For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (19 page)

I
stopped to marshal my thoughts before carrying on. ‘Even if we just tried to grow things here, I don’t think it would work. You need to tend crops every day and there’d be nothing worse than putting in all the time and effort only for a bunch of infected to turn up when it came to harvest time. Growing food on shore just wouldn’t be secure.’

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’ Andrew sounded dejected.

‘Shall we get out of here then?’ Jon was just about to start the engine when something occurred to me.

‘Where the hell’s Jack?’ I looked round but he was nowhere in sight. ‘Jon, did you see where he went?’

‘No, I didn’t even notice he was gone. I was too busy watching you two filling the sacks.’

Suddenly I saw a movement in the trees, up along the path. ‘I think we’ve got company.’

‘I can’t get a clear shot.’ Jon had the rifle up and was trying to sight whatever was coming towards us. ‘What the hell? It’s Jack.’

Jack was running as fast as he could and I was pretty certain I knew what he was running from. I turned on the engine and had my hand on the throttle ready to go the moment Jack made it to the runabout. ‘Jon, can you see any infected?’

Jon scanned the path behind Jack with the rifle sight. ‘I can see one behind him. No, there’s two ... wait, there’s more ...’

Jack had made it to the hurricane hole and leapt into the boat, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ He was breathing heavily and slumped onto the seat at the bow of the runabout.

Filled with large bags of soil, the boat moved sluggishly and I found it difficult to manoeuvre in the confines of the hurricane hole. First one infected and then two more burst from the bushes. They saw us immediately and snarled. We were far enough from the walls that they couldn’t reach us. Instead, they prowled the water’s edge.

I could see them clearly, two skinny men, one taller than the other, and a short, stocky woman. The remains of tattered clothing clung to bodies caked in dirt. The faces of the two men were gaunt and contorted with rage. The woman, while still bulky, had lost enough weight that her skin hung from her once ample body.

After one of the longest minutes of my life, the boat was finally pointing directly at the entrance to the narrow channel. I eyed it up. It was one thing to be able to navigate it slowly when under no pressure, but it was quite another to try to get through it when there were infected around. If they got alongside while we were in the channel, we’d be in big trouble. I voiced my concerns. ‘This is going to be bloody tight.’

Before the others could respond, another infected emerged, drawn by the noise made by the ones that were already there. This one was no more than a teenager. His once blonde hair was matted and grubby, and his wasted body was so thin I could see his ribs poking through his pale skin.

Jack stared at the boy for a moment, a look passing across his face too fast for me to read, before he turned to me. ‘Want me to do it?’

Jack knew the channel well and it made sense that he was the one at the wheel as we tried to get out, but I respected the fact he’d asked rather than just taking over. I nodded and stood aside. Jack took the wheel and gunned the engine. Before the infected had time to react, the boat leapt into the narrow channel. It took them a split second to sense their prey was escaping. Then the
y reacted, sprinting after us. With the soil, we were riding deep in the water and it took all the power in the engine to get us up to speed. Even then we were only managing to do about fifteen knots. I looked round. The infected were now running along the sides of the channel and were gaining on us.

‘Shit. Jon can you get them?’

Jon raised the rifle and tried to aim it at the teenager.

‘I can’t get a clear shot. The boat’s moving around too much.’ Jon was starting to panic.

The teenager was now only a yard behind the runabout and he would be alongside us in seconds. He was so close I could see his eyes were pale blue and, while they burnt with rage, there was something eerily familiar about them. I looked ahead. We were still some fifty feet from open water.

I urged Jon on. ‘Try it anyway.’

Jon fired, hitting the teenager in the arm but he barely slowed. Jon shot again, this time bringing him down. Jon turned his attention to the other side where the stocky woman was almost as close. He missed completely with the first shot, and only winged her with the second, but it was enough to buy us the time we needed to finally burst free from the channel.

Once we were a safe distance from the shore, Jack eased back on the throttle so we could chug the short distance to Hope Town without using too much fuel. I looked back and saw there were now five infected milling around the entrance to the channel. We wouldn’t be going back there any time soon. I turned to Jack, angry and surprised he’d taken such a risk.

‘What the hell were you doing back there?’

