For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (20 page)

The winds in the second half of the storm were stronger, pushing and tugging at the boat, straining the anchor lines to the limit, yet they held firm. Looking out across the harbour I saw a small waterspout pass across the island to our north, but other than that it was as uneventful as the first and as darkness descended, the hurricane started to blow itself out.

***

When
I woke the next morning I could tell immediately we were riding gently at anchor once more. After a few minutes lying there on the pile of sails enjoying the stillness, I got up and went out on deck, thankful the storm had only been a small one. I gave the catamaran a quick once-over and found no major damage. I then spent a couple of hours going over every inch of it just to make sure. As I did so, the others emerged one by one, and sat around the cockpit waiting for me to finish. I could tell CJ was still mad at us but I heard Jon reassuring her we weren’t going to kill any dolphins, and that it had just been idle thoughts to pass the time in the storm. This eased her mood, but I could see she wasn’t completely convinced.

Once I was satisfied the catamaran was unharmed by the storm, we set to work emptying the cabin. Soon everything was as it had been before and Jon, Jeff and I lowered the dinghy into the water so we could retrieve the runabout. We were about half way across the harbour when we saw a drifter clinging to the anchor lines of the nearest garden boat. I put the engine into neutral and we coasted forward. The infected sensed our presence and its head snapped round to face us. Its hair was plastered against its skull and I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Its cheeks were sunken, almost skeletal, but the rage still burned within it. It gnashed its teeth and roared at us, one arm clawing at the water. It wanted us, but it wouldn’t leave the safety of the anchor line.

‘How are we going to deal with that?’ Jeff sounded worried.

‘With the rifle I guess.’ I’d have to be careful not to damage the garden boat when I took the shot, but it wouldn’t be too difficult.

‘We don’t have many bullets.’ Jon hesitated. ‘I counted then the other day. There’s only thirty left.’

‘I’ll just have to make sure that every shot counts then.’

I
considered this for a moment. I was impressed that Jon knew exactly how many rounds we had left. We didn’t use the rifle often and it hadn’t even occurred to me to keep track of how many of the bullets we’d used up. If we ran out, or rather when we ran out, it would make our lives much more difficult. We would lose one of our main weapons for dealing with the infected when we came across them clinging to floating objects in the sea, or if one got onto a boat and had to be cleared from it before it got to the people sealed in the cabin below.

I circled the dinghy back and picked up the gun. I also radioed the other boats to let them know what we’d found. There would undoubtedly be more drifters lurking in the harbour, swept into the water by the storm, and they’d be clinging to anything they could get their hands on. When we got back I dealt with the drifter, dispatching it with a single shot, and we checked the garden boat it had been clinging to. I was glad to see it had ridden out the storm well and the rapidly growing seedlings were unharmed.

We spent the next hour searching the rest of the harbour and we found five more drifters, four men and a woman. They were all bedraggled, some hanging onto anchor lines, others clinging to bits of wood that had been blown into the water from the shore. Each one snarled and snapped as we approached. Even in the water where they posed us no danger, being so close to the infected was unsettling. Their unblinking eyes burned with anger, as they bored deep into our souls. While most of the infected we came across were caked with dirt, these drifters had been scrubbed clean by their time in the water. This made them seen more human and it contrasted sharply with their infected state.

Keeping a steady aim from a small dinghy wasn’t as easy as shooting from the more stable deck of the catamaran and I used up eight bullets finishing them off. Twenty-one left. It wasn’t much and I could see no way of getting any more. Bullets weren’t something that were usually kept on docks or boats and, as far as I knew, no one had come across any during their foraging trips.

As we motored back to the catamaran, Jon was deep in thought. Eventually he spoke. ‘I think I’d rather die than end up as one of them.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Jeff looked horrified.

‘At least it would be over quickly. I can’t think of anything worse than being alive for months, maybe years, just empty inside.’ Jon paused for a moment, D’you think they remember what they were like before? D’you think they remember anything?’

Jon turned to me, seeking an answer.

I recalled the teenager I’d seen on Matt Lowe’s. He’d shown no sign he remembered Jack. There’d been no flicker of recognition or humanity. ‘No, I think the infection burns out the parts of the brain that make us who we are. Maybe there’re still memories in there, but if there are, they’re locked away beyond their reach.’

Jon shuddered at the thought.

