Sex and Murder Magazine

By Aaron Polson

Anybody with special cargo, anybody who wants to avoid trouble, knows about the Lane. Of course, there were stories about the Lane, stories about ancient, vengeful spirits. All that crap. Rumor held that the Lane traveled over the same part of the ocean as the Middle Passage. The slave route.

I never believed that shit.

The pirates caught us a couple hours ago. We were an older ship, and shouldn't have been worth their time-definitely not worth the ransom. But they knew our cargo, our secret cargo below deck. Somebody must have tipped them off about the heroin, but they weren't ready for us to fight back. Sunshine gutted one of those fuckers with a twelve-gauge before he knew what hit him.

But when his blood sprayed the deck, they came. They must've smelled the blood. Tasted it. Violence remembers violence, I suppose.

I never believed the stories before, but that bastard's blood called back through the centuries and howled to his kinsmen or something. When the voices started, the other pirates' eyes swelled like white balloons until I thought they'd pop. They knew the language…snatches of it at least. Enough to know we'd woken the dead.

They chanted, see. A low, moaning chant. Rhythmic, haunting. Echoing against the steel rails and wooden decking. Rising at the injustice of the hold, stacked like living wood in urine and shit. Crying for their lost babies, their dead children, their starving wives. Weeping for the ones left on shore in pools of their own vomit and blood over four hundred years ago.

Sunshine dropped the gun to cover his ears. Hightower and Caboose both scattered below deck. I don't know what happened to the captain. One of those pirate cocksuckers hacked halfway through Sunshine's neck with a machete before I could pry him off. He howled the whole time. Nearly broke Sunshine's collarbone with that blade.

I tossed the bastard over the rail while the others ran after Hightower and Caboose.

The voices rattled in my skull. Tore at my guts. I grabbed Sunshine's shotgun and followed below. They were heading for the boiler room, the loudest part of the ship, probably trying to drown out the sound.

Caught one in the back with a blast from the shotgun, but the others slipped through the hatch. I locked them in there, stuck in the boiler room with Hightower and Caboose. Sunshine's shotgun made a nice wedge against the door.

They wouldn't be coming out.

When I got to the bridge, the captain was gone. Gunshots echoed below deck. The ship shook with an explosion-maybe a grenade or something homemade. Must have been that explosion that punched a hole in the hull. Over the intercom, the men in the boiler room called for help, said somebody screwed them in from the outside. I didn't answer.

I wasn't going back down there, into the dark.

I found the captain's pistol, and barred the door. The gun won't stop the dead. I'm saving it for myself, when the voices come again.

The engine won't last much longer, and I'm sure we'll take on enough water to go belly-up soon. They keep shouting over the intercom, voices mashed together, English and some African dialect. I hear the water and the clang of metal as they try to stop the leak.

They'll die down there when we take on enough water, and I'll be left to wait, alone.

Lucky bastards.








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