‘Getting these ...’ Jack opened a small bag I was sure he hadn’t been carrying before he’d gone ashore. I peered inside and saw it was filled with packets of seeds: carrots, peas, lettuces, tomatoes, beans, corn, all kinds. Jack took one look at my face and smiled. ‘I’d always meant to get round to starting a vegetable garden. I even got as far as buying the seeds, I just never got round to planting them. I knew I still had them up at the house. I knew exactly where they were and I figured I could nip up, grab them and get back without too much risk. After all, we can’t have gardens and nothing to grow in them.’

My anger at Jack evaporated. He’d risked his life to get the seeds we’d need to make the garden boats a success.

That evening Jack and I sat on the bridge of his boat as we underwent the mandatory quarantine after a run-in with the infected. Andrew and Jon were in the galley cooking supper. I stared at Jack. Something was niggling me, but I wasn’t quite sure how to steer the conversation in that direction. I decided I should just go for it.

‘Jack, can I ask you something?’

He seemed to know what I was going to say. ‘Yes, I knew them before they were infected. The woman was the housekeeper and the two men worked as gardeners on the island.’

‘And the boy?’

Jack had a faraway look in his eyes and, as I watched him, I realised why the eyes of the teenager looked so familiar. Jack said nothing, but he didn’t need to. I’d wondered before whether Jack had lost anyone close to him in the early days
of the outbreak and now I knew.

  Chapter Fourteen 

In the past, hurricanes would sweep out of nowhere, over unsuspecting settlements, destroying them as completely as any war. With technology came advance warnings of when they were coming. While these did nothing to reduce the destruction, it gave people time to prepare, to board up their houses, to run if they had somewhere to run to, and to brace themselves for the storm if they didn’t.

Before the infected came, the weather channel was compulsive viewing during the hurricane season for everyone who called the Bahamas home. The storms were tracked and named, and people learned to talk about them as if they were old friends. It wasn’t unusual to hear someone say, ‘Well, it was worse with Andrew’, or ‘You should have been here for Floyd. That was a big one’.

With the fall of civilisation, there was no one left to watch the satellites that undoubtedly still looked down as storms were born, grew and died. There was no one to name them, no one to tell us they were coming, no warnings issued, and no updates provided on the hour, every hour. Once again, hurricanes became fearsome beasts and attacked with little warning. If you knew the signs and could read the clouds, if you watched your barometer and saw it falling as the heart of the storm approached, you’d get a hint something was coming, but you’d never know how big it was until it was on top of you.

People had become so used to getting all their information from the weather channel that most had lost the ability to read the signs, so when the first one hit, we had little time to prepare.

A couple of weeks after we’d established the garden boats we noticed a change in the air. The infected were unusually restless and the clouds that streaked the sky were strange and unfamiliar. Jack, Andrew and I huddled in the cockpit of the catamaran discussing what might be going on.

‘This is weird. There’s definitely something happening, but what?’ I looked at the others to see if they had any answers.

‘You know,’ Andrew said thoughtfully, ‘I remember my granma telling me how, when she was growing up, if a hurricane was coming, the dogs would start acting weird, and there’d be odd clouds in the sky.’

Jack stared at the infected in the shore. ‘You think they can sense something coming?’

Andrew just shrugged.

Jack tried again. ‘D’you think there’s a storm on the way?’

‘Yeah, it feels like it.’

I stared up at the clouds. ‘What’re we going to do?’

‘There’s nothing much we can do other than batten down the hatches and hope it’s not too bad.’ Jack was rattled. ‘We need to get everyone back here. This is probably the most sheltered place in the Abacos. We’ll have a better chance here than anywhere else.’

‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’ I wondered how long it would take, and whether everyone would get back before the storm hit.

Jack got up and went over to the VHF radio.

‘Hey, this is Jack. We think there’s a hurricane coming in. If you’re not already in Hope Town, you need to come back now. If you’re here, we’re going to have an emergency meeting on my boat in about ten minutes.’

After the meeting, we set to work, laying out extra anchors and a web of lines to keep us from dragging, no matter which direction the winds came from. All the clutter, all the little things that gather on the deck of a boat when it has sat too long in one place, had to be stowed away in any available space. Jon and Mike dealt with the dinghy, removing the engine before deflating it and carrying it into the cabin. I took the runabout and tied it up with the others in the most sheltered corner of the harbour so it wouldn’t smash against the catamaran in the storm.

