Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Green

  ‘Gee, thanks, Uncle Mark. Up at three o’clock, so I probably won’t get back to sleep again after that.’ She left the room and banged the door angrily behind her.

  ‘Tell me everything. Please,’ Mark said as he climbed the never-satisfied treadmill.

  31

  Despite his fitness, Mark was finding the unfamiliar work of driving the treadmill hard. But he didn’t complain, and listened attentively as Paul outlined events as they’d happened over the past three and a half years.

  The pandemic had hit England fast and hard, overwhelming public services. Because of the size of the population, the consequences of the outbreak had been even more dramatic than in New Zealand.

  Government assurances that there was no need to engage in panic buying had had the opposite effect. Shops and supermarkets were emptied within twenty-four hours, as were the fuel tanks at the garages.

  Over the following few days, shelves were partially restocked from distribution centres. Rationing was introduced, but the system collapsed as claims of nepotism and fraud arose. By mid-February, factories and other businesses had stopped operating because of the deaths of so many workers, and those who could work refused to do so.

  Even if people been prepared to work, power was rarely available. And it was February, the coldest month of the year. The outages had had a devastating effect.

  ‘A lot of elderly people died of cold or pneumonia,’ Paul said. ‘Then there were the problems caused by rotting garbage. The contractors went on strike because so many dead cats had been put in the rubbish — there was that theory cats were spreading Super-SARS. The problem got even worse when families started putting dead bodies out into the streets. I was told more people died in London from cholera than from the effects of the virus itself.’

  ‘How did you get on in Sevenoaks?’

  ‘My Marion died two days after your phone call from Auckland airport. I just went to pieces. Cheryl had to run the shop for me, which resulted in a terrifying incident.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Paul told Mark that when, on the Thursday evening, Cheryl failed to come home from her father’s shop, her sick and anxious husband had called Paul.

  Paul had rushed down to the shop in the high street to see if she was there. He found the shop locked. He tried her sister’s and her friends’ houses, but Cheryl had disappeared.

  The police force had been badly hit by illness. A harassed officer took down only the briefest of details and Paul guessed little action would be taken. Frantic, he’d spent the remainder of the evening searching for his daughter, with no success.

  All he could do was be at the shop early the next morning, hoping that somehow Cheryl would be there to open up. He found a queue of customers waiting. The shop sold pet food and accessories, and Paul had never seen a queue like that before. One of his regular customers provided the first real information about Cheryl.

  ‘Two men came in a big car, middle of yesterday afternoon. I saw your Cheryl lock up the shop, white as a sheet she was, arguing with them good and proper.

  ‘I wondered what she’d been up to. Like I said to my Stan, she never seemed the type to do nothing wrong. Hey, you haven’t been putting no dead bodies in them dog rolls, have you? My Stan and I had one for our tea last night.’ Paul grasped the reason for the queue. His customers were consuming the pet food themselves.

  He assured his customers there were no dead bodies in his dog rolls, and explained that he wouldn’t be opening his shop until he’d found his daughter. With that he set off to walk back to the police station. As soon as he was out of sight, however, his customers had broken into the shop and looted the shelves.

  The officer on duty at the station had assured him local police had not been involved in Cheryl’s apparent arrest. ‘I’ll make enquiries when the computer systems come back on line — if they ever do,’ he’d promised.

  ‘It was several weeks before I saw Cheryl again and found out what had really happened,’ Paul told Mark.

  When the men had walked into the shop and asked for Mr Chatfield, Cheryl replied, ‘My dad’s not here today, can I help you?’

  ‘Your dad! You must be Cheryl or Bridget,’ said one of the men.

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘Which one are you?’ snapped the other figure, gruffly.

  ‘Cheryl.’

  ‘Right, we need you to lock the shop and come with us.’

  ‘Why? Who are you?’

  ‘We’re from the Ministry of Health,’ explained the less intimidating of the two strangers. ‘We think you might be able to help us with regard to this pandemic. We need you to come with us and take some tests.’

