everything in their path. Lifeboats went up like kindling. Men were blazing like torches. The big dozers were shrouded in fire. George saw four or five men dive off the writhing decks, stick matches consuming themselves.
The deck lights went out for good now.
They were no longer needed. The ship had become a flickering funeral pyre of orange and yellow billowing light, backlit by the mist.
There were flashes of purple and red light, more detonations from below, more flames, more dying and screams of agony. The air was reeking with a hot, raw stink of seared flesh and crackling thunderstorms.
“Come on!” George screamed over the jarring racket. “We gotta get off her before she goes!”
They got unsteadily to their feet as the ship lurched further and further to port, the mangled decks dipping down to the water line. There was a sudden awful blaring noise of screeching metal as both of the dozers snapped their moorings and slid across the decks, taking howling, crushed men with them as they burst through the railing and into the black waters below. Huge fireballs cascaded into the night.
George and the others ran towards the bow, vaulting the injured and the dying as the ship heaved. Jagged fissures opened up before them, swallowing one of the graders and four men who’d been trying to toss a lifeboat over the side. Their screams split the air.
“Over the side!” George screamed. “Now!”
“I can’t swim,” Soltz blubbered. “I’m afraid to-”
George shoved him into the darkness and planted his foot on Cushing’s backside. Both men careened to the waters below, vanishing into the fog. George took one last look around before doing the same. The ship was going down fast. It seemed he could almost feel it sinking. The decks and cabins were raging with fire now. He gripped the railing and made to jump.
But stopped.
Someone was calling for help.
Just go, goddamn you, a voice cried out in his head.
But he couldn’t. This one voice seemed to rise up above everything else and he couldn’t ignore it. He jogged through the smoke and pillars of fire. The voice was louder. It was coming from up near the superstructure… or the jagged pile of burning shrapnel it now was.
“Help me out of here,” Gosling moaned. “For the love of God…”
His ankle was trapped between two timbers. George wrapped his hands around the upper one, the encroaching fire singing the hairs of his beard. With a great heave he budged it an inch, two inches, three. Gosling pulled his leg free.
They made it to the railing together.
“Over the side!” Gosling shrieked.
Another explosion rocketed through the night and both men were catapulted into the sea along with shards of steaming metal and burning wood. There was that dizzying moment of descent, lost in the fog and blackness, then the water. The sea was warmer than George anticipated. Warm and soupy, yet oddly refreshing after the heat of the ship. He plunged down into the waters, sinking and sinking, wondering why the lifejacket wasn’t working, and then he surfaced, sucking in smoky, salty air. Something gripped his shoulder and he realized it was Gosling’s hand.
“Swim!” he gasped. “Swim away from her!”
29
George followed in Gosling’s wake, distancing himself from the ship, realizing the vacuum of it going down would probably pull him under if he didn’t. The water was bobbing with wreckage. It was like swimming through an obstacle course. He heard voices crying out. Heard voices answering. At least they weren’t alone in their plight. The sea was flat as a tabletop… but the water itself… odd. Not just warm, but turgid, thick… water but not water as George knew it. But there was no time for observations. He kept up with Gosling and soon the ship was a flaming silhouette in the distance.
“We’re okay now,” Gosling panted. “Far enough.”
George watched the Mara Corday give up her ghost.
The fog was still a constant, but visibility had improved. The ship had listed now until its port gunwale practically touched the water. Then there was a booming rush of fountaining bubbles and she righted herself. For a second. The bow sank lower and lower, waves rushing up and over it. The stern rose up vertically like a jutting black finger and then she went down with an enormous hissing, leaving a sucking whirlpool in her wake. A few moments later, more cargo and flotsam bobbed to the surface.
Then there was only the cloisterous fog pressing in and that stillborn, tideless sea.
PART TWO
THE DRIFT
1
George’s first impression was that he and Gosling were alone out there.
His second impression was a feeling: panic.
Combined, these things made him want to scream and thrash like some little kid drowning in a bathtub. But slowly, slowly, he got it under control. He was with Gosling. Gosling was an experienced sailor
… if anyone could keep him alive and get him to dry land, it would be the First Mate. That provided a certain sense of security. It wasn’t exactly something you could wrap yourself up in and go to sleep with, but it was something.
They heard voices in the distance from time to time, but when they called out no one answered. There were a few bits of scattered light from burning objects still afloat, but one by one, they went out. And then all there was was that ever-present fog, thick and roiling. It still had that odd luminosity to it… like it was backlit by the glowing beam of some distant lighthouse. If nothing else, it provided scant illumination.
Just enough, George figured, to make everything look weird and surreal.
And creepy.
Because there was no other word to describe it. For that’s exactly how it looked out there with that fog and the odd glow: creepy.
Sure, George was trying damn hard not to panic, but the bottom line here was that they were out in the middle of fucking nowhere without a lifeboat or a life raft and it was night and by dawn their life jackets would be saturated and they’d drown. That is if the sharks didn’t get them first. His mind had already sketched that particular nightmare out in some detail. He kept remembering scenes from that movie where the big shark gobbles people up. He kept wondering what it would feel like when those teeth sank into him. Would it be a big goddamn shark that would swallow him whole or would it be a smaller monster that would maybe bite his leg off? He’d seen a show once where a shark did that to a shipwreck victim. It just kept coming around, taking bites and pieces.
Oh, Jesus.
This can’t be fucking happening, he thought frantically. This only happens to guys on the late movie. Shit like this doesn’t come down on normal guys like me who run bulldozers for a living and are just trying to keep the creditors at bay-
“HELP!” he started screaming. “IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? GODDAMN YOU ANSWER ME RIGHT NOW FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST!”
There was no answer. Just that brooding silence. And that odd sort of humming he could hear from time to time.
