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.’
br /> 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.
‘This is the All-Father,’ Belle said. ‘He’s fathered fifty chicks and he’s so old we don’t even know how old he is.’ Belle ripped open a bag of feed and the All-Father woke up. He partly opened his wide green wings and dropped down onto the lip of the trough. He landed clumsily, but not hard, his weight incommensurate with his bulk. He sidled back and forth along the trough as Belle lifted the hopper’s lid and shook the feed into it. Now and then the bird opened his hooked beak and nipped Belle’s vest. ‘Watch it,’ Belle said to him. The kakapo made a few deep rattling remarks in reply, then put his whiskery face down into the pellets. Belle rested one hand lightly on his back for a moment. Jacob would have liked to do that too; the bird’s feathers looked thick, springy, and alive.
They went back down the hill. Belle returned the sack of feed to the shed.
‘Have you got plenty?’ Jacob asked as she was locking up.
‘Yes. Why?’
Jacob didn’t answer, but she read his expression. ‘Are we really stuck?’
‘I don’t know. But if anyone could come in they would have by now.’
‘We’re not supposed to think too far ahead,’ Sam said. ‘We’re only supposed to help Mrs McNeal and her daughter.’
Belle straddled her quad bike. ‘Who wants to ride and who want to follow?’
There was a way up through the meadow and along one edge of the old arboretum, the collection of exotic trees planted by Richard Stanislaw, a nineteenth-century runholder whose twelve-bedroom homestead formed the core of the spa. There were times when the going was steep, especially on the trip back down, when Jacob and Sam waded through ferns while holding Kate steady on the back of the bike. Kate rode side-saddle—the only position her hips could manage. Holly scrambled after them. Holly was near collapse when they finally reached the spa in the early afternoon—scratched, bleeding, trembling with exhaustion, less from the walk than the effort of suppressing her anxiety since noon the day before. Jacob carried Kate into the spa past the sheeted shapes that lay in a row on its terrace. He put her down in one of the armchairs in the double-height glass atrium.
When William and Bub arrived at the spa they went from room to room checking for signs of life. They found three yellowed, pitted corpses in the greasy-walled sauna. And two more in one of the treatment rooms, one whose head was a pomander pierced by a dozen scissors and nail files, the other with her face encased in plastic wrap—its box still clutched in her cyanotic hands. They found the manager in his office, dead on his feet, with the top of his smashed skull pressed into a bull’s-eye of blood on his office wall.
It was in the manager’s office that William picked up a ruled pad and began to make notes. He wrote down where each victim was found, how he thought they’d died, and who they were—easy in the case of the staff, who were wearing name tags.
Bub asked William, ‘How can you be so clinical?’ And William replied that this wasn’t his first dwelling full of dead people.
After they’d been at the Spa about forty minutes, Warren turned up with Dan and Oscar.
As soon as they came into the lobby Dan spotted the smears of blood on the floor. He grabbed Oscar and turned the boy towards him. Dan was a dad himself—though of younger children—and it was his instinct to press Oscar’s face into his chest, to enfold and blind him. But Oscar was so tall that Dan was only able to set his hands against the boy’s temples. He made blinkers. ‘Don’t look,’ he said.
Oscar stayed obediently still, eyes wide and nostrils flaring.
William came out of the manager’s office. ‘The Business Centre is uncontaminated.’ He pointed the way.
Dan was impressed and rather reassured by the man’s use of ‘uncontaminated’. It made him sound like he’d found himself in similar situations before—crime scenes perhaps, Dan thought. Warren had talked about a police officer. But the police officer was a woman and not an American, Dan recalled.
‘The business centre is open for business,’ Oscar said, still wide-eyed.
Dan marched Oscar into the room and told him to stay put.
Oscar was still there hours later when someone finally remembered him and sent Holly to find him. She found him sitting staring at one of the computers and its error message—‘Server not found’—like, Holly said later, a cat waiting at a mouse hole. She introduced herself, and took the boy into the kitchen, where her mother was busy cutting onions and peeling potatoes for a stew they had underway.
Jacob climbed up onto the table in the conference room and prodded the swivelling halogens till their light converged on
the tabletop. He got down and spread a duvet and sheet over the table’s polished surface, then plugged in a desk lamp and set it on the table.
William helped Sam up, and eased her back against the sheet.
Jacob put on the plastic gloves he’d found in the spa’s beauty salon, and began to pick at the tapes on the edge of Sam’s bandage. Once he’d removed the last layer of gauze he winced at what he found underneath it. He lowered his head and peered till he felt the heat from the desk lamp on his scalp and smelled singed hair. He said, ‘Oh—darling,’ and studied Sam’s face. Surely this real show of sympathy would give her the cue she needed to cry. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I did it with scissors, I think,’ Sam said.
William said, ‘She said to me that she’d been told to get someone to change the dressing for her. So I thought maybe it happened before everything else. I mean, when there was still someone to tell her what to do.’
Jacob frowned at William and shook his head. He was pretty sure William had just stopped Sam telling her own story in her own words. He asked, ‘Did you do this to yourself before the Madness?’
‘I don’t remember doing it. And I think I did the same thing to other people.’
‘I think she was mad,’ William said.
‘She’s sane now, so let’s leave it at that.’ Jacob placed a square of cling film over the raw flesh and then put a packet of frozen peas on top of it. ‘I searched the spa, and found only a weak local anaesthetic,’ he explained. ‘So the best I can do is numb the place by making it cold. You’re going to have to be brave and hold very still. I have to join skin to skin for it to heal. It’s going to be a rough job, honey, and I’m sorry. But a plastic surgeon will be able to fix it for you properly once we get out.’
Sam blinked at him. She held still, breathing shallowly to minimise the movement of the icy packet on her chest.
‘I’m not going to start till those pills I gave you kick in.’
William wanted to know what kind of pills Jacob had given her.
‘Tramadol, and anti-inflammatories. I went through the guest’s rooms. Tomorrow I’ll search the pharmacy.’