For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak (26 page)

Grabbing the net, I plunged it into the water. When I pulled it out a second
later, there were three large, silver fish flapping around in it.

‘Whoa!’ Daz’s eyes widened. ‘They’re massive!’

I
emptied the fish onto the walkway and held the first one down with my knee.
Pulling out the hammer I’d brought with me for just this purpose I smacked it
sharply on the top of its head: instantly the fish was still. I repeated this
with the next two.

‘What
do we do with them now?’ Tom was watching me closely. ‘I mean, how are we going
to stop them going off?’

I
thought for a moment. ‘I’m not sure, but I did wonder if we could dry them
somehow.’

Daz
nudged one of the fish with the tip of his shoe. ‘How’re we goin’ to do that?’

I
looked back at the boat and an idea came to me. ‘If we fillet them, we can
string them up from the rigging; they should dry out in the sun and the wind,
and that’ll preserve them.’

Tom
folded his arms, unconvinced; he nodded up at the sky, which was now heavily
overcast. ‘I’m not so sure the sun’s going to be much help.’

Two
hours later, we’d killed a couple of hundred salmon. Working on the pontoon,
we’d set ourselves up as a production line. Being good with a knife, Claire had
taken the role of filleting the salmon. Beside her Sophie washed the fish in the
sea before Daz poked a hole in the tail end and pushed a piece of fishing line
through it. Tom then passed them up to where I was standing, ready to hang them
from the rigging.

After
thirty minutes, we were all covered in scales and fish juice, and Sophie was
beginning to complain about the state her clothes were getting into. Another
forty minutes after that, we were finally finished. I jumped onto the pontoon
and looked back at the yacht. It was a somewhat surreal sight, festooned as it
was with salmon fillets which swung slowly back and forth in the stiff breeze.

Claire
cleaned her hands in the water. ‘We’re all going to stink if we don’t do
something to get all this crap off.’

‘No
problem!’ With that Daz leapt off the pontoon, holding his knees tightly to his
chest. He hit the water with a loud splash that sent water spraying over the
rest of us. Sophie screamed and tried to hide behind her mother.

‘Bastard! I’ll show you!’ Tom dived into the sea and a second later Daz
disappeared from sight. He resurfaced coughing and laughing, followed shortly by
Tom.

I
turned to Claire and shrugged, ‘well, if you can’t beat them ...’ I stepped off
the side and dropped vertically into water that was colder than I’d expected. In
the gloom, I could see the net of the fish farm a few feet away, and beyond it,
the salmon packed tightly together, their sides glinting as they milled around
in the confines of the cage. It seemed unfair that they would all soon be dead,
but there was nothing I could do about it. I heard two more splashes and saw
first Claire’s and then Sophie’s legs appear above me. I kicked back to the
surface and joined the others as we scrubbed ourselves, and our clothes, clean.

After
about five minutes, I pulled myself out onto the pontoon beside Claire and
watched as Tom, Sophie and Daz splashed and played in the water.

Sophie
had been distant from Daz, Tom and me at first, and I don’t think she quite knew
what to make of us. Each of us was so different in our own way from anyone she
was used to dealing with. Daz, in particular, was someone she’d probably have
crossed the road to avoid before all this happened: now they swam happily
together in the cool waters around the fish farm. It seemed the collapse of
civilisation was a great leveller, and just as it had swept away all of Sophie’s
advantages, it had done the same with all of Daz’s disadvantages.

If I
were being honest with myself, Daz wasn’t someone I’d ever have mixed with
before either, and certainly I’d never have invited him onto my boat, but now he
was here, it turned out he was a bit of a natural, taking to sailing like a duck
to water. I was amazed by how much he’d picked up in such a short space of time
and he was rapidly becoming the one I relied upon to be my second-in-command.
Without him, life in this suddenly changed world would be so much more
difficult. I wondered if Tom was put out by this; after all, I’d known him for
years, but it seemed unlikely. Both of us knew this wasn’t his type of thing;
he’d be glad he was alive, but unlike Daz, this wasn’t an opportunity for him to
learn about things he’d never have had the opportunity to do if the world hadn’t
changed.

