‘And how will you tell the difference,’ William said, ‘between everyday Sam and stoned Sam?’
‘Don’t be an arsehole.’
William shrugged. ‘I wonder whether she’s the only exception to the Madness. Whether anyone else was crazy and came through it.’
‘You mean, are there people still out there, hiding from us, and horrified at themselves?’ He looked into Sam’s hazy eyes. ‘Why do you think you came through it, Sam?’
‘I went away,’ Sam said.
‘You went unconscious?’
‘Yes,’ Sam said. ‘I suppose I did that too.’
Jacob lifted the packet of peas and watched watery blood swimming under the plastic wrap. The sight of the wound made him want to weep with pity. ‘Okay. I’m going to start,’ he said. ‘I want you to slide your arms up over your head, so that your hands are by your ears. I’m going to ask William to hold down your arms and shoulders and I don’t want him standing in my light. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Sam said, and followed his instructions.
Jacob told William to put his elbows on her shoulders and take hold of her wrists.
William bent over Sam and pressed her arms down. ‘Look at me,’ he told her. She did, her gaze fearful and fascinated.
Jacob adjusted the light. He picked up tweezers and a sewing needle. He pinched the edge of the wound closed.
Sam pulled a sharp breath through her nose. The muscles in her jaw rippled. Her eyes filled with tears and the tears spilled down into the hair at her temples.
The locks on the doors of the spa’s bedrooms worked with swipe cards, and no one knew how to program the machine. But William found a card, in the pocket of a dead housekeeper, that seemed to open every door. He began opening them while Bub followed him to tape down the latches.
So far the only room in use was the one Curtis had commandeered to lay out his dead wife. William and Bub had secured that door first, working hurriedly, fumbling and hushed.
Some minutes later and several doors down, Bub was breaking off a length of tape while William kept his thumb on the steel wedge and the little light on the lock flashed at them angrily. In the middle of this fiddly task William said, ‘I’m not normally intimidated by other people’s grief.’
Bub didn’t respond. He pressed the gaffer tape to the latch while William wriggled his thumb free. Bub smoothed the tape, and air crackled in its folds.
Two doors on, Bub began to feel William’s silence. William was expecting a response. Bub bit his lip and stayed quiet, but the pressure eventually got to him. ‘Do you mean you expect to feel less upset?’
‘Nothing happened to me,’ William said.
‘You were covered in blood, man,’ Bub said. ‘So I’m guessing you either tried to stop someone from being killed, or to save someone badly injured. I had to throttle a guy. And then I found my friend George with his head in a deep fryer. You can’t say “Nothing happened to me”.’
‘But I’m not feeling it.’
‘You’re in shock.’
‘Are you?’
Bub thought about this. After a time he said, ‘Well, I guess I must be.’
William shook his head, but didn’t make any further remarks till they’d reached the end of the corridor and the door to the fire escape. Bub pushed it open and stepped outside. The night air was cool. He could hear barking. ‘Tomorrow I’m going to round up those dogs,’ he said.
William said, ‘The dogs didn’t go mad.’
‘Neither did the seagulls. What’s your point?’
‘Nerve gas would affect animals too. And what else could have done this?’
Bub stepped back indoors and waited for William to join him. William opened and closed the emergency exit several times to check it was working properly, then stood, his manicured fingers curled around the bar latch. ‘We witnessed other people’s mad behaviour, but we didn’t go mad. Don’t you want to know why?’
‘Look,’ Bub said. ‘I respect that you’re a thinker, but I’m going to go along with Theresa’s recommendation that, rather than analysing all the data, we make ourselves safe and comfortable. She’s right, you know. We should just batten down the hatches.’
William looked at Bub for a long moment, then said, ‘Unbelievable,’ and set off along the hallway.
Bub pursued him. For some reason he didn’t want this guy to think badly of him. ‘Do you want to be responsible?’ he said. ‘If Theresa calls the shots then she’s responsible.’
William rounded on him, but at that moment, the lights went out.
