For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (17 page)

‘I assumed they’d died. I think everyone did and they started to gather round. There were probably about twenty people there when the ones on the ground began moving again. They leapt to their feet and started attacking anyone they could catch. All the people running around seemed to confuse them and the attacks didn’t last long; just long enough to bring the person to the ground. Then they’d be onto the next.’

Andrew turned to look straight at us. ‘That’s when I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. I tried my car first, but I’d left my keys behind one of the check-in desks. I wasn’t going to go back for them, so I just started running. I kept looking over my shoulder, back at the burning airport, but I didn’t see anyone following me. As I ran I could see others driving in the opposite direction, going to see what had happened.

‘When I was almost half-way back to town I heard a car coming up fast behind me. I’d seen it going the other way a few minutes before. It screeched to a halt. I took the hint and I leapt in before it raced off again.

‘The driver looked at me. “Andrew?” I recognised him from the marina. He was one of the cetacean research people; one of the guys that used to run around in the boat you scavenged. As he drove, the guy spoke rapidly. “The people out at the airport, they’re attacking each other, ripping each other to shreds, I only just got away.” He stared into the rear-view mirror. “But I think they followed me, they’re heading this way, maybe a couple of hundred of them. They’re acting more like a swarm than people. I think it’s the virus, the one from Haiti. It’s here. We need to get out of here.” I clung on as we skidded round a corner, the car almost tipping over from the speed. He ignored the stop-light and shot straight across the junction, causing others to brake sharply. When we reached the marina, he pulled up. Not knowing what to do, I got out and he sped off down the road.

‘No one at the marina seemed to know what had happened, or what was happening. They could see the smoke twisting up from the airport, but that was about it. But I knew what was going on and my only thought was to get off the island as quickly as possible. I knew there were keys for some of the boats in the marina office, so I went in there. I was just trying to break open the drawer they were kept in when I heard people shouting. Then I heard screaming. Through the office windows, I saw people running and I knew the infected couldn’t be far behind.

‘I ran outside and looked up the road. There was a solid mass of people running straight at me. The sight rooted me to the spot and all I could do was stare. The infected swept along the road, chasing people, attacking them, bringing them down and then moving on. I saw children, old people, men, women — anyone who couldn’t run fast enough — just get swallowed up by the horde. I heard their screams as they were ripped apart.’ Andrew glanced around.

‘I recognised faces both amongst those who were killed and amongst the infected. These were people I knew, some I’d known all my life. I couldn’t believe all this was happening here. To me. Then
I recognised another face. My mom, running as fast as she could. I called out, but she couldn’t hear me over all the screaming. Suddenly, a little boy appeared in front of her and she stopped. I ran forward, worrying she was going to be attacked, but before I could get there she tore into him, blood dripping from her face as she bit him again and again.’

I looked at Andrew, there were tears running down his face. ‘That was when the reality of it all finally sank in.’ Andrew buried his face in his hands. After a moment, he calmed himself and carried on. ‘I knew I couldn’t outrun them and that my best chance was out on the water so I ran up the dock. I was just deciding which boat to take when one of the infected spotted me. He veered off and started running at me. As he did so, I realised I’d seen him around. He’d bought me a beer a few days earlier, after I’d helped him sort out a flat battery.’ There was a note of disbelief in Andrew’s voice.

‘There was no time to untie a boat so I climbed into a little storage shed at the end of the dock. I just got the door closed when he reached it. He started hammering and banging at the door trying to get in. Luckily, the door opened outwards and not inwards, and he couldn’t work out how to open it. I took some old rope and tied the handle to a small workbench built into the shed just to make sure.’ Andrew drifted off for almost a minute, thinking back to that day.

‘What happened then?’ Jon was prompting him gently to continue.

‘I listened to what was going on outside. In amongst the banging of the infected, I could hear the screams of people being attacked and the sounds of their attackers. After a while, there were no more screams, just groaning and snarling, and the infected hammering on the door. Then for a moment, it stopped and I thought he might’ve finally given up. When it started up again a few seconds later, it was worse than before. There were two of them, then three, then five … then I lost count. That’s when I realised I was stuck and that my only hope was if someone came to get me. That’s when I broke down and cried like I hadn’t cried in years. I realised pretty much everyone I knew was most likely either dead … or worse.’

