There had been a phone call—they’d thought—someone looking for them, someone who’d tell them what to do. There’d been a reprieve, and now there was only the sun coming up over the ridge at the top of Stanislaw’s Reserve, and a day to be got on with somehow.
After the Nokia ring tui had raised then dashed their hopes, Oscar, like the rest of the survivors, sat for several hours in shivering despondency. But eventually he felt hungry, and his legs were restless, and he decided to find something to eat.
Halfway through a packet of Mallowpuffs Oscar decided to deal with his feelings, as if his feelings were what he had to fear. He told himself that he’d felt like this before—not too long ago—and it had turned out all right.
In January of that year he’d first noticed he was being kept awake at night by a new sensation. It was as if there were a lump in his mattress, or something caught under the fitted sheet, like one of his mum’s nylon knee-highs that had perhaps got mixed up in the washing and ended up in his bedding. He took his bed apart to look for whatever it was, but couldn’t find anything. He lay back down—and the lump was still there. He ran his fingers down his back, then went to peer at himself over his own shoulder in the bathroom mirror. There was something beside his spinal column—a patch of highlighted skin. A lump. He touched it. It was flat and firm, but not hard.
Oscar made his discovery on a Saturday and had to wait till Monday to see his doctor. His parents spoke reassuringly to him, but went around all Sunday with a strange stark look in their eyes.
Anyway—it turned out that the lump was a lipoma, and was made of fat, and the doctor said that although it might grow and need to be drained, it would almost certainly shrink and vanish. So—Oscar had had a sentence and a reprieve. He already knew what that felt like. He knew that just because things looked bad and you felt doomed it wasn’t necessarily the case. And he remembered that, while he was waiting to see the doctor; he’d kept himself from going crazy by doing what he normally liked to do anyway, only with more intensity. He’d watched a whole season of Lost; played Oblivion, and Bioshock, and Mass Effect—nothing online because he didn’t want to have to talk to anyone, even strangers. He had really gone into those games, had let them close over his head.
That was what he was going to do now—he was going to go back into the bright worlds, the dark worlds, and let the games carry him through this too.
Oscar slipped out the kitchen’s delivery door and hurried off down the spa’s driveway. No one seemed to notice him leaving. And they wouldn’t miss him if he was quick.
Sam came awake, and struggled up, ready to fight or flee. Her first step was bigger than she anticipated; it took her off the tabletop and onto the floor. Several duvets tumbled after her.
The table she’d been lying on was long, highly polished rimu. The chairs pushed back to the walls of the room were those fancy black mesh ones. The sunshades were down, and the room was full of filtered sunlight.
There was no one in the room with her.
Sam touched her chest. A thick pad of fresh dressing covered one nipple, and a bandage was wound tight around her rib cage, keeping the dressing in place. Sam’s top was bare, but she was still wearing uniform pants. She slipped her hands into their pockets and found a hair tie, a pencil, a limp stick of chewing gum, but no note.
Because she had to leave so many things to chance, Sam was constantly double-checking what she already knew. Yes, the dressing was on her left side, so the other one would still have full use of her right hand—her writing hand. There should be a note.
Sam listened. What she could hear she didn’t like at all—the stifled weeping of a number of people, like the sound under the music at the end of a funeral service.
A woman appeared at the door. She was wearing khaki shorts and a green T-shirt. She had short blond curls and handsome, if incongruously dark, eyebrows. She was pale and tear-stained. She said, to someone beyond the door, ‘Sam’s awake.’
‘You’re not Lily,’ Sam said.
‘I’m Belle. Remember? Would you like me to fetch Lily?’
Sam shook her head. The pill bottles on the tabletop caught her eye. Codeine phosphate, tramadol, naprosyn. Painkillers and anti-inflammatories.
Taking her cue from the bottles, Sam hunched and folded her right arm across her chest. So, she’d been right, and had seen right, despite the smoke, and the smoke alarm shrieking in her ear. That taut little nipple in the paella pan had been—
Sam shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.
