From the guide, I saw the only major test between us and Hope Town, at least from a sailing point of view, was Whale Cay Passage. There, our southward journey would be blocked by shallows and we’d have no choice but to head out into the open waters to the east of the island. The channel we’d pass through was notorious for treacherous sea conditions that could make it impassable when the wind blew from the north-east. If things stayed as they were, we’d be fine, but it could change in the hours before we got there, and even in good weather, we wouldn’t want to try to make it through the passage as the sun was going down.
I looked further north for a suitable place to spend the night. There was a good-sized island, Green Turtle, which under normal circumstances would have been perfect. Yet, it had been well-settled before the outbreak and I wanted to avoid the possibility of an encounter with any infected. Just to its south was a small, apparently uninhabited island, called No Name Cay. It wasn’t much, but it would offer some shelter, while keeping us clear of places where people once lived, and it would put us within striking distance of Whale Cay Passage for the morning.
We reached No Name Cay an hour before the sun disappeared behind Great Abaco. I nosed the boat as close as I dared, and yelled for Jon to drop the anchor. I took the binoculars and eyed up the pass we would face in the morning. It seemed placid enough … for now at any rate.
Supper was a light affair. Despite fishing all day, Jon had caught nothing. There was some rice left over from the night before and a can of pineapple rings for dessert, but none of us were particularly impressed. Later, as I sat at the chart table, I could hear Mike and Jimmy arguing in the cabin they shared and I knew why. This would be the first night we would go to bed hungry.
To take my mind off my empty stomach, I wandered out onto the deck and sat in the darkness, staring into the night. In the west, a fire burned. I watched it for an hour, the glow on the horizon ebbing and flowing as it blazed and spread, before going to bed. In my cabin I lay on my bunk, mulling over the events of the last week. I could barely believe it had only been a week — seven days — since we’d approached Hole-in-the-Wall, so keen to get ashore, to get a break from each other, ignorant of what had happened to the world.
Eventually, rocked by the boat as it pulled gently at the anchor, I drifted off into a tormented sleep.
In my dreams I was in the water, drowning. I saw Bill standing with his back to the sea on the nearby beach and I tried to call out to him. He turned towards me. As he did, I saw his face was covered in blood, his clothes torn and shredded. He raised his arm to point at me accusingly, as if blaming me for his death. Something kept grabbing at my legs, pulling me under as I tried to stay afloat. Each time I spluttered to the surface, I could see Bill still standing there, pointing. Then he was gone and I was being pulled under for the last time. I could feel my lungs burn as they yearned for air. I tried to swim to the surface, but it just got further and further away. I looked down and saw Bill pulling me towards a group of infected that was beckoning to him from the murky waters far below.
I woke with a start, clawing at my sheets and soaked in sweat. I shuddered as I remembered the dream and how real it had seemed. As I lay there, I realised what had woken me. The boat was no longer riding smoothly in the water. The wind had picked up in the night, and it was now bucking and dancing on waves that were battering against the hulls. I grabbed my clothes and ran up on deck. Jon was already there, letting out some extra anchor line, making it less likely it would drag in the strong winds. I helped him secure the line again and we went back to the cockpit.
My dream, my nightmare, was still troubling me and Jon seemed lost in his own thoughts. Eventually he spoke.
‘What d’you make of all this?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, what d’you think our chances are, out here on our own?’
It was a very direct question and not one I’d expected from Jon.
‘They’d have been better with Bill.’ I only said it to try to avoid answering his question, but I realised immediately it had been the wrong thing to say.
‘Bill’s not here anymore, is he.’ Jon had a pained expression on his face. I could tell he felt responsible for what had happened to Bill. He’d been the one who’d fallen asleep when he should have been keeping a look out.
‘Jon, it wasn’t your fault. It could’ve happened to any of us.’
‘But Bill trusted me. I was the one in charge when we ran aground.’ Jon sounded dejected and I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him.
After a few minutes he looked up at me again. ‘So d’you think we have a chance?’
‘I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know. We don’t know enough about what we’re up against yet.’ I’d already let what I really thought slip out once by accident, and I thought maybe it was time to tell Jon the truth. ‘If we can find those other people we might make it. If we don’t, I’m not too sure how long we can last, just the five of us.’
Jon was silent for a few minutes before he spoke. ‘Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking too.’
I looked at him, surprised at how well he was dealing with things. He was clearly trying to make a realistic assessment of our chances, and I had to respect him for that. He stood up and walked over to the back of the boat.
‘So all we have to rely on is what some drunk thought he heard someone saying?’
‘It’s better than nothing.’
As I said this, I wondered if it was true.
***
I woke to find myself still sitting in the cockpit but with a blanket tucked round me. I looked up to see Jon standing in front of me holding out a mug of fresh coffee.
‘Sorry, no tea left, and no milk, not even the powdered stuff, and no sugar. Not much for breakfast either, but there’s this.’ With a flourish he produced a plate from behind his back. A lit candle was stuck to it and alongside this was a single cracker.
Jon smiled at me. ‘Not much of a cake and I know it’s not how you planned to spend it, but happy birthday anyway.’
