“You brought it in!” Fabrini snapped at Menhaus. “Drag that fucker out!”
“I ain’t touching it,” he said.
“Keep away from it,” Cook warned them. “I don’t trust those whiskers… they could sting.”
Saks just watched it, wondering what sort of sewer of evolution it had wriggled from. Something like that… it had no right to live.
Its pectoral fins were spines like the tail, webbed with pink flesh, but the lower pelvic fins were something between fins and stubby walking legs. And back toward the caudal, there were tiny appendages which could have been nothing but swimmerets like those of a crayfish.
But for all of this, it seemed to be a fish.
Somehow. Some way. For it was incontrovertibly fish-like.
“Jesus Christ,” Fabrini cried. “Somebody kill that fucking thing!”
And they all wanted to, for it was so incredibly appalling that it offended them on some basal level. It was a horror. Something that had slithered out of the backwash of a primeval sea… snaking and undulating and disgusting. But nobody dared get near it.
Saks took up an oar, staring down at it, figuring it would be up to him to smash this monstrosity.
It was dying now, he could see that much. Getting sluggish and dopey. It wouldn’t last much longer. Each of those plates or segments were expanding to take in air, deflating again with slushy sounds. He figured it didn’t have the normal forward gill slits of a fish, but that the openings between the segments must have been gills of some sort.
“Get the hell out of my way,” he told Fabrini, moving around it with the oar.
Hupp was moaning, gagging, sounding like he was going to wretch. He slid out of Crycek’s grip and Crycek let out a little cry… but too late. Hupp’s leg got too close to the fish and those whipping barbels grazed the open flesh, leaving red vertical blisters like blood poisoning or burns. Hupp screamed and flopped and blood came from his mouth. His leg where the barbels had grazed it went blue as a blister, then black. Swelling up like bread dough. He shuddered and slumped over, dead as dead can be.
Nobody said anything.
Nobody did anything.
Crycek whimpered a bit, but didn’t touch Hupp’s body. Was afraid to, maybe.
Saks was watching that thing.
It had no eyes, but all those whiskers or whips were ringed around a flat, flabby gash further in which he supposed was a mouth. Each time the plates expanded to take a breath, that repulsive mouth yawned wide. There were things in there, maybe tongues but looking more like a nest of slender blue worms.
Saks figured then how this sucker hunted.
It used those wormy-tongues to lure in fish much as an alligator snapping turtle did with its own tongue. And once prey got past that flabby cave of a mouth, those whips would come in and seize it, inject it with some nerve agent that would paralyze it. For that’s what those red thorns were: nematocysts, stinging cells like those of jellyfish. Those whips acted like the tentacles of a sea anemone… they captured and killed what the tongues lured in. Saks figured that might explain the thing’s fins… they were like legs because it probably crawled over the bottom.
“You sure you ain’t gonna filet this bastard?” he said to Menhaus and Menhaus stupidly shook his head as if it had been an option he decided against.
Saks stood near the fish… but not too near.
It was growing very still now. Even the whiskers were barely shuddering. And there was a ripe, decomposing stench wafting off it like a bucket of steaming entrails. Saks brought up the oar and smashed it down on the head. Those plates weren’t as rugged as he first thought. The impact of the oar split one like a peanut shell.. . black, inky fluid oozing out. He brought the oar up and then down, crushing those barbels to paste. He kept hammering at it until it ruptured completely open, pissing a stew of meaty organs and black juice and vomiting out a bile of yellow jelly.
Opened up like that, it didn’t smell too sweet.
Fabrini upchucked over the gunwale.
Menhaus was green as moss.
Cook, however, was unmoved by any of it. If he was anything more than offended by the fish, he would not let Saks see it. He sat in the stern, eyes hard as forged iron. Pale and pinched-looking, but nowhere near as bad as the others.
“Who’s gonna clean up this fucking mess?” Saks asked. “How about you, Cook?”
Cook offered him a thin smile. “Not likely.”
“Well,” Saks said, dipping his oar in the water and washing it off best he could, “guess it falls to you, Menhaus. Be careful of them tentacle-things. They still can sting. Hurts like a motherfucker, too. Just ask Hupp.”
Menhaus looked like he was going to be sick, but he knew that he’d pulled the job. He brought the fish in and he would have to throw it back out. It took him a few moments to get his stomach under control, but when he did he went right over to the fish and, using the gloves, took hold of its tail and heaved it over the side. The fish bobbed there for a few seconds, then slowly began to sink.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said to them. “Goddamn babies. Just a fish”
But then all there was to do was think about Hupp’s corpse and what they were going to do with it. And nobody seemed to want to touch that one. No one but Saks. While the others looked at just about anything else, Saks eyed the handle of a knife sticking out of Hupp’s boot. Making sure no one was looking, he plucked it free and stuck it in his own boot.
Nobody seemed to notice.
Except Cook. He saw it, of course. But Saks flashed him a smile, just to let that sono-fabitch know that he had his number. That when the time came, he’d be punching his ticket.
“What about Hupp?” Fabrini finally said.
But got no reply.
So Saks said, “Looks like we’re a little shy on a good burying hole, so he goes over the side.”
“You… you can’t do that,” Crycek stammered.
“Why not?”
“Jesus Christ, Saks, we should say something,” Fabrini said.
“Okay, you’re right. Goodbye, Hupp.” Saks seemed to find it amusing. “There. I said something.”
“You’re an asshole,” Cook told him, meaning it.
Saks grinned. “Good, glad you feel that way. You can help… take him by the feet there. On the count of three…”
12
Since they’d gotten on the hatch cover, Cushing had heard it all again and again. Soltz had a nervous stomach, sensitive skin, arthritis in both knees, countless allergies, angina, myopia, a scalp condition, and was prone to gingivitis, bladder infections, and unexplainable pains in his legs. He was like a walking textbook of hypochondria. Back on the ship, he’d had medications for all these things-pills, salves, drops-but now he had nothing.
And he made sure Cushing knew it.
Cushing didn’t know how much more he could take. Soltz was bad enough with his constant litany of complaints and ailments, but there were worse things happening than that. And the bottom line was that they were trapped in some terrible ocean and Cushing was pretty sure it wasn’t a backwash of the Atlantic.
He kept telling Soltz not to worry. That the fog would lift and they’d be rescued… but how much longer could he keep that up?
“There really is no chance, is there?” Soltz said.
“Sure there is,” Cushing lied once again. “Patience is the key. You just gotta be patient.”
