Blood Cruise

by Mats Strandberg

  *

  Inside Charisma Starlight, Marisol is trying to hide from the guests the fact that she has started crying. Filip looks at the woman on the floor between them and wonders who she is. If anyone is missing her. Looking for her. He forces down his fear of the contagion and squats next to the woman to give her mouth-to-mouth. The sweet, sickening smell of blood is coming from between her lips.

  ‘Filip …’ Jenny says, ‘don’t do it. It’s too late already. Don’t you see?’

  He pauses. ‘I have to try,’ he says.

  But she shakes her head. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a zombie flick?’ She tries to smile, but it turns into a grimace. She holds his gaze until Filip straightens back up. The voices around them are getting louder. Demanding they open the grille. Demanding they keep it shut.

  Albin

  The screaming woke him.

  Lo had grabbed his hand and it was as if he’d woken up all over again when he saw how terrified she was.

  ‘Abbe,’ she said, and her voice sounded thin and small.

  People are running past on the deck outside their hiding place, alone or in small groups. Most of them are dressed up, but some are in their underwear.

  ‘… the fuck are we going to go …? Did you see the blood …?’

  ‘Are we sinking?’ he whispers, and his stomach drops.

  Lo shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she replies. ‘It’s something else.’

  But he isn’t convinced. He can almost feel the ship listing. His hands fumble for something to hold on to. He looks at the sky, the raindrops forming a ceaseless pattern against a black backdrop, and thinks about his mum. She won’t be able to use her wheelchair if there’s water in the hallways; that’s far too easy to imagine. He wishes he’d never seen that old film.

  I’m the king of the world!

  You realise the Titanic sank, don’t you?

  Lo squeezes his hand so hard his knuckles hurt when they spot the man dressed in nothing but underpants and a T-shirt. Hunched over, he passes the staircase they’re hiding under. His arms are folded across his stomach as if he is carrying something heavy. His long hair hides his face.

  There is something about that man. He mustn’t see them. Albin wishes they could back away, but there is nothing but cold steel behind them.

  The man leans over the railing, breathing heavily, sobbing, staring out into the darkness as if he is looking for something in it. The wind catches his hair, blows it free of his face.

  But his face is almost gone: there’s a big hole where the cheek should be. They can see his tongue move inside as the man mutters to himself.

  Albin claps his hands to his mouth. Lo presses herself harder against him. The hair falls across the man’s face once more and Albin doesn’t care what happens next, so long as he never has to see that again.

  He tries not to scream – he really does try to push the scream back into his body – but a strange yelp erupts from his throat.

  The man turns his head their way.

  Holds up a bloody hand.

  Raises his index finger.

  Puts it to his lips.

  Shhhhhh.

  Then he puts his hand back on his stomach.

  Time seems to have stopped.

  Screaming comes from somewhere else on deck, but Albin can’t stop looking at the man, who is standing motionless, trying as hard as they are to be quiet. And he is no longer afraid of the man. He is afraid for him.

  An old woman in a nightgown comes shuffling towards them. She is barely lifting her feet. Her thin socks have rolled down, bunching around her ankles. Her mouth is making horrible snapping sounds and the man is shouting for help. But he doesn’t look Albin and Lo’s way. He doesn’t give them away.

  The woman tears and rips at him; he loses his grip on the thing he is carrying. A big bundle unravels from under his T-shirt. Red snakes landing on the green floor with a splashing sound. He slips in them, gets entangled. The woman drags him away towards one of the stairs down to the promenade deck. The red snakes trail behind him, leaving slimy tracks.

  More sounds try to escape Albin. He is going to explode if he keeps them inside.

  But he has to. He has to stay strong in front of Lo.

  And eventually the sobbing stops, abruptly, as though someone has flicked a switch, and his head goes empty. Like he is no longer here. The only things that feel real are the cold raindrops occasionally falling on his cheeks.

  The red, sticky tracks left by the man’s innards are already being washed away by the rain.

