by Ellen Datlow
She saw me and came running, and I didn’t know for sure what language she was screaming in but I thought it was probably German, which would imply the Dusseldorf office. She was fast, and gleeful, and next thing I knew I was smashing backward into a curved glass cabinet that was probably eighty years old and quite valuable. Thankfully I hit it at an angle and the shattered glass didn’t sever anything important, but then the woman was straddling me and trying to stuff a thumb deep into each of my eyes.
Her breath smelt awful, the kind of stench Carl had been producing in the toilet, but coming up the other way, out of her mouth. My eyes started to sparkle and meanwhile she was feverishly trying to knee me in the balls, so I gathered all the strength I could muster and planted both feet firmly on the ground and thrust upward, trying to buck her off.
It didn’t work but for a moment she was off-balance at least, and so I twisted sideways instead, managing to roll on top of her. I banged her head down onto the parquet flooring—very hard—and scrabbled to my feet. She was snarling and I could barely see anything because of the stars in my eyes, but as she started to get up I sent a swinging kick at her head and managed to catch her in the jaw.
I didn’t wait to see her land but sprinted the remaining yards to the stairs, leaping down most of the first flight in one jump. This meant I nearly went sprawling and bounced painfully into the wall on the next return, but thankfully I kept my feet and half-ran and half-fell down the next flight.
As I landed chaotically in the reception area I saw a group of people attacking each other. It was impossible to tell who was trying to kill whom. It’s possible everybody was trying at once. I also saw Peter, at the reception desk, repeatedly smacking someone’s forehead down onto its polished walnut surface, lifting it up and bringing it down again.
He saw me coming, whacked the person’s head down one final time—there was enough of their face left for me to recognize him as the clerk who’d checked me in when I arrived—and turned to me, panting. His face and shirt were smeared with something brown. “You took your fucking time, mate.”
I sniffed. “Are you covered in shit?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I thought it might help.”
“Again—why?”
“When I came down the steps from the top deck I found out Inka was still alive even though both her legs were broken. She grabbed my ankle and I fell down. We ended up rolling around in her, well, her shit, until I could get away from her again. I thought about wiping it off but then I wondered if maybe it’d help, if the smell would make these fucking loonies think I was one of them or something.”
“Does it work?”
“Not even slightly. It was a bad idea.”
“Hell yes.”
As we ran to the walkway Pete dodged over to the souvenir store, undoing his shirt and throwing it to the ground. Grabbed a Queen Mary sweatshirt and pulled it on.
As he turned back he also picked up a souvenir coffee mug, shaped like one of the ship’s funnels.
“Why the hell are you—”
I ducked just in time and the mug reached the target he’d intended—the head of the naked woman from upstairs, who’d come running up behind me. The mug smashed to pieces on her face and she fell like a sack of bricks.
“Dusseldorf?” I asked as we looked down at her.
“No,” he said. “Warsaw.”
“Oh. Well, thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome. Now let’s get the hell off this boat.”
We ran through the doors and out into the fresh air, along the metal walkway toward the staircase that’d get us down to the parking lot. “Why are we okay, though? Why isn’t this happening to us too?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Pete said. “That is a problem for another time, if ever.”
“Jesus—look at it back in there.”
There were now forty people or more in the reception area—all tearing at each other—with others joining them from above and below. It was hard to tell who were victims and which were attackers, though I did spot the guy from Madrid who’d bought me a pint I never got to drink, and it seemed like he was trying to escape, rather than kill. “Do you think we should try to …”
“Fuck that,” I said. “I’m not going in there.”
“I’m of like mind,” Peter admitted. “But what the hell are we going to do?”
“Get off the boat. Properly. Onto dry land.”
“Obviously,” he said, “but look.” He pointed down toward the dock area. Figures were running back and forth, screaming. Some had weapons. Others were attacking people with their bare hands. “It’s no better down there.”
“So we find somewhere to hole up.”
