Wake

by Elizabeth Knox

  I will never see you again, Sam thought. It’s all right. Don’t hurry. Mind your heart.

  She began to recite lines from a poem. She’d had it in her head for days, as if she’d been working herself up to say it to William. ‘Come with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.’ She said it to the Wake instead. Her lonely outrage was a better offer. Better than Bub’s righteous fury, or Oscar’s grief. Better than anything. There was nothing like it anywhere.

  Her sister’s cot wasn’t yet disassembled. It had air in it still. The mattress and bedding were on the floor, that bunny blanket Fa loved, on one side pink rabbits on a white field, and on the other white rabbits on pink.

  This time Sam wasn’t little, and standing in her own cot, watching. She was beside her uncle, colluding with him, helping him collapse Fa’s cot. Together they transformed the place where her sister had slept from a container into a flat square; two layers of bars, so closely overlapping that even a toddler’s fist wouldn’t fit through the gaps. Clack—and it was closed.

  I will never see you again.

  I know never.

  Fa.

  Gentle Sam arrived, and found that, although she wasn’t in the forest with Bub and Warren any more, Bub was still shouting. Why did her sister have to keep leaving her like this—in the middle of trouble? Bub shouted, and Sam’s eardrums fluttered as if she was on a train in a tunnel and another train was passing alongside, pushing all the air out of its way.

  There was something else wrong, apart from angry Bub. Sam looked around her and saw that she was standing in the long grass by the graves, and that there was another shrouded body, a small, narrow form. Jacob was standing beside it. He’d been stitching up the shroud but was now pulling the needle out of the pad of his hand.

  Sam turned back to Bub in time to see him clash foreheads with the man in black. Bub lost his balance and staggered. The man in black stepped away and brought his hand up to touch the sore place. And then he slapped himself several times—each time a little more forcefully. He looked amazed. Then he turned his eyes to her. ‘So, there really are two of you,’ he said. Then, ‘Come here.’ He reached out his hands, palms up, friendly and coaxing.

  *

  One moment Bub was leaning on the solid transparency of Myr’s force field, then suddenly there was nothing between him and the man, and Bub’s skull thumped against Myr’s.

  Theresa watched this. She saw Myr discover that his force field had vanished. Her understanding followed his by only a few seconds.

  The dogs stopped howling. Abruptly, as if someone had switched them off.

  Theresa knew what had happened. Sam had somehow so captivated the Wake that she’d captured it, or the part of it that was in this world. Sam had then changed places with her sister. She’d gone away and taken the Wake with her. Theresa saw this much at least. She saw a respite.

  William arrived, breathing hard, pale and anxious. He saw that Sam was in tears and hastened to her.

  As William came, his arms open, Myr closed on Sam. Sam spun to face him, her expression fearful. ‘You threw our ladder down the bluff,’ she accused. ‘I saw you do it.’

  In the sharp and oddly motionless light Theresa glimpsed the knife handle poking out of Sam’s back pocket. Her first thought was, ‘How careless, that’ll stick her if she sits down.’ Then she realised that it was the knife that Myr wanted.

  William had come. Sam saw that he looked worried. Then his face changed—just a little—but Sam noticed the change. She wasn’t clever, but she always paid attention to other people’s feelings. She saw that William was just a little bit less concerned than he had been a moment before, when he thought he was running to help her sister.

  The sight was somehow too bright for Sam, or too dark for her. She put her hands over her eyes.

  *

  Theresa shouted, ‘William! Sam has a knife!’

  Then both men had their hands on it. Sam’s pocket ripped. William tried to shove Sam out of the way, but Myr seized hold of her hair.

  Then, because Myr had spared a hand for Sam, and because he hadn’t any experience defending himself, William got the knife from him—the oyster knife with its short, sturdy blade. William’s hand swept up and the knife skittered across Myr’s collarbone, parting the pristine black cloth of his shirt, and making a bloody notch on the underside of his jaw. Then William’s arm came around—it was all one movement—and he brought the knife in under Myr’s sternum.

