Blood Cruise by Mats Strandberg
Without the music blanketing it, the din in the room suddenly sounds deafening.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt the party, but we’re experiencing some technical difficulties on board,’ he says. ‘I’ve been assured by the management that there is no cause for concern.’
He becomes aware of screaming and shouting from somewhere outside Starlight. He shields his eyes against the spotlights, notices people shifting uneasily. A murmur is filling the room.
‘I’ve been asked to tell you to calmly return to your cabins. There is nothing to worry about. More information will be given to you as it becomes available.’
‘What the fuck?’ a man by the bar bellows. ‘I just bought a pint!’
‘Me too!’ calls out one of the girls from the group that has been singing along to every song. ‘Are we allowed to take them with us or what?’
‘If not, I want my money back!’ the man by the bar shouts, and is rewarded with shouts of agreement. Filip doesn’t know what to say. According to the rules, the answer is no, but he has a feeling that would lead to a riot.
‘What’s going on?’ a woman standing right next to the stage shouts.
‘Just a routine check,’ Filip says. ‘There is nothing to worry about.’
He was never a good liar and the hot spotlights do nothing to help.
A woman somewhere outside the entrance screams. There is a tangible shift in the atmosphere when everyone turns their attention that way. Filip dashes down from the stage and, this time, people obligingly step aside for him. He notices many of them are quickly downing their drinks to make sure the contents will leave with them.
There’s more screaming by the doors. Out of the corner of his eye he sees that Marisol has climbed over the bar and started running with him.
‘Help me!’ the woman screams. ‘For God’s sake, help! They’re right behind me!’
And now he can see her coming in: a woman with short hair, dyed red and black. The right side of her tank-top is dripping with blood. A large chunk of flesh is missing from her arm, near her armpit. Her face is shiny with sweat and tears. She falls onto all fours, sobbing.
People are screaming, and some rush towards the exit while others back further into the room. Yet more move in closer, wanting to see what is going on.
Panic surges through Filip when he sees Marisol squatting down next to the woman.
‘They’re right behind me!’ she pants.
‘Who?’ Marisol asks, while Filip runs towards the grille.
‘There’s something wrong with them, something seriously fucking wrong!’ the Green Party supporter with the blond dreads shouts.
‘Fuck,’ the woman holding his arm says.
She points and her hand is shaking so hard her wine spills from her glass.
Cilla
‘… is no reason to panic. We are working as fast as we can to solve the problem …’
The volume makes the plastic rattle in the speaker above Cilla’s head. She recognises the voice: the man from the information desk. She can tell he is scared.
The lift dings as it comes to a stop on the sixth floor. Cilla glares impatiently at the doors, trying to open them through sheer force of will.
Abbe and Lo might be back in the cabin, watching a film, eating sweets. Maybe Linda found them.
Good God, let that be the case.
The doors finally open. The voice echoing from the speakers in the hallway has switched to Finnish now. Cilla pushes the joystick forward and the wheelchair rolls out through the lift doors with a soft whirring sound. She needs to get to the portside corridor, but people are streaming down the wide staircase in front of her, jostling towards the two hallways, stumbling into one another. The doors close behind her. There is barely enough room for her to turn her wheelchair. She backs up a foot or so, pulls the joystick, moves forward another foot at an angle, pulls the joystick the other way, reverses again, repeats the process several times.
A series of nightmare scenarios flash through her mind: Abbe falling overboard, disappearing into the freezing water, being pulled into the currents around the ship, drawn towards the propellers …
How is she supposed to protect Abbe if something happens?
She wasn’t even able to protect him at home. And now he is missing. How could she think Abbe didn’t notice, wasn’t harmed, didn’t understand? This is what Linda has been trying to warn her about for years. And now she can’t ignore it any longer. Of course he understands, her clever, lovely boy. But how is she going to explain to him that she can’t leave Mårten? He has threatened in no uncertain terms that he would take Abbe from her, because anyone can see she is unable to look after a child on her own. She can’t even look after herself. And her condition is getting worse. Sooner or later she is going to end up in a home.
The joystick slips in her hand as she struggles to manoeuvre the lumbering beast into the right position. No one looks her in the eye, afraid she might ask them for help.
At long last, the wheelchair is pointing in the right direction. She impatiently waits for someone to let her through. Most of the people look bored and annoyed, their night of partying interrupted. Some talk and laugh unconcernedly together. But Cilla also glimpses panic in a couple of faces; those people are straining to hear the speakers, hushing people to no avail. In the end, Cilla pushes the button marked with a stylised horn and the wheelchair emits a pitiful honking. A woman in a plaid dress halts on the last step and lets Cilla pass. Cilla thanks her, manages to make her way to the right hallway and turn left without too much trouble.
She honks her horn again. People slowly, unhurriedly move aside; she wants to scream at them as she starts and stops, starts and stops. A trio of obese men walking side by side finally notice her when she is just behind them. They line up against one of the walls; she pushes the joystick to the max. The wheelchair shoots off. The wide tyres whisper against the carpet.
Abbe. Abbe. Abbe.
