The sunlight woke him.  The tiny cabin was already warming up and his body was sticky with sweat from the night’s sleep.  It couldn’t be more than late April, he thought, perhaps early may.  “I’ll have to start sleeping up top soon” he muttered to himself as he glanced out the small window and took in the wide blue vista.  “No choice about it, too hot to sleep down here.  Can’t sleep, can’t think.  Can’t think, then I start making mistakes… It’s no good”.  He knew he wouldn’t get much sleep on the deck either though.  At least in the cabin he felt protected, not naked under the stars, his body exposed and vulnerable.  Just irrational fear he told himself; ‘Nightmares or not, it would soon be high summer and there would be no choice.’

He threw open the hatch and climbed out on deck.  It hadn’t long risen but the Mediterranean sun beat strongly on the back of his neck.  He looked out at the rocky coast some miles in the distance and enjoyed the cool sea breeze on his skin.  His eyes scanned the coast briefly before he made his way to the front of the yacht.  He checked the evaporators and the rain-traps and gently shook the old plastic cola bottle that collected the harvest.  “Not even a lousy half pint.  Too little rain and it’ll only get worse.  I’ll have to make another landing.” he moaned to himself.    Using a bucket to collect some seawater he refilled the black plastic evaporator bags and checked the lines off the sides of the boat.  A large silver sea bass and few smaller fish he didn’t recognize had taken the bait.  Throwing the smaller fish in the bait box, he took the bass into the cabin to prepare some breakfast.

In many ways things had been easier in the beginning he concluded as he lit up the small brazier stacked with driftwood and poured the fresh water into a pan.  Of course his life was far easier now than then; he was mentally and physically tougher, he had knowledge of ‘the enemy’ that he would have killed to have had a few months ago.  But it was the fear that he missed.  That vital, all consuming, sustaining need to survive.  There was nothing else to think about back then, just survival.   He half-smiled as he placed the bass over the small coals.  Now of course he had found something to replace that void with.

He had been lucky, oh he knew that.  Even though he had read the situation faster than most, he had been so very lucky.  Many who had reacted faster and smarter than him had not been.  Those who in the early days, when the media still referred to the infected as ‘sufferers’ or ‘casualties’ and the government had started their predictable tirade of cover-ups and newspeak, had foreseen what was to come and had acted to escape.  So many of them had been caught in the panic and the sheer speed of the chaos.  He flipped the fish and poured the boiling water into a mug of instant coffee.  Yes, he had been lucky to get out of England alive, he reflected; lucky to make it even to the marina… he so nearly hadn’t.

The breeze was gentle but steady and as he raised the anchor and unfurled the sails the small craft cut satisfyingly through the turquoise water.  He lounged in the shadow of the mainsail, lazily steering with his right hand.  Off to his left were rocky hills and small coves covered in thick brush and forest.  The scent of pine and juniper was in the air.  He followed the line of the coast; never too close but always in sight.  A week or so before he had attempted to cut a direct path away from land but the waves and wind had got up and he had been scared back towards the coast.  The sea was kinder here but still he preferred to stay in his safe zone; not too far out, not too close in.  ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’

When he needed wood, or was extra low on water he would find a isolated beach or cove and search for a creek.  He never anchored too close to the shore, he would either swim or take the small dingy.  In a recurring nightmare he would moor his boat too close and return to find them there in the cabin, moaning and thrashing, their hideous stench everywhere.  He had no idea if they could swim or not; he preferred not to take the risk.  As he watched the clouds evaporate under the hot sun he remembered the one’s that had been there at the marina when he had stolen the boat.  They had sunk like stones as they launched themselves after their disappearing quarry.  Their eyes dead and fixed, flesh and limbs foaming the water in a frenzy of blood-thirst.

He realized with a start that he had tensed and was sitting bolt upright.  He relaxed himself again.  ‘Dammit, what are you doing.  They can’t get me.  Not while I’m here at least.’  As his mind relaxed he thought of her.  His hand involuntarily fondled the seashell in his trouser pocket.  She had given it to him.  A small striped shell about an inch long, curved and twisted,  with a sharp serrated edge and a smooth twisted spiral.  She had said it had always given her luck.  She had said that he was in need of it more than her.  She had left it as her promise.

