Dead Sea

Gosling heard his name spoken and nearly jumped. Lots of things made him jump now. But it was just George Ryan, out taking a walk or something. He was leaning up in the corridor outside the crew’s mess smoking a cigarette.

“Are you doing a little detective work?”

Gosling cleared his throat of whatever had been stuck in it. “No. Why the hell would I be doing something like that?” he said a little more sternly than he intended.

“Why wouldn’t you? You’re just as curious as the rest of us, aren’t you?”

“There’s nothing to be curious about.”

George ran thin fingers through his matted beard. He dragged slowly off his cigarette. “Isn’t there?”

“No, there isn’t.”

Christ, this was the last thing Gosling needed right now. It hadn’t even been an hour yet since they danced the nasty with that fucking worm and he was beginning to wonder if it had happened at all. Morse was up in his cabin, trying to figure out their next move. Gosling himself had taken a hot shower and still he could smell that thing on him… that sharp stink of carrion. What he didn’t need right now was George Ryan reading his mind.

George laughed. “No, I guess getting lost in some weird fog and having a deckhand go crazy is par for the course at sea. I gotta get out more.”

“Jesus bloody Christ, George. I thought you were smarter than that. I was starting to think that you and Cushing were the only ones with brains on this goddamn ship. I guess I was wrong.”

George was smiling. “Save it,” he said. “Save it for Saks and those other idiots, okay? All the dumb swabbies who’ll swallow anything you guys tell ‘em. I know better”

“And what is it you know?”

“I know you guys are clueless. You don’t know what’s going on here or where we are or how we’re going to get out of any of this. And I also know there’s a lot more to that bit with that deckhand than any of you guys want to let on about. Why don’t you just admit it?”

Gosling just stood there, feeling completely defenseless. There were a lot of things he could have said. Countless lies he could have manufactured. But it would have all been pointless. George had him and he knew it.

“You want me to tell you we’re lost in the Bermuda fucking Triangle, George? You want that?”

“If it’s the truth”

“Well, it’s not, so if you don’t mind, I got work to do,” he said, walking away and leaving George standing there, that amused little grin on his face. Sonofabitch was just too damn smart for his own good.

Gosling made his way topside and coming up that companionway, he started to get a bad feeling. There was no real reason for it. But, regardless, it descended on him and filled him with a bitter sense of hopelessness, an anxiety that left him feeling utterly helpless. He paused there, leaning up against the bulkhead, and he honestly didn’t have the strength to face any of it. Things had already happened that were beyond anything rational and they would keep happening. Keep happening, he figured, until he was drained dry, without an ounce of fight left in him. And that was really the problem, wasn’t it? Gosling was a handson sort of guy. Very blue-collar, very working class. He was not the imaginative sort. His world was very black and white, the perimeters very well-defined. He asked very little of reality other than for it to always be the same.

And now this.

It was just too goddamn much.

He started up the steps again, telling himself in no uncertain terms to suck it in. He was the First and that meant people looked to him. Looked to him for strength and stability. Sometimes, when the going got rough, the First was the only thing standing between chaos and calm.

Gosling came out of the hatch into that boiling fog and right away, he knew there was trouble. Just as something in him had suspected. Somebody was hollering, crying out frantically.

“Now fucking what?” Gosling said under his breath.

It was coming from somewhere in front of the superstructure, somewhere out on the bow. Gosling made his way forward, that fog thicker than pillow down. He could hear one of the men shouting about something and then the sound of feet running in his direction. The fog whistle sounded, as it did every few minutes, but this time it made him jump.

One of the deckhands – Pollard – came bounding out of that soup, his eyes wide and wet and his mouth trying to form words.

Gosling took hold of him and slammed him up against the bulkhead. “What in the Christ are you yelling about?” he snapped at him.