Downstairs someone shrieked.
The blackness made the hallway seem stuffy. Bub’s heart had split in two and was trying to bash its way out through his ears.
One of the women called out in a shaky voice, ‘Has anyone got a lighter? There are candles on these tables.’ Bub thought it sounded like the DOC worker, Belle. He’d last seen her sitting in the dining room.
After a moment the general blackness turned grainy, and William’s shape reappeared, black, against it. Someone downstairs had switched on a flashlight. Its beam was swooping about crazily.
‘That’s your responsible constable,’ William said.
William went towards the light, and Bub followed. They made their way back along the hallway past all the open doors. Bub collided with someone in the dark and yelped. It was Curtis, who had come out to see what was happening. ‘Stay put,’ Bub told him.
In the lobby Warren began shouting, demanding to know whether they were under attack. Theresa called for quiet. Bub and William reached the head of the stairs, and Theresa flung the beam of the torch up into their faces, dazzling them. But not before Bub had seen that her face was clenched with fear.
Curtis hadn’t stayed put. He spoke from behind Bub. ‘Constable Grey,’ he said. ‘Hold your light on the stairs and keep it steady.’
She did, and Curtis gave Bub a little push and said quietly, ‘We should all go down and join her.’
Everyone had crowded into the reception area—everyone but Sam, who was still in the conference room, oblivious and asleep.
The candles in the dining room were all alight, and Belle was carrying one in a glass tumbler. Its light made her round-cheeked face look sweetly cherubic.
Theresa drew her gun and used her torch to push the front doors open. She went out onto the terrace. The others followed.
The whole settlement was dark. Far off, across Tasman Bay, the lights of the small settlement of Glenduan glimmered, watery silver, above the rim of the horizon.
‘Maybe the officials have turned the power off,’ Curtis said. ‘I mean, whoever is in charge out there has decided that the No-Go is pulling power off the grid. That that’s how it works.’
‘Wouldn’t they know if it was?’ Theresa said. ‘Couldn’t they tell without leaving us in the dark?’
‘They’re probably desperate,’ Bub said.
‘And experimental,’ William added.
Then Dan appeared carrying a bottle and shot glasses. He set them up in a row on the rail of the veranda, and filled them. He passed a glass to Bub. Its sides were wet with spilled liquor.
William took a glass. ‘I can smell peat. That’s a good one.’
‘Laphroaig. Twelve years, it says,’ said Dan.
‘Booze and bravado,’ said Holly.
‘If it’s them they’ll soon realise cutting the power isn’t going to making any difference,’ Theresa said.
‘How do you know it isn’t?’ That was Warren. He took a whisky, slugged it back, and ran down the steps to the Captiva. Jacob darted after him shouting, ‘Sole! Do you really want to go on your own?’
‘I’ll just go nose the car into it,’ Warren said. ‘And if it’s down, I promise I’ll come back to tell you.’ With that, he drove off.
Behind Bub, William sai
d, softly, ‘I don’t know that I would.’
Theresa told them she’d follow Warren. She too promised to come back for them. She took her patrol car.
They waited. Bub sipped his whisky. Belle came out and took a glass. She went down to the lawn and stood looking up, her hair almost phosphorescent in the starlight. It was so dark the Milky Way was visible, a long skein of shining fleece stretched across the sky.
Someone lit a cigarette. Someone else asked the boy, Oscar, if he was okay. He said he was and, a moment later, Bub heard a tinny whisper of music leaking from his ear buds. It was a homely sound, but one that, under these circumstances, Bub found somehow objectionable. He decided to join Belle. He stood as near to her as he could without being obtrusive, and turned his face up to the heavens too. The stars were bright and far away. They were the big picture. They were everything already over. They were pretty and apparently tickled, apparently laughing in the distortions of the atmosphere.
‘Think big,’ Bub said, and made a sweeping gesture at the stars.
‘I’m thinking about my kakapo,’ Belle said. ‘They’re small. But sometimes small is big.’
