100 Fathoms Below

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

When Jerry and Tim returned to the reactor room, Tim broke off to talk to a small group of enlisted men who had a hundred questions about what was happening on the rest of the boat, while Jerry took the opportunity to take a breather. After nearly getting caught by Matson twice, first in the torpedo room and then outside the reactor room, his heart was still pounding. He needed a minute to calm down. He sat with his back against the bulkhead and listened to the men around him as they theorized about what was going on. Some were as convinced as the captain that it was a mutiny. Others suspected something else—something they couldn’t explain.

“I saw their eyes light up in the dark,” one sailor told his buddies in hushed tones. “You ever seen someone’s eyes glow in the dark? I sure as hell haven’t. There’s something not right about them.”

Still others had their own outlandish theories. One sailor was convinced that Seaman Apprentice Oran Guidry and Lieutenant Abrams from the galley were in on it, having laced the soup with cyanide, and that the reason Oran had stabbed his brother was because LeMon had caught them. Jerry shook his head and looked away. Poison hadn’t killed those men. Matson and the others like him had. He had seen Matson carry the much bigger Senior Chief Farrington as if he were a CPR dummy. He had seen LeMon Guidry up and walking and Steve Bodine’s body bag lying empty. They weren’t human anymore. When humans died, they stayed dead.

Jerry had to find a way to convince Captain Weber of the truth. Once he did, the others would fall in line behind the captain. But how was he going to prove that this wasn’t a mutiny or a Soviet plot or any of that crap? That those things out there weren’t men anymore? If he so much as breathed the word vampire, they would tell him he’d lost his mind. And although it was starting to feel very much as if he had lost mental moorings, what he had seen was real. Persuading everyone else, on the other hand, was going to be difficult.

Tim extricated himself from the crowd of inquisitive sailors and came over to join Jerry.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” Tim said, sitting down beside him. “I didn’t get the chance before.”

“For what?” Jerry said.

“You saved my ass out there. If you hadn’t gotten me out of my rack when you did, I’d be as dead as the rest of them, no doubt about it. Then you did it again in the torpedo room. When Matson came back, I froze up, but you didn’t. You kept us alive. Same thing in the control room. I owe you my life three times over.”

“Just seven more, and I get a free sandwich,” Jerry said.

Tim laughed. “Something like that.”

“So you knew we were in Soviet waters, huh?” Jerry asked.

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t feel like sharing that information?”

“Sorry, but I was under orders from the captain to keep it to myself. He figured the fewer people who knew it, the better.”

“I guess it doesn’t get much fewer than this,” Jerry said, looking around at the survivors scattered throughout the room. “Do you think we’re all that’s left?”

“I hope not,” Tim said.

“People are trying to figure out what’s going on,” Jerry said. “Did you hear the story about Gordon and Oran poisoning the soup?”

Tim chuckled. “That’s almost as bad as one I heard, that it’s all a government experiment, the CIA pumping LSD into the air supply. I don’t think that’s even how LSD works.”

“It’s amazing the bullshit people will convince themselves of when their backs are against the wall,” Jerry said. “But you… you saw the same things I did, didn’t you?”

Tim nodded solemnly.

“And you know…” He paused and looked around, then lowered his voice. “You know what they are?”

“Yes,” Tim said. He was reluctant to say it; Jerry could tell. But Tim took a deep breath, as though speaking the word aloud took enormous effort. “Vampires.”

Jerry sighed in relief. It felt as if someone had lifted a heavy weight off him. “Thank God. I was starting to wonder if maybe I was slipping a gear.”

“Not unless I am too,” Tim said. “Still glad you transferred to Roanoke?”

Jerry laughed. He couldn’t help it. It was just the momentary balm he needed amid all the horror. “I’m glad I met you, Tim. But I can’t say I like your boat all that much.”

“Listen,” Tim said, “I don’t know how things are going to play out, so there’s something I need to tell you. I didn’t just happen to sit down with you that first day in the mess. Shortly before we left Pearl Harbor, the captain asked me to keep an eye on you.”

Jerry stiffened. “Go on.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Tim said quickly. “He just wanted to make sure everything was cool, that he hadn’t made a mistake accepting your transfer after what happened on Philadelphia.”

Jerry’s eyes narrowed. “And how, exactly, is that not as bad as it sounds?”

“Ah, shit, man,” Tim said, the realization coming over his face that he had botched it. “I just meant—”

“You just meant you had orders to be my friend.”