“For how long? And then what?”
“My PA is coming.”
“Shannon?”
“How the hell do you know who my PA is?”
“Seriously? Everybody knows you stole her from the Chicago office by doubling her salary. All the other PAs are seriously pissed off about it.”
“Okay, well, maybe that wasn’t such a bad decision, okay? She’s on her way from Vegas right now to pick me up.”
“That’s an impressive level of dedication.”
“This is my point.”
“She may not make it here, you know that.”
“I do. But I owe it to her to be ready and waiting if she does.”
“Definitely.” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out two small bottles, and handed one to me. “Here.”
“Hell is it?”
“Jack Daniel’s,” he said. “Nicked them off the plane.”
“You do good work, Pete.”
“Cheers.” We knocked the drinks back in one, threw the bottles away and ran together to the stairwell and pattered down the three flights to ground level, pausing only to simultaneously kick a fat man who tried to throw himself down on us from the flight above, but thankfully missed us and instead landed with a bad-sounding crunch on the concrete landing.
At the bottom we stepped cautiously out into the parking lot. A car was on fire in the corner. In fact, every car I could see was in flames. The air was full of smoke and choked with the smell of burning tires and the sound of distant sirens. A helicopter flew fast and low over our heads but with no intention of stopping—instead heading out over the bay. When it was clear of land a soldier stuck a huge machine gun out of the side door and started firing down into the water.
“That doesn’t seem like a positive development,” Peter said.
“No. You figure something even worse is fixing to come out of the ocean?”
“Looks that way. Christ.”
“We’ve got to get farther from the ocean—and fast. Over the causeway and onto the mainland.”
“But how’s Shannon going to know where to come?”
“She knows where the conference was. She’ll have established the ways in and out. Knowing Shannon, she’ll text me a map with estimated walking/running/fleeing times under post-apocalyptic conditions, and knowing her, it’ll be right.”
We headed across the parking lot toward the access road to the bridge back to the mainland. We both ran in a relaxed mode, keeping it loose, not knowing how far we were going to have to go. Pete clocked my style and nodded approvingly. “You run?”
“Of course,” I said. “Though only a 5k or so, couple,-three times a week.”
“Me too. I hope that’ll be enough.”
“You’ll be fine. Your form’s pretty good. You still stink of shit, though.”
“Everybody does, Rick. I never realized the end times would smell this bad.”
“Me neither. And it’s only going to get worse.”
As we ran onto the bridge we watched a group of four women in the middle, as they took each other’s hands, stepped up onto the ledge, and threw themselves silently into the bay.
“I fear you’re right. But there’s one thing at least.”
“What’s that?” I h
eard shouting behind and glanced back to see that a group of men were staggering out of the parking lot. Arms outstretched. Coming for us.
Peter saw them too, and picked up the pace. “Nobody’s going to give a damn about the RX350i being late.”
Then both of us were laughing as we ran faster and faster, over the bridge and toward a city on fire.
HAUNT
SIOBHAN CARROLL
MAY 31, 1799
INDIAN OCEAN
17˚10’N, BY RECKONING 9˚W OFF CAPE NEGRAIS
Swift did not think about the Zong. The Minerva was a different kind of ship, plagued by different kinds of misery. Her hull, for one. Swift did not like the feel of the boards beneath the waterline. Leaning over the jollyboat’s gunnel, he plunged his arm deeper into the ocean, seeking further damage.
“How’s she fare?”
Swift shook the water off his arm. “A stern leak between wind-and-water,” he said. “’Tis an ill wound for an old ship to bear.” He glanced at the sun, a yellow smear in a haze of gray. A storm was brewing.
“And her hull wants copper-plating,” Decurrs stated. An able seaman, he heard what Swift did not say. “We must move quickly. Pass him the oakum, boy.”
There were three of them in the jollyboat: Decurrs to manage the oars, Swift to patch, and the watch-boy to assist and learn. But, like her mistress, the Minerva’s jollyboat was ill-provided for the sea, and the boy had been bailing since they’d launched her. Swift reached for the oakum himself.
