For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea (9 page)

‘Even if I hadn’t run out of bullets, there were too many of them. The problem was the boat getting away from him.’

‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’ Jon was shaking with anger. ‘It wasn’t. If anything it was Mike’s. He was the one who didn’t get the anchor line in fast enough. That’s why it wrapped around the propeller. That’s what stopped us picking Bill up in time.’

‘I’m not the one who ran the boat into the sandbar in the first place,’ Mike shot back.

‘Stop it, stop it all of you!’ CJ yelled at the top of her voice. ‘It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. What matters is that Bill’s dead. He’s dead!’ She was teetering on the brink but she was just managing to hold herself together. ’Don’t any of you care?’

There was a moment of silence as her words hit home. I sank down onto one of the seats in the cockpit. We’d lost Bill and I wasn’t sure how long we could survive without him. As I sat there, physically and emotionally numb
from what had just happened, I watched the others as if from a distance.

‘Of course we care.’ Jon glanced round at the rest of us. His eyes lingered on me. ‘CJ’s right. It doesn’t matter why Bill’s dead. We need to decide what we’re going to do next.’ Sensing my fragile state, Jon was taking charge.

‘What d’you mean?’ CJ was no longer close to the edge. Instead, there was a hit of anger in her voice.

‘We can’t just float around out here. We need to do so
mething.’ Jon looked down to avoid making eye contact with CJ. ‘I think we need to keep going.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ Mike’s voice wavered as he spoke. ‘We need to keep going,’

‘We can’t just leave Bill there,’ CJ glared at Jon and Mike almost daring them to disagree with her.

‘We don’t have a choice.’ Jon wiped his eyes before carrying on. ‘Besides, it’s what Bill would have wanted us to do.’

As we set off once more, Jon got the others busy with different tasks, not ones that really needed done but ones that would keep them occupied, making sure they had no time to dwell
on Bill’s death. This was a smart move. With Bill gone and while I was in no state to help, he couldn’t afford to lose anyone else, even temporarily.

As I watched, I was struck by how CJ was reacting to Bill’s death. While she was upset, she seemed to be dealing with it better than I was. It was as if losing him to the infected was the trigger she needed to finally accept that the world had changed, and that she had to change with it or become lost within it. I watched as she moved around the deck. There was no hint of the fragility that had haunted her since she’d gone to pieces in the cockpit just a few days before. Instead, she had a look of grim determination on her face, as if she’d resolved to never let this new world beat her, no matter what obstacles it threw in her path.

The others worked well together, with CJ acting as the second in command, marshalling Mike and Jimmy to the tasks Jon assigned them. Soon the spotlight was removed from where I’d left it wedged on the bow, the anchor was retrieved and the dinghy was raised back on board. While the others were doing this, Jon worked out how to get us back on course and rearranged the watches, not that anyone was going to be able to sleep. Soon we were underway once more.

As we left Great Sale Cay, I couldn’t help but stare into the darkness off our stern. Somewhere out there, the infected were feasting on Bill’s lifeless body and there was nothing I could do about it.

I felt so helpless, so empty, so lost. I knew I needed to bring myself back to reality, but I was unable to do it. I remained detached somewhere deep within my soul, trapped by my inability to do anything for Bill even after he was dead. He deserved better than to be left alone on that beach, being picked over by the horde of infected that had killed him. Yet what else could I do?

  Chapter Six 

I don’t think of any us left the cockpit until the morning. We sat silently in the darkness, Bill’s absence unmentioned but ever-present. As the sun rose, I finally managed
to pull myself together and moved for the first time in hours. This startled CJ who had put a comforting arm around me sometime in the night.

‘Hey, how are you doing?’ CJ looked up at me, ‘You want some tea?’

I nodded. CJ disappeared into the cabin, emerging a few minutes later with a tray of mugs and a box of crackers. She handed a coffee to Jon, who was at the wheel, and woke Mike and Jimmy to give them theirs. She handed a tea to me and sat back down with her own. She put the crackers on the table, ‘Sorry, it was the first thing I found.’

‘Where are we?’ My voice cracked as I spoke.

‘We’re just off Allans-Pensicola. I looked it up in that.’ Jon pointed to a spiral-bound book lying open on the table, ‘It’s a cruising guide to the Bahamas. I found it when I was looking for a pencil under the chart table. Apparently, it used to be two separate islands until a hurricane threw up a sandbank that joined them together.’ Jon looked across to the nearby island. ‘Anyway, it’s got a pretty good anchorage. I figured we could rest up there for the day. You know, regroup. We need to decide what we’re going to do now, without ...’

Jon didn’t finish the sentence, but we all knew what he meant.

An hour later, we pulled into the lee of the island and were surprised to find another boat already there. Jon brought the catamaran to a halt by turning it into the wind.

‘D’you think there’s anyone on board?’ CJ was craning her neck to get a better look.

‘If there is, they might know more about what happened.’ Jon
scratched his head. ‘There’s still a lot I’m not really clear about.’

