They ate their lunch sitting on the grass beside the grave and then said their goodbyes to Bruce before climbing to the summit of nearby Mount Hobson. Beneath them the city of Auckland sprawled in all directions. They spent several minutes scanning the suburbs, hoping to see a plume of smoke or a moving vehicle.
‘Nothing,’ Steven announced finally. ‘We’re all alone.’
Jane said she felt sick in the stomach.
They chose a different route back to Raconteur, still hoping to find signs of life, but the suburb of Parnell told a similar story to Epsom. There was no one else alive.
When they got back to Quay Street the smell of decaying corpses seemed worse than before. They were pleased to get back aboard Raconteur.
‘Where to now?’ Steven asked his father as they sailed past Devonport.
‘Head north, back to Gulf Harbour. We’ll take over one of those houses on the canal.’
Jane gave Mark a questioning look.
‘It’s an ideal location,’ he explained. ‘We can moor Raconteur in the canal and use her for fishing, and we can set up everything else we need close by.’
There were no signs of life as they motored into the man-made canal that wound its way through the cluster of waterside homes at the top of the marina. Each property had a gangway leading down to a private berth, but most of the berths were empty now. Mark swung Raconteur in and brought her to rest.
‘Do you mind preparing something to eat?’ he asked Jane. ‘Steven and I will have a quick scout around.’
‘I want to come, too,’ said Nicole eagerly, struggling to lift her leg over Raconteur’s lifelines. Misty and Snowy had already jumped ship and were making their way up the gangway.
‘No,’ said Mark quickly. ‘You children stay and help your mother.’ He looked at Jane and she nodded in understanding. Who knew what her father and brother would find in the houses beside the canal?
Steven and Mark made a quick reconnoitre of the block of three town houses directly in front of where they had berthed Raconteur. Looters had forced the doors on all three properties and all the food had been taken, but otherwise the houses were intact. They found only one body; it was badly decomposed.
‘It’s ideal,’ Steven announced. ‘There’s plenty of room — we can spread out over the three properties if we want to.’
Mark nodded. ‘Let’s get rid of that corpse.’
Throughout the late summer and autumn and into winter, the Chatfield family worked feverishly to establish a base that would sustain them into the future. Mark, an avid reader, had always been attracted to survival stories. The knowledge he’d accumulated over the years now came to the fore.
Over several weeks he led the family as they scavenged their way along the Whangaparaoa Peninsula. On a farm they located an old tractor and a diesel car. In a builder’s yard they found two large plastic water tanks, which they trucked down to the marina village and hooked up to the guttering of their new home. The same builder’s yard yielded a septic tank, which solved their sewerage problems.
A trip to a pioneer museum located an old cooking range, complete with a back boiler. Deserted boats in the marina provided batteries, wind-generated power systems and solar panels, which they gathered together, then spent many months figuring out how to work. Eventually, they managed to rig up a pump to take water from the plastic storage tanks to the header tanks in their loft. Next they ran a twelve-volt lighting system throughout the three houses.
They adopted a two-pronged approach to their survival, scavenging for any remnants of food they could find in order to ensure their short-term survival, while at the same time preparing for a longer-term, self-sufficient existence. They ripped out all the flowers from the terrace gardens alongside the canals and planted vegetables in their place, having found seed packets still on the shelves at the local garden centre. They also carefully transplanted fruit trees and grape vines from orchards and vineyards in the area. As time went by, in the remote farms north of the peninsula, they came across stray farm animals and transported them back to the local golf course, which was now covered in long, lush grass.
They experimented with making cheese and butter, they bottled fruit and vegetables, smoked fish and learnt how to brew beer and make wine. They pumped out the tanks of boats in the marina to build up reserves of diesel for the tractor, the diesel car and Raconteur.
Keeping busy, they had little time to mourn their past lives or the people they’d lost. As spring approached, and the evenings became longer again, they were pleased with their efforts. They had moved beyond survival mode.