That afternoon there was a community meeting to assess the aftermath of the storm. One runabout had been lost, swamped by waves, soaking the engine in salt water. It might be salvageable, but it would be difficult work. The engine would need to be stripped down, cleaned and rebuilt; a job that none of us had done before. Other than that, there had been little damage. As a community we were elated; we’d survived a major challenge to our long-term existence away from the land. Just as importantly, the garden boats had survived the storm without losing a single plant, something that pleased everyone … everyone except David.

Just as the meeting was ending, he got to his feet.

‘Don’t you see? We were lucky this time. We mightn’t be so lucky next time and there
will
be a next time. There will always be a next time.’ David hesitated as if trying to gather his thoughts. ‘The garden boats are too vulnerable. Our own boats are too vulnerable. What would’ve happened if one of them had broken free? There’d have been nothing the rest of us could have done. They’d have ended up on the shore just like Dan did, and look what happened to him.’

As the noise level in the room rose, it became clear no one was paying attention to what David was saying. I could see the anger rising within him, but there was nothing he could do about it. Everyone was just too happy to listen to him banging on about the need to clear somewhere on shore yet again.

While David saw the hurricane as a warning, the rest of us saw it as confirmation that we had a chance of surviving in this new world.

  Chapter Fifteen 

Over the next couple of days, life got back to normal as the hurricane was forgotten, and we got back into our usual routine of repairing boats, tending the gardens and foraging. On one fishing trip, Jon, CJ, David and I went out to try to get some tuna as we’d not had a
ny in a while. We didn’t invite David but when he heard what we were planning, he asked if he could come along. The others weren’t keen, but I figured some time spent out on the water together might help us work out our differences, so I was happy for him to join us. It wasn’t until we were returning, having had no luck, that David’s motivation became clear.

We were running along the outside of Tilloo Cay close to the rocks, trying to see if anything interesting had been cast up by the storm. CJ and Jon were sitting up front and David was standing beside me at the helm.

‘Hey, Rob. I’ve been wanting to have a word with you, away from Jack and the others.’ David was speaking quietly so he couldn’t be overheard. ‘Look, I know you’re a sensible person, and I know you’ve invested a lot of time in the garden boats, but you’ve got to see we can’t survive forever out on the water. Eventually, we’re going to have to move back to the land, and to do that, we need to have a safe area, somewhere we’ve cleared of infected.’

‘In theory, I agree with you.’ I, too, kept my voice as quiet as possible. ‘It’s just there’s no way we could ever actually do it. How do you expect to be able to take on the infected?’

‘We’ve got guns. We can use them.’

‘We’ve only got five between us, and very little ammunition.’

‘We can get more.’ David turned to look at me, ‘I’m convinced there are plenty of guns on the sport-fishing boats in Boat Harbour. There will be bullets there too.’

‘Just how would we get them off? Those boats are infested with infected
. You of all people should know that.’

‘Oh, I’m sure we can work something out.’

‘David, even if we got more guns, most of the people here have never used one before.’ I was beginning to get annoyed. ‘They’re certainly not capable of using them effectively. That takes a lot of training.’

‘We can train them, you and me.’ There was a tone in David’s voice that was starting to worry me. ‘I’ve seen you shoot. You’re pretty good.’

‘That’s from a distance and from the safety of the water. I doubt I could do it nearly as well if I was on land and the infected were coming at me.’

‘But we need to do something. We can’t
just sit and wait.’ David was getting louder all the time. ‘At the moment, the infected have pretty much won. We’re all but defeated. We need to start taking the war to them.’

I didn’t like the direction David was heading but before I could say anything, there was a shout.

‘Hey, what’s that?’ CJ was pointing to a large white bird with a long tail that had flown up from the rocks, startled by our presence.

‘It’s a tropicbird.’ I’d seen them before on my travels.

‘What’s it doing in amongst the rocks?’

‘Probably nesting.’

‘Where there’re nests, there’ll be eggs!’ Jon had a gleam in his eye. ‘God, I haven’t had eggs in ages.’

I felt my mouth
water at the thought. Until then, I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed them.

‘D’you think it would be safe to go ashore and look for some?’ CJ clearly didn’t have the same aversion to eating the young of birds as she did to eating baby dolphins.

