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

by Michael Green

  The sea was relatively calm in the lee of the ship. Mark swung Archangel as close to the ship as he dared. Steven slid over the side and swam over to Northern Princess. Mark watched as his son clambered up the anchor chain, obviously finding it hard work. Steven was agile and strong, but weeks at sea had robbed him of some of his fitness; he only just made it to the top. He squeezed through the hawse pipe onto the liner’s foredeck and rested for a few moments before waving to his father, who was slowly circling the ship in Archangel. Then he set off to explore.

  The ship was eerily empty. At first Steven assumed the liner had discharged her passengers before being anchored. However, the clothes hanging in the cabin wardrobes told a different story. Northern Princess had clearly sailed with a full complement of passengers. All their personal belongings were there: clothes, toiletries, books, games and children’s toys. But the Northern Princess was a ghost ship; there were no passengers, not even any bodies.

  The ship’s log told part of the story. It recorded the first illnesses aboard, told how the ship had been refused entry to several ports. Stores ran out, there were riots, several suicides and a mutiny. The final entry, detailing the master’s failing health, had Steven wondering what anarchy had ensued after he died.

  The ship, he told his father later, had given him an uneasy, sinister feeling. He helped himself to a few items from the carpenter’s store, packed them in a small canvas bag and hurriedly made his way back through the ship to the foredeck. Then he tied the canvas bag around his waist and lowered himself part-way down the anchor chain before leaping clear, splashing into the water and swimming back to Archangel.

  ‘A ghost ship,’ he said as he clambered aboard. ‘Not a sign of anyone, not even a corpse.’

  ‘Thought it would be a waste of time.’

  ‘Got you a present though.’ Steven grinned as he opened the canvas bag. On the way through the main lounge of the ship he’d picked up a half-empty bottle of Cockburn vintage port.

  ‘Then it certainly wasn’t a waste of time,’ Mark said, taking the bottle of his favourite port and fondling it appreciatively.

  Dinner, throughout the voyage, had been the highlight of their day. Whenever the weather allowed, they would arrange their watches so they could enjoy the evening meal together. George, their nickname for the self-steering system, would be left in charge of Archangel and they would settle down to eat together. They took it in turns to cook and prepare the meal, and each took an extra bit of trouble, whether it was to wash and shave, or tidy the cabin and prepare the table. It was their special time of the day, a time to discuss the day’s progress, plan the next day and share their thoughts.

  Those thoughts often turned to Gulf Harbour; they worried continually about how the family was coping. Little by little, Steven had opened up, sharing his grief at the loss of his son. And when they were not discussing Gulf Harbour, they were thinking ahead to England, speculating on what they might find.

  Tonight, however, there was a special cause for celebration — the bottle of port. Steven was aware of Mark taking care not to hurry through the pickled meat and potatoes that comprised the main course, but he knew his father was dying for a slice of his favourite cheese, some of Jane’s carefully preserved dry biscuits and a glass of the Cockburn vintage port.

  Mark tried his best to look casual as he opened the bottle, but Steven sensed the pleasure his father was taking from the moment. ‘Fancy a drop?’ Mark asked his son, raising the bottle.

  Steven shook his head. He rarely drank alcohol and the few remaining glasses of port in the bottle would be appreciated far more by his father than himself. He watched as Mark carefully sipped the port, savouring the flavour.

  ‘Forgotten what it tasted like,’ Mark said. ‘Tastes a bit more …’ His voice tapered off, his head lolled to one side and he slumped forward onto the table.

  For a moment, Steven thought his father was acting the fool, and then it dawned on him this was no game. He raced to the galley and pumped salt water into a glass. Within seconds he was back at the table, forcing the salt water down his father’s throat. At the second gulp his father vomited, but he didn’t regain consciousness. Steven dragged him out from behind the table and tried to make him stand, but there was no strength in his father’s legs. He realised Mark was no longer breathing.