‘By nightfall I knew no one was coming, and that I was on my own. I realised if I was going to get out of there, I’d have to do it myself. I looked around. The floor of the shed was the dock itself and below that was the water. I figured if I could get through the floorboards, I’d be able to drop into the water and I might be able to get away. I don’t mind being on the water in a boat, but getting in scares the shit out of me; it always has. I mean, have you seen the size of some of the sharks that are in there? That’s why I never learned to swim.

‘Now I could see the water was my only way out. Between the infected that were definitely on the other side of the door and the sharks that might be in the harbour, I figured I’d have a better chance in the water. I searched around for something I could use as a float and found one of those big plastic bottles from a water cooler. I hoped it would be enough to stop me sinking and tried to work out a way to get through the boards. The only tools I could find were a hammer and chisel. It took until the following evening before I managed to make a hole big enough for me to get through.

‘By then, my hands were blistered and bleeding, and all the time I could hear the infected just inches away on the other side of the door. I think the only thing that stopped me going mad was the fact I had a plan; that I could see a way out. I didn’t want to go into the water in the dark, that’s when the
big sharks are out and about, so I waited until the sun came up again before I summoned up the courage to take the plunge. I dropped the empty cooler bottle into the water and then I followed it. I was scared shitless about what might be in there, but I didn’t have a choice. It was my only way out. The bottle just kept me afloat and I managed to push myself away from the dock. I could see the infected milling on the deckboards above me. They’d sensed I was gone, but they couldn’t work out where. Slowly, they moved off, shambling back down the dock, looking for others to attack.

‘I just floated there, clinging to the bottle, trying not to let go or think about what else might be in the water with me. I lost track of time, but after a while I felt the strength seeping from my body, and I knew I was going to drown. That was when I hear
d a boat and, before I knew it, Jack was pulling me on board. God, I was so sure I was going to die ...’

Andrew’s voice tailed off and he wiped tears from his eyes. We
sat there in silence on the beach for a few minutes. Andrew’s story had brought us back to the reality we’d managed to escape for a few hours.

‘Right.’ Andrew had pulled himself together again and was on his feet. ‘I suppose we should
be getting back.’ Following suit, the rest of us roused ourselves, putting out the fire and getting back into the runabout. I thought about Andrew’s story; how he’d decided to face his worst fear rather than face the infected. I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to do the same and I hoped I’d never have to make such a choice.

Back in Hope Town, we shared the tuna around the other boats and then I invited Jack and the McGanns over to the catamaran for supper. It would be tight with everyone on board, but I felt we needed to do something to thank them for making us feel so welcome. When we finally got back to the catamaran, CJ was none too pleased.

‘You did what? You could have asked first. That’s a lot of people to have to cook for.’

‘CJ’, Jon tried his best to interrupt her before she got too wound up.

‘What, Jon?’ CJ had a look of intense irritation on her face. ‘You going to tell me not to get so upset, or are you just going to make a sarky remark about my cooking?’

‘No.’ Jon’s voice had a hint exasperation in it. ‘If you just calm down for a second, I was going to say why don’t you take the evening off and let me and Rob do the cooking for a change?’

CJ stared at him, trying to work out if he was being serious or not. ‘You can cook?’

‘Well no, not really.’ Jon sounded slightly flustered, ‘But it’s just going to be tuna steaks. It shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?’ Jon looked slightly embarrassed for a moment. ‘And I think you deserve at least one night without having to cook for us.’

With that Jon went back out to the cockpit and started preparing the tuna. CJ glanced at me, a look of confusion on her face. ‘What’s he after?’

‘I don’t think he’s after anything. I think he’s just trying to be nice.’

‘Hmm.’

After Jon had picked on her all the way across the Atlantic, I could see why CJ would be so sceptical.

