The Peco Incident

by Des Hunt

  I was following Dad out through the door when, suddenly, he pulled back, almost knocking me over. Before I could complain, he had his hand over my mouth.

  ‘Shhh,’ he said into my ear. ‘People! Security guards!’

  Cautiously I peeked around the edge of the door. There were two of them: big, overweight men with a swaggering walk, heading for the other shed.

  After they’d gone inside, I turned to Dad. ‘What now?’

  ‘We find somewhere to hide — and quickly.’

  The somewhere was behind a small metal shed that sat between the two chook houses. From the shadows, we would see the guards when they moved from one place to the other. That’s if they ever did. If they found Nick inside, then no doubt they’d take him back to their office. What would happen after that was too unpleasant to think about.

  But clearly they didn’t find Nick, for a couple of minutes later we saw them swaggering across to the shed we’d just left. We stayed hidden until, a while later, we saw them heading back to the administration building.

  ‘Where’s Nick?’ I asked.

  ‘Must have gone back to his bike while we were looking at the chooks,’ Dad replied. He thought for a time. ‘Still, I think we’d better take a look in there, just in case.’

  The second shed had the same layout as the first — and the same chamber of horrors. Again we split up in order to search the place quicker. I was the one unlucky enough to find Nick.

  It happened as I turned into my third aisle. Part-way down was this creature, covered in chook poo. Black slime was dripping from its hair. The only hint that it was human was the face that had been wiped clear of poo and slime.

  ‘Hi, Danny,’ he said cheerfully. He held up his phone. ‘I got the evidence.’

  ‘How did you get like that?’ I asked.

  ‘Aw this,’ he said, flicking off some of the poo. ‘Some security guards came, and the only place to hide was down in the shit.’ He giggled. ‘They never thought of looking there. Walked right past me.’

  That’s when Dad turned up. He took one look at Nick and said, ‘Right — let’s get out of here.’

  Back at the ute, Dad made Nick sit on the deck with the bike.

  As we moved off, I asked, ‘Are you going to punish him?’

  He gave a little chuckle. ‘Punish him? How do you punish someone who thinks it’s great to be covered in chicken shit? You’d think that would be punishment enough.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘We’ll have to hose him down when we get back. Chloe will go ape if he goes inside like that.’

  We drove in silence for a time.

  ‘What worries me most,’ said Dad, ‘is that black slime. That’s come from those dead animals. Whatever’s causing the sickness will be in that slime.’

  ‘You think Nick might get bird flu?’

  ‘I don’t know … don’t know much about it. But last time bird flu broke out in Asia, people died. That was the main worry. That somehow the virus had crossed over into humans. They reckoned the big flu epidemics in the past were caused by that — the ones that killed millions of people.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Dad rang the BIRT hotline first thing in the morning.

  All he told them was that his son had seen lots of dead sparrows around the place, including some outside a chook farm. Nick was most annoyed that he wasn’t mentioned, especially since he reckoned that he’d done all the work.

  After some discussion, Dad arranged for Nick and me to meet someone at the café in Portobello. He then headed off to work, but only after he’d got a promise from each of us not to mention anything about what we had done and seen the previous night.

  Nine o’clock was the agreed time for the meeting at Portobello. We left Harwood with plenty of time to spare.

  The woman who met us looked younger than my mum and older than Brio, which, I guess, made her about thirty. The dark-green uniform she was wearing suggested she was someone with authority. She introduced herself as Cathy Andrews.

  While Cathy sipped a cappuccino, I reported on the dead birds that we’d seen around the café and alongside the chook farm.

  ‘They could have been poisoned,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘Sparrows can be a real pain around poultry farms, and also around places like this.’

  I told her that I’d seen poisoned ones before, and these ones behaved differently, which wasn’t really true, but I didn’t want her driving off without investigating Peco. That was the whole point of the meeting.

  ‘OK,’ she said getting up from the table. ‘Let’s see if this place here has still got any of those dead birds.’

  After asking at the desk, she went out to her car. When she returned, she was wearing a full-face mask, white coverall, and rubber gloves up to her elbows.

  Nick giggled at her appearance, whereas I was a little alarmed.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe not,’ she replied. ‘But it’s the rules, and I don’t want to get into trouble with my boss for not obeying the rules.’

  She then led us around the side of the café, where we watched from a distance as she sorted through some rubbish bags. Five birds were located and bagged. After that, we parked the bikes behind the café before piling into her car for the trip to the chook farm.

  At first, we stood in front of the gate taking in the sheds and the surroundings.

  ‘I bet there’re dead birds everywhere in there,’ said Nick. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to keep animals like that.’

  I gave him a dirty look, hoping to shut him up. It didn’t work.

  He turned to Cathy. ‘You’ve got to shut the place down.’

  Cathy studied him for a while. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘First, I want to look at these dead birds you said you saw around the perimeter fence.’

  Once again she donned safety gear, and yet she showed no concern that we were unprotected. Maybe she assumed that we’d already been contaminated and it didn’t matter if we had further contact with the disease.

  At the top of the rise, we paused to look down at the buildings. There was nothing that looked unusual — nothing to indicate the horrors that lay hidden within.