  Despite everything she knew about him, Theresa was still surprised by the skill and decision of William’s movements—and shocked as he clasped Myr to him, the knife between them. And shocked again that Bub, seeing the attack, darted in and rammed his elbow into the small of Myr’s back, so that Myr’s body bore down on the blade. Bub pushed, and then jumped back as if scorched—though it was perhaps only that he was propelled by disgust at what he’d done.

  William and Bub acted so quickly, and in concert, that it struck Theresa that they’d been primed to do this for a very long time—to kill the man in black.

  The dogs were quiet, but there was a sound of something coming from farther off—a faint pounding noise.

  William was staring into Myr’s face, and his fist worked between their bodies. Blood darkened the seam between each of his fingers, then spilled out, reddening his fist. Myr’s knees buckled, and William let him go. Myr sagged to the ground. The bloodied knife remained in William’s hand.

  There was another sound, a growl and clanking as something heavy and slow tackled the sloped road on the far side of Matarau Point. They all stood frozen, listening to its progress.

  Theresa made a sound herself then—a small noise of puzzled distress. She didn’t understand her own unhappiness. It was as if she had been under the water and had made a long ascent and the surface was now in sight. She was going to be all right—so what was wrong?

  Three helicopters were coming in across the bay, flying low and fast.

  Myr was on his back, his eyes open and blinking. Blood bubbled between his lips. His mouth moved. He was inaudible above the thump, thump of the choppers. Theresa knelt by him and put her ear to his lips.

  He whispered, ‘You have to make sure.’

  Theresa couldn’t figure out what he meant. She met his gaze.

  Myr tried again. ‘You have to make sure it doesn’t come back.’ He coughed. Blood splashed across his cheek and the dark brilliance began to ebb from his face.

  The helicopters thundered past. One came around and circled back to hang above them. The long grass of the lawn rippled, parted in many places, flashed white.

  Everyone was looking up. Sam too, bewildered and astonished.

  Then, all at once, Theresa understood what she had to do. She unclipped her holster, and took out her gun. She stepped back and took aim. She gave a wordless cry that still said, quite clearly, It was always going to be like this, and pulled the trigger.

  Someone knocked her down. And when she opened her eyes, and peered out from beneath Bub’s bulk, she saw William cradling Sam, holding her close to protect her ruined face.

  The helicopters hovered, their rotors shaking the air.

  Part Nine

  The people who came and took charge said that they wanted to carry the survivors away separately. It was the principle of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Bub watched as everyone else conceded. But he refused to let go of Belle’s hand. He glared stubbornly at the man trying to reason with him. The man had an American accent, regional rather than TV, and Bub could only make out about half of what was being said to him. It didn’t help that he was having difficulty with facial expressions, as if he’d forgotten how to read the faces of people he didn’t already know.

  The soldier who strapped them into the helicopter called them ‘Mr Lanagan’ and ‘Miz Greenbrook’. He offered them earplugs. Bub put in his own, then patted
Belle’s sling, where she’d been keeping her writing pad and pencil. Even if they couldn’t hear, they could communicate. But Belle shook her head; she’d lost her pad.

  The soldiers who had arrived in the helicopter closed its doors, and stayed on the ground themselves. The vibrations intensified, then lessened as the chopper left the ground. It went straight up, slowly swivelling. Bub saw the branches of the jacaranda lashed by wind from the rotors, scattering blossoms over the five mounded graves, and into the one empty.

  The chopper’s nose dipped and it flew off across the settlement, passing over the supermarket carpark and another chopper, set neatly down on their house-paint bull’s-eye, rotors still lazily twirling. The aircraft they were in was American. The one on the ground belonged to the Australian Navy. The helicopter flew over the beach, and the Champion, at her mooring, stern-on to the outgoing tide.

  When they were halfway across the bay, the sun came out.

