For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (10 page)

We each introduced ourselves, CJ, Jon and me stepping forward to shake his hand, the two boys just waving as they kept their distance. They had more experience of the way things were now, and they were much more wary of the unknown. Another uneasy silence followed the introductions.

‘Do you want some tea?’ Unsure of the situation, I reverted to type, doing what my mother always did when confronted with a potentially awkward situation. She thought everything could be solved with a cup of tea: a broken heart, a lost job, a death in the family. I felt the pang I always felt when I thought of her but, for once, I was glad my parents were dead, that they hadn’t lived long enough to see the world change. Unlike Jon and CJ, I didn’t have to worry about what had happened to them, whether they’d somehow survived, how they might have died, whether they’d become infected.

‘What is it with you Brits and your tea? Civilisation’s collapsed, those creatures are everywhere and you still think a cup of tea is the answer. D’you not have any coffee?’ This outburst broke the ice.

‘You Americans never did appreciate tea. I guess we could scrape a mug of coffee together.’ CJ smiled and went into the cabin. She reappeared a few minutes later with coffees for Matt and the other Americans, and teas for herself and me. She’d also dug out some cookies I didn’t even know we still had. We sat around the table in the cockpit and chatted. It was almost as if nothing had changed. I was keen to find out what Matt knew, but I didn’t want to spoil this first moment of normality we’d had in days. It was almost lunchtime before we were brought back to reality when a low moan drifted towards us from the island. We fell silent and turned towards the beach. The lone figure was still there, staring out at us.

‘Bob doesn’t usually make any noise durin
g the day. He senses something different is happening. He must think I’m going to get away, and he’s mad about it.’

‘So why do you call him Bob?’ I was still intrigued by this.

‘As I said, it’s a bad joke. There was a guy I once knew called Bob. He was the nicest guy you’d ever meet. He’d do anything to help anyone, but god did he have a big mouth. One day when he was being particularly loud, someone shouted across the bar to him, “Oy, Bob, would you please just shut the fuck up!” The name stuck and from then on everyone called him “Shut-the-fuck-up Bob”.’

Matt sipped his coffee. ‘On the second night I was here, I was lying in my bunk listening to that creature on the beach. I lost it and started screaming at it, just screaming, “Shut up, just shut the fuck up!” I don’t know how long I screamed but, by daybreak, I was hoarse and he’d acquired the name of Bob.’

After lunch, Matt rowed over to his boat with the promise he’d come back for supper. I still hadn’t got any information from him, I hadn’t asked and he hadn’t offered. I’d have to bring it up at some point but something about Matt made me reluctant to
push him. While he’d seemed a bit mad at first, he’d gradually grown more and more normal as we chatted until, by the time he’d left, he seemed almost as sane as the rest of us. And yet something wasn’t quite right. There was a slight blankness behind his eyes, and whenever there was a break in the conservation, he seemed to drift off to somewhere deep inside. They were momentary lapses, but it was as if the friendly mask he was trying so hard to present to us slipped briefly, revealing something much darker lying beneath.

I had no doubt he’d seen some awful things, possibly done some awful things, but that went with the times and it was the only way to survive. It was a mark of how much the world had changed. I thought about what I’d been through in the last few days. I’d seen two people ripped apart in front of me, one of whom was someone I’d known and liked. I’d seen a city that had been razed to the ground, its ruins haunted by the infected. I’d bludgeoned another human being to death as they tried to kill me and I’d very nearly shot Matt just a few hours before, without even
stopping to check whether he was infected or not. Maybe I had the same distant look on my face from time to time, and I’d certainly seen something similar on the faces of the others, but with Matt it wasn’t just the look, it was more. It was almost as if a part of him had become lost and he’d been unable to find it again.

