Dead Sea (55 page)

But he just shook his head.

Cushing told Pollard to keep an eye on Gosling and George and he slipped up behind the remaining Hummer. From the light thrown by the lantern, they could see that the nylon line they’d tied off the lifeboat and raft with had been snapped.

“Oh, shit,” George said. “If that raft is gone …”

And Cushing understood the implications of that just fine: marooned. Without the raft or lifeboat, they were marooned. Trapped in the steel coffin of the C-130 and like candy in a dish, the monster-squid would keep coming back until said dish was empty.

“I wish this goddamn night would end,” George said.

“We just have to hang on.”

George said, “If I can get at those satchel charges, we can take care of that ugly bastard.”

“No,” Cushing said. “You go back there … no, you’d be exposing your ass to that thing.”

Pollard came walking up. “I think … I think the First is coming around.” He looked out into the mist. “That thing … it can’t get us way in the back, can it?”

“No,” George told him.

But it was a lie and they all knew it. Cushing had gotten the only real good look at the thing out of any of them. And from the dimensions he’d seen, however briefly, he knew the squid was at least a couple hundred feet in length, maybe more. The tentacles themselves, he figured, were probably well over a hundred feet long. What they’d seen were just the ends. If the squid wanted, it could easily crush the plane or root around in there until it got all of them. Cushing was certain of this. Those tentacles would find them even in the cockpit.

“Look,” George said. “Jesus Christ,
look …”

The weeds and mist were glowing again, which meant the squid was still there, still waiting. There was a gentle, rolling splash and a tentacle slid out of the sea and up the loading ramp, uncurling as it came on. It was one of the specialized tentacles with the convex, hooded club at the end. The club was very smooth and shiny, reflecting the glare of the battery lamp hanging above. Cushing figured it was six or seven feet at its widest point and probably nearer twenty feet in length than sixteen as he’d originally thought. The tentacle it was hooked to, was smooth and suckerless, big around as a centuried oak where it vanished in the weeds.

George made an involuntary gagging sound. “What the fuck is that?” he said.

But Cushing was beyond words.

The club rose up vertically as before at the edge of the cargo bay, revealing its pink, moist underside and the barbed spines gleaming at its perimeter. That pink flesh shriveled back from that immense concave mouth and black gnashing teeth. They all saw that circle of red orbs and were all certain they were watching eyes. Pink slime was dripping from the mouth, dropping in clots to the ramp.

“Don’t move,” Cushing told them, locked down hard inside like January ice.

Nobody did.

They just stood there, peering around the Hummer.

It was an insane, nightmarish scenario. The club moved up into the cargo bay inch by terrible inch. Once inside, the tentacle itself paused, but the club turned slightly to the left and then to the right like the head of a man looking or listening for something. Cushing had a sudden, unsettling memory of watching the movie,
War of the Worlds,
as a boy. That part where the couple are trapped in the farmhouse with the Martian war machine hovering outside and the sensory probe that looked like a Martian head came sliding in through the shattered window, trying to locate them. This was very much like that, for he had no doubt whatsoever that this club was
looking
for them.

No, no, not looking, but
sensing,
it occurred to him. It can’t see. Those things look like eyes, but they’re not eyes, not really. More like the eyespots around the bell of a jellyfish … looking very much like eyes, but actually light-sensing ocelli. Except in this case, maybe not light-sensing at all, but possibly heat-sensing like the pit organ of a desert rattlesnake.

It was sheer speculation on his part, a wild leap of logic at best based on what he understood of sensory physiology, but it sounded about right.

Yet, it was hard not to believe those orbs weren’t eyes. When that hooded club swept around, they glittered like jewels, like something with awareness and intelligence behind them.

Cushing was wondering if maybe that monstrous cephalopod and its attendant tentacles might just leave, figuring the food source in the plane had made its escape. But he would never know because Pollard was getting antsy. He was shaking like a man with a tropical fever, sweat rolling down his face in rivers.

