Blood Cruise by Mats Strandberg
The young girl who has been bitten cries ever more hysterically, reaching out to her friends, who back away.
Marisol drops the bottle on the floor with a dull thud.
Filip suddenly realises the Green Party supporter is standing strangely still. Then he opens his mouth and blood pours out of it.
Fresh panic spreads like a shockwave through the room.
‘Come on,’ Filip says to Marisol and Jenny. ‘We have to get people out of here, then head to the mess.’
Albin
Lo squeezes his hand and silently nods to a group of people gathered by the railing. They have opened one of the cylindrical containers. A life raft is dangling from one of the davits, an orange tent with a black base, swaying in the wind.
The man leading the group is wearing a security officer’s uniform.
‘Should we go to them?’ Lo whispers.
‘I don’t know.’
But he does know. He doesn’t want to leave their hiding place, even if it is a very poor hiding place. He is too scared.
‘There’s a security guy there,’ she says, ‘so they must have a plan.’
He wonders where his mum and dad are now. ‘Shouldn’t we wait?’
‘How long for? We need to get off the ship, Abbe.’
He can tell from looking at her that she has made up her mind. And nothing is more terrifying than being left behind, all alone here.
‘Mum and Cilla and Mårten will find help too,’ Lo says. ‘They would want us to help ourselves.’
Lo pulls on him and he has no fight left in him. He knows she is right. He stands up on numb legs; he has to lean against the wall to stop himself falling.
Lo takes the lead, stepping out into the lamplight.
Madde
Dazed, Madde sits up in her bed, unsure what has woken her. If she was dreaming, she doesn’t remember what it was about. Her head is pounding and her mouth is so dry it hurts to breathe. The lights are all on and she looks around the cabin at her clothes and tax-free bags and Zandra’s pink speaker on the floor. The beer bottles and catalogues on the table. She vaguely recalls a thudding sound. Maybe she did dream it after all. Sleep pulls her back down, down …
Something slams into the door, hard.
Madde struggles free of the duvet, tripping over her own shoes as she gets up. She is still wearing her dress; the thin fabric is damp with sweat.
As she watches the door, the handle is pushed down from the outside and then snaps back up again with a clang. There’s a new thud against the door. Madde walks right up to it, while the fog in her head clears a little.
‘Hello?’ she calls. ‘Zandra? Is that you?’
Her voice bounces back, sounding trapped. It seems impossible that anyone on the other side would hear it. She puts her mouth to the tiny gap between the door and the doorpost.
‘Zandra?’
The thud that follows makes her jump.
It feels like an icy gust of wind is caressing the perspiration on her back, but there is no draught in this cramped, windowless cube.
She hears a drawn-out, guttural groan and grins, recognising that sound. Zandra must have lost her key card, or maybe she’s too wasted to use it.
Madde reaches for the handle, but just then the door bursts open with a bang and Zandra stumbles into the cabin.
‘Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!’ Madde shrieks. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Zandra is swaying back and forth as if the only things holding her upright are her heels, digging deep into the carpet. The eyes are vacant, the mouth is open, slack. Her hair is hanging loose, dishevelled.
Madde looks at the doorjamb, which has shattered where the lock used to be, and sighs. Zandra is too off her tits to be scolded right now. She steps aside so her best friend can get past, reaching out to support her when Zandra wobbles.
‘Back already?’ she says. ‘Did you even take the time to wipe between your legs?’
Zandra’s eyebrows draw closer together as she stares uncomprehendingly at Madde.
‘Are you okay? Do you need to throw up?’
She shuts the door behind Zandra, but it won’t stay closed. Goddamn it. The lock is completely busted.
Zandra blinks and moans something incomprehensible, but the smell coming from her mouth speaks volumes. She has already thrown up. Madde decides to risk it and leads her to the bed instead of the bathroom.
‘You have breath like a garbage truck,’ she says, kicking aside a bottle of hairspray.
