The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  One flick with my thumb showed this wasn’t the case now. Nothing tech at all. A mass of retweets from news organizations and randomers, blurry footage of people running, others asking if the country was under terrorist attack—and yes, a consistent message urging people to get away from the coast.

  “What are you doing?” Shann asked.

  “Looking at Twitter. It’s a dumpster fire. What the fuck?”

  I heard another scream from out in the corridor. This one approached like a siren and went past like one too, as though someone was sprinting down the corridor outside.

  The sound suddenly cut off.

  The silence afterward seemed so loud that I barely noticed the growling noise from the stall, followed by another explosive release of air and something splashing into the toilet bowl.

  “Oh no,” Carl said, very quietly. “That’s . . . oh no.”

  “Who’s that?” Shannon asked, sounding freaked. “I heard a voice your end.”

  “I’m . . . in the restroom. It’s a guy from the Boston office.”

  “Carl Hammick?”

  “You know him?”

  “Not in person. But it’s my job to know who—”

  “Whatever. Shann, what I need to know is . . .”

  I trailed off. I didn’t know what I needed to know. My Twitter feed was still spooling down the screen, absurdly fast, showing more of the same. I flicked sideways to trending stories and saw identical retweets, the same information—or lack of it—being rotated very quickly.

  Then one popped up that said: Santa Monica to be evacuated?

  My heart was thumping in my chest now. It was impossible to believe this was real. But then there was a retweet of something that looked like a genuine news source. The problem with social media is it’ll recycle bullshit without anybody stopping to check if it has any basis in reality, but then—there it was: a different source saying the same thing.

  This source was CNN.

  And regardless of the 45th president’s views on the matter, I consider CNN to be real fucking news.

  There was a thudding sound above me, then a heavy crash. I didn’t know the boat well enough to know what would be on the next floor but it sounded like some large piece of furniture had been overturned. I hoped it was that, anyway—because if the noise had been caused by the collision of a body with something, the person could not have survived.

  “Shannon,” I said. “Where are you right now?”

  “In the car,” she said. “You’re on speaker.”

  “Going where?”

  “Wait . . .” She stopped talking, and I caught the faint sound of other voices in the background.

  “Are you with someone?”

  “No—it’s the radio. There’s some guy from the army saying they think definitely it’s the water now.”

  “Not a terrorist thing? I saw—”

  “No. They bailed on that idea half an hour ago. This isn’t terrorists. It’s something in the water.’”

  “But what kind of thing?”

  “They don’t know. Just get onto land, Rick.”

  I heard another person run past in the corridor, this time shouting—a deep, tearing, guttural noise. It sounded like a man’s voice, and he stopped to hammer on the door of the restroom with a truly terrifying degree of force, before running on. “That may not be a straightforward undertaking. Sounds like things are pretty fucked up out there.”

  “Rick—get off the boat.”

  The smell was truly appalling now. I’d stopped noticing the warning sound of growling from the stall and further splashing sounds. The last couple of pints I’d drunk had come home to roost, too, and I felt muddle-headed, off-kilter, unprepared. Really drunk. So much that it took me a couple of seconds to get my head around the fact my phone was vibrating, again, and work out what that meant.

  Another incoming call.

  The screen said: PETER???—LONDON

  “Hang on, Shann. Don’t go away.”

  “What are you—”

  I muted her and accepted the call. “Pete?”

  “Where are you?” Pete said. He sounded terse and clipped and pretty drunk but a lot more together than I felt.

  “The john.”

  “Which one?”

  “The small one you showed me. Near the bar.”

  “Is the door locked?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  “What the hell’s going on? Where are you?”

  “Up on top. Of the boat. Came up here with Inka to . . . doesn’t matter.”

  “Is she there with you?”

  “Not anymore. I pushed her down the stairs.”

  “You . . . what?”

  “We left the bar because she was feeling queasy. I assumed it was just jetlag combined with a truly astonishing amount of vodka, and also perhaps she had something else in mind—but no, she genuinely wasn’t feeling well. So I escorted her to the restroom. When she came back out she said she felt better and so we came up on the top deck for some air but then she started behaving extremely strangely and . . .”

  “Pete, wait one second. My PA’s on the other line.”

  I flipped over and said: “Have you heard anything new?”

  “No,” Shannon said. “They’re recycling the same clip.”

  “Are you still driving?”

  “Yes. And Rick—”

  I cut her off and flipped back to Pete. He’d evidently missed what I’d said and just kept talking in the meantime. “. . . blood dripping down my fucking cheek. I had no choice—she was trying to bite my face off.”

  “Christ,” I said. “Is anybody else up there?”

  “No. Hang on, shit. I can smell burning.”

  “What kind of burning?”

  “The burning kind of burning, Rick. I . . . oh. In the fog . . . there’s a glow. I think the burning smell’s coming from the shore.”

  “Where the walkways are?”

