Blood Roots: Are the roots strong enough to save the pandemic survivors?

by Michael Green

  The two years living by herself at Lynfield had changed her perception of life. For those two years she had believed that she was the last person left alive on earth. She had imagined and dreamed of being held and being made love to by a man. And now she had the chance. She knew Rick wanted her, and she knew she wanted him. She also knew there were precious few men at Haver, and according to the accounts related by her father, those men were either spoken for or sadistic brutes.

  Her Christian values cautioned her that wanting Rick was wrong. The devoted look she saw in Julie’s eyes as she clung on Rick’s arm told her wanting him was wrong too. But in the new world, where everything was so tenuous and immediate, those thoughts were being overruled. If she rejected Rick’s advances and let the moment slip by, she might never get another chance.

  One day when Anne and Mark had rowed away from AWOL, leaving Rick working on the engine and Jane and Audrey cooking in the galley, Jane knew instinctively that the moment had arrived. Audrey often slept in the early afternoon, and Mark and Anne had not even reached the shore before Jane suggested to her daughter that she might like a nap. Rick saw her lead the little girl forward to the pipe berths and guessed what was on Jane’s mind.

  They said nothing. They both sensed it would be better that way. Rick had given her all the patter in the weeks previous. They simply ripped off each other’s clothes and he took her on the cabin floor. Then they silently dressed and he continued with the engine and she with her cooking.

  And so it went on. Not love; just sex. Whenever and wherever the opportunity arose, they took it.

  There was a weakness in Rick’s character, something that had driven him all his life to seek the conquest of women, to use them, and sometimes to abuse them. He needed the reassurance of knowing he could attract them. Rick thought he was using Jane. He didn’t realise Jane was using him.

  Mark’s relationship with Anne was far deeper, and as a result it played on his mind. It wasn’t in his personality to use women in the way Rick did. He had never had a shallow relationship. He had always fallen helplessly in love.

  He had loved Helen with a passion; he still loved her, more than six years after her sudden death. Then during his incarceration at Haver he had fallen in love with his cousin Allison, risking all in a clandestine relationship that would have led to them both being executed had it been discovered by Nigel, self-proclaimed ruler of the Haver community. Back in New Zealand their relationship had cooled to such an extent that she had stowed away on Archangel, desperate to return to England against Mark’s wishes. He knew the coolness between them was mainly his own fault; had promised himself he would rekindle their relationship once the strain of Steven and the others leaving had passed. But she hadn’t given him the chance. She had left without telling him she was going, leaving a note telling him she was carrying his baby. Though he still loved her, he was angry with her too.

  He wondered whether Allison was waiting for him at Haver. Had Steven managed to sail Archangel back to England? And if Archangel had reached England, had Allison formed a relationship with someone else? When she had left him she had expected that she would never see him again. He had always declared to everyone that he would never leave New Zealand.

  It might have been better if he could treat his relationship with Anne more casually. But he couldn’t just use her for sex. He needed to fall in love. And she needed him to fall in love with her, too. She had been treated as a sexual plaything by the crew of the submarine; she didn’t want that any more. She wanted to be loved.

  Their courtship lasted five weeks. Without the distractions of a larger world they found out much about each other’s lives, how they felt, what they liked, and how they ticked in a short period of time. They discovered they had much in common. And they discovered they loved and wanted one another.

  One day, while Anne and Mark were working ashore, Audrey, whom Jane had left with them to mind, asked to be allowed to play with her cousin Tommy. Having sent her on her way, Mark simply took Anne’s hand. It was their first time truly alone together. After a few minutes’ walking, he stopped and kissed her. She looked even more attractive than ever. He stared down at her. She was so petite, so delicate. He loved her impish, smiling face.

  ‘It’s time, isn’t it?’ she said.

  He nodded and led her to the house he had chosen earlier.

  ‘I love you,’ he heard himself say as they both climaxed. He had promised himself he wouldn’t say the words, but he couldn’t keep them in.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘and I love you too. And I know that despite how we both feel about each other you don’t want Jane or your grandchildren to know. Not yet, anyway.’

