George was dodging that swooping head, swinging wildly with his oar.
“Get it the fuck away from me!”
he cried out.
Both he and Gosling kept cracking it with their oars.
If the situation hadn’t been so terrifying, it might have been comical. For the eel, or whatever it was, might have been a slick, evil predator in that slimy sea, but above in the open air it was clumsy and drunken, seemed to have no true equilibrium whatsoever. It nudged the sides of the raft again and again with its nose, then seemed to lose balance and rolled in the thrashing water, flashing a pale speckled belly at them. Its fins fanned out like the wings of a bird, but could get no purchase in the air.
Growing tired of the games and obviously getting winded if those gasping, fluttering gill slits could be any indication, it yawned its jaws and took hold of the port gunwale, began to shake it.
Gosling cracked it over the head until it let go, seeing gladly that there were no punctures in the rubber.
The creature slid back into the water to suck in some air from that filth no doubt. But it wasn’t gone. They could hear it under the raft, bumping and squeaking along.
Gosling pulled a flare gun from the survival equipment, thinking that the beast, the worm, whatever it was, reminded him of gulper eels that fishermen sometimes pulled up in their nets. It had that same undulating body and oversized head and like many creatures from the abyss, it looked like something from a B movie out of the water.
George was in the stern now, breathing hard, soaked and staring, oar raised.
“Come on, you prick,” Gosling said, tensing.
And then it did, it shot up out of the water, jaws wide and Gosling moved fast. He brought up the flare gun and fired a flare right into its mouth and maybe down its throat for all he knew. There was a sudden explosion of light and red sparks from inside its mouth and it began going wild, shaking its head madly back and forth, pissing sparks and smoke and the stink of burned flesh.
Then it dove back into the water with a hissing sound.
That was it.
Five minutes later, it still had not come back.
When he was able to catch his breath, George said, “Let’s put that fucking canopy back up.”
“Yeah,” Gosling said.
Saks kept his eye on his “friends.”
He watched them like a mother bird watches a nearby snake. He knew and knew very well what they were thinking. He knew what kind of plots were even now hatching in their brains. They were all fantasizing about overpowering him, about killing him or throwing him overboard to … to those hungry things. Maybe not all of them. Menhaus was too chickenshit to try something like that and Crycek was just a basket case. But the other two? Oh yeah. You could bank on it.
Fabrini and Cook. They were going to be trouble. They were going to try and take the knife.
But it was going to be a cold day in hell when that came to pass.
“I wonder what’s out there?” Saks said almost jovially. “What kind of things … bad things, I bet. Just like Crycek said. Things with teeth that can smell blood in the water. Like that thing we heard eating those guys in that other boat. Remember that? The way it sounded … those chomping, tearing sounds. You remember that, Menhaus? Awful sounds, eating sounds, bones crunching.”
“All right, Saks,” Cook said. “That’ll do.”
“No, I don’t think so. See because I’m just wondering who’s gonna be first to fill their bellies.”
“Maybe it’ll be you,” Fabrini said.
“Not likely.”
“Hey, Saks,” Menhaus said, “why don’t you just stop this shit? Just call it quits right now. What do you say?”
“Sorry. Don’t think it’ll work. First time I set this knife down, your buddies there’ll kill me. They’ll take this knife and slit me up for bait. Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Cook? Feed old Saks to the monsters in the mist. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Listen,” Cook said. “The last thing I want to do is hurt anybody. We need each other. Can’t you see that?”
“I only see that you’re a liar.”
Saks kept staring, taunting them with the knife. He really wished they’d try something. They’d find out good and fast just how handy he was with a blade. He’d killed two slopes in ‘Nam with one and he hadn’t forgotten a thing. Just let ‘em try. Slash, slash. He’d get one of them across the eyes, the other in the belly. Then he’d feed their sorry asses to those horrors out there. Menhaus, he knew, wouldn’t be one of them.
“Anytime you pussies feel man enough,” Saks said, “you just come and get me. I’m right over here. Here and waiting. I think you’re in for a world of hurt, but you’re more than welcome.”
“You gotta sleep sometime,” Fabrini said.
“Oh, but I’m a real light sleeper, Fabrini.”
And that’s probably what they were planning, Saks realized. They were waiting for him to nod off. That’s when they were going to do it. Had it all planned, sneaky little fucks. They were playing it safe right now. Acting all inoffensive and harmless to put him off his guard. But it wasn’t going to work.
He’d kill anyone who got close to him.
