by Baker Chris
Clayton was his name, Hoheria was hers. They’d met at the Cathedral Square markets and had spent the past six months looking for somewhere to live. They’d finally decided to move away from Christchurch in search of another community.
But they weren’t quick enough. They’d been accosted by four skinz, and a tall skinny guy with dirty blonde hair. The attackers tried to force Clayton to look on while they raped Hoheria. He’d fought ferociously. They almost killed him. Leaving him for dead, they all ravaged the young woman. She was left unconscious. It was night when she came to and dragged her still-insensible partner around the back of a nearby house. She remembered the blonde one saying that they hadn’t finished, they’d be back. He didn’t say what they’d do, but she was terrified. Barely able to move, she recovered their horses and lay on the back porch with her arms around her mate wondering if she’d ever feel like a person again. Some time in the night Clayton regained consciousness and the two of them tried to comfort each other. At dawn they began their ride out of the city. They had no clear destination in mind. They just wanted to get away from the nightmare.
Sean and Kevin called a halt at midday under the shade of a row of poplars. A cup of tea. Something to eat.
‘Excuse me,’ said Hoheria hesitantly. ‘Could I please have that hot water? We need to get cleaned up.’
‘Feel like some fried veggies?’ Kevin asked.
‘No thanks. We’d better keep moving.’
That night they talked Hoheria into stopping and they camped by a willow-lined stream. The young couple spent over an hour immersed in a deep pool. Sean shot a turkey with the crossbow and tried to cook food for four in one frypan. A good meal helped them relax. As a full moon rose, Sean could see they were slowly rejoining the land of the living. They were both relieved to be alive and in a safe place, but Hoheria still looked around at every noise. Sean and Kevin did their best to reassure her, especially about Hamu’s abilities as a watchdog. They slept around the fire, Clayton and Hoheria in each other’s arms and Sean and Kevin wrapped in their saddle-blankets.
Sean dreamed again, a magical little village by the sea. This time there were people in the dream, smells and noises too. He could hear surf and a dog barking. He saw wide, dusty, sunlit streets and cottages from his childhood, windows and doors forming friendly faces. Men and women wearing colourful patched clothes walked with arms around each other. There were no old people, and no babies either. He heard laughter and casual chatter. Wood smoke tickled his nose and when he sneezed he woke up, lying by a dead fire under a full moon. This time the dream had come with a sense of urgency, the feeling time was running out. Where was the place? Where did the dream come from? What did it mean? He lay in the moonlight wondering.
Magpies woke them, warbling away as the hot sun rose. They took turns bathing in the stream and when Sean got back Hoheria was helping Kevin fry turkey and potato leftovers with freshly gathered chickweed. Clayton was trying to get some movement back into his left arm, immobile after a kick in the elbow while he lay on the ground.
‘Thanks for everything,’ he said. ‘Things were looking really black for a while there.’
Sean laughed. ‘You wouldn’t care to rephrase that?’
Hoheria stopped her stirring. ‘They’re getting browner by the hour.’
When they were packed and mounted and riding through Darfield, cleaned up like the small towns they’d seen elsewhere, she dropped back to where Sean and Bojay were cruising along in the rear. Where was Sean from, she asked. Who was his iwi? From Ngapuhi, he told her, surprised at her resilience, her ability to look beyond her own hurt. His ancestry was Samoan and Irish. He didn’t know about Kevin. She was Kahungunu, she said, but she wasn’t sure about anything any more.
‘Nearly everyone I knew is gone now. Everything is different since the Fever. Where does that leave Clayton and me?’
Sean felt like replying ‘Why ask me?’ but he suddenly remembered Auntie Mihi. He looked at Hoheria, trust in her eyes despite her horrible experience. He had to say something.
‘You’re a Pacific person,’ he told her. ‘And it doesn’t matter what happened. You’re still Ngati Kahungunu. Maybe it isn’t such a big deal any more. Maybe it’s more important than ever. Your choice. It always was.’ He felt like an imposter, a charlatan.
But it was enough for Hoheria. She thanked Sean and rode ahead to Clayton. Sean heard the sharp hiss of an indrawn breath as Clayton stretched and flexed his arm, and reached out to caress her shoulder. She spoke to him and he laughed. Maybe Sean’s words had been of some help. He wondered what she’d said.
