For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak (22 page)

I let
my gaze wander over those who had been set adrift with me. Daz was at the wheel,
a look of intense concentration etched onto his face as his eyes moved
continuously from the sails to the sea and back again. Judging by our wake, he’d
finally got the hang of keeping us on a straight course; he might never have
sailed before, but he was learning fast. Tom sat upfront, his legs dangling
either side of the bow. He was looking down into the water, taking the
occasional draw from a hand-rolled cigarette which I was sure would have
something more than just tobacco in it. I wondered if Claire would tell him off
if she spotted him, just as she had when Bob had given him a beer the night
before. Claire sat on the opposite side of the cockpit with her arm around
Sophie, as they both stared off into space. We were all from different worlds
and it was only by chance we’d all been thrown together as everything fell apart
around us.

Of all
of us, I was the only one who knew how to survive at sea, and in that respect,
the survival of the others was in my hands. Whether I liked it or not, I was
stuck with them for the foreseeable future. The way I saw it, though, I’d been
pretty lucky: there were a lot worse people I could have found myself with.

As the
sun was going down, I set the sails so we were barely moving through the water.
Now we were finally free, I needed to try to work out exactly where we should
go. Until this point, I’d given it little thought, beyond the general decision
to head up to the islands which lay to the north-west. I took a chart into the
cockpit and spread it out on one of the seats so I could examine it. It covered
an area from North Rona in the north to Northern Ireland in the south. Between
these, lay islands of all shapes and sizes: some were inhabited, but I knew many
weren’t, and hadn’t been for a very long time. While some lay close enough to
the mainland, or neighbouring islands, to be linked together by bridges and
causeways; others were far from the coast, and from each other. I tried to think
about what we’d need in order to survive, both in the short and the longer term:
food, water, shelter; and what we’d need to avoid the infected and the virus
which created them: to be as far away from anywhere which had had a large human
population when the disease broke out.

I
considered the outlying islands first: North Rona, Flannan, St Kilda. There was
virtually no chance of any one with the disease reaching such places, at least
not under their own steam. There were seabird colonies and seals, shorelines to
forage on, and there’d be fish in the surrounding waters, but they were remote
and wild places; there’d be little chance of meeting other survivors, and I
still thought we had a better chance of surviving if there were more of us
working together. They were also exposed to the full wrath of Atlantic storms
and pounding seas, and it would be unlikely the boat would survive being
anchored there for any length of time, not when faced with 100-mile-an-hour
winds, and waves which could be fifty or sixty feet high. This meant that if we
made for one of these islands, once we were there, there’d be no going back.
This I didn’t like, as I thought it would be important to keep our options open.

I
looked at some of the nearer islands. The large ones — Lewis, Harris, the Uists,
Barra, Skye, Mull — were all well-populated and well-connected to the mainland
by ferries and flights, and it was likely people fleeing from the infected would
have carried the disease there before everything fell apart completely. The
medium-sized islands — places like Coll, Tiree, Islay, Jura, Gigha, Raasay —
were potentially different. Yes, they were inhabited, but they were more
sparsely populated, and they weren’t as well-connected. It was just possible the
disease hadn’t reached there yet. Even if it had reached some of them, it was
unlikely to be able to spread between them. There were also islands like Iona
and the Small Isles; home to small, tight-knit communities. If they hadn’t yet
been affected, would we be welcome if we suddenly turned up out of the blue? Or
would we be seen as dangerous strangers; people who could bring the infection to
them? Would this be an issue anywhere where there were groups who had so far
survived the outbreak unscathed?

Finally, I considered the smallest islands, the ones where no one lived: places
like the Shiants and the Treshnish Isles. All were capable of supporting
communities, and had done for hundreds and possibly thousands of years before
they had been finally abandoned in the twentieth century. Many were sheltered
from the worst that the sea and the wind could throw at them. They, too, would
have birds and seals to eat, as well as access to shorelines and seas to fish.

There
were so many possibilities to choose from: which one was best? Any decision I
made would affect not only my survival, but the survival of the others, too. I
was used to being in charge on board, to making decisions which affected
people’s immediate future; not ones which would affect the rest of their lives.
This was life or death, and getting it wrong would probably be fatal to some, if
not all of us. Out of nowhere, a fear unlike any I’d ever felt before gripped
me: what if I made the wrong decision? Before, we only had one aim: to get out
alive. Now we’d finally escaped, there were a myriad of possibilities before us
and I was paralysed by the choice.

Tom
emerged from the companionway, a rolled-up cigarette between his lips. He sat
down opposite me and lit it, before taking a long drag and exhaling the smoke
into the growing darkness. He looked at the cigarette in his hand.  ‘I think
it’s about time I gave these up once and for all.’

Lost
in my own thoughts, I wasn’t really listening to him. ‘What?’

‘I
said,’ he took another long drag, ‘I think it’s about time I gave up smoking.’

I knew
Tom had smoked since he was sixteen, and I’d seen him try to give up before: the
longest he’d lasted was a couple of days. I looked at him curiously. ‘Why now?’

‘Haven’t you heard? It’s bad for your health.’

Despite everything, this made me laugh. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, there are a
lot worse things for your health going around these days.’

‘That’s just the point. I’ve run out of tobacco and it’s going to be a real
killer nipping out to the shops for more!’ Tom took a final draw on his last
cigarette and threw the end over the side. ‘I feel healthier already.’

Again,
I couldn’t help but laugh. Tom glanced at the chart. ‘So, have you worked out
what we’re going to do?’

Instantly, I felt my insides tie themselves in knots again as the fear returned.
I couldn’t get any words out, and all I could do was shake my head.

