“Guys, just take it easy,” Chris said.
For a moment, the very briefest of mad moments, Jim forgot about dying. He forgot about watching his father–who he loved and who had raised him alone, had done his best to care for him–fall away into the infested ocean right before his eyes. He forgot about his exhaustion, and sickness, and the horror of their situation.
For the briefest moment they were all kids again, sitting in the basement, playing video games, or dime poker. Mom was upstairs, cooking them lasagna, and Dad was on his way home from work. They’d watch a movie later, and the older guys would sneak liquor from the cabinet upstairs after the folks went to bed, but Jim would only have a sip because he hated the taste and the way it made him feel. The empty-headedness made him sick and scared.
But now those kids were here. Jack out of prison, Chris a foreman at his father’s company. Jim freelancing as a software programmer, living in the same room he grew up in. His parents—both his parents now—dead. Gone.
A feeling of emptiness washed over him, cleaned him out. Now, out here in the dark, afraid and soon to die, he was a shell of who he thought he was. An empty vessel—fragile, dying and worthless. Even worse, he didn’t know if he even cared what happened to him, to the others. In the dark night, floating on the great ocean, life seemed more passing. Their new world was death now, a dark place dominated by a split horizon of black water and a sooty, starless sky. He felt like a speck in this world, as insignificant as dust. There was no blanket of stars, no stunning cosmos in the heavens to pray to. The bowl of space hung blank and desolate and uncaring as the water.
They would all die soon, and his only hope was that his soul, or his energy, or whatever it was that lived on, if anything at all, would find something better than all this. Find something to love about life’s miracle, which more and more seemed like the ultimate joke. They were but animate flesh on a planet as inconsequential as they were. They all tried so hard to live and to feel, desperate to understand the why of it all, time and time again, but they simply lived and died by the billions, and never, not once, did they feel truly alive, were no closer to answering the biggest questions, the ones that mattered. The imagination organ let humanity see God in their minds but still, somehow, the point was missed, leaving a planet full of idiots. For that failure the species was being punished. Wrathfully. The earth was taking the flesh back from beneath, retribution rising, released and hungry, wiggling and mighty and dark, to suck humanity down into the formless primordial stink of pre-existence. It was time for someone else to try and solve the riddle because Jim’s turn, he knew, was just about over.
He heard his brother and Chris arguing, but he’d tuned them out, was listening to the soothing whispers and claps of the waves, the skittering, crackling sound of the crustaceans as they overtook the boat slowly, inch-by-inch, dragging it down into the sea. He almost smiled at the rush of peace that coursed through him, the knowledge that it would soon be over, that the end was so near...
“Oh my god!” Chris screamed, and stood so abruptly his hip shoved Jim into the side of the boat. He pointed, and both Jack and Jim, recovering, turned to look.
In the distance, from the direction Jim assumed must be the shore, was a light. A spotlight.
A boat.
No, not just a boat, Jim thought, his mind taking in the size and speed of the vessel, his dark thoughts shoved to the back of his mind, a rescue boat.
“I think that’s the Coast Guard,” Jack said, stunned, but Chris was already moving. He leapt up onto the rail, side-stepped his way toward the rear of the boat.
“Chris!” Jack yelled.
“The radio! We haven’t been checking the radio, man!” Chris yelled back, already dropping down onto the deck and entering the wheelhouse. Jack and Jim stared through the glass as Chris grabbed the radio, began talking into it, saying, “Help,” saying, “S.O.S.”
Jack turned to Jim and smiled, slapped his back. “See, little brother, I told you I’d get you out of this.”
Jim tried to smile, to find some comfort, but could not. He watched the boat, still so very far away. It was a small toy in the vast ocean, but it was getting closer, steadily closer.
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes never leaving the oncoming beacon of light.
Jack hopped up onto the boat’s bulwark, gripped the handrail and climbed up onto the top of the shelter, waving his arms like a lunatic, jumping up and down, finally gripping the large, blinking antennae and hollering like a coyote under the jolting white hemisphere of the distant moon.
