“Hungry,” Menhaus was saying. “I can’t seem to remember what it is not to be hungry.”
Saks thought that was funny. “Yeah, but look at yourself. You’ve already dropped pounds. You’re looking good. Just imagine how good you’re going to look after a month, two months, a year-”
“Okay, Saks,” Cook said. “Once again, quit trying to piss people off.”
“I’m kidding, for chrissake. In case you don’t know what that is, Big Chief, it’s also called a joke or a funny, a laugh. Boy, Cook, ever since you decided you were the big cheese, you’re a real fucking pain in the ass.”
Cook could only sigh.
In command? Oh Christ, of all things.
Command of what exactly? A lifeboat with four men who were ready to tear out each other’s throats at the drop of a hat? Even Fabrini wasn’t weathering any of it real good now. After what they’d seen and experienced on the Cyclops, something in him had shut down. What was left was irritable and angry and looking for something or someone to vent on. Cook had tried to draw him out more than once, but each time he did Saks was there, asking if he wanted to breastfeed Fabrini, too. Maybe wipe his ass and tuck him in to boot. And Cook had to wonder how long it was going to be before Saks and Fabrini really went at it, how long before their knives came out and blood was drawn. At least on the Cyclops, they’d settled down, had enough room to get away from each other.
Sure, Fabrini had been very good about it, when you considered things. Like the fact that Saks had cut off part of his ear with a knife. Most guys, they’d be wanting payback for that, but Fabrini let it go. That was big of him. But now? Well, Fabrini kept touching his bandaged ear and staring at Saks. It wasn’t too hard to imagine what he was thinking.
And Saks knew it, too.
Cook had to watch them all the time.
And he pretty much had to do it alone because Menhaus was pretty much whiny and pouty twenty-four/seven now, withdrawn really, talking from time to time, but more to himself than anyone else.
And Crycek? Well, Crycek had his moments.
So, essentially, Cook was wading these dark waters alone. He had to keep them from each other, offer them hope, squelch Saks, reassure them that they were not going to starve to death or get eaten by horrors out of the mist. Then, if that wasn’t enough, Cook had to keep directing them, giving them something to hold out for and this when he was dying inside, had considered more than once how easy it would have been to slit his own wrists.
“How do you like this fog, Crycek?” Saks said.
Saks had been asking him this question about every half an hour or so, needling him, trying to get under Crycek’s skin… and pretty much trying to get everyone riled up. Because Cook knew that’s what Saks was: a catalyst. That’s how he saw himself. The more disorder he could create, the sooner Menhaus and maybe even Fabrini – God forbid – would want him back in charge.
Crazy thing was, Cook had even considered handing back the reins to Saks. Wondering if maybe that arrogant, selfish piece of shit might have some ideas about what they should do that he would only share once he was firmly back in the driver’s seat. But, ultimately, Cook had weighed it out like a man deciding whether or not to emasculate himself with a paring knife… and decided it wasn’t exactly prudent.
“You hear me, you crazy shit?” Saks said. “How do you like this fog?”
Cook was ready to intercede, but Crycek turned and said, “Compared to what?”
Cook laughed.
Saks smiled, but he was seething beneath. Who was Crycek to smart off to him? To undermine the disorder he was sowing?
“Compared to Fabrini’s hot ass on a cold night, you freak.”
But that didn’t get him anything. And you could almost hear the reels spinning in Saks’s mind, hear him scratching that one off his big list of Things To Do. Hear his pencil scribbling up there: Note to self, Crycek is impervious to gay cracks. Try a new approach. Maybe insult his mother or father, talk about banging his kid sister.
Cook was watching the curtain of fog ringing them in. It was thick as woolpack now and you could barely see three feet to either side. For a while there, it had gotten dim and those mystic, eldritch moons had come out… Crycek nearly coming out of his skin at the sight of them. But then the fog had blown in or seeped in, and things had gotten lighter out again. Though it seemed like it was thinking about getting dark again, it just couldn’t make up its mind. Things were dimmer, yes, but they could still see each other fine and Cook was almost praying for darkness so he wouldn’t have to see their faces for awhile. The disappointment in them. The way they had been ravaged and lined by terror.
The weeds were very thick. Much thicker than earlier which told Cook they were getting closer to the heart of the seaweed sea. From time to time, he had his little crew row, but that never lasted because Menhaus would complain about his back and Saks would call him a pussy and Fabrini would tell them both to shut up and Crycek would start getting gloomy, asking Cook just what their hurry was. What was waiting out there for them was endlessly patient.
