Steven turned the television off in disgust. ‘So much for the Prime Minister’s promise of “total honesty and full disclosure of information”,’ he said.
Between power cuts, Steven and Jane phoned friends and family. The news was appalling. They learned that Bruce’s mother had died and that his father was not expected to last much longer. Many of their friends were ill, and one of Bruce’s young cousins had died overnight.
‘Could you call the children in for lunch?’ Jane asked Steven.
‘Have you taken their temperatures?’ Jane glanced down at the floor. ‘Better check them,’ Steven continued gently. ‘If they’re running a temperature it might help if we give them medicine early on.’
Tears welled up in Jane’s eyes. ‘I’ve hardly got any medicine left.’
Steven called the children in from the garden and Jane checked their temperatures. Both were normal, and she cried with relief.
‘Now ours,’ Steven prompted. Their own were normal as well.
‘Why don’t I take the children out this afternoon? Give you a bit of a break.’
Jane nodded.
After lunch, Steven took Zach and Nicole to the park. There was a surprising number of children there, accompanied by one or both parents.
‘Bad business this pandemic,’ said a man sitting on a bench overlooking the playground. He was watching his daughter intently as she climbed up the slide.
‘Sure is,’ Steven agreed.
‘The little girl next door died this morning. My son’s in bed ill and both my wife and I have temperatures. So has she,’ he added, pointing to his daughter, ‘but I wanted to get her out of the house.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t get any answers from anyone.’ There was a note of helplessness, almost of resignation, in his voice. ‘My boss phoned and asked why I wasn’t at work this morning. I told him to get stuffed. My family comes first at a time like this.’
‘Judging by the number of parents in the park, we’re not the only people staying home today.’
‘No,’ the man said. ‘I’ve heard that where I work less than half the staff turned up.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes, each absorbed in his own thoughts.
‘How are your two kids?’ the man asked after a while.
‘They’re not my kids, they’re my sister’s. They’ve got no symptoms so far.’
‘Then you don’t know how lucky you are. All our friends’ kids are ill.’
‘Zach, Nicole, time to go,’ Steven called, cursing himself for having exposed his niece and nephew to the sick children in the playground.
They walked down Ragmot Street towards home. A hearse was parked outside one of the houses.
‘That’s a deader,’ Nicole said to Zach knowingly as the body was carried out and placed on the platform inside the vehicle. There was no coffin, just a plastic body bag.
‘How’s Bruce?’ Steven asked as Jane opened the front door.
She shook her head; Bruce was a fighter, but she could see he was losing the battle.
That evening, as soon as he’d put the children to bed, Steven walked into the master bedroom and sat down beside his sister.
‘I don’t think he’ll last much longer,’ Jane said quietly.
‘No,’ Steven agreed. There was no point in lying.
Bruce fought on until the early hours of Thursday morning. When he finally stopped breathing, Jane let out a piercing wail that reverberated through the old bungalow. Her body shook with uncontrollable sobbing.
‘Is Daddy dead?’ Nicole asked.
Steven spun round; the children were standing in the doorway.
‘He’s gone to heaven,’ Zach said.
9
Feeling overwhelmed, Mark stared at the mound of earth in the garden, the spray of flowers lying on top.
‘Daddy’s soul is in heaven, but his body’s in the garden,’ Zach said.
‘We were going to burn him up,’ Nicole added, not to be outdone, ‘but there were no spaces at the crem … the crem …’
‘At the crematorium,’ Zach said, hands on hips.
‘Why don’t you go and play?’ Jane said.
Seeming reluctant to miss any part of the drama, the children sauntered up to the top of the garden to their playhouse.
Steven waited till they were out of earshot before continuing the story. ‘It was just after Bruce died that we got your phone call. But your call didn’t make sense. Why were you cut off so suddenly?’
Jane and Steven listened as their father explained how Brigadier Fotherby had traced the call to the airline office and cut off the phone before he’d a chance to tell them about their mother.
‘We didn’t hear a word from the authorities,’ Steven said bitterly. ‘If Uncle Paul hadn’t passed on the message we wouldn’t have known Mum had died until you arrived today. If you hadn’t escaped we might never have known.’
Two hours after Bruce died, Steven had finally persuaded Jane and the children to return to bed and try to get some sleep. Once they were snuggled up together in the double bed in the spare room, sobbing quietly and holding one another tight, Steven made his way to the family room and began calling funeral directors. His calls elicited only unanswered ringing or pre-recorded messages.
He was about to give up when an exhausted voice responded to his final call. ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman on the other end of the phone explained. ‘The crematoriums have stopped accepting any more deceased. We’ve run out of coffins and even if we had any we couldn’t help you. My husband’s ill, I’m ill, and none of our staff have turned up for the last two days.’
‘What should we do?’
‘They’re digging mass graves at Waikumete Cemetery. But I must warn you, they’re just bulldozing the bodies into the graves and covering them as quickly as they can.’
‘What have you been doing?’ Jane asked Steven the next morning. ‘I could hear you banging about in Bruce’s workshop half the night.’
Steven led her up the hallway. As she entered the main bedroom, she saw Bruce lying peacefully in a simple but well-made coffin.
