Dead Sea

Everyone slowly went below decks again. Saks was proud of the way he handled things. But if there was nothing else in this world he was good at, it was handling men and handling trouble. He’d done it in the war and he’d been doing it ever since. Holding hands and kicking asses. He was good at it.

He looked at his own crew. Menhaus and Fabrini stood motionless, wind-up soldiers waiting to be put into action. Ropes of fog clung to them like scarves. “Let’s go find that goddamn captain and see what kind of shit we’re into here,” he said.

There were no arguments.

14

When Gosling heard the alarm and found out one of his boys jumped overboard, he pretty much went apeshit. He ordered the navigator to bring the ship around. Workboats were lowered and a search was carried out for Stokes, the kid who’d jumped over the side. The search went on for nearly an hour in that moist, rank pea soup, led by Gosling himself, but it was hopeless and everyone knew it. First thing he did when he was back on the ship was to jump up and down on his sailors, reaming them out about protocol concerning men overboard. When he was done jamming maritime law and regulations down their throats, he went up one side of Saks and down the other. By the time he was done, Saks had a sore asshole. Saks wasn’t the sort to take crap like that, but Gosling was his kind of man – tough as saddlehide and with a set of balls on him he should’ve been pushing around in a wheelbarrow.

“You want to run my ass up the flagpole, Gosling,” Saks said after he ordered his boys away, “you take me aside and do it. You don’t treat me like that in front of my men.”

But Gosling wasn’t having it. Saks was a tough old bastard himself – just ask him – but Gosling towered over him by nearly a foot and looked like he’d kicked more balls in his time than the Dallas Cowboys. “Well, see, you’re wrong there, Mr. Saks, dead-ass fucking wrong,” he explained. “On this ship I’m the First. First Mate. That means I’m God and Ghandi and Hitler all rolled into one. I run this goddamn ship and if you’re on it, then I run you, too. You’re mine. When the shit comes down, I’m there with the biggest fucking shovel you ever saw and if you don’t believe that, I’ll crack that shovel right across the back of your fucking skull, scoop up what runs out and throw it right over the side. You can believe that.”

“You better watch that mouth,” Saks told him.

“And you better shut your pisshole before I throw your ass into the deep six,” Gosling told him. “We lost a man out there. And if you or your boys had gotten off your dead asses and alerted us to the situation a little sooner, that man might be alive now. So don’t give me any shit, Mr. Saks, because you do and you’re going to look real funny with my size twelve boot hanging sideways out of your ass.”

Saks saw that intimidation wasn’t going to work with this guy, so he just started laughing. “I like you, Gosling, you’re a grade-A prick.”

With that, Saks left.

And Gosling stood there, taking hard breaths and thinking hard thoughts. He didn’t need Saks and his shit because right then, the First had a full plate. Sure, the alarm had been sounded, but not soon enough for Gosling’s liking. In situations like that, it was never soon enough. And why those goddamn mother-rapers – his own crew included – had stood there while Stokes danced over the railing, was beyond him. It should have been obvious what the kid was attempting, particularly given his state of mind.

Gosling just shook his head, watching the fog get thicker and their chances get thinner.

15

George Ryan had been sleeping when the madness hit. As had Cushing and Soltz. They came awake at roughly the same time, gagging and coughing and finding it impossible to draw so much as a breath. They heard the men stampeding in the corridors outside, but decided not to join them.

In fact, it really wasn’t even a choice.

Soltz passed out before he made it to the porthole. George made it there and Cushing just barely did. Within the span of a few minutes it had all passed and they were left lying on the floor, leaning up against bulkheads, their throats raw and dry as desert sand.

They never heard the screaming.

Never even knew what hell had been let loose on the decks above. Everything they would learn, they would learn later and in varying detail from the others. For now, it was just enough for them to be able to breathe.

“What happened?” Soltz asked them.

“A very interesting question,” Cushing said, coughing.

George ignored the sarcasm of that. “We better get topside and see what this is.” Soltz said, “Are we sinking?”

He was staring up into the rafters of the cabin, at the lifejackets and survival suits hanging up there.

“No, we’re not sinking.”

Cushing was staring out the porthole by this time. “Look at that fog,” he said. “You ever see anything like it?”

16

Gosling had one last pipe before he went to the captain.