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

by Drysdale, Colin M.

  It took Bill a while to reply. ‘I really don’t know.’

  I tried again, ‘Why would they do that to another person?’ I wanted an answer, any kind of answer, something that might explain what we’d seen.

  ‘I don’t know. Why do people do any of the cruel things that they do to each other?’ Bill stared out into the darkness.

  ‘But this is different. Even in comparison to most human atrocities, what happened back there was vicious. I’ve never seen anything like it. They were like wild animals.’ I stopped and thought for a second, ‘No, they were worse than that. They didn’t just kill him, they ripped him apart.’ Just thinking about it made me feel sick.

  ‘I know.’ Bill turned and looked at me, there was a pained expression on his face. ‘I know. I’ve seen a lot in my life, but I’ve never seen anything like that.’

  Even if I’d wanted to I don’t think I could have slept that night. I couldn’t get the image of the young boy with his wild, staring eyes, out of my head, or the terrified screaming of the man as he was torn apart. I felt there was something deeply wrong with a world where such things could happen. I couldn’t wait to get back to civilisation and get so drunk that those images would be erased from my mind, at least for a few hours.

  Chapter Three

  Sometime in the night the wind shifted around to the west, and with it came a strange smell. It was barely discernible at first, but it grew stronger the closer we got to the Florida coast. Mostly, it smelt of smoke; not wood smoke but something thicker, more acrid, with an undertone of singed flesh. Bill had gone down to his bunk a couple of hours before, and Jon had replaced him on watch. As we discussed what the smell might be, CJ brought out a coffee for Jon and a tea for me.

  CJ looked towards the front of the boat, standing on tiptoes to get a better view over the cabin.

  ‘Hey, is that the sun coming up?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Cammy.’ Jon took a sip of his coffee, ‘We’re heading west. The sun rises in the east, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, there’s something going on over there,’ CJ retorted. ‘It definitely looks like a sunrise.’

  She sounded so certain that Jon and I stood up to see what she was talking about. Sure enough there was an orange glow on the horizon.

  ‘Must be some kind of brush fire.’ Jon didn’t sound convinced, but it seemed logical.

  We watched for the next hour. By then, we could make out flames leaping high into the darkness. The fire explained the strange smell, or at least it seemed to, but the smoke didn’t smell like a brush fire, it smelt more industrial. I scanned the horizon. The flames were strung out in loose clusters along a stretch of coast about half a mile long, and directly ahead of us. On either side there was nothing but darkness. That in itself was odd.

  ‘I can’t see any lights. Miami’s a big city. We should be able to see some by now.’ I looked over at Jon. ‘I think we’ve wandered off course.’

  ‘I don’t see how, I’ve been keeping a very close eye on the compass.’ Jon’s reply was defensive.

  ‘I’m not blaming you. Maybe the currents are stronger than we thought.’ I’d run through possible scenarios in my head and it was the only one that seemed viable. ‘Go get Bill and we’ll see if he can work out where we’ve gone wrong.’

  ‘CJ can go.’

  CJ glowered angrily at Jon for passing the buck before she turned and stormed back into the cabin.

  A few minutes later, a sleepy-looking Bill appeared. I handed him the binoculars and he scanned the coast for a minute, then went inside. He returned seconds later with his sextant. We watched as he worked away, moving back and forth between the chart table in the cabin, where he did the calculations, and the foredeck, where he measured the height of Polaris, the pole star, above the horizon. He took much longer than usual but, eventually, he came back to the cockpit, scratching his head.

  ‘I checked three times. We’re directly east of Miami. It must be something in the city that’s burning.’ Bill pulled out the binoculars and scanned the horizon again, trying to get a better idea of what it was. ‘It’s huge. I wonder what it is? Something at the port maybe? Fuel tanks, something like that.’

  Bill’s tone sounded slightly lost and a worried look had crept onto his face. Jon, CJ and I glanced uneasily at each other. Even in the height of the storm Bill had given off an aura of certainty. Now there was something in his voice that made us wonder if he felt as confused as the rest of us.

  After a few moments, Bill seemed to pull himself together. ‘Right, here’s the plan. We’ll carry on heading towards Miami for now, but we might have to divert to Fort Lauderdale if it looks like the port’s closed.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Sun up’s in an hour. We’ll be able to get a better idea of what’s going on then.’