Jane laid her head on Steven’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, bro. It’s beautiful.’
‘The crematoriums and cemeteries have stopped functioning,’ he said. ‘I think we should bury Bruce here at home.’
Jane nodded. ‘Yes, under the old plum tree at the top of the garden. He used to love to sit up there and watch the children play.’
After breakfast the children helped Steven dig the grave. Unable to contact Bruce’s family by phone, Jane set off by car to tell them the sad news and to invite them to the funeral.
When she drove up the drive of his parents’ house, two mounds of earth on the front lawn filled her with foreboding. Then she saw the simple crosses that confirmed Bruce’s parents were dead.
Inside she found her sister-in-law Eileen dead on a bed. There had been no one to bury her, and in the heat her body was already beginning to decompose.
Jane left quickly and drove half a kilometre to see Bruce’s other sister, Hazel. She too was ill, but not as bad as her husband and two children, who were all in bed. Hazel received the news with quiet resignation. She’d lost her mother, her father, her brother and sister — all within forty-eight hours. Her husband and two children were desperately ill and barely conscious. It was taking her all willpower, she said, not to climb into bed beside them and lie down and die. No, she couldn’t go to her brother’s funeral.
Jane hugged her sister-in-law before she left, but got no response; Hazel had switched off from the world. There was nothing Jane could do for any of them — they’d all be dead within hours. Feeling helpless and sad, Jane drove back towards Ragmot Street, desperate to get back to her own children.
She drove through the shopping centre at Remuera. Most of the windows of the shops had been smashed and looters were removing what they could. She turned into a side street that led back home. A line of vehicles parked across the road blocked her way.
‘Stop,�
� demanded a young man in a hooded anorak.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘You got any food in your car?’ demanded another boy, sticking his head through the open car window.
‘No.’
‘Open the boot,’ demanded the first youth.
‘No,’ she said defiantly. Seconds later she heard a crowbar rip open the boot.
‘Nothing in here,’ called a voice from the rear of the car. She glanced in the car’s rear mirror. The man in the hoodie had levered off her petrol cap and was inserting a tube.
Jane’s adrenalin kicked in; she slammed the car into reverse. The tyres screeched in protest and so did the youth stealing her petrol as she ran over his feet. With her view obscured by the open boot and the slap of the siphoning tube on the side of the car ringing in her ears, she hurtled blindly back down the street. Once safely away, she reversed up over the pavement before changing gear and racing forward. She was still shaking as she drove into her driveway.
Shortly after Jane returned home, Steven saw George digging at the bottom of his garden. He climbed over the fence with his spade. ‘Like a hand?’
‘Thanks,’ George said, leaning on his shovel. ‘My wife Barbara,’ he added, motioning towards the shallow grave. ‘She died last night.’ He was breathing heavily.
‘Let me break the back of this hole. You can give me a hand to finish off.’
George didn’t argue; he slumped on the garden seat. He was a proud man but he didn’t have the energy to dig.
‘Have you been into the city?’ he asked Steven.
Steven threw a spadeful of soil on the manicured lawn. ‘No. How about you?’
‘I went in yesterday afternoon — thought I might be able to get some medicine.’
‘And did you?’
‘No, the shops have all been looted. It’s a mess in there, whole streets have been burnt out. There are gangs of youths roaming round the place, drunken brawls, rape. Anything goes. The army’s trying to keep control, but there aren’t enough soldiers. People have given up hope of anyone finding a cure now.’
Steven levered a huge scoria boulder up onto the lawn. He was fit, but digging two graves in one day was hard work. Looking at George on the bench, his breathing laboured, Steven knew he would be finishing the grave by himself.
At four o’clock that afternoon, the two simple funerals took place. Jane recited the funeral service as best she could remember it, and then they began to lower Bruce’s coffin into the grave. Steven and Jane each took an end of one rope at the head of the coffin, while George summoned all his reserves of strength to grip another at the bottom, opposite Zach and Nicole, who clung on to their end.
George was too weak; the coffin crashed down into the bottom of the grave. They dropped some petals on the coffin lid, crying as they shovelled in the soil and placed a large spray of vivid pink bougainvillea on the mound of earth.
Once they’d helped George through to his own garden, Steven and Jane went into the old man’s house and wrapped Barbara in fresh sheets. They struggled with their burden down the garden path. George was too distressed to help. They lowered Barbara’s body into the grave, Jane repeated the service, and the children threw in more petals.
‘That’ll do,’ George said after Steven had covered the body with a few centimetres of soil.
Steven looked up.
‘There’s something else I’d like put in the grave before it’s filled in,’ George explained. ‘Just give me a minute.’
‘Do you want a hand?’ Jane asked, as George shuffled wearily up the garden path.
‘No thanks,’ he said.
Jane and Steven sat on the garden bench together and waited for George to come back. The children amused themselves throwing a ball for George’s West Highland terrier, Snowy.
‘What effect will all this have on them?’ Jane asked Steven, nodding towards the children.
Before Steven could reassure her, they heard a shot from the house.
‘Keep the children here,’ Steven called as he raced up the garden path.