  Filip

  Filip stares at the television screen showing the dance floor at Club Charisma, unable to wrap his head around the fact that it really is happening right now, upstairs. It’s like when he saw the twin towers collapse on live TV: too like a movie he had seen a thousand times before, too unlike anything he has ever seen in real life. Impossible to believe.

  ‘You have to let me out,’ a woman pleads. ‘My children are alone in our cabin. What if they wake up?’

  She is talking quickly, taking big, gulping breaths.

  ‘Our kids are alone too,’ says the dad of the family Filip noticed earlier tonight, and he thinks about the children who were climbing on the sofas, the girl with the glasses.

  He looks at the grille, hears the screaming coming down the stairs on the other side, turns to Marisol. Her face is pale and ghostlike in the light from the screen. Her lips are moving quietly, quickly, her fingers clutching the gold crucifix she wears around her neck.

  ‘Not until we know more,’ he says. ‘They’re going to call any minute now and—’

  ‘You don’t have children, do you?’ the man says accusingly. ‘If you did, you’d understand.’

  ‘You’re safer here,’ Filip offers.

  ‘Safe?’ an old man with a white beard hisses. ‘That’s a poor fucking joke.’

  Shouts and muttering of agreement.

  Filip wishes he knew the right thing to do. The staff run through safety drills at least every other week, hammering into every employee who is responsible for what. He has often wondered how the people working on board would do if disaster struck, how he would do. No one knows how they will react until it happens. He has agonised about what would happen if there was a fire, or if the ship started sinking. Those scenarios seem like tiny little trivialities now.

  ‘At least they can’t come in,’ he says. ‘And you serve your children better by surviving.’

  ‘But what if my kids decide to go looking for me?’ the woman with the gulping breaths wants to know. She sounds close to hyperventilating.

  ‘Anyone with children can call them from here,’ Jenny says, looking at Filip, and he gives her a grateful nod. Obviously he should have thought of that himself. Surprisingly, there are no fights about who gets to call first. Jenny steps in behind the counter, bringing the woman with her to the wall-mounted phone.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ a man says. ‘We have to get to the lifeboats.’

  ‘You won’t be able to lower them while the ship is still moving,’ Marisol replies.

  ‘Then why aren’t they stopping the fucking ferry? Is there no one driving it?’

  For a moment, all is silent. The humming in the floor and the faint clinking of glass against glass becomes very noticeable.

  ‘Help will be here any minute,’ Filip says, trying to look convincing. ‘They will definitely have sent out a distress call by now.’

  ‘I need to get off the ship,’ the band’s drummer mumbles, and sits down on a table with his head in his hands. ‘I have to get out of here. I’d rather drown. I have to get off the ship. I have to get …’

  ‘How is anyone going to help us?’ the man with the white beard asks. ‘If we can’t even get the lifeboats down into the water, how are they going to get us?’

  ‘Helicopters,’ Marisol says with conviction. ‘The best thing we can do is to stay calm and not panic.’

  The man shakes his head, but at least he does
n’t object.

  The dreadlocked Green Party supporter gets up from one of the armchairs and walks in behind the bar. He is so skinny his legs look like an insect’s in his tight black jeans.

  Marisol watches him. ‘Excuse me, can I help you with something?’ she says.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll sort myself out,’ the guy says, and takes a bottle of Famous Grouse down from the shelf. ‘I’m going to get properly hammered, and the way I see it the shipping company might as well pay for it.’

  A few people laugh, and Filip is surprised to realise he is one of them. The woman talking to her children on the phone hushes them irritably.

  Suddenly there is a loud crash above them. The laughter dies abruptly and when Filip looks at the TV screen, he can see chairs have been thrown down onto the Club Charisma dance floor.

  The Green Party supporter pulls the pourer out of the bottle and starts drinking.

  ‘She’s alive!’ a woman shrieks next to Filip. ‘Look!’

  Confused, he turns and stares at the woman lying on the floor. Her eyes are wide open. Her mouth is opening and closing.

  ‘Come on, help her up!’ someone shouts.

  Filip goes to the woman, who blinks her eyes a couple of times and tries to focus on him.