‘CJ, he’s being genuine. I think he realises that with everything that’s happened, it’s important we all get along, and that we don’t take each other for granted. And he’s right. We can’t expect you to cook every night. It’s unfair.’

‘I don’t mind cooking, really I don’t.’ CJ paused briefly, ‘But a night off every now and then would be nice.’

I left CJ to enjoy her unexpected chore-free evening and went out to join Jon in the cockpit. When I got there, I sat down next to where he was carving up the fish. ‘That was nice of you.’

‘She could at least be grateful.’ Jon sounded put out and a little upset.

‘She is. You just caught her by surprise.’

‘Yeah. After the way I’ve treated her I suppose I probably did.’ Jon stopped what he was doing and sat back on his heels, ‘You try and do something nice for someone once ...’ Jon’s voice was so full of mock indignation I couldn’t help but laugh. He smiled at me and went back to preparing the tuna.

  Chapter Twelve 

Over the next few weeks, we settled into the community and, for the first time since reaching the lighthouse at Hole-in-the-Wall, we fell into a steady routine. Our biggest worry was that something would give out and we would be cast up on the shore. At night, we kept watch in two-hour stints in case the anchor dragged, staying within the cabin because of the risk of drifters. Each morning I’d snorkel down to check the anchor was still firmly set into the sand. Aft
er that, I’d have breakfast as we listened to the cruisers’ net on the VHF radio before heading out to spend the day fishing, foraging, scavenging and doing running repairs. In the evening, either Jon or I would check the anchor again and inspect the anchor line for any signs of damage or wear.

The cruisers’ net was something born before everything went wrong, and was a local Abaco tradition. It was a way for people living on boats scattered across all the islands, harbours and anchorages, to form a community. In the past, it was dominated by weather reports, arrivals, departures and announcements of special offers in the local bars and restaurants. Now it was dominated by reports of where people had seen infected, especially drifters, offers of barter for food, and requests for spare parts. There were no more arrivals. We had been the last new people to turn up, and there were certainly no daily specials from the restaurants lining the harbour. These days, the only thing on the menu there was us.

The morning broadcast on the cruisers’ net was how we found out whether anyone had been lost to the infected or, less often, to other causes. While Hope Town harbour was the main base for our community, the boats that made it up dispersed gradually throughout the shallow waters of the Sea of Abaco as we used up the nearby resources, and had to forage ever further afield. We had to move around, scavenging through the remnants of the society of which we’d once been part.

I’d always taken it for granted how easily I could pull up to a dock to get fuel, or nip into a shop to get food. Now even going close to shore could prove fatal, and time spent on land was usually brief, sporadic and terrifying. It was something everyone avoided unless they had no choice, but we all had to do it from time to time when th
ere was no other way of getting something we desperately needed. Shore parties often encountered the infected, and if they couldn’t make it back to the safety of the sea that was it. Sometimes, only a few made it back; sometimes none at all. There were several occasions I’d pulled up to a familiar vessel I’d see riding at anchor to find no one on board. A missing dinghy was a sure sign the crew had gone ashore and hadn’t made it back.

It was these reports we dreaded hearing over the radio. It was always the first item on the agenda on the cruisers’ net, and each morning I’d hold my breath, counting down the minutes until it began. Whoever was hosting it would start with a call for reports of anyone who’d been lost. On a good day, there’d be none and we’d heave a collective sigh of relief. Sometimes a week, or even two, would go by without losing anyone. Sometimes, we lost too many all at once.

The main issue dominating our daily lives was finding all
the things we needed to survive in a world where we could no longer go ashore freely. Some of these were easier to find than others. Before the outbreak, this had been a maritime community, and almost everyone had a boat of some description. This meant there were plenty at the water’s edge, ready to be scavenged for parts as and when they were needed. There often wasn’t even the need to set foot on land, as many boats were tied to the ends of long, narrow docks sticking out from the shore, and were ripe for the picking. Jon developed a great knack for remembering which boat was where, what type of engine it had, and whether anyone had already scavenged parts from it. This meant he could usually find whatever anyone needed within a few hours. Eventually, these would be used up, but that seemed a long time off, possibly years, and we hoped things might have changed for the better by then.

