They saw it.
They all saw it, if only for a moment or two. Something sticking up out of the weed. Something circular, disc-shaped, and very large. It wasn’t a boat and it wasn’t a plane… at least not of the world they came from. There was a word for what it might have been, but nobody dared say it out loud. They saw it for just a few fleeting seconds, then it was lost again in the fog. Thankfully.
“What do you think it was, Fabrini?”
Saks said this to him, not really expecting a reply anymore than he would expect one from a pet beagle. Because he figured that, intellectually, Fabrini was on the same level as your common ball-licking, shit-on-the-carpet, drink-from-the-fucking-toilet beagle. On a good day, that was. Most days, you could play fetch-the-goddamn-stick all afternoon with that boy and he still wouldn’t get it. Sit there, wagging his tail and waiting for you to tell him what he should be doing and what he should be thinking about it all.
At least, this is how Saks was seeing things.
His crew of misfits and ass-fuckers, as he liked to call them, were his pets now that Cook was in hairball-heaven. Old Al Saks was holding that leash and you got out of line, he’d whack you in the nose with a rolled-up Chicago Trib or rub your pink, wet little nose in your own shit, see if he didn’t.
Fabrini kept swallowing, looking around in the mist for a door that said EXIT and not finding one. “I don’t know, I don’t know what it was.”
“You hear that, Menhaus? He don’t know what it was. Fagbrini, you’re a goddamn moron, you know that?”
Ah, here we go.
Fabrini was filling up with that hatred that was just as dark as bootblack and just as searing as hot oil. His hand was going for that knife in his belt, because maybe he was thinking that this was it. This was the time he punched Saks’s ticket and Cook wasn’t there to talk reason and the other two – Menhaus and Crycek – were out of their heads more often than not and could have cared less if Fabrini killed that bullying, foul-mouthed sonofabitch.
Just as long as he did.
Saks sighed, really bored with it all. “Go ahead, Fabrini, pull that fucking blade,” he said, not bothering with his own knife. “Come over here and kill my ass. Personally, I don’t believe a neutered she-bitch like you is up to the job. But, go ahead, prove me wrong. Bring it on, you cheap ass-licker. Come on, I want to see this.”
Fabrini had his knife out, was never aware even for a moment that his buttons were being pushed and he was being manipulated by a master puppeteer.
He came on.
“Boy,” Menhaus said, “you two are starting to bore the piss out of me.”
Crycek said nothing, didn’t seem to realize any of it was happening.
“C’mon already, Fagbrini, kill me,” Saks said. “I’ll have the last laugh and you know it. Because when I’m gone, it’s going to be funny as all hell watching the three of you trying to survive out here.”
That slowed Fabrini. Stopped him, even.
You could see the doubt creeping over his face in the light of their final lantern. You could see the indecision. And finally, yes, you could hear that hot bag of air in his belly leaking.
“Go ahead,” Menhaus said, his eyes bloodshot and fixed, a crazy look about him like a guy on a three-day caffeine binge watching the WWF and wanting blood, wanting violence. “Slice the bastard! Nobody’s gonna stop you. Nobody’s gonna give a high, randy shit. You’ll be doing us all a favor shutting that goddamn mouth of his.”
Saks chuckled. “Sure, Fabrini, do what Fat-Boy says.”
Fabrini didn’t know what to do. Looked like he was ready to start chasing his own tail.
“Well?” Saks said. “No, I didn’t think so. Because without me, you three are dead as Menhaus’ dick and you know it.”
Fabrini put the knife away and took his seat up in the bow again. Saks had finally broken him and he knew it. He needed Saks. They all needed that macho, trash-talking asshole and it was a hell of a thing to have to admit to yourself. Like saying you needed a pushpin in your left nut or a needle through your tongue. It hurt about that much.
But it was true.
“Okay, then,” Saks said, happy now. “Since we’ve all come to the conclusion that none of you donkeyfucks could find your own wee peckers without rubbing your crotches with rock salt and seeing what turns red, let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Fabrini wasn’t liking it, but he listened.
“Now, I’m in charge here whether you gay bastards like it or not. You don’t have to love me, but if you cooperate, I’ll keep your asses alive and maybe, just maybe I’ll get you out of this pissing sewer and back to your pathetic little lives. How does that suit you boys?”
Menhaus shrugged. “Yeah, whatever it takes.”
Saks turned to Fabrini. “How about you, Richard fucking Simmons?”
Fabrini managed a nod.
“Crycek?”
Crycek was staring out into the fog.
“Yeah, well, we’ll take that as a yes since you’re shit-crazy to begin with.”
