In the night I woke and listened helplessly to the trees and the river. I wept for about five minutes. When I woke again it was a clear day.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I loaded the car and stood on the bridge looking at the water rolling beneath. There were broken clouds in the sky and the sun was being cut and dulled. Then the clouds would go and the heat press down on my neck. My reflection was on the surface of the water and my shadow lay on the riverbed below.
I put my sunglasses on and drove up the hill through Taupo, and left on the lakeside road south. The road swept up and then crawled down awkwardly between hills in sharp bends. Round one bend I nearly collided with an empty sheep truck and trailer jack-knifed across the road. I stopped, got out, and looked. The way was blocked. On the left, a wall of cliff and bush. On the right, a patch of soggy earth and ferns, then dense bush. I couldn’t move the truck. The batteries were dead and it had run dry of petrol. I consulted a map; either go back and round the lake on the other side, or go down State Highway 5 to Napier. It would take ages, and those roads would be narrow and might be blocked as well.
After testing the muddy patch and pulling aside some plants and tree branches I thought I could make it past the truck on the right. No sooner had I driven off the road than the back wheels sank and churned up the mud and in ten seconds the car was stuck. I got out and unloaded the boot and back seat to lighten the weight.
Then I wrenched some planks from the sheep truck and shoved them under the back wheels of the car. I found some rocks, rammed them into the ground, jacked up the right rear wheel and pushed rocks and a piece of plank under it. At the first attempt the wheels kicked out the wood and sank again. Covered in sweat and mud, I tried again. On the third attempt it worked and the car lifted out, found traction, and lurched forward over the firmer ground, scraping bushes on the right and bouncing back onto the road. Then I had to carry all the stuff round and reload.
The immediate problem had taken my mind off everything else and I felt better. I drove on along the winding road by the lake and past empty motels, caravans and campsites. Half an hour later I stopped on the bridge at Turangi and opened tins of corned beef and pineapple for a snack. The sun was coming and going. Turangi seemed less altered by depopulation than anywhere else I had seen. I couldn’t imagine anyone would live there by choice. The makers of the place must have been struck by the same puzzle, and had thrown the houses down and run away. The road, as I drove past, was like an escape route made for a massive burglary; but what had been stolen from this desolation was a mystery. The hills ahead on the right were dark against the sun, barren and sullen, as if vengeance had been involved and was not ended yet.
I speeded up for a couple of kilometres, then slowed down, cursing. There was another sheep truck and trailer across the road. This time there was no way round, just clumps of tussock and embankments of red earth. To the left, about thirty metres back, there appeared to be a way through the knots of gorse and small mounds of scrub and bracken-covered land. It might even have been a well-used track at some time. The ground looked quite firm, but in the distance there were blots of steam which suggested thermal pools. Maybe the track once led to a thermal area and there was no way back onto the main road. But it was worth trying.
I walked back, got into the car and reversed, then cautiously turned left and nosed the vehicle slowly into the wilderness. The hills were about three to five metres high and obscured the view on both sides and in front; the way curved slightly right, then left again, and the fronds of vegetation brushed against the car in places. Sulphurous smells confirmed that this was a volcanic area, or at least an area of geological weakness. I peered out intently at the track, watching for danger signs or patches of treacherous mud. The way led towards the steam. Ahead on the left I could see a pool half-overhung with dead ferns, steam drifting from the water across the track. The windscreen hazed over and the humidity increased. I stopped. This was too risky. I had only come this far because there was no room to turn around, no way to go back. Reversing would be awkward.
I opened the door and carefully got out. There were bubbling, demonic noises from the pool on the left, and similar and other sounds nearby from behind the hills. I trod along the track into the steam, but it seemed to thicken and become more clammy and hot, and I couldn’t see any further. The tangle of plants rising up on both sides seethed with vapours, a dead dark green and brown; the sun had vanished, and the atmosphere and odd sounds closed in on me. I stopped. The noises were secretive, unnatural. A pressurised hissing broke through undertones of heavy exhaling and mixed with the bubbling water to sound like a series of sighs trying to force their way up from beneath the surface and being drowned, falling back, trying again, the bubblings expelling furious energy out of suffocation.
I suddenly felt the onset of terror, a bad, hard fear coming at me from all this, the place, the noises, and something else watching me, consciously, very close.
There was a rustling in the ferns on the small hill to my left. I hadn’t got my shotgun. I turned to run back to the car, not wanting to see whatever was behind the mist.
But the haze cleared for an instant and I couldn’t move a muscle. For a fraction of a second I might even have been unconscious with shock. Then stupefied.
It was a human figure. A man.
Pointing a gun at me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Stay there. Don’t move.’ Keeping the gun trained on me, he sidled down and stood about five metres away on the track. ‘You alone?’
I nodded. I couldn’t speak. The steam moved between us; his hands were raised with the rifle and his face obscured. He seemed to be wearing army gear, khaki trousers tucked into his boots, an anorak stippled with dark camouflage green, and a black woollen hat. He kept the gun levelled at me.
‘Put that bloody thing down,’ I managed to say. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for so long, my voice sounded unconnected to me. He stayed as he was.
‘Where you from?’ he said.
‘Auckland.’
‘Just you?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many people up there?’
‘None. Nobody.’ The realisation that I wasn’t alone was beginning to penetrate my mind, pushing aside the fear and danger. My voice caught in my throat. ‘I haven’t seen anyone since last Friday,’ I said. He seemed to hesitate and began to lower the gun. ‘Look. For God’s sake—’
There was a breeze from the south, and the air cleared as the steam was blown aside. He suddenly came into focus and I could see his face. He was a Maori. We stared at each other, and he relaxed even more, the tension going from his arms and shoulders. He held the rifle down.
‘Nobody?’ he said. I shook my head. The intentness of his eyes and face drained away and he looked as worn out as I must have looked and felt. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked; ‘Where the bloody hell is everyone?’
Something crumbled inside me, as it must have inside him, with the revelation that we had each been alone and could tell each other nothing. I shook my head again.
‘I don’t know.’
Perhaps the disappointment was greater for him than for me, since I might have seemed to him more likely to know an answer. In that moment we appeared to have said everything we would ever say to each other; we had exhausted what was important. We faced each other blankly. He was uncertain what to do, and the gun made me nervous. Cautiously holding out my right hand, I said, ‘I’m John Hobson.’
There was a long pause, as though we were both frozen in an event which had slowed down outside normal space and time. Then he advanced towards me, the rifle held down in his left hand, his face still almost drained of expression, his right hand reaching up to clasp mine. The formality of shaking hands in the middle of so much strangeness reminded me of pictures of British explorers meeting after months of forcing their way through remote jungle alone. I didn’t know what else to do. We managed to smile at each other.