by Tim Curran
God, he thought, what’s it going to be like after two or three days? A week? A month?
But he wasn’t going there.
“It’s funny,” he said to Gosling, “how it puts everything in perspective.” Gosling smiled. “It does that, doesn’t it?”
“I mean, you blunder through your life taking everything for granted. You worry about mortgages and bills and money. You dream about all the things you’d like to buy. The lifestyle you’d like to have. Never once do you look around and think, ‘hey, this isn’t so bad. I’ve got a roof over my head, food in my belly, I can afford a few nice toys. It’s a good life’. It’s not until everything goes to hell that you appreciate it. What I wouldn’t give for a lazy Sunday afternoon in my recliner, snacking and watching the tube. A nice cold beer in my hand. Lisa always makes a big dinner on Sunday – roast beef or fried chicken, all the trimmings. You know what I’d give for that now?”
Gosling said, “Just about anything, I’d imagine.”
George sipped water from the cap Gosling handed him. Already they were on strict rations. “How about you? Do you appreciate what you have or do you worry about what you don’t have?”
“I like to think I appreciate what I’ve got.”
“But do you?”
“Not enough.”
“Are you married?”
“I tried it once. Didn’t work. I’m gone too much.”
“Kids?”
“No. No time.”
George thought it didn’t seem like much of a life flitting about from one place to the next. No roots. No nothing. Just a lot of time to think while you were out at sea. It sounded lonely.
“When we get rescued,” George said, “I want you to come over for supper, Gosling. I mean it. It’ll be good for you.”
“Maybe,” Gosling said. “Maybe I will.” He kept staring out the doorway of the raft. “What’s so interesting out there?”
“Look.”
George went over to the doorway with him, stared out into the fog and murk and saw it right away. It was brighter now, of course, and visibility was up to maybe two hundred feet or so. And that’s where George was seeing it, right where the mist became the water and the water became the mist… a series of luminous objects just beneath the surface heading in their direction. Whatever they were-they looked lozenge-shaped, a few feet in length each-there had to be hundreds of them and they were coming fast. More all the time.
“What the hell are they?” George asked.
Gosling just shook his head. “Something… I don’t know… like a school of luminous fish”
And there was no time for further discussion, for the school was closing in on them, moving just a few inches beneath the surface of the water and creating a surging, boiling swell in their wake.
Gosling zipped the door shut.
Eyes wide and panicked, they waited for the first impact.
15
Cook never took his eyes off Saks.
Crycek was crazy, of course, and Fabrini was trouble. Maybe Menhaus, too, and mainly because he was such a follower. But Saks.. . he was another story. Saks reminded him of his father. But unlike his father who had good days and kind words from time to time, Saks pretended to be nothing but what he was: a bully.
What they needed right now was a sense of unity.
The common enemy was this terrible sea. They could only survive if they worked together. Cook was no survival expert, but even he knew this. And the greatest threat to their unity was Saks. Not what lurked out in the fog or even this hypothetical devil of Crycek’s. Just Saks. He would destroy the survivors much faster than any of those factors. He was a self-involved, self-indulgent macho bastard who would have fed his mother to the sharks if he thought it would keep him alive a few more hours.
If the others had risen up and decided to kill the man, Cook knew he would happily join in. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway.
But if he was lucky, maybe in time.
And nobody was more patient than Cook because he knew Saks was a dead man, it was just a matter of when now.
16
“I’m so thirsty,” Soltz kept saying. “I need water.”
“You’re okay. Just try to think of something else,” Cushing said, scanning the fog with his bright blue eyes, looking for something, anything out there. Anything that might give him even the thinnest ray of hope. Because, Jesus, this was bad.
Real bad.
Cushing wasn’t a pessimist by any stretch of the imagination, but there were limits to everything. Just the two of them, he was thinking, floating on that fucking hatch cover in that turgid, alien sea. What were their chances here? Death could come in so many different ways. And if it wasn’t from some of the wildlife – he’d heard enough sounds out there now to be convinced that there was some seriously nasty shit prowling around-then what? Dehydration? Starvation?
