For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak (37 page)

‘After
what Gordon and the marines did on Iona, can’t you at least give him the benefit
of the doubt, and listen to what he has to say?’ Mitch was sitting beside me in
the cockpit and from what she was now saying, it seemed she was coming round to
my point of view. ‘I’m not saying you have to like it or go along with it, all
I’m saying is that you should at least hear him out.’

‘Okay,
okay.’ Claire could see she wasn’t going to win. ‘I’ll listen to what he has to
say, but I really think it’s going to be a waste of time.’

‘Here
they come!’ Sophie’s excited voice drifted down the companionway. She’d been up
on deck for the last hour, keeping an eager eye out for the appearance of Gordon
and the marines.

I
looked up at Daz. ‘Are you okay taking the others ashore in the dinghy?’

Daz
nodded, his mouth full with the last of his supper.

‘In
that case, I might hitch a ride ashore with Gordon and show him around a bit.’ I
turned and made my way up to the cockpit, where I found Sophie with the
binoculars trained on the approaching boat. I cleared my throat, and she jumped.
‘Sorry Ben, I was just, ummm …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Checking out who was on board?’ I ventured.

A
tinge of pink spread across Sophie’s cheeks and I laughed at her embarrassment.
‘You’d better not let Daz catch you looking at other men. You might make him
jealous.’

A grin
leapt on to her face. ‘Really?’ Then she realised quite how much she’d given
away, ‘I mean …’ The pink on her cheeks turned into a deep red. Cringing
slightly, she turned and headed for the companionway. She paused when she got
there and glanced back. ‘D’you really think Daz would be jealous?’

‘Yeah,’ I nodded slowly. ‘I think he probably would.’

Sophie
smiled and disappeared inside.

I
leant forward. ‘So what d’you think about this place?’

Gordon, Claire and I were sitting round a small table near the back of the one
pub which was still at least partially operational. Sophie and Daz were next to
us, lost in their own conversation, while Tom was over at the bar where he
alternated between flirting with Mitch and chatting with Hamish and some of the
other locals.

I
looked around the bar; there were about forty people in the small room: sixteen
marines; the rest locals. At first glance, it was no different than it had been
on any Friday night before the disease swept across the island, and, for a
moment, I was transported back to how it used to be.

A
braying laugh from one of the marines brought me back to reality with a thump:
uniformed men, armed with pistols, were certainly something you’d never have
found here before. The two groups were keeping themselves to themselves for the
time being, but there were signs that with a little help from the lubricating
effects of alcohol, the tensions between them might ease.

I
turned my attention back to the conversation at our table as Gordon finally
answered my question. ‘You’ve got a pretty good set-up here, given the
circumstances; better than I’d realised.’ He took a mouthful of whisky from his
glass. ‘But it’s still vulnerable. There are infected just beyond your
barricades. All it would take would be one little slip and they’d be inside.’ He
put his glass carefully on the table. ‘All in all, I think Rhum’s much safer.’

Claire
swigged her beer. ‘But how would the infected get in? The walls might be made of
straw, but have you seen how thick they are? There’s no way they’re coming down
accidentally.’

‘I
suppose.’ Gordon picked up his glass again, ‘but look at Iona. There’s clearly
some way of infected getting across water. What if that happens here?’

‘But
we don’t know what happened there.’ Claire was waving her bottle in Gordon’s
general direction. ‘So there’s no way you can say for sure whether Rhum’s any
safer than here.’

Seeing
the conversation starting to go in circles, I intervened before it descended
into something less pleasant. ‘So what d’you think happened on Iona?’

Gordon
put down his drink again. ‘I really don’t know, but it’s rather worrying. I’d
always assumed that the water would keep us safe.’

Claire
took another mouthful of her beer. ‘Then don’t you think we should be trying to
work that out?’

Gordon
nodded. ‘Yes, but with only one incident to go on, there’s not much we can do.
D’you have any ideas?’ He looked round the table.

