I took a deep breath and raised the foghorn to my lips. The blast shattered the silence. Making such a racket went against all of my innate survival instincts, and even after I’d stopped the sound seemed to carry on, reverberating back to us from the island. There was no response from the day sailer. I blew it a second time, then a third. Still there was no response. It seemed that even if someone had been there recently, they weren’t there anymore.
‘What now?’ CJ looked at me.
‘I don’t know,’ I was out of ideas. I scanned the shoreline with the binoculars just to make it seem like I was doing something. While the foghorn hadn’t roused anyone on the nearby boat, the same couldn’t be said for the island itself. While it was almost a quarter of a mile away, too far for them to really sense our presence, I could see figures shambling out of the bushes and onto the beach. I watched as they gathered at the water’s edge.
‘Why don’t we have breakfast?’ CJ seemed to realise I was playing for time.
‘Yeah.’ I wondered if the others could tell just how grateful I was to CJ for her suggestion, ‘That sounds like a good idea.’
As CJ and Jimmy busied themselves in the galley, I turned my attention back to the infected on the shore. They knew there was something out there, but they didn’t seem to be able to tell quite what. I started to count them but gave up when I got to twenty. They seemed to pause every now and then, to sniff the air or cock their heads to one side, like a dog trying to locate an unfamiliar sound. Maybe I was imagining it because I knew what they were capable of, but these figures seemed more animal than human. As I watched, they lost interest and ambled back into the scrub that covered the island. Soon there was just the one lone figure standing there, staring towards us. I wondered if it had once been the owner of the other boat or whether it was just curious about the object it could see bobbing in the distance.
‘Hey, Rob,’ Jon had come up behind me, ‘food’s ready.’
I walked over to the table and sat down.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Jon spoke between mouthfuls. ‘There might be some useful stuff on that boat. I think we should check it out.’
‘There could be trouble too,’ I was nervous about having another encounter with the infected.
‘I don’t think there’s anyone on board.’ Jon spooned some more food into his mouth. ’If there was we’d have seen them by now.’
‘But we can’t know for sure.’ With Bill gone, I felt responsible for the others and I didn’t want to risk losing anyone else.
‘The infected on the shore heard us and they’re more than a quarter of a mile away.’ Jon sounded exasperated.
‘The cabin door’s closed,’ I pointed out, ‘There could be some trapped inside.’
‘I think we’d have heard them trying to get out if there were. We should at least take a look.’
‘I don’t know. We still don’t really know what we’re dealing with. It’s too much of a risk.’ While I could see Jon’s point of view I felt we had to be much more cautious.
‘We’ve not got a whole lot of food left and there might be some on board.’ CJ was siding with Jon.
‘That’s how Sam got attacked, going onto a boat we thought was empty,’ Mike reminded us.
‘There might be other useful things on board too: charts, stuff like that.’ Jon looked round at us all and I couldn’t help thinking this was getting us nowhere. Despite the fact he’d deferred to me for the first two decisions of the morning, Jon clearly thought he was right — as did I — but neither of us was keen to force our opinion on the other in case we were wrong.
Suddenly there was a sound behind me. I leapt to my feet, sending the last of my breakfast flying, and saw a figure staggering from the cabin of the nearby boat. It was unkempt and dressed in torn clothing. Being nearest, I dived into the cabin and grabbed the rifle. After checking it was loaded, I dashed back to the cockpit. Infected on the island were one thing, they were far enough away to be ignored, but this one was so much closer.
I didn’t know how much of a risk it posed and I decided we couldn’t afford to take any chances. I levelled the gun and moved it across until its head filled the telescopic sight. This was the first time I’d seen one up close and in daylight, and I took the time to study it. Its hair was tangled and its beard straggly. There was dirt ingrained into the lines on its face. As I watched, it licked its lips, its mouth slightly open as if contemplating a meal. Despite this, I was surprised how human it looked. I think it was the eyes; I could see a sense of humanity in them. I wondered whether anything remained inside of the person it had once been. I saw its lips move and heard the sound again, a rasp that was almost like a greeting. As I slowly started to squeeze the trigger, it raised one hand above its head and waved.
