The day after bonfire night her brothers would gather up the squibs, the crackers that hadn’t gone off, and snap them open to empty the gunpowder from their paper barrels. They’d make a little heap of salvaged gunpowder and put a match to it. It would fizz, and seethe, and spark, every grain igniting, each with its own fierce voice. Lily felt her cells were doing that, they were on fire, but it wasn’t just combustion, how things ran—the cellular motor of life—it was how she alone could run, it was a slow explosion, and as she went on it would be something else, a detonation, with a thunderclap like the boom of a jet breaking the invisible but audible barrier of sound.
Lily ran on, so whittled down now that the air scarcely resisted her. She ran through it. She ran through it.
Curtis was spending the day in bed. His curtains were closed, so he didn’t see Bub and William go past with their guns.
His extremities were feeling strange. His hands and feet were cold, and had been since the night he’d stood in the sea at the end of the point, waiting for the tide to turn.
Curtis could feel his big toes, but not the others. It was what used to happen when he’d been swimming too long. His feet would be fine when he was actually immersed, but afterwards, when he was walking up the beach, he’d find that ordinary sensation terminated where his sole joined his toes, and intensified there, as though every time he set his foot down he was stepping on the edge of a dull blade. But, on those occasions, his feet had always warmed up again. Now they wouldn’t. Nor would his hands.
Curtis got out of bed. He went into his bathroom, switched on the lights, and stood before the bathroom mirror. He took a good look at his feet and hands. Then he pulled his boxers down and his shirt up.
There were deep bruises on his torso and thighs.
Curtis peered. The marks looked like something worse than bruising. What he had first seen as the discolouration of blood seeping into damaged tissues was, in fact, an interior rot beginning to show itself. Rot rising to the surface and shining darkly through flesh that was still alive.
Curtis fingered his side. Didn’t that dark patch feel a little pulpy?
He checked his arms, and saw a darkening there too, a kind of purplish webbing, deep in his muscles. And—now that he thought about it—weren’t there areas of diminished sensation in his arms, a sort of chilly insensitivity? Were his muscles not a little less firm and elastic, as if he’d aged ten years in the last few days?
Curtis stood pinching his biceps, fiercely and repeatedly, his nails making red crescents on his skin. He kept it up till his skin was stencilled with marks like fish scales. He was brutal, and yet his arms still felt numb.
He did have sensation in his hands. He put them together and wound one over another as if washing them. Yes—he could definitely feel his hands. The problem was his arms—he could see them, but they weren’t there. And his legs, they were numb too, and mottled. And his feet were bloodless.
Curtis gazed in the mirror and turned his palms out to his reflection, beseechingly. They seemed to float beside his body like shining lotus flowers in a Hindu devotional painting.
Clearly something was wrong with him, something terrible, and without remedy.
*
The next day the hunters weren’t due to set off till eleven, so Holly sent Sam to the supermarket to find pearl barley, lentils, and bulgar wheat.
Sam was stopped in an aisle, anxiously checking and rechecking Holly’s list against the label on a packet, when Warren joined her. He put one hand on the small of her back. ‘Holly told me that you could probably do with some help,’ he said, then pried the packet out of her grip and dropped it in her canvas shopping bag. ‘Yes, that is the thing Holly wants. See, I am useful.’
‘Thank you,’ Sam said. She waited for Warren to remove his hand. He didn’t. He was drunk, and breathing fumes on her. His hand drifted down to the top of her buttocks. ‘William is a very lucky man. Do you think he knows that?’
Sam didn’t know what to answer. She had always supposed that lucky people were the happy ones, not just those who won Lotto or ‘lots of dosh on a flutter on the gee-gees’—as Uncle would say. Uncle, the man who raised her. Uncle, who used to have the odd flutter and would tune in to the racetrack broadcasts and shout at the radio, seeming to urge it on as if it might jump off the kitchen counter and gallop out the door.
Sam looked hard at Warren to try to determine what he meant about William being lucky. She saw that he had pinpoints of sweat under his eyes. Years ago there’d been a boy who worked with Sam in the storeroom of this very supermarket who had looked like that, and sometimes smelled funny, like the engine of Uncle’s old Falcon when its gearbox casing cracked.
Warren took her hand. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast. ‘Sam, come on. I just want to be your friend.’
Sam delivered her practised reproach. ‘You shouldn’t take advantage of someone just because they’re slow.’ Now he would let her go. It mostly worked that way. But instead of letting her go he began shaking her hand, as if they’d just been introduced. ‘I wouldn’t take advantage of you. I’m not like that,’ he said. He dipped his head to peer into her face. It was an exaggerated stoop, because really he wasn’t much taller than her. It was what people did when they were trying to get a child to meet their eyes and be talked out of a sulk or something they wanted and couldn’t have. ‘Anyway,’ Warren added, ‘you’re not as stupid as William thinks. None of us could possibly be as stupid as William thinks.’
‘I don’t know what William thinks,’ Sam said, ‘and I said slow, not stupid. Stupid is when you don’t try to think about things. I try all the time. I’m just not as good at it as I once was.’