“I can’t do this,” he said under his breath. “I can’t do this …”

And then he moved, turned and ran back towards the cockpit. The club jerked back suddenly like a startled cobra and that mouth hissed in alarm. It had sensed Pollard’s whereabouts now, whether through motion or heat or maybe both. And the sea beyond the ramp began to boil and the mist began to blow around as dozens of tentacles came pouring out of the weeds and up the ramp, coiling and looping like serpents from a snake charmer’s basket.

George and Cushing ran back to join the others.

Ran back and looked at those sweating faces and shocked, glassy eyes that were expecting to hear what their plan was. Hear about their defense or escape route, except George and Cushing didn’t have one. Because this was it. This was endgame.

The beast knew where they were and now it was coming for them.

George saw the first of the tentacles slide over the roof of the Hummer, three more slide under it and emerge with a swimming, serpentine side-to-side motion.

“Into the cockpit,” Cushing said. “Right now.”

George and Pollard lifted up Gosling and started carrying him through the door.

Chesbro was just pale and paralyzed.

“Move, goddamn you!” Cushing said, the stink of the beast bathing them. When Chesbro didn’t, he slapped him across the face. “Now, you dumb shit, unless you want your Behemoth to find you.”

That got Chesbro moving.

He leaped through the cockpit door and Cushing wondered, as the tentacles came worming and slithering forward, wondered how long that flimsy steel door was going to protect them.

And maybe he would have kept wondering it except he saw an eruption of light outside, from somewhere in the mist. A flickering, orange-yellow light like that of a bonfire. Whatever it was, the tentacles and their master became aware of it, too. They froze on the floor, in midair, hanging from the ceiling by their suckers. They began to quiver like a cat watching a bird. More of that flickering light and very close now.

Fire.

It was fire.

Out here … but how?

A tongue of flame brushed up against the plane, throwing a greasy, churning light that jumped and flashed. Gosling, looking down towards the passenger door saw the flames quite clearly. The weeds were on fire. And either they had ignited themselves or someone had done it for them.

“What the hell is it?” someone in the cockpit said.

And Cushing was wondering just that when a shadow cut through the flames outside the passenger door. A shadow hunched and jumped through the doorway. Cushing fell backward through the cockpit hatch, expecting the very worst.

But what he saw was a human being.

A human being with a pail of something in one hand and a burning flare in the other. They tossed the bucket at the tentacles and threw the flare. Flames erupted in a gushing, spreading cloud and the tentacles retreated instantly like worms on a hotplate. They disappeared in a column of funneling smoke.

And it was then that Cushing got a look at their savior.

It was a woman.

They saw it.

They all saw it, if only for a moment or two. Something sticking up out of the weed. Something circular, disc-shaped, and very large. It wasn’t a boat and it wasn’t a plane … at least not of the world they came from. There was a word for what it might have been, but nobody dared say it out loud. They saw it for just a few fleeting seconds, then it was lost again in the fog. Thankfully.

“What do you think it was, Fabrini?”

Saks said this to him, not really expecting a reply anymore than he would expect one from a pet beagle. Because he figured that, intellectually, Fabrini was on the same level as your common ball-licking, shit-on-the-carpet, drink-from-the-fucking-toilet beagle. On a good day, that was. Most days, you could play fetch-the-goddamn-stick all afternoon with that boy and he still wouldn’t get it. Sit there, wagging his tail and waiting for you to tell him what he should be doing and what he should be thinking about it all.

At least, this is how Saks was seeing things.

His crew of misfits and ass-fuckers, as he liked to call them, were his pets now that Cook was in hairball-heaven. Old Al Saks was holding that leash and you got out of line, he’d whack you in the nose with a rolled-up Chicago
Trib
or rub your pink, wet little nose in your own shit, see if he didn’t.

Fabrini kept swallowing, looking around in the mist for a door that said EXIT and not finding one. “I don’t know, I don’t know what it was.”

“You hear that, Menhaus? He don’t know what it was. Fagbrini, you’re a goddamn moron, you know that?”

Ah, here we go.

Fabrini was filling up with that hatred that was just as dark as bootblack and just as searing as hot oil. His hand was going for that knife in his belt, because maybe he was thinking that this was it. This was the time he punched Saks’s ticket and Cook wasn’t there to talk reason and the other two — Menhaus and Crycek — were out of their heads more often than not and could have cared less if Fabrini killed that bullying, foul-mouthed sonofabitch.