They had met in southern France.  After leaving the south coast of England, he had sailed as far and as fast as he could.  Half-starved on the meager supplies he found on the boat, but refusing to make landfall, he had pushed on round Spain and Portugal.  Finally lack of food and water had forced a re-stock along the Mediterranean coast of France.  He chose a small town and swam ashore.  The whole town was dead and rotting, the smell overwhelming.  Flies and rats were the only things moving amongst the smashed glass and wrecked buildings.

He had almost turned back.  Hunger fought fear as he pushed through the stench and the blood, cloth over his mouth.  Canned food was easy to find as was bottled water.  Food was the last thing on the minds of the people who had fled the town.  It was when he was in the bookshop along the waterfront, looking for nautical charts, that he had seen them.  Two girls and a man loading up a half-battered Citroen with cans of siphoned fuel.  He had approached carefully; whistling quietly to advertise his presence.  The last thing you wanted to do these days, he had learned, was take people by surprise.  They eyed him cautiously but beckoned him over.

“Parles tu Anglais?” he asked.  One of the girls did.  “Where are you going?  Where have you come from?  What have you seen?”.  They exchanged depressingly familiar stories.  Mainland Europe had been devastated, the lack of sea borders made it even more impossible to contain than in the UK.  They had barely made it out of Toulouse alive and were heading east.  They had seen no-one for days, no-one living at least.  He told them about his boat and his escape.  They ate canned meat and olives and drank lemonade on the deck.  She had talked with him for hours.  She was just like him; an instant soul-mate.  Drawn to each other like two lost children huddling for warmth in the night.

His hand grasped the shell in his pocket again as he pulled the tiller and adjusted the course around a rocky outcrop.  Yes she was just like him he thought, but with a key difference.  Whereas at that time he had had nothing but desperation, she had hope.  He was dead, she was alive.  She told him of the island off the coast of Turkey where they were headed and the friends that owned it.  She told him of the buildings and the fruit trees, the goats and the bees.  She told of how they could live… how he could live.  Not just survive but actually live.  She filled the void.  He asked her to come with him; the boat was safer than land he reasoned.  “No, my brother must pick up a friend in Switzerland.  We will meet you on the island.” she had said.  He had pleaded and argued with her, but it was no good.  She could not leave her brother and he could not leave his floating sanctuary.  She drew him a map and gave him the shell.  They had left the following morning.  He was alone again, but he had a purpose now.

The sun was high in the sky now and there was little shade anywhere on the boat.  He climbed back down into the cabin to check his position.  Remarkably the handheld GPS unit had proved itself still accurate, the satellites untouchable by ‘them’.  He thought again how it was nice to use technology after so many of the other modern comforts had been snatched away.  Phones, Internet, electricity and even water supplies had ceased… perhaps forever.  But that little display was like a window back to a different time; the names of the little towns and villages on the Greek coast he was now passing were displayed proudly in bold white lettering as though everything was just as it had always been.  He scanned the map over to his destination and double-checked the coordinates of the tiny island.  “Not long now”, he thought.  It had been a long few weeks but it was not long now.

He anchored up a hundred metres out.  The fishing village spread out around the bay in front of him; turquoise waters, white walls, blue windows.  “One more stop!”  he said rather too loudly to himself.  “One more stop and I’m away for good.”  He took the small dingy and tied it up on a fishing pier.  The wind had picked up slightly and the half dozen fishing boats rose and fell slowly in rhythm with the waves, the wire rigging slapping against the masts.  He picked his way over a spaghetti-tangle of ropes and fishing nets that were strewn over the wooden boards and stepped up on to the waterfront.  Entering a covered market next to a whitewashed church he found bottled water and some dried fruit in the chaos on the floor.  Unzipping his bag he began to pack his loot.   He casually gazed back out the window at the pier and saw them.

There were four, no five.  Filing out of two of the fishing boats, shuffling and lurching lazily towards the pier.  Flesh hanging off them… clothes grey and rotting.  He acted instantly, jumping to his feet and sprinting out the door towards the pier and his boat.  A movement to his right caught his attention as he stepped onto the pier.  He snapped his head to see another three of them, just metres away, bloody and ragged coming at him fast down the waterfront.  As he turned to face forward again, something jerked at his feet.  He fell.  The turquoise stunned his face with a blinding slap.  Rope and net wrapped his legs as he fought and twisted, slowly sinking downward.  He clawed desperately at the bonds as dark thrashing shapes sunk past in streams of bubbles.  His lungs burned and his fingernails throbbed as his vision started to go dark.  He stopped struggling.  He thought of her.  His hand moved toward his trouser pocket.