By the end of January, Beth and Shane have added more islands to her imaginary passport. They spent a couple of days in the British Virgin Islands before heading for their American counterpart to the south. Timing the crossing to Anguilla took the same finesse as getting from Puerto Rico to the BVI did, but by now, Beth's feeling less of a sailing apprentice and more like she could truly captain the Iris.
The shared island of St. Martin and Sint Maarten, and later St. Barts, are all lovely when they venture further southeast, and when they risk a marina landing on Sint Maarten, Shane looks a little troubled.
"What's bugging you?" Beth asks, although she thinks she knows. There are no signs of walkers here at all, and her little tour guide books say that Sint Maarten should have had about forty thousand residents.
Shane sighs, looking around a place that looks like it ought to be out of one of those movies where people just poof and disappear, like a religious Rapture or alien abduction. "I know a lot of places evacuated, if they could and had time. But I'm wishing I'd checked the bigger islands now. Took the risk to see more."
"Maybe their government shipped them all away?" she suggests. "Just because our government screwed it all up, doesn't mean the rest were just as bad. This place was Dutch, right?"
"South part of the island, yeah. Northern two-thirds was French. It just adds to the oddity. We haven't seen any large ships anywhere, and the only boats in the marina are those with no sails. The virus did break out around the time most sailboats have to head out of the Caribbean to keep their insurance, but it's just weird that none of the ones who would have lived here full time are around."
Beth studies the few boats in the marina. The Iris's masts stand out like a beacon among the sport fishing boats. "Guess we should explore then."
Later, they do find evidence that the island didn't fully evacuate, because what they're on is a peninsula of sorts. Whoever had survived long enough to keep the area around Simpson Bay clear had raised the lift bridges to prevent any access from the more populated areas.
"Jesus Christ," Shane mutters, staring out at the clusters of walkers roaming the streets.
"Would've been nice, to not see any, that maybe more people got to safety somehow, wouldn't it?" Beth tells him, moving to wrap her arms around his waist. The sight bursts the carefully protective bubble they've managed to be in by avoiding any island with a large enough population for a sight like this. "Maybe we just find one of the little islands and set up camp like the Swiss Family Robinson," she suggests.
Shane presses a kiss to her temple and laughs softly, although there's none of his usual humor. "Eventually, you'd get sick of just me for company, darlin', that I can promise you."
They return to the boat, but only after a check of enough of the buildings to at least give them some hope. Not everyone on this part of the island died, because things have been stripped pretty clean. Somewhere, people did survive, at least for a little while.
With that hope in mind, they continue to St. Barts. A landing there shows them a similar pattern of an isolated area on one part of the island with trapped walkers. Like Sint Maarten, there's no signs of any living human beings in the deserted area.
"Maybe they evacuated to something less populated?" It's a puzzle Beth can't yet figure out. The Caribbean is a hodgepodge of independent nations and islands still subject to other larger countries, but she thinks that if they circled back to the populated areas of St. Martin and the British Virgin Islands, they might find the same pattern.
Shane's studying the map of the islands south of them. "You know, just because we haven't seen any sign of the U.S. Navy, it doesn't mean the other nations abandoned their people out here. But they don't have the number of ships the Americans put out here, so finding them could be a needle in a haystack."
"If people died of the virus down here at the same rate as they did in Georgia, they really could evacuate all the survivors, right?"
He nods. "I have no idea what the true survival rate was, because even those of us who never got sick didn't make it for other reasons. But if people had a military that didn't fall or turn on them…"
"Then there's a community around here somewhere, right?" she asks hopefully. Remembering Woodbury and Terminus, she feels a trickle of fear along her spine, but then she reminds herself that the prison wasn't like that. Good people still exist. She and Shane are proof of that.
"I think so. I mean, a good Naval ship could make the Atlantic crossing and take survivors home, but why risk it? Like you suggested about us finding a deserted island and taking up residence, maybe they did the same, or took over one of the smaller populated islands, depending on how many survivors they needed. It would explain the missing supplies in the safe zones."
"Next closest island is Saba. I think those journals I found said it had less people than my hometown did," Beth contributes, going to find the stack of personal journals she collected from abandoned boats back in the Bahamas. Sometimes these records are even better than the official guides and charts, because they have unique impressions from people who sailed the seas they're in, versus governments trying to bring in tourism income.
"Saba it is. If there's no one there, at least you can have some fun exploring, right?" Shane grins, and Beth sticks her tongue out at him.
