Dead Sea

by Tim Curran

  He was right and they all knew it.

  Except maybe Soltz. “What we have to do, I think, is accept that we’re lost far from home, in an ocean I don’t think exists on any map.”

  “He thinks we’re in the Devil’s Triangle or something,” Cushing added.

  “No, not exactly,” Soltz pointed out. “We were somewhere like that. But that fog reached out for us and dumped us here, in this place… wherever this is.”

  Gosling just studied him. “What do you mean it reached out?”

  “I mean it took us, transported us somewhere else. I don’t know. .. another plane or dimension, call it whatever you want,” he said to them, eyes huge behind his spectacles. “I know it sounds impossible and far-fetched and you all probably think I’m crazy or having a nervous breakdown. Please yourself. Think those things all you want, but down deep you know I’m right. This is the Twilight Zone. This place is neither here nor there, but caught in-between, a world or dimension stuck in the mist and shadows. Nothing’s right here. Nothing’ll ever be right.”

  It was all very sobering stuff, of course, but nothing they hadn’t all been through in their minds dozens of times.

  “Don’t get carried away,” Gosling finally said.

  “I don’t think I am. I think, given the circumstances, I’m being entirely realistic. This fog is not right. The sea is funny. Even the air… have you noticed, that even the air feels-”

  “Like it isn’t put together right?” George said. “Too thick or too thin, too moist or too dry. But too damn something. Yeah, I think we’ve all felt it. Like… like maybe the atoms are turned inside out.”

  They looked at each other for a time after saying that, nobody speaking at all.

  Finally, it was Cushing who broke the silence. “Well, I tell you boys something. This place is fucked-up. We all know it. And I think it’s a dangerous place, too. But the fact is that something pulled us in here and I’m willing to bet that whatever it was, can throw us back out again. Any time it chooses.”

  22

  The first thing Saks realized was that he was looking at a body.

  “Hey, you guys,” he said, deciding just this once not to insult any of them. “We got ourselves a floater over here”

  The four of them peered anxiously into the water. The body was floating face-down. Its clothing was burst open due to bloating, the flesh brilliantly white and puckered obscenely. As it drifted closer, they could see it wore no lifejacket.

  “It’s got fatigues on,” Fabrini said. “What the hell would a soldier be floating out here for?”

  “Same reason we are,” Menhaus said.

  “Maybe a troop transport went down,” Cook suggested.

  And that got Crycek going on one of his conspiracy theories again. This one concerning the military toying around with technologies they did not understand like children with their fingers on remote controls, having no true conception of what doors they might be opening or what things or forces they might be waking up.

  “What the fuck are you babbling about?” Fabrini put to him.

  But Crycek just giggled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  Fabrini looked to Cook for a translation, but Cook just shrugged. He knew very well what Crycek was taking about, of course, but he wasn’t about to launch into some half-baked diatribe concerning Crycek’s theory about the military trying to smash holes into other dimensions. Maybe it was true and maybe it just belonged up on that dusty high shelf along with the Philadelphia Experiment.

  “All of you shut up,” Saks said. “Quit listening to that fucking monkeyskull. He’s crazy, that’s all.”

  When they drifted close enough, Saks stuck his knife in the web belt around the soldier’s waist and pulled him or her or it to the boat.

  “Menhaus, get your thumb out of Fabrini’s ass and lend a hand here,” he said. “The rest of you… stay put.”

  Fabrini and Cook eyed him coolly.

  Crycek grinned.

  “What’re you girls staring at?” Saks said. “Find something to do. Go shave your pussies or something. Jesus Christ, what a bunch.” He shook his head. “Soon as our backs are turned, Menhaus, they’ll be pumping each other. Got that look in their eyes. It’s a big day for both of ‘em. Soon as Fagbrini gets home, he’ll be writing, ‘Dear Diary, Cook shot his load into me. It was the greatest day of my life since I blew Liberace.’ What a guy, what a guy.”

  “What the hell do you want me to do?” Menhaus said, looking at the soldier’s corpse. “Jesus, what a stink.”

  “Just hoist him up, bright boy.”

  “Me?” Menhaus said.