‘Well,
as a matter of fact, I do.’ Claire turned to me. ‘Ben, remember what happened
when Glasgow was bombed? Remember all those infected clinging to the debris?
What if it’s as simple as that? The infected can’t swim, we’ve seen that, but
they can hang onto things, can’t they? What if one was just drifting around out
there, clinging onto something, and it just happened to come ashore on Iona?’

I
pondered this possibility; it would certainly explain what had happened, but if
it were true, then nowhere was really safe. I shuddered at the thought.

Gordon
was clearly worried by this possibility, too. ‘You think it could have come all
the way from Glasgow? That was weeks ago. Could they survive in the water that
long? Surely, they’d die of exposure within hours.’

‘That’s just the point.’ Claire set her beer firmly on the table. ‘We don’t know
what this disease really does to people. Maybe it changes their physiology in
some way; maybe they don’t need to stay warm like us. Anyway, I’m not saying
that it was necessarily someone from Glasgow, but there are other places much
closer where they could’ve come from. We ran into some on a fish farm just
outside Port Ellen. Maybe they came from somewhere like that, and they’d only
been in the water for a few hours.’

Suddenly a thought struck me. ‘Maybe they weren’t even in the water at all.’

Claire
looked at me questioningly. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well,’ I took a gulp of beer. ‘Think of what would’ve happened if we hadn’t
found those people in the rowing boat when we did: the man would’ve turned and
attacked the others. Chances are they’d have ended up dead and he’d have been
left on his own, drifting around in the dinghy. Something like that would be a
floating time-bomb, just waiting to come ashore somewhere.’

Gordon
stared through the window and out into the gathering darkness. ’If there are
things like that drifting around out there, we could be in big trouble.’

‘There
can’t be that many, though, can there?’ We turned to find that Daz and Sophie
had been drawn into our conversation. Daz continued. ‘In all the time we’ve been
out here, we haven’t come across anythin’ like that, no’ an infected just
floatin’ around on its own, an’ Mitch hasn’t mentioned seein’ anythin’ either.’
Daz looked at Gordon. ‘Have you seen anythin’ like that?’

Gordon
shook his head. ‘That’s a good point. If none of us have run into that sort of
thing, then it can’t be too much of a threat, can it?’

‘But
it’s still a possibility, isn’t it?’ There was a warning note in Claire’s voice.

‘Yes,
and we’ll need to keep it in mind, but I think there are more pressing matters
for the time being, like setting up a clinic, and that’s what I really want to
talk to you about.’ Gordon must have seen Claire’s face change. He held up his
hands. ‘I’m not saying you have to move up to Rhum, or anything like that. All
I’m saying is that if you tell me what would be useful, I’ll see if I can find
it and give you a room to set it up in; that way, if you ever need it, it’ll be
there waiting for you.’ He took a sip of his whisky. ‘You have to admit, it
would be useful to have a place like that at your disposal … just in case.’

I
could see the cogs turning in Claire’s head as she considered the offer. There
was clearly a part of her which could see the advantage of what Gordon was
offering, but there was also a part of her that didn’t trust him because of his
military background, and her experiences with such people in the past.

Gordon
saw this, too, and carried on. ‘How about this as a compromise? You draw me up a
wish list, with no strings attached. I’ll see how much of it we can find, and
then, maybe, we can discuss it further. Would that work for you?’

Before
Claire could answer, we were interrupted by the sound of raised voices. I turned
and saw Nick standing just a few inches from Hamish, jabbing his finger into his
chest. ‘Don’t tell us what we can or can’t do, and who we can or can’t do it to.
We’ll do whatever we fucking want. We’re in charge around here, not you.’

Hamish
was bristling with anger. ‘Says who?’

‘Says
the fact this country’s under martial law, and like it or not,’ Nick swept his
arm across to where the other marines were standing, tensely watching the
situation, ‘it seems we’re all that’s left of the military. That means we’re in
charge.’

‘Country? What fecking country?’ Hamish spat back ‘There ain’t nothing left of
your precious country.’

