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

by Michael Green

  Mark mulled over how the pandemic had changed his view of the world. While his upbringing had not been particularly religious, it had been founded on Christian principles. He had a conservative streak. He had forbidden Bruce and Jane to sleep together in his house before they were married, even though he knew they enjoyed an intimate relationship. He had been faithful to Helen, and she to him. Now he found himself looking at the handsome Roger and hoping he wouldn’t stay as much in love with Louise as he appeared to be at that moment. Of the three San Diego women Louise was the least attractive, though her sharp, pinched features, which reminded Mark of his cousin Diana, were softened by her ravishing red hair. He found himself hoping Roger would find the Haver Chatfield women more attractive than Louise and that he would spread his genes.

  The final member of the San Diego survivors wasn’t looking at the cutter either. Mark became aware that Anne was looking at him. He caught her eye. She blushed and looked quickly away, then turned towards him again. He smiled, and she smiled back. Like Louise, Anne was of slight build, though much shorter. She was slim and petite, her blond hair short-cropped. She had an impish prettiness.

  Mark returned to grappling with the sleeping arrangements. There were effectively eleven adults, since he had to include Zach and Nicole in that category. There were five small children. AWOL had three fixed double berths and four pipe berths. The saloon table could also be lowered and the settee converted to form an additional double berth, but he was reluctant to do that, as those not sleeping needed space. He decided the twins could be doubled up, thereby enabling the five small children to be accommodated in the four pipe-berths up forward. The berths had full lee cloths so, wedged in with pillows, the children should be safe, even in the roughest weather.

  That left eleven adults and three double berths. They’d have to both hot-bunk and double up. Jessica and Fergus, Rick and Julie, and Roger and Louise were givens to share a double berth. There remained Zach, Nicole, Jane, Anne and himself. He ran through the permutations and caught Anne’s eye again. Then he noticed Jane glance at both him and Anne.

  Jane and Nicole could share a berth. He would share with Zach. Anne could have a berth to herself.

  As the cutter finally disappeared from view, Julie rose and sat with Rick next to Jane and Jessica.

  ‘So how long till we get to England?’ Rick asked.

  Mark shifted his stance and looked up at the sails. He knew all eyes were on him. His jaw tightened. ‘It’s going to be at least another eight months. It’s only about four months’ sailing, but we can’t head south yet. We’re almost into the cyclone season, and even if we weren’t, the safest time to go round the Horn is January or February. We need to hole up somewhere just south of here. Far enough away from San Diego to be safe — but not too far south.’

  ‘You sure we can’t risk rounding the Horn now?’ Fergus challenged.

  Mark shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t want to take your children round the Horn at this time of year. We need to find more food. It was touch and go whether we had enough to get back to England as it was — we certainly can’t make it with five extra mouths to feed.’

  Jessica glanced at Fergus. Mark could tell from the looks on everyone’s faces that there would be no further argument. ‘We need to find somewhere nice and sheltered, with accommodation ashore. In the meantime we’re going to have to hot-bunk.’

  ‘What’s hot-bunk?’ Nicole asked.

  Mark outlined the sleeping arrangements, about how the people on different watches would sleep in the same bunks at different times. Only the double-bunkers seemed pleased with the arrangements.

  ‘If you want a good anchorage, you might like to consider Ensenada,’ Roger suggested. ‘It’s in Mexico, only about sixty miles south of San Diego. I was on holiday there a couple of years ago. There were plenty of boats anchored. It was also a popular cruise-boat destination, so I’m guessing it’s a pretty safe harbour.’

  Mark glanced over his shoulder. ‘What’re the chances of the sub crew coming after us?’ he asked Roger.

  ‘Well, they’ve got no fuel for power boats. But they could try to catch us in a sailboat.’

  ‘Could they track us on radar?’

  ‘There’s radar at the airfield on North Island, but they’d have to re-commission it. I doubt they could do that before you got below the horizon.’

  ‘Could they send the nuclear sub after us?’ asked a wide-eyed Zach.

