Nicole raced off to her bedroom, followed by Zach. He was still complaining.
Mark was growing increasingly fearful the authorities would come back. ‘I want to be out of here in ten minutes. I’ll pack the food. Jane, you pack your clothes, pack some of Bruce’s clothes for me and we’ll need duvets and bed linen for everyone.’
‘With that much luggage, we’ll need both cars,’ Steven said. ‘I’ll get them ready.’
The family hurried off to their allotted tasks. Ten minutes later the cars were almost loaded up.
‘You take the children and lead the way,’ Mark said to Steven. ‘I’ll follow with Jane in her car.’
‘Which way shall we go?’
Raconteur was berthed at Gulf Harbour, on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula some forty kilometres north of Auckland.
‘I don’t fancy the Harbour Bridge,’ Mark said, thinking of his experience at Mangere. ‘Let’s head out through the western suburbs and then turn north.’
Jane walked to the cars with two large plastic bags filled with bedding. They were ready to leave. ‘Where’s Zach?’ she asked.
‘He’s up in his playhouse,’ Nicole said.
‘No I’m not, I’m here.’ Zach appeared from around the side of the garage carrying his pack.
Zach, Nicole and Snowy were bundled into the back seat of Steven’s car. As Jane followed her brother out of the drive in her car, Mark looked back along Ragmot Street. A small army truck entered the street from the other end and he shrank down into the seat, but the vehicle sped towards them.
‘They’ve seen us,’ Mark shouted. Jane accelerated and raced past her brother, gesturing furiously at him to follow.
Jane abruptly turned right into a side street. Steven’s car followed. Nicole clung onto Snowy, and Zach clung onto his pack. The driver of the truck was finding it hard to keep up.
‘Our school’s just round the next bend,’ Nicole said.
When Steven’s car careered around yet another corner, he realised Jane’s car had disappeared. There was a bend ahead, but Jane wasn’t far enough ahead to have reached it.
‘Where’s your school?’ he yelled.
‘Just past that big hedge on the left,’ Zach replied.
Steven only just had time to react, turning hard left at the hedge. Seconds later he saw a flash in his rear mirror as the soldiers sped past the obscured driveway and continued round the next bend. Jane was driving around the school car park, then headed back out the driveway. With her brother’s car on her tail, set off in the opposite direction down the street at breakneck speed.
After several more sharp turns down side streets they drove into a small reserve. Steven turned off his engine and slumped, sweating, at the steering wheel. Zach sat quiet and pale, hanging onto his precious backpack. In the distance they could hear the grunty roar of the army vehicle as it cruised around the district, but gradually the sound of its engine grew fainter until they could no longer hear it.
They drove out through the western suburbs, Steven leading the way. It was a scene of desolation. They saw few people. Streets of houses were still smouldering where fires had burned out of control. Everywhere there were freshly dug graves.
As they passed through Glen Eden, a car travelling in the same direction came up behind them. Steven slowed slightly to allow Jane to drive closer. The other car drew alongside. A woman was driving and her two middle-aged male passengers, one in the front passenger seat and the other in the back, peered into Steven’s car. They looked respectable enough.
The car continued driving along beside him, its occupants staring at them. With no other traffic on the road, the other car was able to keep pace with them by driving on the wrong side of the road. Its presence became increasingly menacing. Steven wound down his window and motioned for the woman to pass, but she ignored him. He sped up a little, but so did the other car, maintaining its position.
‘Pass me my rifle, it’s on the parcel shelf,’ Steven said to Zach, ‘but don’t touch the trigger, it’s loaded.’
Zach passed over the rifle and Steven placed it on the seat beside him. He hoped it would deter the other driver but, to his dismay, when he glanced across again both male passengers in the other car had wound down their windows. A handgun was pointed directly at his head and another trained on the children. The men motioned for him to stop and reluctantly he pulled over. Jane and Mark, unaware of the guns, drove up behind and climbed out of their own car. One of the men climbed out and pointed a gun in their direction.
‘Right, out you get too,’ demanded the other man. Steven had no choice but to obey.