It wasn’t until Jack stopped screaming and jumping that Jim noticed Chris had disappeared. He looked through the glass, saw nothing but the darkened wheelhouse and a distorted sea beyond. He reached up, waved his hand, tagged his brother on the ankle.
“Jack!” he said.
Jack looked down, smiling like a winded teenager. “What?”
“Where’s Chris?”
Jack looked at Jim, confused for a moment, then spun toward the rear of the boat. “Chris!” he screamed, and slid down from the roof, toward the deck.
Jim leapt up, followed Chris’s path around the shelter, stopping near the rear, not wanting to leave the safety the height afforded.
The rear of the boat looked, to Jim, like a coral reef. Whatever had come out of the captain had somehow expanded, meeting up with the barnacles encroaching from the water to create a solid mass of black, writhing organisms. The air was putrid with the stench of brine and rot. Jim leaned forward over the lip of the roof, twisted and saw Chris, sitting on his ass on the floor of the wheelhouse, ripping the things off of his exposed ankles and calves.
“I don’t know how, man, I don’t know...” he was blubbering.
Jack had dropped down behind Chris, keeping Chris between him and the encroaching crustaceans. He carefully worked around his friend, plucking up the rubber suits that were not yet been covered by the things. He looked up and saw Jim watching.
“Take these,” he said calmly. “Throw them up top there. Hurry, Jimmy.”
Jim took the rubber suit pieces, one-by-one, and tossed them up onto the roof of the standing shelter, a space no more than six-feet by six-feet and dotted with antennas, a horn of some sort, and a box Jim assumed housed the emergency beacon.
After Jack handed him everything he jumped to the railing, waved one arm for balance, then climbed up onto the roof of the wheelhouse.
“Get up here,” Jack said quietly, calm as could be.
Jim climbed up top, got on his hands and knees, turned to look at the boat’s infested deck. He noticed, for the first time, that the rear of the boat was now dipping slightly into the water with each wave, white foamy sea slithering in, more and more, with every heave. It wouldn’t be much longer, Jim knew, until the rear of the boat submerged, taking on the water from the hungry ocean by the hundreds of gallons, and all that swam within.
“Chris,” Jack said, as if in eulogy.
Jim could hear Chris whining now, slapping at his legs ferociously, at his calves, his thighs. Jim bent forward, crouched low, looked down over the edge at his brother’s best friend. He saw the white fleshy legs were nearly covered now, but still kicking. Chris was breathing fast and heavy, but he wasn’t screaming, wasn’t crying.
Then the legs disappeared, and he heard a gargled voice below say, “Fuck it.” Jack looked down sharply as the scent of diesel fuel filled the air.
Jim heard the gurgling, could see it splashing onto the deck before Chris tossed the whole can toward the rear, where it continued to empty itself.
Furiously, Jack began grabbing pieces of the suit, wrapped one of the coats around him.
“Damn it, Jim, put the fucking suit on.”
Jim got to his feet, and after a moment’s hesitation, found the other pair of pants, pulled them on.
They were too big, and rubbery, and stank of mold. “What the hell are we doing, Jack?”
Jack was struggling
with his own pants now, yanking them on one leg at a time. “We’re gonna cover ourselves as best we can in this stuff, and then, and then we’re gonna swim for it, little brother.”
Jim stopped, panic scratching madly at the back of his brain.
“Swim?” he said, not able to keep the fear from his voice. “Did you see what those things did?”
“That’s why we’re gonna wear the suits, man,” Jack said, and actually smiled at him. “It’ll keep that shit off of us, okay? We just got to make it to that rescue ship, and it’s close, right? Super close now, brother.” He stood, fully wrapped in the yellow suit, and grabbed Jim’s shoulders.
“Look, we’ll stay here as long as we can. But if this thing starts to sink, we gotta jump for it and swim, okay? Otherwise we might get sucked down with it, and we won’t be able to swim out.”
“Oh man...” Jim whined, felt like crying. Jack helped him get the coat on.
“Here,” he said, and began pulling strings, tightening everything as best he could, fussing with him like he was dressing Jim for the first day of school, or fixing his tuxedo jacket the night of the prom.