Damn. What a bunch.
“Hey, Crycek,” Saks said. “What’s your view on cannibalism?”
“Oh, knock it the hell off, Saks,” Fabrini said. “You’re really getting on my fucking nerves.”
Saks giggled. He looked satisfied. Well, maybe he couldn’t torment Crycek much, but he could still push Fabrini’s buttons just fine. He seemed happy with that.
“No, I’m serious, Fagbrini. I think we should all just sit down and discuss this. We may drift like this for weeks… in another month, we’ll be out of food and water. What then? I mean, we have to be practical, don’t you think? We have to decide who’s going on the spit. And when that times comes… what’re we gonna do? Flip a coin? Draw straws? Or just decide who’s most expendable?”
Fabrini was breathing real hard, veins pulsing at his temples. “I’m telling you, Cook, shut that prick up or I will.”
“Shit, Fabrini, settle down,” Saks chuckled. “You’re scaring the piss out of me over here.”
“Knock it off, Saks,” Cook said. “Or we’ll all throw your ass into the drink.”
“Yeah,” Menhaus piped in. “Quit being such an asshole.”
Saks chuckled again. “Listen, Menhaus, a man has to go with his strengths.” Dammit, it never ended.
Nobody had come off the Cyclops in real great shape. They were all haunted after that. Those monsters in the sea and fog… well, they were terrible things, but you could fight them and they were not intelligent. But that spider-woman on the Cyclops… well, she was an entirely different bag of chips, now wasn’t she? Even now, nearly a day since they’d fled from that mausoleum, Cook was having trouble putting any of it into context. For, really, what in the hell had Lydia Stoddard become? A ghost? A mutant? A crawling and skittering representation of the raw and shivering insanity that had peeled the skin from the Cyclops and everyone on board? Was she a physical manifestation or something supernatural? Jesus, it all boggled the mind and wilted the soul. But the very scary thing about it all… or scariest might have been apt, because it had all been scary and withering… was that whatever that woman had become, it was intelligent. It could plot and scheme and lure men to insanity and death. And as far as Cook was concerned, you could not fight something like that. Something that was equal parts madness, ectoplasm, and nightmare biology driven by a predatory, deranged mind.
No, none of them had been unscathed by the implications of that business. Even Saks, Cook figured, had had his stomach ripped out by it. He might not show it, but if you looked real close, you could see it in his eyes: fear.
“Now listen,” Saks said. “I don’t want to alarm you dipfucks, but food is something we have to be concerned about. Eventually, we’re going to run out… then what? What happens then? What happens if one of us starts getting crazy ideas?”
“You already got that covered,” Crycek said under his breath.
“Yeah, well I wouldn’t talk, psycho.” Saks held his hands out before him to show that there was nothing up his sleeve. “This is something we have to think about. You guys are all hungry and I know it. This goddamn rabbit food Cook has been doling out isn’t keeping our bellies full.”
He had Menhaus’ full attention now. You could see it in his eyes, that caloric lust. Here was a guy intimately familiar with buffets and second helpings. Maybe his belly was shrinking, but his eyes were filled with an unflinching desire to sink his teeth into something.
“All right, Saks, that’s enough,” Cook said, once again the only voice of reason. “We’re all hungry. I’d love a cheeseburger or an order of prime rib, but there aren’t any restaurants out here that I can see. So just shut up about it. And as far as cannibalism goes.. . I’ll shoot anyone who even mentions it again.” He had everyone’s attention then and his eyes were flat and dark and menacing. “And you better believe that I mean it.”
Even Saks wasn’t smiling then. No, he had a new game now. Which was really old and just plain worn out through repetition. You saw it every day in prison yards and factories, boardrooms and barrooms… the stare. Any place men were gathered, you saw the stare. The intimidation game. My dick is bigger than yours and my muscles are harder than yours, don’t you look at me ‘cause I can kick your ass any goddamn time and you better believe it. You don’t intimidate me, I intimidate you. Yeah, it was childish and self-defeating, the last resort of weak minds. The sort of thing that should have been left in the high school locker room along with your dirty jock. But men never left it there. Cook knew they didn’t. Men were essentially weak, frightened creatures scurrying through life, seeing just about anything and everything as a challenge to what swung between their legs. Great stuff. You could see monkeys and lions practicing it on TV and men practicing it just about everywhere else.
And as Cook knew, the only men who practiced intimidation were those that were intimidated.