Damn, but it wasn’t looking real peachy right about then.
He hadn’t slept in… well, he wasn’t sure how long now. Since his berth in the ship. Every time his eyes started drifting shut, he snapped awake with the dread certainty that something was coming out of the fog, something was reaching out for him. Even when he was wide awake and alert, it was hard to shake that feeling.
He wondered if Soltz felt it, too. But he didn’t dare ask him.
The man had enough anxieties to deal with.
“No boats will come here,” Soltz sighed. “Not into this Sargasso Sea.”
“I told you that’s a myth. I was pulling your leg.”
“I think we both know better, don’t we?”
Cushing just shrugged. Okay, the kid gloves were off. No more trying to talk reason to the man… even if it was less like reason and more like out and out bullshit. Let Soltz believe they were lost in some alternate dimension, that they’d fallen through the back door of the Devil’s Triangle.
Why not? Because they probably had.
“What is that?” Soltz said excitedly. “Look! What is that? A shark? A whale?” Cushing looked and saw nothing. “Where?
“There!” Soltz said, jabbing his finger at the water.
Cushing saw a gigantic shadow pass beneath them. Soltz, trembling, his jaw sprung open like a trap, moved to the very center of the hatch cover. Cushing crept out to the edge, tried to get a look at their visitor. It was a huge fish, at least forty feet in length. Its body a dusky brownish green speckled with white dots and darker transverse bands. It could have been a whale… except that as it passed, Cushing saw that its head narrowed into an angular probocis that was lit up like a Christmas tree, seemed to twist in the water, corkscrewing.
Crazy, impossible fish.
It swam off, did not return.
“It’s just some kind of whale, I guess,” Cushing said, not sure if he was relieved or terrified by the idea of something that size. “Harmless, I think.”
“You think? Well, it didn’t look harmless to me.”
“It’s gone. Don’t worry about it.”
Soltz stared out through his thick glasses. “You know a lot about nature, don’t you? The sea and its animals, things like that. How is it an accountant knows about things like that?”
“I’m a frustrated naturalist,” Cushing admitted. “I read books on everything. Sea life happens to be one of those things I’ve studied.”
“With my eyes, reading is a chore. I get headaches. Did I ever tell you about my headaches?”
Cushing figured he was about to learn all about them.
17
“Get ready,” Gosling said and there was dire import behind his words. George said nothing.
He’d never felt quite so helpless before in his life. His knuckles were white as they gripped his knees. He was tense and waiting, his heart hammering wildly.
His throat was so dry, his voice would barely come. “I’m afraid,” he admitted. “Jesus, I’m afraid.”
“Stay calm,” Gosling said.
The waiting, of course, was th
e worse part. Not knowing what was going to happen and when, if anything at all. George was now very much thinking about Lisa and his son Jacob and those pleasant Sunday afternoons. The worst part, the very worst part, about it all now was that he honestly didn’t think he’d see them again. He’d never know another Sunday.
Just stay calm, he told himself. Just like Gosling says. That’s what you gotta do. Stay calm.
Bullshit.
“They’re almost on us,” Gosling said.
But how he could know that with the door zipped shut was beyond George. Maybe he just felt it because George was feeling it, too, now: a gradual, almost lazy pressure building in the sea behind the raft. George was certain he could feel it coming right through the rubberized deckplates… a weight, an expectancy, a surging motion like air forced before a train. Right before impact.
There was no way to stay calm. Even Gosling didn’t look so good. He was clown-white under his tan, his eyes jittering in their sockets like roulette balls. He was gripping the plank for dear life.
There.
George felt it and so did Gosling. Something or many somethings had just moved beneath them with such speed and power its aftershock actually lifted the raft up a few inches. The sea exploded with activity.
