Read For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea Online
Authors: Colin M. Drysdale
Tags: #Zombies
The others looked around shiftily and I could tell they just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
‘Please, it would only take a few minutes.’ I don’t know why this had suddenly become so important to me, but I felt it would haunt me for the rest of my life if I didn’t. I couldn’t bear to leave her there to rot, to be picked over by the infected. Maybe it was because of what happened to the McGanns; we’d never been able to recover their bodies and they still lay on their boat along with the infected that killed them, floating around Marsh Harbour.
‘Okay.’ Jon
glanced around nervously, ‘But only if it’s quick.’
We motored
along the coast and past the rocky outcrop. The girl’s body still lay where I’d found it the day before. With Mike and CJ standing guard, Jon, Andrew and I made a quick excursion ashore. We had nothing to dig with, so we simply heaped the sand on top of her until she was hidden. Before I went back to the runabout, I used a piece of driftwood to mark her grave.
‘You know, we could always use another boat.’ Jon was looking down the beach to where the boat was lying on its side. Somehow I got the impression Jon was thinking more about the opportunities having his own transport would give
him for spending time alone with CJ than about the practicalities of our survival, and I couldn’t blame him. It was hard enough to start a relationship at the best of times, and it was all but impossible when there were always other people around.
I was loath
to let anyone take our runabout out for a simple pleasure cruise, to give them time alone, it was too much of a risk. Without it, we’d be much less self-sufficient and we couldn’t risk wearing it out sooner that it otherwise might. An extra boat would mean I’d be less worried about this. I thought about it, and despite Jon’s bias, I could see he was right. It would always be good to have a back-up. ‘Okay, let’s go take a look.’
Once we reached it, I scanned the beach for a good ten minutes. The boat itself looked in pretty good shape and there was no sign of any infected.
‘What do you think?’ I turned to the others.
‘It looks okay from here but we’d need to see it up close before we can tell for sure.’ Jon
shaded his eyes with his hand as he stared towards the shore.
‘Mike, if you and CJ want to stand guard again, Jon and I can nip ashore to check it out properly. Is that okay with you guys?’
CJ and Mike nodded, and Jon and I slipped over the side. We waded the short distance to the beach and walked up to the boat.
‘It’s in pretty good shape. It can’t have been here for long.’ Again I wondered where it had come from.
‘D’you think we can get it back into the water with just the two of us?’
I reached out and rocked it back and forth. ‘Yeah, we should be able to manage it.’
After fifteen minutes it was floating between the two runabouts. Jon clambered on board and tried to start the engine. It turned over, but didn’t catch.
‘Hang on a second.’ Jon unscrewed the lid of the petrol tank and peered in, ‘No fuel. No wonder it won’t start. We’ll just have to tow it back.’
I watched as he strung it out behind our runabout. Once he had it secured, I slipped the engine into gear and pointed the runabout north towards Hope Town. It was a glorious feeling to be heading home; something that only half an hour before I thought we’d never be doing again.
When we got within radio distance, I called up and let Jack know we were safe and we were coming home.
‘Hi, Rob. Good to hear your voice.’
‘Good to hear your voice too, Jack. Look, we’ve had a pretty major run-in with some infected. No one’s hurt, but better to be safe than sorry. D’you want to bring the catamaran out and we’ll head up to
Man-O-War harbour for a couple of days’ quarantine? If you anchor her just outside Hope Town, we can pick her up there. We should be there in about an hour or so.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’ Jack sounded happier than I’d heard him in a long time.
Towing the rib, and weighed down
with the cans, it took us longer to get back than I’d anticipated and it was getting dark by the time we finally arrived. I could see the catamaran anchored off waiting for us. After our time in the container, I’d be glad to get back to my own bed and get some proper sleep. We pulled up alongside the boat, tied the runabout to the back and climbed on board. As we did so, CJ turned and flung her arms around Jon, giving him a long kiss that he returned as he hugged her back. I glanced at the others. Mike and Jimmy were making faces at each other while Andrew looked happy. Something was still niggling at me though.