I scanned the shore. There were no infected in sight. There were also no bushes or trees on this side of the island. It was too exposed and drenched in salt blown in from the sea for anything substantial to grow. No bushes meant nowhere for the infected to hide, and going ashore would be relatively safe. We would have plenty of time to get back to the boat, or leap for the safety of the water, if we saw any coming.

‘Okay, but we need to take care.
Jon, David, you stay with the boat. Keep the engine running and make sure you keep it away from the rocks. CJ, you and I’ll go ashore. Any sign of danger and it’s back in the boat. If you can’t make it to the boat, just jump into the sea. Jon can pick us up. Everyone clear?’ There were nods all round.

Jon pulled the runabout up to the rocks and, timing it for the top of a wave, first CJ and then I stepped onto the rocks. I glanced around nervously. Being on land just didn’t feel right any more. I thought of our last venture ashore and how it had come so close to ending badly.

‘Hey, I’ve found one!’ CJ was a few yards to my left and was pointing down into a crevice in the rocks. There, sitting on a nest that was little more than a few scraps of dried seaweed, was a large egg, its white surface speckled with brown.

I reached down and picked it up, finding it warm to the touch. ‘Right, let’s see how many more we can get.’

We walked slowly along the rough rocks, peering into every crack and hollow that might hide more nests, Jon keeping level with us in the runabout, ready to pick us up at a moment’s notice. CJ turned out to be much more adept at spotting the eggs than I was, and I spent most of my time keeping guard while she searched. She’d found eight eggs by the time the first infected appeared in the distance. I didn’t know whether it could tell we were there, but it was moving fast towards us. I looked round and saw another one coming from the opposite direction. I turned towards the sea. ‘Jon. Infected.’

Jon pulled the runabout up to the rocks and CJ stepped
on board. The waves took the boat away before I could follow her. I looked round. The infected were closing and I could see more appearing in the distance. I wondered how they’d known we were there. Was our scent carried on the wind? Was it the noise of the boat’s engine? I had no time to dwell on it. Jon manoeuvred the runabout back up to the rocks and I jumped on board.

As Jon took the boat away from the shore, CJ showed off her prize. We drooled over the thought of fresh eggs. None of us had had eggs in months and it would make a welcome change to our diet of fish and other seafood, interspersed with the occasional serving of canned vegetables.

‘How are we going to cook them?’ Jon licked his lips in anticipation. ‘I like mine fried.’

‘No, it’s got to be omelettes, a few herbs, maybe even some paprika if we’ve got any left.’ CJ’s pallet was more sophisticated than Jon’s.

‘How about poached?’ David was just as eager for the taste of something different.

‘Guys, we’ve got eight eggs, and there’re
six of us, seven if David joins us.’ I looked over at David, who nodded. ‘I think the only way we’re going to be able to split them fairly is if we go for scrambled ... And besides, I like scrambled best.’

There were howls of protest from the others, but eventually they relented.

‘Okay, we can have them scrambled, but I’m going to be the one making them, right?’ CJ glared at Jon and me, daring us to disagree with her. She was always unimpressed with our attempts at cooking, and she wasn’t going to let us ruin this unexpected treat.

Back at the catamaran, CJ cracked the eggs into a large bowl and mixed in a small amount of our remaining margarine. She added some black pepper and the last of our paprika before whisking them until they were light and fluffy. While she was doing this, Jon lit the barbeque and had a hot pan ready for her by the time the eggs were prepared.

Jon sniffed the pan as the eggs were cooking. ‘They smell a bit funny.’

‘I’m sure they’ll taste fine.’ I was pretty confident; after all eggs were eggs. ‘They can’t be that different just because they don’t come from a chicken.’

‘Right. Plates.’ CJ spooned out
seven equal portions.

Jimmy was the first to take a mouthful and he immediately spat it over the side. ‘Urgh. Tastes like rotten fish.’

The rest of us stared down at the eggs in front of us. Jon tentatively tasted some and spat it out as well. ‘Yeuch. No offence, CJ, but these are inedible.’

‘It’s not my fault.’ CJ sounded hurt.

‘I wasn’t blaming you.’ Jon rubbed her shoulder in a consolatory manner, ‘It must be the fish the birds eat. It must get into the eggs somehow.’

I was deflated. I thought we’d found a welcome new food source but we hadn’t, and none of us would be trying tropicbird eggs again.