Jane and the children had settled into the centre house, which also contained the communal kitchen. Mark and Steven had claimed the town house on the seaward end of the block of three. The third house had evolved into their activities centre. The lounge was set up as a schoolroom and the dining room was converted into a library, where Jane began assembling books to continue the children’s education.
The library also contained medical books, covering simple surgery, first aid and herbal remedies. From the pioneer museum they had collected an old treadmill-driven dentist’s drill, though they all hoped it wouldn’t be needed. From a couple of trips to medical centres and a hospital they assembled an assortment of surgical instruments, bottles of anaesthetic and training guides. Jane was their designated doctor, and whenever she had spare time — which wasn’t often — she worked through a course of self-study. Illness was a sobering concern for her. She knew she didn’t have the knowledge or equipment to treat diseases like cancer, and she would have been hard pressed to cope with anything that required surgery.
Although they could scavenge for what they needed, they decided to assemble everything close at hand, converting the adjacent multistorey apartment block into a warehouse. In rooms on the six floors they stored all the items they thought would be useful in the future, such as tools and clothing, rope and spare tyres. Eventually over four thousand items were catalogued in a card-index filing system Jane had methodically established in the foyer.
With the necessities of life secure, Steven connected up a twelve-volt entertainment system and a computer acquired from a superyacht in the marina.
In one sense, Mark reflected, they had everything they could ever want, yet they didn’t have the one thing they craved. They had one another, but increasingly they missed interacting with a larger community.
Part 2
15
‘I’d like to make a trip to Wellington,’ Mark declared. It was September and the worst of the winter was over. Jane and Steven looked up. ‘I’ve been thinking about your Uncle Christopher,’ he continued. ‘There’s a chance he and your cousins are still alive.’
‘No one else is,’ Jane said.
‘I know, but our family obviously has some sort of immunity to the disease. The last time we spoke to Christopher he was fine, and so were your cousins.’
‘But that was only a week after the outbreak. A lot of people were still healthy then.’
‘I know all that. But think about it — your mother died, Bruce died and your Aunt Elizabeth and your cousins’ husbands had either died or were ill before the telephones went down. Yet Christopher, Sarah, Katie and their children were still in good health.’
‘But, as Jane said, that was only a week into the pandemic,’ Steven reminded him.
Mark was becoming frustrated by their attitude. ‘There are three generations in this house — me, you two and the children — and we all survived.’
‘It could be a quirk of nature,’ Steven conceded. ‘Something in our blood line, a crucial gene you and Mum passed on to Jane and me, and that Jane has passed on to Zach and Nicole.’
‘And it could just as easily be a gene my mother or father passed on to me,’ Mark argued. ‘If it is, Christopher could have the same immunity as I do, and if he does, so could his children and grandchildren.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Well, I don’t want to travel to Well
ington,’ Jane said firmly, ‘and I don’t want the children to go either. We’re safe here. You never know what we might find down country.’
They debated the issue far into the night.
‘You and Steven go,’ Jane said finally. ‘The children and I can manage the animals for a couple of weeks.’
Mark finally agreed, though he was unhappy about leaving Jane and his grandchildren alone at Gulf Harbour.
Over the next few days, he and Steven prepared for the journey. They hitched a trailer behind their salvaged four-wheel-drive vehicle and loaded it with enough cans of fuel for the return trip. They packed camping equipment and enough food for a fortnight, and assembled a collection of items that might be useful on the journey — axes, saws, crowbars and ropes. They also tied two bicycles onto the trailer, just in case they couldn’t get the vehicle through. Finally, from the locked apartment at the top of the warehouse that served as the armoury, they collected their two favourite rifles.
In the second week of September, late on a cold, wet and windy morning, the men were finally ready to leave. After one last hug for his sister, Steven turned the ignition key of the four-wheel-drive.
