The Ship

by Stefan Mani

  Is he dead? It doesn’t matter.

  Guðmundur pumps the shotgun and aims again. He has to hit at least one or two more before they get under the bridge wing and up to B-deck. Once they are on B-deck they’re as good as into the wheelhouse.

  But before the captain can pull the trigger a second time he hears the monotonous bark of a large machine gun, and heavy lead bullets crash into the bridge, making a fearsome commotion. Sparks fly in all directions and slivers of metal, shards of glass and chips of paint rain down. The captain throws himself face down on the floor and covers his ears while the pirates’ mother ship pumps lead over the ship’s wheelhouse.

  Silence.

  Guðmundur takes his hands away from his ears and opens his eyes. Beside him lies the shotgun, covered with pieces of glass and white chips of paint, like the captain himself.

  The alarm bell! He has to ring the alarm bell! There are bloodthirsty gunmen on board the ship and the only thing to do is get the crew into the lifeboat and abandon ship before it is too late.

  The captain clasps the shotgun close and crawls on all fours into the damaged bridge. Then he runs across to the red box in the middle of the bridge, opens it and pushes the fire alarm. Immediately, all the bells in the ship begin to ring.

  Guðmundur looks at his watch.

  00:02:30

  The captain intends to wait for up to two minutes on the bridge, then go straight down to the boat deck and be the last to get on board the lifeboat. It doesn’t matter what danger threatens the ship and crew: the captain does not abandon ship until the last minute and he is always the last to leave the ship, or loses his life if it comes to that.

  Guðmundur takes a few steps over to the starboard side of the ship and peers out the door that opens onto the bridge wing. A sea of green light floats above the black water while a red globe flames up in the heavily clouded sky.

  The noise from the bells makes it difficult to think clearly and every nerve in his body is incandescent as a lightbulb. Skuggi has crawled into hiding and is keeping quiet.

  ‘NO SUDDEN MOVES!’ shouts someone behind him.

  The captain clenches his hands around the shotgun, looks to the right and slowly straightens up …

  00:00

  Sæli stands on the platform back of the wheelhouse on the bridge deck holding the flare gun in his right hand and the flare cartridge in his left. A flare gun is like an ordinary handgun except that the barrel is as wide as the exhaust pipe on a car. Sæli opens the gun with shaking fingers, puts the cartridge in place and shuts it again. Then he climbs up onto the roof of the ship, which is running wet and tilting uncomfortably to starboard.

  Sæli is cold, his every muscle is twitching, his teeth are chattering and his stomach is clenching into a tight knot.

  He has to manage this. He has to!

  Sæli crawls out onto the roof and rolls onto his back in the middle. His legs point to the disconnected satellite receiver and at the back of his head the radar mast rises like an oversized scarecrow. Under the seaman 4000 tonnes of cold iron are rocking on the surface of an abyss; above him there is only darkness.

  He holds the gun with both hands and points the barrel straight up to the night sky. But he doesn’t pull the trigger. He can’t pull the trigger. Why should he pull the trigger?

  They are dead! Dead. All of them!

  Hesitating up there on the roof, Sæli startles when the captain fires the shotgun down on the bridge wing.

  What was that?

  But when the shooter on the pirates’ ship starts pumping lead into the ship’s bridge, it’s as if the seaman’s blood freezes in his veins and his soul leaves his body. The machine gun barks thunderously and the ship shudders under the heavy hail of lead. At first the bullets pelt the bridge wings and the outside of the bridge, but then the shooter raises the barrel of his gun and aims his gunfire at the radar mast, which splinters like a henhouse in a hurricane.

  Bits of plastic, screws and bent and broken metal rain over Sæli, who squeezes his eyes shut and cradles the flare gun to his chest like a child with a soft toy.

  Silence.

  Sæli opens his eyes and stares up into the sky, no longer feeling the cold or his body. The mast still stands but the two radar scanners are simply unsightly scraps and tangles of wire.

  Time stands still and eternity smells of salt, smoke and broken plastic.