‘What’s it doing?’ I took my finger off the trigger and the noise came again, this time it was clearer.
‘Hey. Hey you.’ It was barely discernible, but they were definitely words.
‘Bloody hell! That’s not one of them. That’s a man!’ I lowered the rifle. I was shaking at the thought of what I‘d almost done.
‘Why didn’t he come up when you blew the foghorn?’ CJ was more curious than concerned. I don’t think she realised quite how close I’d been to pulling the trigger.
‘I don’t know.’ Now the initial shock had passed, I started to wonder that too.
‘He doesn’t look quite, I don’t know, quite …’ Mike tailed off but I knew what he meant, there was something odd about the man on the other boat.
He called out again, his voice getting louder and more human, ‘Hey. Hey you. You are there, aren’t you? Answer me. Please. Are you really there?’ The man’s voice sounded both demanding and pleading at the same time.
We looked at each other, wondering what to do.
It was CJ who broke our collective silence. ‘Yes, we’re here. Are you okay? Are you hurt?’
He didn’t seem to really hear the questions, ‘You’re real. My god, you’re real. Shit, you’re real!’
He disappeared into his cabin and it was five minutes before he came back up. In the meantime we waited apprehensively. When he reappeared, he’d done his best to smarten himself up: his hair had been brushed and his face washed. It hadn’t made much of a difference but it was the effort that counted. He’d also changed into clothes that were cleaner but a size too big for him. He called out across the water to us.
‘Sorry about that. I haven’t seen anyone in well over a week. It’s just me … just me and Bob, and occasionally some of his friends.’ As he said this, he pointed over his shoulder at the lone figure standing on the beach.
‘You know who that is?’ I was horrified by the possibility it might be someone he’d once known.
‘No. He appeared there the morning I first arrived and he’s been hanging around ever since. He just stands and stares. He knows I’m here, but he can’t work out how to get to me. Whenever I’m on deck, I can feel him watching me. You’d have thought it would be better at night but it’s not. I can’t see him, but I can hear him. In the night, in the darkness, he moans. Not a lot, but just enough to let me know he’s still there. It’s been driving me mad.’
‘Why do you call him Bob?’ I was intrigued.
The man laughed, more to himself than to us. ‘It’s a very bad joke.’
I waited for him to explain but he didn’t. Instead, he changed the subject. ‘I’d invite you on board but there’s not exactly a lot of room over here.’
‘Why don’t you come over here then?’ We all turned to look at CJ.
‘Why’d you do that?’ Jon hissed furiously.
CJ shrugged. ‘It seemed polite.’
Whatever the reason, the invitation had been issued and accepted, and before we could discuss the matter any further the man was getting ready to launch his dinghy. I had only a few minutes to prepare for our visitor and I really didn’t know what to expect. In a panic, I started by hiding the rifle and then anything else that could be used
as a weapon. While I did this, the others stayed on deck waiting to see what would happen.
All too soon I heard the soft bump of rubber hitting the side of the boat and I went out to welcome our visitor. He secured his dinghy to the back of the boat and clambered into the cockpit. He stood there, suddenly looking uncomfortable now he was with us. After a minute he broke the silence.
‘I’m perfectly safe. I may look it, but I’m not mad. I just haven’t been around people for a while. I guess I forgot how to do it. I’m Matt by the way.’
We each introduced ourselves, CJ, Jon and me stepping forward to shake his hand, the two boys just waving as they kept their distance. They had more experience of the way things were now, and they were much more wary of the unknown. Another uneasy silence followed the introductions.
‘Do you want some tea?’ Unsure of the situation, I reverted to type, doing what my mother always did when confronted with a potentially awkward situation. She thought everything could be solved with a cup of tea: a broken heart, a lost job, a death in the family. I felt the pang I always felt when I thought of her but, for once, I was glad my parents were dead, that they hadn’t lived long enough to see the world change. Unlike Jon and CJ, I didn’t have to worry about what had happened to them, whether they’d somehow survived, how they might have died, whether they’d become infected.