They sit down next to each other on the bed. Madde bends down and pulls off Zandra’s shoes. A pink feather is stuck under one of her heels, but there is no sign of the boa. Madde straightens up and looks at Zandra again, at her bottomless, vacant eyes.
‘Seriously, are you all right? You don’t look all right.’
Zandra tilts her head to the side. A thin string of saliva trickles out of the corner of her mouth, faintly pink in the light from the sconces.
Madde feels that icy phantom wind again.
‘Did you take something?’ she asks, snapping her fingers in front of Zandra’s eyes. ‘Did that fuckwit put something in your drink? Hello?’
She puts her arm around Zandra and quickly retracts it when she notices it getting sticky.
Sticky and bright red.
Full gale-force winds inside Madde now. ‘Let me look at your back,’ she says.
Zandra doesn’t react, but obediently leans forward when Madde pushes at her gently. Her clothes are torn, her back streaked with blood that has made the fabric cling and stiffen against her skin.
‘What happened to you? What did they do? You have to tell me!’
Zandra is still hunched over, but she turns her head. The muscles in her face have contracted into an expression Madde has never seen on Zandra. On anyone.
She digs around the sheets and finds her phone. Her fingers are so wet with perspiration the screen doesn’t respond. She wipes her hands on the duvet and manages to unlock the phone. No reception.
She reluctantly leaves Zandra’s side and walks to the desk. Picking up the internal telephone receiver, she says, ‘I’m going to call someone who can help you.’
She rifles through the brochures and tax-free catalogues scattered across the desk, pausing when she hears what sounds like screaming somewhere outside the cabin. She chooses the thickest catalogue and starts flipping through it from the end. It has to say somewhere what number to call to get through to information, or straight to the infirmary, because surely she saw green signs with a white cross on them?
But she can’t find any numbers, only advertisements for the restaurants and perfume ads with movie stars.
‘We’ll figure this out,’ she says, and she starts dialling numbers at random: zero, nine, zero again. ‘We’ll figure this out, I’ll just have to go get someone who …’
She trails off when she hears a wet rattling behind her and turns around. Zandra is on her feet, taking a few steps towards her, wincing in pain.
Madde rushes forward through the jumble littering the floor and carefully puts her arms around Zandra for support.
I should never have fought with her when I was drunk. Then this wouldn’t have happened.
‘If they did this to you, I’m going to fucking kill them,’ she says.
Zandra’s hands, disconcertingly limp, paw at Madde’s sides. She sniffs under Madde’s ear, tickling her.
‘I promise,’ Madde says. ‘Do you hear me?’
She takes a step back, examines Zandra and has the air knocked out of her.
Zandra’s eyes have regained their focus. She is staring at her hands, sliding up Madde’s arms. Her lips draw back, baring her teeth.
But they’re not her teeth.
One of her front teeth is supposed to overlap the other; I’ve been looking at those teeth since middle school and I know, I know exactly what they’re supposed to look like and that’s not them.
Zandra’s hands wander across Madde’s shoulders. Fing
‘Cut it out!’ Madde says, batting them away.
Zandra doesn’t even blink.
‘What did they do to you?’ Madde says again, in a voice that cracks on every syllable.
Zandra lifts her hands up again and touches the big gold hoop in Madde’s ear. She studies it, fascinated, hooks a curled finger around it, and Madde feels her earlobe stretching.
‘Stop it,’ she says, and tries to grab Zandra’s wrist. ‘Don’t pull, don’t pull—’
Her ear suddenly burns as though someone has set it on fire.
‘Motherfucker!’ she roars.
Zandra pulls her hand back. The earring slides off her finger and falls to the floor without a sound.
Madde’s ear is burning. Warm blood is trickling down the side of her neck.
Zandra opens her mouth.
Marianne
Marianne is shoved this way and that in the torrent of bodies pouring through the narrow corridor. Vincent and she had hoped the flood of people would thin out, but more kept coming. increasingly battered. Running, tripping, getting injured.
