by Ellen Datlow
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 who. 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 Daniels,” 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 stop-ping—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 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 heard 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.
YOU KNOW HOW THE STORY GOES
THOMAS OLDE HEUVELT
You know how the story goes. One night, you pick up a hitchhiker on a country road. A young lady. It’s always a lady. This lady, she’s paler than the moonlight and doesn’t talk a lot. You see, there’s something about her that stops you from making your move, even though you’re single and she’s pretty. Instead you ask if she’s all right.
“No,” she says. “I’m sorry, but
I’m not all right at all. Something very bad is going to happen. Something terrible.”
You ask her what and she says she’s cold. So cold. A single drop of blood is dripping from her nose.
You’ve got to admit at this stage you’re wondering what on earth possessed you to pick up a hitchhiker in the dead of night. We all know this is going to end badly for at least one or both parties. Abortion. Divorce. An autopsy. But you don’t want to be a jerk like that. This lady, she might need help, and it’s you she ran into.
You wriggle your coat off—such a gentleman you are. You offer it to her. After she’s put it on she leans in and kisses you on the cheek. It’s a kiss as cursory as it is unexpected, and the immediate impression it leaves is how cold her lips are.
When you look again, she’s gone.
You know how the story goes.
Next day, there’s a strange phone call. They found your coat. The man on the line says he traced you through the membership card for the gym in the inner pocket. And you, you’re just relieved you’re not crazy after all. You’re relieved it was probably just a blackout and the only thing you can’t remember is where or when you let the lady with the nosebleed out.
“We both must have forgotten,” you say, after you tell him what happened. “The coat. She really didn’t need to leave it for me. Some folks have a good heart.”
There’s a long silence. Then the guy, you hear him say, “Some hearts are bitch’n black.” The man on the phone is a caretaker at a graveyard. Not far from where you passed last night. This is the third time he’s found a coat, he says. A month ago, it was a scarf.
And he always finds them on the grave of the young lady who was found a year earlier, naked and dead in a ditch along the road. Hooked a ride with a black heart.
This story has been told a million times. The deets differ, but it’s always the same: A nocturnal hitchhiker mysteriously vanishes from a moving vehicle. Often with a piece of clothing taken and later found draped around a gravestone. In another version, the hitchhiker foretells seven years of deficiency before she vanishes. Look it up on Wikipedia. Urban legends, modern myths, they’re always the same.
I don’t believe in urban legends. Definitely not in ghost stories. That’s why I waited so long to tell mine. Tell you the truth, I tried to forget. But I can’t. At night, when I wake up alone, the memory cuts like a razor. And each time I remember, it seems worse, more sinister. I lie wide awake and cannot seem to move. I’m telling myself I won’t be thinking about it anymore in the morning. But the nights are long and pitch black.
Then, last night, the tables turned. There was this story on NewsOnline that told me I cannot avoid it any longer. Someone had shared it on Reddit, otherwise I’d probably never have seen it.
So I’m telling it now, and like all urban legends, I’m telling it as a warning.
I can’t say jack about picking up hitchhikers, as I’m not a driver like the person in the story. I don’t even have my license. But wherever you are, do not try and get a ride after midnight.
Stay away from tunnels.
And beware of the Tall Lady.
There’s no good story as to why I ended up hitchhiking that night. Nothing to grant what happened some sort of poetic justice. You’ll have to cut me some slack here. I’d gone out in town, had drunk a shitload of beer, and skipped my ride home because I had my eyes set on this really pretty girl. I’d say smoking hot, but I don’t want to come across as out-and-out superficial.
I’m from Croatia, and the town in question is Opatija, a worn-out party town on the Adriatic Sea. This happened some Saturday night last March, at least two months before the tourist fuckfest. We locals still owned the pubs and nightclubs. All the girls seemed pretty that night, with crystal faces shimmering in the dim light, but my pet project had an irregular quality. An expression of melancholy that provided her with a flawed yet highly attractive beauty.
This girl, her name was Tamara. In Croatian, the rhythm is like Pamela. She came from one of the towns in the hills. I circled her all night, trying to grab her in an eye-lock. Yet her calm self-assurance and the hint of mockery on her lips instantly downsized me to a schoolboy. While I felt the Ožujsko crawling to my head, she was drinking biska, seemingly without getting drunk. I imagined her lips tasted like alcohol and mistletoe. That and her navel piercing when she was dancing and her top crawled up a tat, and I was a million sparkles exploding in my stomach. So by the time my ride home told me he was ready to leave, I took a considered gamble and said I wasn’t planning to sleep in my own bed that night. My face all Romeo bedroom smirk, I deliberately passed on the opportunity to get home.
