For Those In Peril (Book 2): The Outbreak Read Free Page B

join him in a rerun of the old show.
Whenever I did, I was reminded both of how much I enjoyed it, and why I didn’t
want to do it for the rest of my life: it was just too nerve-wracking,
especially the finale which involved flaming torches, blindfolds and some
unsuspecting volunteer we’d dragged from the audience.     
    As an
alternative to juggling, I’d taken a job as the resident expert for a
whale-watching company in the Azores. I’d intended it to be a stepping stone to
a research career, but as my first summer there wore on, I realised I’d found my
niche in the world and that I wanted to stay. I’d worked my way up until I had
the knowledge and the connections I needed to start my own company. Ten years
later, I was living the dream: I spent my summers on the west coast of Scotland,
taking tourists out on my forty-five foot sailboat to see minke whales and other
local wildlife, while I wintered in the Canaries doing a similar thing, but with
different whale species.
    Like
the birds, each spring and autumn, I’d migrate between my summering and
wintering grounds. And each time I passed, I’d stop off in Glasgow to meet up
with Tom. A couple of days of drinking too much and talking over old times twice
a year were enough to keep our friendship going.
     
    The
day before, I’d sailed up the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland, past
the lighthouse on Ailsa Craig, keeping clear of a red, white and black ferry as
it made its way from Ardrossan on the mainland to Arran, the southern-most of
the inhabited islands in the Firth, and on past the cooling towers of the
Hunterston power station. As I turned eastward into the river itself, the land
closed around me. The residential town of Helensburgh was to the north, while
the more industrial Greenock lay to the south. Ahead, the span of the Erskine
Bridge stretched from one side to the other, a hundred feet above the water. Few
people ever approached Glasgow this way these days, but for me, passing under
the bridge always meant I was home, even though it would be several more hours
before I’d reach the city itself.
    As I
sailed on, I was eager to see what had changed in the six months since I’d last
visited. Glasgow had been making a concerted effort to redevelop a river front
that had once been dominated by shipyards, and there was always something new.
This time, it was the sleek metal lines of a new museum squatting beside the
water. I saw that the tall ship I usually tied up next to had been moved down to
a new berth beside it, meaning that I’d have the floating pontoons just west of
the city’s exhibition centre all to myself.
    By
sunset, I’d settled in and phoned Tom to tell him I was back in town before
arranging a time and place to meet the next day. After that, I turned on the TV:
things had been getting pretty weird in the last couple of weeks, and I wanted
to see what the latest news was. What I found out wasn’t good. It seemed they’d
finally confirmed this new virus everyone had been talking about was, in some
way, linked to the violence that had been bubbling up here and there in various
US cities, and to the unrest that had been erupting across the Caribbean. Nobody
seemed to know how it had got into the US, but rumours suggested a contaminated
drug shipment out of Haiti. Yet, that didn’t quite seem to fit with the way it
was spreading, especially in the islands. I was just about to switch it off when
they cut to some breaking news, and I watched in horror as Miami descended into
chaos, live on air and right in front of my eyes.
     
    Sometime in the night I must have fallen asleep, because I woke in the morning
to find I was still sitting in the saloon. The television was still on and the
news was even grimmer than before: Miami, it seemed, had been overrun. It was
still unclear what had happened, but all indicators pointed to it having
something to do with the disease; the one