Wake Read Online Free PDF Page B

water. He tried not to look at the body in the bow. He’d not go up there again unless he absolutely had to. That bit of his boat was a crime scene.
    The Champion charged forward, then her engines suddenly gave out and, once again, something combed through Bub’s body removing all his fear, then all his feelings, then all his strength. His legs buckled, his grip of the wheel loosened, and he crumpled to the deck.
    Bub had no idea how long he was unconscious. He came to, as he had the first time, feeling perfectly fit and well. It wasn’t like being knocked out, as he’d been once when he was a teenager and had run his motorcycle into a stray cow on a dark country road. Nor was it like climbing out of the grey, chemical pit of a general anaesthetic, or waking from a drunken stupor. He simply came awake. The rising tide had carried the Champion back towards the shore, and out of the influence of—of whatever it was .
    Bub decided not to repeat the experiment. He wasn’t going to risk letting the tide carry him right out into that.
    From landward there sounded a sharp blast of a horn. Bub scrambled to the wheelhouse to answer it. He spotted the woman in the meadow behind the spa. She was on her knees next to a quad bike, near the first fire. Bub lifted his arm and waved to her. She waved back.
    A few minutes later the Champion ’s radio made some throat-clearing crackles. Bub snatched it up. He tried not to yell. ‘ Champion here. This is Bub Lanagan. Is this the police? Over.’
    â€˜Constable Grey, from Richmond. Are you okay, Mr Lanagan? Over.’
    Bub told the cop that someone had been killed. Murdered. Then he remembered what he’d done himself, and for a moment was too perplexed to speak.
    â€˜Mr Lanagan?’
    â€˜There are crazy people,’ Bub went on, then gave a rushed, breathless account of everything abnormal he could see. Eventually he made himself stop, which was a mistake, since he hadn’t got to the thing .
    â€˜Mr Lanagan,’ said the constable. ‘Do you think you could go for help? I’m at the bypass turnoff and heading west on Highway 60. There’ll be help in Motueka. But you should take your boat around Matarau Point and see why no one has come from the Nelson end.’
    Bub listened to the constable’s very reasonable request. He stared at the dead sailboarder and whispered, ‘What can I tell her?’ Then, he told her that he was going in to check on his friend George.
    The cop’s voice was tremulous, squeezed, wavering in volume. She once again advised Bub to stay out on the water. She said the streets were very dangerous. She talked about possible contaminants.
    Bub glanced at the horizon, and saw only the horizon, to the north out to sea a line where one blue met another, and east, Pepin Island, at the end of the long arm of the Richmond Range. There was no water traffic in sight.
    Bub’s radio coughed. ‘Mr Lanagan?’
    â€˜I’m here. Can we hook up? Over.’
    She screamed at him. ‘ Are you listening to me at all? ’
    â€˜Look,’ said Bub, and was pleased to hear resolve in his own voice. ‘I’m going to do a quick scout for my mate, George. After that I’m heading over to try to do something about the fire near the petrol station. When I’ve seen to that I’ll come and find you. Over and out.’
    She was still protesting when he signed off.
    The Smokehouse Café had eleven bodies in its dining area. Bub found his friend George doubled over the deep fryer, his head and arms immersed in boiling fat.
    Bub shoved the fire doors open and threw himself out into the parking lot. He doubled over, retching, then sagged, and sat down on the ground. He stayed there for a time, till the wind shifted and a gust of hot, metallic smoke wafted over him.
    He got up and went back into the restaurant. He turned off the deep fryer, let the range hood run for a minute, then