For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak (8 page)

‘Wait,
what?’ Daz’s eyes moved from face to face, ‘What’s up with him?’

‘He’s
got the disease, hasn’t he?’ We turned to find Sophie standing behind us. ‘He’s
going to die, isn’t he?’

Claire
wiped her eyes and straightened up, ‘Yes, he’s got the disease, but I don’t
think it’s going to kill him.’

‘So,
he’ll be okay?’ Sophie sounded hopeful.

‘No.’
Claire hesitated momentarily. ‘No, he won’t; he’ll become like that man who
attacked us.’

Sophie’s eyes widened. ‘But, Mum, you’re a doctor; you must be able to do
something.’

‘Honey,’ Claire walked over to her, hugging her closely, ‘there’s nothing I can
do.’

Tom
and I glanced at each other uncomfortably.

‘What’s goin’ to happen when he ...? You know, when he turns?’ Daz didn’t look
at anyone. He just kept staring at Jake.

A
realisation spread through my mind and I saw it occur to Claire and Tom, too. We
were on a boat in the middle of the river with someone who would soon turn into
an infected, and when he did, he’d attack us. He might only be a child, but in
the close confines of the cockpit, we’d be unable to get away from him, and I’d
seen on the news the previous night just how dangerous kids could be once the
disease had overtaken them.

Claire
let go of Sophie, and paced back and forth. She paused, staring at Jake for a
moment, before setting off once more. ‘Shit! Shit! SHIT!’

‘Mum
…’ Sophie stepped towards her, but Claire brushed her aside. She tried again.
‘Mum, you’ve got to do something.’ Tears were streaming down Sophie’s face,
‘Please!’

Claire
stopped, a look of resignation creeping across her face. She turned to Sophie.
‘There’s only one thing I can do, honey.’

‘Then
do it!’ Sophie urged her.

Claire
took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’ She knelt down beside her doctor’s bag, and with her
hands shaking, she pulled out a syringe and a small glass bottle filled with a
clear liquid. Wondering what she was going to do, I watched as she drew the
liquid into the syringe and then held Jake’s small hand. For a second she closed
her eyes and just knelt there, like a statue; then she leaned forward, her dark
hair brushing against his cheek, and kissed him on the forehead, murmuring
softly, ‘I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.’

Claire
kissed him again and then turned his arm over. She quickly found a vein and
pressed the needle into his pallid skin: he didn’t even flinch. She paused
again, this time more briefly, before she pushed home the plunger, emptying the
contents of the syringe into his body. As the rest of us watched, Claire pulled
the needle out and leant forward. She picked Jake up and held him tightly
against her body, her shoulders heaving up and down as she whispered to him. It
took a few seconds before I realised the boy’s breathing was slowing and soon it
stopped altogether. I was confused for a moment, then I saw the word
Morphine
on the label of the now empty bottle and realised what she’d done. She laid Jake
back down and stood up. Sophie was staring at her. ‘Mum, what did you just do?
What did you do to Jake? Mum?’

Claire
pulled her daughter close once more and held her tightly. ‘The only thing I
could do for him, honey.’ She wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve.
‘The only thing.’

Sophie
struggled free and pushed Claire away; she stared at her brother as he lay
there, motionless. She ran to him and laid her head against his chest. After a
few seconds, she glared at her mother. ‘Oh my god, you killed him, didn’t you?
How could you do that?’

Daz,
Tom and I stood frozen, not wanting to intrude on the family’s moment of grief,
but not knowing what to do instead.

Sophie
and Claire were staring at each other, tears streaming down both their faces. ‘I
had to, honey. He would have become one of them if I hadn’t. I couldn’t let that
happen to him. I couldn’t. You didn’t see the news last night; you didn’t see
what happened in Miami. I couldn’t let him become like that. Please tell me you
understand, please.’

Sophie
looked towards Jake and then back to her mother. ‘There was really nothing else
you could’ve done?’

