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

by Michael Green

  He ran along the lower level of the terminal building, through the deserted arrivals hall and past the long line of abandoned check-in desks, the four marines in close pursuit. One of the terminal doors had been jammed open to allow the fresh air in. Mark raced through and out into the welcome coolness of the night.

  7

  It was probably only the weight of the boots, weapons and packs that the marines were carrying that saved Mark initially. Even so it was a close-run race. As he sprinted across the deserted car park he could almost feel their breath on the back of his neck. The sound of their heavy boots crunching on the tarmac was loud and threatening.

  ‘Stop, or we’ll shoot!’ one of them yelled. Mark knew they wanted him unharmed. He ignored the warning.

  Five hundred metres further on he realised hs lead was increasing, centimetre by precious centimetre. When he turned left up George Bolt Memorial Drive towards Auckland, there was another shout ‘Stop, or we’ll shoot!’

  ‘No you won’t!’ Mark answered in defiance.

  On hearing the clatter of rifles falling to the ground, Mark immediately regretted his bravado. Unburdened by the weapons, the marines began to surge towards him again. As they closed to within five metres, Mark gritted his teeth and, calling on all his reserves, pulled ahead again. Three marines gave up the chase. Now there was only one pair of boots following him.

  Every so often Mark would hear the marine surge up behind him, but fright spurred him on, enabling him to stay ahead. However, he knew the remaining soldier was only one of his problems; it could only be a matter of time before the other three would regroup and come after him in their jeep.

  He did, however, have one advantage over his pursuers — his local knowledge. There were no streetlights and a kilometre up the road he turned left into Ihumatao Road, which led away from the main road and into a quiet rural area.

  A few minutes later, he noticed the beams of a vehicle’s headlights sweep up George Bolt Drive behind him. He sighed with relief when the vehicle failed to turn left and follow him down Ihumatao Road, but continued up the main road towards Auckland instead. The pursuing marine also realised his compatriots had taken the wrong road.

  ‘You a marathon man?’ gasped the voice behind.

  ‘Sure am,’ Mark panted back. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Ran the Boston Marathon last year.’

  Every so often Mark would hear the soldier surge after him, and every time he dug deep and somehow managed to stay ahead.

  ‘What sort of time do you run?’ gasped the voice behind after another unsuccessful attempt to catch him.

  ‘Oh, I’m a sub-three-hour man.’

  Mark picked up the pace slightly. He had omitted to say it had been ten years since he’d run a marathon in less than three hours. A few minutes later Mark was relieved to hear the sound of the marine’s boots grow fainter and then it ceased altogether.

  As soon as the marine was out of sight Mark left the road, climbed a fence and began jogging across farmland. He crashed into a barbedwire fence, cutting his arms, before falling into a small creek and grazing his knees. It was time to rest and have a drink. While savouring the sweet creek water and recovering his breath, he saw headlights sweep along the road he’d just left. The jeep stopped, picked up Mark’s final pursuer and sped down the road for a couple of kilometres before turning and creeping back, shining its powerful searchlight across the adjacent farmland. Mark watched from the shelter of the creek bed until the jeep was out of sight before continuing his journey.

  He headed north until he reached the suburb of Mangere. There were no lights in the houses he ran past, and no traffic. He didn’t stop running until he reached the reserve beneath the motorway bridge.

  Mark knew the soldiers would never find him in the urban sprawl of Auckland. However, he was worried they might have joined forces with the New Zealand Army, which had the local knowledge to post sentries on the bridge that carried the motorway from the airport across the Manukau Harbour towards the centre of Auckland.

  He sat on the grass at the edge of the harbour, recovering his strength and listening. The absence of human-generated sound was uncanny; even the hum of the power cables hanging from the pylons was absent. A lone vehicle drove onto the bridge and stopped halfway across before continuing, confirming Mark’s fear that a roadblock had been established.

