Blood Cruise

by Mats Strandberg

  ‘You must be very tired,’ Adam says.

  Dan nods. He is, to the bone.

  ‘I think you should rest until we get there,’ Adam says. ‘You are going to need all your strength then. Think about what lies ahead. This is only the beginning.’

  Yes. Rest. That is what he needs.

  And he knows exactly where: he will go to the place that should have been his all along. He is going to have a front-row seat when they arrive in Finland, when the world wakes up to a day unlike any other in all its long history.

  Albin

  ‘Abbe,’ his dad says, ‘Abbe, where are you?’

  He is neither angry dad nor crying dad but a dad Albin has never heard before. He sounds so small, as if they have traded places and now Albin is the adult.

  And Dad has been drinking so heavily Albin can barely make out what he is saying.

  Albin doesn’t know why he is disappointed. Had he expected anything else? That his dad would somehow turn into that dad from the stories he used to make up when Albin was little? The dad who was brave and fought monsters and saved everybody?

  ‘I’m with Lo and some people in the galley,’ Albin says. ‘Where they make the food.’ Has it really only been a few hours since they were all having dinner together at the restaurant?

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Dad asks. ‘And Linda?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Albin says with a sidelong glance at Lo. ‘Aren’t they with you?’

  Lo gets it instantly; she tries not to show it, but she droops as though an invisible piece of string holding her up has suddenly been severed.

  ‘I’m all alone here,’ his dad says. ‘Why did you just run off?’

  Albin fiddles with the phone cord, twisting the soft, grey plastic coils around his index finger. ‘I had to talk to Mum about something,’ he says.

  ‘Why didn’t you come to me? I was right next door!’

  The cord is so tight his fingertip is turning dark purple. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t know either,’ his dad says. He starts crying, wet and gross on the other end. Now Albin recognises him.

  ‘I would come if I could,’ Albin says, ‘but I can’t.’

  As soon as he says it, he knows he isn’t even going to try. He is not going to be in that cabin, cooped up with his dad. He would much rather stick with Calle and the others.

  ‘Then tell me how to get to you,’ his dad snuffles.

  Albin extracts his finger from the plastic cord tunnel. It is slippery with sweat. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I’m going to go crazy in here.’

  You’re already crazy. And I don’t want to see you. And I don’t want Calle and the others to meet you. You would ruin everything.

  ‘I have to go now. If the ship stops, make your way to the roof if you can. There are life rafts there.’

  ‘Abbe – Abbe, don’t hang up! You know I love you more than anything else in the world, I have to …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I love you too.’ Albin has to stand on his tiptoes to hang up. He turns around; Lo is looking at him with glistening eyes.

  ‘They’re not there,’ he says, even though he knows there is no need. ‘And I don’t want to go back.’

  She nods mutely.

  ‘Did you get them?’ Calle calls.

  Albin looks at him. It suddenly strikes him that Calle and the others might not be too thrilled about having to look after him and Lo. That Antti guy definitely doesn’t want to, but at least no one is paying any attention to him. But Calle, Calle did tell them he couldn’t … But things were different then, weren’t they?

  ‘Just Dad,’ he says. ‘We’d rather stay with you until we find our mums.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you—’ Calle starts saying, but just then something seems to click for him, because he breaks off and nods.

  Marisol comes up to them with one of Filip’s improvised knife-spears. She shoots Albin a warm smile. ‘Of course we’re all sticking together,’ she says.

  ‘Where did you actually last see your mums?’ Filip asks from where he is standing by one of the counters.

  ‘The café,’ Lo says. ‘Then they must have gone to the information desk, because there was a message over the speakers …’

  ‘Then you must have talked to them, Mika,’ Filip says. ‘Do you remember them?’

  Albin curses himself. Why didn’t he think of that? He did recognise Mika, after all. Of course he was the one his mum and Linda spoke to.

  ‘My mum’s in a wheelchair,’ he says, and moves closer to the man sitting on the floor. ‘And Aunt Linda has long blonde hair.’