A man appeared behind Belle. An Islander with a topknot. He looked exhausted. He wheeled one of the chairs towards Sam, got her to sit, and knelt before her. ‘We have a bed ready. Once you’re lying down I’ll give you some more painkillers and inspect your wound.’
‘I can help you get her to her room, Jacob,’ Belle said. ‘And—oh—she was asking for Lily.’
‘I wasn’t.’ Sam wondered how long she could postpone the moment when this man unwound the bandage on her chest. How much she could discover in the time she had.
The sound Sam had woken to had gone on, unabated. A sound of private lamentation, but without a funeral’s solemn or uplifting music, or the bad guitar, ragged singing, and glassy chatter of a wake.
‘Why are those people crying?’ Sam asked.
‘Don’t bother yourself about that now.’ Jacob helped her up. Belle draped a duvet around her—a flash one, of crackling cotton and thick down. It dropped onto Sam’s shoulders and, at the same moment, she recognised the view through the gaps in the sun blinds. She was at Kahukura Spa.
Belle and Jacob put their arms around her and led her from the room.
In the atrium a guy with a shaved head was nursing a bottle of whisky—though judging by the sun it couldn’t be later than eight in the morning. An old lady was sitting beside another woman with an expensively streaked blunt-cut bob. They were holding hands. The younger one was crying. The old lady looked drawn and remote.
They reached the foot of the stairs. Sam tried again. ‘I was writing something. Where is it?’
‘Were you? We don’t know about that, darling,’ Jacob said. ‘I suppose you left it at the rest home.’
So they knew about Mary Whitaker. ‘Have you been up there?’ Sam asked.
‘The rest home? No. Why?’
‘Perhaps you should carry her, Jacob,’ said Belle.
‘I don’t want to risk disturbing those sutures. I’ve only ever watched suturing, Belle, so they’re not very professional.’
‘Hospital can do it properly,’ Sam said, and then she started to tremble. It was involuntary. She was a patient person. She was accustomed to the time it took to get on top of the situations in which she found herself, used to having to bat bits of information out of the air, as if she was a blind cat who’d fallen through the roof of an aviary full of startled and innocent birds. If Sam was at a disadvantage, other people were at a greater disadvantage, and she knew how to work that. But she wasn’t making any progress. And back at Mary Whitaker it wasn’t an aviary she’d fallen into, it was a slaughterhouse.
‘Just one step at a time,’ Jacob coaxed.
‘Only a little further,’ Belle added.
Their tenderness was ferocious. And Sam understood that she’d given them something to do—get her up the stairs and into bed—and they were grateful for it because it meant that, for a few minutes, they weren’t with these others, the old lady and her daughter, and the man with the bottle.
She practised another question, silently, in her head. ‘Does anyone know what happened?’ Then she asked it, hedging her bets by adding a modifier. ‘Does anyone know yet what happened?’
Jacob said, ‘Don’t worry about that now.’
A moment later Sam was sitting up in bed, and Jacob was laying out bandages and scissors and surgical tape. Then he remembered the medications and hurried off downstairs. W
hile he was out of the room another man looked in. A tall, well-built guy with black hair. His eyes were a clear tawny brown and made him look fierce and hyper-alert. Sam recognised him. It was William, of course. William, fully conscious and not helpless. Sam found herself blushing. She crossed her arms over her chest and said, ‘Nice to see you up and about. Now how about you piss off?’ She’d had enough of being examined, and of the draughts of mysterious misery. She couldn’t get any traction with her questions. Why was she in a hotel room being patched up? Surely they weren’t all still trapped?
When Jacob returned he found Belle standing at the bathroom door, alternately knocking and calling. She said to Jacob, ‘William looked in, and Sam got all flustered and locked herself in.’
‘Did you send him away?’
