There Is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Right, procrastinating from uni to get ahead with this: expect a lot of stops and starts as I try to juggle writer's block and essays, but I will try my best to keep updates coming - probably tri-weekly to monthly at first, though if I really get into this TL (and if there's enough interest/feedback/constant clour for more) that could become weekly or fortnightly depending on what format I settle for (ah, the eternal dilemma: omniscient narrative or single-character POVs? )

So without further ado, here we go:

There is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand

I: Everybody's Talking About World War Three​

​

I hold that the character of nuclear weapons is such that their very existence corrupts the best of intention…that they have brought us to the greatest of all perversions; the belief that this evil is necessary.
- David Lange

​

...everybody's talking about World War Three
Yes everybody's talking about World War Three
But we're as safe as safe can be...



Throughout 1983, the world watched with bated breath as the two superpowers of the era, the United States on one side and the Soviet Union on the other, experienced a cooling of relations which many was feared would bring about nuclear war and devastation the like of which the world had never seen.
In New Zealand, thousands of miles from either of the belligerents or the flashpoints in Europe and the Middle East, the threat of war loomed impossibly distant yet chillingly near, as the spectre cast by Soviet nuclear missiles placed the tiny island country of three million people within the reach of nuclear attack, aggravated by its close ties to the United States.


There were those who protested. As the country experienced a burgeoning economic crisis and society’s fabric was stretched by a failing economy, many amongst the younger generation took to protest, on and off the streets, against what they saw as a one-sided alliance with the United States which only served to put their country on the list of Soviet targets for annihilation whilst giving the Americans somewhere to park spare ships. While anti-nuclear protest was by no means a new phenomenon to New Zealanders, (the USS Truxtun having been met in 1982 by throngs of angry protestors), it reached a new level of intensity by the time the first round of Soviet-American negotiations broke down in Geneva in late January of 1984, so much so that Muldoon felt compelled to pass under urgency a piece of temporary legislation which would forbid protests from being held within 200 metres of any military facility, the consulate or embassy of any foreign country, or the House of Representatives in Wellington. While the former measure would prove almost laughably redundant given the remoteness of most New Zealand Defence Force installations, the move to cordon off the Beehive and much of central Wellington from protest inflamed feelings amongst those who felt the Prime Minister was once again abusing his power.
For his part, Muldoon couldn’t have cared less.


Following the introduction of Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom on January 28, and the downing of KLM-146 over the Aegean Sea by Bulgarian forces, protest against war briefly abated as people wondered what might happen next. As the situation in Europe began to go rapidly downhill, some wondered if the Government’s response had not been correct in gearing the country towards whatever might come next.
Records salvaged from the National Archives (and the disused railway tunnel in the Rimutakas to which many documents were moved) indicate that several meetings and telephone calls were held in the Beehive’s ninth and tenth floors during February 3-5, where the decision was probably made to lay Civil Defence plans should an attack be declared. While there were no concrete provisions made regarding nuclear war, the Prime Minister was later quoted as saying “I want everyone to know that they’re safer in New Zealand than in Switzerland,” indicating his lack of concern about the likelihood of the country coming under nuclear attack.


By the 10th, the PM’s chipper outlook had no doubt changed as the news of Andropov’s death and replacement by a military council (which he referred to in no uncertain terms as “a junta, plain and simple”), as well as heightened tensions following the Munich bombing, led him to place the Defence Force on alert, meeting with US Ambassador Browne to discuss the role New Zealand would be prepared to play under its ANZUS obligations. Although Browne assured Muldoon the ongoing negotiations in Geneva would make any contribution of New Zealand troops unnecessary, he said the United States welcomed the gesture from its ally and said the mobilisation of reserve regiments across the country would be appreciated.

On Valentine’s Day, many ignored the restrictions on unsanctioned gatherings to demonstrate against the escalation of forces, as the small NZDF’s mobilisation became rapidly apparent and hysteria spread about the chances of Soviet attacks. Crowds gathered in the centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Hamilton to protest; while those in smaller provincial centres dispersed relatively early, Muldoon ordered that “those long-haired layabouts get their arses off the street and stop helping the Russians spread panic”; an order which led to violent confrontations between students and police in Dunedin and a similar clash at the gates of Parliament.

The following day, a young Maori man was arrested on suspicion of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the US Embassy in Wellington and taken into police custody. Rumours that he had been beaten by the Marine guards who caught him near the scene led to conflicting feelings of anger at the Americans and contempt toward the people threatening to undermine the alliance with the one country which could capably defend New Zealand from Soviet attack. This was soon overshadowed, however, as the morning of the 17th brought with it the news of a Soviet ultimatum in Europe and the joint response of Reagan and Thatcher with a solid negative. As panic spread, Muldoon called a press conference for noon where he said, in part:
“…we now face a grim possibility that war will arise again in our lifetime…I must ask of you now as a country to stand together behind this Government and trust that we can ride out this storm…”
It wasn’t particularly reassuring, as speeches go, but the situation was sweeping up Muldoon, and the world, faster than he could adjust to it. With the economy teetering on the brink of freefall as investors across the world engaged in a panicked spree of buying and selling, he was faced with an out-of-control global crisis that could, for all he or anyone else knew, end the world.


It was with this in mind that the cameras and microphones of the country’s news media congregated in Parliament’s press hall at half past ten on the humid summer’s night of February 18th, 1984 as, giving a speech that continues to create debate over whether he was drunk or just stressed by the extraordinary situation, Robert Muldoon announced the outbreak of World War Three.
“...we have decided, after consultation at Government House with our allies from the American embassy and the British High Commission...that following the aggression displayed in Europe the appropriate and moral next step for New Zealand to take is to declare war upon the Soviet Union.”

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

II. There Is No Unrest In This Country​

“We were in no way prepared…for Muldoon’s statement. Cabinet only went along with him because the alternative was trying to roll him, and nobody ever thought the war would escalate so quickly that we couldn’t do both…we were wrong.”
- George Gair, former Deputy Prime Minister.

“Ooh you sing bravo, bravo
Save me from myself
I’m the first to get trigger-happy
The first to think of my own health…”


Muldoon had hoped that his declaration of war would help rally the people of New Zealand behind him as his sterling leadership and tactical nous in allying with the Western Alliance against the Evil Empire breathed fresh life into his Government. As Michael King would write of him, Muldoon’s entire government had been dedicated to keeping alive the country he had grown up in, so it was perhaps a natural extreme of this philosophy to try and re-enact the crusade which had defined his young adulthood.

To call this move a misstep is a massive understatement.


By the time Radio New Zealand broadcast the news of the declaration of war at 10:43, the country was thrown into panic. The Armed Offenders Squad had to be called out in the Wairarapa later that morning as a Greytown man shot one woman dead and wounded a man in what was apparently the home of two local National Party organisers, and another young man was caught trying to set fire to a police station in Tauranga. Such extreme reactions were in the vast minority: for most of New Zealand the immediate concern was as to how this would play out. Although nobody held any illusions about the dangers of nuclear war, there were still those who felt that the war might just play out at a slow burn, long enough for some kind of peace deal to be signed. Given the repeated failures of the Geneva negotiations, these optimists were short on numbers.

Throughout the rest of the country, the reaction was a barely-repressed panic, which started to express itself when the stock market dropped abruptly as two things became apparent. First, New Zealand had voided whatever semblance of neutrality it may have held. Given the fact that it had built up a small amount of goodwill with the Soviets, this reversal was, in a word, unfortunate. Second, the massively protectionist nature of the New Zealand economy and the general condition thereof (a wage-price freeze having been in effect since 1982 and monstrously complicated financial controls) dissuaded investment. Cold comfort came with the closing of the New York Stock Exchange for the last time on the 19th, but the damage had been done. Overnight three billion dollars was wiped from the economy, which coupled with war panic (not helped by the Soviet rampage through the Fulda Gap) to drive the economy further from control.

With the country apparently sliding towards economic ruin and social disorder in the space of 24 hours, Muldoon turned to focus on what had always mattered to him most: ensuring his survival through any political crisis. In what post-War parlance has come to term the Three Days’ Hate, Muldoon fired shots at every enemy he had made in his nine years of power, and they were indeed legion. According to interviews with surviving Cabinet members, the emergency Cabinet meetings of the 19th to 21st of February were focused almost entirely on salvaging the Government’s reputation and using whatever financial reserves available to maintain the strength of the New Zealand dollar in anticipation of war contracts with American and British firms (that the EEC had its own mechanisms in place was either unknown or of no concern to Muldoon, even as the Reserve Bank screamed for a reprieve). This came at the cost of civil defence preparations, which were largely left to local authorities.


The regions were therefore at the forefront of the hurried preparations for nuclear attack, and this largely meant adapting existing natural disaster preparedness plans to the projected impacts of nuclear war. Although pre-War local government danced to the tune called by Wellington, civil defence was one of two crucial areas where they were permitted to make their own arrangements. This had the side-effect of leaving them hopelessly underfunded, however – as late as 1983, Hawke’s Bay did not even have a regional council, and Canterbury was the only one to levy more than $120,000 per year in total rates. By the afternoon of February 19th, practically every territorial authority in the country had convened its district or city council to discuss what preparations could be made.

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​

Council Administration Block, Auckland City
4:30 pm, NZDT
19th February, 1984

To call Catherine Tizard unimpressed was to call the sun warm or the Red Army peevish. She’d opposed the government on the Springbok tour, ridden into the mayoralty on the back of resentment of Rob’s Mob, and now what had they done? Only declared war on the superpower which was now romping through West Germany, shrugging off the Allies and kicking the shit out of Hannover. And now…
“So what you’re telling me,” she said levelly across the table at the Civil Defence representative, “is that the largest city in the country has no plans for dealing with nuclear attack?”
“Well uh, ma’am, not in so many words –”
“And that we have no actual facilities here to protect Council members in the event of any attack, nuclear or not, on the city?”
“Well strictly speaking, Devonport Naval Base is the main military target in the area, so that’s something, uh, that is, it’s more of a concern for my counterparts over in the North Shore…”
“Oh wonderful,” replied the Mayor, voice dripping with sarcasm. “So you’re saying the Russians will make sure to only bomb the area north of the bridge, then?” Before the grey man in his grey suit could respond, she sighed and waved him off. “Thank you, Colin, we’ll call you back in if we need to know anything else.”
As he left, Tizard looked to the table of councillors in front of her. They looked to her expectantly, a cold feeling of dread settling in the pit of her stomach as she realised there was nothing reassuring she could say if things really were to turn out as she feared. Still, like a nurse at the bedside of a man with cancer (she immediately regretted thinking that one), it was her duty to at least say something. As one of the councillors, a Labour colleague of hers, opened his mouth to speak, the Mayor cleared her throat.
“Well, we’d better do this properly, hadn’t we?” Not good, but it’ll have to do. “So Graham, how are the hospitals prepared for beds?”

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​

​

By February 21st, then, the country was balancing on a knife edge. Stores were reporting incredible rates of panic buying moderated only by the wage-price freeze, service stations saw fights over petrol as thousands flooded the motorways out of Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, fleeing the targets with increasing desperation as the war showed every sign of escalation; the sinking of a freighter bound for Tauranga from Manila by a Soviet submarine overnight on the 20th brought the war home to many. All the while, civil defence plans were hurriedly drawn up by the councils and the central government tried to juggle mobilisation of troops, obeying Muldoon’s demands for financial tightening and discrediting anti-war protestors, and calming the public.

For all the publicised failures of the Government during the Three Days’ Hate, though, one strategic decision which would have long term effects was taken, as the RNZAF was quietly dispersed from October 20th to regional airports across the North Island, and the RNZN dispatched HMNZS Waikato from Devonport for what was quoted as a ‘routine patrol of territorial waters,’ and the Wellington was prepared to join an ANZUS-organised convoy from Brisbane for the anticipated showdown with the Soviet Pacific Fleet off Japan.

These two choices, along with the mobilisation of the Army’s regiments across the country, would prove decisive in shaping the events of the next few days, weeks, and months.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

III. We Can All Keep Perfectly Calm
​

“In this Government’s view, a nuclear weapons-free zone would not present a practical step towards disarmament…this objective is best attained through collective defence arrangements and we have regarded the Anzus Treaty as the cornerstone of New Zealand’s defence policy.”
- Defence Ministry white paper, 1979.

“I look at the sunrise
I look at it burn
I look into your eyes
Don’t know where to turn…”

At 8pm on February 21st, New Zealand households received a disturbing piece of news: as Soviet troops encroached upon the suburbs of Munich and Hamburg, it was revealed that Parliament had been disbanded and MPs outside Cabinet permitted to return to their constituencies, sparking fears that the Government knew something it was not letting on.

Although Muldoon went on camera to allay New Zealanders’ fears by stating “At this time, we have no fear of immediate Soviet attack…the Members are being sent to their electorates to help coordinate Civil Defence planning and maintain calm, despite the efforts of certain, ah, radical efforts to stir up trouble in aid of the Warsaw Bloc,” the heightened tensions would explain the panic which erupted in the lower North Island later that evening; an earthquake measuring about 5.3 on the Richter scale hit Turangi, and was felt from Wellington to Hamilton. In the circumstances, many feared the Soviets had launched a surprise nuclear attack on Ohakea Airbase or Palmerston North – that this had supposedly occurred without any sign of an exchange in Europe or even attacks on Wellington, Christchurch or Auckland simply did not occur to many in the circumstances. At any rate, this ensured the emergency services were on high alert well into the evening, and impromptu evacuations from the four major centres intensified.

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Underneath Parliament Buildings,
Wellington, New Zealand
12:52 am, NZDT

Rob Muldoon was sweating like a pig which had just heard the farmer’s wife ask for a side of bacon. That wasn’t due to any fear on his part – he was running on liquid courage, as he had been the last few days – but rather the heat which hung in the bunker under the Beehive in spite of the coolness which had descended outside in the wake of a cloudless night.
David Thomson was talking about the continued dispersal of forces across the country; although the sailing of the Wellington earlier that evening had raised some eyebrows, most civilians were too busy with their own preparations to pay the frigate much heed, and by and large the same had applied to the Air Force flights to Napier, Gisborne, and Rotorua. Whenuapai was being readied for operations as flights through the international airport at Mangere tailed off, and the Defence Ministry anticipated a total shutdown of air travel as the threat of shootdowns grew – at this stage the only flights out were those headed across the ditch anyway, reasoned Jim McLay, so would Auckland International not make a good staging point as well?

As Muldoon rumbled about the need to halt civilian travel altogether, and began to outline a plan whereby 40 Squadron could load up with the better freight handling facilities at the airport in Mangere, an MFAT mandarin swept in, flanked by two SIS men.
“Mr Prime Minister –” began the Foreign Affairs man, before Muldoon cut him off, eyes suddenly focused like a hunting dog on a scent.
“They’ve done it, haven’t they?” If it was a question, the Prime Minister’s tone didn’t seem uncertain at all. All eyes in the room bore upon the messenger, who could only muster a halting nod.
“Kassel, P-Prime Minister.”
“Ours or theirs?”
“The, ah, the High Commission wasn’t sure, sir; we got the message from across the road.”
Muldoon grunted. Time for someone to take the reins, then, and as he was the man for the job…
“Jim, pass it on to Ewan up in Trentham: we need to get the Army and Air Force out of Auckland and Wellington. George,” this directed at the Minister of Railways “get the commuter trains running. If the Americans tell us the Russians are firing at us, I want orderly evacuations up the Hutt Valley; out to Masterton if we can. Ben,” now the Minister of Police was in the line of fire “get the message out to the districts. We’ll need every officer we can ready to help keep order if the Communists try anything, from here or there.”

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Although, strictly speaking, TV broadcasting stopped after midnight, the entire country was going to be awake for some time, and the Government knew well enough to keep people calm with the reassuring faces who brought them their news in peacetime anyway. Dougal Stevenson was just that face. As the man who’d been the face – and just as importantly, voice – behind the country’s first TV news bulletin, he was an ideal choice for the task of announcing the news to the country. It was therefore his authoritative baritone which made the announcement at 1:25 am on both TV One and Radio New Zealand that there had been “a small-scale tactical nuclear exchange somewhere in central Germany.”

This was the moment, then, where panic was properly unleashed, in the wake of an uncertain next few hours. To TVNZ’s credit, Stevenson stayed on the air through the night, reading out Civil Defence advice regarding the possible consequences of nuclear war, most of it verbatim from materials sent from the American embassy and British High Commission. Then, at a quarter to three, he was handed a piece of paper. Reading it, he blinked slowly and turned to the camera.
“We have just received word of a second nuclear strike in Central Germany. Casualties among NATO forces have not been reported, but are feared to be in the thousands…”

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Drovyanaya, Chita Oblast
Transbaikal Military District
RSFSR, Soviet Union
10:31 pm local/2:31 am NZDT

Polkovnik Stanislav Ivanovich Ozerov (4th Missile Division, 53rd Rocket Army, Strategic Rocket Forces), was practically buried in a drift of paperwork rivalling the snow which lay outside, above his command bunker. He was tasked with implementing targeting plans in the Far East, and with the Chinese looking restive Stavka was screaming down the line to bombard everything east of Irkutsk.
Right now, then, he was plotting targets to which spare missiles could be assigned. Fortunately the buildup of the last eighteen months had made sure they had plenty at their disposal, although there was the fear that the Imperialists would launch a surprise attack before the Soviet Union could strike at their dead heart – their reckless attack near Kassel had proven as much.

Co-ordinates were being programmed into UR-100s of various denominations, as long-range targets were located for destruction. A strategic strike was imminent; although air missions on the Pacific coast had been postponed, Ozerov was smart enough to know better (and if his superior hadn’t already been purged by Andropov’s successors, smart enough to be sent north to break ice off rocks and then the rocks).

He was therefore tasked with selecting cities in the Southern Pacific region to immolate. They had three missiles assigned to the Southern Pacific Operations Area; all with one megaton warheads equipped. Stroking his chin while also patting his pocket for his packet of cigarettes, Ozerov looked at the options, and nodded. Three names, their foreign English origins made no clearer by the Cyrillic print, loomed out as he typed them into a command console, before sending them to his subordinates.

Канберра, Австралийская столичная территория.
Сидней, Новый Южный Уэльс
Дарвин, Северная территория​

As he prepared to move on to oversee the deployment of the missiles, his telephone rang. Ozerov picked up the receiver with a gingerness remarkable in a man who had just deployed the destructive force of three million tonnes of TNT.
“Yes, sir? Indeed? I see. It shall be done. I serve the Soviet Union.” This time he slammed the receiver down, snapping to himself “Yobany v rot! Where in hell do those khuys expect me to find spare weapons for the South Pacific when I’ve got a billion screaming yellow monsters over the border?” He sighed and sat heavily, taking a minute to make a protracted show of lighting a cigarette, the harsh tobacco smoke of the first drag sharpening his mind a little after 48 hours at his station. Then, a thought occurred. He picked up the receiver again, this time with the determination of one who knows his superiors won’t be around long enough to berate him if he messes up anyway. A voice answered at the other end.
“Ah Oleg, is that you? Good. I know. Yes, I have had another order from Stavka. Tell me, what assets does the Pacific Fleet have in the Southern Pacific Operations Area with spare capacity? Chto? Ah, excellent! Right, can you assign some extra targets to them? Yes, straight from Moscow via Chita. Pizdaty; I have…” he scanned another telexed sheet, headed Новая Зеландия which had been deposited as he spoke “…four targets to strike. What? Well, that’s good as it is, if you can relay that to our comrades in Cam Ranh…Khorrosho.”

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[Tsar of New Zealand]

IV. ...But We're As Safe As Safe Can Be​

“Blue smoke goes drifting by into the deep blue sky
And when I think of home, I sadly sigh
Oh, I can see you there with loving tears in your eyes
As we fondly said our last goodbyes…”

Through the wee small hours of the morning of the 22nd, New Zealand stayed up with eyes and ears glued to the latest news. The eerie calm which had descended over Europe didn’t help, with the spare news time being filled with updates from a tired-eyed Dougal Stevenson and information on what might follow a nuclear attack. Across the nation panic spread uncontrollably as the immediacy of nuclear war became apparent to the formerly insulated population of New Zealand. Highways were packed with cars and calls to the emergency services began to go unanswered as policemen were out on the streets trying to maintain a semblance of order, fire appliances were diverted to prepare for possible firestorms, and ambulance services were held back by local health boards hedging their resources for a predicted run on supplies.
As the hours lengthened and the warm, still night gave way to a golden dawn, things only got worse.

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​

“And as I sailed away, with a longing to stay…”

250 kilometres NNE of Port Vila, Vanuatu
South Pacific Ocean
1748 GMT

K-431 had been tailing a convoy sailing for Japan when the order from Cam Ranh Bay came in. Having narrowly escaped that port and the massive bombing raid by dint of sailing out two days before the declaration of war, the skipper was pleasantly surprised to have confirmation that someone was alive there. Hot on the heels of this thought came a far darker realisation: radio silence had finally been broken, so clearly something had gone very wrong.
Indeed, at that moment on the other side of the world, Soviet missiles were launching, casting fiery streaks across the skies of Siberia and the western USSR as sirens blared across deserted towns and cities, their populations huddling in communal shelters as Party bosses fled to redoubts and hardened command posts.
Reading the order the captain’s deepest fears were confirmed: the order to launch had been given. He relayed the order to the crew to prepare missiles and announced a course change, turning away from the flotilla to find somewhere to safely ascend to launch.

K-431 was sailing towards Armageddon.

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***

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​

Underneath Parliament Buildings
Wellington, New Zealand
7:15 am

The funny thing was, nobody was tired. Muldoon barrelled on with the same pigheaded determination which, for better or worse, had been his defining feature these past nine years. MacIntyre sat nearby, communicating the Prime Minister’s directives to the military as planes, trains, and ships were hurriedly prepared for takeoff, departure, or embarkation, co-ordinating transport efforts with George Gair, delegating military problems to David Thomson, and letting Aussie Malcolm try and juggle the screaming health authorities himself. As Muldoon started to speak on the necessity of getting people to safe transit locations in the country, an exhausted-looking SIS man nearly flung the door off its hinges as he burst in.
“They’ve done it!” he said in a near-shout before professionalism reasserted itself. “We’ve lost all contact with London, and the Aussies are saying they’ve tracked missiles inbound across Southeast Asia.”
Everyone in the cramped room looked expectantly towards Muldoon. Although there had been plenty of rumblings about a coup (MacIntyre had been approached surreptitiously in the hallway by Jim McLay barely – good God, only two days ago now since the proposal), the Prime Minister was still the Prime Minister.
Muldoon’s eyes glazed over and lost their focus for barely two seconds, before his hand gripped the tumbler of whisky (the ice, like many Wellingtonians, having left town hours ago) and he downed the rest of the drink in a definite motion, his eyes focusing almost manically upon the major from upstairs as he spoke, words slowly and carefully enunciated in stark contrast to the slur which had been increasingly affecting him since the news of Kassel’s destruction had come through.
“Anything bound for us?”
“Don’t know, Prime Minister. The Australians believe they’ve detected something over Thailand, but the Americans also mentioned they couldn’t rule out Soviet submarines getting past their SOSUS nets around Guam.”
Another agonising pause as Muldoon nodded and waved off the officer before he reached for the jug of water on the table for the first time in nine hours, filling his glass and saying “George, tell the Railways to open the doors on the commuter trains. Get everyone out of the cities we can.”
“Can we still get them out in time?” asked McLay. “With all due respect – ”
“None of that!” snapped the Prime Minister in a tone which in any other environment might have drawn comparisons to other former corporals. “The fucking Reds are throwing everything they’ve got, and it’s our job to keep as many people out of the pigshit as possible. Call the Railways, George, make it happen.”
Gair (who if he was offended at all by the PM’s lack of composure didn’t show it) stood and nodded briskly, exiting the room. Jim McLay simply sat there trying to sink into the floor, the sole voice of dissent silenced at the eleventh hour. As Muldoon resumed talking and upstairs panicked transmissions from NATO states ceased abruptly to the consternation of SIS listeners, the collective mood was split between trying to come up with a plan before God only knew what happened and contemplating just what it was that would happen.

They would all find out soon enough.

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​

At twenty past seven on the morning of February 22 New Zealanders across the country – from those few still in their homes to watch TVNZ as well as the many who listened to the radio in provincial towns, their cars on the packed highways, and even a few impromptu fallout shelters built since the New Year – all of those listening heard a commotion in Avalon Studios, across the harbour from Wellington City, as Dougal Stevenson was handed a notice printed from a telex machine, and he spoke, voice giving out once or twice for the first time that night as he read the dispatch from Europe via Australia.
“I can now confirm to you…I can confirm that we have received reports of multiple nuclear detonations across Europe and North-” here his voice cracked briefly, and careful listening to surviving tapes reveals his saying holy Jesus, “and North America. We have no knowledge of what targets have been hit, but our sources have no doubt that the Americans and NATO will respond in kind.
“A strategic exchange of both Western and Communist nuclear arsenals has begun.”

***​

At 9:29 am, reports of the first impacts in Australia reached both Cabinet and the now practically deserted newsroom in Lower Hutt, where Stevenson made the statement a bare six minutes after his ABC counterpart across the Tasman.
“It’s been reported that –” here his voice gave out once more, with the veteran newscaster pausing and breathing deeply before going on “–that Alice Springs, Cairns, and Townsville, all those in Australia, have been hit with nuclear weapons. I repeat, Alice Springs, Cairns, and Townsville are reported as hit by nuclear –”
A voice from off-camera interrupted with “Two more! Perth and Fremantle!” Stevenson blinked and covered his microphone as he exchanged a couple of words with a frightened young intern who walked over to hand him another sheet of paper, before he nodded and faced the camera again as the sounds of crying filtered in from behind the scenes.

“Once again, five Australian cities have been hit with nuclear weapons: Cairns, Alice Springs, Townsville, Fremantle, and Perth, with more reports yet to come in.” He paused once more, gathering his thoughts. “I, ah, I don’t know how much longer we can stay on the air here in the studio, as many of our staff and yourselves out there will be seeking shelter. I’d just like to say now that I and a few of my colleagues here will stay on as long as we can to keep you informed, and remind our listeners in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch that the commuter train services have been made available for evacuation out of your respective city centres, as per Civil Defence broadcasts made by your regional broadcasters in the last two hours. We, uh…I certainly hope that every one of you is safe now with those you love, and…We’re going to go off the air for a couple of minutes, now, but we’ll be back soon to let you know what’s coming.”

***
​

In an almost farcical scene on Bunny Street, down the road from the train station where hundreds were gathering to take advantage of the trains which were set to leave any second now, a mixed bag of policemen and soldiers were escorting the Prime Minister and the few remaining Cabinet ministers across to the ferry terminal, the nearest available space for an airlift evacuation. As Muldoon was bundled into a waiting Air Force helicopter (alongside MacIntyre, McLay and George Gair) and the engines powered up, he looked out over the city in the blinding morning night. The clouds had dissipated since last night, and an unnatural calm had descended over the windiest city.

Such a nice day, thought Robert as heavy, boozy tears began to well up behind his eyes, the weight which had been in the pit of his stomach for the last few days suddenly becoming unbearable.

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South Pacific Ocean
2038 GMT

Moscow was gone. So were London, Paris, Kiev, Leningrad, Vladivostok…
They had to be, otherwise why was the captain right here right now, about to see the firing of the remaining MIRV aboard K-431? (Oh, it would have been four, but certain places took precedence in the ungodly arithmetic of strategic nuclear war – by the same token, to whoever in New Zealand had been spared by that stroke of luck, news of the vaporisation of Truk would be a blessing.)
As the officer next to him made a request for confirmation, he added another small sigh to the massive stockpile of sighs he’d been building up ever more over the last few months as he nodded, saying “Da” in a low tone which felt deafening in the hush which seemed to have fallen.
Two minutes passed with much rush and bustle as the seamen executed the manoeuvres for which they had drilled for years. Afterwards, as the captain made the commands to descend once more to depth in order to evade detection from ships he knew would never come looking, his eyes would have seemed to the careful observer to lose what little light they had held in the half-light of the bridge.

As K-431 dove into the blackness of the ocean, the lightly-loaded R-39 missile reached the outskirts of space, three warheads splitting off before they began their descent towards their programmed target co-ordinates in New Zealand. They would hit within fifteen minutes.

.. - / -... . --. .. -. ... / .... . .-. . .-.-.-
​

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

V. Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…


​

“And Monday is a Monday
Tuesday’s a thunder day
With a wind that chills you to the bone.
Wednesday, don’t mention Wednesday!
Not a good one at all…”

The last broadcast from TVNZ took place at 9:38 am, and the few remaining viewers of TV1 could, if they looked carefully, see the dark circles underneath Dougal Stevenson’s eyes and the shake in his hands as they lay clasped on the desk in front of him. He smiled faintly at the camera as if trying to reassure a dying man, nodded, looked offscreen and focused back on the camera after a few seconds.
“We’ve had word recently that contact with Darwin, Sydney, and Canberra has been lost. I…don’t know about Melbourne, though I’m informed by my staff that –” another expectant look offscreen, a nod “- we have recently had some contact with sources based near that city. For those of you with family or friends in the cities hit I can only offer my deepest sympathies in this…extraordinarily difficult time. Ah…I must also inform you that a general evacuation order has been posted to the staff here at Avalon so we will be going off the air in the next few minutes. I’d just like to thank those who have stayed here with me to help keep all of you informed, and I certainly hope that their determination in the face of an uncertain future has helped.”
He swallowed and breathed deeply, nodding as an indistinct voice from offscreen floated through the ether.
“I’m told that I need to end my broadcast now, so if I may I’d just like to take a moment here to say that it has been a privilege to bring you all the news over the last two decades, and ah…I hope that, in the face of a future where none of us can safely say for sure what will happen, you are all out there with your family and loved ones. Keep each other safe and… we’ll all come through this safe. I promise.”

With that, the camera lingered for a few moments as the presented stood, unclipped his microphone, and walked offscreen before the local TV networks went off the air completely. A piece of news had just reached the heads of those stations, and they were fleeing.

... - --- .-. -- / .. ... / - .... .-. . .- - . -. .. -. --. / -- -.-- / ...- . .-. -.-- / .-.. .. ..-. . / - --- -.. .- -.--​

Over Wellington Harbour
9:37 am

The helicopter thundered towards the Hutt Valley, as the four elder statesmen aboard avoided each other’s gaze while scarcely daring to look out the window. For those who did dare, they saw the motorway north packed with cars, the last wave of those who had either brushed away the signs of nuclear attack or believed the government’s assurances that all would be well.
And you let them down, didn’t you, Rob? was all Muldoon could think as the chopper passed over Petone, where a fire had broken out in one of the houses across from the beach, going unattended by absent owners, neighbours, and a fire service with much too much else on its mind. The Prime Minister breathed heavily as the weight on his chest grew a little more painful, while MacIntyre watched the last train bound for Upper Hutt hurry through commuter stations where a few people gathered hopefully, ignoring the Council’s adamant statement that the evacuation of Wellington would take priority and being disappointed as they were passed by. George Gair tried his best not to look.

The helicopter had made it to Lower Hutt proper now, and as Muldoon looked to the west a frantic voice crackled through the radio, barely audible over the thrumming of the rotors. As the co-pilot looked back at the assembled ministers and instructed them to look down and keep their eyes closed if and when instructed, he knew all hope was lost. Now, the tears began to flow openly.

.. ..-. / .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / --. . - / ... --- -- . / ... .... . .-.. - . .-. / .. .----. -- / --. --- -. -. .- / ..-. .- -.. . / .- .-- .- -.--​

By the morning of the 22nd, it is estimated that the actual population of the Auckland metropolitan area had decreased from 880,000 to a little over half a million, as the population dispersed throughout Auckland’s satellite towns and cities, or further afield to rural areas where many still had relatives who owned farming properties where they believed they could find food and shelter, or otherwise lived in small provincial towns unlikely to be hit by any kind of assault. The streets of central Auckland City were practically deserted as people feared the inevitable attack on the country’ largest city, although places like North Shore City were almost as empty given the presence of an urban population and Defence Force infrastructure which would provide a tempting target – those in poorer areas such as Manukau or the lower-income parts of Auckland City, however, largely had nowhere else to go, particularly the immigrant Pacific Islander and Asian populations of those areas. Arterial routes also remained busy, with traffic intensifying after TVNZ went off the air.

The first detonation of a nuclear weapon on New Zealand soil during World War Three therefore killed less people than it could have, with the warhead detonating at 9:53 am, about 100 metres off-centre and a little less than two kilometres above a point just off the shore at Devonport Naval Base, with a force of roughly 410 to 420 kilotons. The blast straddled Auckland Harbour, sweeping Devonport and Takapuna clean of life as well as much of central Auckland. Around the harbour the shipping facilities of the city were demolished as ships were flung into the shore as buildings crumbled for a mile and a half in every direction of the stricken base. Takapuna Grammar School, a designated Civil Defence post, lay three kilometres from Ground Zero, and was essentially blasted into the sea, while the few cars left abandoned on the Harbour Bridge were tossed into the sea as the bridge itself was warped and blackened. In Auckland City proper, the high-rises of Queen Street toppled over one another, with those strong enough to remain standing left blackened and unrecognisable.

In the immediate aftermath of the nuclear strike, 143,200 people were killed outright and approximately 204,000 were injured by causes ranging from radiation (a 500rem dose saturating Devonport and Mechanics Bay) to severe burns as intense thermal radiation blasted a vast area from Epsom to the Wairau Valley.

Even as the mushroom cloud began to rise into the sky and fires ignited within a vast circle from Glenfield to Mount Eden to St Heliers and even as far as the southeast face of Rangitoto, another warhead tumbled from the sky to the south.

***​

Whereas the warhead designated for Auckland functioned almost perfectly, the one aimed for Wellington experienced a few minor errors. First, polkovnik Ozerov had miscommunicated the importance of Wellington as a command centre, with the capital ‘only’ receiving a 340-kiloton strike as a result. Furthermore, the hasty loading of warheads onto K-431 may have caused some disturbance to the internal mechanisms, with this or the questionable quality of Soviet electronics leading to it detonating not two kilometres above Lambton Quay as planned, but landing up the Tinakori Valley at three minutes before ten, detonating a bare twenty or so metres above the ground.

Due to the fact that the bomb detonated in a valley a kilometre or so from central Wellington the destruction was perhaps a fraction less severe than it might have been, but it was still immense given the compact nature of the city. Within an instant the inner suburbs of Kelburn, and Northland were erased, and with them went the main campus of Kelburn University and the Botanic Gardens. Although the valley distorted the blast somewhat, the central city was a total loss. An air burst of a little under 400 miles per hour swept down Tinakori Valley, erasing the city’s oldest continually-inhabited district before vaporising Parliament Buildings and the suburbs of Thorndon and Pipitea. Wellington Railway Station crumbled as if it was made of gingerbread, with the casualties amongst those who had clamoured to get on the last trains out of town impossible to ever calculate. Trains were not the only transport affected; the motorway north was scorched and hundreds died as a result of the raised sections collapsing, and the port facilities were set alight or destroyed outright.

Further downtown the effects were somewhat ameliorated by the barrier effect of Kelburn, but nonetheless devastation reigned. As far as Cuba Street nothing was left standing, with the overpressure of the air blast only dying down below 3psi at the foot of Mount Victoria (which itself saw fires breaking out on its west face as it caught the force of the blast which would have otherwise immolated Evans Bay and Hataitai. In the most densely populated area of the city in Newtown the effects were somewhat less as the shielding effect of Kelburn hill became more pronounced, but the effects of thermal radiation were still significant. Those heading north to try and escape at the last minute were subjected to heavy burns, with third-degree burns afflicting those as far away as Island Bay to the south and Khandallah much further north. As it was, Wellington Hospital was severely damaged and the tunnels through Mount Victoria rendered unusable, while in the western parts of Wellington City the suburb of Karori was virtually erased from the map as fires ignited all over the western and southern hills.

As the mushroom cloud rose, a roiling, boiling tower of promethean fire and the ashen souls of those it had claimed, 53,600 lay dead and approximately 56,000 injured. And one bomb remained.

