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

by Michael Green

  ‘Nothing special about that,’ Mark said.

  ‘There is if you are the only person in the room at thirty-seven,’ countered the doctor. ‘I’d like to take a blood sample.’

  Jane arrived home just after two o’clock in the afternoon and found Bruce intently watching the television news.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, glancing up. Normally he would have stood, given her a peck on the cheek and made a fuss of the children. Today he was preoccupied with the news.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, keeping his eyes focused on the television set. Jane could see he wasn’t telling the truth.

  ‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ she said softly. She sent the children out into the garden to play. Once the tea was made she settled down on the sofa beside him and ran her fingers through his hair.

  ‘You’re burning up,’ she said.

  ‘Stop fussing, I’ll be okay,’ he said grumpily.

  Jane knew just how sick he must be feeling; normally a mild-mannered man, Bruce was always grumpy when he felt unwell.

  ‘This SARS business is serious,’ he continued, motioning towards the television. On the screen the Minister of Health was addressing the nation.

  ‘… A number of cases of the SARS-like illness have now been confirmed in New Zealand. The government is working to establish special centres for the diagnosis and treatment of this disease. A further bulletin, detailing the location of these centres, will be broadcast later this evening. In the meantime, people with flu-like symptoms, however mild, are requested to remain in their own homes and to avoid contact with other persons.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Bruce muttered. ‘Half the people I know have got the flu.’

  The telephone rang. Jane picked it up and handed it on to Bruce. ‘It’s Natalie from the office.’

  ‘Hi Natalie … Yes … No … When …? Are you sure? I’ll call you tomorrow … we’ll decide what to do then.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Jane asked as Bruce put down the phone. His face was drained of all colour.

  ‘It’s Andy, the transport foreman — he’s just died. He only went home sick yesterday.’

  ‘You’ve got to see a doctor,’ Jane said firmly. She dialled the surgery number but the phone was engaged.

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ Bruce insisted. ‘I’ll just lie down for a bit.’

  As soon as he was in bed, Jane tried the surgery number again — it was still engaged. She phoned her brother Steven. ‘Bruce is ill. I’m really frightened. One of the men at his work has just died. I’m worried it might be SARS.’

  ‘I’ll come straight over.’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘If they quarantine us, we need someone to look after Mum and Dad.’

  At first, he seemed reluctant to heed her request. ‘Things are bad here as well. Everyone’s standing around watching the news on TV. A quarter of the staff is off sick, and half the others have just gone home to be with their families. I’ll call you later.’

  When Jane finally got through to the surgery, the receptionist sounded harassed, telling her Bruce’s doctor was off sick himself. She was told Bruce could have an appointment with a locum in three days’ time. That was far too long to wait, but Jane made the appointment anyway.

  At four-thirty the passengers from the large marquee were finally bussed across to the terminal. The results of the efforts of Civil Defence were impressive. In a few hours, a legion of volunteer and armed-services personnel had transformed the second floor of one wing of the terminal building into a fully functioning isolation facility. They’d chosen well: the second floor of the terminal included the duty-free shops, departure lounges and, most importantly, the food outlets. A squad of army chefs now manned the kitchen of the largest restaurant. However, most of the weary passengers had little interest in food; they fell exhausted onto the waiting rows of beds.

  At five in the afternoon, Mark and the remaining crew members stood silently on a patch of grass behind the marquees and watched solemnly as soldiers lowered six coffins into freshly dug graves. An army chaplain read a short burial service, but Mark was too numb to take in what was said.

  Then he and the remaining aircraft crew were bussed to the terminal building, to a separate area at the other end of the second floor, well away from the main group of passengers. They too collapsed, exhausted, into freshly made beds. Mark’s fitful sleep was disturbed by images of ghostly white faces staring at him wide-eyed.

  5

  Mark dozed until nine o’clock on Wednesday morning. Much of the time he lay on his bed thinking about Helen, blaming himself for not realising she’d been so ill in England.

