It was gliding straight towards him, at speed. Making no attempt to slow down. In the moonlight, he could just make out a name in white letters on the prow: Elia.
Jonas smelled the diesel and heard the throbbing of the engines.
There was no collision; his dinghy was too small. It was simply sucked towards the bow by the swell and carried along with the ship.
Jonas got on his knees, a cold feeling in his belly; the bow wave was beginning to compress his little boat. It was starting to sink.
He was frightened now, and tried to stand up. His hands fumbled, but he managed to get hold of the end of a rope swinging from side to side. He looked up; it was the end of a nylon rope, dangling from the ship’s gunwale like a liana in the jungle.
He clung on as tightly as he could and pulled himself up out of the dinghy, which suddenly freed itself from the swell and spun around like a yellow lifebuoy. Then it slipped away towards the stern, whirled around several times in the glittering waves and disappeared under water.
Casper’s dinghy. Gone.
Jonas wanted to save it, but if he let go of the rope he would be sucked down beneath the keel. He held on.
But not for much longer.
He gritted his teeth, swung his legs and managed to get his right foot on a rusty little ledge part way up the hull. Using the ledge for support, he hauled himself up towards the black steel rods that made up the gunwale, then clambered up as if they were the wall bars in a school gym.
He couldn’t hear any sound of human activity from the vessel above him. No voices, no footsteps. The engines seemed to have died away, too; there was only the gentle lapping of the waves as the ship drifted on through the night under its own steam.
Jonas gathered his strength, heaved himself over the gunwale and landed on a cold metal deck in his bare feet. He was frozen and shaking, but he was safe.
He breathed out and looked around. Where was he?
On board a large fishing boat, apparently. He couldn’t see any nets, but the stench of fish and diesel filled the air.
He was standing next to a closed hatch with a small white structure on either side — a smaller one in the prow and a larger one towards the stern. There was a faint light in one of the windows of the latter; the rest of the ship was in darkness.
Jonas blinked. Where had it come from? He had seen big ships out in the Sound in the summer, but never this close to the shore.
He stood by the hatch, wondering what to do. Should he head for the prow, or the stern? Or just stand here and let the ship decide?
Slowly, he began to make his way along the edge of the hatch, moving towards the stern. He felt it was better to go towards the light, however faint it might be.
Nothing was moving.
He kept on going, taking very small steps. The hatch came to an end, and beyond it he saw something round and dark. At first, he thought it was a ball.
Then he realized it was a head. And a neck, and a pair of shoulders.
There was a man lying on the deck.
Jonas stopped dead.
The man was wearing dark overalls. His face was turned towards Jonas, and the lower half of his body was stuck in a square hole in the deck; it looked as if he had been trying to climb out of the hold.
But he wasn’t moving now; he didn’t even appear to be breathing. He was just lying there.
Jonas stared at him. He was just thinking about giving the man a little push with his foot when he heard the sound of moaning from down in the hold.
There were more people in there, but their voices didn’t sound normal. They sounded muffled, and in terrible pain.
He listened, frozen to the spot.
The voices fell silent.
Jonas heard a rattling noise on deck, right behind him. He turned around and saw a figure stumbling out of the darkness, from the prow. A tall, thin man with black hair. He was young, dressed in jeans and a white sweater — but he looked ill, with staring eyes, his head drooping. He staggered forward as if he were in a trance; he almost tripped over the hatch but slowly straightened up, his expression blank.
The living dead. A zombie.
He spotted Jonas; he raised his arms and made a kind of noise. It sounded like a foreign language, a hoarse wheezing.
The zombie reached out; he was only two metres away now.
One metre.
Jonas backed away, turned around and fled along the gunwale. His feet jumped past the man lying on the deck as his eyes searched for a safe place.
The sea was as black as ink. Öland was far away. Jonas ran blindly towards the stern and the wheelhouse, which had a narrow steel door.
But the door was closed. Locked. And there was no handle. He pushed his fingers between the edge of the door and the frame, but it wouldn’t budge.
Trapped.
He could hear the wheezing behind him, coming closer and closer. He turned around, saw the outstretched hands. Moving towards him.
Jonas closed his eyes and felt his pants fill with warmth. He had wet himself. At the same time, the steel door shook against his back. Someone on the other side was trying to open it.
Another monster? Jonas shrank in his wet pants as he heard the door squeak.
It was thrust open with such force that he was pushed aside. Someone emerged — first of all a foot in a leather boot, then a denim-clad leg, then a pair of raised arms. Holding an axe.
The man who stepped out on to the deck was also tall and thin; he had a shaven head, and he didn’t seem to have noticed Jonas. He took two steps past him and swung the axe.
It had a long handle; the blade flashed and went straight into the zombie’s chest. The blow sent the body reeling backwards and it landed on the deck next to Jonas.
The zombie kept on moving, waving its hands and trying to get up. The man with the axe shouted something and hit it again, twice, three times, four times — then the zombie fell back and lay still.
Silence. The ship drifted on through the night.
The man with the axe took a long breath; he sounded as if he was shivering. He turned and saw Jonas.
Their eyes met in the moonlight. Jonas realized that he recognized this man, those blinking eyes, that tense expression. He had definitely seen him before.
But the man’s eyes were cold. Cold and afraid. He bent over Jonas and gasped a question: ‘Who are you?’ He gripped Jonas by the shoulder. ‘Where’s Aron, the Swedish-American?’
Jonas opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Every single word had disappeared from his brain, but the man kept on asking questions.
‘The old man — where’s he gone?’
He raised the axe, which was dripping with blood.
Jonas managed to make his body move, and rolled to the side. He had to get away, anywhere. He reached out, felt the cold metal of the gunwale and quickly got to his feet. He saw a white lifebelt; his hands grabbed it in passing and tossed it overboard as he clambered to the top of the gunwale.
‘Wait!’ the man shouted.
But Jonas swung his leg over and glanced behind him one last time. He saw a new figure, someone standing at the window of the wheelhouse. An old man, with grey hair, a pale face...
He had seen enough; he threw himself off the ship, straight out into the darkness of the sea.
The water was bitterly cold; it took hold of him, dragged him down. He sank into a world of bubbles. The currents around the hull of the ship pulled at him as a dull rushing sound filled his ears, but his flailing hands carried him back up to the surface.
He gulped in the night air, saw the horror ship looming above him. But it was moving away, its engines still throbbing faintly.
Jonas was floating — his lifejacket was doing its job. The lifebelt was just a metre or so away; he managed to get hold of it and slipped it over his head and under his arms.