***​

If one had been standing on the peak of Mount Ruapehu on that fateful day, they would have seen not only the flashes to the north and south, but also a third, less blinding flash much further to the west sometime between the other two, possibly New Plymouth. Likely as that seemed it would feel slightly off – if it had been New Plymouth, why was there no visible mushroom cloud this near, only a minute later and about 200 kilometres away? Our confused hypothetical mountaineer* would, in fact, have been watching the third nuclear strike aimed at New Zealand – though we may never know what exactly happened, it seems likely that this was a guidance error of the sort which saved many towns on the day of the Exchange. Detonating about 150 kilometres off the Taranaki coast, the bomb incurred no casualties and had few effects, besides salting the seas off the west coast of the North Island with a little more radiation (from readings taken on Lord Howe Island, it can be determined that most of the fallout coming from New Zealand was high-altitude windborne particles, so presumably this impact, colloquially known as the Splash, was actually a standard airburst).

This news came as cold comfort, though. Two of New Zealand’s largest cities had been, to all intents and purposes, destroyed, and at least two hundred thousand – about 6% of the country’s population – would be dead by sundown.

*Although there were a few people on the mountain that morning, most were in lodges further down the mountain, or with a small group celebrating the end of the world with morbid abandon at the crater lake itself. It is from this group that we got the infamous “Three Mushrooms” picture, as well as the famous painting of the same name, now visible in Dunedin Art Gallery…

“Otherwise fine
Otherwise it’s dandy.
Otherwise fine
Otherwise it’s over the top!”

In the air, between Upper Hutt and Featherston
9:56 am

The helicopter had made a course change and was now somewhere over the Rimutakas. Below, out of sight under clouds which had begun sweeping in from the northeast and clearly visible from the height to which the helicopter had dropped, a line of cars, trucks, or whatever transport those fleeing Upper Hutt could muster was weaving its way slowly towards the Wairarapa and, hopefully, safety. Muldoon’s few tears which he had allowed to flow (even at the end of the world, he would show the senior members of his cabinet who was boss here) had fallen and dried, lost in the whitening stubble on his unshaven jowls or the collar of his rumpled suit. As he looked to the east, and the Wairarapa, the co-pilot turned back once more as a louder, more crackly radio transmission came through, the helicopter leading forward as the pilot coaxed every ounce of horsepower out of the engine. Muldoon felt he knew what would be said even before it came.

“We’ve got incoming; duck your heads and do not look at the flash! Do not look back at the flash!”



Then, behind them, the world disappeared.



“And the outlook for Thursday
Your guess is good as mine!
We’ll be together, yeah, together by design
Sunshine!
Sunshine!
Sunshine!
Sunshi-shi-shi-shi-shi-shi…”

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

VI. There Are No Teeth In Our Heads​

“Want to stop the crying, want to stop the crying
She’s laying there dying
How can I live when you see what I’ve done?
How can I live when you see what I’ve done?”

… --- …
The assembled members of Cabinet had touched down a park at the north end of Featherston, their Air Force minders attempting to get their radio rig working once more after the blast had interfered with it. In the small town the scene was a world away from the ominous fatalism of Wellington and the Hutt, with the only signs of any disturbance being the cars which sat parked in driveways despite the fact it was quarter to eleven on a Wednesday morning. On this side of the Rimutakas the summer heat was more obvious, the dry nor’east breeze causing MacIntyre’s combover to waver like the comb of an elderly rooster.

For the last twenty minutes the Prime Minister had been sitting on a field roller, abandoned in the middle of pressing a strip of turf for cricket, staring silently towards Wellington, or rather, where Wellington had been. The mushroom cloud had reached its full height some time ago, and the high-altitude winds were slowly tugging at it and sweeping it towards the southwest. MacIntyre and the other two Cabinet members, all equally out of place in their rumpled suits in the middle of a quintessentially Kiwi small-town sports field, were concerned at this similarly jarring change in the Prime Minister. Even throughout the chaos of last night he had been as verbosely bellicose as ever, issuing directives even as news of the losses of London and Paris and the rest of the Old World’s greatest cities were relayed to them, struggling underneath Parliament with a weight on their shoulders the like of which nobody in this country had ever had to bear. Right now, in the middle of the eerily quiet countryside with the smell of fresh hay wafting from a nearby paddock and the song of a tui faintly audible below the muttered cursing of the Air Force men, the difference was unsettling in more than one regard.

“D’you think we should say something?” This from McLay, who stood awkwardly and sweated as he spoke.
“Daresay we shouldn’t,” replied Gair stiffly. “He’s the Prime Minister, and he shall let us know when he has decided upon the best course of action is.” Yes, that was Gair, stiff upper-lip, Armageddon or no.
It came down to MacIntyre then, thought the Deputy Prime Minister. Looking at the other two he repressed a desire to sigh (he hadn’t sighed in North Africa; damned if he’d do it in front of a pair of worried old men), surreptitiously fiddling with the pipe in his jacket pocket while he ruminated on the matter, before saying in a moderated tone “We’ll get to Ohakea first, let him rest. He doesn’t need to be pushed any further, not in the middle of the Wairarapa where there’s nothing to be done about it.”

McLay and Gair murmured uncomfortable agreement while Muldoon continued to stare to the southwest, a study in contemplation. As a truck rumbled up the road from town and three of the most powerful men in the country peered towards it, desperate for a distraction from their thoughts, the cloud over Wellington drifted to the south.

I wonder, thought Muldoon, what it’s like in Nelson today?
… --- …

From Disaster, Deprivation, and Deliverance: A History of New Zealand in the 1980s (Palmerston North: Massey University Press, 2009).

…In the immediate aftermath of the Exchange, New Zealand was in a state of barely-coherent panic. As fires raged in the North Island’s two greatest cities with the fire services either unable to access them through ruined roads (particularly in Wellington, where the few appliances unaffected were unable to get to the central city through collapsed tunnels) or forbidden to do anything by government officials fearing further attacks and the invisible threat of fallout (as in Manukau, where City Council authorities refused to allow them to go into Auckland proper), the rest of the nation fled for cover. In Christchurch it was taken as gospel that the city would be targeted for the same nuclear destruction, scenes of chaos unfolding on the highways to the north, south, and west as news of Wellington’s destruction became common knowledge around half past ten, as relayed by phone from observers in Blenheim (from which the great mushroom cloud over the capital was clearly visible).

This news was verified by the pilot of a light aircraft which had touched down in Nelson at 11:48, an insanely fortunate individual who had flown out of the deserted Wellington Airport forty-five minutes earlier, having decided the destruction of the central city made the prospect of flying north rather unpalatable…

…nonetheless it can be confidently said that the situation in Christchurch by noon was one of organised chaos, a far cry at the time from what was later to emerge from the Town Hall.

Kaiapoi High School
20 kilometres north of central Christchurch
4:25 pm

Hamish Hay had been Mayor of Christchurch for just gone ten years now, and the prospect of having his city immolated as some kind of grim full stop to his career was unappealing, to put it mildly. Although he had had to be physically pulled out of City Hall yesterday when the Council elected to move to a safer location (pile of nancies, he’d thought at the time), Hay couldn’t help but feel a bit grateful at the moment for that decision. Wellington had been properly knocked for six, and even though the belt of cities around Auckland was so big that a few people were probably still alive, nobody had any idea how many were dead or dying in the North right now. More to the point, nobody had any idea if the Ivans had fired a missile at Christchurch, and the windows had been hastily boarded over in case the impossible happened.

Although the Kaiapoi Borough Council and Eyre County authorities had displayed a little small-town impertinence at the city boys riding in and setting up shop in their neck of the woods the grim news from Europe, then Australia, and finally the North Island had brought them into, if not a genuine spirit of civic cooperation, a grudging willingness to help coordinate evacuations and preparations for what might lie ahead. Rough estimates put the number of evacuees from Christchurch City above fifty thousand (possibly a hundred), and reports said the roads were crowded as far south as Darfield while they were certainly full this far north.

“Have we any word at all from Wellington?” he asked for the umpteenth time. The man in charge of communications, a young chap who’d come down to see family before the war broke out (Mike Robertson or Robinson or some similar name, if he remembered correctly), shook his head glumly.
“We made a call to Dunedin since you last asked – Skeggs refused to clear out, so at least we didn’t have to hunt for him in some town hall in Balclutha – and they haven’t heard anything.”
“Have you tried asking Palmerston North?” asked the Treasurer, a kindly-looking old duffer in spectacles. Mike shook his head again.
“We tried, but they didn’t answer; can’t tell if the lines through Wellington are down or...anyway, we’ve sent a fella on a bike to Burnham to see if the Army’s got any idea what’s going on, but he’s having to go out round the Uni first and see if the roads are less mad past there.”
Hay gave a quick hmph. “Can we at least try – ”
A knock came at the door, opening to reveal a bright-faced fellow who’d run from the staffroom and was clutching a piece of paper in a white-knuckled fist. Before anyone could ask his business, he shouted “New Plymouth!” at which every face in the room drained of colour.
“You mean they’ve been hit?” squeaked a red face under a hard hat.
“No, no! They got a phone call from Australia over there; it’s the only place they could reach by phone, and – ”
“Wait, whereabouts in Australia?”
“Hobart, sir, I think – they called New Plymouth to see what was going on over here.”
“Who called?”
“State government, I think. They had news from their end – Adelaide’s still in, and word from Launceston is that there’s no sign of anything hitting Melbourne.”
Hay blinked once or twice as he realised he’d stood up in mounting excitement.
“And what did they have to say about the rest of the country? New Zealand, that is? Or Australia: has anything else hit? Have the Russians stopped shooting?”
“Not a clue, sir,” said the messenger, a chap in his thirties who, from the looks of it, was attached to the County rather than the City. “Just passing on the news: we were pretty fucking pleased to – I mean, uh, we were happy to hear that someone across the ditch was still going.”
Hay nodded while a manic smile pasted itself on his face. “Of course it’s good news,” he said, “wonderful news!”
“Oh, we’ve heard about other places up North, too: Napier and Hastings are alright, so’s Hamilton, and Palmerston North’s in one piece – the bloke up New Plymouth reckoned his mate in Palmy had seen a heap of Army trucks moving south, towards Wellington.”
Hay nodded, sitting down slowly as the room exploded into excited chatter. While conjectures were flung across the room, he mused on what to do next. So most of the country outside Wellington and Auckland is fine, and we’ve got direct contact with Dunedin, New Plymouth, Nelson, and Invercargill… “Wait, who’s in charge in New Plymouth?” he barked at the messenger, who consulted his piece of paper as the Treasurer hushed the room.
“Ah…City Council, though the local MP’s taken charge. Least I’d reckon he’s the local MP: who else is staying there?”
“That chap Peters?” ventured one of the more worldly councillors. Hay shook his head as he recalled the returns from the ’81 election.
“No, he’s the one who lost away up North, isn’t he?” asked Hay. “Face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle, you know the one…no, New Plymouth’s man is Bolger, I think. You know, looks like a spud with charm to match; one of Rob’s Mob.”
Although the more rurally-inclined members of the group winced, a couple of heads nodded. “So, we have a grip on what’s going on in the provinces, anyway, and we’ve got a name to work with. Any idea what’s on with the Government?”
The messenger suddenly looked a little less exuberant. “Not sure, sir. We figure those who’ve made it are probably headed to Waiouru, where the Army and Air Force are, though there’s been no contact from anyone claiming to be central government so far.”
Hay sat back again with another small hmph, tidying his cuffs while he thought. Eventually, the Mayor cleared his throat and spoke.
“Right, get a call made to Ohakea and check to see if we can get through to anyone in charge there, and see what MP’s around here are home in their electorates. Charlie, write up what we know for sure and see if there’s any way of getting it across on the radio – I want people to know something, cool the panic a bit and see if we can’t get folks off the roads.”
“Are…are you sure the Russians aren’t getting ready to…?” asked a councillor from Cashmere or somewhere else in the south, inviting a sigh and a terse response from Hay.
“Look, we’ve been sitting here pissing ourselves since sunrise, and it’s been all day since we lost Wellington and Auckland. If Melbourne and Adelaide haven’t been hit by now, I don’t think we’re liable to be atop the list of priorities. Alright? Alright. Oh, Charlie, another thought: let’s call Dunedin and Nelson. I want to talk with the folks in charge there, see if we can get some sort of organisation back up and running. If we can’t keep in proper contact with the North, we’ll bloody well have to do what we can down here.”
As a bustle of activity started up again, Hay looked once more at the communiques littering the teacher's desk in front of him, as a thought began to crystallise in his mind. If he remembered correctly, Geoff Palmer was somewhere in town. Maybe it was time to give him a call as the local MP for Christchurch Central, give the local emergency administration some legitimacy. Of course, it was unfortunate that Palmer wasn't a member of the party nominally in charge of the country, but desperate times, thought the mayor with a tiny smile, called for desperate measures...

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

VII. We Sleep In A Well-Made Bed​

If you’d’a known I’d’a led you astray
I was prone, I was weak, I’d’a been hell to live with.
Now I’m a nomad
I’m taking you with me
I’ll take you away…

By the late afternoon of February 22nd, the number of internal refugees had reached its peak as the remaining few who could flee fled, and those on the road stopped after what had in most cases been a long day of driving in order to stop and get their bearings. It has been estimated that several tens of thousands fled in the last few hours before and during the Exchange, with at least half a million people on the move throughout the country when the bomb fell. The strain on the road network had become particularly apparent in the North Island, with the highways out of Auckland and Wellington still gridlocked upon the destruction of those two centres – this led many to abandon their cars and struggle on by foot, adding to the confusion. Prior to and after the attacks, road accidents were either ignored or unceremoniously dealt with by impatient (and often half-hysterical) motorists, with reports of trucks towing wrecked vehicles out of the way, sometimes with the drivers still trapped inside. Like a spring tide coming up an estuary, the flow of humanity swept past anything before it, leaving in its wake those too weak or unlucky to flee.

In the South Island, communications were rapidly established through the afternoon between civilian administrations in Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, and Nelson, with a broad agreement made to establish some sort of interim government if the situation across Cook Strait turned out to be worse than feared.

As it happened, a phone call made to Burnham resulted in a message reaching Mayor Hay in Kaiapoi at around 6 pm, detailing the situation as was known. The Government had been largely withdrawn to military bases in the central North Island and, pending the arrival of the Prime Minister, Ohakea was to act as interim capital until further notice. Although this required most of those informed to consult a map, the measure was accepted with relief more than anything else – the Prime Minister was alive, as were most of the government, and the military was intact enough to help run some sort of administration. This feeling may have been helped by the tacit agreement that the South Island would be left to run itself for at least the next few days, with the Mayor’s Office returning to the deserted centre of Christchurch a little before sundown to provide a solid base of operations.

A radio broadcast from Christchurch was before long broadcast across the South Island informing the public of the loss of contact with Wellington, but detailing the communication made with Australia and urging people to return to Christchurch in view of the city’s relative safety. Although this bulletin was somewhat effective, the condition of the highways in Canterbury remained chaotic and actually got worse, as many decided to return to Christchurch and either encountered those still coming the other way or, worse yet, ran out of fuel. By the end of the day, at least thirty thousand are estimated to have remained on the roads outside Christchurch, with many in the city staying at home for fear of looting or violence. Nevertheless, in comparison to the situation unfolding in Auckland, Wellington, and by then Blenheim, this was paradise.

.- .-.. .-- .- -.-- ... / .-.. --- --- -.- / --- -. / - .... . / -... .-. .. --. .... - / ... .. -.. . / --- ..-. / -.. . .- - ....

RNZAF Base Ohakea
Near Bulls, Manawatu
About 3:30 pm

Upon the arrival of the Prime Minister and his little entourage at Ohakea Air Base, the group was rushed from the helicopter to a small admin block near a terminal, an RNZAF Orion taking off behind them as they scurried across the tarmac.

Shepherded into a meeting room in the bowels of the building, Muldoon, MacIntyre, McLay, and Gair were directed to a long set of tables, the dozen men there standing at the Prime Minister’s entry. Muldoon blinked in surprise and then nodded at them, straightening up to try and compensate for his rumpled suit, fuzzy chin, and bloodshot eyes. From the mixed looks of surprise and relief he got by way of response, it was only marginally effective.

And who was there? Muldoon wearily took in the remains of the Government he’d worked both with and against and quickly made a mental list:
• Michael Cox from the Manawatu – reliable if dull, shaky majority in ’81, does as told.
• John Falloon of Pahiatua – held Statistics, IRD, Associate Finance portfolios. Clever, popular, loyal, in good with Federated Farmers, which might come in useful. Muldoon could rely on him.
• Ben Couch, Minister of Police – so he’d made it out of Wellington this morning as well. Solid fellow for a Maori, certainly executed policy terribly well during the ’81 tour. Muldoon had leaned on the police during the last few days to keep order, and he’d be doing it for some time to come – thank God Ben was alive, then.
• Roger McClay – the one new National MP in ’81; hadn’t he been sent back to Taupo a few days ago? However he’d gotten here, he was here.
• Aussie Malcolm – Well, he’d made it out of Wellington too, then. Minister of Health, which was going to become a very undesirable position very soon.
• Venn Young – if it hadn’t been for his wife and nine children, Muldoon would’ve had him pegged as a poofie considering his attempts to legalise that sort of thing; his shift to Social Welfare had been a way of edging him out of centre stage.
• Trevor de Cleene – deregulation nut from Labour, one of that madman Douglas’ crowd. Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers…
• Derek Quigley – if anything worse than de Cleene: at least de Cleene had the courtesy to be in Opposition! Muldoon had been planning to do something about the enemy within before things had gone to hell; looked like that would have to wait.
• Russell Marshall – Labour’s Wanganui man, and former Senior Whip. Dangerous, though he might be willing to work with the government now to keep Labour in check.
• John Terris – Labour, Western Hutt. Popular in his electorate, so he might be able to help keep order in the Hutt.
• Fran Wilde – Jesus, there was one who would’ve been better staying in Wellington Central. Not as economically liberal as de Cleene, but what kind of mad social liberties she’d want to take Muldoon could only guess at. From the barely-concealed contempt in her eyes, the distaste was mutual.
• And finally – wait, him?

It was probably the tiredness, but Muldoon couldn’t help but blink again and say his first words since entering the room:

“You? I thought you were dead!”

From across the table, a pallid Bruce Beetham gave a thin smile, looking at Muldoon from sunken eyes.

“I love you too, Rob,” said the Social Credit leader. “And here I thought I was lucky to live through my heart attacks; some bloody convalescence I got.”

Muldoon ignored the quiet condemnation in the retort, grunting in reply and looking around the table again. “Well, here we all are. Any word on who else is coming?”

An SIS man who’d made his way in with the gang of four cleared his throat and nodded once the PM looked at him.

“We’ve had confirmation that Mr Bolger is in New Plymouth with Mister Friedlander,” here Beetham coughed in his throat, which was either illness or a stifled jibe “and they’re co-ordinating things up there. Mr Palmer, Mr Talbot, and Mr Moore are all safe and have made their way to help the Mayor’s office there, and we’ve confirmed the survival of all the main governmental figures from Ashburton south.”

Muldoon nodded, drawing himself up and trying to reassert his authority. He had some facts now, and knowledge was most certainly power in this kind of chaos. Then Jim McLay decided to ask a question of his own.

“What about Auckland?”

The room went silent. Muldoon’s seat was in Tamaki, just east of the CBD. Depending on where the bomb had been dropped…
…the SIS man probably knew as much, swallowing and taking a deep breath before responding.

“We, ah…well, Minister…ah, we’ve not had any contact with Devonport, so for the time being we’re assuming the MP for Takapuna will be absent, and there have as yet been very few reports from the area. But we’re assuming that that is due to organisational difficulties, Minister,” he added quickly, choosing the diplomatic route and looking at Muldoon with hope in his eyes.

It was a forlorn hope. Muldoon opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it, the rest of the room falling silent as McLay mumbled some sort of agreement, and Beetham looked down at the floor, presumably in fear for his SoCred partner’s wellbeing. After a moment or two, the Prime Minister spoke more quietly.

“Get us the latest reports on the situation as we know it. I want to make a speech, let people out there know there’s still a country. Do we have broadcasting capabilities here?”

“I’ll…have to check, Prime Minister, but I can certainly go and get those reports. The other Ministers have been informed what we know already, but we’ll see if there’s any new information.”

“Good,” said Muldoon shortly. “Go.”

As the man scuttled out of the room, Muldoon sat at the head of the table and looked out at the rest of the MPs.

“Well,” he said, “let’s get to work, then.”

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Towards nightfall, a news bulletin went out across the country, relayed in many places by local broadcasters (naturally, considering the destruction of Radio New Zealand House with the rest of the government quarter of Wellington) to smaller settlements as well as the evacuees who had begun wondering what to do now – having escaped death by the bomb, death by starvation or murder or accident loomed in the minds of the more pessimistic. Thus, the Prime Minister’s speech came as some sort of comfort, even amongst those who had come to hate him bitterly within the last nine years, or nine days. The speech was as follows.

“Good evening, New Zealand. This is your Prime Minister speaking.

“Today, our country was hit by the horrors of war on its homesoil for the first time in our history, as the Soviet Union, in its brutality, sought to destroy us by means of two atomic missiles which I can now confirm to have detonated in Wellington and [here his voice seemed to catch] central Auckland. No other attacks upon us have been confirmed at this time, and we do not anticipate any more.

“I must therefore ask now that we as a country come together to rebuild what we have lost. We must mourn those we have lost today, and those we may yet lose in days to come, but we must not lose sight of hope. I speak to you now from the central North Island alongside several other Members of Parliament from both sides of the chamber, and I assure you we are working tirelessly to manage the crisis which New Zealand has been forced into. As many of you will be aware, local authorities are picking up the slack while we re-establish communications with the main centres and the affected areas, in many places alongside their constituency representatives. We commend their efforts in organisation and I now offer the full support of the Government to these efforts.

“Throughout the last few days, radio and television broadcasts have been informing you on how to protect yourselves and survive the dangers which are present at this time. At the moment these guidelines should be followed wherever you think they might be needed, especially in Auckland and Wellington. Although the first instinct of some will be to panic and flee, adding to the possibility of chaos on the streets, I ask of you to remain calm and remain at home. Emergency services are trying to reach all they can, and if you stay in one spot their job will be made easier. Of course, I know that New Zealanders have always remained calm in a crisis. We have stood together as a country despite all the last few years have thrown at us, and God willing we will stand together and work to rebuild.

“I now hand over the airwaves to your local broadcasters. If you are listening to a battery-powered radio and wish to conserve power, official bulletins will be broadcast every hour on the hour from ten o’clock this evening. Follow the survival guidelines, take care of yourself and your loved ones, and we will all pull through.

"God keep you all through this long night, and God defend New Zealand."

Although a fairly run-of-the-mill announcement from a continuity government in the first 24 hours following the Exchange (albeit one which was actually heard by a majority of its intended audience, as opposed to, say, the UK or much of Australia), certain parts of Muldoon’s speech were somewhat prophetic. Although there had been no real confirmation of the end of hostilities, Muldoon prevailed upon the Emergency Cabinet the importance of providing reassurance to a panicked population. Likewise, the claim that emergency services were rushing to assist people in the burning shells of central Wellington and Auckland was a creative manipulation of the truth – following nuclear preparedness guidelines transmitted from London and Washington offices, these appliances were largely held back, only being used to help maintain order and preparedness in areas a suitable distance from the blast radii like Mangere or Upper Hutt.

Muldoon’s maskirovka fulfilled its purpose though, and the country outside the two main centres began to return home to gear up for the task ahead. Unfortunately, as the Prime Minister was informed soon after the recording was disseminated throughout the country, the South Island was about to catch some of the consequences of the attacks on their brothers across the Strait, in an event which would threaten the Muldoon Government scarcely a day after it had escaped ruin.

Better the devil you know
The best of the worst you can handle
And will you follow?
Will you follow?
Will you follow?

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

VIII. We Have No Valium (Valium, No, No)!​

I’m tired of the city life
Summer’s on the run
People tell me I should stay
But I gotta get my fun.

“We in New Zealand, you know, used to be able to think that we would sit comfortably, while the rest of the world singed, seared, withered. We were enraptured!
And the fact is that we used to have the vision of our being some kind of antipodean Noah’s Ark, which would, from within its quite isolated preserve spawn a whole new world of realistic humankind. Now, the fact is that we know that that is not achievable. We know that if the nuclear winter comes, we freeze; we join the rest of you.”
- David Lange

From King, M., Disaster, Deprivation, and Deliverance: A History of New Zealand in the 1980s. (Palmerston North: Massey University Press, 2009).

Volume I, Chapter 19: Aftershocks

The detonation of a 300-kiloton nuclear weapon is never a small event, even against the backdrop of a nuclear exchange which (according to estimates collated by CSIRO in 2003) totalled some 1700 megatons, and when such an event occurs in the capital city of a small nation it is, for want of a better term, blown quite out of proportion…

…aside from the relocation of the Government to Ohakea in the interim, the deaths of approximately sixty thousand Wellingtonians and the fleeing of eighty thousands of their fellow townspeople, the strike on Wellington was to have longer-term effects…

February 22nd was a bright, warm day in Wellington, and the northeasterly wind (of about 10 to 15 knots) persisting throughout the day provided a relief in the short term for the residents of the Hutt Valley and the Kapiti Coast as they were spared the fallout – Geiger counters in the hands of Army personnel in Porirua recorded few changes in background radiation, and the fallout cloud only barely affected anywhere north of Johnsonville (see map in index iv) – that is, the dose per hour was less than 10 rads (or 0.1 Gy/100 mSv). When one considers that 40 rads (0.4Gy) is required in half an hour to cause even very mild radiation poisoning, and that this intensity of radiation was only reached as one got within the radius affected by the severe thermal radiation which caused third-degree burns (in Wellington’s case, as far north as Khandallah and as far east as Mount Victoria), the danger of radiation to upwind areas can be considered negligible in hindsight…

…the effects of radioactive fallout were well-documented, but with the lack of civil defence preparedness in 1980s-New Zealand there was a distinct absence of public knowledge as to the correct procedures. Without going yet into the other reasons hotly debated since then, this seems the least controversial explanation as to what was soon to unfold across the Cook Strait. From Blenheim, the mushroom cloud over Wellington was clearly visible, and as the smoke from the raging fires rose alongside it and the cloud drifted towards the town, the County Council, which had dispersed after the announcement of the destruction of Sydney, slowly began to trickle into the Town Hall to establish a plan…

…within two hours, the homemade Geiger counters in Blenheim Town Hall (particularly the one slung on the end of a string out a window) was going berserk, with readings in excess of 400 rads (4 Gy/4000 mSv) being registered by noon. There was clearly a crisis afoot.

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Blenheim Town Hall
12:30 pm

Philip Taylor, Mayor of Blenheim, wasn’t a man to scare tremendously easily, but faced with whatever the hell was going on outside had his bowels aflutter. Wiping sweat not-entirely-borne-of-the-heat from his forehead, he looked across the table to where a young lass with a toaster-sized radiation counter from God-alone-knew-where (or when, though the words ‘RADIAC SURVEY METER, No. 2’ embossed upon the side implied sometime around the late 1950s) sat listening carefully to the clicks emanating from it and scrutinising a dial. The Mayor licked his lips nervously before speaking.

“Ah…what’s the outlook, Vicki?”

Vicki held up a forefinger, listening to the clicking while he stood and carried the bulky piece of equipment around the room, stepping briefly into the hallway before returning to the table, consulting a chart in a scientific volume and fiddling with a pocket calculator. After what felt like an eternity, the agonised silence punctuated only by the clicking of the RADIAC SURVEY METER, No. 2, Vicki cleared her throat and looked at the seven councillors sitting around the table.

“Well, assuming the intensity of the radiation is halved by every seven centimetres of concrete – this building has reinforced steel, I suppose? Yes, well then if we add the effect of the steel on the radiation…We’re getting about 50 rads per hour in here, maybe a hundred if this piece of junk is off. I’d go outside to check and be sure but frankly, I’d rather not risk it.”

At that the Mayor could only wring his hands as discreetly as possible and ask what that meant. The young scientist (was she on University Challenge that one time?) sighed and looked at him with a mixture of pity, frustration, and sadness.

“I’m not entirely sure, sir. This Geiger counter’s from the age of the dodo, this textbook still refers to plate tectonics as an exciting new theory, and to be quite honest, I’m a psych and sociology major so I’m in over my head here as much as you lot. But, if this is to be believed, 50 rads is sufficient only to cause a bit of blood cell trouble – and that’s of rather more concern to the injured, which we aren’t – and maybe some slight nausea after five or six hours.”

Philip felt a manically relieved grin begin to break out across his face. “You mean,” he asked, “you mean we’re not all going to get radiation sickness? Thank God; we can head out and begin to organise some actual civil defence, and…” he noticed the psychologist’s crestfallen look “…and…and…no?” She shook her head.

“Assuming the walls of the Town Hall are protecting us by a decent factor, the radiation outside is probably in the region of 400 rads, so eight times greater than what’s happening in here.”

“Oh,” said one council member in a very small voice. “And that means…?”

“Going by what this book says, within 24 hours of a full dose of 400 rads – and remember that what we’re looking at is the dose overall, while the counter only shows rads per hour – vomiting, diarrhoea, possible fever, and loss of nervous function.” Now she was the one to lick her lips nervously. “And that’s a low guess, given that anyone outside is getting about 400 roentgen – it’s the same as rads; the measurements are complicated – per hour, the actual effects over, say, 12 hours to a day, those would be much, much worse. Mortality rates rise on a curve very steeply after 600 rads; without care upwards of three-quarters of those exposed.”

Nobody in the room said anything. There wasn’t really anything to say. Eventually, Philip thought of something.

“For God’s sake,” he said hoarsely, “is there anything we can do?”

Vicki shrugged sadly. “The best thing to do is stay in shelter until the fallout begins to clear, which should be by midnight, though I can only guess.”

A man at the end of the table – Trevor, that was who it was – raised a shaking hand.

“If there’s nothing else for it,” he said, holding his voice still by force of will alone “do we have a telephone and a phone book? We might as well call people and let them know to stay indoors at all costs.”

All heads turned back to the young scientist, who stared back at them with a resigned and exhausted expression.

“I don’t bloody know; can’t be a worse idea than leaving twenty thousand people to die a slow death as they try escaping, can it?”

“Thirty thousand,” corrected the Mayor automatically. “In the district, anyway. Right, then, let’s get to it, shall we?”

“Shouldn’t we take a vote?” asked one of the members, a puffed-up fellow who was looking deflated by the events overtaking them. Philip, Vicki, and all the rest looked at him with almost pitying scepticism.

“If you want to dawdle while people are out there getting covered in all that radiation, you can leave now. Any objections? Good, as I was saying…”

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It was a perfectly admissible and indeed noble argument that led to the Blenheim councillors and a few staff calling as many households as ten people could practicably manage with nine telephones. It was also, however, a hasty and misinformed one.

The atmosphere in Blenheim was suffused with an eerie calm at the time, as those who hadn’t fled (which is to say most of the population: only the most pessimistic had predicted any horrifying fate befalling Blenheim, of all places) remained indoors as the radio broadcasts and television updates had advised them. After radio services finally ceased around 10am, people took it as a bad sign; the second sun which rose in the northeast only served to confirm the unimaginable. So when the telephone rang in a hypothetical house, the reaction was surprise – as one person put it: “A nuclear war had just started and finished, and somebody thought now was the time to make social calls?” – quickly followed by terror as the quavering voice of some council functionary alerted them to the invisible death which was floating outside their windows and saturating their veggie patches, before attempting (with nary a trace of irony) to reassure them of the need to remain indoors.

The population thus split into two sections: the “well that’s bloody obvious” set, who were if anything annoyed that at this juncture all their local government was doing was repeating the same phrases they’d been hearing ad nauseam for the last fortnight and to a maddening crescendo over the last 24 hours; and the “flee the oncoming certain death” group, who were quite understandably terrified at the prospect of a slow death by irradiation. This latter group was mainly comprised of those who had already been in the process of fleeing or making contingency plans when TVNZ made its last broadcast that morning, and who had only stopped because of the fear instilled by the blinding flash across Cook Strait, and were therefore galvanised back into action by the sudden public service announcement. For many this meant rushing themselves and/or their families into cars hastily fuelled earlier that day, and speeding through the roads of Blenheim towards either Nelson or Christchurch, getting considerable doses of radiation in doing so. Worse still, the very unlucky few who decided to head up the Wairau Valley found themselves being chased by the fallout cloud, with the higher than average cluster of fatalities occurring in West Coast hospitals among the refugee population throughout March (and a string of suicides) directly attributable to this.

The mushroom cloud over Wellington had dissipated entirely by 1pm, and the level of radioactivity in the fallout which drifted through Blenheim had decayed to a hundredth of its peak intensity after about 48 hours, but it was more than long enough to deliver lethal doses of radiation to those who tried to leave. The dry, dusty conditions of the area, particularly at the tail end of a not unusually dry summer, exacerbated the spread of radioactive dust and thus the degree of radiation poisoning in the area. Cars driving along roads kicked up dust which was breathed in, either through open windows or ventilation systems or by chance when people leaving their cars after they had reached safety touched the radioactive material on the sides of their vehicles and unwittingly irradiated.

As a result, by the end of 1984 directly-attributable radiation deaths from Blenheim and the Marlborough would exceed 3,500: roughly ten percent of the pre-war population of 37,100. This high death toll, while far below that seen in areas of South Auckland and Manukau or Wellington’s eastern suburbs, presented a major challenge for healthcare and governmental authorities in the South Island as the year wound on. The strain placed on overstretched healthcare resources would lead to instability in some cases (pharmacies in most major towns were placed under armed 24-hour guard from March 7 onwards) and caused a major moral dilemma in regards to care for those suffering radiation sickness and the legal standpoint of voluntary and/or assisted euthanasia.

Nonetheless, it is important to remember is that these were longer-term consequences of the nuclear attacks, and against the grim backdrop of those first few hours after the attacks it is miraculous that the population of Blenheim stayed put in numbers as large as they did. While decontamination efforts would only begin in earnest once it rained in the first week of March, the immediate danger had passed – after the all-clear was sounded on the 24th following two days of agonised waiting and panicked phone calls to Christchurch (whose survival the Blenheim Council regarded with immense relief) and Palmerston North (whence a shaky Interim Cabinet was coordinating relief) some effort was made to hose off buildings and roads, though innocent ignorance of the insidiousness of irradiated dust would end up plaguing the survivors of Blenheim with mild radiation poisoning throughout the next fortnight, and cancer-related health issues for decades to come. All in all, the events which unfolded in Blenheim were representative of what would come to pass in 1984 New Zealand – fear and lack of awareness of what to do in the event of nuclear war led to hastily-issued directives which did harm as often as they did good while well-meaning people prospered and suffered in equal measure,

As an aside, a further casualty of the fallout plume from the attack on Wellington for the medium-term future was the nascent Marlborough wine industry. Although much of the fallout was washed out in the week of rain from March 1, the high mortality rate from radiation sickness in the area crippled all economic activity, and viticulture was no exception. After the immediate chaos of the post-Exchange period, the privations of future years, and later reluctance to engage in any kind of agriculture in an area of land viewed as ‘poisoned,’ the wine industry was crippled until well into the 21st century (although in the lowest reaches of the Wairau, where the vineyards nudge up against the inland Kaikoura ranges, some production of Sauvignon and Pinot Noir would continue as a means of supporting families who found themselves with little other livelihood but to barter alcohol). Vintage bottles from the vineyards producing before the Exchange remain sought-after by collectors and connoisseurs alike, for their historical and sentimental value, their perceived purity from radiation (more than one vintner survived by hiding out in their deep cellars), and the attached sense of a piece of old New Zealand which could never really be rebuilt, but merely replicated.

