phone. It was 4:30am.

Once there was enough light, William went to Sam's bathroom in search of a fresh dressing. They'd all managed to find the toilet in the dark the night before, and Sam had brushed her teeth. But now William was able to see that the bathroom was as clean and tidy as the kitchen. Sam had horrible stuff—William had woken up to find that the duvet cover he'd sweated under all night, through a medley of mad dreams and convulsions of panic that bounced him up into consciousness again and again, was a nasty pink polyester thing with swallows and roses. Sam's furnishings were vile, but everything in her house was scrupulously clean.

William pissed, washed his hands, and turned to the bathroom cabinet only to be confronted by the spectre of a prisoner, a haunted, hollow-eyed face behind black bars. He flinched—and the face did too, because of course it was his own reflection in the cabinet mirror. His bottom lip was swollen and scabbed from the mad child's bite. The prison bars were on the mirror. William touched its surface, and felt ridges. Black gaffer tape had been smoothed onto the glass in evenly-spaced, vertical strips, with the effect of forming bars over whatever was reflected there.

William opened the cabinet, found a dressing, closed it again, and regarded his face, sectioned by bars. He thought, ‘Who—or
what
—is it Sam wants to keep imprisoned?'

When the rain let up, and the bush stopped dripping, Belle emerged from the storage shed and went down to the gates of the reserve. She stood, her forehead pressed to the wire, and listened. The little settlement was quiet; quieter than it had been when she'd come to work shortly after six the previous morning. Then there'd been the odd car, and all the scarcely discernible noises from indoors, a sound made of boiling jugs in kitchens where the mothers of small children were perhaps already assembling bigger children's school lunches while the two-year-old sat in pyjamas in front of a softly chattering television. Belle thought of the cumulative whisper of all that, of sleeping people, and morning showers, and cats plucking at the blankets near their owners' heads, wanting breakfast.

This morning Kahukura was as awfully still as a cooling baby in a cold crib.

Belle unlocked the gate and went out into the clearing to get a better look at the town. The streetlights were still on. As she watched, Belle saw a new light come on in one of the streets near the garden centre. Before it went off, another illuminated. They were outdoor security lamps, a relay that showed someone present in the silence, someone walking in the twilight across other people's properties. Belle heard a dog rouse to challenge the presence with frenzied barking. It continued to bark long after the last light had gone off.

Part Two

W
hen the sun came up, Bub started the
Champion
's engines, and a number of survivors emerged from hiding, rallied by the sound of the trawler's throttled-down gargling.

Three people came from the bach on Matarau Point, where the light of a carried candle had shown briefly in the night. A man, armed with an axe, was followed by two slight young women, one wearing a thick bandage around her otherwise bare chest.

Bub raised anchor and slowly motored in to the pier. The small group made its way around the shore and waited there.

Theresa stood in the
Champion
's bow, one hand on the blistered rail. The reflective checkerboard pattern of her hi-vis jacket caught the light. In her unspectacular police livery Theresa looked like help, and one of the women—the skinny blonde in running gear—began to wave, with the businesslike jubilation of someone greeting a rescue helicopter.

A car pulled onto Beach Road, and the small group from the bach quickly rearranged themselves, the women moving to put the man, and his weapon, between them and the car.

A guy with a topknot—whom Bub picked as Samoan—got out and approached the group at the pier. He came slowly, holding his hands out before him, open and empty.

Bub cut the engines. The
Champion
coasted to a halt, wallowing in low, steep waves, about five metres from the pier. Bub examined the people, narrow-eyed. The axe-man's flash shirt and trousers were fouled with blood and his bottom lip was swollen and scabbed. He was coppery dark, and had pale eyes, like a malamute. He called out, ‘You're not really help, are you?' He had an American accent.

The Samoan said, ‘Give her a chance.' He went and stood by one of the pier's bollards. ‘Throw me a line.'

‘Are you all okay?' Theresa called.

‘Well, I'm not crazy,' he answered. ‘And you'll notice I've turned my back on these others, because they seem to be fine too.'

Bub was tired of straining to hear what the people on shore were saying. There was room aboard for all of them, and he was prepared to put in and pick them up, if only that bowlegged gingery guy who was hanging back by the car would get all the way out from behind its open door—where Bub hoped he didn't have a gun concealed—and get over here with the rest of them.

Bub swung the wheel, pushed the throttle, and let the
Champion
glide forward. Then he gave the helm to Curtis, told him to hold her steady, and went forward to throw the line. He had to straddle the sailboarder's body to do so. The night before, they had shrouded the dead man in plastic, but had left him where he lay.

Bub's gaff was gone, so once the Samoan had the mooring line, he and Bub had to pull the boat in to the pier by main force. The hull's buffers ground up against the pier and Bub shouted, ‘Get on board!'