“Okay, Saks, you can quit staring me down now,” he said. “The playground is closed and I don’t play the big dick game.”
Fabrini burst out laughing and even Menhaus did.
“You might wanna watch it with that, Cook,” was all Saks could say. He had been cornered now, his infantile macho games dragged out into the open for all to see.
“Yeah, okay, Saks.” Cook smiled. “And Saks?”
Saks looked at him, never seemed to stop.
“Grow the fuck up already.”
Saks was boiling and Fabrini was laughing at him.
Poor old Saks, Cook thought, he never even realized that all his life, people were laughing behind his back.
“What’s that shit on your arm?” Menhaus asked.
Saks looked at him. Gave him the stare, too. “What the hell are you talking about, mama’s boy?”
But Cook was seeing it, too. All over his forearm… things like sores, great spreading red sores that did not look so much like abrasions or scrapes but like ulcers.
Saks pulled his sleeve down. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing.”
“You better let me look at it, Saks. Doesn’t look good at all. Fabrini? Grab me the medical kit.”
But Saks said, “Keep away from me, Cook! All of you just fucking keep away from me! Be a cold day in hell I’d let a cock-monkey like you dress my wounds.”
“Then dress ‘em yourself.”
“Mind your own goddamn business.”
Cook folded his arms, shaking his head. “C’mon, Saks, you’re talking to the Big Cheese here. The health and well-being of all of you is part of the Big Cheese’s job.”
Saks recoiled a bit when Cook moved toward him and Cook stopped. Saks’s eyes had gone feral and simmering. He looked suddenly like he was capable of just about anything.
“If that shit’s catchy, Saks, you’re going over the fucking side,” Fabrini said.
And the thing was, even with the brief look at it Cook had had, those ulcerations did look catchy. There was something unpleasant and unnatural about them like skin tumors. Something morbid.
“You just try, Fagbrini.”
Saks shifted and they were all watching him, ringing him in now like wild dogs and he was feeling it, too, feeling cornered and threatened. A guy who liked to be the center of attention, but not prey. His hand inched towards the knife in his belt and Cook knew he’d cut anyone that got close.
Fabrini got a little closer. “What is that? Between your legs.. .”
Saks recovered now. “That’s my dick, and, no, I’m not putting it into your mouth.”
But it wasn’t his dick they were all looking at. There was a little greasy flannel sack that he had hidden under his leg. And now everyone saw it.
“Okay, Saks, what is it?” Cook put to him.
Saks grinned, knew they had him. He was caught in their snare with nowhere to run. He did two things real fast right then: he brought out his knife and picked up his little flannel-wrapped package that was about the size of a fist. “It’s mine and you fucks don’t get any.”
Cook said, “Saks-”
“Fuck you, too, Big Chief.”
He unwrapped it and it held something pale and fleshy marbled with pinkish-brown lines. Salt pork. They could smell its saltiness and meatiness in the air and everyone began to drool almost immediately. And Saks was loving it. He brought it up and licked it.
“Where’d you get that?” Menhaus said, slavering like a dog now.
“You cheap, selfish sonofabitch,” Fabrini said.
Crycek just blinked his eyes rapidly.
Cook shook his head. “He got that off the Cyclops.”
Everyone stopped salivating about then. To them, the idea of eating anything off that hoodoo ship was akin to stuffing your mouth with worms. They wanted meat and fat… but they weren’t ready to go that far.
Cook said, “Saks, Jesus Christ, don’t eat that stuff… you don’t know what kind of germs got into it. That shit is almost a hundred years old.”
Fabrini was looking sick, like maybe Saks was licking a piece of carrion.
Cook didn’t like this at all. The salt pork had an odd grayish cast to it.
Saks wouldn’t let them near it even if they wanted some. “It was in a sealed cask, you knothead, it’s just fine.”
“You mean you’ve been eating it?” Cook said.
“Sure, just like this.” Saks took a bite out of it and then another.
“Jesus, Saks! Don’t!” Cook cried out.
But he was powerless to stop him. Saks ate the entire wedge of salt pork and seemed to enjoy every bite. When he was finished, he licked his lips.
“How much, Saks… how much did you eat?”
But Saks just smiled.
“Let him poison himself,” Fabrini said. “Who gives a shit?”
Cook was watching him and thinking about those sores on his arm. Maybe there was no connection. Maybe it meant absolutely nothing and maybe it meant everything.
After that, nobody said a thing, but they were all thinking plenty.