“Mind how the patch goes,” Decurrs said to the boy, as Swift stuffed the sticky fibers between the boards and laid over the tarred canvas. “When the waves surge high, the oakum will swell. The leak will suck the canvas inwards, stopping her mouth.” Decurrs raised the oar to fend off the hull. The jollyboat knocked against the ship anyway, a jolt that shuddered into their bones.
“Aye,” the boy said. He’d left off bailing and was staring intently at the horizon. “Look,” he said suddenly. “To starboard. ‘A something in the sky!’
Swift wiped algae scum onto his trousers. “Hand me the sheet-lead,” he said.
“A haunt!” The boy said. “It follows us!”
“The sheet-lead,” Swift snapped, “and quick about it.”
But it was Decurrs who handed Swift the gray sheet of metal and who helped him nail it to the Minerva’s hull. Like Swift, Decurrs did not scan the horizon for phantoms. He kept his eyes trained on his hands, on the work that could save or kill them.
“The Nightmare Life-in-Death,” the boy breathed. “Just as the ballad said.”
“The Devil take your ghosts.”
Swift ran his hand over the edge of the sheet-lead, making sure the patch lay flush. There was something in the corner of his eye. A flicker of white.
Back aboard ship, Swift was taken aside by Captain Maxwell. “How’s she fare?”
Swift rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His hands were still gummy with the oakum pine-tar that gave sailors their name. It smelled like a distant forest, like a place he’d never see.
“The patch will hold,” Swift said. “But if the seas run high again …”
Maxwell stroked his beard. Swift could see the man considering his charge. The Minerva was a three-masted ship with eleven passengers aboard, forty-eight crew, and a cargo of teak bound for Madras. To turn back to Rangoon would delay the shipment by weeks, and the Company must have its profits.
I should not have shipped on the Minerva, Swift thought. I should have waited for a better berth.
“The coast is a lee shore,” the Captain said, “and her waters are shallow. We will make for Madras.” He coughed, wetly, against his arm. Then he said, awkwardly: “The serang says one of the Lascars saw … something in the swells. Did you happen to spy anything? In the waves?”
Near the windlass, Decurrs was scolding the boy. The boy protested vigorously, pointing toward the horizon.
“No, sir,” Swift said. “We saw nothing. Nothing at all.”
The gale blew into their teeth on the first of June, a choking whirl of greenish mist. “She’s taking on water,” came the cry from below. Swift clung close to the windward rigging of the mainmast as he climbed, flattening his body against the damp ropes. Far below him, the deck heaved with the rising swells.
On the yard he pressed his belly against the hard beam and stepped sideways onto the shivering footrope. It was his stomach, now, that bore his weight as his hands clawed in the heavy canvas of the mainsail. Beside him, two other able seamen did the same, rushing to tie up the ship’s largest sail before the winds rose.
A cry rang down the yard. One of the Chinese sailors had straightened up, pointing at something behind the curtain of rain. Swift hastily turned back to his reef knot, even as the Chinese sailor straightened further, pressing his weight back on the footrope at the very moment the ship rolled. A flurry of motion, and the man fell out of Swift’s vision.
A crash below told Swift the sailor had slammed into the deck. “A kinder death than drowning,” the old salts said. In the rising wind the Chinese sailor’s loose canvas flapped like the wing of an angry bird.
“Belay that sail!”
A Lascar slid sideways on the yard to take his shipmate’s place. The Indian sailor worked quickly, his eyes intent on the task. His own reef knots tied, Swift pulled himself back to the standing rigging and slid back to the frenzy of the deck. The Chinese sailor’s body rested amidships. His fellow seamen stepped around him, their eyes on their assigned lines.
Swift leaned over the man—a young fellow, his eyes wide, staring at the sky. A red stain spread beneath his body, mingling with the wash on the deck.
