“Right there,” George was saying. “Do you see it… right over there…”
Gosling was looking through the doorway with him and he saw it, all right. Tangled in a mass of weeds, something bright orange. Looked like styrofoam. He was thinking it might have been an EPIRB tube that had floated free of the ship or one of the lifeboats. At least, that’s what it kind of looked like.
“What do you think?” George asked.
Gosling figured it was worth checking out. “Help me unzip the canopy.”
The canopy was zippered to the inflated arches of the raft. Together, they began taking it down. Maybe it put them at risk, Gosling was thinking, but it was nice not being enclosed in the canopy. To feel the air again… even if it did smell like something mossy and rotting.
Gosling passed out oars and they began rowing over there, feeling the drag of the sea anchor behind them. The weeds were growing more numerous and none of that had escaped Gosling’s attention. Before, there had been little drifting clumps, an occasional island, now the islands were getting more numerous. They rowed on, parting the mats of weed, moving towards their target.
When they were maybe six feet away, Gosling saw the orange of an EPIRB. “Just a radio beacon,” he said. “We already have two of them.”
“Fuck it,” George said. “Let’s just keep rowing. Feels good to be doing something.”
Gosling figured he was right. It did feel good. And maybe, just maybe, with weeds becoming more concentrated it meant they were nearing some landmass. Maybe.
So they rowed and watched the weeds, the tendrils of steam wafting off the water, the heavy fog shimmering and glimmering. It felt good to put their muscles to work.
George suddenly said, “What the hell?”
He was yanking on his oar, managed to free it. He studied the end and began rowing again. Gosling figured he’d caught it on the weeds, paid it little mind… until something seized his oar. Held it tight.
“I’m caught on something,” he said, struggling with it, trying to pull it up and out of the mire. He managed to work it free of that dark, sluicing water a few inches and then it was pulled back down again. No, it surely wasn’t weeds, it had to be-
There was a thump under the raft. And then another. A rubbery scraping sound that made Gosling’s hackles rise. It was like the sound they heard earlier, a sort of slow investigative motion. More scraping, another thump. Then something down there hit the raft hard and it lurched to the left.
“Christ,” George said.
He had his oar out of the water by then and Gosling gave his a yank and there was nothing holding it. They sat silently, waiting for what would come next for they both knew something would. Something was about to happen here. They were froze up, looking at each other, the sea.
There was a ripple of motion just beneath the surface on the port side. George’s side. Then another. He let out a little involuntary gasp and then water sprayed up and over him like he’d been hit by a big comber.
And then something big moved in the water.
Gosling caught a quick glimpse of something dark and shiny-looking, like oiled rubber.
“What in the hell?” George said, moving away from the gunwale, maybe feeling whatever it was in his mind and not liking it at all.
Gosling was thinking about a weapon, something other than the wet oar in his hands when another gout of water splashed into the boat and George cried out and… and something huge and serpentine came winding out of the drink. It was big around as a man’s thigh, brown and leathery, with a long snaking body and a huge, eyeless head that looked bony and plated. It had a mouth and it was a big one.
George ducked down as it snapped at him, darting its head in his direction like a python trying to snatch a rat. The head was about the size of a mailbox, set with a hinged jaw that allowed the mouth to open wide enough to take hold of a man’s head.
Gosling hit it with his oar and then hit it again.
It backed off, slid under the water and came back up again.
It lashed out at where it thought the men were, but it was blind. Completely blind, something engineered to haunt the black depths far below. It looked, if anything, like some immense moray eel. Its body in the water was coiling and twisting. Gosling figured it had to be fifteen or twenty feet in length. It had fins like an eel and that awful length of corkscrewing, boneless body. There were bright yellow gill slits set just behind the head. It hammered into the raft with its head and body, not sure what to make of it. Every time those jaws came open, Gosling could feel a rush of hot, briny air
George was dodging that swooping head, swinging wildly with his oar. “Get it the fuck away from me!” he cried out.
Both he and Gosling kept cracking it with their oars.
If the situation hadn’t been so terrifying, it might have been comical. For the eel, or whatever it was, might have been a slick, evil predator in that slimy sea, but above in the open air it was clumsy and drunken, seemed to have no true equilibrium whatsoever. It nudged the sides of the raft again and again with its nose, then seemed to lose balance and rolled in the thrashing water, flashing a pale speckled belly at them. Its fins fanned out like the wings of a bird, but could get no purchase in the air.
Growing tired of the games and obviously getting winded if those gasping, fluttering gill slits could be any indication, it yawned its jaws and took hold of the port gunwale, began to shake it.
Gosling cracked it over the head until it let go, seeing gladly that there were no punctures in the rubber.
The creature slid back into the water to suck in some air from that filth no doubt. But it wasn’t gone. They could hear it under the raft, bumping and squeaking along.
Gosling pulled a flare gun from the survival equipment, thinking that the beast, the worm, whatever it was, reminded him of gulper eels that fishermen sometimes pulled up in their nets. It had that same undulating body and oversized head and like many creatures from the abyss, it looked like something from a B movie out of the water.
George was in the stern now, breathing hard, soaked and staring, oar raised.
“Come on, you prick,” Gosling said, tensing.
And then it did, it shot up out of the water, jaws wide and Gosling moved fast. He brought up the flare gun and fired a flare right into its mouth and maybe down its throat for all he knew. There was a sudden explosion of light and red sparks from inside its mouth and it began going wild, shaking its head madly back and forth, pissing sparks and smoke and the stink of burned flesh.
Then it dove back into the water with a hissing sound.
That was it.
Five minutes later, it still had not come back.
When he was able to catch his breath, George said, “Let’s put that fucking canopy back up.”
“Yeah,” Gosling said.