‘Yes,
there is.’ Nick was swaying slightly as he yelled at Hamish. ‘There’s here. You
might not want to admit it, but you won’t be able to survive for long without
our help.’

‘Ach,’
Hamish waved his hand derisively at Nick, ‘why don’t you just feck off back to
wherever you came from. We don’t need your help; we’re doing well enough on our
own. And anyway,’ Hamish’s face was turning a deep, angry red, ‘where were you
when we really needed you?’

‘What
d’you think?’ I glanced at Gordon. ‘Should we let them sort it out between
themselves?’

‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘Hopefully they’re just letting off steam. You never know, it might
help clear the air if they can get it all off their chests.’

Across
the room, Nick jabbed Hamish again, this time hard enough to force him to take a
step backwards. Nick advanced. ‘We were fighting on the front line, protecting
sorry arsed people like you.’ He jabbed Hamish once more. ‘You don’t have a
chance in hell of surviving around here without us.’

Hamish
stepped forward until his nose was almost touching Nick’s. ‘We’ve been surviving
around here since before fecking Sassenachs like you ever even knew places like
this existed.’

‘What
the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’ Nick looked confused. ‘What is it with you
people? How do you expect to be able to run things when you can’t even speak
proper English?’

Hamish
sensed he was starting to get the upper hand. ‘If you don’t like how we do
things around here, why don’t you go back to your precious London? Oh, because
you can’t, can you?’ This time is was Hamish who poked Nick in the chest. ‘You
fecking Sassenachs couldn’t even save your own capital, what makes you think you
can help us any better than we can help ourselves?’

The
room held its breath as it waited for Nick to react. Unsurprisingly, he
exploded. ‘You fucking prick! My family was in London. I’d rather have been
there, protecting them than trying to stop you fucking diseased Jocks killing
each other. The moment it happened, we should have just walled the lot of you
off and left you to it.’

Tom
put his beer down on the bar and stepped forward, standing beside Hamish. ‘Don’t
forget they tried that. It didn’t exactly work, did it? And I’d hardly say
fire-bombing a city of half a million people’s trying to stop us killing each
other.’

‘We
should have bombed the whole damn country back to the Stone Age. We should have
done it years ago.’ Nick stopped, looking around in an exaggerated manner. ‘Oh
wait, how would anyone have been able to tell the difference?’

The
other locals watched intently, trying to get a read on where the situation was
going before making a decision as to whether or not to get involved. The marines
were doing likewise. To my left, I heard Daz make a move to get up and I put my
hand on his arm, ‘This isn’t our fight.’ He shot me a look of disdain as I
carried on. ‘Not yet at any rate. We’ll only get involved if we have to.
Otherwise, it’s best to just let them sort it out between themselves.’

Daz
settled back onto his seat, but he didn’t seem 100 per cent convinced.

Suddenly, Hamish lunged at Nick, but Nick stepped back and pulled out his
pistol, pushing it into Hamish’s face as he tumbled onto his hands and knees.
The room froze, no one quite sure what to do next.

Keeping the pistol pressed against his cheek, Nick leant forward and growled
into Hamish’s ear. ‘Not so brave now, are you?’

Tom
stepped forward and Nick turned the gun on him. ‘You stay where you are!’

Tom
held his hands up. ‘Look, let’s just cool it. I get it, we’re all pretty
stressed; it’s no big surprise; we’ve all got to let off a little steam, but
it’s over now. You won the argument, everyone can see that. Why don’t you put
that away and I’ll get you another drink?’

Nick
straightened his arm and pressed the barrel against Tom’s forehead. When he
spoke his voice was cold. ‘Don’t you tell me what to bloody well do!’ He
adjusted his grip on the gun. ‘Just remember that around here, I outrank you.’
He pointed back to the other marines. ‘We all do. In the pecking order, we’re up
here,’ he held his other hand out parallel to the floor at shoulder height,
‘while you … you’re all the way down here.’ He dropped his hand to waist level.
‘And don’t you ever forget that!’