“My best man,” Jim said, and started crying.
“What?” Jack said, tucking Jim’s coat roughly into the waist of the pants, trying to seal everything as best he could.
“You would have been my best man, Jack,” Jim said, smiling through tears. “That is, if I ever would have gotten married.”
Jack stopped, looked at his brother, his eyes wet and scared. “Come on, who’d want an ex-convict as their best man?”
“I would!” Jim said, sounding to his own ears like a petulant child trying to convince the world he was right, damn it. That he could be right, just this one time.
“Okay, Jimmy,” Jack said quietly, looking him over. “Okay.”
He tucked in his own jacket, pulled the pants as tight as he could, then bent over and tried, miserably, to tuck the thick rubber into his thin crew socks. He tilted his head, looked up.
“Tuck it into your socks, bro, you got thicker ones than I do, it might stay.”
Jim started to bend over to do just that, when he saw Chris emerge from beneath the roof of the shelter.
“Oh, good Christ,” he said.
Chris was covered up to his belly in dark barnacles. They were spotted along his arms, his hands, the back of his neck.
“Oh no,” Jack said, looking down at his friend.
Chris turned, looked up at the brothers, his height bringing the top of his head almost to their feet. His face swarming, misshapen. He opened his mouth to speak, and a few of the things slithering over his face slid quickly inside. He closed it, looked perplexed, then gagged, choked, swallowed.
As Jim watched, the jelly-like things on Chris’s face turned color, stuck themselves to his flesh then, before his eyes, oozed black inky fluid through their translucent gel-like bodies, blacking and hardening in a matter of seconds.
Chris tried to open his mouth again, perhaps to scream, but instead he twisted, jerked, smashed his hands into his face, clawed at himself. Jim noticed he held a stick in his hand.
A flair.
Chris stepped backward, stumbling. He waved his arms, pushed through the infestation, away from the brothers. He brought his hands together, only a few fingers on each one still probing through the creatures rooted to him, and sparked the fuse. Without hesitation, he lunged toward the rear of the deck, right into the heart of the swarming organisms.
“Jim!” Jack yelled, jumping from the roof of the shelter down to the deck at the head of the ship.
Jim watched one more moment, long enough to see the flare burst into red flame, to see Chris fall, the flare with him. He saw the fuel ignite over the swarm of creatures, spreading across the rear deck of the boat in a whoosh, covering it like a liquid yellow blanket.
Jim turned and jumped after his brother as the can erupted, blowing an explosion of broiling flame through the wheelhouse, blasting shards of glass outward into the night. As he dropped through space he felt glass sting his leg, his arm. He saw Jack’s face sliced into thin lines of red, his screams engulfed by the eruption.
Jim landed hard, collapsed to the deck, Jack fell on top of him, still screaming. “We gotta jump,” Jack screamed, almost sobbing now. “We gotta swim, oh fuck...” he said, touching the mask of blood that was his face. His bulging eyes burned bright yellow, reflecting the flames that threatened to consume them both within a matter of seconds. “We gotta go NOW!”
With a roar, Jack stood, pulled Jim up with him, pushed him toward the edge of the boat, which was tilting upward at an angle, reaching higher as the rear of the boat flooded.
Jim could see the spotlight of the rescue vessel past the bright hot flames. He could feel the incredible heat on the side of his face, could hear the crisping of his eyebrows as it baked his skin. He had time to wonder if the heat was melting their rubber suits when he was shoved toward the water. He caught the rail, looked down, saw the thick crustaceans, the dark water below. He turned, panic blinding him.
“Jack, please no,” he whimpered.
Jack’s blood-streaked face grinned, his burning eyes leaping out of his skull like a demon incarnate. “Time to go, little brother!”
He leapt and rammed hard against Jim, who tried to push off with his feet in order to clear the things covering the sinking, burning vessel. In the split second before he impacted with the water, his brother wrapped around him in a bear hug, he heard Jack yell into his ear, “Keep your mouth closed!”
Then they hit.
