by Tim Curran
Menhaus explained that when you raced these boats, you generally did it with three people. One guy doing the steering, another on the throttle, and another doing the navigating. He said it had a V-hull which made it plane over the top of the water.
“Okay,” he said, once the others were aboard and their equipment was loaded. He turned the key and punched the starter. The boat shook, sounded like it would never go, then the engines kicked in and all that power beneath them was thrumming.
“You feel up to playing navigator?” he asked Greenberg.
Greenberg honestly didn’t look up to playing anything, but he nodded.
When everyone was in their seats, they cast off the lifeboat and Menhaus took them through the weeds and fog. In ten minutes they were out into open water.
And their destiny.
29
Getting the satchel charges was child’s play.
The fog was still thick, it never really thinned much, but sometimes it was more transparent than at other times. In the glow of the fog and what passed for daylight in that place, George and Menhaus and Cushing quickly unpacked the crates of satchel charges. They went about it in a very business-like manner, trying not to think about Gosling or Marx though feeling them everywhere in the C-130 like maybe their ghosts had chosen this spot to haunt until time itself ground to a withering halt. Inside the crates there were thirty cases of satchel charges with two satchels per case, giving them a grand total of sixty charges.
“Hot damn,” George said. “This is going to be fireworks like you’ve never seen before.”
He told Cushing, out of range of Greenberg’s ears, that this much explosive… and he planned on using it all… would not only blow those drums of waste wide open and spit their poison for a mile in every direction, but it would probably turn that freighter into matchsticks at the same time.
When it was loaded, they ventured first to the Ptolemy where Greenberg had extra fuel. They filled the cigarette boat’s 100 gallon tank up and siphoned off another thirty gallons into plastic tanks. By that time, there was very little room to sit or stand in the cigarette boat.
Next stop, the freighter.
As they brought the cases of satchel charges up the boarding ladder, George was struck by a queasy feeling in his stomach. Part of it was that ship, he knew, and everything that had happened there. Even without it, that derelict was like a floating tomb. But it was more than just the ship or any of that.
And you know what it is, he told himself. You know damn well what it is. Things are going too smoothly here. Everything’s fitting into place like it’s pre-arranged and you’re just waiting for the bottom to drop. Because in this goddamn place, the bottom always drops sooner or later.
But he tried not to think.
Thinking was not a luxury he could afford at that moment. Night was coming soon and there was a lot to be done before the light faded. So he did not think of the Mara Corday and the positively bizarre chain of events that led him to this place on this day, because if he had… he figured he might burst out crying or start laughing. Maybe both at the same time.
“That’s the works,” Menhaus said. “Let’s rock and roll.”
They unpacked the individual satchel charges and respective priming assemblies. Then they got down to work. The satchel charges – M183 demolition charges, in army-speak – each contained some 16 blocks of C4 and five feet of det cord. The real work was breaking open the orange plastic crates that contained the drums of radioactive waste. That was a job unto itself. An hour later, they had some sixteen containers opened, thirty-two neon-yellow barrels ready. George and Menhaus went about arming the satchels, wiring them with primercord and blasting caps. When they had all sixty satchels ready, they attached them to the barrels using duct tape and rope, something the freighter had no lack of. After that, George connected six-inches of time fuse to each of the priming assemblies, leaving the time fuse and fuse igniters hanging outside the satchels. They they wired all the fuse igniters together with wire and tied a rope to that.
When Greenberg was ready, all he would have to do is pull the rope
… that would fire all the igniters simultaneously.
“And scratch one Fog-Devil,” George said. “Hopefully.”
“And one old man, too,” Cushing said.
“Try not to think about it, man.”
But Cushing was thinking about it. They were all thinking about it and trying not to, trying to turn their hearts very hard because how else were you going to get through something like that? How would you live with yourself later?
George went over it all one more time. It had been a few years since he’d wired any C4, but it looked right. The satchel charges were designed that so just about any idiot could make them go boom. So he went over all his connections once and then twice to be sure.
About the time he finished, a figure stepped out from behind one of the skids. Bent over with a shotgun in their hands, there was no mistaking who it was.
“Saks,” George said and that single word was like a knife in his belly.
Saks. Yeah, he was plenty to contend with just about any time, but now, well, he was just a little worse. He stood there, his face pale and blotchy, one eye narrowed to a slit and the other wide and glistening like a peeled grape. The front of his shirt was brown and crusty with dried blood. He was grinning and that grin was all teeth like something from a storybook that ate children.
“Having a little party, eh?” Saks said. “A little going away party? Fireworks and everything? Well, don’t that beat all? Don’t it. .. just… fucking… beat… all?”
George swallowed, but there was no spit in his mouth. “Saks… Jesus, you’re still alive.”
Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, but there was probably no right thing to say. Not now. Saks was insane and there was no getting around that. He was sick and wounded and insane. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he had a shotgun in his hands. The barrel was rusty, but it looked like it wasn’t that rusty.
