The meanest Flood

threatening. Unless your name was on his list.
    Sam got out of his bunk and dressed. He went to the ship’s buffet restaurant and gorged himself on poached salmon, prawns and tiny squares of herring in mustard sauce. He got himself a clean plate and went back for blue mussels and crayfish, a pile of fresh salad. Ate so much he had no room left for pudding. The profiteroles looked real nice, too good to leave behind, so he put a couple of them in a bag for breakfast.
    He ordered coffee and the limping German came over to his table and sat down opposite him. ‘Guten abend,’ he said.
    ‘How you doing?’
    They smiled at each other for a while. The German pointed at Sam’s cup and said, ‘ Gemein kaffeesatz.’
    Sam took a sip, letting the aroma fill his nostrils. ‘After the stuff we drank from that machine,’ he said, ‘this is bloody marvellous.’
    The German laughed. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he echoed. ‘ Komisch .’
    Sam laughed along with him. He didn’t get the joke but he knew what people meant about travel broadening the mind. Here he was on the tip of Scandinavia learning the German language without even trying. Wunderbar.
     
    There must’ve been every woman he had ever known in his life in the dream. He couldn’t remember which ones were dead and which alive. He looked at them and thought about it real hard, trying to tell the difference, but he couldn’t get it. He thought it should be important but in the dream there was a different value system. Death was a thin line on the ground, a chalk line that you stepped over if you felt like it or were pushed, it really didn’t matter. Whichever side of the line you were on you could cross back to the other side. There were no absolutes. Life and death were a continuum. Nothing mattered.
    The ship’s address system woke him and he pulled on his new clothes and went up on deck and watched Kiel approaching through a mist. It was a setting from a horror story, the grey sea and sky, the hazy images and ship’s horn moaning at the silent morning. Other passengers on deck were like zombies hanging over the rails in search of a lost mortality. Perhaps the grim reaper had boarded them in the night, slipping from cabin to cabin, leaving behind him a trail of broken promises.
    Huge cranes appeared on the dockside, derricks and warehouses and other ships much bigger than the Gothenburg ferry. As the morning mist lifted, the extent of the Baltic harbour was revealed. Gulls soared. The tang of salt was everywhere.
    Sam walked through passport control and stayed on the main road. Heavy lorries shipped their loads from and towards the docks. The bulk of them were German but there were Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish trucks and others from Eastern Europe and the UK.
    On the outer edge of the dock area Sam found a truckstop. He stood in line with a tray and scored some rye bread with cheese and Spanish chorizo; a large mug of coffee which tasted greasy, as though it had been fried. He sat at a table by the window so he could see the trucks pulling in to the car park. Didn’t move for two hours, until he saw a huge Scania V8 with a British registration loaded with a high-sided container. He watched as the driver shifted off the road and circled the cafe to pull neatly into a space only thirty metres from where Sam was sitting.
    The driver was young and athletic. He jumped down from his cab and his knees flexed easily to take the strain. He had a mop of black hair and a ring in each ear. Around his neck was a knotted silk scarf and when he entered the cafe his face and arms were slick with sweat. He scanned the room without acknowledging anyone and turned to the counter where he bought a can of Coke and a concoction of hard-boiled eggs and herbs swimming in yoghurt and sour cream.
    When the driver was settled at a table Sam went back for another mug of coffee and sat down opposite the guy. Sharp blue eyes flashed up at him. Sam smiled. ‘You going back home?’ he asked.
    The driver took a forkful of the egg mixture. ‘Who’s asking?’
    ‘Call me Sam.’
    ‘And what can I do you for?’
    ‘I’m looking for a lift.’
    ‘You got a passport?’
    ‘Yeah, but I’d rather get through without it.’
    The driver smiled with everything except his eyes. ‘More than my job’s worth, mate.’ He looked around the room. ‘Let’s walk outside.’
    He left his meal half-finished and led the way to his truck. The mop of black hair wasn’t as thick as Sam had