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He hadn’t meant to do it, but the silly bitch had asked for it after all. She’d got in the way was all; he’d been dazzled by the flash and heard the roar of a million jet engines and felt the blast and he knew he had to run, get south, get somewhere safe, so he’d jumped the fence, opened the door of the house and walked in. She’d been in the bedroom and come out to see what was going on, saw him taking the keys and started shouting at him. He grabbed for her keys, she slapped at his hands, he slapped her in the face and she spun and fell. Fear in her eyes, fear in his. A siren in the distance, the scream of the air-raid warning dying out as the cloud rose out there, out the window and in the distance. He was panting, and the sound of his blood rushing filled his ears and covered the sound, as he turned to leave, of her standing up and moving towards the phone. A click as the receiver was lifted and he span on his heel, moving to stop her. Then he saw the knife, a yell and a dull glint as she held it up in front of her face. The hand, him pressing her up against the wall, the two of them eye to eye, breath heavy on each other’s faces as he looked down at the knife which had slashed a red line across her shoulder.

And then…then it was a blur. He didn’t know why he’d done it but she’d tried it first right and that made it self-defence and besides where were the pigs to stop him anyway with the war and the panic and the Russians and the riots and the Emergency Powers Act and now he was driving through the Waitakeres where they wouldn’t look for him after they found her and the things he’d taken to use for himself.

And now here he was, parked on the side of a dirt road up a hill somewhere in the ranges. The blood on the gearstick and steering wheel had dried some time ago, filling his nostrils with a coppery-iron stink and occasionally bringing him out of his bewildered reverie. The sun was shining hot and oppressive in the west, as if trying to outdo the second suns which had risen all over the world, and the heat bore down upon him in the metal box of a Jap import model which had been pulled over after the radiator started to boil over. It would be a while before he could drive anywhere. Oh well. Best to drive at night anyway, he thought.

As day turned to night, he looked to the north where the mushroom cloud had drifted off only to be replaced by a cauldron of smoke, the essence of a hundred thousand caught in the blast, and shook his head as a wave of tiredness overtook him. He’d sleep, move on in the morning, he thought as he lay in the backseat, feet dangling out the open window as the breeze from the north blew gently past and a headache pounded gently but insistently on the inside of his skull.

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Take me to the April sun in Cuba, whoa-oh-oh!
Take me where the April sun will treat me
So right!
So right!

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

IX. We Have No Dole Queues​

You’ve been dying since the day you were born
You know it’s all been planned
The quartet of deliverance rides!
A sinner once; a sinner twice;
No need for confession now
‘Cause now you’ve got the fight of your life!

“We [Party General Secretary, President, and Minister for Trade and Industry] were picked up from the airport, and driven up to Ohakea see the Emergency Cabinet. And we hadn’t been in Jim McLay’s office thirty seconds when…well, Muldoon came in. Pissed as a fiddler’s cat. And we thought ‘Oh, God, no…what the hell – what are we going to do now?’”
- Barrie Leay, National Party General Secretary.

Time! Has taken its toll on you
The lines that crack your face​

With the grim news from Blenheim slowly making itself known in Christchurch and Dunedin, the Southern Interim Government was thrown into panic. It was quickly realised that there was little capacity to care for 300 individuals suffering radiation poisoning, let alone 30,000. While the rugged terrain of the Marlborough and prevailing wind patterns led Government observers to surmise that fallout would only be an issue along the Wairau Valley, leaving Picton untouched and the two ferryloads of refugees it held safe, the utility of the port was severely undermined by confirmation from Ohakea that Wellington’s port facilities had been swept clean into the sea or otherwise rendered unusable by heavy radiation (a downpour of black rain was reported in the eastern suburbs shielded by Mount Victoria, which only alluded to what was going on closer to Ground Zero), thereby effectively cutting off North-South commerce until some sense could be made of the situation in New Plymouth or, preferably, Napier.
The news broadcast made in Australia on the evening of the Exchange was of little comfort either, as the terse report from an audibly overworked Prime Minister Hawke made it glaringly obvious no help would be forthcoming from across the ditch. As Mayor Hay put it, “after years of complaining about everything we had to send up North to keep Auckland fed and lit, we were on our own. And it terrified us.”

Southern Interim Administration
Christchurch City Hall
February 26, 1984

The City Council building was a monolithic concrete slab which erupted from Hereford Street and loomed over the block. If the ‘Interim Administration’ the MPs and councillors from across the South Island had set up were anything near as secure, Mayor Hay would have been a lot less stressed than he was now. Right now a debate was raging on how to proceed with things: while everyone recognised the importance of sending aid across Cook Strait to prevent untold thousands of their brothers and sisters dying, the argument was getting hung up on how to administer such an effort. From one side came the claim that it was better to engage in a simple majoritarian game while trying to get the entire island to cooperate behind their local governments, coordinating activities through Christchurch as the largest surviving city in the country and, according to the smarmy young Member for St Kilda down in Dunedin, “ensuring continuity of elected representative government with the people’s backing.” That this approach favoured the Labour members who had largely remained in their home constituencies while National Cabinet members were stranded up north was nowhere near coincidental; Hay could see the deck being stacked, though that side was correct in claiming that any Labour-led government would enjoy a majority of the votes from ’81. In Christchurch alone 7 of the 10 electorates in the wider area were firmly red, with two of the National ones in Selwyn and Rangiora being mainly rural districts centred out in the wop-wops.

Which led to the counter-argument; that the Government of day was still, Emergency Regulations or not, the legitimate and elected Government of all of New Zealand, and the members therefore had a duty to all of New Zealand to hold the line and follow the example of the Ohakea-based Emergency Cabinet which showed Labour members following the Prime Minister’s continued leadership as the head of government. Labour members countered this counter (with some credibility, as Hay thought about it) that it was Muldoon’s drunken blundering which had led to his declaration of full support for the Americans and thus incurred the disaster which had befallen the country, a bold statement which had ruffled some feathers on the other side of the room.

“So does the Honourable Member for Sydenham suggest treason?” spat the MP for Rangiora, “or simply secession from the rest of New Zealand?”
Said Member, an independent who’d broken with Labour but was caucusing with them in this microcosm of democracy (and who happened to be Big Norm’s son), snorted and retorted to the effect of declining to dignify the comment with a response.

Cue Labour’s big chief coming down from his war-throne to slam the National backbencher (who was roundly despised by the PM in any case), much argument, and a circuitous route of wasting another five minutes. Eventually, enough was enough.

When Hay stood up and threw a mug to the floor the sound of shattered ceramics finally drew the room to a hush, the twenty-odd politicians and ten local government representatives finally silenced by the sudden outburst from the genteel, white-haired Mayor.

“For God’s sakes!” he said in an exasperated near-shout, “Can’t you mob see what’s going on more than two inches past the ends of your noses? We have here a million people or so on this island, all scared half to death by the fact that the Russians have up and bombed us, nobody’s sure how to organise things besides lining the nest for whatever party they support, and we’re sitting here arguing about a Parliament that’s been blown to Kingdom Come? You all appal me!” he barked at the MPs, noticing one or two of them suddenly avoiding his gaze. “The lives of our countrymen are not, not chess pieces to play your damn games with; what we should be doing here is making plans for food distribution, keeping law and order, maintaining contact with the bloody Government, and getting the Army in to help with all of that, not kicking up a stink about who should be in charge of what non-existent body they want to establish to do that!” He surveyed the room once more, noticing for the first time the stunned silence which his outburst left in its wake, before clearing his throat and saying in a calmer tone of voice “So, let’s start focussing on the real problems, shall we?” he asked finally, sitting down once more.

Almost immediately, a woman at the back of the room stood up and spoke.
“I agree with the Mayor – miracles do happen, I suppose – and we need to hang together or be hung separately. As a Labour member, I say we need to work past this bipartisan crap and get to work.”

While Hay could have been less bothered by the incorrect conjugation of the verb “to hang,” he was amazed by his young rival’s enthusiasm in supporting him. The next few minutes followed the example, then: the politicians agreed to work together in a cooperative, nonpartisan framework under which they would help enforce Christchurch’s decisions in their home electorates, while ensuring they weren’t thrown to the wolves by trying to hold themselves separate to the Interim Administration and by extension the rest of the South Island. As they began to discuss the possibilities for guarding freezing works in the Deep South and looking towards equitable distribution and rationing of the wheat, fruit, and vegetable harvests, Hay felt a smile creep almost imperceptibly about the corners of his mouth.

That’s it, Hamish, he thought, keep them honest, keep them from arguing too much, and we might just get through this in one piece.

Famine! Your body it has torn through
Withered in every place…​

Far to the north, Auckland lay in a state which could be optimistically described as hell on earth. Everyone who prior to the Exchange had seriously believed the Soviets would attack had written the city off as a dead loss, presenting as it did an impossibly tempting target for the Ivans. This hard core of pessimists made up the initial wave of evacuees from the cities along the Auckland isthmus, as from Helensville to Hunua people packed and fled for safe havens or family homes if they had them, or otherwise drove north or south and waited.

These people had been the lucky ones, then: from the 21st onwards the roads were almost impassable, with the fabric of society coming asunder wherever petrol station attendants tried to fend off crowds of scared and angry motorists or worse still where those motorists competed for finite fuel supplies. The police reported no fewer than ninety-seven incidents of aggravated assault on the 21st of February, and the increased rate of absenteeism combined with the reticence of local commanders to send out their men into a maelstrom of chaos (and the orders from Wellington to hold officers at dispatch points to maintain order following a Civil Defence emergency) stretched resources to breaking point.

So, when news of the strikes upon Australia broke the next morning and television went off the air, central Auckland was be abandoned by the police for fear of an uncontrollable riot. The bulk of regional police available were thus spared the immediate effects of the blast, which devastated the civilian population of the area. Third-degree burns occurred as far away as Castor Bay and Penrose, with many residential structures closer to the blast blown down or otherwise severely damaged. Roofs were stripped from houses as far as Ellerslie, and windows shattered in Hobsonville and Mangere.

All of which was fairly unfortunate for those stuck on the motorways, to say nothing of those in the area who had stayed at home and hoped for the best. With fires south of the harbour raging in a semicircle from Grey Lynn through Mount Eden and thence to Remuera (where the air blast had collapsed most non-concrete or –reinforced buildings, providing a ready source of fuel), the humanitarian situation was growing bleaker by the minute, and the tide of people trying to outrun the encroaching disaster was in the thick of it. Many were injured by flying glass or burns, some quite severely. At the two main bottlenecks at either end of the Auckland isthmus (New Lynn in the west, Onehunga to Mt Wellington in the south) anarchy reigned as thousands fled, some succumbing to their injuries after long hours of shambling from where they had stood when the bomb fell.

To the north, nothing was visible through the pall of choking black smoke.
Officially, the burning cars on Mangere Bridge were the result of a careless driver ploughing into a petrol tanker, never mind that petroleum shipments had been redirected when allowed to government fuel depots. Regardless of the cause, traffic was unable to cross the bridge for two days, and the mad press of bodies in the walkway beneath the road saw several deaths by trampling thanks to another burnt-out vehicle at the end causing a bottleneck.

In any event, surprisingly few people made it across Mangere Bridge that day.

-.. . ... .--. . .-. .- - . / - .. -- . ... --..-- / -.. . ... .--. . .-. .- - . / -- . .- ... ..- .-. . ...​

“For fuck’s sakes, Ted, just get the kids in the car and quit going on about your record player!”

“Alright, but you can forget about your bloody records then,” replied the man as he turned to a terrified-looking girl who had returned from the hospital only three days earlier. The reasons for her visit were bundled up in her arms, wailing their heads off. “Come on, Slutty-Pants, get your sprogs and let’s go.”

If the term was some sort of inside joke, the look on her face didn’t say so. As she picked up the two babies and made her way to the Holden waiting outside, the younger man of the two turned to Ted, scrutinising his craggy face with cold eyes.

“You really want to leave the place? I remember you saying if the pigs couldn’t get you out of here, the fucking Ivans wouldn’t.”

Ted sniffed. “I said if Piggy couldn’t get me out, the Russians wouldn’t. Hope the fat bastard fried in Wellington. And it’s just a house. Rita and I were going to give the bloody place to you and Slutty-Pants anyway.”

“What?” A brief look of bewilderment in those shark eyes. “…look, Dad – ”

“Save it, we’d best get going. There’ll be a pile of bloody refugees coming, so no point locking the place,” he mused as he headed for the door. “When we come back it’ll have been stripped bare anyway; this just saves the windows. Not that they’ll get into that safe without a bomb.” He turned to look at his son as he stood at the door. “Well, what’re you waiting for?”

The young man shook his head and followed his father outside, the sound of traffic audible on the motorway in the distance and the smell of smoke in the air. Could what was waiting for them in Whangarei be any worse than what was going on to the east?

.- ..-. - . .-. / .- .-.. .-.. / - .... .. ... --..-- / .-- --- -. .----. - / -.-- --- ..- / --. .. ...- . / -- . / .- / ... -- .. .-.. . ..--..

Pestilence! For what you’ve had to endure
And what you have put others through…​

RNZAF Base Ohakea
February 25, 1984

David Lange was not afraid of speaking his mind. Indeed, it had been his defining factor since entering Parliament, and his opposition to nuclear weapons and the admittance of American ships with nuclear weapons aboard had pitted him against the Government from day one.

When the war broke out, Lange had sworn loudly and been escorted out of the chamber for his trouble, which didn’t stop him bellowing at his caucus to oppose the madness. Later, when Muldoon announced the formation of a War Cabinet and excluded Labour from all proceedings, Lange had done even more shouting, staying in Wellington to fight the good fight. And when TVNZ had broadcasted news of the outbreak of total nuclear war in Europe, Lange had called his wife and apologised for not heading back to Mangere to see her before advising her to leave Auckland a week earlier, promising to see her and the kids “before too long.” It had been the first time he’d cried since the war began.

It had by no means been the last.


So after he was airlifted out of Wellington a few hours ahead of the Emergency Cabinet (managing to quip to the pilot “you’re going to need a bigger helicopter for me, Mac”) and landed in Waiouru where he was informed that the majority of Members who had been in Wellington during the Exchange were gathering at Ohakea and would he like to take his spot there as leader of Opposition, his first instinct was to go down to the airbase and punch the Prime Minister in his great thick head for being such a stubborn Goddamned idiot.

So now here he was, sitting across a desk from a man who looked to be barely functioning, sunken, red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes staring wetly at him from a face off which the jowly skin seemed to be hanging like forgotten laundry from a clothesline. Upon seeing that mournful visage, Lange’s killing urge faded. If Muldoon wasn’t dead, he was dying inside.

“So, you made it, then?” drawled the PM in a disturbing croak which took Lange aback for a moment. His first thought was that the Prime Minister was dying. He usually sounded like a bulldog with a frog down its throat, especially when he had drink in him (and yes, that was a bottle of gin on the corner table), but his voice here sounded especially sickly. Yes, this man was dying inside, alright. After half a second, Lange nodded. The motion felt unnatural; he was suddenly intensely aware of everything going on, from the breath he took to speak to the distant drone of an engine.

“Yeah. Yes, I made it. As did you.” The words were dull and heavy, the banality of the occasion not lost on Lange. Two scared middle-aged men, sitting in a shed as the world goes to hell.
From the response he got, it was lost on Muldoon.

“Well, are your lot going to get behind us and actually help fix this mess?” It wasn’t a question. All of a sudden, that urge to punch the PM returned with a vengeance. Instead, David cleared his throat and nodded again.

“It’s why we’re all here, isn’t it, Rob? I think we can leave politics at the door here: today we’re all just New Zealanders who want to help however we can.”

“Good,” said Muldoon curtly, or at least as curtly as one could manage whilst sounding like a toad in a cement mixer. “So, your lot won’t mind making sure they do what they’re told.” Again, not a question. Again, Lange nodded.

“I’m sure nobody minds pitching in, Rob–”

“Cut the ‘Rob’ nonsense,” snapped Muldoon, sitting up straight for the first time. “I’m the Prime Minister, and don’t you or anyone else forget about it. This country’s been attacked by a pack of Red cowards, and I don’t want any of the pinko subversives in your mob making things difficult. If – when – the Emergency Cabinet makes its decisions on what to do about the refugees and treatment centres, I expect everyone here to do their duty without arguing about it.”

“Now hold on a minute Prime Minister, what you’re saying is that only your Cabinet will get any say in how to help everyone in New Zealand get by, and nobody outside those twelve men will get to discuss it, or be privy to the discussion. How is that government?”

“We need to be led, Mister Lange, and last time I checked we were still the elected government of New Zealand.”

By whose arithmetic? Lange resisted the urge to point out the fact Muldoon had received fewer votes than Rowling in ’78 and ’81. Rowling, for God’s sake! The man couldn’t inspire a bowl of porridge!

“So what d’you need us around for then, if your plan is to rule by decree? Why not just shove the Labour caucus in a dole queue and get them to clear rubble in Auckland?”

That did a better job of shutting up the Prime Minister than Lange had anticipated, until he realised the PM was probably thinking about his electorate. He would have felt worse if the old maniac hadn’t brought it upon himself: one old man’s feelings didn’t make up for however many lay dead or dying in the ruins of what had been two of New Zealand’s greatest cities. Muldoon’s eyes took on a steel which was terrifyingly out of place with his otherwise worn-out demeanour though, the croak disappearing from his voice as it rose.

“Look, do you lot want to help your country or not? I have the support of my Cabinet and caucus and have the authority to lead this country through this crisis: you don’t have the authority, any authority, and I suggest you do as you’re damned well told before people start wondering about treason!”

Lange was gobsmacked. Muldoon had more or less just conflated disagreeing with him to treason. He’s going over the deep end, he thought to himself he’s really going to go mad with power. Those beady eyes were still fixed malevolently upon him. Lange sighed.

“Labour members will continue to attend sessions of the Emergency Government,” he said, “and you can rely upon our support for measures proposed to help get New Zealand through the dark times ahead.” Lange stood and nodded, his array of chins wobbling as he did so. “Good day, Prime Minister.”

As he exited, he realised his fists were clenched and sweaty, and felt lightheaded as he made his way back to the converted mess hall where Government was conducting its business these days. He'd clashed with the PM before, but never like this...what the hell was New Zealand in for?

In his office, Muldoon poured himself another hearty glass and sat quietly for a while, sipping and staring at nothing in particular. It wasn’t his fault the Communists had gone mad. All this after Labour had been pushing for increased détente with the Ivans, it went to show you what you got for trusting Reds, and what you got for thinking that fat blowhard had any sense whatsoever. He was still the Prime Minister, and he was still as right as ever. They didn’t want to say it because they wanted to take power away from his side while the people of New Zealand couldn’t do anything to keep the government they wanted and needed. Well, he’d show those pinkos that Rob Muldoon still had some fight left in him, by God!

Death! Deliverance for you for sure
Now there’s nothing you can do…

.--. .-. --- ...- . .-. -... ... / ..--- .---- ---... .---- .....​

Pukekawa, Waikato
Between Huntly and Pukekohe
February 27, 1984

The cars had stopped going past a day or two ago. Apparently the Army had a roadblock on SH1 up near Tuakau, though it would’ve surprised him to hear of anyone who hadn’t managed to find a way around. Still, the main roads had been all but cleared for military traffic, which was a moot point as the Army was the only lot who could get their hands on petrol any more (nasty business down in Huntly with that station attendant; it was turning into Mad Max these days).

Arthur was a man of God, so when a few refugees had stopped by, begging for food and shelter, he wasn’t likely to turn them away. It never hurt to have some extra hands about in the middle of milking, so why pass up a dozen or so people perfectly willing to earn their keep? Plus it gave him some use for the milk; the dairy factory in town had been closed since Auckland went up in smoke (he’d seen the cloud after he heard the news, having gone for a walk out the back paddocks to think about things) and better the refugee mob drink some of the blessed stuff than he dump it in the river.

When the cars came up the driveway, Arthur was busy changing the back tyre on the quad bike which had burst while getting the cows in, the crunch of tyres on the driveway catching his notice. A ute, a van, and a car. Well, he thought as he straightened his back and wiped his hands on his trousers, if they want me to take refugees in I’ve got about twelve good reasons not to in the house and camping in the yard.

The car stopped with a swoosh of gravel, a dust cloud briefly obscuring it as the van and ute came to a halt as well. When the policeman opened the door and stood to hail the occupants of the farmhouse, Arthur stopped dead, the sunshine of the warm summer’s day suddenly doing nothing to stop the chill in his bones. There was no mistaking that big nose and leathery face, and he found his fists clenching as the cop said something along the lines of “Anyone home?”

“Morning, Inspector,” Arthur called out as he stood his ground where he’d stopped. “What brings you lot out here? If you’re dropping off refugees I’ve already got a dozen, so tell ‘em the farm’s full up.”

The Inspector smiled faintly and walked towards Arthur.

“Morning yourself. I’ve got a load of people on the move who I’m escorting to their families down in the Waikato, so they’re looking for some food and supplies. I’m here to see if farmers can give comfort to some of these people. Most of them have lost their homes, you know,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Arthur looked past the Inspector, at the occupants of the van and ute. From the amount of their chattels stuffed into the back of the van or loaded onto the ute, they’d lost their homes but damn all inside it. And what had he said – ‘give comfort to them?’ None of them looked particularly uncomfortable, but then who would, loaded down with enough furniture to set up a department store? He sighed and turned to look at the Inspector.

“I don’t know why the hell you thought you could walk up to me here after what you did, but I know you’re gonna leave before I get the Army down here to ask why you’re away from your post. I thought you lot were meant to be keeping the peace up in Auckland?”

The day got a few degrees colder as the Inspector’s faux-affable smile frosted over, eyes turning steely. “Now, now, Mister Thomas,” he chided in an innocently menacing tone. “Wouldn’t want to give me another reason to get you investigated, would we?”

“Be the first bloody reason I ever gave you,” retorted Arthur as his brother came out of the house to see what was going on. The Inspector turned to look at him.

“Good morning there, I’m just asking your brother if you could spare some supplies for these refu-”

“Fuck off.” Des was blunt, you could say that for him. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, poking your – ”

“Calm down, Des, I’ll deal with this,” said Arthur placatingly. “God said we have to love each other, and I won’t let the starving man go hungry.” He turned to the Inspector, who stood expressionless. “This lot have any clean containers?” A curt nod. “Right. Des, go fill them a gallon or two of milk from the shed. A gallon more or less is no difference to us, and don’t go using sour milk because I’ll know.”

Bewildered but finding his protests stifled by Arthur, Des went and filled a jerry can (which had the smell of something either freshly-bought or –looted about it) with milk, as Arthur went into the house to get something else for the refugees and the Inspector told the travellers what he’d managed to procure for them. He was standing at the door of the van laughing at some unknown joke when Arthur placed the jerry can beside him, and placed a small ice cream container on top of it.

“Seeds. Thought you might want to plant some things if you wound up on a farm somewhere,” said Arthur easily. “Now get off my land.”

The Inspector gave another genial smirk and nodded to the occupants of the vehicles, who started their engines as he went to shake Arthur’s hand.
“You’ve done us a service today, Mr Thomas,” he said. Arthur stared at the hand and back at the Inspector.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, hands staying right at his sides. “And you did more than enough for me. Nine bloody years of it. God have mercy on you, Inspector, because next time we see each other I might not.”

The Inspector’s hand fell back, and the smile began to slip again. With a quiet goodbye, he got in the car and started off.

Arthur found Des in the kitchen with the rest of the family, who fell silent as he walked in. He looked at the assembled faces before sighing.
“Let justice be done,” he murmured, before simply saying “Right, I’m off to fix that tyre; let that Maori chap know I want to be out for the cows in an hour.”

After the three vehicles made it past Hamilton, the Inspector breathed a little more easily. He was meant to be in Auckland, and if the hellacious noise had been anything to go by there wasn’t much of it left to be in. He smiled as he thought about what had just happened. He’d had that yokel pegged as a dimwit from the start, and it didn’t look like a lot had changed since 1970. He’d even given them seeds, for Christ’s sakes! There was hardly a garden centre left in the country which hadn’t been ransacked since the Exchange, and he was throwing the things about like rice at a wedding! He was still smiling as he idly opened the box to see what was inside, and the ute had to brake abruptly to avoid hitting the car as it swerved when the Inspector’s hand jerked with shock on the wheel.

In the container, amidst two packets’ worth of seeds, lay a shell casing.

.--. ... .- .-.. -- / ...-- --... ---... / ..--- --... -....- ..--- ----.​

Now’s the death of doers of wrong
Swing judgment’s hammer down...
…
On through the dead of night
With the Four Horsemen ride,
Or choose your fate and die!

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

X. We Have No Secrets​

I respect your wishes
You gave me such precious hours
What to do? without you?
Squeezed me out of your life;
Down the drain like molten toothpaste
I feel used and spat out.
Poor! Old! Me!

“He’s [expletive deleted] cracked!
- (Attributed to) David Lange at Interim Cabinet, February 29, 1984.

From Gustafson, Barry, Decline and Fall: The Muldoon Years 1981-84. (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 2007). Reproduced under license.

As the dust began to settle across New Zealand and the world, another cloud was forming over the unassuming hamlet and Air Force Base of Ohakea. Divides were already forming in the National Unity Government; control over the South Island was quite theoretical and the debate over whether Members whose constituencies had undergone (to use the gentler bowdlerised term) “population reapportionments” should be allowed to engage in policy decisions given the fact they now technically represented nobody was a shameful example of the political wrangling which both sides engaged in unabashedly over the first week after Black Wednesday…

…Labour’s internal disputes are of little concern here; of considerably more interest to this publication are the rifts emerging in the exhausted National Party. The Prime Minister’s own electorate had been rendered uninhabitable, those of two of his Cabinet colleagues were effectively devoid of life, and even his closest colleagues were questioning his ability to handle the crisis.

Without wishing to get his hands too dirtied in the bitter accusations and counter-accusations of the last twenty-five years which have gone on behind closed doors and in Party offices across the country, the matter of Muldoon’s alcoholism must be at least given passing notice by the author. It is true that by February 1984 he was drinking more heavily than ever before, with his declaration of open support for the United States widely suspected of having been made whilst under the influence. After being evacuated to Ohakea, then, he can scarcely be blamed for using some sort of crutch to get through those awful days – indeed, one of our unexamined national shames is the spate of suicides and extrajudicial “mercy” killings which went on from February through to at least April, and the death of the monarch by her own hand was a tremendous surprise to all – but this does not absolve Muldoon of the fact that before a week had passed his mental state had begun to decline. His speech at Cabinet was frequently slurred, his demeanour wildly changing from melancholy to sanguinity and back again, and his strong style of leadership began to grate even with his Cabinet colleagues. This came to a head with the resignation on February 28th when…

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​

RNZAF Base Ohakea
February 28, 1984

Muldoon had slept six hours in the last two days so it was no surprise that he seemed less involved in the proceedings than he usually would be, and therefore the snap to his current state of alertness was unsettling, to say the least, bloodshot eyes narrowed into a glare which managed to be at once manic and calmly furious.

“What was that you said, George?” he asked of his colleague in a voice bubbling with anger, miles off the croaking drawl he’d slipped into recently.
Across the room, George Gair stood stiffly at the end of the table, an envelope in his hand. He cleared his throat and repeated himself.

“I said, Prime Minister, that I do not feel that I can continue as a member of this Cabinet, or of this Parliament. I am no longer a young man and my –” here, for the first time, his voice caught in his throat “My electorate has been, I am reliably informed, utterly devastated by the events of the past week, so I also fear that I no longer have the constitutional authority to remain a member of Parliament, or your Government – one can hardly carry out a by-election, after all, when there is no electorate left to vote.” George sighed. “I remain loyal to you and your Government, sir, and I will back you to the hilt, but I do not feel comfortable holding several portfolios when I have no legal grounds to do so. While there may be a way to justify my remaining a Member of the House, I doubt the legitimacy of a Cabinet Minister who has no vote, no opinion, no people behind him.”

It didn’t help, a fact which became apparent as Muldoon snorted, lurching slowly forward in his seat with the ominous interminability of a cyclone.

“So, you think anyone whose electorate was in one of the affected areas should be tossed out of the Government altogether, do you? You know Birkenhead and Remuera were ruined as well, don’t you? So d’you reckon we need to toss out Jim McLay and Allan Highet too?”

The question of what that would mean for the sitting member for Tamaki (which was in a state you could optimistically call ‘very bad’), also known as the Prime Minister, went unsaid in words but shouted in body language. Gair shook his head.

“Prime Minister, I cannot speak on what this situation may mean for other Ministers of the Crown, but I am informed that the, the, the bomb went off directly over Devonport Navy Base. If that’s true then my electorate isn’t just damaged, sir, it, it, it no longer exists.” He was beginning to struggle on some words now. It wasn’t sure what was left of the North Shore, but the initial reports (some of which lay buried in the pile on the desk) weren’t promising. Nobody had made it out of the area since February 22nd, anyway.

“So you aren’t trying to roll me as leader again, hey?” It came as an accusation, not a question. “Oh yes, you lot were always thick as thieves with Brian Bloody Talboys. Or are they offering you as bait, make out like the old man’s packed a sad so the older man should take the hint and pack it in too?”

Gair was bewildered. “Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking abou –”

“Oh of course not,” snapped Muldoon, elbows sliding off the desk as his palms gripped the edges and he began leaning over the mounds of paper like a whiskery gargoyle. “They never bloody do. Well, listen up, this is still my government and no treasonous little shit is going to take it away from me, understand? Consider your resignation declined; I expect that report on the Railways by Friday at the latest and less defeatist talk from you and your esteemed bloody colleagues.”

Gair opened his mouth as if to say something, before appearing to think better of it. Instead, he managed a choked “Yes, Prime Minister” and left with all the dignity he could.

In his office, Muldoon poured himself another drink and brooded over his reports, eyes glazing over again as possibilities seared their way through his mind. He would remain so for quite some time.

... - .-. . .. -.-. .... .... --- .-.. --.. . .-. / ..- -. -.. / -... . -. --.. .. -. -.- .- -. .. ... - . .-. -.​

I’m fed up with crying
My despair is dying,
Turning into rage
Day by day

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The Huey buzzed its lonely way southwards through the empty, cloudless skies and over empty, carless streets, the Pilot marvelling at the lack of wind as they headed in to land at the deserted airport. Wellington was usually an absolute bitch even on a nice day, but at the moment a high pressure system was draped languidly across the country and even the windy city was barely breezy.

Well, “marvelling” was perhaps too strong a word. A lack of wind was surprising, certainly, but the real marvel lay to the southwest, Pilot and Co-pilot unable to resist looking across the valleys and harbour to the blackened, twisted ruin of the capital. Recon flights had already confirmed that the major firestorms had burnt themselves out here and in Auckland, but blazes remained in the western hills in the sunny weather, a rough semicircle of smoke radiating outwards towards the sea where helicopters with monsoon buckets were yet being directed in a desperate attempt to keep the bushfires away from the Cook Strait cable terminus and keep the lights on across the North Island.

And there was just so damn much of that destruction. The Pilot was from New Plymouth originally but familiar with flying into Wellington so he could at least pick out the landmarks – or rather the lack thereof. For one, he was quite sure that there was meant to be a Beehive-shaped building amidst all that rubble in the northern area, from which only the toothy skeletons of high-rises loomed out of the devastation. Jesus, there was just so damn much –
He was brought out of his reverie by the Co-pilot, who asked him something innocuous about landing and went into a thoughtful silence again afterwards, before adding his two cents.

“Fuck of a mess, in’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah. Wonder what we’ll find down around the airport, eh?”

“Reckon we’ll find out, or that lot in the back will, anyway.”

His spectacularly dismissive “that lot” took in a section of soldiers from one of the platoons stationed out in Trentham, where the Defence Force was currently overseeing the tentative expeditions into Wellington (they’ve been pretty damn tentative, alright, thought the Pilot since the first bunch of jokers and cops and Territorials to wander in there didn’t fucking well come out).

For their part the soldiers were mostly silent; not being preoccupied with keeping Flight Endeavour Alpha aloft they had much more time on their hands to gawp with terror at the ruined city. As they headed down Evans Bay towards the runway, the tail of a stricken airplane jabbing out of the harbour gave them all the more reason to gawp, as that and other features became starkly apparent to the Lance-Corporal gazing unblinkingly at the scene. Here, a car lay half-submerged where it had run through the barrier on the road around the bays. There, a blanket with the word “HELP” stencilled on it was draped across the front of a pretty hillside villa. Regarding the plane over which they were passing, one of his section-mates nodded absent-mindedly and turned to the others.

“Bloody women drivers, eh?” he quipped, face contorted into a half-hysterical parody of a grin. It convinced nobody.

The strip of road in between the airport and the bay was deserted, just like all the roads hereabouts. On the runway itself, planes were parked up neatly where they’d been left before the Exchange, adding to the illusion that here, over the hills and a million miles away from the horrors which no doubt lurked in the city centre, everything was as it had always been.

That illusion was shattered pretty quickly once they landed. No ground crew rushed out to greet them, no noise but the steady breeze and the whine of the motors as they powered down and the clicking of the Geiger counter as the Lance-Corporal waved it about in the warm sunny air.

“We’re looking alright,” he said hoarsely “what next?”

To cut a long story short, the soldiers found themselves asking the growing crowd of locals just who had been running civil defence and administration since what they tactfully referred to as “the Incident.” The citizens – who had grown to a fair couple hundred in number by the time Endeavour Alpha and Bravo got a grasp of the situation – pointed them in the direction of the high school which sat pretty much right across from the airport, where they were received by a local somebody who’d aged a decade in the last two months, and a century in the last week. A brief discussion between the Captain and him about the situation made it apparent why.

When the missile struck home, there had been somewhere in the order of fifteen to twenty thousand people living east of Mount Victoria; nobody was sure how many were left alive, but looting had been a severe problem since law and order more or less evaporated outside the belt from the Kilbirnie shopping area (where the few remaining policemen had secured the supplies at the end of a gun) to Seatoun (where the locals were far enough away to scarcely notice what had happened, and a minor sealift had taken place on a harbour ferry before fuel had run out on the way back over and the passengers had had to swim for it before the ferry drifted into the same reefs on which the Wahine had floundered a quarter-century earlier. It did not bear thinking about as to how much of the radioactive material dumped in the harbour had ebbed out there with the tide).

However, since people had more or less stocked up for at least three days the hunger problem hadn’t become acute just yet; radiation remained the key issue, an all the more severe one given the lack of familiarity with it. A cursory wave of the Geiger counter over the dried black spots atop cars and the roof of a utility shed backed up the report of a downpour of black rain not too long after the Incident. Ambient radiation was scarcely one to two rads per hour; given that it had been at least 160 hours, the prevalence of radiation sickness even amongst the healthy and hale was making itself felt. Closer towards the central city, the council warned, they couldn’t vouch for survival – the black rain had fallen thicker and for longer there, and nobody had come or gone from anywhere further than Hataitai since the evening of the 22nd.
Which brought them to the humanitarian effort: with at least five thousand having made the journey across the hills from the central area (or turning around after they realised the airport was not, in fact, the target – when they were still able to see, that was) and becoming heavily irradiated in the process, the mortality rate had already been considerable. By this stage, most of the worst cases had already died as those who had been lucky in the short term began to enter their long, slow decline. Against his instincts, the Captain asked where they were dealing with the ill. And so they were shown to the school hall.

Itcan’thappenhereitwon’thappenherethisisn’thappeningherethiswon’t -

A door creaking open and a rush of warm air. Behind the Lance-Corporal, one of the soldiers lurched to a drain grate and was sick. The inside of the building was mercifully too dark to see much from out here – the power having gone out not long after the explosion – but the atmosphere was choking, the heat of midsummer and several hundred people only exacerbating the palpable odour.

OhGodnoGodnoGodnothereisnoGodnoGodohfuck

They made it inside five paces before they were stopped in their tracks by a closer look at some of the (for want of a better term) patients, most of whom were too far gone to realise, let alone respond to, their presence. As the Lance-Corporal looked to the Captain to ask what they were meant to do with this, a woman walked over towards them (a welcome distraction for the Captain, who had no idea how to deal with this nightmare). Possibly she’d once been quite pretty; either way the sunken eyes were those of a human being who had in the last week gone through the very mouth of Hell and was still wading through the Stygian depths of suffering. None of the soldiers had any kind of chance to respond before she made her way to the Captain and, after taking a moment to regard him and his underlings as if to make sure they weren’t some sort of hallucination, exploded in a hoarse and hateful outburst.

