The Night Ship

by Alex Woodroe

Genres: Horror; Apocalyptic

Synopsis

An apocalyptic world turned into a pitch-black sea of nothingness, but smuggler Rosi and her crew of survivors aren't alone. Something hungry lurks below...

Driving a logging truck through the Romanian mountains, smuggler Rosi and her crew come across a radio signal that hints at impending doom. As the world goes completely dark, their truck becomes a vessel sailing across a sea of nothingness.

But they're not alone: transmissions trickle in through the radio from similar isolated islands across the country, from amateur radio hobbyists and police cars and customs facilities.

Attempting to rescue survivors and find a way out, the group save more lives, but soon discover that something hungry lurks below, and it's sending up agents – and transmissions – of its own.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress

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Release date: January 20, 2026

Publisher: Flame Tree Press

Print pages: 245

Sample

Chapter OneGoodbye, Everybody

Transmission #41

[two speakers]

“I think they’ve got us.”

“Andrei?”

[rustle]

“I think they’ve finally got us.”

“Andrei!!”

[thumps and a clang]

“Go.”

* * *

When darkness fell over the world, only Rosi witnessed its arrival.

There was a loud rumble like thousands of thunderclaps in quick succession. Gigi’s fist was halfway through its arc toward the radio control panel, purpose unknown. It, and he, froze before anyone could ever find out just what he thought punching a piece of machinery would do, and the transmission he’d threatened to forcefully interrupt by any means necessary had fallen silent. The hitchhiker, Sorin, was tucked neatly under a desk, only his scruffy left boot visible from Rosi’s position by the window. He was scrunched up, trembling lightly, waiting for a blow to land, at that very moment probably unaware that it had already landed outside.

Rosi waited by the old double window, head pressed against the cool glass, neither angry nor afraid, but some other mysterious third thing that she couldn’t quite identify beneath the overwhelming awe of what she was seeing.

One moment, there had been a forest. There were scraggly pines along the edge, wind-picked and nearly bare up to their blue-green tops, a well-churned mud road, a painfully bright day. There had been raucous bird noise, sparrows elated by the first sunny day after a week of pouring spring rain. There was the chain-link fence that surrounded the radio tower and its adjacent concrete cube of a control room, a poorly covered woodpile stacked up neatly against it, and an old tractor tire against that.

When the darkness fell, it trickled. It was fast, but liquid, starting out as a frothing of the sky that quickly descended. It touched the top of the trees and met with some resistance, like a tar rain, progressing down branches and trunks in rivulets and globs. The grass succumbed quickly, and then the mud, and only the pools of water somehow lingered as though immune to its effects, floating in nothingness for a moment like silver ships on a sea of black. Then, everything was gone; the dark was no longer the aggressor, but the landscape itself. It had swallowed the world and become the world, and there was nothing left but them, their concrete submarine under the radio tower, and the terror of what would come next.

And after a few breaths, as reality sunk in, Rosi’s mysterious, third feeling finally emerged from under the blankets of blood-rushing shock: she was relieved.

 

 

Chapter TwoBefore the Night

1987, Romania. Two hours earlier.

10:45:32, private channel“Radar exit Tușnad. Be advised. Boys look bored today, let’s not give them anything to do.

Do you know the one about the two peasants driving their cart down the road?

Ion is driving the horses, George in the cart behind him.

‘Look, Ioane, a motorcyclist without a head!’ George says.

Ion turns to look at George, then turns back to his horses. ‘Turn the scythe the other way, you idiot.’

Get it?”

* * *

Gigi’s flatbed truck was no potato wagon, ripped up and customized to hell and back for relative comfort when spending months at a time on the road, hauling logs from left to right for the Party’s furnaces; but even so, Rosi felt like taking on a hitchhiker in the front cabin was a bit of a ridiculous squeeze.

“My name’s Sorin.” The fragile-looking young man reached over her chest to shake Gigi’s hand first, and she squeezed herself back into the tartan-fabric middle seat to keep her boobs out of the way.

“Gigi. This is Rosalba, my fiancée.”

