For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (13 page)

‘Even if there’s infected inside, they’re not getting out, are they?’ Jon said impatiently.

I looked for other places where infected might be lying in wait. Further up the hill, a stone building rested close to the brow of a ridge. It was far enough away that I didn’t t
hink we’d have to worry about what might be inside.

‘Come on. We could really do with a boat like that; one we could use as a runabout. It’d make it much easier to go fishing.’ Jon’s argument was persuasive, it would be important to be able to move around, to forage and scavenge, and there would be places inaccessible to a boat as large as the catamaran or a dinghy powered by a small outboard engine.

‘Okay.’ I was finally convinced it was worth the risk. ‘Let’s see if we can get it.’

With that, I slipped the dinghy’s engine into gear and we moved forward. I nosed the dinghy past the dock with the shuttered building on it and up to where the runabout was nestled in the mangroves. Checking one last time for infected, we covered the last few feet and Jon leant forward to grab the frayed rope attached to the front of the semi-submerged boat. Being full of water, it was heavier than I’d anticipated and I had to crank up the throttle on the dinghy’s little outboard to make
any progress. The engine whined under the strain, making much more noise than before. As the dinghy passed the dock again I heard something stirring inside the small building. Riled by the sound we were now making, it started roaring and snarling, tearing at the shutters and the locked door.

‘That’s one of them in there, isn’t it?’ Even though we were a safe distance from the shore, Jimmy looked scared.

‘Yeah.’ Jon looked towards the shore. ‘I wonder how it got in there?’

I thought on this for a few moments. The only reasonable explanation was that someone had been locked inside, probably after they’d become infected, but before they’d turned; a quite different, but equally effective version of quarantine. Now they could sense us, they wanted to g
et us, to attack, to satiate their need for violence. The noise the infected made mingled with the sound of our straining engine as it echoed around the harbour.

‘Look at that!’ Jon pointed towards the top of the hill where infected were streaming from the stone house. They ran through the bushes towards the dock, drawn by the sounds coming from below.

‘Jesus, they’re fast!’ I was startled by their speed across the uneven ground. The quickest made it from the top of the ridge to the dock, a distance of about 100 yards, in less than thirty seconds. The rest weren’t far behind.

‘Yeah, they can be on you in
an instant.’ Jimmy spoke quietly, reliving a memory from the time before we met him. Jon and I looked at each other, but said nothing. We didn’t really know much about what Jimmy and Mike had been through before we found them, or rather before they found us. I heard them both screaming in the night from time to time, but neither really spoke about the things that had happened to them, and they would change the subject quickly if anyone brought it up.

Once the infected reached the dock, they paced back and forth, knowing we were there, but finding they were blocked from reaching us by the water. I watched them, the anger contorting their faces, roars of frustration coming from deep within. I counted nine in all, hair tangled, clothes ragged and torn. They looked dirty and unkempt, and most were skinny but not emaciated. The way their tattered clothes hung from their bodies, suggested they hadn’t eaten in several weeks, maybe not since they’d first become infected. I wondered if that might be what would eventually kill them, whether they were now so consumed with rage, that they no longer felt hunger or the urge to eat, and whether they would eventually starve to death.

By the time we got back to the catamaran, we were far enough away that the infected on the dock had lost interest and were starting to disperse. The noise we’d made towing the runabout had roused CJ and Mike, and they were out in the cockpit watching us approach. I tied up the dinghy and displayed our trophy.

‘Cool. Does it work?’ Mike appreciated it, but CJ had a slightly disgusted look on her face.

‘What are you going to do with
that?’
She emphasised the last word in a way only a teenage girl could. Over the last few days, I’d forgotten quite how young she really was. While she was only a few years older than Mike, most of the time she seemed so much more mature. I guess those few years made all the difference but I had to remember that, at heart, CJ was still just a teenager.

‘Get it going, of course,’ Jon shot back at her, overconfident and condescending.

CJ swore under her breath and stalked back into the cabin, angry at being spoken to like a stroppy teenager, ignoring the fact that that was exactly how she’d been behaving.

I cut a plastic bottle in half, and using it, it took an hour to bail out all the water. Once the runabout was empty, I checked the fuel tank. The filler cap was under the centre console that housed the throttle and the steering wheel. When I opened it, I saw the tank was about half-full and that the seal on the cap had held despite being submerged for so long. Jon cleaned out the fuel filter and checked the spark plugs. It all seemed to be in remarkably good condition. The battery was flat, but that was only to be expected, so I hooked it up to a small solar charger we had
on board. It wasn’t powerful enough to charge the large batteries of the catamaran but, given a couple of days, it would recharge the small battery of the outboard, allowing us to see if the engine still worked.

