“SHUT UP!” Saks roared, unable to listen to that droning, insane voice any more. He could feel Crycek up there, in his head, like dirty fingers sorting around, making him think things and feel things, filling his mind with lies and doubts. “YOU BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU!”
But Crycek just giggled. “Can you feel them, Saks? Can you feel them up there draining you dry? Sucking your mind away?”
Saks was trying to sort it out, because none of it was true. It couldn’t be true. It was all madness what Crycek was saying. There was nothing out in that fog, no devil, no evil presence that ate minds. And… and in the boat, Cook and Fabrini and Crycek were there. They were not ghosts, because if they were ghosts that would mean that Saks himself was the crazy one. Talking to shadows. It would mean that he was by himself out there, that he was totally alone…
So Saks did what came natural to him.
He pulled the trigger on the Browning. The shot rang out and the bullet passed harmlessly over Crycek’s head. And that shut him up. It didn’t wipe that smirk off his face, but it sure as hell shut him up. The others weren’t saying much either, just staring with those sweaty, sooty faces. Accusing faces.
Finally, Fabrini said, “Nice try, Crycek. It almost worked.”
But you could see from the look on Crycek’s face that it had not been a ruse. He believed everything he had said.
“Next one goes right between your eyes, Crycek.” Saks had calmed now, but still looked a little confused. He put the gun back on Menhaus. “Okay… you said Cook and Cook it’s gonna be. You sure now?”
“I’m sure.”
Saks raised the gun and took aim.
And then Menhaus made his move.
30
It happened fast.
As Saks took aim Menhaus moved with a speed he’d thought abandoned him years ago. Saks hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t even remotely expected it. He probably just assumed Menhaus would curl up and pout. And that was his mistake. Menhaus threw his body against Saks, upsetting his aim and knocking him into the gunwale. The gun went off, but the bullet went into the sky. And then Menhaus had his hands on it, struggling against Saks. Saks kicked him in the stomach, in the thigh, but he would not let go.
By then, Cook and Fabrini were at his side.
Fabrini punched Saks in the face about four or five times while Cook and Menhaus wrestled the gun away.
The fight gone out of him, Saks let it go and sunk to the deck plating. Used up and empty, all the hot air gone now like somebody had bled him empty.
He did not look at them or even speak.
Cook took the gun to the bow where it would be out of harm’s way.
Fabrini took the knife from Saks’s boot while Menhaus held him.
It was all over very quickly.
“There,” Fabrini said, giving Saks a good kick in the ribs. “There you are, asshole. What’re you going to do now?”
Saks just stared at him, his face smeared with blood.
“I’m going to kill you,” Saks said and dove at him.
31
The three of them managed to put down Saks’s latest rebellion without too much trouble. But they knew now that he was too far gone to reason with. He had to be tied up. They used Fabrini’s belt. They knotted his arms behind his back and threaded the belt through an oarlock, knotting it again. At last, Saks was harmless. He wouldn’t hurt them or himself now.
But it was pathetic, Cook thought, having to do something like that in the first place.
What was it all coming to?
“At least, at least now we can breathe, now we can relax,” Menhaus said, still not sounding so sure of it. “We can figure out things.. . maybe get out of here.”
“There’s no getting out,” Crycek said. “Not yet, maybe not ever. We’re drifting… can’t you feel it? We’re being drawn deeper into this place.”
He had a point and nobody dismissed it. Where before the weeds had been in isolated little patches and clumps drifting about, now there were great banks of them. The water was still open for the most part, but the islands of weed were so huge you couldn’t see where they ended. They just faded off into the mist like headlands. And they were massive and thick, steaming and verdant and stinking of jungle swamps.
“He’s right, you know. Crycek. We’re all going to die,” Saks said almost cheerfully. “Each and every one of us. Look at those weeds.. . sooner or later they’re gonna snare us up and that’ll be all she wrote.”
“Shut the hell up,” Fabrini said.
“You better shoot me if you want to shut me up,” Saks told him.
It looked like Fabrini was indeed considering it.
“Maybe… maybe some day the weeds will part and this lifeboat’ll drift out same way we drifted in… except there’ll be five skeletons in it. It’s happened before. A whole ship one time.. . went missing three years, then it just showed up one day and-”
“Want me to gag him?” Fabrini asked.
Cook seemed to be in charge now. He was the most level-headed one of the bunch. “I don’t know. We’ll leave it up to Saks. Why do you say, dumb ass, do we have to gag you or are you gonna be a good boy?”
Saks went quiet, but you couldn’t wipe the look of grim certainty off his face or erase the mad dog glare of insanity from his eyes. These were constants. Things the others had to pretend they weren’t seeing. But it was no simple matter to look lunacy in the eye and ignore its ramifications. To know, deep down, that under the right conditions, it could take anyone, anytime.
And no one knew this better than Cook.
Nobody in the world.
He’d felt it that day he’d killed his father. The blinding, white-hot, ice-cold slow burn that was true madness, whether temporary or permanent. And until you experienced it, tasted it, filled your belly with it, you could never appreciate it or how ugly it all really was. Because once you’d tasted it, you never got that awful flavor out of your mouth.
Cook didn’t like the idea of being in charge. He would have preferred a very democratic sort of leadership, a council made up of him and Fabrini and Menhaus. Maybe even Crycek because now and then he made sense. But it wasn’t going to be that way. Surely Fabrini was tougher and more physically able than he. Menhaus had been around more, had more experience. And Crycek… if he wasn’t so loopy.. . he was an experienced sailor. Yet, they seemed to be looking to Cook for leadership. He seemed to have the final say whether he liked it or not.
But all he really wanted was to sleep.
He was dead tired… yet he didn’t dare close his eyes. He had to watch Saks and watch him close. If trouble was going to come, it would come from his direction.
At least, that’s what Cook was thinking.
And then something hit the boat.
And then hit it again.
32
Soltz was pretty certain about it. “I know what I heard,” he told Gosling and the others. “It was a gunshot. My hearing is more acute than yours. I know what I heard.”
George had heard something, too. They all had. A sort of muted cracking in the distance. It could have been a gunshot… but it could have been a lot of other things, too.
“Maybe we ought to get on that radio,” Cushing suggested. “See what we can pick up… somebody might have been trying to signal us.”