As we went back inside, Jon spoke, sounding deflated. ‘We’re not as safe out here as we thought we were, are we, Bill?’
‘No, we’re not.’ Bill had a solemn look on his face. ’If there’s going to be infected people drifting around out here, we’ll need to keep a careful lookout at all times.’
I thought about what this meant. Even at sea, we’d never be completely safe, we could never truly relax. Maybe this survival thing wasn’t going to be easy after all.
Chapter Five
I spent the rest of the night in the cockpit cradling the reloaded flare gun, scanning the darkness, searching for anything that might contain more infected. Mike sat across from me, not to keep me company but to watch me. He still didn’t believe I hadn’t been infected. Every time I shifted on my seat Mike jumped and reached for a large knife he’d tucked into his belt, Bill having locked the rifle away.
To pass the time I tried to get him to talk. ‘So what was it like growing up in Fort Lauderdale?’
‘Don’t want to talk about it.’
Maybe that was a bad topic. I tried a different tack, ‘How old’s Jimmy?’
‘Thirteen.’
That was more like it. ‘What about you?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Where’d you learn to use a gun?’
‘Been hunting since I was twelve.’ He stared straight at me. ‘I know how to use a knife pretty well too.’ As he said that he pulled the knife from his belt and started to play with it. I figured it was best to steer the conversation in a different direction.
‘How’s Jimmy holding up?’
‘He cries a lot, mostly at night. He’s been having bad dreams.’ For a moment it looked like he was going to say something else but he remained silent.
I felt I was getting somewhere so I carried on. ‘Yeah, I’ve been having quite a few nightmares myself. I think it goes with the territory.’
Mike looked at me suspiciously, trying to figure out if I was telling the truth or if I was just humouring him. He must have decided I was being honest. ‘I have nightmares too. I keep dreaming about what happened to Billy,’ Mike stared out into the darkness, his eyes glistening. ‘And about what I did to Sam.’
‘I think it’s only natural. Those are some pretty hard things to deal with. They’ll start to go away, though. It just takes time.’
‘But I don’t want them to go away,’ Mike was close to tears now. ‘It’s all I have left of them; it’s all I can remember.’
‘Give it time. Other memories will come back … better memories.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mike seemed sceptical.
I took a deep breath. ‘My parents died a few years ago, and at first all I could remember about them was how they’d looked when I had to identify their bodies.’ I didn’t like talking about such personal things with strangers but I felt it might help, so I pressed on. ‘After a while, I started to remember how they had looked before: when I was young, when they came to my graduation, all sorts of memories. Now I only remember them the way they were when they were alive.’
I glanced over at Mike. He had a strange look on his face. It wasn’t that he looked happy, it was more that he looked like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. ‘Rob,’ Mike looked down at his hands. ‘Thanks for telling me that.’
A few minutes later, I heard the knife clatter to the deck. I looked over and saw Mike had finally fallen asleep.
***
When morning finally came, I met it with relief. The blanket of darkness lifted, restoring our ability to see anything that might bring more infected to us. As a group, we worked in silence most of the day, each trying to deal with things in our own way, and soon we’d achieved a great deal. One of the boat’s engines was up and running, although it still sounded very rough. Using this, we finally got the batteries recharged. The electrical system had had plenty of time to dry out, and now we had power again most of the electronic equipment was working, including the radar, the depth-sounder and, most importantly, the water-maker.
In the afternoon, Bill and I worked inside, checking out the communications equipment.
‘Well, none of it seems to be damaged. Where should we begin?’ I looked at Bill.
‘Why don’t we start with the shortest distance one, see if we can pick up anyone around here and then work our way up to the long distance ones?
‘Sounds reasonable.’ I turned on the VHF radio and scanned slowly through the channels. Silence. I turned to channel sixteen and sent out a message. No one replied. I fiddled with the gain and tried again. Still there was no response.
‘Okay, so there’s no one on the radio around here. Let’s try the FM receiver.’
We’d had no luck with the one on CJ’s phone, but this was more powerful and capable of picking up stations from hundreds of miles away. We turned it on and heard nothing but static.
‘Try switching it over to AM. See if there’s anything there.’
There was nothing.
‘Okay.’ Things weren’t going the way Bill had been hoping, ‘How about the short-wave?’
With the short-wave set, we could potentially talk to people over thousands of miles. As I turned it on, a spark shot out, burning the tips of my fingers, and it went dead.
‘Should we try to repair it?’ I glanced at Bill.
‘Do you know how?’
‘No.’
‘Nor do I, so I guess that answers that one.’
‘Okay, so we’re down to the satellite TV receiver.’ This was our last hope and I was starting to sound desperate. If there was nothing on this one, it would mean we were well and truly on our own.
Bill put his hand on mine as I reached out to turn it on. ‘Just remember. Even if we don’t pick up anything, it’s not the end of the world.’
‘Bad choice of words there, Bill.’
‘Yeah probably,’ he laughed slightly. ‘But you know what I mean.’
