BEFORE THE STORM

Private Gemma Shaw drove quickly, expertly, without speaking, at a regulation sixty miles per hour, heading west on the Northwestern Motorway.

Tane wondered how fast she’d drive if one of them was behind her.

Convoys of trucks passed them on the other side of the motorway, great olive-green behemoths with huge jagged tires, long columns of them that stretched into the distance. But in their direction, the motorway was clear, at least until they got out of the Albany basin.

Private Shaw carefully braked and brought the army Land Rover to a halt.

Tane stared at the scene in front of him. Two hundred thousand people lived on the North Shore of Auckland City, and it seemed that all of them were jammed into little metal boxes down the four lanes ahead. There seemed to be no order to it. No careful lines of cars. It was just a jumble of multicolored pieces, as if someone had emptied a LEGO set down the motorway. The cars spilled from lane to lane, invading the shoulder and even the narrow grass of the median strip, rasping paint off their doors as they scraped along the median barriers. There were five and in some places even six cars squeezed into the narrow asphalt corridor.

There were family wagons, and sedans, and tradesmen’s vans, stuffed to the gunnels with belongings and people. Every second vehicle seemed to be a big, square four-wheel drive, spewing black and brown diesel fumes from its exhaust. Motorcycles somehow found chinks in the solid metal armor of the roadway, weaving and winding their way through.

Just past Bush Road a late model Audi had been abandoned in the middle of the center lane. There was no way to get it off the road; instead, it was bulldozed along by the Toyota SUV behind. Whenever the Audi veered to the left or the right, a clip from a car in one of the side lanes steered it back into line. Already it was a wreck from the constant battering. And yet, with the relentless pressure of the traffic, it kept moving, as if it too wanted to escape the horror that was creeping across farmlands, through gullies, and down the highway, a few miles to the north.

Members of a North Shore evangelical church walked the length of the motorway, clambering over car bonnets when they had to, handing out muesli bars and bottled water and religious tracts. Voices were shouting and horns were blaring, and from at least one vehicle, now pushed to the side, a column of smoke rose out of the engine.

“How the hell are we going to get through that?” Fatboy asked in dismay.

“Won’t be a problem, sir,” Private Shaw said, and performed an extremely nonregulation U-turn in the middle of the motorway, driving the wrong way down the on-ramp, under the overpass, and back up the off-ramp on the other side of the motorway. There was a police roadblock on the off-ramp to prevent people from doing exactly what Shaw was doing. They needed the eastbound lanes clear for the convoys of trucks. The army vehicle and Shaw’s ID got them through the roadblock without problem, though.

Shaw turned her headlights on full-beam, even though it was daylight, as a warning to the oncoming traffic.

They passed police cars at irregular intervals down the motorway, trying ineffectually to create some order out of the chaos.

They saw any number of minor nose-to-tail accidents, but the drivers did not even bother to stop. One car was scraping its front bumper along the roadway in front of it.

Not that they were moving far. A yard at a time if they were lucky.

Most of the cars were packed with belongings. Suitcases strapped onto roof racks, backseats stuffed with cardboard boxes and canvas bags. They passed one car with an elderly woman sitting in a kayak strapped onto a roof rack, wearing a bicycle helmet for protection. The car was driven by a middle-aged couple. There was no room in the backseat for the old lady because that was taken up by three ferocious-looking rottweilers.

“What are we going to do?” Tane asked. “When we get home?”

“Tell Mum and Dad what’s going on,” Fatboy said. “Then get over to Rebecca’s house.”

Rebecca’s mum had been questioned and released, and was now back at the West Harbor house, according to Crowe.

They had tried phoning them from the stadium but got only a recorded voice telling them to try again later. The entire telephone system was overloaded across Auckland as a panicking population tried to contact friends or relatives.

Rebecca had stopped crying now, but there was a strange sadness about her. More than that, a sense that she didn’t care anymore. That nothing mattered. It was like a wall around her, and even Fatboy didn’t try to penetrate it.