It was the same with fuel. The many marinas scattered across the different islands had fuel docks specifically designed so they could be easily accessible to boats. Being a local, Andrew knew where each one was and he was the one who worked out the strategy to prevent us being attacked when we used them. By removing enough planks from the wooden walkways that led out to the fuel docks, we created a barrier that the infected could not
cross. We could then go up to them and, with the help of a portable generator to power the pumps, we could access the fuel within their storage tanks. While some of these tanks were quite small, others were truly massive, carrying enough fuel to fill even the largest, most fuel-hungry sport-fishing boat to the brim. We had to be careful about our fuel use, and we would eventually run out, but it wasn’t a pressing concern in the short term.

Other things were much more difficult to find, and it was these that caused us problems in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak. While we could get enough fish from the sea to stop us going hungry, we struggled to find enough fresh fruit and vegetables to stay healthy. Ever since humans first took to the seas, diseases of malnutrition, such as scurvy, had plagued them. Meat could be salted, fish could be caught, water could be stored in barrels, but fresh fruit and vegetables only lasted so long before they went off. Those on long journeys would often fall ill, simply because they didn’t have enough greens in their diet. It had taken until the eighteenth century for doctors to work this out, and it wasn’t until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the advent of canned and frozen foods, that the supply of such things became easy, and the dangers finally receded for those who made their living on the sea.

Now we’d been forced from the land, these diseases would return if we couldn’t find a way round the problem. The canned vegetables we’d found so far would soon run out and we couldn’t simply nip to the local supermarket to pick up more. We couldn’t even raid them for the supplies they still housed. They were situated too far from the safety of the water and in the places where people had once gathered; the very places where most infected now lurked.

We could get coconuts from the palms which lined the many islands, but they provided few of the nutrients we really needed. There were sea grapes on the bushes and breadfruits on the trees. We could even see one outside a house in Hope Town, its branches groaning under the weight of unpicked fruit, but there was no way we could get to them; they were just too far from the shore.

Everyone agreed something needed to be done, but the community couldn’t agree what. There were two basic schools of thought. The first was Dan’s idea of the garden boats. Working away with Jon, he’d refined and honed the basic premise, to the point where we were starting to see how it might actually work, and almost everyone thought we should at least give them a go. The only one really opposed to this idea was David, and he could be persuasive. He’d been against the garden boats from the moment Dan had first raised the idea. David thought they were a waste of energy and that our time would be better spent trying to clear somewhere on land where we could grow food and use as a fall-back position. He was convinced that relying on boats alone was just too dangerous, that they were too fragile, and that eventually they’d give out and we’d be forced onto the shore. When that time came, he wanted us to be ready.

Many of us agreed with David in principle, but we knew it was unachievable and, outside of David’s group, few would support it. David knew his best chance of getting people to back his plan was if he could persuade them it was only way to get the much-needed fruit and vegetables. This meant it was David who pointed out, at every opportunity, the one apparently insurmountable problem with the garden boats. Growing plants under the hot, tropical sun would require more freshwater than we could ever hope to supply. Even with all the reverse osmosis machines we had within the community, we could barely keep up with our own water needs, let alone produce enough to stop the garden boats from drying out.

While David knew what he wanted, he couldn’t work out a way to actually achieve it. The small, easy-to-clear islands lacked soil suitable for growing food, while islands that were large enough to have suitable soil, we simply couldn’t do anything with. We didn’t have enough guns, or ammunition, or people, to clear them. Unlike situations David had been trained to deal with, we couldn’t just go in all guns blazing, and overrun the enemy with superior fire-power and greater numbers. We were outnumbered by the infected many hundreds, even thousands of times to one. And without access to numerous guns and pretty much unlimited ammunition, we were no match for them, even one on one.

The best plan David could come up, and the one he was starting to fixate on, was to clear the infected from the peninsula around the lighthouse, and build a wall across it to keep any more from getting in. Yet, no one would take this plan seriously. We could see it was beyond our capabilities, and we knew that even if we could get the infected cleared off and the wall built, there would always be the risk of drifters coming ashore and attacking us. Dan and Jon would point this out to David in no uncertain terms whenever he raised the possibility, just as David would point out the flaws in their garden boat idea.