“You bastards. You useless, fucking, bastards. Where were you?” She kept repeating the words over and over, punching the soldier feebly in the chest before an internal dam broke and she burst into hysterical tears. Another worn-looking doctor came over (in a coat covered in stains which redoubled the gratitude the Lance-Corporal felt towards the impenetrable half-light) and escorted them out with some similarly exhausted-sounding apologies, but the point had been made. Neither Lance-Corporal nor Captain would be able to find any good answer to her question.

.- -- / -. --- - / - --- .-. -- . -. - . -.. / .-- .. - .... / - . -. / - .... --- ..- ... .- -. -.. / .... . .-.. .-.. ...
​

I was blue
When you let me down
Black and blue!

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The Leader of the Opposition slammed a pudgy fist down on the cracked surface of the sun-bleached Formica table, rattling a pencil-holder and more than a few spines around it. From behind one of his three remaining pairs of glasses David Lange stared at the meeting room with a focused fury, and when he spoke it was with no effort whatsoever made to conceal it.
“I tell you, the man’s gone bloody barmy!”

“Now, steady on, David,” interjected John Falloon, “this is the Prime Minister of New Zealand you’re –”

“He’ll be the Prime Minister of a graveyard if he goes on like this!” bellowed Lange. “And anyone who can’t see that is just handing him the shovel. No we’ve got to do something about this. Accusing me of treason is one thing, but when he starts pointing fingers at his own Cabinet ministers he’s going off the deep end.” At the other end of the room, George Gair cast his eyes downwards.

“So what are you suggesting, a coup or something?”

Lange blinked at Jim McLay, letting that one hang in the air for an uncomfortably long time before he gave a slow no, reaffirming it with an emphatic shake of the head.

“This is New Zealand,” he said as he stared at the table, talking in an attempt to convince himself as well as the others. “If we go down that road we’ll end up scattered and broken. No, we just need to convince the Prime Minister that this is beyond party politics or personal egos; this is a matter of national survival. That it no longer serves the country’s best interests for him to be running things the way he has been. That we have been.” He looked up and out at the scared men who were the future of this country’s survival, continuing in a pensive voice. “Because if we allow the Prime Minister to keep killing himself in an attempt to fix a situation which none of us have faith in him to approach realistically, we will be as much willing accomplices in the death of our country as the man who pressed the button that set the world on fire.”

Nobody on either side had any kind of response to that. David didn’t expect they would, and let them stew uncomfortably in the silence. As he opened his mouth to speak once more, he was interrupted by someone clearing their throat. And unless Roger Douglas’ voice had suddenly gone up a few octaves and it had stopped having to negotiate with his nose and teeth to obscure intelligibility, that was young Marilyn Waring speaking up from behind him.

“So what do you think we should do?”

Lange looked out at the room and spoke, the barest hint of something faintly sinster at the fringes of his voice.

“I think it’s about time somebody had a word with him; didn’t you?”

-... ..- - / .-- .... . -. / .. / - .... .. -. -.- / --- ..-. / .- .-.. .-.. / -- -.-- / .-- .-. --- -. --. ... / -- -.-- / -... .-.. --- --- -.. / .. ... / .-.. .. --.- ..- .. -.. / ..-. .-.. .- -- .​

…I see red, I see red, I see red!
I see red, I see red, I see red!
I see red, I see red, I see red!
I see red, I see red, I see red!
I see red, I see red, red, I see red, red, red, red…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Screw study; have an update!

XI. We Have No Rebellion​

It was the worst thing you could do
You don’t know what you put me through
That’s why I’m telling you
This is what I saw through
I’ll turn away as you close the door…

“Now Rob Muldoon and Rowling
They haven’t made a hit.
They’re ruining the country
More than just a bit.
And if they keep on the way they’re going
We’ll all be in turd…”
- Fred Dagg

Taihape, Rangitikei
February 29, 1984

The townspeople had done their share of whinging after the Government closed the railyards at the tail end of last decade – at least, in that way peculiar to rural New Zealanders which involved a lot of “they’ll regret it, you know” and “bloody idiots” and “too right, mate” – but in contrast to the times that happened in most other circumstances, here the people of Taihape had been vindicated slightly when the Government reopened the shifting yards in a tearing hurry around the start of the year. There had hardly been time to brush the dust off the padlocks on the sheds before the trains from Wellington began arriving via Palmy, and throughout the month the number of people flocking north to disperse through the countryside had ballooned, reaching a fevered pitch around the 21st before the abrupt cutoff last week.

Since then things had calmed down only marginally; the Railways were dredging up every piece of rolling stock they could to move food and people about to and from the burnt and shattered cities, which was how Gus found himself shuttling a DB-class to the Port of Napier and back on these hot autumn days, towing all the cargo from Down South it could and damn the length limit.

He’d pulled a twenty-eight hour shift before returning to Taihape via Palmy to finally knock off for what could be considered a half-civilised smoko, but like everyone else around him Gus got on with the job with only the standard murmur of complaint about “bloody cityboys,” with that tongue-in-cheek country tone of someone helping out a mildly careless yet likable neighbour. A quick pint in the refreshment rooms helped; from the looks of it most of the other workers thought so, much as they always did.

“How’s the folks, Wiry?” asked Gus of Wiremu, the big Maori bloke sitting down the bar from him.

“Oh, alright, eh?” he said as he gave a shrug like plate tectonics. “Got some family up from Porirua at the moment, so they’re back home eating everything before I can get there.” Wiremu finished that thought with a sip of beer (rationing such a vital resource was an alien concept to rail workers; the barman had the common sense to not try and enforce the rules too stringently) and looked at Gus. “What about you, mate, any cuzzies come camping just-for-the-hell-of-it-and-nothing-to-do-with-the-war?”

Gus, less susceptible to irony than the trains he drove, nodded over a handle of DB (after all, it’d take a damn sight more than nuclear war to stop good beer reaching the pubs and ale-houses of New Zealand) in response.

“Yeah, wife’s family are up from Wellington. Reckon they’ll be with us a while.”

“Shit, sorry to hear that mate,” said Wiremu, which elicited a shrug from Gus.

“Could be worse, least they came up in time. Kids still think it’s a bloody holiday, so we’ll see how long that lasts. What about you, mate, anyone back south?”

“Nah, all in Porirua or out in the Hutt, so they’re probably all alright, eh. Haven’t heard much from the cuzzies up Auckland way, but I mean nobody has, so what’re you gonna do?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re the same at ours. Our cousin Daryl lives out West, so reckon he should be alright. Jealous of me brother though, he lives down Christchurch way so reckon they’re doin’ alright for themselves. Ah, well.”

Another pensive sip as a few other men joined in their conversation. News was recycled a lot in these parts; a nuclear war merely gave the local gossips a new dimension to explore on top of the usual who’s-who, and they pressed Gus and Wiry and the rest of them for information only slightly more than they always did.

In other words, business as usual carried on. Oh, a bit sleep-deprived perhaps, but things would turn out alright in the end. They always did.

I never thought you’d break my heart
I should’ve known it from the start...

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“We did all we could…we invested in the wellbeing of this country, protected our industries from foreign predation…and for all of it one New Zealander of every ten was killed by the Russians. My God, I only hope they can forgive me someday.”
- Former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon’s last official interview, February 1985.

RNZAF Base Ohakea
February 29, 1984

As far as weeks went, this one had been a bit of a shit. The corner of Muldoon’s mouth quirked upwards at that thought (for all the good it did; at best it turned his frown into a grimace) while it lasted. Yes, this was definitely worse than any other week he’d been through; no way to talk past the cameras – there was still no way to broadcast with the TV network still off the air – and if he’d found that blowhard Lange hard to argue with it was even more difficult to negotiate with a nuclear weapon.

The Prime Minister had been stunned by the start of the war. Oh, he’d gone on giving orders and doing plenty of shouting during the evacuation, because what else was a leader for? Why would the Russians bomb New Zealand, after all? Ever since Wellington was hit he’d been operating on autopilot in many ways: there was work to be done and he would make sure it got done. That was what he did. And if he had to maintain control during that time, what of it? He was meant to lead and there was no fit alternative that he could see; George Gair’s defection had convinced him solidly of that. They weren’t traitors, quite, but if they couldn’t see the truth in front of them…

That little voice of self-doubt in his head, a formerly unknown feeling which had been growing steadily since the shooting started in Europe and he wondered in the pit of his stomach what this country had got into – why go to war when we have wool lying unshipped and meat going off in cold storage? – begged to differ, as it had since he saw the flash and the cloud hovering over Wellington like a 30,000-foot tombstone. Muldoon had slept perhaps two hours a day in the last week, reading reports and staring blankly at casualty figures and lists of roads, hospitals, schools wiped out a week ago, trying to figure out what to do.

Nobody else can do this. Nobody else should do this.

The news from Wellington yesterday had sent him further into despair. The city was a mausoleum. They were trying to scrounge up a radiation suit from somewhere but this country was simply not equipped to send men tramping into the open-air reactor core which had been the capital. But it was the report of Flight Endeavour on the situation in Kilbirnie – two thousand more dead there Robert you could have sent planes why didn’t you think of sending planes I was too busy trying to organise the ones who’d already escaped but you know that’s no excuse but the report said how many of them were dead already that’s no excuse Robert – that had convinced him just what had been wrought on this country. It was staring death in the face.
For the first time in his life, or at least as long as he could remember since entering politics, Robert Muldoon didn’t know what to do. And for the first time since Italy, forty years ago, he was scared.

- . .-.. .-.. / - .... . / - .-. ..- - ....​

David Lange had worked all night on what he wanted to say. Several of his colleagues in the Emergency Government – colleagues and counterparts alike – had dropped by the cramped office he had appropriated to offer their support, and he’d politely (at first) and then impolitely (after Roger had come in for a third time to blether on about the need for liberalisation of the disaster management response it’d have taken the patience of a saint not to tell him to fuck off) told them to leave him alone.

Nobody else could do this.

He’d been in Parliament long enough to see how Muldoon could bully people into seeing things his way, which ruled out any of the Nats – good God, if he was chewing out old Gentleman George, he doubted if Thea Muldoon herself could disavow him of his current path – and he’d clashed with Muldoon often enough to know that nobody else here from Labour could debate with the man when he no doubt started going on about how inherently superior the PM’s methods were for dealing with burn victims and drug shortages and blackouts and the other million problems which Muldoon insisted on managing personally, despite the fact the four dozen MPs already in Ohakea were having trouble organising things, despite working together. So no, it was all on Lange to talk the man around.

Or down off a ledge, if need be.

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Muldoon had managed to dredge up a secretary from somewhere, and trust the old bastard to have the luck to find a pretty young thing who looked like she was fresh from typing class. ‘The Prime Minister will see you soon,’ she had assured Lange, and he found himself casting his mind back to the last draft – those hurriedly scribbled pages, at any rate – of what he would say. Oh, doubtless Muldoon was champing at the bit to see him; after all, they’d exchanged so many tender words over the last seven years. Right now it sounded like he was just as eagerly seeing someone else; you could almost make out the sneering tone through the wall.

After what may have been five minutes or five hours – time moved like treacle these days – and the talking abated, the secretary went into the office and returned, nodding briskly at Lange and standing aside to let him through the door. Credit where it was due, she was cool as a cucumber when confronted with two men who’d eaten veteran journalists alive.

It was messier than the last time he’d been in, two long days ago. Evidently the administrative issues were being sorted out; mountains of paper cluttered the desk and tables around the sides of the room, with Muldoon glowering behind a sprawling pile of reports and telex printouts.

The really surprising thing was how far downhill the Prime Minister had gone in forty-eight hours. Usually you could feel the man staring into your brain like a laser, scanning for the best avenues of attack to rip you a new one and romp past you as if you were never there. He was still eyeballing Lange, but now it was more…scattered. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, and while Lange appreciated the freak divergence from his usually intimidating focus it was jarring to say the least.

“So, you’ve come to have a crack at it from another angle, have you?” burbled Muldoon, his voice a sickly shadow of even the slurring drawl he’d managed last time, catching Lange’s full attention in what might almost have been concern. Yes, definitely the eyes. Something wasn’t right inside. Whether that would make this any harder or easier, Lange couldn’t guess.

“If you mean talk frankly about what’s going on, then yes,” said Lange as Muldoon sneered. Well, some things are staying constant, anyway.

“If you’ve come to launch a coup, you’d do well to remember the provisions for treason under the Emergency Powers Act.”

“Just as well I haven’t come to launch a coup, isn’t it?” You little Napoleon, added his mind. “I’ve come to have a talk. Now before we start, let’s make a deal, you and I. I’ll talk. You listen. And if you hear me out, and we still disagree…”

“You’ll keep being a pain in the nation’s arse?”

“I will resign.”

That stunned Muldoon into silence; you could practically hear the wheels turning in his head as he weighed up just how serious this must be. He had at least a begrudging respect for his adversary, and even he had to admit Lange was the only man in politics as determined as he was to stay in the thick of it. Leaving politics was, to either of them, the equivalent of exile to Siberia. After due consideration, he gave a single slow nod and Lange began.

“There’s a reason you’ve got so much opposition these days. Believe me when I say it’s not because anyone else wants your job; it’s a mug’s game to try and organise it these days –” Muldoon opened his mouth and Lange held up a pudgy index finger “– remember the deal – because trying to sort through everything on your own these days will kill you. It looks like you’re on the way, to be honest. Cabinet heard about the heart problems.” Muldoon’s eyes widened of their own accord at that news, and Lange nodded. “So no, it’s not that you lack the confidence of Parliament to be Prime Minister – you lack the confidence to survive being Prime Minister. A cardiac episode today, but what will it be next week? D’you think anyone will even bother asking you about this if you have a full-blown heart attack?”

Muldoon’s expression was unreadable; somewhere between rage and melancholy and bewilderment.

“I have a letter here from the Emergency Cabinet, and all the members on my side too. It’s a formal request for your resignation. We haven’t brought Beattie into this, this isn’t a constitutional problem and anyway, he’s still at the emergency centre in Palmerston, being treated for flash burns.”

Silence greeted Lange. Silence, and a thousand-yard stare as Muldoon’s eyes gazed in and out of focus at something that didn’t seem to be there. Lange changed tack.

“Look, Robert, this is not a bloody overthrow. I don’t want you written out of this country. I believe that you, you and a whole lot of people in the National Party, have a contribution to make to get this country to recover, to get us back on our feet and up off our back.” His voice had adopted a soft tone a world away from the usual bellicose bellow he had traditionally used when dealing with the Prime Minister. “And I put it to you that that is still something worth striving for.”

Muldoon offered neither opposition nor approval, so Lange continued speaking with that gentle intensity.

“Sir, I believe you are the man who can lead that recovery in your party and revitalise this government, and I believe the people in your ranks are willing to be part of that recovery and that they are still willing to have you help lead them through it. I won’t spurn them, even if you do. They’re going to be part of that recovery, and when we do it, when we roll up our sleeves and go to work together, it’ll be for that hundred thousand left wounded and homeless in the greatest disaster in our nation’s history, the ones who need our help most.

“This isn’t a coup, Prime Minister. It’s an offer of partnership in that enterprise.”

Muldoon sat quietly, eyes watery with emotion, illness, and alcohol as he stared idly into nothing. Lange’s hand, the one he wasn’t using to poke the table and make his point, was clenched and sweaty. It took all of his will to stop it from shaking. After what felt like an eternity, Muldoon looked Lange in the eyes.

“I love you, Mister Lange,” he murmured indistinctly with his expression still giving away nothing, let alone the meaning of the bizarre non sequitur. His chest heaved with a sigh, and he looked down at the desk again. “I got a full report from the Red Cross and the Ministry of Health,” he said in that slurring drawl as his shaking hands (fuck me, they are shaking! thought Lange. He can’t actually be giving in, can he?) pawed through the papers until they came to a folder marked SECRET - LIMDIS and slid it over to Lange. “Page nineteen,” he burbled before taking a snort of whatever paint-thinner was in the tumbler on his side of the desk.

Whatever Lange had been prepared for, it wasn’t this. This was a full report on the number of confirmed and estimated casualties (naturally one was far higher than the other), and Page Nineteen was filled with columns of numbers all laid out like neat rows of seats in a hall.

Or crosses in a graveyard.

A fragment here and a fragment there caught Lange’s eye has he tried to take in the immensity of the damage.


Wellington City and environs: 67,900 probable, 80,000 - poss. 100,000 within next two weeks, of which:
- Immediate fatalities in blast/within five minutes: ~45,400
- Fatalities within 24 hours from severe radiation sickness/burns: ~22,300 (within Zone A as defined above)
- Fatalities in the week to 28/02/1984 (Zones B-D): Best estimate ~44,200 [3]
- Casualties not immediately resulting in fatality in the week to 28/2/84 (that is, those surviving longer than one week: ~40,000, probably greater.
- Casualties known to have self-evacuated from the region within 24-hour period after X-Hour: <2,682
- Of the above, those succumbing to injuries/radiation sickness within one week: 1,894

[3] Discrepancies in figures incorporate likely fatalities in the 0-24 hour period; note Zone A is not included as survival in that area is estimated at <0.5% probability of survival after one week…


It was an education, at least. Lange flipped through to the pages on Auckland, which had been dog-eared and well-read from the looks of it. Muldoon didn’t even need to see Lange look at the page before he started speaking.

“Immediate deaths, one-hundred-fifty-three-thousand-eight-hundred,” he recited, “Twenty-four-hour-deaths, approximately-thirty-one-thousand-one-hundred-within-Zone-A. Fatalities-in-first-week, estimated-total-across-Auckland-metropolitan-area, one-hundred-and-ninety-two-thousand-four-hundred. Casualties-not-immediately-resulting-in-fatality-in-past-week, one-hundred-fifty-thousand-of-whom-half-expected-to-result-in-fatality-without-prompt-care. Of-those, radiation-illness-affecting…”

Lange had stopped looking at the folder some time ago, instead looking at Muldoon as he dully recited figures How many times has he read this how many times how is he still functioning until he came to a stop, before he seemed to focus on something again and looked Lange in the eyes. Muldoon’s eyes weren’t glassy anymore: instead they held an awful clarity beyond exhaustion, of someone who has stood on the brink of the abyss and stared into an unimaginable void and seriously thought about letting himself fall in.

“Devonport, Takapuna, Northcote, Auckland Central, Parnell, Mission Bay, all gone. Castor Bay, Glenfield, Birkenhead, Herne Bay, Grey Lynn, Mount Eden, Remuera, Glen Innes and Glendowie burning out. Tamaki’s in ruins. Prebble and Knapp and Highet, all dead.” Muldoon let out a breath like a deflating zeppelin, as Lange sat enraptured. Sure, a million people had seen the Bomb go off in New Zealand, but how many could ever have claimed to see this, whatever this was?

With an abruptness which caught the Leader of the Opposition on the back foot Muldoon spoke again. “Is the Governor-General still about? I’d like to talk with him.”

The Prime Minister’s voice had taken on a tone Lange had never heard. It wasn’t wavering or slurred, but still quiet, even without being entirely sad. Was it…was it entirely possible he was asking his permission? Dumbfounded, Lange nodded. Muldoon sighed, and started to talk again in a voice falling back into its usual drawl, enunciating every hard consonant clearly and carefully.

“Well, if you could let him know, I’d be quite grateful. I think…” he glanced at his watch “…yes, two o’clock should do. I'm sure I'll be told if I need to go to see him rather than the other way around. Good day, Mister Lange.”

As Lange closed the door behind him, he wasn’t sure what sound he heard coming faintly from the room. He would never pass on that question, and he would never receive an answer. Perhaps that was for the best.

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I never thought you’d let me down,
I never knew he’d come around…

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Southern Interim Administration Headquarters
Christchurch City Council Building
March 1, 1984

Hamish Hay was sitting opposite Geoff Palmer (who wasn’t a bad chap once you got to know him; a bit dull, but bloody well-organised) when the news came through. The bloke on the other end of the line didn’t sound like he believed himself. Hay and Palmer certainly didn’t believe it. They’d both been awake at least once in the last nine years; the only way Muldoon was ever liable to resign was if he lost an election (and having technically managed to do so twice running, neither was particularly confident in the ability of any alternatives). But as a call to Burnham and a telex to Palmerston North confirmed, the Prime Minister – the ex-Prime Minister now – had indeed agreed to step down for unspecified health reasons. The wording, noted Palmer, was almost enough to make you suspicious: the last world leader to step down for “health reasons” had been Andropov, although as Hay pointed out with a grimace Duncan MacIntyre was no Ogarkov. For one, MacIntyre was sane. Oh, modestly crooked perhaps if that Loans Board scandal a few years back had been anything to go by, but for want of a few dollars the country wouldn’t be lost.

So the two men sat in the warmth of an Indian summer and thought about what the Christchurch government could do now. Palmer was more than willing to go along with Lange if he came out on top, and the more conservative Mayor held few qualms about following suit (both Party leaders were rather unsavoury fellows in their own ways, but Lange had the decency to talk his way around his faults), so there was little danger of them decrying the coup and attempting a secession or some daft idea like that. Not that you could put anything past Quigley.

“What about the Members?” asked Palmer after a few minutes of tense thought.

“What about them? Your lot’ll follow Lange like a lamb; the other lot either hate the Prime Minister already or they’ll be stunned silent.”

Geoff gave a mirthless smile at that one. With the possible exception of Roger Douglas and the one-legged mental case from Invercargill, that was a pretty fair appraisal.

“Well, we may as well do something other than wait,” said Geoff. “Best take this to the Interim Cabinet, assuming they don’t know already.”

“I reckon so,” responded Hamish. “We may want to talk with Burnham, too; they’ll take orders from whoever’s in charge up in Ohakea now, so best to get on the same level.”

“Not that we should get distracted from the minutiae down here, either,” sighed the academic-cum-politician. “Has the latest cargo left Lyttelton yet?”

“Got a call from Napier earlier, they’re ready for it when it comes.”

“And I’ve had memos from the hospitals, who say they’re doing alright for triage cases from Blenheim but still expect more dieback in the next week regardless of whatever resources they use. So they’re…conserving them.”

A grim nod from the Mayor. It went without saying that morphine supplies – or more likely, empty syringes in particular veins – were going to be expended in significant quantity in the next few days; unsaid because nobody wanted to hear it. You did all you could do, these days. Even – especially – when it didn’t feel right.

“Well, I suppose we’ve done all we can do,” responded Hay after a pregnant pause, breaking Palmer out of his introspective tailspin. “We may as well call a meeting. I daresay it’ll be a relief to be delegated authority from central government again; absolute power doesn’t seem to corrupt so much as tire oneself absolutely.”

Palmer managed a small smile at that one, looking out the window on an absurdly bright April afternoon. If Muldoon had managed to see how much realities transcended politics, to the point where he’d actually voluntarily relinquished power, the rest of Parliament might be able to face up as well. Who knew? The country might yet muddle through all this.

-. --- .-- / .-- . / .- .-.. .-.. / -.. .. -.. / .-- .... .- - / .-- . / -.-. --- ..- .-.. -.. / -.. ---
​

...even though I’m blue,
Even though I’m blue.
Darling, I’ll say goodbye,
Even though I’m blue,
Even though I’m blue,
Even though I’m blue.
Darling, I’ll say goodbye,
Even though I’m blue,
Even though I’m blue,
Even though I’m blue…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

XII. We Have No Sexism (Sexism; No, No)!​

It’s been some time now, a year or so
If you weren’t coping you’d have let me know
My friends say I do too much; I’ve got a lot on my plate
If there was something, I wouldn’t hesitate…

“The Labour Party stands for a society where people don’t feel challenged to be nasty about everyone else; where people are drawn together to work in the interests of their country. We want a country where people have a chance to be equal – we don’t say they’ll end up being equal, some will excel, some won’t make it, but all, male or female, Maori or Pakeha, have to have that chance…and I say to New Zealanders, ignore claims by others of success…”
- David Lange

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RNZAF Base Ohakea
March 3, 1984

It had been a hectic two days, thought Lange as the rest of the politicians began filing into the hangar, the only structure they’d found which would comfortably accommodate fifty-two MPs and the thirty-six delegates of those being kept informed over the phone from elsewhere.
At the head of the rough quadrilateral cleared at the side of the hangar for the proceedings, Lange and his brain trust (the fish and chip brigade rides again, eh?) sat at a table, separated from three National counterparts – MacIntyre, McLay, and Aussie Malcolm – by a chair occupied by Bruce Beetham, who hadn’t so much taken to the role of mediator as outright taken it with both hands. His face had lost the ashen pallor it had held a week earlier; a course of heart medication and the death knell for a political adversary did wonders for the old ticker, it appeared.

Eventually, when everyone had taken their seat on either side of a rough aisle, Beetham cleared his throat, drank from a glass of water, cleared his throat again, and stood.

“Right, let’s get started, shall we? We all know why we’re here, naturally,” a few glares, a few smiles hastily concealed, a few cocked eyebrows “so I’ll allow the executives of the two -” he made a noise which you couldn't quite accuse of being a sniff “-major parties to make their case, before we open the floor to nominations for a new Prime Minister. Would the Acting Prime Minister like to start?”

Duncan MacIntyre gave assent with a nod of his craggy head and stood tall over his table, hands behind his back like he was reliving his days as a brigadier, about to tell the Maori Battalion to get out there and kill Jerry.

“We’ve come through the worst time in this country’s history,” he began, “but we’re still here. We’ve lost quarter of a million people, but we’re still here. We’ve lost our leader and Prime Minister to the pressures of a situation he could not control, but we as a nation, and as a National Party, are still here.

"If we are to remember those values of democracy and freedom for which we as a party and a country have stood and fought for in three world wars now, let us remember that we are best governed by a democratically-elected government. Our national government – our National government – is still a majority within this Government, the first among equals. We are still the party of the common New Zealander, of the man struggling to feed his family in these dark times. And I would remind you that we are a party of community as well as of the individual. We are not beholden to the legacy of the Prime – of our recent Prime Minister. A National Government can still offer this country the governance it needs to get out of this crisis and build us back up.” A jeer or two from the Labour ‘benches,’ until Lange shot a glare which could cut steel in their direction. MacIntyre didn’t even blink. Instead he turned to the Labour members. “I say this to all of you. Not just blue, nor red, nor” the faintest pause, just long enough for Bruce Beetham’s eyebrows to furrow “yellow. If we can agree upon a way forward for our national, National government, it will be as a national unity government. We all have a place at the table, and I invite you to take your place alongside us in helping our nation.

“However,” now that got a response, as one or two claps started and died off abruptly “however, I am not asking you to vote for me.” Murmurs raced around the hangar, and the delegates began taking notes to be sent to the MPs they represented by phone during the next recess. “I was persuaded to remain in this government a little under two years ago after developing a serious heart condition, and two months ago stayed on as Deputy Prime Minister only through the request of my country. Though the spirit is willing, the body is weak. I am therefore compelled to nominate my honourable colleague James McLay –” and now the clamour began “who I believe has the foresight and vitality to carry this government and country forward through our reconstruction and re-emergence as a proud country which can hold its head high.”

It took a few minutes of clamour and protest from one or two of the more diehard Nats before Beetham could make himself heard, and the brouhaha died down enough to give Lange a shot at his speech. As Lange belted out a speech about the need for strong leadership after Muldoon’s heroic sacrifice of his own health and wellbeing in the interests of the country the little voice in his head, having taken a look at the crowd, whistled air through its imaginary teeth and said “it’s gonna be a long day, David my boy. A long bloody day…”

.- -. -.. / -.-. --- .-. .-. ..- .--. - .. --- -. / --. ..- .- .-. -.. / --- ..- .-. / ... - .- - .​

There’s five blue figures
On a white circle
They’re making agreements
They’re keeping each other in line…

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Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
Ambere Park, near Mangere
March 6, 1984

Grace was hungry. She’d been hungry for some days, though at least it hadn’t gotten as bad again as the third day, when she’d eaten the last of her food and worried about whether or not she’d be able to get anything else to actually eat. That fear had fortunately been premature as she’d discovered when she was herded into a truck and driven south, processed out at the airport (that is, told to sign off her household from a phone book before being given a meal card), and sent back up here on foot to the tent city which had erupted on the wide green sports ground. They hadn’t given her a tent or anything; she got to keep the clothes and blankets she’d bundled into her duffel bag, but for anything else you were out of luck, Jack.

She’d felt immensely uncomfortable at first, and it was precious little consolation to find out that everyone else did, too. After an agonising afternoon she gravitated towards a group of girls from her college – God knew why they’d been moved down here from Mount Wellington, but it was at least further from the fires which had raged through the central city, where the ash and dust filtered through every shattered window and broken door and into every pore of your skin – and gradually staked out a claim on a patch of grass about five metres square and three hundred metres from the narrow metalled road which was the only link back to the city.

Not that you’d really want to walk off, she opined to Alex, a rower from the form below her, later on. The policemen who occasionally walked around to check on the perimeters of the refugee camp didn’t try to stop people from leaving (unless they’d been trying to take advantage of anarchy), but why would you leave in any case? Here you were guaranteed at least something to eat, a meal in the morning and one around six; tonight bowls of gluey rice with a few vegetables stirred in, some boiled meat of indefinite origin dropped wetly on the top, and a piece of fruit if you were particularly lucky. Not haute cuisine, but better than starving in a burnt-out shell of a house. Which, Grace recalled, a surprising number had chosen…

…Or you could take the easy way out. Like Mum. Grace remembered it, remembered it and more as she relived the scene every time she closed her eyes the dust and the screaming, panic and vomit, sirens roaring before the flash glared from every window. an eerie pause, long enough to make you wonder if it was all real – and then the flat, harsh bang and the roar of the blast, the house shaking for half a minute before it all stopped and you were left with the ringing in your ears and your knees in your own piss. Opening your eyes and laughing as you realised you were still alive, standing up and trying to pull your blanket off you as you realised your hands were shaking too much and you’d pissed yourself anyway and shaking as you stood and walking up from the garage. Broken glass where did that come from? the windows are gone the door blew in it had been closed after I ran in but it’s been blown off its hinges. Oh God is Mum safe I’m alive is there anyone else maybe it’s not so bad maybe it’s maybe –

Looking out the window – what had been the window, now just an empty frame lined with jagged shards of glass, grinning emptily – and seeing the cloud punch its way into the stratosphere like Satan’s own fist. It happened it happened it happened oh God oh God ohGodohGodohfuckGod…

Realisation dawning. Running through the house shouting for her – she hadn’t gone out as well had she? I came back as fast as I could as fast as I could…Opening the bathroom door…No. No. nonono. no.

Glass in the bath, silver fish drifting lazily in a pool as tendrils of red gently felt their way outwards from the figure sitting back at the head of the bath, chips of glass blown into her hair the hair long blonde hair she was always so careful with like her face her face a tear, a knife on the floor, her arms…

Grace sat up sharply, hyperventilating as the sweat poured off her in the tent and the other four slept around her, the sound of their breathing and the rustle of grass as whoever was on lookout turned to face the tent.
Alex’s head popped through the flap, two white eyes blinking as she mouthed a question. The only response to that and the arm stretching out over Grace’s shoulder was a shiver as hot, bitter tears started to flow.

.- -. -.. / -. --- -... --- -.. -.-- .----. ... / -.-. .-. -.-- .. -. --. / -... ..- - / -- .​

Are you making a difference
Out here by yourself, love?
Is it in everyone’s interest?
Is it more than a scratch?
Have you made the impression last?

... --- / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -.-- --- ..- / .--. .-.. . .- ... . / ... .- -.-- / .... . .-.. .-.. --- / - --- / - .... . / ..-. --- .-.. -.- ... / - .... .- - / .. / -.- -. --- .--​

RNZAF Base Ohakea
March 4, 1984

They had been in and out all day, making votes and speeches while scurrying back and forward to attend to matters of state and reconstruction. The first ballot had been messier than Lange or McLay had hoped, considering it was meant to be the only ballot. Of the 88 MPs present, 33 had voted for McLay, one had voted for Muldoon (probably the peg-legged crank from Invercargill who was always on about a ‘homosexual conspiracy;’ he was nutty as a fruitcake), two had voted for MacIntyre regardless of his refusal to take the stand (possibly they hadn’t heard the news when they directed their delegates, or they were just stubborn), and three had abstained (Beetham was neutral, Kirk had a chip on his shoulder, and Quigley was a loose cannon loaded with the scrap iron of desperate ambition). With forty-nine votes to go, Lange had started preparing his victory speech. It was a damn good one, which made it a pity when his pen scratched so hard it ripped the page in two when he was given the news.

Thirty-one votes for Lange. The remaining eighteen, all Southerners, had thrown in their lot behind their own compromise candidate, never mind that he had voted for his own Party leader.


They talked, and talked, and talked. Phones rang here and there, deals were made and broken. Another ballot was taken, then another, then another. Votes shuffled back and forth between the three leading elements; this was not the easy path Lange had foreseen. It was complicated somewhat by the fact most of the Nats still saw him as an opportunist who’d driven Muldoon out in some sort of palace coup. Never mind that the man had been half out of his mind and frightened the wits out of them all to the very end; Lange was Labour, Labour was Lange, and either of those in the top spot meant they were out on their backsides. So the leaders of a nation talked, and talked some more. A slap was thrown, then a punch, before someone had the good sense to restrain Miss Wilde before she seriously damaged Mister Douglas’ nose, while Lange had the good sense to restrain his laughter. The latest vote; 35 for National, 32 for Labour, Beetham abstaining so thoroughly you’d think he’d taken up the priesthood, and 20 for the Great Compromiser.
It was going to be a very long night indeed.

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Memorial Park, Lower Hutt
Near Civil Defence Processing Centre WEL-03 [Petone]
March 5, 1984

When the rain finally came, it was with the wind, a wind from the west which had roared in and forced the people of the Hutt Valley and those still living in Wellington’s eastern suburbs to retreat indoors as the Geiger counter at the airport clicked and popped disconcertingly, the radio announcer grimly repeating in a flatly authoritative tone the same platitudes. Stay indoors. If you must go out, do not carry any dust indoors with you. Conserve your batteries by turning off your radio now. And so on, and so forth, ad bloody nauseam.

But when the rain finally came, it was a torrent. An autumn storm had muscled its way in, shattering the high-pressure system and the eerie stillness which had come with it. The cremated, irradiated remains of central Wellington and those who had been caught therein were washed at last off roofs and down hills, through abandoned gardens and condemned houses, into the harbour and if not out of mind at least out of sight.

Which left space for other, equally unpleasant things to be dealt with. Mainly by refugees rounded up and promised their daily crust in return for a bit of work. Open plots of land from graveyards to rugby fields were turned over by hungry men with shovels before other refugees (who no matter else what you could say for them would at least never go hungry again) were interred with varying degrees of decorum into the increasingly muddy earth. If they were lucky.

The Lance Corporal was seriously reconsidering his career choices at this point, as rain slicked through the seam where his hood met the heavy raincoat and slid down his back. Unfortunately, that was not the reason he had a chill creeping along his spine. He’d never seen a dead body before the airport, not unless you counted Pop’s funeral when he was twelve; it was an inexperience he shared with most of the civilians he was guarding (for want of a better word). They had all gotten over the culture shock remarkably quickly, as if there was a choice. Mind you, the Lance Corporal wasn’t actually expected to do any digging. Not so much for mercy’s sake as the fact that two of the men from the Endeavour Flight had already been found dead by their own hand; it probably followed in the bizarre logic of Those In Charge that it was therefore a correct balance to only make them supervise the manhandling of the carcasses and spare them actually touching the bodies. You couldn’t help but wonder why the holes were necessary if the faint smell of smoke and petrol and burning flesh drifting from Petone was anything to go by, but if they were going to the effort of getting a priest to walk along the muddying ground past the neatly laid-out rows of people then you had to make at least a half-hearted attempt at maintaining the other niceties. Besides, it meant the ashes all stayed in one place.

The Lance Corporal shivered and adjusted the rifle slung across his shoulder, drawing a variety of glances from the Ava Amateur Gravediggers’ Association which ranged from fear to indifference to hostility, before all except one returned to the task at hand. An enormous Maori bloke was the sole dissenter, staring emotionlessly at him from behind a nose like a tomato that had been hit with a sledgehammer. He held his gaze while shifting to lean on his shovel before he called out to the underofficer.

“Oi, mate! Any idea when we go on break? ‘S fuckin’ freezin’ out here.”

