‘There’s four guys on it,’ Mike still had the binoculars trained in the approaching boat, ‘Big guys.’
‘Look, there’s another one!’
Just as Jimmy said it I saw it too, emerging from the shadow of Elbow Cay. At first, it seemed like it was heading west towards the main island, but after a few hundred feet it slowly turned until it too was heading towards us. Mike panned across with the binoculars ‘There’re five guys on that one.’
This didn’t look good.
‘Go get the others,’ Jimmy ran into the cabin, ‘And get the rifle too,’ I called after him.
He reappeared a minute later with the gun, followed shortly by Jon and CJ. Both looked like they’d had a rough night. I turned back to the boats. The first one slowed until the second one caught up, and then sped up again so that the two boats were moving in parallel. As they neared, the men became visible and I could see at least one was carrying a gun. Within minutes they’d be upon us, one on either side, and if they wanted to cause trouble, there’d be little we could do. We wouldn’t be able to outrun them and, even with the rifle, we wouldn’t be able to hold them off because while we targeted one, the other would have an open shot at our backs. They obviously knew what they were doing.
‘Shall I see if I can get one of them?’ Jimmy was following the closer of the two boats through the rifle’s sight.
‘No!’ I grabbed the gun from him and tucked it into the crook of my arm, on display, but not exactly threatening. If there was going to be a fight I was pretty sure we’d come off worst, but I wanted to show we could at least put up some resistance. The two boats slowed in synchrony as they closed on us.
‘Ever get the feeling you’re being judged?’ Jon had taken the binoculars from Mike and was looking at the boat to our left. Sure enough, I could see two of the men were examining us through their own binoculars. I turned and saw one of the men in the other boat was doing the same.
‘I think they’re talking to each other on their radios. What d’you think they’re up to?’ Jon glanced at me. ‘What should we do?’
I was wondering that myself but before I could come to a conclusion, CJ stepped up to the guard rail and waved, moving her hand slowly back and forth above her head.
‘What are you doing?’ Jon hissed at her, ‘Get back here. Now!’
She stopped and shrugged. ‘Just being friendly. There’s nothing wrong with that.’
As she turned to wave again Jon grabbed her, pulling her back and pinning her arms to her side.
‘Have you lost your mind? They’re all guys. They probably haven’t seen a girl in weeks. Do you realise what they’d do if they got their hands on you?’
‘Oh, go fuck yourself!’ It was the first time I’d heard CJ stand up for herself. I watched as she struggled, but couldn’t break free from Jon’s grasp.
‘Hey, they’re waving back. Well, one of them is.’ While Mike and I had been distracted by the spat between Jon and CJ, Jimmy had kept watching the boats. We all turned to look. Distracted, Jon loosened his grip and CJ took the opportunity to free herself.
I heard a clunk as the left-hand boat shifted its engine into gear and motored slowly towards us. The other one stayed in its position off to our right. When the approaching boat got within about twenty feet, the engine was slipped into neutral again. Now they were closer I could see the men more clearly. Their clothes were loose-fitting and well-worn. Most of the men were somewhere between early twenties and late forties. They sported facial hair ranging from rough stubble to full, straggly beards. As we watched, one of them shifted from his left foot to his right and back again; it seemed that they were as nervous of our arrival as we were of theirs. Amongst them was an older man, maybe in his early sixties, marked out by a shock of white hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was driving the boat and had a shotgun slung over one shoulder. He’d been the one who had responded to CJ’s wave, and from the way the other men looked at him, I got the feeling he was the one in charge.
He shouted across to us. ‘Have you got a VHF radio on board?’
‘Yes.’ We did, but we hadn’t turned it on in days, the silence just reminded us how alone we’d been.
‘Turn it on and switch to channel sixty-eight.’