  But Mika doesn’t respond.

  ‘Hello?’ Calle says. ‘Are you deaf or what?’

  There’s still no reply, and Albin suddenly notices that Mika’s eyes are open, as though he is staring out into a big nothingness.

  ‘Mika?’ Calle says. He walks up to him, squats down by his side and feels Mika’s throat.

  ‘Bloody hell, Calle!’ Filip shouts, and comes running, one of the spears over his shoulder. ‘Be careful!’

  ‘I can’t find a pulse,’ Calle says quietly, looking up at Filip.

  ‘Stellar,’ Lo mumbles under her breath. ‘Really fucking stellar’.

  ‘Get back, Calle,’ Albin says. ‘Please.’

  Calle unbuttons Mika’s jacket; the gold buttons flash. When he pulls it open, they see his shirt is torn across his chest. There is a big bloodstain on it. Calle closes his jacket and wipes his hands on his jeans.

  ‘Fucking moron. Why didn’t he say something?’

  Marisol gently grabs Calle’s shoulder and he finally backs away, far enough that Mika’s hands can’t reach him. He walks to one of the sinks and opens the cupboard under it.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Antti says. ‘Is he one of them?’

  ‘He will be,’ Lo replies.

  ‘She’s right,’ Filip says. ‘The one in Starlight seemed dead at first too.’

  Calle returns, wearing a pair of bright-yellow rubber gloves. He squats down next to Mika again.

  It feels like everything in Albin’s stomach is slowly tensing, tensing, tighter and tighter, contracting into a ball of the same red snakes that fell out of the long-haired man on the sun deck.

  It doesn’t matter what colour we are on the outside because we look the same on the inside. His mother always used to tell him that when he was little and started asking questions about why they looked so different. But he never understood what that had to do with anything.

  Mum. Where is she now? His mouth fills with saliva. When he swallows it tastes cold and metallic.

  Calle gently pushes Mika’s chin down. Blood pours out of his mouth when his lips part.

  Filip gets in position right behind Calle, holding out his mop handle so the knife points at Mika, square in the face. Albin moves in closer; he can’t resist.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Calle says. ‘Check this out.’

  Mika’s teeth are falling out at the lightest touch.

  ‘Enough already,’ Filip says. ‘Move aside.’

  ‘Wait.’ Calle tilts Mika’s head back so the light from the ceiling can reach inside his mouth. There are tiny white dots in there moving up through the shredded gums.

  ‘That’s how it happens,’ Calle says, and stands up.

  ‘He’s going to wake up any second,’ Marisol says. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  A memory pops into Albin’s head: a photograph from his biology book; he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for days. It had been an X-ray of a child’s head and the adult teeth were neatly lined up deep inside the gums, ready and waiting to break through as soon as the child lost its baby teeth.

  Calle puts the gloves down on a counter. ‘Come on, let’s fill the buckets. Hurry.’

  ‘He’s moving!’ Lo exclaims.

  The man on the floor blinks his eyes, wincing. His hands are twitching so hard they’re bouncing up and down against his thighs. His mouth opens as if in surprise. />
  Albin turns away. He tries to speak, but can’t get a sound out. He wants to run, but doesn’t know how. Lo is shaking his shoulder, saying his name, but she can’t get through to him. No one can. His true self is rolled up somewhere deep inside him, hiding in a fortress of flesh and blood.

  The others are screaming at each other, gesturing frantically. Lo’s face is right next to his, but she is still so far away. Is she trying to tell him to move? But how?

  His cheek, which is so remote it no longer feels like it belongs to him, suddenly burns, and he realises Lo has slapped him.

  ‘Abbe,’ she cries, ‘what’s wrong with you?’

  He can’t explain. Explaining it might ruin it. He wants to stay where he is, hidden inside himself.

  ‘Abbe, I can’t do this without you,’ she says. ‘You have to come back.’

  He looks at her.

  ‘Can you even hear me?’ Lo says. ‘Please, don’t break down now. We can do that later, when it’s over.’