I counted it out on my fingers and found he was right, it was my birthday; my fortieth birthday. I’d planned to celebrate it in style in Miami, and must have mentioned this to Jon at some point. God knows how he’d remembered. I took the cracker and laughed. In the eight weeks I’d known him, I’d not realised quite what a sense of humour Jon had.
I thought about how old I now was. Forty. Too old to be delivering boats, not that I’d ever be doing that again. I looked back and thought about how little I’d achieved in my life. Nothing much really: No house, no pension, no career, no family. Some people would consider me a failure, my life wasted. Yet, I’d probably outlived most who’d had all those things. The world had changed, the rules had changed, and because of my wasted life, I’d been in a position to survive and they, with their fancy homes, their stock market portfolios and their respectable jobs, had not. True though it was, this thought gave me no satisfaction.
As I sipped my black coffee and ate my cracker, I looked out towards Whale Cay Passage. While it had been placid the night before, it was now filled with rollers stacked one on top of another, and breaking in all directions. I could see now why it was so notorious. I waited for the others to get up and then set out our options.
‘Right, we need to decide what we’re going to do. There’s no way we’re getting through the passage today, it’s just too rough. So we can do one of two things. We can stay here, which is going to be very uncomfortable, or we can head into the lee of Green Turtle. That should give us a bit of shelter, but it’ll mean an earlier start to get through the passage once the weather clears up. What do you think?’ I looked at the others. From their faces, I could see they’d slept as poorly as I had.
‘What are we going to do for food?’ Tired as he was, Jimmy was thinking with his stomach.
‘If we go to Green Turtle, I’m sure we can find somewhere to catch some fish.’ I wasn’t certain of this, but it wa
s the best I could offer.
‘I vote we go there then.’
The others followed Jimmy’s lead so we upped anchor and left. The trip was rough and we had to tack back and forth into the north-east wind. It was four hours before we eased into the shadow of Green Turtle and the seas around us finally calmed.
As we picked our way along the coast looking for somewhere to drop the anchor, I got the feeling we were being followed. It was half an hour before I finally saw a movement on the island. Standing on the crest of a ridge was a lone figure. I picked up the binoculars and examined it. Its clothes were ragged and fluttered around its body. The front of what was left of its t-shirt was stained dark, as was its face. I watched it shuffle over the ridge and disappear from sight. I started looking more carefully along the shoreline. In amongst the scrub, I glimpsed the occasional flash of an arm or a leg, suggesting there were more infected shadowing our movements. We passed a beach and they emerged from cover, a dozen or so shambling figures, sensing our presence. I was sure they couldn’t get through the deep water separating us from the shore but, just in case, I got Jon to steer us further out.
Once we were about 500 feet from the island, the infected seemed to lose track of us and started to move slowly away in all directions. Where they were heading, I couldn’t tell. Soon all but two were gone. The final pair remained at the water’s edge, unmoving, staring after us. Keeping our distance, we paralleled the shore again. The two infected remained where they were as if waiting for us to return.
A mile up the coast, we finally dropped anchor. It was still rough, but not as bad as our last anchorage, and it was as close as I dared go to the island. Once we’d settled in, our thoughts turned to food. Going ashore wasn’t an option, but we needed to find something. Picking up the binoculars, I scanned the waters around us. I saw something sticking out of the water about 200 yards away. It looked like a metal pole sticking up at an odd angle, and it seemed unlikely someone would have put it there on purpose.
Leaving Jon in charge, I took Jimmy and Mike with me in the dinghy to investigate. I brought my snorkelling gear along just in case. The dinghy bounced around on the choppy waves and progress was slow but we got there eventually. The pole turned out to be the tip of a mast belonging to a sunken sail boat. From its size, I’d have said it was more of a weekender than a day sailer, and judging by its condition it hadn’t been in the water for long. Some fish shoaled around it, but otherwise it remained free of the marine life that would colonise a boat when it’d been underwater for more than a few months. I tied the dinghy to the mast and donned my snorkelling gear.
‘What are you going to do?’ Jimmy was looking at me curiously.
‘I’m going to see if there’s anything useful on board.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like food.’
‘But it’ll all be ruined.’
‘Not necessarily.’ I knew what Jimmy was thinking, but I had another possibility in mind.
The boat was lying in about twenty feet of water and was close to the limit of my breath-holding capability. Diving down and kicking towards it, I saw there was a gaping wound below the waterline near the bow. I could see a large coral head looming out of the underwater gloom in the distance and I was pretty sure this was what had holed it. The life raft was gone and the cabin was open, so it looked like the crew got off before it sank, but if this had happened after the infection struck they’d have been little better off than if they’d had to swim for it.
I kicked back for the surface and recovered before diving down again. This time I made straight for the cabin and swam inside. I had a fairly good idea where to look and what I was looking for. I pulled at the padding covering the left-hand bench and it floated away revealing a hatch. I just had time to pull it open and grab one of the many cans that were inside before I ran out of oxygen and was forced back to the surface.
I clung to the dinghy as I caught my breath and then tossed the can to Jimmy, ‘I think you’ll find the food inside is fine. There’s loads more of them down there too.’