The man had a black jacket on which had had until very recently a patch on the back, and the general air of someone who came home on Saturday night with other people’s blood on his clothes; it took some thought and the persistent weight of the gun to remind the Lance Corporal which one of them technically had the power here. He blinked and swallowed before responding.

“Ah…don’t know. Youse just keep at it and I’ll let you know when I’m told. I reckon…fifteen more minutes?”

The man stared at him for a few seconds which stretched on endlessly, impassively black and unblinking eyes looking into the soldier before he looked to the man beside him, gave a shrug, and returned to the task at hand as the Lance Corporal gave an inward sigh of relief and walked on.

Neither man gave any notice to the rows of bodies in the near distance, nor the smell on the shifting wind; if their eyes saw things then their minds told them they weren’t what they were. You couldn’t afford to see things where they actually were these days. All things considered, it was safer to think about smoko.

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I took pride in my even hand
When I took control, I thought you’d understand
If all things were equal I could be your friend, I could
Turn around and take it again…

Christchurch, Canterbury
March 7, 1984

The planes had roared into Christchurch Airport this morning, the first flights in nearly a week and as important as that rarity would indicate. The Members inside and outside the Cabinet had disembarked and made their way to the Army trucks, to be driven into the centre of the new capital of New Zealand.
The Prime Minister was not amongst them.



Rather, he was waiting for them already in the Council building where he had been since soon after the bombs had fallen, watching and waiting and coordinating rescues and hospital beds and reading an incomprehensible number of reports.

So when David Lange and Jim McLay arrived at the Council building, the newly-appointed Prime Minister had given a couple of glances at the alliteratively-named duo who’d landed this job on top of him like a ton of bricks. Bruce Beetham and Hamish Hay merely stood and looked dignified right back at the Prime Minister as the two Party leaders came in.


Geoffrey Palmer had not expected any of this.


And I want you
To be happy
But I’d rather
That you were still with me
Perhaps we can arrange something
Arrange something…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

XIII. We Have No Racism​

Te poi
Patua taku poi
Patua kia rite
Pa-para patua
Taku poi e!

From Braithwaite, A., A Century of Maori Struggle in New Zealand (Palmerston North: Massey University Press, 2014). Reproduced under license.

Chapter 12: Fallout

The situation of race relations in New Zealand had been somewhat strained for some time by the time of the Exchange, with the Maori Renaissance carrying on through the heightened feelings and sensitivities of the Springbok Tour of 1981 to the Porirua riots during the Three Days’ Hate in February 1984…

…in the days after February 22nd (a date which has taken on an even greater significance for New Zealand since 2011, if that ever seemed possible), many urban Maori in the poorer districts of Auckland and Wellington found themselves cast adrift on the same uncertain sea as their Pakeha neighbours. It was a telling impact of the power structures which had restrained Maori for fourteen decades, though, that triage operations in even those areas where Maori constituted a majority of the population largely saw Pakeha receive greater rates of recovery and treatment, particularly those of European descent.

…the patronising attitude of the Muldoon Government towards Maori (an example in microcosm being his tacit support for harmful gangs as focal points for communities, as if they were simply bored children) was, unfortunately, one present in a large proportion of the collective consciousness of New Zealand. The occupation of Bastion Point was identified in the previous chapter as an illustration of this attitude and while it was understandable that land claims were forced to take a backseat to a nuclear attack, 1984 has proved almost as insurmountable a barrier as 1840 in terms of the damage done to those seeking an equal position for their culture and people in a bicultural society…

…[F]ollowing the assembly of the Palmer Government in Christchurch and the appointment of MPs to positions in the Emergency Cabinet, the strategy of lumping Maori in with Pakeha continued, disengaging from the tentative process of ata which even Muldoon had seen fit to begin (Pohatu, 2005)...

…Palmer was personally ambivalent on Maori issues, seeing them as essentially legalistic matters to be dealt with in the same framework of Pakeha contract law as that in which he had worked prior to his political life…the presence of other matters meant that his Government left these issues on the back-burner, with vague “returns to discussion” foisted upon iwi for the rest of the decade...

Christchurch City Council Building
March 11, 1984

Geoffrey Palmer was very quickly coming to learn why Muldoon had suffered a breakdown. If orchestrating recovery efforts in the South Island had been taxing – he himself had had maybe three or four hours sleep per night since the 22nd – then trying to do so for the harder-hit North Island was unimaginably difficult. Still, a fun diversion was to be had in wondering how Roger was handling it all; personally, Palmer found it blackly humorous to think that the subsidised primary industries the would-be Finance Minister had been keen to get at with the financial equivalent of a bloody cleaver had proven the main reason the country had done so well so far. Credit where credit was due, Muldoon had had that one right. He may have flushed the economy down the lavatory and then smashed the septic tank open to try and stop the pipes backing up, but if he’d known a nuclear war was coming he could scarcely have done better preparing for it…

…with one or two exceptions. His Minister of Police was currently discussing one of those exceptions over the phone with a local area head from the Eastern District.

“So what you’re saying, Inspector, is that they essentially control half of Gisborne?”

A pause long enough for you to all but hear the face of the man being interrogated reddening, a protest faintly audible from the other side of the desk before Ben Couch cut him off. “Well, what fraction would you rather I said? Two-fifths? Three-quarters? Seven-twelfths? The facts on the ground, facts we’ve had people shouting at us from within your district, are that a sizable number of the locals are no longer playing ball in regard to rationing and relocation programmes. Do you deny that?”

Another pause.

“So that’s a ‘yes’ then, eh? Eh?...yes, Mr Pa – the…the Prime Minister – is here” Palmer idly noted Couch’s reluctance to give Muldoon’s usurper the respect of a title (but when it comes to running a country beggars can’t be choosers et cetera Geoff) “and I doubt he’d be happy to hear that you’re having trouble keeping a pile of striking layabouts and drug-addled gangsters away from camps full of women and children!”

Palmer calmly blew air through his teeth as he annotated a report on interisland shipping the commissioners at least know Ben; they’d’ve balked at Ann Hercus for being inexperienced, or for being a woman…he suddenly realised there was something under his nose. A receiver. A further look revealed that it was attached to a hand, which was attached to his cantankerous colleague. Couch nodded deferentially, and Palmer uneasily held the receiver slightly away from his head as if afraid it was going to bite his ear off.

“Ah…hello, Inspector?”

“Mister Prime Minister, sir,” began the policeman. “Look, I can’t find any other way to say it but we’re going to need the Army down here. My men are down to two-thirds in most of the district with desertions and injuries and God only knows what else; we were having enough trouble keeping a lid on the refugee camp out at Flaxmere without the rug being pulled out from under us up in Gisborne. We…we can’t manage this, sir.”

Geoffrey wondered if this was what Lange had mentioned about how Muldoon had sounded when he went to talk to him a fortnight (more like a lifetime) ago. Closer to dead than dead tired; held together by willpower alone. He idly clicked a pen as he replied to the Inspector.

“Alright, Inspector, here’s what we’re going to do. You told Mister Couch that the gangs had been looting throughout central Gisborne, yes?”

“So far, sir, yeah.”

“Right, now, is there any possibility that if the police you have available regroup somewhere more easily defensible, say…” he leafed through a 1976 atlas of New Zealand until he came to a city map of Gisborne “…right; let’s say you get your officers to the Gladstone Road bridge, can they hold on until we send some soldiers up from Napier?”

A pause as the line crackled. “Might be a bit late for that, sir. There’s already been a few arsons in the centre of town; so far the men up there have been trying to make sure nobody burns down the Council building or gets to the refugees in Kelvin Park.”

Palmer had no response to that but a terse swear word, taking a moment to think before he moved on. “Alright, I’ll get on the blower to the garrison in Napier. We’ll have people up there by Tuesday at the latest. If we strip the port bare we might get a machine gun or an armoured vehicle or something, but at the least rifles should beat whatever you’ve had to crib together so far.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” said the policeman with a note of relief. “Thank you, sir.” After they ended the call, Palmer stared at his desk for a while as he contemplated what he had just done by siccing armed soldiers on their fellow countrymen. Had anyone ever done that before in this country?

After a pregnant pause, Ben Couch spoke. “You did the right thing, sir.” Palmer looked at him wearily. “Got to have law and order. Otherwise, we’ll go to the dogs.”

“Yes,” replied the Prime Minister with an emotionless, unblinking gaze. “I suppose so.”

“We’re not here to be popular, after all – we’re here to keep things in line and uphold the law.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he repeated, clicking his pen again as the Minister of Police cleared his throat and excused himself from the room.

It was some time before Palmer could get back to those shipping reports.

E rere ra e taku poi poro-titi
Ti-taha-taha ra whaka-raru-raru e
Poro-taka taka ra poro hurihuri mai
Rite tonu ki te ti-wai-waka e

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Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
March 10, 1984

The rain kept on coming, a steel-cold downpour from a pig-iron sky. With several thousand people packed into what was effectively a tent city, the ground was soon saturated enough that a trip to the latrines became a hike through clinging, ankle-deep mud (and that wasn’t even counting the struggle not to fall in the ditch once you got there).

If there was one thing to be grateful for, it was that at least the other girls had agreed on the necessity of going in groups. After all, the ditches and the mess tent were some way away, and there were certain unpleasant individuals around who might take advantage of a bedraggled young woman out in a thunderstorm. From what Alexandra – Alex – had told her, word on the street (well, on the beaten track, anyway) was that this had happened in more than a few cases, and that they’d actually found a body heaped in one of the cremation pits, one which definitely hadn’t been dead from natural causes. Teuila wasn’t sure how true that was, but it was enough to keep her going only in a group.

Which was how she found herself in the line for slop out with a two of the girls flanking her; Alex on one side and Melanie, the most capable member (and therefore more-or-less head) of the group, on the other. They usually did it this way; three would go for food or to the latrines or to go on the obligatory pilgrimage to the tent near the main gate to see whether anyone’s nest of kin had been located. Given that the fragile one – Grace, that was her name – was two days deep into some truly awful cramps and the fifth girl, Kathleen, was still wringing wet from going on a latrine run, Teuila had gotten to go on her second visit of the day. She was grateful; by this stage that had become more important to her than going for meals, the faint hope of finding family members keeping her going far more than the waterlogged potatoes the bored-looking trusties doled out in the evenings.

“See anyone?” asked Alex as she lifted sheets of paper to search the lower levels of the pile.

Teuila sighed and shook her head as she scanned the photographs and scrawled notes pinned to the plywood noticeboards. “No, nothing.”
“Where did you say they picked you up from, again? Sorry, always have to ask twice so I remember.”

“That’s okay,” she replied absently, trying in vain to keep the memory of that Wednesday morning from coming back in stereo sound and living colour. “I was in Papatoetoe when it happened. I saw the flash and heard it go off and everything, lost my family in the crowd near the train station later.” A shrug as she tried to shake off the weight of memory. “They’re probably alright. Fuck knows where they are, though.”

A knowing nod in response from Alex. They said nothing more until all three had established that nobody had miraculously shown up for them in the last day or two, when Melanie finally sighed and told the other two they may as well all get back to the dining hall before the crowd got too bad.

They hadn’t been fast enough, as they found out while spending fifteen minutes in the rain waiting to actually get near shelter. Underfoot the mud only got thicker as hundreds trampled the ground where thousands had stood and the rain got even stronger, thundering down in a torrent which flowed off every waterproof or waterlogged surface to saturate the soil even more. The crowd pressed on towards the steaming vats and the relative warmth of the mess tent, steam rising off them in a haze as it fizzed against the rain. In the thick of it the three girls huddled warily, tensed up and washed out as they finally came under the green canvas of the antiquated tent.

“It’s like the world’s shittest wedding,” said Melanie out of the corner of her mouth, which got a surprised laugh from Alex and a smile from Teuila. It didn’t last long, however, when a middle-aged woman jostled into the three and elbowed Teuila in the side, sneering at the questioning glances she got from the girls and giving her own social commentary in acid tones

“What’s the matter, coconut, don’t like it so much here anymore?”

Teuila could only blink, surprised as Melanie and Alex began to protest. The woman, a frumpy, housewifely sort, ignored them and continued to focus on the brown one in the group, her voice rising as others began to pay attention.

“Christ, can you even understand English? Typical Islanders, coming over here without learning the bloody language, going about staring at people like Martians when they’re spoken to!”

Teuila finally processed enough of what was happening to give some sort of response, brow furrowed in bewilderment as the line’s pace slowed to a crawl around the slowly-developing argument.

“Coconut? I’m from Mount Albert!”

The attempt to use logic was ineffective, which became apparent when the bedraggled woman (what had she been, before everyone here ended up here?) rolled her eyes and opened her mouth again.
“You’re still a bloody boonga, though; your parents couldn’t stay in their own country, could they? Now your lot are all stranded here, you’re taking the food out of our mouths.”

It was the hate in her voice which hurt the most. You got used to a bit of racism; someone might call you a coconut now and then, but you could at least call them a white idiot to their faces. This…this was altogether different.
She didn’t know if she’d ever come up against such concentrated hate based on her appearance. And still the tirade continued, as people around them began to look their way and Teuila wished to disappear into the earth – or better yet, to see at least one sympathetic face in the crowd.

As the woman’s abuse began to repeat itself and Teuila struggled to respond in the few respites a reprieve eventually came in the form of a soldier who materialised behind them.

“Right, what’s going on here, then?” he asked in an almost bored tone. Teuila’s eye was nearly put out by the grimy finger jabbed in her direction as the woman crowed at the camouflage-clad man.

“It’s her. She shouldn’t be here.”

The soldier glanced at Teuila, gave her a look up and down, and asked to see her meal card. Gently, Alex fished the piece of card out of the purse which was the only dry place they had to keep such things, and after a cursory inspection of it the soldier shrugged and handed it back.

“Looks like she’s got as much right to be here as anyone else, miss,” he said, black eyes impassive as she began to restate her argument. The tall Maori cocked an eyebrow for half a second after she made her point about “people coming over here to take our land off us,” but seemed to humour her for long enough to let her wind down before blinking slowly and speaking again.

“Well if she has her card, miss, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to get in the line. We’ve got a lot of people to feed, and I’m sure you don’t wanna leave them out there” his nod took in the increasingly agitated people queuing in the rain “for too long.”

She opened her mouth to protest, closed it, and opened it again before thinking better of whatever she was about to say, shaking her head and muttering as she squelched back into the gloom. The soldier turned to the three girls.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “If yez could move forward now, please.”
He nodded, spared the briefest of glances at Teuila in which you could, if you were particularly keen-eyed, make out a glimmer of sympathy before he slid back into the fug of the tent.

As the three moved along the line and those around them shrugged and got back to their conversations or their thoughts Melanie and Alex tried to make light of whatever the hell it was that had just happened. Teuila put up a smile and nodded and laughed along with them, hoping her voice didn’t sound too hollow as she thought over some things. Her family had often thought her a fiapalagi, one wanting to act white; it was always jarring to be reminded that she’d never be white to the actual palagi. So she smiled and laughed and joked along, reminding herself that for the time now at least, misery had made equals of them all.

Outside, the cold, hard rain continued to fall.

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Ka pare pare ra pī-o-o-i-o-i a
Whaka-heke-heke e ki a kori kori e
Piki whaka-runga ra ma mui-nga mai a
Taku poi poro-titi taku poi e!

.. - .----. ... / -... . . -. / .- / -.. .- -.-- / --- ..-. / - .. -. -.-- / - .-. .. ..- -- .--. .... ...​

Around Poverty Bay, East Cape
March 13, 1984

The convoy sped along the deserted highway north, the train track which periodically criss-crossed their path and the occasional lights of a small town or farmstead the only signs of life in the half-light of the grey morning. A thunderstorm was rolling in from the Pacific, and already a light rain had begun falling as soldiers sat shivering under canvas roofs and watched the road hiss behind them as the spray showed up in the headlights of the trucks behind them.

Before too long (but then no trip was ever too long in this country, especially if you paid as little attention to the road rules as these drivers) they were roaring down the main drag of Gisborne. Over thirty thousand people lived in this town, and from the looks of it half of them had set about terrorising the other half. As the green-grey trucks rumbled down wide streets lined with cabbage trees and ferns, the occasional local peered out from a kitchen window or the footpath.

The trucks didn’t stop for them, though, nor scarcely acknowledge them. They had bigger problems to deal with. They pulled up at the police station as the thunder started to boom out at sea, an ill wind rising as the soldiers disembarked and an officer practically leapt out of his Land Rover to get the measure of things from the local constables and direct the soldiers to take up positions. As boots thudded and splashed across concrete and mud, the locals began to take a substantially greater interest. Word gets out fast in provincial towns, and Gisborne was no exception. Law And Order, came the words, looters to be Shot On Sight.

The first two people to test that decree were a large couple of men wearing leather jackets and gang patches, who had split off from their cluster to take advantage of a dairy with a smashed-in door. The end result: a gunshot wound to the shoulder for one and a rifle butt toe to the face for the other.

Word gets out very fast in criminal circles, particularly when those circles overlap with tight-knit communities. As the rain got heavier and the wind began to howl in the trees, the groups massing near the bridge got larger. Return to your homes, came The Word From On High, so we can let the next train in from Napier. Return to your homes, it repeated, or we have Authority To Fire.

It was around four o’clock when the hailstorm broke. Hail pelted the spectators, the few who were close enough by to appreciate the unfolding spectacle as the dam broke and the mob advanced across the main bridge, a power unto itself. Another rushed declaration from the officer. Turn back immediately or we will be Forced To Act. This is your Final Warning.

They didn’t listen.

They sure as hell heard when the petrol bomb arced across to the west side of the bridge and set a terrified twenty-year old’s leg alight, and all were listening by the time shots rang out and a thirty-one year old father of three was shot in the stomach and arm.

A brief pause held after the first fusillade, the only sounds the moaning of the gutshot gunshot victim and the frantic pounding of a damp tarpaulin on a burning boy as the hail kept coming down like an avalanche of frozen peas, clattering off helmets and tyre irons and spelunking into the river.
And then a cry of havoc, before the men from the east came howling in like the dogs of war and the Crown’s soldiers Did Their Duty.

If there was an advantage to the hailstorm, it was that the melting ice helped wash away the blood afterwards. It took a long time for it all to clear away.

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It would be wrong to claim that what popular memory has come to call the Battle of Gisborne was entirely the result of some sort of gang-centred attempt at taking advantage of (or at provoking anarchy); it would be similarly erroneous, however, to claim that they were in no way related to the riots of the prior month.

The unrest in Gisborne, in Mangere, in a dozen other majority-Maori locations throughout the North Island was reflective of deep-seated inequalities and insecurities within New Zealand society which had been scarcely short of boiling over since they climaxed at the Springbok tour. In 1984, as in 1981, the heavy-handed paramilitary response only exacerbated the divide between the two New Zealands, with Maori – and to an arguably greater extent Pacific Islanders, who would continue to be treated as third-class citizens through the decade – reminded of the subordinate position their separate identity was meant to take in order to preserve the veneer of a united, harmonious, and above all conformist Pakeha identity…

…the causes in Gisborne, a relatively prosperous town for its time, are indicative of the troublesome undercurrents in post-nuclear New Zealand. The rationing system imposed on an area already self-sufficient in most resources was a bitter farce, one to make the pre-War experiment with “carless days” appear a roaring success in comparison (this work has already touched upon the matter of counterfeiting elsewhere); the influx of an estimated two thousand refugees, primarily from Auckland, did not assist matters as regionalist sentiments (and, to be honest, some not-entirely-peripheral gang rivalries) eventually boiled over by about the second or week, as refugees camped near the centre of town began monopolising the fitful shipments of supplies from Palmerston North…

…however, there was a crucial difference in time. During 1981, the protestors could at least claim the moral high ground and from there broadcast to the rest of the world. In 1984, there was no similar coverage. And with half a million homeless, most New Zealanders had no time at all for people who were, on the face of it, just taking advantage of those who had nothing (never mind that the former group didn’t have much even before the bombs fell). So it was that, for the rest of the decade, the glacial advance of racial equality and multiculturalism in New Zealand would freeze over once more, with such small increments as came only due to the accommodating actions of certain better-resourced iwi in the central North Island…

Poi e … whaka-tata mai
Poi e… kaua he rerekē
Poi e… kia-piri mai ki au
Poi e… awhi mai-ra…
Poi e… tāpeka tia mai
Poi e… o taua aroha
Poi e… pai here tia ra
Poi… taku poi e!

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

XIV. We Have No Drug Addicts​

Well, it’s the happening thing
And it’s happening to you…

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Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
March 20, 1984

“So what were you planning to do, once you left school?”
Grace turned to face Melanie, from whom the question had come.

“Sorry?”

“What did you have lined up, you know, once you were gonna leave school?”
Grace shrugged, the loose-fitting shirt she’d stuffed into a bag a month ago now nearly falling off her shoulder as she did so. “Uni, I guess. I mean, I got Sixth Form Cert last year so…”

A sage little nod. “Fair enough, cruising along in Seventh Form this year then, huh?”

Grace shrugged again, looking around the tent as if to say ‘you call this cruising along?’ as she absently adjusted the shirt and propped herself up in the camp stretcher with an elbow.

“I guess so. Plan was to go to uni and do a BA in…well, whatever you do in a BA that actually gets you a job.” And whatever wouldn’t prove Mum too right, her mind added tartly. “Past that –” another shrug. “Why, what about you?”

“Well, I’m in my – I mean, I guess I was in my second year at uni. Or about to be, anyway. So much for worrying about the start of lectures, huh?” Grace gave the faintest hint of a smile in response to the wry grin Melanie shot at her. “Still, fucked if we’re gonna need lawyers anymore. I mean – well, if we do need lawyers I’m fine, but yeah, otherwise? Fucked.”

In the faintly uncomfortable silence which followed, punctuated only by the faint drips of water off canvas, it slowly dawned upon Grace that saying something might be desirable.

“Law?”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you thought the Bomb was unlikable, eh?” A snort. “Yeah, I thought I’d try to be a lawyer. Apparently there are more psychopaths there than anywhere else, so I guessed an iron-arsed bitch like me” this statement delivered with a flourish of the hand “would do pretty well.” Another silence.

“Still, what can you do, eh?”

“Yeah,” replied Grace quietly, immediately thinking of all the other things you couldn’t help these days as the squelch of footsteps announced the return of the other three. “Suppose we could go out for dinner. Who knows, maybe they stopped a shipment of steaks.”


Alas, the steaks were not forthcoming. If the weather had improved even a little, the food certainly hadn’t. There were also a lot more people around, so fighting for a place in line for the twice-daily offerings at the mess tents was increasingly a fight in the literal sense. Grace – being a skinny, blonde, seventeen year-old girl – was practically disqualified from the start; even going with one or two others it was an uphill battle to avoid being buffeted about in the mad crush as the usual pack of bastards muscled their way to the front.

Not that you’d ever say no to said usual pack, not if you had any sense. For all that they were reprehensible human beings they had the muscle to back it up, or at least enough to intimidate a few teenagers. From the way they talked and carried themselves and what they wore (crudely, lewdly, and a lot of black) they were Westies of some shade (with the perhaps jaundiced view of someone who considered herself to be from the real Auckland, Grace took that as sufficient explanation for why they acted like they did). On that note, one of them, a scrawny little man with the clinging odour of cigarette smoke and pub urinals, took the chance to brush up against Grace as he made his way towards the row of tents. It wasn’t an accident. It was never an accident. But you didn’t mention it; she’d only been here a week and you heard what happened to people who got too mouthy about liking or disliking things. She merely suppressed the urge to throw a punch or throw up and nudged Melanie, rolling her eyes as the malingering little twat – Rat-face, she’d come to think of him – caught up with his substantially bigger mates to join in on their laughing about something.

From the looks of the great aluminium vats, it was some sort of stew tonight, which for all its sins at least meant meat. As the three of them neared the long bench the sound of scraping became audible as the trusty, a man with forearms like suckling pigs and the bizarrely theatrical motions of a frustrated actor press-ganged into food service, swept the bottom of the barrel with the ladle, looking up and shaking his head at the head of the line (about ten people up from the girls).

“Twenny minutes,” he called out with a shrug, sitting back against a table (which gave a short startled squeak of protest) as he started waiting indifferently. And well he might: what were people here going to do, complain to the management?

So of course it would be then that who should pass by their way but the Bastard Squad themselves? Even as Grace made to talk to Melanie, one of them – not the rat-faced one, but a bigger one covered in uneven stubble and splotches of dirt – looked her way and leered, wafting the bowl in her direction as he spoke.

“If you’re hungry,” he called across the aisle, “I’ve got some meat here for you.” Rat-face sniggered in anticipation of the joke. “Oh, and some in the bowl too, if you’re hungry afterwards.”

Grace paled and tried to shrink away You’re a target shit you’re a target this is bad this is bad get out of the situation carefully shit what do I say…

…and then Melanie laughed and did the unthinkable. She responded.

“Fuck off mate, even the shit they give us here is more filling than your pissy little cheerio.”

That...well, if nothing else it got their attention. More than a few people around laughed at the stunned-looking man. The bloke behind the serving table gave a melodramatic little clap and made as if to doff his hat, sweeping his ladle about. Grace gave a surprised gasp of laughter herself, which quickly died in her throat as a scowl darkened the man’s face like the storm clouds which had only just passed, his finger jabbing at the two young women.

“You two,” he said, “had better fucking learn your place.” As people started to cluster around again, he took note of the situation and apparently decided to make a tactical withdrawal. “C’mon,” he snapped at his mates as he stormed off, leaving a nervous wake behind him. Rat-face shot a glance which was either confused or sympathetic at the two as he trailed along with the pack, the crowd closing back in like the Red Sea after the Israelites. Grace realised she’d stopped inhaling, and drew in a ragged breath. Melanie turned to her.

“So that may not have been my best move ever, but fuck me if it wasn’t satisfying.”

Grace could only tilt her head in assent at that one as her heart slowed back to a normal pace. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be too much of a price for either of them to pay for those fifteen seconds of fame.

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Full moon and thunder
Ribbons of blue
Ice on the windows
Ice in my heart…

From: Clark, M., Party Politics in New Zealand: 1890 to Now (Manukau: Auckland University Press, 2016).

“…the Coalition Government, such as it was, relocated to Christchurch almost immediately after its inception, where it would remain…

…as for Lange, his feelings of betrayal were reduced somewhat by his appointment as the Minister of Communications. A calculating move by Palmer, this placed the bellicose orator into a position where his impressive command of the English language could be best employed, with his frequent speeches over the radio (and, as time went on, television in some areas) raising the morale of New Zealanders uninspired by Palmer’s drier if more succinct manner of speaking in the early days of his Premiership…

…and as Bassett notes, while it was “scarcely an era of good feelings,” it remains that the Coalition was able to maintain sufficient cohesion to focus entirely upon the grim task of rebuilding the country – and while this may seem obvious to the point of offense for those of the post-War generation, we must remember, as many of those alive during the period do, the titanic clash of egos which characterised New Zealand’s political arena in the 1980s…”

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Christchurch, Canterbury
March 17, 1984

Geoffrey Palmer woke to Saint Patrick’s Day with something he hadn’t permitted himself in two months: a sleep-in. The hotel the Government had commandeered (all through the proper procedures under the Emergency Powers Act, naturally) was a grand Renaissance-style building which sat across the street from the Cathedral, only slightly out of place before the modernist monstrosities which had been sprouting up in the South Island’s largest city for the last decade or so.

The Prime Minister had been given a room overlooking Cathedral Square, and he took a moment to stand and look out over it all while he thought, the steady rain outside falling in the nigh-empty streets.

They’d’ve been celebrating in Chicago come today, he thought. Imagine the University! Even some of the professors eased off if it was a weekday. And the dyeing of the river…only the Americans could think to do that.

Gone now, I suppose. Swept away. Mind you, it’s stone and brick, so maybe bits of it are…

…what about Iowa? It’s in the middle of nowhere in any case; probably it survived to be drowned in a tide of refugees. Virginia U, though…well, it’s up the wop-wops, so it’s probably not too badly-off either. Maybe I should’ve taught at Vic; seems like only my almae matres bloody well copped it as opposed to where I taught…

The Cathedral looked lovely, anyway. Even in this weather a few people were already walking along to a prayer service, of which there had been more than a few recently. Much good prayer did Wellington and Auckland, he thought with a trace of heavenward bitterness as he walked to the en suite. Christ, you look old, Geoff, was all he could think as he looked in the mirror to shave and how much longer are razor blades going to last?, the rasp of razor on stubble a reassuring rhythm which kept him from drifting too far from the here and now. The smell of soap was one you got with increasing rarity these days; a month after the Apocalypse many people’s’ attitude towards bathing was as fatalistic as that they held towards life. It was nice to get that though, the occasional reminder that there were still things in this world which weren’t radiation burns or casualty lists or requisition forms. Things of beauty, things of happiness. Not that you want to get stuck in the past – well, it wasn’t even a month or two ago but to hell with me if it doesn’t feel like a lifetime.

He sighed and washed his face, the absurdly neat and tidy little sink in the neat and tidy room in the neat city an impossibly far cry from Wellington. Wellington…what’s left? The house in Mount Vic? Gone, or burnt to shit, no doubt. The University…oh, Jesus, the Law buildings. He shook his head mournfully as he turned to trimming his fingernails. Biggest wooden building in the Southern Hemisphere, second-biggest in the world…another ash-heap, on the ash-heap of history. Tinakori, the University, all gone. And Auckland; nothing left between Takapuna and Parnell, they told you. Fuck. Fuck. So much lost.

The Prime Minister sat on his bed and started putting on a pair of thick, warm socks before he started polishing his shoes to a hearty lustre. He could probably have walked into the Cabinet office in a singlet and stubbies and Swanndri and nobody would much care – what good was fashion without a media to report it or a voting public to look at it? – but you had to maintain an image these days, pro bono publico. You kept up the form and hoped to hell that the function would follow.

David could do that, he’d thought more than once. If anyone could ginger up the hoi polloi, it’s David. But here you are instead, Geoff Palmer from Nelson, handed the poisoned chalice because you were the least pissing offensive choice. A wryly mirthless smile crossed his face as he pressed the lid back on the Kiwi tin and packed the brush away, before stepping into a pair of trousers. Less offensive than Rob Muldoon; that’s a low bar to vault over if ever there was one.

As he put on his shoes and a fresh shirt (now that was a luxury) he mused on popularity. It was one thing to be Prime Minister during or immediately after a nuclear war. It was quite another to be the PM appointed as a wartime replacement. And to be the dark horse candidate voted in over his own wishes and against the leader he’d hitherto served loyally? Oh, the history books were going to have fun dissecting that one.

“History books,” you say, Geoffrey thought as he draped a red tie around his neck. Look at you! Megalomaniacal and it’s hardly been a fortnight! Easy to see how Muldoon fell into this trap; there’s no way to express the feeling of knowing that every move you make every day is shaping history…ah-ha, there I go again, y’see? His fingers deftly tied a Windsor knot and he tightened it, the unfortunate noose motif galloping to mind like the horseman bearing bad news after the battle. The Mirthless Cavalier or something like that, he thought with a brief but genuine smile. He actually found that one rather good, if he did say so himself.

Well, you can’t put it off forever. Time to face the music, I reckon. Palmer patted down his pockets to make sure he had everything he needed and gave a world-weary sigh, pausing abruptly as his fingers found something he hadn’t seen in years. Geoffrey extricated the pipe and held it to the light, toying with it as thoughts ran unbidden through his head, standing stock still for some time until he recalled a promise he’d made to someone very important some time ago.

Eventually he gave another, slightly sadder sigh. You’ll see them again before too long. Even if right now, they’re just as homeless and uncertain as any refugees. David may well hate me from here on out, but at least his family have a home. And a father who can be with ‘em – a hotel’s not a home. Another smile that was not a smile. Said the man in the posh, opulent hotel who has enough to eat and his own bed. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, quite possibly one of the most powerful men left in the developed world, shook his head and walked out into the hallway, flicking the light switch off before he swung the door shut.

In the room, an old pipe was left on a table and returned to the business of gathering dust. Tobacco’s probably impossible to come by anyway, he had thought and besides, if Lange and Muldoon are having trouble coming by medicines, who am I to abuse Prime Ministerial privileges to glue my lungs shut with tar?

Geoffrey breathed deeply as he got to the staircase. It’d be another long day.

Outside, the drizzle eased off a little, though the sun steadfastly refused to shine.

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Or is it any wonder
The streets are dark?
And is it any wonder
We fall apart?

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​

Dunedin, Otago
March 26, 1984

It was Anniversary Day today. Usually, he would’ve been glad for the day off from study. Not today. Not when he was stuck at home, classes cancelled indefinitely since the letter from the Uni arrived at the start of February. Not when he was stuck at home while Dad was out doing war work on the lines since the bombs fell and the week without a Government sent everyone else home to wait nervously and fidget, and definitely not when he was there with his grandparents, who couldn’t stand him or the blood in his veins.

James, about as bog-standard an English name as you got. Hemi, Mum had always called him. Her, his grandparents had always called her. Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers, but Jim just wished he could have been the choosy beggar to get to leave and go to uni and make a go of it in the real world.

But it seemed like this was it now. Going to the shops once a week to flash your card and get it punched to say you’d received your allotment of food, two-thirds the amount for the elderly and extra milk for children (because where the hell were the farmers to send it now; primary produce restrictions were no longer a concern but neither were the EEC countries), and…what the hell was the quote again…“a penny for a pound of wheat and a penny for three pounds of barley, and hurt thou not the oil and wine.” On its own, the corner of Jim’s mouth quirked upwards. Quoting Scripture, even tongue-in-cheek, usually helped with the grandparents. They might be gloomy old souls, but they were gloomy old Presbyterian souls – and Jim held the lingering suspicion that his grandfather, a recalcitrant Anglican, actually got the joke.

Some things you simply couldn’t get these days, even if you waited in the interminable line at the Town Hall for requisition forms and your special dispensatory cards then made your way to the supermarket near the hospital (although even on standby the chocolate factory was a torment to walk past) with its protective little cordon of soldiers and policemen. Ciggies were drying up, pills were impossible to come by, and if you wanted insulin you were pretty much shit out of luck. Which was why Nana had been very quiet recently. Comatose, if you wanted to split hairs.

Jim’s grandfather was Irish somewhere up the line, maybe Northern. Either way, he’d been to a wake once. It was kind of like now, except there people actually talked and tried to remember the deceased.

Not here. Here, nobody really talked, nobody really displayed any emotion besides an occasional fragile expression which you got the impression would shatter at the faintest touch to spread bare that most horrifying of things – what they actually thought. So nobody really asked how anyone was anymore; no, just the usual pleasantries, a plaster smile on a plastic face and the faint odour of desperation.

The Gardens were quite full for the time of year, he noticed as he walked past, even for Anniversary Day. Full of people with no idea what to do with themselves for the last month and more; jobs were spent doing nothing much of anything for not much pay to buy a range of items even more depressingly sparse than before the War broke out, and go back home to silent televisions and asinine radio broadcasts. A man was feeding the ducks. You had to idly wonder if they hadn’t banned that as some sort of treasonous food wastage, because a slice of bread, the radio announcers seemed to believe, could feed all the refugees of Auckland. This had come as a surprise to Jim, who hadn’t known Jesus was working for the Ministry of Civil Defence.

The flats on the upper reaches of Cumberland Street were even more eerily silent than they usually were during the summer. A not insignificant number of the student body had actually come south in late January, either out of hope or ignorance towards the gathering storm half a world away. Without study to distract them – or the pubs to entertain them – they were even more lost than the people walking like lost souls through the Gardens. Here, people slouched about in dingy houses and lay on their roofs to make the most of the dimming sun (and how much longer would that last?), though if there was one small mercy it was that they seemed to be at least willing to think openly about the immense pool of shit they’d all been dropped into. Jim would probably drop in on some of them later – it wasn’t as if he had an otherwise busy social calendar. Still, at least he was out and about.


They were out of pretty much everything at the pharmacy, as an exhausted-looking man in a white coat kept explaining to the crowd. One of the men ahead of Jim, a greasy-haired man with a poorly-maintained handlebar moustache, didn’t take it too well.