I turned it on. We spent the next thirty minutes scanning through every possible channel, but all we got were automated notices saying broadcasts had been interrupted temporally and would be back as soon as possible. The satellites were still beaming down the signals but no one was transmitting anything up to them.
‘Shit, Bill, it looks like you were right.’ My voice sounded flat even to me. ‘This is global.’
‘Yeah.’ Bill glanced down before looking up at me. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if we’re the only ones left.’
‘Surely we can’t be the only ones?’ A sense of despair was growing within me.
‘If there’s anyone else, where are they?’
‘Fuck!’ I thought for a few seconds, ‘I’m not sure I can do this, Bill, not if we’re the only ones left. What future do we have?’
‘You’ve got no choice, Rob. This isn’t about you or me; this is about all of us. There’s no way the others can survive without us. I know Jon thinks he can do it all, but he can’t, he’s too young, too inexperienced. CJ’s barely holding it together, and the boys won’t last on their own, not in the long term.’ Bill looked me straight in the eyes. ‘I heard you last night, talking to Mike about his nightmares, I heard what you said to him, what you told him. You did good.’
‘You can manage without me. I can’t do this.’
‘Yeah, you can. You have to.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘Rob, I can’t do this without you. I need another adult. I can’t look after these kids on my own.’
I got the impression Bill was trying to make me feel needed, and I had to admit it was working.
‘Okay, Bill, what do you want me to do?’
‘Just help me look after them. You saw what happened to CJ the other day. We’re all going to go through times like that … you, me, all of us. I need to know that when it happens to me there’s someone else who can take over until it passes. Rob, you’re the only one I can trust.’
‘I’m not a leader, Bill. I’m a follower.’
‘No, you’re not. I heard you with Mike, you
were great. You might not realise it, but you’ve got what it takes. Anyway, I’m not asking you to take charge, I’m just asking you to be there when I need it.’
I considered what Bill had said for a few minutes before I replied. ‘Okay, Bill, you win.’ I smiled at him, ‘You really know how to get to people, don’t you?’
‘I think we should push on. We don’t know where those infected came from last night and there might be more of them around here.’ Bill looked round at the rest of us.
Night was falling and we were in the cockpit trying to decide what to do next. I was all for Bill’s suggestion. It was always a little more risky to do a passage at night, but it would be much more difficult for us to be surprised by any infected if we were on the move. In any case, we now had the depth-sounder working to warn us if we were approaching any shallows, and there was just enough light from the nearly new moon to see our way. Looking at the chart, I could see the waters around us were almost uniformly twenty feet deep, meaning there was little chance of running into any coral heads that might be out there. Jon, CJ and the boys were also happy to push on so, with the last of the sunlight disappearing from the sky, we pulled up the anchor and continued east, a stiff wind pushing us from behind.
‘How are we going to organise the watches?’ I glanced across at Bill.
‘I think there should be two people on deck at all times. One can steer and the other can take the gun and keep an eye out for anything that might be hiding any infected. Each of us can do two hours on, four hours off, and we’ll rotate the jobs every hour.’ Bill’s watch system was pretty standard for a night passage, and it was similar to the one we’d used as we’d crossed the Atlantic, with the exception of the need for someone to be armed with a gun.
‘Rob, you and CJ can take the first watch. Rob, you come down first and Jon can replace you, then Jimmy, then me, then Mike and that should take us back to Rob.’
The rota was well thought out. It meant there would always be someone with a decent amount of sailing experience — either Bill, Jon or I — on deck at all times.
After the others had gone inside I was left in the cockpit with CJ.
‘If you want to take the helm, I’ll take the gun.’ I went to pick it up.
‘What makes you think I can’t handle it?’ CJ had a defensive look on her face.
‘It’s not that CJ, it’s just ...’ I wondered what to say next and I decided I should be honest with her. ‘Look, CJ, how are you coping with all this?’
‘I’m doing fine.’ She looked down at the deck, avoiding eye contact.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ There was a note of defiance in her voice, but she still didn’t look at me.
‘CJ,’ I glanced at her, wondering how much I should share and decided this wasn’t the time to be holding back. I looked out into the darkness. ‘CJ, I’ve had my moments. I’ve thought about it, but we can’t. None of us can. We need to keep it together, not just for ourselves, but for each other.’
‘Rob, I know I fell apart before. I admit it. I couldn’t cope with it at first.’ She was staring at me now, her eyes burning with intensity. ‘I’ve had time to think since then. I can deal with it. I’m not going to let this win.’
‘You sure?’ I searched her face, looking for clues.
‘Yes.’ CJ sounded so emphatic.
Against my better judgement, I took my hand off the rifle and let her pick it up. I was surprised at how confidently she handled it, checking the chamber and the magazine to see how many bullets were there.
She saw me staring at her and she looked back at me, making direct eye contact.
‘I told you. I can deal with this.’
