Dead Sea (21 page)

The easiest thing to do was to tell yourself that you were being paranoid, imagining soul-eating bogies out in that draping fog. For imagining such a thing under such conditions was perfectly natural. For the human mind was like that, wasn’t it?

If it had no answers, it created them.

It filled in the blanks so it didn’t burn out circuits and relays trying to answer that which was ultimately unanswerable. Maybe there was no discarnate intelligence out there, no depraved puppet master working the strings. Maybe it was just nature, raw and ravenous and alien. Such a thing was entirely possible, George decided. But it did not satisfy that very human sort of logic that declared that there always had to be
someone
in charge, if not God then the Devil and if neither of them, something vile and nameless so above us on the evolutionary scale that it might as well have been a god.

Humans had need of such higher powers.

Maybe it was because our society was empirical, based on social pecking order and always had been. Everything had to have levels and classes, we decided, a food chain of sorts. And every food chain had its apex predator … the big guy, the boss man, the chief.

And in that awful void of fog and nightmares, well, there had to be one, too. It definitely was not man so it had to be something else. For the idea of a place existing, being left under the chaotic charge of old Mother Nature … that was not acceptable.

For every ship had a captain and there had to be one here, too.

Didn’t there?

Well, didn’t there?

Yes, George had been thinking these things, trying to root out superstitious fear with modern weapons like reason and hard-headed logic. He’d come up with a pretty good theory to explain away this theoretical Fog-Devil. But he had to. There really was no choice in the matter. If you didn’t erect some kind of wall between yourself and the unexplainable, well … you were going to be in trouble. And especially here. George had gone through it for a time after hearing that phobic white noise. It had gotten to him. Gotten to him bad. Gotten to him to the point that he had pulled down inside himself, crouched down in his own cellar, hidden there, trying to be small and silent and safe like a mouse avoiding an owl in some great, misting killing field. And there he had waited, scared and helpless, smelling the rubber of the raft and the dankness of his own soul. But paranoia found him even there, hiding in the shadows, told him that this … this
whatever
it was, could find him anywhere. That even then it could hear his breathing, smell the fear-sweat on him, sense the hot blood rushing through his veins and the electrical impulses threading the synaptic networks of his brain.

It was out there, thinking about him. Feeling him. Getting stronger and stronger on the sour bile of his fear.

It was then that George put it to bed.

He climbed out of the cellar and filled his lungs with that moist, musty air and pretended real hard that he could not feel
something
out there. It was easier that way. Through ignorance there was ascension, through self-denial there was purity. Because the only other option was gradual mental deterioration, a rabid and all-encompassing paranoia that would eat his mind right down to cinders and polished bone.

So, without a doubt, George did not need to be on the lifeboat with the others. He did not need Crycek’s madness for he had enough of his own, thank you very much.

God, he thought,
what’s it going to be like after two or three days? A week? A month?

But he wasn’t going there.

“It’s funny,” he said to Gosling, “how it puts everything in perspective.” Gosling smiled. “It does that, doesn’t it?”

“I mean, you blunder through your life taking everything for granted. You worry about mortgages and bills and money. You dream about all the things you’d like to buy. The lifestyle you’d like to have. Never once do you look around and think, ‘hey, this isn’t so bad. I’ve got a roof over my head, food in my belly, I can afford a few nice toys. It’s a good life’. It’s not until everything goes to hell that you appreciate it. What I wouldn’t give for a lazy Sunday afternoon in my recliner, snacking and watching the tube. A nice cold beer in my hand. Lisa always makes a big dinner on Sunday — roast beef or fried chicken, all the trimmings. You know what I’d give for that now?”

Gosling said, “Just about anything, I’d imagine.”

George sipped water from the cap Gosling handed him. Already they were on strict rations. “How about you? Do you appreciate what you have or do you worry about what you don’t have?”

“I like to think I appreciate what I’ve got.”

“But do you?”

“Not enough.”

“Are you married?”

“I tried it once. Didn’t work. I’m gone too much.”