“I am your friend,” Tim said.

“Go fuck yourself, Spicer,” Jerry said, standing up.

“Ah, Jerry, come on,” Tim said.

Jerry ignored him and walked away. He should have known better than to think anyone in the service who knew his history would actually want to be his friend. Fuck Tim. Fuck everyone on this goddamn boat who thought they knew him. They didn’t know shit.

Captain Weber wanted scouts to search the boat for survivors, on the theory that the more loyal crewmen they had with them, the easier it would be to retake the boat. When he asked for three volunteers, Jerry stepped up at once. He didn’t necessarily see any safety in numbers against the vampires, but it was as good an excuse as any to be out of the reactor room and away from Tim, the captain, and everyone else who had bullshit opinions about him. The other two volunteers were from the group of sailors who had met them at the reactor-room hatch, including the man with the spud wrench, whose name turned out to be Ortega. The other sailor, Keene, was a balding engineer with wire-rimmed glasses.

The captain led them to the weapons locker mounted against one of the reactor room bulkheads. It was scarcely bigger than a steamer trunk, maybe three feet tall by two feet wide. Using the key Jerry had taken off the weapons officer’s body, Captain Weber opened the locker. Inside was a small arsenal of Browning M1911 semiautomatic pistols, nine in all.

“Gentlemen, it’s no exaggeration to say the contents of this locker could decide the future of the United States,” Captain Weber told them. “The Soviets aren’t good at inventing things, but they’re damn good at stealing them. If they take Roanoke, they’ll get their hands on our technology. They’ll learn about US Navy sonar, our torpedoes, our radio communications, and God only knows what else. Every boat in the fleet will be in danger. So arm yourselves, gentlemen. The fate of the West depends on you.”

Ortega and Keene each took a gun and stepped aside. Jerry reached in and grabbed one. The .45 caliber weapon felt solid in his hand and gave him a sense of comfort. Now, finally, he could defend himself against the vampires. He just hoped bullets would stop them. He had taken the weapons qualification course in basic, so he knew how to handle an M1911. He had fired on targets at 3 yards, 7 yards, and 15 yards, and had scored well above the minimum 180 points needed to pass. But he had never fired at a living target before—if “living” was the right word to describe these creatures—and prayed he didn’t freeze up when the moment came. Any hesitation out there could get him killed.

“If you find survivors, you bring them back here, to us,” Captain Weber told them. “If you find any of the mutineers, you put them down. Is that understood? They’re not playing around, and goddamn it, neither are we—not anymore. They didn’t show any mercy when they killed your fellow crewmen, and I don’t expect you to show them any in return. We’re going to take back this boat, gentlemen, and we’re going to do it with extreme fucking prejudice.”

Jerry loaded a full magazine into the pistol, put two extra magazines in his pockets, and followed Ortega and Keene to the hatch.

The rest of the sailors came to wish them good hunting. Tim was among them, desperate to meet Jerry’s eye, but Jerry ignored him. He listened halfheartedly to the others wishing them luck or telling them to be careful. A plan was already forming in his mind—a way to show everyone what was really happening aboard Roanoke.

A sailor cracked the hatch and peeked outside. Finding no one, he signaled the three scouts to go. They slipped out into the corridor, and the hatch slammed shut behind them.

In the moment before they switched on their battle lanterns, it was so dark that Jerry felt as if he were looking down into a bottomless well. He didn’t see any eyes glowing in the darkness. The vampires seemed to have fallen back, but to where was anyone’s guess. Lantern in one hand and gun in the other, they inched their way to the main ladder. Ortega and Keene started climbing up toward the control room, but Jerry didn’t follow them. Instead, he pocketed his gun and began descending the ladder to the bottom level.

“Hey,” Ortega hissed out of the darkness. “What are you doing?”

“You keep going,” Jerry whispered back. “Try to find survivors. There’s something I need to do.”

“We should stick together,” Keene said.

“Not this time. It’s better if I do this alone.”

“It’s your funeral,” Ortega said, annoyed. “Cap’s not gonna like it, though.”

At that moment, Jerry didn’t much care what Captain Weber thought about him—or, for that matter, what any of them thought about him. All he cared about was getting proof that the so-called mutineers weren’t who—or what—everyone thought they were.