‘And the children,’ ordered the woman. She had joined her two male companions and was waving her own gun wildly.
Nicole climbed out of the car, followed by Zach. Steven looked at their assailants; all three were in a bad way.
‘What do you want?’ Mark demanded.
‘Have you got any medicine?’ the woman said.
‘No.’
‘Search them,’ said one of the men.
‘No,’ Zach said, clutching his pack closer to his chest.
‘What have you got in there?’ the woman asked, stepping towards him.
‘Leave him alone,’ Jane shrieked.
One of the men pointed a gun directly at her head.
‘Give me that bag,’ the woman said to Zach.
‘No!’
The woman grabbed the pack roughly, laid her gun on the road and pulled back the zip. It jammed. Undeterred, she thrust her fingers through a small gap. Suddenly she shrieked with pain and withdrew her bleeding hand from the pack.
It was all the distraction Mark and Steven needed. They grabbed the barrels of the guns held by the male hijackers and yanked them away. Two shots were fired but the bullets flew harmlessly into the air. Jane grabbed for the remaining gun on the road and pointed it at the woman.
The woman lunged weakly towards Nicole. It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that Jane’s children had been threatened; she squeezed the trigger. The woman folded and dropped to the ground; she didn’t move again.
Misty forced his head through the opening in Zach’s backpack, surveyed the fracas and meowed to be set free. Zach stuffed him back in and forced the zip closed.
Steven quickly dispatched the older hijacker with a well-aimed punch. Then he closed in on the other man who was struggling with his father and hit him on the back of the head with the rifle butt.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ Steven shouted as he shot out the tyres of the hijackers’ car. Jane was crying and shaking, staring at the blood starting to ooze from the dead woman’s body.
‘I’ll drive,’ Mark said quietly as he took the gun from Jane’s hand and led her to the rear seat of the car.
Nicole climbed in beside her mother. ‘Zach’s naughty, isn’t he, Mummy?’ she said. ‘I told him he shouldn’t hide Misty in the playhouse.’
‘Just as well he did,’ muttered Mark as they drove off.
13
Mark led the way as the two vehicles sped north out of Glen Eden and swung towards Silverdale. They all felt safer with the city behind them; the rural landscape seemed reassuringly unchanged. A farmer carrying a gun peered at them suspiciously.
They passed the decaying, mutilated carcasses of farm animals, their limbs and sides roughly hacked. The bones were now being stripped clean by hawks and stray dogs.
After an hour they turned due east along the road that ran the length of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula. As they drove past the Plaza Shopping Centre a small group of people chased them, but they sped up, ignoring the pleas to stop.
‘Nearly there,’ Mark said, as he negotiated the roundabout above Gulf Harbour and drove down the hill towards the marina. In front of them was the distinctive settlement of Gulf Harbour Village, Mediterranean-style ochre-coloured buildings with red-tiled roofs clustered at the edge of the canal. It had been Helen and Mark’s dream: to retire to Gulf Harbour, Raconteur moored on the canal outside
their home.
The marina car park was full and there were far fewer masts in evidence than usual; a lot of people must have decided their boats offered a safe haven as well. They set out towards the pier where Raconteur was moored, Steven and Jane leading the way.
Jane’s face was white and she was unusually quiet. ‘Okay, sis?’ Steven asked as they walked.
‘I murdered that woman,’ she replied, fighting to hold back the tears.
‘You may have saved your children’s lives.’
‘Stop where you are!’ a voice challenged them. Looking to their left they saw a weather-beaten old sailor peering over the lee cloths of his yacht, pointing a rifle in their direction.
Mark hurried to catch up. He’d recognised the distinctive voice of one of the older members of the Gulf Harbour Yacht Club.
‘That you, Bill?’
‘Bloody Mark Chatfield,’ the old sailor smiled, lowering the rifle and adding, ‘Just protecting my patch.’
‘How’s Janice?’ Mark asked.
‘Dead, buried her out there yesterday,’ Bill said, pointing towards Kotanui Island off the entrance to the marina. ‘Ain’t got long to go myself by the feel of it. Where’s your Helen?’