  He turned his attention to the old, disused Mangere Road bridge, which ran parallel to the newer motorway bridge. It was dilapidated and now served only as a fishing platform for locals and a crossing place for walkers, joggers and cyclists. He hoped his pursuers had forgotten about the old structure.

  Most of the crossing was a stone causeway; the bridge itself, low to the water, was less than five hundred metres long. Though he watched for several minutes and could see no signs of life, he remained nervous about attempting a crossing.

  It was low tide; the stone causeway stood proud five metres above the mudflat and scrubby mangrove trees. He slid down the bank and picked his way along the bottom of the causeway, where the mangroves hid him from prying eyes.

  Progress was slow; Mark kept slipping off the slime-covered stonework and falling down into the mud and tangle of mangrove roots at the base of the wall. It took him almost half an hour to reach the end of the causeway, where he climbed the wall and peered cautiously over the edge and along the span of the bridge.

  He was just hauling himself up onto the roadway when he saw a flicker of flame at the other end of the bridge. He dropped to the ground and rolled over the edge before sliding back down the wall into the mud.

  Mark was sure he must have been seen; his heart pounded while he lay in the mud, straining his ears for the telltale crunch of boots on the roadway. He knew he would be hard pressed to escape again. Fortunately the sentry lighting his cigarette had not only betrayed his position, but also temporarily blinded himself.

  Both of Mark’s shortest routes into Auckland — the motorway bridge and the old road bridge — were guarded. He could still get into the city but it meant a long detour. Not relishing such a journey, he crawled across the mud and slid into the cool waters of the Manukau Harbour.

  He swam quietly under the bridge. Because it was slack water he was able to hold his course. When he reached the other side, he could hear the voices of two sentries debating the demise of a comrade who had been shot for desertion. He crawled up the bank and headed into the suburb of Onehunga. There was the sound of an occasional car in the distance. Mostly, however, there was an eerie silence. There was also a strange smell in the air.

  The adrenaline pumping through Mark’s body eased; he was on the home run. As the sun rose, he jogged along the tree-lined tracks of Cornwall Park. A month earlier, the day before he and Helen had set off for London, he’d run the same route at the same time in the morning. That day he’d passed several dozen joggers with whom had exchanged cheery greetings. Today he ran alone; the park was deserted.

  By the time Mark arrived at the front door of his daughter’s house on Ragmot Street in Epsom, he’d run the best part of a marathon. As he stepped onto the porch of the old weatherboard bungalow, he was filled with both excitement and dread; excited at the prospect of seeing his children and grandchildren, but also dread at the thought that perhaps they would be ill, or worse still, dead.

  A few seconds after he banged on the door, he heard muffled talking.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called a voice. It was Steven.

  ‘It’s Dad.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  He heard the unfamiliar sound of bolts being slid back, then the door opened and he was pulled quickly inside before the door slammed behind him. He fell into the arms of Jane. Steven was hurriedly securing the bolts on the door. Seconds later Jane, Steven, Zach, Nicole and Mark were huddled together crying. Mark’s feelings were a confusion of joy, relief and sadness.

  ‘Daddy’s dead,’ Nicole said quietly. ‘We buried him in the garden
.’

  Jane sobbed even louder.

  ‘And Misty’s dead, too,’ Zach added. Misty was the family cat.

  ‘We don’t know Misty’s dead,’ Jane said. She was fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘He’s just disappeared.’

  ‘Let’s go and have some breakfast,’ Steven said firmly.

  Mark could tell his son wanted to steer the conversation away from anything that would distress Jane even further.

  8

  Steven led the way through the house and onto the veranda. He was a tall, good-looking man, his frame well muscled. He’d inherited his mother’s blonde, naturally curly hair.

  ‘We’ve run out of gas,’ he explained as he took the lid off the gas barbecue. He’d removed the gas fittings and they were now using the barbecue as a timber-fired hotplate. There was no electricity and no running water. Fortunately, Steven had filled the bath and a number of containers before the taps ran dry. The toilets of course were no longer functioning, so they’d dug a latrine in the back lawn.