I’d seen a similar expression once before, many years ago when I was just a child, on the face of a homeless man I passed every day, on the way to and from school. He was a drunk and half-blind from the alcohol. His life was over and he knew it; he’d given up. He wanted a way out, an escape that could only come with death, but he couldn’t bring himself to end it all. I hadn’t seen that expression since my childhood, but now I was pretty sure I’d glimpsed it again whenever Matt let his mask slip accidentally.

We spent the afternoon fishing and within a few hours we’d caught a fairly decent bag of yellow tails and bar jacks. Matt rowed back just as the sun was going down, bringing with him a bottle of whisky. The way he clutched it as he climbed
on board reminded me again of the old man from years before. He held it as if it was more than just a drink, like it was the only friend he had left in the world. I pushed these thoughts from my mind and watched as CJ and Jon worked in the galley, Jon cleaning and filleting the fish for CJ to fry. They also boiled up some rice to accompany it. I couldn’t help thinking that when they weren’t arguing, they worked well together.

Once the meal was prepared, I looked at it. It wasn’t much, just fish and rice, but it was all the hospitality we could offer. We ate in the cockpit and afterwards sat back in the growing darkness, listening to the wavelets slap against the side of the boat. Then we heard it, a low moan floating on the breeze from the island. It was a chilling sound. It wasn’t loud, but it penetrated deep into your soul. Bob was letting us know he was still there. I saw Matt’s eyes flit to the whisky bottle and then close. If we were to get anything useful from him it would be now or never. I knew it would be difficult to get him talking, but I also knew a drink would help things flow.

I picked up the bottle and pretended to read the label. ‘This looks pretty decent, shall we open it?’

Matt licked his lips and replied, ‘Yeah, why not. I haven’t had a good drink since it all happened.’

I was sure he was lying but I said nothing.

As we drank, I told Matt our story, and about how we didn’t know what had happened, how we were at a loss to explain how the world had gone so wrong in the few weeks we’d been out of contact. Then I asked the question I knew I’d have to ask all day, but that I’d been putting off.

‘What do you know about all this?’

Matt looked at me, and then the empty glass in front of him. I poured him another shot. He licked his lips again before he spoke.

‘I don’t really know much. There’d been rumours for a couple of weeks, odd events, stories on the news about problems in Haiti triggered by some biotech company doing something they shouldn’t have been doing. But it was nothing that seemed particularly unusual. The unrest seemed to be spreading and, supposedly, it had reached Puerto Rico and Jamaica, but people just put it down to local politics. There had been some problems on a warship sent down to help out in Haiti, but that was a long way off. We were in America; we thought we were safe. Sure, there had been a few problems in inner cities — random violence and that — but it seemed to be caused by contaminated drugs, or so the news said. What did we have to worry about? We never went to the inner cities. We thought the police would keep it all under control and the doctors would sort out the disease.

‘Then it all went wrong and it went wrong fast. I was there when it happened, I was actually there. I still can’t believe it. I was with my family and friends. We got together, all of us, once a year and went somewhere interesting. In our younger days, before any of us had children, we’d sail over to the Bahamas and spend a couple of weeks drinking cocktails and partying on a beach. Once we got a bit older, we’d drive down to the Keys rather than go across to the Bahamas. This year we thought we’d be a bit more adventurous again, now that most of the kids were a little older. The usual tensions had eased enough that a ferry route had opened up between Miami and Cuba. We decided we should grab the chance while we could, as no one thought the political situation would stay so relaxed very long.’

Matt picked up his glass and started rolling it distractedly between his palms. ‘We were in four cars and drove down to the Port of Miami early in the morning. We were one of the first ones there, so we were down near the front of the queue of cars on the dock. The ferry was due to get in around lunchtime, so we had a few hours to kill. We got out and chatted, while the kids played around between the cars. We listened to the radio, enjoying the blue skies and the early morning sun. There was some news on the radio about the troubles further south in the Caribbean. It seemed to be getting worse and becoming more widespread. It had reached the Turks and Caicos Islands and it seemed all contact with Haiti had been lost. We discussed it briefly, but thought nothing of it. That was all happening hundreds of miles away.

