Fabrini didn’t seem to know what was happening. A look of rage swept across his features followed by one of dazed confusion and finally pain. His hand went to his ear, blood gushing between his splayed fingers. He saw the knife, felt the warm wetness course down his neck and started to scream, crawling away towards the bow on all fours.
Menhaus tripped over one of the seats trying to get away from the glinting silver of the knife. “Oh shit,” he gasped. “Oh Christ.”
Apparently, Menhaus didn’t like it when his thrills spilled over in his own lap.
Cook stood his ground, his eyes like shining metal balls. “Give me the knife, Saks,” he said in a low, hard voice. “Give me that fucking knife!”
Saks cackled, blood running down his chin from a split lip. “You want the knife, fuck-face? You want the fucking knife?”
Cook knew he was in a dangerous position. He could see the raw animal rage in Saks’s eyes. It was like fire and rusting metal. The man was about as close to insanity as anyone he’d ever seen. Anyone save his father.
Saks slashed at him with the blade, driving him back. “You be good, asshole, you be real good,” he panted. “You get over there with your buddies or I swear to God I’ll slit you open.”
Cook backed away slowly, hands held out before him peacefully. “Sure, Saks, sure. We don’t want no trouble here. You just relax and keep cool.”
“Oh, I’ll be cool, shitbag, don’t worry about that,” he said, still smiling like a skull in the desert. “Just as long as you do what I say. Otherwise, heh, there’s things out there… hungry things. You know what I’m saying?”
In the bow, Cook found Fabrini splashing water on his ear. Washing blood from it and his neck, but also putting blood in the water.
“You idiot,” he said. “Stop it.”
“What?” Fabrini said. “What?”
“You’re getting blood in the water.”
“What of it?” Fabrini said.
“The blood,” Cook said breathlessly. “Sharks can smell it in the water.”
He didn’t need to say more. Nobody was really worried about sharks, but there was bound to be other things. Worse things. Hungry things, as Saks had said.
Menhaus licked his dry lips. “I think you’re right.”
Cook decided he’d better derail that one. “Besides… this water… it doesn’t look real clean to me. You might get some sort of infection from that slop.”
He got out the first aid kit and bandaged Fabrini’s ear for him, sprayed a little disinfectant on it. Fabrini complained, but he wasn’t too bad about any of it. Which got Cook to thinking that there was hope for him. The fact that he hadn’t tried to grab an oar or something and go at it with Saks, proved there was something very human in him.
But Saks?
No, he was too far gone.
“Right there,” George was saying. “Do you see it… right over there…”
Gosling was looking through the doorway with him and he saw it, all right. Tangled in a mass of weeds, something bright orange. Looked like styrofoam. He was thinking it might have been an EPIRB tube that had floated free of the ship or one of the lifeboats. At least, that’s what it kind of looked like.
“What do you think?” George asked.
Gosling figured it was worth checking out. “Help me unzip the canopy.”
The canopy was zippered to the inflated arches of the raft. Together, they began taking it down. Maybe it put them at risk, Gosling was thinking, but it was nice not being enclosed in the canopy. To feel the air again… even if it did smell like something mossy and rotting.
Gosling passed out oars and they began rowing over there, feeling the drag of the sea anchor behind them. The weeds were growing more numerous and none of that had escaped Gosling’s attention. Before, there had been little drifting clumps, an occasional island, now the islands were getting more numerous. They rowed on, parting the mats of weed, moving towards their target.
When they were maybe six feet away, Gosling saw the orange of an EPIRB. “Just a radio beacon,” he said. “We already have two of them.”
“Fuck it,” George said. “Let’s just keep rowing. Feels good to be doing something.”
Gosling figured he was right. It did feel good. And maybe, just maybe, with weeds becoming more concentrated it meant they were nearing some landmass. Maybe.
So they rowed and watched the weeds, the tendrils of steam wafting off the water, the heavy fog shimmering and glimmering. It felt good to put their muscles to work.
George suddenly said, “What the hell?”
He was yanking on his oar, managed to free it. He studied the end and began rowing again. Gosling figured he’d caught it on the weeds, paid it little mind… until something seized his oar. Held it tight.
“I’m caught on something,” he said, struggling with it, trying to pull it up and out of the mire. He managed to work it free of that dark, sluicing water a few inches and then it was pulled back down again. No, it surely wasn’t weeds, it had to be-
