Claire looked concerned. ‘What d’you mean?’
I took another mouthful of beer. ‘He’s very keen to get all the survivors around here together on Rhum and set up a community there, and he seems to think the key to doing that is to offer them something they can’t get anywhere else.’
‘Like what?’ Claire was eyeing me suspiciously.
‘Like some sort of medical facility, complete with its own doctor.’
‘And by that, you mean me?’ Claire took an angry swig of her beer. ‘I hope you told him where to shove it!
‘Well,’ I rubbed the back of my neck, ‘no.’
Claire glared at me. ‘What did you tell him?’
I picked nervously at the label on my beer bottle. ‘I told him that his best chance of getting you on his side was to get you medical supplies: equipment, medicines, and so on.’
Claire slammed her bottle down onto the seat beside her, sending beer foaming out over the top. ‘You told him what?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ I replied defensively.
‘I suppose,’ she conceded.
‘And if he can get you stuff like that, then you’d be able to do much more for the people around here, wouldn’t you?’
‘That’s true.’
‘So if he made you an offer, would you take him up on it?’
Claire picked up her beer again and drained what was left. ‘If it means I can treat people better, then I might. There’s only so much I can do with what I’ve got with me, and I’ve already run out of almost everything useful. We’ve been lucky so far; there’s not really been anything I haven’t been able to handle, but our luck’s got to run out some time, hasn’t it?’ She got up and leant on the side of the boat. ‘I don’t know. I’d need to think about it. I wouldn’t want to get stuck there, and I’m not too sure I’d want Sophie to be around those marines all the time either, but I can see the benefits of having somewhere with proper equipment in case of emergencies.’
***
‘What’s that over there?’ We’d left Canna early that morning and we were just getting ready to turn into the sound between Mull and the mainland when Daz called out. ‘Over there. You see it?’
I stared in the direction Daz was pointing, but with the wind blowing at a steady twenty-five knots, it was difficult to spot anything amongst the swell and breaking waves. ‘What did it look like?’
‘Dunno. It looked big, though, six, maybe eight feet long.’ Daz craned his neck, trying to find the object again. ‘Might’ve been a whale or somethin’.’
‘It could’ve been a leatherback turtle. I’ve seen them out here before.’ I glanced up at the sails, checking how they were set. ‘We need to come about.’
I watched as the others scuttled around the deck, dressed in their waterproofs and life jackets. The seas were rough, but they weren’t so bad that safety harnesses had to be worn. Nonetheless, care needed to be taken. ‘Daz, one hand for yourself and one for the boat.’
‘What?’ Daz sounded confused.
‘I mean, always hold on with one hand whenever you’re doing anything outside of the cockpit.’
He gave me a double thumbs up. ‘Gotcha!’
Tom and Sophie laughed.
‘Daz, stop messing around.’ I gave the boat, and the sea, a quick once-over, then I picked a spot between the approaching swells. ‘Ready abou …’
‘WAIT!’ Daz was standing on his tip toes, peering into the distance.
‘Daz, I told you to stop messing around!’ I was beginning to lose my temper.
‘No, I saw it again! The thing I saw before: it’s a boat!’
I searched the waters around us, but saw nothing. ‘What sort of boat?’
‘A little one; a rowing boat or somethin’ like that.’ Daz’s eyes were sweeping back and forth across the sea. ‘I’ve lost it again, but it was definitely a boat, an’ I think there’re people in it.’
‘Where?’
Daz pointed off the right-hand bow. ‘Over there somewhere. No’ too far away.’
‘And you’re sure it was a boat?’
‘Definitely!’
I made a quick assessment of the situation: if there was a small boat out here with people on it, then they were in trouble, especially in these seas. Instead of turning to the east, I turned until we were heading in the direction Daz had indicated. ‘Daz, go up front. See if you can spot it again. If you do, call out, but keep your eye on it; don’t lose it. Point at it and keep pointing. Sophie, Claire, stand by the mast; you can relay any instructions between Daz and me. Tom, I need you to stay back here and adjust the sails.’