  “No. The other shore. Where the city is.”

  I abruptly remembered there was one thing at least that I could do to improve the situation. I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Carl said, from the stall. His voice sounded weak.

  “Seriously? Have you even been listening?”

  “It’s no-smoking in here.”

  “This room smells like I am literally inside a turd, Carl. That’s on you. So deal with the fucking smoke.”

  “Who’s that?” Peter said, in my ear.

  “Carl. From Madison.”

  “I know Carl. But what was that about a smell?”

  “He’s . . . Carl’s experiencing intestinal difficulties.”

  “Oh fucking hell. Get out of there,” Peter said, very seriously. “Get the fuck out. Now.”

  “You told me to stay in here.”

  “Yes, but that’s what happened with Inka. Weren’t you listening?”

  “I missed that part—I flipped across to my PA to check she was okay.”

  “Inka’s stomach . . . it gave out. When we were up here. It growled and then there was a flood of—it was truly disgusting. But then she said “Oh, I feel a lot better now”, and that’s when she came at me and tried to bite my—”

  “Carl,” I said. “How’re your guts feeling now?”

  The answer came in the shape of a sound in the stall. Not a growl, but an explosive impact of something in water.

  “Oh no,” he said. “There’s more blood in it.”

  “More blood?”

  “It’s everywhere.”

  I took a cautious step back from the cabin door. From this angle I could see a patch of the floor within the stall. It was liberally splattered with red. I looked up and saw there were splashes of blood all the way to the ceiling too.

  “But . . . I feel better,” Carl said. “A lot better.”

  I heard running feet again outside the cabin. More than one set. A distant shout, and broken, high-pitched laughter.


  “I think it’s over,” Carl said. There was a strange, dreamy quality to his voice. “Yes. I feel fine.”

  I’d lowered the phone but I could hear Pete’s voice from the speaker, still shouting at me to get out. “Uh, maybe you should stay where you are,” I told Carl. “And I’ll go find a doctor or something.”

  “I’m good.”

  “There’s blood all over the place.’”

  “That’s okay. Honestly, Rick—it’s all fine.” His voice sounded normal. Strong, confident. “And thanks for being a pal. Is that Peter Stringer you’re talking to? From London?”

  Stringer, that was it. “Yes.”

  “He’s a solid guy. We should go find him—and work out what the hell’s going on out there.”

  I heard Carl sliding the latch on the stall door, and mainly I was thinking: Yeah, that’s an actual plan. Three of us, three guys together—that had to give us a decent chance against . . . whatever the hell was going on out there. Right?

  But then I saw that while Carl was approaching the door inside the stall, his pants were still down around his ankles. That seemed weird to me.

  When he opened the door I semi-recognized him. We’d met before at some event or other. Though not like this. His lower half was naked and awash with red and brown liquids, and his eyes were bleeding down his face.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, looking at my throat.

  I kicked the stall door back at him as hard as I could.

  He was knocked back into the stall, banging his head hard against the tiled wall. He stayed on his feet, however—slip-sliding in the confined space because of all the stuff on the floor, but remaining upright.

  I heard Pete’s voice shouting at me to tell him what was going on, and put the phone back to my ear.

  “Carl’s . . . I don’t think he’s okay anymore,” I said.

  “Knock him out,” Pete said. “Do whatever it takes. Keep doing it until you’re sure it’s done. I had to kick Inka down the stairs three fucking times before she stayed down.”

  I realized Carl was coming at me again and I slammed my foot into the stall door even harder this time. He crashed back down into the narrow space between the toilet and the wall. Started to move again, but sluggishly. As he turned his head I saw that the back of it wasn’t the normal shape. Impact with the wall had broken his skull.

  He was still trying to get up, though, reaching out with hands that were trembling and shaking.

  “Pete—what the hell are we going to do?”

  “We’ve got to get off this boat,” he said.

  “How? ”

  “Come find me up top.”

  “Can’t you come down here instead?”

  “Look, mate, this ship is full of people trying to kill people. I’m up for working together on this but I’d be out of my fucking mind coming back down to where you are.”

  “Nice. Seems last year’s team-building weekend was a waste of money, hey.”

  “There’s no “i” in team, you twat, and I do not want to get fucking killed.”

  “Wait a second.”

  Still watching Carl—he’d managed to lever himself up halfway to his feet again, but was still trapped behind the cistern, one eye open, the other closed—I flipped to the other line on my phone. “Shannon?”

  “I’m still here,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “Carl Hammick is trying to kill me.”

  “Because of the delay on the RX350i?”

  “No, Shann. Because he’s lost his fucking mind.”

  “Get out of there. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m coming to get you.”

  “You’re . . . Shannon, it will take days to drive here from Boston.”

  “You don’t listen to a single word I say, do you?”

  “I do, but . . .”

