Blood Cruise

by Mats Strandberg

  She thinks she can make out the sound of footsteps approaching, the snapping of teeth over the howling of the wind. She shuts her eyes tight, tries to not even breathe.

  Her heart is pounding hard, and every beat brings a dull pain in her torn earlobe. She wishes she hadn’t looked out of the window of the suite and seen what happened here. She knows how these people died. It is all too easy to imagine what is going to happen when they find her and Marianne.

  Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

  Sniffing in the air. Still some ways off, but far too close.

  That feeling fills her again: she wants to stand up and scream, fight. She could jump into the freezing water and hope for the best. Or allow herself to get bitten. Anything, so long as it is finally over.

  But she can’t, no matter how tempting it might be. She would risk Marianne’s life too. They haven’t made it this far just to die when help is on its way.

  Fuck no. They are going to make it. They are going to get out of here and get up to the goddamn life rafts on the sun deck. They are going to wait for the help that will come sooner or later. The woman said so over the PA system.

  They are going to survive. They are getting off this fucking boat. If not, Vincent’s death was completely pointless.

  The footsteps behind them fade into the distance. Madde is still holding her breath, not quite daring to believe it.

  But yes: they are fading.

  Madde exhales slowly and opens her eyes. She has been squeezing them shut so hard the muscles around them ache. The faint grey light of dawn is trickling in through her eyelashes.

  Her ears are straining. She can’t be sure there aren’t more of them on the bow deck.

  Marianne shifts. Madde turns her head a few degrees, glares at her.

  Marianne is staring back at her, wide-eyed.

  ‘Lie still,’ she mouths.

  ‘I am,’ Madde mouths back.

  Something is gently nudging Madde’s stomach.

  The body underneath them is moving. The man in the unwashed jumper emits a groan that rumbles through the ribcage Madde’s nose is pressed against. He has started waking up.

  Calle

  ‘Let’s go,’ Calle whispers, urging the children on. He takes the first few steps up the wide staircase.

  Something flutters by at the edge of his vision.

  Someone screams.

  It happens so quickly that it’s done before Calle can even turn around.

  A wild-eyed man in a dressing gown has run straight into Antti. The man coughs and tiny droplets of blood mist Antti’s face. Antti stumbles backwards, revolted, wiping at his face with his shirt sleeve.

  The man’s hands slide down to his stomach. The handle of Antti’s knife is sticking out of the gap where his dressing gown has fallen open.

  ‘But … why?’ the man gasps, and falls to his knees, staring at his bloody fingers.

  Something is twisted around them: colourful plastic beads on a heavy-duty sewing thread. A necklace, made by a child. Nausea rises in Calle’s throat.

  ‘He can talk,’ Lo says. ‘He’s not one of them.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Antti says. ‘I’m sorry, fuck, I’m sorry …’

  The man looks up again, grabs hold of the knife handle and tries to yank it out; his whole face contorts in agony. He lets go of the knife and starts sobbing silently.

  Calle can tell that every movement is making the pain in his gut worse. ‘What the fuck have you done, Antti?’ he says. ‘What the fuck have you done?’

  He squats down, vaguely aware that a number of people have emerged in the surrounding hallways, that they are staring. Some are wearing coats, others are wrapped in blankets.

  ‘He just ran straight at me. You saw it too,’ Antti says. ‘I thought he was one of them.’

  ‘Stella,’ the man whispers, fixing firmly on Calle, as though to make sure he has heard the name. ‘Stella …’

  ‘Who is that?’

  The man’s gaze cuts right through Calle.

  ‘We saw them at dinner,’ Lo says. ‘Stella’s your daughter, right? She thought my aunt was in a pram.’

  The man nods, wincing with pain again. His face pales, so rapidly Calle can see the colour change. ‘She ran out of our cabin ahead of me when … my wife …’

  His mouth opens and closes, but no other sounds come out. He is having trouble holding himself upright, so Calle helps lower him onto his back.

