“If we start sinking,” Saks said ghoulishly, practically reading Cook’s mind, “we’ll just have to rid ourselves of some excess weight.”
No one wanted to comment on that.
The fish circled and circled, occasionally nipping at one other or breaking the surface with jaws snapping and tails slapping. There had to be about two or three dozen different species out there. Most were armored, but some were more like typical fish but with exaggerated jaws and teeth.
Saks started toying with them, making the others nervous. He was dipping an oar into the water, stirring up that briny soup. As soon as he did that, they came in numbers, thumping against the boat and trying to find something to bite which was very often each other.
“Stop that for chrissake,” Fabrini said. “You’re pissing ‘em off.”
But Saks wouldn’t stop; he was enjoying himself now. He giggled and dipped his oar back in and this time it was hit immediately. And hit with such force he almost lost it. And the gun. Whatever was on the other end was either real hungry or really pissed-off.
“Look what I caught, Menhaus!” Saks said, recovering himself quickly. Because he had been scared there for a moment or two. Was certain he was about to be pulled in.
He lifted his oar out of the water and they all saw his “catch”.
It was even uglier than the boneheads.
It was about two feet long, round as a basketball, shaped much like a pufferfish with a stubby tail. But its flesh was jet black and leathery, wrinkled and convoluted. Its mouth was huge. Big enough, it seemed, that it could have swallowed itself. It had tiny milky-blue eyes lacking pupils. Its jaws were yawned open, dozens of long needle-like fangs imbedded in the oar. They were about the thickness of sewing needles, but easily five or six inches in length.
“It’s… it’s glowing,” Menhaus said.
And it was. Deep in its mouth were a series of tiny luminous barbels that probably attracted prey fish into the mouth where the teeth took care of them.
It was flopping and thrashing and Saks could barely hold the oar up. Its sides were expanding with frantic, gulping breaths.
“Hurry up, Menhaus,” Saks said. “Grab the little pisser.”
Menhaus just stared with wide eyes.
But then the fish dropped back into the murk, disappeared. It left two of its teeth in the oar, though. Saks laughed and threw the oar at Menhaus who almost jumped out of the boat to avoid it.
Then the fun and games ended and they all just watched and waited, hoping and praying the fish would move on. But thirty minutes later, they still hadn’t.
“Shit,” Fabrini said in a panicked voice, “check that out.”
They did.
The fish passing by the boat was a monster. It was easily fifteen or twenty feet long with a spiny dorsal fin that jutted from that decayed sea like an inverted rudder, scathed with ancient scars and threaded with stray weeds. It was a dirty olive brown with a massive head that was plated in shields of ridged bone that looked sharp enough to slit open a belly. Its hinged jaws were gigantic, serrated not with teeth as such but jagged tooth plates, natural and lethal extensions of the armor covering its head and upper thorax.
It moved past the boat, those razored jaws opening and closing, opening and closing. Its eyes were the size of softballs, flat black and dead, remorseless. You could see death in those eyes. Evil, relentless death. Though its upper body was huge and armored, its tail was almost snakelike ending in a huge asymmetrical caudal fin that pushed it through the water gradually.
“Jesus, look at the size of it,” Fabrini said.
The other fish, none of which exceeded ten feet and of which most were considerably smaller, gave the big fish room. It swam with a slow, even gait, almost lethargically. It seemed to be almost lazy in comparison with the others that darted around it and out of its way, moving with great heavy strokes of its scythe-like tail. That was until a smaller bonehead swam too close and the big one rocketed forward with a smooth flex of muscle and ingested it with slashing bites. The water became a boiling soup of blood as the others went crazy snapping and nipping at one another. Tails were thrashing, fins knifing, bony jaws slashing in and out of the water.
“They’d tear a man to bits,” Fabrini said sickly.
“Two bites!” Saks said. “Did you see that? That goddamn fish had to be five feet and it took it in two bites! Shit and shinola.”
Menhaus kept looking at his feet. He didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know. Cook studied it all with almost clinical detachment. He looked, if anything, like a Nazi sub commander watching a torpedo speed toward its target with cruel indifference. The effect was heightened by his sparse blond hair and sharp, predatory features.
The boat suddenly reeled as if struck by something big. Menhaus let out an involuntary scream. He hung onto his seat like a man on a roller coaster. The boat shuddered again, rocked with motion, then settled down.
“It’s that big one,” Saks said grimly. “He knows there’s something to eat in this boat and he wants it.”
“Break out them fucking oars,” Fabrini said. “Let’s try and pull away from these goddamn things.”
“You don’t give orders here, Fabrini,” Saks said.
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Fuck me? Fuck me?” He had the gun on Fabrini. “You wanna rephrase that you little cockmite?”
Fabrini just glared. Oh, it was coming. One way or the other, it was coming.
Saks clenched his teeth, shook his head. “You see, Fabrini,” he said patiently, “what you don’t understand is that I am in charge here. Get it? And if I tell you to jump in and swim with the fishies, you better by Christ do it. Even if it’s that big one. And you don’t touch them fucking oars until I give the word.”
Fabrini gave him the finger. “You ain’t shit to me, Saks. You ain’t nothing or nobody. You ain’t a damn thing.”
Saks sighed dramatically. “Who brought you dipdunks together? Who hired you? Who was in charge?” Saks asked of him. He waited a moment for an answer. Two. Three. Then he shook his head and jabbed a thumb at his chest. “I was. Me. I organized all this and got the show on the road.”
“And it’s been some show,” Menhaus said in a rare moment of defiance.
“Yeah, it’s been a party right from the beginning,” Fabrini said with contempt. “Merry Fucking Christmas.”
Crycek was giggling, but nobody seemed to notice.
“What I’m saying, you goddamn shitrats,” Saks grumbled, “is that I’m in charge. Gun or no gun, I’m the one who should be in charge. I’m the only one here with enough goddamn smarts to run the show.”
Fabrini scowled and watched the fish. “Yeah, you’re a real fucking Mensa genius, Saks.”
“Keep it up, shit-for-brains. See what happens.”
Cook cleared his throat. “We don’t need a foreman out here, Saks. There’s no need.”
“You see, you’re wrong about that. You need one and I’m it. Who else is up to it? You? You can’t keep your hands out of your shorts long enough to crack the whip. And Fabrini? Shit. Fabrini can’t find his own asshole without Menhaus’ crank in his hand. And Crycek? Shit.”
Saks waited for more argument, but got none. And he knew why. Oh yes, he knew very well why. Because they were just putting up with him until he closed his eyes. Then they were going to kill him. Or so they thought.
But they were in for a big surprise.
A very big one.
Menhaus said, “Looks like the big one swam off.”
“But his friends haven’t,” Fabrini said.
Saks, unlike the others, was hoping it hadn’t gone too far. Come tonight or what passed for night, he might just need all the man-eating fish he could lay his hands on. Because tonight was going to be trouble. Tonight the shit was going to fly. And when the shit came down, there was no one better at dodging it than old Saks. Saks was just about to tell them he was onto their little bullshit plot and if they wanted a piece of him now was the time, baby, when something-something goddamned huge-bumped into the bottom of the boat. The boat seemed to be actually lifted out of the water. To heave up from the sea and crash back down again with an explosion of foam and sediment, tossing the men from their seats.