8
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.”
Nobody argued with any of that. One thing at a time.
Menhaus and Fabrini began debating what kind of place this was, to have all those ships trapped in the weeds.
“Sargasso Graveyard,” Saks told them. “That’s what the old salts called this place. The Sargasso Graveyard. Even the big steamships and diesel jobs end up here… they run out of fuel and drift into this cesspool. No way out. Then the weed grows all over ‘em. But some of these ships, well, they have to have motorboats on ‘em. That’s what we want.”
“Graveyard,” Crycek said. “That’s exactly what this place is: a graveyard.”
“Lots of dead ships out there,” Menhaus said. “And lots of dead crews to go with them, I’ll bet.”
The idea of that paled Fabrini somewhat.
But that wasn’t what Saks wanted to talk about. He wanted to mention that other craft they had seen. The very thing that had prompted this entire line of conversation. Because they had seen something jutting from the weed and it was like nothing any of them had ever seen before.
