ON CHRISTMAS DAY

It was half past nine in the morning. On Christmas Day.

The Christmas tree sat in the corner of the middle lounge, the largest of the three. It was a tall tree, perfectly shaped in the traditional Christmas tree cone, with deep green needles—or were they leaves?—and a dark wooden trunk scored with the intricate and random patterns of bark. It was a luxurious tree—vibrant, exciting, larger than life—that embodied the spirit of Christmas in its very form.

And it was made in China, according to the not-quite-covered-up sticker on its base. Aluminum, fiberglass, and plastic, if you cared to read the small print.

“Be there in a moment,” Tane’s mum called cheerily from the kitchen, busy with some final putting-away.

They had all helped clear away the remnants and dishes of the champagne breakfast, which was a Christmas morning tradition in the Williams household and happened before the presents were opened. They all helped; that was part of the tradition also. Even Rebecca.

It was the first time that Rebecca had spent Christmas morning at Tane’s house. Her mum’s cousin had come and picked her up, but Rebecca had asked to go to Tane’s and nobody had minded.

Tane thought it was strange to be having a day of celebration with all that was going on—quarantine zones, kidnappings, nationwide police hunts, and so on—but it seemed even stranger not to celebrate Christmas, and certainly it would have raised some tricky questions with his mum and dad if they had decided not to show up.

His mum wandered in at last from the dining room and found an empty armchair.

“Right, then,” she said. “Who’s the youngest?”

That was another Williams family tradition. The youngest person would play Santa Claus and hand out the presents to the others, starting from the oldest person. As there were no grandparents or young cousins this time, that made his dad the oldest and Tane the youngest. Rebecca shared his birthday, but she had been born in the morning and Tane had been born in the evening.

Tane didn’t answer. He was too busy watching the spider. It was a big one. Not huge like an Avondale spider or a tarantula, but big enough to be scary. It was brown with an elongated body and thick, sectional legs. It had woven an intricate web in the corner of one of the large picture windows of the middle lounge, a tightly woven web, almost honeycomb in appearance, with many layers of strands on top of other layers.

The spider was quivering, shaking. He had never seen a spider do that before. A thin band of white crossed over the dark brown body. It struggled to move, and he suddenly realized what was happening. The spider had become trapped in its own web.

“Tane’s the youngest,” Rebecca said brightly, showing no sign of the worry that must surely be festering inside.

Tane hunted in the pile of brightly wrapped parcels until he found something with his dad’s name on it.

“Merry Christmas,” he said jovially, making a bit of a performance of the handover. His dad grinned and snatched it off him, scanning the tag to see who it was from and ripping off the paper with gusto. It was a book, the latest John Grisham thriller, from his uncle in Wellington.

His dad laughed now, for no real reason. Just the joy of the day.

If only he knew!

Tane was already rummaging for a present for his mum. His mind was elsewhere, though, and he skipped over one a couple of times before noticing it.

He found a present for Fatboy from Rebecca, and then one for Rebecca, from Fatboy.

Fatboy’s present to Rebecca was a silver necklace. Tane didn’t look at it too closely, but it looked expensive. Still, with over a million dollars still earning them interest in their trust account, what was money anyway? It was the thought that counted, and he hoped that Rebecca would realize the effort that had gone into the present Tane had chosen for her—the chess set.

She still hadn’t opened it, saving it till last probably, because it was the biggest. Or maybe, he hoped, because it was from him.

He opened Rebecca’s present slowly. It was delicately, femininely wrapped in layers of colored tissue, bound by ribbons. That wasn’t like her at all. Maybe they had wrapped it in the shop for her, he thought. Inside the wrapping was a white cardboard box. He pulled the top off carefully and stared down at what was inside.

It was a brand-new harmonica. Engraved on the silver top of the instrument were the words FRIENDS FOREVER.

He gave Rebecca a hug, with a warm feeling that went from his toes up to the hair of his scalp.

His parents’ presents for him and his brother were the same, he realized as he opened his. Fatboy had opened his a few moments earlier. It was a genuine hand-carved patu pounamu, a greenstone club, almost a foot long with a leather cord through one end, carved with traditional symbols of their Tuhoe tribe.

“Goes with the moko, don’t you think?” Fatboy said proudly.