  Roger shook his head. ‘It would take too much to make her seaworthy. Anyway her propellers are so damaged, she couldn’t match AWOL for speed. She’s just a floating power plant these days.’

  ‘I’m still worried they might try to get us back,’ Louise said, her voice faltering.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll come after us,’ Roger assured her. ‘They’ve got an easier way of securing the women they need.’ Everyone looked in his direction. ‘The reason I couldn’t get back to AWOL the night before last is that by the time I got aboard Midway, Brad’s body had been found.’

  ‘Why weren’t we challenged at the time?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Apparently someone heard the bullets from Brad’s gun, but they didn’t recognise what the noise was. They simply wandered up to the guard on the gantry and reported they’d heard strange noises coming from the engineering section. We were well away by the time he got around to investigating.

  ‘Anyway, when the guard found Brad’s body and discovered Rick had escaped, all hell let loose. I only got back through the exit gantry by the skin of my teeth. There was no way I could get away again. The skipper wanted me to examine the body and then I got tied up in the investigation trying to determine what had happened.

  ‘The first thing the skipper did was to set up an ambush at Date Street, in case Rick headed there to collect Julie. In the meantime, when Brad did not return at the agreed time to where Hank was holed up, Hank got sick of waiting and headed for Date Street.’

  ‘And got caught in the ambush set for Rick?’

  ‘Exactly. I was present at his interrogation. He was accused of stealing the women. He spilled the beans on everything: Brad and his drugs-for-women trade, finding the tracking tags. I had to go with the flow. I even volunteered for the search party so that if anyone noticed AWOL I could see imaginary women in the distance. I also wanted to find out if you were still there.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Fergus interrupted, ‘is why all this would stop them heading out after us in a sailboat?’

  ‘In the process of his interrogation, Hank let slip that there was a woman at Edwards Air Force Base. A raiding party was being planned even before his interrogation ended.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ Anne breathed.

  ‘Unfortunately, it was the raiding party that spotted me as I was making my way down the quayside with the suitcases full of drugs.’

  ‘At three o’clock in the morning!’ Fergus exclaimed.

  ‘That’s how keen they were to get their hands on her.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ Anne said again.

  Jane looked at her father and opened her mouth to speak.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, there’s no way we can risk going back. We can’t take any chances at all. We’ll head out to sea for a few hundred miles and then swing back in to Ensenada. Fergus, I’d like you to go aloft and get that radar reflector off the mast.’

  Over the next few days, AWOL settled into a new routine. The crew was divided into a two-watch system, port watch and starboard watch, each standing watch for twelve hours at a time. The use of the three double cabins was allocated on the same basis. Fergus was appointed watch-captain of the noon-to-midnight port watch with Jessica, Roger, Louise, Jane and Nicole his crew. Mark took the midnight-to-noon starboard watch himself, with Zach, Rick, Julie and Anne. Mindful of the journey around the Horn they would face later in the year, he took every opportunity to instruct and train his new crew members, as did Fergus.

  Anne proved Mark’s most willing recruit. Julie was more
interested in doting on Rick, who proved surly and bad tempered. He seemed to carry a huge chip on his shoulder and certainly resented Mark giving him orders. Mark wondered whether the resentment was caused by Rick’s desire to be his own man now he had thrown off the yoke of enslavement. He could only guess how traumatic it would have been for Rick to have had to stand by, helpless, as Julie had been forced to service the sexual needs of the sub’s crew.

  In dealing with Rick, he trod carefully at first, asking rather than commanding. But as the days passed he found it more and more difficult to accept Rick’s surliness. He also realised there would be no time to ask nicely when they were flying in the teeth of a gale. It didn’t help that Rick had sailed dinghies in his youth and thought he knew it all. He didn’t.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Anne whispered in Mark’s ear after one of his many confrontations with Rick. ‘He’s always been an arrogant bastard. Just like his grandfather. And just like his grandfather, he was always trying to put it about. Don’t tell Julie though, she doesn’t know.’

  Mark looked at her questioningly.

