Mark crossed the room and bent to hug his brother. ‘What’s this, skiving in bed?’
Christopher sighed. ‘Don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve been ill for months. You two look well — especially you,’ he said, holding out his hand to Steven. ‘How are things in Auckland?’
Sarah interjected. ‘Do you think you’re well enough to get up, Dad? We can catch up on all their news over lunch.’
‘Good idea. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be through.’
Sarah led Mark and Steven to the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted, but it was a good opportunity to encourage Dad to get out of bed.’
‘He’s very lethargic,’ Katie explained.
‘You have no idea what’s wrong with him?’
Katie shook her head.
Sarah stirred the saucepan on the stove. ‘It’s just pumpkin soup for lunch, I’m afraid. I think I can make it stretch.’
‘We’re not that hungry,’ Mark said. ‘We had a good breakfast.’ He suspected food was in short supply.
‘And who’s this young lady?’ Steven asked, ruffling the hair of a toddler sitting in a high chair beside the kitchen table.
‘This is my daughter, Gina,’ Katie said proudly. Unlike her cousins Holly and Zoë, Gina was dressed immaculately in designer clothing.
Mark looked around the room. He guessed his nieces were struggling to survive. When Sarah opened the pantry door his guess was confirmed.
Christopher shuffled into the room. He’d shaved and dressed, but wore a blanket around his shoulders.
‘You cold?’ Mark asked.
‘I’m always cold.’ Christopher slumped down on the chair beside the fire. ‘Tell me about things in Auckland. Are Jane and the children all right? Has anyone else in Auckland survived?’
Over lunch they exchanged stories. Christopher’s wife Elizabeth and Sarah’s and Katie’s husbands had all died within three days of one another. Sarah and Katie had decided to join their father in Wainuiomata.
With Christopher’s help they’d packed up the contents of their pantries, caged Sarah’s hens, loaded them onto Christopher’s truck and set off over the hill. At the summit they found a barricade manned by gang members. Had they not ignored the order to stop and smashed their way through, they would never have made it. A few hours later the barricade was strengthened and Wainuiomata was sealed off from the rest of the country.
With the closing of the Wainuiomata hill, gang members took control and from then on they terrorised the community. Any vehicle that ventured up the hill was stopped and searched, and anyone who resisted was either shot or hacked to death with machetes. Christopher and his daughters heard rumours of looting by the gang and took the precaution of hiding most of their food in the wood-stack behind the garage.
Their precautions were well founded. A week later, gang members forced their way into the house and emptied the pantry. They also made off with Sarah’s precious hens.
By the fourth week of the pandemic, the situation in Wainuiomata had become desperate. The shops and sole supermarket had been emptied during the first few days. Every house in the valley had been searched and looted. The few horses and farm animals in the valley were killed and eaten. After they were gone, every cat, dog, pet rabbit and guinea pig had suffered a similar fate.
Although the virus had by then claimed the lives of ninety per cent of Wainuiomata’s residents, there wasn’t enough food left for those who remained. Even previously law-abiding citizens who had been demanding the disbanding of the gangs became members. It was a case of life or death, and membership offered the possibility of survival.
Eventually the gang members concluded that Christopher must have a stash of food. One afternoon during the third week after his daughters’ move to the valley, they made another visit.
‘How come you’re so healthy?’ demanded their leader, a short Maori girl with a distinctive facial moko.
‘We’re just lucky,’ Katie had replied.
The girl sneered and said, ‘Well, your luck’s just run out. Where’s your food hidden?’
‘We’ve got no food,’ Sarah said defiantly.
The girl held her gun at Gina’s head.
‘In the woodshed!’ Katie yelled.
The leader smiled and pulled the trigger. The gun failed to go off. Christopher assumed it was a cruel joke. It wasn’t.
‘Give me your gun,’ the leader said to one of the other gang members.
‘No!’ Katie cried as she lunged forward to protect her daughter. A blow to the head felled her from behind.
‘For pity’s sake,’ Christopher begged, stepping forward and placing himself between Gina and the leader. ‘We’ve told you where our food is, why don’t you leave us alone?’
The butt of a rifle slammed into his face, knocking out several teeth. Blood trickled down his chin.
‘Why don’t we take them to the farm?’ suggested one of the other members of the gang. ‘Look at them, they’re plump and healthy.’
The leader reluctantly agreed. Payment was only delayed. Christopher and his family were forced to retrieve their remaining food from the woodpile. There was precious little left; Christopher, Sarah, Zoë and Holly were able to carry it in their arms. Katie carried Gina as the family were marched down the street with guns pointed menacingly at their backs.
The gang were all breathing heavily; they were in an advanced stage of the illness. Christopher, Sarah and Katie, in spite of the ordeal to which they’d just been subjected, were in much better shape, but with rifles trained on their backs and a leader with a sadistic streak there was no chance of escape. They walked for a kilometre before being marched through the gates of a fortified gang house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. Outside the gates were a number of corpses; the stench was appalling.