  He can feel his head nodding mutely, for her, because she seems to need it. But what does she mean by ‘over’? This night is never going to end.

  Filip

  Filip is shaking so violently he almost drops the mop handle. He’s staring at Mika, who is trying to stand up, bracing his back against the holding cabinet. His face contracts in pain, turning it into a horrifying mask.

  ‘Kill him,’ Antti urges, but Filip shakes his head. How can he?

  It doesn’t matter what he really thought about Mika. They have worked together for more than fifteen years.

  ‘He’ll kill us if you don’t,’ Lo says.

  ‘I know!’ he says, and raises the mop handle so the knife is dancing in front of one of Mika’s eyes. ‘I know …’

  He glances at Marisol. Her entire body is tense, as though it consists of a single muscle, ready to spring.

  Mika gets on his feet. His hands move up to his mouth and he starts plucking out his teeth, one by one. He sniffs like he is crying, but his eyes are dry.

  ‘Screw this,’ Filip hears himself say. ‘Let’s just go.’

  ‘We have to get water first,’ Antti says. ‘Just do it.’

  ‘Why don’t you do it?’ Filip snaps. ‘You’re the one who wanted to make mincemeat out of all of them! This is your chance!’

  Antti doesn’t respond. Fucking coward.

  Filip glances at the children. The girl is scared, but the boy looks like he isn’t even present any more. Filip clutches the handle harder, takes a deep breath and tries to aim the point of the knife. The blade is long and thin.

  A gurgle erupts from Mika’s throat. Filip thrusts the handle forward.

  The knife slides into Mika’s eye, all the way, until the point hits the inside of his skull. Mika howls, a single, drawn-out syllable, piercing and atonal. Filip wiggles the mop handle. The knife roots around in there, scrapes against the edges of the eye socket, shredding tissue. When he pulls the blade back out, it is covered in blood and pink bits, and Mika collapses like a pile of dirty laundry.

  How do you kill a monster without becoming a monster yourself? The thought comes to him from his subconscious; he wonders if he has read or heard it somewhere.

  How is he going to live with what he has seen? With what he has done?

  The Baltic Charisma

  The ship’s public spaces have almost been cleared of living bodies. Only a handful remain, having found hiding places on the weather decks, in remote hallways, in the closed restaurants they have broken into. The newborns are growing increasingly desperate. A few of them have started regaining their memories. Not thoughts, exactly, but enough for their instincts to lead them to the corridors where their cabins are. They hurl themselves at the locked doors, rattle the door handles. A few are let in by people who love them, which attracts other newborns who come to fight over the prey. Other cabins fill with the screams of unfortunates who locked themselves in with infected people earlier in the evening.

  *

  The dark-haired woman fights to resist the temptation of the enticing smells. She is still shaken by what happened in the mess, but there is no going back now. She has stopped looking for her son; now she is doing her best to steer clear of him instead.

  She is making sure the newborns notice her, start following her through the corridors.

  In the mess, a few of the bodies have got off the floor. They sniff the air, but there is nothing left here to still their hunger.

  *

  In a stairwell not too far from there, a man is on all fours. He has a wife called Lillemor, but he has no memory of her now. He pulls on the arm that is cuffed to the railing. He has to break free, has to eat. He bites into his wrist with his new teeth, rips off big chunks of meat and spits them out. He gnaws through the bones until all that connects the arm is flimsy sinew and flaps of skin, then he tugs so hard the metal screeches. He’s almost free now. Soon, he can hunt. The blood from his arm trickles across the floor, dripping down onto the man on the landing below. He hasn’t woken up yet, but his new teeth have already surfaced in his mouth.

