by Baker Chris
Halfway to Brian’s place, five dogs came barrelling out of a driveway, not barking till they were nearly on the two men. Sean and Brian were both knocked over. They didn’t have time to raise their shotguns before they had snapping snarling dogs right in their faces. Sean was on his back with a rottie by the neck, losing the fight to keep the hundred-pound beast away from his throat when he remembered his new knife.
‘Use your knife, mate!’ he yelled as he detached a hand and grabbed for his, hoping it wouldn’t stick in the sheath and give the rottie time to get its teeth into him. He pulled the knife free and stuck the dog under its left leg, the blade sliding between its ribs just as its teeth closed on his neck. He struggled to heave it off as it convulsed and a great gout of blood splashed on the footpath and up into his face.
Back on his feet, shaking and unsteady, he saw Hamu had two dogs on him, one on either side, darting and tearing. He kicked one in the balls as hard as he could and left Hamu to deal to the other while he turned to Brian.
His friend was getting bad trouble from the other two dogs, one of them hanging off his forearm while he held the throat of the other. Sean cut the first dog’s throat and stuck the second beast the same way as his rottie. He turned back to Hamu. The dog was panting and bleeding while his attacker had joined his mate who was yelping and hobbling up the road. He could see one of Hamu’s ears was badly torn. Legs gone all rubbery he sat down on the kerb, Brian beside him. Hamu stalked and growled around the three corpses lying in the road. Brian spoke first.
‘I think my arm’s broken.’ Sean looked at him, clothes torn and bloody, cradling his chewed limb.
‘You look like shit too.’
It must have sounded normal, like Brian’s reply.
‘Yeah, well, you’re no fucking oil painting yourself.’
As they grinned at each other, a middle-aged woman and two teenage boys came rushing towards them down the drive, calling out ‘Are you okay?’ like they’d just had an accident or fallen off a pushbike. Sean shook his head and asked himself if the apparition was for real.
‘Come up to the house, we’ll get you cleaned up,’ the woman said. She looked at the dead dogs and shuddered. ‘They’ve had us trapped in here for four days. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come along.’
She looked at Sean and burst into tears. One boy reached for her hand. The other glanced in her direction and then at the dead rottie. Sean moved to the woman, put his arms around her and started talking the sort of soothing nonsense he’d become used to talking to a hurt child. She clung to him sobbing, while he patted and stroked and tried to reassure her. He wasn’t sure how well it worked for her, but it did wonders for him. She was warm and soft and she smelled good. Sean was instantly in the old familiar role of comforting somebody, his own fears and inadequacies put conveniently to one side. After a while she pulled away and looked at him, a faint shame and a massive relief showing.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘All this has been just awful. I haven’t known if I was awake or having a nightmare.’ The relief on her face intensified. ‘I thought we might have been the only ones left.’
Suddenly Sean’s tiny store of confidence vanished. Here were people alive and his thoughts and feelings went tumbling about like flood-borne debris. He mumbled and shuffled, and it was Brian who stepped forward and spoke.
‘I think my arm’s broken. We could use a bit of help.’ Without waiting for an answer he started walking up the drive.
Marie, that was her name, had a gas bottle hooked up and she heated some water on the stove. She’d been able to cook, she said. Pasta and tins of soup she’d found in the cupboards. It wasn’t her house. Chased by the dogs she’d run in there with the two boys.
‘It was horrible,’ Marie said. ‘The two old people in here were dead and we had to drag them outside.’ Bet that was a nice job, Sean was thinking, when Marie spoke again. ‘We had to listen to the dogs eating them. Disgusting.’
‘What’s with the boy who won’t talk?’ Sean asked. ‘Shock?’
‘Something like that,’ Marie said. ‘He hasn’t spoken since I found him.’ Sean looked at the boy. He had the thousand-yard stare Sean had sometimes seen on accident victims when working as a journalist.
‘I found him at the mall. He won’t look at me but I know he hears me. He was helping me carry some food when we found Kevin.’ She indicated the other boy with a nod. He gave a wary half-smile. ‘But we had to drop the food when the dogs chased us in here.’