Rosi grunted something appropriately noncommittal, something that wasn’t quite a lie but didn’t quite admit she had no intention of ever marrying him. They’d never even held hands; it was ridiculous. But at the same time, could she really argue with the word? Their parents counted on them to marry, and so did he. Her dad kept pushing her to spend time with her ‘future husband’, and to be fair, she’d hardly fought it much once she learned what he did for a living, and how she could use his truck routes to do a little ‘living’ of her own. Move hundreds of pairs of contraband jeans to spoiled rich kids in the capital. Coffee cartons to the miners, contraceptives at the market. Just enough to make enough money to get the hell out; but too little to get caught before she made enough money to get the hell out.

Otherwise, it would be a life on rails. Government picked the job, parents picked the husband, everything organized and careful down to their haircuts and how many friends they’d be allowed to congregate with, how late they’d be able to stay up, what music they’d be allowed to listen to, and then she’d have to have kids, multiple kids, it was mandatory, and black market contraceptives didn’t always work, and what if he was an informant, and—

She couldn’t breathe.

Sorin must have seen something was off, and he shuffled slightly away to give her more room as she recomposed her face into ‘amused serenity’, one of her go-to costumes in unknown situations around untrusted people. Gigi didn’t seem to notice anything, which made him either oblivious or a great and subtle snitch for the government, nothing in between.

“So what do you do, Sorin? And how far are you going?” she asked, in her mind repeating ‘amused and serene’ over and over.

Sorin ran a hand through his wispy blond hair; he was so thin and pale and blue-eyed it felt like color avoided him deliberately. Nothing like Gigi’s russet trucker tan, or even Rosi’s black hair and deep olive skin, a rare outcome from her mother’s very old Hunnic heritage.

He spoke softly and tentatively. “I’m a student. Philosophy.”

Gigi whistled. “That’s still allowed?”

Rosi was surprised, too. Last she’d heard, the Party had gotten rid of several tenured professors, mostly the ones in humanities. Anyone who thought too long and too hard about anything that wasn’t how to fix a tractor or enhance the country’s nuclear power capabilities.

“Yes, it’s…” Sorin seemed to search for his phrasing deep within himself. “It’s actually encouraged among students; especially associated with other majors like teaching or physics. Some of the professors were dissidents but the Party isn’t unreasonable.”

He threw her a panicked look she could only respond to in kind, the absolute bullshit coming out of his mouth beyond any hope of credibility to man or beast. She’d heard people smoothly twist any action of the Party into a ‘best possible outcome for the people’ before, and boy, this wasn’t it. He had a long way to go.

But the poor thing tried; of course he did. He didn’t know them and what their feelings about their fearless leaders were, so he couldn’t chance saying anything out of place. Frustratingly, she’d just learned more about him in this one exchange than she had about Gigi in five trips together.

“That’s great to hear!” she lied. “Haven’t met a lot of philosophy students.” Quick darting glance to Gigi, serenity confirmed as always.

“Yeah, that’s great,” Gigi added. “But I don’t expect it’ll be for us. I mean our kids. By then I expect there’ll be a lot more focus on practical concerns. The country is moving forward

into the future. Engineering, likely.”

Panic. Gut-crushing terror. If he wasn’t a downright Securist, he was at the very least an informant for them. She needed to end this, and fast, and she was only about halfway to what it would cost to get out of the country safely. Maybe it was about time she considered the un-safely option. Maybe she would have to make this her last trip. Maybe she had to reach around the hitchhiker, unlatch the door, shove him out, then lunge at—

“I’m actually on my way to a conference in Cisnadie,” Sorin added. “The Party asked the students in my year with the best results to volunteer to discuss, uh…” Frantic searching. “To meet and discuss some new curriculum.”

Poor, unfortunate thing. He was either genuinely summoned to a talk, in which case he’d be handed new mandatory study materials adorned with Ceausescu’s photo on the front page and told to stick with them for fear of his life, or worse, that fear had already come to pass and he was one short trip away from one long trip to Siberia. And it didn’t look like he was all that sure of the outcome, either.

“Well.” Gigi’s hard and loud tone made Rosi jump after Sorin’s soft and low one. “We’re passing right by town, so you’re in luck. It’ll be what, two hours? Rosi, can you check the map?”

