*
In the sea outside the Charisma, those who have ended up in the water are yelling desperately. No one aboard the last raft to be launched says anything. They know there is no more room; they would risk everyone’s lives if they tried to save even one more.
Madde watches the ship, wondering where Zandra and Vincent are now. She hears screaming and loud splashing from another raft: one of them has managed to surface and is clawing at the edge of the raft. His snapping teeth are sharp enough to puncture the rubber. The people on board are striking at him with a paddle, but Madde has to look away.
Marianne is shaking, not just from cold. Now the tension is dissipating, violent convulsions are racking her body. She tries to keep them under control for Stella’s sake. The girl has snuggled up in her arms and is sucking her thumb. Marianne watches Calle, who is paddling on the other side of the raft. Their eyes meet and she reminds herself to tell him that Vincent saved her life. That he was a hero.
Calle looks away, gazes at the Charisma. Her bow has risen up out of the water. When she sinks, she is going to pull down everything nearby with her. He and Marisol paddle harder; his arms are tired, the gash in his forehead is throbbing, but it feels good to work his body. A young guy vomits down the side without warning.
‘I’m not sick,’ he says quickly, and wipes his mouth, ‘just drunk.’
A woman swears in Russian. Calle studies the young guy, thoughts racing through his mind. They need a plan: they need to get information through to whoever comes to rescue them. He looks at the people around him: Linda, who has her arms around the children, kissing the tops of their heads; the women on another raft who are singing to stay awake. Calle has always been told it’s the people who put themselves first who survive a disaster, but maybe that’s not entirely true. He glances at Marianne again, seeing her wrap her blanket around Madde, even though she is shaking herself. It is such a simple gesture, yet it contains so much kindness. Calle suddenly realises he is happy Vincent was with her. Vincent is dead. He tests out the thought. Vincent doesn’t exist. He is gone. He can’t believe it. It is too absurd to imagine that Vincent, who is the most alive person Calle knows, no longer exists. And even so, he hopes Vincent is dead. That is better than Vincent having turned into one of them.
Albin squints at the cold sun. There are fewer and fewer screams from the water as people die. Albin just wants to sleep. He has noticed that Linda is worried about him: the more worried she gets, the more she talks. Now she is telling him that she is sure his mum and dad are fine, that they are probably really worried about him right now, that they will all be reunited soon, but he can’t focus on it because what she is saying is meaningless. His eyes close. Tiredness spreads through his body, making it warm.
‘Don’t fall asleep now, Abbe, okay?’ Linda says, and he grudgingly looks up at her. ‘You can’t fall asleep, Abbe. You’re going to freeze to death if you fall asleep.’
And he knows she is right, but sleep is pulling him under. The raft is rocking beneath him. The sound of the oars being dipped into the water is soothing.
Then he feels Lo’s breath next to his face. ‘I’ve been thinking about the vampires. Shouldn’t they get hammered, drinking the blood of all those drunk people?’
Albin opens his eyes again. What Lo said has made him curious. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘that’s weird.’
He suddenly becomes aware of a thrumming sound in the air: a helicopter. It’s still far away. He isn’t even sure he has really heard it until he notices other people scanning the sky too. He closes his eyes to hear better, and feels the tiredness making his body heavy again. Heavy and warm. The cold can’t get to him any more.
‘I don’t think it’s that weird,’ Madde says. ‘When you’re really wasted, your blood alcohol level is the same as, like, reduced-alcohol beer. And that’s hardly enough to get you sozzled.’
Albin remembers her from the terminal. She is shivering and her lips are blue, as if she’s eaten blueberries. Her friend who dropped peanuts down her cleavage isn’t here.
‘Drinking blood is my number one advice to the general public,’ Albin says.
The people nearest them on the raft stare at them.
‘You eat blood sausage though,’ Lo says. ‘That’s, like, the same as a scab, you know.’
The young guy who threw up before glares at them, and that makes Albin giggle.
‘All right,’ Linda says, ‘that’s enough.’ But she shoots Lo a grateful look when Albin isn’t looking.
The thrumming of the helicopters is getting louder. The first can be seen on the horizon now.
The Charisma has risen out of the water like a tower. The prow is pointing straight up and she is sinking steadily, foot by foot, in the pale morning light. The white bird with its pipe and captain’s hat is just clear of the waterline.
