The Body Boat by Chris Butt

A few years from now. October, south coast of Newfoundland.

  Darryl Carbone looked out into the fog that enveloped the ship as she sailed through the Grand Banks. He sighed as he addressed the captain.

  “You actually want me to go down there?”

  Captain Roger Kirk, a tall, bearded man gave a distracted reply.

  “Yes. Apparently, some of the boys heard noises down in the front compartment, I need you to do a manual check.”

   “Can’t you check the cameras?” Darryl asked.

  “On this boat? We’re lucky we have engines," Kirk replied.

   “What about the others? Surely a more seasoned man would be better for this?”

  “You’re the new man, Carbone, so you get all the new man jobs," Kirk replied.

  “Fine," Carbone said with disgust. “I’m taking a weapon though, could be anything down there.”

  “Whatever you like,” Kirk said dismissively. “Just get down there and check it out.”

  Darryl turned and exited the bridge. He was halfway down the steps when he heard the other crewmates laughing in the mess. One of them, a man named Jenkins yelled out to him, “Have fun down there with the passengers.”

  The others laughed as Darryl flipped them the bird. As he continued down the stairs, Darryl heard some of the rude Star Trek comments aimed at the skipper. Despite himself, Darryl laughed as some were quite inventive.

 *

  Three weeks earlier Darryl had left his residence, paid in full by her Majesty’s Government. His brother, Sam picked him up and brought him home.

  “Christ, I could use a beer," he said to Sam.

  “Really? After what happened? You want a beer?”

  “I wasn’t asking,” Darryl replied giving Sam a hard look.

  “You know where the fridge is,” Sam said in a defeated voice.

   Darryl made his way to the kitchen, opened the fridge and grabbed two beers. As he came back into the living room, he handed Sam one of the beers which he took reluctantly. Darryl sat on the couch while Sam took a seat next to a picture of their mom. The beer was Daryl’s first in two years since he was inside.

  “Your lawyer is pretty good,” Sam said as Darryl knocked back the beer. “There’s no way you should be out now.”

  “Technicality. Bet the government moves fast to close it,” Darryl said glancing at the picture next to Sam. His mother stared back at with a look of disappointment. “Did you see the family protesting? There is a lot of hate for me in this town.”

    “I know,” Sam said as he looked at his brother with a little bit of shame. He took a swig of beer.

  “Which reminds me, I got you a job. Shipmate on one of those cadaver cruises.”

  “What?”

“Easy money. Just transporting bodies to the Argentina burn site from Cape Breton. Thirty hours there, thirty hours back. A couple of years and you’ll be able to settle down in Sydney and stay the hell away from Kingston.”

  “What’s a burn site?” Darryl asked, taking a drink.

  “An environmental incinerator. It burns everything from garbage to tires, old metal and in your case, cadavers.”

  Sam took another drink and continued.

  “The Newfies got one of the burn sites. It’s a monster incinerator and the government in St. John’s are making money hand over fist with it. Bigger money than the oil. Everybody on East Coast is sending their garbage to them. Christ man, don’t you read the news?”

  “Too busy not giving a shit, I guess,” Darryl said.

 *

  Darryl stepped out of the bridge tower and lit a cigarette. He watched the fog roll over the ship as he blew out the smoke. It was haunting.

  “Carbone, over here.”

  Darryl shook his head and spotted Barry ‘The Bastard’ Batstone sitting on one of the hatches. He was drinking from a flask and smoking a doobie. Barry was a loner, a bit of a conspiracy nut and unfortunately, the first crew member Darryl met when he reported to the ship.

  “He’s crazy as a box of frogs,” the other men had told him.

  “How are you enjoying your cruise on the Two Bills?” The Bastard asked.

  “Fine,” Darryl replied taking a drag on his cigarette. “Still looking for giant squid?”

  “Don’t mock me,” The Bastard replied. “A kraken attacked a ship out here during the seventeen hundreds.”

  “That’s just a story,” Darryl said.

  “Oh yeah, what about all those angler fish coming up from the depths? Something’s chasing them up.”

  “I don’t give a crap, alright, I got to go down into the hold,” Darryl said, walking away.

  “Well, be careful down there,” The Bastard said to Darryl’s back. “You see and hear a lot of strange things out here in the Grand Banks.”

  Darryl flipped The Bastard a finger, flicked his cigarette away and grabbed an ax off the wall. He made his way to the main hatch and opened it. Before he started down, he glanced out at the eternal darkness around the ship. The cool air made him shudder and he felt a little uneasy.

  “It’s just stories, man, just stories.”

  With a deep breath, he stepped down into the hold and shut the hatch behind him.

 *

  The Burke and Hare was an old Beluga style cargo ship with two cranes and enough rust to envy a junkyard. According to Jenkins, the ship was named after two murderous men in Scotland.

  “William’s Burke and Hare opened an inn in Edinburgh in the early 1800’s. They lured people to the inn, murdered them and sold the bodies to medical schools. Morbid shit, eh?”

  “Well, The Two Bills would have been happy with this arrangement,” Darryl said as he walked down the stairs.