And then they heard the rattling of a grille by Charisma Starlight and a whole new wave of people broke over them.
She squeezes Vincent’s hand tighter as strangers stumble into her. She catches brief glimpses of terrified faces; everywhere, people are calling out for their loved ones.
How much further? Somewhere up ahead are the main stairs by the buffet restaurant. From there, they need to get to the ninth floor, where Vincent’s cabin is. Marianne is shoved aside by a woman with blood spatter in her hair, then she’s pressed up against the back of a tall man whose jacket smells of smoke and spilt beer. Someone pushes past her, and suddenly Vincent’s hand is gone.
She looks around, but he is nowhere to be seen.
There is screaming behind her, and the pressure is building. People are pressing in on her from every direction, making it hard to breathe. In the midst of the chaos, as she is swept out of the narrow corridor, she catches a glimpse of the buffet restaurant sign. Now she can see the stairs, but although there is more space here, the confusion is even worse, with people heading in different directions, all running into one another. She hears a dinging sound, again and again, like someone doggedly ringing a doorbell, and sees the lift doors opening and closing halfway, opening and closing halfway again.
More screaming behind Marianne as panic spreads among the bodies, spreads through her own, as though they share the same adrenalin. She is surprised how badly she wants to live, how strong her desire for more life is. Something slams into her from the side with considerable force and she loses her footing. Suddenly on the floor, she wraps her arms around her head and curls up into a ball. Feet trample the floor around her; a knee hits her shoulder; someone trips over her; the heel of a boot grazes her ear. She tries to get up, but something clobbers her hard across the back of her neck.
A body falls to the floor right next to her: a man her age, with a big, white beard and bushy eyebrows with bristles thick as wires. His wide-open eyes stare uncomprehendingly at her. A young man with blond dreadlocks throws himself onto the man’s back, grinding his face into the carpet and ripping a chunk of flesh out of his neck. Then he spits it out and clamps onto the wound. It only takes half a second.
Someone hoists her up by the arms.
Vincent.
Marianne feels her feet land on the floor and then he is dragging her through the mayhem, holding her close.
They have reached the stairs. The dinging continues behind them. A red-haired woman comes stumbling down with a bloody sheet wrapped around her. She is holding it firmly closed over her breasts and stomach. She stares at Marianne as they pass each other, shouting something in Finnish.
‘It’s the next floor up,’ Vincent says, urging her onwards, upwards.
People going down shove her, but – ding – Vincent keeps his hands on her – ding – shoulders. She turns towards the – ding – lift.
Lying between the lift doors is a small, brightly coloured bundle. Something like a child’s arm sticks out. But it can’t be an arm. Not at that angle.
Marianne looks away, noticing all the people lining the hallway, pressed up against the windows. They are standing dead still, flesh-and-blood statues. A couple of them are looking around, as if waiting for someone to come over and tell them what to do.
But no one is coming.
They reach the landing between the eighth and ninth floors. Vincent is walking behind her as they move against the current; people apparently running from something upstairs. She thinks about the Finnish woman in the bloody sheet. What if she had been trying to warn them about something?
‘Where is everyone going?’ Marianne says.
‘There aren’t a lot of cabins on the ninth floor,’ Vincent says. ‘Most people stay further down the ship.’
She thinks about her own cramped cabin below the waterline, the reeking hallway. Her legs filled with renewed determination, as she and Vincent climb to the ninth floor. She hears glass doors opening and shutting on the floor above them and realises the people running down the stairs are on their way from the promenade deck.
Vincent leads her around the stairwell, past a glass wall, the lone, dark conference room on the other side of it.
‘Our cabin is down there,’ Vincent says, pointing at the maze of hallways in front of them. ‘Straight ahead, at the end. See?’
She nods. It is not a particularly long hallway and there is no one in sight. At the end of it is a door that looks like all the others.