Marisol rests her aching arms now they have put a safe distance between themselves and the ship. She puts the paddle down in the raft. Her head is throbbing and she wishes she had a water bottle to hand. The pain is radiating up through the roof of her mouth. She licks her lips and tastes the blood that has dried on her upper lip. Gross. But she licks it again. It feels like the new life in her belly needs the blood. Wants more.
*
The eddies rising up through the ship make its walls buckle and break, shatters windows, sucks suitcases and clothes and toothbrushes out of cabins, sweeps up bodies that have fallen down stairwells and corridors.
The last bit of air is squeezed out of the Charisma with a rumbling sigh, a terrifying final exhalation.
Pia can’t fight it any longer. She is pulled under by the current. It’s like free-falling. Cold water fills her nose, mouth, rushes into her stomach. She looks at the sunshine, slanting down through the water above her. Beautiful. She doesn’t want to sink down into the darkness. She doesn’t want to disappear. The hulking shape of the ship looms, a gigantic sea monster. There are bodies beneath her kicking feet. A few of them are like her. They are sinking, sinking, and she is sinking with them into the dark.
The first man infected on board claws at the walls of his water-filled cell. The woman and men in the cells next door have drowned, but he was not so lucky.
Some of the newborns are already crawling across the sea floor. Their eyes are open. Their teeth snap like scissors. Everything is so different down here. It’s dark. Sound works differently, smells act different too. But it is enough to guide them. They crawl and drag themselves towards land.
They are slow, but determined.
Acknowledgements
They say it takes a village to raise a child. That goes for this book as well. I would like to thank all the friends and strangers who helped me: answered questions, read drafts and gave me feedback from their many different fields of expertise, or cheered me on when I was sure this ferry would sink and take me down with it. Anna Andersson, Kim W. Andersson, Ludvig Andersson, Åsa Avdic, Helena Dahlgren, Gitte Ekdahl, Måns Elenius, Maria Ernestam, Varg Gyllander, Emma Hanfot, Rickard Henley, Karl Johnsson, Jenny Jägerfeld, Ulf Karlsson, Fredrik Karlström, Åsa Larsson, Patrik Lundberg, Jenny Milewski, Elias Palm, Alexander Rönnberg, Mia Skimmerstrand, Gustav Tegby, Maria Turtschaninoff and Elisabeth Östnäs – thank you.
The eighteen months I spent on board the Baltic Charisma were, for better or for worse, the most intense time of my life. There are a few people I feel an extra-deep gratitude for. Levan Akin, Sara B. Elfgren and Anna Thunman Sköld – you guys were my life rafts. It would take at least another book just to name all the things I have to thank you for. That also goes for Pär Åhlander, who was the first one to read it, who went with me on a cruise (‘Are you the one smelling like sausage?’) and who designed the cover to look just like I pictured it, only much better.
Also, thank you, Kim Petersen, a great friend and a great concept artist, for creating the cover illustration of the blood-soaked corridor.
Thank you, Dad, for letting me work on your couch, always with a coffee cup and
your excellent food within reach.
And, of course, thank you, Johan Ehn, for putting up with my obsessing over corridors and characters during this eighteen-month cruise. Marrying you was definitely the best decision I ever made.
A lot of amazing people have helped me with my research. They have patiently answered stupid questions, and looked for answers when they didn’t already have them. Sometimes, they even gave me answers to questions I knew too little to know that I should ask. They even meticulously combed through my drafts to look for mistakes. Most of these heroes and heroines wish to keep their anonymity, with two exceptions: Matilda Tudor, who gave me a lot of insight into the social structures on board; and Sven-Bertil Carlsson, who helped me with the technical stuff. I would like to add that any factual errors are completely my own, whether they were intentional or not. I would also like to add that if I ever set foot on a ferry again, there are no hands I would feel safer in than those belonging to the wonderful people I’ve talked to.
Thank you to my publisher, Susanna Romanus, and my editor, Fredrik Andersson, who understood exactly what I wanted to go with Blood Cruise and helped me get there.
Thank you to my agent Lena Stjernström and the rest of the crew at Grand Agency, my life vests when the ship is rocking.
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