The garden boats posed a bit of a problem. They were large and heavy, and if they got loose, they could wreak havoc. They’d be more than capable of damaging or destroying any of the live-aboard boats they hit, and in the high winds there would be nothing we could do to rescue anyone if that happened. We also needed to ensure that the salt spray, which would be whipped up by the wind, didn’t coat them, contaminating the soil we’d work so hard to collect. Jon, Andrew and Jeff spent a frantic hour pulling the canvas covers across the top, bringing down the rain-catchers and stowing them away, checking the lines and doubling them up where needed.

By the time the outer rain bands started to pass overhead, we were as ready as we’d ever be. We crammed ourselves into the cabin of the catamaran along with the dinghy, its engine and the sails which we’d taken down so they wouldn’t be ripped to shreds, as the wind built outside. Andrew was with us, worried that his own boat was too small and too old to survive the storm. As we waited, unsure of what to expect, we kept in touch with the others using the VHF radio, making sure they were okay and reassuring them the same was true for us.

As the day drew on, the skies darkened and the winds picked up, the rain drummed on the deck and the waves tossed the boat back and forth. As it pitched and rolled, we held on to avoid being thrown about. Mike, Jimmy and Jeff had jammed themselves onto one of the seats surrounding the table, while Jon and CJ were nestled on the dinghy where it lay on the floor, wedged between the chart table and the galley. It was still partly inflated, cushioning them from the worst of the storm. Whenever a particularly strong gu
st of wind made the boat lurch violently, I saw CJ cling onto Jon as she reached for anything that would give her comfort. Whenever she realised what she was doing, she’d let go instantly, glancing around furtively, hoping no one had noticed. I was perched on the pile of sails, high enough to see through the cabin windows so I could see what might be coming, ready to react in an instant. Of all of us, Andrew was the one taking it worst. Unable to swim, he dreaded the possibility that he might end up in the water. He sat, terrified, with a life jacket on in readiness, his hands braced against the sides of the boat, flinching every time a large wave crashed against one of the hulls.

Then, without warning, the winds dropped. I peered through the windows, wondering what was going on.

‘Is that it?’ Jon seemed disappointed that the hurricane hadn’t been as fierce as he’d expected. CJ thumped him on the shoulder to let him know he shouldn’t be so flippant.

‘No, it’s just the eye of the storm.’ Andrew had seen this sort of thing before. ‘It’ll pick up again soon.’

‘The eye of the storm? Cool. Can we go out and take a look?’ Mike was curious and I couldn’t blame him. You always hear that the eye of a hurricane is an oasis of calm within the maelstrom and he wanted to check it out. I had to admit I was curious too and, looking at the others, I could see they were the same. The only exception was Andrew, who remained apprehensive.

I glanced over at him, ‘How long will it last?’

‘Don’t know. Five minutes, maybe ten. You can tell when it’s going pick up again. The wind will suddenly switch direction.’

I considered this information. ‘Okay, we can go out and take a look, but we come back in the
minute I say so.’

The boys leapt up, CJ and Jon not far behind them. I pulled open the cabin door and stepped out into the cockpit. The harbour was unbelievably calm, only a slight ripple disturbing its surface. Above us, I could see patches of blue sky amongst the wispy clouds. A couple of frigate birds circled overhead, looking for scraps of food cast up by the storm. Palm fronds were strewn across the bay and, here and there, coconuts floated amongst the debris.

Suddenly, my eyes were drawn to a movement. At first I thought it was a drifter, but then it slipped below the surface in a decidedly undrifter-like manner. It appeared again a few feet further on and I saw it was the sleek back of a dolphin that had come into the harbour, seeking shelter from the storm. A few minutes later, it was circling the boat, playing with all the new toys it found floating in the water. I stood there with the others, watching the dolphin, enjoying the spectacle. It was an odd moment of normality despite the infected on the land and the storm that surrounded us.

As it swam between the hulls of the catamaran, I thought about how well adapted dolphins were to a life at sea. Over millions of years, evolution had honed them until they could survive almost anything the ocean had to offer. In contrast, we were creatures of the land; that’s where we evolved and that’s what our bodies were built to deal with. We were nothing but trespassers in the realm of the dolphin, but now we had nowhere else to go. We had none of their adaptations and none of their natural advantages. Without our technology, our aluminium masts, our fibre-glass hulls, we’d be nothing out here. Before the infected, it didn’t matter because we’d always had the land to run to if our technology failed. Now, because of them, we were marooned on one of the few places on Earth where we had no right to be.