There was no hesitation. The American very diplomatically left his axe behind. He jumped nimbly aboard. The Samoan then handed the women up onto the gunwale, and Bub helped them down onto the deck. The gingery guy slammed his car door and hurried over. All he'd been hiding were his trembling hands. The survivors balked a moment at the wrapped body, but stepped over it and made their way to the deck. Bub walked though them to the wheelhouse, nodded at the Samoan to cast off and watched the guy try to coil the rope—with good heart, but not a lot of skill. Bub backed the
Champion
out from shore, then cut her engines. It was quiet again. Or almost. The sounds of human activity had stirred up Kahukura's dogs. They raised their hoarse, exhausted voices again, to bark in rage, in hope, in warning; to call out for people who were
late
,
late
,
late
—who wouldn't come, who had gone and left dogs
alone
,
alone
,
alone
all night.

The Samoan dropped the rope and came to join them. He said, ‘Warren and I left two people in a truck outside town. Dan and Oscar. Oscar's a kid. And—sorry—I'm Jacob.'

‘How old is this Oscar?' said Theresa.

‘About fifteen I guess. And there are two women in a car stuck up in the hills back there,' Jacob pointed. They could in fact see the small blue vehicle, but not the people in it.

The bandaged woman raised her pale, very pretty face and said, ‘Was one of them an old lady?'

‘Yes.'

‘That might be Mrs McNeal. Her daughter was bringing her back yesterday. She was on the list for lunch.'

‘Back to the rest home, Sam means,' William said. ‘Sam works there. Sam Waite. I'm William Minute. And this is Lily Kaye.'

‘Jacob Falafa, and this is Warren Kreutzer. We came in this morning to check on Warren's Aunt Winnie. She runs the bed and breakfast.' Jacob pointed at the villa one along from Sam's bach.

‘I think she's dead,' Warren said, his voice soft and hollow.

‘I'm Bub Lanagan,' said Bub. ‘And this is Constable Grey.'

‘Theresa,' said Theresa. ‘And this is Curtis Haines.'

Jacob turned to Theresa. ‘Is it over? Are they finished?'

‘And is this it?' Lily said. ‘I mean, are we it? Us, Dan and the kid, and the two women on the hill?'

‘No, there's Theresa's friend Belle, too,' Bub said. He looked around the variously bleak, bruised, bloody faces.

‘They can't all be dead,' said Jacob.

‘The whole of Kahukura—as well as my aunt?' said Warren.

Lily began to tremble like a racehorse.

‘How many are we talking about, anyway?' said William.

‘I guess the daytime population is about five hundred,' Theresa said, looking at Bub for confirmation.

Bub didn't know. People had jobs. The people of Kahukura, and Ruby Bay, and Mapua. They got in their cars and drove into the city. He'd be out in Tasman Bay, fishing, then he'd come in and touch first one place then another—making his quick daily landfalls. And sometimes he'd think about the rest of them, commuters, regular folk, earthbound, going out wide on the roads, surrounded always by places people lived, like little birds that live in gardens, not like him, on his boat, out over the water, like a gull or a gannet. So, when Theresa looked at him, Bub just shook his head.

Theresa's face suddenly crumpled and she began to sob. She made a start for the water as if she meant to jump in and swim to shore. Bub was appalled and paralysed; it must be his fault. But the American had quick reflexes. He intercepted her. Curtis then took hold of her more gently. ‘What is it?'

‘There's an Area School,' Theresa said, sobbing. ‘I didn't think of it yesterday. It has a roll of about thirty. I forgot them!'

‘You'll have to go later,' Bub said. ‘First we have to get your friend Belle, and the other survivors we know about.'

Jacob upturned Bub's empty bait box and sat Lily down on it. She was shaking hard, and her teeth were chattering. Next, Jacob tried to take Sam's hand and lead her to the shelter of the cabin, where there were seats. It was then he noticed the blanket-wrapped bundle—Adele Haines's body—and stopped, aghast.

Theresa roughly wiped her eyes. She pulled herself together. ‘Look, she said, ‘I know I'm not really better qualified than anyone else to take charge—'

‘You have a gun,' said William.

She only glanced at him, then went on. ‘But Bub is right. We need to make plans. Plans based on what we know for sure. And what we know is this: we are trapped here, for the time being.'

‘Quarantined,' said William. ‘Shut in with whatever turned the town murderous.'

Theresa kept her cool. She just raised a hand and made gentle hushing motions at William. ‘We have to think about what we can do to make ourselves safe.'

‘Safe where?' said William. The man wasn't about to be silenced, Bub saw.

‘Why can't we just stay here?' Warren said.

‘
Champion
is too small for all of us,' Bub said. ‘Plus she's too exposed to the weather. The crazies are terrifying, but a cold southerly will kill you just as dead.' He looked into their faces again and regretted talking about killing. Tears were coursing down Lily's cheeks, and Warren looked like he was about to throw up, though Bub doubted the man had anything in his stomach.

In the pause Sam said, almost inaudibly, as if speaking only to herself, ‘I should be writing this down.'

Bub gave himself a moment. He went up to the bow to toss out his anchor. The tide had turned again. The
Champion
would swing bow on to the swell once she was moored, then they'd all feel a little more comfortable. Bub could tolerate the rolling, but he was positive the others would get motion sickness. Who needed that misery on top of everything else?