  ‘What about your wife?’ Calle says.

  The man pulls up the sleeve of his dressing gown.

  A large bite mark just below the elbow.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Antti shouts. ‘Bloody hell, he’s infected, and I have his blood all over me! Fucking twat!’

  Calle is practically speechless, then he roars, ‘Shut the fuck up!’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Antti says. ‘He was going to die anyway!’

  ‘But you didn’t know that!’

  When Calle turns back to the man, he has stopped breathing, and Calle realises he is standing at that precipice again. He is balancing on the brink of insanity, leaning out over the edge. He is staring into the abyss and the abyss is staring back at him.

  ‘I’m telling you, it wasn’t my fault,’ Antti whimpers.

  He turns around and runs back down the hallway, away from them.

  Calle closes his eyes. He has to try to hold it together, just a little while longer.

  Madde

  The man is squirming underneath her, making the whole jumble of bodies move. The heel burrows deeper into her calf, striking a nerve. Madde cautiously lifts her head up.

  She almost wets herself.

  The man is staring back at her. The look in his watery blue eyes is as animalistic as Zandra’s was, both empty and determined. He is straining to get his face closer to hers. His teeth snap.

  Madde braces her hands against his chest and pushes up on all fours. The long-haired woman and Marianne roll onto the deck. Madde scrabbles backwards, puts her knee on someone’s thigh, finds the floor, freezing cold against her bare toes, and manages to stand up.

  Marianne doesn’t move but stares at the man with panic in her eyes. They are so close. The man slowly turns his head until they are face to face. He sniffs.

  That disgusting fucking sniffing and snapping of the teeth. Madde is so sick of being afraid of them. She hates them so much, so incredibly fucking much.

  She gropes around until she hits upon Marianne’s elbow and pulls her upright, checking behind her while Marianne finds her balance. A group of them have gathered by one of the glass doors. They have apparently abandoned the other side of the bow deck.

  The man sits up and reaches out for them, snaps his teeth. The corners of his mouth point straight down. He looks like a spoiled child, sulking in the sweets section because he can’t have everything he wants.

  Marianne whimpers, but Madde hushes her, gestures in the direction of the huddle, which is bound to notice them any moment now.

  They set their course for the other glass door. Madde steps across the woman, slipping when she treads on her hair.

  Madde barely manages to force down a yelp when there is a hard tug on her dress.

  The man is staring up at her when she whips around. His hand has a vice-like grip on the hem and he tugs and pulls at it. His hairy knuckles rub against her thigh. His round face is a mask of unadulterated urge.

  Enough already. Fucking enough already.

  Hate fills her to the brim. Blows into her on the wind. Roaring and swirling.

  She tries to pull free, but he clings on. She almost falls over, but catches herself on the railing.

  ‘Suck my cock, you fucking perv,’ she hisses so quietly the words dissolve in the gusts of wind.

  The huddle has spotted them now. Empty, burning eyes study them.

  Suddenly Marianne is beside her. She kicks the man in the head with the pointy toe of her shoe. She kicks again and this time gets his arm. He loses his grip on Madde
’s dress.

  Marianne kicks him a third time, so hard he topples backwards, rolling over the body underneath him and landing face-first. He tries to get back up, arms flailing.

  Madde pounces on him, grabs the hair at the nape of his neck and pulls it so hard it’s a wonder it doesn’t come out. She slams his head into the lower bar of the railing with such force the metal rings. She screams at the top of her lungs. She can’t hold it in. What difference does it make? They’ve already been seen. This is for Zandra. For Vincent. This is for the conversation she has to have with Zandra’s parents. This is for Zandra’s daughter, who will never know her mum properly, never know how wonderful she was.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Marianne says, but Madde isn’t listening; she’s slamming the man’s face into the railing, again and again. The metal becomes slick with blood and something else, which trickles across the deck and into the water. She slams his face down again, as hard as she can, and only when his body goes limp does she let go. His head falls to one side and Madde sees the bloody mass where his face used to be, the profile that is now concave, and she finally backs away.

