Crycek was still grinning. He couldn’t seem to lose that grin any more than a clown could lose one painted on his face. “Childish. You’re both so goddamn childish. You sit and argue and call each other fucking names while we drift farther into the mouth of Hell. Because that’s where we’re all going, each and everyone of us, right into Hell. And you know what, Menhaus? We’re never getting out. Never, ever.” He started giggling with a high, jittery sound that seemed to have the same tonal quality as fingernails scraping a blackboard. “Just like… heh, heh… just like Alice in Wonderland, eh? We went through the looking glass and now there’s no way out, no way at all.”
“Shut up,” Saks told him. “Goddamn freak.”
“No, no,” Fabrini said. “Let him speak. Let him get it off his chest. Maybe it’s about high time somebody around here speaks what’s really on their minds, really tells the truth.” Cook said, “Everyone’s overwrought.”
“Shut up, moron,” Saks told him. “Okay, Crycek. Spill it. You’ve been chewing on a bone ever since we came aboard, so out with it. What kind of crazy shit have you got for us?”
Crycek didn’t like that. Didn’t like being called crazy any more than a prostitute likes being called a whore. Because sometimes the truth not only hurts, it wounds, it scars. “What bone have I been chewing on? Same one you’ve all been chewing on, except not a one of you has the balls to come out and admit it. You’re all scared, you’re scared fucking white and I know it. I can see it in your eyes. Shit, I can smell it on you. You’re all ready to piss your pants! Big tough construction workers scared like little old ladies of the dark! I love it! I just fucking love it! Look how I love it!”
Cook said, “C’mon, Crycek… take it easy for chrissake. We’re your friends here.”
That got Saks laughing. “Friend? I ain’t his friend, Cook, anymore than I’m yours. And I also ain’t his mommy and ain’t about to baby this goddamn pussy.”
“Jesus Christ, Saks,” Fabrini said. “Give the guy a break.”
“Kiss my ass, you dumb wop. And that goes for the rest of you fucking sissies. Jesus H. Christ. Not a man among you.” He looked over at Crycek, looked at him like the very idea of his existence disgusted him. “Go ahead, Crycek. Vent yourself. Have your little nervous breakdown. When you decide you’ve got the balls to slit your wrists, I’ll give you the knife. Hell, I’ll hold it for you.”
Cook was beginning to feel tense and uncomfortable now, too. It was like reality and sanity were sewn together and some crazy bastard was pulling the seams open. He felt alone and paranoid and vulnerable.
Maybe they all felt that.
For if there had ever been any camaraderie here, it had just gone black to its core. Saks was a big part of that, of course. He was the proverbial rotten apple, the seed of malice. Sure, he was everything that was wrong with the race, all the intolerance and selfishness and cheap hatred rolled into a big fucking mess that called itself a man. Survival situations, like war, brought out the best and worst in people. And there was no doubt where Saks fit in. He was vile and crude and callous, the sort of guy that would slit your throat for a crust of bread.
And wasn’t it just damn funny, Cook got to thinking, how trash like him always survived? Always lived another day to poison a few more minds?
But if any of Saks’s cruelty was intended to make Crycek fold up like a flower in a frost, it just didn’t work. “That’s what I like about you Saks… you’ve got the biggest mouth of the bunch. Thrusting your chest out and running the others down, big boss man, big tough guy… and you know what’s really funny about that? What’s killing me is that you’re the most scared of all. You hide behind that macho shit because inside you’re a scared little boy… we weren’t here to show off for, you’d be crying and sucking your thumb.”
Saks was pissed. And everyone thought he was going to read Crycek the riot act, go up one side and down the other and not miss much real estate in-between… but he didn’t. He just stared at him, stared with such intensity he could’ve burned holes through him.
Menhaus said, “Okay, Crycek, enough. Both of you, enough.”
Fabrini just looked puzzled by it all. “What’s this ‘through the looking glass’ shit… what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Crycek, still grinning, said: “We aren’t in the Atlantic anymore. We’ve passed beyond, to another place. A bad place and you all know that. Just like Alice, right through the fucking looking glass… only this Wonderland, things aren’t so brightly lit, are they? You can call it the Devil’s Triangle or the Sargasso Sea or the Graveyard of Lost Ships… what does it matter? That fog grabbed us, vomited us out here… wherever in Christ here is. Another dimension, another planet, I don’t know, but I do know one thing and that’s that not a one of us is getting out. We’re here to stay.”