‘Hey, CJ?’ She broke away from Jon and
turned me, ‘Where’d you learn to shoot like that?’ I knew shotguns had quite a kick and an inexperienced person would be lucky to hit anything with one, let alone get six kills out of six.
‘Oh, you know us poor little rich kids. We grow up hunting and fishing.’ She winked at Jon and he smiled back.
Chapter Seventeen
Over the next two days, I doubted Jon and CJ spent more than a few minutes apart. Now we all knew, they didn’t bother trying to hide their feelings for each other anymore. Indeed, by the end of the first day in quarantine, CJ had pretty much moved into Jon’s bunk. I didn’t know about the others, but I was pleased to see some happiness in an otherwise dark and difficult world. The quarantine passed uneventfully, with Jack visiting us each morning and evening to check that we were all okay.
CJ and Andrew filled us in about what had happened in Hope Town once it became clear something had gone wrong with our foraging trip.
‘We had an emergency community meeting last night,’ CJ was talking fast, ‘and things got very heated.’
‘Jack thought we should send out a search party to look for you, but David was dead against it.’ Andrew’s face hardened as he spoke. ‘I don’t really understand why, but he was.’
I hadn’t told the others about the argument I’d had with David and I wondered whether this had clouded his judgement. He now knew just how much I opposed his plans and part of me wondered if he’d seen it as an opportunity to make sure I never came back. I
considered this for a moment and then dismissed it. David and I might not see eye to eye on certain things, but he’d never struck me as the vindictive type.
‘You should’ve heard him. He said we didn’t know what’d happened to you, that we’d just end up losing more people, and that we needed everyone we had if we were to survive. He had quite a few people on his side at first.’ CJ sounded like she couldn’t believe quite how many people had been willing to give up on us so quickly.
Difficult as it was, I had to admit David had a point. For all they knew, we might have already been dead and it would have been stupid to risk the lives of more people just to find out.
‘That was until CJ pointed out David wouldn’t still be alive if Jack hadn’t rescued him when he was stuck in Boat Harbour. You should have seen the look on his face. I thought he was going to bust a blood vessel or something. Anyway, that got a few more people on our side.’
CJ was smiling. ‘Well, someone had to say it.’
‘But it wasn’t enough, and by the end of the meeting, everyone was still arguing over what we should do. That was when me and CJ decided that if we couldn’t get the community to agree, we’d just have do it ourselves.’
‘Jack thought we should have another go in the morning though, to see if we couldn’t get some sort of agreement, but that meeting was worse than the first.’ CJ glanced over at Jon. ‘David just kept going on and on about how you must all be dead, and that it was clearly too dangerous to send anyone else to find out what happened. He said we should make Little Harbour off-limits and no one should be allowed to go there, no matter what. It was as if he was trying to make sure there was no way we could come and look for you without going against the community.’
Again I wondered if David had been trying to do everything he could to make sure we didn’t make it back. From what CJ was saying, it seemed possible, but then again maybe CJ had just got the wrong end of the stick. What David had said was sensible given what they knew.
‘That’s when CJ and I slipped out.’
‘And aren’t we glad you did.’ Jon put his arm round CJ. ‘For a while there I really thought I’d never get to do this again.’ With that he kissed her hard on the lips.
***
When we returned to Hope Town after our quarantine, there was little evidence of the discord our failure to return had caused. Almost everyone seemed glad we were back and the news of what we’d found in the container had spread like wildfire. Only David showed any displeasure, although I found it hard to tell whether this was real, or if I was just imagining it given what CJ and Andrew had told me.
Ever since the argument, David had been avoiding me as much as possible and even when we met at the community meetings he did his best to ignore me. If it had been anyone else, it would have bothered me but since it was David I didn’t mind, and in many ways it made for an easier life. It meant I didn’t have to deal with him or his obsessions any more.
