Lying on his back in the darkness, Leo listened to the heavy rain pummeling the deck. The ship had begun to roll and pitch, lumbering from side to side. He traced the vessel in his mind, picturing how it might hold in a storm. Stubby, like a gigantic steel thumb, it was wide and slow and stable. The only section-aside from the steam funnel-that rose above deck was the tower where the guards and crew quarters were located. Leo took reassurance from the vessel’s age: it must have survived many storms in its lifetime.
His bunk shook as a wave thumped the side, breaking over the deck-a sloshing noise that carried with it a visual imprint-the deck briefly merging with the sea. Leo sat up. The storm was growing. He was forced to grip the sides of the bunk as the ship lurched violently. Prisoners began crying out as they were shaken off the bunks, cries echoing around the darkness. It had become a disadvantage to be so high. The wooden frame was unstable. The structure wasn’t secured to the hull. The bunks might fall, tipping their occupants to the floor. Leo was about to climb down when a hand grabbed his face.
With the wind and the waves, the commotion, he hadn’t heard anyone approach. The man’s breath smelled like decay. His voice was gruff:
– Who are you?
Sounding authoritative, he was almost certainly a gang leader. Leo was sure the man wasn’t alone: his men must be nearby, on the other bunks, to the sides, underneath. It was impossible to fight: he couldn’t see the man he was fighting.
– My name is The man cut him off:
– I’m not interested in your name. I want to know who you are. Why are you here, among us? You’re not a vory. Not a man like me. Maybe you’re a political. But then, I see you doing sit-ups, I see you exercising and I know you’re not a political. They hide in the corner and cry like babies about never seeing their families again. You’re something else. Makes me nervous, not knowing what’s in a person’s heart. I don’t mind if it’s murder and stealing, I don’t even mind if it’s hymns and prayers and goodness, I just like to know. So, I say again, who are you?
The man seemed entirely indifferent to the fact that the ship was now being tossed like a toy by the storm. The entire bunk was rocking: the only thing keeping it fixed was the weight of the people on it. Prisoners were jumping to the floor, scrambling over each other. Leo tried to reason with the man:
– How about we talk when this storm’s over?
– Why? There something you need to do?
– I need to get off this bunk.
– You feel that?
The tip of a knife touched Leo’s stomach.
Abruptly, the ship lifted up, a movement so sudden and powerful it felt as though the hand of a sea-god were underneath them, pushing them out of the ocean and racing them toward the sky. As suddenly the movement stopped, the velocity vaporized, the watery hand turning to spray, and the Stary Bolshevik fell, plunging straight down.
The bow smacked into the water. With the force of a detonation, the impact cracked through the ship. With a synchronized snap every bunk splintered and collapsed. For a second Leo was suspended in darkness, falling, with no idea what lay beneath him. He rotated so that he’d land facedown, pushing his hands out toward the floor. There was a crunch of bones breaking. Unsure whether he was injured, whether his bones had broken, he lay still, breathless and dazed. He didn’t feel any pain. Patting the ground underneath him he realized he had landed on another prisoner, across a man’s chest. The noise had been the man’s ribs fracturing. Leo searched for a pulse, only to find a splintered fragment of wood jutting out of the man’s neck.
As he staggered to his feet, the ship rolled to the side, then back the other way. Someone grabbed his ankles. Worried that it was the nameless, faceless gang leader, he kicked them away, only to realize that it was more likely someone desperate for help. With no time to put right that wrong, the ship rose up again, at an even sharper angle than before, rocketing toward the sky. The smashed bunks, now free to move, slid toward him, piling up. Sharp, lethal fragments pressed against his arms and legs. Prisoners unable to maintain their grip on the sloping floor tumbled down, knocking into Leo, an avalanche of wood and bodies.
Pushed down by the ragged wall of people and timber, Leo tried blindly, hopelessly, to find something to steady himself, something to grab on to. The ship was at a forty-five-degree angle. Something metallic caught him in the side of the face, Leo fell, tumbling, rolling, until he arrived against the back wall, against the hot timber planks that separated the convicts from the roaring coal engine. The wall was four deep with prisoners tipped from their beds, waiting for the ship’s climb to reverse and slip into the inevitable fall. Groping for anything fixed that they could hold on to, they feared being tossed forward into the unknown. Leo clasped the hull-it was smooth and cold. There was nothing to grip. The ship stopped its upward climb, perched on the crest of a wave.
Leo was about to be thrown forward. He’d be helpless, everyone behind him landing on top of him, crushing him. Unable to see anything, he tried to remember the layout of the hold. The steps up to the deck hatch were his only chance. The ship tipped into a freefall, accelerating down. Leo threw himself in the direction where he guessed the steps were located. He collapsed into something hard-the metal steps-and managed to clasp an arm around them just as the ship’s bow thumped into the water.
A second detonation-like impact, the force was tremendous. Leo was convinced the entire ship had split apart, a nutshell smashing under the head of a hammer. Waiting for a wall of water, instead he heard the sound of breaking wood, like tree trunks splitting in half. There were screams. Leo’s arm, locked around the step, was yanked so hard, he was sure it had been dislocated. Yet there was no wall of water rushing in. The hull was intact.
Leo looked behind him and saw smoke. He couldn’t just smell the smoke, he could see it. Where was the light coming from? The noise of the ship’s engine seemed to have intensified. The timber partition separating the convicts from the coal engine had broken apart. The engine room was exposed. At its center was a red, glowing hub surrounded by the smashed debris of bunks and twisted bodies.
Leo squinted, his eyes adjusting from permanent darkness. The hold was no longer secure: the prisoners-the most dangerous men in the penal system-now had access to the crew quarters and the captain’s deck, which could be reached from the engine room. The officer in charge of keeping the engine running, covered in coal dust, raised his hands, indicating surrender. A convict leapt at him, flinging him against the red-hot engine. The officer screamed: the stink of burning flesh filled the air. He tried to push himself free from the metal but the convict held him fast, gloating as the man was cooked alive, his eyes rolling, gurgling on spit. The jubilant prisoner called out:
– Take the ship!
Leo recognized that voice. It was the man on his bunk, the gang leader with the knife, the man who’d wanted him dead.