Page 2 of Kiwi Sin
We were standing on the pavement, then, with about a hundred people, all milling about in an excited sort of way, talking about what had just happened, laughing or shocked or angry or all of those things together. Having emotions, and expressing them freely. They wore jackets against the chill, and I was in my shirtsleeves, my brown trousers, and the braces that held the trousers up. I was hungry, too, because I’d worked fourteen hours yesterday, taking advantage of the summer light, and it was time for breakfast.
I wasn’t sure how I’d get breakfast. I knew no rules for this, except that breakfast would cost money I didn’t have, and suddenly, I was nauseated. I breathed my way through it, telling myself,There has to be a way,and sure enough, within five minutes or so, Gray was taking charge again.
Parceling out the refugees, is the only way I can describe what happened next. Raphael and Radiance went with a couple who introduced themselves as Matiu and Poppy Te Mana and said they had an extra apartment in their house and would be glad of the company. My parents and Harmony went with Gray.
And me? So far, nothing, and the nausea was back again.
That was when a big, fit, tough-looking fella of forty-odd, who’d done some of his own talking through the loud-hailer back there and had an air of command I recognized, told me, “We have a granny flat. You’re welcome to stay in it.”
I didn’t ask,What’s a granny flat?I said, “Thank you. Until I get myself sorted.” One thing I knew about Outside was that you did it yourself. It was like the drop of pond water we’d looked at under a microscope when I’d been at school, full of individual tiny things of different types called “single-celled organisms,” moving around seemingly at random, intent on their own business, while I was used to being just one cell in a body.
“No rush,” the man said. “Need a chat with anybody, or would you rather go?”
“Ready to go,” I said, because I couldn’t think of what I’d say to anyone. The only person I needed to talk to was Gray, and he was heading into one of the houses, a block of glass and steel unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
The man saw me watching and said, “I’ll ring him later and ask him about you starting work, shall I?”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m Gabriel, by the way. Gabriel Worthy.”
He put out a hand. “Drew Callahan.” His eyes were gray, which was unusual, and he had some long-healed white scars on his forehead and around his eyes, and another one on his chin. He looked tough and felt quiet and calm, and I relaxed a bit. He asked, “You hungry?” and I relaxed a little more.
“Yeh,” I said. “But I don’t have money for food.”
“I’ll shout you food until you’re earning,” he said. “Let’s go, then.” And climbed up into the kind of car called an SUV. The seats seemed to be covered in leather, another thing I hadn’t seen before, the instrument panel gleamed with electronics, and it was about as far from Mount Zion’s small fleet of battered old farm utes as it was possible to be.
I climbed in, trying to scrape off my dirty boots along the way, but said, “I’ll keep an account.”
He set off down the hill, his movements assured and economical, and said, “No worries. I’m good for a few meals. Can’t be bothered to keep track of all that anyway.”
I had a little notebook and a stub of pencil in my pocket, as I always did. I pulled them out and said, “No need. I’ll do it.”
He braked to a stop at a sign, glanced over at the calculations I’d made this morning, and said, “Looks like heaps of maths. That what you do, then?”
“No,” I said, feeling a bit embarrassed. “Just working out lumber, electric, that sort of thing, and a bit about the design.”
“Hmm,” he said. “In your head,” and didn’t say anything else until we’d stopped in town. “Takeaway OK?”
“Yeh,” I said. “You’ll have been up all night, though, I’m thinking.” The Prophet had told us men outside were soft, but this man, though he was old enough to be a grandfather, didn’t seem that way.
“Nah,” he said. “I’m good. Hang on, then, and I’ll be back with breakfast. Coffee?”
“Uh …” I said. “I haven’t had it.” Coffee was an intoxicant, and a sin.
“Well,” he said, “reckon it’s time to try.” And got out of the car.
* * *
Some things were the same,I found. You felt better once you’d eaten, more settled. Drew didn’t talk much, other than saying, “Three and a half hours to Dunedin.”
“Fine,” I said, because I had to say something, then looked out the window at not much at all and tried not to be overwhelmed by what I’d done, the yawning expanse of the unknown.
One moment, I was staring absently at the intersection ahead as we drove along beside Lake Dunstan. The next, I was shouting, “On your right!” at the top of my lungs.
It couldn’t have taken Drew a half second to react, because even as I shouted it, as the car ahead made the right turn to the north toward Wanaka, swinging too wide, into the wrong lane, intoourlane, Drew was slamming on the brake and driving straight off the road to the left, all the way onto the verge and nearly down the bank and into the water. I saw two horrified faces, mouths and eyes stretched, through the windscreen of the car as it flashed past, then heard the squeal of brakes as it slowed and swerved left, back into its own lane.
I hadn’t even started to breathe again when another car, headed north too fast, was past us as well. Almost at the same moment I registered it, I heard the noise behind me. Loud and sudden and brutal, the sound of metal crunching into metal.
Drew said,“Shit,”punched a button for his hazard lights, and was stopped and out of the car, but I was faster. I hadn’t had to hit the lights or turn off the car. I was sprinting, because the too-fast driver had hit the wrong-way driver from the rear. Even as the too-fast driver pulled to the side of the road, the wrong-way car was spinning down the highway in a sickening circle, then catching an edge of pavement and flipping. It rolled once, all the way around. Another half-roll, and it came to rest on its roof, rocking a little.
