‘I’m sorry, my name is Madde, I … you have to help me find someone,’ the woman whispers, tugging at Marianne’s jumper. ‘My best friend needs help – she must have been drugged or … or …’
‘No one can help her,’ Vincent says quietly. ‘Not now. Come with us.’
Marianne gives him a look. Doesn’t he understand that this Madde could be one of them?
‘No, I need to find someone who can help Zandra,’ Madde whimpers.
Heavy steps sound in one of the adjacent hallways. Dread makes Marianne’s stomach contract. ‘The ship is full of people like her,’ she snaps. ‘You either come with us right now or you take your hands off me.’
Zandra comes out of the same side corridor and glares at them with bloodshot eyes.
Vincent pulls Marianne away. The creature behind them emits a scream that rattles every bone in her body and Marianne runs, ignoring her aching hips and knees. Madde is still clinging to her jumper. Time and space seem to have ceased existing; the hallway grows longer and longer in front of her, like in a nightmare, and now she can hear more feet behind them, more of them, attracted by the ruckus. Vincent has reached the door and is fumbling with his key card, stabbing in frustration at the narrow slot. Finally, it slides in, but nothing happens. He jiggles the door handle. Still locked.
Madde pulls the card out and flips it. She gets it in on her first try, the lock beeps and they tumble into the cabin.
Marianne hears the door shut behind them and everything goes dark.
Albin
The raft has been raised up and swung out past the edge of the deck. No one notices him and Lo when they join the semi-circle that has formed by the railing. The security guard is pulling on a rope, shouting instructions to a passenger holding the other end. Albin wonders how many people will fit on the raft. Most of those waiting are wearing life vests, but not all. There is talk of blood and death and not believing what is happening, about mentally ill people and drugs and monsters.
He doesn’t want to hear it. He just wants to get off the ship, now, immediately. Lo was right: they have to hurry. The water is rushing past far below. Somewhere on the lower floors are his mum and dad, but he mustn’t think about them now, not about where they are, or that they might die.
Lo is with him.
‘There’s no strap to put between your legs,’ complains a man who has just pulled on a life vest. ‘It’s going to slip off as soon as I get in the water. I need another one!’
‘Get in if you’re coming,’ the security guard bellows. ‘No more than twenty-five people.’
Lo grabs hold of Albin and they push forward towards the raft. As someone hands them a life vest each a woman steps in under the bright orange dome, the raft rocks and then she is gone.
‘What’s this fucking strap you’re talking about?’ someone shouts. ‘You have to help me with this shit!’
No one answers. Albin pulls his life vest on, trying to figure out how it works. The security officer helps more people climb into the life raft, and each time it rocks like a cocoon full of larvae ready to burst. Albin wipes raindrops from his eyelashes. The vibrations from the floor spread through his body and turn into a shiver along his spine.
Lo has cut into the line and is waving impatiently for him to follow her.
‘Make sure you get these kids on there!’ a man shouts behind Albin, and a few people do actually move when the man firmly grabs Albin’s shoulders and pushes him forward.
Lo shows him how to fasten that strap between his legs and he wonders where she learned to do that. They are almost at the raft now. The security guard is instructing people on how to sit, alternating right and left. Albin counts the people ahead of him. He and Lo are going to fit, but he wants to sit next to her. He looks at the guard when it is their turn. His name tag says HENRIK.
‘Can we count as one?’ Albin says, grabbing Lo’s arm. ‘So we can sit together?’
Henrik just stares at him. Albin can tell from his eyes that the man’s as scared as he is.
‘Just hurry up,’ he says.
‘Hey!’ someone yells. ‘Hey, you can’t launch that raft!’
The security guard turns towards the sound, squinting against the rain and the lights. ‘And why the hell not, exactly?’ he says.
‘I used to work here. If I know, you must know too. That raft is going to flip over as soon as it hits the water.’
Albin turns around and studies the guy who has joined them. His head is shaved and he has a dark beard.
‘I’m not staying here,’ the security officer says. ‘No fucking way.’
‘Are you not getting that you’re going to die?’ the guy counters.
Albin looks at Lo.
The security officer pulls a winch handle from the davit. It shimmers like silver in the lamplight.
‘Then so be it,’ he says. ‘I’d prefer that.’
The guy curses and glances at the raft. The people waiting inside are huddled close together for warmth.
‘Get off the raft!’ He shouts to make himself heard over the wind. ‘Right now! You have to go to your cabins and stay there!’
No one answers.
‘Lo,’ Albin says, ‘let’s stay.’
She shakes her head.
‘It’s for your own safety!’ the guy shouts.
‘Watch out!’ Lo suddenly screams, and Albin sees a gleaming arc, like liquid silver flying through the air. The guy barely has time to turn before the heavy winch handle rams into his face with a sound that makes Albin cover his ears.
But it is too late. He has already heard it and he will never be able to unhear it. Blood gushes from the guy’s nose and he staggers backwards, falls, tries to get back up.
The security officer walks to where he is lying. Albin can see only his broad, uniformed back. He raises the handle and brings it down hard. When he walks away, the guy is still on the ground with blood all over his face. He looks dead.