Please, God, let him be in our cabin or Linda’s.
She can see the doors up ahead now, near the end of the corridor. 6510 and 6512.
The man on the speakers is now doing his announcement in English, but is drowned out by the sound of running feet and screaming behind her.
A chill spreads through Cilla when she hears it. For the first time, she is scared for herself. She wouldn’t stand a chance if she ended up in the water. She can’t even swim any more. People ahead of her in the hallway turn around and up their pace. She tries to twist her head, but her neck refuses to obey.
‘What’s happening back there?’ she calls out. ‘Can someone tell me what’s happening?’
But no one answers.
A cabin door opens ahead of her and a man with a wide neck and shaved head takes a small step into the hallway. The Rolling Stones mouth on his T-shirt is stretched across his big gut. He could be anything from twenty-five to fifty-five.
‘What’s going on?’ Cilla says. ‘I can’t turn my chair around in this corridor … What’s happening behind me?’
The man hesitates for a moment. ‘My wife wanted to stay out dancing,’ he offers in a thick regional dialect, and laughs. ‘As usual.’
‘Do you know what’s going on?’ she says, desperately trying to keep her voice steady.
‘You don’t?’
She shakes her head. No, I don’t know, I don’t know where my son is, I don’t know if anyone other than Linda is looking for him, I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON and I don’t know why we’re on this ship at all, why we thought it was a good idea.
‘I saw it on the TV,’ he says. ‘You know, they have cameras on the dance floors … At first, I thought it was a horror film …’ He falters.
They are the only people left at this end of the hallway. The people who were in front of Cilla have disappeared into their cabins. She hears doors slamming shut.
‘What?’ she says. ‘What did you see?’
He doesn’t appear to have heard her. ‘It must be gas or something. T
‘Tell me what you saw,’ Cilla says. ‘Please. My son is missing.’
He blinks as if seeing her properly for the first time. His eyes fill with pity, which scares her more than anything else.
‘There’s nothing you can do for him,’ the man says. ‘They’re killing each other over there.’
‘What?’
Far behind her she can hear a man shouting, ‘Hurry, hurry up, hurry.’ More doors slamming.
‘Maybe it’s a military weapon,’ the man says. ‘They don’t look human, the ones who have lost their minds.’
Cilla shakes her head and grabs the joystick.
‘I don’t know if I should go and look for her,’ he says. ‘Do you think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself if I don’t?’
She looks up at him again, sees the pleading in his eyes and doesn’t know if she should tell him the truth: that if she had been able to walk, if she had been able to help, she would have run up and down this ship until she found Abbe, regardless of what was happening. And she would never have been able to forgive herself if she had done anything less.
There is a loud crash as a cabin door is flung open from the inside, thirty feet in front of her. The man starts and turns toward it.
A woman comes staggering out into the corridor. It is the security officer who accompanied Abbe and Lo at Starlight earlier tonight. And yet …
‘They’re here too,’ the man gasps.
It is not her, not at all.
The woman’s eyes, which had been so warm, so kind, are completely empty. Blood is splattered across her face, staining the white shirt that is torn to shreds around the collar. Almost all her hair has come loose from her tight topknot and is falling across her shoulders in tangles. Her dark, pressed trousers are sticky with something. Her thumbs are a reddish-brown, as if she has dipped them in paint.
The woman opens her mouth and closes it again.
‘I’m sorry,’ the man says. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t, I wish I could but I can’t …’
His voice breaks off abruptly when he slams his cabin door shut.
The woman comes a step closer. Her grimy name tag gleams, drawing Cilla’s eyes.
Pia? Fia? What does it matter? That’s not her, not her, that’s something else.
The door to her and Mårten’s cabin is halfway between her and the security officer. But even if she could reach the door and get her key card out … would she be able to get through the narrow opening in time?
She can’t risk it. She has to get out of here.
Cilla fumbles with the joystick, reverses and turns. Her wheelchair hits the wall behind her.
She pushes the joystick forward. Turns.
‘Mårten!’ she screams as she reverses again. ‘Mårten, help me!’
Is he one of them now too?
The thought is crystal clear and panic erupts inside her like a mushroom cloud.
An older woman has stepped into the hallway behind the security officer. Her ponderous body sways under her nightgown as she approaches. Her teeth snap in the air.
Snip, snip, snip.
Cilla pushes the joystick as far up and right as she can. Her wheelchair whizzes off in a tight curve and the metal footrest hits the cabin door opposite. She reverses and turns left. Hears footsteps, heavy boots against the carpet behind her; something rattling and wet, like breathing, but not quite. Every cell in her neck is expecting to feel fingers any second, fumbling …
She finally manages to point the wheelchair in the direction she came from. She pushes the joystick just as she hears fingernails scrape against the coarse fabric of the wheelchair’s backrest, right next to her head. The wheelchair rolls forward. The fingers are there again, trying to grab her short hair, but the wheelchair gathers pace with a whining sound.
Cilla leans forward on the thick seat cushion that was tailor-made to her specifications as door after door flies past, caught out of the corners of her eyes.