  William was to be taken by road in an ambulance. Jacob insisted on briefing the paramedics. William watched Jacob scratch his head and slowly summon each thought. He talked about valve damage and pacemakers, then said apologetically, ‘But I’m not a doctor.’ He asked for water, and squeezed the plastic bottle to rinse William’s blood-smeared hands.

  ‘I’m not hurt at all, Jacob,’ William said.

  Jacob imperturbably went on rinsing, drying, and inspecting William’s hands. William let him do it. Everyone else was being patient—the soldiers, the paramedics, though their heads kept swivelling this way and that, keeping an eye out for danger, for ‘any changes’, as William overheard an officer warning them.

  A soldier placed a hand on Jacob’s shoulder and coaxed him out of the back of the ambulance. And that was William’s final sight of Kahukura—Jacob being led away by several people, all handling him gently.

  The paramedics wanted William to lie down, so he did. One of them opened his shirt and taped sensors to him, then fiddled with a monitor. He heard a clunk as someone closed the ambulance doors.

  After that he minded the curves of the road—the turn out the gate into Bypass Road, several more long curves, and then the roundabout where Bypass, Beach, and Peninsula Roads intersected. The ambulance climbed the bluff, was briefly level on its summit, and then it went on down.

  In hindsight it was clear to William what had happened. And if he’d been there when she had arrived at the spa he believed he would have been able to read Sam’s blunt determination. He would have guessed what she meant to do—and still he would have fought, against her wishes, and his own interests, and against the world, to keep her alive.

  William imagined Sam, where she was now, swallowed by the monster, and in stasis, pinning it in place, her stopped self indigestible, and impossible to spit out.

  Theresa was gathered up by her own people—the police. ‘We may not be in charge,’ said one, ‘but we made a pretty good case for taking care of you ourselves.’

  She found herself seated between two colleagues in the back seat of a big Toyota utility. ‘Sorry it’s scruffy,’ the driver said, ‘but it was the biggest vehicle we had on hand at the eastern limit of the Zone. And I guess it’s pretty good for travelling incognito.’

  There was a steel grille behind Theresa’s head. Through it she had a glimpse of a clawed plastic pad, where a police dog usually lay.

  Her colleagues knew better than to keep talking to her. But they did answer her occasional questions.

  ‘Was there a gun trained on me there at the end?’

  ‘That’s why Bub Lanagan jumped on you. He signalled them not to shoot.’

  ‘Has anyone explained?’

  ‘What you were doing? There was some explanation. So far it doesn’t make much sense. But don’t trouble yourself. It’s early days yet.’

  Someone patted her hand.

  ‘Can I ride up in front?’

  They pulled over and let her out. The roadside was weirdly silent.

  She said, ‘Are there no birds?’

  ‘They’ll be back.’

  The sergeant from her station helped Theresa with her seatbelt and then took her place in the back. They continued on. Theresa watched the road unfold. She’d realised that she had been tired of all the old pictures. At last she could turn the page.

  There was a section of road just beyond the turnoff to the old Moutere Highway that had always made her happy whenever she was travelling along it out of Stoke. The road dropped down and there was a vista: fields, a windbreak of Lombardy poplar, everything gold and green, and composed. When the Toyota reached that bit of road, Theresa looked in her wing mirror; she looked back, then forward. Either way that corner was a karanga—farewell, welcome, farewell.

  Theresa began to pay attention again when the vehicle doubled back near the airport and crossed the railway tracks. The driver—a woman constable Theresa knew, but whose name had slipped her mind, saw her interest and began to explain. As Theresa could probably imagine there was one big base of operations. ‘But the place we’re taking you was set up some weeks ago to be ready for you all.’

  ‘Did you know?’ Theresa said, puzzled. How could anyone have known that they’d escape?

  ‘I think it was more an act of faith,’ said the sergeant.

  They turned onto the Monaco Peninsula.

