George watched the
Mara Corday
give up her ghost.
The fog was still a constant, but visibility had improved. The ship had listed now until its port gunwale practically touched the water. Then there was a booming rush of fountaining bubbles and she righted herself. For a second. The bow sank lower and lower, waves rushing up and over it. The stern rose up vertically like a jutting black finger and then she went down with an enormous hissing, leaving a sucking whirlpool in her wake. A few moments later, more cargo and flotsam bobbed to the surface.
Then there was only the cloisterous fog pressing in and that stillborn, tideless sea.
THE DRIFT
G
EORGE’S FIRST IMPRESSION WAS that he and Gosling were alone out there.
His second impression was a feeling: panic.
Combined, these things made him want to scream and thrash like some little kid drowning in a bathtub. But slowly, slowly, he got it under control. He was with Gosling. Gosling was an experienced sailor … if anyone could keep him alive and get him to dry land, it would be the First Mate. That provided a certain sense of security. It wasn’t exactly something you could wrap yourself up in and go to sleep with, but it was something.
They heard voices in the distance from time to time, but when they called out no one answered. There were a few bits of scattered light from burning objects still afloat, but one by one, they went out. And then all there was was that ever-present fog, thick and roiling. It still had that odd luminosity to it … like it was backlit by the glowing beam of some distant lighthouse. If nothing else, it provided scant illumination.
Just enough, George figured, to make everything look weird and surreal.
And creepy.
Because there was no other word to describe it. For that’s exactly how it looked out there with that fog and the odd glow: creepy.
Sure, George was trying damn hard not to panic, but the bottom line here was that they were out in the middle of fucking nowhere without a lifeboat or a life raft and it was night and by dawn their life jackets would be saturated and they’d drown. That is if the sharks didn’t get them first. His mind had already sketched that particular nightmare out in some detail. He kept remembering scenes from that movie where the big shark gobbles people up. He kept wondering what it would feel like when those teeth sank into him. Would it be a big goddamn shark that would swallow him whole or would it be a smaller monster that would maybe bite his leg off? He’d seen a show once where a shark did that to a shipwreck victim. It just kept coming around, taking bites and pieces.
Oh, Jesus.
This can’t be fucking happening,
he thought frantically.
This only happens to guys on the late movie. Shit like this doesn’t come down on normal guys like me who run bulldozers for a living and are just trying to keep the creditors at bay-
“HELP!” he started screaming. “IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? GODDAMN YOU ANSWER ME RIGHT NOW FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST!”
There was no answer. Just that brooding silence. And that odd sort of humming he could hear from time to time.
“You feel better now?” Gosling said. “Good. Now knock it off for chrissake. We’re not dead yet.”
George kept treading water as if he didn’t trust the lifejacket. “Oh, you’re a real fucking comfort,” he panted.
“Quit splashing around,” Gosling told him. “Just lay back like me. The jacket’ll float you. All the racket might attract interest”
“Sharks?”
“No,” Gosling said. “That’s not what I was thinking exactly.”
And George honestly didn’t have the balls to follow that one up. Not sharks? What, then?
“Don’t panic. We’ll be fine. But there’s no sense in wasting energy treading water when you don’t have to.”
George swallowed and let himself float. It wasn’t bad. It was almost relaxing just bobbing there.
“Are there really sharks out here?” he asked.
“Who can say? This is the ocean, George, lots of things call it home. It’s a food chain like any other.”
Shit. “Will they get us?”
“Not if I can help it.” He must’ve sensed the panic in George’s eyes. “All right, listen to me and listen good. There are two things that attract sharks. The first is doing what you were doing — splashing around. What you’re doing when you do that is drawing attention to yourself. You’re acting like a fish in distress. You’re sending off the same signals. The second thing that attracts sharks is blood. They can smell it in the water. I’ve heard they can smell it for miles. So don’t thrash around and don’t bleed. Simple.”
George started checking out every ache and pain in his body to see if he had any cuts. He didn’t think so. “You didn’t cut your leg back there, did you?”
“No, I just twisted it. Relax. Wait for the dawn. We’ll be fine.”