  ‘No, don’t move her,’ someone else puts in. ‘If she’s hurt her head—’

  ‘She didn’t hit her head, moron.’

  ‘Like we know anything about what happened to her before she came here!’

  Filip tunes out their squabbling and squats down. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asks.

  The woman blinks several more times.

  ‘Watch out,’ Jenny says. ‘She might be one of them now.’

  Filip looks at her. Fear is making his stomach turn somersaults.

  ‘We can’t just wash our hands of her,’ Marisol says, and falls to her knees next to him. ‘She’s our responsibility.’ She takes the woman’s hand and feels her wrist with her fingertips. Her brow furrows as she gently touches the woman’s throat.

  The woman’s lips draw back. Her teeth are so gleamingly white in her mouth.

  Were they that white before?

  ‘Jenny’s right,’ he says. ‘Be careful.’

  To his surprise, Marisol backs away a little.

  ‘I can’t find her pulse,’ she says quietly. ‘Would you mind trying Raili again? And ask someone to bring a glass of water.’

  Filip stands up so quickly he almost faints. He presses his hand against his forehead, waits for it to pass. ‘Could someone get her a glass of water?’ he says to no one in particular.

  Some of the people by the bar look at each other, and in the end it is the Green Party supporter who walks to the tap and fills a glass. It spills when he puts it down on the bar.

  ‘I’m not going any closer,’ he says.

  Suddenly someone behind Filip screams, and the scream becomes one of many, a chaotic chorus from hell.

  Marisol.

  He turns around and sees the woman’s fingers curled like talons, entangled in Marisol’s hair, trying to pull her close.

  The woman opens her mouth and

  she is just like the ones on the dance floor upstairs.

  She was bitten and now she’s one of them.

  ‘Help me!’ Marisol screams. ‘Come on, help me!’

  Just like the woman was screaming when she came in here.

  After she was bitten.

  The woman’s teeth snap shut with a cold, clicking sound. Her neck is straining so hard that a tendon protrudes like a rope.

  Filip runs to the bar, grabs the magnum of sparkling wine on display there.

  He notices a few women turning away. They know what he is going to do.

  ‘Watch out,’ he tells Marisol, and gets down on the floor next to them, holding the neck of the bottle with both hands. The empty, staring gaze of the woman shifts to him. He shuts his eyes, hears the snapping sound and brings the bottle down, bottom first.

  The impact reverberates up his arm and something warm spatters his face.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ someone breathes.

  A droplet trickles down across Filip’s lips. If he stuck his tongue out now, he would taste blood. Her blood.

  Contagion. Contagion.

  He opens his eyes.

  The woman’s mouth is a gaping red hole. Her jaw is loose, resting against her chest. Her tongue writhes this way and that for a couple of seconds before it stops moving. At the back of her throat is something like white pebbles. Her top lip has been split all the way to the nose, but her teeth look completely undamaged in the midst of the bloody ruin around them.

  Filip chucks the bottle aside, snatches the rag out of his apron pocket and wipes at his mouth frantically. The rag turns bright red. It feels as if her blood is seeping in through his pores, into his own system.

  Marisol’s breathing is rapid and shallow. She is struggling with the woman’s limp fingers, trying to extricate them from her hair. Filip shudders when he grabs one of the woman’s hands. It feels like a dead animal in a tangled nest. He spreads the fingers wide, trying to coax them out.

  ‘Cut it off,’ Marisol whispers. ‘I don’t care if it all goes, so long as I’m not stuck here.’

  Filip glimpses the woman’s face again and his stomach lurches. He focuses on Marisol’s hair until both the dead hands have relinquished their grip.

  ‘Come on,’ he says, grabbing Marisol’s arm.

  They stand up together and only now does he realise how quiet everyone is.

  ‘I need a big fucking drink now too,’ Marisol mumbles, sniffing.