“They’re under us,” Gosling said.
And they were.
Dozens and dozens of those luminous fish or animals or whatever they were. They swam close to the surface and now they were bumping against the raft, one after the other. The funny thing was that their light – sort of a pale, thrumming green – filled the interior of the raft, actually lit the bottom like an x-ray so that you could see the outlines of the air chambers, every seam and stitch.
Yes, it was amazing. Truly amazing.
But neither George or Gosling had the time to truly appreciate it, for being in the raft was like being on a roller coaster. Thump, thump, thump in rapid succession. The sea boiled and the raft careened and George clenched his teeth down hard, waiting for those chambers to start popping and for them to start sinking.
But that it didn’t happen.
The raft was engineered to handle rough seas and no amount of jolting and jarring was going to pop it. That’s why it was designed with a series of air chambers, rather than a single one.
Gosling had told him this and more than once, but George couldn’t remember any of that. All he was seeing was that weird glow and feeling the raft beneath him in constant motion, spilling him this way and that, into Gosling and then back to the deck.
Then the bumping stopped and the glow went out as if somebody had switched off a lamp.
After a moment or two, Gosling went to the door and unzipped it. Nothing but the fog and the sea again, moving as one when they moved at all.
“Gone,” he said. “And we’re still here.”
18
“Well, I’m hungry,” Saks said, after a long period of silence. “What do you guys say we cut up Fabrini and have a snack?”
This elicited a low, dry laugh from Menhaus. Cook said nothing. Crycek just stared. Fabrini clenched and unclenched his fists.
“I mean, if this goes on for a long time,” Saks went on, “we’re going to have to eat someone. Fabrini’s my choice. Let’s face it, he’s the most expendable.”
“No, you’re wrong, Saks,” Fabrini said. “I’m too thin. What you want is some lardass. Like you for instance. A big, fat blowhard. A blubbery hothead that’ll cook in his own juices.”
Saks cackled. “You hear that, Menhaus? He wants my juices. All he ever thinks of is my dick.”
Cook tuned them out. He was watching the fog, watching Crycek, and mostly just watching Saks. Crycek’s diatribe earlier of some devil out there, waiting, was not lost on him. It seemed, that he could feel this other when he closed his eyes. Some presence nipping at the back of his mind. And maybe that was sheer imagination and maybe not, but there was a much more clear and present danger and that was Saks.
“Right now, food don’t sound so good,” Menhaus grumbled. “What I need is a cold beer.”
“Shut up,” Fabrini said.
“There’s no point in talking about that,” Cook said. “We have to be realistic.”
Saks held his hands out before him in surprise. “Shit, was that you, Cook? Who rattled your cage? Let’s be quiet, guys, he might speak again.”
Cook narrowed his eyes. “I’m just saying we must be realistic here. There’s no point in talking about beer. We’ll have to get by on our survival rations until… until something else shows up.”
“Well there you go,” Saks said. “Mr. Realism has spoken.”
“Oh, just shut up,” Fabrini said.
“Why don’t you go fuck your mother, Fagbrini?” Saks snarled.
Fabrini rose to his feet, the boat rocking slightly. “I’ve had as much as I’m going to take from you, Saks. You’ve been asking for this.”
Saks grinned without mirth. He stood up slowly, knowing that he had been asking for this. He’d been trying to push Fabrini to violence ever since the ship went down. And the fact that the moment had come gave him no end of satisfaction. He liked to be able to manipulate people. It gave him a feeling of power knowing he could push the right buttons and get someone to act accordingly. Like Fabrini, for instance. Hotheads were the easiest to control.
“Stop this,” Cook said. “You can’t fight in the boat.”