He found George slumped at the desk in his study, a rifle by his side. A sheet of blood-splattered paper on the desk read, ‘Please put me in the grave beside my wife.’
In a state of shock, Steven wrapped George’s limp body in blankets, hoisted the bundle onto his shoulder and carried it through the house and out into the garden.
‘Bet that’s old George. Bet he shot himself,’ Nicole said, staring white-faced as Steven and Jane struggled to lower the body into the grave.
‘I think they’ve been to enough funerals for one day,’ Steven said, looking his sister in the eye. ‘Take them home.’
Jane looked down at the blood seeping through the blankets. She turned away and called the children to her. Taking them by the hand, she led them back to the house.
‘Come on, Snowy,’ Steven called to George’s dog, patting down the last of the earth and preparing to leave. Snowy, however, lay beside the grave and refused to move.
Steven walked back into George’s house, where he rummaged around the kitchen and threw what little food remained into a bag. Then he gathered up the rifle and ammunition, jumped over the garden fence, dumped the food in the pantry and hid the rest in the rafters of Jane’s garage, out of reach of the children.
10
‘Which brings us to yesterday,’ Steven told his father as he threw the dregs of his tea onto the lawn.
He explained how the electricity had come back on at half-past nine on Thursday morning. They’d tried the taps, but no water had come through. They turned the television on hoping to get some news. The channels were blank with the exception of one which was playing music and displaying a message advising that an announcement would be broadcast at ten o’clock.
As Jane hurriedly made breakfast, Steven had taken the opportunity to phone Christopher.
‘How are things in Wellington?’ he asked his uncle.
‘Grim. Your Aunt Elizabeth’s very ill.’
‘How about Sarah and Katie and their families?’
‘Both the girls are fine, and so are their children. But I’m afraid Sarah’s husband died last night and I don’t hold out much hope for Katie’s husband. How’s everyone up there?’
Steven quickly ran though the catalogue of family members and friends who had died in Auckland.
‘It’s an appalling business.’ Christopher’s voice was barely under control. ‘Heaven knows how many people have died down here. Look, I’ve got to go,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve got another call coming through. It might be Katie phoning about Mike. Thanks for calling, and take care.’
Steven relayed the news to his sister.
‘Try to get through to Uncle Paul in England,’ she prompted. Steven dialled the number but a pre-recorded message advised that no overseas services were available.
He tried the special number they had been given to enquire about their parents, but all he got was the same message that had been broadcast for the last forty-eight hours. The message stated that all passengers were well and receiving medical treatment. Steven had no confidence in the message, given both its age and the deteriorating situation in the rest of Auckland.
At ten o’clock Jane, Steven, Zach and Nicole had settled down to watch the television broadcast. Snowy, who had at last been persuaded to leave George and Barbara’s grave, was lying at Zach’s feet. Jane was pleased to have Snowy in the family, though she couldn’t imagine how they were going to feed him. He was a diversion for the children. Misty the cat was not so pleased; he’d scurried away and was hiding under the veranda.
‘Things must be grim,’ Steven said as an army officer appeared on screen.
They listened intently to the decrees, the children not understanding their significance until they heard the words, ‘Domestic cats have been identified as potential carriers of the disease, and are to be destroyed immediately.’
‘No!’ Zach cried, running out of the room in tears.
/> ‘What do they mean — be destroyed?’ Nicole asked.
‘We’ve got to listen to the man,’ Jane said firmly, glancing at Steven and wondering how she was going to deal with the problem of Misty.
The army officer continued, unaware that, throughout the land, his directive on cats was causing more consternation than any other he’d issued. He concluded with the words, ‘Finally, we are pleased to advise that international efforts to find a cure for the disease are well advanced. We expect to have effective medicines and vaccines available in the near future.’
‘I don’t believe a word of that,’ Steven said forcefully.
‘What do they mean Misty has to be destroyed?’ Nicole asked again. Jane looked at Steven, her eyes imploring him to help her find an answer.
‘It means they’re going to kill him!’ shouted Zach, who had returned and was standing in the doorway.
Nicole burst into tears, and both children ran down the hallway and into their bedroom. Jane hurried after them.
The electricity had gone off again by the time Jane returned to the family room. ‘Why cats?’ she asked Steven.
‘There was a suspicion that the first outbreak of SARS originated with wild cats from Asia. Maybe the disease has spread to domestic cats,’ he explained as he left the house and walked out into the garden.
Steven glanced up at the sky. There was a hint of rain. He disconnected the downpipe from the roof and diverted it through the window into the empty bath. He estimated they had enough water left to last four days, providing they were careful. If it didn’t rain soon he would have to find water elsewhere.
Next he began working his way methodically down the street, knocking on the doors of the bungalows. He’d seen little sign of life over the last twenty-four hours, and was hopeful he would find empty houses. At the first house — number five — a frightened woman talked to him through the closed door. She told him all her family were ill and begged him to go away. He knocked loudly on the front door of the next house — number seven. There was no reply. He knocked again several times, and then made his way round to the back of the house, where he found a large dog tugging hungrily at an arm protruding from a shallow grave.
Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1) Page 6