  By six we could see Miami, or what was left of it. All that remained of most of the skyscrapers were stumps of crumpled steel. Dense columns of smoke rose from them, twisting upwards and drifting out to sea. The few that were still standing were ablaze, flames licking from shattered windows. As we watched, one collapsed in on itself, sending a wave of debris sweeping across the rubble that surrounded it. If anyone had still been inside, they wouldn’t have survived and I hoped everyone had already got out. We stood in silence, taking turns with the binoculars, none of us quite believing what we were seeing.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ We were all thinking it but CJ was the first to put it into words, her voice cracking slightly as she spoke. Somehow hearing it said out loud made it more real.

  ‘Could have been a hurricane, or a riot ... or a terrorist attack … or an earthquake … or …’ I was clutching at straws, my mind searching for things that could consume a city so completely.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bill’s voice wavered slightly. ’Let’s see if we can get a bit closer. God, I wish we had a working radio, even just an FM one. We could pick up a news channel, find out what’s going on.’

  I closed my eyes, screwing them tightly shut, hoping it was a hallucination, but when I opened them again the devastation was still there. For a while none of us spoke, we just didn’t have the words to talk about what we were seeing.

  ‘Hey!’ We all turned to look at CJ. ‘I just remembered. I’ve got a radio on my mobile phone.’

  ‘You’ve had a radio all this time and you didn’t tell us?’ Jon was clearly annoyed at her. Then another thought must have hit him. ‘Hang on … your cell phone still works? You didn’t think of mentioning this before now?’

  ‘Jon, leave her alone.’ The wavering had gone from Bill’s voice, ‘We couldn’t have picked up a signal much before now anyway. CJ, go get it.’

  CJ smiled at Bill and shot past Jon into the cabin, returning a few minutes later with her phone. She turned it on and we waited. After five minutes of trying every position on the boat, it was clear she couldn’t get a phone signal, and she turned to the FM radio receiver function. She scrolled through the frequencies, but there was nothing but static. She scrolled through them again with the same result.

  ‘Maybe we’re still too far out to pick up a signal.’ I could tell Bill didn’t believe what he was saying. ‘Let’s get nearer to shore.’

  We pushed on for half an hour before CJ tried again, with the same result. Another half hour and we were about a mile from the outer limits of the Port of Miami. There was still neither a phone signal nor any radio station.

  ‘What now?’ CJ looked enquiringly at Bill. As a group, we looked to Bill for reassurance and leadership, but for the first time since we left South Africa, he looked not just worried, but unsure of himself. I couldn’t help thinking that if even Bill didn’t know what to do, we were in deep trouble.

  ‘I think we need to go right inside, into the port, see what we can see, see if we can find any one.’ It was Jon rather than Bill who eventually answered CJ.

  After ten minutes, no one had come up with a better suggestion so we carried on towards the devastated city. We took it slowly, ready to turn ro
und if it looked like there was danger ahead, but within the hour we were well inside the port. Around us, there were commercial vessels of all sizes tied up to the docks. Here and there, away from the main channel, smaller pleasure craft rode at anchor. I inspected each one as we passed but saw no one.

  Further on, a large car ferry bumped against a loading ramp, its bow doors were raised but it was only secured to the dock by a single rope. Ahead, on the quay, the burnt-out remains of cars were lined up as if they were waiting their turn to drive on. I searched the cars with the binoculars but couldn’t see anyone inside.

  Ten minutes more and we had gone as far as we needed, as far as it felt safe for us to go. I scanned the surrounding land. Thick smoke obscured the view for much of the time, but whenever it cleared, I could see nothing but broken, shattered buildings and smouldering heaps of rubble.

  ‘Bill, I don’t see the point of going any further. There’s nothing left. It’s all gone.’ Even though I could hear myself say it and saw the destruction that lay all around me, I still couldn’t quite believe it.

  ‘Yeah,’ Bill sounded despondent. ‘Let’s get out of here,’

  At first, it seemed there were no signs of life amongst the ruins, but as we turned to head back out to sea, I spotted a small knot of figures hunched over the ground. They were so dirty they blended in with the ruins that surrounded them, and it was only their movements that drew my gaze to them. As I focussed the binoculars, one of them stood up, arms raised, holding something out of the reach of the others. My hands began to shake as I realised what it was. Held high against the smoke-filled sky was a human head. From the long hair I could tell it had once been a woman. As the people moved, I realised they were clustered around her body as if they were feeding on it.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ It was all I could think to say and, for a moment, I thought I was going to be sick. I swallowed hard and passed the binoculars to Bill. He scanned the shore briefly before passing them on to Jon. Jon stared for several minutes before passing the binoculars on to CJ. She glanced through them for a second and let out a noise that was half gasp, half scream. This was the second time in as many days that we’d seen people attacking each other like animals. We shuddered as a group, and wondered what had happened to the world while we’d been gone.