‘What is it with you Brits and your tea? Civilisation’s collapsed, those creatures are everywhere and you still think a cup of tea is the answer. D’you not have any coffee?’ This outburst broke the ice.
‘You Americans never did appreciate tea. I guess we could scrape a mug of coffee together.’ CJ smiled and went into the cabin. She reappeared a few minutes later with coffees for Matt and the other Americans, and teas for herself and me. She’d also dug out some cookies I didn’t even know we still had. We sat around the table in the cockpit and chatted. It was almost as if nothing had changed. I was keen to find out what Matt knew, but I didn’t want to spoil this first moment of normality we’d had in days. It was almost lunchtime before we were brought back to reality when a low moan drifted towards us from the island. We fell silent and turned towards the beach. The lone figure was still there, staring out at us.
‘Bob doesn’t usually make any noise during the day. He senses something different is happening. He must think I’m going to get away, and he’s mad about it.’
‘So why do you call him Bob?’ I was still intrigued by this.
‘As I said, it’s a bad joke. There was a guy I once knew called Bob. He was the nicest guy you’d ever meet. He’d do anything to help anyone, but god did he have a big mouth. One day when he was being particularly loud, someone shouted across the bar to him, “Oy, Bob, would you please just shut the fuck up!” The name stuck and from then on everyone called him “Shut-the-fuck-up Bob”.’
Matt sipped his coffee. ‘On the second night I was here, I was lying in my bunk listening to that creature on the beach. I lost it and started screaming at it, just screaming, “Shut up, just shut the fuck up!” I don’t know how long I screamed but, by daybreak, I was hoarse and he’d acquired the name of Bob.’
After lunch, Matt rowed over to his boat with the promise he’d come back for supper. I still hadn’t got any information from him, I hadn’t asked and he hadn’t offered. I’d have to bring it up at some point but something about Matt made me reluctant to push him. While he’d seemed a bit mad at first, he’d gradually grown more and more normal as we chatted until, by the time he’d left, he seemed almost as sane as the rest of us. And yet something wasn’t quite right. There was a slight blankness behind his eyes, and whenever there was a break in the conservation, he seemed to drift off to somewhere deep inside. They were momentary lapses, but it was as if the friendly mask he was trying so hard to present to us slipped briefly, revealing something much darker lying beneath.
I had no doubt he’d seen some awful things, possibly done some awful things, but that went with the times and it was the only way to survive. It was a mark of how much the world had changed. I thought about what I’d been through in the last few days. I’d seen two people ripped apart in front of me, one of whom was someone I’d known and liked. I’d seen a city that had been razed to the ground, its ruins haunted by the infected. I’d bludgeoned another human being to death as they tried to kill me and I’d very nearly shot Matt just a few hours before, without even stopping to check whether he was infected or not. Maybe I had the same distant look on my face from time to time, and I’d certainly seen something similar on the faces of the others, but with Matt it wasn’t just the look, it was more. It was almost as if a part of him had become lost and he’d been unable to find it again.
I’d seen a similar expression once before, many years ago when I was just a child, on the face of a homeless man I passed every day, on the way to and from school. He was a drunk and half-blind from the alcohol. His life was over and he knew it; he’d given up. He wanted a way out, an escape that could only come with death, but he couldn’t bring himself to end it all. I hadn’t seen that expression since my childhood, but now I was pretty sure I’d glimpsed it again whenever Matt let his mask slip accidentally.
We spent the afternoon fishing and within a few hours we’d caught a fairly decent bag of yellow tails and bar jacks. Matt rowed back just as the sun was going down, bringing with him a bottle of whisky. The way he clutched it as he climbed on board reminded me again of the old man from years before. He held it as if it was more than just a drink, like it was the only friend he had left in the world. I pushed these thoughts from my mind and watched as CJ and Jon worked in the galley, Jon cleaning and filleting the fish for CJ to fry. They also boiled up some rice to accompany it. I couldn’t help thinking that when they weren’t arguing, they worked well together.
