by Tim Curran
“Is he still unconscious?” Cook asked, looking over at Hupp.
“Yes,” Crycek said. “I rather doubt he’ll wake at all.”
Hupp was the first assistant engineer and he was in a bad way. He was badly burned and banged-up from one of the explosions. Like Crycek, Cook’s knowledge of medicine was strictly limited. He’d examined Hupp in the glow of a chemical lightstick, but that didn’t tell him much. But judging from the fever boiling in his blood and the awful, hot stink wafting off of him, it looked very grim.
Cook had been the first to see the lifeboat. It had probably been blown clear of the ship’s davits – along with its equipment during one of the final thundering detonations, Cook figured – and had managed to right itself in the flat seas. He found it within minutes after swimming clear of the ship. Sometime later, an hour or so, he’d found the two crewmen. Crycek was wearing a survival suit and Hupp just a lifejacket. Crycek had been holding onto Hupp, in order to keep his head out of the water. Said he found him floating like that, barely conscious.
So there they sat, waiting.
Thinking.
Worrying.
Cook could’ve asked for better companionship than Crycek. The man just sat there brooding in the gloom, clutching a lightstick and refusing to part with it. Much as he refused to part with his day-glo orange survival suit. Like he was expecting them to sink at any moment. But there was more to it than that, Cook knew, for Crycek had been one of the sailors that had manned the rescue boats when that crew member-Stokes, Cook remembered-had lost his mind and jumped overboard. He kept watching the fog like he was expecting something.
Now, Cook was quiet by nature. Not much of a conversationalist, but even when he tried, he couldn’t get much out of Crycek about their search in the fog for Stokes. Crycek got real nervous when Cook brought it up just to pass the time.
And why was that?
All Crycek would say was, “The fog, there’s funny things in the fog” And from the way he said it, you could tell real easy he wasn’t alluding to clowns and dancing bears.
Which made Cook think about all those stories running through the ship, bits about the Devil’s Triangle and things about Stokes being bloodied by something that drove him mad. And that other tidbit he’d gotten from one of the porters, something about the search team having some weird, spooky experiences out in the fog.
Cook didn’t like it.
Didn’t like a lot of this.
Among the equipment stowed on the boat were signaling devices and flares, a manual radio beacon and even a portable VHF radio. Cook had been sending out distress signals for what seemed hours now, calling out for help on the VHF.
So far, nothing but static.
And it was that very static that was bothering him. For it almost sounded at times as if there was something buried in it, a strange distant buzzing sound that came in short, irregular pulses. It rose up and faded away, it seemed, before his ears really got a chance to separate it from the background noise. But it was there, he was sure it was there.
Maybe it was nothing… yet, Cook didn’t believe that. The few brief instances when he’d heard it, it had unsettled him for it did not seem random or undirected. And that should have been a good thing
… but for some crazy reason he didn’t think it was.
What? he asked himself. What is it that bothers you about it so much? What you might be hearing could be just dead noise, atmospheric interference… or maybe the Coast Guard searching you out. Isn’t that a good thing?
He just wasn’t sure.
For nothing was reading right here, from the fog to this soupy becalmed sea, and part of him was certain that if there was an intelligence behind that buzzing, then it was not benevolent in nature.
That was crazy, paranoid thinking, but there was something about the fog that encouraged such wild leaps of irrationality. The buzzing pulses or pings or whatever they were only occurred moments after Cook sent out a voice signal. Maybe that meant absolutely nothing… but what if somebody out there was locking onto those signals and was seeking them out?
This is the very thing that unnerved Cook, the very thing he dared not even admit to himself. Because he couldn’t get one central idea out of his mind: whatever came out of the fog would not be a good thing.
Crycek had heard those sounds when he used the VHF, too. And when he did, he pulled the plug from his ear, said, “Fucking weird… that sound, you hear it? A buzzing. Like there’s some locust out there wanting to talk.”
And that’s exactly what Cook had thought, what had gotten under his skin and stayed there: it did sound like a locust. Like some loathsome insect was trying to make contact.
Of course, if there was someone or something trying to find them, then all it would have to do is follow the emergency radio beacons the boat sent on auto.
You gotta stop it, Cook was telling himself, and you gotta stop it right now.
And he knew he had to. He was not nervous or high-strung by nature and that’s why him feeling this way, thinking these dark things, was even more disturbing.
But he had to keep his head, because he had the feeling that Crycek was right on the edge. And one little push is all it would take.
Cook kept wondering about the others. Had any of the ship’s crew made it? Had any of the construction crew? He found it hard to believe that even the sea could take Saks. It was silly to think of a man like that simply drowning. Maybe a bullet or a knife, but nothing so prosaic as drowning.
And the others?
Well, yes, he could picture the sea taking them.
But not Saks.
Saks was too much like Cook’s father, the belligerent, opinionated sonofabitch who’d beaten his mother to death. Cook had watched it go on for years. Every Friday night his father finished his shift at the mill, sauced himself up on Jack Daniels, and came home walking ten-feet tall and bulletproof, just looking for a fight. And men like that, they always found one sooner or later. And if they couldn’t find one, they created one.