  Once I knew what to look for, I started spotting people everywhere. Most of them were shambling through the ruins or were staring blankly ahead. All were dirty, covered in soot and ash from the rubble that surrounded them. A few scratched at the ground, picking at things I couldn’t see. Occasionally, a head would snap in our direction but, for the most part, they seemed unaware of our presence. It was as if they’d been through something so awful that it had rendered them senseless.

  ‘Should we try to help them?’ I turned to the others, trying to guess what they were thinking.

  ‘I’m not really sure what we could do. There’s so many of them.’ Bill was right, but it felt wrong not to try.

  As we slipped silently past them under the power of our sails, I tried my best not to stare at the inhabitants of the ruined city, distraught at our inability to do anything for them.

  By nightfall we were back out at sea, the devastated Miami still visible on the horizon. We’d barely said two words to each other since we’d left the port but, as a group, we needed to decide what we were going to do next. Bill turned the boat into the wind and let it drift on the currents.

  ‘Right, I think we’ve got two choices here.’ As before Bill ticked these off on his fingers as he listed them. ‘One, we can head north along the coast, try Fort Lauderdale or West Palm. Or two, we can head back over to the Bahamas and try Freeport, see what’s going on there. Personally, I think we should try going north.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I rubbed my eyes as I tried to think about what we should do next. ‘Maybe Freeport would be better. I don’t know, Bill. I’m too tired to think clearly.’ I hadn’t slept since we’d started our approach to Hole-in-the-Wall more than thirty-six hours before. Jon and CJ looked as run-down as I felt, and even Bill wasn’t looking too fresh.

  ‘Why don’t we anchor up for the night?’ The rest of us turned to look at Jon. Seeing the expressions on our faces, he carried on. ‘I mean, if we can get some sleep we’ll be in a better position to make a decision in the morning.’

  ‘Jon’s right. No point in trying to make a decision when we’re all so tired. We should leave it till the morning.’ Bill glanced across at me ‘What d’you think, Rob?’

  I was so tired all I could do was nod.

  ‘CJ?’

  CJ shrugged in answer to Bill’s question and I could tell she was barely able to keep her eyes open.

  ‘Right, we’ll spend the night here then.’

  After the anchor was set, Jon, CJ and I turned in while Bill took the first watch. Tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I relived scenes I never thought I’d witness. At one in the morning, I gave up and went out to the cockpit to relieve Bill. At three, Jon joined me, shortly followed by CJ. By five, Bill was up as well. It seemed they’d had as much trouble sleeping as I had. Together, we watched as the sun rose and shone on the ruined city once more. Jon made a round of teas and coffees, a first for the entire voyage, and then went back to staring blankly at Miami’s smouldering remains.

  ‘I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe Miami’s gone,’ Jon took a gulp of his coffee. ‘I just don’t understand what could’ve happened.’

  CJ was playing with her phone, but no matter what she did, she was still unable to get a signal. She turned it off and tossed it onto the small table in the cockpit. ‘I wish I could phone home, let my parents know I’m okay, that I wasn’t there when whatever happened took place. They’ll be worrying about me. They knew we were supposed to arrive last week.’ She sounded glum.

  ‘CJ, I think this is a little more important than you not being able to call home,’ there was a note of distain in Jon’s voice, ‘An entire city has been destroyed and all you can think about is whether your parents are worried that you’ve not checked in?’

  ‘Jon, stop it!’ I was angry at him. This was not the time or the place to be picking on CJ.

  Bill listened to us bickering for the next few minutes but didn’t intervene. That was unusual. Eventually, he spoke quietly and almost off-handedly, but what he said was so unexpected it stopped us in our tracks.

  ‘I wonder if it’s just Miami.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Jon looked nonplussed.

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it all night. I can see why we can’t pick up any of the Miami radio stations, but we should be able to pick up something from Fort Lauderdale, or even Freeport. And there’s no sign of a rescue operation. I mean there’re lots of survivors but no one is helping them: no army, no helicopters, no naval ships, no coastguard. And then there was what we saw at Hole-in-the-Wall. I mean, you don’t think it could all be connected? That something really big has happened? Something that’s affected a lot more than just Miami.’

  ‘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.