“You feel better now?” Gosling said. “Good. Now knock it off for chrissake. We’re not dead yet.”
George kept treading water as if he didn’t trust the lifejacket. “Oh, you’re a real fucking comfort,” he panted.
“Quit splashing around,” Gosling told him. “Just lay back like me. The jacket’ll float you. All the racket might attract interest”
“Sharks?”
“No,” Gosling said. “That’s not what I was thinking exactly.”
And George honestly didn’t have the balls to follow that one up. Not sharks? What, then?
“Don’t panic. We’ll be fine. But there’s no sense in wasting energy treading water when you don’t have to.”
George swallowed and let himself float. It wasn’t bad. It was almost relaxing just bobbing there.
“Are there really sharks out here?” he asked.
“Who can say? This is the ocean, George, lots of things call it home. It’s a food chain like any other.”
Shit. “Will they get us?”
“Not if I can help it.” He must’ve sensed the panic in George’s eyes. “All right, listen to me and listen good. There are two things that attract sharks. The first is doing what you were doing – splashing around. What you’re doing when you do that is drawing attention to yourself. You’re acting like a fish in distress. You’re sending off the same signals. The second thing that attracts sharks is blood. They can smell it in the water. I’ve heard they can smell it for miles. So don’t thrash around and don’t bleed. Simple.”
George started checking out every ache and pain in his body to see if he had any cuts. He didn’t think so. “You didn’t cut your leg back there, did you?”
“No, I just twisted it. Relax. Wait for the dawn. We’ll be fine.”
And that was easy for him to say, George thought dismally. Big, tough sailor-boy. But George was no sailor and after this little party he was moving to fucking Kansas. He never wanted to see open water again. He didn’t think he’d ever even go swimming again. And if he did, there wouldn’t be anything bigger than tadpoles in said water, thank you very much.
Which made him start remembering things. The panic… the fire and screaming and confusion… the ship going down… sure, it had all blotted out other things for awhile, darker thoughts about that awful fog and the stories circulating concerning it. You know, all that cute, amusing stuff about the Devil’s Triangle and that sort of thing.
But now it was back.
Now it was digging down inside him and it had teeth.
He thought: What if any of that crazy hoodoo bullshit is true? It’s bad enough to abandon ship, but to abandon ship in some fucking crazy dead zone that chews up ships and men, swallows ‘em alive and kicking…
Jesus, it was all bad, wasn’t it?
And not just that weird fog and all the rest, but even the sea itself. So calm, so warm. Unnaturally warm, it seemed. And its consistency just wasn’t right. Not like water really, too oily, too thick, too something. Like it was full of suspended sediment, closer to gelatin than water. It left a slimy residue on the skin.
And it stank. Like something decomposing under a log.
George sucked in a sharp breath, tried to fight the fear, the uncertainty, tried to hold it all together which was not easy. Felt like his guts, his resolve was strung together out of thread and spit.
For now there was survival. Nothing more. He had to remember that.
“Do you think it’ll be long before we’re picked up?” George asked Gosling. And from the tone in his voice – a squeaky, breathless tone – he realized he sounded like some little kid that needed reassuring that there were indeed no monsters in the closet or under the bed.
“Depends” Gosling’s voice was practically a whisper. There was something very guarded about it.
“On what?”
“On a lot of things,” he said. “If the current pushes us out of the shipping lanes, it could be awhile. If it doesn’t, I would say a boat’ll be by any time. Probably in the morning or afternoon. Hopefully. If not, well, we’ll be reported overdue in Cayenne tomorrow night… or tonight actually.”
What George was hearing in his voice he did not like at all. It sounded like Gosling was reading from a script, like he didn’t believe a goddamn word of what he was saying. If there was an undercurrent there, it was saying, sure, George, they’ll be looking for us. Same way they look for lots of ships that vanish without a trace…
“How long will these jackets float us?”
“Long enough. Maybe.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry. First light we’ll have a look around, see what we can find. Should be lots of junk floating around. Usually is.”
George could see his silhouette in the murky light, figured he was lying his ass off about a lot of things. And maybe it wasn’t that exactly, but it was something. So George decided to bait him a bit: “Shouldn’t somebody be here by now? A rescue ship? A plane? A helicopter?”
“Why?”
“Because of the distress signal.”
Gosling exhaled sharply. “I think they might have a little trouble finding us. Being where we are.”
“Which is?”
But Gosling would not answer him. And that seemed to be the worst thing of all.
2
“You know something, Fabrini,” Saks said. “If they ever come out with an asshole of the year award, I’m putting you up for it.”
Fabrini gave him the finger even though it was invisible in the semi-darkness.
“You think anyone else made it?” Menhaus asked.
“Course they did,” was all Saks would say.
“Yeah, well don’t hold your breath,” Fabrini said sourly.
“Shut your hole, shit-fer-brains. I told you, I told the both of you to get to the freaking lifeboats. But did you?” Saks slapped his palm into the water. “No, you two ass guppies sat there clinging to each other like you were queer for each other. So you swapped some spit and fell in love and this is where it got us.”
“Fuck you,” Fabrini mumbled.
The three of them were clinging to a large wooden crate. In addition to their lifejackets, they were safe for the time being. Saks had found the two of them dog-paddling through the surf like confused puppies. With his usual grace he’d directed them away from the boat. Until Menhaus bumped his nose into the crate. Then the trouble started. Both Fabrini and Menhaus did their best to clamor onto it. No dice. The crate spun in the water. They started screaming and hollering, fighting each other to get on top – so much for their pledge of watching each other’s behinds. Saks had to intervene and explain to them just what sort of mud-bathing, shit-eating farmyard critters their mothers had had sex with to give birth to a couple of candy-assed losers like them. After a good five minutes of abuse, they calmed down. They clung to different sides of the crate. In this way, they could float peacefully and safely.
Menhaus was watching the fog, knowing there was something damn funny about it, but not wanting to point it out to the others. Hoping, maybe, that it was just his imagination. Nothing more.
“No, Menhaus,” Saks went on, “I just don’t know what you see in Fabrini. What makes you wanna tongue him all night is beyond me. He’s hung like a pencil stub and dumber than a box of stale rat shit. I don’t get it.”
Menhaus forced a chuckle.
“We get out of this, fuckface,” Fabrini ranted, “and me and you are going to have business. You know what I’m saying, asshole?”
“Yeah, I know what you’re saying, you little ass jockey,” Saks said in disgust. “And you should see me. I’m just blushing over here. I’ve never had my dick sucked by a wop before.”
