I glanced round. ‘Has anyone got a better idea?’ The others remained silent. ‘Okay, I admit it’s not much, but it’s the only plan we’ve got.’
‘Hmm.’ Jon had a look of resignation on his face. ‘I guess so, but let’s eat first.’
He picked up a can and opened it with his Leatherman and offered it to Jimmy.
Jimmy refused to take it. ‘I don’t want peaches anymore.’ The novelty of eating fruit had quickly worn off.
‘You need to eat something,’ Mike urged his brother. Jimmy took the can, but only ate a few mouthfuls before he set it down.
Jon opened a second can for Mike and one for me before opening one for himself. As I ate, I stared up at the top of the container looking for any possible weak spots, but I couldn’t find one.
‘So how are we going to do this?’ Jon looked at me.
‘If we stack some boxes up, we’ll be able to reach the roof and then we can try to break through.’
Jon didn’t reply. Instead, he started shifting boxes around while Mike and Jimmy watched. Once it was ready, I climbed up and added the sound of my banging to the cacophony from the infected. After an hour it was clear that just as the infected couldn’t break in, there was no way we could break out. The metal was too thick. I slumped dejectedly onto a small pile of boxes and we sat there, refusing to even look at each other.
I thought about what the others would be doing in Hope Town. CJ would be beside herself while Jack would be concerned about the loss of more people from his ever-dwindling community, as well as our safety. Some would presume that CJ and Jeff wouldn’t want to stay on the catamaran on their own and would already be eyeing it up as a possible upgrade to their own less salubrious accommodation. It was harsh, but these were difficult times.
Jon was obviously thinking about similar things. ‘I hope CJ isn’t worrying too much.’
After a few seconds, he looked up at me. ‘You know me and her ...’
Jon’s voice tailed off but I had an inkling of what he’d been about say.
‘I ... I ...’ Jon’s eyes flicked around the container as he struggled to grasp a thought and put it into words. I waited for him to pull it together. ‘I ... I never got to tell her I love her.’
They’d been trying not to make it obvious but I’d noticed how close the two of them had become. It had been building gradually and while I hadn’t been certain until that moment, I’d been sure something had been going on between them. At first, I just noticed that Jon had stopped treating CJ like a little sister, to be belittled and sneered at. Then I noticed he’d stopped calling her Cammy and had started calling her CJ like everyone else. More recently, there had been a few nights when they’d lingered in the cockpit long after the rest of us had turned in. Last week, a couple of days after the hurricane, I’d gone up to check on the anchor line in the night and found them asleep under a blanket, CJ resting her head on Jon’s chest, his arms wrapped round her. It could have been innocent but I’d very much doubted it. I’d slipped back into the cabin and made sure I made enough noise to wake them before going outside again. They were both sitting up, looking a little lost, hair tousled. The blanket had been tucked out of sight.
‘Hey, you two still up? I hope you weren’t sleeping up here. You know it’s not safe to stay outside at night.’
After the hurricane, the number of drifters had increased, with both infected, and debris they could cling to, being swept into the sea by the heavy rains and strong winds. We’d had incidents where several had been brought into the Hope Town anchorage by the flowing tide. One had even made it as far as the deck of a boat before it was spotted and dealt with. This meant that while I could understand Jon and CJ’s need for some space where they could be alone, I wasn’t pleased they’d taken such a risk. Maybe it hadn’t been intentional, maybe they’d simply fallen asleep while talking late into the night, but the infected wouldn’t care. I’d watched them slink back into the cabin and saw Jon tenderly sweep the hair away from CJ’s face and run his hand down her back as she turned to go down to her own bunk. I checked the anchor line and returned to the cabin to find Jon sitting at the table with a glass of water, staring into space, lost in his own little world. I secured the cabin door and retired to my bunk, leaving him to it.
I looked over at Jon now, stuck in the container with me when he’d rather be cuddled up with CJ in Hope Town. He seemed deep in his own thoughts. I gazed over at Mike and Jimmy. Somehow Jimmy had finally fallen asleep but Mike just stared straight ahead, his eyes unfocussed. I sat back and watched the pinpricks of light as they moved slowly across the floor, telling me the sun was moving across the sky; that time was passing.
In a few hours it would be dark again and I wasn’t too sure I could go through another night listening to the sound of the infected as they banged and pulled at the metal. I concentrated on their sounds now. I could hear them snarling and groaning as they moved around, one or other of them occasionally letting out a roar of frustration.
I thought about our situation. One thing was clear; we weren’t getting out of here on our own. If no one came to rescue us, we would die in the container. It was only a matter of when and how. And why would anyone come to rescue us? They knew where we’d gone, and we were the first to venture this far south since everything had changed. Our failure to return would be taken as a sign that the area was unsafe, that it should be made off-limits.
They might venture down months from now, maybe a year, driven here finally by the need for something they couldn’t find anywhere else. What would they find when they did? If they came sooner rather than later, they’d find our boat tied to a container surrounded by infected. They’d figure we couldn’t still be alive inside and they’d move on. If they came later, we’d be dead and the infected would probably have gone, having moved off once they no longer sensed living creatures inside. They might see the container and land, opening the door, seeking something useful and find our bloated, rotting corpses, or maybe even just our skeletons. Either way, we weren’t getting out alive.