  Steven laid him down on the cabin floor and bent over him, trying to remember the CPR drill he’d learned at his firm’s first-aid course. There was a pulse. In his anxiety he could barely contain himself from working faster than the prescribed rate. For what seemed forever he continued the procedure; only when he felt his father’s lungs take over the job did he cease. But Mark still didn’t regain consciousness.

  Steven sat by his father through the night, shaking him gently every so often but to no avail. He talked to him continuously, berating himself over and over for his stupidity in bringing the port on board, recalling the entries relating to suicide in the master’s log.

  He had no idea what poison the port had been laced with. He felt helpless and alone. His sense of helplessness lasted through most of the next day; it lasted until the moment his father finally opened his eyes briefly before falling into what Steven sensed was a sleep rather than a coma. He left him for an hour before waking him and giving him a little fresh water, a practice he repeated every hour throughout the following night.

  23

  It was a week before Mark was well enough to haul himself slowly through the companionway and into the cockpit. He ceremoniously poured the contaminated port into the sea. He would never drink port again.

  They made landfall off Hastings, on the southern coast of England, in the second week of August and sailed east, standing a mile or so offshore. They passed beneath the white cliffs of Dover and continued past Charles Dickens’s Bleak House at Broadstairs before turning west along the northern coast of Kent.

  Binoculars revealed no sign of life, not a single spiral of smoke. They saw only desolation: fire-blackened buildings, vehicles abandoned on streets and wrecked vessels stranded on the beaches. Off Sheerness they entered the River Medway and sailed past Stangate and Half Acre creeks.

  Late on the evening of the eighteenth of August they finally dropped anchor at a bend in the Medway on the eastern outskirts of Gillingham. They had made it.

  ‘I think’, Mark said as they sat in the cockpit sipping a celebratory wine, ‘that before we head inland we should make Archangel ready for the return voyage.’

  Steven looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘You never know what we’re going to find when we get to Sevenoaks.’

  ‘Maybe nothing and maybe no one.’ Steven didn’t need to remind his father of the absolute absence of signs of human life ashore.

  ‘Maybe, but I want to be able to get out of here in a hurry if we need to.’

  Steven didn’t argue. Archangel had to be made ready for the return voyage; it made no difference if they undertook the task immediately rather than when it was time to leave.

  Preparations for the return were not too arduous. As far as possible they had kept on top of necessary maintenance as they had been sailing. Nevertheless, Steven spent the best part of the next day replacing worn shrouds.

  Meanwhile, Mark checked the stores. To his relief they still had enough food to get back home — at a pinch. With any luck they would be able to supplement their dwindling rations with fresh food before they left.

  Late in the afternoon they rowed ashore and set foot on English soil. They had landed on the foreshore of what had been a leisure park. On one side of them lay an empty children’s paddling pool set in a raised mound of earth and on the other a drained swimming pool. Both contained skeletons.

  They found a country lane that headed east towards the village of Upchurch. As in New Zealand, nature had been quick to reclaim the land. Weeds had begun their relentless march across the tarmac; hedges were climbing skywards, their lower branches hanging over the narrow lanes. They saw no cattle or she
ep.

  The village of Upchurch had escaped the ravages of fire that had claimed many of the places they’d passed and still retained its picture-postcard beauty. Left unchecked for over three years, the flowering shrubs that climbed the cottage walls slumped under the weight of their own blooms. The rudiments of English village life were still there — the pub, the church and the village store. Only the people were missing.

  They found no food in the cottages, but there was little sign of looting, and unlike Auckland there were no graves in private gardens. They found no corpses in the cottages either; somehow the village spirit had prevailed and the dead had been taken to the churchyard and buried alongside their ancestors.

  They entered the unlocked doors of the ancient church of St Margaret the Virgin. The church, constructed of flint, dated back to the twelfth century. The only corpses in Upchurch were in the church itself.

  ‘I guess,’ Steven said, looking at the three well-dressed skeletons lying together in the nave, ‘these three were the very last people in the village to die.’

  Mark nodded. ‘No one left to bury them.’