Bub waited for her to go on.
‘I should have gone with Tre,’ she said. ‘I’m her friend and she’s got all this on her plate.’
Bub said he got that. He got that they were Theresa’s kakapo.
Belle gave a little laugh. ‘That’s right.’ Then, serious, ‘I guess certain kinds of people become police officers. I never thought about it before, but at some point Tre must have made a decision to take things on, and be someone people turn to in emergencies.’
Bub saw that the two cars were already making their way back along Bypass Road, carving a green corridor in the blackness, lighting up the trees. They arrived together and Warren got out, came up the steps and, without a word, resumed drinking. Theresa followed Warren, looked at everyone, and simply shook her head.
Theresa convinced almost everyone to try to sleep. To find a room—they were all empty—and a bed. Jacob chose to sit with Sam, who hadn’t stirred. William hunkered down at the head of the stairs, just behind Theresa, who’d posted herself there, on sentry duty. When she looked at him he said, ‘I’m keeping you company,’ then, overcome by a sense of mischief, ‘Or maybe I just don’t trust you to watch over me.’
‘You’re such a dick.’
William laughed.
After a little while Theresa said, ‘Do you have any idea what things are going to be like for us without electricity?’
‘So, now you’re asking me to take a look at our situation and think things through?’
Theresa turned to him, studied his face. Then, ‘Arsehole,’ she said, disgusted.
‘I’m trying to cheer you up,’ William said. ‘When the back wheels of this cataclysm roll over us, at least you’ll be able to think that it got me too.’
‘Why are you sitting here?’ Theresa demanded.
‘I can’t sleep.’
She made a dubious sound.
‘I bet you didn’t sleep last night, Constable Grey.’
‘I doubt any of us did.’
‘Sam did. And Lily. Dan said Oscar did. Holly said Kate did.’
‘I hate you,’ Theresa said. There were tears in her voice. ‘You’ve remembered everyone’s names.’
William slid down a couple of steps and put his arms around her. She tried to shake him off, then finally submitted to being held.
‘Let’s make a deal,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow your lead. I’ll be useful. And, for a time, we’ll see how that goes.’
Theresa was still. William could almost hear the cogs whirring in her head. Eventually she said, ‘Are you saying that you’ll let me be the leader?’
‘That’s right.’
Again she tried to shake him off—but, he noticed, not very hard for someone who must have been trained in how to get out of grips when grabbed. ‘They wouldn’t follow you!’ she said. ‘No one likes you!’
‘People mightn’t like me, but they’re always trying to please me.’
Theresa shivered. She stayed still in his arms. He suggested she try to sleep. He told her to relax, rest her head on his shoulder. ‘And we can present a united front to the open door.’
‘It’s open so I can see when the lights come on.’
‘They’ll come on in here too.’
‘I want to see them come on out there, in Kahukura.’
‘All right, Constable. But watched pots never boil. Close your eyes. I’ll stay awake and keep an eye out for all that stuff stories have made us expect—the blowing leaves, the lightning flashes, the shambling zombies.’
‘Jesus you can talk,’ Theresa said, and William thought he could detect some admiration in her exasperation. ‘Are you some kind of writer?’
‘I’m a lawyer. A trial lawyer.’
‘Right—A. Arsehole, Attorney at Law,’ Theresa said, then giggled.
Theresa’s hair smelled of smoke, and perhaps it was this that suggested a memory to the drowsy William. A memory that melted into a dream.
From Los Angeles all the way up to Monterey the sky was stained, as if it had hung for twenty years in a bar filled with cigarette smoke, or for 300 in a church full of candles. The fire behind Big Sur was still burning, and the Pacific Highway was closed. William was on his way back home—San Francisco—and didn’t want to take the detour inland to Paso Robles and the 101. Instead he followed the tour buses north to San Simeon, then went on past the colony of elephant seals, where the last few cars had stopped. After that he had the road to himself. He drove on between the sea and sudden hills with their aggregations of brown stone slopes, and tin beach shacks, and rusty remnants of small-scale coast industries—everything held together by white sage, its leaves damp and softened by sea mist. It was chilly on the coast, but as soon as William turned onto the last exit—the only way around the fire—it got hot. For every twenty feet he rose above the blue whey of water, it was another degree hotter. Nacimiento-Fergusson was open, but each time he came to a road leading into Ponderosa National Park, its entrance would be barred and locked, and posted with a sign saying, ‘Be warned.’