  He recalled the previous Saturday evening, when they’d been sitting in the Halfway House, a sixteenth-century pub on the outskirts of Sevenoaks, just twenty miles south of London. Helen had coughed all evening, but he’d been too busy enjoying the Chatfield family reunion to give her much attention.

  Although he’d been born in England, New Zealand was home as far as Mark was concerned. However, as he had sat in the old public house, soaking up the atmosphere and enjoying the company of his relatives, he had to admit there were people here and things about the country that he really missed.

  One of those people was sitting next to him: his Aunt Margaret. She was frail, her hair thin and white, but Aunt Margaret’s infectious chuckle echoed around the old pub. No one who heard her laughing would guess at the pain her arthritis caused. It was only when she stood, leaning on her walking stick, and shuffled forward on boots with steel rods strapped to her legs, that the observer became aware of her suffering.

  ‘So, how are things in the colonies, old chap?’ Mark’s cousin Nigel Chatfield asked, rudely interrupting the conversation Mark and Helen had been enjoying with Aunt Margaret. Nigel was overweight, bloated by the indulgent lifestyle his role as director of a water-supply company made possible. Nearly bald, he’d combed the few strands of hair that remained to him carefully across the crown of his head in a vain attempt to re-create his youth.

  ‘Still managing to survive,’ Mark replied, finding it hard to disguise his dislike of this particular cousin.

  Mark and Nigel were two of thirteen cousins, the offspring of five brothers and sisters all born in the first half of the twentieth century in Sevenoaks, to Claude and Cora Chatfield. As the family tree that Aunt Margaret had proudly handed to Helen to study affirmed, the descendants of Claude and Cora now numbered over fifty.

  ‘Where’s Annie?’ Mark asked, enquiring after Nigel’s wife.

  ‘In bed … laid low with this damn flu bug. I hear you’re going back to Auckland tomorrow; pity you haven’t managed to pop up to Oak Hill Road and see us. Maybe you’d like to call round before you head off?’ Nigel had emphasised Oak Hill Road — it was one of the best addresses in Sevenoaks.

  ‘What are all these blank boxes on Nigel’s side of the family?’ Helen asked Aunt Margaret, pointing to the family tree. She’d deliberately interrupted the conversation, saving Mark from having to respond to the invitation. ‘Have you got some relatives you haven’t told us about?’ she continued, glancing at Nigel.

  Aunt Margaret blushed.

  ‘Let me have a look,’ Nigel demanded, snatching the chart out of Helen’s hands. He stared at it, red-faced with rage. ‘How dare you!’ he hissed at Aunt Margaret. ‘Keep your nose out of my family’s business. If you don’t, you’ll regret it.’ He stuffed the chart in his pocket and stormed off.

  ‘What the hell …’ Mark called after him, beginning to rise from his seat.

  ‘Please, don’t make any trouble,’ Aunt Margaret pleaded hastily. ‘It’s been such a lovely evening.’

  ‘He’d no right to talk to you that way. And he’s got your chart.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Allison has it stored on her computer.’ Aunt Margaret nodded towards her daughter, sitting at the next table. ‘She can print me out another copy tomorrow.’

  Helen motioned to Mark to sit down so reluct
antly, still filled with anger, he lowered himself to his seat and picked up his drink.

  ‘What’s Nigel so upset about?’ Helen asked. She struggled to get the words out through a bout of coughing.

  Aunt Margaret tapped the end of her nose and winked. ‘Family secrets. I’ll tell you one day. Oak Hill Road indeed,’ she chuckled, changing the subject. ‘He’s up to his eyes in debt trying to maintain his swanky address and fancy cars.’

  Mark looked across at Nigel, who was standing at the bar with his two eldest sons, Jasper and Damian. Mark was unsure where Jasper was going in life, but Damian was into computers. Mark had previously spoken to the two young men, in their early thirties, and concluded they had inherited most of their father’s undesirable attributes. By all accounts, Nigel’s other two sons, twins in their mid-teens packed away at an expensive boarding school, weren’t much better.

