Blood Bond (16 page)

Mark and his party stood outside the house, watching through the gap where the patio doors had once stood as the children made a fuss of the cat.

Nicole finally handed Misty to Holly and hurried to the kitchen. ‘Where's Uncle Christopher?'

‘We've buried him, up the top of the hill,' Steven explained.

‘We'd better finish filling in the grave,' said Fergus. ‘Take a rifle,' Mark said.

‘Don't worry — there's no way I'm going anywhere around here without one.' Fergus shouldered his rifle and hurried away.

The children turned their attention from Misty to the picnic basket which had been brought ashore.

‘Now,' Allison said from the safety of the doorway, ‘I only want you to eat what I tell you to eat, and drink what I tell you to drink. Your tummies will be very small now and you don't want to get sick.'

However, her plea fell on deaf ears. The children were starving.
Only when they had eaten all the food and had all been sick did Mark ask Zach again to tell them what had happened.

Zach began by recalling the boring lesson just a few weeks earlier, then how Christopher's terrified shouts had sent them scrambling up the hill behind the marina. Misty and Snowy followed them, but the cat had slunk off in the direction of a group of trees part-way up the slope.

They had watched in horror as a huge wave swept over the breakwater and smashed its way through the marina and surged through the houses beyond it.

Eventually the water began to recede, dragging masses of debris with it. The tower block which had contained the community's warehouse of essential items, and a number of other buildings, collapsed shortly afterwards, and Zach and Holly watched in amazement as the timber-framed, fibro-clad apartments their grandfather had always complained about floated out to sea.

The water continued to ebb until they could see not only the empty canal but also the seabed in the marina. They began to head down the hill again, intent on finding their uncle and Jane. Snowy came with them, and they saw Misty standing at the edge of the trees. They called to him but he made the same unfamiliar sound he had before the wave arrived, and refused to budge.

At the foot of Marina Hill they were greeted with an alien scene. The retaining walls, gates and garages that had previously fronted their home had been swept away. The water and sewage tanks that Steven had installed had disappeared, as had the doors and the lower windowpanes of the three townhouses. They walked into the middle house and found the furniture was gone, too. They also discovered the body of their uncle lying in his upturned wheelchair, jammed against the back wall of the kitchen.

But as they talked about what to do with the body, Zach looked back through the gap where the patio doors had once been and saw water surging back up the canal. He had told the other children to run, but when they reached the back door they found water sweeping past, cutting off their escape route.

Gina was swept off her feet as water began to surge around their
legs. Zach grabbed her by the hand and dragged her towards the stairs. Audrey was clutching him so tightly around the neck that he was having trouble breathing. They stumbled up to the bedrooms, terrified the water would follow. Seeing the debris-laden water surging up the canal a few metres below was even more terrifying than watching the flood from up on the hill. They felt the building move under the pressure. The plasterboard covering the pre-cast concrete slabs began cracking. A picture fell from the wall and then part of the ceiling crashed down. The younger children cowered under the bed, crying as Zach and Nicole stood at the bedroom window, while the debris bumped past, along with the remains of corpses that had previously been buried in shallow graves along the canal.

Zach knew his mother had been working in the gardens further along the canal when the first wave came. He hoped she had heard the water coming and had run to higher ground too. But he was worried — there was no sign of her.

Eventually the water began to recede again, gathering pace as the level dropped. They could hear the sound of more buildings collapsing nearby, and the walls of their own continued to groan and move with the force of the water swirling through the downstairs area. Frightened that their house would also collapse, the children gathered on the stairs and moved down, step by step, as the tide retreated. From part-way down they could see Christopher's wheelchair and body still trapped in the kitchen.

Wading to the foot of the stairs, Zach looked through the gap where the patio doors had been, waiting for the water level to drop further. Eventually he swung Audrey onto his back and gave the call to run.

As they ran towards the hill they were confronted by a wide strip of mud. The suction gripped their legs and made it hard to move forward. Looking over their shoulders, terrified the water was going to come back, they tried desperately to make for the firm ground at the base of Marina Hill. After a few minutes Nicole, who had fallen over, discovered it was easier to crawl on all fours through the mud than to try to run. The others mimicked her, Audrey clinging like a koala bear to Zach's back. Exhausted, frightened and covered in
mud, they eventually reached the other side and clambered wearily up the hillside. Snowy was no longer a white West Highland terrier.

When they reached their previous lookout position, they sat down and stared in the direction of the marina. It was no more. The breakwater had gone and so had the jetties, the yachts and launches all swept away. A huge pile of debris stretched for almost a kilometre on the landward side of Kotanui Island.

Another wave surged in, smaller than the previous ones. They watched it surge back and forth across the patch of mud they had struggled to cross. The younger children started crying, looking to Zach for reassurance. He told them they would be fine, but despite his words he wasn't so sure: he had never seen waves as big as those that had swept up the canal. Could
Raconteur
possibly have survived such conditions?

No sooner had he told the children they were safe than they heard dogs barking. The pack was close by. They jumped to their feet and headed up the hill towards the houses at the summit.

Just as they reached the door of the first house, the pack caught up with them. The dogs stood snarling and snapping, backing the children against the door, but when Zach reached for the handle he found it was locked.

The children yelled, kicking at the dogs and waving their arms. Snowy stood alongside, barking defiantly, but he was no match for them. A huge bull mastiff, the boldest of all the dogs, rushed forward and grabbed Gina's leg. She screamed as she was dragged off her feet. Zach grasped her hand and Snowy lunged at the mastiff, his jaws latching on to the bigger dog's ear. Yelping, the mastiff released Gina's leg and threw back its head. Snowy was pitched in the air, landing in the midst of the pack. To the pitiful cries of Snowy being ripped to pieces by the distracted pack, the children slipped around the side of the house, pushed through the back door and slammed it behind them. Seconds later they heard the scratching of claws as the growling dogs tried to get in.

