‘No! Daz, don’t!’ Too late, I’d finally put two and two together. ‘He’s infected!’
Tom reacted instantly, struggling to get away from the man’s grasping hands, but Daz was slower and the infected marine grabbed onto his outstretched arm. Daz screamed as he started to slip towards the water. I scooped up one of the boathooks and shouted. ‘Tom!’
Tom deftly caught the boathook and leant over the side, swinging it wildly from side to side. I heard it make contact with something, and Daz yelped in pain. Tom swung again, this time he must have hit his target because a second later Daz was wriggling his way back onto the deck.
‘Fuck, that was close!’ He lay there for a moment, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, before pulling back his sleeve and inspecting his arm closely for any sign that he’d been injured by the infected. Once he was satisfied he was unhurt, Daz sat up and looked at Tom, who was still standing over him. ‘Thanks. For a minute there, I was sure I wasn’t goin’ to make it!’
Tom ignored him, and instead slumped on to the top of the cabin, holding his right side, his face contorted with pain. Between his fingers, I could see blood starting to seep through his shirt. Claire must have seen it, too, because she ran forward and helped Tom back to the cockpit, where she started to examine him.
Daz pulled himself to his feet and adjusted his clothes. ‘What the hell’s goin’ on?’
‘I think the frigate’s been overrun; I think that’s why it’s on fire. He must have fallen into the water after he was infected; we’ll need to keep an eye out for oth ...’
Before I could finish, Sophie shouted: ‘There’s another one!’
We all turned towards where she was pointing and sure enough there was another man floating in the water; despite the fact he was infected and clearly couldn’t swim, his life jacket was keeping him alive.
‘And another!’ By the time Daz cried out, we were sailing through what seemed like a sea of infected sailors and marines, all kept afloat by life jackets. We could hear them growling and snarling as they clawed and hammered at the side of the boat, trying desperately to get on board. The sides were slick and the gunnels well out of their reach, but still, in the dimness of the early morning light, it was a terrifying sight.
While the others stared at the infected, transfixed by their frantic, but fruitless, efforts to get on board, I looked ahead to the frigate itself. We were much closer now and I could see only one group still fighting: they were holding a position towards the stern where two black ribs were being lowered towards the water. Back on deck, I saw an orange tongue of fire engulf all the infected within thirty feet of the few who remained unturned. Despite the fact that the nearest were instantly incinerated, the rest of the infected still pushed forward. It took me a few seconds to realise the survivors must be using flame-throwers to keep their attackers at bay, and buy them enough time to get the ribs into the sea. Another ball of fire leapt towards the infected, but again it had little impact beyond frying the nearest ones to a crisp; they were immediately replaced by more.
As soon as the ribs were safely in the water, the last of the men clambered down the wires attaching them to the boat, the large packs of the flame-throwers visible on their backs. The moment their feet touched down, the wires were released and the ribs sped away from the burning frigate. Soon, they’d disappeared from sight and we were left watching the decimated vessel as it continued to burn.
Daz stared, aghast. ‘How d’you think the infection got on board?’
Claire looked up from where she had just finished tending to Tom. ‘Remember how that man they’d dropped off yesterday had been fighting with one of the marines? He scratched the marine’s face: I’m guessing he was a carrier.’
Daz frowned. ‘What’s a carrier?
Claire explained it to him. ‘It’s someone who’s been infected, but hasn’t started showing any symptoms yet. It’s common in quite a lot of diseases. Carriers can still infect other people, but they can look completely normal; they might have been attacked and thought they’d got away unscathed; it’s even possible that they don’t even realise they have the disease, not until they start to turn.’
I shot Claire a glance. ‘How long would that take?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. With this disease, I’m guessing a few hours; maybe a day at the most.’
Sophie scratched her head. ‘Why do some people end up being carriers, but others turn right away?’