  ‘He hit on both Louise and me before the sub arrived. He said we needed to produce babies in order to survive. He can be very charming, but deep down he’s a nasty piece of work. He sounds like that Nigel back at Haver. Chatfield male genes, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m a Chatfield,’ Mark said defensively.

  She touched his arm lightly. ‘I know, but you’re different, I can tell.’

  Zach returned from the foredeck and Anne drew away. Mark wondered if he really was different from Nigel and Rick. His self-confidence had often been misinterpreted as arrogance, and he had been looking at Anne and thinking of the need to produce babies. Or was it just lust?

  No, he couldn’t get involved with Anne. He still loved Allison. He still loved Helen. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair. Not to Helen, not to Allison, not to Jane. And not to Zach or Nicole either.

  19

  AWOL was averaging over one hundred and fifty miles a day. On the sixth morning the wind turned northerly so Mark changed course and swung back towards the port of Ensenada

  The favourable wind died and a rare easterly developed. It took nearly a week to beat back to the coast. Everyone was relieved when the journey ended. The hot weather and cramped conditions had made for an unpleasant voyage. Mark planned modifications to allow hammocks to be slung above the saloon table so watch members not required on deck could rest during heavy weather.

  At daylight on a damp August day — Nicole’s thirteenth birthday — AWOL anchored in the northeastern corner of Ensenada Harbour, opposite the fishing piers.

  ‘I plan to leave here in early December, which means we’ve almost four months before we head south,’ Mark announced. ‘It doesn’t make sense for us to live crammed aboard AWOL all that time.’

  ‘Well, Julie and I certainly fancy a holiday ashore,’ Rick declared.

  ‘It won’t be any holiday,’ Mark countered sharply. ‘A few days’ rest then there’ll be plenty to keep everyone busy. We need to find enough food both to live on now and to replenish AWOL’s stores for the voyage to England.’

  Zach and Nicole led a chorus of volunteers willing to decamp from AWOL and hunt for food.

  ‘I could do with someone staying aboard to help me refit AWOL,’ Mark reminded them above the clamour of voices.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ Anne said.

  ‘I will too,’ Jane said quickly, apparently having suddenly changed her mind. ‘You two can stay aboard too,’ she added, nodding towards Zach and Nicole.

  ‘I want to go ashore,’ Nicole said defiantly.

  ‘Me too,’ Zach said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Please, Mum. We’re going to be cooped up on AWOL for months. I’ll look after Nicole ashore.’

  ‘What do you mean look after me?’ Nicole demanded, hands on hips. ‘You can’t even look after yourself without breaking your leg. I’ll look after myself, thank you.’

  Mark looked at her sternly. She was becoming a handful. He hoped Jane would allow her to go ashore — he could do with a break from her petulance.

  ‘Jane, we’ll keep our eye on Zach and Nicole,’ Jessica said gently.

  ‘I don’t need anyone to keep an eye on me,’ Nicole retorted angrily.

  ‘I think we’ll all need to keep an eye on you,’ Rick laughed. The humour seemed to diffuse the situation.

  ‘I want to stay with you, Mummy,’ Audrey said, cuddling her mother lovingly. That seemed to help too. Jane nodded to Zach. ‘OK, but get up to any mischief and you’ll both be back onboard.’

  As the women made preparations for the move ashore, Mark rowed Rick, Roger, Fergus and Zach ashore to investigate. Nicole, furious that she had not been included in the shore party, sullenly set about packing her clothes, ignoring her mother’s request to pack Zach’s clothes too.

  The shore party found Ensenada eerily quiet. Large sections of the industrial and commercial areas of the town close to where they beached the dinghy had been burnt out. However, the twin towers of the cathedral of Nuestra Señora had survived, as had the huge sculpted heads in the plaza. They continued inland to the residential suburbs, and it seemed the town appeared to have ended its days in a more orderly fashion than San Diego. They found only four corpses on the streets. Many gardens had neat rows of graves. Multiple skeletons were rare in the houses they searched.

