Saks smiled and aimed the barrel just left of Fabrini’s head and pulled the trigger. The report was like thunder. Fabrini felt the bullet whiz by his temple. The shell casing hissed into the water.
“You stupid fuck!” Fabrini shouted. “You stinking stupid fuck! You could’ve killed me!”
Saks chuckled. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead now.”
Menhaus just looked ill. Cook looked alarmed, hopeless. He knew very well that the balance of power had shifted even further in Saks’s direction. This was not a good thing.
“Big tough man with a gun,” Fabrini grumbled.
Saks aimed the Browning square between Fabrini’s eyes. “This time you die.”
“Stop it,” Cook said. “This is crazy.”
“Yeah, c’mon, Saks. We’re all friends here.” Menhaus’ smile was trembling and quivering like an earthworm desperate to get out of the sunshine.
Fabrini spat. “Go ahead, tough guy. Shoot.” He said this with a strong, even voice. But underneath he was scared shitless and they all knew it.
“Saks,” Cook said.
Saks lowered the gun. He was thinking that, yeah, he should’ve greased the mouthy little wop. There wouldn’t be jack the others could do about it. One pull of the trigger and no more Fabrini, two more pulls and he could waste them all. But, for some reason, he didn’t. Even he wasn’t sure why. There were no laws in this place, only the ones you made up as you went. And it wasn’t that his conscience was bothering him or even the fact that it would be murder. He could live with that. No, it wasn’t any of those things and although Saks couldn’t admit it to himself, the real reason was that he could not face the fog alone. The idea of it… and what called it home… was just too much.
“Maybe,” Menhaus said sheepishly, “you could shoot us something to eat with that. We can’t live on that shit in the pouches forever.”
“Sure,” Saks said.
“Or maybe just kill anything… anything that comes after us.” Saks smiled. “Why not? As long as I got three bullets left in case you sweethearts try to get funny with me.”
And that, of course, was it in an eggshell, the others realized. Saks would kill them if they didn’t do what he said. He wanted to be boss, needed to be in charge. And if they didn’t play the game by his rules, then he’d shoot them and feed them to the wildlife. It was a simple arrangement. An age old one.
“As long as you play by my rules, everything’ll be fine,” Saks told them.
“And if we don’t, you kill us,” Fabrini said.
Saks kept smiling.
Cook was watching Saks as they were all watching him. He was becoming less and less afraid of what might be waiting in the mist and more afraid of what was in the boat. Particularly now that it had a gun. But Saks was right about one thing: they were quite a bunch. They were led by a violent, arrogant asshole with a gun. And Fabrini had that dark, slow burn in his eyes like all he was living for was the chance to kill Saks. And Menhaus? He was useless, because he’d just go with the flow as he probably had his entire life. Then there was Crycek… well, no point going into that. Crycek was nuttier than peanut brittle.
And what about you? Cook asked himself. Do you really think you’re any better than the rest? You can sit there and play the voice of reason all you want, but the bottom line is that you’re as fucked up as the rest. You get your chance, you’ll kill Saks. Let’s not forget that. Maybe you’ll be killing your father all over again, but you’ll kill him all the same.
Yeah, they were quite a crew to dump into the same lifeboat and particularly in this haunted sea. Anyway you served it all up, Cook figured, it wasn’t exactly peaches and cream.
“See, you got it all wrong,” Saks said. “I don’t want to kill anybody. I want us to live through this, one way or another. But being that I got the gun and that I’m in charge, I’m pretty much God. And it’ll be up to me to sort out any of your sorry asses if I decide you’re a danger to the rest. Keep that in mind, Fabrini. Because I swear to God, I’m not fucking around here.”
There wasn’t much to say after that. They watched the body drift away. Maybe Gosling was right about there being subsurface currents, fingers of unseen motion. For the body gradually moved off or the lifeboat did. The body hadn’t gone more than a hundred feet before it rose up suddenly with a bubbling gout of foam and came back down, seeming to thrash and jerk in countless directions like an epileptic having a massive seizure.
But it was no seizure.
Seizures didn’t have cutting wet-leather dorsals and tearing razor teeth. Only sharks did. Cook saw them hit the body like torpedoes, maybe a dozen of them. In that murky water, they looked very much like sharks… but they weren’t sharks. Not exactly. These fish ranged in size from maybe fifteen inches to three feet. They had long, slim bodies and heavy heads plated like armadillos, seemed to move with a serpentine eel-like propulsion.
Whatever they were, they shredded the body to bone within minutes. And then they tore the skeleton apart, too.
No, they weren’t sharks.
They were worse.
23
While Cushing and Soltz slept, George kept watching the fog, waiting for it to vomit something else out at them. He kept seeing shapes and shadows out there and could never really be sure if they were actually there or he was dreaming them. In the back of his mind, despite himself, he was still sensing something out there. Something big and encompassing and… well, evil. Because that was the word his brain kept throwing at him.
Evil.
Something incalculably evil.
A cancer waiting out there that would eat a man’s mind straight down to the marrow.
But he wouldn’t let himself think too much on it because he didn’t want to go insane. It would just be too damn easy, all things considered. But the bottom line was that he didn’t have to consciously think about it, maybe his imagination was just permanently stuck on high-rev… or maybe it was thinking about him. Some grinning, loathsome god of maritime wastes, some dark lord of black depths and ghost ships, of haunted seas and drowned sailors. A demented, slithering malignance that was vast and empty like the black spaces between the stars, something that could only fill itself with human terror and anxiety, madness and dread and desperation.
The very embodiment of the fear that the seas had always inspired. This thing given flesh… or something like flesh.
Enough, George told himself. This shit has to stop. If you get out of this horrid dead zone you can spend the rest of your goddamn life being dry and sassy and spinning tales about spooks and ghosts and all that shit. You can wake with the sweats at four a.m. from nightmares about this place… but at least then, they’ll really be nightmares, not reality. But for now, keep your head, because there’s no waking from this one and danger every time you close your eyes.
Well, now, that was food for thought.
George scratched his beard and ran fingers over his torso. He could feel his ribs. But this wasn’t from starvation; he’d always been thin. Wiry. He had a supercharged metabolism and found it nearly impossible to gain weight. The diet gimmicks and infomercials on TV always made him laugh. He’d tried most of his adult life to put on weight and simply couldn’t.
The fantasy question everyone kept toying with on the raft was: What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home? The answers came in all shapes and sizes. Gosling wanted to pay a visit on a lady friend in New Orleans and get drunk for a week… in bed. Cushing intended to quit his job and tell his brother-in-law to get fucked, for reasons he wouldn’t elaborate on. Soltz just wanted to rest and get some medication… particularly since Gosling had forbid him from touching the medical kit and the pills and ointments within.
But what did George want?
He wanted to spend day after day with his wife and son. He wanted them to know exactly how much they meant to him. He wanted to spend days telling his boy, Jacob, tales of high adventure at sea. The kid would eat it up. He’d want to hear the stories again and again. And George would oblige as generations of father’s had. The three of them would have cookouts and picnics and lazy Sunday afternoons spent doing absolutely nothing. And the nights, after Jacob was fast asleep, would be spent in sweaty embrace with Lisa.