By this time, it was late afternoon, and our thoughts turned to supper. I opened up a couple more of the label-less cans and was rewarded with carrots and peas. Mike took one of the fishing rods and fitted it with a small shiny lure. Out on deck, he spent the time until sunset casting it as far from the boat as possible and then pulling it back jerkily through the water. As he did, it danced through the water, flashing its silvery sides like an injured fish.

Soon Mike had caught six good-sized snappers and a small barracuda, but then his luck ran out. A four-foot shark attacked the next snapper he hooked just as he was about to lift it from the water. The shark ran with the fish, stripping line from the reel and almost yanking the rod from Mike’s hands. After a few seconds the line went slack. Mike wound it back in and inspected the end. It had rubbed against the sandpaper-like skin of the shark and snapped. The fish and, more importantly, the lure were gone. In a normal world this would be no more than an annoyance, to be dealt with by nipping into the nearest tackle shop, but now it was a minor disaster. Fish were now the mainstay of our diet. They were relatively easy to catch and there was almost no risk involved, unlike trying to get any food from the shore. We only had so many hooks and lures, and each one we lost made accessing this underwater bounty more difficult. 

Other than finding the runabout and the incident with the shark, our quarantine was uneventful. As promised, Jack checked in on us the following morning. He came alone and only stayed long enough to see we were all still alive and showing no signs of infection. We drank the rum and coconut water on our final night of quarantine, toasting the end of our solitude.

As we sat in the cockpit, I looked forward to the following day. Once we reached Hope Town, we’d finally have other people around us, and we’d no longer have to face this frightening new world on our own. The survival of the others would no longer be so dependent upon my presence and the decisions I made, and I hoped the feeling of responsibility that had weighed so heavily upon me since Bill’s death would lessen. 

I wondered about the other people we’d meet there. By the way Jack talked of a community, it sounded like there were quite a few of them, more than just those we’d seen in the runabouts. It had been somewhere around two months since I’d spent a decent amount of time with anyone other than Bill, CJ or Jon. Much as I’d liked spending time with Bill on the crossing, and I had to admit I’d grown closer to Jon and CJ since we had left the ruins of Miami, I had little in common with them. I couldn’t wait to speak with someone closer to my own age; to someone I might have more in common with.

This thought excited me in a way I found surprising and it was only then I realised how lonely and isolated I’d felt as I’d crossed the Atlantic with three strangers. These feelings had been amplified when we’d reached Miami and found everything changed, and they’d been growing more intense ever since.

  Chapter Nine 

The following morning we were up early, eager to see what the day would hold. By eight, the dinghy was hoisted
on board, ready for the short trip to Hope Town, but by ten, there was still no sign of Jack. To kill some time, Jon and I fiddled with the engine on the runabout. It took half an hour but, eventually, it spluttered into life. The sound echoed around the near-empty anchorage, agitating the infected on the land surrounding us on three sides. I quickly shut it down again, happy it worked but not wanting to rile them up any more than I had to. I didn’t think it would make a good impression if Jack came to collect us and found we’d attracted every infected on the island to the nearby shores.

I needn’t have worried. Jack didn’t turn up until late in the afternoon. He was alone and had a harassed air about him. He tied his boat to the back of the catamaran and came aboard. He shook hands with each of us in turn and within minutes we were underway. Once out of the harbour, I let Jon take the wheel and went to sit down next to Jack.

‘You look more worried today than when we first arrived.’ I didn’t want to ask directly, but I wanted to give him the opportunity to talk if he wished.

‘Yeah.’
Jack fidgeted with his hands for a second or two. ‘You’ll find out about it when we get to Hope Town anyway, so I might as well tell you now. We had an incident last night. We lost someone, almost two.’

I studied Jack’s face as he spoke. It was heavily lined and tanned from a life spent out in the elements, but I was sure women would still find him attractive,
his white hair making him seem distinguished rather than old. Even though he looked tired, there was still a sparkle in his eyes. He was tall, his body strong without being muscular. His accent was soft with an element of the American south, barely discernible but definitely there.

‘They were over at Boat Harbour trying to find guns. They knew it was off limits — it’s too dangerous — but David doesn’t always listen to what others think. I think it’s his army training coming out.’ Jack sounded irritated and I wondered what the story was there.

‘Nobody likes going there, to Boat Harbour I mean. It’s just a mess; boats of all sizes piled up. When the infection overran Marsh Harbour, the people there panicked. Everyone tried to get out at once, but there just wasn’t enough room. A couple of the big boats, almost ships really, ran into each other and blocked the entrance. That only made things worse. I don’t think any of them got out alive. Well, I suppose they’re still alive, lots of them; they’re just not human anymore.’ Jack sounded sad, as if he pitied them for losing their humanity.