  ‘Where to? What tests?’

  ‘Just to Tonbridge. We’ll have you back before you know it.’

  ‘I can’t, I’ve got to run the shop, and then I’ve got to get home to my children and my husband — my husband’s ill.’

  ‘Are any of your children ill?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good — and you yourself?’

  ‘No, the children and I had a touch of the flu last week, but we were soon over it.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘He was ill as well, but he soon recovered. My mother died though.’

  ‘The fact you got over the flu is a good sign. That’s why we need you to take some tests,’ explained the more kindly official.

  Cheryl was becoming suspicious. ‘But why me?’

  ‘That’s enough questions,’ said the gruff one. ‘The sooner we go, the sooner you’ll be back. Now lock the shop.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you don’t do as you’re told, you’ll be arrested.’

  ‘It would be really helpful if you could come with us,’ added his colleague.

  Cheryl continued to protest, but as she had little choice she locked up the shop. She was driven away at high speed. When the car didn’t stop at Tonbridge she demanded to know why, but the officials ignored her questions. At a private hospital on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells she was taken before a panel of doctors who asked her a long list of questions.

  ‘We need to take a blood sample,’ a doctor said finally.

  Cheryl hated needles; she rolled up her sleeve and looked the other way. She felt the needle enter her arm, and saw the room begin to spin as the drug took immediate effect.

  She was unconscious most of the time for the next few days. But every so often her eyes would open and she saw blood travelling along a tube from a needle in her arm into a bottle alongside her bed. She sensed dimly even then that the doctors were milking her blood.

  One day she woke feeling less drowsy. The drug feeding into her arm had run out and the nurse looking after her had died in the chair beside her bed. She managed to pull the tubes out of her arms and fled from the hospital, still wearing her gown. It took her over a week to walk back to Sevenoaks.

  ‘She was a real mess when she got home,’ Paul explained, his head twitching even more rapidly than usual. ‘God knows what experiments they’d done on her. She’s covered in scars. It’s a wonder she survived.’

  ‘The bastards!’ Mark recalled his own concerns, urging Jane to leave Epsom after he’d escaped from Auckland airport.

  ‘If I hadn’t asked her to work in the shop it would never have happened,’ Paul said, his voice racked with guilt.

  ‘And if I hadn’t made that phone call to your shop from Auckland airport, neither of you would have been at risk.’

  ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘Exactly, and you weren’t to know either, so stop beating yourself up. It’s a wonder they didn’t come back later for you.’

  ‘The next day there was a big meeting in Sevenoaks. It was decided to quarantine the town, and barricades went up on all the approach roads. Sevenoaks wasn’t the only town to quarantine itself. England became a series of fortified enclaves. They couldn’t have got back here even if they had wanted to.’

  ‘And how did Sevenoaks fare — havin
g quarantined itself?’

  ‘Here, take a rest. I’ll do a spell while I tell you.’

  Mark didn’t argue; he was only too pleased to get off the treadmill. His legs and back were aching and his shirt was soaked with sweat. As Paul began his long walk, Mark eased himself onto the floor, helped himself to some food, and prepared to listen to the rest of the story.

  32

  Like any other town in England, Sevenoaks had a diverse population. Don Grant, a seventy-four-year-old retired Red Cross aid-worker, was one of the first to grasp the seriousness of the pandemic. By then a resident of Rockwell Retirement Home, he had witnessed the Ebola plague in Africa.

  His warnings were dismissed at first as the fussing of an old man with nothing better to do than spread doom and gloom. But as the death toll rose, he was taken seriously and eventually convinced the council to arrange a public meeting.

  Broadcast vans, normally used at election time, were pressed into service to tour the streets. The loudhailers advised that a meeting to discuss the pandemic was to be held at the Vine Cricket Ground. That evening, the mayor climbed onto a stage erected in front of the pavilion before a crowd of nearly five thousand. After a few words of welcome, he called the local MP to the stage. Instead of addressing the concerns of the gathered townsfolk, the MP blamed the failure of public services on the previous government and was booed off the stage.

