Below

The Survivors

"I think he's coming to," said a voice above me.
I open my eyes slowly allowing them to adjust as the last dregs of tiredness dissapate like smoke. I see a face looking down on me, a young girl with long, flowing brown hair. Her face is slightly dirty on her pale white skin and she smiles down at me, her dark, brown eyes studying me.
I am no longer in the sea, floating on water. I find that I am in a boat, lying on my back looking up at the sky. But there is no sky to see, just this thick, roiling fog that engulfs everything in sight. I am wrapped up in a blanket and there is a pillow behind my head. The girl looking down on me, gives me a silver tankard and makes me drink from it. The taste of fresh water is just what my dry throat needs and I consume a mouthful of the liquid.
"Is he okay?" spoke another female voice.
"Yeah," said the other woman who had given me the water.
I try to sit upright but find that my body is weak, and a wave of nausea and light headedness comes over me. Steady hands help me back down onto my pillow.
"Steady now," came a mans voice. "You have been in the water for a long time and you are very tired. You need rest."
I look up at the faces. Behind the girl with brown hair is another woman who is Asian in her looks. She has short dark hair and a white prom dress with a short leather jacket draped over her for warmth.
The man behind them looks more like a sailor. He wears a short vest top and dirty and ragged denim jeans. They look soiled by grease and oil, an indication that he is a mechanic or engineer on a ship. He has short, scraggy hair and tattoos run down the length of both his muscular arms.
Behind him is another man in a long dark coat. He has a crew cut hair and hardened features that indicate a military man. Behind him, rowing the boat at a steady pace is another man who looks native - American in appearance.
"W-w-where am I," I say in a dry, rasping voice.
"That's the question," said the man in the long trenchcoat. "At the moment we appear to be lost."
He looks blankly ahead at the horizon at the thick sheets of roiling fog. His face is slightly cut and bruised and he seems alert as if watching out for something.
"Names Bree by the way," said the girl with brown hair.
She points at the Asian girl behind me who shivers slightly as she sits back down.
"This is Marawa Englasia," Bree said again, pointing at her.
"I'm Milman," spoke the man in the vest top. "Daniel Milman of the cruise liner The Wessex."
"Hicks," said the man in the trenchcoat. He pointed to the native - American. "And Mr Silent goes by the name of Jonnah, though we call him Chef because that is what he is, a ships cook."
"He must have been a passenger on the Wessex," said Milman taking his oars and starting to row like Chef. "Poor guy must have been in the water for god knows how long."
"Do you remember anything?" asked Bree, steadying my head up to take another drink from the tankard.
I shake my head slowly as she settles me back down.
"Guys probably gone insane with fright or bumped his head, " said Hicks. "He should consider himself lucky he doesn't remember."
I wanted to ask them what Hicks meant but the girl called Bree seemed to already read my mind and tell me straight away what had happened.
"We are all passengers of the cruise ship The Wessex," she told me, resting my head in her lap. "Milman was a engineer aboard the Wessex and Chef was the cook as you know. Myself, Marawa and Hicks were passengers."
"It was a cloudy day and the ship was trudging along just fine," cut in Hicks. "Until we reached a bank of fog and got hopelessly lost in it."
Bree cast Hicks a look that she was non too impressed by the interruption. "We were lost in the fog for seven days. Many of the passengers were confused and afraid. I mean the fog just did not seem to lift. The ships crew tried to radio for help but non of the equipment seemed to be working."
Milman nodded his head in agreement. "There was something about the fog that interfered with electrical equipment. Most of the ships systems ran on electric so you can imagine what the chaos was like with over a thousand passenger's."
"Then there was that thing!" spoke Marawa, shivering uncontrollably as if by fright. "That thing that attacked the ship!"
A moment of silence fell over the five people I was with as if remembering the memory of the incident was just too disturbing for them. I waited for the answer but the silence that lingered was so thick like the fog, you could just cut it with a knife.
"I..er..um...I don't know what it...um...was," Bree said hesitantly. She looked out at the calm waters of the ocean, at the thick, roiling fog that seemed to be getting more denser by the minute. It appeared, like Hicks that she was looking out for something, fearful that something was out there in the fog, watching and waiting.
"It was on the seventh day that it came," said Milman taking over. "I was down in the engine room when it happened. There was this big crash as if the ship had hit something hard. Before we knew it, we were taking on water and there was mass chaos and panic."
"Something came out of the sea," butted in Hicks. "I was on deck at the time when I saw it, saw them! I can't really describe them because it was hard to see because of the fog. They looked almost like......sea serpents."
"I thought they were tentacles," said Marawa, rocking backwards and forwards, her arms and legs pressed against her chest. "It..It was horrible. All I could hear was screaming, people being taking off by the ship by these things....The ship going down..."
"In the chaos and panic, we just barely managed to escape in one of the lifeboats," said Bree. "And for the last twelve hours we been wandering aimlessly in this fog until we found you."
"You are the only survivor we've found," Hicks told me. "Out of over a thousand passengers including crew, we seem to be the only ones left."
I didn't know what to say or think. I had not known who I was or how I ended up in the sea. But a tale of a sea monster or monsters attacking a ship just seemed so far fetched. Yet somehow, it made perfect sense to me. Just looking at the way these five people were looking out at the fog, I could see that they sensed what I was sensing when I was in the water. That there was something out there below us, in the fog, something that just did not seem right, something out of place, nightmarish and terrifying. It had frightened these people and they were afraid.
"Well, I'm hoping that is the last we see of that thing," said Milman. "We just get out of this fog and then we can use the radio to call for help."
"It's not gone," Chef suddenly said, taking everyone by surprise. "And there is no way out of this fog. It is out there, biding it's time, hidden far below the abyssal deep, camouflaged by this fog. We are just living on borrowed time. It will come us eventually and there will be no escape..."