They drove down the motorway towards the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It was only a little over six months since traffic had ceased using the motorways, yet already nature was beginning to creep back. The verges were now waist high in weeds, seeds had germinated in cracks on the tarmac and tiny clumps of weed were inching across the roadway.
On the summit of the Harbour Bridge, a row of concrete blocks confronted them. They had to shift the heavy blocks by hand so it was already getting dark by the time they finally breached the barricade.
Just south of Auckland they found an empty house, cooked themselves a meal, spread out their sleeping bags and turned in for an early night. Mark found it hard to sleep. His mind continually wandered around Gulf Harbour, seeking out his daughter and grandchildren, trying to ensure they were safe, checking and re-checking that Steven and he had done everything necessary before they left.
The two hundred and eighty kilometre trip from Auckland to Lake Taupo took all of the next day. They skirted the city of Hamilton, travelling along a series of back roads so that their journey consisted of long stretches of open road broken only by small settlements of a few dozen houses. It seemed every settlement had built a roadblock in order to hold up and rob vehicles travelling along the main highway. Each of these slowed them down as they forced a way through. Steven and Mark saw no sign of human life.
It was late afternoon by the time they breached the final roadblock north of Taupo and entered the town. They found an empty motel room and dumped their gear before setting off to explore. The number of corpses in the motels and the large number of graves beside the lake suggested the holiday resort had experienced an influx of people during the final days of the pandemic.
‘I wonder how Jane and the children are,’ Mark said, as they walked beside the lake.
‘Don’t worry. They’ll be fine,’ Steven assured him.
16
But Jane wasn’t fine. A few hours earlier, back at Gulf Harbour, Nicole had run into the house and shouted breathlessly to her mother, ‘There’s a boat coming up the canal.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Jane said, without looking up from the kitchen bench where she was busy preparing their evening meal.
‘Mum, there really is a boat,’ insisted Zach, who’d followed Nicole into the house.
Jane walked onto the patio to investigate.
‘Look, there’s a man!’ Nicole was jumping up and down on the spot, her voice shrill. The children waved enthusiastically. Jane was in shock; he was the first human being, other than her family, that she’d seen for over six months.
The man waved back. His two-masted ketch was shabby; rust streaks ran down the hull from the stanchions. Lashed to the deck was an untidy assortment of jerry cans. The wind-vane steering and the cluster of navigation equipment suggested the boat was an ocean-going vessel. They could make out the name The White Witch in faded lettering on the hull.
They watched as the man motored his yacht slowly past them, peering up at the empty buildings as he went. Then he nosed into a vacant berth, reversed back to the other side of the canal to complete his turn, and came back down the canal towards them.
Uninvited, he swung The White Witch into the empty berth alongside Raconteur. Excitedly, the children ran down the gangway to greet their visitor. Jane felt compelled to follow.
‘Hi,’ said the bearded figure as he threw her a line. ‘I’m Tom.’
‘Hi,’ Jane replied, taking the line and making it fast. For some reason she didn’t immediately feel like volunteering her name. After months of longing for company, she felt annoyed that her territory had been invaded.
As soon as The White Witch was secure, the wiry, bearded man leapt onto the pontoon. His clothes — a stained T-shirt and ripped shorts — were as scruffy as his vessel. ‘Hi,’ he said again. ‘I’m Tom Barker from Toronto. I was sailing down to Auckland when I saw the smoke from your fire.’
Jane held out her hand. ‘Hi, Tom, I’m Jane, this is my son Zach and my daughter Nicole. Would you like something to eat?’ she heard herself saying. ‘We’re about to have dinner.’
‘Sure would,’ Tom replied enthusiastically.
Jane led the way up the gangway towards the house.
‘He pongs,’ Nicole whispered to Zach as they followed. Zach held his nose, and both children giggled. Tom had obviously not washed for many weeks.
‘Nice set-up you’ve got here,’ the visitor said as they walked into the house. Jane noticed him inquisitively looking around her home, picking up items and inspecting them.