  It was only when Don Grant was helped onto the platform to address the crowd in a clear, if shaky, voice that anything was achieved. He outlined the critical factors: water supply, sewerage, isolation of those infected, and disposal of the dead. He spoke with an authority not dimmed by age. He asked for all people with skills that might be helpful in the emergency to report to the pavilion after the meeting to sign a register.

  He proposed a list of actions to be undertaken immediately, such as digging latrines, and locating and storing water. He called for the isolation of the town, detailed which roads were to be closed, and charged the residents who lived closest with the responsibility of constructing and manning the barricades.

  Finally, knowing that handing the reins back to the politicians would mean a degeneration into farce, he adjourned the meeting and told everyone to go home. It was a masterly performance.

  ‘It didn’t make any difference to the end result, of course,’ Paul said. ‘Nobody knew then that the virus was unstoppable. Don Grant died himself within ten days, but undoubtedly the foundations he’d established made a difference in Sevenoaks. A lot of people lived longer than they might have done otherwise. The looting didn’t get bad until near the very end — when everyone was desperate for food.’

  ‘How did you manage to survive?’

  Paul chuckled grimly. ‘Pet food. I never reopened the shop after it was looted. There was nothing left. However, as it happened, because I never had enough storage space at the shop, I always kept extra stock in the back of my garage at Lodge Road. I’d never told the neighbours about it because it was against the health regulations, so no one knew it was there.’

  ‘You survived by eating pet food?’

  ‘It’s surprising what you’ll eat when you’re hungry. Just as well I had such a large store. When Bridget’s and Cheryl’s husbands died, and then Mathew’s wife, all the family congregated at Lodge Road.’

  ‘What happened to Mathew?’ Mark asked.

  There was a pause and, once again, at the mention of Mathew’s name, Paul’s nervous tic became more pronounced. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said.

  Mark changed the subject. ‘What about our cousins? When did you first realise the Chatfield family had some sort of immunity?’

  ‘We didn’t know until the disease had killed nearly everyone else. It was the cousins who found us in the end. Diana walked up to Lodge Road to see if we were still alive and if we had any food. Her family were starving to death. I couldn’t just turn her away, so I gave her a dog roll. Next thing I knew, the Steeds, the Daltons and the rest of the Morgan clan were camped on my doorstep. A few days later my stockpile was gone.’

  ‘And what about Nigel and his sons?’

  ‘We heard early on that they’d acquired guns and were terrorising the town. They held up the distribution centre in the Otford Road, drove five lorryloads of food to Haver Park, and barricaded themselves inside the house.

  ‘After we’d finished all my pet food, Duncan volunteered to go into the park to kill a deer. We knew it was a dangerous place to go, but we were desperate. When he got to the entrance there was a sign saying KEEP OUT, but of course he ignored the warning and went in. Next thing he knew he was confronted by Nigel and his sons and told to get out.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘He didn’t have much choice. They took his gun and threatened to shoot him. They meant it, too. He was lucky to get out alive.’

  ‘But you all ended up at Haver anyway.’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul sighed. It was a sigh that was tinged with regret.

  ‘I’ll take over,’ Mark said as he finished eating and rose to his feet. ‘Now, tell me how you all ended up in this mess.’

  Paul sat down on a stool in the corner of the room and continued his story.

  Shortly after Duncan’s aborted attempt to enter Haver Park, the last of Sevenoaks’ population, with the exception of Claude and Cora Chatfield’s descendants, died. The Steed, Dalton and Morgan families drifted up to join Paul and his family in Lodge Road.

  The efforts of Don Grant’s committee had undoubtedly helped to prolong the life of many people in Sevenoaks, but as a result the land had been picked clean. Every scrap of food had been consumed. Houses had been searched over and over again. Every vegetable had been lifted from the gardens, every farm animal and pet had been slaughtered, as had most of the wild birds. The ponds and rivers had been dragged with nets or blasted with dynamite and were devoid of fish.