So they sat there by lantern light in that lifeboat, listening to Saks’s view on the world in general which was about fifty-percent truth and about fifty-percent bullshit. But it was something. Unlike the others, he had not retreated into his shell, hoping somebody’d pull him back out again. He had some ideas and some scenarios on how they were going to stay alive and be one big happy-assed family.
They were deep into the weed now, into the ship’s graveyard like Cushing and the others. Although the fog was thicker than oatmeal and night had come on, black and eternal, they had seen things out there. The overturned hulls of ships, wreckage, an occasional glimpse of some old-time schooner or modern cutter rigged with fungus and weed, things like rotting old ghost ships. But never more than a glimpse. Just enough to make them realize that they were in a place of legend.
“Sooner or later, maybe when the night ends,” Saks said, “we’ll find us a decent ship. Something that hasn’t been here too long. And when we find that, we’ll call it home.”
“Home,” Menhaus said. “I like that. Home. Jesus.”
“Shut your hole,” Saks told him. “The point being we can’t drift around in this goddamn boat for the rest of our merry lives. We need something better. Something that might have a store of food and water, maybe some weapons or a good motor launch on her.”
“A base of operations,” Fabrini said.
“Exactly. That’s our first order of business. Find a place that’s dry and safe, then we can spend our time getting the lay of this place and weighing our options.”
Nobody argued with any of that. One thing at a time.
Menhaus and Fabrini began debating what kind of place this was, to have all those ships trapped in the weeds.
“Sargasso Graveyard,” Saks told them. “That’s what the old salts called this place. The Sargasso Graveyard. Even the big steamships and diesel jobs end up here… they run out of fuel and drift into this cesspool. No way out. Then the weed grows all over ‘em. But some of these ships, well, they have to have motorboats on ‘em. That’s what we want.”
“Graveyard,” Crycek said. “That’s exactly what this place is: a graveyard.”
“Lots of dead ships out there,” Menhaus said. “And lots of dead crews to go with them, I’ll bet.”
The idea of that paled Fabrini somewhat.
But that wasn’t what Saks wanted to talk about. He wanted to mention that other craft they had seen. The very thing that had prompted this entire line of conversation. Because they had seen something jutting from the weed and it was like nothing any of them had ever seen before.
“What the hell was that?” Saks put to them.
No bullshit, no insults, no bullying, he honestly wanted their opinion on what it was they had seen before the fog swallowed it again. Because, he knew one thing, he hadn’t liked it. Just looking upon it for those few fleeting seconds had made something in him close up like an oyster. Made something else in him begin to shiver. For there were some things you honestly never wanted to see and particularly not in a place like this.
“It was a spaceship,” Fabrini said, finally framing it into words for all of them. “Some kind of spaceship.”
“Spaceship,” Menhaus said. “My ass.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Saks said.
Menhaus just shook his head. “Oh, come on, you two. A fucking flying saucer? You hear what you’re saying?”
They heard what they were saying just fine. Whatever it had been, it was sticking up out of the weed, the edge of something circular and streamlined. Blackened-looking like it had burned up. And it had been making a low, muted humming that was barely there. But they’d heard it, all right.
It was crazy stuff, to be sure. The stuff of pulp fiction and late-night movies. But when they’d seen it, they’d all been thinking the same thing. The monsters in the mist were bad enough and the slimy things in the Dead Sea, but this was something else entirely. This was the last thing they wanted to see. The last thing anybody ever wanted to see, despite all the claims to the contrary. For the sight of something like that made your guts turn over and your head fill with a funny kind of noise. Because things like that were not supposed to be. Not really. And when you saw them, something in you cringed, the way a healthy cell might cringe at the idea of an invading alien microbe.
Particularly when you started wondering if there had been a crew aboard.
“I’m not buying that flying saucer shit,” Menhaus said, about as stubborn as they’d ever seen him. “I don’t believe in any of that shit. We only saw it for a few seconds. Could have been anything.”
“Like what?” Fabrini wanted to know.
“Like… like maybe a hovercraft. They’re round, right? Could have been one of those.”
“A hovercraft?” Saks said, laughing now. “A fucking hovercraft? Didn’t look much like a hovercraft to me.”
“You know damned well what it was,” Fabrini said. “We all do. I knew the minute I’d saw it and I didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. And you know why?”
Menhaus looked at him. “You tell me.”
“Because it scared me, same as it scared all of you. And don’t you goddamn try and deny it, any of you. It scared the shit out of all of us. Those dead ships are one thing, but-”
“That’s enough,” Menhaus said. “That enough already.”