  We found dead birds near the first lot of gorse: two Californian quail and several sparrows. As soon as we’d pointed them out, Cathy made us stand back while she collected samples. Again, five were enough. We then turned around and went back to the car.

  While we waited to be told what to do next, Cathy walked out of earshot, pulled out a phone and made a brief call.

  ‘He’ll be here shortly,’ she said when she returned.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Bryce Shreeves, the owner.’

  ‘Oh, him,’ sneered Nick. ‘The killer farmer.’

  Again Cathy studied him, obviously puzzled by his comments. She was opening her mouth to say something when the roar of a motor came from within the compound. A moment later a huge SUV skidded to a halt just short of the gate.

  The man who climbed out was dressed more for the city than for a poultry farm. I couldn’t imagine him spending much time in the filthy sheds. His hair was receding, but styled in a way that tried to hide the larger bald areas. The most noticeable feature of his face was the complexion — it was bright pink, almost as if he were sunburnt. Then, when he spoke, I realized he was red with anger.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Shreeves,’ said Cathy, pleasantly. ‘I’m here because dead birds have been found around the perimeter of the fence.’

  ‘Where?’ He strode up to the fence and marched along it a bit. ‘I don’t see any.’

  ‘They were found further around the perimeter.’

  ‘Did these boys find them?’ He glared at Nick. ‘Was it you? What were you doing sneaking—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who found them,’ interrupted Cathy, showing the first signs of annoyance. ‘The point is that they were found, and now I must come in and inspect your sheds.’

/>   ‘No!’

  ‘I have the statutory right to inspect any property where there is evidence of—’

  ‘I said no!’ he shouted, his face now almost purple.

  Cathy took a deep breath. ‘Mr Shreeves. We can do this two ways. You can let me in and I will make my inspection. If I see no problems, then it will be over in half an hour. Or,’ she added, pulling her phone out of her pocket, ‘I can call the police and they will escort me in. The problem with this second alternative is that it is very likely that the news media will discover what is happening and they will arrive shortly after the police.’ She opened her arms. ‘It is your choice. Which do you want it to be?’

  It took some time before he made up his mind, and even then he didn’t say anything. He walked to the gate, unlocked the padlock, and swung it open a metre or so. Cathy picked up her mask and rushed through the gap before he had a chance to change his mind.

  Nick tried to follow, only to have the gate slammed in his face. Shreeves then relocked the padlock, climbed in the SUV and drove off, leaving Cathy to make her own way down to the buildings.

  ‘C’mon!’ shouted Nick, heading towards the side fence. ‘I’m not missing out on this.’

  I raced after him, thinking he was going for the gap, but fortunately he stopped when he got to the vantage point. We watched as Cathy approached the open door to the nearest shed. She paused long enough to put on the mask before disappearing inside.

  We waited.

  She took so long that I began to think something might have happened to her. When she eventually emerged, she walked some distance away from the shed, removed her mask and crouched to the ground. Then she vomited.

  ‘She saw it,’ said Nick, jumping up and down beside me. ‘She saw it.’

  Yes, she’d seen it, and had clearly been deeply affected by its horror. When she’d finished, she stood and wandered aimlessly in circles for a time before pulling out her phone.

  That’s when Shreeves reappeared. His body language suggested that he now knew he was in real trouble. This time he pleaded with her. It worked no better than the earlier bullying. She made the phone call anyway.

  It was almost an hour later when the biosecurity team arrived. By then we’d moved back to the gate to wait with Cathy. A very unhappy Bryce Shreeves had unlocked the gate and disappeared again.

  Cathy wouldn’t talk about what she’d seen in the shed, other than to say that she’d seen dead and dying animals. When Nick asked whether it was bird flu or not, she said she didn’t know, claiming that many bird diseases had very similar symptoms. They’d have to wait for the test results.

  I’d visualized the biosecurity people arriving in a couple of vehicles and going quietly about their work. It was nothing like that. Vehicle after vehicle drove up the side road, until they were packed end to end as far back as we could see.

  A man jumped out of the first one and marched over to where Cathy was standing. Nick and I had slipped back a bit to be out of the way. Nick was taking photos of the vehicles with his phone.

  ‘Who are they?’ demanded the man, pointing at us.

  ‘They’re the boys who reported the dead birds.’

  ‘Thank them, and get rid of them. They have to be outside the quarantine zone. Pronto!’

  Before Cathy could respond, the man had turned and left.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But you’ve got to go.’

  ‘Who’s he to order us around?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Colin Saxton. He’s the Incident Controller. He has the power to order you around whenever he wants. He can even have you arrested.’

  Nick looked daggers at the man, who had begun issuing orders to the rest of the team.

  ‘Can you give us a ride back to our bikes?’ I asked.

  Cathy looked at her car, now blocked in by several other vehicles. She shook her head. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to walk.’ She fished in her pocket and pulled out a card. ‘This has all my contact details. Give me a call or email me tomorrow and I’ll let you know what we’ve found out. OK?’

  We nodded our acceptance and started the long walk back to the café.