Jimmy’s eyes lit up. ‘D’you need a hand bringing it up?’
‘No, I’ll manage.’
Half an hour later and I’d removed almost 100 cans from the sunken vessel and brought them back to the surface. The boat had been very well-provisioned for one designed to spend only the occasional weekend at sea, suggesting whatever had befallen it and its crew had happened after everything had gone wrong.
The journey back to the catamaran was as bumpy as the journey out and, weighed down with the cans, the larger waves broke over us when we hit them. I watched Mike pick up one of the tins and examine it. They’d spent enough time in the water to become a little rusty, but they were all still sealed.
‘How are we going to tell what’s in them?’ Mike had a look of consternation on his face.
‘What d’you mean?’ Jimmy sounded confused.
‘The labels are gone.’
I’d been so busy concentrating on the cans themselves I hadn’t noticed the labels had been washed off.
‘We’ll just have to open them and see.’
Back at the catamaran, we unloaded the salvage, drying the cans carefully before stacking them on the table. The five of us then stood around staring at them, wondering what to do next.
I picked up the nearest one, ‘Okay, time to play tin-can roulette.’ As the others looked on expectantly, I opened it and sniffed its contents. ‘There is the possibility that I’ve just found us a three-month supply of dog food.’
Jimmy and Mike were crestfallen. With trepidation, I reached for a second tin. This one had a ring-pull attached and I peeled back the lid. There was a collective sigh of relief when it became clear that it was chilli rather than Pedigree Chum. Three more cans and we had enough for a not unpleasant, if unorthodox, lunch of chilli, carrots, sweetcorn and tomato juice. While we were eating I even had an idea of how we could use the dog food.
Late in the afternoon, I was back in the dinghy; this time with CJ, the unwanted contents of the first can and two of Jon’s fishing rods. We motored over to the coral head I presumed the sunken boat had struck. Once there, I took the dinghy upwind and let it drift. We baited the hooks with the dog food and dropped them into the water. For a while it seemed even the fish didn’t want it, but on our third pass we started getting bites. Soon, we had two large parrotfish in the bottom of the dinghy, as well as a small grouper.
Once we were back on the catamaran, I cleaned, skinned and filleted the fish before frying them on the stove. I tried another couple of the mystery cans, getting some peas and another can of dog food. I put this aside to be used as bait and spooned the peas onto the plates. The fish was overcooked, and it was too much protein and not enough of anything else, but at least it was filling.
***
In the night, I was plagued by dreams I couldn’t quite remember and I woke in the morning feeling far from rested. I lay there for a few minutes listening for the wind, but it had dropped. I went up on deck to find Jon, Jimmy and Mike returning from a fishing trip, more of the unwanted dog food converted into something edible. We left the anchorage soon after and were through Whale Cay Passage before one. By sundown, we were off an island called Man-O-War Cay, and decided to anchor up for the night. The weather remained calm and I made sure we kept far enough from the shore not to alert any infected to our presence. Hope Town was only an hour or so further south and we would be there early the next day.
Before we went to bed, we made plans for the morning.
‘So how are we going to do it?’ CJ asked nervously.
‘Can’t we just motor into the harbour and see if there’s anyone around?’ Mike’s preferred approach was certainly straightforward.
‘We could, but if there is they mightn’t be too keen on having more people there. It means more mouths to feed.’ I was worried that if we didn’t make a good first impression, we might blow our chances of being able to join up with any other survivors who might
already be there.
‘What’s the alternative?’ Jon looked at me.
‘I think we should take it slow. Maybe go down and anchor outside the harbour. We can watch and see if anyone goes in or out. If we haven’t seen anything by the afternoon, we can take a trip in with the dinghy.’ I was being overcautious but I felt it was too important to be rushed.
‘I think that sounds like the most sensible way to go.’ CJ was onside and I looked at Jon.
He shrugged, indicating he was happy enough to go along with it. ‘There mightn’t even be anyone there anyway. We don’t know for sure they were heading for Hope Town. Maybe they were heading somewhere else. Maybe Matt got it wrong about them heading for somewhere with a lighthouse. They might’ve changed their minds and gone somewhere different. Even if they were heading for Hope Town, anything could’ve happened since Matt lost them.’
I had to admit it was a possibility, but I felt Jon didn’t need to point it out quite so bluntly. I could see CJ and the boys were pinning their hopes on there being other survivors there, and they drooped visibly on hearing what Jon said. I knew how they felt. I, too, was desperately hoping there’d be other survivors there. If there weren’t, I wasn’t sure what we’d do next. While we were surviving from day to day, I still felt we needed to be part of a larger group if we were to have any chance of surviving in the longer term.
Chapter Eight
I woke early the following morning, still unsure of what the day might hold. I went out on deck to find Mike and Jimmy were already up.
‘It’s definitely coming this way.’ Mike was looking south towards Hope Town with the binoculars.
I followed his line of sight and saw a dark object, moving fast and throwing out a wide, white wake. I watched as it grew larger. There were other survivors in Hope Town after all, and they were coming our way.
For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea Page 11