  *

  The woman has lured a herd of newborns into the narrow stairwell leading down from the fifth floor. She opens the door to the car deck using the card she took from one of the dead people in the mess. The strong reek of petrol comes as a relief; it hides all the smells she has to hold out against. The vibrations from the ship are strong down here. There’s a faint jangling from the chains securing the cars. She looks at her caravan, plays with her locket and reminisces about everything they have done together, all the years, all the time they stole. The boy she loved more than anything is gone for ever. She still doesn’t understand how it happened, how he found the man who works here; she figures they must have been planning this for a long time. He worked with determination and skill, but she has realised her son’s determination is also a blessing. It gives her a chance to avert the greater disaster without anyone outside the ship finding out what happened here tonight. If her son and his helper had not been so meticulous about cutting the ship off from the rest of the world, videos and photographs from hundreds upon hundreds of phones would already be spreading across the globe like wildfire. She no longer has any hope of saving her son, or herself, but there is still a way to save everyone outside the Baltic Charisma.

  She closes the door, trapping the newborns, and heads up the narrow stairs to round up more.

  Madde

  Madde is sitting on one of the upholstered dining chairs, tapping her nails against the tabletop and gazing out of the window. The sky has lightened outside: shades of darkest grey, deepest blue. The sun is going to start inching out of the sea soon. She wants to shout at it to hurry up. The impenetrable darkness they have been travelling through has felt so eternal, as if time has stood still.

  Somewhere ahead of them is Åbo. She has travelled there aboard the Charisma so many times without ever actually seeing the harbour. She was always asleep when they arrived.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Marianne says. ‘Please.’

  Madde beats out a few more drumrolls before letting her hand rest. She can feel the faint vibrations in the table: the engines Vincent’s boyfriend is going to try to kill.

  What happens if they don’t succeed?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, looking at Marianne. ‘I just …’ She can’t think of what to say.

  Marianne nods. ‘I know.’

  Vincent is sitting on the spiral staircase leading to the upper level. He is also gazing out of the window. ‘There’s practically no one left on the bow deck,’ he says. ‘No one moving, that is.’

  He is sitting stock-still, clearly on edge. She understands. If the engines do stop, he will know his boyfriend made it at least that far.

  Madde puts her hands on the edge of the chair. Her sweaty fingertips have left marks on the polished tabletop. They slowly evaporate before her eyes.

  Does she even want help to come? What would that mean for the contagion? Will it keep spreading until th
e whole world is like the Charisma?

  Suddenly she just wants to get up, leave the suite and let herself be killed. She wouldn’t have to wait any longer, or be afraid any more. It would be over.

  She stands up. The door is pulling at her, as if it’s exerting its own gravity, but she forces herself to go back to the sofa and sits down next to Marianne. She folds her arms, shudders.

  Marianne misunderstands, lifts herself off the sofa and pulls a maroon blanket from under her, same shade as the carpet. She wraps the blanket around Madde’s shoulders and Madde pulls it tighter, draws her legs up so most of her body is covered by the blanket.

  To think that such a simple thing can feel so good. The door loses some of its attraction.

  ‘You haven’t said if you have someone out there,’ she says to Marianne.

  ‘I came here by myself,’ Marianne replies dully.

  ‘Were you having a good night? Before everything happened?’

  Marianne makes no reply, but Madde is beginning to feel overcome with sleepiness.

  ‘It certainly turned out eventful,’ Marianne says at length.

  Madde can’t suppress a smile. Her eyelids are so heavy. It would be so nice to fall asleep, duck out for a while. ‘I’m glad we found each other,’ she murmurs.

  Madde opens her eyes when Marianne doesn’t respond and watches her wipe a few tears from her cheeks, toss her head slightly.

  Something electronic beeps: a familiar sound. Madde’s heart leaps into high gear and she sits up straighter, hearing the door opening.

  ‘Calle?’ Vincent shouts, and runs down the stairs, making a turn so tight when he reaches the bottom that he would have fallen if he hadn’t kept his hand on the banister.

  ‘No,’ a tired voice says, and the door closes.

  Vincent stops in the middle of the room.

  Madde gets up from the sofa, still wrapped in the blanket, staring at the man, trying to piece it together.

  Has he come for me?

  No, of course not. How would he know I’m here?

  ‘How are you?’ she says, brushing her hair from her forehead. ‘Are you okay?’