I’d been drifting in and out of sleep for about an hour and a half when the boat suddenly lurched to the left and I heard something fall from a shelf in the galley and shatter on the floor. I grabbed a t-shirt and was in the cockpit in seconds, but not before cutting my foot on a shard of broken crockery. On deck, Jon was at the wheel, the spotlight next to him while Jimmy was at the table with the rifle, both had just woken up. As I turned off the alarm on the depth-sounder, I looked up at the sails, while they were still full, we were going nowhere.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing? If you couldn’t stay awake, you should’ve woken someone else up.’ I was pissed off, but I was probably being unfair. We were all exhausted and it could have just as easily happened to me.
‘I can’t believe I fell asleep.’ Jon was on his feet, looking around, trying to get his bearing. ‘What happened? What did we hit? Are we okay?’
I picked up the spotlight and shone it into the water. We’d run into the tip of a narrow sandbar that was separated from a low-lying island by a short stretch of shallow water. While the bow of the left hand hull was wedged onto the bar, there was still a good two feet of water under the right one.
I turned to Jon. ‘It’s just sand, I think we’ll be okay.’
Jon looked relieved. I ducked into the cabin and met Bill and CJ coming up from their bunks.
‘What happened?’ Bill sounded concerned but not worried.
‘We’re hung up on a sandbank.’
‘All the way out here?’
‘There’s an island as well, but luckily we missed that.’
‘How’d we do that?’ CJ looked confused.
Bill scooted over to the chart table, ‘We must’ve run into the southern end of Great Sale Cay. It’s the only land around here. Just as well it’s not inhabited. We won’t have to worry about running into any infected.’
It sounded logical, but he was wrong.
Jimmy spotted them first, just visible in the faint light of the crescent moon. It could have been the noise of us hitting the sandbar, or the light, or even the sound of us talking, but for whatever the reason we’d attracted the attention of a small crowd. There were six of them and from the way they were acting, prowling around the water’s edge like hungry predators, I could tell they were infected. I wondered where they’d come from, how they’d got there.
They knew we were there and they wanted to get at us but they seemed unwilling to enter the water. It was as if they feared it was too deep. This was just as well as we knew what they didn’t, that the water was sufficiently shallow for them to wade out to the sandbar within a matter of minutes.
The presence of the infected was bad enough, but then the situation got worse. Bill was looking at the tide table, ‘It’s high tide now. If we don’t get off soon, we’re going to be here for another twelve hours.’
‘How far will it drop?’ I was thinking about the shallow water that was the only thing keeping the infected from making it to the sandbar.
Bill looked up at the sky and then at the tide table. ‘It’s near enough a new moon, so three, maybe four feet.’
While it didn’t sound like much, it would be enough to link the sandbar to the island. I looked over to the shore where the number of infected had increased to eight. I didn’t know how much intelligence they retained, but it couldn’t be long before one of them realised the water was shallow enough to cross.
‘Fuck, Bill, if it drops that much, they’re going to be over here. We need to get off fast.’ I looked round at the others and saw the severity of the situation sinking in.
Bill took charge. ‘Right, Jon, get the sails down. Mike, CJ, Jimmy, come with me. We need to shift as much weight as we can from the left hull to the right hand one, see if we can reduce the draft on the side where we’re stuck. Rob, get the dinghy in the water and set an anchor into the seabed about thirty feet off the stern. Once you’re back, wrap the line round the right mainsail winch and crank it tight. With a bit of luck it’ll be enough to pull us back into deeper water.’
With a sense of urgency, we set to our assigned tasks. Within minutes I was back on the boat and cranking the anchor line around the winch. The boat strained but didn’t move. Bill and I glanced at each other.
‘Should we try the engine?’ I knew if we p
ut it into reverse we might be able to pull ourselves away from the sandbar. It would get us off quickly, but it would make a hell of a lot of noise and that might attract more infected.
‘What else could we do?’ Mike was looking at Bill.
‘We can get off and push.’ There was a hint of resignation in Bill’s voice.
Mike looked horrified at the thought and I felt the same. Trying to push the boat off would be quieter, but it would take longer, increasing the risk one of the infected would work out they could get through the gradually shallowing water separating the sandbar from the island.
‘I don’t think the amount of noise we make is really important. Look!’ Jon pointed towards the beach. The number of prowling shadows had grown to twelve. We were attracting more infected with every passing minute, and it was unlikely the engine noise would attract them any faster than the noise we were already making.
‘Everyone agree?’ We nodded. ‘Okay, here goes.’ Bill held his breath and turned the key in the ignition. The engine exploded into life. In the still of the night, the sound seemed deafeningly loud. Bill slammed it into reverse and revved it as high as he dared. As it roared, the boat strained under us and I felt it shift ever so slightly. It was our first glimmer of hope.
I looked to the shore. There were still only twelve of them. The sound of the engine didn’t seem to be attracting any more but the level of agitation in those already there had increased dramatically. The engine noise seemed to confirm there was something out there in the darkness and they were now starting to test whether they could get through the water.
‘Try it again,’ Jon urged Bill on. He was responsible for us being on the sandbar and he was keen to see us get off again as soon as possible.
For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea Page 7