“Hello, lovely,” I whisper to him as I perch on the side of his bed, looking down at him sprawled out on his sheets, deep in sleep. I drop a quick kiss out of habit on his forehead and take a second to realize what is wrong. I expected the warm, soft skin of a sleeping toddler. Instead my lips reached hot, sweaty skin with a fever raging just under it.
He is burning up.
TOBY WILLIAMS
Somewhere off the coast of Iceland
Day 105
February 15, 2026
I’ve never journaled before but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been on this ship for fifty-one days. I don’t know if I will ever leave it. This may be the only record of this horrible experience and of my existence here. I want someone to know what it was like.
Let’s start at the beginning. My name is Toby Williams. My wife, Frances, is a librarian at the Barbican Library in central London. I’m an engineer, which now that I write it down makes me seem boring but I really like my job.
I’m an identical twin. That’s an important thing about me. Always has been. If you’re an identical twin it makes you special. Mark, my brother, is the reason I’m here on this godforsaken boat. We turned sixty on January 2 and it seemed like a nice idea to go to see the Northern Lights like we had always talked about as children. I wondered at the time when we left in December if we should really be doing this with the Plague becoming such a problem but Frances was insistent. She said, “You’ll be safer there than here. Besides, it’ll all blow over.”
My wife is usually right. Almost always. It’s one of the things I love most about her but she was wrong about that. It has not blown over. Although maybe she was right that I’m safer here.
Four days after we left Reykjavik there was an outbreak in the city. Within days, it was in crisis. The Plague was making its way across Europe day by day but the captain was clear. He didn’t put it to a vote. He gathered everyone in the Cinema Room and said, “We will stay on the boat until we know it is safe to return. We have good stores of food and we will request for more to be delivered to us. We are not returning yet.” One woman on the boat is particularly furious. Bella Centineo. She’s from Italy and she’s on this trip with a friend, Martina. Martina is catatonic, Bella is enraged. She screamed at the captain that he couldn’t do this. Her children are waiting for her in Rome. Her son and her husband might die and then what will happen to her daughter? Her daughter, Carolina, is only eighteen months old. Bella has no sisters and her mother died two years ago. I understand her distress. The communication is getting patchier now between us and everyone back home. Her husband and son might die, leaving her daughter to starve to death in a Roman apartment, all on her own. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
I empathize and yet I could have cried with relief when the captain told her: “If you manage to escape death by a few days, I consider it rude to refuse such good fortune.” And then he turned around and left the room.
My last message from Frances was weeks ago now. We’re not getting reception anymore. She said, “You have to stay on that boat, Toby. I don’t care what happens or who wants to go back, you stay on that boat.” Which is exactly what I intend to do.
But we don’t have enough food. We have minimal medicine. We’ve run out of fuel so the anchor is down and we’re stuck in one place hoping that one day, rescue will come. The captain says that he reached the coast guard weeks ago and they said they would provide us with rations. The captain has a solar-powered satellite phone and knows our coordinates. I try to hold on to these facts and hope but each day feels like a lifetime away from home.
I am in the safest place in the world for a man to be and yet I have never felt in more danger. We have nowhere to go. There is no sanctuary we can turn to. We are stuck out here while our loved ones wait and hope back home. Is it better to starve or be felled by a plague? I don’t have the choice but sometimes I think the latter is better. At least it’s quick, I hear.