Sean looked at the silent boy. He was eating from a bag of lollies. Sean tried talking to him.
‘E pehea ana koe, e tama?’ he said. The boy gave him a quick and piercing glance, then, while Sean watched, his eyes glazed over and the faraway look returned.
‘His name’s Hemi,’ Marie said. ‘Kevin knew him at school.’
They had no way of telling if Brian’s arm was broken. Marie bandaged it with a torn-up sheet and a splint cut out of some plywood they found in the garage. Sean lost himself in the activity, the lunatic edge of some of the panic and despair he could feel buzzing around like a swarm of wasps fading and receding. Marie found disinfectant in the medicine cabinet, cleaned up both men, and gave them a stern warning about infection.
‘It’s gloomy in here,’ she said in the half-dark kitchen. ‘And by the way, keep any cuts or scratches clean. No antibiotics now.’ She turned around to Hamu who was watching them, unconcerned. ‘What about that dog’s ear?’
Sean took a close look at the dog. Hamu needed cleaning up and stitching. They did the business on the kitchen table, Kevin and Hemi holding him while Marie and Sean handled the repairs. Hamu’s struggles and yelps mixed with Sean’s memories of an old film about the Crimean War. He could see the dog was completely bemused by being up on the holiest of holies and as soon as they finished he dived underneath, peering out at everyone like they were strange and not to be trusted.
By then they were all looking at each other like they were a bit strange. It seemed to Sean like they’d dressed all the wounds and with nothing else to do immersed themselves again in their personal nightmares. As soon as he saw what was happening he moved to restore whatever equilibrium they’d been able to achieve.
‘How about some food?’ he said. ‘You guys got any left?’
They did. Pasta and soup.
‘This is great,’ said Sean. ‘Bet those guys at the Last Supper would like to be here. It’s another bundle of laughs.’ Marie gave a faint and dutiful smile.
The light faded while they ate, and they cleared and washed up by candlelight. Sean was used to the dim flickering light, but the stink leaking through the closed doors and windows was disturbing. They all but clung to each other, their solidarity unspoken and their big fear forming: What if there’s just us?
When it was completely dark outside they moved into the lounge, into the luxury of soft armchairs and a couch. They had a mug of black tea each. A candle burned in a willow-pattern cup on the coffee table in the middle of the room, and a National Geographic stood out against the black Warehouse finish. The two boys sat either side of Sean on the couch. Brian leaned back in an armchair in the shadows on the other side of the room, his eyes glazed from the painkillers he’d been chewing. The moon was rising, its pale light soft on the eyes and bright enough to see by.
‘Tell us your story,’ Brian said to Marie. There was a long silence. Sean and Brian watched her recalling something painful.
‘My husband’s dead. He was a bastard. He used to get drunk, come home late and thump me. I’d spit in his food and worse. I thought I hated his guts and I just don’t understand why I miss him.’
‘What happened after he died?’ Sean asked. The talk felt comforting despite its dreadful content.
‘I dragged him out to the shed after I recovered,’ she said. ‘Then I went looking for food. That’s when I found these two.’ She looked lovingly at Kevin and Hemi. ‘I’ve got a son and a daughter in Auckland, but I don’t
expect I’ll hear from them.’ They all sat in the candlelight thinking of their lost families. Kevin nodded off, falling bonelessly against Sean. Hemi watched while they laid him on the couch and Marie covered him with a blanket.
‘What about you two?’ asked Marie. She listened horrified to the tale of the cremation and burial of their families.
‘There might be others,’ she said. ‘People trapped like us by dogs. Could you stand looking for them? Calling out? Walking around?’
‘Nothing better to do,’ joked Brian. He sounded slurred from the painkillers and Sean suddenly wished he had some dak.
He needed to shift the awful reality he could see was hitting each person in the room, anything to give him a break from the bad dream. Any shred of normality was welcome while they tried to cope with the deaths of their families and the stench, foul and horrid. Dead people were all around. Dogs were trying to kill them. There was no power. No lights. Soon, he thought, no running water or sewerage. Cars weren’t safe either. What if one broke down or ran out of gas? What about disease and infection? Who was left anyway? How would they find them?
