Stefán Máni - The Ship

‘ Yeah, I…’ Stoker takes the heavy knife. ‘But where’s it best to—’

‘Stay here back of the wheelhouse,’ says Satan. He gets the sock with the shells out of his left trouser pocket. ‘If anyone comes out of the door or down the stairs, stab the guy in the gut.’

‘Okay.’ Stoker looks at his reflection in the broad knife blade.

‘And don’t think about death or anything like that,’ says Satan as he tips out the eight shells into the palm of his left hand and closes his fist over them. ‘While we’re alive we can kill others, and that’s the only thing that matters. A dead man is of no use, and that’s why it’s no use thinking about death – got it?’

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ mutters Stoker, clenching his ice-cold right hand around the haft of the knife.

‘May as well get on with it.’ Satan draws the handgun from its holster by his right ankle. ‘I’m going in!’

‘But what do I do if…’ Stoker begins, but he doesn’t get to finish his question before Satan jumps up and disappears around the corner.

Stoker gets hesitantly to his feet, grits his teeth and peers around the same corner. Behind the wheelhouse there is nothing to be seen. Nothing that shouldn’t be there. The stern is empty of people.

What should he do? Stand guard or…

Suddenly he hears a heavy blow and seawater splashes over the deck. Stoker cowers down, circles his head with his left arm and closes his eyes.

What was that? Has he been shot? Is he wounded? Is he…

He blinks, lets his left arm drop, turns around, sidles into the wheelhouse and braces his bare back up against the wall between the door to the wheelhouse and the stairs leading up the back of it.

The boat!

Behind the ship the lifeboat is rocking to and fro. It spins slowly counterclockwise as it drifts east away from the ship.

Who shot the boat overboard? And why doesn’t whoever it is start the engine? Who is on board the boat? Everyone? No one? Are they going to leave him behind?

‘HELP! HELP! HERE! TURN AROUND!’ screams Stoker, running back to the stern and waving his hands like a madman. ‘DON’T GO WITHOUT ME! TURN BACK! DON’T…’

The lifeboat drifts further and further from the ship until it’s lost in the darkness.

No, this can’t be happening!

‘Fucking traitors,’ Stoker says and walks back to the wheelhouse, trembling with cold.

What should he do? He can’t hang around out here – he’ll freeze to death. But what else can he do? Where can he go? Where is he safe? Nowhere?

Down to the engine room! He can go down to the engine room. It’s warm there, it’s dark there, it’s…

Stoker opens the door to the B-deck corridor and squeezes through.

The noise of the bells rages on.

He hurries over to the stairs that lead down to A-deck but then freezes in his tracks.

No!

On the floor at the bottom of the stairs lies the chief engineer in a pool of blood, already stiff with rigor mortis and blue around the mouth.

00:05:02

The bells peal through every deck and shut out all other sounds.

Satan runs up the stairs with the revolver gripped in his right hand and the eight shells in his left. He turns in a circle on each deck to be sure that no one will catch him unawares and points the gun alternately up and down the stairs.

If only those fucking bells would stop!

On C-deck he took a quick look at the corpses of the cook and the bosun before he carried on. It was neither the time nor the place for sentimentality. On D-deck there was nothing to be seen, nor on E-deck, but when he looks around on F-deck he hears for the first time something other than the bells.

He hears voices. Voices from above. Excited voices calling to each other in a strange language. Two men, one up on the bridge deck and the other high on the stairs that lead up to it.

Satan presses his back against the wall beside the stairwell, then turns to the right, points his gun upwards and fires three shots towards the black-clad legs at the top of the stairs.

Bam, bam, bam!

The first two shots miss, but he thinks the third one might have hit the pirate in the back of his left calf.

Somebody screams up on the bridge deck.

Satan takes a short break after shooting the gun, moves one step to the left and silently counts to two, then jumps sideways, stretches his right arm up, aims at the chest of the pirate standing at the top of the stairs who’s about to pull the trigger of his machine gun, and fires two more shots.

Bam, bam!

With that the gun is empty but another pirate has fallen, crumpling onto his knees and then tumbling forwards down the stairs, firing a few shots from the machine gun into in his own thigh as he falls.

Ratatata–

Satan steps to the side, opens his gun and empties out all the shells so they bounce, steaming, over the lino on F-deck. Then he loads the five compartments in the revolving cylinder of the gun with sweaty, shaking fingers: one shell, two, three…

The fourth shell slides on his palm, drops between his fingers and bounces along the floor.

Shit!

Four and five. He slides the cylinder into place, spins it and pulls back the hammer. The gun is loaded and there are two more shells resting in his palm. That makes a total of seven. That’ll have to do.

Satan squats to the side of the stairwell and aims his gun up towards the bridge deck.

Nothing is happening there: no movement, no voices. He looks at the pirate who lies on his belly in the stairs above him.

Does he have a wound in one calf? Yes, he is wounded on his upper left calf, which means that his mate up in the bridge deck is unhurt.

‘Fuck!’ mutters Satan, now and then aiming the gun down the stairs leading to E-deck. As far as he knows, one or more of the pirates might be below him in the ship.

Fuck it! How long should he wait for someone to attack? He could make a rush up to the bridge deck, but it’s not good tactics to attack up the way. And the fucker waiting up there knows it. He’s going to wait until Satan gets tired of waiting and storms up there to his death.

Unless he’s waiting for reinforcements from below… Fuck, fuck, fuck! Satan can’t wait here forever! Time is either running out or standing still – he can’t be sure, because the fucking bells are driving him mad .

‘ Come on out, fucker! ’ screams Satan up to the bridge while directing his eyes and the barrel of his gun down to E-deck. ‘COME OUT IF YOU DARE!’

No answer, no attack – nothing but the endless pealing of the bells.

DRRRHHHRrr…DRRRHHHRrr…DRHHRHHHRRRrrr…

He’s not waiting any longer. He can’t wait any longer. He’ll lose his mind if he…

‘Who’s there?’ someone shouts suddenly. Whoever’s calling is yelling with all his might, but it’s barely loud enough for the words to carry down to Satan.

Who’s that? Someone on the bridge? The captain himself?

‘Can you shut off the bells?’ Satan calls up through the stairwell.

No answer.

Sweat runs down Satan’s forehead and he blinks his eyes and aims the gun up and then down. His back and shoulders ache; he can’t stand there much longer.

‘CAN YOU HEAR ME?’ he shouts so loudly it stings his throat. ‘LET ME KNOW IF YOU—’

He stops shouting when the bells fall silent, all of them at once.

00:06:11

Guðmundur Berndsen is standing inside the bridge wing on the starboard side, hiding behind a tall cupboard and aiming his shotgun across the table in the chart room at the door leading to the corridor.