‘David’s been obsessed with finding more guns ever since he got here, and he figured there must be some on the boats there. He’s probably right; a lot of them would have had guns
on board, but there’s a big difference between knowing they are there and being able to get to them. I don’t think David always understands that just because you make a plan, it doesn’t always mean you can actually achieve it.’ Jack sounded irritated again.

‘So, yesterday, David talked another guy, Brian, into going over to Boat Harbour. They managed to search two boats before their luck ran. They’d just gone onto the third boat when an infected came out of nowhere. They were very lucky there was only one … well, David was. He managed to get up onto the lookout tower, but Brian got caught. He got ripped to shreds just a few feet below where David was safe, but well and truly trapped.’

I shuddered at the thought of being stuck so close to one of the infected.

‘It was evening before anyone realised David and Brian were missing, and where they’d gone. By the time I got to
there I could see David was still alive, but it was too late to mount any sort of rescue attempt. Boat Harbour’s dangerous enough in daylight and I wasn’t going to risk it with the sun going down. I had to leave him there, not knowing if he’d make it through the night. When I went back this morning I was relieved to find he was still alive. It seemed the infected couldn’t quite figure out how to get up to him but it had tried all night. It took a while to work out a way to get David off, and even then it was a close call for both of us.’ Jack fell silent as he relived the events of the day.

After a few seconds,
he started speaking again. ‘I don’t think David’s too pleased that I was the one who rescued him. He thinks he should be the one in charge. He was a lieutenant in the army when all this happened, and that sort of job comes with a certain view of the world. To be honest, he’s been a bit of a pain in the ass ever since he and his group turned up.’

So, like us, David was a relatively new addition to this community. I listened as Jack continued. ‘When they first arrived, I was happy to see them. I felt the more people we had in our community the better, and we’d already lost a lot.’ Jack hesitated for a moment. ‘But David started trying to take over almost immediately, trying to organise things his way. He kept going on about the need to find more guns, the need to be more
structured. We’re a pretty laid-back bunch around here, and it was all too military for most of us. David’s calmed down a bit since then, but he still causes problems every so often, especially when he gets an idea into his head.’ Jack glanced towards the island to our west. ‘Maybe what happened in Boat Harbour will have taught him a lesson or two about what we can and can’t do nowadays.’

Jack didn’t seem bitter about David’s presence; rather he seemed perturbed by the disruption it had caused. 

‘Anyway, we won’t know whether he’s learned anything for a couple of days. He’s currently holed up on his boat with everyone staying clear until we see for sure he wasn’t infected.’ Jack looked ahead, ‘Right, that’s us just about there.’

I turned to find that we were near a large, low-lying island, dominated by a tall lighthouse painted with alternating red and white hoops. Jack got up and started giving Jon directions, guiding us in. The entrance to the harbour was narrow, only about fifty feet wide in places. On the right, there was a sign proclaiming ‘Slow Down You’re In Hope Town’, around which an infected paced, glaring at us as we passed. It growled as it shadowed our movements. I examined it through the binoculars. It was a woman, probably in her fifties, dressed i
n a luminous green bikini. Hair that had once been tied back in a ponytail was sticking out at odd angles all over her head. Under normal circumstances the sight would have been comical, now it was deeply disturbing. It brought home how quickly the disease must have overwhelmed her, striking as she sunbathed on the beach, or rested by the pool.

The anger on her face contrasted sharply with the way she was dressed. I could see she yearned to attack us, but she couldn’t understand how to do it. While the infection might not kill,
it seemed to rob people of the ability to work things out. They knew what they wanted, what they desired with every fibre of their being, what every urge in their body was driving them to do, but they couldn’t overcome even relatively simple barriers in front of them. They couldn’t cross deep water; they wouldn’t cross shallow water unless they were sure they could do so safely. It was clear from the incident Jack had just told me about that they couldn’t work out how to climb a lookout tower, even if they knew there was someone up there.

I thought about this and its implications for our survival, but I didn’t come to any conclusions.

We passed through the narrow channel and emerged into the anchorage itself. As we did so, the Hope Town community opened up before us. To my eyes it was amazing. It was the first thing I’d seen that resembled how life used to be, and it seemed almost normal in comparison to everything we’d encountered so far. Not Western normality, but something that would have been recognisable to people somewhere in the world before all this happened; maybe to those fishing communities in Thailand or the Philippines that lived in floating villages moored at the water’s edge.

There were boats of all shapes and sizes floating in small groups within the harbour, some secured to moorings, others riding at anchor. Some were on their own while others were tied up side by side. Jack told us the boats had been scavenged from far and wide, and brought here to give the people in the community as much living space as possible. This explained the puzzling lack of boats in the harbour at
Man-O-War.