Whether it was genetics or environment, Cook only knew that his father was trash. Asshole is as asshole does.
It was just not Cook’s mother who took it, but Cook himself. Anybody who got in the way. Then the old man lost his job, decided drinking was a vocation, and the beatings became daily. In time, they became extremely vicious. His mother was in and out of the hospital. Broken ribs. Broken jaw. Sprained wrist. A punctured lung. Bruised kidney. And she always covered for the bastard. But she couldn’t cover for him when he threw her down the stairs in a drunken rage and her neck snapped like a twig.
Cook had come home from school and discovered his father weeping over her body, drunk and ugly.
“She fell, goddammit,” he snapped. “And that’s all you gotta know, you little bastard.”
Cook could still remember the sense of acceptance he’d felt. The sense of calm knowing the worst had finally happened. He’d set his books down, went into the den and got the shotgun. He remembered grinning as he chambered a shell. Grinning as he pumped it into his father’s chest.
Self-defense, they’d said.
They were wrong.
It wasn’t self-defense, but it wasn’t murder either; it was eradication, extermination. Much as you eradicated a weed that threatened your garden or exterminated termites that infested your home. Some things had to be done for the good of all.
Yes, Saks was his father reincarnated.
Cook didn’t doubt this.
And if the two of them washed up on a desert island or they were the only ones in a lifeboat, Cook knew what would happen. As soon as Saks closed his eyes, he would kill the bastard.
And smile as he did so.
5
“You ever been shipwrecked before?”
“Once,” Gosling said, “off the coast of Labrador.”
“How long?”
“Six hours before I got picked up. I was a mate on an ore freighter. She was improperly loaded, they said. Ore shifted
, snapped her in half. Lost twenty men. I was one of the lucky ones. I floated on a piece of planking until I saw a channel buoy. I made my way to it, waited there. A Coast Guard ship picked me up.”
George floated in the slimy water, wondering maybe if it was contaminated with something. Maybe the ship had been carrying chemicals and maybe that weird water quality was due to the fact that they were bobbing in a sea of toxic waste. Sure, he found himself thinking, you’re probably already poisoned, shit’s eating through your skin.
A normal explanation like that would have been almost preferable.
“Was it better or worse than this?” George asked. “That other time?”
Gosling wouldn’t qualify it, though. “Well, water was cold. And there was this shark that kept circling me. Never came close. Just circled. When I was on the buoy, he finally gave up.”
“Shit, you must’ve been terrified.”
“Was. At first. But after a time and he didn’t attack, I got used to him. Called him Charlie. I talked to him all the time. The only time I was really afraid was at night when I couldn’t see him.”
“And he never attacked?”
“Nope. Never even came close.”
“Well, if a shark comes along,” George said, “you talk to him.”
That made Gosling laugh, only it wasn’t a good sort of laughter.
They floated on, the water around them gelatinous and syrupy, clumps of weed drifting past from time to time. The water was warm like a mud bath, but the air was chill and dank. It made steam boil from the surface. And the fog? Yellow and white, billowing and thick like a fine cottony weave, charged with that ghostly radiance. It was moist on their faces, left a greasy residue on their skin.
That stink was there, too, but they were used to it now and didn’t smell it much more than a bum smells his own body odor.
George was wondering when his lifejacket would get saturated and he’d go down like a brick, down into those awful black depths. The idea of that made him shiver, despite the heat surging around him. It was hard to imagine all that water beneath him. Like some huge alien world that only fish, crawling things, and dead men ever saw. He could almost see it down there himself. Desolate mountain ranges and abyssal pockets of blackness. Like the geography of some distant planet, some submerged graveyard.
George was thinking this, knowing such morbid thoughts were probably not a good idea, and that’s when he saw something drifting in their direction not ten feet away. That crazy shine in the fog was reflecting off its surface which looked smooth and wet and oddly circular.
“Hell is that?” Gosling said, a note of panic in his voice.
George was looking at it, shivering again now, thinking it looked like some immense, rubbery eyeball rising from the depths. And the idea of that made him go hollow inside.
“Jesus… I think,” Gosling began, “I think… I think it’s a survival raft.”
They started paddling over there, Gosling in the lead. George trying to keep up with him. As they got close, George could see it was nothing so fantastic as an eyeball, but something the general shape of a donut. It didn’t look much like a raft, but then he realized it must have inflated upside down. When they boarded the Mara Corday, Gosling went through the drill with all of them. Lifeboat stations and the like. He had explained to them that the survival rafts were in containers and would inflate automatically, that if the containers were submerged in ten or twelve feet of water-like if the ship sank-a hydrostatic mechanism would release the rafts and they’d bob to the surface, inflating.
Gosling and he took hold of the righting strap and heaved back with everything they had. On the third try, the raft broke the suction of the water and flipped over, sending George underwater momentarily. He came back up, gasping and spitting water from his mouth. Maybe he couldn’t smell the stink of it any more… but the taste, the feel of it in his mouth was horrible. Like a mouthful of slime warm as bathwater. Sickening.
Gosling thought it was pretty funny. “I told you she’d come over quick when she did,” he said.
