Wake (17 page)

William looked in horror, then mercifully remembered then that no one had suffered long; how, after that first hour, everyone who wasn't killed had simply keeled over as if at a signal.
A signal
, he thought, and his brain started up again. He recommenced thinking where he'd left off three weeks before, when they'd embarked on the urgent and reasonable task of taking care of the dead.

The black man was carefully prying a body free. He handled it gingerly and gently.

‘You probably shouldn't be doing that with bare hands,' Bub said, and then, when he didn't get a reaction, he went out and found a pair of rubber gloves and offered them to the man. The man laid the little body down on the piled toys, and pulled the gloves on.

Back at the spa the others did what they always did at the end of each day: they trooped into the industrial laundry and stripped. Holly used tongs to lift their overalls and masks into the washing machines. She set about rinsing their gloves. They put on the spa's thick white towelling robes and picked their way through rain puddles to the side door. They went to their rooms and showered, soaked, shampooed, showered some more. They washed the menthol rub from their raw nostrils, then went downstairs and poured themselves drinks. Except Theresa, who went straight to bed, flanked by a hot water bottle, and the big labradoodle.

Oscar posted himself at the foot of the stairs. When Belle appeared he followed her into the dining room, talking. ‘You're back early. What's up? Warren is wasted, and Theresa looks squashed flat. Sam came in from feeding cats then went out to the garden—she's still out there, floating about. Where are the other guys?'

Kate came to the door of the dining room and said that dinner was ready—then went to the foot of the stairs to call.

Oscar followed Belle into the dining room and pulled out a chair for her.

She said, ‘Bub, William and Jacob are doing what, with any luck, will be the last horrible job. Don't crowd them when they come in.'

‘Am I what passes for a crowd around here?' Oscar felt he was being fobbed off. The adults were all forming shells. There were times now when they wouldn't just postpone talking to him; they'd not even meet his eyes.

It was after midnight when the men returned. Oscar was on the veranda, waiting for them, eager to count them all in, like bombers after a raid. Holly had waited up to wash their clothes, Belle to serve them dinner. And Sam was just there, in the shadowy atrium, awake, and sometimes spinning to inaudible music.

When the headlights of the Holden showed on the driveway, Oscar hurried out, for it was his job to hose down the ute. He uncoiled the hose, but the men got out of the cab and stayed, leaning on the side of the tray in a way that made Oscar think, for an icy moment, that they were hiding something there.

‘Sorry we're late,' Jacob said, nonsensically.

‘That's okay,' said Oscar, and continued to wait for them to move.

Bub said to Jacob and William, ‘No one else needs to know what happened to those kids. We've buried them—okay?—and we can burn the building down.'

‘What happened to them?' Oscar asked, but they wouldn't even look at him. ‘Hang on, are you talking about that daycare centre? I thought there weren't any kids there.'

Jacob continued to ignore Oscar and said to Bub, ‘If anyone asks we can make stuff up.'

Belle came down the steps and told them to please come in out of the cold. She tried to take Bub's hand, but he drew away from her. ‘Don't touch me. I'm covered in filth.'

‘Was it bad after all?' Belle asked. Then, when she got no answer, ‘For heaven's sake, come indoors.'

Jacob slogged off in the direction of the laundry and, after a moment, the other two followed, Bub stumbling with tiredness.

By the time they'd stripped and wrapped themselves in robes they were docile, and half asleep. They went upstairs, showered, and Bub went straight to bed. Jacob and William reappeared and sat in the dining room, and Holly served them. She spooned chilli into bowls and passed them buttered wedges of cornbread. Jacob's hands were shaking. ‘It's just as well this is spoon food,' he said, and smiled at Holly.

Oscar went into the kitchen to make coffee. The espresso machine was off, but there was a six-cup Moka on the back of the stove.

Belle came in with dishes. She said, ‘Perhaps I should get into bed beside Bub tonight.'

Oscar's ears began to burn.

Belle went on, musing. ‘This isn't just exhaustion. He's climbing inside himself. Theresa's coming down with something, but her spirit isn't going to break. She'll get sick for a bit and we'll make her stay in bed. Bub isn't going to get sick. He's too tough for that. Instead he's going to go all remote, and we can't have that.'