***
Over the next few days, Jack, Andrew, Jon and I made six trips down to Little Harbour and brought the rest of the canned food back to Hope Town. Learning from our mistakes, we always took two boats to ensure no one became trapped again.
Within the community there was a growing feeling of confidence in our ability to survive, not just from day to day but in the long term. I couldn’t identify the exact moment, but for some reason it felt like we’d finally turned the corner from basic survival to actually having a life and a future. It wasn’t the life we’d had before, but it was still a life worth living.
The changes in the wider community were mirrored by changes on the catamaran. The relationship between Jon and CJ seemed to bring us together in a way we hadn’t really been brought together before. It was as if their relationship acted as a bridge between myself and the three youngsters, and we were becoming like a family. With the relationship, Jon seemed to grow still further and he was taking on a greater level of leadership and responsibility. I now felt much more confident in leaving him in charge when I was off foraging, or indeed letting him take the runabout out himself on scavenging expeditions. With Jon stepping up, I was starting to feel less weighed down by the responsibilities that had been forced on me by Bill’s death, and after many months I felt I could finally relax.
The only thing that wasn’t quite going to plan was the engine of the rigid-hulled inflatable boat, or ‘rib’ for short. Jon and I worked on it whenever we had some free time but we just couldn’t get it started.
‘It’s turning over fine, it’s just not catching.’ Jon scratched his head.
‘It’s not the fuel. I’ve checked that.’
‘Maybe it’s the spark plugs.’
‘Have we got anything we can take them out with?’
‘I think I can get them with the adjustable wrench.’ Jon strained to loosen the first one. It finally gave way, but as it did so, the ceramic insulation that surrounded it crumbled.
‘Shit. Where the hell are we going to get another one of those?’
I looked at Jon and could see him going through his mental list of boats, but he came up blank, ‘The only engines I know of that might have had suitable spark plugs have been scavenged already.’
Jon turned back to the eng
ine; this time, taking more care, he managed to remove the others without damaging them. He inspected the spark plugs closely. ‘Looks like these are the problem.’ He held up one and I could see it was coated with soot. ‘They must have got covered in gunk when the fuel ran out.’
I watched as he cleaned them off, sanding down the connections until he could see the metal underneath. He replaced each one and we were left looking at the broken spark plug. Without a new one, the engine was useless.
***
It took a week, but Jon finally managed to scrounge a replacement spark plug from an old power boat that had been brought down from the harbour at
Man-O-War. Having blown a gasket, its engine was shot and it was, instead, being used for storage, but its spark plugs were still in working order. A little bit of trading and Jon had his prize. By the end of the day, the engine of the rib was purring like new.
‘Shall we take it out for a test run?’ Jon was eager to try it out.
I looked at my watch. ‘We’ve got a meeting in an hour, and then I’ve really got to put some time in on the garden boats. It’ll have to wait till tomorrow.’
‘I could just take it out on my own.’ Jon looked at me hopefully.
‘No, I want to be there in case anything goes wrong. I don’t want you getting stranded out there if it suddenly quits on you.’
‘What if I took CJ?’
‘CJ’s not exactly mechanically minded, is she? I don’t think she’d be much help if you broke down.’
‘What about Andrew?’
‘Jon, I’d just rather I was there. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’ I could see Jon was annoyed, but after what had happened at Little Harbour, I didn’t want anything else to go wrong.
The main item on the agenda for the community meeting that evening was the rota for work on the garden boats. As usual, David was refusing to have anything to do with them and this was starting to cause friction with the rest of the community. I was sure he’d happily eat the crops when it came to harvesting them, but David loathed everything about the garden boats. It was as if he blamed them for our consistent failure to accept his proposition to clear the peninsula around the lighthouse.
It took a while, but eventually a rota was agreed upon and the meeting came to an end. As everyone started to leave, I finally had a chance to speak to Jack.