  “If you had, you’d have heard me saying earlier in the week that because you were going to be out of town, I’d decided to visit my mother in Las Vegas.”

  “You’re in Vegas ?”

  “Not anymore. I’m . . . oh, gosh.”

  ‘What?’

  “Another accident. It’s . . . god, that’s horrible. There’s dead . . . and people are . . . Eurgh. Everyone’s driving like maniacs. Mainly going the other way.”

  “But you’re . . .”

  “Coming as fast as I can.”

  “But why would you even do that?”

  “Because I’m your PA, you dick. It’s my job.”

  “It’s really not, Shannon. And Las Vegas is a very long way from Long Beach. I mean, like, hours and hours.”

  “Unless it gets much worse than this I think I can do it in five and I’ve been on the road nearly two hours already and I’m driving as fast as I can. I’m going to hang up now so I can focus on the road, okay? I’ll call back in a while.”

  “But what about your mom? Will she be safe?”

  “Nobody’s affected in Vegas. It’s a long way from the ocean. As a precaution they’ve made everyone stay indoors wherever they were when the news broke. My mom’s locked inside the Flamingo Casino with a hundred bucks in change and a long line of margaritas and literally could not be happier. Just get off the boat, Rick.”

  And then she was gone.

  I turned just in time to see Carl had managed to haul himself to his feet again and was shambling in my direction, grasping hands outstretched toward me.

  I braced myself against the wall and kicked him in the chest as hard as I could. I didn’t land my foot squarely, though, and so he spun lop-sidedly away, crashing into the urinal I’d used, slipping and smacking his face really hard into the metal fixture at the top.

  The sound this made was bad and the way he crashed onto the ground looked extremely final and I realized with incredulous bafflement both that he’d looked exactly the way they made these things look on television and also that I’d just killed Carl Hammick from the Wisconsin office.

  Except I hadn’t. After maybe three seconds of stillness, his fingers started to twitch, and his shoulders bunched as some impulse deep inside pushed him toward movement again.

  I remembered I’d left Peter hanging. I kept a close eye on Carl and flipped to the other line. “You still there?”

  “Look, I’ll meet you halfway,” Pete said. “You’re right. I can’t expect you to come all the way up here, and anyway that’s not how we’re going to get off the boat.”

  “Deal.”

  “I’ll meet you at reception. Where I saw you when you first arrived. That’s where the main walkway is. Be as quick as you can, Rick. I’m not going to wait forever.”

  “Understood.”

  I ended the call stowed my phone in my pocket. Carl was pushing himself up from the floor, slowly but irrevocably. I tried to think of something to say but couldn’t imagine what it would be, and doubted he’d even understand it any more.

  So I put my ear against the cabin door and listened. I could hear noises out there but they seemed distant and I couldn’t tell what they were. The one lesson I learned from years of video games as a teenager is when you reach a new level you don’t screw around. You get going immediately, before the situation has a chance to get worse.

  I opened the door and stuck my head out.

  The first thing I noticed was a long splash of blood on the opposite wall of the hallway. It was still dripping. There was another splash of something much darker and brown below it. It smelled bad and was still dripping too.

  I glanced left, back toward the bar. Some of the sounds were coming from there. They weren’t good sounds, and some of them were to do with the fact the place looked like it was on fire. An orange glow, crackling noises, the smell of smoke.

  Nonetheless I started cautiously in that direction, as I recalled there was a lateral sub-corridor that would take me to the outer and much wider walkway, which I figured would be a faster and safer way to the stairs that’d take me down the single flig
ht to the reception level.

  I’d barely gone three yards before someone came lurching out of the sub-corridor. A waiter. One I’d been dealing with earlier, in fact—who’d put my personal Amex by the register so I could run a room tab. The card was still in there but I decided it was going to stay that way. The left side of the barman’s face was raw and burned and he was missing an eye and most of one check and I could see his teeth through the hole. He was dragging one leg behind as he stumbled toward me, too, and leaving an unpleasant brown trail, but nonetheless closing in fast.

  I swept my foot to hook out his good leg and as he crashed to the ground I turned and ran back the other way.

  The door to the toilets flew open as I got level, smacking me into the wall. Carl came staggering out, still with his pants around his ankles, still intent on getting his hands around my neck.

  He managed it, too, but some instinctive memory triggered me to use the single piece of useful advice my mother ever gave me. I grabbed him by both ears and head-butted him on the bridge of the nose. It’s because of the implications of nuggets of maternal wisdom like this that I’ve never blamed my father for leaving home when I was nine.

  Carl collapsed to the ground and I ran.

  It was plain sailing down to the open area where the expensive little wine and cosmetics concessions were. As I hurtled toward the grand staircase, however, jumping over the prone body of someone I’d been drinking with earlier, I saw a woman coming up to my level. She was completely naked and liberally splattered with blood and it was clear both that none of it was hers and that she was keen to add to her collection.

  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.