Claire shrugged again. ‘It could be any number of things. It might be that some people just have better immune systems and they manage to hold the disease off for longer; it might be to do with how badly they’re injured by an infected — a small injury might mean the initial viral load is lower, and that it might take longer to build up to a high enough level in their blood system to overwhelm them; it might even depend on where they’re injured by the infected; it’s possible that it takes longer to affect you if you’re bitten on your ankle than on your neck.’
What Claire said made a lot of sense. If the young man had been a carrier, he’d have infected the marine without anyone realising. The man himself hadn’t turned until late in the night, and the marine had presumably done the same. Once he’d turned, there’d have been little chance any of them would be able to escape, not in the confines of the ship, and it would have spread like wildfire. It was amazing any of them managed to get away unscathed.
‘At least we’re free to leave now. Sorry, that came out wrong.’ Claire took a moment to marshal her thoughts. ‘What I meant was, despite everything, at least we’re still alive; at least we’ve got a way out. It’s not much, but it’s something.’ She hesitated briefly. ‘And I really need something to hold onto at the moment, otherwise I’m going to lose it.’
She glanced over to where Sophie and Daz were still staring at the burning ship. She spoke quietly. ‘I’ve got to keep it together for her. I know she’s trying to act all tough, but inside she’s petrified by all this, and I don’t blame her; I’m just as terrified as she is. I mean, how on earth are we going to survive? Where are we going to go?’
I turned to Claire and saw she was close to tears. Tom and I exchanged uncomfortable glances: even though the world as we knew it was rapidly falling apart all around us, like most men, we still didn’t know quite what to do when faced with a crying woman. I’d assumed Claire was doing okay, but now I realised how much it was just a front she was putting on for the sake of Sophie. Inside, she was as scared as the rest of us.
I took a deep breath. ‘Now we can get out of the Clyde, I think we have a chance.’ Both Tom and Claire looked at me disbelievingly, but I carried on. ‘No, I mean it. I was thinking about this last night. There are lots of islands out there where there aren’t any people; they’ve been deserted for years, decades even. No people means no infected.’
‘But what happens if they get there?’ Claire still sounded upset. ‘I mean look at that island you were on the other day? The infected got there, didn’t they?’
‘That’s different. They were carried there from Glasgow because that was only a few miles away. If we can get out to the islands further west, they’re miles from anywhere. It’s like Bob said about St Kilda, there’s no chance of infected getting all the way out there. If there’s anywhere we can avoid them, it’s out there.’
‘I thought we were heading south?’ Tom stood up and stared off into the distance. ‘You know, get beyond Hadrian’s Wall where we can go ashore. They seem to be holding back the infected so far.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that, too. I can’t see it staying that way for long. All it takes is just one person carrying the infection to slip past and that’s it. Once it gets into England, there’s going to be no way they can stop it. It’s only a matter of time,’ I looked at the burning warship, ‘I mean look what happened with the frigate. I think we have to accept we’re on our own now, at least for the foreseeable future. That means we’d be better off heading out to the islands and fin
ding somewhere we can hole up until we get an idea of just how bad this is going to get.’
Tom was sceptical. ‘That’s all fine and well, but what are we going to do for food and things like that?’
‘I know these waters, Tom. I’ve spent years out here each summer. I know where we can catch fish; I know where the seabirds nest. We can get food off the shores, like we did the other day. There’ll be sheep and seals, and porpoises too, if we want something a bit different. The islands out west have supported people for thousands of years. Trust me, getting enough food for five people isn’t going to be a problem. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. We’re going to have to work hard, but we can survive, I know we can.’
Tom was surprised. ‘Where the hell did you learn all this stuff?’
We might have known each other for years, but in all that time, he’d never seen me out here before; he’d only ever seen me on shore, and when we worked together he was the more experienced one; he was the one in charge. Out on the water, it was different: this was my world, my element, and out here, for once, it was me who would be teaching him. In fact, I’d be teaching all of them.