The children remained cowering in the house for the remainder of the day and the night that followed. There was no food and no water. At first light Zach searched the house and in the internal garage
found a garden fork and a broom handle, to which he bound a large kitchen knife to form a spear. He gave the fork to Nicole, took the spear himself and assembled his party at the front door. Once he was satisfied the dogs were no longer in the vicinity, Zach cautiously led the children out of the house. He had decided that the safest place to go was Shakespear Regional Park, as there were no animals left there to attract the dogs.

And so began an eight-kilometre trek along the clifftops to the far end of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula. Along the way they found more garden implements, which they collected to defend themselves. Their progress was slowed by Audrey's tiny legs and the need to carry her much of the time, Gina's limp, the weight of their weapons, and the waist-high grass and patches of thistles, which covered the clifftops.

Eventually they arrived at the YMCA hostel at the end of the peninsula. Many of the rooms had skeletons lying on the bunks but they found one empty room with six bunks. They bolted the door behind them and slumped down to rest.

 

The following morning, Zach discovered the hostel's roof-fed water system was still functioning. He washed himself and tended to Audrey before instructing the other children to clean up too. Gina would not wash her leg — the bite wounds were too painful. Zach ordered Holly, Zoë and Nicole to pin her down and ignored her screams while he cleaned up the gashes as best he could. They were deep and he knew he needed to find antiseptic cream.

He locked the youngest two children, Gina and Audrey, in the bunk room and led the other girls out to search for food and supplies. They had success in a house in Army Bay — they picked fruit from tangelo and lime trees and used their garden forks to dig up carrots from an overgrown garden before hurrying back to the lodge with their spoils.

Several times over the next few days they had tried to get back to Gulf Harbour to see if they could find Jane, Katie or Sarah, but each time they turned back. They were terrified the dogs might see them and follow them down to Shakespear Bay.

 

Fighting hunger and filled with concern about their mothers, the children struggled to survive. They found a dinghy and some kayaks tangled up in the scrub near the lodge, and some fishing rods, but they couldn't make a fire.

They couldn't find any matches at the lodge, and although Zach had heard stories of Boy Scouts rubbing sticks together to start a fire, try as he might he couldn't master the technique. He spent fruitless hours rubbing the sticks together, waiting for them to burst into flame, and eventually he gave up.

Periodically, he and the other children raided the gardens in Army Bay. They searched the houses and found guns, but no ammunition. They could find no tinned or packaged food, matches or candles. They had all been consumed in the weeks following the pandemic.

Zach realised the children needed protein, but they could not catch any of the rabbits that ran wild in the park. Of the birds in the area, they only managed to snare one clumsy pukeko. And its raw meat tasted so strong that they never tried to catch another.

Their diet consisted of raw carrots, Brussels sprouts, swedes, cauliflower and silver beet, supplemented with fruit, oysters, pipis and the occasional raw fish. Gina's wounds healed, but being a fussy eater, she picked at the food Zach provided. He could see they were all growing thin and he worried how he would continue to feed them if the dogs discovered their refuge and restricted their movements.

Then one morning, just as he was beginning to lose heart, Nicole rushed into the lodge, carrying her fork. She thought she had heard gunfire. All the children rushed outside to the veranda and listened.

‘I heard two shots,' she insisted.

After five minutes the other children looked at her accusingly, and they were beginning to walk inside when a further two shots rang out, far away. Filled with hope and excitement, the children grabbed their garden forks and set off from the lodge, making their way as quickly as they could along the clifftops towards Gulf Harbour. They walked with a fork-wielding child on each flank and Audrey and Gina in the middle. Occasionally they heard the dogs barking in the distance and would halt and wait until they had plucked up the courage to continue.

On the ridge above the marina they could see a yacht at anchor in the bay. At first they thought it was
Raconteur
— the young girls calling for their mothers — but then Nicole pointed out that it had two masts, and Zach realised it was
Archangel
.

Their pace quickened, but a few minutes later they saw the pack of dogs in the distance. They dropped into the grass to avoid being seen.

Nicole was the first to raise her head and see the people on the hill. The figures were over a kilometre away but Zach was sure it was his grandfather and Uncle Steven. The women with them, he felt sure, were the children's mothers.

Zach panicked. He didn't want them to leave without seeing the children were still alive. He picked up Audrey and ran across the hilltop, the other children at his heels. They had gone barely fifty metres when the pack of dogs charged towards them. Zach and Nicole yelled at the top of their voices and waved frantically at the figures on the hill opposite but it was only when they were surrounded by the snarling dogs and fighting them off with the forks that they heard the guns go off and guessed they had been seen.

The noise of the shots seemed to spur the dogs to greater ferociousness. The older children stood around the terrified Audrey and Gina, jabbing their forks at the animals that were attempting to break through. Only when the fourth dog had been shot and the remainder of the pack had run away did Zach realise he and the other children were safe.

 

‘So your mother was working in the gardens further along the canal when the tsunami came through?' Mark asked once Zach had finished telling his story.

Zach nodded.

‘And we haven't seen her since,' Nicole said, choking back her tears.

‘And your mothers had gone fishing on
Raconteur
?' Mark asked, turning towards Holly, Zoë and Gina.

The three girls nodded.

‘Do you know where they were heading?'

Holly shook her head. ‘They just said they were going to follow the gannets and fish where the birds were diving.'

Mark stood up. ‘All right, children, I want you to sleep upstairs tonight. Except Zoë — she can sleep down here with me.'

Everyone looked at him, surprised. The children couldn't understand why only one of them would be allowed to sleep downstairs; the adults were mystified as to why Mark had chosen Zoë to be the guinea pig.