  They spent a few minutes looking around the church, brushing aside the cobwebs, fascinated by the history recorded in the church’s fabric. A dusty information booklet recorded that one of the vicars — Edmund Drake, who held office from 1570 to 1576 — was the father of Sir Francis Drake. Flagstones, covering graves set beneath the church floor, spanned the centuries.

  ‘It doesn’t seem possible, does it?’ Mark said. ‘Nearly a thousand years of history and now it’s come to an end.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Steven corrected him. ‘We’re still here, and maybe your brother Paul. Perhaps others.’

  Mark nodded, the mention of his brother snapping him out of his melancholy mood and reminding him of the job in hand. It was time to press on. The question to be answered was whether they would be returning to New Zealand to collect the rest of their family and bring them to a new life in England, or returning to Gulf Harbour to their small and, in the long term, doomed community.

  Early the next morning they began their quest for an answer to that question. They packed two rucksacks with sufficient food for a week, selected a rifle each from the armoury, and packed ammunition. Then they made Archangel secure, double-checking the anchor chain and ensuring the wind generator was charging the batteries. When all was ready they shut tight the portholes, cracked open the fore-hatch to allow air to circulate through the yacht and boarded up the companionway. They rowed ashore, hauled the dinghy onto the promenade between the paddling pool mound and the empty swimming pool and set off towards Sevenoaks.

  Their first task was to find bicycles. Steven had inspected several abandoned cars the previous day and found all devoid of fuel. The dearth of fuel suggested that England had run out much earlier in the pandemic cycle than New Zealand. It appeared that every last drop had been used before everyone died.

  As they cycled towards Sevenoaks it became apparent that not every village and town had experienced the same tranquil end as Upchurch. Roadblocks were everywhere. A number of the villages seemed to have had a relatively orderly end. But the towns, particularly the larger ones, reminded them of what they’d seen in Auckland — burnt-out buildings, abandoned cars, telltale grave mounds in gardens, signs of conflict and the occasional cluster of skeletons around the barricades. Polythene bags full of garbage were piled everywhere, but already vegetation was beginning to creep over the decomposing mounds.

  They stayed that night at an old pub in the village of Borough Green. ‘Early night tonight,’ Mark said. ‘Big day tomorrow.’

  Steven nodded. How big a day would it be? Was his father heading for the elation of a reunion with his brother, or for a shattering disappointment?

  24

  When they reached Seal Village on the outskirts of Sevenoaks, glass lying on the road punctured their tyres. They dumped their bicycles and began walking.

  Adjacent to the pine woods where he’d played as a child, Mark beckoned to Steven to follow him into Greatness Cemetery opposite. Together they picked their way along the overgrown pathways. Finally Mark stopped at a tombstone in one of the older parts of the cemetery and pulled away the weeds to reveal an inscription. It read: ‘In memory of Claude Harry Chatfield, born 31st December 1898, died 19th August 1940.’ Beneath had been added, ‘And of his wife Cora Audrey Chatfield (née Wrightson), born 31st December 1898, died 4th May 1956.’

  ‘Your great-grandfather and great-grandmother.’ Mark wore a look of pride as he stood up.

  ‘They were born on the same day,’ Steven observed.

  ‘Your great-grandfather was a master baker. The family always joked that he looked for a woman with the same birthday as himself so he wouldn’t have to bake an extra cake.’

  Steven appreciated the joke. A tradesman himself, he’d heard his workmates’ wives complaining that their husbands were reluctant to practise their trade around their own homes.

  They left the cemetery and continued on towards the suburb of St John’s, named after an ancient hospice in the area in Saxon times. There they turned south, and twenty minutes later reached the town centre of Sevenoaks. The charred shells of buildings, particularly in the high street, came as a shock to Mark. Gloomily, he wondered if it mattered; perhaps there was no one left to claim their heritage.