As we made our way past the still-burning frigate I considered my companions. The four of them, Claire, Sophie, Tom and Daz, each represented very different parts of my home city; not just physically, but socially as well. Claire and Sophie were very much the epitome of the West End, or at least the middle-class part of it: the types who shopped in Waitrose and sent their kids to private schools. They dressed well and were the ones the City Fathers wanted you to think of when they came up with the slogan Scotland with Style to promote the city.
Tom represented the West End too, but the alternative side: the artists, the musicians, the writers, the performers. They inhabited the bedsits and shared the rented top-floor flats. In the summer, you’d see them lounging around the parks, hanging out and subtly smoking a spliff, while chatting with friends and strumming on guitars. They might live off Social Security from time to time, but by choice rather than by necessity; they always had a family somewhere to fall back on if they really needed it.
This was all a world away from the Glasgow where Daz had grown up. His was a world of crumbling 1960s high-rises and housing schemes. People lived on Social Security there, too, but because they had to rather than because they wanted to. This was a life you were born into, and it was difficult to get out of; it could be done, but it was something few managed. After all, it was hard to know what to aim for when you had no one to show you the way. While it would be presumed from birth that Sophie would go to university, for Daz, just finishing school would have made him more educated than almost everyone else he knew; this wasn’t because of a lack of intelligence, it was more a lack of expectation from those around him.
The ironic thing was that when the world suddenly changed, Sophie, with all her advantages, education and parental encouragement, was just as unprepared for it as Daz: neither lifestyle had readied them to survive in a world which was rapidly being overrun by the infected. It was the same with Tom: this was the first time in his life when he’d been faced with a situation where he no longer had a safety net to fall back on; there were no longer any parents to go home to, or Social Security for when he didn’t feel like working. He was out of his depth, and pretty much all he was facing was far beyond the realm of his experience.
Claire was different: she’d undoubtedly seen a lot, and in many ways she was better prepared than the rest of us, but there was still a lot which was new to her. For the first time when she was in a dangerous situation, she had Sophie to worry about, and that was a whole different ball game from the times when she’d faced adversity in the past. There was also the loss of Jake which, while she kept it hidden, I was sure was eating away at her. With both of these weighing heavily on her mind, I wondered just how well she was really coping compared to the front she presented to the rest of us.
I was lucky, if anyone could really be called lucky in a world where all this was happening: I’d lived much of my life in this part of the world, and I knew it like the back of my hand. I’d also picked up some useful skills over the years. I’d like to have been able to say it was because I could see the signs, and knew what was coming, but I couldn’t: I had been taken as much by surprise as everyone else. It just happened that the skills I’d picked up were the ones which were turning out to be useful. This didn’t mean I wasn’t scared — I was petrified — but it meant I could keep us alive out here on the water. That gave us our best chance of surviving until this disease was finally brought under control or burnt itself out … or at least that’s how I hoped it would end.
If it didn’t, if it kept on going, then no matter what skills I possessed, there was little chance of us surviving in the long term; not the five of us all alone in a world ruled by the infected. For that to happen, I knew we only had one option: we needed to find other survivors. This was an opinion I was keen to keep from my companions for as long as possible.
Suddenly, Daz called up from below. ‘You guys need to come see this.’
While Claire, Tom and I had been discussing what we were going to do next, Daz and Sophie had gone down into the cabin to get something to eat. Daz had turned on the television to get the latest news about what was happening back on shore, and it wasn’t good.
We climbed down into the saloon, where Sophie had her eyes locked on the television, an untouched mug of coffee going cold in front of her. When she heard us coming, she turned and spoke. ‘Mum, oh god this is awful. I thought there was hope, I thought if we could just get south of Hadrian’s Wall, we’d be okay, but we won’t be; they’ve broken through.’
As Claire went to comfort her, Daz sank down onto one of the seats by the table and stared at the television, ignoring the rest of us; his eyes wide; his mouth open. I moved to where I could see the screen: it seemed that the media had finally broken ranks with the military, and were now reporting what was really going on. The rolling text along the bottom of the screen was listing all the places where outbreaks had been reported in the last few hours: Carlisle, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, even as far south as Birmingham and Hull.