  ‘It’s very quiet,’ Mark commented. The last time he’d sat in Jane’s garden there’d been the continual drone of traffic passing along the main road.

  ‘We’ve heard hardly any traffic for the last day and a half,’ Steven said. ‘Most people have run out of fuel.’

  ‘Or they’re too frightened to go out,’ Jane added.

  Mark was disturbed by her tone. ‘How bad are things?’

  While they huddled around the barbecue, cooking and eating their meagre breakfast, Jane and Steven outlined the events of the last few days.

  After Bruce had taken to his bed on the Tuesday afternoon, Jane had checked him regularly. His breathing was laboured; he refused all food and could only manage a little water. She spent the night listening to him in the bed beside her, coughing and fighting for breath. At four o’clock in the morning, unable to stand the rasping any longer, she’d phoned the emergency services.

  ‘This is a pre-recorded message,’ advised the automated reply. ‘Due to unprecedented demand, no further emergency calls can be processed at this time.’

  A surge of panic swept through her. Then she remembered that an emergency medical centre had been established in a previously decommissioned hospital less than three kilometres away. She woke Zach and Nicole and led them, half asleep, to the car. Then she cajoled and supported Bruce, who was having great difficulty walking, into joining them.

  There was a queue of cars outside the old hospital and the car park was full. Distressed that she couldn’t get close enough for Bruce to walk, she drove onto the grass verge, locked her family inside the car and hurried away to get help.

  The scene as she entered the foyer was chaotic: harassed receptionists were facing a barrage of questions from concerned families. Looking down the corridors leading off the foyer, Jane could see rows of mattresses lying on the floor. The wards were obviously full. Nurses and doctors were picking their way between mattresses, stepping over reclining bodies and manoeuvring between relatives squatting on the floor.

  Stretcher-bearers arrived and lifted a limp body off one of the mattresses close to the foyer. The crying relatives were led away. As soon as the corpse was removed, an altercation erupted as two competing families fought for the vacant mattress space.

  ‘There’s no more medicine available,’ Jane heard a doctor say. ‘All we can do now is to make patients as comfortable as possible and hope for the best.’

  Jane made her way back to the car, tears streaming down her cheeks. She would have to nurse Bruce at home.

  It was already light when she turned the car into her driveway. George, her neighbour, emerged from his front door and peered in at Bruce sitting semiconscious on the front seat.

  ‘We’ve been to the hospital,’ Jane explained. ‘It was a waste of time. There’s no medicine and they’ve run out of beds.’

  ‘I heard you leave earlier. You could have brought the children over to me.’

  George and his wife Barbara had been good neighbours over the years. ‘It didn’t seem fair to wake you up.’

  George sighed. ‘I’ve been awake all night. Barbara’s getting worse. I don’t feel too good myself either.’

  George helped Jane get Bruce back to his bed, then left to resume his vigil with his wife. Jane persuaded Zach and Nicole to return to their beds; they were still sleeping when she left the house at eight o’clock to head for the nearest shopping centre.

  She found a long queue already outside the pharmacy. Everyone wanted aspirin-based products. The pharmacist was refusing to supply strangers and rationing his regular customers to a single packet. Jane received the last packet available. A young woman behind her in the queue began to cry.

  Wearily, Jane queued again outside the supermarket. There had been queues most days over the last week. Initially there had been shortages due to the number of factory workers who were falling ill. That problem had later been compounded by power cuts and panic buying.

  Inside the supermarket, many shelves were empty, and signs reading LIMIT OF ONE PER CUSTOMER had been placed on most items. Jane rushed around the store, grabbing whatever was available.

  Zach opened the front door for her when she arrived back home. He was crying. ‘Daddy’s coughing up blood.’

  She dumped the shopping on the hallway floor and rushed though to the bedroom.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  Bruce was too tired or too sick to answer.