  ‘We were starving,’ Paul explained. ‘We had thirty-nine people to feed. We ended up fighting over a couple of sparrows or a hedgehog.’

  In retrospect, the consolidation of the Chatfield families into one location had been a mistake. There were simply too many people competing for what they could forage from their base in Lodge Road. There was no fuel for their vehicles so they were restricted to foraging by bicycle and on foot. By the end of March the situation had become acute.

  ‘I think we should go to Haver Park and talk to Nigel,’ Diana had suggested one evening as the family sat round the communal fire.

  ‘And get shot?’ Duncan exclaimed.

  His daughter Andrea walked up behind him and put her arms around his shoulders. She was tall and shapely, her red hair reaching almost to her waist. ‘We might as well get shot,’ she said despondently. ‘At this rate no one’s going to live to see the summer anyway.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Diana said, her head bobbing assertively. ‘We don’t have any choice. Nigel’s got food. We know he robbed the distribution centres on the Otford Road.’

  ‘And he’s got deer,’ Andrea added.

  ‘If there are any left,’ Paul cautioned. He looked ill, his eyes sunken further back into his skull than usual.

  ‘I’m sure there are still deer in the park,’ Diana insisted. ‘Nigel’s sons shot anyone who tried to steal them.’

  ‘So what makes you think they won’t shoot us?’ Duncan asked. He tugged at his unkempt beard.

  ‘We have to convince Nigel we’re worth more to him alive than dead,’ Diana said, trying hard not to lose her temper. ‘His stockpile of food’s going to run out sooner or later. Then he’ll need labour to produce more.’

  The debate continued late into the evening. There was considerable apprehension about the reception they might receive from Nigel, but by the time the last embers of the fire had died, they’d agreed on a plan of action.

  At ten o’clock the following morning, thirty-nine people left Lodge Road and dragged themselves the mile or so to Haver Park. The large iron gates were closed. A sign hung on the railings announcing
‘KEEP OUT. ANYONE WHO ENTERS THIS PARK WILL BE SHOT — ANYONE WHO SURVIVES WILL BE SHOT AGAIN.’ Hanging on the gate were two badly decomposed corpses.

  ‘Typical of Nigel’s sense of humour,’ Paul muttered with foreboding.

  The group ignored the warnings and filed through a side gate into the park. Adam Dalton limped along, leading the procession, pushing Aunt Margaret who was in her wheelchair. Immediately behind were the other senior members of the community. The third and fourth generations — young adults, teenagers, children and babies — followed. The group moved slowly, hunger sapping their energy.

  ‘Look,’ Andrea said, pointing further down the valley. Thirty-eight pairs of eyes followed her finger. At the far end of the valley, beneath a huge oak tree, stood a small herd of deer.

  ‘Pity we don’t have a rifle,’ Adam complained. The community had decided that in order to avoid provocation, they would travel into the park unarmed.

  No one challenged them, and they began to wonder if Nigel and his sons were still alive. They reached Haver House and entered through the great gate in the West Wing. A saddled horse, tethered to the statue of Venus in the overgrown Lawn Court, announced that at least one person was still in residence. Unchallenged, they walked through Lawn Court, under Cromwell’s Tower and into Flag Court.

  ‘Smoke,’ Paul said breathlessly, pointing to the blue-tinged plume creeping up from the chimneys above the Great Hall. They stumbled wearily towards the open door on the other side of Flag Court.

  They found the four Chatfield brothers slumped on sofas arranged around the huge fireplace set in the southern wall of the Great Hall. On the floor were plates of half-finished meals and an array of empty wine bottles. The group stared enviously at the wasted food.

  Mary-Claire, Paul’s five-year-old granddaughter, was more pragmatic; she set off at speed for the nearest plate, kicking an empty wine bottle in her haste. The noise, as the bottle cannoned off others, together with the stampede of other tiny feet and other kicked bottles, might have woken the dead.