Tane put his carefully to one side, conscious of the close scrutiny of his parents. It was a kind of cool present, but he had been hoping for a new Xbox console. He forced a smile.

“Thanks, Mum, Dad, it’s great!”

Rebecca came over and sat next to him as she unwrapped the chess set. Tane crossed his fingers behind his back.

It was a hit.

Rebecca actually squealed with delight as the paper fell away. She slid the wooden case out of its plastic covering and pulled each piece individually out of its velvet casing, noticing the fine detail of the replications.

She even held up the king, Michelangelo’s David, to show the rest of the room. “Look at the detail!” she exclaimed. “You can see every muscle on his tummy. And what a tiny willy.”

They all roared with laughter.

“Thanks, Tane,” Rebecca said, and hugged him warmly.

Tane never got to see what Rebecca had bought Fatboy, which was the only jarring note on the day. Fatboy unwrapped it, looked inside without revealing the contents, smiled at Rebecca, and wrapped it back up. He gave Rebecca a hug after that, but Tane looked the other way.

It was a lovely day, and the worries that faced them receded for a few hours at least. They ate, they drank more champagne than they were allowed by sneaking into the kitchen and topping off their glasses just a little at a time, and they listened to “Snoopy’s Christmas” over and over on the stereo until his dad got sick of it and put on “The Little Drummer Boy” instead. They just spent time enjoying their presents and each other’s company. Fatboy got his guitar out after lunch (leftovers from the breakfast) and Tane joined him on his new harmonica. The big windows were open to the forest, and the sounds and smells of the native bush drifted gently inside. The sun was fiery, but sheltered by the trees of the forest, the house was cool and peaceful.

It was a lovely day.

         

In the midafternoon, they went back to the West Harbor house to do some more work on the Chronophone. Rebecca’s mother was still out at her cousin’s, so they had the house totally to themselves. They had already purchased most of the parts for the machine, and Fatboy had arranged for his mate Goony to come over and start building it the moment the rest of the plans came through.

Rebecca went to sit on a large sofa in the corner of the living room and wrapped her arms around her legs, rocking back and forth slowly. Tane watched her silently. They had managed to put it all out of their minds for a few hours on Christmas morning, but now the reality was breathing down their necks.

At six o’clock, Tane turned the television on to watch the news. The queen was on, broadcasting her Christmas message, and he flicked over to TV3.

There was only one story. The news had apparently been running all day. Breathless reporters behind police roadblocks and helicopter shots from a distance told a story of the most catastrophic disaster in the history of New Zealand. Fifty thousand people, cut off, missing or worse. A strange fog. The evacuation of the small town of Maungaturoto, south of Whangarei, the next in the path of the fog as it drifted down toward Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city.

Auckland residents were urged to remain calm and to not try leaving the city. Civil defense managers assured reporters that special teams of experts had already been brought in from overseas to deal with the problem.

Rebecca had been drinking some water, but her glass shattered suddenly on the floor. Her face was white.

“Rebecca?”

She turned and ran outside onto the patio. Tane ran after her. He sensed Fatboy following.

“Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

Rebecca gripped the edge of the patio table with both hands as if she would fall down without it. She was breathing strangely, Tane noticed, hyperventilating. She kept lurching forward.

“Oh my God, no,” Rebecca said.

“What is it, Rebecca? Do you think we were exposed to a virus when we were on the island?” Fatboy asked urgently.

“No. Worse than that. Much worse than that.”

Worse than that! The world seemed to be spinning around Tane’s head. “What’s wrong, Rebecca?”

She shut her eyes for a second and breathed out a long, slow breath. “I’ve just put it all together. The island. The fog. The cryptic messages. I know why we had to buy the submarine.”

“To visit the island. We already knew that, didn’t we?” Tane asked with a growing apprehension.

She shook her head. “What if there were two reasons? A plan B in case our trip to the island failed.”

“Which it did,” Fatboy noted.

“What if we were right? What if this…virus…or whatever it is, is so dreadful, so devastating, that plan B is to give ourselves a refuge, a kind of a fallout shelter under the sea.”

“A sanctuary,” Fatboy said softly.

Rebecca asked, “What if we’re supposed to hide underwater in our little yellow submarine to keep ourselves safe from a plague that is about to wipe out the rest of New Zealand?”

“Or the rest of the world,” Tane said.

It was ten past six in the evening. On Christmas Day.