  Nicole joined Zach at the doorway and peered in. ‘Is Daddy going to die?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Jane said softly. ‘Now go out in the garden and play.’

  When they’d gone she cleaned up the blood, dissolved several aspirin in a glass of water, propped Bruce up on pillows and held the glass up to his lips. He had difficulty swallowing, and half the precious liquid soaked into the bedclothes. She made him as comfortable as she could and went through to the kitchen to prepare the children’s breakfast. As they sat at the table, Steven phoned.

  ‘How’s Bruce?’

  ‘He’s very ill,’ Jane whispered, glancing across at the children. ‘I think he’s going to die.’

  ‘I’m coming over.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No buts. I’m not going to work, there’s no point. You need me there. I’ll bunk down at your place for a few nights.’

  Jane was relieved; she’d always been close to her brother and they had become even closer since he’d broken up with his long-term girlfriend. As soon as she put down the phone it rang again. Bruce’s sister was calling to tell her his elderly parents were sick, and she felt unwell herself. Jane decided not to burden Bruce with the news.

  Steven had arrived just as the power failed again; he’d grabbed a football and taken the children out into the garden. Jane succumbed to a cleaning frenzy. Anything to keep her mind occupied.

  The power was restored mid-morning. They switched on the television, anxious for news. Most of the channels were playing old films, but a small independent cable station was transmitting a panel discussion about the pandemic. A Doctor Thrussell — apparently New Zealand’s foremost virologist — was speaking.

  ‘The deadliness of Super-SARS’, he said, giving the disease the label that had been attributed to it, ‘lies in the uniqueness of the illness, combined with the prevalence of worldwide air travel.’

  ‘What is so unique about the pandemic?’ asked the panel chairman.

  ‘First,’ explained the doctor, ‘the disease is extremely infectious. It can be contracted simply by breathing the air exhaled by an infected person. Second, because the initial symptoms are so mild and the incubation period so long, when the disease first spread no one realised how serious it was, and as a result no one was quarantined. We have never experienced a virus of this nature. Most viruses reach their zenith within about five or six days, but this virus takes three weeks to reach its peak.’

  ‘Have you, Professor Davies,’ interrupted the chairman, directing a question to another me
mber of the panel, ‘as a statistician, any comments regarding the spread of the pandemic?’

  ‘The die was cast as soon as the infection reached the first international airport. Just imagine a single infected holidaymaker taking a flight from, say, Singapore to London.’

  ‘They infected a lot of people,’ said the chairman gravely.

  ‘Exactly, and once home they infected their friends and family. The next day, their work colleagues, the garage attendant and the assistant in the photographer’s shop who accepted their holiday film.

  ‘Finally, and most significantly, they would infect the doctor who listened to their complaint of a touch of flu. A doctor who, like thousands of other doctors around the world over the next few days, faced with the same mild symptoms, failed to recognise the seriousness of the illness they were dealing with.’

  ‘A huge number of infected people,’ the chairman repeated.

  ‘I estimate that in less than forty-eight hours,’ concluded Professor Davies, ‘a single infected passenger would have infected between a thousand and two thousand people. Each of those people was destined to infect a similar number of people within the next fortyeight hours. The statistical model we ran at Auckland University concluded that, given the prevalence of international travel, ninety per cent of the world’s population would have been infected by the Super-SARS virus within ten days of its outbreak.’

  The panel chairman was momentarily stunned into silence as the implications of the statistician’s statement sank in. ‘Doctor Thrussell,’ he continued as soon as he’d recovered, ‘do you believe a vaccine is, or will be, available, and even if it were, do you think the vaccine could be made available in sufficient quantities?’

  As Doctor Thrussell opened his mouth to answer, the television screen went blank. Steven and Jane sat solemnly waiting for the empty screen to be restored but they, like everyone else watching, were destined never to hear the virologist’s opinion. A few seconds later, without apology or explanation, a wildlife documentary began to screen.