Free Wake by Elizabeth Knox

chain-link and a tumbled mess of bodies. William froze at the wheel, staring wide-eyed through the windscreen.
    But Sam jumped out of the car and went straight to them, moving from person to person, touching them tenderly and calling their names, sometimes formally, ‘Mrs Harbin! Mr Young!’, sometimes informally, ‘Lorna! Audrey! Jim!’ But she couldn’t rouse any of them, and eventually she gave up, clapped her hands over her face and began to weep.
    William watched as a young woman with a blond ponytail floated swiftly down the road and threw her arms around Sam. He recognised the runner from earlier in the day. He touched the axe on his back seat, but didn’t take hold of it. Empty-handed, he got out of his car.
    The runner said her name was Lily Kaye. She said she’d been there for over an hour. No one had come. ‘Not from Kahukura till you. And not from Nelson.’ She gestured at the tangle of bodies in the chain-link. ‘I wasn’t able to leave them. They were alive.’ She began to cry. ‘They kept trying to hurt each other. And there was one woman who I think was trying to tell me something.’
    Lily and Sam were sobbing now in concert. William was wishing one of them would stop and supply him with more information. He really must try to be patient. His own fear was making him pitiless—and paltry.
    Lily said, ‘She was wearing face powder. Makeup is a sign of self-respect, right? So how does a clean, well-groomed old lady end up like that?’ Lily peered intently into William’s face, her expression desperate. ‘None of them came back to themselves. They kept dying, one by one. And about an hour after I found them, the few surviving simultaneously heaved in a breath, and held it. Then the air went out of them, and they died. It was horrible. And so strange .’
    William thought of the girl he’d tried to save; how she had just stopped . ‘Look. It’s possible no one has come because the settlement is locked in some kind of quarantine.’
    â€˜I thought of that. Of nerve gas.’ Lily let go of Sam, who went back to the tangled bodies and began straightening clothes and wiping faces.
    William said, ‘I’m going to walk out. Whoever stops me, even if they can’t help, might be able to explain.’ He clasped Lily’s arm, ‘I won’t be long. Look after Sam.’
    Lily seemed glad to be given something to do.
    William strode off, purposeful, around the last bend before the crest of the cutting.
    He got out of sight of the women and almost within sight of the road he’d meant to take. The air was fresher. It had all the expected smells, of the sea, flax bushes, and the cold water perfume of native forest. But there was something else as well, something astringent and clean.
    And then, the next thing William knew he was soaked through and shivering hard. His bones ached with cold. Someone behind him was saying, ‘You’ll have to drive; I never learned how.’
    Light flickered, then the world came up around him the way water does when you jump into it. He had jumped into a swimming pool. He’d been damp, but was now drenched. There was very little light. Someone beside him said, ‘I suppose you have to run the engine to make the heater work. How does this fancy car start? I haven’t driven one before.’
    William began to shiver, big convulsive shudders. Then whoever it was beside him found the headlights. A wet road appeared, rain in black air, and a tangled mass of bodies lying on a length of chain-link fence.
    William collected himself enough to show Lily how to start the Mercedes engine, and the heater. She turned the car and drove slowly back towards Kahukura.
    William asked what had happened. His voice was hoarse, as if he’d spent the last few hours shouting his head off.
    Lily showed him a rip in the elbow of her top. She had a graze; stripped epidermis pinpricked