So we had two possible solutions to our ever-more desperate need for fresh fruit and vegetables, but it seemed neither of them would actually work. We had no way to get enough water for the garden boats, and we couldn’t ever hope to create a secure zone on land. Yet, both David and Dan were adamant that, with enough time, they could get their idea to work. This meant whenever the subject came up, the community meetings would descend into chaos as the arguments raged between David on the one side, and Dan and Jon on the other.

Eventually, Jack had to step in.

‘Right, we can’t go on like this. David, Dan, Jon … both plans are off limits for the community meetings until one of you comes up with some way of making theirs work. We’ll back whoever presents the first viable solution. Does everyone agree?’

There was a murmur of approval from the rest of the room. The race was on and we waited eagerly to see who would win.

***

‘So is there anything else we need to cover today?’
We’d been in Hope Town for several months and Jack was just finishing off another community meeting.

Jon stood up and cleared his throat. ‘I think we’ve solved the water problem.’

The room fell silent. After all the anticipation, everyone knew what he meant and what it could mean for all of us. I glanced over at David. There was a look of dismay on his face.

‘Okay, Jon. The floor is yours.’ Jack sat down and listened intently.

‘So, the first problem we’ve got to deal with is how to stop the garden boats drying out. If we take some old sailcloth and lay it over the top, it’ll slow the evaporation to a manageable level. If we make a small cut wherever we plant things, they’ll be able to grow through.’ Jon glanced round the room to check everyone was following him. ‘If we then put another layer of sailcloth higher up, we can use it to shade the soil when the sun’s at its highest, which will help reduce evaporation even further. We can also use these to protect the plants from any storms or heavy rain that might damage them.’

This was a refinement of Jon’s original idea and I could see how well it might work. I looked across at David. It was clear he could see this too and his mood was darkening by the minute.

’The next problem is where to get the water from in the first place. If we take some more sailcloth, we can make a cone about six feet high and ten feet across at its widest point. We can keep the top open with six poles fixed like the spokes of a wheel. If we use yachts as the basis for the garden boats, we can tie the bottom of the cone to the foot of the mast and use the main halyard to pull the top up and hold it tight. If we have one on each garden boat, we should be able to collect more than enough water each time it rains.’

‘It’s too complicated. It’s … it’s ...’ David blustered angrily, but he could see as well as the rest of us that this was the solution Dan and Jon had been searching for. After a few seconds, David could contain himself no longer. He stormed from the cabin knowing he’d lost, and that the garden boats would be our way forward from that point onwards. His own plans for trying to set up a base on land wouldn’t be happening any time soon. I walked to the window and watched as he sped across the anchorage in his runabout. I thought at first he was going back to his boat, then I saw him turn and head out of the harbour.

Jack got up to speak, bringing my attention back to the meeting. ‘Well, if there are no other objections, shall we vote on it?’

Everyone knew a good idea when they saw it and they backed the plan unanimously. We were elated to finally have a solution to one of the biggest hurdles for our long-term survival, and it was at least half an hour before people started to leave. As they did, I heard CJ congratulating Jon.

‘Wow, that rain-catcher idea’s brilliant.’ CJ was beaming at him. ‘How’d you come up with it?’

‘It’s a bit gross really. I was lying in my bunk one night and I couldn’t sleep because of the heat. I could feel the sweat running down my back and pooling on my sheets. That’s when it came to me.’ Jon stopped when he saw a slightly disgusted look appear on CJ’s face. ‘Sorry, but you did ask.’

I turned to Dan. ‘So when are you going to get started?’

‘No time like the present. There’re a couple of boats I’ve been eyeing up in Marsh Harbour. I figure we could head over there tonight to check them out properly. Besides, Jennifer and her dad are there at the moment, and Jeff’s been pestering me to go over so he can hang out with her.’ Dan laughed. ‘That crush he’s got on her is starting to get way out of hand.’