“What the fuck d’youse mean, you’ve not got any repeats left?” he barked at the pharmacist. “I was told, I was led to believe, that my mum would be able to get her pills, and –”

“Well, she can’t, because we haven’t got any in for the last fortnight,” explained the white-coated doctor who probably looked young once, but sure as hell not in the last few weeks, “and we really weren’t aware of what wouldn’t be availab–”

“Bullshit! You had enough for the last three fellas; do youse want me mum to die or something? She’ll die if she doesn’t get her medicine and you lot’ll be the ones responsible; it’ll be…”

As the pharmacist continued trying to reason with the distressed man, a policeman walked over and, pardoning himself as he edged past Jim, gently placed a hand on the unsatisfied customer’s shoulder and the numbers 5024 briefly flashed past Jim’s eyes.

“I think you should go, sir,” he said in a soft but steady voice, meeting the bewildered gaze of the man – who looked like he had plenty of arguing left in him – and holding it. After a long moment, he scowled, shook off the hand and stormed over to the doorway, turning to give a parting shot as he opened the glass door onto Great King Street.

“I’ll be back,” he snapped angrily. “I’m gonna get you lot. I’ll blow youse away.”

Jim blinked and looked at the policeman, who was suddenly the centre of attention, who exhaled slowly and looked at the door as he spoke.

“Not even on duty at the moment,” he said. “Looks like I’m back on now, eh?”
Aren’t we all, mate; aren’t we all…

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All these feelings that
Seem so wrong
Remember, we
Were so strong…

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James had come back empty-handed, so Alf had found himself at a loss. Norma had become noticeably tired a couple of days after the insulin ran out – not that she ever complained about it; she was a battler, that kiddo – and the only real problems she’d let on about were that she was thirsty quite often, before she had fallen asleep while reading in bed. Even then, he’d chalked it up to stress.

They hadn’t been able to get a doctor out to her in the last two days. All busy, they’d said. Patients from Blenheim; the fallout from Wellington got to them, they'd said. So Alf had sat and waited by her side, watching the woman he had loved for fifty years fall into an unescapable sleep.

He’d always imagined himself going first. He wasn’t sure why; he’d never thought about it in Libya or Korea, or even during that heart scare of his a few years ago, but he’d always assumed he’d die first. This was not the way he had imagined he would be proven wrong.

Alf held her hand, shaking off the hope that she’d ever squeeze back as he felt the limp pulse in her cool palm. An idea slowly crystallised over the next couple of hours in his mind, and he went off to read the Bible, before returning to Norma to clean her filth away from her and change her sheets. Amidst this process, as he poured bleach with an unsteady hand into the washbasin and placed the sheets in the water, he realised what he had to do.
After dressing Norma in a clean white nightgown, he sent the boy out to the church with a letter for the vicar. That should give him enough time, he thought as the words rang out in his head.

- He said unto me again “Stand, I pray thee, upon me, and slay me: for anguish is come upon me, because my life is yet whole in me.”

Alf made a cup of tea the way Norma had always liked it, sweet and milky, and as he poured her a sip from the cup and dabbed at the sides of her mouth with a flannel he realised it was time.

- And I stood upon him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen.

He leant over slowly and kissed his wife, brushing her cheek with his thumb as he turned for a pillow. The vicar shouldn’t be too long; he’d dealt with that nasty business over at that farm before the bombs fell so he’d presumably seen a dead body before. The letter would get him moving anyway.

- And I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm, and have brought them hither unto my Lord.

God forgive me.

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But it’s been raining
For so long
It’s been raining
I can’t go on…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

XV. There Are No Sheep On Our Farms​

Went to a doctor, said I look so hard
And with a smile on his face pointed me to a junkyard
Look for an answer in empty doorways,
Talk to a dancer, said it’s out on the highways…

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Somewhere in South Otago
March 31, 1984

“…morrow, the Post Office will be able to guarantee phone services across the entirety of the South Island and the following…”

“Wid’ya turn ‘t over t’ somethin’ int’restin’, Bill?” Brian asked as the boy swept another load of crutchings over to the side of the woolshed. “Palmer dun’nt know whenna shuddup, does he?”

“Too right mate,” chipped in Sid as he hauled another ewe onto centre stage and Brian began snick-snick-snicking at her tail with the shears. “Je-sus, least Lange kept yer attention, eh?”

“I know this…not even begin…ease…losses of the last…only state my…all lost someone. Frie…lee members, those closest to…laces we once called ho…”

“’S no good,” said Bill as he skimmed the channels. “On every station.”

“Eh?”

“I said, ‘s on every station.”

“Ah, leave ‘er on, then; he’ll shut up in a bit.”

Bill nodded and headed outside to check on the feed, scratching the rough beginnings of a beard (he wished) as he rolled a bit more silage out for the ewes. Peripherally, he dimly registered the rumble of wheels on grit and the plume of dust making its way up the valley. As he finished up and dusted his hands off on his pants the truck stopped down at the main gate, and it was only when Brian and Sid came out of the shed to have a look that he bothered to pay the visitor any notice.

“Good morning!” called the man who stepped out of the cab with a wave. He wasn’t the usual stock agent; no doubt he was still up in Nelson with his family. No, this fellah…this one looked too fresh-faced to be a stock agent. Brian seemed to think so as well; he hesitated for a long second or two before he offered a hand to be shaken.

The stranger maintained steady eye contact during the brisk exchange, and his open, easy smile did not once waver. Brian stood silent for the briefest of moments after they let their hands fall to their sides, before nodding. The new man had passed the test, and so he offered the ritual greeting.

“G’day. Kim far?”

“You don’t mess around, do you Mister McKay?” A grunt in response. “But yep, I’ve come down from Dunedin; I’m with Federated Farmers.”

“Oh, yeah?” He might have walked and talked like a townie, but he was in the right tribe; Brian’s demeanour became imperceptibly more trusting.

“Whaddaya come out here fer?”

“Ah, you’ve…heard about the change in government, I guess?” A snort in response. “Yes, well, the Minister of Agriculture’s still in, so he’s been trying to work out a response to some of the snags in the rationing system.” An impassive stare. “So I’ve come here today to tell you about the plans; you’re close enough to the distribution hub they’ve set up in Balclutha that, ah, that even with the transit companies’ diesel ration being reduced they oughta be able to get out here when the time comes to send some of your flock off.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Ye-es…it’s, ah, quite lucky, actually; they’re possibly going to have to stop collecting milk over in some areas; the Ministry’s getting all the supply in it can, but there’s not the, not, ah, not the diesel to do it all all over, so places further from the towns are going to be passed over…”

“Huh.”

“…and so we – sorry? No, yes, we’re trying to establish who’s able to be included and not, and perhaps thinking of moving workers into some of them.”

“Aw, yeah?” asked Sid. “Whazzat mean fer us then, eh?”

“Well, ah, looking at the land here, I was meant to ask how much diesel fuel this farm’s operations required per week. Or month, if you could guess.”

“Well…” drawled Brian, scratching at his jaw with a lanolin-coated hand like a glazed ham “…Ah rrikkin maybe…oh, no more’n twenty gallons a month for the tractor when we need it; Lamber-geeny, and she’s been awright even since the old oil shock. Gotta Roverr‘s well, which ya use a bit more, but she’s not used too often ‘til spring. Call it another few gallons there. Oh, an’ the boy here’s got a Hondie bike, too, but that’s petrol, so I dunno if that’s a problem.”

And with that concerted effort of oratory, he lapsed back into silence as the fresh-faced Federated Farmers fellah furrowed his brow and pulled a notebook from his back pocket, tracing some figures with his finger as he murmured sums under his breath. After maybe half a minute, he looked back up at the three.

“Make it fifteen a month through September and I’ll be able to see you right.”
Brian thought again.

“Still on the ration?”

“Nope.”

“Eh?”

“New rules, Mister McKay. Nobody gets diesel, not unless they prove both need and effective use to the Ministry of Energy. Do you have any storage tanks on the property?”

“Ah…coupla old forty-fourr gallon drums.”

“Right, let’s think. Ah…you should be able to get fifteen gallons per month, call it three months’ supply at once to save you the trips and…yeah, yeah I can tell the station in Balclutha to get you one barrelful.”

“Balclutha?”

“Well, you see, most of the smaller local stations like your one just up the road” a thumb jabbed over the shoulder “have been sucked bone-dry since – since last month, and with diesel being restricted it’s been decided – so, uh, so I’m told – that it’s easier to store it all in one or two big tanks at places like Balclutha, Gore, Lumsden, places like that, and let the farmers come to them instead of spreading it all out. Makes it easier to guard.”

“Guard?” interjected Sid. “Take’nit all a bit seriously, ain’t’chez?”

“We-ell, did you hear about what’s been happening up in Canterbury lately? Gangs – or someone, buggered if I’d know – has been going around targeting petrol stations, holding the owners at gunpoint and pinching their diesel.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s not the half of it; Christchurch’s got a warrant out for them and apparently there are soldiers turning up at stations. With rifles.”

“Bloody hell. Hope they catch the ones playing sillybuggers up there, then.”

“Yeah. Well, if you can sign this requisition form I’ll send it on to Dunedin for you and get you an exemption sometime in the next fortnight.”

“Awright,” drawled Brian, marking the page in a surprisingly well-kept script and shaking the agent’s hand. “Be seein’ yez.”

“Yep, goodbye, Mister McKay,” said the agent as he got into the cab and rolled off. As the plume of dust made its way back to the main road, Brian spoke again.

“We still have that diesel we bought at the starta the year, right?”

“Aye, therr’re still five or six barrelsful out ‘round the back of the old shed,” replied Sid.

“Right, we’ll move ‘em ‘round aback’a the house t’nigh’,” said Brian, mopping his brow again. “Best fill up the tractor while we’re at it; may’s well ‘ave him thinking we’re desp’rit f’r every drop we can get.” A shake of the head as he moved back into the shed. “Forty-bloody-five gallons, I ask you. Whazza country comin’ to…”

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Well here I am in the big city
I got no heart and I got no pity…

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Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
March 29, 1984

They were going to be moved soon, or so the rumour went. Teuila already had; they’d found some of her seemingly limitless extended family and shipped her to Matamata, where one of the bigger processing centres had been established. Grace hadn’t been sure how she felt about that. Still wasn’t.

It wasn’t that she was deluded enough to think that there might be something worth going home to which made her jealous, but more the idea of having some sort of purpose at all. Even the people who left the camp in the dead of night to wander north into the burnt-out heart of the city had something they were trying to achieve; the guards, if you could call them that, didn’t bother stopping them anymore. Why bother feeding people who were going to walk into certain death anyway?

It was also unpleasant to have a member of their group gone, and not only for the emotional reasons that had spilled out at the teary farewell. Now it was only pairs of them making their runs to the latrines or the cafeteria tent, which did little to help the sense of unease. In a nutshell, it had all gone to shit, it really all had.

Mel was somewhat more optimistic, probably because nuclear war made no real difference to her particularly bitter take on the world.

“You reckon you’re the worst off?” she said in an irritated snarl when Grace raised the matter. “Shit, we’re alive, we’re not dying in a ditch somewhere, and nobody’s dragged us off in the middle of the night. Call me crazy, but I’m kinda grateful for all that.”

“Ye-ah, but was pissing off those guys really the best move?”

“Oh, you’re still worried about that? Five dollars says they end up getting stabbed before we move out of here; they’re bound to piss off someone more threatening than us before long.”

“You’re on,” said Kathleen from outside the tent, where she was catching a little of the fitful light as the wind shifted around to the west. “I’ll let you pay me when we get moved.”

“We have witnesses, you know; I’m gonna hold you to that.” Like most sentences involving money these days, it was said with an implied lack of belief. Money was nice, but a) most people didn’t have any, having escaped with the clothes on their back or less, and b) being less than useful in the absence of shops to spend it in. Like most sentences involving pre-war normalities, it helped you convince yourself that things might get back to normal someday.

She wasn’t prepared to put five dollars on the chance, though.

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Make the cancellation and I got numb
I haven’t the motivation to get myself a gun…

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New Plymouth, Taranaki
March 25, 1984

They’d been given a week’s leave. In New fucking Plymouth. The Lance-Corporal would almost have preferred being on deployment.

For one, their previous posting had been at the refugee camp at Featherston, probably one of the nicer Civil Defence facilities south of Levin. It wasn’t as rainy as in Wellington, you didn’t have the lurking shadow of a dead city hovering almost within sight, and the women around there were desperate enough for a root that you could get off, but not so desperate that it felt like you were taking advantage of it (you were, of course, but everyone lied to themselves to get to sleep these days; if two almost-completely-consenting adults wanted to forget their woes with ten faintly disappointing minutes in a tent in a field somewhere in the Wairarapa, well, who was to judge them? Certainly not the twenty year-old with a full ration pack and an empty itinerary).

But such decisions were not for mortal men to make: the Brass had called, and here they were.

It wasn’t the most bored he’d ever been; church he’d always found worse (being given the bash by someone who then marched you to prayers the next morning tended to do that). Watching the wharfies work was a pastime, at least. A convoy had made its way south from Auckland and whatever it had been carrying was important enough for a dozen armed guards for the eight trucks and a three-hour delay for the freighter due to move south (and much pissing and moaning on the part of the wharfies).

Eventually curiosity got the better of him and he asked Scott, a squadmate of his who’d gotten into the business of getting people what they needed (intel, razorblades, soap, condoms, you name it), what the fuss was. He smiled in response and pulled a hand out of his pocket, a purple rectangle in his palm. The Lance Corporal’s eyebrow jumped.

“Fruit and Nut?”

“Y’know how there’s that chocolate factory up Auckland?”

“Ah…”

“Yeah, well, apparently they’re having trouble getting people to work somewhere two kays downwind from what used to be the Harbour Bridge. And they want to keep morale up, and Easter’s coming…”

“…so they’re putting all this effort into moving a few boxes of chocolate to another island?”

Scott shook his head.

“Parts, mate. They’ve got space in the factory down in Dunners; looks like they’re gonna gear up production somewhere a little further from the shitstorm in Warkworth or wherever it was.”

“Huh. So why the rush?”

“Well…you know how they’ve had ships from abroad turning up now and then in Tauranga? Apparently there was enough left of Madagascar or some bongo-bongo country for a ship fulla cocoa to make its way to Invers.”

“Bullshit, mate.”

“Hey, I just say what I hear. Don’t ask me why they didn’t stop in Aussie; maybe they heard about Perth and Sydney and decided to give the rest a miss.”

The Lance Corporal chuckled. “Can’t fuckin’ blame ‘em. Ah, but will they play rugby with us?”

Scott gave a wincing grin. “Ouch. Bit soon, mate. Haven’t you heard about the Yarpies?”

“…oh shit, they copped it too, huh?”

“Let’s just say the ‘Boks aren’t gonna be touring anywhere this side of the Pearly Gates.”

“Man, the world’s gone to shit, hasn’t it?”

A frank shrug. “Could be worse. There’s still Dairy Milk. Better yet, some chocolate biscuits, if you know where to find ‘em.”

“Pity there’s no tea or coffee left to have them with,” said the Lance Corporal with an air of practiced indifference. “I hear some people’d trade a pack of razorblades, or even a day’s ration cards for that sorta thing.”

Scott grinned and nodded in the direction of the warehouse behind them.

“Come step into my office,” he said.

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Can’t you see I’m on the run?
Can’t you see I’m not having any fun?

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From Lange, David, My Life.

“…naturally always held Geoffrey in the highest regard during those dark days, when he had the wholly unenviable task of holding the country together as a sort of unknown quantity who could provide a unifying figure (this naturally being the reason for his appointment in a Parliamentary meeting-in-exile at Ohakea sometime during that first frantic fortnight) after the divisiveness of Muldoon’s last few weeks. Though I hesitate to spurn the dead, it would be dishonest to claim that Sir Robert was entirely in control of the situation as it unfolded – unravelled, one might say – towards the end of his tenure, something we all saw and were shocked by in his abrupt resignation.

So it was with my erstwhile second-in-command now at the helm that we all struggled together towards whatever goal it was we had in mind over the autumn of ’84, as primary production quotas gave way to rationing and logistics and the proposals for a nuclear-free zone (oh, how naïve we were in 1983!) became even more moot after Geoff got the call from a very harried Lindsay Watt that the Roanoke and the Merrill had just arrived in Suva to ask if they could they please get some information on Mr Muldoon and communicate with him to ask was there any point in sailing for New Zealand…

Christchurch, Canterbury
March 28, 1984

They’d dredged up a secretary. God alone knew why. Probably out of some reactive desire to stick to procedure; Palmer certainly couldn’t imagine who would want any of this on the record.

“I’m simply saying that we do not have the capacity at the present time to go gallivanting about the Pacific and rescuing a few stranded fishermen and paper-shufflers.”

“Those stranded paper-shufflers, if I might remind the Minister, are not only New Zealand citizens but also represent all that is left of our diplomatic corps to the known world.”

“Well, then, why not leave them in Suva and Apia? They’ve got jobs, haven’t they?”

“If I might interject –”

“Oh, Christ…”

“– they remain citizens of New Zealand and we are duty-bound to assist them as much as anyone else on our sovereign – ”

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes, Helen, they’re gadding about wreaking untold havoc on the gene pool of Polynesia; I can think of a few thousand people in the mud outside Wellington who’d quite enjoy being marooned up there.”

“Oi, simmer down, you two. We haven’t even got any boats in the area so we can send a civvie tub from Tauranga and see what happens; what we need to do right now is get onto the situation in Manukau…”

“If I might have a chance to speak?” asked Palmer, regarding the whole table as one with a sharp look. The three separate arguments which had erupted within the space of fifteen seconds sputtered to their respective halts as his thumbs pressed grooves into the ballpoint pen. “I believe we already covered a majority of these points in the other Other Business. To wit: Colin, the farms take precedence over the fisheries for now. Heavy fuel oil’s harder to come by than diesel, and the fuel needed to process the fish caught is just another expense which’d be better spent on trains or tractors or, or, ah, fertiliser." He raised a hand as Moyle began to object. “The farms produce more food per gallon of diesel than the fisheries, and we’re stretched beyond breaking point. We simply cannot afford wastage; I will not have the farms coming to a halt and people starving to death. Not in this country. Those machines are vital to the running of the farms; as much as sending refugees to work the land sounds good in principle, we can’t have people wandering about with sickles and scythes and expect a decent harvest; this isn’t eighteen-fifty. Like George said, it worked when we prioritised farmers with fuel rationing during the War; it behoves us to do so here as well.


“Secondly – Roger, the nationalisation and rationalisation plans will continue as discussed. The Reserve Bank and half of its staff were wiped out in Wellington; aside from what was trucked out of Wellington and Auckland to Palmerston before the attacks our assets depend on the goodwill of the private sector and the strength of state-owned assets until we can set up a new haitch-queue, as Anthony mentioned. The big banks will do as they’re told. We do not want to have to enforce policy at gunpoint, but they must be made to realise that there is no way the stability and reconstruction of this country can be jeopardised because their portfolios are no longer secure. The Justice Minister has given me his take on the applicability of the Emergency Powers Act, and I’d like to table some thoughts in next week’s meetings on how to apply it in this case. I’d prefer to avoid complete nationalisation of all financial assets, but…” he spread his hands. The survival of a nation took precedence.

“Third, and I know we’re out of time so we’ll make this the last point of order before we adjourn, but I would like to support the proposal to end the use of diesel generators where we can. We’ve got an optimistic forecast of forty percent of usual supply from Marsden Point, and that’s assuming we don’t have any tremendous blowouts. Yes,” he said, raising a hand “winter is on its way, but we have coal at Huntly and while the two percent total usage mightn’t seem much, that’s several thousand gallons of heavy oil we can put to freighter use – which, need I remind the Minister of Energy just as much as I already reminded the Minister of Fisheries, is still vital for getting things from island to island until we have some sort of rail terminus built at New Plymouth or Napier or wherever, and to Australia, too. The shortage of jet fuel, to address your point, Helen, is why we will not be sending anything to the Islands, either. We’ve got an Orion up at Whenuapai which we could send in case of emergency, but the Telex to Suva will suffice just fine until then.”

Palmer allowed himself a moment of respite after the effort of smacking down the hydra-like bombardment of requests from his (alleged) subordinates, before looking at the table once more with an easy smile which wasn’t reflected in the slightest in the gaze he fixed some of the dissenters with.

“All in accord? Very good; meeting adjourned and we’ll check back in in four days.”

As the Ministers filed out, Lange stood but did not follow. The Deputy Prime Minister looked quizzically at him. Lange just looked right on back as MacIntyre, ever the officer, gentleman, and composed elder statesman, shook his grizzled head imperceptibly and left.

Palmer laid down the pen he’d been wielding throughout the meeting. Well, this was clearly going to happen sooner or later so why put it off any longer…
“Something you’d like to talk about, David?” he asked wearily.

“Very perceptive of you, Geoff,” said David as he moved his still-considerable bulk around the room to loom over him better. Palmer stifled a sigh and neatened up the edges of the papers before placing them back in the folder, closing it and looking up at David. “I think it’s about time we had a little chat, don’t you?” It was the sort of tone that implied a bollocking was on the not-too-distant horizon. This should be interesting; he was after all the PM…

“Yes, take a seat, won’t you?” asked Palmer, deciding to play the geniality game as best he could. He swept a hand around the conference room. “You’ve got your pick of them.”

Lange gave a grim smile and sat at the corner of the table, close enough that Palmer could see the little screws in the corners of his glasses.

“You took your pick of them, didn’t you, Geoffrey? Saw your chance and crossed the aisle to grab it, too.” Palmer held Lange’s gaze and maintained a carefully not-quite-smug-but-still-confident half-smile as the Minister of Foreign Affairs kept speaking in his usual boisterous baritone. “You know the caucus isn’t happy with half of what you’re been doing, don’t you?”

“Well, seeing as it’s a unity government I’d’ve called a fifty-fifty hit rate rather good, under the circumstances.” Geoffrey’s eyes crinkled in a brief expression of genuine amusement. “So long as none of the Other Lot are leaving any less than half-angered, I do believe I’ve hit the compromise nail on the head.”

A mirthless smile from Lange. “Very droll, Geoffrey, very droll.”

“If you’re here to try and tell me to resign, David, it’s not going to happen.”

To his credit, Lange didn’t look at all surprised at the suddenness.

“Then it’s just as well I’m not here to do that, isn’t it?”

“Nice to know we’re in agreement, then.”

“Yes,” said Lange flatly. “On some things, if not others.”

Palmer held his gaze. This was going to be one of those discussions.

"Something else you'd care to say, David?"

"No-o," Lange said at length, eyes sharp behind his glasses. Geoffrey decided to just spill the beans and be done with the pussyfooting around.

"If you think I usurped you on purpose, you're wrong. I didn't - Jesus help me, I still don't want this bloody job. You know as well as I do where the last man to try and deal with this ended up." On two kinds of pain medication and enough gin to float a frigate, were the words he left unsaid. "But I'm apparently enough of a non-entity that I'm a useful compromise candidate that you all get to pretend to listen to me while pretending to get on with one another, so I might as well pretend to be doing something useful before we get the country back in shape and I can bugger off and have a decent sleep for once." He scowled (never mind that from him the expression was about as threatening as a somewhat cranky cocker spaniel). "Look, David, I backed you in every one of those damn votes; if the majority of Parliament decided they hated me less than you or McLay, well, that's democracy."

" 'The worst form of government, except for all the others', " quoted Lange with a glimmer of amusement in his eye. "Fine then, Geoff, you're King for a day even if you don't wanna be. Just remember that when that day ends - and it will - you have a responsibility that the Party and the country will expect you to fulfil."

"God, responsibilities," said Palmer with an exaggerated shake of the head, the tension breaking just before his nerve did. "If I ever get within spitting distance of the premiership again after this nightmare is over, it'll be too fucking soon."

Palmer, Geoffrey, All Hands To The Tiller: The Unity Government and the State of Emergency.

“…didn’t have to be a genius to tell that David still despised me for what he viewed as a calculated betrayal, but after a while he seemed to calm down after presumably reconciling himself to the fact that I didn’t want to be in that seat any more than he wanted me there…well, I liked to imagine he had, anyway. Our relationship following the elections, when they came after the State of Emergency was ended at my insistence, is well-documented; I leave it to the reader’s intelligence and unsullied point-of-view to tell if I was right or not…

…the reader will probably be aware to some extent, April began with a tremendous bang when Bob rang me from Melbourne in the middle of the night with a telex from Réunion …

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Well, anything could happen
And it could be right now
And the choice is yours
So make it worthwhile…

Bay of Biscay
March 29, 1984
1030 GMT

The Canberra of the RAF shot overhead at what would on land be treetop height so as to get a decent visual, the pilot confirming the identity of the vessel as it carved through the North Atlantic in the cold, grey dawn.
To the north, in Portsmouth, preparations began to be made for the arrival of HMAS Perth as through CHANTICLEER’s Corsham catacombs word began to spread.

The Aussies are here.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

The character of Ross Bailey is adapted from PimpLenin's TL The Lucky Country: Protect and Survive Australia. I have only made use of the name; the rest is a different interpretation/continuity of the events in the P&S universe than his. No plagiarism is intended. With that covered, here's an update. Look who's learned how to stick to a schedule



Interlude I – London Calling

It was an April morning
When they told us we should go…

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Portsmouth, Hampshire
April 4, 1984

To his credit, Commander Ross Bailey of the Royal Australian Navy didn’t react to the news he’d just heard with anything more dramatic than a widening of the eyes and catch of the breath. It was, however, audible enough for Whitelaw to give a sad little grimace.

“Captain,” he continued softly but firmly in that plummy Pommie accent which sounded like his back teeth were catching on the inside of his deflated-balloon cheeks, “Britain may be down, but we are not out.” He punctuated every word of that sentence by jabbing a finger on the oak table before moving on. “The world needs to know that if we are attacked by the Soviet Union, by the Argies, or by, or ah, or Tuvalu, we will strike back. Hard.”

Bailey closed his eyes and nodded, the ticking of the clock the only other sound in the room as he processed what had been said. “I see.” You’re all mad you’re all mad you crazy sonsabitches whywouldyouwishmoreofthisshitonanyonewhywouldwha-

The Prime Minister – leader of this shell of what was (of what had been?) Australia’s mother country and one of its greatest allies – kept talking, the words echoing in Bailey’s mind for hours afterward. The gleam in his eyes, though, would stay with Ross for much longer. It was the gleam of desperation without compare, of a man who has run out of all options and all alternatives and is thinking of the unthinkable as nothing more than a means to an end. The bags under his eyes and greying hairs retreating from the temples only added to the image.

“Captain, it is a…terrible thing, I know. However, our remaining nuclear weapons – and there are precious few of those, I assure you – are the only defence left to us.”

The Australian emissary nodded blankly as the Prime Minister kept talking. He’d never felt as glad as he was for the fact that they were sailing back home tomorrow.

And as I turned to you, you smiled at me
How could we say no?

Somewhere in the South Atlantic, WNW of the Cape of Good Hope
April 15, 1984

Before setting out from Albany they’d stripped the Perth of everything even faintly unnecessary to extend her range beyond the standard six thousand nautical miles. It had been made much easier – which was to say remotely logistically possible in the first place – with the presence of a civilian oiler, though that had made port in Cape Verde before they made for Britain – you never knew, after all – and Bailey had decided tell a little white lie to the Poms aboard in claiming that it just happened to be an Australian vessel they just happened to stumble across off West Africa on the way to Portsmouth. It probably hadn’t fooled anyone, but it was good enough for diplomacy.
More importantly, the extra fuel had meant that they could really thrash the ring out of the Perth and keep their speed above the 15-knot line; they’d made a steady 25 or so since Praia and should be home by Anzac Day.
Bailey glanced uneasily at the Royal Navy man the Poms had stuffed aboard in place of his second mate (his exec, who had been with him since basic, had not taken that well at all) as he looked idly towards the coast of South Africa.

“Shame it’s all gone, isn’t it?”

“Ah, yeah, suppose so. Still, not like we were playing rugby against them anymore.”

“No,” replied the Brit – who was a commander himself, but as an ADC on secondment from the RN was very kindly permitting Bailey to treat him as a subordinate – leaving an uncomfortable silence in the space between the two men on the otherwise busy ship. “Still, I was always more of a cricketer, myself.”

“Well, a shame we’ll be on different sides when the next Ashes comes up.”
A faint smile. If it ever comes. The words went unsaid, and didn’t join the other hollow words caught by the wind whistling towards a land which probably no longer had much use for sport. He recalled snippets of frantic transmissions they’d picked up on the way to Portsmouth, and the vague narrative they’d managed to sew together from the disparate facts they’d gotten on their close pass to the southern coast of the continent.

Cape Town was out for six, they knew that much. Same with the Pretoria to Johannesburg belt, if the ‘Effricans they’d had a brief talk on the blower with in Durban were to be believed. Port Elizabeth was still in, but nobody seemed to know what was happening. Neither the Admiralty nor Melbourne were keen to check for sure. A chill ran down Bailey’s spine, one that had nothing to do with the westerly wind. According to the intelligence officer, the government had dropped what he described as “an absolute shitload of mustard gas on the darkies” while beating a retreat from Pretoria to – where? Some sort of white man’s redoubt, they’d figured. If they were salting the earth after them…

The Commander hoped they never had to play rugby there again.

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Oh, to sail away
To sandy lands and other days…

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“I believe that when Australians are confronted with the facts of crisis, that they have sufficient commitment to this country to respond positively…in 1941 and ’42…in the more dramatically obvious crisis of war, then they responded to the need to adapt and to change.
Now I believe that in the crisis confronting us now – when we openly bring Australians together and confront them with the facts – that they will respond.”
- Bob Hawke, 1983 press conference

Melbourne, Victoria
April 10, 1984

Government House, which had been dusted off for Emergency Government use soon after the dust from Canberra and Sydney had settled (all of a sudden Bob Hawke realised how much he wished he hadn’t thought of it in those specific terms), was an immense, beautiful structure. The Governor had been all too eager to see the State Government more or less evicted as the Federal Government made itself at home, and he might well be – for was it not that, after fifty-seven long years, Melbourne had retaken its position as capital and primus inter pares of the great Australian cities?

Not that that was much of a statement, with Sydney and Perth shells of their former selves, Canberra and Darwin smoking craters, and everything north of Brisbane effectively ungoverned.

As Mister Palmer pointed out with a smile at the corner of his mouth, though, had it really been governed besides on the suffrage of Mister Bjelke-Petersen before the bombs fell, anyway?

And Hawke had laughed, deciding that this was a man he could do business with.

“So what do we make of it then, Geoff?” Bob said as he looked out at the gardens, where an elderly gardener was still pottering about tending to the flowers.

“Well, Britain’s still in, which I don’t think we’d honestly even thought about on our side of the ditch. So I’d say a lot of people are going to get very happy, then very worried, then…” he spread his hands, and Bob nodded. Most of Australia and New Zealand either had friends and family in or were themselves from the UK. The prospect of some of those friends and family still being alive was a dizzying one, even for the two Prime Ministers, closely followed by the possibility that they were dead for sure. Hope was frightening like that.

“According to the skipper of the Perth,” Hawke said, glancing towards the telex from Réunion “the Poms have suffered an almighty knock.”

“Well, quite.”

“London, Birmingham, Glasgow…anywhere worth a bomb and a few places that weren’t.”

“So the capital’s in…”

“Portsmouth.”

“You would have thought they’d hit that, surely?”

“A miss, they reckon. I believe there’s a diplomatic bag being sent; reckon we’ll learn more when the Perth gives us a better report.”

“I did get a quick rundown on the flight from Christchurch to that effect. So they want food, and lots of it, then? Well, Federated Farmers should love this. I think we can manage enough shipping for it; there ought to be a freighter or two about that nobody will notice go missing.”

“Ah, praise be to eminent domain. Well, we’ve got a little time to plan for that, at least. No, I ah, that’s not all, though, yer see. Our fella had other news.” The look that darkened Hawke’s suncreased face said enough.

“…shit.”

“Ye-es,” said Hawke at length. “Seems our man had a meeting with Whitelaw before he left. They tried sending a little boat to the Falklands –”

“Oh, God.”

“– and it came back shot fulla holes an’ down three men. Sea burials, full honours, all that jazz. So Whitelaw made sure to tell him that they’d bombed Buenos Aires.” He exaggerated the words: Bway-nuss Airys. Palmer’s brow creased as a thought came to him.

“I would’ve assumed all their long-range bombers were recalled to Europe for the air war. Suppose they had a trick up their sleeve.”

Hawke opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again as he tried to grasp the magnitude of what he was about to say.

“They did. It wasn’t planes.”

“…oh, shit.”

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To seek the man whose pointing hand
The giant step unfolds…

Across the South Island
April 11, 1984

Transcript taken from the National Archives; radio broadcast on the morning of April 11, 1984.

Presenter: …aaand we’re back here on ZM Christchurch; that was one which I’m sure’ll be a classic before too long, it was of course the Dance Exponents bringing you all Victoria. We’ve got another great lineup for you before the news, and we’ll start with…

There is a pause in the recording as someone speaks to the Presenter.

Presenter: Sorry, what?

The Interrupter speaks again, in an excited tone.

Presenter: Alright, alright. Ah, we, we’ll start with one from Split Enz; here’s History Never Repeats.

Background chatter is faintly audible for the next minute and eight seconds, before the song is abruptly cut off.

Presenter: Jesus, uh, folks we, we have some breaking news here; bear with us for a second.

More chatter, with occasional interjections from the Presenter. From this point on the Presenter’s speech is interrupted periodically, as represented beneath with ellipses.

Presenter: We, we do have coming in confirmed reports that an Australian Navy ship has made contact with the Government of England [sic]…my God…yes, yeah, I know, there’s actually someone else EXPLETIVE DELETED well left alive out there…yes, um, we’ll be handing you all over to Radio New Zealand shortly where the Prime Minister is going to make a statement on the situation. Uh, stand, stand by please.

The next two minutes are largely dead air, with excited chatter between the Presenter and Interrupter clearly audible at points.

Presenter: INDISTINCT can’t believe it either, mate; I thought there was nothing left past Aussie INDISTINCT someone alive out there! We’re not alone, thank Christ…

Interrupter: What do you reckon Palmer’s gonna say about it?

Presenter: Who knows, he’s probably only just found out himself; we’ll probably know less than the audience after INDISTINCT said and done.

Interrupter: INDISTINCT hell out of the weather forecast, doesn’t it.
Presenter: Too EXPLETIVE DELETED right it does mate, too EXPLETIVE DELETED right. Oh…wonder what’s left up there? INDISTINCT Poms came through alright, there’s every chance the Yanks did, yeah? And what about the mother EXPLETIVES DELETED Russians?

Interrupter: INDISTINCT… (think your (?)) mike’s on.

Presenter: Oh, EXPLETIVE DELETED me.

Into the sun, the south, the north
At last the birds have flown…

From Shearer, Dave, ‘History Repeats: First Contact, First Fleet’ in New Zealand and the Third World War (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 2004). [1]

…likewise, the first communication from the CHANTICLEER headquarters under the Wiltshire Plain which comprised the vestigial government of the United Kingdom was at first received with disbelief in New Zealand, and soon afterwards with excitement. If full-fledged nuclear war had failed to wipe Britain out, surely that said something for New Zealand’s chances…

…[A]s it was, the Whitelaw regime (for what else can one call a government operating at the end of a gun barrel, except perhaps ‘junta’?) was rather blunt, upon its assessment of the damage in the Antipodes, in regard to its desires for any bilateral relations which might yet be possible. To put it simply, the British wanted food. Lots of it. So much so that, when HMAS Perth returned to Melbourne, it was with a complement of Royal Navy in place of half the Australian crew, with a token shipment of two radiation suits and an Engineer (who had been so keen on his homeland that he had practically swum across Portsmouth Harbour to get aboard) as a sort of down payment, a sop to diplomacy. The message was clear, and although the governments of Australia and New Zealand were suspicious – and to some extent afraid – of the methods CHANTICLEER was willing to exploit to get what it wanted, loyalty to the Mother Country won through with no opposition from the Emergency Cabinet…

…Palmer subscribed quickly to the strategy Hawke suggested during their first meeting behind closed doors in Melbourne, with the tentatively titled Operation Transit of Venus to be launched later that month with the Perth as flagship in what would make a nice gesture of solidarity with the Royal Navy…

…so it was decided. Transit of Venus would commence on the twenty-fifth of the month, in an immense logistical effort (by the standards of mid-1984) which would see tens, hundreds, thousands of tonnes of food collected from across New Zealand and Australia, distributed across damaged roads and through shattered towns to the rail hubs and ports from which they could be loaded onto the task force and its support vessels and from there shipped to the other side of the world. They were to be assisted in this venture by elements of the Army, with the logistics company of the…

It would be a long voyage, nearly four weeks in all, for those aboard, not only the sailors but also detachments of the Army regiment, a company-sized unit under the command of…

[1] The New Zealand version of the book. Copies eventually sent to the UK of 2011’s third edition were heavily edited with any of Shearer’s extensive criticisms of the post-Exchange Government excised on the recommendations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This reduced the length of his chapter from 39 pages to scarcely 20.

