Saks looked sullen with the memory, as if he could see them running in packs in his mind. Smell them and hear them squeaking.
“Did you poison ‘em out?”
But Saks didn’t seem to hear the question. “I was a Seabee, Construction Battalions. We put in air strips and docks and roads, threw together camps in godforsaken places.” He shook his head. “My first classification was gunner’s mate. So when the river rats, the river patrol sailors, took some bad causalities and were under strength, they would yank guys from other units to build the riverine forces back up to strength. Yeah, they pulled my ass off a big Cat dozer and stuck me in the stern of a PBR, a river patrol boat, on the fifty cal. Had to pull that shit for a month until the replacements made it in-country. What a clusterfuck that all was. Cruising around that stinking brown water down in the Delta, blowing the piss out of little villages. Taking fire and giving it back. Riding herd on all those sampans out in the channels. Most of ‘em were just gook fishermen, papasan and his fucking net, but now and again you’d run across some VC.”
Menhaus wasn’t really in the mood for war stories. He was watching the shadows and thinking about that black, oozing tissue that had nearly consumed Makowski. Wondering if it was coming back and if he’d really seen that woman’s face in it.
“What’s the rivers have to do with rats?” he said.
So Saks told him. “One day, the chief gets a call from an A-6 pilot. There’s some barge drifting downriver, looks derelict. We gotta go check it out. Quick-and-dirty like everything else. The brass says that hulk is a hazard to navigation and the chief is pissed. Hazard to navigation? Down there in the fucking mud flats? Sheee-it. Command says for us to take a peek at her, if she’s derelict, they’ll have some UDTs or SEALs go in there and blow it.”
“So you went aboard the barge?”
“Sure as shit we did.”
“What did you find?”
Saks clenched his teeth, then said, “It was like this tub… dirty and rusting, taking on water. Full of spiders and slime and stinking of decay. Thousands of flies. We found a weapons cache and called it in. Then we found the bodies…”
About twenty VC sappers had been using the barge as a staging point. They had weapons and ammo, explosives and det cord, the works, Saks told him. All the shit they needed to cause all manner of suffering and trouble. The bodies had been there over a month and were just black and rotted, the worms all done with them. Just husks like mummies. But they were chewed-up looking, their bones full of teeth marks.
“About then, the rats show,” Saks said. “Hundreds of ‘em. Their eyes were red in our flashlights. Red and glaring and hungry. Those rats were hiding in the dark corners and debris… but when they saw us, they were hungry enough to come out. Just starving and slat-thin, having picked those bodies down to bones, they wanted some meat and they were going to have it.”
Saks said they came charging out of the darkness, all squeaking and chittering and snapping their teeth. The sailors opened up on them, drove most of ‘em back, but still dozens got through, biting and clawing and drawing blood.
“What did you do?”
“We got off her in a hurry. But you know what?”
Menhaus shook his head.
Saks grinned. “Those fucking things were so hungry, they dove off the ship into the water, started swimming after our launch. Hundreds of ‘em. The chief flooded the water with fuel oil and lit it up. Fucking barbecue. What a smell. Jesus lovely Christ, I’ll never forget that smell. The A-6 pilots came in and dropped napalm on the barge until she was nothing but a blackened, smoking hulk. They put a few missiles into her and down she went.”
“Damn,” Menhaus said. “Of all things.”
“You know what?” Saks said to him. “That’s why I hate this fucking hulk, because it smells just like that barge. Like vermin and bones and death.”
Of course George didn’t know much about Pollard, thought he’d seen him around on the Mara Corday once or twice, but had never actually spoken to him. It was Gosling’s idea for him to have a chat with Pollard. Pollard needed someone to talk to, a sympathetic ear. That’s what Gosling said. So while the others pulled at the oars, George was sitting with Pollard in the back of the raft.
“There’s some bad shit in this place, isn’t there?” he said, trying to break the ice.
Pollard didn’t even look at him.
“I hear you were adrift by yourself for a time.”
Pollard shrugged.
“Must have been tough being alone out there.”
Pollard cleared his throat. “I wasn’t alone.”
Contact. “Who was with you?”
Pollard looked at him briefly, as if he couldn’t believe George was quite that naive or stupid. And you could almost see it in his eyes: You’re never alone here, George, haven’t you guessed that yet?
“I went overboard with Gosling. We bobbed around in our lifejackets, Christ, for hours and hours, maybe most of the day… what a day would be back home… and then we found this raft. Thank God for that.”