  Sæli doesn’t know what he’s doing, what he should do or what’s happening.

  Maybe he should just fall asleep and never wake up?

  Yes.

  It’s best to try to sleep.

  All of a sudden the bells resound throughout the ship and the seaman blinks his eyes and blows shreds of something out of his nose. Then he lifts an arm, aims the gun at the heavens and pulls the trigger.

  Pow!

  There’s a solid bang and the gun recoils so hard that Sæli almost drops it in his face, but the flare streaks vertically into the night sky. It leaves behind a white stripe as it flies higher and higher, until it stops climbing and pauses for a second, then comes a bright red light that glows like a jewel and changes the darkness into a rose-red dome that grows smaller as the flare sways calmly down, hanging from a white parachute.

  Stoker, wearing nothing but a pair of cotton trousers, is sitting by the table in his cabin, mixing himself a pipe, when a green glow lights up the beige curtains.

  A green glow?

  ‘What the hell?’ he mutters, putting down the pipe and the burnt aluminium foil with its hot blend of tobacco and cannabis oil. He stands up from the table and walks over the slanting floor, kneels on the bed and pulls the curtains to both sides.

  Out in the sea north of the ship is a wash of green light that’s gradually getting nearer.

  ‘Pirates!’ declares Stoker and he clutches the curtains in his fists. He has read several books about this perpetual threat on the high seas which, contrary to what many people think, has never in the history of sailing been as real as it is now.

  ‘One, two, three, four,’ murmurs Ási as he moves the red piece over an equal number of squares. He is sitting alone at the table in his cabin, playing ludo against himself. The blue piece has two sixes in a row, the green is close behind, the red has got started but the yellow one has hardly left the starting square.

  ‘Come on!’ says the cook as he shakes the die in his right hand, releases it and rolls it over the table. Before it stops, some kind of hailstorm slams into the starboard side of the ship. It clangs against the steel, and sudden thumps pulse through the wheelhouse like someone knocking at the ship with a big hammer.

  ‘What was that?’ Ási says, stands up and walks over to the window, which is on the port side and faces at an angle up into the night sky.

  Outside there is nothing to be seen but darkness.

  ‘Where had we got to?’ Ási sits back down at the table, where the red die lies motionless, showing two black pips. ‘Wasn’t it yellow? It was yellow. Yellow forward two. You’d better get a move on, my little yellow friend, eh?’

  Ási moves the yellow piece two places and now all the pieces have started on one more go around the square board. The cook shakes out a cigarette from a fresh packet and lights up with a match.

  ‘Whose turn is it?’ asks Ási of no-one, shaking the match out before putting it back in the matchbox. Then he squints, sucks on the cigarette and blows smoke out his nose.

  ‘Is it green?

  The cook takes the cigarette out of his mouth and stubs it out in a tin can half full of sand and stubs.

  ‘No, wasn’t it blue?’

  Yellow’s turn has come round again when the alarm bells resound throughout the ship.

  ‘What’s all the fuss?’ says Ási, absentmindedly throwing the die.

  Four.

  Outside of the window a red light starts glowing, but the cook doesn’t notice. He stands up and walks slowly to the door, and opens it just as if the raging clatter of the bell was the doorbell and there was an impati
ent visitor waiting in the corridor.

  Now what’s up?

  In the corridor stands a man dressed all in black, who turns suddenly when he becomes aware of the cook and stares at Ási with wild eyes.

  ‘What can I do for you —’ But before Ási can finish his question the pirate pulls the trigger of his machine gun.

  Ratatatatata!

  Àsmundur Sigjónsson from the Westman Islands blinks his eyes, moves his lips and tries weakly to hold onto the doorframe, but his fingers are as soft as butter and his body so terribly heavy. So heavy. So …

  ‘I’d better let Satan out,’ says Stoker, jumping down off his bed. He opens the door into the corridor and runs barefoot and bare-chested down the stairs and out the door at the back of the wheelhouse, to B-deck, where he turns right, runs past the wheelhouse and in three jumps down the stairs reaches the weather deck on the port side.