Oh, the sweet refrain
Soothes the soul and calms the pain…

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Buenos Aires, Argentina
April 4, 1984

“My brother, you know, the one in the Navy,” said Juan's friend Camilo as they walked, “told me that the British were harassing our supply ships off the Malvinas. Apparently they told us tomarlo por culo sobre el horizonte, y fired on the Comodoro Py to make their point – so we fired back in their direction, they tried to sink the Comodoro, we nearly sank them, and then they left.”

Juan found his eyebrow quirking upwards at that one; the Navy had been sore about being put on a leash ever since ’82, and putting Massera under house arrest hadn’t calmed the flames at all. He could have cared more about the godforsaken rocks; a few thousand Englishmen were probably all that were left anyway; best to leave them in peace. Sadly, the people who got to make those decisions had decided to traipse over there anyway with what the news media persisted in calling a “humanitarian aid mission.” If Inglaterra had survived and come calling, though, and the Navy had been fool enough to piss them off…

“Son boludos si esto es así,” he replied “and the Navy as well, if they want to fuck with the people with nukes.” His brow furrowed again. “A moment – would does that mean that there’d still be anything left of England? I thought the Russians had them bombed back to the Stone Age.”

A shrug was all he got in response.

“I haven’t found out anything about that; all I know is what I hear from the radio and see on the TV.”

That got an only half-sardonic smile from Juan; the government was treading an unbelievably fine line at the moment as they balanced the tenuous democracy with one the one side a military which had seen the outbreak of another World War as a justification for the Reorganisation, and on the other the many hundreds of thousands of very angry, surprisingly well-armed individuals who would rather like to see Videla thrown out of a helicopter into the South Atlantic himself. As a result, official reports on the global situation had tended to be…carefully worded.

“Well, so long as we don’t end up like Brazil, we should be fine, or at least further from civil war.”

“In fairness,” ventured Camilo, “they’re down a capital city, which tends to take the wind out of the sails a little.”

“Can’t disagree with you. Well, geopolitical bullshit aside, shall we head to the café?”


The café in San Telmo was like most of the other buildings in the area, full of crumbling grandeur and the faint aroma of history being dimly forgotten. It was an imposing 19th century building which, from the stone façade, the wrought-iron railings, and the fact the windows all faced south, had been erected in the days before architects had finally clicked to the fact that the north was the sunny side. Still, it did at least make for a pleasant enough view of the Parque Lezama on the other side of Avenue Brasil.

So it was in the shade that Juan and Camilo sat just as noon passed, and there they talked and took coffee with some of their more bohemian friends who’d come out of the woodwork since the Reorganisation ended. He quite liked one of them, a young woman with a pierced eyebrow and an expression from behind which she seemed to calmly survey the world. Rosario, he thought her name was. Juan had been working an angle there for a couple of weeks now, and he might be able to arrange something soon, if he was smart about it.

“I don’t see what one priest more or less is going to do in the mountains,” she was saying. “Pinochet’s as much of a bastard as the ones we threw out here, and likelier to do something stupid.”

Some Jesuit had been west recently, to try and minister to the feuding brothers in the Andes. With the somewhat jaundiced eye of someone who’d lived through the Dirty War, Juan couldn’t help but agree that his words would sound sweet and do little. Pinochet was a bastard, after all, and since he’d closed off the Strait of Magellan the two brothers had started unsheathing their fraternal daggers.

“Ah, but aren’t we all God’s beloved children?” retorted another man (Ignacio or something like that, possibly?) in a voice saturated with sarcasm. “The Pope probably found out anyway; all the prayers in the world didn’t save Rome, did they?”

That one may have been a bit too on-the-nose. He’d been to the huge public Mass they’d held along the Avenue 9 de Julio in honour of those who’d died, heard the speech of the Brazilian ambassador, seen the abject depression of the peninsulares who lived amongst them at the news of the destruction of their homeland, and of all the devout at the news that the Eternal City’s votive had been snuffed out forever. Like everyone else, Juan preferred not to think about that.

After a while he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and stood to excuse himself, Rosario’s eyes following him rather deliberately as he did so. «Ho-la, I know what that look means. Well, Juanito, we just have to give it some time, get her home, and then…»

As he performed his ablutions Juan continued to think quite vividly about his nocturnal plans, and it was in the middle of one of the more diverting fantasies (while washing his hands, incidentally) that he heard the shouts of shock from the café. He spun on his heel, hands still dripping, to face the door, and blinked in confusion when he saw the bright light glaring through the gaps above and beneath. Forgetting his amorous intent for a moment Juan strode to the door and flung it open, just as another flash from the north illuminated the streets in a marginally dimmer but still blinding light. Casting an arm over his eyes he had just enough time to add to the confusion with his own “¿Qué coño?” before a third light flashed into existence, a fourth sun in the Platine sky. As the unearthly glow slowly dimmed enough to let one see without squinting, the clamour died down somewhat as people sat in stunned silence.

“So,” began Camilo, “what happened th–”

Then the windows blew in and the sound of a thousand speeding trains the wail of a million damned souls assaulted the ears filled the head shook the soul what the fuck what the fuck, as the blast waves of the nuclear weapons which had hit Buenos Aires swept past.


The three two hundred-kiloton warheads of the Polaris missile had hit in a roughly equilateral triangle about ten kilometres a side. The first and farthest explosion from the group in the café had been about twenty kilometres away, over the Campo de Mayo in San Miguel. The second was much closer, detonating a mile above the Aeroparque de Jorge Newbury and immolating most of central Buenos Aires and the majority of the Argentinian civilian government. The third and final blast occurred in (ironically enough) La Matanza, not too far from the intersection of the Avenue Camino de Cintura and the Calle Brigadier General Juan Manuel de Rosas, destroying a vast residential and commercial area.

As three towering mushroom clouds punched their way through the wispy clouds hanging over the city, sucking up the atomised remains of more than half a million unwitting porteños and casting an unearthly shadow over two million more writhing, dying casualties, Juan peered out from under the table he’d ducked under to see what was left.

He thought the earth was still trembling until he saw his hands clutching at the table-leg, shaking like a case of delirium tremens. He couldn’t hear am I able to hear am I able to see am I dead anything except a high-pitched whine as his ears tried to figure out as much as he had just what had happened.
Someone was on the floor, their face pulped by some of the broken glass which elsewhere littered the floor like a thousand diamonds. As his breathing slowed – as he felt able to breathe again – Juan heard someone crying. It took him a while to realise it was him. He didn’t waste the time on shame; a quick glance showed everyone else doing the same except for those too deeply in shock, unconsciousness or death to do so.

“¿Quién? ¿Por qué?” someone asked of the heavens. Shakily rising to his feet as if for the first time, Juan couldn’t think of any good reason. There probably wasn’t one. As he murmured Dios, nos ayuda over and over he shook his head in shock and fear and denial and panic. No, there definitely wasn’t one.

«…Este país ha sido atacado con armas nucleares…»

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‘Oh, Albion remains
Sleeping now to rise again…’

Trentham Military Camp, Upper Hutt
April 14, 1984

“Alright, stand at ease,” said the Captain. “Now, no doubt you’ve all heard by now the Prime Minister’s speech, and I’m sure you’re all excited at the news. Britain’s still standing, a bit bloody ‘round the brow but still there.”

The Lance Corporal blinked and opened his mouth to ask a question, before a private from another section did it for him.

“Is the war still on?”

A sad smile from the Captain. “Certainly is, Stevens. As far as I’ve been told, yes. There was a rumour that someone in the Urals surrendered –” a brief murmur in the crowd “– though God knows if there’s enough left of Russia to surrender to anyone.”

“Sir?” The Captain turned to face Private Scott. “Has the Brass said anything about the Americans?”

A sterner look. “Nothing that I’ve heard. The Aussies picked up two of their ships in the Indian Ocean, but that’s about it.”

“S-Sir?” A benignly tolerant look directed at the Lance Corporal this time.

“Why…are we being told all this?”

Another faint smile. “I did wonder when someone was going to ask me that. The Regiment’s been volunteered to help with the logistics of an aid convoy they’re sending over to Britain. And we’re all getting on the boat with them.”

I know the way, know the way, know the way, know the way
I know the way, know the way, know the way, know the way…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

XVI. We Have No SIS​

We’re in for a long night,
A strong night…

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Christchurch, Canterbury
April 12, 1984

The Prime Minister had been bundled rather unceremoniously into a waiting car on the tarmac the moment his plane back from Melbourne had landed, a Skoda which had been furnished by some councillor or another (who was probably all too pleased to have a Communist car taken off his hands) and now roared through the darkened streets of Christchurch towards the Civic, the grand old building which now did duty as Government House.

The car pulled up on Cathedral Square, and Palmer was rushed somewhat wheezily up the stairs to the main door, taking a moment inside to use the conveniences and (more importantly) catch his breath before heading up to a conference room on the first floor where Cabinet now sat.

“Hello, good evening, hi,” he said to nobody in particular as he swept through the fine oak doors, into the snowdrifts of paperwork and general fug of bodies too busy to be washed regularly, to take the seat left vacant at the head of the table. As sweat filtered through the pores he’d given a quick sluicing-down only a few moments earlier and he tried to cover it up by affecting a casual sweep of his hand through his hair, Palmer looked at his colleagues for the first time.

“Well…what did we think of the speech?”

Nobody said anything for a few long moments, instead looking at the Prime Minister as if he’d just arrived from Mars. When a response did come, it was a question from Lange.

“It was…it did the job. Was it…all, ah, entirely within the lines of truth?”

“Well, now, that depends on what you mean, David,” said the PM as his composure flooded back. “If you’re asking about whether it’s all what Hawke and I were told by the Brits who came back on the Perth and was corroborated by many of their crewmates, then yes, it was true. I’d also add,” a meaningful look “that it’s precisely the truth which will be disseminated now and, should frail academics like myself prove more resilient than the cockroaches, when the history books come to be written. But if you’re asking within our happy little family here in your capacity as Party Leader and Minister of Foreign Affairs” God, you can hear Cooper glaring “then I’d say that none of it is strictly false, provided you’ve got a generous definition of the truth.”

“Ah-ye-es,” said Venn Young from elsewhere in the room “I thought there was some creative editing between the lines. So how much is true, then? Reckon the crew of the Perth weren’t exactly lining up to stay, were they?”

“From what I gathered from Bob” (the use of the casual first-name basis exacting a cocked eyebrow from Lange) “he was displeased enough at the news from the captain of the ship that he toyed with not sending anything back at all.”

“You’re joking!” blurted the Minister of Energy, sparking a brief argument before Palmer raised a palm.

“I understand, Bill, that Mister Hawke is under a more…stressful set of circumstances than ourselves. The Hobart is missing, presumed sunk somewhere en route to Britain soon after the war started, and they had to resort to bombing parts of Sydney to keep the bikies from overrunning evacuation centres. In these circumstances, it’s not altogether unreasonable that he took the news of half the Perth’s crew being taken hostage – kept as some sort of deposit –poorly. As I expect anyone reasonable would,” he added with a sharp glance.

“What about England – well, the UK?” pressed Justice. “You were pretty bloody cagey about things outside’a Portsmouth – is there anything left outside’a Portsmouth?”

Palmer blew air through his teeth and clicked his pen as he drew up the shortlist (a very short list, and no kidding yourself there) in his mind.

“Oxford, surprisingly enough. Also Swansea, as well as Aberdeen – which is where the refineries are, even though the Russians hit the wells themselves fairly hard. Um…the important bits of Newcastle are still there; a near miss or something, I believe…ah…Brighton, down in the south, Lancaster, Ipswich, Norwich, uh…” His brow furrowed as he struggled to think of anywhere else, the tension in the air almost palpable as the two dozen men and women around the room tried to play a backwards game of fill-in-the-blanks. “Ah!” said the Prime Minister with a start, rifling through his briefcase as a thought occurred to him. Finding an old envelope, he began to read aloud from it. “Yes, yes…Ipswich…Inverness, and…” The brow creased again, the eyes scanning the piece of paper on which his counterpart across the ditch had written the information passed on to him by the Australian Navy captain, the mind not quite believing the absences on there as he read. Eventually, Palmer looked up guiltily at the Cabinet.

“And that,” he said with an air of finality “is about that.”

Two dozen pairs of eyes stared at him in astonishment. A stammered question came on casualties. Palmer’s mouth set itself into a tight line and he stared emptily as he answered.

“Millions. Tens of millions. There are maybe, we think, twenty million left alive. The population before the bombs fell was roughly fifty-five millions.”

The silence that followed was rent only by the Minister of Employment’s slow “Fuck me!” and the Minister of Trade suggesting that perhaps the country really could afford to send an aid shipment or two to Blighty, but even these remarks paled in comparison to the sudden frantic knocking at the door which, when Koro Wetere opened it, turned out to be from a runner who’d come from the communications room that had been set up in one of the smaller storerooms. Wading his way through the room to the Prime Minister, the worn-looking young man (who Palmer thought he recognised, might’ve been called Something-Or-Other Keyes) gave a curt “Message from Melbourne” and handed over a piece of paper. Palmer scanned it, giving a double-take when his eyes hit what Hawke (for it was he) was driving at in the communique.

…INS Godavari en route to Port Hedland…escorting two freighters, carries diplomatic personnel. Arranging meeting w/them there, going with PM and Foreign Minister hats on to oversee proceedings…info about situation in subcontinent; find enclosed below…

“Oh…Jesus me,” breathed the Prime Minister, briefly forgetting that there were other people in the room. He blinked and clicked his pen as he mused on what to tell them.

“Does…anyone know about the status of the Indian High Commission staff? I believe we’re going to need to see them…oh, David? You may want to pack an overnight bag.”

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You! Look what you’ve done to me!
You lit me, you bit me, I’m rapt…

... .... . / -.-. --- -- .. -. .----. / - --- / -- -.-- / .... --- ..- ... .

From Hot Spots: Readings in Indo-Australasian International Relations (Dunedin: University of Otago Press (National Centre for International Relations), 2014).

…contingent aboard included no less than the Minister of External Affairs, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who divulged to Hawke exactly what had transpired in India as the lamps went out across Europe.

The Soviets had spared plenty of megatonnage for the subcontinent, even considering their thoroughness in dealing with NATO. Pakistan had been hit by tactical weapons based somewhere in Central Asia, and the theory that this was in retaliation for that country’s ongoing support of freedom fighters in Afghanistan was reinforced by the use of a strategic-yield weapon on Peshawar, at the foot of Khyber Pass – one of the primary routes, incidentally, to the Afghans – and Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and the Kojak [sic] Pass would follow in short order…

…military government pulled itself together in surviving locales such as Rawalpindi, Multan, and Faisalabad, albeit bereft of a not inconsiderable number of senior officers. That these centres of emergency government were at first unaware of and then briefly in competition with one another contributed significantly to the next week of hostilities…

…uncertain whether it was the Soviets or the Chinese who attacked India; while the warmer relationship with the USSR and history of hostility with China implied the latter, it was equally plausible that the Soviets had extended their policy of attacking even non-aligned states to limit the number of potential allies who might help their enemies rebuild. Given the role India would play in Operation Transit-Of-Venus and the Reconstruction, this was not perhaps completely inadvisable on their part under strategic logic (though it remains of course as inexcusable a war crime as any of the other nuclear attacks on neutral…

…spite of the destruction of much of China’s second-strike capacity, it seems probable from the geographical spread of targets that it was a missile regiment in Tibet (or, on an outside chance, some of their Soviet counterparts in Outer Mongolia) which launched the initial salvo…

…any case, New Delhi and much of the surrounding metropolis was gone. Even though it was a comparatively small nuclear detonation which hit the city – by the standards of the Exchange, at least – having been estimated as no more powerful than five hundred kilotons, the airburst sufficed to annihilate an area between Palam Airport and the River Yamuna, injuring two million or so people and killing a million more outright. Chief amongst these was Indira Gandhi, the long-serving and often polemical Prime Minister of India…her son, Rajiv, would soon find himself propelled into power even more reluctantly than when he entered government at his mother’s behest…

…rest of the situation only became apparent to the younger Gandhi over the next couple of weeks as the government attempted to replace the uncountable government ministers and bureaucrats immolated in Delhi…

…Calcutta received a similar airburst as the capital, and Old Bombay was not to escape unscathed either…others included Poona, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Jaipur, Ludhiana and Bhopal, where the damage suffered at a large chemical plant would lead to a major chemical leak making the chaos even worse than…
…Pakistani contingent in Kashmir, upon losing communications with Islamabad, launched its own small punitive action against their counterparts on the other side of the ceasefire line. Unfortunately for them, the Indians were better-prepared, and so a week of confused fighting erupted along the front until the Faisalabad clique, emerging victorious in the brief but vicious internal government struggle (in a conflict perhaps even dirtier than that unfolding on the Punjab frontier), called for an end to the informal state of hostilities…
…the fact that this occurred only a couple of days after the rapid escalation of hostilities between the two neighbours is no coincidence, particularly in the wake of the decision taken by an Army division to deploy the rudimentary nuclear devices which were the sum total of Pakistan’s atomic bomb project. The first blow happened in the wee small hours of February 28th, as an Indian armoured formation forced their retreat across the Jhelum River, causing vast military casualties from both the actual blast and the large amount of fallout it generated; the second took place only a couple of minutes later, vaporising the division staging out of Ferozepore…tactical retaliatory strikes on Pakistani units – and more to the point, upon the nuclear research site at Kahuta – forced Pakistan’s hand and led to a white peace as both countries woke up to and focused on their own immense domestic challenges…

…Indian delegation brought more than just news of the situation; they also brought a willingness to cooperate with Australia and New Zealand on “matters of regional significance.” Subsequently, David Lange summarised the situation thus: “They were happy to play ball with us, on the understanding they were granted a piece of the pie.” And a piece of the pie they would get when…

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Asian cigarettes
A long talk, a few cans
If you can…

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Port Hedland, Western Australia
April 17, 1984

Autumn out West was always a bit of a sick joke to a man like Bob Hawke, accustomed as he was to the soothing rather than searing heat of the season.

To David Lange, who’d grown up with Auckland’s humidity, it was as near an approximation of Hell as he’d ever come across. He sat in the dignified silence of diplomacy, percolating in the lightest suit he’d been able to get his hands on and which even now felt like he was buried to his neck in a wool bale.

Outside, the port sat under the oppressive heat pressing down on them like God’s iron, the town wound up into a frenzy of activity since the Indian frigate turned up in the harbour with a brace of freighters in tow. Inside, the trans-Tasman delegations sat across from their Indian counterpart, Mister Rao, a Telugu with dark eyes and a hairline beating a hasty retreat down the sides of his head. As my predecessor might have said, the inscrutable Oriental, thought Lange, as Rao began speaking in that croaking, measured, and noticeably accented drawl.

“Mister Prime Minister, and Minister, I thank you for meeting me at such short notice in such an…inconwenient location.”

“No trouble at all, Minister,” responded Hawke, taking priority over Lange in both diplomatic rank and (alas) nationality. “Yes, to meet a representative of one of our Commonwealth partners and friendly if, ah, somewhat distant neighbours, particularly given the circumstances; well, I’m sure you’ve come further to be here than we have.”

“Yes,” chimed in David, “I’m sure it was a long voyage from…sorry, I assumed Madras or somewhere along the eastern coast, but I confess that we haven’t had much information on your situation, at least” the briefest cool glance at the Australian “not on my side of the ditch.”

“You are both right; I have come from Madras with part of our Eastern Command’s naval force. We were escorted in by the Stuart, one of your own western-based ships, though I understand that Perth did not surwive the war.”

“That’s…accurate, Mister Rao; Fleet Base West was, we believe, targeted directly by one of the three Russian attacks along the coast there.” Rao’s eyebrows hopped quarter of an inch. Presumably that qualified for excitement in the world of diplomacy.

“Sorry, Bob – Mister Prime Minister – but I wondered, Mister Rao, if you were interested in an exchange of what we know of the wider situation. Honesty mightn’t be the most natural stance to take in meetings such as this, but,” Lange spread his wide, sweating palms “we live in interesting times.”
Rao gave a small smile. “It is nice to see the Antipodean directness in action; you understand that my usual environment is werry much more stratified than yours, so forgive my reticence. Well, if we were to begin by perhaps getting an understanding on what cities were hit, we could move on to say what has happened in our regions over the last two months. They have been…eventful…in India, I assure you.”

Lange and Hawke were unsurprised at news of the annihilation of Delhi, Bombay (which the External Minister insisted on pronouncing “Mwumbai”), and Calcutta; nor was Rao surprised at the losses of Canberra, Sydney, Perth, and Darwin. Eyebrows were raised over the survival of Melbourne and the corresponding destruction of Auckland and Wellington, though not nearly as much as those of the Australasians upon hearing of the barney that had broken out in Pakistan.

“Is there any idea at the moment,” asked Lange upon getting the synopsis from the Indian, “of the make-up or stability of whoever’s running things in Faisalabad?”

“The new administration has expressed little interest in communicating with our own Extraordinary Government in Agra,” Rao said, adding with what verged on disinterest “an attitude undoubtedly arising due to the recent misfortune to befall both our nations and the regrettable actions taken by both sides.”

In other words, thought Lange, fuck the Pakis: they made their bed and we damn well obliged them to lay in it. A briefly-shared glance with Hawke indicated that Australia and New Zealand were in agreement in that analysis.

“And the domestic situation in India itself?” pressed the Australian. “I mean, as well as all of those millions dead, what challenges d’you face which might be…problematic for our interactions?”

“Rebels and bandits in the hills are being dealt with where they still persist, if that is what you are referring to,” replied the Indian offhandedly, “but beside that, the primary concerns of continuity of government and supply of essential goods is being restored, although not painlessly. Our three nations share oil deficits, I understand.”

It wasn’t a question, and struck the Australian rather bluntly - early estimates figured that there we're maybe nine months of lubricants at hand; maybe a year’s worth if the rationing system became tighter yet. And pending the resumption of a steady, reliable supply from the refineries of Victoria and Adelaide, Australia’s industry was in very real danger of grinding quite literally to a halt.

“Yes. We’ve been able to manage some exchange between our two countries, but between us there’s scarcely enough fuel oil to supply the convoy being planned for Britain.”

“Here at least, Your Excellency, I believe my nation may be able to offer assistance.” The supreme confidence in that statement took Lange and Hawke aback. “The Prime Minister and his adwisers have deemed it whytal to India’s international position to quickly restore relations with the surwiving Western powers, and so the Navy has been preparing their own sizable contingent to send abroad. Primarily non-perishable items, of course; large amount of American ration packs from several years ago, tinned foods, et cetera – enough to feed some thousands for weeks.”

“We’ve got a similar layout,” disclosed Lange. “Cabinet has authorised several RNZN ships and a number of refrigerated ships have been, uh, requisitioned.”

Hawke said much the same, before fixing the Indian with a far sharper glance. “So, how does this square up for you lot? Casting the “dear mother Britannia” nonsense aside, that is; the Poms gave you far less reason to be nostalgic for ‘em.”

Rao gave a cryptic smile. “Now, I think that is an unfair type of question, Excellency. Britain is, as we have discussed, crippled, and unlikely to rise again for some time. Still, as foreign powers have discovered to their disadwantage, their military remains a force to be reckoned with.”

“You know about Argentina, then,” responded the Australian tersely.

“Communications aren’t rapid at present, but Agra is neither deaf nor blind. Is it not therefore desirable, Prime Minister, that we act as necessary to ensure the stability of Britain’s government? Preserving the Old World trappings of democracy, in a state which is in threat of regression to a style of international relations more in line with the feudal era, is not simply…not just a humanitarian mission, but a security-focussed one. As the citizens of Buenos Aires discovered, colder heads are not prevailing in Portsmouth at the moment.”

“Not to mention,” interjected Lange, “that by shipping several thousand tonnes of food to the other side of the world, you get to hint that India’s in better shape than it – than it might otherwise be imagined to be.”

Rao gazed at Lange for a good long few seconds, the ticking of the clock the only sound in the rest of the world of heat and light and shadow before he responded with the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“How fortunate we are, Mister Lange, that there are such selfless powers as Australia and New Zealand to offer aid without entertaining the prospect of such Machiawellian schemes.”

“I reckon,” said David after a few more long, silent moments “that our three countries may be able to do more than any of us had thought. Prime Minister?”

“Looks like it, Mister Lange. Naturally, we encourage cooperation with the British, but as we realise we’re more capable than other powers, we are prepared to maintain the rule of law in our backyard. Solely to lighten the load on others, of course.”

Rao and Lange glanced at one another and smiled.

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

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Another smoke, another can
Another conversation, maybe…

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Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
April 19, 1984

“Line up in single file!” bawled the Territorial herding the crowd towards the admin hut they’d set up a few days back, breaking off to point a finger at one man and snap “single file, you daft bastard, or I’ll kick your arse so far to the back you’ll walk from fuckin’ Pukekohe!” before continuing his chant: “Line up, single fi-le, fer identification cards!”

Grace shuffled forwards with Alex, the two making the same small talk as everyone else was on what they thought would come of this latest development. Nothing good, was the consensus. Still, ‘not good’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘bad’. And even ‘bad’ was an improvement on living in a tent and sponging yourself down with a damp rag every two days in lieu of bathing.

The Mangere camp was, although nobody inside had any way of confirming their suspicions, one of the more disorderly refugee facilities in the country. The area had been struggling along even before the bomb hit Auckland; understandably, it was felt among the locals that their needs took priority over the folks from up the road who hadn’t been smart enough to get out while there was time. That wasn’t to say that there wasn’t sympathy – how couldn’t there be, when by now everyone in the country knew at least half a dozen people who’d died here – but when the shops were being gradually closed up or co-opted into the government’s wider rationing programme and the cars weren’t driving and one person of every two hadn’t been called in to work for two months, the spirit of hospitality began finding itself increasingly scarce.

Once she got inside the admin hut, Grace was given a rough square of card with the details she gave to a soldier who grilled her briefly before being directed to a room (with four walls and everything!) with a note outside reading IDENT. H-L and a harried man in a wrinkled shirt with several boxes stacked around him.

“Enter,” he murmured without looking up from the form he was filling out, holding out a hand and barking out an almost-angry “Card.” Grace obeyed, and he started copying down her details onto the form.

“Usual residence: Panmure?” he asked, and before waiting for confirmation added “Long way from home, girlie. Relative status deceased-slash-unknown…” his voice descended back into a murmur as he continued filling out the form and briefly conferred with a large volume sitting next to him as Grace looked around the room.

Boxes lined every wall, or at least every one not covered in file cabinets, with surnames and places roughly stencilled or scrawled onto each. The open box had a similar legend to that on the door: E.CENT: F-Mo., with a squint at the book the man was looking through showing what seemed to be a more comprehensive type of phonebook. Suddenly, the fellow spun the book to face her and jabbed a finger at her last name.

“Any of these one of your parents?” he asked, drumming the fingers of his left hand impatiently while those on his right twirled a pen idly. After a while she came across the details of one SANDRA ELIZABETH and nodded, indicating it to the man sitting across the desk. With a flourish he inscribed her mother’s details and signed off at the bottom, handing the form across to her as he signed next to the name in the electoral roll and gave a similarly-irritable “Sign where it says.” Grace complied meekly and he took the form back, scanning it quickly and nodding briskly, tearing off and handing her a sheet of carbon paper underneath.

“Take-to-Processing-and-follow-their-instructions; follow-the-red-line,” he said like he was reading from (probably is reading from) a script, before responding to her question of what and why with nothing but a terse “It’ll be explained to you when you get there.” Suitably dehumanised, dazed, and confused, she left and navigated the corridors.

When she left the hut a while – an hour, ten minutes, twenty? – later, Grace was holding what she was reliably informed was to be her ration card and identity from now on, to be reported if lost or stolen under penalty of the EPA, whatever that meant. Back at the tent – to which she walked alone for the first time in several weeks – everyone else had one too. By the end of the next day, everyone in line for dinner (now the third of three daily meals) had one, and they were naturally a hot topic. Among other things.

So it was that Grace and her tentmates learned of the transportations.

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​

I knew you – not long
I knew you – you’re so strong
So strong…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Interlude II – Where Beer Does Flow and Men Chunder​

Spirit of a sailor
Circumnavigates the globe…

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From Wynd, M. A Century on the High Seas: The Royal New Zealand Navy 1910 to 2010 (Manukau: Auckland University Press, 2010).

Chapter 8: World War Three Activities in the Pacific and Beyond

…addition to the decision to postpone the decommissioning of the Otago, the re-commissioning of the Taranaki was thus a major priority of the Muldoon Government in the run-up to the outbreak of war in Europe, and this paid off handsomely when the boiler which had been ceremonially extinguished almost two years earlier burned once more with a new and – as it would soon prove – vital flame…

…The Otago and Taranaki made port at Melbourne on April 21st, holds packed with many tonnes of supplies both for the seamen and soldiers aboard and as a part of the aid shipment intended for Britain. They escorted three freighters from New Zealand (the Dunedin, the Marlborough, and the Southern Cross; all owned, incidentally, by a shipping line run by the Mayor of Dunedin's family) loaded with beef and mutton carcasses as well as a quantity of coal from Southland and the West Coast and even a token amount of aluminium from Tiwai Point. However, the Emergency Cabinet had made the collective decision to withhold pharmaceutical supplies, and medical aid of any kind was in short stock amongst the supplies sent on the Convoy. Aside from the obvious lack of supply within New Zealand (already supplies of vital drugs were running low: it was becoming hard for the man on the street to access several drugs which could no longer be imported from Europe or supplemented by Australian supplies), there was a very small hope that perhaps the British might have something to spare…

…of the USS Roanoke in Suva came too late for it to be of assistance in TRANSIT OF VENUS, but the additional range afforded by the inclusion of a fleet oiler into the Tasman navies did allow for extended expeditions to be undertaken in the Central Pacific as winter approached. Also of interest was the information the sailors aboard this vessel and the Merrill brought with them: of the destruction of Pearl Harbour (at least three bombs), San Diego (same), Los Angeles (uncountable), Okinawa (four bombs), Guam (same), Subic Bay (destroyed with Manila) and all of the other American military bases they had attempted to make contact with. This would factor heavily into the reasonably sedate efforts at making contact in the North-West Pacific, though the decision to send an expedition to the West Coast regardless would prove…

…has been little official indication as to what the actual policy discussions in Melbourne and Christchurch were, we can infer that the Australian and New Zealand Governments decided to bolster the naval taskforce assigned to the Convoy – although this was explained away as defending the merchant shipping against Soviet submarines, the British experience at Whitby had shown that most, if not the entirety, of the Soviet Union’s submarines were out of commission – in a move which appears to have been designed to tacitly inform the British of the shift in the balance of power east of Aden. The decision to set sail on Anzac Day was also significant in another sense, as it affirmed national identity and acted as a crucial moment in the trans-Tasman relationship and a further step away from New Zealand’s former dependence upon Britain…

…the Indians, for their part, were mainly involved to alert the British and by extension the rest of the NATO states that reports of their demise had been very exaggerated (losses in Delhi, Old Bombay, Calcutta, and others notwithstanding), as well as delivering a message that they were now powerful enough to spare significant stocks of food and fuel to send as aid despite their losses in the Exchange, and a not-so-tacit declaration of their aspirations towards great power status in the new order. While the latent significance of the Indian effort was not appreciated initially, Rajiv Gandhi’s 1986 declaration…

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The lust of a pioneer
Will acknowledge no frontier…

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Flagstaff Gardens
Melbourne, Victoria
April 24, 1984

It was an obscenely nice afternoon in Melbourne. No humidity, high teens even at the end of April, and bright, bright sunshine. You could understand why there were literally hundreds of thousands of refugees crowding the place.

They’d had a good squiz at the refugee camps sprawling outwards from the city when they were flown in, with the acres of canvas and corrugated iron and caravans speckling every surface east of the Bay. A million was the best guess anyone had made, almost all of whom had come from Sydney or Canberra, descending upon Australia’s once and future capital like a horde since the wee small hours of February 22. The Lance Corporal had never seen so many people in one place; he was certainly prepared to believe the rumour going around that Melbourne’s three-or-four million made up the largest known city in the world.

In such an immense urban sprawl there were little islands of calm, places where, like back home, you could tilt your head and squint and convince yourself that there hadn’t been a war. Like this park, for instance.

Cricket was the game of the day; it had been dry enough recently for the ground to be good enough for it, and (more to the point) it had helped prevent a fight from breaking out over which rules they should play rugby by – “Aussie Fucking Rules,” Jonesy had sneered good-humouredly, “or league. League, mate!”

However, he wasn’t one of the company’s good cricket men, so he got to sit and watch as a few of the New Zealanders began hammering some stumps scrounged up by the Aussies into the ground, and the Lance Corporal got to let his mind wander and wonder what England would be like. Probably less cricket, for a start, he thought as the umpire produced a coin for the toss. Less of everything, I imagine. Pity. Not any sort of OE without a trip to London and a pub or two. A pause in thought as he sat up to watch the batting. Not likely to be going to Big Ben, either. Pity. Coulda sent a postcard. A crack, a flash of maroon as a ball scudded into the trees, and the two Aussies on bat started running as the Kiwis scurried about in the outfield. The Lance Corporal watched with detached interest as the process repeated itself a few times over before the Aussies were finally bowled out, shouting erupted from the crowd of soldiers and sailors who were spectating, and the teams changed over and they went on bowling and batting and fielding in the golden autumn sun. Suppose it’ll be summer in Britain by the time we get there, he thought, fingers idly tugging at grass which (understandably) hadn’t seen mowing for some months. Wonder if it’s anything like as nice as this?

As the Australians and New Zealanders played cricket under a sunset of violent reds and golds and purples, he couldn’t help but feel a tiny swell of Antipodean pride – even as the niggling voice of doubt piped up to say that the answer to his question was likely to be unpleasant.

Ah, well. Least she’s a decent sunset.

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Tyranny of distance
Didn’t stop the cavalier…

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Government House
Melbourne, Victoria
April 24, 1984

The bigwigs had descended upon Government House like a Biblical plague, and the poncy kai hadn’t been far behind. Not that David Lange was complaining; being both bigwig and fond of a decent meal.

The PM had been similarly inclined, making his way over from Christchurch soon after Lange and Hawke returned from Port Hedland (these jaunts back and forth across the ditch, he thought, are gonna have Roger and the Ministry of Supply shitting bricks, I bet) and was now hobnobbing with his counterpart not too far across the room. David would have done the same, but seeing as how Hawke was wearing the Foreign Minister hat alongside his Prime Ministerial one, it would also have meant hovering around Palmer like a fly around shit. And while he was prepared to believe that he hadn’t wanted to steal the Prime Minister’s seat from under his nose, he was also fresh out of patience for his erstwhile deputy. No, kowtowing to him was simply too much to bear.

There, at least, he thought as he sipped on a decent glass of bubbly, was a small mercy. A lesser man might have bashed him over the head with the unexpected reversal. A more arrogant – no, scratch that, Geoff’s intellectually arrogant, at least – a pettier one certainly would have. Whatever else Lange might have held against him, the PM was content to lead by mediation. Probably it was what the country needed.