You probably guessed it from the get-go: I crashed and burned. When we finally left the pub she rose to her toes and kissed me on the cheek. I figured I’d sway my arms around her and press our bodies close. But before I could, Tamara freed herself and lifted the hood of her bright red coat with the tips of two fingers. “I had a wonderful night,” she said, putting it over her head. Covering that hint of mockery around her lips in shadows. “I’ll send you a WhatsApp message.”
She turned around and off she went, her coat fluttering around her ankles like a cloak. And me, there I was. Watching my good luck walk away. Bewildered so much that I remembered we never gave out digits first when she was out of sight.
Smiling, I walked uphill, away from the town center. I didn’t know where I was headed. I had no money for a hostel. I appreciated the fresh air, but after a while it began to feel frigid, not fresh or crisp. My hands were numb and I slid them into my pockets. I watched my breath vaporize in alcohol-scented clouds that should instead have blown a little bit of soul in Tamara’s lungs. Such a waste. Loaded up, I was probably capable of walking all the way home—that is, until I’d sober up at wee a.m. out in the williwags, realizing I had a problem. I’d be trapped. I wasn’t dressed for the occasion and would suffer the consequences. Like, severe hypothermic consequences. Pneumonia. Paradoxical undressing. Now wouldn’t that be ironic. Anyway, it’d be sunrise before I’d make it to Istria. Before me awaited the long traffic tunnel underneath the Ucka mountain.
I felt foolish for getting so far away from town. It was quiet. Quieter than expected. A little unsettling. So when I heard a car, I put out my thumb. It was an impulse. It’s a universal gesture and I’d never used it before, and it surprised me a little that it immediately did the trick. The car stopped. I was drunk enough not to hesitate when I got in.
The driver, this guy, he was a student from Jušići who had treated himself to a night out. Just like I had. He gave a low whistle when I told him where I was heading and took me to the Euro Petrol at the A8 turn off. “It shouldn’t be too hard to hook a ride here,” he said. “A ride underneath Ucka.”
I said thanks and raised my hand when he took off. I wondered if he too had hoped for something bigger that night.
The gas station was closed. I climbed up the entry ramp and reached the traffic lights. Here, beneath the halo of a streetlamp (I turned my collar to the cold and damp, right), I figured my odds were best. My phone said it was one-o-seven. Every now and then, a car rushed by in either direction. Pushing my shadow ahead in quarter-circles like a runaway sweep—second hand. Time flies when you’re having zero luck hitching a ride. As it did, there were fewer cars and the stretches in between grew longer. Sometimes the A8 was quiet for minutes at a time. I’d listen to the wind or search for a glow on the horizon. On the ramp, no living soul had passed.
My breathing seemed loud, because it was so quiet. I felt misplaced. Like I didn’t belong here. Like I was a brand-new swing set in the yard of a burned-down farmhouse. It had textbook creepiness written all over it. I wiggled my hands in my pockets, jogged up and down the road divider, couldn’t keep warm. Couldn’t ditch that sense of unease, too. Suddenly I understood why: I wasn’t alone at all. There was somebody close. Across the motorway. Just outside the yellow light of the street lamp. It was a terrible feeling. This had never happened t
o me before. Something irrational like that. For a second or two it felt as if someone was standing right there on the rocky shoulder. Very close. Watching me. It was very real and very frightening. My heart was pounding. I was sweating heavily, despite the cold.
The sound of a car snapped me out of my dread. It came up the ramp, blinding me with its headlights, and here’s me, forgetting to wave my thumb. Fuckwit. The car rolled past me and stopped in the lane to Istria. The traffic light automatically turned green. Only when the window rolled down and a hand waved languidly did I realize the driver was waiting for me.
Quickly, I ran around the back of the car. A Toyota Prius in Blue Crush Metallic. License plate from Rijeka. That alone, I don’t know why it didn’t flash any alarms in my head. It should have, of course, considering what everybody had read in the papers. Considering the photograph everybody had seen. Maybe it was because the yellow streetlight changes that kind of clear blue. Yellow light has a sickening quality. Ever noticed that? It can tap the life out of a color until nothing remains but an indefinable and unwholesome complexion. The waving hand I had seen had been indefinable in that light as well. Unwholesome. Too late, I realized that its gesture could have meant literally anything. Be welcome, I’ll take you where you need to go. But also: I see you now. You’ll never be fully unseen anymore, even when I’m not there.
I opened the car door and said, “Gee, thanks, I thought I’d never get a ride.”
Only a few seconds elapsed before I bent down to get inside the car, but in those few seconds I saw an image that for some reason is imprinted in my memory. There was a lady behind the wheel. This lady, I couldn’t see her face. It was hidden by the Prius’s roof. I could see everything below her face. Pale hands holding a black leather steering wheel. A coat so thick her body seemed to disappear in its folds. I don’t know why I remember this image so vividly. There was something completely run-of-the-mill about it and yet it seemed wrong in all sorts of ways.
