For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (30 page)

‘That’s somewhere off Miami, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, about 200 miles east.’

‘You’re the first we’ve heard from in the Americas.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Thirty-seven south, twelve west.’

I thought about this position. It would be s
omewhere west of the southern tip of Africa. ‘Wait, Tristan. You’re on Tristan da Cunha?’

‘Close enough. We’re on Gough Island.’

I’d heard of it. It was a desolate hunk of rock sticking up into the South Atlantic that should have been uninhabited.

‘How’d you end up there?’

‘We were part of a research team. We’d just been landed when the infection broke out, and no one ever came back to take us off.’

With no one coming to the island, there’d have been no one to bring the infection to them, but it also meant they’d have no way of getting off. I didn’t envy the position they’d found themselves in.

‘How many of you are there?’

‘There’re nine. What about you, how many people at your end?’

I thought about how different the answer would have been if we’d be asked this just a few days before.

‘There’s twenty-seven of us.’

‘Wow! I think that makes you the largest group we’ve heard of.’

This news caught me by surprise. ‘There are other groups? How many? Where?’

‘There’re twelve that we know of.’ There was a pause. ‘I think we’ve lost Port Stanley though. That’s the third week in a row they’ve missed their check-in with us.’ There was a hint of sadness in his voice.

I’d heard the name before but it took me a few seconds to place it. Port Stanley was the capital of the Falkland Islands, another outpost in the South Atlantic. It seemed that islands were the key to survival.

‘How many people were there?’ I tried to hide the elation I was feeling about finding out there were other survivors out there.

‘Five.
It’s always the small groups we lose.’

By the end of the day, we’d heard from six different groups and we’d spoken to four of them. They were all in similar situations to us, surviving, more or less, clinging on in a world changed forever. Hearing that there were others out there was uplifting, and it boosted the community’s spirits just when we needed it most. We weren’t as alone as I had thought. We weren’t the only ones left.

With renewed vigour, we turned to the task of finding another short-wave radio. Jack knew there was one on Matt Lowe’s Cay, but since we’d only just got away with our lives the last time we been there, none of us wanted to go back. I thought of all the locations we had visited and remembered something. On Tilloo Cay, to the south of Elbow Cay, there was a tall tower with a radio antenna on top. It didn’t look like your typical VHF antenna and I’d wondered before what it might be attached to. Maybe it was attached to a short-wave radio. It would certainly be worth checking out.

***

The next morning we sat off Tilloo Cay. Staring towards the island through the binoculars, I could see the tower and the antenna, and it certainly looked like the type that would be hooked up to a short-wave radio. The nearby house looked relatively unharmed by the hurricane so if there was a radio in there, it might still be in good condition. I saw no sign of infected, but I knew they were on the island. We’d seen them when we’d collected the tropicbird eggs. The house was only fifty feet from the shore and it looked tantalisingly close.

‘What d’you think?’ I turned to Jack. He had his own binoculars and was inspecting the house too.

‘I think it definitely looks promising. What’s the plan?’

‘You’d drop me off in the runabout and I’ll try to get up to the house as quickly as possible. The others can keep watch from the catamaran, warn me if they see anything coming, and use the rifle if they need to.’

‘No, Rob. You can’t go. It’s too much of a
risk. I’ll go, I’m faster than you.’ Andrew pointed to where the gun lay ready on the table. ‘And anyway, you’re a better shot than any of us. You should be the one with the rifle.’

I looked at him. ‘Are you sure?’

He nodded.

‘Jack, what d’you think?’

Jack nodded too.

‘What about the rest of you?’ I turned to CJ and the boys, ‘Are you okay with this?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ CJ glanced at Andrew, ‘Just be careful, Andrew, really careful.’

He smiled at
her. ‘Don’t worry, I will. Remember I’ve got away from them twice already, I’m not about to let them catch me now.’ He took a deep breath, ‘Right, let’s get this over with.’

As Jack and Andrew got into the one runabout that had survived the hurricane, I climbed onto the roof of the catamaran and loaded the last few bullets into the rifle. I set a hand-held radio I’d borrowed from Jack down beside me and scanned the island carefully with the binoculars. I could see no infected

I picked up the radio. ‘Okay, the coast looks clear.’

I watched as Jack nosed the runabout up to the dock and Andrew climbed out. As he made his way up to the house, I looked around, but nothing else moved. I watched as he reached the house and crept slowly round it, checking it for any signs of infected.

I saw him speak into his hand-held radio, ‘Looks clear from down here, how’s it looking from your end?’

I scanned the island again. There were still no signs of any infected. I pr
essed the transmit button. ‘Looks good so far.’

‘Okay. I’m going in.’

With that Andrew disappeared into the shadows. One minute passed. Three minutes. Five minutes. At eight minutes I started to worry. I wiped the sweat from my brow and shifted the rifle slightly. Suddenly, off in the distance, a flock of birds shot out of a tree. I picked up the binoculars and could see something moving fast through the bushes below them.

‘Andrew, we’ve got visitors. Get out of there. Now.’

There was no reply.

‘Andrew, d’you hear me? Get out now!’

I searched around. The movement in the bushes was much closer. To the north, more birds started into the air. This time I could see the infected. There were four or five of them sprinting towards the dock. To the south I could see another group heading for the same point. I guessed they were being drawn to the sounds of the boat’s engine.