‘You’ve got a big mouth, mate,’ he said to himself.
For the next two hours he felt a rising tide of responsibility, waves of alarm and a deep and irresistible current of uncertainty swirling around him. He thought of Auntie Mihi, Uncle Wire, and all the old ones who’d navigated the treacherous waters of the twentieth century, equipped with nothing more than the collective strength of their own characters and the teachings of those who went before them. He’d never thought of Uncle Wire silenced by doubts, but he must have had his moments, invisible to Sean in his youthful arrogance. He could hear the old man chuckling as if he was riding alongside.
‘Now you know what it feels like, boy!’
Now Sean did know. He was so busy thinking about Hoheria’s state of mind and wondering how she was able to keep going after such a horrendous invasion, that he missed the turn-off that led down to the Rakaia River, through places like Glentunnel and Windwhistle. Clayton had a good map in his shoulder bag but he couldn’t see very well through his swollen eyes, and before long Sean realised they were heading into the Alps.
A few kilometres past Springfield, deserted and windblown, they boiled the billy and consulted Clayton’s map. A southerly front blew over. Clayton and Hoheria must have been accustomed to such weather, but Kevin and Sean couldn’t believe the sudden plunge in temperature and the way the freezing wind knifed through their swannies. Sean was suddenly aware of Hamu at his back, out of the wind and leaning against him for the warmth.
According to the map, they could take a southerly turn at Lake Lyndon and skirt the northern end of Lake Coleridge, then follow the Acheron River down to a road running alongside the Rakaia River, opposite Mt Hutt. As they climbed towards Porters Pass, a feeling of foreboding grew in Sean. They rode around rocky bluffs and between hills steeper than any he’d seen. Stony slopes and tussocky promontories marked their progress. Hawks soared high overhead in the pale blue sky. The streams had names like Kowhai and Rubicon and the water was icy sweet, spilling into rocky pools and tumbling down miniature gorges. Sean battled with a growing anxiety, a certainty of trouble on the way.
The sun was glowing gold above snowy mountains as they came to Lake Lyndon and the turn-off they’d been looking for. They made themselves comfortable below the road on the lake shore. As they sat there resting, Clayton nursing his wounds and Kevin and Hoheria tending the fire, a gust of wind from the east brought the distant roar of motorbikes. Sean leapt to his feet and called to the others. Kevin heard the bikes too and stopped to listen.
‘They’re coming this way,’ he said. ‘They’re onto us.’
‘How do they know?’ asked Hoheria, her voice tremulous with fear.
‘Horseshit,’ said Kevin.
Hoheria looked shocked. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Horseshit,’ repeated Kevin. He nodded towards Bojay and the other horses.
‘These guys leave a trail a blind man could follow.’ And there was the answer for an ambush.
‘Quickly,’ Sean said. ‘Put those bigger logs in the road, just on this side of the corner. Kevin, you and Clayton fight together. Hoheria, you fight with me.’ When the logs were in place, he checked everyone’s weapons. Two firearms. Sticks. Knives. A tomahawk. The crossbow, good for one shot. He thought of Matapihi and the dog attack near Wellsford. This time the stakes felt a lot higher. Things had a far more deadly edge. He cocked the cros
sbow and checked the shells in his sawn-off. The motorbikes changed gear two or three kilometres away.
‘We’ve got the advantage,’ he said. ‘Shock the shit out of them with our first attack. Get them when they come off their bikes.’ He tried to sound confident, but he certainly wasn’t feeling it. He passed the crossbow to Hoheria and made sure his knife was loose in its sheath. The feeling of the weapon sliding between the ribs of the rottie in that early attack flashed through his mind. Focus, he growled at himself. These guys are dangerous.
He could see Kevin, checking his weapons and stamping his feet with fear and impatience. Clayton had Kevin’s tomahawk stuck in his belt. He was practising one-handed thrusts and swings with a hefty piece of driftwood. Hoheria was holding the crossbow, a knife in her belt and a solid branch on the ground at her feet. She looked grim, out for some serious revenge.
The roar of the motorbikes grew louder but somehow filtering through was a watery noise behind them. Sean whirled. There in the lake, close to where a stream was discharging, huge bubbles were rising. Hoheria saw them too and her jaw dropped.
