Kokopu Dreams Read Online Free

hours. He could have driven, but the keys to both his car and Uncle Wire’s truck had been in the burning houses, and hot-wiring vehicles was not among his life skills. Instinct kept him moving slowly, giving him time to get his head around the things he suspected he’d find. Sean’s dread grew with every step, Uncle Wire’s sandals going flip-flop as the sole of the right one came loose.
    Sean used to work in Ngahere sometimes. He’d laid concrete drives and floors, and built fences for the cheap houses sold to starry-eyed young couples with lounge suites and whiteware on hock, freshly sown lawns and roadside plantings that looked like twigs stuck in clay by kids. The suburb was up on a hill, but nonetheless Te Rina had renamed it ‘The Sunken Village’.
    â€˜You wouldn’t laugh if you had to live there,’ Sean had said to her.
    It always felt to him like every other fibro-and-chipboard suburb where the kids tagged the fences — ‘Hip-hop rules, OK?’ — and the council collected the rates and commissioned sociological surveys with stirring recommendations that nobody could afford to implement.
    Sean walked into the place, trying to focus his apprehension, thinking mainly of friends he’d had, and wondering whether or not they’d survived. Had any of them been forced to watch family members die around them? Had they burned and buried spouses and children? His imagination worked overtime but the stench brought him back with a nasty jolt. He should have expected it, but it quite took him by surprise.
    Hamu’s growl made him turn. Out of a drive charged three dogs, barking and snarling. Hamu didn’t hesitate. He crouched as the lead dog, a heavy-jawed, spiked-collar mastiff cross, leapt at Sean. Hamu sprang and took the attacker by the throat. Sean seized the second dog around the neck and swung him, breaking his back on the kerb. The third dog fled. Hamu had his opponent, about twice his size, by the throat and on his back.
    As he moved to one side for a better purchase Sean knee-dropped the mastiff and heard his ribs break. Hamu ripped his throat open. It must have taken all of five seconds.
    Sean sat down on the kerb by the dog he’d killed. Hamu was growling, his hackles and his tail up, ready for any other attackers.
    â€˜Good dog,’ Sean said. ‘You did really well.’
    Hamu knew he had and wagged his tail, before giving his enemy’s corpse another bite in the neck and a shake. Sean remembered Uncle Wire telling him what a good pig dog he’d been in his younger years, baling and holding some very large boars. He thought of all the mean dogs — rotties, staffy crosses, pit bulls, ridgebacks and mastiff crosses — that he’d seen held in check only by owners meaner than themselves. He looked at Hamu.
    â€˜Well, mate, we’d better get used to shite like that,’ he said. Hamu wagged and panted.
    They didn’t go into the house where the dogs had been. There was no traffic, no noise anywhere; there were no people, no motor mowers, no chainsaws or hedge trimmers. Sean was aware of little more than the stench, like the smell in Uncle Wire’s house, not as concentrated but more pervasive, multiplied a thousand times and filtered through closed doors. He thought again of what it meant. Hundreds and hundreds of dead people. Bodies in every house, and he was only on the edge of the suburb. He couldn’t help himself. He threw up, sitting there on the kerb, Hamu sniffing round apparently unfazed. He thought of disease, rats. He was dirty. The stink made even shallow breaths feel disgusting.
    And where was he going, anyway? What was he going to do? If there were other survivors where would he find them? Suddenly he was fighting the feeling of being in very deep trouble, way out of his depth. Words like confused and lonely didn’t even come close. Frightened didn’t cut it either. He felt a whisker away