Claire took a step backwards. ‘It’s not that bad.’
‘I want my own clothes back!’ Sophie yelled in response.
‘You can’t; they’re just too dirty.’
‘Can’t we clean them?’
‘Sophie,’ Claire ran her fingers through her still damp hair, exasperated by her daughter’s outburst, ‘this is a boat; it doesn’t have a washing machine. These clothes are your only option; you’ll just need to make the best of it.’
Sophie said nothing. Instead, she turned and stormed off into the forward cabin.
As the morning wore on, the wind started to pick up, meaning we could finally use the sails. Claire stayed below with Tom, who remained unconscious, while Sophie and Daz helped me on deck. I showed them how to undo the sail ties and raise the larger main sail in the middle of the boat, then the smaller mizzen sail at the back. Sophie’s strop over having to wear my clothes had passed, and having dug around, she’d found an old woollen jumper to cover the shirt. She was now making the most of it, pulling the sleeves down over her hands to keep them warm as she moved around the boat.
Once the sails were up, I demonstrated how to use the winches to crank them tight. Then I showed them how to unfurl the triangular jib at the front of the boat, and use the sheets to set it in the right position.
Both Daz and Sophie seemed to enjoy the challenge of learning how to do something new, and I guessed it took their mind off the events of the last twenty-four hours. I glanced at my watch just to double-check; I couldn’t believe that only eighteen hours ago I’d been sitting on the steps at the top of Buchanan Street, watching the people go by. Now Glasgow was gone, and I couldn’t see how anyone would be able to stop the rest of the country going the same way.
After teaching them the basics, I showed Daz and Sophie how to steer the boat under sail. Mostly it was about setting them just right so that it went in the direction you wanted it to, with little need to touch the wheel. By the time I disappeared into the cabin to get some food, they were taking turns, using the wake to judge who could steer the straightest course. To be honest, neither of them was doing particularly well, but they weren’t doing too badly considering they’d been on the boat for less than a day.
Down in the cabin, I went over to where Claire was changing the dressings on Tom’s wounds. She turned to me. ‘I wish I had something better than gin to keep these sterile. I really don’t want him getting an infection on top of everything else.’
I rubbed my chin nervously, feeling the roughness of fresh stubble. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘Really well,’ Claire applied a new dressing to Tom’s shoulder, ‘apart from the fact he’s still unconscious.’
I watched Claire as she worked. ‘No sign of him coming round?’
‘No.’ Claire sounded glum. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if that head wound is worse than I originally thought.’
‘How much worse?’
‘I really don’t know, but worst case, he might be bleeding into his brain. If that’s happening …’ Claire’s voice faded out.
I stared down at Tom. He was someone who was usually filled with energy and life; always on the move: it was unnerving to see him lying so still. ‘Is there anything we can do to try to help him wake up?’
‘Not really; not without knowing exactly what the problem is. We’ve just got to wait and see.’ Claire adjusted the position of the tube which snaked from Tom’s chest. ‘Have you seen the news this morning?’
‘No, not yet. Anything positive?’
Claire picked up the remote and switch on the television. ‘Judge for yourself.’
On the screen, a newsreader sat, stone-faced, behind a desk, shuffling through his papers as if he was searching for something. Eventually he found it, but he seemed to have to read it twice before he was ready to speak. He cleared his voice and began, ‘This is the latest update we have. Er ...’ He scanned his notes again. ‘It seems that last night’s attempt to eliminate the HRV outbreak in Glasgow has failed.’
Claire stood up. ‘“Eliminate the outbreak”? That’s a great euphemism for killing half a million people. They’re being careful not to say what they did; not a single mention of them bombing the whole city back to the Stone Age.’
I ignored her and kept my attention focussed on the television, but I couldn’t help thinking that she was right.
‘The virus has now moved beyond Glasgow and into the surrounding areas. General McDonald has announced a new strategy to try to contain the outbreak and limit its spread. Rather than trying to set up a cordon around the infected areas, they have established two lines of defence: one to the south along a range of hills known locally as the Southern Uplands; and another to the north. Naval blockades have also been set up in the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde to prevent anyone infected with the virus from getting out.