‘Have a seat,’ she said, motioning to a chair at the dining table. She wanted him to leave her possessions alone. ‘Zach, you lay the table. Nicole, you offer Tom some fruit while I finish making the dinner.’
The children busied themselves, looking wide-eyed at the bearded figure of Tom as he bit into a large apple and allowed the juice to run into his beard.
‘You three all alone here?’ he asked.
Jane didn’t like the way his eyes were all over her. ‘No, my brother and father live here too.’
‘They’re away. They’ve gone to Wellington,’ Zach said.
Jane threw him an angry glance. He looked wounded.
‘They’ve gone to see if they can find Uncle Christopher,’ Nicole added.
‘What about your husband?’ Tom asked.
‘Our daddy died,’ Nicole said before Jane could reply.
‘How about you?’ Jane asked Tom, keen to prevent her children telling the stranger all their family business. ‘What’s your story?’
‘Lucky, I suppose. I set off to sail solo non-stop round the world just before the pandemic broke out. When I heard the news, I decided the middle of the ocean was the safest place to be. I listened to the news, and when the radio stations stopped broadcasting I kept in touch with other yachts to find out what was going on ashore.’
‘Are there many other yachts still out there?’
‘I haven’t heard any radio signals for a month now.’
The children watched wide-eyed as Tom ate the apple core.
‘Can I show Tom my rabbits?’ Nicole asked.
‘Yes,’ Jane said, relieved at the prospect of having her house back to herself.
Tom followed the children outside. While they showed him the rabbits, Nicole chatted away, telling him her life story, and how her Uncle Steven had promised that while he was visiting Wellington he would try to find her a guinea pig for her birthday.
When Tom lost interest in the rabbits, the children escorted him along the canal, proudly showing off the gardens. They pointed out the warehouse and boasted about all the items they had helped store in the rooms. When they had shown him everything, they led him back to the house.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ Jane said. ‘Wash your hands.’ The children hurried to the bathroom. Although
his hands were grubby, Tom just sat down at the table. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Jane asked, holding up a jug of apple juice.
‘Got any wine?’ he asked roughly.
‘Red or white?’
‘Red,’ he said. ‘You sure are well set up here,’ he added as an afterthought.
The children returned, Jane put the meal on the table and then selected a bottle of her father’s home-made wine from the rack, uncorked the bottle and poured Tom a glass. He grunted and gulped it down. She put the bottle down beside the empty glass and left him to help himself. He drank another glass before beginning to bolt down his meal.
‘When are you expecting your brother and father back?’ he asked as he scraped the last morsel of food from his plate.
‘Tonight — or early tomorrow morning.’
‘No, they won’t be back for days,’ Nicole chimed in.
‘They’ll be back soon,’ Jane repeated.
‘They said they would be away for up to two weeks,’ Zach insisted, supporting Nicole’s story, ‘and they only left yesterday.’
‘Clear the table,’ Jane ordered. As the children were busy stacking the dishes in the kitchen she whispered to Tom, ‘It’s Nicole’s birthday tomorrow — they told me they’d try to get back tonight as a surprise.’
Tom was clearly enjoying the comforts of home life after months at sea. He took his wine to the sofa and watched intently as Jane and her children washed and dried the dishes. He didn’t offer to help. Once they were finished, Jane and the children sat down together on the chairs opposite him. It was already growing dark outside.
‘What’s brought you to Auckland?’ Jane asked.
‘Been here before. Remembered it as a good place.’
‘Will you sail back to Canada?’
‘Doesn’t seem to be much point now. Might stay in New Zealand, or I might go up to Fiji, not sure yet.’
They sat and talked for another hour. Tom got more communicative when he began telling them bitterly how his wife had run away with his best friend, and that he had two teenage children he hadn’t seen for five years. Then the conversation dried up again, and Jane waited for him to go back to his yacht. He showed no sign of moving.
Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1) Page 9