“Goddamn sharks,” Menhaus said.
“Ain’t sharks,” Saks told him. “I’ve seen sharks. These ain’t sharks.”
He knew that much. These pricks would have polished off Jaws in about five minutes. No, not sharks… but something like sharks. Saks was thinking they were familiar. That maybe he had seen them before. Not living, of course, but maybe hanging in a museum or on one of those nature documentaries on fossil life. Because, dammit, more he was watching those greedy, shit-ugly excuses for fish, more he was thinking there was something ancient about them. Prehistoric.
Too bad Cushing wasn’t along, he’d probably know what Saks was trying to get at. The pictures in his mind he just didn’t have words for. Cushing knew a lot of damn useless, trivial nonsense like that.
Saks had dubbed them “boneheads” because their heads were more skull than flesh. All plated and angular with sharp bony ridges and hollows. First time one of them got real close to the boat, Saks had almost pissed himself. Like the little monster was wearing a skull mask… or was a living, swimming skeleton. They were as ugly as ugly got. Made sharks looked almost kind of sweet and inoffensive.
“They look…” Menhaus began, cocking his head to the side like maybe he was hoping something relevant would drop out “… I don’t know, just goddamn spooky, goddamn devilish, don’t you think? Them bony faces and black eyes sunk in those pits, jaws opening and closing like they only live to bite and tear…”
That got Saks smiling. That’s right, you idiot, he thought.
Sharks or boneheads, they were vicious streamlined things that could go through flesh and bone like living chainsaws. They came in a wide variety, that was for sure. Some were less than a foot in length, shaped roughly like eels; others were two or three feet in length with massive bullet-shaped bodies that were mostly head; still others – the really big ones – were eight and ten feet long with immense bony jaws that could have bitten through steel cable.
They were all predators. There was no doubt about that. And whether the men in the lifeboat could scientifically classify them and assign them a place in the natural order of things or not, it didn’t really matter. For they were here and it didn’t look like they were going to leave anytime soon.
Saks was getting a real kick out of them.
But mainly, he supposed, from the absolute fear they inspired in his little crew.
So he watched them, found them interesting.
They were brown or green and sometimes yellow. Speckled, banded, a few of the smaller ones the bright, electric red or shiny sunset orange of carnival glass. Almost artificial looking, you came right down to it.
Menhaus stared at his feet, rocking slowly back and forth, stroking his mustache, maybe thinking and maybe afraid to.
Fabrini cursed the fish, calling them everything but white men.
Cook studied them without emotion, his eyes as flat and dead as those of the predators circling them. But inside, he was coiled tighter than a fireman’s hose.
And Crycek? You just never knew what sort of happy shit was bouncing through the haunted ruins of his mind. He watched them, his lower lip quivering a bit.
Saks was the only one who seemed to be enjoying any of it.
In his mind, he viewed the boneheads and his shipmates in a similar vein. Enemies. That’s what they were. If he went into the water the boneheads would get him, would take his life quick as a knife across the throat. And it was no different here in the boat. Fabrini and Cook (maybe even Menhaus, too) wanted to take his life as well. Crycek was too withdrawn to do much more than scratch his balls and breathe, but the other three? Traitors and cutthroats. The only thing stopping the murdering bastards was the gun and the knife. They made Saks lord and master. And like any lord, he had his enemies.
Saks didn’t want to kill them.
But he would.
At the first sign of trouble.
But he’d only kill one of them. Toss them into that churning sea of teeth, let the others see what the boneheads did with fresh meat. If they’d tear apart a corpse, they’d gobble down a fresh bleeding body in seconds.
“Dammit, Saks,” Menhaus said, “why don’t you just shoot those goddamn things? They’re driving me buggy.”
Saks just laughed.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Cook said hopelessly. “The blood in the water… it might drive them mad.”
“That’s right,” Saks said. “Haven’t you ever seen it on TV? They call it a feeding frenzy. Sharks go crazy, start biting everything, including each other. More blood flows, the crazier they get. And those are sharks we’re talking about, not… not these bastards.”
“How many more can there be?” Fabrini moaned. “I mean, shit, they just keep coming and coming.”
“Hundreds,” Cook said, cheerful as ever.