  Eventually Rick, Roger, Fergus and Zach each chose themselves a house in one of the nicer suburbs, each taking care to ensure space between themselves and their neighbours. They all felt the need for privacy after weeks aboard AWOL.

  Mark chose a large house for Jane, Anne, Audrey and himself. He intended to sleep aboard AWOL for safety reasons but would often be ashore during the day to help with provisioning. He felt that Jane would eventually want to move ashore with Audrey. Or was he just hoping?

  Fergus, Jessica and the younger children were the first group rowed ashore. They were followed by Julie and Rick and Roger and Louise. Nicole grumbled because she had to wait till the third trip, even though it had been her failure to pack Zach’s clothes that caused the delay.

  Finally, Mark rowed Zach and Nicole ashore. Nicole had insisted on taking Misty with her. As soon as her grandfather had left to row back to AWOL, she announced to Zach that she didn’t like the house he had chosen. She stormed off and returned ten minutes later to announce that she and Misty were moving in two doors away. When Zach pleaded to move in with her she refused to let him.

  As Mark had predicted, life ashore was busy. There was not enough time to create an agricultural community so they became hunter-gatherers. Due to the near-desert conditions of the Ensenada area there was not much wildlife available to hunt. They found large numbers of guns but few rounds of ammunition, and ended up with a weird assortment of weapons, some with only a single round. They bagged the odd mule deer and bighorn sheep, but were forced to hunt rabbits, squirrels and even coyotes to supplement their food. Despite the abundance of fish in the harbour and self-sown vegetables in gardens, it took considerable effort to feed sixteen people and to gather additional supplies in preparation for the voyage to England.

  At first, liberated from the cramped conditions aboard AWOL, everyone seemed to get on better. Even Rick fitted in. Mark wondered whether many of the ills of the pre-pandemic world were a result of mankind’s practice of cramming too many people into too little space.

  Whatever Mark thought of Rick’s sailing skills, he could not help but admire the American’s mechanical ability. He stripped down AWOL’s engine, searched anchored boats for spares and soon had the engine ticking over nicely. As had been the case at the other marinas Mark had searched, every fuel tank had been drained. But following Rick’s instructions he drained fuel lines and filters and over the following weeks, drop by precious drop, he accumulated fifteen litres of fuel.

  Rick also took a lead in building makeshift equipment to help with preserving food. Fish were caught and smoked, vegetables and fr
uit bottled, meat dried. Everyone played their part, even Nicole. At Gulf Harbour she had helped her uncle Steven on his building projects, and here she again took on the role of Rick’s willing apprentice.

  Rick clearly enjoyed the respect his mechanical skills brought. He strutted rather than walked. Julie looked at him lovingly, as proud of her catch as she had been before the arrival of the submarine. He had an easy, charming manner with all the women, including Nicole. But he was surly with Mark and argumentative with Fergus.

  ‘You know he’s a bit of a rake?’ Mark said to Jane, nodding in Rick’s direction, towards the end of the first month of their stay in Ensenada.

  ‘Why are you telling me?’ she asked indignantly.

  ‘I’ve noticed him chatting you up — and giving you the glad eye.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. He’s just a friendly guy. Anyway, he’s with Julie, he wouldn’t mess around.’ Mark, remembering what he’d been told by Anne about Rick’s philandering, opened his mouth, but Jane kept talking. ‘Not that it would matter anyway. I’m not interested in him. Rather than worry about Rick and me, you should worry about yourself and Anne.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come off it. I’ve seen the way you look at her, and I’ve seen the way she looks at you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Then don’t you be ridiculous about Rick and me!’

  They fell into an uneasy silence. They’d both lied. Their emotions were in turmoil.

  Jane knew Rick was bad news, but couldn’t help being attracted to him. He was charming, he seemed to be paying her particular attention, he made her feel alive — he made her feel like a woman again. It was six and a half years since Bruce had died. In the circumstances, Rick was the perfect match. She didn’t love him, and he didn’t love her; it was purely a physical attraction. She was forty and due to the epidemic had already lost six and a half years of what should have been a sexually active period of her life.