‘Fucking stellar, you fucking douchebag!’ Lo screams.
The officer turns to her, and Albin stops breathing. But he doesn’t raise the winch handle again. ‘Are you coming?’ he says.
Albin and Lo shake their heads. The security officer waves the last few people on board the raft before climbing in himself. It sways on its ropes as it’s slowly lowered down towards the water.
Lo runs to the guy, but Albin can’t take his eyes off the heavy cocoon. He walks up to the railing, clutches it hard when he is overwhelmed by vertigo. He wonders if the people are talking to each other or if they are quiet, waiting. How many of them heard that guy? Have any of them changed their minds and want to get out? Too late now.
The ropes creak.
The raft is winched lower, lower, lower. It starts skidding on the foam rushing around the ferry and then the ropes are cut with a loud snap. The raft smashes into the hull, then flies into backwards somersaults as if it weighs nothing. Albin thinks he can make out screaming from down there, but it must be his imagination. He leans as far out over the railing as he dares; he has to see how it ends. Far behind them he can glimpse the black underside of the raft through the foam. And then it’s gone.
Lo and he could have been on it.
He holds on tighter to the railing and vomits.
Madde
Something heavy slams into the door from the outside. Zandra. Zandra who isn’t Zandra any more. She wants to get in.
She’s not going to give up.
There’s another thud. Madde covers her ears and starts bawling, ‘What the fuck’s going on here?’
The old lady pats her arm awkwardly and Madde lowers her hands. She feels the next thud against the door in every part of her body.
The lights come on. All Madde can see through her tears is glitter.
‘Come on,’ the guy says, moving further into the cabin to turn on more lights.
Madde wipes her eyes and blinks. Her fingertips are streaked with black mascara.
She follows them into a big room. The fi
rst thing she notices are the pink streamers hanging in bunches from a banister. The cabin has an upper level: this is the suite where she thought Dan Appelgren lived, but it is even posher than she imagined. It’s only a few feet away from the cabin she shared with Zandra, but this is worlds apart from the Charisma Madde knows so well.
Shrivelled rose petals have been ground into the carpet under her bare feet.
She walks to the windows and studies the gently rounded point of the railing at the prow, sharply illuminated against the compact darkness beyond it. People are running down there. Two young girls have attacked an old man; his face is upturned, gaping, his eyes wide. Only a few feet away, an older woman has climbed up on the railing. She is shaking her head; it looks like she is crying. The wind tears at her blouse as she climbs down onto the gunwale. A semi-circle of young men are converging on her; Madde feels like she recognises them from Club Charisma. And then the woman lets go of the railing, hides her face in her hands and kind of leans back. In the next moment, the night has swallowed her.
She jumped willingly, even though she must have known she would die.
Another wave of tears is burning in Madde’s eyes, but she can’t look away. A woman is tottering through the mayhem on her own. She turns around and Madde recognises her instantly. Instead of her usual uniform, she is wearing a wet dress that is clinging to her thin body and the rain has made her hair frizzy. Her normally flawless mask of makeup has been washed away. Madde knows her name because she has seen her name tag so many times. It is the woman who works in the tax-free shop: Sophia.
A girl who can’t be more than ten years old sprints past. Sophia grabs hold of her, picks up the writhing body and buries her face in her neck. The girl goes limp, like a toy from which someone has removed the batteries.
There are so many of them. They are like Zandra.
‘Come and sit on the sofa instead,’ the old lady says, leading her that way.
‘What’s going on?’ Madde brings herself to ask again.
‘We don’t know,’ the guy says. ‘They’re biting people … that seems to be how it spreads.’
Madde stares at a bowl of jelly hearts on the coffee table, then gingerly touches her torn earlobe. Even the lightest touch stings.
‘Their teeth,’ she says. ‘Zandra had new teeth.’
She notices the guy and his mum exchanging a look as she sits down.
‘How are you feeling, dear?’ the old lady says, taking a seat next to her. ‘Did she hurt you?’
The old lady looks nice. How old is she? Her hair is straight and dyed red. When did all of those old-lady hairdos with curly grey hair disappear?
‘Did she bite you?’
‘No,’ Madde says.
There’s a new thud against the door. Madde stares at the steps leading to the upper level. Where should she run to if Zandra gets in?
‘I’m sorry, but we have to ask,’ the guy says. ‘There’s a cut in your ear that …’
‘She tore out my earring,’ Madde says. ‘I’ve not been bitten.’ She has a sudden realisation. ‘And what about you? How am I supposed to know you and your mum won’t turn into them all of a sudden?’
They exchange another look.
‘We haven’t been bitten either,’ the old lady says. ‘And I’m not his mother.’
Madde examines her and decides to trust them. What other choice is there? ‘I want to get out of here,’ she says. ‘I want to go home. I don’t want to be here.’
‘I know,’ Vincent says, ‘but at least we’re safe here.’
She doesn’t ask how he knows that, or how any of them could possibly know anything at all about that.
Calle
He touches his forehead. When his fingers get close to the edges of the wound near his hairline, the pain grows roots all the way down to the soles of his feet.