Just as long as he did.

Saks sighed, really bored with it all. “Go ahead, Fabrini, pull that fucking blade,” he said, not bothering with his own knife. “Come over here and kill my ass. Personally, I don’t believe a neutered she-bitch like you is up to the job. But, go ahead, prove me wrong. Bring it on, you cheap ass-licker. Come on, I want to see this.”

Fabrini had his knife out, was never aware even for a moment that his buttons were being pushed and he was being manipulated by a master puppeteer.

He came on.

“Boy,” Menhaus said, “you two are starting to bore the piss out of me.”

Crycek said nothing, didn’t seem to realize any of it was happening.

“C’mon already, Fagbrini, kill me,” Saks said. “I’ll have the last laugh and you know it. Because when I’m gone, it’s going to be funny as all hell watching the three of you trying to survive out here.”

That slowed Fabrini. Stopped him, even.

You could see the doubt creeping over his face in the light of their final lantern. You could see the indecision. And finally, yes, you could hear that hot bag of air in his belly leaking.

“Go ahead,” Menhaus said, his eyes bloodshot and fixed, a crazy look about him like a guy on a three-day caffeine binge watching the WWF and wanting blood, wanting violence. “Slice the bastard! Nobody’s gonna stop you. Nobody’s gonna give a high, randy shit. You’ll be doing us all a favor shutting that goddamn mouth of his.”

Saks chuckled. “Sure, Fabrini, do what Fat-Boy says.”

Fabrini didn’t know what to do. Looked like he was ready to start chasing his own tail.

“Well?” Saks said. “No, I didn’t think so. Because without me, you three are dead as Menhaus’ dick and you know it.”

Fabrini put the knife away and took his seat up in the bow again. Saks had finally broken him and he knew it. He needed Saks. They all needed that macho, trash-talking asshole and it was a hell of a thing to have to admit to yourself. Like saying you needed a pushpin in your left nut or a needle through your tongue. It hurt about that much.

But it was true.

“Okay, then,” Saks said, happy now. “Since we’ve all come to the conclusion that none of you donkeyfucks could find your own wee peckers without rubbing your crotches with rock salt and seeing what turns red, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Fabrini wasn’t liking it, but he listened.

“Now, I’m in charge here whether you gay bastards like it or not. You don’t have to love me, but if you cooperate, I’ll keep your asses alive and maybe, just maybe I’ll get you out of this pissing sewer and back to your pathetic little lives. How does that suit you boys?”

Menhaus shrugged. “Yeah, whatever it takes.”

Saks turned to Fabrini. “How about you, Richard fucking Simmons?”

Fabrini managed a nod.

“Crycek?”

Crycek was staring out into the fog.

“Yeah, well, we’ll take that as a yes since you’re shit-crazy to begin with.”

So they sat there by lantern light in that lifeboat, listening to Saks’s view on the world in general which was about fifty-percent truth and about fifty-percent bullshit. But it was something. Unlike the others, he had not retreated into his shell, hoping somebody’d pull him back out again. He had some ideas and some scenarios on how they were going to stay alive and be one big happy-assed family.

They were deep into the weed now, into the ship’s graveyard like Cushing and the others. Although the fog was thicker than oatmeal and night had come on, black and eternal, they had seen things out there. The overturned hulls of ships, wreckage, an occasional glimpse of some old-time schooner or modern cutter rigged with fungus and weed, things like rotting old ghost ships. But never more than a glimpse. Just enough to make them realize that they were in a place of legend.

“Sooner or later, maybe when the night ends,” Saks said, “we’ll find us a decent ship. Something that hasn’t been here too long. And when we find that, we’ll call it home.”

“Home,” Menhaus said. “I like that.
Home.
Jesus.”

“Shut your hole,” Saks told him. “The point being we can’t drift around in this goddamn boat for the rest of our merry lives. We need something better. Something that might have a store of food and water, maybe some weapons or a good motor launch on her.”

“A base of operations,” Fabrini said.

“Exactly. That’s our first order of business. Find a place that’s dry and safe, then we can spend our time getting the lay of this place and weighing our options.”