The fact that the island in question was partially a marine preserve is a point of interest for her. She has no interest in the ghost towns or walker infested places people used to inhabit. It's easier to focus on the wildlife and plants that are recovering their places in the world now that humans aren't constantly fighting back.
Fort Bay Harbor at Saba doesn't have a marina, just a secluded strip of moorings on the more sheltered western side of the island. Massive cliffs tower over them, and Beth gets her camera out as soon as they're safely moored. "Oh my God, it's gorgeous," she breathes out, making Shane laugh.
Once the dogs are let out of the cabin, Shane settles in the captain's chair and does something they haven't once attempted since boarding the Iris the first time. He signals the harbor office on the radio's VHF band. As expected, there's no reply, but he shrugs. "I'll try again before we go ashore in the dinghy. Even if there's people here, they might not have someone babysitting a radio."
They take time to eat lunch and change into shore gear, which means they're still in the cabin when the radio crackles to life.
"American vessel Iris, this is Sergeant-Majoor Luuk Janssen of the Royal Netherlands Navy. I am on the civilian sailing vessel Sharlou on patrol just off the coast of Sint Eustatius. Are you seeking asylum from the dead?"
Wide-eyed, Beth freezes at hearing the first human voice that isn't Shane's since that awful, horrible woman at Terminus. He pulls her in for a hug. "Do we trust them?" he asks softly. "If he's truthful, we're far enough away to be gone before they can get here."
Beth likes that he's not just making the decision for them, and she thinks it over. "I think that I can't live with thinking everyone is like the Governor," she admits. "Maybe we should take the chance."
Pulling back to study her expression, he nods after a moment of seeing how serious she is. "Can't say it hasn't worried me, that something might happen to one of us on our own like this."
She knows the unsaid part of that is that he worries about her ending up alone, more than himself, so she cups his face and kisses him gently before nudging him toward the radio. It's time they took a chance on someone other than just each other. Drawing on every last ounce of faith her father instilled in her that people will be good if they can, Beth listens as a short conversation on the radio changes everything for the pair of them.
Shane just about crawls out of his skin during the wait for the Dutch sailed vessel to make it to Saba's little harbor. He understands the security of the unknown man telling them to stay put while the Sharlou sails to them, but it doesn't make him feel any better. Beth's tales of the prison's fall and then what he saw at Terminus lurks in the back of his mind too clearly.
The Sharlou dwarfs the Iris, which isn't exactly a tiny vessel for its class. The Sergeant-Majoor greets them kindly enough from the other boat's deck, along with introducing all of the six-person crew he has with him. He also introduces the vessel's canine mascot, a massive black Labrador named Ella. Only one other crewman is a Dutch sailor, with the remaining five a mixture of Caribbean islanders, one of them a former police officer from St. Kitts, Avarinda Williams.
It's the last that asks to board the Iris, and she smiles gently at the relief on Shane's face that it's one of the two women being sent to join them. Avarinda is a tall woman, nearly Shane's height, with gleaming dark skin and shoulder length braids. Like the others on the Sharlou, she's dressed for sailing, and tells them they'd been at Sint Eustatius to scavenge. "You aren't the first refugees we've found who were wary of the men or the military, although you are certainly the sailors the farthest from your original home that we've seen that weren't living aboard a boat beforehand."
It makes sense, as Shane doesn't think most Americans would retreat to the Caribbean, and honestly, if he and Beth had been reliant solely on engines to cross the water, he wouldn't have attempted it at all. He hadn't gone south of the Bahamas before on his own.
"We lost our people in attacks by outsiders," he explains, watching as compassion settles as Avarinda's dominant expression. Just because he hadn't been with Beth when that happened didn't change the reality of what occurred.
"Well, I can't say that's an impossibility where we're going, but we've been safe for nearly two years now. We don't just rely on the sea to keep us safe, either," she tells them, her accent holding that slight inflection Shane associates with British-settled Caribbean islands. She doesn't elaborate on that, but everyone on the Sharlou is armed the same way as Beth and Shane.
It takes eight days to sail the four hundred or so nautical miles between Saba and Montserrat. Avarinda fills them in on the surviving community in between helping them with the Iris. The reason for the mixed crew on the Sharlou is as simple as can be expected in their world. All seven people were those who already knew how to sail before the world ended, and only those willing to learn to fight walkers are permitted to leave the safe haven on such vessels.
"I know it seems counterproductive, to choose the one island with an active volcano that once caused two-thirds of its people to evacuate," Avarinda explains. "But it meant that of the islands with reliable infrastructure, it had the lowest population. With only basic hospital services, the majority of the Montserratians were evacuated to St. Kitts and Nevis, leaving less than five hundred people on the island."