A gun? Saks had a gun? Of course he had a gun, George knew. Guns find people like Saks and people like Saks always find guns. Same way rich men always find money and poor ones never get a break. Saks probably found it on the ship somewhere. The really crazy thing was that Saks was still alive. Gutshot like that, he should have been dead or dying at the very least, curled up somewhere like a road-struck dog. But that blood on his shirt was old. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.
How could that be?
He took it right in the belly, George thought. I saw it. He took it right in the fucking belly.
Cushing and Elizabeth were standing there now.
It was hard to say what was on their faces. They didn’t seem really surprised, just unhappy. Both of them were probably beyond the point where anything in this damn place could really surprise them.
“Why did you run off?” Cushing asked him. “Why did you hide from us when we looked for you? We were just trying to help you, Saks.”
Saks laughed or wheezed… he did something, made some sort of rattling, choking sound that might have been mirth. Might have been, but wasn’t. His right eye, the wide one, was simply blank and scary looking. “Is that what you wanted to do, Cushing? Is that it? You sure you just didn’t want to finish what Menhaus started?”
“C’mon, Saks, you know me better than that.”
George was staring without meaning to, way you might stare at a mad dog knowing it was certainly the wrong thing to do. But… but Saks’s neck was covered in something. Where those weird sores had been the other day, the ones Saks was always scratching, there was some kind of spreading, tumorous growth. It looked pink and furry like moss might look on Mars. Something made of tiny, wiry hairs.
Cilia, George thought, like on an ameba.
And there was something under his shirt, something bulging and obscene-looking. Something that did not belong. Whatever it was, it was moving.
“Where’s Menhaus?” Saks said in a low, grating
voice. “I wanna see the fucker who killed me.”
And that’s what he said. Like maybe he had died, but came back just to fuck up this little party they were planning. George didn’t know what had happened to him, but it didn’t take a real jump of logic to connect Fabrini’s story of Saks eating that discolored salt pork from the Cyclops and the sudden outbreak of sores on his body and what was happening now. It was an easy path to follow.
“So what do you dipfucks got in mind here?” Saks wanted to know. “Are you planning on sacrificing the old man to your Fog-Devil, George? Is that it?”
“No, we-”
“Nice work there, George, nice-looking bomb you’ve got there. You would’ve made one hell of a terrorist. Let’s see here… if I pull that cord you got rigged up, in about… what? Sixty seconds, maybe, we all go up? Something like that?”
George felt a trickle of sweat slide down the back of his neck. “Saks,” he said. “We… we rigged that to kill the thing…”
“Menhaus!” Saks cried out. “You don’t show your ass in the next ten seconds, I’m gonna have to start killing people! You hear me?” He leveled the shotgun at Cushing. “I’ll start with Cushing… you hear me? You hear me, you slimy little fuck?”
“No,” Elizabeth said, stepping in-between the shotgun and Cushing. “No, that’s enough. No more killing. I can’t bear any more killing.”
Saks chuckled. “Does blood offend you, honey?”
“Yes.”
George didn’t believe that, but it sounded good. Sounded real good and looking into those sad green eyes of hers you could almost believe it. But it wasn’t true. Elizabeth wasn’t a cold-blooded killer or anything, but she was a survivor. That was for sure. Part of her was very callous and when necessary, she had a mean streak a mile wide.
“Okay, here’s how it works,” Saks said. “Menhaus don’t show… and I don’t think he’s gonna show… I kill your snatch, Cushing, then I kill you. What do you think, George? You got a problem with that?”
Greenberg just sat there on the deck, looking old and used up, maybe not liking any of this but too far gone himself to do much about it.
“Menhaus! You think I’m fucking around, you think this is-”
And that’s about as far as he got. For something hit him in the back of the head and he pitched forward, dropping the shotgun. Cushing moved fast and kicked the gun away from Saks’s clutching fingers. There was a wrench laying on the deck. A pipe wrench. Saks was barely conscious.
Menhaus waltzed purposely out from around the aft cabin.
“Good shot,” George told him.
“Fucking guy’s like a tick,” Menhaus said. “Stepping on him ain’t enough, you got to burn him out.”
Saks moaned and George saw what he was going to do seconds before he did it. Saks was feigning here, pretending to be nearly unconscious. But he wasn’t. He was inching himself over toward the pull rope for the satchel fuses. He made it maybe an inch closer and George kicked him in the head. Punted him hard enough to make the game-winning field goal.
This time, Saks was out cold.
Menhaus, with no emotion, simply picked-up the wrench and went over to Saks and swung it with everything he had. There was a sickly wet and hollow popping sound. Menhaus hit him again with everything he had and then stood up, studying the gore and clotted hair on the end of the wrench. He tossed it aside with a shudder like he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.
Nobody said anything about it.
And Menhaus himself had absolutely no comment.
“You had better go,” Greenberg told them, clutching the Geiger Counter to him.
George put the end of the pull rope on his lap. “You know what to do,” he said. “But I’ll ask you one more time if you don’t want to come with us.”