‘Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has been meeting with other European leaders and NATO commanders to discuss what needs to be done. In a statement released earlier today, he stressed that every effort is being made first to contain the outbreak and then to eliminate it.
‘In related news, the outbreak of HRV which started in Miami two days ago is spreading rapidly across the US. Since the State and Federal Governments didn’t initially realise the events in the city had been triggered by the virus, they only began to try to contain the outbreak yesterday. These belated attempts seem to have failed and there are reports of other major outbreaks in Atlanta and South Carolina. It’s still not clear if the outbreaks in Miami and Glasgow are related, but it seems that a transatlantic flight between the two cities landed just a few hours before the HRV outbreak started in Glasgow, suggesting a link between the two. As a precaution, all commercial flights across the world have been grounded until further notice. However, there are already as yet unconfirmed reports of similar outbreaks in other cities as far apart as Rio, Hong Kong and ...’
I’d seen enough, and I turned off the television. The Government and the army had been more than ready to sacrifice Glasgow to try to stop the outbreak, and now it seemed they were willing to do the same with most of the remaining population of Scotland. There must be close to four million people living between the two defensive lines which had been set up, and it seemed there would be no way for anyone caught between them to get out. That meant there’d be no way to avoid the infection.
Suddenly, Tom moaned, moving for the first time since we’d been knocked down by the bomb blast. Claire sat down on the bench beside him. ‘Hey, how’re you feeling?’
Tom licked his lips. ‘Where am I?’
Claire put the back of her hand on his forehead. ‘We’re on Ben’s boat.’ She lifted up his wrist and felt his pulse. ‘Do you remember?’
Tom opened and closed his mouth slowly. ‘Yeah.’ His eyelids drooped and then closed. ‘It’s the virus, isn’t it? We were trying to outrun it.’ He opened his eyes and looked at me blearily. ‘Did we get away?’
‘Yeah, we got away.’ I smiled at him, glad he was finally awake. ‘At least, for the moment.’
‘So what happened?’ Tom made a feeble attempt to sit up, but Claire put a firm hand on his chest, holding him down. He didn’t seem to have the strength to fight it. He cleared his throat and winced in pain. ‘I remember watching the bombs come down … then …’ A look of concentration spread across his face; after a few seconds he gave up. ‘Then it all gets a little hazy.’
I folded my arms, thinking back to the night before. ‘The last one landed a bit too close. We got hit pretty hard, but we made it through in one piece; more or less.’ I pointed to his chest.
Tom glanced down and saw the tube coming out of his chest for the first time. ‘What the hell’s that all about?’
Claire walked over to the galley and filled a glass with water. ‘You fractured a rib and it punctured your lung.’ She went back to Tom and held his head up as he took a sip. ’I needed to drain the air out.’
Tom blinked slowly. ‘I don’t remember
.’
Claire put the glass down beside him. ‘You’ll have lost your short-term memory when you got knocked out.’ She put her hand on his forehead again, trying to judge his temperature. ‘It’s not unusual.’
Tom tried to sit up again and this time Claire let him, but he only made it halfway before the pain got too much and he slumped back onto the seat. He closed his eyes. ‘My shoulder hurts.’
‘I’m not surprised. You dislocated it.’ Claire offered him another sip of water, but he batted the glass away.
‘Did I?’ With that Tom drifted off again.
I leant forward, concerned. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Yes, I think he’ll be fine. He’ll just need to rest.’ The relief was clear in Claire’s voice. ‘Although I’m not looking forward to removing that tube and sewing up the incision without any anaesthetic; It’s going to hurt like hell.’