But at least they’d survived and they’d found each other. If they did discover anyone else maybe they’d be right around the twist with shock and horror, unable to live with what had happened. Sean had a sudden flash of them as extras in an ‘after-the-Bomb’ movie, all gone a bit weird. But this morning there had been only him. Now there were five of them, and things felt more possible.
That night they bedded down on the lounge floor. Sean lay awake for several hours, trying not to think of all the dangers they faced, and, when that failed, trying to see what they could do about them.
4
THEY WERE A COLOURFUL CARAVAN through the deserted streets to Brian’s place. Kevin led the procession. He was pulling a golf trundler carrying the gas bottle. He would have blended in a crowd but he stood out now, with jeans, sneakers, a blue hooded sweatshirt with STEINLAGER on the front and NGAHERE TAVERN on the back. He had a wire-haired terrier, teenage boy look, all disproportionate features waiting to grow into an adult shape, and a prickly vulnerability that made some people feel protective and others send a fax to the Listener. Or ‘used to’, Sean thought to himself. New rules applied now.
Hemi wasn’t saying anything and Sean could see he still looked away to a distant horizon. He was helping Marie with her pushchair-load of blankets, cans of food and other things like candles, soap, batteries and a big pot Brian thought they might need. He was dressed all in black — baggy jeans, a nylon jacket with PENRITH PANTHERS on the back, an unadorned peaked cap on backwards, and on his feet a pair of expensive sneakers.
Sean could tell Marie was excited, frightened but perky, like a person on holiday, going somewhere new. She also wore jeans and sneakers, and over a shirt and jumper, a woollen coat she’d found behind the door of the house they’d just vacated. Her purposeful stride and eager air were quite at odds with the noxious atmosphere that grew thicker as the sun got higher and the day warmed.
‘You look like a bag lady,’ Brian told her and she laughed, the sound loud and shocking in the empty street.
‘Maybe I should have brought a shopping trolley home,’ she said.
Brian’s jeans and check shirt were still torn and bloodied from the dog attack. His left arm was in a sling. He had some packets of rice and pasta in a shoulder bag and he carried his shotgun in his right hand. He had a crab-like walk and crazy stare. One arm or not, Sean wouldn’t have bet much on the chances of anything that attacked.
Hamu was frisky and alert. He seemed eager for new adventures, but nervous about the prospect of more surprises. His ear looked okay, probably in better repair than Sean’s gear. Sean looked like he’d been sleeping in the pig-fern for a week. A quick glance in a mirror that morning had shown him a crop of whiskers about two stages beyond designer stubble. Like the others, he was wearing, beneath an air of bravado, a dark and haunted look around the eyes. He carried his shotgun, a knife on his belt, the ammunition in a shoulder bag. He thought of Kosovo and East Timor where death and disaster had become commonplace. He wondered briefly how things were in the rest of the world.
But thoughts of other countries were soon displaced by the smell of death around them and the nightmare they just couldn’t get away from. It didn’t matter how he breathed either, deep and even, or shallow and panting. He resolved to take up smoking again — anything to combat the stink. ‘No health in it,’ as his Irish grandmother would have said.
Everyone looked around as they walked along, wondering what other shocks were in store. Then a cry from one of the houses they were passing stopped them in mid-stride. Sean tensed. Watch it, he thought. You’ll get wasted by something you don’t expect.
He looked to his left. Out of a drive came a little girl in a frilly dress, accompanied by one of those big lollopy English gun dogs, all dribble and bounce.
‘Are you real?’ she said. ‘Or did we dream you?’
‘We’re real, okay,’ said Brian, the first to recover. ‘You’re not dreaming.’
She looked at him in distaste.
‘You’ve got blood on you. Your shirt’s torn.... Everyone’s dead. Rex and I haven’t got any food left. Where are you going? Can I come with you?’
‘Certainly you can, dear,’ said Marie. But before anyone could move, Hemi detached himself from the pushchair handle and moved to the little girl. He didn’t say anything and she took his hand.
