Dead Sea

Saks moaned and George saw what he was going to do seconds before he did it. Saks was feigning here, pretending to be nearly unconscious. But he wasn’t. He was inching himself over toward the pull rope for the satchel fuses. He made it maybe an inch closer and George kicked him in the head. Punted him hard enough to make the game-winning field goal.

This time, Saks was out cold.

Menhaus, with no emotion, simply picked-up the wrench and went over to Saks and swung it with everything he had. There was a sickly wet and hollow popping sound. Menhaus hit him again with everything he had and then stood up, studying the gore and clotted hair on the end of the wrench. He tossed it aside with a shudder like he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

Nobody said anything about it.

And Menhaus himself had absolutely no comment.

“You had better go,” Greenberg told them, clutching the Geiger Counter to him.

George put the end of the pull rope on his lap. “You know what to do,” he said. “But I’ll ask you one more time if you don’t want to come with us.”

Greenberg appreciated that they all seemed to care about him, that they did not make this decision to leave him easily. It was tough on them. So much inhumanity and death had been forced on them in this awful place, the idea of willingly sacrificing one of their number was unthinkable. Yet, they had to do it. Greenberg knew it and so did they.

But it didn’t make the parting any easier.

Even Elizabeth said, “Please, Mr. Greenberg, think about it.”

But he just shook his head. “You better go. There’s not much time. It’ll be dark in just over an hour, I’m guessing. Please, get moving.”

George looked at him one last time, mumbled a goodbye and Menhaus did the same. They did not look back.

“Mr. Greenberg, I-”

“On your way, Elizabeth,” he told her. “Your uncle and I were friends, you know. What I’m doing, I’m doing for you and for him and for all the others that thing has killed. And, yes, out of curiosity.”

Cushing led her away towards the boarding ladder.

And that was it.

That was the last anyone saw of Greenberg.

30

In the cigarette boat, the ship’s graveyard and its attendant weed were easy to transverse. There were a few scary moments in the fog when Menhaus slammed into an overturned hull and nearly pitched everyone overboard or when he nearly steered them into the side of a tanker, but other than that it went pretty smoothly.

In thirty minutes, they were free of the weed, moving at a good clip through one of the channels, cutting through the fog and keeping their fingers crossed. They had everything they needed and if they couldn’t find the vortex, then it would all end out in the Sea of Mists. Maybe through the offices of the local wildlife or maybe when Greenberg pulled the cord and let loose his anti-matter bomb, as he called it.

As they pushed further away from the ship’s graveyard, George was thinking that just about anything would be preferable to having your mind vacuumed clean by the Fog-Devil. Just about anything.

The channel began to twist and turn and Menhaus lowered their speed a bit, not wanting to, but knowing that they couldn’t afford a catastrophe. Not even a little one. Darkness was coming. They could all see that. The fog was getting verse dense and heavy like rainclouds fallen to earth.

George had the compass out. “If Greenberg’s right, we should make the general area of the vortex in twenty, thirty minutes after we get out into that sea.”

“Especially with this baby,” Menhaus said, loving his new toy.

“That is,” Cushing cautioned. “If we don’t get turned in circles in this goddamn fog.” But George didn’t think they would.

Elizabeth was doing the navigating now and that was a good thing. She seemed to know her way through the channels pretty well. And George wondered how many trips she had made like this through the weed with her uncle, searching out that elusive trapdoor, that escape route from the misting world of the Dead Sea. She told Menhaus which channel to take, when he had gone too far, her eyes on the fog like maybe she could see through it.

Then finally, ultimately, all those acres of green and rotting weed to either side finally opened up, fell away, and there was open water before them, little islands of seaweed drifting about, but nothing like what they had just left.

“Hold onto your hats,” Menhaus said and edged the throttle back, picking up speed and parting those gelid waters.

“Not too fast,” Elizabeth told him. “There’s derelicts out here, too. Lots of things in the water.”

The mist started gathering around them in blankets and sheaths, just impenetrable and boiling and viscid. It was so damp it left a wet sheen on their faces. And George could remember all too well the days spent drifting and rowing through its murky depths. Jesus, he got to thinking, how had they even made it this far?

Night was coming and there was danger in that.