“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.
20
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.
21
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.”