‘What’s for supper? I’m starving.’ Tom was properly awake now, his eyes following me keenly as I rummaged through the cupboards. As usual, there had only been me on the boat on the run up from the Canaries and I‘d expected to be able to pick up more supplies while I was in Glasgow. This meant I didn’t have much left on board, and certainly not enough to feed five people for any length of time. Daz, Claire and Sophie sat around the table with Tom, all looking at me expectantly. We’d dropped the sails and were drifting with the current somewhere between the town of Largs on the mainland and the island of Cumbrae, which lay off to the west.
‘Not much.’ I inspected the contents of the last food cupboard I’d searched. ‘All I’ve got is a couple of cans of baked beans and a packet of supernoodles.’ I turned to the others apologetically, ‘I meant to pick up some supplies yesterday, but I never got the chance.’
‘Hey, food’s food, isn’t it?’ Daz looked round, grinning, but he saw he was getting little support from the others.
‘Well, it’s all we’ve got, so it’ll have to do, whether you like it or not.’ I turned back to the cupboard and emptied it.
***
The following morning we lay off Brodick, a small ferry port on the island of Arran, and contemplated the shore. We needed supplies and we needed fuel, but we couldn’t be certain if it was safe to go ashore. I hoped the islands out in the Firth might be safer than the mainland, but I had no way of knowing whether or not this was true. The news on the television wasn’t much use. It was now filled with what amounted to little more than propaganda, and none of it seemed to match with our own experiences.
They still hadn’t mentioned what had happened to Glasgow and they were still pretending that the best chance people in the infected zone had was to stay inside and keep themselves to themselves. I felt sorry for those who believed them: given what we’d seen so far, I figured that since they’d been abandoned by almost everyone, there was little hope for them. I just hoped they didn’t realise it, not yet at any rate; I wanted them to live the briefness that would be the rest of their lives in hope. We knew the real situation, but at least with the boat it seemed like we had a way out. There was still talk of a naval blockade on the Firth, but we’d seen no evidence of it yet.
Brodick was little more than a cluster of shops, cottages and other buildings, but it offered the possibility of supplies close to the shore. It seemed likely that the ferries, which were its only connection to the mainland, would have stopped running before the outbreak reached the nearest mainland port, and it was possible that the infected which had been swept down the river after Glasgow was bombed hadn’t made it this far before they finally drowned. I surveyed the land: nothing moved, but smoke circled up lazily from a couple of chimneys, meaning there was still life in the small community.
I dropped the anchor, and Daz and I set to work inflating the dinghy and fitting the engine. Once we had it in the water, we climbed in and puttered towards the shore. Soon, we were alongside the harbour walls and I tied the dinghy to a rusting iron ladder before we climbed up and onto the quay. Daz looked around. ‘What now?’
‘There’s a shop up there,’ I pointed to a small, white-washed building with boards advertising various newspapers on either side of the door, ‘I guess we should try there first.’
As we walked along the dock, I surveyed my surroundings, worried about what we might find, but with the exception of the gulls which wheeled and circled overhead, everything remained still. When we reached the shop, we found it was closed. Daz was rattling the shutters, trying to judge how easy it would be to break in, when there was an explosion and the shop’s window disintegrated in front of us. I spun round to find two men standing in the middle of the street, each armed with a shotgun.
I called out to them. ‘Hey, don’t shoot, we’re okay. We’re just looking for some food.’
The man on the right raised his gun and I saw his finger shift onto the trigger. ‘Daz. Run!’
We sprinted for the dock as the man fired again, sending splinters flying from the door where we’d been standing just moments before. Back at the ladder, Daz climbed down first and I quickly followed, glancing back at the two men; they were now standing at the entrance of the quay, shotguns resting in the crooks of their arms: it seemed they weren’t out to kill us, just to drive us away, and it had certainly worked. I jumped the last few feet into the dinghy, landing in it with a loud whop. I steadied myself before untying it, annoyed and a little worried that we were heading back to the boat with nothing to show for our efforts.
‘They tried to kill you?’ Sophie was shocked by Daz’s retelling of the events on shore.
‘I don’t think they really meant to hurt us.’ I was trying to bring a sense of calm back to the boat. ‘I think they were just warning shots’
‘Warnin’ shots? Any closer an’ they’d have blown our bloody heads off!’
