On the lifeboat, it was pretty much the same thing:
“What is that shit?”
Crycek looked over where Saks was pointing. There was a clumpy expanse of yellow weeds, floating stalks and bladders. “Gulf weed,” he said. “It’s all over the Atlantic.”
“Don’t look like Gulf weed to me.”
Crycek smiled. “No? What do you think it is?”
Saks said, “Hell if I know.”
“Sometimes things look like one thing when they’re actually another,” Crycek said, just filled with mysticism or dementia… take your pick.
Which got Saks glaring at him. “No shit? And sometimes sailors look like men, but they’re really pussies looking for their mama’s tit. Ain’t that right, Crycek?”
Cook sighed. Crycek was baiting Saks. He’d been baiting them all since Saks and his crew had climbed aboard the lifeboat. It was a game to him, you see. His mind was getting softer than a pumpkin two weeks past Halloween and now he was acting like a little boy with a dread, dirty secret. Only he wasn’t going to tell, because that’s not how it worked. So he just kept needling the others, hinting at dark things and unseen things and just plain awful things. Hinting, mind you, but never framing said terrors into words.
Crycek was not only losing it, Cook decided, he’d already lost it.
Hupp was dead now, tossed overboard under Saks’s direction with all the ceremony of an emptied chamber pot. And that had been the catalyst, Cook figured. Only Hupp and caring for him had kept Crycek’s oars in the water. Even then, he was on the verge of hysteria, but it had been something. Something to call his own. Something to balance out the madness. Now, however, there was nothing. And Crycek was giving into his dementia like a junkie giving into the needle, knowing that all things were eventual somehow.
Cook had been noticing that the clumps of weeds were getting more and more numerous now. The one in question Saks was studying was a little island easily six feet in circumference. And, no, it didn’t look much like Gulf weed or any other weed Cook had ever seen before. It was a collection of matted, weedy growths, stalks and bladders, and white greasy-looking pustules about the size of teacups that looked very much like the caps of Death Angel mushrooms. And maybe the strangest and most disconcerting thing was it had a red jelly glistening on it like snot.
Maybe it was perfectly harmless.
Maybe.
“Hey, Fabrini,” Saks said. “Why don’t you jump in there and play with it? Take Menhaus with you. Maybe you two can catch a nice fish for supper. That last one… boy, now that was a real keeper.”
“Why don’t you piss up a rope?”
“You wanna suck on my what?” Saks said.
Menhaus laughed nervously.
Crycek just grinned.
Cook and Menhaus caught each other’s eyes for a moment and they were both thinking the same thing: this was trouble. There was tension here. Something that might turn violent and bloody at any moment. A poisoned sore ready to burst, ready to spread infection throughout the body… the body in this case being the sum total of those in the boat. Maybe they were disguising it with this high school locker room banter, but there was bad blood between Saks and Fabrini. A potentially volatile situation brewing. Saks was staying in the stern and Fabrini in the bow, but sooner or later Saks was going to mouth off and Fabrini was going to be all over him. You could see it in Fabrini’s eyes. The festering hate that was just waiting, waiting for the right moment like a tiger deciding when to unsheath its claws and open some bellies.
“Sure,” Crycek said. “Why don’t you touch that stuff, Fabrini? That would be interesting. What do you suppose would happen if you touched that stuff?”
But Fabrini wasn’t having it. The smile on his face was like a paper cut, just a slit. You could see it in his eyes, how he was getting damn tired of Crycek, too. Was maybe thinking that after he punched Saks’s fucking ticket he was going to do the same with Crycek, just keep it up, keep it up.
Menhaus said, “I just wish we’d drift free of this shit already.”
“You hear that, Fabrini? Menhaus wants us to drift free of this shit already,” Saks said. “What do you suppose the chances of that are?”
“About the same as you getting a personality,” Fabrini said.
Which got Saks laughing. “You’re great, Fagbrini, you’re really great. Why didn’t your old man shoot his load into the sink and save us all this grief?”