  ‘It’s sufficiently isolated. And because it’s a narrow bit of land, it has a controllable perimeter,’ said the driver. ‘It’s close to the airport, and yet out of the way—to minimise its impact on the city.’

  They were speeding through a corridor made of traffic control barriers. Beyond them on the sloped lawn before the breakwater, and in the carpark of a faux-Elizabethan inn, Theresa spotted clusters of satellite dishes. There were people standing on the roofs of TV News vans. Long-barrelled cameras swivelled to follow the car.

  ‘Has the port been closed all this time?’ Theresa asked, thinking of the city.

  The driver said, ‘The port, the National Parks, Highway 60, fucking everything. You can’t imagine—’

  The driver was hushed by the sergeant.

  The car turned into the entrance of the Grande Mercure. Theresa had been to the hotel complex three years before, for a friend’s wedding. She remembered the immaculate enclosed greens, and tables set up under Mediterranean pepper trees, tables covered in white cloths and mounds of yellow-throated white orchids.

  They glided past gabled brick buildings—semi-detached cottages with mullioned windows, climbing roses, rough-hewn wooden doors and lintels.

  They slowed and entered a narrow lane between two rows of cottages. There was a checkpoint at the head of the lane, the only one on the whole journey—though Theresa had registered a mass of military vehicles immediately over the other side of Matarau Point.

  Once they were through the checkpoint, Theresa saw that the faultlessly groomed green she remembered was covered in generator trucks, and a vast tent with plastic flooring. A number of vehicles had pulled up inside the tent. The police vehicle coasted in, and was directed to a particular spot.

  And there they waited. Theresa’s hands found each other in her lap, and gripped hard. She looked out through the windscreen at people—too many people. Then she had a little jolt—and the sergeant looked at her, concerned.

  She had spotted Jacob. He was some distance off. The perspective of the tent was strange. The floor was made of blue matting, and its honeycomb pattern seemed to swarm whenever Theresa moved her gaze. The light filtering through the white PVC of the tent was so uniform that it confounded normal vision and made everything indistinct.

  Jacob was surrounded by his family. That must be them. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. They were in a kind of prayer huddle, only they hadn’t ‘left space for the energy’, as Theresa’s high school soccer coach had used to say. Jacob’s family were so intent on him that they’d made a spiral rather than a
circle. Those with the greatest claim were pressed bodily to him, the others winding in after them. As Theresa watched, the spiral closed like a valve, and Jacob was lost to her sight.

  She couldn’t see Oscar—who might be hidden somewhere in any of those screened bays to one side of the long space. But Bub and Belle were visible. They’d just climbed out of a black vehicle with a wide wheelbase—Theresa didn’t recognise what it was, because it looked so strange where it was. Bub and Belle’s escorts were directing them to different corners—to a group of around twelve people, a mix of Maori and Pakeha, and another smaller group, consisting of Belle’s mother and sister, who both looked like Belle, and a man, probably the sister’s husband. Theresa watched Bub and Belle refusing once again to be parted. They exchanged a look, then turned away to call to their families, who swooped, Bub’s lot jostling aside furniture and people to get to him.

  But once they reached the couple, their family members hesitated. They looked shy. Bub and Belle began their introductions—so that instead of being embraced themselves, they ended up at the centre of a lovely dance of handshake and hongi, hugs and kisses.

  Theresa realised that her colleagues were detaining her. They were trying to explain something. Someone said, ‘Your mother and sister are here,’ then added a ‘but’. Theresa heard the ‘but’, and went deaf. She thought she was being prepared for bad news.

  But then Theresa caught sight of them. Her sister was standing, fidgeting, and shifting her weight from foot to foot. Her mother was a little further off, sitting on a folding chair, holding a cup of tea, and conversing with an attentive attendant—a uniformed police officer. Her mother looked unflustered.

  The sergeant said, ‘Oh good. Here he is.’

  Someone opened Theresa’s door and helped her out. Theresa recognised the pleasant, freckled face of the head of the Police Association—her union. They had only kept her so that he could have a word.