Within moments, everyone was in position and the boat was cutting as close to the wind as I dared. The waves were now crashing over the bow on a regular basis, and Sophie squealed as a particularly large one drenched her. I heard Daz call out from the bow and saw him point.
‘Claire, what did he say?’
‘He says he can see it now. Straight ahead, about 100 yards.
Daz called out again and Claire relayed it back to me. ’Fifty yards. I can see it now, too.’
Another few seconds and I caught a glimpse of it myself. Daz was right; it was a small rowing boat, no more than six feet long. Two people were huddled towards the stern. Neither of them had realised we were there; instead, they were concentrating on something lying on the bottom of the dinghy that I couldn’t see.
‘Claire, I can see them now. Tell Daz to get back here, we’re going to have to do some pretty tight manoeuvring to get them alongside.’
Claire arrived back in the cockpit. ‘What d’you mean get them alongside?’
‘We’ll need to take them on board. We can’t just ignore them. That boat won’t last much longer out here in this weather, and if they end up in the water, they’ll drown.’
‘But what if they’re infected? Remember that man back at the blockade? The carrier? Remember what happened when Pete took him on board?’
That hadn’t even occurred to me and the possibility distracted me momentarily.
‘Ben, look out!’ Daz leapt into the cockpit, grabbing the wheel and turning it sharply to the left. The yacht heeled steeply onto its side and we narrowly avoided smashing into the wooden dinghy.
‘Shit! Thanks, Daz.’ I took a few seconds to compose myself, not believing I’d almost run them down. ‘We’ll turn up into the wind and heave to. Then we can work out what we’re going to do.’
With the others following my directions, we soon came to a halt some twenty yards upwind of the dinghy, rising and falling each time the heavy swell passed under us. Unsurprisingly, since we’d very nearly run them down, the people on board had finally noticed our presence and were waving frantically.
‘So what do we do?’ I turned to find the others looking at me enquiringly.
I scanned the dinghy. ‘They don’t look like they’re infected.’
Claire scowled. ‘But that doesn’t mean they’re not carriers, does it? They could have been bitten or injured in some way; if there’s even a small risk of that, it’s too great.’
Sophie was holding on tightly to the guard rail as she swayed back and forth with the movement of the yacht beneath her feet, eyes fixed on the tiny boat. ‘But, Mum, we can’t just leave them here, can we?’
‘Yeah,’ Daz chimed in.
Tom did his best to avoid making eye contact with me, ‘Sorry, Ben. I’m afraid I’m with Claire on this one.’
‘But if they’re not infected and we leave them there, they’re going to die.’ I looked from Claire to Tom and back again. ‘You want that on your conscience?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Tom mumbled noncommittally. ‘But still, it’s a risk; isn’t it?’
I glanced at the rowing boat: the two people were now calling out to us, but their words were being whipped away by the wind before they reached us. ‘They don’t seem sick right now. Claire, d’you think you’d be able to tell if they’re carriers or not?’
‘If they are, they’
ll have an injury of some kind, and I should be able to find it if I examine them.’ It was Claire’s turn to look at the dinghy, which was now only about ten yards away. ‘That’s if they’ll let me.’
‘Okay, so how about this? We’ll pick them up for now. You can examine them, and if you’re sure they’re not infected, we can take them back to Tobermory. If you think there’s even a chance of them being infected, or if they won’t let you examine them, we’ll drop them off on one of the uninhabited islands nearby; then we can wait and see what happens. Does that sound like a plan?’
There were nods all round.
‘Fuck!’ Daz was peering over the side of the boat. ‘What happened to him?’