  At the same time five black-clad men throw a line with a three-pronged hook on the end over the railing on the starboard side.

  When Stoker is halfway across the icy-cold, wet deck the captain lets off a shot from his shotgun and then the second engineer throws himself on his face on the ribbed iron floor. Seconds later the shooter on the pirates’ mother ship pulls the trigger of the big machine gun and rains lead over the bridge of the ship.

  Stoker grimaces and crawls forwards along the deck like a soldier in a shallow trench. When the shooting lets up he has about a third of the way still to go. Then he stands up and runs the last bit, back bent, head stretched forward, and when he sees the red-painted front of the forecastle he throws himself on his abdomen in front of the forward hatch.

  He lies there for a short while to catch his breath, then rolls over on his back. Just then the emergency flare swooshes into the black sky.

  ‘FUCK!’ screams Stoker, knowing that in a few seconds the flare will light up the night – and himself, where he stands defenceless in the bow of the ship, half naked and unarmed.

  Why turn out the lights when idiots with a flare gun are loose on board?

  Stoker jumps to his feet and runs over to the red door in the middle of the forecastle. He takes hold of the rusty hasps with his bare hands and tears them loose, and just before he manages to loosen the last hasp and open the door to the forecastle the flare ignites in the sky. It sways like a soap bubble at the highest point of the dome and casts a rose-red gleam over the ship and the surrounding sea.

  Rúnar is half sitting in his bed reading The Good Soldier Svejk. It’s dark in the cabin, except for the reading lamp that shines above the bosun’s head. He’s supposed to have reported to the bridge but he only has a page and a half of the thirteenth chapter to go and he might as well just finish it, rather than leave this little bit unread.

  Always best to begin a new chapter each time a book is opened.

  I think it must be wonderful to be run through with a polished bayonet, says Svejk in the book, and the bosun laughs aloud. He knows the story almost by heart, having read it on more or less every tour he’s been on for the last three years, but the matchless nonsense spoken by that idiot Svejk never stops being funny.

  And it’s pretty decent to get a bullet in the stomach. But the most wonderful …

  The bosun stops reading when the page takes on a green tinge.

  ‘What?’ he says and looks up. Then he sees that this mysterious light is coming from outside and filtering into the cabin through the light-brown curtains. He sits up in the bed, pushes the curtains to the side and looks out through the clouded glass of his window.

  A sea of green light?

  ‘Is that a ship?’ the bosun mutters and shades his eyes in order to see out more clearly.

  Yes, it must be a ship. But green lights! Who uses green lights?

  ‘What the fuck!’ says the bosun, eyes wide. Is he seeing things? No: there are men boarding the ship’s weather deck from an inflatable. They’re on board! Somebody heard the emergency signal after all!

  We’re safe!

  ‘I knew it!’ says Rúnar, his face pressed to the glass. ‘I knew it all the …’ But he goes silent and stiffens when he hears shots fired in the distance and see the first of the five rescuers collapsing on the weather deck.

  What?

  The other four act as if nothing has happened. They run, stooped over, stepping over their comrade, heading for the stairs that lead up to B-deck on the starboard side. There’s a glint of light out on the black sea and a split second later the noisy bark of the machine gun reaches the bosun’s ears. He throws himself on the bed when lead bullets slam onto the bridge, ripping up iron, wood and glass.

  Silence.

  Why can’t I open my eyes?

  ‘Damn,’ murmurs Methúsalem as he claws at the caked pus that’s stuck to his eyelashes, gluing his eyes shut.

  After about a minute he manages to open one eye and then the other. He is lying on his back in bed and looking up into the damp darkness.

  What day is it? What time?

  He hears a shot.

  Silence.

  And then a large machine gun barks in the distance and shots rain on the starboard side of the ship.

  ‘What’s going on?’ wonders Methúsalem as he gets out of bed and tears the sodden blanket from the window.

  A cold and refreshing wind hits the pale face of the chief mate, which takes on a green tinge from the strange light north of the ship.