The water slammed into him with an explosion of roaring, freezing cold, and Jim fought to keep his mouth shut, his eyes sealed. He could feel the heat behind him, the deafening roar of the boat cracking open, groaning in its final death throes.
Something hit him hard on the shoulder—Jack, kicking away—and it knocked his balance even more askew.
He opened his mouth to scream, realized a split-second too late what he was doing, and shut it while simultaneously blowing water out, back into the sea.
He swam away from the heat, away and up, breaking the surface with a gasp. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything. He breathed in deeply, realizing with mad hope that his face felt clear, free of any parasites. He saw the spotlight approaching fast now, only a few hundred meters away. He could hear the loud engine, hear men screaming.
He swam toward it, his rubber-covered floppy arms fighting his advance, making it hard for him to get up any speed in the water. Massive waves, so much bigger than they seemed from the boat, lifted him, dropped him. The light of the oncoming ship would appear, disappear, then appear again. He turned, only for a second, saw Jack swimming like mad behind him.
Behind Jack was their boat. A ball of flame contrasting, like water in the desert, against the vast ocean surface. Something loud snapped, like a splitting two-by-four, and there came a soft bellowing, a detonation beneath the waves. Most of the boat had sunk into the water now, only the wheelhouse and madly waving antennae still visible when Jim spun himself around, continued swimming toward rescue.
“Keep going... Jimmy...” he heard Jack say from behind him. Jim wondered why the idiot wasn’t keeping his mouth shut like he’d told him to do. “Keep going, brother!”
Jim did keep going. He swam, harder and harder, the thrill of knowing how close he was to safety, to living, energized him. He was going to make it.
He turned, smiling, wanting to wait for Jack, wanting to share this with him.
Jack was gone.
In the distance, the last flickers of the fishing boat vanished below the waves. The water surrounding Jim illuminated with a white incandescence as the spotlight of the rescue ship locked in on his position.
“Jack?” he said, then looked where the spotlight was filling the ocean.
They were everywhere. The water was filled with them. White, jelly-like creatures, shaped like tiny, gelatinous crabs, surrounded
him. He was immersed in them.
The rescue boat killed its engines, rising up above Jim, two-stories high and built like a warship. A voice came booming from a loudspeaker, telling him to stay where he was, that they were sending help.
He saw a raft with an engine lower from a pulley, then release and hit the water, three dark shapes inside. The boat sputtered over the waves, racing toward him.
As he floated, he felt strangely buoyed by the creatures in the water. His flesh tingled, and his body felt eerily numb. He lifted his fingers, looked at them as if for the very first time. The crab-like creatures, no bigger than fat tadpoles, slid off his skin, back into the ocean. His mind buzzed, and the back of his neck tingled.
He could feel his muscles expand, and relax. There was the slightest pressure behind his eyes, a tickling on the inside of his nose, at the back of his throat. His tongue felt covered in jelly, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to open his mouth and drink from the salty ocean water, drink it all down, fill himself with it.
Jim forgot about his brother, about his father, about his mother, about the boat. He felt... at peace.
Jim? Was it... Jim.
The boat reached him and strong hands pulled him up into the rubber raft.
“You okay, son?” one of the men yelled over the sound of the angry drone of the engine, speeding them back toward the ship. “Is there anyone else alive out here?”
Jim shook his head, could feel the probing at the back of his eyeballs, the rims of the sockets, the back of his lips. Something painlessly punctured his ear drum, slipped into his ear canal, then drew itself back.
Already a pressure was building in his abdomen, a growth. Swirling, dancing life. A new beginning.
A few moments later and they were strapping his body to a heavy harness, canvas and snapping locks securing him. He was lifted up into the air, dangling like dead weight, higher and higher, up toward the world of men.
The fathomless ocean crashed in great swelling heaves below him, on the deck above men ran and yelled as the heavy black sky watched impassively and the massive buzzing spotlight lit him up like a dripping wet savior being carried to heaven on the wings of angels. He closed his eyes and smiled as calm washed through him, every nerve-ending tingling, every part of him alive. He gloried in the power of the surrounding sea, and yet was eager for land.
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