“Now, if we just had some land to go for a spin,” George said.
“I wonder where all this stuff was going,” Cushing said.
“Middle East or Europe, probably,” Gosling said.
Marx climbed up atop one of the Hummers, played his flashlight along a heavy gun mounted on top. “This would be a fifty-caliber machine gun, boys. If we just had some ammo for it, we could cut anything in half out there with it.”
Up front of the vehicles, there was an open space with web seats on either wall. There was some loose gear stored there in green nylon canvas bags. Gosling checked them out one after the other. “Medical gear,” he said. “We can use this stuff… antibiotics, pressure bandages, disinfectants. Must have been some medics on board…”
They found a few battery-powered lanterns and used them, conserving their flashlights. Marx and Gosling kept checking everything out.
“I don’t see any survival rafts here, First,” Marx said. “My guess is these boys ditched and headed off across the weed.”
They moved forward up to the cockpit and it was empty, save for a lot of avionics and navigational systems which were beyond them. Many of the screens were still lit which meant the batteries still had a charge. Marx turned on the VHF and scanned the channels, picking up nothing but that breathing, listening static. He turned it off before they heard something worse.
George and Cushing stepped down to the passenger door just behind the cockpit. It was open, too, weeds and water having insinuated themselves there now. It was getting dim out in the seaweed sea, the fog hanging in a ghostly membrane, flowing and covering, shimmering like burning marsh gas, will-o’-the-wisp. Great patches of it drifted over the weeds and assorted wreckage.
But maybe ten feet out in the weeds was what they were looking at.
Snagged in green mats of the stuff were the remains of three bodies, possibly a fourth. You couldn’t see much of them, just slats of white bone showing through greasy emerald and yellow-green ropes and flaps of creeping weed. Though the others were face-down, sinking in the growth, one of the skulls was grinning up at them, tendrils of pinkish slime oozing from its eye sockets and seaweed on the crown dangling like hair. Down there, in that misty growth, that skeleton looked like it wanted to get at them.
“Oh, boy,” George said. “That must be the crew… or some of them…”
A fat brown worm slid from the skull’s nasal cavity and sought the weed.
“They’re just dead. They can’t hurt you,” Gosling said, leading the both of them away.
But George was thinking that it had already hurt him, seeing those men stripped to bone like that had hurt him in ways he could not begin to catalog. But that was the reality of this place: one wound on top of another. One heartbreak and nightmare after another. You could expect no more here in this feral dimension.
Like gravity, it sucked.
5
Cook thought: Look at them, just sitting and waiting, hoping. They all have something to return to. Lives. Things they want and need to take up again. All except me. I was alone in the old world and I’m alone in the new one. And they know it, they all goddamn well know it. They talk about girlfriends and wives, sisters and brothers and children. Me? I say nothing. They want to get back. And look at their eyes, will ya? They all doubt that I’m the man that can get them there.
Cook could feel it all draining out of him now. All the poison, all the doubts and uncertainties and anxieties. It came out of every pore and nearly drowned him, left him gulping for air up in the bow. He sat there, staring off into the mist and the weeds, not wanting any of them to see the weakness on his face. He was wrung out and just plain out of answers. All of this had gone on too long and these men were going to die and it would be his fault, all his fault, because he didn’t have a goddamn clue as to what to do next.
No, he couldn’t let Saks see it on his face.
Because Saks would see it. And if he saw it, he would recognize it. Because guys like Saks are predators and they can smell fear and personal anguish same way a mad dog can smell panic on you. And once that happens, forget it, it’s only a matter of waiting for those teeth and that frothy, hot breath. And that’s exactly how Saks was: he smelled it on you, he tasted it on you, he sensed it on you, he’d sink his teeth in and never let go. You had any flaws or frailties and Saks got hold of them, he’d exploit the shit right out of them. He’d rub it all in your face until you either killed him or just simply broke down and he won.
And if he won… look out.
Cook wasn’t exactly sure when it had started coming apart for him. Maybe it had been coming on for a long time and maybe what they’d found in the other lifeboat had just kicked it into high gear. Because he was having trouble with that, having trouble with what he’d seen.
Blood. Those weeds had been full of blood. They’d been milking the poor bastard lying in the bottom. He was unconscious and beyond pain, but what if he was paralyzed or something? What if he had known what was happening, but could do nothing to prevent it? Was just too weak? Jesus, how long could the mind string itself together when parasitic weeds were sucking the blood out of you?
And I left him there, Cook thought, just angry and guilty and full of wild, self-defeating things he could not name. I left that poor bastard there… to be drained to a husk…
What kind of death was that? By the look of the guy, he’d probably already lost too much blood. Even if they cut him loose, he would never wake up. Cook tried to tell himself that, but it did not make him feel better. Because the least he could have done was to have killed the guy. Put a bullet in his head or drawn a knife across his throat… something.
But he hadn’t.
He hadn’t done a damn thing.
When he’d sliced through those damn weeds… and they’d bled, squirted hot blood over his hands… well, it had just been too much. And when he’d pulled those little suckers off the guy’s throat, that’s when things had snapped for him. The grim and shocking realization that those plants fed on blood, were designed by nature to leech things… it was just too much.
Even now, he could still feel the greasy flesh of those plants, the blood on his hands.
Saks was watching him.
Cook did not turn, did not have to. He could feel that hungry gaze on him, those probing eyes. Oh, yes, he could feel them just fine. Searching for a sign of weakness, something to take advantage of, to use and abuse.
Cook, feeling a raw heat in his belly, turned around and sure enough Saks was giving him the eye, that cocky grin on his face.
“What the hell are you looking at?”
That grin, growing, knowing it was on to something here. “What’s the matter, Cook? You seem a little touchy? Something eating you?”
“What could be eating me, Saks?”
“I don’t know, but something is. Playing the big boss man too much for you?”
Cook felt his lower lip tremble. “It’s too much for anyone, isn’t it?”
“Poor Cook. He just bit off more than he could chew.” That grin was so big now it was like a knife cut in Saks’s face. “Some guys just aren’t up to it, Cook. Some guys just don’t have it. And you, my friend, you don’t have it.”
“Well, maybe not, Saks, but who else is there?”
Saks shrugged. “Let me think. How about you, Fabrini? You ready to take charge here?”
Fabrini just looked from him to Cook dumbly, an almost bovine emptiness in his eyes. “No… no, I don’t want no part of it.”
Saks shrugged again. “Well, there’s always Menhaus. He’s a true pillar of fucking strength. And Crycek? Sure, maybe a crazy situation needs a crazy leader.”