But Crycek assured him that he was completely in control of his faculties. He dared Saks to shoot him, because he didn’t honestly believe that those bullets would kill him. “It might look like they did and it might look like I die… but will I? Or is it just something they’ve planted in your little mind? Is that even a gun you hold, Saks?” He started giggling afresh, wiping spit off his chin with the back of his hand. “Think about it, Saks! Go ahead, think about what I say! This might be your last chance! For all you know, for all you really know, you might be alone right now. Lost in this hungry fog all alone… and you just think we’re here. We might have all gone down with the ship… just ghosts, memories. C’mon, Saks, close your eyes, when you open them we won’t be here… ghosts..”
“SHUT UP!” Saks roared, unable to listen to that droning, insane voice any more. He could feel Crycek up there, in his head, like dirty fingers sorting around, making him think things and feel things, filling his mind with lies and doubts. “YOU BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU!”
But Crycek just giggled. “Can you feel them, Saks? Can you feel them up there draining you dry? Sucking your mind away?”
Saks was trying to sort it out, because none of it was true. It couldn’t be true. It was all madness what Crycek was saying. There was nothing out in that fog, no devil, no evil presence that ate minds. And… and in the boat, Cook and Fabrini and Crycek were there. They were not ghosts, because if they were ghosts that would mean that Saks himself was the crazy one. Talking to shadows. It would mean that he was by himself out there, that he was totally alone…
So Saks did what came natural to him.
He pulled the trigger on the Browning. The shot rang out and the bullet passed harmlessly over Crycek’s head. And that shut him up. It didn’t wipe that smirk off his face, but it sure as hell shut him up. The others weren’t saying much either, just staring with those sweaty, sooty faces. Accusing faces.
Finally, Fabrini said, “Nice try, Crycek. It almost worked.”
But you could see from the look on Crycek’s face that it had not been a ruse. He believed everything he had said.
“Next one goes right between your eyes, Crycek.” Saks had calmed now, but still looked a little confused. He put the gun back on Menhaus. “Okay… you said Cook and Cook it’s gonna be. You sure now?”
“I’m sure.”
Saks raised the gun and took aim.
And then Menhaus made his move.
It happened fast.
As Saks took aim Menhaus moved with a speed he’d thought abandoned him years ago. Saks hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t even remotely expected it. He probably just assumed Menhaus would curl up and pout. And that was his mistake. Menhaus threw his body against Saks, upsetting his aim and knocking him into the gunwale. The gun went off, but the bullet went into the sky. And then Menhaus had his hands on it, struggling against Saks. Saks kicked him in the stomach, in the thigh, but he would not let go.
By then, Cook and Fabrini were at his side.
Fabrini punched Saks in the face about four or five times while Cook and Menhaus wrestled the gun away.
The fight gone out of him, Saks let it go and sunk to the deck plating. Used up and empty, all the hot air gone now like somebody had bled him empty.
He did not look at them or even speak.
Cook took the gun to the bow where it would be out of harm’s way.
Fabrini took the knife from Saks’s boot while Menhaus held him.
It was all over very quickly.
“There,” Fabrini said, giving Saks a good kick in the ribs. “There you are, asshole. What’re you going to do now?”
Saks just stared at him, his face smeared with blood.
“I’m going to kill you,” Saks said and dove at him.
The three of them managed to put down Saks’s latest rebellion without too much trouble. But they knew now that he was too far gone to reason with. He had to be tied up. They used Fabrini’s belt. They knotted his arms behind his back and threaded the belt through an oarlock, knotting it again. At last, Saks was harmless. He wouldn’t hurt them or himself now.
But it was pathetic, Cook thought, having to do something like that in the first place.
What was it all coming to?
“At least, at least now we can breathe, now we can relax,” Menhaus said, still not sounding so sure of it. “We can figure out things.. . maybe get out of here.”
“There’s no getting out,” Crycek said. “Not yet, maybe not ever. We’re drifting… can’t you feel it? We’re being drawn deeper into this place.”
He had a point and nobody dismissed it. Where before the weeds had been in isolated little patches and clumps drifting about, now there were great banks of them. The water was still open for the most part, but the islands of weed were so huge you couldn’t see where they ended. They just faded off into the mist like headlands. And they were massive and thick, steaming and verdant and stinking of jungle swamps.