‘Okay—I’ve offended you. At least tell me you forgive me.’
Sam wondered if she should give him a bit of a shove. She was stronger than he was. Strong from helping people out of bed, lifting them into their bath chairs. Strong from loading bodies into the ute, and carrying them from the ute to their graves.
Warren looked pouty and squinty like a kid pretending to be sad. ‘I didn’t think you were so fussy about people. I mean—William isn’t a very nice person and you like him.’
‘You shouldn’t drink so much, Warren,’ Sam said.
‘Another wowser,’ he said, and flicked a finger against her cheek.
Lily ran past the supermarket, her ponytail swinging. Sam dashed out and ran after her. She ran for a time in Lily’s wake. But Lily didn’t slacken her pace or turn her head to say ‘Hello’ or ask, ‘Is everything okay?’ And Sam couldn’t keep up for more than half a circuit, so eventually came to a stop and watched Lily float away.
*
During the time they were searching for the man in black, William would wake up in the middle of the night to find Sam wanting a conversation.
They’d have gone to bed, always in his room, not hers. They’d make love. He’d fall asleep and would wake later to find that she wasn’t beside him, but was perched on the end of the bed, just out of reach. As soon as she saw he was awake she’d start asking questions. They were very simple questions, and her manner was oddly constrained. Perhaps she was rehearsing. Not that her questions sounded rehearsed as such—but neither did they seem spontaneous.
Finally William decided to take Sam’s need to know him a little more seriously. He began to vet his answers carefully to make sure there was nothing she wouldn’t understand. But instead of being grateful or even stimulated by a conversation conducted at her level, Sam became visibly displeased. She chafed and fidgeted.
William lost patience. ‘Would you rather we go back to discussing books?’
‘But you’re still reading the same one,’ she said.
‘I’m not reading. When you’re not here with me I’m doing the same thing I do all day—only with my ears. I listen for the man in black.’
Sam was silent. But the air seemed to
vibrate.
William said, ‘I was making an effort with you, Sam. I can’t think what you want. What these questions are for. It can’t be flattery, because whatever else you are, you’re an honest person.’
Sam didn’t respond, didn’t thank him for the compliment. He was agitated, and that was unfair on her. He modified his manner. ‘To be absolutely honest, this thing you’ve taken to doing creeps me out. It’s like—’ He considered for a moment how he could make the comparison he wanted in a way she’d understand. But she wouldn’t like it if she sensed him making adjustments in order to accommodate her simplicity. She clearly thought he was talking down to her.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What I tell myself is that you’re getting to know me, and being dogged about it. You’ve compiled a list of questions and are working your way through it. I’ve heard that the Queen of England, when she’s taking one of her little walks shaking people’s hands, always asks: “Have you come far?” That’s what it’s like with you. Your questions are so general that it’s as if you haven’t taken in any of what I’ve already told you. As if you’re only asking questions in order to pass on what you learn to someone else.’
‘Sorry,’ Sam said.
William sat up so that he could meet her gaze full on. ‘We’re having a kind of relationship,’ he said. ‘And it’s a relationship with some certainties. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ she said. Perhaps she was too afraid now to admit she didn’t.
‘I’ll tell you something about books,’ William said, and waited for her reaction.
‘Okay,’ she said, neutral.
‘When my mother finally went right over the edge, she was still trying to save, or comfort herself, with the things that always worked before—like rereading her favourite books. She had an early edition of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, signed by him. She was very proud of it. But one day she confided to my sister that someone had changed her copy for another one with exactly the same cover. She’d discovered the substitution when she was trying to read it again, and found that all the words were subtly different. My sister asked to see the book. Mom produced it, and my sister pointed out Haldeman’s signature and his personal inscription. But Mom didn’t want to be reassured, she wanted to be believed, and colluded with. She’d say, “People are jerking us around!”’
William stopped talking—he’d quoted his mad mother and her favourite saying had scorched his mouth. After a moment he went on. ‘She said someone had come into the house, taken her book, and left a replica in its place. A physically exact copy, right down to Joe Haldeman’s signature.’
‘Am I like a replica?’ Sam said.
William shook his head, impatient. ‘Where did you get that from? What I’m trying to tell you is that the weird way you ask questions is doing my head in, partly because I keep wondering whether I’m being like my crazy mother and imagining a difference that isn’t there.’
Sam apologised again.
‘I don’t want an apology.’
‘Do you want me to get back into bed with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be a minute,’ Sam said. She went into the bathroom. This time William wasn’t overtaken by sleep. He waited. Sam couldn’t have understood much of what he’d just said. She’d decided he was telling her off, and that she had to make peace with him. He couldn’t talk down to her—but he couldn’t talk to her either. He couldn’t conjure a simpler past for himself, or simpler feelings about his past. He wondered why it mattered anyway. Because one of the certainties of their relationship was that it was temporary. After all, he could hardly fall in love with a brain-damaged caregiver, could he?
And then he had a moment of insight. Of course he could. Sam—tolerant, responsive, loving—was someone who would have taken his mad mother just as she found her, and managed to be simply, steadily kind. He was falling in love—with someone right now very suitable—but someone who would never fit into his life. A life he could scarcely imagine resuming now, though it was his real one.