The radio was just inside the door of the cabin and I was reluctant to go inside until I knew what was going to happen next. I think the white-haired man realised what I was thinking. He slipped his boat into gear before turning sharply to his right and heading back to the spot where he’d been before. As he did so, he showed us his back, offering us a clear target. It could have been a mistake, but I got the impression it was a signal that he trusted us and that we, in turn, could trust him.
I handed Jon the rifle and went into the cabin. After tuning the radio to the requested channel, I took the mike and stepped back onto the deck. The coiled cable linking the mike to the radio only just stretched far enough. At first, there was only static but then it was broken by a soft American voice
‘Calling the catamaran anchored off Man-O-War. Can you hear me?’
I pressed the transmission key on the side of the microphone. ‘This is the catamaran.’
‘Where did you come in from?’ The man’s voice was stern, but there was something in it that suggested he meant us no harm.
I briefly explained our situation, our encounter with Matt, and that we’d come looking for the other survivors he’d mentioned.
‘I know who you’re talking about. They arrived a couple of weeks ago.’ There was a hint of something in his voice that made me wonder if I’d said the wrong thing. I hoped it wasn’t a bad sign. Then something struck me. I’d assumed these people must have been part of the group Matt had met, but it seemed they weren’t. I wondered who they were and where they’d come from.
‘How many of you are there?’ The man’s voice was back to sounding stern.
‘Five.’
‘Are any of you sick?’ There was a touch of concern in his voice.
‘No, we’re all fine.’
‘That’s good,’ he sounded relieved, ‘Have you had any encounters with the infected?’
I told him about the people in the life raft.
‘You were very lucky. Few people survive an encounter with drifters.’ I’d not heard the term before but I knew instantly what he was referring to. ‘Anything else?’
I told him what happened at Great Sale Cay and about losing Bill.
‘Sorry to hear that.’ He sounded sincere. ‘When was this?’
‘Three days ago.’
‘That’s it? Nothing more recent?’
‘No.’
‘Okay.’
There was silence on the radio but I could see the man discussing something with the other people on his boat. I was starting to worry they wouldn’t let us join them.
After a couple of minutes he spoke again. ‘What’s your name?’
‘It’s Rob.’ I hoped it was a good sign he wanted to know my name.
‘Nice to meet you, Rob. I’m Jack.’ He was starting to sound less stern and more friendly. ‘Look, we don’t want any trouble. We’re just trying to survive here.’
‘That’s all we’re trying to do too and I figure we’ve got a better chance as part of a bigger group.’ I looked across at the boat where the discussions were getting more animated.
Eventually, Jack came back on the radio, ‘Okay, you can join us if you want, but there’s certain rules you’ll need to stick to.’ I wondered what sort of rules he was talking about, but Jack seemed to know what I was thinking.
‘Don’t worry, they’re nothing strange. They’re just ones we’ve come up with, to help keep us safe and to help us function as a community.’
‘What sort of rules?’ Despite what Jack had said I was still wary.
‘Well, first of all, before you can come down to Hope Town, you’ll need to spend forty-eight hours in quarantine. We need to know for sure that none of you are infected. You’re free to move on if you want,
but if you chose to stay, you have to go through quarantine.’
I found out from Jack later that they’d been less strict with this at first, only asking if anyone had been attacked or injured by an infected. But people lied, and kept injuries covered up, knowing how they’d be treated if anyone found out. There had been sizable losses as newcomers turned, attacking and spreading the infection within the community. Quarantine was an obvious, and traditional, solution to the risks of infection caused by visiting vessels.
‘Okay, that sounds reasonable.’ I was happy to agree. A couple more days spent on our own was a small price to pay to be allowed to join up with other survivors.
‘Have you got a yellow flag?’
‘Yes.’ Yellow flags were used in most countries to signify a new arrival, so we had one on board.
‘You’ll need to fly it so that everyone knows it’s not safe to approach.’
‘Okay. Do you want us to stay here, or should we go somewhere else?’
There was a brief discussion on Jack’s boat before he replied. ‘Man-O-War harbour’s closest. You can go in there. It’ll keep you out of the way.’