Inside the gates, gang members were sitting at barbecue tables in the yard. To one side was a huge barbecue and steaks were cooking on the hot plate. There was a stack of beer and spirits. The gang members all appeared to be in a bad state, a combination of the effects of alcohol, drugs and the illness. It seemed a lifetime since Christopher and his daughters had smelt the tantalising aroma of barbecued meat.
‘Fresh supplies,’ announced the leader of the foraging party. She motioned to the family to dump their food on the tables. She then forced them at gunpoint towards the garage beside the house. A plank of wood had been jammed at an angle between the driveway and the cross strut on one of the double garage doors, preventing them being opened from the inside. Above the doors the words HEKE’S FARM had been daubed in big red letters.
The armed girl kicked away the plank. The sound of it clattering on the concrete was greeted by a whimpering sound from inside the garage. As the door was opened and light flooded in, Christopher saw two figures cowering at the far end. Before he could demand an explanation he and his family were pushed roughly inside. The doors slammed shut behind them and they heard the plank of wood being jammed back against the door strut.
‘I’m frightened,’ Holly said.
‘Don’t worry,’ Christopher mumbled from between his broken teeth. His mouth ached. ‘We’ll be all right.’
His words fooled no one.
‘Christopher Chatfield, isn’t it?’ came a voice from the other end of the garage. Christopher recognised the voice immediately; it was one of the village shopkeepers.
‘Brian, what’s going on? What is this place? Why’s it called Heke’s Farm?’
‘You haven’t heard?’ the shopkeeper asked.
‘Heard what?’
‘Cannibalism,’ another voice responded. ‘They’ve turned to cannibalism. We’re being farmed.’
Katie began to cry.
‘Not to worry,’ the voice continued. ‘They’ve already killed two today. They’re cooking them now, and that’ll keep them going for a day or two. Anyway, you’ll be okay for a few days. They always take the children first. Tenderer, you see.’ The speaker chuckled encouragingly.
Katie’s so
bs intensified.
‘Why aren’t you trying to escape?’ Christopher demanded angrily.
‘We’re ill. We’re just too weak,’ the shopkeeper said.
‘And they’ve got guns. Lots of guns,’ added the other voice.
‘The authorities sent the army but even they couldn’t get over the hill to stop them.’
‘What’s the point?’ asked the prophet of doom. ‘We’re all going to die soon anyway.’
Christopher decided against asking any more questions. He put his arms around his daughters protectively and waited for Katie’s sobs to subside a little. ‘Listen,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not going to let anything happen to you or the children. I promise.’
‘But it’s hopeless,’ Sarah pointed out. ‘There’s so many of them.’
‘And they’re all ill, and they’re all drunk,’ Christopher pointed out. ‘We’re fit, healthy and sober. We stand a chance. Look after the children. I’m going to check this place out.’
His eyes were now becoming accustomed to the dim light penetrating the many gaps in the wooden garage. Despite the gaps, the garage was sturdily built. He climbed up into the rafters and found the roof securely nailed down. He couldn’t budge any of the heavy corrugated iron sheets. He searched the garage for tools, but there were none. He found three thin slats of timber, but they were not heavy enough to lever off the garage cladding. In a corner he found a pile of rubbish, mainly old tins and bottles — again, nothing large enough to serve as a lever.
Frustrated, he moved to the garage doors and peered through a crack between them. The gang members appeared to be very drunk, and while he was watching a fight broke out. A rifle shot echoed around the compound. One of the fighters fell to the ground. Christopher watched as the girl with the moko reloaded her gun and shot the second fighter. The bodies were dumped beside the barbecue.
Christopher forced his fingers into the gap between the doors and tried to prise them apart, but there was barely any movement. He worked his fingers down to the bottom of the door to see if there was more play. Through the crack at the bottom of the door he could see the wooden plank used to wedge the door closed.
He edged his way across to Sarah and Katie. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘I think I know how we can get out of here.’
In the pile of rubbish he found a tin lid, which he carefully folded so that he had a serrated edge. Then he began to painstakingly chip away at the gap at the bottom of the garage door.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ said the shopkeeper, who had wandered over to see what was going on. ‘You’ll never make it out of here alive, none of you.’
Christopher ignored him. While daylight remained, Katie and Sarah took turns peering through the crack at the top of the doors while Christopher sat on the floor and chiselled laboriously away at the crack. Slowly, scrape by scrape, splinter by splinter, he enlarged the gap.
By late afternoon his hands were covered in blood, shredded by the broken bottles and tin lids he’d used, but he stopped only when the opening was large enough for one of the slender slats of wood to be poked through. Tired and sore, he moved back from the door and lay flat on the garage floor to ease his aching muscles.
The shopkeeper spoke again. ‘Thought you’d give up,’ he said.
A little later an armed gang member opened the garage door and dumped a bucket of bones on the floor. As he slammed the door and jammed the wooden plank up against the strut to imprison them once again, the shopkeeper and his companion began gnawing meat from the bones.
‘Can I have a chop, Mummy?’ Zoë asked.
‘No,’ Sarah said weakly. She was close to vomiting at the thought of what the shopkeeper and his companion were eating.
‘But I’m hungry,’ complained Holly.
‘You’ll eat later,’ Christopher said.