She goes on to explain that of those, only ninety survived the initial viral outbreak, and twenty-three more died in the early days of not understanding how to put down walkers. The sixty-seven Montserratians are the largest single nationality in the settlement in the town of Brades, which has the almost unfathomable population of just over seven hundred people. There are survivors in other locations on Montserrat as well, in smaller numbers, bringing the island's current population to nearly a thousand people collected from safe pockets all over the Caribbean like the ones Shane and Beth found on Sint Maarten and St. Barts.
He's glad of the warning that the Naval ships sent to the Caribbean by the respective sovereign states in Europe for hurricane support had shifted their orders to providing what support they could for the islanders, because otherwise, seeing the two behemoths anchored west of Montserrat would have been like being transported into different world. One ship is the Dutch vessel that Luuk Janssen arrived in the Caribbean on. The other is a British vessel, too big and sluggish to be anything more than a hulking guardian of the island and its survivors now.
"The smaller British ship sailed for France as an escort to the French ships," Avarinda explains. "They debated for days over disobeying their last orders, which were to stay and support the British here in the islands. In the end, the captain decided learning something was better than the potential for punishment. The French government thought they had a solution, and we needed that here."
"Did they?" Shane asks, remembering Jenner's rambling tale that he thought the crazy bastard may have imagined.
"We don't know. We lost contact with them after they reached the coast. Ham radio is never as reliable as satellite communications, and whatever controlled the satellite services went down with the rest of civilization."
That's a skill Shane will have to learn, because the ham radio on the Iris wasn't something he or Beth really fiddled with. If they had, they might have overheard transmissions from the Caribbean survivors as small sailing vessels scavenged and looked for any stray refugees like Shane and Beth.
Avarinda directs them to a slot in the marina, and Shane's relieved to see that the Iris isn't the only catamaran docked at the section for smaller vessels. The Sharlou will dock elsewhere, its length requiring more open water for maneuvering to dock, once it returns from finishing the scavenging expedition it returned to after delivering Avarinda to the Iris. The marina is a new one, built by joint efforts of Navy and islanders, because Montserrat only had the basic docking facility for the massive ferry boat and cargo delivery vessels before.
"Policy here is that those who arrive on their own boats keep them, Deputy Walsh. You and Beth will be given the choice to live aboard the boat or to be assigned quarters on shore."
"And are we required to stay here permanently?" Beth asks, sounding a little suspicious.
It earns her another of those endless kind smiles Avarinda has been gifting them both with since she came aboard. "No, you are not. Even if you took up some sort of piracy among a larger foreign group we've somehow missed, attacking this island would not be worth the reprisals our looming guardians would visit upon such acts. If you decide to stay, you will need to contribute to the community in some way, but this is not a prison colony."
Considering the majority of the survivors here have ancestors stolen away from Africa and transported here as slaves, Shane imagines the very idea is abhorrent to them. Her assurance proves true, because after being led to a central building, island residency is offered to them both after medical exams and thorough interviews with a committee of three people who report to the island's Governing Council, which consists of the captains of both Naval vessels and four surviving governmental officials from the various islands.
Even the dogs are given a thorough physical by a cheerful veterinary technician who apologizes that he's not a fully qualified veterinarian. The young man asks them to consider allowing the males to breed with dogs already on the island, which is an understandable request. Canines are too useful to allow the species to die out, and Ella's presence on the Sharlou is a common one for the scavenging vessels as a backup to lesser human senses.
They return to the Iris to find a cluster of boxes waiting for them on the dock, set politely near the Iris without accessing the vessel. Avarinda is still acting as a combined escort and tour guide, so she explains the allotment of supplies. "I know you two have plenty on board, even after hosting me for days, but each new resident is entitled to their welcome package. If you stay, you'll have to pick up each week's allotment at the commissary."
"When do we need to decide?" Beth asks, hopping onto the Iris and taking the first box Shane passes to her and setting it on the exterior table.
"You have two weeks grace period to decide if the community is suited for you. After that, if you choose to leave, you can visit at any time, but you'll need to check in and out like customs in the old world."
Shane doesn't think two weeks will change his inclination to stay, not after seeing an actual damned hospital and school, and learning that the utilities are in full service, even if electricity is limited as the combined efforts of Navy personnel and mechanically inclined residents try to convert the diesel powered facility to something sustainable now that they've lost access to indefinitely importing petroleum products.
