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.”
22
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.”
Fabrini and Cook eyed him coolly.
Crycek grinned.
“What’re you girls staring at?” Saks said. “Find something to do. Go shave your pussies or something. Jesus Christ, what a bunch.” He shook his head. “Soon as our backs are turned, Menhaus, they’ll be pumping each other. Got that look in their eyes. It’s a big day for both of ‘em. Soon as Fagbrini gets home, he’ll be writing, ‘Dear Diary, Cook shot his load into me. It was the greatest day of my life since I blew Liberace.’ What a guy, what a guy.”
“What the hell do you want me to do?” Menhaus said, looking at the soldier’s corpse. “Jesus, what a stink.”
“Just hoist him up, bright boy.”
“Me?” Menhaus said.
“No, the gay midget in your pants. Yes, you. Maybe Sergeant York’s carrying something we can use.”
“C’mon, Saks, he’s rotten,” Menhaus whined.
“So’s Fabrini’s asshole, but that never stopped you before.”
Cook said, “C’mon, Saks, push that body away… it might attract something.”
“Yeah, we don’t want that,” Menhaus said. “We don’t want something coming for it.”
Saks scowled. “Just grab him under the arm. He won’t bite you.”
Fabrini laughed and shook his head. “Why don’t you do it, big chief?”
Saks features were cut by a knife blade smile. “Because I told Menhaus here to do it, dipshit. And like you said, I’m the big chief.”
Fabrini cracked a fart. “There’s one for you, big chief”
Menhaus saw it was a no-win situation. Pale as flour, he took hold of the corpse under the arm and lifted. It seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds. The flesh was spongy beneath the fatigue shirt. “Oh, God,” he gasped, breathing through clenched teeth, turning away from the sick/sweet stink of putrescence. “Oh my Christ… oh my God…”
The body was lifted a few feet out of the water, a great fleshy, waterlogged balloon. Its face had been chewed away by fish… or something like fish. Nothing there but a grisly hollow of bleached muscle and knotted cartilage. Lipless, skinless, it grinned with jutting yellow teeth set in withdrawn, shriveled gums the color of oatmeal. Water ran and dripped from the empty eye sockets and collapsed nasal cavity.
Saks paid no attention.
He felt along the huge, distended belly, ignoring the whimpering of Menhaus and the parasites that clung in twisting loops around the navel. His fingers found something and pulled it free. A gun. Sunlight winked off its cruel metal lines. Dread settled into the faces of Cook and Fabrini. A three-inch worm slid like a greasy noodle from the cadaver’s mouth, wriggling in the light.
“Oh, good God,” Menhaus said.
There was a sudden wet, ripping noise followed by a fleshy snap and the body slapped back into the water. The arm had pulled free of the shoulder joint. With a strangled cry, Menhaus dropped the limb and vomited over the side.
“You don’t need that gun, Saks,” Cook said.
“Oh, yes I do,” he said, grinning proudly, happily, like an old man who’d copped his first feel in years. “Nice, isn’t it?” He waved the gun around for all to see and admire. “A Browning nine millimeter auto. Nice weapon.”
“Shit,” Fabrini said. “Thing’s been soaking for days. It won’t shoot.”