And that was easy for him to say, George thought dismally. Big, tough sailor-boy. But George was no sailor and after this little party he was moving to fucking Kansas. He never wanted to see open water again. He didn’t think he’d ever even go swimming again. And if he did, there wouldn’t be anything bigger than tadpoles in said water, thank you very much.
Which made him start remembering things. The panic … the fire and screaming and confusion … the ship going down … sure, it had all blotted out other things for awhile, darker thoughts about that awful fog and the stories circulating concerning it. You know, all that cute, amusing stuff about the Devil’s Triangle and that sort of thing.
But now it was back.
Now it was digging down inside him and it had teeth.
He thought:
What if any of that crazy hoodoo bullshit is true? It’s bad enough to abandon ship, but to abandon ship in some fucking crazy dead zone that chews up ships and men, swallows ‘em alive and kicking…
Jesus, it was all bad, wasn’t it?
And not just that weird fog and all the rest, but even the sea itself. So calm, so warm. Unnaturally warm, it seemed. And its consistency just wasn’t right. Not like water really, too oily, too thick, too something. Like it was full of suspended sediment, closer to gelatin than water. It left a slimy residue on the skin.
And it stank. Like something decomposing under a log.
George sucked in a sharp breath, tried to fight the fear, the uncertainty, tried to hold it all together which was not easy. Felt like his guts, his resolve was strung together out of thread and spit.
For now there was survival. Nothing more. He had to remember that.
“Do you think it’ll be long before we’re picked up?” George asked Gosling. And from the tone in his voice — a squeaky, breathless tone — he realized he sounded like some little kid that needed reassuring that there were indeed no monsters in the closet or under the bed.
“Depends” Gosling’s voice was practically a whisper. There was something very guarded about it.
“On what?”
“On a lot of things,” he said. “If the current pushes us out of the shipping lanes, it could be awhile. If it doesn’t, I would say a boat’ll be by any time. Probably in the morning or afternoon. Hopefully. If not, well, we’ll be reported overdue in Cayenne tomorrow night … or tonight actually.”
What George was hearing in his voice he did not like at all. It sounded like Gosling was reading from a script, like he didn’t believe a goddamn word of what he was saying. If there was an undercurrent there, it was saying,
sure, George, they’ll be looking for us. Same way they look for lots of ships that vanish without a trace …
“How long will these jackets float us?”
“Long enough. Maybe.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry. First light we’ll have a look around, see what we can find. Should be lots of junk floating around. Usually is.”
George could see his silhouette in the murky light, figured he was lying his ass off about a lot of things. And maybe it wasn’t that exactly, but it was something. So George decided to bait him a bit: “Shouldn’t somebody be here by now? A rescue ship? A plane? A helicopter?”
“Why?”
“Because of the distress signal.”
Gosling exhaled sharply. “I think they might have a little trouble finding us. Being where we are.”
“Which is?”
But Gosling would not answer him. And that seemed to be the worst thing of all.
“You know something, Fabrini,” Saks said. “If they ever come out with an asshole of the year award, I’m putting you up for it.”
Fabrini gave him the finger even though it was invisible in the semi-darkness.
“You think anyone else made it?” Menhaus asked.
“Course they did,” was all Saks would say.
“Yeah, well don’t hold your breath,” Fabrini said sourly.
“Shut your hole, shit-fer-brains. I told you, I told the both of you to get to the freaking lifeboats. But did you?” Saks slapped his palm into the water. “No, you two ass guppies sat there clinging to each other like you were queer for each other. So you swapped some spit and fell in love and this is where it got us.”
“Fuck you,” Fabrini mumbled.
The three of them were clinging to a large wooden crate. In addition to their lifejackets, they were safe for the time being. Saks had found the two of them dog-paddling through the surf like confused puppies. With his usual grace he’d directed them away from the boat. Until Menhaus bumped his nose into the crate. Then the trouble started. Both Fabrini and Menhaus did their best to clamor onto it. No dice. The crate spun in the water. They started screaming and hollering, fighting each other to get on top — so much for their pledge of watching each other’s behinds. Saks had to intervene and explain to them just what sort of mud-bathing, shit-eating farmyard critters their mothers had had sex with to give birth to a couple of candy-assed losers like them. After a good five minutes of abuse, they calmed down. They clung to different sides of the crate. In this way, they could float peacefully and safely.
