1

‘IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY for it,’ Sean said to the ducks, busy with their early morning forage on the beach. Bush-covered hills were reflected in the glassy estuary waters, the sun an hour above the horizon warmed his back and glinted in the treetops.

Sean liked the glow. The weather reminded him he was far from the north, a hundred kilometres south of Otepoti, with none of the mangroves of Ngunguru or Hokianga and none of the steamy summer heat either. But the southern coast still teemed with fish and birds, and Te Tai Tokerau was a long way distant.

The birds were loud and the smell of honeysuckle strong. There weren’t many people left and folk mostly knew how to behave. If they pushed here they’d get a bulge there. Every action had a price. Even doing nothing had a price. He was laughing at himself for thinking in slogans when his reverie was shattered by Bernie, the drake, chasing one of the chooks up the grassy foreshore with a great flapping and squawking.

‘Get out of it, you wally!’ he yelled, throwing a gumboot. ‘That chook doesn’t look anything like a duck!’

That morning when Sean had been woken just before dawn by a competing chorus of roosters, he’d lain in bed for half an hour wishing he wasn’t alone and contemplating an hour of chores. Eventually he’d rolled himself out onto the floor, dunked his head in a basin of cold water — pure misery in the frosty depths of winter — dressed and lit the stove, before moving outside to collect the eggs and milk Phoebe, the goat.

Breakfast was easy. Comfrey tea with honey and fried potato cakes made from last night’s spud mashed up with smoked fish and some chopped parsley. Sean still had clear memories of toast, finest quality local olive oil, margarine, coffee, orange pekoe tea, porridge and Weet-Bix. But never mind, he thought. Get real. Kidney fat is good enough to fry stuff. Potato cakes are fine. Sean still pulled a face though. Sometimes when he drank clover or chamomile tea he almost wept at the memory of a cup of coffee.

Dishes were still a chore. Hot water off the stove and into the sink with some of Debbie’s soap. Sean had no idea how she made it but to his daily amazement it worked, lathering up like Sunlight or Palmolive. Debbie traded cakes of soap for fish and anything else she needed and Sean often laughed at the popularity of her product. They might be rude and crude, patched and cobbled, but at least they were nice to be near.

Soap had lasted longer than anything else in the supermarkets, except the hardware like crockery and cutlery, pots and frypans, and things like boot polish and paper. Some people kept the money though Sean preferred to barter. The small gold coins were handy, but there was something sad about people hoarding money — like they hadn’t quite grasped what had happened, they were still waiting for Richard and Judy to read the news on the telly, or for Jim to announce that Glenavy was the place to be tomorrow, but watch that burn time.

Thirty-two people lived in Kokopu Waters. Thirty-two. It wasn’t very many, Sean thought, and they still weren’t reproducing. The biological term crashed in his head, splintering and cracking like a breaking window.

Everyone worked hard at keeping things together. Manu was down on the beach already. A former gang prospect and now a fisherman, whenever he could he braved the bar in his waka, netting and longlining and supplying the village with fish. Marama, his partner, was a naturopath and worked with Kamisese and Frangipani on keeping everyone healthy. Bill, a tattooed biker from somewhere near Picton, was a hunter. Pita was a carpenter; Derek looked after the plumbing. Sean was a gardener, a teacher and a sort of elder, though the position still made him feel like an imposter. Like today.

He’d been called on to officiate at the community’s first wedding — a double wedding, Lydia and Whata, Dennis and Corinne. And everyone had high hopes.

‘Better be a good fix, bro,’ Manu said. ‘We don’t start having kids soon there’ll be nobody to bury us.’

‘Nobody to bury us.’ It wasn’t fair. Sean had buried dozens of people, maybe hundreds, and so had all his friends. And they were doing their best, looking after each other and the life around them but it still wasn’t happening.

His chores over, Sean took a walk down to the grove of fruit trees where the wedding was to take place. There were apples, apricots, cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, plums and even grapes. But no fruit on The Tree. It was an apple tree, Sean knew, ten years old but still barren. Every year there were glossy new leaves but no blossom — no fruit.

He stood for a while under a walnut tree, the sun climbing higher and leaves dappling the light, while he thought of a suitable ceremony. It was a problem. Lydia, who lived with his occasional lover, Alex, was a Buddhist. Whata believed in the old gods — Tane, Papatuanuku, Hine Nui te Po. Dennis was a Christian, Corinne didn’t really know. Sean was bound to offend someone, especially if he tried to please everybody.

So when he stood in the small clearing between the trees three hours later he did his usual thing. He pleased himself. He called out a formal greeting to the sea and the land and the people present. He said hello to Tinirau as well. You never knew with taniwha. Best to stay in good with those guys.

‘E nga iwi katoa, haere mai, haere mai, haere mai! Mauria mai te aroha me te rangimarie!’

He really meant it. Bring your love and your peace, all of you. Cloak everyone with all your good feeling. Wrap us in your warmth, everyone holding tight together, sharing strength and spirit.

They needed it. Sean could see people had been through the worst of the hells. They were battered, shell-shocked, wounded, some of them insane. But they were coping. They were still here, handling things, even doing okay. Except nobody was getting pregnant.

It hadn’t mattered much for the first two or three years; they’d all been so busy surviving. Before the telly died, haggard-looking people, politicians mostly, described how an illegally imported rabbit calicivirus had mutated. It wasn’t killing rabbits any more — they were a staple food now — and nor was it affecting cats and dogs, and not the native bat nor the little spotted kiwi. But it had been killing people with a type of haemorrhagic fever that’d travelled from the Mackenzie Country up and down the land like the wind, from Bluff to Cape Reinga in about three weeks. And that was the good news, Sean laughed bitterly to himself.

At about the same time the scientists’ worst nightmare had come true. A woman exposed to a new, airborne, strain of Ebola got on a plane at Kinshasa. She’d infected everyone on the plane and wherever it landed they got off, either mixing with the locals or journeying elsewhere. It had taken less than a week for the epidemic to spread around the world and for people to start dying, their organs liquefying, blood coming out of every orifice.

But the Ebola hadn’t come to Aotearoa. The mutated calicivirus had already seen the country tightly quarantined.

Not that it really mattered, Sean thought. The Curse of the Rabbit had wasted everyone without any outside help. Now, with no babies, it looked like they might all die out anyway. But they had to keep trying, they weren’t quite ready to give up, and maybe the wedding would do the trick. Maybe this time.

Sean started the service.

‘We’re all here to celebrate the love of Lydia and Whata, Corinne and Dennis, each for the other. We wish them every happiness, long lives, much joy, and if it’s meant to be, lots of children.’