‘Whereas it's perfectly all right for Lily to be doing laps of the bypass, rain or shine?' said Oscar.

‘Staying in shape is Lily's bottom line—it was
before
all this.'

Oscar asked Belle what her bottom line was.

‘My kakapo. They're eight per cent of all the kakapo in the world.'

Oscar filled a milk jug and grabbed a handful of paper sugar straws. He looked around for a tray and asked Belle if she knew where Holly was keeping them now. ‘She keeps reorganising stuff. It's a nervous thing, I guess, but I worry about it. If you were here all day like I am you'd be worrying about it too.'

‘People have different ways of coping,' Belle said, then went back to what was on her mind. ‘So—do you think I should climb into bed with Bub?'

‘Um—yes,' said Oscar. He didn't want to discourage anyone from asking his opinion.

Belle relaxed, then said, ‘Last time I looked the trays were in that skinny cupboard by the dishwasher.'

Once they were back in the dining room and Oscar was pouring coffee, Belle said, ‘You should hit the sack, Oscar.'

He went off, walking backwards, saying he'd be up early and he'd see them at breakfast.

As Oscar climbed the stairs William called out after him, ‘We're sleeping in.'

‘Quick save,' said Jacob.

Belle realised that William and Jacob had been making a pretence of having recovered their spirits. She could see the strain of it in their eyes.

Jacob pulled her down into the chair beside him.

Holly had begun to clear away. William invited her to sit too, then, when she misinterpreted his invitation as politeness and shook her head, he said, ‘Sit
down
, Holly.'

Holly looked put-upon, but pulled out a chair and perched.

Jacob told them that Bub's firefighter had finally appeared. ‘He turned up at the daycare centre, and helped us, and then once we'd packed them all in the motel pool, he removed his gloves and walked away.'

Belle sat still, feeling the aftershocks of ‘packed them all in'. Jacob hadn't volunteered any information about what they'd found at the daycare centre—apart from Bub's firefighter.

‘I asked him whether he wanted to join us,' Jacob said. ‘He listened, and then went on his way. Bub followed him, and apparently he's living on Bub's boat. Bub's been too busy to notice what's going on with his boat.
Champion
is the only sizeable vessel anchored out there, and I guess it's a safe place to choose to live if you're someone who's decided to keep himself apart.' Jacob stopped to catch his breath. His speech had accelerated steadily while he was telling his story. ‘Even if I couldn't speak English I'd still be here, bunking up,' he said. ‘I don't understand why he's avoiding us.'

‘Curtis avoids us,' Holly said.

‘It's not the same.'

Belle suggested that maybe the man was a deaf mute. Then she said, ‘Sorry. That's a bit feeble.'

Jacob said, ‘He looked at us whenever we spoke to him. He was listening. Only he didn't answer.' Jacob couldn't seem to stop shaking. His teeth were chattering. William put an arm around his shoulders and leaned into him. He said, ‘Did you see fear when you looked at him?'

Jacob shook his head.

‘Horror? Hysteria? Any kind of evasiveness?'

‘No. He just didn't talk.'

William said, ‘That's right. He gave us a little ration of his attention. He helped us as if he was taking pity on us after having judged our efforts to be truly determined and sincere. He handled the little corpses as if he'd handled little corpses before. He came down from his mountain with its icy, airy summit still shining in his face, and helped us.'

Jacob was nodding. His expression was a mix of distress and gratitude.

Holly frowned furiously for a moment, then her face cleared. ‘Maybe he's from some war-torn country and he's been plunged into some kind of
state
by all the bodies. What's it called? Post-Traumatic Disorder?'

William looked at Holly. ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Actually, that's plausible. And here was me thinking I'd found someone to blame.'

From the doorway to the shadowy atrium Sam said, ‘I have to go.'

Everyone looked at her.

‘Where do you have to go, sweetie?' Belle asked.

William got up. ‘Well,
I'm
going to bed. So you can join me.' He scooped Sam up and walked away.

Jacob was quiet for a moment, apart from the chattering of his teeth. Then he said, ‘By the way, how do we feel about that?'