  They hurried through the narrow thoroughfare at the top of the town and past the ancient Six Bells Lane in the shadow of St Nicholas’s Church. As they walked, Steven searched for signs of activity — for any indication that Sevenoaks might be different from other deserted towns they had walked through. He could see nothing, a fact he was reluctant to point out to his father, who seemed to be quickening his pace.

  They turned right into Oak Lane and hurried down the dip of the valley and up the other side, before finally turning into Lodge Road. At the final bend in the road, Mark pointed out his brother’s house, number four, further down the street. They both peered ahead, searching for signs of life, filled with a sense of dread.

  The overgrown path prepared them for the worst. Before they’d even reached the house, Mark’s pace slowed.

  ‘They could always be somewhere else,’ Steven said, as he pushed open the unlocked front door and led the way into the house. He tried to sound optimistic, but he could hear the lack of conviction in his voice.

  They walked quietly through the house. It hadn’t been looted, but they couldn’t be sure whether or not Paul had made an orderly departure. They climbed the stairs to the bedrooms; the stairway walls were lined with photographs of the family, including one of Jane, Zach and Nicole that Mark had sent to Paul himself. It was an enlargement of one of the photographs contained in his wallet in the rucksack he was carrying.

  ‘Looks like there’s only one grave out the back,’ Steven remarked, peering through a bedroom window that looked out onto the back garden.

  They made their way back down the stairs and out to the grave. A simple cross on the mound of earth read ‘Marion Ann Chatfield’. She had been Paul’s wife.

  ‘See,’ Steven said, ‘the same pattern as New Zealand. No graves for our blood relatives. Not Uncle Paul, Mathew, Cheryl or Bridget. Perhaps they’re still alive and living somewhere else.’ He knew he was clutching at straws.

  ‘I didn’t see any signs of recent activity as we came through Sevenoaks,’ Mark said solemnly.

  ‘Remember the mistake we made in Wellington,’ Steven cautioned. ‘We nearly left without finding Christopher, and all the time he was just a few kilometres away.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Mark conceded. ‘But there’s no evidence Marion’s grave has been tended. Paul visited our parents’ grave every week and kept it tidy. I find it very hard to believe that if he was still alive and anywhere in this area he would let Marion’s grave get into this state.’

  As Mark spoke, he was pulling the creepers and brambles clear of the mound of earth.

  ‘Look,’ Steven said, concerned at his
father’s continued negativity. ‘We’ve come halfway round the world. We have to conduct a proper search.’ For the first time in his life he found himself taking a leadership role with his father. ‘Let’s have something to eat and then plan what to do next.’

  He helped Mark clear the remainder of the undergrowth from the grave before leading the way back into the house.

  ‘How long will it take to search Sevenoaks?’ Steven asked, as he brushed the worst of the dust from the kitchen table and then took provisions from his rucksack.

  ‘A couple of days, three maybe,’ Mark said, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Then we’ll walk the streets together. You can show me the sights. If we turn up nothing in Sevenoaks, you can make a list of all the other places where Paul might have gone, places that are familiar to him — favourite holiday places, particularly seaside towns. He might have come to the same conclusion as we did, and moved to the coast.’

  ‘Could be a long list,’ Mark observed gloomily.

  ‘We have to give it our best shot. There’s no point in getting back to New Zealand and you saying, “He might have gone to so-and-so, and we didn’t bother to look there”. This is our one and only opportunity.’

  Mark took the notebook and pencil he always carried in his rucksack and wrote down the names of two seaside towns to search.

  Over lunch they decided that the Lodge Road house would be their base for the next few days. ‘No sense in lugging all this stuff around with us,’ Mark said, pointing to the rucksacks that still contained several days’ supply of food.

  ‘What about the rifles?’

  ‘We’ve seen no signs of life. And let’s be honest, if I find my brother and his family, I’m hardly going to shoot them. We’ll leave the rifles and ammunition here; the lighter we travel the greater the distance we can cover.’

  Steven smiled, relieved that his father’s spirits were reviving. Mark had always been the rock of the family. The chink in his armour that had shown up at the disappointment of not finding his brother had been unnerving.