That almost did it. Fabrini’s eyes went dark and simmering, like hot tar bubbling up from a crevice. He looked about as close to murder as anyone Cook had ever seen. But then that look melted from his eyes and that smile came back, only it was sharp enough now to slit a throat. “Keep it up, Saks. Just keep it up,” was all he said.
“I always do. Just ask your mother.”
Crycek was still grinning. He couldn’t seem to lose that grin any more than a clown could lose one painted on his face. “Childish. You’re both so goddamn childish. You sit and argue and call each other fucking names while we drift farther into the mouth of Hell. Because that’s where we’re all going, each and everyone of us, right into Hell. And you know what, Menhaus? We’re never getting out. Never, ever.” He started giggling with a high, jittery sound that seemed to have the same tonal quality as fingernails scraping a blackboard. “Just like… heh, heh… just like Alice in Wonderland, eh? We went through the looking glass and now there’s no way out, no way at all.”
“Shut up,” Saks told him. “Goddamn freak.”
“No, no,” Fabrini said. “Let him speak. Let him get it off his chest. Maybe it’s about high time somebody around here speaks what’s really on their minds, really tells the truth.” Cook said, “Everyone’s overwrought.”
“Shut up, moron,” Saks told him. “Okay, Crycek. Spill it. You’ve been chewing on a bone ever since we came aboard, so out with it. What kind of crazy shit have you got for us?”
Crycek didn’t like that. Didn’t like being called crazy any more than a prostitute likes being called a whore. Because sometimes the truth not only hurts, it wounds, it scars. “What bone have I been chewing on? Same one you’ve all been chewing on, except not a one of you has the balls to come out and admit it. You’re all scared, you’re scared fucking white and I know it. I can see it in your eyes. Shit, I can smell it on you. You’re all ready to piss your pants! Big tough construction workers scared like little old ladies of the dark! I love it! I just fucking love it! Look how I love it!”
Cook said, “C’mon, Crycek… take it easy for chrissake. We’re your friends here.”
That got Saks laughing. “Friend? I ain’t his friend, Cook, anymore than I’m yours. And I also ain’t his mommy and ain’t about to baby this goddamn pussy.”
“Jesus Christ, Saks,” Fabrini said. “Give the guy a break.”
“Kiss my ass, you dumb wop. And that goes for the rest of you fucking sissies. Jesus H. Christ. Not a man among you.” He looked over at Crycek, looked at him like the very idea of his existence disgusted him. “Go ahead, Crycek. Vent yourself. Have your little nervous breakdown. When you decide you’ve got the balls to slit your wrists, I’ll give you the knife. Hell, I’ll hold it for you.”
Cook was beginning to feel tense and uncomfortable now, too. It was like reality and sanity were sewn together and some crazy bastard was pulling the seams open. He felt alone and paranoid and vulnerable.
Maybe they all felt that.
For if there had ever been any camaraderie here, it had just gone black to its core. Saks was a big part of that, of course. He was the proverbial rotten apple, the seed of malice. Sure, he was everything that was wrong with the race, all the intolerance and selfishness and cheap hatred rolled into a big fucking mess that called itself a man. Survival situations, like war, brought out the best and worst in people. And there was no doubt where Saks fit in. He was vile and crude and callous, the sort of guy that would slit your throat for a crust of bread.
And wasn’t it just damn funny, Cook got to thinking, how trash like him always survived? Always lived another day to poison a few more minds?
But if any of Saks’s cruelty was intended to make Crycek fold up like a flower in a frost, it just didn’t work. “That’s what I like about you Saks… you’ve got the biggest mouth of the bunch. Thrusting your chest out and running the others down, big boss man, big tough guy… and you know what’s really funny about that? What’s killing me is that you’re the most scared of all. You hide behind that macho shit because inside you’re a scared little boy… we weren’t here to show off for, you’d be crying and sucking your thumb.”
