Tim Curran - Dead Sea

The men in the lifeboat knew what was happening to him.

They knew he was not being eaten exactly or drained of blood or de-boned… although, essentially, all these things were happening, just not in the way they understood them. For Cook was being absorbed and digested by those hairs, dissolved and assimilated into the general mass of that nightmare. The creature was the sort of thing you whacked with a broom and swept into a dustbin, except in this place, it did the whacking.

It was moving now, lilting slowly from side to side like it was drunk. Saks saw this and figured it probably wasn’t a good thing. For if the beast was full, it would have just sank back into the sea.

It brought those limbs forward, resting them on the gunnels of the lifeboat and all those wiry gossamer tendrils began to twist and curl and spread out like when it had first seen… or sensed… Cook. A surging, rustling growth of them flowed from the thing and covered the bow, filling the boat now, seeking new flesh to subvert.

And Saks found himself thinking that those hairs were not just a body covering, but possibly general appendages and sensory instruments to boot… muscle fibers and nerve fibers, organs of taste and smell and digestion.

Menhaus tried to climb overboard and Saks clapped him on the ear. “Give me one of those kerosene lamps and a flare,” he said very quietly as those hairs crept steadily forward, just a moving mat of them creeping in their direction, covering the bow seat and progressing, progressing, a tidal wave of surging, living hairs.

Fabrini put one of the lamps in Saks’s hands and Saks shattered it against one of the amidships seats, scant feet from those tendrils, and splashed kerosene over the advancing horde. He capped the flare and a bright red tongue of flame lit up the boat and reflected off the fog like neon. The creature did not know fire. It could not see as such, but Saks was willing to bet it had nerve endings. He tossed the flare at those kerosene-drenched fibers and they exploded with a gush of flames, catching like tinder, spreading up toward the thing’s body.

It began to thrash wildly, cheated out of easy pickings, and it had a mouth or something like one, for it began making a high, strident e-e-e-e-e-e-e sort of sound like a dying insect, the sort of sound you expected a spider to make as you crushed it to pulp under your shoe. It withdrew, flaming and smoking, filling the air with a nauseating, acrid stench.

It sank back into the sea, sizzling and steaming.

But it did not go away. Its hump was still visible just above the waterline.

“What now?” Menhaus said. “Oh, Jesus, what now?”

“Put that fire out,” Saks said.

Fabrini and Crycek splashed water on the dying flames in the boat and Menhaus grabbed the flare which was burning a trench in the hull of the lifeboat.

The hump began to move, vibrating and shaking, rising up now maybe three or four inches out of the water. It began to elongate and then there were suddenly two humps and they began to pull apart with a tearing, moist sound.

“Oh, what the fuck is it doing?” Fabrini said.

Crycek licked his lips. “I think… I think it’s dividing.”

And it was. Binary fission, asexual reproduction. Like a protozoan, it was splitting itself into two parts. The humps continued to move apart, both vibrating madly, strands of pink and yellow tissue connecting the halves as genetic material was shared and the cellular plasma membrane was sheared and reformed. Coils of white fluid like semen filled the sea around it. And then division was complete and there were two humps out there. Neither were moving.

Menhaus vomited over the side of the boat.

Crycek said, “It might be dormant now… we better get out of here while we can.”

Saks thought it was a good idea. He passed out the oars. “Now row, you sonsofbitches,” he told them. “Row like motherfuckers…”

It had been threatening for hours and now darkness came.

It was born in the stark depths and the black silent bellies of the derelict ships. It came rushing out in a plexus of shadows, shifting and pooling and spreading, connecting finally in a blanketing ebon sheet that fell over the ship’s graveyard until even the fog was consumed. The only hint of light being that dirty, reddish haze from the larger of the moons overhead.

“And how long, I wonder, will it last?” Cushing said to George.

They were standing on the boarding ramp with one of the battery-powered lanterns while Marx and Gosling went through the crates, calling out what they were finding. So far, they had found blankets and tools, three crates of boots, two of desert-camouflage tents. And about two dozen boxes of MREs, Meals, Ready-to-Eat, in military jargon. The replacement for the old C-rations. So they had a new food source. And probably enough to last them for months and months.

Gosling had a crowbar and Marx had a roofer’s hatchet-hammer for splitting crate ends. Both supplied by the U.S. Army loadmaster who had supervised the loading of the plane.

“Lookee here,” Marx said. “Satchel charges… pre-packaged, too. Set the fuse, toss one, and boom! These could come in handy, you know what I mean.”

They did.

George had used charges like that when he was in an Army engineer battalion. Had used them a lot more for blasting at construction sites. Packed with C-4, you could do some serious damage, you were of the mind to.

Chesbro and Pollard were up in front of the Hummers, sitting in the web seats. Chesbro was praying and Pollard was just staring off into space.

“Who can say what sort of orbit this place is in?” Cushing continued. “Night might be a few hours or a few weeks. Who knows?”

“Shit,” George said.

The fog was bad enough, but to be in complete darkness that long. .. well, he doubted that they’d all be sane by the time it lifted.

He tried to distance himself from it all. He kept thinking of Lisa and Jacob and how much they meant to him. Even the things he’d once dreaded seemed reassuring now. Jacob’s dental bills. Lisa’s chiropractor bills. The two ex-wifes and the alimony. The mortgage. Christ, it all sounded so good now. So comforting and safe. It was funny what the thought of impending death and madness could do to a person.

It could just change your outlook on everything.

“We can live like shitting kings,” Marx said, overjoyed at all the goodies they were finding. “Look here… flares! Now don’t that beat it dead with a stick?”

Gosling said, “We’ll never get all this stuff into the boats without sinking them.”

“We’ll just take what we need, come back again if we need to.”

“Yeah,” Gosling said. “If we can find this damn plane again.”

“Oh, but I got faith in you, First. Even here in the Devil’s own asshole, I got lots of faith in you.”

Gosling laughed and Marx launched into some dirty story about three nuns and a leper whose dick kept falling off.

George looked out into the mist. It was thick and roiling and lacey beyond the boarding ramp, something woven out of smoke and steam. The light from the battery lamp made it maybe ten feet before giving up the ghost. “What keeps you going?” George asked Cushing. “I mean, what keeps you sane here? Me? I’ve got a wife and a kid back in the world. I know I have to get back to them, one way or another. Every time I feel like I can’t do this anymore, that my mind is coming apart on me… I think of them. I think of how it’s gonna be to see them again. It gives me something to hold onto. But what about you? You’re not married, are you?”

Cushing shook his head. “I told myself I wouldn’t get married until I was forty and then when I turned forty, I told myself fifty sounded good.”