Cook tried to control his breathing, felt like he was about to start hyperventilating. “Which leaves who? You, Saks? You?” Cook started laughing. “Saks, no offense, but putting you in charge is like putting a child molester in charge of a little boy’s school.”
“Fuck you mean by that?”
“I mean, you’re a goddamn zero. I mean you don’t have the guts for the job. Yeah, I’ve been watching you, Saks, and when the shit gets deep, you’re the first to run. All you care about is your own skin. You can play tough all you want, you can run those fucking intimidation games of yours until the cows come home, but it won’t change the fact… you’re weak. Inside, you’re soft and gutless and spineless and-”
“You shut your goddamn mouth!” Saks cried out, his voice echoing out through the fog.
Ah, now who was pushing whose buttons?
“Take it easy, Saks,” Cook said, feeling calm now. “We all know it, we all know you aren’t fit to run a fucking hot dog stand. But you know what? It always amazes me how gutless, stupid fucks like you always end up in charge. Just blows me away. But, you know what they say, shit always floats to the top.”
Well, there it was.
Saks’s invitation to take up his knife, lunge and cut. And he’d probably make a good show of it before Cook put a bullet in him.
Saks just sat there, eyes narrowed and filled with hate. But that’s all he really did. He sat there and stewed and made with the hard eyes. All bluster and blow, no thunder to go with it.
Fabrini chuckled. “Boy, you pegged old Saksy, Cook. You sure as hell did. Anybody smell something? I think Saks just shit his pants.”
Saks had his knife out then.
Maybe he could take it from Cook, but not Fabrini. No way. Not ever. He brought that knife out and his eyes went black and Fabrini brought his out and here it came, all those boiling black poisons were finally being lanced and Menhaus and Crycek weren’t about to get in the way and, the thing was, neither was Cook.
Not this time.
He had murder on his mind. As they said, it only took one rotten apple to ruin the bunch and Saks was rotten, all right. Just dirty and dark and seething to his core like something that needed to be cut out before it infected the whole body. So Cook was not going to intervene, he was going to let Fabrini kill him and if he didn’t, Cook was going to. Because he couldn’t go on day after day in this nightmare world with that asshole picking at everyone.
“Go ahead, Fabrini,” Cook said, his voice low and even. “Kill that useless fucking prick. You’ve got my blessing.”
That made Fabrini smile.
Something like doubt crossed Saks’s face. See, this wasn’t how it worked. Cook was the voice of reason and he was supposed to stop this, get in the middle of them, cool heads prevailing and all that. But Cook wanted it to happen. Really wanted it and that was the last thing old tough guy Saks expected. He was no stranger to violence. He did not back down easily… particularly when the odds were in his favor. He had been in knife fights before, but what he wasn’t liking was that Fabrini was young and strong and muscular. Had been pushed too far now and was beyond all the societal taboos ingrained in him that had stopped him before. He was capable of murder now and Saks knew it.
Fabrini was on his feet, the lifeboat rocking.
Saks stood up, knowing it was coming now.
“Bring it on, you faggot,” he said.
And Fabrini started to move, down low and stalking, knowing he had physical advantages here. Maybe Saks was experienced at this sort of thing, but he was pushing sixty, going to fat, and his glory days on the docks and construction gangs were far behind him now.
“What’s that?” Menhaus said. “Over there… what the hell is that?”
Saks did not look, but the others did. Fabrini included.
There was something there. Something that looked pretty much like a large patch of weed that had broken loose and was drifting… drifting right toward the lifeboat.
“Weeds,” Cook said. “Weeds.”
But even as the words fell from his lips, he wasn’t so sure. Weeds? No, this did not look like a harmless patch of weeds, in fact, Cook was thinking it looked like… well, it looked like a head of hair just beneath the surface. That was crazy bullshit, but that’s what he thought momentarily. Like the gargantuan head of a woman, her hair fanning out in every direction. If it was just weeds, then it was different weeds. For these were not the average creepers and stalks, leafy branches like kelp that made up the weed banks. No these hairs or tendrils or whatever in the Christ they were, were fine, were wire-thin and as that patch got closer to the boat, Cook was thinking that they looked much like waterlogged pasta, thin and reedy and pale.
“Put those blades away,” Menhaus suddenly said.
He was soft and friendly, your favorite uncle or brother-in-law. A good neighbor or a guy to drink beers with or cookout in the backyard, bowl with… but he had no real balls and they all knew it. So when he barked out an order in that I’m-taking-absolutely-no-shit tone of voice, it was uncharacteristic and everyone listened.
Now Saks was watching that submerged shape moving at the lifeboat, too, and there was absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind: it was not accidental, that thing was moving at them on purpose.
“Get ready for the shit,” Saks said.
Sure, and that’s exactly what everyone was doing… except, they did not know exactly how to get ready for this. At sea, in a normal body of water, you saw a shark or a jellyfish or sea snake moving in your direction, your mind had some ready ideas because it knew what these things were and what they were capable of. There were certain evasive maneuvers you could attempt. But what about this… thing? How could you prepare for something that looked like nothing you’d ever seen?
Cook was watching it.
It was circling around the boat and seemed to be moving in the general direction of the bow now, where he was. It was brushing aside clumps of weeds and there was no doubt it was a solid object. But looking at it, you wouldn’t have thought so. It had come up out of the water maybe two or three inches now, just enough so that it broke the surface of that algae-scummed sea. What Cook was seeing was an irregular, somewhat oval hump that seemed to be made of those wiry strands of material. They were yellow and green in color, incredibly thick and profuse and tangled like discolored angel’s hair. They radiated out from that shaggy hump in twisting filaments that were snarled and matted in places, others free flowing and incredibly long.
“What is it, Cook?” Menhaus said. “What does it want?”
And Cook was thinking that what it wanted would not be a good thing… for this thing inspired a shivering primal disgust in him like seeing a spider under a microscope, a bulbous body covered with fine hairs. Something so alien and abhorrent it could not truly be alive. He watched the thing, seeing that it had no eyes… just those wire- thin projections cast about in the water from that hump. As he looked upon it, those cilia-like hairs seeming to twitch and writhe in the water, he saw his own death. It came on him suddenly and with complete conviction, this thing was death. It was his death, the same death that had been dogging him for thirty-eight years. It was here now and it was ready.
Cook saw this and knew it to be true and the knowledge of that was like a razor scraped across his brain. It was painful and destructive and emptying. He had an odd, almost hallucinogenic sense that something inside him wanted very badly to rip through his skin and escape. He couldn’t seem to breathe and he could feel his heartbeat slowing, as if preparing for the inevitable.
“I don’t like this, Cook,” Saks was saying. “Shoot that fucker.. .”
And they were all telling him to and he figured they were right, but then he also knew that this new and mystical certainty which had bloomed in him like a death-orchid was simply beyond them. It was not their time.
“Cook…” Fabrini began.
The thing began to rise up before the bow… and, Jesus, what was it? It came up out of that stinking, vile sea, dripping water and slime and clots of decomposing matter, plumes of steam rising from it. It came up ten or twelve feet, viscid and alive and utterly impossible.
Menhaus gasped.
It had a nebulous, abstract sort of shape, something made of bumps and mounds all threaded with those