  As we went past the biosecurity vehicles, we got some idea of what would be involved once they moved into the compound. There was a mobile cafeteria, a toilet block, and a command centre. Through the windows of a bus we saw people putting on full protective suits. One truck, labelled Decontamination Unit, was a big, walk-through shower. Behind it were tankers labelled with multiple hazardous-chemical symbols. Then there were the closed vans that had no markings whatsoever.

  I found it both exciting and scary. The scary part was the precautions these people were taking to protect themselves. They were wearing spacesuits to go into the same place where Dad and I had gone with nothing more than a builder’s dust mask. Nick hadn’t even had that! I wondered whether Mr Colin Saxton would have been so keen to get rid of us if he’d known where we’d been during the night.

  There were a couple of hundred metres of empty road before we got to the T-junction. There we found many more vehicles. However, these were not parked neatly in lines; they were all over the place, making it impossible for others to get through. They were the vans, cars and motorbikes of the various news media.

  A barrier blocking access into the side road was manned by police. Other officers were trying to sort out the chaos of vehicles. They were having little success, as the media personnel were too busy talking into microphones, or scribbling in notebooks.

  After watching for a while, we continued towards Portobello.

  There we found more media: a television crew was interviewing the people from the café. I recognized the interviewer as Jim Black. He did a current events programme on NetNews that Mum and Dad enjoyed watching.

  Unfortunately, I had to leave Nick to watch by himself, as I was busting to go to the toilet. Then I had to wait for someone else to finish, and, by the time I got back outside, Nick was in front of the camera being interviewed.

  My gut tightened. There was no predicting what he might say. I was too far away to hear what was being said, but I could see that Nick was enjoying himself. He showed none of the nerves I knew I would suffer if I were being interviewed. He chatted away as if he and Jim Black were best mates.

  Then I noticed he had his phone in his hand. The clamps on my gut tightened further. On that phone were the photos he’d taken inside the chook farm: photos that all of the media would love to get their hands on.

  As I watched, Jim Black pointed to Nick’s hand and asked a question. Nick lifted the phone and pressed a few buttons before holding it out towards Jim. I brought my hands to my head, hoping to shut out what was about to happen. Then, without warning, the whole of Portobello resounded to a loud blast from an air horn.

  I jumped, Nick jumped, so too did Jim Black. The cameraman, however, calmly turned his lens towards the source of the noise. A fire engine was coming down the road from Dunedin. It gave two more blasts as it approached the intersection. Then it turned and roared off towards the chook farm.

  No sooner had it gone than the cameraman, interviewer and sound engineer were sprinting towards their vehicle. A moment later it, too, was roaring up the road.

  I let out a long sigh of relief as it disappeared around a bend. I also made a mental note that, in future, Nicholas Clarke and reporters should be kept well clear of each other, or those photos would end up everywhere.

  CHAPTER 8

  As peace returned to the Portobello shops, I noticed Murph sitting in his usual place outside the pub. We wandered over.

  He looked up as we approached. ‘Are you two the cause of all of that?’

  ‘Some of it,’ I replied.

  His eyes twinkled for a moment. ‘You didn’t set fire to Shreeves’s place, did you?’

  ‘No. Nothing was on fire when we were there.’ ‘Somebody needs to set fire to it,’ said Nick, with feeling. Murph shook his head. ‘Not with the chooks in there, mate. If they weren’t there, I’d agree with you
.’

  ‘They’ll all be gone soon anyway,’ replied Nick. ‘Half of them are dead already.’

  Murph turned and raised his eyebrows at me. ‘You been inside?’

  ‘Last night,’ I said quietly.

  ‘What was it like?’

  We told him. I knew our secret would be safe with Murph. He rarely spoke to other people, and when he did it was only ever about horses.

  ‘Mongrel!’ he said when we’d finished. Then, after a pause: ‘You know, he tried to get rid of all my birds once. Said they were a possible source of disease.’ Murph let out a humourless laugh. ‘That’s ironic, isn’t it? Accusing my birds when now it’s his that are the source.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Oh, Councillor Shreeves turned up at my place with some officials, insisting that the birds be destroyed. We had a real barney, screaming at each other. It was just after protestors had got into his sheds and taken photos. I’d seen them on TV, so I had plenty of shots to fire back at him.’ Murph thought for a moment. ‘I think that’s what it was all about. He was trying to deflect attention away from the problems at his place. Anyway, the officials inspected all my aviaries and made a list of things I had to clean up, and that was the end of it. Fortunately, the only native I had at the time was Harriet and she was asleep in the house. If Shreeves and his lackeys had seen her, I would’ve been done for.’

  ‘Has he ever been back?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Nah. The only times I’ve seen him since have been when he’s posing on TV.’

  ‘You know he might try and blame you again,’ I said quietly.

  Murph stared at me. ‘Oh, shit! You don’t think he would, do you?’

  I shrugged. ‘Probably not,’ I replied, wishing I hadn’t said anything in the first place. ‘Even if he did, who’s going to believe him?’

  The biosecurity emergency was the main story on NetNews that night. They’d dubbed it ‘The Peco Incident’. One of the reporters was live on the scene, filmed standing on a hillside with the Peco compound as a backdrop. While she said a lot, there was little information.