Before the two Naval ships were anchored semi-permanently at Montserrat, both captains had scavenged abandoned ships from all over the Caribbean, siphoning off fuel and treating it for long-term storage. Neither of the men wanted to continue to burn through it at the rate that the big ships required, so after nine months, they'd switched to only using smaller vessels, and only those with sails after a year had passed since the outbreak.
Their early salvage operations are why Shane and Beth didn't see any larger vessels like abandoned cruise ships in their travels. Once they stripped such a ship of all of its useful supplies, the Naval personnel had simply run them aground off the coast of South America as giant cemeteries of dead tucked into cabins as if simply sleeping. Far enough away not to draw unwanted attention to Montserrat, yet close enough if the survivors need to salvage more from the ghost ships' actual physical structures.
Avarinda bids them farewell after helping them move the boxes to the Iris, telling them she'll meet them after breakfast tomorrow for a guided tour. Beth pokes through a few boxes half-heartedly before tucking herself against him. "It's too damn surreal," she tells him.
Shane agrees. There's a mental dissonance after so many months in ruined and abandoned Georgia, her living in a broken down prison and him moving between abandoned areas as the whim took him. "I'm just glad we've been sailing a while. Makes this feel more normal than it would have if we'd been plucked right out of Atlanta or something."
"No kidding." Beth giggles softly, but then she sighs. "I can't believe our government ordered our military to abandon us."
That had been a bitter pill to swallow, but not unexpected after what Shane witnessed at the hospital where Guardsmen slaughtered staff, visitors, and patients alike. The lack of U.S. Naval ships wasn't due to them falling to the virus like the cruise ships had, or even losing nearly half their crews like the Dutch and British ships had. No, someone higher up had ordered the entire U.S. Naval presence on the Eastern Seaboard and the Caribbean to retreat to the Pacific. The interview committee hadn't hidden their disapproval of the largest Navy in the area abandoning not just their Caribbean interests, but their own damned national capital.
Shane doesn't think he could stand sailing past Jacksonville or Norfolk after hearing those disapproving words from the elderly politician from Puerto Rico. The woman had been pissed, even nearly two years later, about being abandoned by what was at least nominally her own government. The fact that other governments hadn't? Shane understands why they were told that the fifty or so American citizens here don't cluster into any sort of expat neighborhood together, but blend into others instead.
The vindictive part of Shane hopes that karma visited those who made those decisions with vicious consequences. There were other Navies in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Columbians and the Mexicans, but those had at least fallen to the virus while trying to keep their own people safe. They'd honored their duty to their citizens, and many died because Navy ships are almost as hellish as cruise ships when a virus tears through the occupants.
"I wish I was surprised," Shane tells her. "But maybe they did survive better out west, somehow." He can't imagine the congested, overpopulated states on the west coast being any better off than Georgia had been, or from what Avarinda told them happened on larger populated islands like Cuba and Jamaica, but the average survivor deserved more help than they got in the eastern United States.
"Maybe." Beth lets him go after a tender kiss and eyes the boxes again. "I'll tackle those tomorrow, after I've slept on the idea of where we're going to be living."
"Oh?" Shane asks, keeping his tone teasing and light. "You're deciding that part?"
Beth smirks at him and huffs. "Like you care if we live on the Iris or in one of those cute little apartments like Avarinda has, long as me and the dogs are there."
It's true enough, so he concedes the point. The day's been an overwhelming one, and they do have a lot to consider that doesn't have to be decided tonight. For now, at least, they go to bed in the captain's cabin, letting the motion of the waves rock them to sleep.
Shane does have one last thought, as Beth gives out one of those tiny little snores she makes sometimes and shifts to burrow further into his chest, that he thinks he's finally kept his initial promise to himself to find her somewhere safe to live. It took four months to do so, and a trip he never would have considered back then as the solution, but so much has changed between them that there's one thing about that promise he doesn't intend to keep.
Back then, he intended to find her a safe haven and walk away. That's sure as hell not happening now, not as long as this whimsical, loving woman wants him right here, arms around his middle as if she's protecting him from the world as much as he protects her. She's the center of his world, and he can't be happier about it.
A/N: The notes to explain potential issues here got really long, so if you're dying of curiosity of the data/research behind the chapter, please see the link: darktidings. atwebpages dot com /Swim_ Montserrat. html (remove spaces and change dot com to what it should be for a URL - or just email me on gmail at darkertidings for the link... FFNet is insane on disallowing links). Some open ended issues (like the French cure and the missing US Navy) could appear in a future story if I make this a series.
Eventually, something will trigger the Virginia trip, but they'll get 2-3 chapters before heading north.