‘Really.’

Sophie
said nothing. Claire stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her, holding
her tight, but I couldn’t help noticing that Sophie didn’t hug her back.

After
what seemed like an age, Claire broke away and went back to where Jake was
lying. As gently as possible, she picked up his body and carried it below. The
rest of us followed, but we remained in the main saloon as she laid him out in
the forward cabin. As we waited for her to return, I switched on the television,
trying to find out more about what was going on, and just as I’d watched Miami
fall apart the night before, I watched Glasgow go the same way. Many of the
scenes were similar, but it was so much worse watching it happen to somewhere
you recognised, that you knew, that lay all around you.

The
official line was that people should stay inside and let the police deal with
the infected, but no one was listening; everyone was trying to get out. In
response, the army had put what they were calling a ‘ring of steel’ around the
city, and were refusing to let anyone through. Just like the soldiers we’d
encountered, they were heavily armed and there had been footage of them shooting
into the crowds gathered at their barricades. The commanding officer claimed
they were shooting at infected, but that wasn’t what it looked like to me.

One of
the news channels had got hold of a feed from a CCTV camera which overlooked
Buchanan Street, and it was interspersing live footage of the near-deserted
street, along which the occasional infected shuffled between the dead bodies,
with repeats of the infected sweeping up it from earlier in the day. An hour of
this was all I could take and I went on deck to try to think about what we
should do next. By then, Claire had returned to the main cabin and she followed
me up.

‘So
what’s the plan?’ There was an edge to Claire’s voice that suggested she wasn’t
doing as well as she appeared.

‘I
don’t know.’ I looked out over the city. Smoke was twisting up from somewhere
over by the university, while military helicopters circled above the centre and
parts of the Southside. Occasionally, there were muzzle flashes from the machine
guns which I could just make out protruding from open doors.

Claire
cleared her throat. ‘How about we just get out of here for now and work on a
plan later?’

I
turned back to her. ‘Yeah, that’d work for me.’

There
was a moment of silence before Claire replied, ‘But we need to do something
first.’

‘What?’

She
sniffed. ‘We need to bury Jake. I want it done properly.’ Her voice was
trembling. ‘It’s the last thing I’ll ever be able to do for him.’

‘I’m
sorry, Claire,’ I glanced away, not wanting to meet her eyes. ‘We can’t do that;
we can’t go ashore.’

Claire
raised her head and stared at me. ‘You can do a burial at sea, can’t you?’

‘Yeah,
but …’ I stood up and walked to the back of the boat, ‘but it’s not something
I’ve done before.’

‘You
can do it, though, can’t you?’ Claire implored me.

I
turned her suggestion over in my mind. I knew the basics of what to do, at least
in theory, and it really was the only option we had left. I let out a resigned
sigh. ‘Yes.’

Two
hours later, we gathered on the deck as we continued to drift slowly downstream.
In that time, we’d travelled a couple of miles, and we were now passing through
the outer suburbs of the city. I’d wrapped Jake’s lifeless body in some old
sailcloth and weighted it down with a spare anchor. Since I was the closest
thing to a captain we had on board, it fell to me to perform the ceremony. It
wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d have to do and I didn’t really know where
to begin. I looked round at the others, trying to get some inspiration. Despite
all we’d been through, it was only when we were safely on the boat that we’d had
time to introduce ourselves properly. Daz was seventeen and came from Maryhill:
not the best part of Glasgow, but by no means the worst. His real name was
Darren, but his friends called him Dazzler, or Daz for short. He was just under
six foot and skinny in an unhealthy kind of way, like he’d never eaten anything
home-cooked in his life.

Claire
and Sophie were from the more prosperous west end of the city. Claire’s
shoulder-length hair was a mess and her make-up was tear-streaked, but there was
still a certain sense of refinedness and self-confidence about her. She worked
at a local medical practice as a general practitioner, but before she’d settled
down with a family, she’d spent time working in casualty departments across two
continents, as well as numerous stints overseas with
Médicins sans
Frontières.
This gave her a level of experience rarely needed when listening
to middle-class mothers complain about their child’s latest food intolerance, or
giving well-heeled pensioners their annual flu vaccinations.

