All Fabrini did was laugh. And that laughter was bitter and haunted, filled with cynicism and a hint of stark madness. “You still think we’re on earth, Saks? That what you think? Well, guess again, because we got sucked into some dark closet just this side of hell and we ain’t ever getting out.”
“Shit,” Menhaus said. “Oh, shit…”
“Don’t listen to him, Menhaus. Don’t let him get to you. See? That’s what he wants. He wants to tear your guts out, wants to bring you down to his level,” Saks said, trying to sound smart and urbane and sympathetic, maybe more than a little superior. “Guys like Fabrini, they don’t have any balls. They wander through their pathetic, empty lives trying to make up for their little dicks-”
“Go fuck yourself, Saks, you goddamn idiot,” Fabrini said, derailed by the master once again.
Menhaus looked from one to the other in the gloom as they traded insults, ran down each other’s manhood and mothers. He felt like a metal filing caught between two magnets. And down deep, he was starting to really wonder which of them was the craziest.
“My watch is reading almost eight in the morning,” Fabrini said. “If you’re so smart, Saks, then why ain’t the sun coming up?”
“You’re watch is fucked,” he lied. “Besides, in this pea soup, you won’t even see the sun.”
That got Fabrini laughing. “Oh really? Why don’t you just admit it, Saks, the sun don’t come up in this place. It’s always dark and foggy and out there, out in that damn fog, there’s things that’ll chew your insides out…”
Menhaus was trying not to listen, but it was all bouncing around inside his head, tearing things up. “It’ll come up… the sun has to come up, don’t it, Saks?”
“Sure. Sure it will. Once it burns this fog off, then we’ll be able to see where we are. The others’ll be able to see us, too.”
Fabrini barked that cynical laugh again. “Yeah, and so will whatever got the other boat…”
7
Thing was, nobody knew where they were.
They thought things and they said things and they repeated maritime horror tales, but not a one of them could truly guess the severity of their situation or how far it was they were from home.
Yet, each man hoped against hope. Each one carried a vision of the gleaming ship that would whisk them away to civilization. They would be given dry clothes. Beds. There would be mugs of coffee and cool water. Tables piled abundantly with eggs and pancakes, ham and bacon, bread and fruit, steak and potatoes, pie and cake.
They hoped, but none of them really expected it to happen.
They expected torment and death. They expected thirst and drowning. They expected starvation. They expected suffering in all its guises and, yes, they expected things to come at them out of the mist, the sort of things that had crawled alive and breathing from nightmares and cellars and dank, dark places.
And on this matter, they were right.
8
Cook figured he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew Crycek was digging in the supply compartments of the lifeboat. He could hear him swearing under his breath and then the boat rocked slightly as he stood up, saying, “Here! Here! Jesus Christ, we’re over here!”
He raised something up above his head, something like a cylinder, and there was a muted pop and overhead, far up in that swirling vortex of mist, a flare burst in a shower of red sparks. It drifted through the fog, creating darting shadows and casting flickering bands of red-orange light. In that eerie, strobing illumination you could see just how thick that fog was. How it was composed of billowing layers pressed upon layers like blankets of smoky ether.
“What is it?” Cook asked, springing up now. “A plane? Did you see a plane or a ship?”
Crycek just watched that flare drift off, slowly sinking into the swamp of fog, his face lit by muted flashes of red light that were going yellow now.
“What did you see?” Cook asked again.
Sighing, Crycek sank back in his seat. “I… I’m not sure. It was a light, high up there, a light passed over us.”
Cook licked his lips. They were suddenly very dry. Like chalk. “A light? What sort of light? Like a searchlight?”
But Crycek shook his head, said it wasn’t that kind of light. It was sort of bluish, funny, just a glowing ball of blue light… that he didn’t hear any engine noise. Not a thing. Just the light, the light.
Cook didn’t like it, wasn’t entirely sure why. Only that, yes, it unnerved him. A blue glowing light, but no sound of engines? Not a helicopter or plane then… because you would have heard it in this godawful graveyard silence. But if not a chopper or a plane… then what? And he supposed that’s what was getting to him. Crawling down into his guts and making something sharp prod at his bowels, making them want to void right down his leg.
Something flying up there… something glowing… something that did not make a sound.
“Gone now,” Crycek said, sounding very much like he wanted to break down and cry. “It’s gone now and we’re still here, still in this fucking fog.”
Cook wanted to reassure him… but what was there to reassure him about? He was right: they were still in that fucking fog.
But at least, he thought, we have not been seen yet.
Again, he wasn’t entirely sure why he was thinking things like that, letting that scratching paranoia open him up in all the wrong places, but he was. Because here, in this world of fog and stink and steaming rank sea, maybe keeping your head down, maybe hiding and not being seen… maybe that was the best you could hope for.
Cook popped another lightstick, took a good look at Hupp’s wounds. Crycek was cradling his head in his lap, stroking his brow. Cook looked at him and what passed between them was a prognosis and it wasn’t good. Most of the hair was singed from Hupp’s head including his left eyebrow. His face discolored by a livid purple bruise. There was dried blood on his mouth, some of it around his nose and ears. The skin of his chest and arms was raw and hurting. Where it wasn’t raw it was scorched and blackened. Rivulets of sweat ran down his brow. He was shaking and shivering. Now and again, he would moan. There was a heat coming off him, feverish and sickening… and the smell, a hot sour stink like the breath of a dying man.
“No chance is there?” Cook said.
“Not unless we get picked up real soon.”
Cook licked his lips. “What are the chances of that?”
Crycek just stared at him. “What do you think?”
“I’m just asking because you’re a sailor.”
Crycek shrugged. “Good, I guess, if someone picked up our distress signal. If that’s the case, someone’ll be along soon. Should’ve been here by now really. And there’s always the radio beacons. All the rafts and boat have ‘em. They begin transmitting the moment they hit water.”
But Crycek had already explained those. They were called EPIRBs, Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons. They pulsed signals over marine and aviation distress frequencies. Class A EPIRBs also transmitted a signal that could be picked up by the SARSAT satellite. The lifeboat had one that started working the moment it hit the water. Cook himself had started the manual unit he found in the emergency equipment by following the directions on the container.
“And there’s the radio, of course,” Crycek said, his voice not much above a whisper now. “All those distress calls we’ve been sending
… if there’s anybody out there, they’ll hear ‘em.”
And that’s exactly what Crycek said word for word, but what Cook was hearing was more along the lines of:
