say which was the worst. That which you could see and which could kill you… or that which remained unseen that slowly ate away your mind, your resolve, your sanity. And then, according to Crycek’s psychosis, there was that forbidding third grouping: that which you could not only see, but what could see you. Could feel you. And to this devil, if Crycek was correct, flesh and blood were of only marginal interest. What it wanted were minds to fill with gnawing pestilence and souls it could eat raw and squirming.
George Ryan was not in the lifeboat and he didn’t need to be, for he had felt this other and more than once. He could sense it on the VHF, something hidden in that static like a hive of wasps hidden in the trunk of a blasted oak. Something that used the static for camouflage or maybe was the static itself. Both, maybe, and neither.
The easiest thing to do was to tell yourself that you were being paranoid, imagining soul-eating bogies out in that draping fog. For imagining such a thing under such conditions was perfectly natural. For the human mind was like that, wasn’t it?
If it had no answers, it created them.
It filled in the blanks so it didn’t burn out circuits and relays trying to answer that which was ultimately unanswerable. Maybe there was no discarnate intelligence out there, no depraved puppet master working the strings. Maybe it was just nature, raw and ravenous and alien. Such a thing was entirely possible, George decided. But it did not satisfy that very human sort of logic that declared that there always had to be someone in charge, if not God then the Devil and if neither of them, something vile and nameless so above us on the evolutionary scale that it might as well have been a god.
Humans had need of such higher powers.
Maybe it was because our society was empirical, based on social pecking order and always had been. Everything had to have levels and classes, we decided, a food chain of sorts. And every food chain had its apex predator… the big guy, the boss man, the chief.
And in that awful void of fog and nightmares, well, there had to be one, too. It definitely was not man so it had to be something else. For the idea of a place existing, being left under the chaotic charge of old Mother Nature… that was not acceptable.
For every ship had a captain and there had to be one here, too.
Didn’t there?
Well, didn’t there?
Yes, George had been thinking these things, trying to root out superstitious fear with modern weapons like reason and hard-headed logic. He’d come up with a pretty good theory to explain away this theoretical Fog-Devil. But he had to. There really was no choice in the matter. If you didn’t erect some kind of wall between yourself and the unexplainable, well… you were going to be in trouble. And especially here. George had gone through it for a time after hearing that phobic white noise. It had gotten to him. Gotten to him bad. Gotten to him to the point that he had pulled down inside himself, crouched down in his own cellar, hidden there, trying to be small and silent and safe like a mouse avoiding an owl in some great, misting killing field. And there he had waited, scared and helpless, smelling the rubber of the raft and the dankness of his own soul. But paranoia found him even there, hiding in the shadows, told him that this… this whatever it was, could find him anywhere. That even then it could hear his breathing, smell the fear-sweat on him, sense the hot blood rushing through his veins and the electrical impulses threading the synaptic networks of his brain.
It was out there, thinking about him. Feeling him. Getting stronger and stronger on the sour bile of his fear.
It was then that George put it to bed.
He climbed out of the cellar and filled his lungs with that moist, musty air and pretended real hard that he could not feel something out there. It was easier that way. Through ignorance there was ascension, through self- denial there was purity. Because the only other option was gradual mental deterioration, a rabid and all- encompassing paranoia that would eat his mind right down to cinders and polished bone.
So, without a doubt, George did not need to be on the lifeboat with the others. He did not need Crycek’s madness for he had enough of his own, thank you very much.
God, he thought, what’s it going to be like after two or three days? A week? A month?
But he wasn’t going there.
“It’s funny,” he said to Gosling, “how it puts everything in perspective.” Gosling smiled. “It does that, doesn’t it?”
“I mean, you blunder through your life taking everything for granted. You worry about mortgages and bills and money. You dream about all the things you’d like to buy. The lifestyle you’d like to have. Never once do you look around and think, ‘hey, this isn’t so bad. I’ve got a roof over my head, food in my belly, I can afford a few nice toys. It’s a good life’. It’s not until everything goes to hell that you appreciate it. What I wouldn’t give for a lazy Sunday afternoon in my recliner, snacking and watching the tube. A nice cold beer in my hand. Lisa always makes a big dinner on Sunday – roast beef or fried chicken, all the trimmings. You know what I’d give for that now?”
Gosling said, “Just about anything, I’d imagine.”
George sipped water from the cap Gosling handed him. Already they were on strict rations. “How about you? Do you appreciate what you have or do you worry about what you don’t have?”
“I like to think I appreciate what I’ve got.”
“But do you?”
“Not enough.”
“Are you married?”
“I tried it once. Didn’t work. I’m gone too much.”
“Kids?”
“No. No time.”
George thought it didn’t seem like much of a life flitting about from one place to the next. No roots. No nothing. Just a lot of time to think while you were out at sea. It sounded lonely.
“When we get rescued,” George said, “I want you to come over for supper, Gosling. I mean it. It’ll be good for you.”
“Maybe,” Gosling said. “Maybe I will.” He kept staring out the doorway of the raft. “What’s so interesting out there?”
“Look.”
George went over to the doorway with him, stared out into the fog and murk and saw it right away. It was brighter now, of course, and visibility was up to maybe two hundred feet or so. And that’s where George was seeing it, right where the mist became the water and the water became the mist… a series of luminous objects just beneath the surface heading in their direction. Whatever they were-they looked lozenge-shaped, a few feet in length each-there had to be hundreds of them and they were coming fast. More all the time.
“What the hell are they?” George asked.
Gosling just shook his head. “Something… I don’t know… like a school of luminous fish”
And there was no time for further discussion, for the school was closing in on them, moving just a few inches beneath the surface of the water and creating a surging, boiling swell in their wake.
Gosling zipped the door shut.
Eyes wide and panicked, they waited for the first impact.
15
Cook never took his eyes off Saks.
Crycek was crazy, of course, and Fabrini was trouble. Maybe Menhaus, too, and mainly because he was such a follower. But Saks.. . he was another story. Saks reminded him of his father. But unlike his father who had good days and kind words from time to time, Saks pretended to be nothing but what he was: a bully.
What they needed right now was a sense of unity.
The common enemy was this terrible sea. They could only survive if they worked together. Cook was no survival expert, but even he knew this. And the greatest threat to their unity was Saks. Not what lurked out in the fog or even this hypothetical devil of Crycek’s. Just Saks. He would destroy the survivors much faster than any of