Sophie
was fourteen, but tall for her age. Although she had the same dark hair as her
mother, it was longer, hanging down over her shoulders, with a slight wave to
it. Given all that had happened, she seemed to be holding up about as well as
could be expected. Mostly she was angry and confused, but the enormity of what
her mother had been forced to do and the realisation of what the disease would
have done to Jake was starting to sink in. It didn’t make it any less
devastating, but it at least made it more understandable.

Claire
was holding it together, too, but much of this seemed to be her professional
persona, no doubt honed over years of working under stressful conditions. Daz
just looked lost. He was clearly well out of his comfort zone, and he didn’t
seem to know what to do next. Physically, Tom looked the worst out of all of us.
His shirt was torn where Claire had pulled it open, and it was soaked in blood
from the gunshot wound. Yet, somehow he’d maintained his naturally upbeat
attitude. It wasn’t that he could see a bright side to everything going on
around us, it was just that he was doing his best to try to stay positive
despite everything.

In
contrast, I was close to losing it. I kept reliving the events we’d witnessed
and I was beginning to wonder whether we had any real chance of surviving for
anything longer than a few more hours. I worried about family and friends I was
leaving behind. Should I have done more to try to get them out of the city, too?
Could I have done anything even if I had? There was still no phone signal and no
way I could communicate with them. I just had to hope that they were lucky
enough to have found a way out, just like I had.

I
stared down at where Jake’s body lay wrapped in sail cloth on the deck near the
bow; it seemed so small and delicate. Suddenly, I knew what to say.

I took
a deep breath, trying to remember the words. I couldn’t recall them exactly, but
I began nonetheless: ‘Do not stand by my grave and weep, for I am not there.

‘I am
in winds that blow, I am the light glinting on snow.’

I
glanced quickly at Claire and Sophie’s tear-stained faces, then across to where
Tom and Daz were standing with their head’s bowed and hands held behind their
backs. I carried on. ‘I am the sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle November
rain.

‘I am
the song of birds circling in flight. I am soft star-shine and the moon shadow
cast at night.’

I bent
down and picked up Jake’s tiny body. ‘Do not stand by my grave and cry,’

Holding Jake across both arms, I crouched down and held him as close to the
water as I could reach. ‘For I am not there,’ I let his body slip into the
water, ‘I did not die.’

I
watched as the white sailcloth sank from sight, then I stood up and walked over
to Claire, hugging first her and then Sophie. Daz and Tom followed suit. Moving
back to the cockpit, I turned the engine on again and pointed the boat down the
river. We were leaving Glasgow behind, and with a heavy heart, I realised it was
unlikely I’d ever return.

As we
headed west, Tom and Daz took turns scanning the banks of the river with my
binoculars. Here and there small bands of people ran, some being chased, others
just fleeing. Occasionally, there was the sound of a racing engine and the
screech of tyres. Once, a convoy of camouflaged vehicles roared by, men in
uniforms clinging to machine guns mounted on the back. Behind us, helicopters
continued to fly over the city, moving in ever-expanding circles. I wondered if
this tracked the spread of the infection: if so, it seemed to be moving fast. I
looked across to where Claire and Sophie sat, holding each other, lost in their
grief.

‘Hey,
Tom.’ He turned to face me, ‘How d’you feel about taking the wheel for a bit? I
want to check on something.’

‘Em, I
don’t really know how to drive a car, let alone a boat.’

‘It’s
pretty easy. All you’ve got to do is keep us pointing in the right direction and
not go too near the banks.’

‘Still
...’ Tom seemed reluctant.

‘I’ll
do it.’ Daz shot to his feet. ‘I mean, how hard can it be?’