Free For Those In Peril (Book 1): For Those In Peril On The Sea by Colin M. Drysdale

rest of us, but then again he was probably the best placed to do so. He had no family as such, and his nomadic life meant he had few true friends to worry about. He was adaptable by nature and had a lifetime of experience dealing with unexpected, difficult and dangerous situations. This wasn’t to say he was unaffected by it all, he was as shocked, scared and uncertain as the rest of us, but he knew better how to deal with it. Given my assessment of the others, I was just drunk enough to be overconfident, to think that, as a group and with Bill in charge, we might just be able to cope with this new world. If we all worked together, we might actually be able to survive, despite everything that had happened.
     
    By ten o’clock, the others had sloped off to their bunks, but I could feel the effects of the wine starting to wear off and I wasn’t ready for sleep quite yet. I sneaked out to the cockpit where I lay back, staring up at the stars. I had a joint I’d been saving to smoke at the end of the voyage, and I figured I might as well have it there and then. Within a few minutes I was well and truly stoned, my mind wandering off into the darkness.
    As I relaxed, the thoughts I’d been doing my best to keep buried for the last couple of days finally surfaced. I wondered about the world I’d suddenly found myself in, about what had happened to people I’d once known: to my brother, his wife, their kids, my friends, people who I’d gone to school with, and who I hadn’t thought about in years. Their faces drifted through my mind, frozen at the point I’d last seen them. Long-forgotten memories bubbled up in my head. If things were as bad as they seemed, I doubted any of them would’ve survived. As I drifted off to sleep, I remember thinking it was only by chance I’d survived when they hadn’t. If we’d not run into the storm, if I’d not had to put into Cape Town for repairs, if the world’s economy hadn’t collapsed leading to my redundancy, if I’d stayed in Scotland rather than following my dreams, I would probably be dead, or infected, just like them.
     
    ***
     
    I woke around one in the morning, and lay there with my eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the sea. I could hear the main halyard slapping against the mast and wavelets washing against the side of the boat. The anchor line creaked quietly as the boat pulled gently this way and that. Somewhere off in the distance I could hear the rasping breathes of a dolphin swimming in the inky waters. I concentrated on this sound, listening to it getting closer and closer, wishing I had the energy to get up and look for it, it seemed so close.
    Then something bumped against the front of the boat and the breathing grew quicker and louder. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but for some reason it no longer sounded like a dolphin, it sounded more sinister. I sat up and looked around but couldn’t see anything. I heard the bumping noise again and peered over the side, straining my eyes to see what it was. There, just visible in the darkness, bobbing gently alongside the right-hand bow, was a life raft. I stared at it for a second, wondering where it had come from, then something stirred within it.
    I crept as quietly as possible into the cabin.
    “Bill, Bill,” I hissed down the companionway that led to the bunks in the left-hand hull.
    A sleepy and disgruntled Bill replied with a shout of ’What?’
    ‘Get up here now. I think we’ve got trouble.’
    I saw the flare gun lying in an open drawer beneath the chart table. I grabbed it, a couple of flare cartridges and then the hand-held spotlight from its peg by the cabin door before running back outside. I loaded the first cartridge, snapping the gun shut before leaning over the guard rail as close to the back of the boat as possible. In the time I’d been gone, the life raft had floated half-way along the boat and was drifting slowly towards where I stood at the stern. As I shone the spotlight onto