But outside the warrens of the Beehive – well, of Cathedral Square – they were all bit players in a far larger drama. The impressment of half the Australian crew of the Perth had not impressed Melbourne and Christchurch, with nobody quite trusting the British sailors sent in their place. Not that they were at all mistreated, of course. Indeed, the sailors who made up half the Perth’s return crew were welcomed as heroes, feted as survivors from the Mother Country and living proof that Britain was down but not out. At least, this was the official line trotted out in propaganda. Besides the obvious secrecy which could be woven around the sailors aboard Perth, it was useful to have official confirmation of the situation in Britain – to say nothing of whatever nightmarish rumours of Germany the Poms brought with them – as a club to beat whingers at home with.

Back in the here and now, Hawke’s grizzled face hove back into view, grinning at Lange. The Australian had apparently necked his glass of beer (him versus Rob, now that would be a match for the ages!) if the empty hands were anything to go by, and the enthusiasm with which he pumped David’s hand as he greeted him reinforced the impression. Unless, of course, it was just that he wasn’t accustomed to seeing genuine happiness in people these days – Hawke was certainly looking pleased.

“Ah! The man of the hour, eh? Looks like we’ve managed to get enough together to send topside as a nice little Queen’s Birthday present, then, dunnit?”

“It ought to keep Wee Willie Whitelaw satisfied for a bit, at least,” he responded with forced levity, before another thought interrupted it. “King’s Birthday now, too, I suppose. Speaking of, I wonder how Charlie’ll respond to getting his elbow ever so gently jogged once our boys get there in force regarding the, ah, fulfilment of the other half of that verbal contract.”
Hawke’s grin all of a sudden just showed a lot of teeth.

“They’ll react positively, we’d hope. It’d be a little bit…ungracious of ‘em not to, wouldn’t it? Hardly in keeping with all that Scout’s Honour and Land of Hope and Glory bull, anyway.”

Lange made an affirmative noise as he sipped his South Australian wine, before changing tack with “The Indians certainly seem to be playing a similar game, at least so far as strong-arming the Poms is concerned”, to which Hawke nodded along.

“Their Foreign Minister’s clearly been at this longer than either of us, eh?” Another mirthless grin. “If they’re sending him over with their lot he’ll run rings around the flaming Foreign Office, wunn’e?” Another sip of beer (where the hell did that come from?). “Mind, I reckon our intelligence fellahs’ll find out themselves, won’t they?”

“Ye-es,” he responded at length. “It’ll certainly be…educational. We’ll see if any of our High Commission staff made it, too – and wouldn’t it be a shame, just, if they were to misplace a sheet of A4 here or there in a diplomatic bag which had already been sealed and was intended for home?”

Hawke’s smile was suddenly frighteningly sober.

“You and I are gonna get along just fine, Minister.”

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So why should it stop me?
I’ll conquer and stay free…

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Port Phillip Bay, Australia
April 25, 1984

Upon receiving the order from land, Captain (until yesterday Commander) Bailey returned the salute given by the Royal Navy officer who had taken the place of his second mate (it was probably a poor attitude towards the Western Alliance that made him think of the man as a Pommie bastard, though if the ’82-’83 season was to have been the last Ashes ever Australia had at least won and set that part of the universe in order) and turned to his (Australian) second-in-command.

“Let’s get this show on the road, then,” he said, taking his place on the bridge and surveying the sea in front of them. As the Perth set out along the navigation channel, followed closely by the Brisbane, Taranaki, and Otago, all with the ritual amount of horn-blowing (of course – nothing to boost the local morale like saying “we’re so well off we can ship food halfway across the globe and expense be damned”), the comms officer radioed the Indian flotilla (by way of several transmissions bounced across the continent) to confirm the rendezvous and route. All going well it would be seventeen days to the Cape of Good Hope, with the plan being to meet the Indian contingent somewhere southeast of Madagascar. From there, it’d be a further eighteen days to Portsmouth, assuming they ran into the usual stormy weather of the Cape and whatever spring in the North Atlantic had to throw at them. Though, from what the Poms had said and he had seen in Portsmouth, there were almost certainly worse things awaiting them on land.

He found himself smiling as he looked out across the Bay towards Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean.

Bloody brilliant.

Not too far away, aboard HMNZS Otago, the Skipper (a captain, if not a Captain) was somewhat more sanguine, though it was easier to be happy-go-lucky without half of his crew being held hostage (through of course if you counted the on-base bar, there’d been a hostage situation of sorts as soldiers and sailors kept the barman on his feet all night on the 23rd). The Otago was well-stocked with supplies, and despite insistence that rations were to remain determined by the same strict guidelines as back in port, everybody recognised that even two months after the War had begun and ended the danger of enemy submarines made a little caloric hazard pay more than fair. After all, it wasn’t like paying the seamen in money would do them any more good, what with the wage and price freeze replaced with the grim arithmetic of rationing and the very concept of currency reduced to a strange limbo.

Below decks, the Lance Corporal was having trouble appreciating these pressing economic issues, as he was currently being sick out a window. Fuck me, I hope nobody’s taking photos, he thought, before breaking out in chuckles in between heaves at how stupid it all was. Here he was: the boy from New Plymouth sicking his guts up on a boat to Britain after surviving a nuclear war.

Well, at least the sunsets were nice.

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Aotearoa!
Rugged individual!
Glisten like a pearl
At the bottom of the world…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

XVII. Ha-Ha, Charade You Are​

Yeah, you’re getting older, you’re getting older
And you don’t know why, you don’t know what to do…

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Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand
May 3, 1984

The weather had been miraculously good for the last couple months, with only the increasingly frequent sou’easterlies carrying dark hints of the winter lying in wait on the other side of the horizon. It was still nice today, sunlight drenching the towering edifice of the BNZ building (which, with international finance somewhat reduced in stature, had found sufficient room to act as Parliament’s current home) and the bureaucrats within. There were fewer hands available to work the tiller these days, an unfortunate number of that grey and functional race having met their makers on February 22nd, and the shortfall had been made up by asking anyone with relevant knowledge in the required fields to come and help coordinate efforts from here. The results had been…well, less bad than they could have been.

Which didn’t overcome the issues still present with communication. Telephone links with the North were still patchy at best, as the rotating crews on at Makara did their level best to get the Cook Strait cable patched up without getting too fatally doused in radiation from the unnervingly close-by skeleton of Wellington. They’d apparently had to start screening those workmen who’d come from the city; two had gone AWOL and presumably made their way across the blackened hills of the south coast on some sort of suicidal pilgrimage back home.

Thank God for Think Big! Geoffrey had never thought he’d think it but here he was. As it transpired, having several kilometres of copper wire and 220kV cable ready and waiting for completion of the final stage of the Ohau scheme had been one of the better moves Muldoon had made (even if it had been considered perhaps surplus to requirements, back when such things had mattered, to spend tens of millions of dollars the country didn’t have on a third immense dam) before the shit hit the fan. They’d already been able to lay an initial cable across the hills behind Karori as far as Johnsonville; with luck, he thought aloud at the Minister for Energy, he thought they might have some power from Benmore going back north before winter hit.

“You’re joking, right?” Bill Birch responded with an incredulous look, elaborating before the awkward pause became too excruciating with “Yes, we might be getting some juice across the Strait again, sir, but with the current line we’ve got out at Johnsonville it’s like running an entire house’s appliances off of one socket – oh, you can do it, but if you don’t watch yourself it’ll short out. If you’re lucky.”

Duly chastised, and unsure whether to commend the Minister for his sense of honesty or make a note of him in the mental filing cabinet under “Second-Priority Revenge”, Palmer made a quiet admission of his ignorance and moved on.

“Well, then, I believe we’ll just have to hope the winter doesn’t come on us too quickly or hard until it’s reconnected. I can’t be the only one waiting for nuclear winter, though I shan’t miss its absence.”

“True, and we’re still predicting less demand than usual. For a start, the resettlement centres use nothing close to the amount of a house in Auckland or Wellington, and there are more people per household in any case. And, if we can cut back on the amount even further through an information campaign or something, we oughta be away laughing.”

Palmer found himself nodding along and his thoughts vocalising themselves again. “At any rate, I suppose the industrial concerns aren’t exactly overtaxing the electricity supply at present, either, and as long as the lights stay on at all the freezing works, I suppose we can rob Peter to keep a bar heater going in Paul’s house – there won’t be much demand for new cars put together in the Hutt, will there? Or to send a great whacking amount of exports processed in our factories abroad…”

He tailed off as he noticed Birch’s involuntary wince: the PM was still used, even after two months in the hot seat, to thinking of discussions with Cabinet ministers as chats with fellow Labour members, not with the former enemy. Think Big had been Birch’s baby, after all, so to hear the industrial boom it had been created to service casually tossed aside…well, it probably hadn’t raised the Prime Minister in his esteem. As if I bloody care, Geoffrey thought rancorously. I’m just here to sign the papers and keep out of Cabinet’s way. Surprising how little a compromise candidate is called upon to get involved in the negotiations; I’m the red-headed stepchild of the Emergency Government.

Birch mistook Palmer’s faux pas for a calculated insult, which considering his last leader’s lack of subtlety wasn’t too surprising. That stopped the conversation rather dead, and they skirted around each other for another five minutes or so before Palmer came up with some frivolous technical point or another to fob Birch off with and he could, mercifully, leave.

What he wouldn’t have given to be able to follow him. But that Cabinet agenda for Monday’s meeting wasn’t going to itemise itself, he supposed, and nor would the authorisation forms for Black Crucible (he suspected the hand of David in coming up with these operational names) sign themselves.

At least he was back up to six hours sleep a night. He even got to see his wife sometimes.

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And you don’t know what
You’ve got yourself into…

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Napier, Hawke’s Bay
May 12, 1984

“Whaddaya reckon, she about time?” asked one of the two uncles who’d been drafted into lookout duty.

“Yep, figure they’ll be here any minute now,” responded the other, “‘s not as if there’ll be much traffic on the way, eh?”

The car seemed to have taken that as a cue to materialise around the corner at that instant, the grey paint of the Rolls shining and silver in the early afternoon sun. A little drizzle had fallen that morning, the tail end of a patch of on-and-off wet weather that had been pestering the Bay since Wednesday, but it had eased off for the event. Nice of Mother Nature, thought the first usher, the tempestuous old bitch.

The father of the bride had been driving the rented car, and after pulling up at the kerb let one of the uncles fuss over the bride and bridesmaids (say what you will for Gay Gordon, the fella knows how to make sure they look good, he thought while checking his own tie and cuffs in the wing mirror) as the second uncle jogged inside to give the organist the signal.

A turn and a gentle fatherly smile at Holly.

“Showtime, my girl,” he said as they lined up.

The rumble of feet and fabric as the guests stood in their pews (emptier than they should have been; absent cousins and grandparents and dear friends from Auckland and Wellington were more than a few, but you couldn't tell unless you looked) and turned to face the door as the strains of the Wedding March began echoing through the church and three bridesmaids made their way down the aisle in dresses which, if not of the same cut, were at least all the same colour (dressmakers being few and far between nowadays, one had to forage as best one could). Their lovely creamy yellow complemented rather than spoke over the crisp whiteness which came around the corner as they lined up on their side of the altar (you can’t hardly tell, the groom’s mum told herself, that it’s being reused from Aunt Noelene’s do thirty years ago. Thank God she’s such a slender girl, imagine finding the silk for a new dress these days!). And it was true; she cut an elegant figure, gliding on like a swan across a lake of worn carpet towards her husband-to-be, looking sharp in a new suit (the image of which was only slightly marred, in her father’s opinion, by the mane of hair cascading down to the back of his collar) as his three groomsmen stood back and to the side in their own simple grey three-pieces.


The usual rigmarole of back-and-forth and reading and hymn took place as the pressure built up until, as the tension crescendoed, the priest – a stout Englishman with a gleam of most unchristian mischief in his eye at the best of times – uttering the well-worn-if-a-wee-bit-secular phrases from the New Zealand Prayer Book.

“Holly Rose Greer, do you take Jonathan Hamish Maclean to be your husband? Will you share his joys and ease his burdens? Will you be honest with him, and be faithful to him always, as long as you both live?”

“I do.”

A nod, with just the faintest hint of a smile giving lie to the priest’s solemn facade as he turned to the groom.

“Jonathan Hamish Maclean, do you take Holly Rose Greer to be your wife? Will you share her joys and ease her burdens? Will you be honest with her, and be faithful to her always, as long as you both live?”

“I do.”

“I now ask the parents of the bride and groom: do you pledge to strengthen this marriage by upholding both Jonathan and Holly with your love and concern?”

The response came back fourfold: “We do.”

“May you find a rich and full life together.” The priest lifted his shaggy head to the congregation. “And will you, their friends and family, do all in your power to support this couple now, and in the years ahead, whatever they may bring?”

“We will.”

The parents sat throughout this in parallel, both mothers holding back their tears as the couple went through their vows and both fathers maintaining their stolid composure as the rings were exchanged and the priest turned once more to the congregation.

“We have witnessed the promises made by Jonathan and Holly, and now recognise them as husband and wife. Steady on there,” he interjected with good-humoured smile and raised hand as the two hovered closer together, “I’ll be out of your way shortly. Jonathan and Holly, you have committed yourselves to one another in love, joy, and tenderness. Become one; fulfil your promises. And may God’s grace be with you and keep you forever. Amen. Now,” he said with what might have been a wink, “you may kiss the bride.”

The rest went as all weddings do, register, applause, exit, and reunions and chatter over a cuppa in the hall afterwards as the newlyweds received their congratulations. Rationing had put a dent in the spread on offer, but there were always ways around. Cousin Phil had found a bag of sugar on the back of a truck, relatives from a farm had brought an immense amount of eggs and milk, and flour had been cribbed together by the eldritch organisation of the Aunties’ Guild so there was at least a cake to cut, and a well-made one at that. The same communal spirit applied to the reception later on; rations had been carefully husbanded for weeks to make sure there was enough for a memorable dinner. The illusion of peace and prosperity was upheld as the two went off to their honeymoon; a hotel in town for the night, and then a few days in Rotorua as they began building their future.

And life would go on.

- .-- --- / .-.. --- ... - / ... --- ..- .-.. ... / ... .-- .. -- -- .. -. --. / .. -. / .- / ..-. .. ... .... -... --- .-- .-..​

So don’t come out in the kitchen
Or any other place…

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From Is This It? A Look at the New Zealand Dream (Manukau: University of Auckland Press, 2012)

…autumn of 1984 passed with remarkable tranquillity. The initial shock of X-Day had dulled, like a burn which turns to scar tissue, and for most New Zealanders some sort of routine had returned to their lives.

…transferrable skills would be more valuable than anticipated as the Auckland reconstruction boom got into full swing and the scattered natural disasters of the 1980s – particularly those affecting the East Coast – allowed for increasingly seamless cooperation between the industry and government, through its Civil Defence arm…

…foundation stone was laid in 1989 for the New City by David Lange in what has become one of his more memorable photos, setting the trend of proactive government involvement in national reconstruction which also left room for private enterprise…

…has proved invaluable in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, with the Minister for Canterbury Recovery having become rather a point of pride for its holder…

Excerpt from ‘Building Up To…Something?’ in The New Zealand Listener (September 28, 2013).

…though it has become rather fashionable in recent years to attribute this rapid response to the catastrophes of the 80s, we also tend to overestimate the foresight of those making policy and laying the foundations for the future – the current system isn’t a beautifully planned design like Auckland’s New City, but rather an amalgam of stop-gap measures which have complemented one another and miraculously ended up working pretty well.

It is a pattern familiar to those in Wellington, where the fears over radiation in the initial few months of the rebuilding period led to a massive number of often contradictory plans guidelines set which have led to the agonisingly slow pace of recovery there compared to other centres…

…around the docks is impressive – the inter-island ferry terminal has functioned with only occasional hiccups since Geoff Palmer opened it in his last act as Prime Minister – it remains out of place next to the deserted former CBD and the Exclusion Zone, which give the impression of a well-kept graveyard and a poorly-kept back section, respectively. As for the suburbs of the area, the focus of their orbit has shifted to Petone and Lower Hutt, where the refugee administration and dockyards eventually allowed for a reasonably smooth transition back to prosperity.

But this is the problem. Wellington has never really reclaimed what it had prior to 1983. Even though it’s a moot point, the demolition of most of the historic CBD in a frenzy of building and investment had already ripped the metaphorical guts out of the structure; by the time the bombs fell, then, it was merely a matter of knocking down the rebar. And while the following thirty years tried to renovate (even if only haphazardly) the burnt-out shell, the fact of the matter is and remains that, with the bureaucracy which once sustained it now well-entrenched in Christchurch, and the headquarters of the companies which had been based there long since re-established or relocated to Auckland or Hamilton or New Plymouth, there seems little reason for anyone to actually live there, let alone return.

That’s the view taken by many in the Hutt Valley, at least, and across the Strait in Nelson. Wellingtonians themselves number only seventy-five thousand today, almost all of those in the old eastern or southern suburbs where reconstruction has been more enthusiastic since the route through the old CBD became passable again and services were fully restored (functional sewerage being one of thsoe things necessary for a cosmopolitan lifestyle). While a further forty thousand or so remain in what was once the Northern Ward – the hill suburbs of Johnsonville, Khandallah, Tawa – their secession to form the Town of Ohariu hasn’t helped the former capital’s case. There’s no longer anything to commute to, after all; they too now orbit the sun of Petone’s docklands and Lower Hutt’s office blocks…

…cultural pull is still disproportionately strong, as old Cuba Street’s Bohemian dinginess has replicated itself along Jackson Street and the music scene of the country, finally removing itself from the long shadow of Dunedin and Flying Nun, is once more dominated by Wellingtonians (for those of you who disagree with this old fogey, wait and see – there are tens of thousands of young’uns fresh from Killjoy’s latest tour who can lecture you for hours on the merits of those four alumni of pre-war Wellington…

…comparison, Auckland’s sheer gravitational pull as a natural national centre of commerce and overseas-bound trade meant that, with the gingerly improving situation of the Nineties and Big Billy Birch’s intense focus on the national rebuild, the plans which Tizard and Co. had been drawing up for a decade got to see the light of day…

…broad, tree-lined boulevards of the area, while reminiscent of the cloying repetitiveness of the Hutt Valley’s post-World War Two suburbs, are a nice symbol of the regrowth of the area. Queen Street is no longer in the shadow of Queen’s Drive, and even the funereal atmosphere of the North Shore seems more well-cared-for than Wellington’s Exclusion Zone. The blank canvas the architects had to work with didn’t hurt, but it’s pleasantly surprising all the same that what could have turned into an exercise in utilitarian city planning visible in Perth or Sydney was averted in favour of something which managed – in this writer’s opinion, at least – to recapture some of the spirit of the old without being held hostage to it. Aucopolis, as the Governor-General declared a few years ago, resurgens indeed…

…CCA, ANZ, BNZ, TSB: all of the acronyms are returning to the area, possibly with a view to escaping the close quarters of Christchurch following the de-nationalisation of much of the financial sector, and this has led to a building boom second only to that of Christchurch…

…rapidly approaching a moment of truth where a choice must be made between two similar but distinct futures for Christchurch: one where it is handled as an ego project to reclaim old glories which harkens back to some idealised past and blinding itself to the future, or to pay tribute to the past but build for a future which can only ever be new and above all different.

Christchurch has a lot of tough choices to make. Let’s hope the new capital makes better ones than the old.

-.-- --- ..- / .-.. .. -.- . / - .... . / ..-. . . .-.. / --- ..-. / ... - . . .-..​

And don’t go on being someone
That you’re never gonna recognise…

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State Highway 1, Waikato
May 10, 1984

The bus had driven them out of the camp at long last, fifty excited, chattering souls who were in better spirits than they had been for literally months. Grace had found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with Mel, who’d apparently been pegged for the same type of relocation as her, and they’d speculated on what might be ahead of them. Nothing glamorous, they’d agreed, but nothing worse than they’d had sitting in the mud in the camp.

About two-thirds of the people on this bus were female; there seemed to be a desire to get women away from the camps quicker than – or maybe on account of – men, though Mel figured they’d still be expected to do the same of whatever work the men got landed with.

“Stands to reason,” she said in the now-familiar tone, embittered and knowing and a little condescending, “after all, more productive to make us work for our keep. If they have us planting spuds all day it’ll mean we’re feeding ourselves. If we’re digging holes it’ll make us too tired to cause trouble. If we’re ploughing fields – okay, maybe the guys do that more, I don’t imagine your Farmer Brown’ll be too hot on the idea of women doing real work” the stress accompanied by a roll of the eyes “but shit, it saves on diesel. Pretty sure this bus is one of those LPG ones, less fuel used in this is more for a tractor somewhere out here in cow country.”

Grace honestly hadn’t considered the logistical side, and admitted she was just happy to be out from behind the damned wire.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, so am I,” responded Mel. “I just don’t think they’ve been doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. Let’s be honest, it’s probably just Muldoon putting more bloody dole bludgers to the wheel.”
At that a woman sitting across the way turned to stick her oar in.

“Nah, Muldoon’s long gone, girlie.”

“Who knifed him? Lange or Mc-Whozzisface?” asked a middle-aged housewife sort somewhere behind.

“I heard he quit.”

“Bullshit!”

“Eh! Not old Piggy, no bloody chance.”

“One of the soldiers said Palmer was behind it all.”

“Who?”

“Bloke who’s Prime Minister now; haven’t you been listening to the news since – Jesus, what was it, Cheryl? – March?”

“With what radio?”

“Yeah, let me pull up my copy of the Listener.”

“Hey, ask a cop once we get to the transit centre, it’s a unity government now.”

“So much for Bruce Bee, then.”

“Take more than a nuclear war to make the SoCred vote worth it.”

“Well,” said Grace to Mel as the conversation whistled overhead “put like that it makes sense, though if they want people like you and me milking cows right off the bat…” Her shrug took in the new (well, second-hand, but clean) clothes she’d been allowed to pick out from a storeroom set up near the depot at the camp, stuff which if not stylish looked warm. If the clinging fog over the dewy, rolling hills was anything to go by, that had been a good choice.

They wound up in Te Aroha, one of those towns Grace had heard of but which could have been anywhere for all she knew, about four. South of the Bombays was a strange, alien landscape. The weird smallness of the street here – which was apparently the main drag – only reinforced the image. A local policeman (who looked far less run-down than the gaunt figures in blue back in Auckland) directed them all to their accommodations for the evening in a local motel politely enough, though, and they saw the place where they would sleep indoors for the first time in over two months. That was when the most shocking part came as Mel, upon seeing a bed, started crying and couldn’t stop. It was like being five and seeing your father vulnerable; disillusioning yet humanising.

War, Grace had established, was very strange.

..-. .-. --- -- / .- / -.-. --- .-.. -.. / ... - . . .-.. / .-. .- .. .-.. ..--..​

Yeah, why don't you do yourself in?
So you’re getting older, getting older,
And you don’t know why, you don’t know what to do…

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

XVIII: BLACK CRUCIBLE

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats…

NORTH

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State Highway 1
Auckland City
May 23, 1984

The truck had left Papakura not long before dawn, and last night’s rain had eased back to a slight drizzle. As the truck rumbled along the motorway, the houses to left and right stood in silent, brooding vigil as the day dawned dimly over Mount Wellington.

The other three men in the Range Rover – the Sergeant, the Captain, and the Technician – sat quietly as the Driver navigated down the empty motorway, the southbound lane on their right devoid now of even the abandoned cars which had peppered it in the chaos following X-Day. It made for an eerily tranquil scene: the broken glass had long since been cleared, the cars taken away for repairs or scrapping, the unkempt grass of the verges the only indication of something amiss.

As soon as they began coming into Penrose the illusion began to falter with the damage becoming more severe and widespread, the lack of windows and roofing increasingly apparent in the buildings alongside as they drew nearer to what the Brass were calling Ground Zero. The crew made a brief stop at the checkpoint next to the Power Board building off McNab, the bored-looking policeman checking their papers to ensure they had authorisation to enter the Outer Zone suddenly becoming animated once he saw their protective gear and the signatures lining the bottom of the paper. With an almost comical salute, the old man waved them through the roadblock towards the central zone.

Before long, as the motorway curved through Penrose and into Ellerslie, things began getting interesting in a hurry. Although the northbound lanes had been almost deserted on X-Day itself – nobody had been trying to get closer to the city, not in those terrifying hours – but between panicked refugees and three long months of wear and tear, a few vehicles had broken down or had prangs on this side, too. This was why the Driver had had to slow down to about 50, and why the others had plenty of time to gawk. Most buildings that the Technician saw were still standing, but the ones you could call habitable had become a noticeable minority, with loss of windows the least of their problems. Most of the trees were stripped of leaves and the cars in the southbound lanes still awaiting removal – and by now there were far more of those – were all missing their windows.

He tried not to notice the stains on some of the cars’ interiors.

There were still people living in the houses around here though, those too stubborn, stupid, or vital to have been evacuated since. Or possibly they’d returned, as a few baulks of timber outside a house on the left indicated, to begin reconstruction (which in and of itself implied membership of one or more of those three groups). Even those scanty signs of life petered out quickly, only a deserted golf course on their right providing an alien sea of green amidst the devastation. By now they had made it about five kilometres from where the motorway crossed the Mount Wellington Highway, and two out of every three buildings they could see were absolutely gutted, nothing but shells filled with a mess of ash and architecture.

There really isn’t, he realised as they slowed down and pulled up next to the train station in Greenlane to show their documentation at the last checkpoint before they pulled on their respirators to enter the Inner Zone, there really isn’t going to be anything left at all.

By the time the low bulk of Mount Hobson reared up the truck was picking its way along the road at about 30. Between the now-continuous lines of totalled cars on their right and the rubble-piles which had once been houses on either side of the motorway, only the most distinct geographic features and the Driver’s familiarity with the road gave any indication of location. To the Captain and the Sergeant, it all seemed more or less the same, with only a few of the stronger walls or the occasional tree trunk suggesting that these piles of wood and brick and concrete had once been homes full of light and noise and life.

Another few minutes passed, and the landscape became increasingly monotonous as they followed the green spray-painted markers which told them that the Viaduct up ahead was safe (enough). Over there, on the right if you knew what you were looking for, an immense pile of gleaming white stone lined up with a cross on the map, as on the left a burned-out forest of rebar and concrete and cars peppered the upper reaches of what had been Broadway. That was quickly followed by a burned-out arboreal forest, the stubbly regrowth stretching onwards towards Mount Eden.

The Technician was in shock as the Rover bounced along towards the caved-in shell of the prison. Only the concrete and Victorian masonry had been strong enough to survive this far in, and besides these half-submerged wrecks nothing else but acres of ruins stretching out under the cold grey sky. The vehicles lining the road were steel and aluminium carcasses. The tyres had melted into the asphalt.

Nothing left.

Nothing.

To the north, a few concrete ribcages stood dimly outlined against the horizon, but fuck all besides that. No time to muse, though; the motorway had collapsed in an almighty maelstrom of concrete and steel just past Symonds, and he had to look at a map to see if there was anywhere they might be able to off-road from towards their objective.

It took half an hour to confirm that it was hopeless. The right lane was too jammed with…all of that…to cross in the Rover, and if the view from atop the overbridge was anything to go by, the roads in Newmarket made even that mess look orderly. After another fifteen minutes, the Captain decided that there was nothing else for it: they were parking just north of the Viaduct and continuing on foot.


It took an hour, a long, agonising hour, to make what should have been a ten-minute walk. The four men picked their way across what the Technician swore had been a Catholic school, but was in practice indistinguishable from the rest of the rubble, taking exaggerated care not to snag their clothing or kit on anything or slip on the slick, uneven ground, nothing but their footfalls and the slow, steady clicking of the Geiger counter breaking the tense silence between the quiet earth and the heavy, ominous sky.

It was even harder to get down the streets to the Domain itself. The jagged steel of the cars threatened to tear through the baggy over-clothes of the four men which would hopefully help shield them from any residual radiation in the dust they might stir up – unlikely, in this damp, but still a necessary precaution; if the Geiger was to be believed there was barely anything worth worrying about, but orders were orders and, more to the point, nobody was comfortable with fallout. It wasn’t that any of them were worried about death – the Sergeant had been in Borneo, the Captain in Rhodesia, the Driver and Technician had been cobbers since Malaysia – but the prospect of a death they knew nothing about.

They kept it out of mind by busying themselves with the mission. They gingerly made their way down Park Road, a bare hundred metres, to the intersection with Carlton Gore, where a bus had been flung into the face of a building and now only a slightly larger than usual pile of rubble lay. Once they crossed the thoroughfare and clambered over a grassy knoll to the Domain’s vast green expanse, the four looked upon the imposing heap which was still recognisable as the War Museum, impressive in death like some immense white elephant.

They made their way to the blackened but otherwise intact Cenotaph, and as the Technician set up a tripod to begin taking photos and unpacked the packs of equipment the other three had been carrying – monitoring gear, mainly radiation and atmospheric bits and bobs from the boys at DSIR – the rest of the crew moved cautiously towards what had been the Museum’s entrance. It had been facing the bomb pretty much face-on and was, if one was to be generous, a blackened mess; that it was even this recognisable was amazing. The bold Old World face of the Museum had collapsed inwards on itself, before the pressure wave had caused the entire building to be crushed from within and without.

The three discussed climbing over the rubble, but quickly decided against it. Too many risks, and not enough rewards to warrant it – the orders left at least enough room for initiative to decide that. So they sat on what was left of the steps (solidly-built enough, like the building, to be recognisable) as the Technician fiddled with the equipment, gently checking and double-checking the components. They checked the Geiger and sat about, breath condensing on the insides of their heavy masks as they looked blankly, emptily, disbelievingly, upon the city and towards where Rangitoto crouched out in the Gulf. The temptation to take off the masks and feel the cool, wet air on their faces was palpable, but even more than their discipline (and it would be hard to find four more disciplined soldiers) the primal reluctance to breathe the air of this gigantic crypt kept the heavy, uncomfortable respirators right where they were. So they sat, and watched.

Before too long the Technician turned to them and gave his confirmation. After a brief moment’s contemplation, the Captain nodded.

“We’ll head back now, then. Still plenty of time.”

They made their way to the Rover, exiting the city as gingerly as they had entered it, yet with the haunted, harried hurry of one leaving a graveyard on a moonless night.

Once they were back in Papakura they were decontaminated, gave their reports, and returned to their quarters. It had been an absurdly simple mission for men of their qualifications. It had also been worse than anything they could ever have dreamt of.

.. / .... .- -.. / -. --- - / - .... --- ..- --. .... - / -.. . .- - .... / .... .- -.. / ..- -. -.. --- -. . / ... --- / -- .- -. -.--

I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.

SOUTH

-... -.-- / - .... . / .-. .. ...- . .-. ... / --- ..-. / -... .- -... -.-- .-.. --- -. --..-- / - .... . .-. . / .-- . / ... .- - /-.. --- .-- -.​

State Highway One
Outside Wellington City
May 23, 1984

The sun shone bleakly over the stark landscape of what had been Wellington, as a single truck, near-identical to one six hundred kilometres to the north, drove sedately along a deserted highway. The recovery crews had already been through once or twice, so by now everyone in the Rover was an old hand at this.

The truck splashed through a puddle of standing water, sending a spray up beside the window and no doubt scattering a few extra rads into the atmosphere. Nobody took much notice, in their heavy boots and thick layers of clothing (some of it even leaded; they weren’t going to let a single rad in if possible). There was, after all, a mission to be focusing on.

As they passed the last marker point before the cleared section of road ended, the number of deserted cars rose dramatically. Where possible – where they’d been able to spare the time and fuel and energy to do so – they’d been shoved to the side (or better yet, in the harbour), but by and large the cars were still sat in the lines where they’d been abandoned just gone three months ago, when the sky had split and the fire and wind had swept out from the valleys and even this far out, four or five miles away, the windows had imploded and people had staggered bleeding and screaming to the north, to safety and, in more than a few cases, to death.

The Soldier was eventually forced to detract from the plans, the four opting to dismount as the road became impassable even for the Rover – the railway line having ceased being a viable alternative where the empty hulk of a passenger train lay pinned under a collapsed section of motorway – and, retrieving their packs, make their way further south on foot.

As the hours passed – like those in Auckland, silent but for the buzzing click of the Geiger – the sun continued to rise over the Rimutakas, light filtering wetly through the clouds and casting jagged shadows on the concrete pillars which rose from the rubble like broken teeth in a gaping skull. Here and there, a skeletal arm or leg waved from beneath it.

They trudged on.


It was just gone ten by the time they’d finished picking their way along Aotea Quay and down Waterloo. The docks had been swept into the sea; only the white-and-yellow lines on the road pointed the way. In the near distance, a ruddy ruin slumped towards the risen sun, the corpse of the Railway Station having tried like those within it to escape the blast to the southwest. In the background, the skeletons of buildings stood stark and grey in the heavy air.

The quartet – Soldier, Builder, Architect, and Scientist –, picked their way gingerly around the well-turned field of debris, making their way to the greyish field which had been the corner where Waterloo met Bunny. Ninety days ago, the most important man in the country had been dragged unceremoniously down across this intersection by a large officer, bundled through the mad press of people rushing to escape the city, borne towards a waiting helicopter from behind the Moses’ staff of a truncheon. Now, the four stood breathless as they examined the view westwards, towards the desolate expanse of Tinakori Hill, the road underfoot by now a fossilised storm sea of melted and reforged asphalt.

As the men walked across the foreground of the Railway Station – or possibly it was the street, but under the rubble it was difficult to say, at least until they came upon the clear expanse of Featherston Street where the cars had been brushed carelessly to one side – they noticed the absence of the wooden elegance of the Law School. As the Prime Minister had mused, there was nothing left. Not even ashes marked its ruin; the kauri had spontaneously combusted in the brief moments before the blast wave tore it to shreds, sending a wave of splinters towards those still flowing north in the human tide. What little was left burned in the fires that raged afterwards, as burst gas mains and an exploding petrol station did plenty to relight whatever was snuffed out by the winds of the blast.

Parliament had held out well, even if the force which had knocked it was not from below, as had always been expected in this city. The windows were gone, several of the concrete pillars supporting the upper floors had been knocked out or crumbled under the swirling pressures of the nuclear maelstrom, and the copper roofing had been melted, warped, and blasted almost beyond recognition, sitting atop the hunched profile of the Beehive like a jauntily-positioned beret – but the structure was still recognisable. Old Parliament Buildings had fared less well, but the thick stonework had also held. From out here, one couldn’t tell that the insides had been torn to shreds where swirling vortices of heat and wind had howled, eviscerated to spill the guts of a century of bureaucracy and history onto Parliament Grounds to be burnt to cinders in the fires that followed.

The closer they ventured, walking in a daze across Lambton Quay, the more apparent the damage became. Not a single living thing had survived, not a tree nor blade of grass. With a dully surprised exclamation, one of them gestured with disbelief at the stub of the Cenotaph, the pillar jutting defiantly into the air where the rushing winds had whipped past it too quickly for the blast pressure to crush it like a toothpick (a myriad of examples of where a structure’s surface area had been too great to follow this miraculous exception were visible all around, in the hollow, gaping shells of office blocks which stood drunkenly in file along the asphalt canyon of Lambton). Evidently, noted the Architect amongst them, the blast had come down Bowen, which would indicate that the bomb had gone off somewhere up the valley. The Scientist was thinking much the same, a slide rule in his head totting up direction and distance and velocity.

Making their way carefully around the Cenotaph, they all saw how the bronze horseman atop it had been stressed into a crouch, the rider’s right hand, which had been outstretched to the heavens, gone.

As they made their way with increasing difficulty up Bowen Street, the Geiger’s crackle became increasingly lively. Still tolerably within the realms of safety provided they kept the sightseeing to a minimum. Now, the shredded bricks of the Turnbull Library littering their path, the skeletal buildings of the Ministry complex loomed up ahead.

And if that one, noted the Architect as the Builder pulled out an obscenely fluorescent set of small cones, if that ruin close by was indeed the Reserve Bank building, then the Treaty, and God knew what else, was inside the sealed vaults and safety-deposit boxes beneath it.

-.-- . .- --..-- / .-- . / .-- . .--. - --..-- / .-- .... . -. / .-- . / .-. . -- . -- -... . .-. . -.. / --.. .. --- -.

…and I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.​