Warren Murphy: Skin Deep

"No," he said quietly. "I didn't think it was a prank."

The two cups of coffee grew cold, untouched, in front of them.

"You did throw that stinking stuff away, didn't you?" the commander asked with a smile.

Caan shook his head. "Did you?"

"Of course," Albright said indignantly. His voice growing louder, he added, "If you think that I'm going to let some punk threaten Arlington Mills Albright for one minute—"

"I didn't think anything, sir." His headache was throbbing again. He rubbed his temples with his fingertips.

"It stands to reason you'd keep yours," Albright said, rising jerkily. "Probably tied around your neck along with a rabbit's foot for good measure. Your people have always been superstitious."

Caan looked up, his face expressionless. "Does that go with being pushy, stingy, dirty, and unfit for membership in your country club? Sir?"

"You insubordinate little Jew," Albright said with contempt, and walked out.

Caan sighed. He put his wet slicker back on and headed out into the rain.

* * *

"Jesus Christ, will you look at that!" Someone near Caan was pointing toward the western sky.

"Gotta be a twister," someone else confirmed.

"Nah, twister's got a tail on it. Or sompin'. They ain't no tail on that thing."

"But it's moving."

It's moving this way, Caan thought.

"Wait a second. Let's have a look-see through these glasses," one of the men said, raising a pair of binoculars. He lowered them again, slowly.

"Well?"

"Damnedest thing."

"What's that?"

"It's birds."

Caan turned around sharply. Wait for the birds. They will be your sign. "What?"

"It's birds, sir," the seaman said, suddenly aware of Caan's presence. Caan moved toward the rail to get a better look, hanging on against the rolling of the ship.

"Gimme them glasses," one of the sailors said, snatching away the binoculars. "Can't hardly see with this rain and all."

"Goddamn birds, I tell you."

"What kind of birds?" an observer asked.

"I dunno. Seagulls, it looks like."

"They're the size of buzzards," the man looking through the binoculars said incredulously.

Caan placed his hand over his breast pocket. The vial lay over his thundering heart. There will be terrible destruction. "Clear the decks," he said, turning back toward the seamen.

"Sir, it's only some birds—"

"Clear the decks, I said!"

The sailors backed away from him. "Yes, sir," the senior one said hesitantly. Caan saw him striding toward one of the ship's officers. The officer, a lieutenant commander, cast an angry glance at Caan, barked something at the seamen, and stormed over toward the copilot.

"What is the idea of telling my men to clear the decks in the middle of a storm?" he raged.

"It's the birds, sir," Caan began to explain.

"Haven't you ever seen birds before? You're a pilot, for God's sake, you must have run across them once or twice."

"It's not like that, sir—"

"Look here, Lieutenant. We've got weather on our hands that's getting worse by the minute. My men can't clear the decks just because of a few birds. Is that clear?"

"You've got to believe me!" Caan shouted. "These aren't ordinary birds."

The other officer's lips tightened. "I think you'd better stick to flying planes, son."

"But—"

"That'll be all." The lieutenant commander walked away.

No one needed binoculars to see the birds now. They were giants, with six-foot wing spans and powerful bodies gliding above claws that jutted downward like gnarled trees as they reached the great ship.

"They're coming— they're coming here," someone shouted, too late.

"Oh, my God," Caan groaned. They were already attacking.

Through the violent rain, he saw a young man, dressed in a slicker like his own, stumble backward onto the deck. His hands flailed spastically as powerful talons swooped down, scooping out his throat with one deadly swat. Another screamed, high and keening with his last breath, as one of the creatures descended on him, picking out his eyes with its bloodstained beak.

Caan wanted to turn away, but some dreadful fascination held him. All around him was carnage and chaos and... terrible destruction, he thought, the voice inside him giddy with hysteria as he watched the birds, obscene in their size and sickly whiteness, pounce with a near-lust on their human victims.

Someone was running toward him, his head low, his big frame lunging desperately ahead. It was Albright. His eyes were pleading, his hands grasping at the rain pouring in front of him. "Caan!" he called. "The vial..."

The birds shrieked like banshees. Almost absently, Caan lifted the dark bottle from his pocket and stared. Was it a joke, the magic contents of the vial? Another bad dream? Beyond the vial, he saw the lumbering Albright with his hungry, twisted face and outstretched fingers.

"Give it to me!" he screamed pitifully. "Give it to me, Caan. I beg you."

And beyond him, the frantic men, blind, maimed, dying in oceans of their own blood while the monster gulls killed slowly, wantonly.

"Caan!"

The copilot stood, shocked into utter stillness, the amber bottle resting on his open palm, as the birds closed in on the commander. A flutter of white wings, one long, ghostly scream, and then Albright lay in a twisted heap of limbs and sinews, his blood mixing with the rain and washing the deck in bright splatters.

"Oh, my God," Caan said again.

And then they were coming for him. A squadron of shiny black eyes and red-tipped vultures' beaks, the wings beating a slow tattoo of death.

"Do something, Caan," he muttered aloud to himself as the birds drew inexorably nearer. A jagged prong of lightning illuminated the sky for an instant. In the light, he noticed his own fingers shaking with comic exaggeration as he fumbled for the cap of the vial.

Even with the high winds, he could smell the foul liquid in the bottle as he poured it onto his scalp and face. He felt a manic giggle rise from deep inside him. What if it was a joke, after all— if when he was found, dead and stinking of whatever vile concoction was in the bottle, the clean-up crews tossed coins to see who would get stuck with bagging his body? He giggled wildly until he broke, weeping, watching the birds swoop down for his inglorious final moment.

They passed him.

Behind him he heard the death screams of others, but the beating wings above him did not fold and drop and come for him. Angels' wings, he thought, seeing the flapping white feathers pass overhead.

The Angel of Death had passed him by.

He was not a religious man, not a Jew in any sense other than that he had been raised, nominally, as a Jew during his earliest years. His parents were not even practicing Jews any longer. Still, he knew of Passover, and it must have been the same then, thousands of years ago, when his ancestors eluded the cold kiss of the Angel with its dread white wings.

He fell to his knees, found a post to hang onto against the worsening wind, and prayed.

In time— how much time?... a moment?... an hour?— the din of gulls subsided, their flapping receded into the distance, and Caan shivered with the cold rain and wind against the back of his neck. Then he raised his head tentatively and gasped.

Around him, in a square, stood four men. They were dressed in diving gear, their faces blackened with grease. Past them, all was silence except for the howl of the wind and the unending machine-gun fire of the pelting rain. Bodies lay everywhere, sprawled indecently, their faces open with surprise and sudden, painful death. The figure of commander Albright still lay where he had fallen, the rigid fingers still searching uselessly, his frenzied quest forever failed. Nothing lived on the Andrew Jackson now except for Lieutenant Richard Caan, undistinguished Navy copilot, indifferent Jew spared from death by the sheerest whim of fate, and four strange men reeking with the stench of the fluid from the amber-colored vial.