  He rolled over onto his back and sighed. ‘In the new world, life should be simple. But it isn’t. We just can’t let go of our pasts. How we were brought up. How we are expected to behave.’

  Life wasn’t simple for anyone. Even Fergus and Jessica were sometimes heard arguing — usually about the children.

  Of the three San Diego women, Louise was finding it most difficult to deal with the trauma of her enforced prostitution. It had had a profound effect on her personality. It was fortunate that she was living with a trained doctor, who loved her. But even though he understood her problems, he was struggling to maintain their relationship and deal with her depression.

  Julie and Rick were forever fighting. Rick seemed to take pleasure in winding her up. Zach, whose house was close to the couple’s bungalow, often heard them screaming at each other.

  The arguing and the use of obscenities distressed him. He’d heard his mother and father have the odd heated word, but nothing like the yelling that streamed from Rick and Julie’s house.

  He didn’t like Rick; he didn’t like the way he strutted about, he didn’t like the way he argued with his grandfather, and he hated the way he spoke suggestively to his mother.

  But most of all, Zach felt lonely. He wasn’t accepted as an adult, yet he was too old to play with the children. He wanted to be treated as a man. He wished he had stayed on AWOL with his grandfather. But even his grandfather seemed to have less time for him these days. The discussions his grandfather used to have with him he was now having with that woman Anne.

  Two doors away, Nicole was growing up fast too. She had similar feelings to Zach. She had the body of a young woman and she wanted to be treated as a woman, not as a child. In the lounge she’d found photograph albums belonging to the family who had lived in the house before the pandemic. She spent hours studying the pictures a doting mother had taken of her teenage daughters.

  Nicole looked enviously at the photographs of parties, beach trips and exotic holidays. She studied the pictures of handsome, muscular young men with their arms around the teenage girls. She would often stand naked in her bedroom looking at her developing body in the mirror, telling herself her breasts were as big as those hidden beneath the swimsuits in the photographs, willing them to grow.

  One day, as she stood naked looking in the mirror, she suddenly became aware of eyes peering at her from the bushes. Instead of covering herself up, she continued to pose.

  20

  ‘Do we have to go already?’ Nicole challenged her grandfather when he announced during the last week of November that he intended to sail in ten days’ time. He looked at her quizzically as he turned the food on the barbecue. ‘It’s going to be horrible and cramped on AWOL,’ she complained. ‘I hate sailing.’ He looked at her again. She had never complained about sailing before. She was just being difficult.

  ‘Well, we can’t sail soon enough as far as I’m concerned,’ Jessica said. She was beaming and clearly relieved that the date had been set at last.

  ‘Is there any rush?’ Rick asked, leaning back and sipping at his grape juice. As usual he was stripped to the waist, showing off his muscular body. And as usual he seemed to relish the opportunity to challenge Mark’s authority.

  Mark had already made the departure date later than he originally intended beca
use he knew there would be few opportunities to be alone with Anne once they sailed. ‘I want to round the Horn mid-January. I reckon it’ll take about fifty days to sail south from here.’

  ‘So what do we load first?’ Jessica asked eagerly.

  AWOL was ready three days earlier than expected. The barometer was steady and Mark ordered everyone aboard. Misty made his way to the dockside, determined to be taken on the first trip out to the yacht.

  As he rowed out, Mark noticed how frail the old cat had become. At one time Misty would have sprung off the dinghy onto AWOL’s boarding ladder; now he waited to be lifted. He hoped the cat would make it to England. Misty was Nicole’s cat, and about the only thing that seemed to make her happy these days. If anything, his granddaughter had become moodier than ever.

  And so began the long slog south towards Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America. AWOL seemed unbearably cramped. Boxes of stores invaded every space. Hammocks, held in readiness to be slung in the main saloon if the weather deteriorated, had been stuffed down the side of each of the three double berths, reducing the comfort of the adults.