‘Died a week ago.’
Bill held his chest and coughed. ‘Bad business.’
‘You want anything before we go?’
‘No, I’ve got plenty of rum,’ he replied, picking up a glass and raising it in salute. Fighting for breath, he continued, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Ramsay.’
Mark smiled to himself as he walked down the pier. How many times in the past had he heard those words — ‘There’s nothing wrong with Ramsay’ — as the old sailor swigged his rum? However, despite his bravado, they both knew there was definitely something wrong with Bill Ramsay now.
They reached Raconteur and their hearts sank; the lock on the door to the cabin had been forced. Inside the lockers had been turned out.
‘All the food’s gone,’ Mark announced grimly. He lifted the cabin floor and peered in at the diesel and water tank gauges. ‘Main thing is’, he said, relief evident in his voice, ‘they haven’t touched the water or diesel. We’ve got food in the cars. We’ll be fine.’
An hour later Raconteur was ready for sea. ‘I’ll just pop along and say cheerio to old Bill,’ Mark said to Steven.
When Mark reached Bill’s yacht he peered over the lee cloths and found the old sailor dead, slumped against the cabintop, glass in hand, a smile on his face. Mark wrapped his friend’s body in the yacht’s foresail and lashed it up with a sheet. The emptiness of the life that lay ahead began to dawn on him. The yacht club had been a large part of his and Helen’s social life. Now his friends were either dead or dying. There would be no more cruising races, no more barbecues on the beach, no more sitting around the fire at the clubhouse drinking and exchanging yarns.
Once they had Bill’s body safely on Raconteur’s foredeck, Mark tied a spare anchor onto the canvas bundle. Off Kotanui Island he brought Raconteur to a halt, and Steven helped him lift the body over the lifelines and drop it into the water. They watched as the package sank beneath the waves, dragged down by the anchor, air bubbles streaming to the surface. There was no service, no eulogy. Their emotional reserves were drained; Mark had nothing left, even for an old friend.
Two hours later they dropped sail and motored into Woody Bay at Rakino Island. It was a beautiful spot, a deep bay with a golden sandy beach at its head. As they passed another yacht, Jane raised her arm in acknowledgement to the figure sitting in the cockpit. Her greeting was ignored. Steven looked knowingly at Mark.
They found a gap between a cluster of yachts at the head of the bay and dropped anchor.
‘Sprats!’ Zach called as a shoal of small fish swam alongside to investigate.
While Steven and Jane supervised the children’s fishing, Mark lowered the dinghy, ordered Snowy aboard, and rowed across to the adjacent boats. His voice echoed around the bay, ‘Ahoy Seaquin, ahoy High Tension, ahoy Golden Bear, anyone aboard?’ There was no response. When he climbed aboard the first yacht, the odour wafting up through the hatchway prepared him for the worst. Inside, a woman and two children lay dead in their bunks. He rifled quickly through the cupboards in the galley.
Twenty minutes later he’d completed his reconnoitre of the other vessels and found more corpses. He’d also collected a meagre assortment of tinned food which now lay in the bilges of his dinghy. As he rowed ashore, shags eyed him accusingly from the pohutukawa trees that lined the bay.
The dinghy ran up on the beach, Snowy splashed ashore and ran off along the sand. Mark found him standing beside a rocky outcrop, barking at the bodies of two small children floating face-down in the water. With tears in his eyes he called the dog away, collected an oar from the dinghy and dug two shallow graves in the soft sand.
14
The Chatfield family spent February and March sailing around the Hauraki Gulf. During the day they fished, collected oysters from the rocks, swam, walked the island tracks and bathed in clear pools fed by fern-lined streams. On remote islands, they would search abandoned farms for fresh vegetables and hunt for sheep that had eluded earlier scavenging parties. Late in the evenings the adults sat in the cockpit under the stars and talked. It was a sad time, a time they all spent grieving, but Mark knew every moment of it would be locked into his memory forever.