  “No, the gay midget in your pants. Yes, you. Maybe Sergeant York’s carrying something we can use.”

  “C’mon, Saks, he’s rotten,” Menhaus whined.

  “So’s Fabrini’s asshole, but that never stopped you before.”

  Cook said, “C’mon, Saks, push that body away… it might attract something.”

  “Yeah, we don’t want that,” Menhaus said. “We don’t want something coming for it.”

  Saks scowled. “Just grab him under the arm. He won’t bite you.”

  Fabrini laughed and shook his head. “Why don’t you do it, big chief?”

  Saks features were cut by a knife blade smile. “Because I told Menhaus here to do it, dipshit. And like you said, I’m the big chief.”

  Fabrini cracked a fart. “There’s one for you, big chief”

  Menhaus saw it was a no-win situation. Pale as flour, he took hold of the corpse under the arm and lifted. It seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds. The flesh was spongy beneath the fatigue shirt. “Oh, God,” he gasped, breathing through clenched teeth, turning away from the sick/sweet stink of putrescence. “Oh my Christ… oh my God…”

  The body was lifted a few feet out of the water, a great fleshy, waterlogged balloon. Its face had been chewed away by fish… or something like fish. Nothing there but a grisly hollow of bleached muscle and knotted cartilage. Lipless, skinless, it grinned with jutting yellow teeth set in withdrawn, shriveled gums the color of oatmeal. Water ran and dripped from the empty eye sockets and collapsed nasal cavity.

  Saks paid no attention.

  He felt along the huge, distended belly, ignoring the whimpering of Menhaus and the parasites that clung in twisting loops around the navel. His fingers found something and pulled it free. A gun. Sunlight winked off its cruel metal lines. Dread settled into the faces of Cook and Fabrini. A three-inch worm slid like a greasy noodle from the cadaver’s mouth, wriggling in the light.

  “Oh, good God,” Menhaus said.

  There was a sudden wet, ripping noise followed by a fleshy snap and the body slapped back into the water. The arm had pulled free of the shoulder joint. With a strangled cry, Menhaus dropped the limb and vomited over the side.

  “You don’t need that gun, Saks,” Cook said.

  “Oh, yes I do,” he said, grinning proudly, happily, like an old man who’d copped his first feel in years. “Nice, isn’t it?” He waved the gun around for all to see and admire. “A Browning nine millimeter auto. Nice weapon.”

  “Shit,” Fabrini said. “Thing’s been soaking for days. It won’t shoot.”

  Saks smiled and aimed the barrel just left of Fabrini’s head and pulled the trigger. The report was like thunder. Fabrini felt the bullet whiz by his temple. The shell casing hissed into the water.

  “You stupid fuck!” Fabrini shouted. “You stinking stupid fuck! You could’ve killed me!”

  Saks chuckled. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead now.”

  Menhaus just looked ill. Cook looked alarmed, hopeless. He knew very well that the balance of power had shifted even further in Saks’s direction. This was not a good thing.

  “Big tough man with a gun,” Fabrini grumbled.

  Saks aimed the Browning square between Fabrini’s eyes. “This time you die.”

  “Stop it,” Cook said. “This is crazy.”

  “Yeah, c’mon, Saks. We’
re all friends here.” Menhaus’ smile was trembling and quivering like an earthworm desperate to get out of the sunshine.

  Fabrini spat. “Go ahead, tough guy. Shoot.” He said this with a strong, even voice. But underneath he was scared shitless and they all knew it.

  “Saks,” Cook said.

  Saks lowered the gun. He was thinking that, yeah, he should’ve greased the mouthy little wop. There wouldn’t be jack the others could do about it. One pull of the trigger and no more Fabrini, two more pulls and he could waste them all. But, for some reason, he didn’t. Even he wasn’t sure why. There were no laws in this place, only the ones you made up as you went. And it wasn’t that his conscience was bothering him or even the fact that it would be murder. He could live with that. No, it wasn’t any of those things and although Saks couldn’t admit it to himself, the real reason was that he could not face the fog alone. The idea of it… and what called it home… was just too much.