The wooden dinghy was now alongside the yacht, inside were two women, one in her late twenties, the other probably in her thirties; neither were dressed in waterproofs and their clothes were soaking wet. Both looked terrified and exhausted. Now the rowing boat was beside us, we could see a third person lying, unconscious, in the bottom. He was young, maybe only a couple of years older than Daz and from the colour of his skin, he looked close to death. The reason for this was clear: his left arm ended in a mass of blood-soaked rags just above the elbow.
‘He got bitten by one of those people.’ It was the younger of the two women who spoke first. ‘He didn’t have a choice, he had to cut it off.’
Claire’s eyes narrowed. ‘How long?’
The woman stared blankly, seemingly confused by the question. ‘What?’
‘How long between when he was bitten and when he cut his arm off?’ It took me a few seconds to work out what Claire was thinking.
‘I don’t know, maybe two or three minutes.’ The older of the two women answered this time. ‘Why? What does it matter? Are you going to help us or not?’
‘Was he the only one who got bitten?’ Claire was observing the women closely; their clothes were stained with blood, but neither had any visible injuries.
‘Only him,’ the younger woman gestured to the man lying in the bottom of the dinghy. ‘They attacked us out of nowhere.’ She shook her head, ’I just don’t understand where they came from.’
‘When did all this happen?’
The women looked at each other and shrugged, then the older one answered. ‘I don’t know; five hours ago, maybe six at the most.’
Claire straightened up. ‘Okay, get him on board and I’ll see what I can do.’
‘He’s not going to make it.’ Claire and I were down in the cabin; on Claire’s orders, the others had remained in the cockpit. Claire continued. ‘He’s lost too much blood, there’s nothing I can do. What he really needs is a blood transfusion and there’s no way we can do that out here, not without the right equipment.’
She moved over to the sink and washed her hands. ‘Probably just as well really. Feel his forehead; he’s burning up.’
I reached out and put the back of my hand against his skin. Sure enough, he was hot to the touch; sweat was starting to bead and roll down the sides of his head. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It most likely means he’s infected.’ Claire dried her hands. ‘They said it was a couple of minutes between when he got bitten and cutting his arm off. Given how quickly the virus seems to affect most people, I doubt that would be quick enough. Once it got into his blood stream, it would have been pumped round his body in seconds.’
‘So how long before he turns?’ The thought of having someone infected with the disease on board terrified me.
‘I don’t know. I guess it depends on how much of the virus got into the rest of his body before he did the amputation, but I don’t think it really matters.’ We both looked at the man. His breathing was shallow and erratic, his skin pale, almost grey. Claire turned away. ‘With the amount of blood he’s lost, he’ll be dead in minutes.’
I glanced towards the companionway. ‘We need to get him off the boat as soon as possible.’
‘So how did you end up all the way out here?’ Tom was sitting with Sophie and Daz on one side of the cockpit, while the two women sat opposite. ‘I mean, where did you come from?’
It was the older woman who answered. ‘We’re from Iona. We’ve been doing pretty well there, really. Then yesterday, these two people with the disease appeared out of nowhere. I didn’t recognise them. I don’t know where they came from. We haven’t let anyone near the island since we heard that Mull had been overrun, and none of us have been off it other than to fish.’ She shook her head. ‘Before we knew it, we were running for our lives; I think some of the others made it back to their houses, but I don’t know for sure. We ran for the boats. They chased us though.’
‘Just the two of them?’ Daz was clearly wondering how this had happened.
‘No, there were others by then.’ The younger woman interjected. ‘People who’d been attacked, lots of them. People I’ve known all my life: friends, relatives …’ Her voice tailed off into silence.
The older woman picked up where the younger one left off. ‘We got there just in time and jumped into the first boat we found, only Ruairidh stayed on the dock to untie it and that’s when he got bitten. There was a fish knife tucked under the gunnels. He grabbed it and cut off his arm: I don’t know how he could do it. He had to snap the bone once he’d cut through the skin and muscle.’ She looked up as Claire and I climbed into the cockpit. ‘How is he? Is he going to be okay?’