Tom
smiled. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll come up with something.’ He’d always been able to
read me like an open book and no matter how hard I tried, he could see what was
really going on in my head. ‘You always do.’

I said
nothing. Instead, I just stared at the chart, and all the possible options,
unable to find a way to choose between them.

Tom
leant forward. ‘D’you remember after Aaron and Jane died? D’you remember what
you told me?’

Jane
had been Tom’s girlfriend since before I’d known him, and Aaron was born the
year after I’d left to work in the Azores. When Aaron was eighteen months old,
Tom had arrived home after working at a late-night event to find their flat in
flames. Despite his frantic efforts to get inside, there was nothing he could
do. His mother had been the one who’d called me, and I’d caught the first flight
home. It was the only time I’d ever seen Tom lose his will to live, and it took
months to bring him back. Later, he told me that it was something I’d said to
him the morning after I’d found him slumped on the floor, having mixed too much
vodka with sleeping pills, dried vomit streaking his t-shirt, that made him
finally want to live again.

‘You
told me that as long as I remembered them, they’d always be with me, and that no
matter what happened, I needed to live on to keep their memory alive. You said
that if I didn’t, then it was like letting them die all over again.’

I
avoided looking at him. ‘Yeah, I remember.’ I’d had no idea if he’d meant to do
it, or whether it was just an accident, but either way, I’d known I had to do
something or he would slip away into a place he’d never be able to come back
from. At the time, I didn’t know if it would help or not, but it had turned out
to be the push he needed to get his life back on track.

‘Well,
I’m going to tell you something similar now.’ Tom sat back. ‘The only reason
we’re all still here is because of you. You’ve kept us alive longer than any of
us could have survived without you. You’ve given us a chance. Anything you do
from now on, no matter what, will still be better than anything we could’ve done
on our own.’

He got
up and walked over to the companionway, stopping before he climbed down. ‘Just
remember that, Ben. We all owe you our lives, but that doesn’t mean we’ll blame
you if something goes wrong.’ With that, he disappeared inside.

As I
sat there, I felt some of the panic ease inside of me. I still didn’t know what
to do, but somehow it didn’t matter quite so much.

***

‘You
doin’ okay?’ Startled, I looked up at Daz and then at my watch: it was one
o’clock in the morning and we were still hoved to, drifting slowly in the
darkness. After Tom had gone below, I’d spent another hour staring at the chart,
considering every possibility open to us, but I’d still been unable to come up
with a definitive plan of action. Instead, I’d put the chart away and left the
decision-making until another time; I knew I’d have to do it at some point, but
I figured that if I left it for now, by the time the decision had to be made, I
might have some more information which would help me decide what was best.

Since
then, I’d sat in the cockpit staring out at the sea, trying to get my head round
all that had happened. My mind wandered back to thoughts of my friends and
family again: had any of them managed, like I had, to get out? Were any of them
still alive? If so, where were they now? Were they looking up at the same night
sky, wondering the same about me?

Earlier in the day, I’d checked my mobile phone yet again, just as I’d done
every few hours since we’d left the dock in Glasgow, but still there was no
signal, meaning there was no way for me to even try to get in touch with anyone.
I wondered if I’d ever find out what happened to them; it seemed unlikely and
this uncertainty was starting to eat away at me like acid eating into my very
soul.

I got
up and stretched before finally answering Daz’s question. ‘Yeah, I guess so.’
For some reason I didn’t want to admit how I was really feeling: not to Daz; not
to anyone, even though Tom had already guessed. ‘Anyway, what are you doing up
at this time of night?’

‘Can’t
sleep.’ Daz yawned. ‘I’m absolutely knackered, but I just can’t seem to get to
sleep; no’ even for a minute.’ He sat down opposite me.

I
watched him for a few seconds; even though he was only seventeen, at times he
seemed so much older. ‘It’ll be the stress; your body’s all keyed up, full of
adrenaline. I think we all are.’

‘Tom
doesn’t seem to have much of a problem; he’s been asleep for hours.’ Daz almost
sounded jealous.

‘He’s
been through a lot; more than the rest of us. It’ll have taken a lot out of
him.’

‘Still
…’ Daz leaned back and looked up at the sky. ‘Wow! I’ve never seen so many stars
before; they’re amazin’.’

I
looked up, too: I was so used to being far from the bright lights of human
habitation that I was no longer surprised by the multitude of stars you could
see when it was truly dark all around you.

I
glanced at Daz. ‘Have you never been out in the middle of nowhere like this
before?’

Daz
shifted on his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. ‘I went campin’
once, out at Loch Lomond.’

I knew
the place well: just half-an-hour’s drive north of Glasgow; it gave many of its
residents their first experience of the wilds of the countryside beyond the
city. ‘Didn’t you see the stars there?’

‘Naw.
I was with some pals and we were all pretty drunk by the time it got dark.’ Daz
chuckled at the memory. ‘To be honest, I was that out of it, I think I’d’ve
struggled to see the moon properly.’

‘D’you
know anything about them?’

‘What?
The stars? Nah, not really. I always wanted to, though; just never got round to
it. Don’t suppose I’ll ever get the chance now.’ There was sadness in his voice.

‘Did
no one ever tell you about them? Not your teachers or your family?’

‘My
teachers?’ Daz huffed dismissively. ‘They took one look at my family an’ where I
came from, an’ they gave up on me straightaway. An’ Mum, all she ever cared
about was where her next bottle of vodka was comin’ from.’

‘What
about your dad?’

‘Never
knew him. I’m no’ even sure my mum knew who he was.’ Daz huffed again. ‘I dunno
why she ever had me if she didn’t want to look after me.’

Daz
sank down in the seat, arms crossed defensively; I wished I’d never asked and
decided to change the subject. ‘Maybe it’s not too late.’