‘My name’s Cally,’ she said. ‘You’re Hemi, aren’t you?’ Silence. ‘I’ll call you Charlie.’
Then Hemi spoke, his voice scratchy with disuse. ‘Yeah, I’m Hemi. Pleased to meet you, Cally.’
They all looked at each other. None of them, not even Marie, had heard Hemi speak. And how did the little girl know his name? Cally smiled at him.
‘And I’m pleased to meet you too,’ she said. ‘I’m nine years old and I’d like to be your friend.’
‘We’re friends,’ said Hemi. ‘I dreamed about you.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I dreamed about you too. You’re supposed to be taller.’
The two of them stared at each other, still holding hands, while the rest of the party stood mute, wondering what was happening. Finally Brian spoke.
‘Do you mind if we go up to your house, Cally? We can pick up things you might want to bring.’
‘No, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘But everyone’s dead. It isn’t very nice.’
Hamu and Rex sniffed and circled warily as they walked up the drive and in by the back door. They found Cally’s parents in their room, the door shut. The stench seemed to bother Cally a lot less than the others. She led the way to her room and Marie found a bag for some of the clothes from her dresser. The walls were covered with paintings. If they’d been framed in a gallery Sean would never have believed they’d been done by a nine-year-old girl.
There were knowing-looking animals, cats and dogs mostly, playing among trees and flowers, sometimes under a bright yellow sun and sometimes a monochrome moon with the face of a young girl. There were pictures of what at first Sean took to be Asian jungle, but a familiarity, at once disturbing and comforting, brought into focus ponga ferns and large-leaf puka. Flying around were brightly coloured kaka, and in the undergrowth strange, misshapen little creatures grinned and gesticulated.
Pinned on the back of the door was a picture of a watery-looking serpentine beast, with fins that might have been wings, big eyes and a mouthful of sharp teeth. Cally had used the cheapest of primary school poster colours, but the painting had a power and a depth that almost scared Sean. It did scare Hemi. He took one look and left the room.
‘That’s my taniwha,’ said Cally. ‘He looks after me.’
Hard-case taniwha, thought Sean, looking at the tiara and a three-strand necklace of large green and red stones that the beast was wearing.
‘He likes jewellery,’ she told Sean and Marie in a matter-of-fact way. ‘He likes pretty things.’
Sean didn’t know what to say. Cally’s paintings looked like pictures of real scenes, not the products of her imagination. He had the feeling she’d been there, dancing with the animals, at home in the jungle while the wild birds swooped through the trees.
‘Who are these guys?’ he asked, pointing to the little creatures in the undergrowth.
‘They’re the Maeroero,’ she said. ‘Kati ra, kati ra!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘It’s what they keep saying. I think it’s "that’s enough, that’s enough." They get upset about a lot of things.’
Sean smiled at Cally. ‘I don’t blame them,’ he said. He took another look at the creatures. They seemed familiar.
‘Bring your pictures,’ he said to Cally. ‘Your paints too.’ Sean was thinking more in terms of therapy than anything else, but as Cally rolled and banded her work and swept her paints into a plastic shopping bag, he had a sudden suspicion that maybe this little girl had a lot to say to people about what had happened.
On the way out they found her brother in the sleepout, buzzing and stinking. Cally stood looking at him.
‘I wish he was still alive,’ she said sadly, then almost as an afterthought, ‘He laughed at my taniwha.’ She picked up her bike and put her bag in the basket. ‘I’m ready,’ she said, and without a backward glance led the way down the drive.
Sean watched her go, like she was off to a party in her frilly white dress, Hemi on one side of her and Rex on the other. He wanted to ask her something but the question hovered just outside his awareness, intriguing and worrying.
Two streets away they found Edgar, an elderly man, sitting in a deckchair in his Victor Meldrew pyjamas, on the front lawn of his fibro bungalow.
‘I was waiting for the dogs,’ he told Sean quietly when nobody was listening. ‘What’s the point? Everyone’s dead. The power’s off. I can’t make a cup of tea. I haven’t even been able to go outside in case I get attacked.’
Sean looked at him, his head still full of Cally’s paintings, and his nostrils with the stink of rot.