Before anyone could move, he ran to the railing. They saw him as a dim form convulsing in the fog. And then he threw himself over into the sea.
“Sonofabitch!” Saks said, breaking the spell. “Man overboard! Man fucking overboard!”
But no one came.
And everybody just stood there, not knowing what in the hell to do. To a man, nobody even moved an inch toward that spot where he’d gone over. Yes, they’d all been watching him, wanting to help him, but the screams, the blood, the very nightmarish absurdity of the whole situation had kept them from doing anything. They just watched. For it almost appeared as if he’d been pulled over the railing, rather than jumped of his own accord. And the splashing they heard… huge, echoing splashes… it didn’t seem like a man could make that kind of noise. It sounded more like somebody had dropped a car into the drink.
There was complete silence for a moment or two.
It was like everything was suspended, locked down tight and motionless. You could hear the water, something that might have been a distant drone of wind, the faint thrum of the engines, but nothing more.
“Man overboard,” one of the sailors said very quietly. “Man overboard. There’s a man overboard.”
But no one seemed concerned.
Reality had taken a beating in the last few minutes and it was still reeling, still trying to find its proper footing and the men with it.
“He’s gone,” Saks said. “Even if we turned this crate around, we’d never find him. Not in this.”
“Oh dear God,” Menhaus said. “That man.”
One of the sailors ran off and a few seconds later an alarm began to sound. It was high and whining like an air raid siren. The sort of thing that went right up your spine, filled your head, made you want to grind your teeth and squint your eyes.
Despite the racket, everyone started talking at once. Talking almost in low tones like they didn’t want the others to hear what they were saying.
Fabrini had his own way of dealing with the unreal, the frightening. He got angry. “This is bullshit,” he said, walking around in a loose circle. “This is fucking bullshit. We’ve gotta turn back. You hear me? We gotta turn back. I ain’t gonna die like that.”
“Like what?” Saks said.
“Yeah,” Menhaus said. “We don’t even know what happened.”
Fabrini realized they were all staring at him. His swarthy skin had an almost moonish pallor to it now. “You heard that guy for chrissake! All of you heard him! You heard what the fuck he was saying! Get it off me, get it off me! He was bleeding like somebody stuck a knife in him! Something got him, right? Something must’ve bit him!”
Saks rolled his eyes. “For the love of Christ, Fabrini, the guy was nuts. He probably slit his own fucking wrists or something.”
No one argued with that hypothesis. It was neat and tight and safe. It made sense. You could fit it into a box, close the lid, and be sure it wouldn’t get back out again. And it was much better than the alternative and nobody even wanted to consider that. At least not openly. Not yet.
Saks looked around carefully. He didn’t like any of this. He’d seen situations like this in the war. Times when the shit hit the fan from every which direction and the tension was so high you could feel it pulsing from man to man in an unbroken circuit. And when things got that stressed out, men cracked. Men started thinking crazy shit and somebody didn’t throw water on it and quick, they started doing crazy shit. And particularly when you had some nut like Fabrini running around feeding their fears, saying the crazy, dangerous things that were on everyone’s minds. And when that happened… mass hysteria soon set in and people got hurt.
Already he could see everyone pairing off in twos and threes, getting paranoid, not trusting their neighbors. Trench mentality. Jesus H. Christ. Saks didn’t need that shit. There was a job needed to be done in French Guiana and he needed these boneheads to do it. A lot of money was riding on the contract and Saks wasn’t about to let somebody screw him out of that. After it was done? Then he didn’t care, they could de-nut each other with potato peelers, they wanted to. But not now.
Not just yet.
“All right, you guys,” he said in a loud, sure voice because he had none other. “Quit acting like a bunch of schoolgirls and try acting like men. That goes double for you, Fabrini. You wanna suck dick and wear a dress, you do it on your own time. Not mine. Everything’s fine here.”
There was a rabble of conflicting viewpoints.
“Fine?” one of the sailors said. “Fine? A guy I knew for three goddamn years just lost his mind and jumped overboard and you call that fine?”
“We got to get out of here,” his buddy said. “You know, I got a wife and kids and, shit, I can’t be doing this. I can’t get involved in this.”
Saks wanted to ask him what, what exactly couldn’t he be doing or getting involved in. Because nobody knew what any of this was. And as far as he was concerned they were just lost in a freak fogbank and that was that. But he didn’t push it. Didn’t ask the guy because they were all thinking the same thing and he knew it. They were all thinking that something had gone seriously sour here… only nobody knew just how or why.
Everything seemed unreal, dreamlike, the world as they knew it veering out of control, heading for some dark abyss that would suck them down and fill their lungs with black silt. And through it all, that siren kept shrilling through the fog like the warning cry of some prehistoric bird circling its nest.
The sailor’s face had gone all rubbery. “You know I got kids and I don’t know what any of this is about… I don’t like it, I don’t like any of this… people going crazy and us almost getting poisoned down there. What kind of way is that to run a fucking ship? I
… I gotta get out of here… this is all wrong and I don’t know why, but my wife and my fucking kids and aren’t any of you going to do a goddamn thing here but just stare… Jesus, what the hell is this?” He looked around from face to face and knew they were all thinking he was going nuts, but they were all wrong because he was just fine, it was they who were out of touch here. “Are you all going to just stand there or what?” he shouted at them. “C’mon, get us out of here, will ya?”
Saks laughed at him. “You wanna go home?”
“Damn straight I do,” the guy said.
“Well, it’s your lucky day because I just happen to have a helicopter shoved up my ass,” Saks said. “You get me a greasy spoon and I’ll pop that prick out for you, you goddamn pussy.”
That got a few chuckles, defused the situation a bit and that had been Saks’s plan all along. But it wouldn’t last and he knew it.
Sure, the electricity was rising again, Saks saw. Surging and crackling. The group of men before him were on the verge of mob violence only they were all so goddamn confused they didn’t know who or what to take it out on.
The sailor wrapped his arms around himself and was shuddering uncontrollably. His teeth were chattering and there was drool running from his lips. “You,” he said in an airless voice. “Look at all of you. Standing there. Doing nothing. Just waiting to go crazy! Just waiting for that thing to get you, too!”
“C’mon, buddy,” Saks said, putting his arms out to the sailor and indicating to the others with his eyes to do the same. “You need some rest.”
The sailor didn’t fight. The fact that so many people were suddenly concerned about him did wonders. Four or five of his mates helped him below and this very action seemed to calm everyone.
The siren had ended now and the ship was slowing.
Menhaus said, “What was he talking about? What thing?”
“Crazy talk, dipshit. Don’t worry about it,” Saks said. “Now, listen, everyone. Let’s quit acting like a bunch of old ladies and get something going here. You sailors got jobs to do and you better get to ‘em before the captain reams your asses clean. Let’s go.”
Everyone slowly went below decks again. Saks was proud of the way he handled things. But if there was nothing else in this world he was good at, it was handling men and handling trouble. He’d done it in the war and he’d been doing it ever since. Holding hands and kicking asses. He was good at it.
He looked at his own crew. Menhaus and Fabrini stood motionless, wind-up soldiers waiting to be put into action. Ropes of fog clung to them like scarves. “Let’s go find that goddamn captain and see what kind of shit we’re