A door they can lock behind them.
Madde
Zandra snuffles loudly, her eyes fixed on Madde’s torn earlobe. Madde summons the last of her strength and shoves Zandra as hard as she can.
Zandra staggers backwards. Her feet are too slow; they trip over each other. She lands on the edge of the bed and tumbles to the floor.
‘I’m sorry,’ Madde says. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do.’
Her best friend is trying to get back up.
‘Zandra, please. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I’m going to get help, okay? Everything will be all right again.’ She imitates the gentle, soothing tone of voice Zandra uses when she talks to her daughter.
Zandra has made it onto all fours and is crawling towards Madde, reaching for her. Madde stares at the bloody streaks across her back.
What the fuck did they give her?
Zandra gasps, arching her back. A red torrent shoots out of her mouth, across the carpet and scattered clothes, splashing Madde’s bare feet and legs.
Then her back relaxes.
She drags her fingers through the red gloop, sticks them in her mouth.
Madde backs away in the direction of the door. She steps on the can of hairspray and loses her footing as it skids away; there is nothing to hold on to. Zandra looks up when she hits the floor. Her mouth is still working eagerly around her fingers.
‘Zandra, please,’ Madde says. ‘Please.’
Zandra’s fingers slip out of her mouth, glistening with saliva and blood. She crawls towards Madde, who kicks out at Zandra. Her foot hits her shoulder, but Zandra keeps advancing. Her slick fingers slither up Madde’s glittery calves, tickling her above her right kneecap.
Madde’s groping hand closes around the can of hairspray. She is panting, and somewhere at the edge of her awareness is the realisation that she is the only one breathing in the cabin. She aims the nozzle at Zandra’s face, now level with her waist.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers.
The cloud that comes out with a hiss has a sickly-sweet floral smell.
Zandra yelps shrilly and loudly, rubbing her eyes hard, sounding like a child in pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ Madde says again, and backs away without getting up, moving like a crab among the scattered clothes.
Zandra lowers her hands, tears streaming from her eyes. Her face is so twisted
That’s not Zandra, that’s not Zandra any more.
Madde sprays her again, but this time Zandra is ready: she shuts her eyes tight and turns her face away. The smell of hairspray fills the cabin, making Madde cough.
She keeps moving and finally feels the door against her back. She tries to get up, but Zandra grabs her foot and pulls it towards her.
Madde snatches up the hairdryer and slams it into Zandra’s face, gashing her forehead. She whacks her with the dryer again; it cracks with a plastic creaking. Zandra hisses. Madde gets to her feet, grabs the pink speaker and hurls it at Zandra.
Zandra gets up too: she is clearly not going to back down. Whatever happened to her, whatever she has become, she will not rest until the same thing has happened to Madde.
‘Please, please, please,’ Madde breathes, but panic closes her throat. She gets the door open, finally escapes the cabin and pulls the door shut behind her. The door that no longer closes properly.
Marianne
They are so close to the end of the hallway. There’s just thirty feet of carpet left.
But Marianne freezes mid-step when she hears a door slam. There are quick footsteps somewhere nearby. The sound bounces off the walls of the maze, making it impossible to locate the source. The muscles behind Marianne’s ears are so tense they ache.
Vincent has stopped next to her.
More running feet: someone who is badly out of breath.
She turns around when the footsteps come into the hallway right behind her and discovers a fat, blonde woman in a see-through piece of fabric that barely covers her privates. The woman stares at them, wild-eyed.
‘Help me,’ she whispers, and runs up to them on blood-spattered feet.
One of her earlobes is torn in two; blood is still trickling from it. When Marianne notices the big gold hoop in her other ear and realises what has happened, a shudder runs through her. She has seen worse in the past few minutes – much worse; unfathomable things – but the pain of this torn earlobe is something she can imagine. It feels real, which is what makes it worse than all the other things. She shakes her head.