Tane wondered if she was right. About the antibodies and macrophages. He had known her for the whole of his life, of her life, too, and she was seldom wrong about anything.

Yet Crowe had been so insistent.

“At the start, there would have been just one,” Rebecca said, mostly to herself. “A small cloud of mist rising out of a test tube or a glass flask. Thickening. Growing. Maybe it was late at night. Maybe no one was there to see. Then, in the mist, a macrophage grew, and it waited. It waited for a pathogen. Maybe it was a night watchman or maybe a scientist working late.”

She paused, and stared out the window for a while.

“And those cells became a resource. Food, if you like. And with them, the fog grew, and then maybe there were two of the macrophages. And the fog spread, creeping along corridors and under doorways, finding its next target, and then there were three or four of the creatures. By the morning, the mist covered the island and the people were gone.”

“Don’t think about it,” Fatboy said. “It’s upsetting you.”

It wasn’t just Rebecca it was upsetting.

Rebecca ignored him and continued, “Then the fog reached Whangarei, wiping out a few scattered farmhouses and small towns on the way. And there were fifty thousand people. Fifty thousand germs to be disinfected.”

“What is she talking about?” Private Shaw was getting nervous.

Rebecca said, “It’s going to reach Auckland soon, and most of a million people will still be here, and it will use their cells to grow. And it will grow. If fifty thousand people makes a fog several miles wide, then how much fog will a million human bodies make?”

“Rebecca, stop it now!” Fatboy said.

“Rebecca,” Tane said.

She closed her eyes and shook her head gently. “Sorry, guys. Long day.”

“A long, strange day,” Fatboy agreed.

Tane said, “Crowe and the rest of those scientists know what they are doing. They don’t think we are a disease, and I don’t either.”

Rebecca lapsed into a strange, moody silence and said nothing more.

“What about the Chronophone?” Tane asked.

They still had to install the device, currently cradled on Tane’s lap.

“We’ll do it later,” Fatboy said. “It’ll be easier to get into the city on the bike; we can just cut through all the traffic.”

A radio beeped, and Private Shaw held it to her ear, giving their location and direction to someone on the other end before pulling over and stopping.

“What are you…?” Fatboy began to ask, but his question was answered as another Land Rover appeared behind them, headlights flashing.

Big “Mandy” Manderson got out of the other vehicle. He was grinning widely. They got out to meet him.

“Managed to commandeer a vehicle,” he said. “Got some good news for you.”

“Really?” Rebecca said sardonically, understandably, considering the circumstances.

“In times like these, any good news is a blessing,” Manderson said.

There was a movement behind him, and a small brown bundle clambered out through the passenger window, chattering and waving its hairy little arms.

“Xena!” Rebecca cried as the chimp ran across and leaped up at her.

“Just wandered out of the mist about twenty minutes ago,” Manderson said. “God knows how she found her way back down through the hotel in the fog. Must have followed the main road south. Just pure luck, I guess.”

Maybe, Tane thought, but animals had a strange instinct sometimes.

Rebecca hugged the chimp like a long-lost daughter, and Xena hugged her back.

“Hi, Xena,” Tane said. She screeched joyfully at him, and he found himself strangely pleased to see the happy little chimp again.

“Please say thanks to Dr. Crowe for us,” Rebecca said as Manderson climbed back in the Land Rover.

He smiled, and said, “Stony is a bit busy at the moment.”

“You didn’t tell him, did you.” It was a statement, not a question.

Manderson smiled again and shook his head. Rebecca walked over before he could pull away, leaned in the window, and kissed him on the forehead, just below that unruly mop of curls.

“Thanks, Mandy,” she said. “Is there any way of reaching you, if we need to? All the phone systems are out.”

He reached into the rear of the vehicle and handed her a portable radio. “It’s already set to the right frequency,” he said. “Just holler if you need anything.”

“I think you’ll be too busy to worry about us.” Rebecca smiled.

“You take care now,” he said. “Go and hide somewhere nice and deep in that little submarine of yours.”

Rebecca hugged Xena tightly as Manderson headed back up the motorway. Toward Albany.

Toward the fog.