“He saw a ghost,” said the second belay, eyes on his line. “That’s what he screamed. A sei-gweilo in the waves.”
“Belay that nonsense.” Swift ran his palm over the Chinese sailor’s eyes, doing what he could to close them. When he raised his hand a half-moon of white showed through, as though the man’s spirit studied Swift from the other side. Swift felt a chill that had nothing to do with his sodden clothing, or the rising gale.
“Pumps in full labor,” said a voice. It was Manbacchus, one of the Lascars. “She takes water.”
Swift felt the heaviness in his gut, what the old dogs called the “sinking feeling.” He hoped it would not come to that.
Crouched in the forecastle, the starboard watch discussed the rumors. The sails were close-reefed and the leak patched, but still the Minerva took on water. They said the bilge smelled almost sweet. A bad sign.
“The Lascars say there is a haunt that follows our wake,” Holdfast Muhammad said. Though he hailed from London, Holdfast had the tongue, and often he passed the whisper from the other Mussulmen aboard. “They say it pressed A-kou.”
“There is a haunt,” their mess-boy said proudly. “I saw it, when we were in the jollyboat.”
“You saw a cloud,” Swift said sourly. “For I too was in that jollyboat and I saw no such thing.”
But the tide of conversation was already moving past him.
“I saw a haunt off Ireland once,” said Glosse, the third mate. “I’m no Frenchman to turn tail and run, but I tell you boys, I was damnably scarified.”
“You saw a haunt and lived to speak of it? You’re a lucky man, Glosse,” Decurrs said.
“That I am, boys.” Glosse laughed. “A jack tar with the devil’s own luck.”
“It could be the Dutchman that follows us,” mused the fresh-faced sailor they called Pretty Pol. “Him that cursed the name of God. He cannot put into port now, but must sail the seas endlessly, eating only red iron and gall. He seeks out all the old sinners of the sea, to press them for his crew.”
“It could be the Mystery,” the boy said. “The slave ship where the Negroes bound the captain to the mast, and forced him to sail ’til the end of time.”
“That’s the Wake,” said Pol. “The Mystery was the slave ship turned into a rock, to stand to this day as a warning. One of its crew was a magician. H
e killed the Negroes first, and then the sailors, and last he bound the captain to the foremast, and forced him to stand watch ’til the Devil came to claim him.”
The forecastle had grown quieter at the mention of slave ships. Decurrs watched the boards, Holdfast Muhammad, and Glosse. Swift knew then that they’d all worked the Trade.
“Warning of what?” The boy was deaf to the silence swelling around him. “And why would a tar kill all aboard?”
“Perhaps it was a Negro that was meant,” Cobb said, thinking aloud. “For plantation men sometimes call Negroes blacke, on account of their complexion.”
Pol, whose own deep tan had been put down as blacke in the ship’s log, scoffed. “’Twas one of us, a tar, who told me that tale,” he said. “And ’twas one of us, a tar, that sunk that ship. But he was a Yorkshireman.”
“Ah,” Cobb said. Everyone knew it was unlucky to sail with Yorkshiremen.
The boy’s brow remained furrowed. “But why would a tar kill all aboard? On a slave ship? If—”
“You’ve not sailed under many captains,” Glosse said. The crew laughed the way men do when they’re eager to change the subject.
“What do you think, Swift?” said Holdfast Muhammad. “Does your patch still hold?” It was telling, Swift thought, that the man would now rather talk of leaks than haunt-ships.
“She holds,” Swift said. “The Minerva has life in her yet.”
The men settled under the forecastle, listening to the drum of rain above. Swift rubbed his scarred hands together for warmth. He did not think about the Zong.
For three days, they labored constantly at pumping. Even the Gunner, who’d normally be excused from such work, turned his blackened hands to the pump. Sailors like Swift, who could handle carpenters’ tools, did their best to repair the pumps as they choked with the sand-ballast drifting free in the water-logged hold.