‘Andrew, get the hell out of there. Andrew, there’s a lot of them, more than I can handle. They’re coming this way. You need to get out of there now.’

There was still no sign of him, no reply on the radio. Maybe there had been infected in the house after all, maybe they’d got him.

‘Andrew, can you hear me? Andrew?’ 

Finally, he shot from the building, something tucked under his arm. He was running as fast as he could, but I wasn’t sure he’d make it to the boat before the infected that were heading for the dock. I raised the rifle, taking aim, but not wanting to fire until they were closer. We had so few bullets left I couldn’t afford to miss.

The first one was twenty feet from the dock when I shot it. Andrew was still thirty feet inland. The infected crumpled. I waited for the next one to get close enough. This time I only winged it, but it was enough to send it spinning into the water where it thrashed around as it struggled to get out. By this time Andrew was only ten feet from the dock. Suddenly, an infected burst onto the path ahead of him. Since it was moving towards the boat, it didn’t sense Andrew was there right away, but it would only be a matter of time. I levelled the rifle and shot. It stumbled, but didn’t go down. I fired again, this time its head exploded and it fell to the ground. As Andrew hurdled the corpse, another one appeared on the path further up the hill. This one could see Andrew and made straight for him. I took aim and missed. I pulled the trigger again, but the rifle just clicked. We were finally out of bullets.

Andrew was on his own.

I looked at the island and could see infected streaming towards the dock from every direction. Andrew had only seconds before they reached it. I could feel the sweat running down my face and into my eyes. I wiped it away with my hand, a sense of helplessness coursing through my body. There was nothing I could do. I watched as Andrew reached the dock, the nearest infected
just behind him. When he got to the end, Andrew didn’t slow. He just leapt, aiming for the waiting runabout. He landed heavily just as the infected reached the point where he’d been moments before. Jack gunned the engine and shot away, leaving the infected hungry and seething with rage.

Back on the catamaran, we inspected Andrew’s prize. It was, indeed, a short-wave radio and it looked in pretty good condition. Andrew had found it almost immediately, but i
t had taken time to rip it from its housing without damaging it too much. It took us a few hours to get it working, but soon we had a way of communicating with each other over long distances, and for communicating with the other communities we now knew existed around the world.

***

Over the next week we prepared. We checked the boat inside and out. We repaired, replaced, oiled, greased, stowed and packed. We dried fish and built up supplies. Finally, we were ready. We sat in the cockpit of the catamaran with Jack and Andrew for the last time.

Andrew shook my hand. ‘It won’t be the same without you guys around.’

‘Yeah, I’m going to miss you too, but hopefully it won’t be for too long.’

‘Yeah, I hope not.’ Andrew moved onto CJ, who hugged him, and then the boys. Jack had already said his goodbyes to the others and now it was my turn.

‘I feel like I’ve known you all my life.’ I shook his hand.

‘At least we’ll be able to keep in touch on the short-wave.’

I looked Jack in the eye. ‘I am doing the right thing, amn’t I?’

‘Yes, I think you are. We can’t survive here forever. We need to find somewhere else, somewhere better.’

‘Good luck, Jack.’

‘Good luck to you, too.’

Late in the evening as the sun was just starting to dip below the horizon, we passed through the
Man-O-War channel and out into the open ocean. Once we were a few miles off, the others joined me in the cockpit as I looked back towards the shore. The sun was almost below the horizon and the western sky was ablaze with colour. CJ stood behind Jeff, her arms wrapped round him in a sisterly embrace. Mike and Jimmy stood side by side. From this distance, Hope Town looked peaceful. It looked like it must have always looked from this distance; it looked like nothing had changed.

The only sign that anything was wrong was the lighthouse: the tower was silhouetted against the sky, its lantern dark. There was no one left to light it. It would never again act as a beacon in the night for those far out at sea. A lighthouse with light streaming from its lantern was welcoming and reassuring. A lighthouse that was dark was sinister; a sign that something was wrong.

I knew what was wrong and I thought about all those we had lost. I thought of Bill, who had died to save us, of Jon, and Dan and his family, who had died because of David’s obsession. I thought of those who died in the storm, and of the little girl I’d helped to bury where she’d been killed on the beach at Little Harbour.

I didn’t know what we’d find on Mingulay, or whether we would even get there, but whatever lay ahead of us,
I hoped we would lose no more.

About the Author
:

Colin M. Drysdale has worked as a marine biologist for almost twenty years. During this time, he has travelled extensively and spent much of his professional career on or near the sea.

He spent six years working in and around the
islands of the Abacos in the 1990s, and much of the geography of this book is based on places he got to know during this time. He is also a keen sailor and has sailed in Scotland, the Bahamas, Florida, Newfoundland and Labrador.

He now lives in Glasgow, where he runs a small business providing mapping advice to ecologists and marine biologists. He is the author of countless academic papers and a number of technical books, but this is his first published work of fiction.

A dedicated fan of post-apocalyptic literature, he has often argued that the best place to survive a zombie apocalypse would be on a sail boat. After writing this book, he’s not so sure.

If you would like find out more about the world of
For those in Peril on the Sea
visit:

www.ForThoseInPeril.net