She reached under her seat – these last trips had revealed that she genuinely enjoyed all the various tasks of being a copilot; maps and directions felt easy and natural to her, and she even occasionally drove the rig when Gigi needed a break – and grabbed their battered, faded old map of Romania. The radio crackled; it often had on that trip.

“Security on DN11 before Oituz.”

Gigi grunted in response, but it wasn’t their road and Rosi didn’t need to worry about rerouting. Not that Gigi was hiding a damned thing; he was the squeakiest, cleanest, and most prepared of the country’s children, but being stopped would take precious hours off his schedule and mean exhausting explanations to his superiors as to why they had to spend another night on the road. They’d suspect them of stopping just to sleep together, even if it was the furthest thing from reality. Conveniently, his perfectly legally avoiding those complications matched her perfectly illegally having stuffed every nook and cranny of his truck with contraband.

Unfolding the map on top of some stranger’s lap was a whole other issue. Sorin sat there, slightly cringing, definitely making himself as small as he could. He swallowed hard and laughed to himself a little.

“Have you ever thought about how, when you fold a map, the streets are touching? If you take your map—” He grabbed at the side of what Rosi had just carefully and delicately unfolded, and brusquely bent it in a direction that had nothing to do with its original fold lines. “—and just fold it down the middle, then one side of the country touches the complete other side? A little car going across the paper could get from Timisoara to Constanta in a moment.”

Rosi’s hands were in the air and she looked at him, confused and amused. He had just roughed up her map, true, but he was so earnest and into his theory it was kind of sweet.

“Can you imagine,” he continued, with a rather endearing glint in his blue eyes, “if we could fold the world like that, travel from place to place, and then unfold it again?”

There was silence for a moment. The radio crackled again, a muted and distant, “Accident on DJ187,” and the tension tickled so much Rosi burst into a giggle.

“Actually—”

The radio burst into static and interrupted his reply. Before anyone could reach for the volume, a voice, crystal clear like it came from around the bend, came on.

“Comrades, I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

The guys both frowned at the speaker, but in different ways. Gigi seemed annoyed at it. Sorin, afraid. The speaker’s tone was a strange sort of calm, a half-quiet hope that reminded Rosi of the time she stood on the edge of a building, looked down, and thought, ‘Well, it can only possibly get better from here.’

“I’m staying here, but I say, try. Try to get out of the way of it now. I don’t know how far, but maybe if you drive for the border—”

“What the hell?” Gigi reached for the knob but Rosi grabbed his hand.

“Let it play.”

“Why? We clearly stumbled on something that’s none of our business. Do we really need that kind of trouble?”

“What if it’s just a fun play?”

Sorin chimed in. “What if it’s real?”

The transmission had carried on under their chatter, and Rosi picked it back up mid-sentence.

“…had not been accountable to the people for years now. Decades…crumbling from the inside out. The outside needs to be informed. If you can’t get to the border soon, head for where there’s radio transmitters. Now. For your safety. For your duty. They don’t have time to chase you if you go now, when everything’s in the air. They’ve made so many mistakes.”

Gigi kept driving steadily down the highway but slowed noticeably. They passed a red Dacia on the side of the road, just sitting there, lights on, engine running, the people inside it motionless.

“They’re coming.”

The voice stopped, and a rustling, crashing noise followed. There were two loud, microphone-popping bangs that sounded like gunshots, then static.

“Well, that was pointless,” Gigi offered, then shut the radio off, clearly bothered enough to opt out of any future alerts of dangers on the road for the moment.

“What was it, though?” Rosi asked.

The world – their country, at least, which meant the same thing – was not made of chaos and accidents. Things did not just happen. They had to be deliberate, allowed, monitored. Hens did not lay unauthorized eggs, cows did not give unauthorized milk, and transmissions didn’t start on their own. It was hard not to feel like there was something grave and important about it.

“Clearly, something important,” Sorin offered. “Someone probably risked their life for it.”

“You think they were…?”

“Killed? Maybe, or maybe those were only warning shots. Either way.”

Either way, whether someone was shot at, or shot warning shots at, they were not in for a good time.