And in his brain he was trying to think of a reason why they couldn’t. Because it was wrong? Because it was immature? Because they might tip the boat? But, no, none of that was what he had been thinking at all. It had been something a little higher and a little mightier. They couldn’t fight because, dammit, they were men, they were both men and that had to count for something. For men were a rarity in this new savage world and if indeed there was some malefic devil out there, some puppet master, then they had to stick together. Had to show this thing that men always stuck together, always presented a unified front against adversity.
Sure, maybe it was all a little idealistic, a little pretentious, but Cook figured it was important. They could not allow themselves to become puppets, playthings, amusement for something wicked and inhuman. For negativity amongst their numbers made them weaker… and made it stronger.
“Please,” he said to them, “just stop this. Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
But they didn’t and continued to hurl insults back and forth, most of which were getting damned unfunny by this point.
Crycek said, “You should listen to Cook. Maybe some of you don’t know, but Cook? Oh, he knows, all right. He knows what’s out there, what waits for us. Divide and conquer, that’s what it’s doing. It feeds on fear and hopelessness and anxiety, violence and anger… and you’re feeding it. Oh, you certainly are. Filling its belly with your filth, making it strong…”
Crycek launched into another of his insane sermons about this mythical other who watched and waited and listened, amused, constantly amused. That both Saks and Fabrini were idiots because they didn’t really want to fight, that they were being manipulated by this thing, that it was in their heads seeding their actions. Crycek told them that they had to fight it, force it out of their minds… didn’t they see? Didn’t they see anything?
Cook knew Crycek was crazy, but that didn’t necessitate that he was wrong. Because Cook himself had been thinking along those lines. What if they were being manipulated, forced into this? Sure, they were both idiots when you came down to it, drowning in their own testosterone, and this is exactly how you’d figure they’d act. But what if Crycek was right?
Cook thought: It makes sense, doesn’t it? This thing, this devil, it would go after those with weakest minds, those it could bend the easiest. Saks and Fabrini might be physically strong, but mentally-like all such men-they’re simplistic, simple-minded. Everything’s black and white and minds like that are the easiest to exploit… that’s how countries got men to go to war, by exploiting their base instincts. This thing would know that. I
t would know the weakest psychological links instinctively…
Mind control… Jesus.
“Both of you stop it,” Cook said, trying one last time.
They both ignored him, edging closer by the moment.
Menhaus opened his mouth to say something, then closed it once more. He slipped around Fabrini to the bow and sat beside Cook.
“This is madness,” Cook said. “Grown men acting like this! We are in a life and death situation here and-”
“Let ‘em go, “ Menhaus said, enjoying it immensely. “Let ‘em get it out of their systems.”
Like a boxing match or a football game… Menhaus was relieving his own tensions and frustrations vicariously. These two were his pressure-release valve.
When they were a few feet apart, Saks stopped smiling. “Okay, you little shitfuck, let’s see what you got.”
The words had barely left his lips when Fabrini made his move. He swung roundhouse at Saks and Saks ducked under it easily. He came up quickly pounding Fabrini twice in the face with tight, economical jabs. Fabrini did not go down. He lunged forward with a stumbling grace, blood running from his nose, and tackled Saks. They both went down in the stern, the boat rocking wildly. Saks fended off two punches and took a third and fourth in the face. Fabrini was swinging like a man possessed. Very few of his blows found their intended target, but those that did were devastating. Saks was being battered badly. He got his foot in Fabrini’s crotch and kicked out with everything he had. Fabrini cried out and, arms flaying madly, went over the side of the boat.
Cook and Menhaus went to his assistance.
Saks wiped blood from his face. “Leave the bastard!” he howled.
But Cook and Menhaus were already pulling him onboard. “He was bleeding in the water,” Cook kept saying frantically. “He was bleeding. In the water.”
But the import of that was lost on Saks. “Yeah, and he’s going to bleed a lot more,” Saks said, coming at them. He had a knife in his hand. The same one he’d pulled from Hupp’s boot. Before anyone could hope to stop him, he slashed out with it, taking off the top of Fabrini’s left ear.