Claire took a deep breath, ‘No, I’m afraid he’s …’
Before she could finish, there was a roar from behind us. Instinctively, I pushed Claire out of the way as I turned to see what was happening, but something hit me before I was even halfway round, sending me sprawling face-first onto the deck. I heard screaming and shouting above me as I tried to free myself, but I was pinned by the weight of the man on my back. I kicked and thrashed, expecting to feel his teeth sinking into my neck at any moment, his hands ripping into my flesh, but before any of that happened, I heard the sound of a heavy blow and he went still. I pushed up with my arms and felt him slip to the side. Not knowing what I was going to find, I leapt up, my eyes darting round the cockpit.
For an instant, everything seemed frozen: Claire was scrambling to get back to her feet; Tom and Daz were standing on the seats on one side of the cockpit where they’d jumped to get out of the way; the two women on the other: all were staring down at the man, who was now lying, lifeless, on the deck. His head had been shattered, and fragments of his skull mixed with hair, blood and brains. Standing over him was Sophie, shaking, a heavy winch handle gripped tightly in both hands.
‘That’s us here. Let’s see what we can see.’ Mitch adjusted the throttle and turned the seaplane to the left, bringing it low over the shoreline.
We’d arrived back in Tobermory an hour after unceremoniously dumping the lifeless body of the young man over the side, and alerting the others on the radio. By then, Mitch had offered to do a fly-over to find out more about what had happened on Iona. I was keen to find out too, so I volunteered to go with her.
It took a little over twenty minutes before the island came into view and we started to descend. Almost immediately, we saw two people shuffling slowly along an otherwise deserted road.
‘There!’ Mitch pointed and brought the plane around in a tight circle. Below us, a knot of infected surrounded a two-storey house which stood slightly apart from a small group of other buildings. A man leaned from one of the upper windows, waving frantically up at us. Mitch took the plane in low, momentarily distracting the infected which crowded round the homestead, trying desperately to break in. Iona had undoubtedly been overrun, but it seemed that at least some had survived.
In the ten minutes it took to fly the length of the island and back, we’d found three houses which, judging by the infected clustered round them, had groups of survivors inside. We were debating what to do next as we flew over the island one last time just to make sure there weren’t others we’d missed on the first two passes.
‘Mitch, I agree we can’t just leave
them like that, but we can’t really do anything about it either. We can’t take on that many infected. We’re not equipped for it.’
‘So what are you suggesting instead?’
We flew over one of the besieged houses again, causing the infected to look skyward as they searched for the source of the noise. As soon as we’d passed, they returned their attention to the building, and renewed their assault.
‘I know you’re not going to like it, but how about we ask Gordon? The marines could be down here in a couple of hours. They’ve got the guns and they’re trained to do just this sort of thing.’
‘I’m really not sure about that. Isn’t this something we should be handling ourselves?’
‘They’re not as bad as you think. Gordon realises they screwed up when they first arrived: they misread the situation.’ I looked down as the last of the island slid below us and we headed back out to sea, the white caps of the wave shining against the deep blue. ‘All he wants to do is work with us, not against us, and if they’re willing to risk their lives to help rescue people, then I don’t think we should hold that against them.
‘I guess not.’
‘So where are the survivors trapped?’ Gordon was poring over a map he’d spread out on his desk while Nick stood beside him. Mitch and I had arrived at the Rhum community a few minutes before and as soon as we’d explained the situation, Gordon had offered to mount a rescue mission.
Mitch pointed to the map. ‘There’s one here, another here, and the third’s further up the coast, here.’
Nick examined the map closely. ‘How many infected did you see?’
‘There’s maybe eighty or ninety in all, mostly around the buildings where the survivors are, but there are others scattered across the island.’
Nick straightened up. ‘That shouldn’t be anything we can’t handle.’
‘We’ll fly down with you. We can keep a look out and tell you where the infected are.’
For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak Page 25