‘Around lunchtime, the kids started getting hot and hungry, and they started bickering. We were going to wait until we got onto the ferry before eating properly, so Mark, one of my friends, who was on his own, and I decided to go and get some ice creams for all of us. We’d seen a small ice cream stand at the entrance to the dock and we thought we’d try there. By this time the dock had filled up with cars, right the way back to the entrance. It looked like we weren’t the only people keen to check out Cuba while we could. We meandered slowly through the lines of cars, nodding to people every now and then. It all seemed so normal.’ Matt ran a finger across his cheek as if wiping away a tear.

‘At the ice cream stand we joined the queue and chatted to the others in the line. Everyone seemed to be keen to see what Cuba was really like. We always heard so much from the news, but we could never trust how much was influenced by politics. We got the ice creams just as the ferry was coming into the dock and headed back down the line of cars. Everywhere people were getting back into their cars and starting their engines, but even over all that noise we could hear this odd sound coming from the bowels of the ferry. It was like the wind blowing through the rigging of a sailboat, all moaning and clanking. It was eerie. We looked at each other and Mark said it sounded like they had truckloads of cattle on board.

‘He was right, it did sound like a large number of cows enclosed
in a tight space, all lowing and pushing against each other. I looked up at the bridge. None of the crew seemed to think there was anything strange going on and they were moving around as normal, getting the ship ready to dock. That put my mind at ease.

‘As the ferry came up to the dock, its bow raised up and the ramp started to come down. I watched as the crew threw the first of the mooring ropes to waiting dockers and they started hauling it over to one of the bollards on the quay. It all seemed so normal.’
I saw Matt eying the bottle of whisky. I poured him another glass and he drank it down in one go.

‘That’s when it happened. The ramp was barely half-way down when the first person came over the top and fell into the water. I looked up at the crew. They seemed to be oblivious
to whatever was happening. The ramp came down further and more and more people started coming up and over the edge. Some fell in the water, others fell onto the concrete of the dock. Of those who landed on the quay, some managed to stagger back to their feet. People started getting out of their cars, going forward to try to help them. As they got to the people from the ferry, they were set upon and dragged to the ground.

‘Mark and I dropped the ice creams and
ran as fast as we could through the lines of cars, back to my family and our friends. We knew something was wrong, but we still didn’t know what. We were slowed by people getting out of their cars, craning their necks as they tried to see what was going on. The ramp finally touched down, crushing some of those who had fallen off, and suddenly we could see what was on board, what we were running towards: a mass of people, all pushing and shoving to get out.

‘Except they weren’t acting like people, they were acting like animals. Some were covered in blood, others had torn clothes. Now the ramp was down they surged as one onto the dock. As they moved, they let out an immense roar that drowned out every other sound. It was only then that the crew realised something was wrong and they started to crowd the windows of the bridge, pointing down towards the dock. The people in the cars at the front of the queue panicked, not quite understanding what was going on. Some leapt from their cars and ran; others jumped in and locked the doors. Neither tactic did much good. The mass of people streaming from the ferry were soon upon them, smashing through car windows to get at the people inside, or pulling the fleeing ones to the ground as they ripped them apart.’ Matt went silent for a few seconds. I looked round the cockpit, the others were listening intently.

‘Mark was faster than me and I could see that he’d reached our cars. He was desperately trying to get everyone out. I saw him pull my six-year-old daughter from our car and fling her over his shoulder. He grabbed the hand of my ten year old, and started running. My wife was right behind him, holding onto our two year old. I stopped and watched, horror-stricken, as my wife was overtaken by the mass of people. The last I saw of her was when my baby was pulled from her arms and torn in two. As she turned to see what happened she ran into an open car door and disappeared from sight. Mark didn’t last much longer, weighed down as he was by two children. I was close enough to hear my daughters screaming as the swarm descended upon them. Mark tried to stay on his feet, holding my six year old high in the air to keep her away from the people now surrounding him.