Once the meal was prepared, I looked at it. It wasn’t much, just fish and rice, but it was all the hospitality we could offer. We ate in the cockpit and afterwards sat back in the growing darkness, listening to the wavelets slap against the side of the boat. Then we heard it, a low moan floating on the breeze from the island. It was a chilling sound. It wasn’t loud, but it penetrated deep into your soul. Bob was letting us know he was still there. I saw Matt’s eyes flit to the whisky bottle and then close. If we were to get anything useful from him it would be now or never. I knew it would be difficult to get him talking, but I also knew a drink would help things flow.
I picked up the bottle and pretended to read the label. ‘This looks pretty decent, shall we open it?’
Matt licked his lips and replied, ‘Yeah, why not. I haven’t had a good drink since it all happened.’
I was sure he was lying but I said nothing.
As we drank, I told Matt our story, and about how we didn’t know what had happened, how we were at a loss to explain how the world had gone so wrong in the few weeks we’d been out of contact. Then I asked the question I knew I’d have to ask all day, but that I’d been putting off.
‘What do you know about all this?’
Matt looked at me, and then the empty glass in front of him. I poured him another shot. He licked his lips again before he spoke.
‘I don’t really know much. There’d been rumours for a couple of weeks, odd events, stories on the news about problems in Haiti triggered by some biotech company doing something they shouldn’t have been doing. But it was nothing that seemed particularly unusual. The unrest seemed to be spreading and, supposedly, it had reached Puerto Rico and Jamaica, but people just put it down to local politics. There had been some problems on a warship sent down to help out in Haiti, but that was a long way off. We were in America; we thought we were safe. Sure, there had been a few problems in inner cities — random violence and that — but it seemed to be caused by contaminated drugs, or so the news said. What did we have to worry about? We never went to the inner cities. We thought the police would keep it all under control and the doctors would sort out the disease.
‘Then it all went wrong and it
went wrong fast. I was there when it happened, I was actually there. I still can’t believe it. I was with my family and friends. We got together, all of us, once a year and went somewhere interesting. In our younger days, before any of us had children, we’d sail over to the Bahamas and spend a couple of weeks drinking cocktails and partying on a beach. Once we got a bit older, we’d drive down to the Keys rather than go across to the Bahamas. This year we thought we’d be a bit more adventurous again, now that most of the kids were a little older. The usual tensions had eased enough that a ferry route had opened up between Miami and Cuba. We decided we should grab the chance while we could, as no one thought the political situation would stay so relaxed very long.’
Matt picked up his glass and started rolling it distractedly between his palms. ‘We were in four cars and drove down to the Port of Miami early in the morning. We were one of the first ones there, so we were down near the front of the queue of cars on the dock. The ferry was due to get in around lunchtime, so we had a few hours to kill. We got out and chatted, while the kids played around between the cars. We listened to the radio, enjoying the blue skies and the early morning sun. There was some news on the radio about the troubles further south in the Caribbean. It seemed to be getting worse and becoming more widespread. It had reached the Turks and Caicos Islands and it seemed all contact with Haiti had been lost. We discussed it briefly, but thought nothing of it. That was all happening hundreds of miles away.
‘Around lunchtime, the kids started getting hot and hungry, and they started bickering. We were going to wait until we got onto the ferry before eating properly, so Mark, one of my friends, who was on his own, and I decided to go and get some ice creams for all of us. We’d seen a small ice cream stand at the entrance to the dock and we thought we’d try there. By this time the dock had filled up with cars, right the way back to the entrance. It looked like we weren’t the only people keen to check out Cuba while we could. We meandered slowly through the lines of cars, nodding to people every now and then. It all seemed so normal.’ Matt ran a finger across his cheek as if wiping away a tear.
For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea Page 9