‘Well, if we’re not going to be eating, you might as well give me a lift back to my boat.’ David gave me a meaningful look, ‘We can finish the conversation we were having earlier.’

I’d hoped David had forgotten about that, but clearly he hadn’t and I figured I might as well get it over and done with.

‘Okay, sure.’

Almost as soon as we were out of earshot of those on the catamaran, David started up again. ‘Look, Rob, you’ve got to see that it’s them or us. We need to strike back. We need to do something. We can’t just sit and wait, letting the infected pick us off one by one.’

‘Just what are you suggesting?’

‘We’ve got to treat this like a war. It’s the only way we’ll survive. In fact, when you think about it, it is a war, Rob, whether you accept it or not. It’s a war and, at the moment, they’re winning. There’re only a handful of us left, and as time goes on, there will be fewer and fewer. It’s now or never. We need to strike back now, before it’s too late. We need to fight. We need to look at the big picture, not just at us surviving here from day to day, but the long term. We can start by taking back the peninsula around the lighthouse, but once we’ve done that we need to push on and clear them off the rest of the island. We need to annihilate them, push them into the sea. We need to do it for us, for our future ...’

David was ranting and I tried to cut him off.

‘David, listen to me. There’re not enough of us. It would be suicidal to even try. The best we can do is stay on the boats and hope the infected eventually die off or something.’

‘You just can’t see it, can you?’ David was shouting now. ‘You fucking civilians, you’re all the same. You never see that sometimes war is necessary, no matter what the cost. We need to think of the big picture and do whatever it takes to win. It’s the only way we can guarantee our safety and our future. Yes, some of us will die, but in a war the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Sometimes you need to make sacrifices. Sometimes difficult decisions need to be taken. Can’t you see? It’s the only way we’ll win. It’s the only way we can win.’

The way David was speak
ing, the words he was using, were starting to worry me. ‘David, calm down!’

‘Don’t tell me to calm down!’ David yelled aggressively. ‘I thought you were smarter than this, Rob. I thought if I could just speak to you on your own, I could make you see sense, but you’re as bad as the rest of them. You just don’t get it. If we just sit here, we’ve let them win. We belong on the land, and they have taken it from us. You need to think of the big picture. You need to think about what’s best for humanity as a whole. It’s our duty to survive, to carry on the human race. We need the land. Our boats won’t last forever. Things can go wrong, things can break, and you end up on the shore like Dan did.’

‘Don’t bring Dan into this!’ I was angry at him for trying to use what had happened to the McGanns in this way.

‘But don’t you see? If we’d cleared out the infected, it wouldn’t have mattered that his boat broke free in the night. Am I the only one who sees that?’

‘Right, like we could possibly clear every infected off the main island.’

‘You’ve just got no imagination, Rob. I can see how it can be done. I can see that it
has
to be done.’ There was a note of euphoria in David’s voice. ‘The fight back has to start here, with us, or humanity is lost forever.’

‘David, you sound like you’re losing it.’

‘Are you saying I’m mad?’ David was back to being aggressive. ‘I’m not mad. I can just see everything more clearly than the rest of you. I can see we’ve got no future if we don’t try it. Humanity’s got no future.’

‘Look, David, that’s us back at your boat. I think you need to go in and get out of the sun.’

As I drove away, I could hear David shouting after me, ‘You just can’t see it, Rob. We don’t have any choice. We need to fight back now or we’ll all be lost.’

I wondered if I should tell Jack about this, but I thought better of it. Maybe David was just letting off steam and would be fine once he’d had time to calm down. After all, he couldn’t possibly be serious about trying to take on the infected. He must realise it would mean certain death.

***

While David was obsessed with taking back the land, for the rest of us food was still the big issue. The garden boats were coming along well, but it would still be several months before the first of the crops were ready to harvest. Our need for fresh fruit and vegetables drove us ever further afield, searching for anything that might tide us over until then. Before the hurricane, we’d been as far north as Green Turtle without much success, so we turned our attention to the south once more.

According to the cruisers’ guide, there had been a small community at the southern end of the Sea of Abaco called Little Harbour. According to Andrew, it had been a bit of a wild place before the outbreak; beach parties, pig roasts and all-night drinking sessions under the full moon. It was unlikely we’d find much there but it was possible, and even if it was only a new supply of easily accessible coconuts it would be worth the effort. There might even be a few boats anchored up there with cans of food or other useful things on board.