  The crew returned to the two-watch system. The sailing was easy but there was tension in the air; too many people, including Mark, wanted to be alone with someone they shouldn’t be alone with.

  The atmosphere between Fergus and Rick was particularly strained. They seemed to have developed a mutual loathing for one another.

  ‘Why don’t you wash your mouth out?’ Fergus shouted at Rick on the fourth morning out of Ensenada. ‘You’re like a bad American film. Every second word you utter starts with an f!’

  ‘What’s your problem, buddy?’

  ‘My kids are the problem. They don’t need to listen to that sort of language.’

  ‘Christ, what you being so precious about?’

  ‘None of us like your language,’ Jessica said. There was a nodding of heads from others in the cockpit. Rick stormed below, swearing as he went.

  Maybe it was fear of spoiling his chances with the women, but whatever the reason, he did tone down his language.

  It was almost a relief when the winds started to blow and everyone had to knuckle down to help sail the boat. The tension faded in the fogginess of fatigue. As the weather worsened, they became engaged in a fight for survival tougher than any that had been encountered before.

  As they ran south towards the Horn in the storm, even Commander Ball’s oversized wind-vane steering couldn’t hold AWOL’s course. Crew fatigue grew as AWOL crashed through the seas carrying a storm jib and fully reefed main. She had to be hand-steered up mountainous waves at an angle of forty-five degrees, before being turned head-on momentarily in order to punch through the crest. After teetering on the peak she would slowly gather speed to career down the back of the wave and dig her bow into the face of the next wave with a shudder. Then she would lift her head and slowly gather speed as she climbed the next wave, the helmsman struggling to gain steerage way for the essential turn at the top.

  For hour after hour AWOL fought on, the helmsman changing every fifteen minutes. Mark, Fergus, Rick, Roger and Zach shared the steering, with two in the cockpit at all times and three resting, fully clothed, in the hammocks slung across the main saloon. Mark was glad of the strength of the younger men. His aging body ached; even Zach seemed stronger than he was.

  The women, none strong enough to helm the yacht in the mountainous seas, spent most of their time in their berths praying for the misery to end. They took it in turns to take food and drink to the children, and to help them to the toilet. Apart from these trips, the children lay wedged in their pipe berths, their knuckles white from gripping the lee cloths.

  As AWOL neared the Horn, their prayers were answered. The weather improved. Although the waves were still high and the wind was blowing twenty knots, the seas seemed calm after what they had been through.

  Gradually the women and children dragged themselves, bruised and battered, from below decks. Even Misty was pleased to see the light of day, pulling himself slowly paw after paw up the companionway. Nicole picked him up and lifted him to his favourite spot under the dodger, where he curled up to watch proceedings.

  The children were all keen to see the headland they had heard so much about. The sky was clearing, the barometer was rising and there was a great sense of relief. The rounding of Cape Horn no longer held the fear it had previously. They all believed the worst was over.

  ‘Why don’t you and Zach go below?’ Jane suggested to her father. ‘Have a rest like the other men. You look done in. We can manage now.’

  Mark looked at Zach. The boy’s hair was matted with salt, his face thin and strained. He knew he must look even worse himself. He felt a hundred years old.

  He reconnected the wind-vane steering system. ‘Take care,’ he said, ‘it’ll get lumpy off the cape. Call me as soon as it’s in view.’

  Zach had already made his way down the companionway, and the three hammocks swinging in unison above the saloon table were occupied by Rick, Fergus and Roger. Exhausted, Zach slumped down on the cabin floor. Mark simply lay down beside him.

  Mark seemed to have barely slept when Nicole’s terrified shriek pierced the cabin: ‘Granddad, Mum’s fallen overboard.’

  Mark was first up the companionway, closely followed by Zach. Fergus, Roger and Rick tumbled from their hammocks and arrived on deck seconds later. Lashing rain stung their eyes.

  ‘What happened?’ Mark asked as he grabbed a dan buoy and threw it overboard.