Throughout my life I’d often thought about how I would die. In my younger days, I’d wondered if it would be in a drunken fight in some bar, or in a car crash caused by driving too fast and too carelessly. As I’d grown older, I worried about a fire in the night, about carbon monoxide poisoning, about cancer, a heart attack, a stroke … about dying alone in my flat, unnoticed and unmissed. When I was at sea I worried about storms and rogue waves, and even about hitting shipping containers, floating just below the surface, like the one in which I now found myself. I’d never imagined, I could never have imagined, that it would end like this, stuck in a metal box on a remote tropical beach, surrounded by people — or what had once been people — infected with some virus that meant they’d kill us if they could only get their hands on us.
I had a moment of clarity and could see how it would play out. The ever-present noise of the infected trying to get in would eventually get to one of us, to all of us, in hours, days, weeks, or months, if we could hold out that long. From there, it would go one of two ways. We could decide to make a run for it, distracting the infected enough to open the door and see if all of us, or even one of us, could make it far enough into the water before they got to us. If we tried that, I doubted any of us would survive. There were too many of them, and it would be a terrible way to go — to watch each other go — being torn apart by the infected. Even if, by some miracle, we didn’t all die there and then, those of us who survived would probably be injured and would eventually turn, becoming just like them. None of us would want to end up like that.
The other option was that we could decide to end it on our own terms. I looked around the container for something we could use to do the job. I’d cut myself often enough on tin cans to know that they could be razor-sharp. A can could be made into something that would do it. Maybe we wouldn’t have to resort to that and Jon’s Leatherman would be enough. If we decided to take that way out, it would need to be a joint de
cision. One of us couldn’t just decide to do it on their own, leaving the others stuck in the container with a dead body. It would force them to act, either to go outside and face the infected or to follow suit.
I was suddenly shaken from these thoughts by something, but it took me a minute to work out what. The constant assault of the infected on the container had decreased, not by a lot, maybe only by one or two, but there were definitely fewer of them. Then there was a pause in the banging I heard what sounded like an engine revving. I only heard it for a second, but I was sure it had been there.
I looked at the others. Jon was bolt upright, as was Mike. Jimmy looked startled, having just woken up, and was wondering what was going on. It was clear I wasn’t the only one who’d heard it.
‘Was that an engine?’ Mike’s eyes flicked from Jon’s face to mine and back again. ‘D’you think someone’s out there?’
‘I think so.’ Jon was on his feet. ‘We need to let them know we’re in here.’
He started banging on the side of the container, yelling at the top of his voice. Mike and Jimmy joined him, as did I. Suddenly there was a loud explosion and something rattled off the side of the container. I could tell from the way it blocked the light coming through the holes that one of the infected was now slumped against it. There was another explosion. This time I saw the metal wall buckle into small pits in an area about a foot in diameter. Another of the infected slumped to the ground. Whoever was out there was using a shotgun, and, with two shots out of two, was using it very effectively. The only person in Hope Town with a shotgun was Jack, but I’d never seen him use it. I had the impression Jack didn’t like guns, and even when it came to dispatching drifters, he preferred to leave it to others. Maybe I’d misjudged him and he was happy to use a gun when he really had to. Another shot rang out, then a fourth, a fifth and a sixth. Then there was silence.
For about a minute nothing happened, then we heard the lever on the door start to move. Once it was fully up, the door was pulled open. A figure stood silhouetted against a light brighter than we’d seen in over twenty-four hours, a shotgun resting on its shoulder. It seemed smaller than Jack, and more slender.
I wondered who it was; then Jon spoke.
‘CJ?’ He sounded confused. I looked again, it did seem more like a woman than a man.
‘Jon, you’re alive!’ CJ ran forward and threw her arms around him. Even in the dim light, I could see tears streaming down her face as she hugged him as tightly as she could. He, in turn, hugged her back, just as hard.
I waited for a second before intruding. ‘Right, come on you two, you’ve got plenty of time for that later. We need to get out of here before any more infected turn up.’
That broke the moment. Jon and CJ pulled apart, and Mike and Jimmy scrambled down from the boxes. Together, we burst into the sunlight, shielding our eyes as we did so. Once I became accustomed to the light, I saw Andrew standing off a few feet from the shore in Jack’s runabout. He waved and called out.
‘Hey, good to see you’re still alive.’
‘Glad to be alive, and to finally be free.’ Jon glanced at CJ as he said this.
‘I know the feeling.’ Andrew must have been thinking about the two days he’d spent on the dock at the start of the outbreak.
The tide was further out than when we arrived so our runabout was resting on the sand. I picked up the rifle and between us, CJ and I kept guard while the others manhandled the boat back into the water. Since no more infected turned up, we took the opportunity to load as many boxes as we could into Jack’s runabout. Finally, we were ready to go.
Just as we were about to leave, I thought of the child lying dead further down the beach. ‘Guys, before we go there’s something I need to do.’
‘What?’ Jon had a concerned look on his face.
‘There’s a little girl just down the beach. She’d been staying in the container. The infected got her just before we arrived,’ I could feel something welling up inside me. ‘I want to bury her. We never get to bury anyone anymore and I want to do this for her.’
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 ha
ppier 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.
For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea Page 23
