Fantasy? Maybe, but it would explain some things, wouldn’t it? George did not think it created monster eels or schools of weird luminous fish or odd little leggy critters that sat on oars-things like that were nature’s creations, a seriously fucked-up and alien nature, but nature all the same. No, whatever this thing was, it was not so crude in its creativity, it was not so general. When it scared someone, it made things personal, intimate.
Just as it had with George.
George started getting the creeps looking into the fog and thinking these things, so he joined the others up front. The VHF was operating and Gosling was sending out signals. The static was rising and falling with an almost morphic sound that made you want to sleep. And dream.
“What is that?” Soltz was saying. “What am I hearing there? That pinging, shrilling sound in there…”
George had heard it before. A high-pitched pinging like that of a tuning fork, but barely discernable in the static. It came and went. There almost seemed to be a pattern to it, a code, something. You’d hear that pinging, then there would be a strange buzzing pulse that rose up and died. But each time George heard it, he was certain there was a pattern to it. That it was not random and certainly not natural in origin.
“Just noise,” Gosling said. “Atmospheric noise.”
That sounded good and maybe Cushing and Soltz were buying it, but George certainly wasn’t. For there was direction behind those sounds, there was intelligence. Something was making them and he honestly didn’t want to know what it was.
“I guess,” Cushing began, “I guess it’s just some weird interference… that’s what it must be.”
“Sure,” Gosling said, but his voice sounded awfully hollow.
If it indeed was static, what they heard next certainly could not be. It happened about three or four minutes later, just about the time Gosling was going to shut the unit off, that static beginning to bother all of them in ways they could scarcely fathom. It started out as a low, distorted whining like a shortwave radio trying to lock on a channel and then it grew high and echoing, became something like a broken up voice full of panic that was saying, “… help us… oh God help us… it’s getting close now… it’s getting close.. . oh dear God…” It faded away and then came back clearer, so clear you could hear the man on the other end breathing and something in the background, a huge and booming sound getting louder and louder. It almost sounded like a great, hollow heartbeat. Boom, boom, boom. “. .. anyone can hear us… it’s… it’s coming out of the fog.. . it’s coming right out of the fog… it’s on the decks and… it’s knocking at the door… at the door…”
It then it faded back into the static.
They listened for another minute or two and then Gosling wisely shut the unit off. His fingers were trembling.
33
“Untie me, you fucking idiots,” Saks was crying out at the others. “Don’t leave me… don’t leave me tied up like this…”
But they had other problems.
They were now in some sort of wide channel cut between two banks of weed and the fish, the boneheads were hammering against the hull of the boat, filled with frenzy and appetite.
But it wasn’t them that really scared the men in the lifeboat.
It was their big brother.
He was back.
The huge, ugly twenty-footer with the armored snout and the dead eyes. For something of its sheer bulk, it moved with incredible speed. With eel-like gyrations of its tail, it launched itself at the boat. The impact was hard and fast. It threw the men to the deck and nearly flipped the boat over.
Then it rocketed in and hit them from the other side, then from the stern, propelling the lifeboat forward like it had an outboard hooked up to it. Most of the smaller ones had scattered, but that big ugly mother was standing his ground.
“Jesus Christ,” Fabrini said, “it’s gonna get us, it’s gonna flip the boat…”
“Damn right it is,” Saks said, enjoying their terror. “It’s going to get one of you in the water and swallow you whole.”
I don’t wanna see that, Fabrini kept telling himself. I don’t wanna see a man get bitten in half by a giant fish. I don’t care what else happens out here, but, by Jesus, I don’t wanna see that…
The fish came alongside the boat, so close they could not only see it, but smell it. It stank of brine and blood and bad meat, like something that had been chewing on waterlogged corpses. And that probably wasn’t too far from the truth.
“Cook!” Menhaus said. “Do something! We got to do something!”
The fish hit them again, knocking everybody to the deck again and almost pitching Menhaus into the drink. He let out a high, girlish scream and sank back down to the deck, gripping the uprights of his seat.
The fish came again, riding right on the surface, spiny ventral fins spread out like Chinese fans and sharp enough to cut timber. Cook was right on the gunwale watching it, watching it bump the boat with its iron snout and pass by. Those thick, bony plates that ran from the tip of its nose to its thorax were actually jointed he saw and it gave the fish incredible flexibility.
Cook took out the gun.
He didn’t want to shoot, but he didn’t see where he had much of a choice.
It nudged up against the lifeboat, those hinged jaws spread wide. .. wide enough to literally bite a man in half… and those dermal tooth bones that were like long, jagged shards of glass grated against the fiberglass hull. It could not bite through the hull and mainly because it could not get a grip on it. Had it been wood and not a single piece of formed fiberglass, it would have been able to butt its head through the hull planking.
Cook kept studying it.
He didn’t think there was any way in hell that a 9mm round could punch through that armored flesh, just no way. Back around mid-thorax, those bony plates ended and the fish had smooth skin like that of a shark or ray.
It vanished from view for a few moments.
The lifeboat was still moving forward with momentum from the hilt to the stern, cutting through those weedy, congested waters and going God knew where.
“It’s coming back,” Fabrini said in a defeated voice. “I can see it…”
And it was.
It was coming straight on, jaws wide and spraying foam, launching itself at the boat like a torpedo. The impact threw Cushing, Menhaus, and Fabrini into each other. The lifeboat swung in a lazy arc, riding on its gunwale a moment before righting itself. Saks screamed and roared like a wild animal.
It swam alongside the boat and Cook brought up the Browning and put three rounds in it at close range. It didn’t seem to have any effect… and then without warning, the fish rose up out of the water like a hooked salmon and they could see that it was probably closer to twenty-five feet than twenty. It rose up straight as a peg and for one horrifying moment they thought it was going to come back right down on the boat like a fallen tree. But it missed by scant inches, making the boat rock wildly.
Its huge tail splashed in the water and then it was gone.
Ten, tense, expectant minutes later, it still had not returned.
“I think we made it,” Cook said.
But nobody commented on that.
The boat was still moving forward, slicing through the weeds and those coiling tendrils of steam that came off them. The fog blew over and around them in great glistening patches and they were suddenly locked in a fog bank. They couldn’t see two feet in any direction. Just hear the bow moving through the weeds that were getting as thick as briars now.
And then the fog receded a bit.
“Holy Christ in Heaven,” Fabrini said. “Do you see it? Do you fucking see it?”
They did.
Coming out of the mist was a freighter.