“Kids?”

“No. No time.”

George thought it didn’t seem like much of a life flitting about from one place to the next. No roots. No nothing. Just a lot of time to think while you were out at sea. It sounded lonely.

“When we get rescued,” George said, “I want you to come over for supper, Gosling. I mean it. It’ll be good for you.”

“Maybe,” Gosling said. “Maybe I will.” He kept staring out the doorway of the raft. “What’s so interesting out there?”

“Look.”

George went over to the doorway with him, stared out into the fog and murk and saw it right away. It was brighter now, of course, and visibility was up to maybe two hundred feet or so. And that’s where George was seeing it, right where the mist became the water and the water became the mist … a series of luminous objects just beneath the surface heading in their direction. Whatever they were-they looked lozenge-shaped, a few feet in length each-there had to be hundreds of them and they were coming fast. More all the time.

“What the hell are they?” George asked.

Gosling just shook his head. “Something … I don’t know … like a school of luminous fish”

And there was no time for further discussion, for the school was closing in on them, moving just a few inches beneath the surface of the water and creating a surging, boiling swell in their wake.

Gosling zipped the door shut.

Eyes wide and panicked, they waited for the first impact.

Cook never took his eyes off Saks.

Crycek was crazy, of course, and Fabrini was trouble. Maybe Menhaus, too, and mainly because he was such a follower. But Saks … he was another story. Saks reminded him of his father. But unlike his father who had good days and kind words from time to time, Saks pretended to be nothing but what he was: a bully.

What they needed right now was a sense of unity.

The common enemy was this terrible sea. They could only survive if they worked together. Cook was no survival expert, but even he knew this. And the greatest threat to their unity was Saks. Not what lurked out in the fog or even this hypothetical devil of Crycek’s. Just Saks. He would destroy the survivors much faster than any of those factors. He was a self-involved, self-indulgent macho bastard who would have fed his mother to the sharks if he thought it would keep him alive a few more hours.

If the others had risen up and decided to kill the man, Cook knew he would happily join in. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway.

But if he was lucky, maybe in time.

And nobody was more patient than Cook because he knew Saks was a dead man, it was just a matter of when now.

“I’m so thirsty,” Soltz kept saying. “I need water.”

“You’re okay. Just try to think of something else,” Cushing said, scanning the fog with his bright blue eyes, looking for something, anything out there. Anything that might give him even the thinnest ray of hope. Because, Jesus, this was bad.

Real bad.

Cushing wasn’t a pessimist by any stretch of the imagination, but there were limits to everything. Just the two of them, he was thinking, floating on that fucking hatch cover in that turgid, alien sea. What were their chances here? Death could come in so many different ways. And if it wasn’t from some of the wildlife — he’d heard enough sounds out there now to be convinced that there was some seriously nasty shit prowling around-then what? Dehydration? Starvation?

Damn, but it wasn’t looking real peachy right about then.

He hadn’t slept in … well, he wasn’t sure how long now. Since his berth in the ship. Every time his eyes started drifting shut, he snapped awake with the dread certainty that something was coming out of the fog, something was reaching out for him. Even when he was wide awake and alert, it was hard to shake that feeling.

He wondered if Soltz felt it, too. But he didn’t dare ask him.

The man had enough anxieties to deal with.

“No boats will come here,” Soltz sighed. “Not into this Sargasso Sea.”

“I told you that’s a myth. I was pulling your leg.”

“I think we both know better, don’t we?”

Cushing just shrugged. Okay, the kid gloves were off. No more trying to talk reason to the man … even if it was less like reason and more like out and out bullshit. Let Soltz believe they were lost in some alternate dimension, that they’d fallen through the back door of the Devil’s Triangle.

Why not? Because they probably had.

“What is that?” Soltz said excitedly. “Look! What is that? A shark? A whale?” Cushing looked and saw nothing. “Where?

“There!” Soltz said, jabbing his finger at the water.