The lifeboat drifted through that bunched, leafy weed and into the perpetual mist that floated over it in tarps and sheets. There were occasional sounds out there… splashings, but they never saw a thing. Not until they rammed into something.
“What the hell?” Fabrini said.
Crycek was in the bow. “It’s… shit, I think it’s a boat.”
Then everyone was up there, trying to pull the boat alongside. It was another lifeboat, a dead ringer for their own. Crycek tried to read the stenciled letters on her bow, but there were weeds everywhere. Somehow, some way, those profuse and winding weeds had climbed right up into the lifeboat, filled it like a window box. But they could still easily make out its general shape and bright orange fiberglass hull.
“How’d all those weeds get in there?” Fabrini wanted to know and you could hear something cracking just under his voice like ice.
Cook was up there, too, now.
He and Crycek were trying to bring the lifeboat around, but it was knotted and braided with creeping weed, just way too much of it and they were all painfully aware of that fact.
So much weed… had it grown in there? Cook pulled and the lifeboat would only move a few feet before it reached the end of its leash. The weeds were lush and bountiful and fibrous, tangled and snaking like the roots of an old banyan tree. You would have needed a chainsaw to free that lifeboat. As Cook and Crycek pulled, their own boat swung around until it was next to it lengthwise… or as close as those verdant weeds would allow.
Cook leaned over and Crycek did, too, while Fabrini and Menhaus held the lifeboat so it would not snap back from the elasticity of the weeds that held it.
Using their knifes, they began cutting through all those creepers and rootlets, tendrils that were thick as fingers and strong as cable. There was a dank heat coming off those weeds, heavy and steaming and sickening to smell. They were set with small, greasy leaves and damp fans, bulbous little floats and thorny stalks. Cook was certain more than once, that he felt them move in his hands… but it must have just been gravity. He took his knife… a knife he’d liberated from the Cyclops… and hacked and cut and sheared away green, glistening stems and hot-feeling vines.
“These things… they’re moving,” Crycek said, pulling his hands away.
Fabrini said something, but Cook wasn’t listening. Yes, they were moving, but very slowly, sluggishly. They were actually pulsing like newborn things, hot and vibrant, unpleasantly fleshy to the touch.
Cook found a bloated tuber that just struck him as wrong. It was pink like a vein, throbbing beneath his fingers and it disgusted him. Plants could not feel like this. They could not be like this. He slashed his knife against it and a dark, inky fluid sprayed against the back of his hand.
Fabrini swallowed something thick in his throat. “It looks like. ..”
“Blood,” Cook said. “It’s… I think it’s blood…”
Maybe it was the others’ unwillingness to help him hack through those pulsing vines and tentacles of green and pink growth and maybe it was just his instinctive hatred for them, but Cook began to slash and cut his way deeper into the mass and soon wished he hadn’t.
There was a body under the weeds.
The body of a man, probably a crewmember from the Mara Corday.. . but it was really hard to tell. He was lying in the bottom of the boat in about two inches of slopping black water, noosed in garlands of pulsing weed. His face was sharp and bony, sallow and lifeless, his body terribly wrinkled and shrunken. And he was breathing. Shallowly, but breathing all the same.
“He’s alive,” Cook said.
But the others wanted no part of this. There was something diabolic and utterly macabre about a man entwined in all those stalks and tubers and pink tentacles. Cook started pulling the weeds away from him… and recoiled as a single distended and oily run of weed came away from the man’s throat with a popping sound like suction cups pulled from vinyl. There were oval sucker marks on his neck. Yes, the weeds had encircled him, tucked him down deep in their own vegetable profusion and-
“They’re… they’re sucking his blood,” Menhaus said in a high voice, just absolutely filled with an irrational horror at the idea of it. “Those fucking weeds… they’re sucking his blood away… ”
And there was no arguing against it.
For that’s what those weeds were doing. The pulsing pink tendrils had suckers on their undersides like little rubbery mouths. They felt like viscid arteries in Cook’s hands. The man beneath them was slowly being leeched, he was being bled white drop by drop by drop.
Cook looked down at his hands and they were red with blood.
Something like a dry, rasping scream came from his mouth. He fell back into the lifeboat and the other one pulled back into the mist and they all distinctly heard the sounds coming from it. Busy, stealthy sounds. Rustlings and slitherings as if the lifeboat were filled with serpents. But it wasn’t serpents, it was something far worse.
Cook hung over the gunnel, washing the blood off his hands manicly.
“Unclean,” Crycek said in a hurting voice. “Oh, so terrible and unclean…”