Watching them now, I noticed that Sophie was spending much more time wrestling
and splashing with Daz than with Tom. She certainly seemed to look up to him and
I wondered if there was the start of something else going on there. If there
was, it wasn’t surprising: if it wasn’t for him she’d almost certainly be dead.

I
nodded towards Sophie, ‘I wouldn’t have thought she’d be keen to get back in
after yesterday.’

‘Me
neither. She doesn’t remember any of it, though,’ Claire waved to her and she
waved back. ‘Judging by how hard the boom hit her, she was probably out cold
before she even hit the water.’

‘But
still ...’

‘She’s
pretty resilient really. She always has been, even as a toddler. When she was
learning to walk, she’d fall down and smack her head off the floor. I’d pick her
up and hold her until she stopped crying, then the moment I put her down, she’d
try it again.’ Claire looked lovingly at her daughter. ‘It was so different with
Jake. He’d get put off by any set back. I remember when he was learning to ride
his bike, he fell off and it took me a month to get him to give it another go
...’

Claire
stopped suddenly. I glanced across and saw tears streaming down her face. I put
my arm around her and she buried her head in my shoulder, her body heaving with
each deep sob.

‘Tom,
pull in the sheet there; just a tad. That’s it.’ Daz turned the wheel slightly
to the right and then straightened it. ‘Sophie, tighten up on the jib a little.
When I call out, let them go an’ pull them in on the other side. Ready about?’

‘Ready!’ Both Tom and Sophie sang out in reply.

‘Lee-ho!’ With that, Daz turned the wheel sharply to the left. It was the first
time I’d let him be in charge while we changed from one tack to another, and
he’d started too soon. I could see he wasn’t going to make it, but I was doing
my best not to interfere: he’d learn much faster by making mistakes on his own
than with me stepping in and taking over. Sure enough, the boat stalled halfway
round, causing the salmon fillets to swing around wildly as the boat swayed back
and forth. A moment later, the wind pushed us back onto our original course.

‘Tom,
Sophie, pull in the sheets on the right side again.’ I watched the sails tighten
up then I glanced across at Daz. He looked both frustrated and slightly
embarrassed. I gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Don’t worry. It takes everyone a
few goes to get the hang of it. You ready to try again?’

Daz
nodded. I sat back and watched. Again he failed, but on the third attempt he
succeeded and we were soon racing along our new course in the strong afternoon
breeze. Daz raised his arms above his head in triumph and Tom, Sophie, Claire
and I applauded. He beamed at me, pride written all over his face. For the rest
of the afternoon, Daz stood happily at the wheel, ordering the others around and
practising the same manoeuvre over and over again. By suppertime he was getting
it pretty near perfect on almost every attempt.

While
Daz was improving his sailing skills, I studied the charts with Claire, trying
to decide where we should go next. To our north was a chain of islands of
ever-decreasing sizes, which lay almost parallel to the mainland, separated from
each other by narrow and dangerous channels.

‘We’ve
got two choices. We can go west through here.’ I pointed to the channel between
the island which currently lay to our left, and the next one up. ‘And try this
island here, which is Colonsay, or we could keep going north.’ I ran my finger
up the east side of a large island with the name
Jura
printed on it, ‘and
see if we can find anyone in any of these settlements.’

Claire
examined the chart closely. ‘It looks like there are more places to check out if
we keep going north. That should mean a better chance of finding other
survivors.’

‘True,
but if we do that we’ll have to keep going north, and that means we have to pass
this.’ I stabbed my finger at the chart.

Claire
leaned forward, squinting as she tried to work out what the strange markings on
the chart meant. ‘What
is
that?’