  Darryl gagged at the foul smell which lingered in the hold despite the continuous air conditioning. He glanced at the rows of cages loaded with body bags from medical schools, unclaimed murder suspects or deceased homeless people. Easy to load and unload, as it was explained to Darryl.

  He pulled out a Harley Davidson bandana and tied it around his face. He gripped the ax tightly as he moved to the door of the second compartment. Shadows danced in the corners from the swinging chains on the cages, the yellow fluorescent lights added a level of eeriness to the scene. A couple of times Darryl caught something out of the corner of his eye only to be relived that it was a shadow.

  “A guy could go mad down here,” he said as he opened the compartment door.

 *

  “You see,” Sam had explained to Darryl. “It’s a new process. An environmentally friendly liquid is poured over all the garbage or whatnot and no, I don’t know what it’s made of.” He paused to take a drink. “A huge dome encloses the whole area, and its intense heats burns everything nice and clean. When the Newfs won the contract, everyone laughed and called them the garbage capitol of the Northeast. However, the Newfs had the last laugh, and all the other provinces are pissed off at losing out on all the money.”

  Darryl agreed with his brother. Good on the Newfs he thought as he walked through the second compartment. A couple of the lights were out, and the cages looked like headstones in the limited light.

  “Keep your head, buddy. It’s all tricks of the light.”

  A sound behind one of the cages caught his attention. He pulled a small flashlight out of his back pocket and flashed it into the area. Nothing. Sweat appeared on his forehead despite the cool air. He took a couple of deep breaths and moved to the third compartment door. As he reached for the handle, he thought he heard a child’s voice.

  He turned and looked at the darkened blocks looming over him.

  “Come on, just get the job done.”

  He turned the handle and entered the last compartment.

 *

  “I can still see them, you know, Sally and Lucy,” Darryl said, the beer loosening his tongue. “Sally nagging at me about everything. She trapped me, you know, at one of those Legion dances. Next thing I know, I’m looking at Lucy in a goddamn wheelchair.”

  “She didn’t trap you.” Sam said. “You just wanted a piece of ass. You could’ve left at anytime, you know.”

  “Ya, and I would be known as the asshole who abandoned a woman and her crippled child. It was hard enough trying to find a job; I didn’t need that reputation as well.”

  “You didn’t look for a job. You sat on your ass and became a burden. It’s no wonder Sally got after you.”

  “Don’t start on me, man. She drove me to it and the court proved it.”

   “Don’t start on you?” Sam said putting down his beer. “You never worked a day in your life. You lived off the scraps of others and put Mom and Dad in the poorhouse with your idleness.”

  “Idleness?” Darryl said rising to his feet. Sam met him in the middle of the living room.

  “Some of us worked our butts off, but not you. Well, no more. The plane and bus tickets are in your room, and it would be nice to see the back end of you.”

  Darryl opened his mouth to speak but Sam shut it.

  “Now! Get out of here and put some distance between you and what happened, for all our sakes.”

 *

   Darryl swung his flashlight around the compartment. He saw nothing.

  “Stupid assholes jerking my chain,” Darryl said flipping the bird to the ceiling. “They’ll get theirs in the morning.”

  As he turned to leave, Darryl heard squeaking wheels. He turned back to see a figure emerge from behind one of the cages. It was Sally with blood running down her face.

  “Jesus!” Darryl gasped and raised the ax. Sally smiled.

  “Looks familiar,” she said as a wheelchair rolled up next to her. Lucy, also covered in blood pointed at Darryl.

  “You killed us,” she spoke.

  “Bullshit!” Darryl yelled. “You bitches drove me to it. The court said I was out of my mind because I was drunk.”

  “And that makes it ok?” Sally asked and nodded toward the cages. “I wonder what they think?”

  A low humming filled the compartment and Darryl’s ears. Glowing white figures emerged from cages. Darryl wet himself as he stared at them. They were disfigured and moaned as the approached Darryl. He tried to run but couldn’t move.

  Darryl screamed as the spectres reached for him. He swung the ax, but it had no effect. Hands reached out and grabbed him by the coat. Lucy and Sally watched as the unearthly spirits pulled Darryl toward and over one of the cages. Darryl continued to struggle as he was forced into an open body bag.

  “No!” he screamed when the bag was zipped up. An opening appeared amongst the bodies and Darryl was thrown into it. He landed with a thud and was soon covered with body bags. He tried to push up but couldn’t move as the bodies settled on top of him. He continued to scream, cursing his brother for getting him this job.

 *

  It was the next morning when Carbone was discovered missing. Kirk assumed that he had gone to bed after checking the front compartment. The search turned up nothing. It was Batstone who found the abandoned ax and a flashlight in the front compartment. When he picked them up, Batstone felt a sinister chill run up his spine.

  Looking around, Batstone swore he heard a child’s laughter. He shook his head and quickly walked to the compartment door. He paused before stepping through. Was that a scream? Batstone strained his ears but heard nothing else. He shook his head and exited the compartment knowing no one would believe him.