Sam came out of the bathroom. She had washed her face and her hair was damp. She tried to disguise it, but she’d been crying. She climbed into bed and pressed her hot, wet face against William’s naked chest. She muttered, ‘You like her better than me.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You were arguing.’
‘I didn’t hear what you just said, Sam. I thought you said that I liked someone better than you.’
‘You argue with Theresa and Bub, and you like them.’
‘I like you. We weren’t arguing, Sam. I was just being—’ Over emphatic. ‘I was just fussing,’ he substituted. He uncovered her face and wiped her tears. ‘Don’t cry. Look. Here we are. The two of us. Together.’
Skin to skin.
Sam bit her lip and made a brave attempt to stem her tears. She managed it eventually, and they nestled, and she went to sleep, damp, warm, relaxed—leaving William worrying about himself, worrying that he’d felt more or less intact till now, and didn’t any more.
On those nights, the nights of the hunt, Theresa would lie in bed and imagine the satellites. She’d continued to believe they were being watched, and had visualised various foiled attempts people on the outside might have made to get to them. On the night following the power cut they’d heard one short burst of what Bub said sounded like an RPG—but only the roar of the rocket, he said, not the detonation of the grenade. Theresa imagined unexploded ordnance lying in the transparent thicknesses of the No-Go, somewhere below one of their hill horizons. She speculated about high-flying drones, till remembering how engines stalled whenever they entered the No-Go. She thought about giant catapults. She thought about slow-tunnelling rescuers.
Theresa understood something of what the people out there—those in charge, of whom she was a lost foot-soldier—would so far have tried to do. She believed they would make every attempt to communicate, to take charge from afar. And she still believed they would talk, once the survivors found that helpful encyclopaedia with an entry on Morse that included the code.
Theresa lay in bed and thought what message they might send first. The people out there would already have a list of the missing, Kahukura’s weekday daytime residents, and travellers on Highway 60. The survivors might have already been identified, and differentiated from the dead, the bodies layered in the motel swimming pool, wrapped in their own bed linen. The satellites could see them—the survivors—and so people would know that the red-haired woman who sometimes still wore her checkered high-visibility vest was Constable Theresa Grey; and the woman who regularly passed back and forth through the locked gates of Stanislaw’s Reserve was the Department of Conservation worker Belle Greenbrook; and the woman who ran laps of the bypass and shore reserve was ultra marathon champion Lily Kaye.
As for the rest of them, surely whoever was missing someone in the vicinity had been called in to look at the satellite pictures of the gathering at Adele Haines’s graveside; Bub and William’s team around their ute; Holly on the Spa’s lawn, lifting sod to make vegetable beds. Hopefully Oscar’s parents had recognised him from above. Maybe they’d all been positively identified, and any messages they sent would only confirm what was already known. Surely if they’d been identified, their names had been released, and her mother and sister and her police colleagues were watching her doing what she’d said they must all do, and be seen to do, and were proud of her.
‘Those people out there,’ Theresa thought, ‘poring over our most recent remote portraits, proud, pitying, anxious. Police, military, scientists, the media, all thinking and talking and making moves and—probably—lying awake, just like this, trying to imagine how it is on the quiet side, for us, with the cats crowded once a day at the boat ramp, heads down and tails up, eating, with all the gulls who’ve learned not to try to fly.’
Every night Theresa would lie awake imagining the satellites, then she�
�d fall asleep and dream. She’d dream that she was trying to find a parking space at the Port of Nelson and every bare bit of asphalt was covered in military vehicles and she couldn’t see the water past the grey walls of ships. Or she’d dream she was visiting her mother and they were in the garden and her mother had asked her to hold a hose—because there was a ban on sprinklers and she was watering by hand—and then her mother had gone inside and Theresa was left standing there, drenching the garden, while the twilight thickened, and the indoor cooking smells grew fragrant, then acrid, then ashy, and then it was dark, and there were no lights in her mother’s house.
Theresa was hauled up out of sleep by the sound of a fight. She was out of bed and in the corridor before she was properly awake.
The yelling was coming from William’s room. Theresa tried the door handle. It was yanked out of her hand. Sam erupted from the room, knocking her aside. William followed Sam and, when she turned to defend herself, he pushed her up against the wall opposite his door. He grasped the blanket she had wrapped around herself and, strangely, had retained, even though it was hampering her flight. William gathered a fistful of blanket under her jaw. He threatened a slap, and then did slap her.
Sam made no sound. For moment, there was nothing but the slap and a thump as her shoulders slammed back into the wall. Then Theresa shouted, ‘Stop!’
Sam let go of the blanket, but it stayed in place, pinned by one of her arms.
William landed a volley of slaps on Sam’s shoulders, and her free, defensive, hand. Then he dropped her and stepped back.
She fell to the floor and finally made a noise—a yelp of surprise, as if she’d only just registered what was happening to her.
Theresa grabbed William’s arm, but when he advanced on Sam again and raised his fist he lifted Theresa off the floor. She jabbed her knee into his hip and he staggered.
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