The two boats waited as we pulled up our anchor and started our working engine. One boat led the way while the other hung back. Later, Jack explained the two boats meant that if something happened to one of them, the other would be able to report back to the rest of the group. This was why it kept further off at all times. Again, this was the result of painful lessons learned in the early days of their community.
Once we were safely at anchor with our yellow flag flying, Jack told us to go inside and close the cabin door. We did so and I watched as he made a fast and brief approach, lobbing a small package into the cockpit before zooming off. As Jack turned to his left and disappeared out of the harbour, Jimmy ran out and picked up the package. It consisted of a half empty bottle of rum and two coconuts, wrapped in an old towel and tied up with a short piece of rope. I picked up the coconuts and shook them. They were full of liquid. This was a very welcome gift and very appropriate. According to the cruiser’s guide, rum and coconut water was a traditional Bahamian drink.
I picked up the microphone. ‘Hey, Jack, thanks for the present.’
‘No trouble, Rob.’ Jack’s voice sounded relaxed and friendly. ‘I hope you enjoy it. I’ll come by tomorrow morning and then the morning after that. If you’re all still okay, and I hope you are, you’ll be cleared to enter Hope Town.’
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something about Jack that made me like him even though we’d only just met.
Jon, Jimmy and I spent the morning in the dinghy exploring the harbour that was to be our home for the next two days. We kept well away from the shore and from the infected which were there. As we puttered around, the dinghy’s engine didn’t seem to be loud enough to attract their interest, but we could see them shambling through the narrow streets or lurking in dark corners, like predators waiting to attack.
There were surprisingly few boats tied up at the docks or riding on moorings out in the harbour. This was curious. If the disease had really overwhelmed communities as fast as we’d been told, it seemed unlikely many would have had time to take their boats and flee. Maybe something different had happened here, but it puzzled me why this would be the case.
The boats that were left fell into two categories: those so badly damaged as to be unseaworthy; and ones in good condition that had a skull and cross bones spray-painted onto their hulls beside a single word written in large capital letters: ‘INFECTED’. When we passed such vessels we could hear noises coming from inside: scratching, clawing, moaning. As the warning said, there were infected on board; most likely people who’d turned while trapped within cabins locked from the inside. They’d been marked to warn anyone else who stumbled across them of the danger that lay within.
It was while exploring the southern end of the harbour that we discovered a boat that was neither damaged nor infested. It was a pretty decent boat, about twenty feet long with a good-sized engine. It was packed with foam to make it just about unsinkable. Since it had last been used, it had filled with water and drifted, semi-submerged, into the mangroves that fringed the harbour, and had the words ‘Cetacean Research’ emblazoned along both sides in black, stick-on letters.
‘Can we go get it?’ Jimmy had spotted it first and was keen to salvage it, but going that close to shore would be risky.
‘The mangroves are pretty thick there.’ Jon looked around. ‘I doubt an infected could get to us, even if they wanted to.’
I put the engine into neutral. I couldn’t see any infected and the nearest place where any could lurk unseen was a small wooden building on a nearby dock. Its storm shutters had been barred from the outside and the door padlocked shut. I nodded towards it. ‘I wonder what’s in there?’
‘Even if there’s infected inside, they’re not getting out, are they?’ Jon said impatiently.
I looked for other places where infected might be lying in wait. Further up the hill, a stone building rested close to the brow of a ridge. It was far enough away that I didn’t think we’d have to worry about what might be inside.
‘Come on. We could really do with a boat like that; one we could use as a runabout. It’d make it much easier to go fishing.’ Jon’s argument was persuasive, it would be important to be able to move around, to forage and scavenge, and there would be places inaccessible to a boat as large as the catamaran or a dinghy powered by a small outboard engine.
‘Okay.’ I was finally convinced it was worth the risk. ‘Let’s see if we can get it.’