“Yeah, I’m a real light sleeper,” he told them in a dry, menacing voice. “I hear anybody creeping around by me, well, I just start slashing. And I don’t care which one of you sweethearts dies.”
Let ‘em suck on that, Saks thought.
“I hope it’s you, Fabrini, I sure do. You see, you and me aren’t done dancing yet. Not by a long shot. You can bet on that. You can swear to that on the grave of that dick-sucking whore you call a mother.”
“You sonofabitch,” Fabrini growled.
Cook held onto him, restraining him. But he made no real effort to get at his tormentor. Fabrini had a bad temper, a violent temper if you cornered him, but he was no fool. Saks was crazy and you didn’t mess with a crazy man holding a knife.
Saks laughed at it all.
Oh, Fabrini was a gem. Just a real fucking pearl. You push button A, he gets pissed off. You push button B, he wants to beat your brains in. Button C, he’s your buddy. Just a dumbass robot. If it weren’t for the other two holding him back, he would’ve been a dead man by now.
“Let him go,” Saks said. “You know that sooner or later he’s going to try it. Sooner or later he’s going to do something stupid and I’ll have to kill him. Let’s get it over with. Fucking shitrat like him is a liability to you guys. To all of us. C’mon, Fabrini, be a hero.”
He didn’t move and Saks giggled.
“About what I expected from a wop.”
“Enough already,” Cook said.
“Quit it, Cook. Quit with the voice of reason here. You ain’t fooling me,” Saks said. “I got your number. I know a scheming killer when I see one. Oh yeah. I know you. I know what you’re all about.”
“C’mon, Saks,” Menhaus said without much effort.
But Saks just smiled. Smiled and waited for them to make their move. Because, sooner or later, they would. And Crycek could go fuck himself, because you didn’t need no devil to make men act like animals. It was their nature.
And Saks knew it.
Cushing couldn’t believe it when the raft came into view.
He looked and looked again, squinting beneath that dome of sparkling, angry mist, certain what he was seeing was a mirage. But it was no mirage, because Soltz saw it, too. It was real enough and so were the men waving from it.
No, it wasn’t rescue as such, but at the same time after countless hours on a hatch cover, that’s exactly what it was.
“I guess … I guess we won’t die on this hatch cover after all,” was all Soltz could say, cheated out of his whiny, dramatic death once again.
Quickly then, they began paddling over to the raft.
When Cushing first saw it, that shape come drifting out of the mist … he thought the worst possible things, of course. Although he couldn’t see exactly what it was — just a shadow moving against that field of yellow and gray — he started imagining plenty. Was certain that whatever was out there was about to show itself.
That was what he had originally thought.
And sometimes in life, it was just damn great to be wrong.
When they got up near the raft … or it got up near them … Cushing saw George Ryan and Gosling, the first mate of the
Mara Corday.
It was the best company he could have hoped for.
“You’re late,” was the first thing George said to him as he hauled him aboard, up the little boarding ladder. “Least you could have done is called. Was that asking too much?”
Cushing laughed. Laughed loud and full like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard and maybe it was. It got him an odd look from Gosling, like maybe he was losing it, but that was okay. After all those hours on that hatch cover listening to Soltz bitch, a man was allowed a certain level of joyful delirium. And Soltz, true to form, complained the entire time Gosling yanked him aboard.
The raft was big and roomy, Cushing noticed, and could have accommodated a dozen men without crowding. That was a good thing because what he needed more than anything else was to stretch his legs without fear something was going to nip one of them off.
After George had given them a quick encapsulated version of the plight of himself and Gosling, leaving out certain unpleasant experiences concerning giant eels and luminous fishies, Soltz began.
“We must’ve drifted for days,” he told them, wiping his glasses against his shirt. “It had to be at least that long … an endless fever is what it was. Just a blur for Cushing and me. Yes, I was pretty certain that we were nearing our last breaths.”
Gosling was just staring at him.
When he was done doing that, he looked at Cushing as if to say,
is this guy for real here?
But the look Cushing gave him back assured him that, yes, this was Soltz in the flesh. The weakest link? Yeah, and then some.
After they had some freeze-dried food and water that tasted a bit brackish after being stored in plastic bags, the novelty of their new position wore off some, at least enough where they could relax and discuss things in depth.
And after it was hashed-out, what was really to be said? They didn’t know where they were or if by luck or providence they’d ever find their way out.
“About all we can do is take it day by day,” Gosling said. “What else is there to do?”
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.”
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.”