‘That
is the entrance to the Corryvreckan whirlpool.’

Corryvreckan wasn’t a place for the faint-hearted. Years before, I’d sat on the
hills above it when the whirlpool was in full flow and seen the maelstrom
first-hand. It was a quarter of a mile across and I could hear it roar even
though I was more than 500 yards away. I’d watched as three boats approached it
and all turned back after being tossed around like corks on the eddies and the
standing waves. If we ended up in conditions like that, the yacht would be torn
apart and we’d all surely drown.

Claire
shot bolt upright. ‘A whirlpool?’

‘Yeah,
but it’s only dangerous in some tidal states. As long as we time it right, it’s
not really that much of a problem. Anyway, we’re not going to try to go through
it, we just need to get past the entrance without getting dragged in.’

Claire
sat back. ‘Have you done it before?’

‘Yes,
loads of times.’ I leant backwards, too, ‘but always with an engine as back-up
in case the wind suddenly changed, or a storm blew up.’ I glanced up at the sky,
trying to judge the weather and what might be coming over the next few days: it
looked settled now, but you could never tell what might be just over the
horizon.

‘So as
long as we’re careful, it’s not too much of a problem?’

I
nodded. ‘That pretty much sums it up.’

Claire
considered this for a few seconds. ‘And if we go north, we’ve got a better
chance of finding people?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmmm
…’ Claire stared at the chart. ‘Okay, let’s go for it; let’s go north. You never
know, we might even find other survivors before we get anywhere near the
whirlpool.’

Chapter
Twelve

So
far, Jura had been a bust. After my close escape in Port Ellen, none of us had
dared go ashore again, but every time we’d come near a settlement, even when it
was just an isolated croft or a cluster of white-washed buildings, we’d seen
evidence of infected. Either we saw them standing, staring off into the
distance, waiting for something to happen, or we saw the remains of their
victims scattered across the ground. Sometimes we saw both, with the infected
picking over the carcasses of those they’d killed. It had been a long two days,
sapping our hope with every new discovery, but before nightfall I wanted to push
even further north.

To
make matters worse, our attempt at preserving the salmon by drying it had
failed. I’d emerged that morning to the stench of rotting fish. I guess the air
was too moist and the sun not strong enough to preserve them properly. It had
taken me a good hour to cut all the fillets down and throw them over the side. I
watched as they drifted off into our wake, aware that we were back where we’d
started: in need of food and with little option but to try to get what we could
from the sea.

I’d
kept my eyes peeled, but since we’d left the Clyde, I’d seen no more flurries of
gannets, indicating fish feeding close to the surface, and since we had little
left to eat, I was beginning to worry: what would happen when we ran out? I was
just mulling this over when I spotted something which might solve the food
problem, at least temporarily. ‘Daz, see that red buoy there?’

‘Yeah,
I saw it.’ Daz sounded put out that I thought he’d missed it. ‘I’m keepin’ clear
of it, just like you told me to do with the others.’

I
stood up. ‘No, steer towards this one.’

‘But I
thought you said ...’

I cut
him off. ‘I know, but I’ve got an idea. Give me the wheel and then go up front;
take Tom with you. When we get there I’m going to turn into the wind. Try to
grab it and then pull it up and loop the rope it’s attached to over the cleat on
the bow.’

‘But
why?’ Daz looked puzzled.

I
smiled. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see!’

Five
minutes later, we had the sails down and the rope from the buoy tied securely to
the bow.

I
rubbed my hands together. ‘Let’s see what we can bring up.’

‘What
d’you mean, “bring up”?’ Daz frowned. ‘What’s on the other end?’

‘Lobster creels!’ I shot back.

Daz
scratched his head, ‘Lobster
whats
?’

‘Creels: they’re like traps.’ I peered over the side, trying to get an idea of
how far down they might be. ‘Fishermen put bait in them to attract things like
lobsters and crabs. Once they get in, they can’t get back out again.’