For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (5 page)

‘Christ!’ I don’t think Jon really believed it, but it gave him pause for thought. ‘Now I wish
I
could phone home.’ For once he wasn’t being facetious.

CJ smiled at him, understanding it was his way of saying he now realised how she felt, and that he was sorry for picking on her earlier. It was the first time he’d even come close to apologising to CJ, and it made me think Jon was deeply unsettled by what Bill was suggesting.

‘Do you really think this goes beyond Miami?’ I glanced at Bill, trying to judge his mood.

‘I don’t know. It’s just strange. There should be someone around doing something. The only reason there wouldn’t be was if … Hang on, what’s that?’ Bill held up his hand for silence and we all listened. I could barely hear it but it was there.

At first, it sounded like a mosquito buzzing somewhere nearby but gradually it grew louder and louder. Someone was approaching.

‘Over there!’ Bill pointed off to our left. ‘Give me the binoculars.’

Jon passed them and we waited.

‘It’s an airboat!’ Bill was startled and I wasn’t surprised. Airboats are little more than a shallow hull with a huge fan on the back, designed to skim over sheltered lakes and marshes, not open seas. This one was heading towards us fast. There were two people
on board and I could see one of them was clutching a hunting rifle.

‘That boat shouldn’t be out here, it’s too unstable.’ Bill wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular, ‘If I were them I’d be doing my best to get a bigger boat.’

‘But where are they going to find a bigger boa … Oh.’ Even as he was saying it, the implication of Bill’s words dawned on Jon.

Bill went into
the cabin and returned a few seconds later with a flare gun. As the airboat approached, he hid it behind his back. I looked at him, wondering what he was doing. He smiled at me weakly. ‘It’s the closest thing we’ve got to a firearm.’

The airboat circled us twice before coming to a halt some twenty feet to our right. At all times the passenger kept his gun trained upon us. They seemed as wary of us as we were of them. I studied them carefully, trying to gauge what they were after. It was hard to tell from this distance, and Bill still had the binoculars, but the one with the rifle appeared to be eighteen, maybe twenty at the most, while the other looked somewhat younger. They were grubby but not dirty, and both had short, military-style haircuts.

Finally, the one with the rifle hailed us. ‘Are any of you sick?’

Given the circumstances, I couldn’t help thinking it was an odd first question.

The rest of us turned to Bill, to see what he’d do next.

‘No,’ Bill shouted back.

‘Where’ve you come from?’

‘We left South Africa six weeks ago.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘We were meant to deliver this boat to Miami.’

‘But why d’you come once you heard about everything?’

‘We haven’t heard anything. We lost all our electronics about four weeks ago. We haven’t spoken to, or heard from another human being since then.’
Bill lent on the guard rail nearest the airboat. ‘Can you tell us what happened?’

‘You mean you don’t know anything about all this?’ The passenger on the airboat sounded incredulous.

‘Nothing.’

‘And none of you are sick?’

‘No.’

‘D’you have room for two more?’

‘Hang on.’ Bill beckoned us to huddle round.

‘They look pretty harmless.’ CJ wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

‘Yeah, Cammy, so does your average psychopath. Everyone always says how quiet and normal they were
after
they’ve found half a dozen people buried in their backyard.’

I opened my mouth to say something to Jon but thought better of it. I didn’t agree with his tone but I could see what he was getting at. Instead, I turned to Bill. ‘Look, we don’t know what’s happened. They seem to be worried about some sort of disease. For all we know, they could be carrying it themselves.’

‘Yes, but we really need to know what’s been going on, and they seem to know something about it.’ Bill made a reasonable point

‘But what about the gun?’
My eyes flicked over to the airboat and I saw its occupants watching us intently. ‘They’re armed. We‘re not.’

‘There’re two of them and four of us.’ Jon was trying to sound tough, but a slight quiver in his voice gave him away. The discussion went on for a full ten minutes with Bill, Jon and me going round in circles and getting nowhere.

‘We’ve got plenty of room, and they know more about what’s happened than we do. I think we’ve got to go for it. Trade them some space for information, but only if they give up the gun.’ We all looked at CJ, it was by far the best suggestion any of us had come up with.

‘That’d work for me. What about you two?’ Bill glanced round. Both Jon and I nodded a hesitant yes.

Bill called across the airboat. ‘You can come aboard, but you’ll need to give me the gun.’

There was a hurried exchange of whispered words before they replied. ‘Okay.’

It seemed they weren’t as wary of us as I’d first thought. They pulled alongside and handed Bill the rifle before climbing aboard. They didn’t even bother to tie the airboat on and it started to float away slowly.

‘Wait!’ The taller of the two jumped onto the airboat and came back a few seconds later with a small box that he handed to Bill. ‘Bullets. There’s about sixty in there. It’s all we’ve got left.’

They stood, skinny and awkward, as we looked them over. Close up, I could see they needed us more than we needed them. They were younger than I’d originally thought, just kids really. The smaller one was only thirteen or fourteen, the older one sixteen at the most. They were scared and desperate, and looked like they hadn’t slept in days.

‘Thanks. We thought we were going to be stuck on that thing forever.’ The relief was clear in the older boy’s voice. ‘We’ve already been on it for almost two weeks, ever since they lost control of Miami. We came down the Intracoastal at first, but it started to get too dangerous. That’s when we decided to head out to sea. We’ve been running along the
coast for the last five days looking for other survivors.’ He hesitated momentarily. ‘You’re the first we’ve met.’

‘So what can you tell us about all this?’ Bill did his best to look unthreatening.

‘You really don’t know?’ The older boy looked first at Bill and then the rest of us as if he couldn’t believe it. The younger one was standing behind him as if trying to hide.