  Nigel apart, it had been a good evening — the first time Mark had met up with many of his relatives for over five years. All too soon the brass bell hanging above the bar clanged, announcing last orders. The Chatfield relatives finished their drinks, bade one another farewell and began making their way to their homes in the surrounding Kent countryside.

  The next morning, Mark had got up before it was light and slipped silently out of his brother Paul’s house. Dawn was the time of day he set aside for jogging. A member of Auckland’s YMCA Marathon Club, he could still run a marathon in three hours forty minutes.

  Opposite St Nicholas’s Church, he crossed the road and ran down the hill into Haver Park. This thousand-acre deer park with the fifteenth-century Haver House perched on the hill was his favourite place in England. Haver was the ancestral home of the Saville family; descendants of the family still lived there, but crippling death duties meant the house was now administered by the Haver Trust.

  Mark pushed himself hard as he ran up the hill on the other side of the valley. Deer stared at him inquisitively and a fox scurried away into the bracken.

  As he ran around the grey stone walls that enclosed the great building, reputed to have over three hundred and fifty rooms, the clock on the central tower chimed. It was time he headed back. Three hours later he would be commencing the nightmare journey home.

  Mark eventually surfaced from his reverie, dressed and walked along the short row of screened-off beds that comprised his and the aircrew’s private isolation area.

  Only two members of the crew remained — the flight attendant who had promised to arrange the ambulance for Helen and the co-pilot. They were sitting in a small departure lounge area. Close by stood a group of armed soldiers dressed in protective suits and facemasks.

  ‘The other crew members have been taken to hospital,’ explained the flight attendant softly when Mark approached.

  The co-pilot stood up and held out his hand. ‘I’m Peter,’ he announced, ‘and this is Natasha.’

  With the acknowledgement of their names, the divide between passenger and crew was swept aside; they were now just three patients held in quarantine. Mark looked again at the soldiers watching them. Or were they prisoners held in a jail?

  ‘How do you feel?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I feel fine. How about you two?’

  ‘We’re both running a temperature, but nothing serious yet,’ Peter said. Natasha began to cry and Peter put his arm protectively around her shoulder. ‘We’ll be okay. Time is on our side, I’m sure they’ll find a cure soon.’ He glanced over at Mark and continued. ‘We two are lucky. We were both away on an airline team-building retreat in the Australian outback in early December. We didn’t get back to civilisation until Christmas Eve. We’ve got at least another ten days for them to sort out a vaccine.’

  Despite Peter’s optimism, Natasha continued to weep quietly. Mark turned the television off; the information being broadcast would only make her feel more depressed. It was eerily quiet in the terminal building, with just the low drone of the air conditioning and the occasional shuffle of the ever-watchful soldiers.

  Wednesday dragged slowly by. They were given the local paper but there was no real news, only government decrees and general interest stories that had been dragged out of the paper’s files. The army chefs fed them, and every four hours an army doctor dressed in protective clothing would arrive to take their temperatures. Mark was asked for more blood samples.

  As it grew dark, the three detainees sat together playing cards.

  ‘Listen!’ Peter whispered.

  In the distance Mark picked up the faint ringing of a telephone. ‘I thought they said the telephones were out of order.’

  All three took out their mobile phones and tried them again, but they couldn’t get a signal. Mark stood up and walked towards the public payphone in the corner of the lounge.

  ‘The phones are out of order,’ said a soldier, stepping forward to challenge him.

  Mark quickly picked up the handset. There was no dial tone. Once he had walked back to his companions he shook his head in disappointment. They carried on playing cards. A few minutes later they heard the distant telephone ringing again.

  ‘Suppose,’ Mark said quietly, ‘the phones are still working. What if they’ve just cut them off in this lounge, and disconnected our mobiles to stop us communicating with our relatives?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Peter said. ‘There’ve been so many lies told in the last few days I don’t know what to believe any more.’ Mark looked at him with raised eyebrows. ‘Our pilot died before we got to Singapore; so did one of the flight attendants. In the end we were lucky to be allowed down to refuel.’