Menhaus was watching the fog, knowing there was something damn funny about it, but not wanting to point it out to the others. Hoping, maybe, that it was just his imagination. Nothing more.
“No, Menhaus,” Saks went on, “I just don’t know what you see in Fabrini. What makes you wanna tongue him all night is beyond me. He’s hung like a pencil stub and dumber than a box of stale rat shit. I don’t get it.”
Menhaus forced a chuckle.
“We get out of this, fuckface,” Fabrini ranted, “and me and you are going to have business. You know what I’m saying, asshole?”
“Yeah, I know what you’re saying, you little ass jockey,” Saks said in disgust. “And you should see me. I’m just blushing over here. I’ve never had my dick sucked by a wop before.”
“You fuck,” Fabrini grumbled. “You suck. I’ll kill you.” He lost his grip and slid back into the water. The crate bobbed wildly. He fought to get a hold, but kept slipping and slipping. Panicking now, he began thrashing wildly in the water. Finally his fingertips caught a seam and he hoisted himself up.
“Shit,” he panted. “Jesus.”
“Quit fooling around, turd brain,” Saks snapped.
“Both of you quit,” Menhaus said flatly. “I’m sick of listening to you. For God’s sake we’re not in the poolroom here, we’re out in the middle of the ocean and I for one don’t wanna drown because you two are acting like a couple brats.”
“Shit,” Fabrini said.
“He’s right, Fagbrini,” Saks murmured. “Let’s just take it easy here. Save our strength. We might need it. I know you two’ll need all the strength you can muster once you get on dry land and start raping each other.”
“Goddammit, Saks,” Menhaus said.
“Sorry. I just never thought I’d be stuck in the middle of the goddamn ocean with a couple guys like you. Jesus H. Christ.”
“Shut up, Saks,” Fabrini said, sounding tired, finished.
“Yeah, I’ll shut up. I think we all should shut up. Do us some good. Especially Fagbrini here. We wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for him stroking your salami, Menhaus, instead of seeing to the boat.”
“Fuck you and your father,” Fabrini said.
“My father? Shit, least he taught me how to follow instructions. Yer old man was too busy screwing the neighbor’s poodle to teach you any sense.”
Menhaus rested his face against the cool damp of the crate, wishing, praying for rescue. Anything. Right now, even sharks sounded better than listening to these two picking at each other.
Jesus, had to be another ship out here.
Didn’t there?
But Menhaus wasn’t so sure. In fact, you came right down to it, he wasn’t sure about a lot of things. Where they were. That damn fog. That funny smell. None of it seemed right. He couldn’t put a finger on it exactly, but something in his guts was telling him this was all terribly wrong, that being shipwrecked was the least of their problems.
“I wonder where the hell we are?” Fabrini said under his breath, but they heard him, all right.
Saks grumbled something and Menhaus didn’t say a word. Was almost afraid to. Because, like the
Mara Corday
herself, he simply could not find his center. His compass was spinning wildly.
“Somewhere in the Atlantic, I guess,” Menhaus found himself saying, hoping that was true.
But Fabrini just grunted. “You think so? You really think so?”
Menhaus was waiting for Saks to say something smart-assed, something crude and insulting, but humorous. Something that would defuse that awful, biting tension. But he didn’t say a thing and Menhaus felt something inside him clench just a little tighter. He stared off into that milky, shimmering mist and was seeing it now as something completely unnatural, something alive and aware and hungry.
It eats people alive,
a voice in his head was telling him, echoing up from some dark, lonely place like the bottom of a well.
It sucks down ships and tosses people into this godawful soup and then slowly, patiently, it devours them.
But that was just nerves talking. Nerves hot-wired by stress and anxiety and fear of the unknown. And Menhaus was not going to listen to them. He was going to be as tough as the other two, take it all with a grin or a smirk.