‘He tried to coax her out, but she just kept saying “In a minute, in a minute.” And Jacob—she took your roll of surgical tape.’
Jacob pressed his forehead against the door and spoke very gently. ‘Come out, Sam. That dressing really needs to be changed.’ He listened to the silence within, then added, ‘It’s okay. William’s gone now.’
The door handle turned and Jacob stepped back. Sam emerged. She was trembling and there were beads of sweat on her top lip. ‘It really hurts, Jacob.’
‘I have the pain pills.’ He told her to get back in bed, and asked Belle to get a glass of water. Belle went into the bathroom and emerged with the water, and Jacob’s roll of surgical tape, and a very odd expression on her face.
Jacob gave Sam two codeine tablets. He sat down on her bed and held her hand till she began to look a little dopey. Then he changed her bandages. The wound site was a healthy colour, and wasn’t weeping, and he was able to sound sincere when he told her she’d be feeling better soon.
Once Sam had drifted off, Belle took Jacob into the bathroom to show him what Sam had been doing with his surgical tape. They stood staring in incomprehension at the vertical strips of tape which were stuck on the mirror, till eventually, Jacob caught sight of his own perplexed face past the strips. It was only then that he saw that they represented the bars of a cage.
Belle said, ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
William caught up with Bub, who was heading into town on foot.
‘Do you think it’s safe for us be out?’
‘I’ve no idea. But some of those dogs we can hear are still on their leads, or shut indoors. I can’t just listen. And, anyway, I’m not unarmed.’ Bub hefted his jack handle.
The streets back from Haven Road and the waterfront hadn’t been busy on the morning of the deadly day. They were clear of traffic, and Bub and William might have driven down them without encountering any obstructions. But there were a few cars run up onto the curb with their doors hanging open. One had crossed a lawn and demolished an elaborate ornamental dovecot. Its driver was face down in a flowerbed, almost hidden in a thick patch of blue match heads.
Bub regarded the body. ‘It seems wrong to just leave him lying there.’
‘Yes, but I guess the whole town is a crime scene.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Bub said. Then, ‘Have you finally started doing that? Looking at all this in ways that will just do for now?’
‘I’m trying not to. I still think being practical and being thoughtful aren’t mutually exclusive.’
‘That’s not what I’m saying—’ Bub stopped and shook his head. ‘Let’s just get these dogs.’
They had some difficulty deciding which dog was nearest. There was one regular, hoarse bark, and another intermittent yipping. The sounds were equidistant and seemed to cancel each other out. Bub said, ‘We could just go one way, and see which gets louder.’
It turned out that the yipping was coming from behind the door of an internal garage. They circled the house, trying doors. Eventually William positioned a wheelie bin under a bathroom window, and Bub stood on its lid. He broke some louvres, and eased the broken panes out of their rubber seal. Then he boosted himself up and slid inside.
The yipping changed to snarling. The dog was approaching at a run. Bub scrambled back out the window. The wheelie bin toppled, and he fell into the shrubbery. The terrier launched itself upward to hang scrabbling on the sill, its eyes popping in its comical face.
Bub got to his feet, backed off and tried to speak to the dog to calm it.
William went to find something sturdier to stand on. He returned with a patio chair, set it under the window, and stepped back with a ‘be my guest’ gesture.
Bub climbed up onto the chair and spoke soothingly to the dog. Then he tried speaking roughly to it. It subsided, whining, and Bub ventured back through the window again. There was a second eruption, then a stifled yelping that moved through the house. William followed the noise. He met Bub at the back door. Bub had the terrier clamped under one arm, his big hand wrapped around its snout. He said, ‘Could you go in and look for a lead?’
William found an extendible lead and a nylon muzzle, both hanging on the back of the laundry door. He brought the lead out and clipped it to the dog’s collar. He showed the muzzle to Bub.
‘Okay,’ Bub said. ‘Have you ever put one of those on a dog?’
‘No. But this is a week of firsts for me.’