He looked up as I walked over. ‘Hey, was that the rib’s engine I heard earlier?’
‘Yep, we finally got it going.’
‘You going to take it out for a spin?’
‘Not till the morning. There’s too many other things I’ve still got to do today, but first thing tomorrow, Jon and I will give it a good workout; make sure everything’s okay. I don’t want it breaking down when Jon’s using it.’
My eye was drawn to something just over Jack’s shoulder. David was hovering there, seemingly staring out at the harbour, but I got the impression he’d been eavesdropping. He turned, giving me a strange look and a small, self-conscious wave as he left the cabin. It was the first time he’d acknowledged my existence in a while, and I took it as a sign that the tension between us might finally be easing.
***
I woke early the next morning and went out on deck to check on the anchor lines. When I got there I was surprised to find David swimming just a few feet away. At first, he looked flustered by my sudden appearance, but he quickly regained his composure and swam over to the back of the boat before treading water.
‘Hey, Rob.’
It was the first time David had spoken to me since we’d argued and he seemed a little nervous.
‘Hey. You’re up early.’
‘Yeah, just thought I needed a bit of exercise. I’ve been cooped up on my boat for too long.’
David ducked under the water, reappearing a second or two later. I don’t know why, but I had the impression this wasn’t true, or at least that it wasn’t the whole truth. He wiped a hand across his face before continuing.
‘Look, I was hoping to run into you on your own at some point. I just wanted to say sorry … you know about the other day, about the argument we had.’
If he’d come to apologise, that would explain his nervousness.
David carried on. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you like that, and when you didn’t come back from Little Harbour, I felt really bad that those were the last things I’d ever say to you. I wished I’d been man enough to say I was sorry while I still had the chance, so I thought I’d do it now. You know, just in case. After all, these days you never know when you might go out and not make it back.’
It was an odd sort of apology, but I figured it was probably the best I was going to get.
‘Thanks, and for my part, I’m sorry too. I guess I didn’t handle it too well either.’
David smiled. ‘So, everything okay between us then?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ I thought for a moment. ‘You know, David, you’d be a lot happier if you just accepted that setting up a base on land is something none of the rest of us are interested in. It would be extremely dangerous and we just can’t see the benefit of it.’
‘I suppose that’s the problem. I know why we need it, I can see why it’s so important, why we can’t win without it. I just need a way of convincing the rest of them that it’s important.’
‘So you’ve given up trying to convince me then?’ I smiled, but David didn’t seem to take it as a joke. Instead, he just looked uncomfortable. He ducked under the water again and when he came back to the surface he fixed me with an intense gaze that I found unnerving.
‘There’s more than one way to win an argument you know.’
Before I could ask him what he meant, I heard Jack’s voice on the VHF radio. ‘Hey, Rob. Are you there? There’re some drifters just outside the harbour entrance. Can you help deal with them?’
Drifters near the harbour entrance were something that was best dealt with as soon as possible. I turned to tell David what was going on, but he was already swimming back across the harbour. I went inside and found Jon just coming up from his bunk. ‘Are you ready to roll?’
‘Sorry Jon, there’s some drifters that need sorting. We’re going to have to leave the test run until later.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Jon’s voice sounded annoyed for a moment and then more resigned. ‘I guess a few more hours won’t make any difference. But we’ll definitely go out today?’
‘Yes, definitely.’
As I motored over to join the other two runabouts that were setting out to find the drifters, I thought about the encounter I’d just had with David. It was a little odd, but then again all my encounters with David had been a little odd recently. He seemed to be getting more and more obsessed with trying to take back the land from the infected. From the way he spoke, I sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t just thinking about the peninsula with the lighthouse on it, but rather the whole of the Abacos, or even the whole world. He seemed to
o intent on waging a full-scale war against the infected, to drive them from the land completely. I had no idea how he thought he could do it, but that was the impression I sometimes got. Even though I didn’t see eye to eye with him on this, I had to at least give him credit for apologising.