  ‘I’d like to see if I can get to that phone,’ Mark whispered, glancing at the sentries, ‘but I’ll need your help.’

  At two o’clock on Thursday morning, Mark lay on his bed resting. For hours he’d been staring up at the ceiling, his mind wandering back to memories of the years he’d spent with Helen. When he wasn’t blaming himself for her death, he was worrying about what might be happening to Steven and Jane, his grandchildren, and his brothers in Wellington and Sevenoaks.

  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a golden reflection flickering on the windows of the airport lounge.

  ‘Fire!’ yelled one of the sentries.

  Pandemonium broke out. Mark waited for the rush of figures to pass, then slipped out of his bed and made his way quickly in the opposite direction. Peter and Natasha had done their job well.

  He moved speedily down the concourse, past the lounges and departure gates, trying the doors leading off the corridor as he went. Fifty metres down the terminal concourse he found an unlocked door, slipped through and began ascending the internal staircase to the third floor.

  Pushing open the door at the top of the stairwell, he found himself in deserted, unlit airline offices. He stumbled around in the darkness and found a phone on the corner of a desk. It had a dial tone. The luminous display on his watch indicated it was past two in the morning; Jane and Steven would be fast asleep. He decided to phone Paul in England.

  ‘Chatfield’s Animal Feeds,’ answered his brother from his business in Sevenoaks.

  ‘Paul, it’s Mark.’

  ‘Mark! How are you? Christopher called from Wellington this morning. He said Jane had phoned from Auckland and told him you and Helen have been quarantined.’

  ‘I don’t know how long I’ve got to talk,’ Mark interrupted.

  They spoke quickly. Within a few minutes Paul knew of Helen’s death and the situation at Auckland airport. Paul in turn told Mark what was happening in Sevenoaks. ‘Two people in Lodge Road have died and at least fifty people in the rest of Sevenoaks. The hospitals are overflowing and the crematoriums can’t cope.’

  ‘What about Marion and the girls?’ Mark asked anxiously.

  ‘Marion’s ill and Bridget’s husband is a bit under the weather. I’m fine and so are Cheryl and Mathew. I spoke to Aunt Margaret and she’s okay. As far as I know all our cousins and their children are fine.’

  While Paul was talking, Mark cou
ld hear the thumping of feet running up the staircase. Instinctively, still holding the telephone receiver, he crawled under the desk. ‘Do me a favour,’ he whispered as the footsteps grew louder. ‘It’s the middle of the night here. Phone Christopher this evening your time and give him my news. And ask him to phone Jane and Steven and tell them about Helen, just in case I don’t get hold of them tonight.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’

  Soldiers opened the door and shone torches into the office. Mark hid under the desk and held his hand over the telephone receiver. In the quietness of the deserted office Paul’s voice asking, ‘Are you still there, are you still there?’ sounded like a voice yelling from a cliff top. Fortunately the soldiers didn’t search the room and left after a cursory glance, but by the time Mark was able to speak again, Paul had hung up.

  Mark began to dial Jane’s number, and then remembered he had promised Natasha and Peter he would phone their relatives. The soldiers hadn’t found him; he had plenty of time. He phoned Peter’s parents in the US, relieved he’d memorised the number correctly. It was a similar story in New York: panic, chaos, illness and a rising death toll. He assured them their son was fine. Next he phoned Natasha’s husband in Australia, but there was no reply and he left a message on the answerphone saying she was fine. He’d become one of the liars.

  It was now nearly three o’clock in the morning; Mark’s emotions were on edge. He was desperate to talk to Jane and Steven, yet dreaded having to wake them in the middle of the night and give them the news their mother had died. He knew it was his reluctance to pass on the news of Helen’s death that had influenced him to make the other calls first.

  He decided to call Steven, who he reasoned could tell his sister more gently in the morning. There was no reply. As he heard the noise of several sets of footsteps running up the staircase, he quickly dialled Jane’s number.

  ‘Jane’s house,’ came a familiar voice at the other end of the line.