Jon was right, the information from Jimmy and Mike had given us a rough idea, but we still weren’t clear how the world had gone to hell so quickly.

‘We need to be careful.’ I glanced round. Mike was standing in the cabin door, there was a note of warning in his voice. ‘You can’t just go jumping onto other boats. There could be infected on board.’

‘Mike’s right. We need to be very careful.’ I looked over at the other boat, trying to work out how we could tell one way or the other. ‘We don’t want another incident like the one with the life raft.’

‘What should we do then?’ I turned to answer Jon’s question to find everyone looking at me expectantly.

It was then that it dawned on me that while Jon had done a good job since we’d got off the sandbar, he viewed it as a temporary charge, and now I was back he presumed I’d
be taking Bill’s place. This was something I wasn’t keen to do, I’d never liked making decisions involving other peoples’ lives, and it was one of the reasons I’d never risen up the academic hierarchy. Yet, in the situation we were now in, I wasn’t too sure I had a choice, I’d promised Bill I’d help look after the others. I felt trapped and I wasn’t too sure what to do. I thought for a full minute, the silence broken only by the sounds of the sea and the fluttering of the unfilled sails.

‘Okay, we can check it out, b
ut we won’t actually go on board. All we’ll do is see if there’s anyone there.’

It was my first decision, I wasn’t certain it was the right one, but it was a decision and the others seemed happy enough with it. When we were within fifty feet of the other boat, CJ and I dropped the sails and we drifted slowly towards it on the tide. Once we were within twenty-five feet, I dropped the anchor. Standing around the cockpit, we took turns to inspect the boat with the binoculars. It was small, a twenty-five foot
day sailer, but it was in good condition. There was no obvious damage to it and no signs of a struggle. There was an empty whisky bottle upright on the table in the cockpit. It was unlikely it could have stayed like that for long given the movement of the boat as it rode on its anchor. This suggested someone was on board and was still human, or at least they had been until very recently.

I looked beyond the boat to the island and saw a single figure on the golden sands. It stood, slightly slouched, staring towards the
day sailer. After five minutes, it hadn’t moved. As we’d approached under sail, we’d made little noise and it didn’t seem to know we were there.

The others again turned to me for a decision, and I made my second of the day. We were far enough from shore that making noise wouldn’t cause us too many problems. The lone infected on the beach would be alerted to our presence, but there was only one and I figured
it wouldn’t be able to get to us even if it wanted to. With tacit agreement, or at least with no one objecting, I went into the cabin and reappeared with the foghorn. It would be a rude awakening for anyone on the other boat, but we’d find out pretty quickly what we were dealing with.

I took a deep breath and raised the foghorn to my lips. The blast shattered the silence. Making such a racket went against all of my innate survival instincts, and even after I’d stopped the sound seemed to carry on, reverberating back to us from the island. There was no response from the
day sailer. I blew it a second time, then a third. Still there was no response. It seemed that even if someone had been there recently, they weren’t there anymore.

‘What now?’ CJ looked at me.

‘I don’t know,’ I was out of ideas. I scanned the shoreline with the binoculars just to make it seem like I was doing something. While the foghorn hadn’t roused anyone on the nearby boat, the same couldn’t be said for the island itself. While it was almost a quarter of a mile away, too far for them to really sense our presence, I could see figures shambling out of the bushes and onto the beach. I watched as they gathered at the water’s edge.

‘Why don’t we have breakfast?’ CJ seemed to realise I was playing for time.

‘Yeah.’ I wondered if the others could tell just how grateful I was to CJ for her suggestion, ‘That sounds like a good idea.’

As CJ and Jimmy busied themselves in the galley, I turned my attention back to the infected on the shore. They knew there was something out there, but they didn’t seem to be able to tell quite what. I started to count them but gave up when I got to twenty. They seemed to pause every now and then, to sniff the air or cock their heads to one side, like a dog trying to locate an unfamiliar sound. Maybe I was imagining it because I knew what they were capable of, but these figures seemed more animal than human. As I watched, they lost interest and ambled back into the scrub that covered the island. Soon there was just the one lone figure standing there, staring towards us. I wondered if it had once been the owner of the other boat or whether it was just curious about the object it could see bobbing in the distance.

‘Hey, Rob,’ Jon had come up behind me, ‘food’s ready.’

I walked over to the table and sat down.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Jon spoke between mouthfuls. ‘There might be some useful stuff on that boat. I think we should check it out.’

‘There could be trouble too,’ I was nervous about having another encounter with the infected.

‘I don’t think there’s anyone on board.’ Jon spooned some more food into his mouth. ’If there was we’d have seen them by now.’

‘But we can’t know for sure.’ With Bill gone, I felt responsible for the others and I didn’t want to risk losing anyone else.

‘The infected on the shore heard us and they’re more than a quarter of a mile away.’ Jon sounded exasperated.

‘The cabin door’s closed,’ I pointed out, ‘There could be some trapped inside.’

‘I think we’d have heard them trying to get out if there were. We should at least take a look.’