  Filip walks in behind the bar, scrubs his face and hands with detergent and the scratchy side of a scouring pad. Marisol accepts the Famous Grouse bottle from the Green Party supporter and takes a big gulp. She has no bite marks, not as far as Filip can see. She puts the bottle down on the bar, wipes her mouth and puts her hair back up. Jenny sits down on the barstool next to her and strokes her back.

  The scrubbing is making Filip’s lips and skin tingle and burn. He pours vodka on a fresh sponge. When he dabs his face it feels like ten thousand red-hot needles.

  He takes a deep swig from the bottle.

  ‘Has anyone else in here been bitten tonight?’ he asks, and is met by nothing but silence. People are shifting uneasily, glancing askance at those next to them.

  ‘Do you really think anyone would admit to it if they had?’ the Green Party supporter says. ‘And end up like the one on the floor?’

  ‘I had to,’ Filip says. ‘You get that, right? I had to. You’ve seen for yourselves what happens …’

  He swallows and makes a sweeping gesture towards the TV screen, which is still showing Club Charisma’s dance floor and the horrors under the flashing lights.

  How is he supposed to sound convincing when he doesn’t know shit? How is he supposed to look at the woman’s battered face and know he did the right thing?

  Jenny gives him an almost imperceptible nod; his next breath comes a little more easily.

  ‘If anyone has been bitten, we will try to help them,’ Marisol says. ‘If this is a disease, there might be a cure …’

  ‘Not for her,’ the Green Party supporter says, and chuckles.

  ‘… but we have to lock them up, for everyone’s safety. There’s a staff room behind the bar …’

  ‘Shouldn’t we stick him in there, then?’ the Green Party supporter says, pointing at Filip. ‘He’s got blood on him. How can we know he’s not infected?’

  The burning on his face turns to freezing cold. It is all Filip can do not to look around for signs of tacit agreement. ‘I’m not,’ he says.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Yeah, how do you know?’ says the woman who has hung up the phone behind the bar. ‘Anyone here could be infected, right? Anyone. Oh my God, oh my God, what are we going to do?’ Her breathing is becoming laboured again.

  Filip notices a movement at the edge of his vision and h
is eyes automatically follow it.

  The woman on the floor has rolled over on her front and is getting up onto all fours. The white lumps are falling out of her mouth. Her back arches. One of her dark-pink pumps has come off her foot. She sniffs the air. Her tongue writhes above her sagging jaw as though she is trying to taste the air to find what she is looking for.

  People start running towards the exit. The grille rattles loudly when they try to open it.

  The woman crawls across the floor, shaking her head, making her loose jaw swing back and forth. Her split top lip draws back, parting like a red curtain, revealing her teeth.

  There is a loud jangle when the grille gets stuck in its tracks in the usual spot; the crawling woman turns towards the sound, tilting her head.

  Filip reflexively reaches for the alarm button, and instantly realises how meaningless it is, because who would come?

  Not Pia. Pia is gone.

  There’s more screaming as the woman crawls away across the floor. The group of singing girls try to leap out of her way, but the woman’s hand shoots out and grabs an ankle. One of the girls topples, landing face-first. The woman pulls her closer. Her upper teeth sink into the girl’s bare calf, ploughing deep bloody furrows. Filip sees a hint of her tongue lapping.

  Jenny slides off her stool and runs over, aims a kick at the woman’s head and makes contact just below the temple. The woman falls heavily onto her side without letting go of the girl’s ankle. Pressing her face to the wounds again, the wet, slurping noises sound almost sexual. There’s a hollow clicking from her mandible. Her upper teeth scrape against bone; the girl’s screams rise in pitch.

  The protective film inside Filip is shredded. The film has afforded him the luxury of not entirely believing what is happening. Now rage floods into him, giving him strength.

  He grabs a knife from the cutting board and runs around the bar. His heart is pounding so fast it could break free of its tether any second.

  When he gets there, Marisol has already brought the magnum down on the woman’s head. The woman looks up at it. A sticky rope of blood dribbles from her tongue.

  Marisol strikes again, again, again. The crunching sounds grow more muffled with each hit. A big crater has opened up in the woman’s skull.