  “Maybe,” Menhaus said sheepishly, “you could shoot us something to eat with that. We can’t live on that shit in the pouches forever.”

  “Sure,” Saks said.

  “Or maybe just kill anything… anything that comes after us.” Saks smiled. “Why not? As long as I got three bullets left in case you sweethearts try to get funny with me.”

  And that, of course, was it in an eggshell, the others realized. Saks would kill them if they didn’t do what he said. He wanted to be boss, needed to be in charge. And if they didn’t play the game by his rules, then he’d shoot them and feed them to the wildlife. It was a simple arrangement. An age old one.

  “As long as you play by my rules, everything’ll be fine,” Saks told them.

  “And if we don’t, you kill us,” Fabrini said.

  Saks kept smiling.

  Cook was watching Saks as they were all watching him. He was becoming less and less afraid of what might be waiting in the mist and more afraid of what was in the boat. Particularly now that it had a gun. But Saks was right about one thing: they were quite a bunch. They were led by a violent, arrogant asshole with a gun. And Fabrini had that dark, slow burn in his eyes like all he was living for was the chance to kill Saks. And Menhaus? He was useless, because he’d just go with the flow as he probably had his entire life. Then there was Crycek… well, no point going into that. Crycek was nuttier than peanut brittle.

  And what about you? Cook asked himself. Do you really think you’re any better than the rest? You can sit there and play the voice of reason all you want, but the bottom line is that you’re as fucked up as the rest. You get your chance, you’ll kill Saks. Let’s not forget that. Maybe you’ll be killing your father all over again, but you’ll kill him all the same.

  Yeah, they were quite a crew to dump into the same lifeboat and particularly in this haunted sea. Anyway you served it all up, Cook figured, it wasn’t exactly peaches and cream.

  “See, you got it all wrong,” Saks said. “I don’t want to kill anybody. I want us to live through this, one way or another. But being that I got the gun and that I’m in charge, I’m pretty much God. And it’ll be up to me to sort out any of your sorry asses if I decide you’re a danger to the rest. Keep that in mind, Fabrini. Because I swear to God, I’m not fucking around here.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that. They watched the body drift away. Maybe Gosling was right about there being subsurface currents, fingers of unseen motion. For the body gradually moved off or the lifeboat did. The body hadn’t gone more than a hundred feet before it rose up suddenly with a bubbling gout of foam and came back down, seeming to thrash and jerk in countless directions like an epileptic having a massive seizure.

  But it was no seizure.

  Seizures didn’t have cutting wet-leather dorsals and tearing razor teeth. Only sharks did. Cook saw them hit the body like torpedoes, maybe a dozen of them. In that murky water, they looked very much like sharks… but they weren’t sharks. Not exactly. These fish ranged in size from maybe fifteen inches to three feet. They had long, slim bodies and heavy heads plated like armadillos, seemed to move with a serpentine eel-like propulsion.

  Whatever they were, they shredded the body to bone within minutes. And then they tore the skeleton apart, too.

  No, they weren’t sharks.

  They were worse.

  23

  While Cushing and Soltz slept, George kept watching the fog, waiting for it to vomit something else out at them. He kept seeing shapes and shadows out there and could never really be sure if they were actually there or he was dreaming them. In the back of his mind, despite himself, he was still sensing something out there. Something big and encompassing and… well, evil. Because that was the word his brain kept throwing at him.

  Evil.

  Something incalculably evil.

  A cancer waiting out there that would eat a man’s mind straight down to the marrow.

  But he wouldn’t let himself think too much on it because he didn’t want to go insane. It would just be too damn easy, all things considered. But the bottom line was that he didn’t have to consciously think about it, maybe his imagination was just permanently stuck on high-rev… or maybe it was thinking about him. Some grinning, loathsome god of maritime wastes, some dark lord of black depths and ghost ships, of haunted seas and drowned sailors. A demented, slithering malignance that was vast and empty like the black spaces between the stars, something that could only fill itself with human terror and anxiety, madness and dread and desperation.

  The very embodiment of the fear that the seas had always inspired. This thing given flesh… or something like flesh.

