George’s first impression was that he and Gosling were alone out there.
His second impression was a feeling: panic.
Combined, these things made him want to scream and thrash like some little kid drowning in a bathtub. But slowly, slowly, he got it under control. He was with Gosling. Gosling was an experienced sailor
… if anyone could keep him alive and get him to dry land, it would be the First Mate. That provided a certain sense of security. It wasn’t exactly something you could wrap yourself up in and go to sleep with, but it was something.
They heard voices in the distance from time to time, but when they called out no one answered. There were a few bits of scattered light from burning objects still afloat, but one by one, they went out. And then all there was was that ever-present fog, thick and roiling. It still had that odd luminosity to it… like it was backlit by the glowing beam of some distant lighthouse. If nothing else, it provided scant illumination.
Just enough, George figured, to make everything look weird and surreal.
And creepy.
Because there was no other word to describe it. For that’s exactly how it looked out there with that fog and the odd glow: creepy.
Sure, George was trying damn hard not to panic, but the bottom line here was that they were out in the middle of fucking nowhere without a lifeboat or a life raft and it was night and by dawn their life jackets would be saturated and they’d drown. That is if the sharks didn’t get them first. His mind had already sketched that particular nightmare out in some detail. He kept remembering scenes from that movie where the big shark gobbles people up. He kept wondering what it would feel like when those teeth sank into him. Would it be a big goddamn shark that would swallow him whole or would it be a smaller monster that would maybe bite his leg off? He’d seen a show once where a shark did that to a shipwreck victim. It just kept coming around, taking bites and pieces.
Oh, Jesus.
This can’t be fucking happening, he thought frantically. This only happens to guys on the late movie. Shit like this doesn’t come down on normal guys like me who run bulldozers for a living and are just trying to keep the creditors at bay-
“HELP!” he started screaming. “IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? GODDAMN YOU ANSWER ME RIGHT NOW FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST!”
There was no answer. Just that brooding silence. And that odd sort of humming he could hear from time to time.
“You feel better now?” Gosling said. “Good. Now knock it off for chrissake. We’re not dead yet.”
George kept treading water as if he didn’t trust the lifejacket. “Oh, you’re a real fucking comfort,” he panted.
“Quit splashing around,” Gosling told him. “Just lay back like me. The jacket’ll float you. All the racket might attract interest”
“Sharks?”
“No,” Gosling said. “That’s not what I was thinking exactly.”
And George honestly didn’t have the balls to follow that one up. Not sharks? What, then?
“Don’t panic. We’ll be fine. But there’s no sense in wasting energy treading water when you don’t have to.”
George swallowed and let himself float. It wasn’t bad. It was almost relaxing just bobbing there.
“Are there really sharks out here?” he asked.
“Who can say? This is the ocean, George, lots of things call it home. It’s a food chain like any other.”
Shit. “Will they get us?”
“Not if I can help it.” He must’ve sensed the panic in George’s eyes. “All right, listen to me and listen good. There are two things that attract sharks. The first is doing what you were doing – splashing around. What you’re doing when you do that is drawing attention to yourself. You’re acting like a fish in distress. You’re sending off the same signals. The second thing that attracts sharks is blood. They can smell it in the water. I’ve heard they can smell it for miles. So don’t thrash around and don’t bleed. Simple.”
George started checking out every ache and pain in his body to see if he had any cuts. He didn’t think so. “You didn’t cut your leg back there, did you?”
“No, I just twisted it. Relax. Wait for the dawn. We’ll be fine.”
And that was easy for him to say, George thought dismally. Big, tough sailor-boy. But George was no sailor and after this little party he was moving to fucking Kansas. He never wanted to see open water again. He didn’t think he’d ever even go swimming again. And if he did, there wouldn’t be anything bigger than tadpoles in said water, thank you very much.
Which made him start remembering things. The panic… the fire and screaming and confusion… the ship going down… sure, it had all blotted out other things for awhile, darker thoughts about that awful fog and the stories circulating concerning it. You know, all that cute, amusing stuff about the Devil’s Triangle and that sort of thing.
But now it was back.
Now it was digging down inside him and it had teeth.
He thought: What if any of that crazy hoodoo bullshit is true? It’s bad enough to abandon ship, but to abandon ship in some fucking crazy dead zone that chews up ships and men, swallows ‘em alive and kicking…
Jesus, it was all bad, wasn’t it?
And not just that weird fog and all the rest, but even the sea itself. So calm, so warm. Unnaturally warm, it seemed. And its consistency just wasn’t right. Not like water really, too oily, too thick, too something. Like it was full of suspended sediment, closer to gelatin than water. It left a slimy residue on the skin.
And it stank. Like something decomposing under a log.
George sucked in a sharp breath, tried to fight the fear, the uncertainty, tried to hold it all together which was not easy. Felt like his guts, his resolve was strung together out of thread and spit.
For now there was survival. Nothing more. He had to remember that.
“Do you think it’ll be long before we’re picked up?” George asked Gosling. And from the tone in his voice – a squeaky, breathless tone – he realized he sounded like some little kid that needed reassuring that there were indeed no monsters in the closet or under the bed.
“Depends” Gosling’s voice was practically a whisper. There was something very guarded about it.
“On what?”
“On a lot of things,” he said. “If the current pushes us out of the shipping lanes, it could be awhile. If it doesn’t, I would say a boat’ll be by any time. Probably in the morning or afternoon. Hopefully. If not, well, we’ll be reported overdue in Cayenne tomorrow night… or tonight actually.”
What George was hearing in his voice he did not like at all. It sounded like Gosling was reading from a script, like he didn’t believe a goddamn word of what he was saying. If there was an undercurrent there, it was saying, sure, George, they’ll be looking for us. Same way they look for lots of ships that vanish without a trace…
“How long will these jackets float us?”
“Long enough. Maybe.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry. First light we’ll have a look around, see what we can find. Should be lots of junk floating around. Usually is.”
George could see his silhouette in the murky light, figured he was lying his ass off about a lot of things. And maybe it wasn’t that exactly, but it was something. So George decided to bait him a bit: “Shouldn’t somebody be here by now? A rescue ship? A plane? A helicopter?”
“Why?”
“Because of the distress signal.”
Gosling exhaled sharply. “I think they might have a little trouble finding us. Being where we are.”
“Which is?”
But Gosling would not answer him. And that seemed to be the worst thing of all.