Jerry listened to them climb the rest of the way up to the top level. Then he continued down the main ladder into utter darkness, jumping his left hand from rung to rung and holding the lantern in his right. It was slow going with only one free hand, and with each step downward he felt increasingly vulnerable. The vampires liked the dark. The lights had bothered them, but like many other predators, they were made for the dark. He had no doubt they could see him just fine even if his lantern weren’t giving away his position. Just because he couldn’t see their glowing eyes in the places where the lantern’s light couldn’t reach didn’t mean they weren’t there, watching him from just out of sight, waiting to grab him and sink their teeth into his neck. They had murdered those crewmen in the control room in a split second, before they could even get up from their stations. They could snatch him off this ladder just as quickly if they wanted to.

He listened for anything: footsteps, the creak of a hatch, breathing—if those creatures breathed. But the darkness remained silent around him. At the bottom of the ladder, he crouched, pulled out the pistol, and trained it on the open hatch of the torpedo room. Inside, the remains of Farrington’s smashed lantern littered the deck, but it appeared that nothing else had changed since he and Tim hid in there.

He spun around, in the direction of the Big Red Machine at the opposite end of the corridor, and pointed his lantern into the darkness. He couldn’t make his way toward the torpedo room without exposing his back to anyone hiding aft. Had they been there a moment ago, watching him, waiting to pounce, only to sink back into the shadows when he turned the lantern their way? What would happen if he took the light off the corridor? Would they come back? Would they get him?

He had to stop thinking that way or he could freeze up. He turned back to the torpedo room, determined to see his plan through. He took a step toward it, his finger on the trigger guard of the M1911.

A dark shape seemed to fold into the shadows of the torpedo room. Jerry saw it for only a fleeting moment. Someone was in there. Had Matson come back down? Or was it Bodine? Or LeMon Guidry? Or someone else who had been turned into a vampire?

As if in answer to his question, Matson’s voice floated out of the room.

“Did you really think you could hide from me in the dark, White? I can see you. I can smell you.”

Matson appeared in the doorway, right in front of Jerry, shielding his eyes from the lantern light with one hand. Gathering his courage, Jerry raised the M1911 and aimed at Matson’s center mass.

“Back away from the hatch,” Jerry said.

Matson didn’t move.

“I won’t ask again,” Jerry said.

Matson took three steps backward. Jerry followed him into the torpedo room. He thought again of the drowned men in the tubes and was tempted to shoot Matson here and now. A shot from this close would blow a nice hole his chest. Putting him down was the captain’s plan, and it sure as hell sounded satisfying, but he had another idea.

“You’re coming back with me,” Jerry told him. “I’m going to show you to the others so they can see exactly what you are.”

“And what, exactly, am I?” Matson asked.

“That’s easy,” Jerry said. “A bloodsucking, murdering pile of shit.”

He glanced over at the torpedo tubes. The LEDs on the control panel told him they were locked but no longer flooded.

“Do you have more men in there?” he said,

“There’s always room for one more,” Matson said.

The son of a bitch was smiling behind the hand that shielded his eyes, as if all this amused him somehow. Jerry skirted along the far bulkhead, working his way toward the torpedo tubes. Matson pivoted to face him as he moved. Jerry didn’t take his eyes off him. No more than ten feet separated them, but if Matson tried anything, Jerry would happily put a bullet through his forehead. He wouldn’t feel a second of regret.

“Open the breeches,” Jerry said.

“I can hear your heartbeat, White.”

“Open the goddamn tubes!” Jerry shouted.

“You must be terrified for your heart to beat so fast,” Matson said. “I can take that fear away for you.”

Jerry raised the M1911, aiming it at Matson’s face.

“I can take everything away,” Matson said.

He lunged, hissing and grabbing for Jerry. Jerry fired, hitting him full in the face. The blast knocked Matson’s head back in a spray of blood. Jerry had shot him at point-blank range with a .45-caliber round, but somehow he remained standing. Matson had a dark hole in the side of his face where his right eye had been, oozing blood. He casually reached into his eye socket and pulled out the bullet. It clattered onto the deck.

Jerry stared at Matson in bewildered horror. Not only had the shot not killed him, it hadn’t even inconvenienced him. The damage to his flesh seemed inconsequential to him.

Jerry only hesitated a moment as his mind tried to process what he was seeing, but that was all the time Matson needed. He grabbed the pistol by the barrel, wrenched it from Jerry’s grasp, and tossed it over his shoulder. It skidded across the floor to the far bulkhead. Jerry backed away. Matson swatted the lantern out of his hand, knocking it to the deck with a thud, its beam pointing uselessly up at the ceiling. Shit. Whatever Matson planned to do to him was going to be far worse than getting shot with a handgun.

