George's fingers penetrated the skin around my neck. The moans of the sea hearkened over the dissipating fog horn as the ship fell away to the coughing mist. . . The waves raised our bodies and dropped us some more. . . But the ringing in my ears built into a buzzing-- a clicking-- a rushing! As though a flashbang grenade just burst the side of my face and popped my eardrums into submission.

Stop, George, stop—Please—I have to save Jack! --

But the words were caught under the strangle of his bloody fingers—I could even smell the iron metals of his blood run out of his filthy fingernails and circle onto my skin.

George was a ghoul; his head hanging like a maniac over mine, his nose busted so bad it looked like two open holes between his eyes! My lungs crushed under his weight as he sat forward on my chest—The peripherals of my sight were getting lost in the high of the oxygen loss—my head was spinning; my sight was blackening—The blood from his nose dripped onto my face and I wanted to scream but could not—This manifestation of animal hatred and survival were a monster trying to kill me!

I could not scream—but I tried to kick my knee up into his crotch! His shifting knee blocked me. My body sucked to pull in air through the space under his grip—My hands launched upward to send my nails cutting and raking on his face—They struck his eyes! George screamed and I tried to make him as blind as I was as my brain gave out to the lightheadedness and black and white spots covered my vision like dark snow on a windshield of a car racing through a murderous blizzard.

His body on me was rape in itself. The blood was not hitting my brain. I felt spiders crawling all over my skull, penetrating! Filling my capillaries with their squirming arms and legs—Stopping my oxygen—ending my life--

Stop George! Please! I have to save Jack!

But George was lost in this moment of insanity--

I would die to save Jack. I might have been weaker than George, he might have been heavier than me. But I squirmed—I tried with all my might to think under this pressure and static killing of how to kill this man on top of me. I even tried to scream for Craig to come back! I tried to rock the boat just to flip it over and kill us both. I tried kicking again and raking my sharp fingers some more. I even tried wrapping my hands around George's neck and driving my thumbs with all the pressure I could to break in his Adam's apple. I failed.

I saw the guilt in George's eyes—and the fear that I would take this boat, and either strand George, or rescue anyone like Jack, Travis or Brett, who would return to have him killed or tell the police if we were ever saved that he had deserted them and thus murdered them indirectly. I don't know what was going on in his head as my vision blurred completely, and all the feeling in my body escaped my senses. . . Because after a moment I even felt George levitate off of me. . .

And I heard the scream, and the familiar yell—of someone shouting, "You're killing her!"

The boat rocked and teetered some more. The fog horn was truly out of hearing range. The ship was lost. And there was somebody new on the boat. Until I heard a violent splash in the water, and knew I was now the only one aboard.

The splashing and yelling continued, until finally I noticed my chest heaving automatically and drawing air back into my lungs—the gray sky and the racing clouds reappeared through the opening curtains of my vision, and I could hear Craig's drowning voice, and the shouting of the man who was about to kill him.

I could not move besides a weak upright motion that made me dizzy and landed me back on my face. The splashing and cursing and wrestling continued when I finally heard a horrible cry and a choking, and a drowning and a bang of metal and concrete.

I swung my hands over to grip the edge of the canoe and pulled myself in a trembling fashion over the edge to see the terror. That's when I screamed, because I saw a motionless body floating in the water in a streak of blood that trailed off the slab of concrete George bashed Craig cranium into with a bent metal pole that fluttered in the water beside him. I shook and fell back in terror as George managed to reel himself in fury back over the side of the boat and managed with his last bit of energy to flop back onto the boat on the bow side across from me. I shrunk into a feeble position—crying and cursing and only planning to grab an oar—which I did—before planning to strike George in the neck a thousand times with it before George was truly dead!

But as I raised the oar, the very heavy oar that challenged my shaking strength, I saw George's whole face turning pale, as the blood was lost from the wound I kicked into him only minutes ago, and with a fatal, dying breath, he wheezed himself into a limp, upright position against the other end of the canoe, and the light in his eyes turned dark. . . and George became a corpse that I was too afraid to push out of the boat and dump into the water.

I cried as the blood dried on my face and lips and neck, and the tears swam down to clean my skin. I dropped the oar in my lap and lay there crying for minutes on end. Until finally I came to the only thought that would keep me going—I had to get to Jack-- I had to save Jack.

I fell into silence, and could hardly tell how silent the world was now, with all the thoughts wailing in my mind. I leaned forward, found the wet blanket that was lying at my feet and clumsily threw it over George to hide his horrible, dead face. He was partially covered except for his hands; his palms were faced up to the sky. I looked one more time over the edge of the boat to see Craig's body floating in a forward hunch in the water. He was drinking in the sea.

I managed to climb out of the boat, and used all my will power to push the boat off the chunks of debris, until the belly of the boat slipped back into the cul-de-sac of clear water space, and I stepped back in, my adrenaline still pumping like striking whips in my veins. I turned on the motor, and ventured through the clear path back to Jack.

I didn't wonder if I would see Brett and that stranded family along the way. I had selfishly forgotten everything in the entire world. All of my friends. All of my family. All of my town. And all of the rest of the world outside my little life.

I could only see his face. And I hoped he was still breathing. I could not think of the past. I could not think of the present. And the fog, and the dying day, was blocking the future.

I hoped Jack was alive. And if he wasn't. . . I would kill myself.