‘Daz, you’re exaggerating.’
‘Am no’!’
‘Either way, why were they shooting at you?’ Tom had raised himself slowly and painfully into a sitting position.
‘I’m guessing it’s because we’re strangers.’ I leant back against the cooker in the galley. ‘They were probably worried we‘d bring the disease to the island. Most likely they were just trying to keep themselves safe.’
Tom shrugged. ‘I suppose you can’t really blame them.’
‘No, I guess not,’ Claire stood up and paced around the cabin, ‘but we still don’t have any food.’ There was a note of concern in her voice.
Looking at the clock, I realised it would be low tide in a couple of hours. ‘I think I know where we can get some, but it’s probably best if we move down the coast a bit first. We don’t want to run into those men again.’
‘Where?’ Daz’s stomach rumbled loudly as he spoke.
‘You’ll see.’ I climbed up into the cockpit, leaving the others buzzing with curiosity about my plan.
A couple of miles down the coast, I found a section of uninhabited, rocky beach and dropped the anchor again.
Daz scanned the shore with the binoculars and then turned to me with a confused look on his face, ‘Why’re we stoppin’ here? There’re no shops,’ he scanned the land again, ‘or anythin’.’
I patted him on the shoulder as I passed him to ready the dinghy for going ashore. ‘Not all food comes from shops, Daz.’
‘What d’you mean?’ He asked quizzically.
I took a bucket out of a deck locker and threw it into the dinghy. ‘You ever watch Ray Mears?’
‘Yeah,’ Daz answered slowly, trying to work out where I was going with this.
‘Well then, you should know there’s plenty of food out there, if you know where to look for it.’
‘What sort of food?’ Sophie had come up behind us.
I smiled at her. ‘Come with us and you can see for yourself.’
I climbed into the dinghy, followed by Sophie and then Daz, while Claire stayed behind with Tom. A minute later, the rubber dinghy was bumping onto the rocky shore and we were getting out. Together, Daz and I lifted the dinghy just beyon
d the water’s edge, then I set to work showing the two youngsters where we could find things we could eat. ‘There are limpets attached to the rocks, and mussels and periwinkles, too.’
Daz was confused. ‘What the hell’s a periwinkle?’
I pointed to the small black shells covering the rocks.
He scowled. ‘But they look like snails!’
I laughed. ‘They are snails.’
‘I’m no’ eatin’ snails!’ Daz sneered disgustedly.
‘They’re not as bad as you’d think, you know,’ Sophie shot back. ‘I had some once when we were on holiday in France. They’re a bit rubbery, but they’re okay. Jake didn’t like them, though, they made him sick.’ She stopped suddenly and looked down at her feet. Daz put an arm round her shoulders and hugged her tightly. After a few seconds, she broke away, wiping her eyes and sniffing, trying to hide how upset she was.
Daz tried to stop her moving away. ‘It’s okay to miss him.’
Sophie shook Daz off and, drying her face on the sleeve of the outsized jumper she was wearing, she turned her attention to the rocks, picking off the periwinkles and mussels before dropping them into the bucket.
Reckoning the best thing would be to leave her to it for the time being, I turned to Daz. ‘There are other things we can eat here, too. See this green stuff? That’s called sea lettuce and it’s edible. And if you turn over rocks and pull back the seaweed, there’ll be crabs and butterfish under there.’
This piqued Sophie’s interest. ‘What’s a butterfish?’
‘Here, I’ll show you.’ I leant down and shifted a large handful of seaweed, revealing the rocks underneath. Everywhere there was movement as the sea creatures which had been hiding beneath it skittered away from the unexpected burst of light. I picked up a small crab and dropped it into the bucket, before scooping up some eel-like fish about the size of my index finger which were flapping around between the rocks. I held them out to Sophie and Daz. ‘These are butterfish. They’re small, but they’re really tasty when you fry them up.’ I dropped them into the bucket and moved on to the next patch of seaweed.
For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak Page 10