Freshly washed laundry hung from the guard rails and was strung along booms, flapping slowly in the breeze. From the front of one boat, three children took turns jumping off the bowsprit into the water, their shouts and laughter echoing round the harbour. As we moved between the clusters of boats, people waved to us and called out. After all we’d been through, it felt like we were finally coming home.

Jack directed us to a space between two groups of boats where we could safely anchor up. Once we were secure, Jon turned off the engine. It was then that the illusion of normality was broken as a low moan drifted across to us from the shore. I looked towards the land and could see infected shambling through otherwise deserted streets that had once thronged with tourists and locals. Every now and then, there would be a small knot of them squabbling over the remains of someone who was long dead. While their main urges were for violence against those without the disease, it seemed the infected still felt hunger and needed to eat after all, maybe not as often as normal humans but they had to eat nonetheless. Others stood motionless in the shade of the trees, staring blankly into space, and there were, no doubt, more hidden inside the many low buildings that made up the small town. It was almost as if they were different creatures to the infected we’d seen so far; more docile, almost listless.

Jack seemed to know what I was thinking and spoke before I could say anything. ‘As long as we don’t go too near the shore, they don’t seem to know we’re here and they pretty much ignore us. When there’s no one around they seem to go into some sort of stasis for most of the time, preserving their energy, just waiting. When they do that, they look so lost, so harmless, but don’t be fooled. Get too close and it changes in an instant. Any sound that seems near enough, any movement, any sign that something living might be within their reach and they spring into action.’

Jack had studied the infected and he’d learned a lot. It was useful information and I listened keenly to what he was saying.

‘I think because they spend so much time waiting, in torpor, they don’t need as much food as normal people. When they attack, it seems all about the urge to kill rather than to feed; they seem to sense the uninfected are different from them and, for whatever reason, it incenses them. They want to kill it, tear it apart, destroy it. When you see them eating, they’re usually scavenging on the remains of those they’ve killed, picking the carcasses clean. Every now and then you’ll see them chasing a rat or a stray dog, but they seem to prefer the dead.’

Jack’s description of the infected reminded me of something. When I was a child, I’d kept a large green praying mantis that spent most of its life hanging from the top of its cage, occasionally swaying gently as if buffered by a light breeze. Every now and then it would shift position slightly, but that was about it. Yet, drop a cricket into the cage and everything changed. The mantis would spring to life, and within minutes, sometimes just seconds, the prey would be caught with a speed of movement that seemed unfathomable. It was the classic tactic of an ambush predator, and from what Jack was saying the infected were remarkably similar.

‘There are sixty-one people in our community: forty-eight adults and thirteen children. We’re a pretty ragtag bunch, Americans, Canadians, Brits, like yourself, Bahamians: people who lived here, expats, people who were on holiday. Mostly, we were on boats when
the Abacos were overrun, sailing, out fishing, even people who were on one of the little passenger ferries, the captain having enough sense not to dock anywhere when he saw what was happening on the shore.

‘On the first day, we were lost. We milled around wondering what to do, where to go. We started coming together, drawn to each other for company and for safety. We waited for someone, anyone, to rescue us but no one came. By the next morning, it was clear we were on our own. We decided we needed to find somewhere to go and here seemed logical. There were as many as ninety-seven of us in the early days, but it took time to work out how to survive. We made mistakes; lots of them.’ Jack sounded bitter and I wondered if he’d lost someone he cared about, just as we’d lost Bill.

‘Other survivors turned up almost daily at first, coming from all over the Abacos: some in small boats, some in bigger ones, and we would welcome them in. People would take them onto their own boats. People were attracted here. I don’t know if it’s the lighthouse or the name, or because it’s familiar, but Hope Town seemed to be a natural place for survivors to head for. We learned the hard way that newcomers could be trouble. They would hide injuries, ignore them, hope they weren’t really infected, but in the end, they would turn, often in the night, attacking those around them. That was why we started the whole quarantine thing, both for newcomers and for any of us who have an encounter with the infected.’

It was a sensible strategy, but I was surprised they’d come up with it so soon. I guess that when the stakes were that high, they’d had no choice but to find a solution as quickly as possible.

‘We also had a lot of problems with drifters in the early days. People didn’t know how to deal with their friends and loved ones if they got infected. After they got really sick, people would put them in a dinghy or a life raft and leave them, but they would drift around and if they bumped into another boat, they’d attack. That was when we decided no one should sleep on deck and everyone should make sure their cabin is secured at night. That way, even if a drifter gets on board, the people are safe, and can call someone up on the VHF radio to come and deal with the infected while they remain safe below. Until yesterday, we hadn’t lost anyone in almost a week.’ Given the circumstances, I figured that was pretty good going.