Tim Curran - Dead Sea

And Fabrini would always be alive in that black, godless dimension.

A stream of atoms forever drifting and dissipating, but alive and aware and insane beyond any insanity ever known or conceived of. A tormented consciousness fading into eternity, alone, always alone, undying.

Nobody said anything for a time.

Nobody could say anything.

At least Saks had had the sense to turn that awful machine off so they didn’t have to listen to Fabrini, to the blasphemy of his endless, bodiless agony. A tactile creature in a world of shadows and anti-matter and non-existence.

He was flaking away, just crumbling now like a vampire in the rays of the sun. Flecks of dust lit off him, bits of him went to powder and rained gradually to the deck like grains of sand. One of his arms fell off, hit the floor and shattered into dirt and debris like it had been sculpted from dry clay. Very dry clay. It was probably the sudden immersion in this atmosphere, after countless centuries in that other.

As they stood there, Fabrini kept breaking apart until he looked like a heap of debris dumped from a vacuum cleaner bag.

Menhaus looked positively slack like his bones had gone to poured rubber. He could barely support his own weight. He just slouched there, drained and beaten and broken, his eyes livid and hurtful.

“So much for Fabrini,” Saks said.

That warmed up Menhaus. He stood up straight, his eyes blazing with an almost animal ferocity. It was too much. First Cook, then Pollard, and now Fabrini. He went right at Saks. Went right up to him and punched him square in the face. Saks almost went down, a trail of blood coming out of his mouth.

“You!” Menhaus bellered. “You knew something like this would happen and you wanted it to happen!”

Saks nodded, a vile and bleeding thing.

Then he and Menhaus went at other with claws and teeth, hitting and kicking and scratching and it took both George and Cushing to pull them apart. George had to hit Saks three times until he fell away and Cushing had to toss Menhaus to the floor.

“Dead man,” Saks told him, spitting out blood. “You’re a dead man, you fucking faggot! I’ll kill you! Swear to God, I’ll kill you!”

And whether that was directed at George or Menhaus or both of them, it was really hard to tell. Elizabeth stood there, shaking her head, not surprised at the ways of men, but generally disappointed as she was now.

“Let’s go,” she said. “I’ve had enough.”

And that sounded good.

Except Menhaus wasn’t done. He came up now with George’s. 45 in his hand. It had been on the floor where George dropped it and now Menhaus had it. He leveled it and George and Cushing got out of the way.

“What’re you gonna do with that, you pussy?” Saks said.

So Menhaus showed him.

He pulled the trigger and put a slug in his guts.

Saks gasped, a flower of blood blossoming at his belly. Drops of it oozed between his clasped fingers. He staggered back, looked like he’d fall, and staggered over to the doorway. They heard him stumbling up the companionway, swearing and gasping.

George slapped Menhaus across the face and he dropped the gun.

“He had it coming,” was all Menhaus would say. “That bastard’s been asking for it.”

And George, numb from toes to eyebrows, thought, yes, he did at that.

They couldn’t find Saks.

They looked and looked for over an hour, canvassing that ship and although their thoughts were still dark and their moods just as gray as stormy skies, getting away from that room and the remains of Pollard and Fabrini and that alien husk had been good for them. Searching for Saks, having something to do, it was even better.

Finally, they gave up.

Elizabeth said a few words over the remains of Pollard and Fabrini and they all bowed their heads, remembering things that made them smile and other things that made them cry. But mostly just bowing their heads because gravity seemed to be pulling them down and they had all they could do not to give in and go to their knees.

“All right,” George finally said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They poled their way back to the Mystic through the weave of dense fog, past the carcasses of dead ships caught in the weed. They took their turns on the poles and said very little and wondered a great deal.

Taking a break and lighting a cigarette with shaking fingers, George told Cushing what he thought had happened to Fabrini. About him being alone for maybe thousands of years in that other place, his mind never dying, just suspended, preserved like something floating in a corked jar of alcohol.

“Yeah,” Cushing said. “About what I was thinking. Time… well it wasn’t the same on the other side.”

“Where was he?”

Cushing just shook his head. “The Fifth Dimension? Sixth? Tenth? Shit, who knows, but a place so alien I don’t want to think about it.”

George was staring at the alien machine at Cushing’s feet. He had brought it along despite Elizabeth’s protests. Even now, she was glaring at it and him like it was Pandora’s proverbial box and she was afraid the lid was going to blow off it.

George dragged off his cigarette, blew smoke out his nostrils. “That alien… that Martian… whatever the fuck it was-”

“I doubt it was a Martian,” Cushing said, trying to laugh, but it just wouldn’t come.

“You know what I mean, smartass. That… being. You suppose it could have helped us? I mean really helped us if we could have talked sense to it?”

Cushing nodded. “Without a doubt. You have any idea of the sort of hyper-intellect it must have possessed? The secrets a race like that must know? Yeah, George, it wanted to, it could have calibrated this magic box and shot us straight to Disneyland if it wanted to.” He sighed. “But let’s face it, it wasn’t exactly the friendly type. You saw how it looked at us. You felt it look into you. I saw it doing that, that’s why I hit it with the axe. So much for my hands.”

“I owe you,” George said and meant it.

“What was that like? It looking into you like that?”

“I honestly don’t know. I felt like my mind was emptied, that I felt very small and helpess. Other that, I don’t remember anything.”

“Well, doesn’t matter. That thing was-”

“Evil,” Elizabeth said and dared anyone to contradict her. “You know it and I know it. Maybe it was an advanced life form, as you called it, but it was cold and diabolic. It looked at us like scientists look at mice in a cage… something to be toyed with.”

“You’re right,” Cushing told her. “As usual, you’re absolutely right.”

And George knew she was, too.

There was evil as in human evil and then there was the other kind. Cosmic evil. An evil so malign and ravening that it was practically supernatural to the human mind. The alien had been like that. Evil to the fourth power. Evil fucking squared. And thinking such thoughts, feeling embarrassed and, yes, liberated by thinking them, George found himself doing something he had not done since childhood: praying. Yes, in his head he was praying to anything that would listen to him. Hoping, begging for some sort of divine guidance and protection. He’d never had much use for religion, but now? Oh yes, he needed it. He needed to feel a guiding hand on him that would deliver them from this hell. And he thought that if there was no god, no superior consciousness out there, then the human race and all the other struggling dumbassed races in the universe were seriously screwed. Because things like that alien would crush them and there wasn’t a goddamn thing they could do about it. If there was no creator, no divine protector… then, shit, that meant that the human race was just a bunch of upright, intelligent apes scratching in the dirt for meaning, for revelation. Trying to make sense out of something that was innately senseless.