When it had just been Scotland, there had been a possibility of controlling the outbreak, but now there was little anyone could do. The military knew this and they’d pulled the army back to try to protect London. The reason they gave was that if they could keep London safe, it would give them a base from which they could work to try to take back the rest of the country. However, I suspected their true motives might be something different; that it was more an act of self-preservation. They were no longer protecting the people. Instead, they were doing everything they could to protect themselves. Those already in London would be lucky, as they’d be protected, too, but the rest of the country was being left to fend for itself, and given the current situation, this was tantamount to a death sentence. Tom turned to me. ‘Looks like you were right.’ He sounded despondent. ‘I guess going south isn’t an option anymore.’
‘Where are we going to go instead?’ Sophie’s voice trembled as she spoke.
‘Don’t worry, honey, Ben’s got a plan.’ Claire avoided Sophie’s eyes and I wondered how much she believed my plan was feasible. ‘We’re going to go west instead.’
Sophie stared at me. ‘But where?’
I looked down at her, trying to sound self-assured. ‘I don’t know exactly, but we’ll find somewhere where we’ll be safe.’
‘D’you think they’ll manage to save London?’ Daz was still staring at the screen and not really listening to what anyone else was saying.
‘No.’ I spoke without thinking. Daz glared at me, shocked by my bluntness. Yet, this wasn’t the time to be giving people false hope. After a second or two, he went back to staring at the screen.
After an hour of watching the news, I’d had enough. There was nothing new, apart from the ever-growing list of places where outbreaks had been reported, and we needed to be getting underway. I gl
anced round the cabin. Claire was holding Sophie while Daz sat a short distance away. Tom was leaning against the sink in the galley. All eyes were glued to the screen, hypnotised by the gruesome images which were being shown and reshown.
Over the last few decades, Britain had become the most watched nation on the planet and CCTV networks could be found in almost every town and city. They’d been installed to improve public safety, but now they were providing live feeds of just how fast the country was succumbing to the infected. The footage was grainy, monotone and silent, but somehow this made the scenes they were witnessing even more graphic and disturbing, and watching them wasn’t doing us any good.
‘I think I’ve had all I can take for the time being. We need to be getting on. The sooner we get out of the Clyde the better, and I’ll need you all out on deck for this.’ I didn’t, but I thought they’d have less time to dwell on how bad things were getting on land if I got them working.
Daz and Tom both headed for the companionway while Claire remained holding Sophie. ‘Come on, you two, I’ll need your help as well. I can’t sail this thing on my own, not without the engine.’
Claire smiled at me, knowing this was clearly untrue as I’d just sailed the boat single-handedly from the Canaries, but also knowing I was trying to make them feel useful. Sophie disentangled herself from her mother and without saying anything followed Daz and Tom into the cockpit. Claire carried on watching the screen. ‘Mind if I stay here for a bit?’
‘How’re you doing with all this?’ I knew I sounded anxious, but that’s because I was. I could tell Claire was close to the edge, and I couldn’t let anything tip her over. Suddenly I realised I desperately needed Claire; I needed her cynicism to keep me sane; I needed her medical skills in case anyone else got injured; and most of all I needed her to be there for her daughter. While Daz was only a few years older than Sophie, he’d been used to having to fend for himself for a very long time, which gave him a certain resilience to anything life could throw at him, even this. Tom, by contrast, wasn’t a natural survivor; however, his innate positive attitude meant that even when the world was at its darkest, he always presumed it would eventually get better, and I knew this would keep him going. Sophie was different: up until now, she’d led a sheltered life; whatever she’d done, she’d never been truly on her own, and she’d always had her mother to look to for support and comfort, even now. Without Claire, and alone for the first time in this frightening new world, I suspected Sophie would fall apart, and if that happened, I had no idea how that would affect our ability, as a group, to survive.
For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak Page 14