  Green light?

  Methúsalem Sigurðsson sticks his head out the window and sees men in black with machine guns run, bent over, behind the wheelhouse and up to B-deck.

  ‘Fuckers!’

  Methúsalem jumps out of bed, naked. He steps on myriad glass shards that cut the soles of his feet and stick into flesh and bones, but he is too angry to feel pain.

  He goes into the bathroom, splashes cold water on his face and looks at his eyes in the mirror. They are fiery red, swollen and sore, and full of yellow clots of pus.

  Infection!

  He had told the captain that he was getting an eye infection and now he’s got an eye infection.

  What’s happening?

  Methúsalem slathers soap on the mirror and spits at the distorted reflection in it, then he puts on some trousers and gets his rifle from the wardrobe.

  ‘I’ll kill those fuckers,’ says the first mate as he releases the safety and wraps the shoulder strap loosely over his right arm. ‘Kill the damn boss-men … Those treacherous vermin. That brute of a captain!’

  Brute of a captain? Yes! Who else is behind it all? Who else was needing reinforcements?

  The captain, that’s who.

  ‘That he should dare!’ grumbles Methúsalem. Salt wind comes in the broken window, bringing up goose bumps on the corpse-white body of the first mate, who’s breathing hard through flared nostrils and gnashing his teeth in fury.

  Seawater is as salty as blood and …

  Suddenly the alarm bells resound throughout the ship and a second later a red light flares outside the window.

  That’s the sign!

  Sign? What sign?

  ‘Doesn’t matter!’ Methúsalem mutters, opens the door and steps out of his cabin dressed only in beige trousers. Holding the rifle in both hands, he runs up the stairs, leaving bloody footprints on every second step.

  He’s going to capture the captain before these black-clad henchmen of the shipping company get control of the bridge.

  No! He’s not going to capture that fucking pig! He’s going to shoot him in the head and watch him die!

  Wow! It’s come to that.

  A cold current runs up the first mate’s spine and he weaves up the last steps as if in a dream, stopping in front of the door leading to the bridge.

  Rúnar is sitting on the side of his bed, rocking back and forth like an old man.

  What’s going on? Who are they? What should he do? Stay still? Go up to the bridge?

  Suddenly the alarm bells clamour in every cabin, in every corridor, on every single deck at
the same time.

  The bosun stands up and clenches his fists. Is there a fire? Or is the captain warning the crew of danger? When the bells stop they’re supposed to meet out on the boat deck. If the ship is in serious danger, the crew’s supposed to abandon ship.

  I’ve got to …

  Rúnar walks towards the door but stops in the middle of the floor and looks at the closed door in bewilderment.

  What if those men have boarded the ship? What if one of them is waiting on the other side of the closed door?

  What if …

  The bosun jumps and gasps as someone grabs the handle and opens the door of his cabin, then he takes two steps backwards as a black-clad man appears in the doorway.

  ‘DON’T! DON’T! DON—’ shouts Rúnar Hallgrímsson, covering his eyes with both hands as the stranger opens his own eyes wide and pulls the trigger of his machine gun.

  Ratatatata!

  The rapid-fire bullets tear asunder clothes, skin, flesh and blood vessels; they blow up entrails, cartilage and bones, before drilling their way through the bosun’s back, slamming into the wall behind him and ricocheting, sticky with blood, along the rug.

  Jónas is lying awake in the sick bay with a sweaty pillow under his head, staring at the closed door.

  He can’t stay any longer on this cursed ship that’s floating dead in the water, en route to disaster. He just can’t! But what can he do?

  What?

  He could sneak up to the boat deck, crawl on board the lifeboat and shoot it overboard. Then he could sail to land. If anybody asks, he can say that the ship sank and he survived. But with any luck he’d come ashore without anyone noticing.

  He could do it. Or could he? Could he, physically? If he took enough painkillers he should be able to hop on one leg up the stairs, supporting himself with one hand on the railing.

  Maybe not …

  The pain is so hellish that he almost faints every time he coughs or gets a cramp.