It was fifty miles of narrow winding road. William’s air-conditioning took care of him, but he did once touch the windscreen and snatched his hand back because it was burning hot. He went over the mountain, and came down a road so sunk in trees—live oaks and pines—that he had no views of the countryside. As the road dropped, the sunlight thinned, but didn’t pale. Instead, the splashes of sun on the road grew gradually more brilliantly orange, till finally William pulled off into a rest area and stepped out into hot silence, tangerine sunlight, and air full of drifting white ash. It looked like some hellish afterlife.
Out again on the flat he had only to watch for the turn he must take. He couldn’t tell from the map whether it was before or after Jolon. He kept thinking he was asleep. The country was all strange. There had been a back-burn, and one side of the road had foaming yellow grass and oaks in green, while the other was scorched and balding, the trees alive but dirtied with soot from below.
From the map he knew he was near Fort Liggett, and, in the burned fields, he saw shelters with gun slits, and a tank, stained by smoke but otherwise unperturbed. There was the road, and there were people’s things—though they all looked left over. He was alone. He kept driving, and kept on being alone.
Finally he reached a checkpoint manned by state troopers and national guardsmen. They were all huddled in a deep gateway erected over the road, an aluminium frame hung with heavy sheets of clear plastic. William slowed at this gate, and let his window down. He drove through a curtain of icy air. There was another vehicle within the gate, the first he’d seen in an hour, a UPS van, facing the way he’d come. A trooper was writing down the details of the UPS driver’s licence, and explaining something about looters, and Big Su
r’s three thousand empty houses.
William found his licence, and stepped out of the car. The sky to the northwest was white and bruise brown. A guardsman beckoned him further into the glassy obscurity of the tent. ‘Come in out of the heat, Sir,’ he said. ‘It’s nice and cold in here.’
There was a phone ringing—the happy fanfare of the Nokia ringtone.
Theresa pulled out of William’s arms so fast he almost tumbled down the stairs after her. It was dawn outside, and the lights were burning in the atrium. The power was back on.
Theresa paused only a moment indoors, then rushed out onto the veranda, following the sound of the phone. Her lips were pressed shut and William knew that, if she weren’t listening so intently in order to find the phone, she might be sobbing with relief.
Lily arrived. Then Bub and Jacob. They all stood very still, only swivelling their heads to locate the sound. Lily had her own phone out and was peering at it, puzzled.
The phone continued to chime.
‘It’s been dropped out here somewhere,’ Theresa said.
They began to search the grounds. Before long others joined them—everyone except Kate and Sam.
It was Belle who called an end to their search. She gave a shout—and they all rushed towards her before registering that her shout was one of despair. She was doubled over, as though someone had kicked her in the stomach. She was keening at the ground, then, as they joined her, she began to laugh too, wild and hysterical.
‘Belle, be quiet,’ Theresa said, because the phone was still ringing, and so close now. She began to search the ground near Belle’s feet. ‘We must be right on top of it,’ she said. Then again, ‘Shut up, Belle!’
Belle straightened and pointed. Up.
And there, over their heads, in the branches of the jacaranda, was a bird—a bird of a kind clearly familiar to everyone, though William hadn’t seen one before. It was iridescent black, with a little bunched cravat of white on its throat; and it was gaily, flawlessly imitating the Nokia ring.
They all watched it awhile. No one disturbed it. No one threw a stone. No one said anything either. The gathered people simply drifted apart. They moved away from under the tree, some staggering, oblivious to one another.