  ‘She went up to free a halyard that was wrapped round the spreaders,’ Nicole explained. She was peering anxiously astern.

  ‘Why wasn’t she clipped on?’ Mark didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Just keep your eyes on that flag — whatever you do, don’t lose sight of it.’ The orders rattled from Mark’s mouth. ‘Rick, get the engine started. Fergus, take Roger forward and be ready to drop the main. Jessica and Zach, stand by to furl the foresail. Everyone clip yourselves on.’

  ‘I can’t see the flag,’ Nicole cried.

  ‘I told you to keep your eyes on it.’

  ‘It’s the rain,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  Mark checked the yacht’s compass course and speed, grabbed the remaining dan buoy and threw it over the side. ‘Don’t lose that one,’ he barked as he struggled to disengage the wind-vane. It seemed to take forever.

  On the second attempt the engine coughed to life.

  ‘I can’t see the flag!’ Nicole shouted again.

  ‘Drop the main as soon as you can,’ Mark yelled. ‘Furl the foresail.’

  The sails began flogging. Eventually the main was dropped into the lazy jacks. He swung the wheel hard over. AWOL bucked wildly as she drew beam-on to the sea. Misty lost his footing and slid down onto the cockpit seat, claw marks on the paintwork detailing his descent. Nicole returned him to under the dodger.

  AWOL began to run with the sea, but with no sail up she continued to lurch violently. At least the noise of the flogging sails had ceased. Mark had not appreciated just how bad the seas still were. After the storm they had seemed relatively calm, but in fact they were still running at more than two metres. Worse still, the wind was still blowing the tops off the waves, which were streaked white.

  Mark checked he was steering the reciprocal course to what AWOL had been on when Jane fell over the side. ‘Can you give the engine any more?’ he asked Rick.

  Rick shook his head. ‘She’s flat out.’

  Mark turned to Zach. ‘Go forward and try to sight the dan buoys. On your way, tell Roger and Fergus to join you as soon as they’ve secured the mainsail.’

  Nicole was standing on the cockpit seats, gripping the top of the dodger, staring ahead.

  ‘How long was your mother over the side before you called me?’ Mark asked.

  ‘I shouted as she went over.’

  ‘Was she wearing her life-jacket?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He guessed it had taken him about a minute
to get on deck and throw the dan buoy, two minutes later the second dan buoy, and four more minutes before he had got AWOL turned onto a reciprocal course. With the boat travelling at eight knots Jane had to be within a nautical mile of them, and there were two dan buoys in line between her and AWOL.

  On a fine day in Auckland Harbour, locating his daughter would have been simple. Today, with the whitecaps, and lashing rain reducing visibility to a hundred metres or so, it was highly problematical.

  He checked his watch. They should have seen the first dan buoy by now. ‘Fergus, up the mast, to the spreaders,’ he yelled above the wind. ‘Don’t forget to stay clipped on.’

  Four minutes had passed and still no dan buoy had been sighted. After another two minutes, he swung AWOL ninety degrees to windward and held the course for two hundred metres before turning back onto the course the yacht had been sailing when Jane had gone over the side. The rain seemed worse than ever. He knew he was running out of time. Jane had been well dressed but even so the cold would get to her.

  ‘Dan buoy starboard bow, twenty degrees, about two hundred metres,’ Fergus yelled from the spreaders. Mark changed course again.

  ‘I can see it too,’ yelled a relieved Nicole a little later. Then Mark saw it himself. But which dan buoy was it? For once Commander Ball had let them down. Both dan buoys carried orange flags. If they had had different colours, Mark would have known in which direction to head.

  He changed course again and ran for five minutes along the imaginary line he believed Jane to be on. The second dan buoy was not spotted. He reversed course again. Five minutes later, the dan buoy they had spotted previously came back into view. They raced past it. Two minutes later they spotted the second buoy.

  ‘She’s got to be somewhere close,’ he yelled a minute later. ‘Throw the cockpit cushions overboard,’ he instructed Nicole.