A bit further down the corridor people scream in panic when they see what is chasing her. Some people fumble with their key cards and disappear through doorways. Others dash back towards the stairwell or vanish down side corridors, pushing and shoving. But regardless of their response, they all have one thing in common: none of them tries to help her.
And she understands that. She would have thought the same thing they are. Better her than me.
Snip, snip, snip.
Cilla screams, because it is the only thing she can do.
Soon the hallway will end in the glass wall of the spa. She hesitates with her hand on the joystick for no more than a split second before zooming past the side corridor with the stairs and lifts. It is full of people staring at her with terrified eyes. She wouldn’t stand a chance of zigzagging her way through there again.
Just a few more yards. The text CHARISMA SPA & BEAUTY rushes towards her. Just before it, the corridor makes a ninety-degree turn to the right. She won’t make it at this speed.
But she can’t just stop and wait for death either.
She is going to do everything in her power to survive. For Abbe.
Filip
The grille. The goddamn fucking bullshit grille from hell. It has stuck in the usual place, three feet from the floor. People are screaming and crying everywhere, but if they had seen what Filip has just seen, the panic would be even worse.
‘Don’t say anything,’ he pleads to the people nearest him while he tugs at the grille.
They shake their heads. A couple of them were part of the group who tried to get past the blokes in the hallway.
They are no more than thirty feet away now: slow, but determined, bloody. They can’t be far out of their teens. Two of them are in good shape, their muscles bulging under their tight T-shirts. The third is short and pudgy, sporting a black T-shirt with some idiotic racist slogan on it. Every time Filip tugs at the grille, they tilt their heads, listening to the sound. On the floor behind them are four people who tried to escape.
Filip still can’t believe what he saw, but he knows all too well what is going to happen if those guys manage to get into Starlight.
He lifts the grille up a few inches and jiggles it back and forth before trying to roll it all the way down, but it sticks again.
Far-away screams are coming from the next floor up. Something must have happened at Club Charisma.
The guys keep moving their blood-smeared mouths like they’re biting the air in front of them in order to pull themselves forward faster. He wonders which one of them tore a chunk out of the woman’s arm. If they have bitten more people.
He tugs at the grille. More rattling. The three of them tilt their heads, moving like one, while at the same time appearing to be unaware of one another.
Mika had said something about the infected being violent. Is this the contagion?
They are so close now. Just a few feet. Their eyes are completely flat.
‘Fuuuuuck!’ Filip roars, tugging on the grille – and it finally unsticks, smacking into the floor with a crash that must be the most beautiful sound he has ever heard. He backs away, realising he is panting.
The next second, the metal rattles again as fingers find their way through the holes, curling like talons; their faces press against it.
Sniffing sounds. Teeth snapping.
He turns to face the room, trying to block out the sound from the grille.
The woman is lying on her back by the bar. Her breathing is rapid and shallow. He wonders if it is shock. Marisol is kneeling beside her with a first-aid kit. Open packets of antiseptic wipes and bloody, balled-up napkins are strewn on the floor around her.
‘It hurts so bad,’ the woman says. ‘So bad …’
Is the woman infected too? Is Marisol?
He can barely bring himself to meet her eyes in case she might guess what he is thinking.
??
‘Do you really have to?’ the woman says, and shakes her head, like an unconscious plea.
‘Just to be on the safe side. Is that okay?’
Filip runs to the bar, leans across it and grabs a bottle of Koskenkorva.
‘It’s going to hurt,’ Marisol tells the woman when he reaches them, ‘but I think it’s for the best.’
‘Can I have a sip of it first?’ the woman says. ‘Just like a bit of an anaesthetic.’
Filip puts the silver-coloured pourer to her lips and tips the bottle to get the alcohol out. It’s like bottle-feeding an infant.
The woman nods to him to show that she is ready. He removes the bottle and she swallows what is left in her mouth, coughs. ‘Do it,’ she says.
Marisol takes the woman’s arm in a gentle but firm grip and turns the wound upwards. A thin, transparent stream pours out of the bottle, splashes against the wound and rinses away the new blood seeping out.
‘Bloody heeeeell,’ the woman screams loudly, and snatches up Filip’s hand, squeezing it like a vice.
The grille rattles loudly again and the woman stares at it with fear in her eyes.
‘They can’t get in here,’ Filip says.
Marisol puts the bottle down and tells the woman everything is going to be just fine, not to worry, that help will be here soon.
Filip says nothing. He takes the compresses from the first-aid kit and carefully dresses the woman’s wound; Marisol wraps the gauze around her arm. There is a gurgling sound from the woman’s throat. She swallows, clears her throat and swallows again. When she winces with pain, her teeth are covered in blood.
‘Did you hurt your mouth?’ Marisol asks. ‘Did you bite your tongue?’
The woman shakes her head, winces again. ‘It hurts so bad,’ she gasps.
‘They’re leaving!’ someone calls out from the entrance.
Filip looks towards the grille: no fingers clutching it from the outside, but that does nothing to ease his mind.
He stands up, walks over and watches the guys’ backs disappear down the hallway. He wonders where they are going now.