So that was it. They all knew something was eating him and here it was. He knew what it was they had seen, he just wouldn’t admit to it and the reason for that was it had him scared silly.
“Yeah, that’s enough,” Saks said. “Menhaus isn’t buying it, are you Menhaus?”
“I certainly am not.”
“See, Fabrini? Menhaus don’t believe in little green men from Mars. He’s too damn sensible for that.”
“Damn right I am,” Menhaus said.
“It’s all a big stupid joke and Menhaus isn’t buying it.”
Menhaus swallowed. “Well…”
“Sure, it’s just a joke.” Saks looked amused. “A big, stupid, silly-assed joke. All right, Fabrini, let’s come clean already. This has all been a joke. The fog, the sea, all those big ghost ships out there. We set the whole thing up just to fuck with you, Menhaus. Candid Camera, right? Fabrini? Tell Alan Fundt to turn off that pissing fog machine and bring the lights up. We’re not fooling Menhaus with this shit, he saw right through it. I told you that flying saucer would tip him off. Menhaus, he’s just too smart for shit like this. Isn’t that what I said? Isn’t that what I told-”
“Fuck you,” Menhaus said.
“Yeah, fuck me is right.” He turned and looked at Fabrini. “Break them oars out, we’ll row back there. I wanna show Menhaus how I made that prick out of coat hangers and old garbage bags. He’s going to love this. Hey! Somebody turn the lights on already, enough is enough. Menhaus has had his fill.”
Menhaus looked like maybe he wanted to cry.
“Take it easy,” Fabrini told him. “So it’s a fucking dead flying saucer and there’s a couple little green men floating in the weeds. So what?”
“So what?” Menhaus shook his head. “What if they’re not dead? What if they’re alive right now and watching us? What then?”
Saks laughed. “Then you’ll get that anal probing you’ve always been wanting.”
“Fuck you, Saks. Just fuck you-”
“I think I saw it.”
They were all looking at Crycek now who had kept out of the entire discussion thus far. He was still gazing out into the fog, but apparently he had been listening. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw that thing come down.” He turned and looked at them. “Before we picked you guys up… when it was just me and Cook and Hupp… I saw this sort of glowing blue light pass over us. It was up high, kind of hazy in the fog. I could only see that blue glow, nothing else. I been thinking… I been thinking that maybe it was that flying saucer coming down. Why the hell not? This goddamn place might have a hundred doors to it. Maybe that ship got sucked through one of ‘em, same way we did.”
“But if they can build a ship like that, something that jumps around from star to star like in those shows,” Fabrini began, “then they’d have to be real smart. That kind of technology is about a thousand years or a hundred thousand from where we are. You wouldn’t think a race like that could get sucked in here and even if they did, you’d think they’d know how to fly back out.”
Saks said, “Maybe the thing was damaged. It looked kind of burnt or something. Crusty.”
Menhaus was just sitting there with his arms folded.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Menhaus,” Saks said. “We’re leaving you out of the loop again. See, we’re talking about this movie we saw once about these queers lost in the Bermuda Triangle. This big, dumb fat lick of dogshit named Menhaus don’t believe that these ass-raping little green fuckers from the Andromeda galaxy have come to sodomize him. Movie was called Invasion of the Butt-Guppies or I Married a Leather-Boy from Outer Space. Something like that. It was one hell of a flick, I tell you.”
Fabrini joined in, laughing now with an almost hysterical sound. “Sure, I remember it. But I think it was called It Came in My Inner Space or The Man from Planet XXX.” He couldn’t stop laughing. “Remember that movie poster, Saks? It said: In space, no one can hear you squeal. Oh, oh, oh, that was a good one. What a movie!”
Menhaus was just staring off blankly now. There were tears coming down his cheeks. He just looked… broken. Used-up and violated like something important in him had been handled, dirtied-up and then stuffed back inside of him. That’s how he looked.
Crycek finally said, “None of this gets us anywhere.”
He was right, of course.
Saks said, “Let’s find us a ship somewhere so Menhaus can cry in private. Jesus H. Christ.”
Fabrini got out the oars and Crycek and he started working them. It was hard pulling through that weed. Anything with a keel on it was going to have trouble cutting through that growth. But they kept pulling and pulling until they sighted a fishing boat.
“She ain’t much,” Saks said. “But she’ll do for now.”
About then, a sound rose up out in the fog. Something like a high, insane chittering. The sound of a beetle just completely out of its mind. When it sounded again it was closer. And they were all starting to imagine the mother of all crickets coming out of the mist.
“Let’s make that boat,” Saks said. “I think our number is about up.”