George ignored him. The raft was big now that it was floating right side up, looked something like a tent floating on tubes. Just the feel of it made George feel safer, stronger. His fingers closed on the rungs of its small boarding ladder. He and Gosling hung there for a moment and caught their breath. This, they decided, was an unbelievable bit of luck. And when you considered that heavy fog, it was surely that.
Gosling pulled himself aboard and then helped George in.
“Home sweet home,” George said, curled up on the deck plates.
He was grateful to be out of that water. The raft had a canopy overhead that you could zip free if you needed to. It was wonderful to be in there, to be in a dry enclosed space. The raft was built to accommodate a dozen men, so there was plenty of room.
“She’s a beauty,” Gosling said, “our savior is.”
And she was.
It was well-equipped, George found out, as Gosling pointed out all the features. There were countless pockets for equipment, flares, inflation valves that you could pump with a bellows (included), and a survival kit. The survival kit, probably the most exciting feature, came in a waterproof, rubberized box. It contained 18 pints of fresh water, 8 flares, 2 bailers, fishhooks, fishing line, a signal mirror, flashlight, extra paddles, bellows, a first aid kit, and food. The latter consisted mainly of chocolate, bread, freeze-dried soups and stews, glucose and salt tablets.
There was a line running from one end into the water. George was examining it. “What’s this do?”
“That’s our sea anchor,” Gosling explained. “Sort of like a water parachute. It keeps us from drifting due to the wind.”
“They think of everything,” George said. And they had.
There was even a small waterproof flashlight and extra batteries, a bunch of lightsticks. Using one of them, Gosling set up the radio beacon and VHF radio. He started transmitting right away.
George swigged from a plastic water bottle. “Hell, we should be okay now. I mean, hell, at least we won’t drown. Sooner or later, this fog has to lift and then…”
But he didn’t finish that and Gosling did not comment on it. For that was really what they were both wondering: what came next? What would happen next? Because something had to and that something could either be good or bad. Sure, they were safe and sound in the raft and Gosling was an old hand with survival equipment. He’d keep them alive. But beyond that?
No answers.
No nothing.
Gosling finally gave up on the radio. “Nothing out there. Just static. Kind of a buzzing sound now and then.”
“Do you think it’s a signal?” George asked, trying to keep that hopeful tone from his voice.
Gosling just shrugged, his face artificial-looking in the glow of the lightstick. “If it is, it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before.”
George sat there, telling himself he had to be satisfied with what they had because things had definitely improved. And he had to be happy with that. But he wasn’t happy with that, he was not satisfied by any of it.
“Paul,” he said, realizing it was probably the first time he’d called Gosling by his Christian name. “Paul… what the hell is this all about? The fog, the wreck… all of it, it’s not right and we both know it. You had to watch what you said before when we were aboard ship because I was a passenger and you were in charge. But now you might as well come clean… where in the Christ are we?”
Gosling pressed his lips tight, looked stern. Maybe he was formulating a lie, a half-truth, something that would keep George’s spirits buoyant. But in the end, he just shook his head and ran fingers through his graying crewcut. “Don’t know, George. Don’t know where we are or how we got here anymore than you do” He took a sip of water. “Sailors, they like to tell stories and one they’ve been recycling for ages is the one about the Sargasso Sea, the Devil’s Graveyard, the Sea of Lost Ships and all that… some awful place where ships and their cr
ews never return from…”
He recounted the tales of the mythical Sargasso for him, explaining that there was nothing truly mysterious about it. That, yes, lots of ships had disappeared there, many derelicts had been found drifting, but he couldn’t say as to whether it was worse than any other body of water. It was a seaweed-sea, he told George, a floating desert of weed and those weed banks were as large as islands in some places. It was like a whirpool of sorts, with conflicting currents at its edges creating a great dead, weedy area. In the age of sail, ships had been becalmed there and quite a few never escaped. They were found crewed by skeletons. When men did come out, they told unpleasant, disturbing tales of things they’d seen.
“But it doesn’t mean anything, George. It really doesn’t. None of it proves a goddamn thing,” he said, trying to dispel the import of what he’d already said. “There are sane, logical explanations for most of that business. But most sailors? They prefer the more outlandish explanations. Makes for a good spooky tale to pass the hours with.”
George didn’t like any of it, didn’t actually believe it any more than Gosling did… but it accounted for a few things and that’s what dried the spit up in his mouth.
“And you’re saying our last confirmed position was at the edge of the Sargasso Sea? The real Sargasso Sea?” he asked.
Gosling nodded. “Yes. And then…”
But George knew that part.
That fog rolling at them, the air being sucked away… and then they were lost, navigational instruments acting funny. Sure, he knew that part just fine. Gosling wanted very much to dismiss it all, but once the cat was out of the bag, just try and get it back in.
“What if there is something to it, Paul? What if we’ve sailed into one of those dead zones you mentioned, a dead sea? What then? Where in Christ does any of that leave us? What can we do?”
But Gosling just shook his head.
He took his lightstick and went over to the doorway of the canopy, adjusting the drag of the sea anchor. He explained that while there was no wind, they were still moving, being pulled gradually by what he surmised were subsurface currents.