Greenberg appreciated that they all seemed to care about him, that they did not make this decision to leave him easily. It was tough on them. So much inhumanity and death had been forced on them in this awful place, the idea of willingly sacrificing one of their number was unthinkable. Yet, they had to do it. Greenberg knew it and so did they.
But it didn’t make the parting any easier.
Even Elizabeth said, “Please, Mr. Greenberg, think about it.”
But he just shook his head. “You better go. There’s not much time. It’ll be dark in just over an hour, I’m guessing. Please, get moving.”
George looked at him one last time, mumbled a goodbye and Menhaus did the same. They did not look back.
“Mr. Greenberg, I-”
“On your way, Elizabeth,” he told her. “Your uncle and I were friends, you know. What I’m doing, I’m doing for you and for him and for all the others that thing has killed. And, yes, out of curiosity.”
Cushing led her away towards the boarding ladder.
And that was it.
That was the last anyone saw of Greenberg.
30
In the cigarette boat, the ship’s graveyard and its attendant weed were easy to transverse. There were a few scary moments in the fog when Menhaus slammed into an overturned hull and nearly pitched everyone overboard or when he nearly steered them into the side of a tanker, but other than that it went pretty smoothly.
In thirty minutes, they were free of the weed, moving at a good clip through one of the channels, cutting through the fog and keeping their fingers crossed. They had everything they needed and if they couldn’t find the vortex, then it would all end out in the Sea of Mists. Maybe through the offices of the local wildlife or maybe when Greenberg pulled the cord and let loose his anti-matter bomb, as he called it.
As they pushed further away from the ship’s graveyard, George was thinking that just about anything would be preferable to having your mind vacuumed clean by the Fog-Devil. Just about anything.
The channel began to twist and turn and Menhaus lowered their speed a bit, not wanting to, but knowing that they couldn’t afford a catastrophe. Not even a little one. Darkness was coming. They could all see that. The fog was getting verse dense and heavy like rainclouds fallen to earth.
George had the compass out. “If Greenberg’s right, we should make the general area of the vortex in twenty, thirty minutes after we get out into that sea.”
“Especially with this baby,” Menhaus said, loving his new toy.
“That is,” Cushing cautioned. “If we don’t get turned in circles in this goddamn fog.” But George didn’t think they would.
Elizabeth was doing the navigating now and that was a good thing. She seemed to know her way through the channels pretty well. And George wondered how many trips she had made like this through the weed with her uncle, searching out that elusive trapdoor, that escape route from the misting world of the Dead Sea. She told Menhaus which channel to take, when he had gone too far, her eyes on the fog like maybe she could see through it.
Then finally, ultimately, all those acres of green and rotting weed to either side finally opened up, fell away, and there was open water before them, little islands of seaweed drifting about, but nothing like what they had just left.
“Hold onto your hats,” Menhaus said and edged the throttle back, picking up speed and parting those gelid waters.
“Not too fast,” Elizabeth told him. “There’s derelicts out here, too. Lots of things in the water.”
The mist started gathering around them in blankets and sheaths, just impenetrable and boiling and viscid. It was so damp it left a wet sheen on their faces. And George could remember all too well the days spent drifting and rowing through its murky depths. Jesus, he got to thinking, how had they even made it this far?
Night was coming and there was danger in that.
George remembered that the last time night had fallen on them, they had been on the C-130. Then the squid had attacked and then… well, he wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t going to think about any of the badness because there was only the here and now and that was enough. He could feel something building in him, same way he’d
felt it when they were nearing the ship’s graveyard… a sense of excitement, of anticipation. They were getting near to something. He could really feel it.
And as he felt it, he knew that there was a motion to their little group now, a building psychic energy, a physical momentum and it was carrying them forward to something.
He looked down at the compass.
The needle was still dead, but soon, soon there would be movement. He felt it right down in his belly. He turned away from the wind the boat was creating and lit a cigarette in cupped hands. Looking at Cushing, he smiled and Cushing smiled back and then something happened.
It happened very quickly.
So fast, George could only watch it happen. Speechless, helpless, he saw it, but could do nothing about it. Something dropped down out of the mist, something shiny like fishing line and looped around Cushing’s throat. Like a noose it swung down and took him, yanked him up out of the boat and into the mist. Whether it was the speed of the boat or the strength of whatever sinister puppet master that worked that line, Cushing was gone fast.
In the blink of an eye.
Elizabeth made one wild dive at him, but she was far too late and she went over the side and vanished in the fog.
They heard her scream.
George shouted.
Menhaus brought the boat around, wanting to know what in the hell had happened. But George had no answers. Nothing tangible to even tell him. The running lights on the bow of the cigarette boat illuminated the fog, cut only ten or twelve feet into it.
“Elizabeth!” George called out. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!”
His voice echoed out through the fog and he thought for one terrifying minute that something out there was mocking his words, but it was just Elizabeth. Menhaus pushed the cigarette boat in the direction of her voice.
There.
They could see her.
Bobbing in that gelatinous, stinking water, looking positively frantic.
And with good reason, George soon saw.