Sorin shuffled in his corner of the seat, uncomfortably shifting his backpack around. “So what do we do?” He clearly thought the answer should not be nothing.

“Nothing,” Gigi immediately responded. “This has nothing to do with us.”

“Clearly it has everything to do with everyone.”

Rosi didn’t know what to think; it was all too strange to be meaningless, but also too strange to be meaningful. She let the men argue on, content to sit and consider for a moment.

“What do you expect? That we run into who knows what because someone, probably some kid, was playing with a—”

“That was not some kid, that sounded like military.”

“You’re guessing!”

Smoke was never just smoke. Either the fire under it was going to burn your skin off, or it was the thing keeping you warm and fed. There were no questions about the fire; the only question was who you were to the fire.

“We’re all guessing everything. Why would your guessing be more valuable than mine?”

“Because I’m the one driving the truck. Who the hell are you?”

“Well, that seems unfair. It’s the people’s truck, and this is the people’s problem.”

Would they be able to figure out whether the fire aimed to protect them or harm them in any definitive sense? No, that was impossible. There just wasn’t enough information. Although, just in case, Rosi quietly flipped the radio back on. It, too, was quiet, and her two companions were loud, Sorin taking a very strange hard stance where before he’d been all soft rounded edges.

“You’re suggesting we walk into unknown drama that might get us killed.” Gigi was gesturing, one hand on the wheel and one in the air, as the truck slowed.

“And you’re suggesting we refuse to walk to a safe space that might save our lives. Other lives! I’m only asking that you admit that logically, both of these suggestions are equally insane in value.”

“What does it matter if I do or don’t?”

“It matters. It’s a solid foundation from which to build a discussion.”

“This isn’t a discussion.”

So not knowing anything about the fire, what was the only reasonable thing to do? Not the actions dictated by the fear of finding out, or the fear of missing out, but the genuinely reasonable actions? They couldn’t be anything other than searching for more information.

“Hypothetically,” she interrupted both her co-travelers mid-yell. “I’m not saying we do, but if we were going to look for the nearest transmitter, there’s a radio tower not…” She rustled the map a little, quickly locating the right bend of the right logging road. “…maybe ten minutes from here?

Left turn, quick drive up a gravel track. Driving by for a glance and getting back on the road would take less than our lunch break. Heck, we could stop and have lunch there, if nothing’s going on.”

Gigi gave her a dark look. “I thought you said hypothetically.”

“You seem like a straight and narrow guy,” Sorin pointed out. “So why wouldn’t you listen when you’re told that something is your duty?”

“By some random stranger on the radio?”

“Who even has access to radio these days aside from official government employees?”

“Lots of people! Jesus, have you never heard of contraband?”

Had he? Did he know? Shit. That…would be bad. Was she also being taken up to volunteer to discuss her future, like Sorin? She was hardly dressed warmly enough for Siberia; all she had on were old wool tights under a cotton house dress and a sweater that was more holes than yarn. Rosi’s mind was racing in too many directions all at once and not coming up with any sensible answers. When the receiver crackled again, they almost didn’t stop yapping at each other, but she grabbed both their forearms in a tight squeeze.

“On behalf of your Ministry of Internal Affairs, you are ordered to disregard the previous transmission.”

Gigi raised his eyebrows smugly at them. They waited for further information, but nothing came, the terse voice cutting off as abruptly as it started. Behind it came an odd sort of silence, not the absence of a transmission, but like they were listening to a transmission of somebody not speaking. Thinking.

The truck had slowed to a crawl, and with nothing but an empty road ahead, Gigi wasn’t even looking. He frowned at the receiver, uncertain, his face going from bemused to concerned. Rosi felt nothing but the concern. This was nothing good. It couldn’t be.

“If you’re in place by a radio transmitter…” The voice suddenly came back, tentative, half-whispered, startling the three of them in unison like a shark thrust into a school of fish “…remain in place.”

And finally, the radio crackled off.

The truck was stopped dead. They looked at each other for a moment. Rosi was gearing up to make a case for going to the nearest hotel or inn, waiting whatever this was out. Sorin was quiet and pale. It was, surprisingly, Gigi who ultimately made the decision for them.

“Where’s the turnoff for this tower?”