Cushing saw a gigantic shadow pass beneath them. Soltz, trembling, his jaw sprung open like a trap, moved to the very center of the hatch cover. Cushing crept out to the edge, tried to get a look at their visitor. It was a huge fish, at least forty feet in length. Its body a dusky brownish green speckled with white dots and darker transverse bands. It could have been a whale … except that as it passed, Cushing saw that its head narrowed into an angular probocis that was lit up like a Christmas tree, seemed to twist in the water, corkscrewing.

Crazy, impossible fish.

It swam off, did not return.

“It’s just some kind of whale, I guess,” Cushing said, not sure if he was relieved or terrified by the idea of something that size. “Harmless, I think.”

“You think? Well, it didn’t look harmless to me.”

“It’s gone. Don’t worry about it.”

Soltz stared out through his thick glasses. “You know a lot about nature, don’t you? The sea and its animals, things like that. How is it an accountant knows about things like that?”

“I’m a frustrated naturalist,” Cushing admitted. “I read books on everything. Sea life happens to be one of those things I’ve studied.”

“With my eyes, reading is a chore. I get headaches. Did I ever tell you about my headaches?”

Cushing figured he was about to learn all about them.

“Get ready,” Gosling said and there was dire import behind his words. George said nothing.

He’d never felt quite so helpless before in his life. His knuckles were white as they gripped his knees. He was tense and waiting, his heart hammering wildly.

His throat was so dry, his voice would barely come. “I’m afraid,” he admitted. “Jesus, I’m afraid.”

“Stay calm,” Gosling said.

The waiting, of course, was the worse part. Not knowing what was going to happen and when, if anything at all. George was now very much thinking about Lisa and his son Jacob and those pleasant Sunday afternoons. The worst part, the very worst part, about it all now was that he honestly didn’t think he’d see them again. He’d never know another Sunday.

Just stay calm, he told himself. Just like Gosling says. That’s what you gotta do. Stay calm.

Bullshit.

“They’re almost on us,” Gosling said.

But how he could know that with the door zipped shut was beyond George. Maybe he just
felt
it because George was feeling it, too, now: a gradual, almost lazy pressure building in the sea behind the raft. George was certain he could feel it coming right through the rubberized deckplates … a weight, an expectancy, a surging motion like air forced before a train. Right before impact.

There was no way to stay calm. Even Gosling didn’t look so good. He was clown-white under his tan, his eyes jittering in their sockets like roulette balls. He was gripping the plank for dear life.

There.

George felt it and so did Gosling. Something or many somethings had just moved beneath them with such speed and power its aftershock actually lifted the raft up a few inches. The sea exploded with activity.

“They’re under us,” Gosling said.

And they were.

Dozens and dozens of those luminous fish or animals or whatever they were. They swam close to the surface and now they were bumping against the raft, one after the other. The funny thing was that their light — sort of a pale, thrumming green — filled the interior of the raft, actually lit the bottom like an x-ray so that you could see the outlines of the air chambers, every seam and stitch.

Yes, it was amazing. Truly amazing.

But neither George or Gosling had the time to truly appreciate it, for being in the raft was like being on a roller coaster.
Thump, thump, thump
in rapid succession. The sea boiled and the raft careened and George clenched his teeth down hard, waiting for those chambers to start popping and for them to start sinking.

But that it didn’t happen.

The raft was engineered to handle rough seas and no amount of jolting and jarring was going to pop it. That’s why it was designed with a series of air chambers, rather than a single one.

Gosling had told him this and more than once, but George couldn’t remember any of that. All he was seeing was that weird glow and feeling the raft beneath him in constant motion, spilling him this way and that, into Gosling and then back to the deck.

Then the bumping stopped and the glow went out as if somebody had switched off a lamp.

After a moment or two, Gosling went to the door and unzipped it. Nothing but the fog and the sea again, moving as one when they moved at all.

“Gone,” he said. “And we’re still here.”

“Well, I’m hungry,” Saks said, after a long period of silence. “What do you guys say we cut up Fabrini and have a snack?”