  Enough, George told himself. This shit has to stop. If you get out of this horrid dead zone you can spend the rest of your goddamn life being dry and sassy and spinning tales about spooks and ghosts and all that shit. You can wake with the sweats at four a.m. from nightmares about this place… but at least then, they’ll really be nightmares, not reality. But for now, keep your head, because there’s no waking from this one and danger every time you close your eyes.

  Well, now, that was food for thought.

  George scratched his beard and ran fingers over his torso. He could feel his ribs. But this wasn’t from starvation; he’d always been thin. Wiry. He had a supercharged metabolism and found it nearly impossible to gain weight. The diet gimmicks and infomercials on TV always made him laugh. He’d tried most of his adult life to put on weight and simply couldn’t.

  The fantasy question everyone kept toying with on the raft was: What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home? The answers came in all shapes and sizes. Gosling wanted to pay a visit on a lady friend in New Orleans and get drunk for a week… in bed. Cushing intended to quit his job and tell his brother-in-law to get fucked, for reasons he wouldn’t elaborate on. Soltz just wanted to rest and get some medication… particularly since Gosling had forbid him from touching the medical kit and the pills and ointments within.

  But what did George want?

  He wanted to spend day after day with his wife and son. He wanted them to know exactly how much they meant to him. He wanted to spend days telling his boy, Jacob, tales of high adventure at sea. The kid would eat it up. He’d want to hear the stories again and again. And George would oblige as generations of father’s had. The three of them would have cookouts and picnics and lazy Sunday afternoons spent doing absolutely nothing. And the nights, after Jacob was fast asleep, would be spent in sweaty embrace with Lisa.

  God, but it sounded good.

  He’d never realized until the shipwreck just how wonderful his life was. It was just a damn shame it took a disaster to make him see this.

  But wasn’t that always the way?

  The memory of his wife and son, if nothing else, gave him strength. Gave him something to set his teeth into. And he decided that right then and there, he was going back to that life. And God help anyone or anything that interfered with that.

  Even that old devil in the mist.

  24

&nbs
p; Everyone handled it differently.

  Because that was how things like that worked. What turned one man’s guts to sauce, made another smile. And what made one smile, made another scream. And that’s how it was out in the lifeboat which was a paper cup tossed into a misting, saline pond where the fog was moist, sparkling, and thick as goosedown.

  The lifeboat was surrounded by the shark-fish now.

  Like slavering dogs circling a bin of butcher’s scraps, they knew there was meat and blood in the boat, they just weren’t sure how to get at it. So they circled. Swam under the boat, around it, nudged it, slapped it with their tails. They hadn’t resorted to brute force yet. .. this was still a casual flirtation from the wolfpacks of that fathomless, primal sea… but it was coming. As more and more of them swam through the drifting clots of weeds and from unknown depths below, gathered in numbers and got in each other’s way, something was going to happen. And once blood got in the water and the feeding frenzy began, it was only a matter of time before they tipped the boat and its tender morsels into the water.

  At least, that’s the way Saks was figuring things. “Lookit ‘em out there, boys… did you ever see such horrors? Lookit the mouths on them fucking things. Mouths like that… Jesus, made to bite off limbs and tear out throats and crunch bones…”

  If he was practicing his usual brand of sardonic humor, then it just wasn’t working. Nobody was amused. Cook was surely not amused and neither was Fabrini. Even Crycek looked scared now.

  “I feel like I’m floating in a bucket in a crocodile tank,” Fabrini said. “Just waiting to see which one of those wicked bastards figures out how to tip me out.”

  Saks seemed to like that, so he improved upon it: “Like a rat in a snakepit. You gotta love the comparison.”

  “Goddamn sharks,” Menhaus said.

  “Ain’t sharks,” Saks told him. “I’ve seen sharks. These ain’t sharks.”

  He knew that much. These pricks would have polished off Jaws in about five minutes. No, not sharks… but something like sharks. Saks was thinking they were familiar. That maybe he had seen them before. Not living, of course, but maybe hanging in a museum or on one of those nature documentaries on fossil life. Because, dammit, more he was watching those greedy, shit-ugly excuses for fish, more he was thinking there was something ancient about them. Prehistoric.