The two front riders rounded the corner, hit the branches in the road and crashed with a spectacular shower of sparks and a screaming of metal on tarseal. Kevin ran forward. One rider was struggling to his feet, dazed from the crash, and Kevin knifed him under the ribcage. The other rider lay in the road, not moving. Kevin was just stepping back when the others arrived. They braked hard, swung wide, and one of them rode off the road towards the lake edge. None of the six came off. They each stopped their bikes and were dismounting in a leisurely manner. Sean fired his shotgun. One fell. Hoheria took careful aim at another with the crossbow, sending a steel bolt into his eye and protruding out the back of his skull. She dropped the crossbow and picked up her branch just as the remaining four attacked. Two of them had sawn-offs and one carried a machete.
Sean saw Clayton go down from a shotgun blast. Kevin shot their attacker before taking a machete cut in the arm. Suddenly Sean’s sawn-off was knocked out of his hands and a tall wiry figure was all over him. The guy was punching, headbutting and biting. He was trying to stick Sean with a mean-looking knife that flashed in and out of his vision. It scored his ribs and sliced into an ear when he dodged a thrust to his good eye.
‘I’ve been waiting for this!’ hissed a familiar voice. His attacker stepped back and glared crazily at him. ‘You can pay for everything now!’
Sean didn’t even get time to draw his knife before Colin was on him again, stabbing and headbutting. Sean tried to pin Colin’s arms, but had to let go when he felt teeth sink into his neck. A blow on the nose blinded him. Tears in his eye and knees like jelly, he grabbed at Colin. Locked together, the pair staggered across the grass verge. Sean thrust Colin away and tried to draw his knife. He could hear a shotgun blasting as he dodged and fended. Colin slashed Sean across the forehead. Blood ran into his eye. He heard a wild laugh. He grabbed for Colin again and pulled him close. Sean was losing the fight to keep off Colin’s teeth and his stabbing blade, when they overbalanced and toppled into the water.
If Colin was unstoppable on land, he was a nightmare in the water. He twisted and writhed as they sank and somehow managed to get his hands around Sean’s neck. Sean struggled for all he was worth, but Colin’s grip tightened and he started to black out.
Then ‘Shut your eye!’ came a shocking compulsion. Something like a huge and muscular eel brushed up against him and the hands vanished from around his neck.
‘Hold your breath! Swim up!’ Something pushed him from beneath and next thing his head was breaking the surface and he was gulping air.
He trod water, a few metres from the bank. What happened? A body floated to the surface next to him. A body without a head. Blood spread outwards in a widening crimson pool. Aghast, Sean flailed and splashed out of the water. He collapsed on the bank, where he sobbed and heaved up a pint or two of lake water.
He was still lying there when he heard Hoheria’s wail of naked anguish. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees and looked across the grass. There were bodies everywhere, torn and bloodied. Hoheria held Clayton in her arms. Her cry echoed across the lake. Kevin stood beside her holding his arm, staring at Sean and the body in the lake.
Kevin helped Sean to his feet, gasping with pain at the effort. He fell back clutching himself, a growing stain in the front of his swanny.
‘How bad is that?’ Sean said, pointing to Kevin’s chest.
‘Don’t know,’ he said, wincing as he lifted the front of his swanny, revealing only a blood-soaked and slashed shirt. ‘I think I’m okay anyway. You’d better see to Hoheria. They got Clayton.’
A shotgun blast in the chest had killed Clayton instantly. Hoheria cradled her man’s head, her tears falling on his face, her cries sounding in the hills. Sean didn’t know what to do. He approached her with the words that carried a universe of meaning but changed nothing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. The words left him feeling completely powerless. They seemed feeble, inadequate. Hoheria looked up and her tear-streaked face broke Sean’s heart.
‘He was so beautiful,’ she said. ‘Why did it have to be him? Why not me?’
Sean moved without thinking, put his arms around her, stroked her hair. Tears sprang from his good eye. His grief felt as old as the lake and just as deep. He and Hoheria, Clayton between them, clasped each other, rocking and weeping.
