“Take it easy?” He uttered a short, sharp laugh that was more like the bark of a dog. It was flat and empty- sounding. Cook was glad, really glad he could not see Crycek’s face then, because he knew it would have been bad, a shroud chewed by lunacy. “Sure, I’ll take it easy. Out in that fog… we were hearing things. Things like voices calling us… awful, clotted voices spoken through mouths full of seaweed… and once, just the once, I heard laughter. A cackling laughter that almost finished me. And then, oh yes, then I saw something. I saw it and it saw me.”
Cook’s arms were full of gooseflesh. He could barely find his voice. “What? What did you see?”
But Crycek could only shake his head back and forth, make a weird whimpering sound low in his throat. “It… it was staring at me out of the fog. Something slimy and stinking with a long neck like a light post. It had a head, something like a head, but all curled-up like a snail shell. Jelly was dripping from it and there was some kind of growth hanging from it, like weeds or dangling roots, only they were crawling and twisting. And its eyes… oh dear God, those eyes, huge and yellow and wicked, staring at me, staring right into me like they meant to eat my soul raw…”
Crycek’s voice faded out and maybe he with it. He was shaking and making sobbing sounds, his fist shoved up against his mouth so maybe he wouldn’t scream his mind away.
Hupp began to moan and thrash.
“Easy,” Crycek said. “Easy… I won’t let it get you, I swear to God I won’t… when it comes for us, I’ll cheat it. Yes, I’ll cheat it.”
He started giggling then.
Cook had all he could do not to join him.
And then there was a sound.
Something was coming out of the fog.
9
It was Fabrini who saw the flare.
The flare Crycek fired off. And that’s how they found the lifeboat in the fog.
“Paddle, you goat fuck,” Saks snapped at Menhaus. “It’s a goddamn boat!”
“I’m doing my best,” Menhaus said under his breath.
“So do better.”
But it wasn’t easy. Not for any of them. Fabrini had sighted the boat just as Saks was asking him if his parents had any children that lived. They’d swung right into action, but it was tough going. It wasn’t easy to hang onto the wet, slimy crate and paddle your feet at the same time. And the crate wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to navigate or steer.
“Let’s just abandon it,” Menhaus panted, “and swim for it,”
“No way,” Fabrini said.
“He’s right, Menhaus. If we don’t make the boat and we ditch the crate, we won’t have anything. Keep going.”
Saks was getting damn tired of the both of them. Why, if this had to happen at all, couldn’t he have found himself adrift with say George Ryan or Cushing? Two smart guys there. They kept their wits about them. Not a couple of idiots like Menhaus and that dumb-fuck Fabrini. Fabrini was like some kind of poster child for incompetence and in-breeding. And Menhaus… Christ, what a piece of work. God must’ve been laughing when he brought those two into being. Some kind of heavenly practical joke. Fabrini’s old lady should’ve kept her legs closed… or dropped him into the toilet with the rest of the turds when the time came. One little flush and the world would have been spared so much.
“It’s one of the lifeboats,” Menhaus gasped. “From the ship.”
And it was. They could see someone – Saks thought it was Cook – waving and waving to them. There was someone else in there waving, too.
Why don’t the stupid fucks row over to us? Saks wondered.
He didn’t know why but he had a pretty good feeling he was going to have to knock a few melons together when he reached the boat. Goddamn lazy sonsofbitches. But it was just like Cook. A guy like that didn’t do squat until you told him so. When he took a shit, you had to show him which end to use.
“We’re going to make it,” Fabrini said.
“Yeah,” Saks said. “Your prayers worked, camel dung. What else did you wish for? A bunch of horny pirates to pick you up and gangrape you?”
“Your turn’s coming, Saks, just you wait.”
“Yeah, if you can get your tongue out of Menhaus’ bum long enough.”
They kept swimming, gripping the crate, and paddling with their feet. It was slow going and exhausting work, swimming through that turgid, oily slop but no one was complaining. They would’ve swam through a septic tank to get to that boat. It was the light at the end of the tunnel… or at least a glimmer of it.
“Okay,” Saks said, “swim for it! We don’t need the crate!”
They all pushed away and made a beeline for the boat which was mere yards away now. It seemed like the longest distance any of them had ever traversed.
“I can’t,” Menhaus panted, coming to a rest, feeling that water around him, warm and thick and oddly comforting. “I can’t… do.. . it.”
“Come on,” Fabrini said, grabbing him by the lifejacket and towing him along. “You can do it, goddammit. You can.”
“Oh, leave him,” Saks said. “Let the fishies play with him.”
They paddled and fought their way to the boat. Through that marshy, miasmic sea, fingers clawing through islands of decomposing seaweed. A yellow, rank mist rose from the water. When they reached the boat, each man was too exhausted to climb aboard. They just hung off the gunwale and sucked in sharp, salty breaths, feeling heavy like they’d been dipped in liquid cement.
“I’m glad you guys made it,” Cook said, unsmiling.
“You too,” Fabrini said.
“Thank God,” Menhaus rasped.
Saks rolled his eyes. “All right, girls. You can make love later. Into the boat before something takes a bite outta you.”
Cook helped pull each man into the boat. Saks was last. Cook pulled him aboard, but didn’t like the idea. You could see that. The look in his eyes said it all. And Saks knew right then who was going to be trouble. Who was going to need his ass straightened out.
“Nice to see you, too, dumbass,” he told Cook.
10
George could see nothing but the fog.
It was white and yellow and steaming, great congested patches of it blowing around the raft by a wind that he could not feel. Maybe it moved because it wanted to move. Maybe it was alive. Maybe it was intelligent and in that godawful place, the idea of something like that didn’t seem quite so preposterous as it would have in the real world. Because this was not the real world. Not Earth. Not the Earth George had known. Maybe it was Altair-4 or Rigel-3 or one of those other quaint science fiction sort of places, but it surely was not Earth. Earth did not have fog like this. It did not have scuttling crab/spider things with too many eyes that could run across the water. It did not have big things with glowing green eyes the size of hubcaps. It did not have weird, trilling things in the fog that sounded like giant insects. And, no, it did not have a sea that was like pink gelatin clogged with rotting seaweed and it surely did not have this fog.
Fog that swirled and swallowed and fumed, was lit with that phantasmal, dirty radiance. The fog hid things,