  The wind snatches at her hair and she pushes it away from her face. Triumph roars inside her.

  ‘Come on now,’ Marianne says, and the graveness of her tone bores into Madde, who turns around, and is stunned. The woman at the front of the pack is barely three feet away. But Madde isn’t scared; she is too high from what she has just done. It feels like she could kill them all, one by one or several at a time. She has to force herself to realise that the most dangerous thing she can do is let herself believe there is no danger.

  She takes Marianne’s hand and they hurry towards the glass door. Hearing footsteps behind them, she shoves Marianne into the hallway.

  Without the wind in her ears, the ship is eerily quiet. The air is warm against Madde’s chilled skin. She looks down the side corridor on their right, just inside the door. Some of them are standing there. They open their mouths when they notice her and Marianne and begin ambling towards them.

  The two women break into a run. There is a small stairwell going up in the next side corridor, but Madde can’t recall where it leads and it’s too narrow anyway; she doesn’t want to risk getting stuck between two bands of them. When they pass the corridor, she spots a young man with dishevelled hair. He has already noticed them, so she accelerates, hoping they will have a clear shot up the main stairs. She is practically dragging Marianne along behind her now. She wonders why more people aren’t making their way to the sun deck. Maybe they prefer hiding in their cabins. She would probably have done the same.

  They come out in the main hallway, and Madde stops mid-step when she sees a man in a bloody dressing gown on the floor right in front of the staircase. A blonde child in nothing but underpants is kneeling next to him. She can count every vertebra in the little spine.

  Marianne is gasping with the effort.

  ‘Hello?’ Madde says, and holds her hand out to the child, then changes her mind and quickly retracts it.

  Not a child that’s one of them. She wouldn’t be able to handle that. She wouldn’t be able to hurt that tiny body even if she had to.

  The child turns around: it’s a girl, looking up at them with eyes red from crying.

  ‘My daddy won’t wake up,’ she says. ‘He has to wake up so we can hide from Mummy.’

  Albin

  He steals a glance at Lo as they walk through the ship for the last time. It feels like she is hiding something. Before, she kept looking at him; now she won’t look at him at all.

  Calle is holding his spear at the ready. They reach deck six, where a few groups of frightened people come stumbling in from the hallways; they nod to them before they start making their way towards the sun deck too. One of them is a woman with cropped hair, muttering to herself in Finnish. He recognises two other women from last night, when he was on his way to the cabin to get Lo.

  Tonight’s going to be amazing, Mum. So fucking amazing!

  Now they look like people in news photos from war zones. Albin wonders if he looks like that too. He stares down the corridor where their cabin is. His dad must have heard the announcement. How would he feel about his dad if he could feel anything right now?

  ‘I wonder where Mum is,’ Lo says as they continue towards the seventh floor. ‘Maybe she was with … with Cilla …’

  Lo’s voice sounds thin. It kind of just evaporates towards the end. He glances at her. She suddenly looks so small.

  ‘We were going to get massages tomorrow,’ Lo says, ‘although I guess that’s today now.’

  Is she as worried about Linda as he was about his mum before everything went so numb and weird? She must be. Why hasn’t she said anything? He probably should have realised anyway. But Lo never gives the impression she needs her mother, or even likes her very much. She never has; not even when they were little did Lo want Linda to comfort her when something happened.

  One of the bodies on the landing reaches out for them and Albin notices Calle taking a firmer grip on his spear. ‘At least Linda has a better chance than Mum,’ he says.

  ‘Not necessarily, just because she can walk. It’s like I said before.’ Lo looks like she is about to cry. ‘Oh well, what do you know. There seems to be someone gnawing on …’

  And then Lo stops dead on the stairs and starts crying. She pulls her sleeves down over her hands, hiding her face in them, hunching down as sobs rack her body.

  Albin puts a hand between her shoulder blades, unsure what to say.

  ‘Come on,’ Calle says. ‘Just a few more floors.’ His voice sounds thick.

  Lo lowers her hands. Her face is flushed, her eyes swollen, but she is not crying any more.

  Albin allows himself to slip away again, to the place where nothing can get to him.

  Filip

  Filip keeps a white-knuckle grip on his makeshift spear, resting it on his shoulder when he and Marisol reach deck ten. He glances at a couple pushing past them. His whole body is tense, ready. Every now and then he meets Marisol’s eyes, checking to make sure she hasn’t spotted any of the infected either.

  A full set of teeth, held together by gleaming braces, sits on the floor by the door to the promenade deck. He looks back over his shoulder. Still no sign of Calle and the children. Two women come up the stairs, so alike they must be sisters, followed by a man in a suit. He recognises a woman with cropped blonde hair from the Finnish conference group who stopped by Starlight early last night. She kept rejecting the advances of one of her colleagues, a baby-faced bald man who was so drunk Filip had considered calling security. Mascara has run down her cheeks. But he doesn’t see anyone who appears to have been bitten.

  ‘Where are they?’ Marisol says.

  Filip knows who she means. Shouldn’t all these people attract the infected?

  They step out onto the promenade deck on the starboard side. The temperature must have plummeted during the night. The wind quickly cools his damp nylon shirt, makes it cling to his body. The sea is eerily still, unmoved by the things that have happened on board.

  They have almost reached the stairs to the sun deck when they hear screams behind them. Filip’s hold on the mop handle tightens and he spins around.

  ‘You!’ Dan Appelgren bellows, shoving aside anyone who is in his way.

  He is less swollen now, and he has changed his clothes. He fixes Filip with those bloodshot eyes and heads straight for him at a run, bellowing, ‘You self-righteous arsehole! I fucking hate you!’

  Dan

  He heard the announcement and instantly knew it was the señorita from Starlight speaking. He came out to make sure no one gets on the fucking life rafts and immediately noticed there are far too few newborns roaming the ship.

  Something is wrong.

  And now Filip is here, brandishing a pathetic little toy spear, waving it about in front of him. ‘Marisol, run,’ Filip says, playing the hero to the last.

  But Marisol doesn’t listen:
she comes at Dan with a fire-axe in her hands. Her pulse is beating hard in her throat, every thump making the gold chain of her crucifix gleam in the pale light of dawn. Dan easily dodges the blade of the axe as it sails past his face. She raises it again, but he is too fast; he punches her in the face, hard, feeling her nose break. He wrests the axe from her hands, tosses it aside, hearing the crowd behind him scream.

  ‘You can forget about anyone getting off this ship,’ he says, smelling the blood streaming out of her nose, and instantly understands.

  He grins at her.

  And then a searing pain blossoms above his waist.

  He turns around and sees Filip standing there with both hands on his mop handle. The knife has gone all the way in, stopping somewhere behind his lower ribs.

  The pain is violent, but it doesn’t scare him; on the contrary, it sharpens his senses, makes every contour clearer. Nothing about Filip’s attack can hurt him. The wound will heal.

  Filip pulls the knife back out and tries to stab him again, aiming for Dan’s ribcage, but he lunges and misses by almost a foot. Filip’s fear makes him unfocused; he glances at Marisol.

  ‘Fucking run!’ he shouts, and stabs at Dan again.

  Dan throws his hand up and the blade slices right through it. He closes his fingers around it. The edge digs into his skin. Time to finish this. He grabs the mop handle, yanks the ridiculous spear out of Filip’s hands and flings it overboard.

  Filip has placed himself between Dan and Marisol, who is too stupid to even try to run.

  Getting him on his back is easy. Filip attempts to twist free but quickly realises he can’t move. People are screaming behind them. The smell of Filip’s fear is growing more acrid by the second.