‘William and Sam?' Belle said.

Jacob nodded, and looked from her to Holly.

Belle bridled. ‘Just because we're female that doesn't automatically mean we
get
what Sam's doing.'

‘Or that we're any more qualified than you are to interfere,' Holly added, primly.

‘But when did it start?'

Belle shrugged. ‘He was always kind of proprietary about her.'

‘Why don't you try talking to William about it? Since you're so concerned,' Holly said.

‘He's my mate,' Jacob said. ‘He's a great guy—in his own way.'

Belle said, ‘He's your mate so you
won't
talk to him?'

‘It's William that needs the talking to, Jacob, not Sam,' Holly said. ‘Sam is—what do they say these days—intellectually challenged?'

‘I guess
I
could take care of it,' Belle said, in the interests of peace.

‘Thank you,' Jacob said.

William told Sam he just wanted her warmth. She could keep her clothes on, but would she please clean her teeth.

Sam went into the bathroom. William took off his robe and got into bed. His dinner was repeating on him. He wondered whether he'd be able to keep it down. The food was just matter—like other matter. Kate was an old-fashioned cook. She made casseroles and stews, and William was off wet food. Or—it would be better if she used more chilli. Tonight he'd been able to taste the mince. The meat.

William threw off the covers, hurried to the bathroom, pushed past Sam and dropped onto his knees over the toilet bowl. Everything came out. The vomit had an undertone of decay, as if the air that had surrounded him all day had seeped right inside him and impregnated his digestive juices.

He got up, flushed the toilet and cleaned his teeth again, then scrubbed his tongue and the lining of his cheeks.

William was sure that everyone else involved had undertaken the burials because it was the right thing to do, and because they'd just moved by degrees into the task. Of course Adele Haines must have a funeral. Of course Warren's Aunt Winnie must. Of course they must lay to rest Bub's friend George, and Oscar's friend Evan, and Kate's fellow rest home residents. It was the right thing to do, and they'd all gone on doing the right thing.

For the first couple of weeks Theresa had even clung to her belief that the satellites could see what they were doing, and they must therefore be mindful of what those people thought of them. She went on imagining they were being watched and judged—as if, for her, the satellites were surrogates for God.

Theresa's persistence wasn't entirely unreasonable. Over the weeks the No-Go had continued to thicken. The horizon had vanished as though clear oil was rising there, roiling, so that when the sun was low in the sky the laminar movement of the transparent barrier would interrupt its light, sometimes magnifying it, sometimes making it dim. It had been a while since they'd seen the sun as a point of light. When it descended the sky it showed rather as a cloud of melting fire. Yet, on clear nights, the stars at the zenith were visible, a little blurred, but each one discrete. And Theresa's satellites were still apparent, passing over.

William had done his part, but never as a demonstration of goodness. He was a pessimist. When he wrapped and buried bodies he was only cleaning a house he had to live in. They'd finally finished the job. Shouldn't he feel better? Relieved? Acquitted? He was clean, so why did he feel dirty? He was alive, so why did he feel dead?

William got back in bed and hauled Sam into the curve of his body. He held her tight, pressed her buttocks into his belly, thigh and groin. He dug his fingertips into her upper arms. He wanted to crush her body into his own, to dilute himself with her, and be dim and absent like her.

Sam whimpered, a tiny bitten back sound.

William said, ‘Do you let me do this because you're trying to help me?' He didn't hear her answer. His ears were full of a black buzzing. Then he heard her ask a question. ‘Who did it?' Sam said. ‘Who did bad things to the children in the daycare centre?'

‘There were two adults by the back fence. Teachers, I guess. They had clawed their way out to the edge of the property. Their feet were—'

‘Were what?' said Sam. He didn't reply and, after a moment, she said, ‘I really do have to go.'

‘No. Stay here with me.' William leaned up over her. He brushed back her glossy hair and cupped one smooth cheek. Sam's eyes were troubled and puzzled—the person there inoffensive, but inadequate. Yet, still, her face was somehow unearthly. She looked like an Ariel from some ideal production of
The Tempest
.