Each day Mark would row ashore and climb to the highest point of whichever island they were anchored off to scan the horizon for telltale plumes of smoke, showing whether others had survived. On the last day of March he made his way to the summit of Rangitoto, Auckland’s youngest extinct volcano. From his vantage point he had a perfect view over the city and the islands scattered around the gulf. He sat for a long time scanning the horizon.
‘I didn’t see a single plume of smoke today,’ he told Jane and Steven that evening as they sat in the cockpit, gazing up at the stars.
‘Are you saying we’re the only people left alive?’ Jane asked.
‘I suspect we are — in Auckland at least.’
‘Do you think it’s safe to head back to shore?’
‘I think so. We need to set up a permanent base before winter sets in.’
They were silent for a few minutes, wondering what horrors they might find on the mainland.
‘Let’s go back to Epsom, to my house,’ Jane suggested.
‘I don’t think Epsom is the place to live now,’ Mark said thoughtfully. ‘We need to look to the future. We should take a lead from the early Maori. When they first arrived in New Zealand they settled on the coast. That way, however hard times got ashore, they could always gather seafood.’
The next morning they sailed Raconteur into Auckland Harbour and anchored at the wharf in front of the old ferry buildings. Steven shouldered the rucksack packed with their lunch; they locked Misty in the head, put Snowy on a lead, grabbed two rifles and clambered up the steps onto Quay Street.
Silence and desolation were everywhere. Cars were abandoned, shop windows smashed and high-rise buildings burnt out. Decaying bodies lay in doorways; the stench of rotting flesh hung heavy in the air.
They walked up Queen Street, Auckland’s main thoroughfare, sickened by the destruction. Rats scurried away from bodies, only to return as soon as Mark and his family had passed. Dogs joined in the feast.
They reached Aotea Square and looked at the rubble that had once been the Town Hall. The old building had been gutted by fire and had collapsed.
‘Listen,’ Steven said suddenly. They stopped walking and strained to hear.
Jane heard it too. ‘Music, and it’s coming from the Methodist Mission Church.’
‘Stay here with the children,’ Mark said to Jane. He beckoned Steven to follow.
Although he was elated at the possibility that someone else might have survived the pandemic, Mark was cautious. They peered in the door of the church. The building was littered with corpses; many had sought the comfort of religion
in the last few hours of their lives. Never had they seen so many flies. Rats were crawling over the bodies, nibbling away.
‘Anyone there?’ Mark called. There was no reply. They stared in the direction the music seemed to be coming from, their eyes gradually adjusting to the dim light.
They began to edge forward, stepping over the corpses, rifles at the ready. The stench was appalling; both men were choking and retching.
They picked out the glint of a metallic object grasped in the hand of someone lying on the floor. When they reached the spot they found only a corpse, most of it gnawed away by the rats. The clothes suggested it was once a woman. A skeletal hand still gripped the music player.
‘She certainly didn’t turn the music on,’ Steven observed wryly.
‘No, but I suspect one of them did,’ Mark said, nodding towards the rats. ‘Probably jumped down from a chair and hit the play button. Let’s get out of here.’
Steven found a cigarette lighter lying beside another body. He took a Bible, ripped it apart, crumpled the pages and placed them beside the vestments hanging from the altar. Then he set the pages alight. It just didn’t seem right to leave the corpses to the rats.
‘I don’t think we should hang around in the city, there’s too much danger of disease,’ Steven said as they stood in the street watching the rats stream out of the burning church.
Mark nodded in agreement.
‘I want to see my house,’ Jane said firmly.
They walked to the top of Queen Street, turned left along Karangahape Road and onto Grafton Bridge. The Perspex panes that had lined the sides of the bridge were broken in several places. Dozens of bodies lay crumpled on the motorway below where people had thrown themselves from the bridge.
It was a long walk and the children were exhausted when they reached Ragmot Street. Jane’s home had been burnt to the ground. Secretly, Mark was relieved; at least Jane would now have to accept living somewhere else.
While Jane and the children gathered flowers and his father explored the houses further along the street, Steven tidied Bruce’s grave.
Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1) Page 8