If, for whatever reason, we lost our boats, we no longer had the land to fall back on and we’d be finished. The thought made me shudder and I got an inkling of why David was so keen on trying to clear somewhere of the infected. He saw it as a safety net; one that would be there just in case we needed it.

I took the binoculars, and one by one, I inspected the boats that surrounded us. A runabout had been swamped, but all the live-aboard boats had weathered the storm so far. Yes, our technology would give out eventually, but for now, it seemed to be holding firm and it was keeping us safe, just as it had been designed to do. I thought about this. As long as we looked after them properly, there was no reason our boats wouldn’t last for as long as we needed them. Maybe that was David’s problem. His army background meant he saw the land as the only safe option. Those of us who’d lived on the sea knew it could be different.

I found this reassuring and I put the thoughts of how poorly we were adapted to a life at sea out of my mind. Instead, I cast my eyes around once more, this time not looking at the boats themselves but at the people who were on them. Many others in the community were also out on their decks, as curious as we were to see the eye of the storm. I waved to a few of them and saw them wave back. Next, I turned my attention to the shore to see how much damage had been done there. Many of the bushes had been stripped of their leaves and the breadfruit tree that had previously hung heavy with fruit was now bare. Some of the buildings had lost their roofs, but other than that there seemed little damage. Yet, something seemed different. It took me a few seconds to realise what it was. For the first time since we’d arrived, I could see no infected in Hope Town. At first, I found this unsettling and I realised I’d become used to seeing them there, lurking in the distance. Somehow the town around us looked even more deserted now they were gone. I wondered if we were finally free of them and, for a moment, my heart leapt. Then I spotted one, hovering in the entrance of an abandoned building. They weren’t gone, they were just hiding from the storm and I realised that just because we couldn’t see them, it didn’t mean they weren’t there, lurking somewhere. While I’d missed the infected when I thought they were gone, I found the realisation that they’d be back as soon as the storm had passed deeply depressing.

I turned my attention back to the others. They were still entranced by the dolphin and were following its every move as it swam from one bow to the other and back again. Jon was the first to break the magic. ‘I wonder what they taste like.’

CJ scowled at him.

‘No, really, I mean it.’ Jon glanced at the rest of us. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to get some red meat for a change? They’re mammals, aren’t they? Tuna’s okay, but wouldn’t you like a nice juicy steak?’

Mike and Jimmy’s eyes lit up at the possibility, but Jeff seemed less certain. It was a thought, and I had to admit one I’d had before.

CJ was disgusted. ‘You can’t eat a dolphin! What’s a dolphin ever done to you?’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’d never be able to catch one.’ I was trying to be pragmatic and to put an end to this without seeming to take anyone’s side.

‘Rob, that’s not the point. No one’s killing a dolphin.’ CJ’s face looked like thunder.

Jon was about to say something when we felt the boat shift beneath us. The wind direction was switching and it was time for us to go inside once more.

Back in the cabin, the boys returned to their seat alongside the table, and CJ and Jon to the dinghy.

‘I guess you could shoot one,’ Mike mused.

I looked at him, ‘Shoot one what?’

‘A dolphin, of course!’ Mike seemed tantalised by the possibility of red meat.

‘No, a harpoon would be the way to go. That’s how they used to do it.’ Jon too seemed to be taking the idea seriously. ‘If it wasn’t for the infected, we could drive them ashore, like they do — like they
did
— in the Faeroe Islands with pilot whales. Or we could use a net. I don’t think we could handle an adult, but we could definitely handle a baby. There would be enough meat on a calf for all of us.’

CJ punched him hard in the arm. ‘You can’t eat a baby dolphin. That’s just wrong. Rob, tell them they can’t eat baby dolphins.’ She was now standing in the middle of the cabin, glowering at each of us in turn, hands placed defiantly on hips. I was captivated by the thought of red meat and took too long to respond.

‘You’re all sick.’

With that CJ stormed from the cabin and descended to her bunk in the right-hand hull. It was cluttered with junk we had stowed there for the storm and she couldn’t have had much space, but then again she was doing it to make a point not to be comfortable.