It grew dark and eventually the children fell asleep, as did the shopkeeper and his companion. Sarah, Katie and Christopher listened to the drunken cavorting of the gang. Finally, at two in the morning, the noise ceased.
When they were satisfied no one was moving around outside, Christopher poked one of the narrow slats of wood carefully through the crack at the bottom of the doors. The darkness was pitch black. He manoeuvred the stick around until he felt the bottom of the plank jamming the door shut; the slat was only just long enough to reach. He pushed the thin slat as hard as he could but the plank would not budge. He stood up and kicked the short end that was still inside the garage. There was a loud crack as the timber split and disappeared under the door.
In the silence of the night the snapping timber sounded like a rifle shot. The three of them held their breath, half-expecting someone would investigate the noise and see the telltale broken slat. But nothing happened. Christopher tried the garage doors but they were still jammed tight.
The second slat of wood suffered a similar fate. Christopher was trembling as he poked his final thin slat through the hole. This was his last chance to save his family. Terrified of breaking his final means of escape he tapped it gently and repeatedly with the toe of his shoe. Periodically he would bend down and feel what remained inside the garage. It seemed to be getting shorter; the plank of wood securing the door was slowly moving. Finally the toe of his shoe was hitting the door rather than the slat of wood. The garage doors were more flexible, but still wouldn’t open. He took off his shoe and kicked the slat with his bare foot. Pain shot up his leg. Two minutes later even his big toe couldn’t reach the wood. He tried the door again. He could now open it three centimetres, but no more. He could hear Katie gulping back tears.
‘Try rocking the door,’ whispered Sarah.
For the next ten minutes they gently rocked the door. Fraction by fraction, the gap between the doors increased.
‘Go and wake the children,’ whispered Christopher when the gap had grown to about six centimetres.
‘What about the shopkeeper and his friend?’ Sarah asked.
‘No, I don’t trust them. We’ll leave the doors open. They’re bound to wake up before the gang. They can take their chances in the morning.’
Sarah and Katie woke the children and they all assembled beside the door. Slowly, rhythmically, Christopher rocked the door. Suddenly, the plank of wood fell and clattered onto the concrete drive. The sound was so loud they were sure it would have woken everyone in the compound. The shopkeeper stopped snoring for a few seconds, but then started again. Even the squeak of the hinges as Christopher pushed open one of the garage doors sounded loud enough to wake the dead.
The family ran across the driveway, through the open gates and into the street beyond. Katie tripped over a corpse and fell to the ground, twisting her ankle. They helped her up and she hobbled along beside them as they moved quickly away.
‘Where shall we go?’ Sarah asked once they were clear.
‘It’s not safe to stay in the valley,’ Christopher replied. ‘We’ll go over the hills.’
19
‘And that,’ Sarah said, ‘is how we ended up in Eastbourne.’
‘What about the future?’ Mark asked. He looked at his brother. In the firelight, his face looked strained and weak.
‘If only I could get over this illness,’ Christopher sighed.
‘Seems to me’, Steven said, ‘we’d all be better off if we joined forces and pooled our resources.’ He made the suggestion even though he guessed there was precious little that his uncle and family could offer.
‘I think’, Mark said, trying to be diplomatic, ‘we’ve had more opportunity to get established in Gulf Harbour. It would make sense if you joined us up there.’
Christopher nodded.
Mark could see how relieved his brother was. Fearing his illness was terminal, he must have been worried about the fate of his daughters and granddaughters.
‘Now, if you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I’m tired. I need to get back to bed.’
The next morning was spent preparing for their departure from Eastbourne. There was little to t
ake. They carried a few belongings along the beach and across the slip to where the car was parked. While Steven set off to find a trailer, Mark made a stretcher out of canvas and poles.
After lunch, Mark and Steven carried Christopher over the slip. The other members of the family scrambled along behind them. With Christopher, Katie and the three children crammed in the car, and Sarah and Steven sitting in the trailer, Mark drove off.
As they drove past the turning to Wainuiomata, Christopher looked longingly up the hill.
‘I’ll bring you back down to Wellington once you’re better,’ Mark said, reading his brother’s thoughts.
Christopher said nothing. Mark could tell he didn’t expect to return to Wainuiomata.
When they reached the slip on the Waikanae road they abandoned the car and ferried Christopher, his family and their possessions to the four-wheel-drive and trailer on the other side.
It took them a day and a half to drive back to Auckland. They stopped for the night at Taupo, where Steven was lucky enough to find a family of guinea pigs in a suburban garden.
‘Goody goody, guinea pig stew!’ exclaimed Zoë, who had fully recovered from the trauma of eating her own pets.
‘No,’ Steven said firmly. ‘These are a birthday present for Nicole.’
Late in the afternoon of the second day they motored down the hill into Gulf Harbour, sounding the four-wheel-drive horn to announce their arrival.
When they reached Harbour Village Drive, they saw Zach and Nicole racing towards them. Mark stopped the car and the two children jumped in, throwing their arms around their grandfather and looking shyly at their great-uncle and cousins.
As they drove the remaining few metres to the house, Zach said excitedly, ‘A man came in a yacht.’
Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1) Page 11