When he rejoined them Theresa said, ‘Lets not get tied up just yet with explanations. Right now there isn't much point in speculating about how many are dead, or what killed them. Or the—thing.'

‘Lily's named it the No-Go,' William said.

Bub thought it was good to have a name for the thing. He'd started to feel that the indispensable word ‘thing' was being spoiled for all its normal uses. No-Go was like Never Never—odd, and descriptive. Last night, when he'd been on watch, he'd tried ‘anaesthetic zone' and ‘inertial field' in his head. Science fiction terms. They'd felt wrong—slippery, and
used
.

‘We have to gather the others,' Theresa was saying. ‘I'll get Belle to take her quad bike up through the scrub to the subdivision and help the old lady down.' She touched Sam's arm. ‘You know this Mrs McNeal. Can I get you to go with Belle and help reassure her?'

Sam nodded.

Jacob said, ‘What's under the bandage, Sam?'

‘Never mind me. Let's just go get Mrs McNeal,' Sam said.

William said, ‘She's being a stoic. It'll need sutures.'

‘I'm a nurse', Jacob said, like a punchline, and gave them all a brief sunny grin. Then he blinked and his smile faded. Bub caught Theresa's eye and saw her look of immense relief.
A nurse
. She said, ‘Jacob, would you go with Sam and Belle? I think retrieving Mrs McNeal might be a bit of a challenge.'

‘Sure.'

Theresa turned to Warren. ‘Will you go with me to get Dan and Oscar?'

Warren's eyes looked black in his pale face, but he nodded.

‘Join us
where
?' said William. ‘I have a count of thirteen. We'll need space.'

‘Fourteen,' Bub said. ‘There was a guy who helped me put out a fire yesterday, then took off. So—fourteen we know of.'

‘I was staying at the spa,' William said. ‘It was only half full, and my party checked out when I did.'

‘Were they in the helicopter?' Theresa asked.

William nodded. ‘Didn't they get away?'

‘No. Sorry.'

William looked sober, but not cut-up. Bub guessed his ‘party' weren't actual friends—as George had been Bub's friend.

‘So, William?' Theresa recalled his attention to her. ‘Can you be told what to do?'

He laughed. ‘Not really.'

‘How about you go check out the spa? Take Bub.'

‘Sure.'

Theresa looked from face to face, her gaze firm and steadying. ‘Are we all set?'

‘What can I do?' Lily asked.

‘Perhaps you can help me with my wife,' said Curtis. ‘She's here on the boat. If no one comes in the next few days we'll have to bury Adele. I want to be able to choose a good place. And I want her with me till then.'

Lily looked scared, but said, ‘Yes, of course.'

‘Are we all ready?' Theresa repeated. Bub saw how she made sure to meet every eye. The survivors made signs of assent. They braced themselves.

‘Bub and I will clear as many—' William hesitated, then got a haughty look and went on as if delicacy were contemptible, ‘—bodies as we can before you arrive.'

‘Good.' Theresa told Bub to fire up his engine and take them in to shore.

Sam and Jacob parked the Captiva beside the unfinished visitor's centre, about a hundred metres from the predator-proof fence. A small woman in a Department of Conservation uniform was waiting at the gate of the reserve. ‘Sam and Jacob,' she said. ‘I'm Belle. Theresa called me to say you were on your way. Before we leave, I should quickly fill the hopper.'

‘Okay,' Jacob said, not knowing what the hopper was.

‘You can come with me if you like.'

They stepped inside the gate and Belle restored its padlock. Belle was a little pale, but she looked untouched. Jacob had onlyhad brief glimpses of yesterday's mayhem. He may not have seen the worst of it—like Lily, William, Sam, and Theresa, all of whom had bloodstained clothes. But he had entered the No-Go, had felt it wipe the vitality out of every cell in his body, so he did have a feeling for the non-negotiable strangeness of the trouble they were in. Looking at Belle he could see that she hadn't quite got it yet. He didn't resent that. In fact Belle's businesslike ordinariness soothed him, and he was content to follow her up the track through the glistening bush. Sam obediently tagged along after them. They stopped at the shed and Belle picked up a bag of feed. Then they all went on up the hill. Before they'd gone far Belle stopped them and said, ‘Shhh,' and, after a moment, Jacob saw the hunched green shape of a kakapo.

The bird stood on the trail ahead of them, peering at the ground. It was large, rounded, big-headed, and its feathers were several shades of green, some dulcet, some vivid, and some tipped black, as if they'd been flocked with black velvet. The kakapo stretched out a claw to pick up a twig and move it from his path. Then, path cleared, he moved on—still stooped and peering.

Belle whispered, ‘That's Tutira. He's very stealthy. He hates to make any noise when he's walking.'

They waited till the bird had passed out of sight, then went on to a sunny clearing dusted with tobacco-brown beech leaves. A plastic hopper stood in the centre of the clearing, above a timber feeding trough. There was another kakapo perched on the hopper, dozing in the sun. This one was even bigger, and had a venerable halo of whiskers, like an Amish patriarch.