‘As I said, we’ve not heard any news in weeks.’ Bill didn’t say anything else, he just waited.

‘When things started kicking off, it just seemed like the heat was getting to everyone. It was so hot, even though it was only spring and when it gets hot, guys get wound up, anything can set them off. But it was soon clear this wasn’t just the usual jerks letting off steam. It started at nights, in the cities, but then it spread into the days too. Soon it seemed like everyone there was fighting each other, the police, anyone. Then we started hearing about the virus.’ He glanced round as if checking we were following him.

‘It started in Haiti. Then it turned up in Miami, and then in other cities. At first, the authorities could deal with it, but then it started going from person to person. Infected people were attacking others, infecting them too. It seemed a little scary, but there were only small pockets here and there, mostly in the inner cities. We thought we were fine out in the ’burbs; that we could carry on as usual. We just need to keep away from certain areas. Then, out of nowhere, something happened in Miami and the next thing we knew, people were getting infected all over the place. We were on a camping trip in the Everglades, out on our own, away from everyone else when Miami was overrun. When we heard on the radio how bad things were getting, we tried to get back to Fort Lauderdale, to get back home. But we started running into mobs of people attacking each other, trying to attack us. We managed to launch the airboat into the Intracoastal and tried to get home that way, because our house backs onto a canal.’
Mike’s eyes flicked from face to face to see if we believed him.

When he spoke next his voice was quieter, more withdrawn. ‘We got home eventually, but I think Mom and Dad must’ve got the virus from somewhere. We’d just got off the boat and were about half-way across the backyard when they came running out of the house. We thought they were just pleased to see us, that we were safe. Billy ran forward, to hug them. He was so happy to see them, he’s only eleven ... he
was
only eleven.’ The kid wiped a tear away from his eye.

‘Mom and Dad attacked him. They just tore right into him, ripping him apart right there in front of us. I don’t think they even recognised him. He was their own son and they killed him without even thinking about it. There was blood everywhere. Me, Jimmy and Sam managed to get back to the airboat, and we just got the hell out of there.’

We all looked at each other. There’d been three of them and now there were only two. Where had the other one gone? Jon looked like he was about to say something, but Bill stopped him, letting the kid carry on.

‘We’ve
been raiding boats and houses for food, but it’s very risky. We got attacked and Sam got bit. He got away though. But once we were back on the airboat, he got sick; he got very hot and went kinda funny.’ The kid paused, lost briefly in his memories, ‘And then he went very quiet. He was breathing quickly but barely taking in any air, and we thought he was going to die. But he didn’t. He ...’

The kid dropped his eyes to the floor for a second and then looked straight at Bill.

‘He suddenly woke up. We could see from his eyes he was different, that he’d changed. He went for Jimmy, but I managed to push him over the side and we left him there. I killed my own brother.’ His face went blank. When he started speaking again it was with an air of defiance. ’I had no choice. If I hadn’t he’d have killed Jimmy and me.’

As he said this, I wondered what else these kids had been through, what else they had seen, what else they’d done to survive.

‘That was a week ago. You’re the first people we’ve seen since then who haven’t been infected.’

Bill was the first to speak, ‘Do you know what sort of virus it is?’

‘It’s meant to be some sort of rabies virus. Some big company’s been messing around with it, made it much more nasty. It doesn’t kill you any more, it just makes you mad. All you care about is killing: you just want to attack anyone who doesn’t have the virus. There’s something about uninfected people that the infected can’t stand.’

I thought about the people we’d seen in Miami the day before and I wondered if they’d been infected. The ones we’d seen tearing the woman’s body apart must have been, but what about the others; the ones shambling around in the ruins or just standing staring? They weren’t attacking each other, so did that mean they all had the disease? If we’d gone ashore to help them, would they have attacked us?

‘So how far’s it spread?’ Bill looked concerned.

‘It’s all over the US, in every city, every town. It’s in Canada and Mexico, and even in Europe, I think.’

‘What about England? Is it in England?’ CJ was thinking about her family and friends back home.

‘Yeah, England too.’

A panicked look spread across CJ’s face. She picked up her phone and fiddled with it, trying yet again to get a signal.

The older boy saw what she was doing. ‘No point. We’ve been trying, but there hasn’t been a cell phone signal in days. Even if you could get one, all you’d get is dead air. It’s been that way since it happened.’

CJ ignored him and stood up to see if it would help her get a signal.

‘Shit!’ Jon sounded deeply shocked. ‘All this in a few weeks?’
A crestfallen look spread across his face. ‘I guess there’s no point in going up the coast, is there? People will be the same there, like the ones we saw in Miami, and at the lighthouse.’

‘He’s right, Bill.’ I felt a sense of dread start to rise inside me. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘What about in the islands?’ Bill ignored me. He was clearly running through possible plans of action in his head. Again I admired his ability to think logically in the face of all that had happened.

‘I heard it was in Nassau and Freeport, and in Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti.’

‘Sounds like it’s widespread; possibly even global.’ Bill seemed deflated. It sounded like there was nowhere we could go that had been unaffected.

‘Yeah, it’s pretty much everywhere. But there will be other people on boats like you, won’t there? I mean that’s why you guys survived, isn’t it?’

‘That’s a very good point.’ The boy smiled at Bill’s response. We waited for Bill to carry on, but instead he disappeared into the cabin, leaving us standing in the cockpit staring after him.

As I wondered what Bill was up to, CJ stepped towards the two boys and held out her hand. ‘I’m CJ. This is Jon and Rob.’

As we shook hands, the older boy told us his name was Mike and his younger brother was called Jimmy. There was then an awkward silence as we stood around, none of us too sure of what to do next. The silence was only broken when Bill returned with a large chart that he spread out on the table. The chart covered an area from Florida in the north to Haiti in the south.