Trim and Ballast

Gustav opened his eyes to see a spanner hurtling towards his face. He moved to avoid it, turning in time for it to graze his temple. The lights of the sub went black. Everything went black, but he could hear the wrench hurtling like a cannonball, hitting metal and the thunk of meat.

His sight returned, but blurry, and enough to know he was going to die. The lights in the sub were flickering. Gustav grabbed the raw metal holding his bunk in place and his feet swung out into the open, in the aisle between the bunks, six stories above nothing. Another sailor making the sounds of hyperventilating looked at Gustav, his eyes wide, struggling to grip his bed frame, swinging in the narrow aisle, like a trapeze artist. And then he was gone. Above him, bodies were dropping past him grabbing at empty space, some were screaming, some weren’t. Gustav’s hands slip on the metal rod.

***

Prior to laying in his bunk, he listened, as did the rest of the crew, to the captain, reading the propaganda from the Kaiser. His hours on the conning tower had been cold and damp. His eyes ached from squinting, looking for the rounded mines bobbing just below the surface. He didn’t care what the man said, just did his job. Gustav was off duty, asleep, and dreaming of his mother.In the dream, feeling warm from a cast iron stove, its door shut, the iron ticking from the heat. The boy practicing maths and lay among his toys.

His mother, making dinner, pours cold milk from the ice box, warns him of getting too close to the stove, or else he get burned.

The front door blows open, and his papers fly faster than he can grab them.His toys scatter. The air is sucked from the room and his chest thumps as his father and brothers walk in. His father smiles, Gustav doesn’t. He Knows he will be put in the closet for the evening.

***

Ooohhh-Gaaa… Ooohhh-Gaaa … Ooohhh-Gaaa

The sound of the subs Klaxon. Battle stations.

Gustav grips the metal rod, moving his hands left to right for better purchase, to avoid letting go.

The klaxon rings like a cowbell tied to his head. The sub compartment dims to black, but now flashing red light. The boat was vertical and hurtling to the seabed.Its forward momentum causing everything not secured to hurtle aft, including the sub’s crew.

Pop…

A metal rivet blows across the compartment like a bullet. A gush of water follows, hitting Gustav in the side.His right hand slips, then his left.

Dropping feet first, unlike those around him, who are tumbling head over foot.Gustav falls past the chains used for guiding torpedoes in the tight quarters of the sub. Misses the first chain but grips the second by extending his arm through a fast moving loop. The jerking pulls his arm from its socket. Gustav screams, then vomits as his body slams into metal, but the chain has stopped him from flying.

Find something…anything to grab. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Another sailor rushes past him, his hand gripping Gustav’s tunic and ripping a sleeve, before somersaulting away.

The chain loosened from its moorings and Gustav jerked into the open amid flying debris. One arm is useless, can’t feel anything. Holding on with the other, snaked through the chain, Gustav feels like he’s holding a rope tied to the end of a train and being pulled through the air, but instead of a train, its a sub picking up speed and heading nose first to the seabed.

A rivet pops along the seam to Gustav’s right. Then a second, and third. The sounds of a machine gun at rapid fire. High pressure water bursts from the metal seam. The sound of the klaxon fades to metal grating on metal.The seam is unzipping as more rivets explode.

Gustav fights to keep from blacking out.

***

The door shuts and his mother frowns. The men had been working and were ready for their dinner. His brothers needed entertainment and his father needed relief. Gustav provided both. The first slap was a warning shot. The second put him face first into the ground where there was only silence.

***

May have been hours, more than likely just minutes. Gustav feels his back arched in a way it shouldn’t. Door handles tearing into his back meant he was against a bulkhead door. Thought about moving his legs, but winced. The red lights have stopped flashing, but there’s still light…a little.

The light flutters.

Gustav moves his arms and legs and cringes. He’d been torn from the chains when the sub hit the seabed and then flown further forward into a bulkhead. Fruits and vegetables were floating at his knees. In front of him, a fridge door stood open. Bedsheets and clothing fell about him. In the gloom, the shapes of legs and arms heaped together came into view.Gustav slid up the bulkhead door, trying to stand, and just as quickly fell amid the bodies, the loan movement in a mass grave.

Gustav grabbed the side handle of a stove, still bolted to the floor and pulls himself up. His eyes narrow, a flame no larger than that of a candle, burns in the stove. The source of his light. He felt his lips twitch, almost smiling.

Gustav knew when the flame went out, that would probably be the end of him too.Minutes ago, he had been asleep, warm under a blanket, thinking about his mom.