Eventually Sean moved, looking up as if he’d been dreaming and was seeing his surroundings for the first time. Hoheria still clung to him and gently he disengaged her arms. Stiff and sore from what felt like a million cuts and bruises, he turned to where he heard a branch being broken. Kevin had managed to light a fire and was poking sticks under the billy, one-handed. His other arm hung useless at his side. He saw Sean looking, and nodded towards Colin’s headless corpse, bobbing in the shallows.
‘What happened to him?’ he asked.
Sean thought for a few seconds. The truth would have to do.
‘A taniwha bit his head off.’ Kevin looked disbelieving. ‘Sure.’
Sean looked again at the lake. He thought of Frank and Kurangaituku.
‘No shit,’ he said. ‘Remember the dream I told you about? Remember Cally’s taniwha?’ Sean watched Kevin trying to get his head around a story and a painting turning real. He could see the young man wanted to believe.
‘Neither of us were kidding,’ he said. ‘That taniwha’s real. His name’s Tinirau. A lot of people know about him too.’ He pulled the manaia from beneath his swanny and showed it to Kevin. ‘That’s who this is. He’s looking after us.’
15
SEAN HARDLY KNEW where to start, until he took a closer look at Kevin. The young man had a machete slash in his arm but more worrying a stab wound in the chest. Sean suspected a lung had been damaged. Kevin winced every time he breathed. Hoheria bathed the wound with hot water, and applied some of the antiseptic cream they found in a medical kit carried in one of the motorcycle panniers.
‘I’m worried about him,’ Sean said to Hoheria when they were out of earshot. ‘He needs more than we can give him.’
‘For sure,’ she said, Clayton in her eyes, but Kevin’s troubles in her voice. ‘He needs complete rest. We have to find somewhere, and soon.’
They made Kevin as comfortable as they could, a cup of tea and a blanket by the fire. After they bandaged his wounds Sean insisted he remain still.
‘You stay there, cuz, you’ve done enough. We’re lucky to be alive.’
Sean and Hoheria gathered rocks in the last of the fading light and built a cairn for Clayton, high on the bank overlooking the lake and planted about with heather and yarrow. They were very wary about approaching the lake edge for water.
‘It isn’t much but as long as I’m alive you’ll be remembered,’ Hoheria said. The tears streaked her face and splashed on the stones. Sean was weeping too as she turned to him.
‘Excuse me if I sit here with Clayton for the rest of the
night. You’d better look after Kevin anyway.’ She stopped crying and Sean watched her wrap herself in what was left of her friend before turning her gaze back on the people left alive.
How did she do it? She looked across to Kevin, propped against his saddle and trying to drink a cup of tea. ‘He’s going to need all the help he can get.’
Sean sat with him for most of that night watching his young friend get steadily worse. By first light Kevin was having a lot of trouble breathing. He barely had the strength to spit out the blood that collected in his mouth while he wheezed and rattled and winced with pain. As the sun rose, Sean and Hoheria hoisted him onto his horse and rode on either side, steadying him as he swayed.
They took all morning to make their way across slips on a narrow winding road down to the Rakaia River. The old concrete bridge was still standing, the tarseal deck lifting above the swirling torrent far below. For the next two nights they camped beside dried-up riverbeds eating wild turkey and self-seeded potatoes, taking turns trying to get food and drink into Kevin. The young man ate little. Sean could see he was running on the strength of his youth and a sort of residual fitness. It was only a matter of time before infection and illness really got a grip on him. Hoheria fussed around him, making sure his wound was clean and he was warm during the nights that were already growing colder.
‘Try this,’ she’d say, holding out a spoonful of food. ‘If you can’t do it for yourself then eat it for me.’ Kevin would make a huge effort. He’d focus on Hoheria and grin, he’d even try to laugh but the mirth quickly degenerated into a coughing fit and a spray of pink-tinged froth. By the time they got to Mayfield, infection and delirium were taking hold.
A nasty surprise met them at Mayfield. Six large and leaping dogs attacked, Dobermann crosses and something that looked like a Dalmatian with a shark’s head. Sean shot three of the beasts while Hoheria buried her hatchet in the skull of a fourth. The other two fled when a woman appeared outside a roadside building, discharged a shotgun into the air and yelled ‘Fuck off!’ in a voice that made Sean think of a blowtorch blistering paint.