‘I don’t know. We still don’t really know what we’re dealing with. It’s too much of a risk.’ While I could see Jon’s point of view I felt we had to be much more cautious.

‘We’ve not got a whole lot of food left and there might be some on board.’ CJ was siding with Jon.

‘That’s how Sam got attacked, going o
nto a boat we thought was empty,’ Mike reminded us.

‘There might be other useful things
on board too: charts, stuff like that.’ Jon looked round at us all and I couldn’t help thinking this was getting us nowhere. Despite the fact he’d deferred to me for the first two decisions of the morning, Jon clearly thought he was right — as did I — but neither of us was keen to force our opinion on the other in case we were wrong.

Suddenly there was a sound behind me. I leapt to my feet, sending the last of my breakfast flying, and saw a figure staggering from the cabin of the nearby boat. It was unkempt and dressed in torn clothing. Being nearest, I dived into the cabin and grabbed the rifle. After checking it was loaded, I dashed back to the cockpit. Infected on the island were one thing, they were far enough away to be ignored, but this one was so much closer.

I didn’t know how much of a risk it posed and I decided we couldn’t afford to take any chances. I levelled the gun and moved it across until its head filled the telescopic sight. This was the first time I’d seen one up close and in daylight, and I took the time to study it. Its hair was tangled and its beard straggly. There was dirt ingrained into the lines on its face. As I watched, it licked its lips, its mouth slightly open as if contemplating a meal. Despite this, I was surprised how human it looked. I think it was the eyes; I could see a sense of humanity in them. I wondered whether anything remained inside of the person it had once been. I saw its lips move and heard the sound again, a rasp that was almost like a greeting. As I slowly started to squeeze the trigger, it raised one hand above its head and waved.

‘What’s it doing?’ I took my finger off the trigger and the noise came again, this time it was clearer.

‘Hey. Hey you.’ It was barely discernible, but they were definitely words.

‘Bloody hell! That’s not one of them. That’s a man!’ I lowered the rifle. I was shaking at the thought of what I‘d almost done.

‘Why didn’t he come up when you blew the foghorn?’ CJ was more curious than concerned. I don’t think she realised quite how close I’d been to pulling the trigger.

‘I don’t know.’ Now the initial shock had passed, I started to wonder that too.

‘He doesn’t look quite, I don’t know, quite …’ Mike tailed off but I knew what he meant, there was something odd about the man on the other boat.

He called out again, his voice getting louder and more human, ‘Hey. Hey you. You are there, aren’t you? Answer me. Please. Are you really there?’ The man’s voice sounded both demanding and pleading at the same time.

We looked at each other, wondering what to do.

It was CJ who broke our collective silence. ‘Yes, we’re here. Are you okay? Are you hurt?’

He didn’t seem to really hear the questions, ‘You’re real. My god, you’re real. Shit, you’re real!’

He disappeared into his cabin and it was five minutes before he came back up. In the meantime we waited apprehensively. When he reappeared, he’d done his best to smarten himself up: his hair had been brushed and his face washed. It hadn’t made much of a difference but it was the effort that counted. He’d also changed into clothes that were cleaner but a size too big for him. He called out across the water to us.

‘Sorry about that. I haven’t seen anyone in well over a week. It’s just me … just me and Bob, and occasionally some of his friends.’ As he said this, he pointed over his shoulder at the lone figure standing on the beach.

‘You know who that is?’ I was horrified by the possibility it might be someone he’d once known.

‘No. He appeared there the morning I first arrived and he’s been hanging around ever since. He just stands and stares. He knows I’m here, but he can’t work out how to get to me. Whenever I’m on deck, I can feel him watching me. You’d have thought it would be better at night but it’s not. I can’t see him, but I can hear him. In the night, in the darkness, he moans. Not a lot, but just enough to let me know he’s still there. It’s been driving me mad.’

‘Why do you call him Bob?’ I was intrigued.

The man laughed, more to himself than to us. ‘It’s a very bad joke.’

I waited for him to explain but he didn’t. Instead, he changed the subject. ‘I’d invite you
on board but there’s not exactly a lot of room over here.’

‘Why don’t you come over here then?’ We all turned to look at CJ.

‘Why’d you do that?’ Jon hissed furiously.

CJ shrugged. ‘It seemed polite.’

Whatever the reason, the invitation had been issued and accepted, and before we could discuss the matter any further the man was getting ready to launch his dinghy. I had only a few minutes to prepare for our visitor and I really didn’t know what to expect. In a panic, I started by hiding the rifle and then anything else that could be used as a weapon. While I did this, the others stayed on deck waiting to see what would happen.

All too soon I heard the soft bump of rubber hitting the side of the boat and I went out to welcome our visitor. He secured his dinghy to the back of the boat and clambered into the cockpit. He stood there, suddenly looking uncomfortable now he was with us. After a minute he broke the silence.

‘I’m perfectly safe. I may look it, but I’m not mad. I just haven’t been around people for a while. I guess I forgot how to do it. I’m Matt by the way.’