The two children are standing in front of him. They look about twelve. Both have childlike eyes, both are scared, but the girl has learned to conceal it. To try to conceal it, at any rate.
Calle struggles to sit up. He can’t breathe through his nose; it feels numb, like a brick in the middle of his face, and his whole mouth tastes of blood. He looks up at the davit. The raft is gone.
‘What happened?’ he says. His voice sounds thick and sticky. He clears his throat and spits.
‘They disappeared,’ the boy says. ‘They … they all disappeared. Into the water.’
Calle tries to get up, but the dizziness makes the whole ship list. He gazes into the darkness beyond the railing. The water is over fifteen hundred feet deep in places and it can’t be many degrees above freezing.
He thinks about the people who climbed into the life raft and wonders what is left of them now, if they were crushed against the hull, tangled inside the raft. The only thing he knows for sure is that they are dead.
If he had arrived sooner, if he had dodged the blow, if he had managed to stop that security officer they might still be alive.
For a while longer, at least. But does anyone on board really stand a fighting chance?
He pushes his fear away, tries to compose himself and turns to the children.
‘Do you know what’s going on?’ the girl asks.
Calle glances at two staggering figures further down the deck. Are they hurt? Infected? He wishes he had something soothing to say, something they would believe. The boy needs it. But he looks at the girl and knows she would see through it, and she wouldn’t trust him again.
‘No,’ he says, ‘not really. They’re saying there’s some kind of disease on board that makes people … weird.’
There’s screaming, somewhere abaft, like a confirmation.
‘What are you doing here?’ Calle asks. ‘Where are your parents? Do you know?’
The boy shakes his head.
‘Where’s your cabin?’
‘The sixth floor,’ the boy says. ‘I think my dad’s there. But our mums might be looking for us. We were kind of … hiding from them.’
Sixth floor: that’s where Pia called from. Calle has no idea what things might be like down there now.
‘My mum’s in a wheelchair. She can’t get by on her own.’ The boy tries to look brave.
Calle has to turn away to keep from crying. He forces himself back on his feet, attempting to think through the pain. He is going to find Vincent: he has to focus on that. And he has seen the statistics. The people who survive disasters are the ones who will literally step over dead bodies. The ones who stop to help others don’t make it.
The girl has just opened her mouth to say something when they hear screaming coming from one of the stairs down to the promenade deck. A whole pack of infected have backed a couple of middle-aged men up against the railing. The men vanish from sight. The screams are abruptly cut short.
‘Don’t look,’ Calle says, and the boy quickly turns away, but the girl keeps staring.
He is overcome with shame. He can’t just leave the children here, but he won’t be able to help anyone if he can’t think clearly. And to do that, he has to switch off his feelings.
He needs to get from one moment to the next, so one thing at a time. Don’t look at the big picture, or his strength will fail him.
‘Come on,’ Calle says, ‘we need to get away from here.’
‘Where are we going?’ the girl asks. ‘They’re everywhere.’
Calle’s head is throbbing rhythmically, but it feels like the pounding is getting duller, starting to subside. And he realises what he needs to do, then he can head out to look for Vincent again.
‘Not everywhere,’ he says. ‘I’ll bring you to the staff quarters. They can’t get in there.’ He hopes he is telling the truth. Regardless, it is the best he has to offer.
The girl’s eyes narrow. ‘How do we know you’re not one of them? Maybe you’re just planning on taking us someplace where you can gobble us up in peace and quiet.’
The boy looks at her, then at him.
The girl is clearly the one he n
eeds to convince. ‘They don’t seem that good at planning, do they?’
She looks at Calle, wavering. ‘Okay,’ she says.
‘Good.’ He looks across at the stairs on the other side of the sun deck. No infected to be seen there, but they have to hurry. He grabs their hands, so small in his.
Filip
The last customers have left Starlight and Filip opens the door to the staffroom behind the bar. Everything still looks normal in there: the hard wooden chairs and the wax tablecloth. The Duralex glass he drank his coffee out of when they left Stockholm is in the dish rack. Marisol and the guys in the band take the lead, pushing open the door on the other side of the room, which leads further into the Charisma’s staff quarters.
Jenny is gone. The others haven’t seen her either. He can’t remember when he saw her last. Could she have run on ahead?
Please, he thinks, let her be in the mess already.
For a moment, he is jealous of Marisol’s faith. She has someone to turn to with her prayers.
He stops in the doorway and looks back at the empty room. Has a feeling this is the last time he will ever see Starlight.
‘Excuse me,’ someone says just as he is about to close the door behind him, making Filip start.
A man in a blue shirt has entered the bar. Large strips of skin have been peeled from his face, hanging in tatters across one of his eyes and from one of his cheeks. But he seems completely composed, as though he hasn’t even noticed.
Filip swallows hard. ‘Yes?’ he says, and is shocked by how neutral he sounds.
‘Would you happen to know if this is going to cause a delay?’ the man asks.
Filip stares at him.
‘I have an important meeting in Åbo tomorrow morning. My schedule was tight even before, so I hope this won’t make us late.’
Filip shakes his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I … I have to go now, but …’
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