With that, I slipped the dinghy’s engine into gear and we moved forward. I nosed the dinghy past the dock with the shuttered building on it and up to where the runabout was nestled in the mangroves. Checking one last time for infected, we covered the last few feet and Jon leant forward to grab the frayed rope attached to the front of the semi-submerged boat. Being full of water, it was heavier than I’d anticipated and I had to crank up the throttle on the dinghy’s little outboard to make any progress. The engine whined under the strain, making much more noise than before. As the dinghy passed the dock again I heard something stirring inside the small building. Riled by the sound we were now making, it started roaring and snarling, tearing at the shutters and the locked door.
‘That’s one of them in there, isn’t it?’ Even though we were a safe distance from the shore, Jimmy looked scared.
‘Yeah.’ Jon looked towards the shore. ‘I wonder how it got in there?’
I thought on this for a few moments. The only reasonable explanation was that someone had been locked inside, probably after they’d become infected, but before they’d turned; a quite different, but equally effective version of quarantine. Now they could sense us, they wanted to get us, to attack, to satiate their need for violence. The noise the infected made mingled with the sound of our straining engine as it echoed around the harbour.
‘Look at that!’ Jon pointed towards the top of the hill where infected were streaming from the stone house. They ran through the bushes towards the dock, drawn by the sounds coming from below.
‘Jesus, they’re fast!’ I was startled by their speed across the uneven ground. The quickest made it from the top of the ridge to the dock, a distance of about 100 yards, in less than thirty seconds. The rest weren’t far behind.
‘Yeah, they can be on you in an instant.’ Jimmy spoke quietly, reliving a memory from the time before we met him. Jon and I looked at each other, but said nothing. We didn’t really know much about what Jimmy and Mike had been through before we found them, or rather before they found us. I heard them both screaming in the night from time to time, but neither really spoke about the things that had happened to them, and they would change the subject quickly if anyone brought it up.
Once the infected reached the dock, they paced back and forth, knowing we were there, but finding they were blocked from reaching us by the water. I watched them, the anger contorting t
heir faces, roars of frustration coming from deep within. I counted nine in all, hair tangled, clothes ragged and torn. They looked dirty and unkempt, and most were skinny but not emaciated. The way their tattered clothes hung from their bodies, suggested they hadn’t eaten in several weeks, maybe not since they’d first become infected. I wondered if that might be what would eventually kill them, whether they were now so consumed with rage, that they no longer felt hunger or the urge to eat, and whether they would eventually starve to death.
By the time we got back to the catamaran, we were far enough away that the infected on the dock had lost interest and were starting to disperse. The noise we’d made towing the runabout had roused CJ and Mike, and they were out in the cockpit watching us approach. I tied up the dinghy and displayed our trophy.
‘Cool. Does it work?’ Mike appreciated it, but CJ had a slightly disgusted look on her face.
‘What are you going to do with that?’ She emphasised the last word in a way only a teenage girl could. Over the last few days, I’d forgotten quite how young she really was. While she was only a few years older than Mike, most of the time she seemed so much more mature. I guess those few years made all the difference but I had to remember that, at heart, CJ was still just a teenager.
‘Get it going, of course,’ Jon shot back at her, overconfident and condescending.
CJ swore under her breath and stalked back into the cabin, angry at being spoken to like a stroppy teenager, ignoring the fact that that was exactly how she’d been behaving.
I cut a plastic bottle in half, and using it, it took an hour to bail out all the water. Once the runabout was empty, I checked the fuel tank. The filler cap was under the centre console that housed the throttle and the steering wheel. When I opened it, I saw the tank was about half-full and that the seal on the cap had held despite being submerged for so long. Jon cleaned out the fuel filter and checked the spark plugs. It all seemed to be in remarkably good condition. The battery was flat, but that was only to be expected, so I hooked it up to a small solar charger we had on board. It wasn’t powerful enough to charge the large batteries of the catamaran but, given a couple of days, it would recharge the small battery of the outboard, allowing us to see if the engine still worked.
For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea Page 12