The boy hugged himself, the cold settling in. He focused on the flame but wanted to sleep. The sides of the sub were closing in, shadows danced as the metal skins of the sub vibrated, sounding like a tin can his father would crush.Gustav wondered if he was the only one left. The sub was small, only a handful of sailors.

No, everyone was dead. Would it be quick for him? Was it the sub that would squeeze until it fell upon itself and crush him or the sea water leaks drown him. Which would be less painful? Would be better just to go to sleep and not wake up. The idea of maths was soothing. Wondering the probabilities of which death would come soonest took his mind in a different direction.

The flame meant gas. Gustav raised his chin and closed his eyes, inhaling. The smell was there, but he hadn’t noticed before, being overwhelmed by salt water, but he could make out the smell of gas. Gustav used the stove to move, holding on with one hand and feeling with the other, trying to find the bottle of gas feeding the stove’s flame.Disconnecting the gas and flooding the compartment with it would force him into a sleep. Faster than waiting for the end to come anyway.

Gustav ran his hand along the copper leading out from the bottom of the stove. The lines ran behind the behemoth to the wall. Working in the dark, Gustav moved the bodies that blocked his path and through electrical wire snaking along the wall.

The further he moved away from the stove, and its flame, the more he had to feel by hand. The tubing wound its way to a box where it seemed to stop in a dead end. It took a moment, but by sliding his hands in the groove behind the box, found another tube leading back down the walls of the sub, over a hull door and then back toward where he started, the opposite wall from where the stove sat and behind the door of the fridge, which still hung open

He found the bottle of gas. It was gently hissing. By undoing the end of the copper tube from the bottle he could release it. Now, the problem was he had no wrench to undo the copper tube. Gustav punched the door of the fridge.

There would be tools in the bilge water, now up to his thighs.

Or what about the goddamn spanner that hit him in the head…Where was it?

Gustav felt in the black water, feeling for anything heavy that might be of use. The shadows were narrowing in the confined space. The aching metal of the sub groaned. Grabbing what might have been a crate of silverware, heaved it out of the way. It wasn’t a wrench, but a meat tenderizer that lay underneath. In dislodging the silverware, a can of lard shot to the surface, nearly hitting him in the head. Gustav pushed it aside and watched it float on the surface of the bilge water, thinking it must have been partially used, its air bubble allowing it to stay buoyant.

A hammer for God’s sake.

Gustav clenched his fists, wanting to hit something, anything. But instead, hammered the cleaver on the stove, taking out his frustration with the strength he had left, creating sparks that burned his skin and showered the kitchen in light.

Gustav jumped back. Blinking, realizing that the sparks might set off the gas in the stove, wondering what he had just done, if he was going to ignite in flames.

Wait a second…

***

Was there a third alternative? The idea of an explosion. There was something here. The fridge door still swung open. Gustav shut it, to see if it would stay closed. It still had its suction from its rubber seal. That could work. The boy checked the fridge itself to see if it was bolted into the structure of the sub.It wasnt, just wedged in tight from the sinking.

Gustav did his best to wrangle the fridge out of its tight spot. If this was going to work, it would have to have room to move, then tossed its contents into the bilge water. It would be tight inside, but doable.

The stove, and its flame, were the next challenge. Gustav felt a tinge of hope, and then sighed. The bilge water was almost up to the flame. If it went out, his plan would be over. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Back to the problem.

Now, if he were to climb in the fridge and shut the door, how would he ignite the stove from within the fridge? Gustav scratched his head. The other problem was simultaneously filling the room with gas. The sub rocked, causing bilge water to lap up both sides of the of the compartment. Gustav grabbed for low hanging wire to keep his balance. More rivets popped and flew through the compartment, ricocheting off metal.The boy ducked to avoid being hit, and in doing so, answered both questions to his dilemma.

The lid came off the can of lard easy enough. He found a dry-ish rag and used it to spread the lard on the wires that were still dry and hanging from the sub’s ceiling. The tricky part was pulling the wire from its mooring so that he had enough of a makeshift fuse to run from the flickering flame to the bottle of gas. Once that was done, he eyed the flame. The water was less than a finger’s width away.

Gustav put the end of the fuse in the flame and watched the arc, traveling its way up the wire to the bottle of gas. Without looking back, he splashed his way to the fridge, warping himself inside and pulling the door shut.

There was no sound, just blackness. The idea was sound, but the practicality of the gas explosion creating a hole in the sub, large enough for the fridge to drift out of and carry Gustav to the surface was less than feasible. As he usually did in moments of stress, rather than panic, he thought of his mother. He braced himself within the tiny bubble and closed his eyes.