The dog seemed happier once she’d lost the option to bite—relieved of the burden of choice. Bub let the lead out, but she stayed pressed against his leg, quivering.
William went back into the house to see if there was any sign of the owners. But the doors had been locked, and there was no car in the garage.
As they were leaving, William paused at the gate. ‘This is a house we know is empty. Perhaps I should leave some sign. To save time and trouble later.’
‘Whose time and trouble?’ said Bub.
‘Whoever comes.’ William hesitated, then ventured, ‘Don’t you think it’s quieter today than it was last night?’
‘It’s been quiet since they all finished killing one another. Apart from the plane.’
‘Shouldn’t there have been more planes?’
Bub picked the terrier up. It wriggled and nuzzled him under his jaw. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I think the air feels kind of deadened. It’s as if they—’ William made a sweeping gesture at the hills ‘—are further away. As if the No-Go is getting thicker.’
Bub took a deep breath, let it out, and said, ‘So, you want to make a mark to say “No bodies in this house”. How about something simple, like a zero on the letterbox?’
William patted his pockets. He turned around and went back indoors. He found a marking pen in a mug by the phone, uncapped and tested it, making a black spot in the centre of his palm.
The fridge shivered into life.
William flinched. Then he lifted the phone and listened for a time to the urgent beeping of its out-of-order tone.
Bub had moved along to the next intersection and was standing with his hand around the terrier’s muzzle to suppress even its whining. William used the marker to draw a zero on the letterbox.
The other bark was coming from a house somewhere beyond a fenced field. They set off that way. But when they reached the field they stopped, frozen. Bub’s grip loosened, and the terrier leapt out of his arms. It took off, the plastic cartridge of its retractable lead skittering along behind it. The dog sprinted for a short distance, then doubled back to savage the cartridge—or to try to, though hampered by the muzzle. Bub bore down on the dog and swooped it up again.
William joined him and they stood in silence, staring at the three weatherboard classrooms and newer school hall and office buildings. William finally spoke. ‘Let us just go and look,’ he said.
Bub was thinking that this was the reality of their situation. He wished he’d thought to ask Theresa for her radio before he set off. He wanted to share this with her and see what she had to suggest. He’d been do
ing all right on his own so far this morning. Well—he was with William, but was on his own inasmuch as he was following his own agenda.
Setting out to see to the wellbeing of Kahukura’s dogs was a small, reasonable, progressive task. He was going to locate them, collect them, and take them back to the spa and human company. He was going to feed and reassure them. He was going to make the dogs his business. But his task had taken him out into the town—to be confronted with a silent school building. He felt as if he was standing on the shore of a vast ocean of possible duties and responsibilities. He felt paralysed, but when William said, terse and somehow formal, ‘Let us just go and look,’ Bub followed him.
When they got onto the school grounds Bub left the terrier tied to a playground sun shelter. William stepped up onto one of the long benches under the classroom windows, and looked into a room. He jumped back down and said, ‘There’s no one there.’
They walked up the wheelchair ramp to the school offices. There was a notice on the door. Attention parents. The bus won’t return the children till 4pm.
Bub put his hand on William’s arm. ‘They weren’t here,’ he said. ‘Thank Christ.’
William pulled the door open. The hallway was full of the smell of frying circuitry. A printer could be heard complaining about a paper jam. They went into the office and saw that it wasn’t paper that was jammed. Bub switched the printer off at the wall and William found some scissors to cut the woman’s hair and free her from the machine. He laid her down on the floor.
Bub then crossed to the principal’s office, took a look, and muttered, ‘What is it with these people and scissors.’
They went back out. William produced the marking pen and wrote ‘2’ on the glass of the door.
They left the school and followed the sound of the hoarse, bass barking. They found a medium-sized dog with a deep chest and curly black coat. It was pressed against the gate of a yard whose lawn was marred by a long drag mark, the flattened grass blackened by blood.
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