At that moment, he simply stopped thinking, and instinct took over. The torpedo tubes at his back, and the men who may or may not be in them, were no longer his priority. He was a gazelle in the grasp of a lion. All that mattered was escape.

He broke for the hatch, but Matson caught him and threw him backward. Jerry slammed into the bulkhead, and the back of his head banged against the breech door of a torpedo tube. Matson grabbed him again, pinning him against the tubes. Jerry was too dazed to fight back. Matson’s deathly cold fingers dug into Jerry’s arms and shoulders. His mouth opened wide, revealing two long, sharp upper canine teeth. When Jerry saw them, he snapped out of his stupor and started twisting, shoving, and kicking, but it was no good. He was caught. Matson bent his head toward Jerry’s neck. The sharp tip of a fang brushed his skin.

Something long and narrow burst out of Matson’s chest. Jerry looked down at the crudely fashioned point of a wooden spike, red with blood. Unlike when Jerry had shot him only moments before, this time Matson cried out in agony. He fell to the deck, twitching and seizing, his remaining eye wide with disbelief and pain. He flailed and hissed and snapped his jaws at the air. He tried to roll onto his back, but the two feet of broken mop handle sticking between his shoulder blades kept him on his side.

Oran Guidry stood before Jerry, glaring down at the body. He snarled, “Connard.”

“Holy fucking shit!” Jerry said, rubbing his neck where Matson’s teeth had nearly gone in.

“You okay, White?” Oran asked.

“I shot him in the face!” Jerry babbled. “I shot him in the fucking eye and it didn’t do anything! And then he—he was going to—to…”

“Bite you? Yeah, that’s what they do. One of ’em tried to bite me up in the control room earlier, but I got away. Been hidin’ ever since. That ol’ mop handle’s the only weapon I could find.”

“Well, it worked,” Jerry said in amazement. “My gun didn’t do shit, but a fucking mop handle took him down.”

Of course, he realized. It was the wood. Just like in the stories, a wooden stake could kill a vampire.

He looked down at Matson, who had grabbed the mop handle protruding from his chest and was trying to pull it out. But he was weakening by the moment. His hands fell limp, and he stopped squirming on the deck and lay still.

Jerry just stood there, staring down at the vampire sprawled at his feet. Oran kicked Matson in the head—whether out of hatred or to make sure he was dead, Jerry couldn’t say. He was just glad that Matson didn’t stir. Oran stepped over the dead vampire and approached the torpedo tubes. He grabbed the handle of one breech door and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Jerry pulled himself out of his bewilderment and went to the control panel.

“Can you unlock it?” Oran asked.

“I think so.”

Normally, working the torpedo control panel would be a cinch, but his mind was still trying to adjust to all that had just happened, and it took him a moment to locate the switches that retracted the safety locks on the tubes. He flipped all four and watched the lights on the control panel change.

“They’re open,” he said.

Oran yanked open the breech door like a man possessed, and Jerry watched in horror as a pale hand dangled out of the tube. Another of Matson’s drowning victims—one he hadn’t flushed out to sea yet. Jerry picked up his lantern off the floor and shined the beam into the tube. Oran grabbed the hand and pulled until a damp sleeve appeared, followed by a head that flopped limply against a shoulder. It was Lieutenant Gordon Abrams. Jerry put the lantern down and helped Oran pull Abrams the rest of the way out of the tube. The lieutenant’s clothes and hair were damp but not soaking wet. Maybe he hadn’t drowned after all.

Drowned or not, Abrams showed no signs of life. They lowered him to the floor, where he drooped like a corpse. His head lolled to one side, and Jerry saw a smear of dried blood and a bite mark on the side of his neck. He shot a look of worry at Oran, who was slapping Abrams’ face lightly, trying to roust him.

“Come on, Lieutenant,” Oran said. “Wake up. You safe now. We got you.”

While Oran was thus occupied, Jerry opened the other three torpedo tubes. Inside, he found more crewmen stuffed into the narrow space, but they were dead, their bodies twisted, their hands frozen into claws, the fingernails broken from trying to dig their way out. Some still had their eyes open, staring sightlessly back at Jerry. Matson had flooded the tubes, drowning them, but hadn’t flushed them out into the ocean yet.

Jerry closed the breech doors and returned to where Oran was still trying to revive his boss. Abrams was dead, surely. Between the bite and being locked in the airless tube, he had to be.

But just then Abrams coughed and groaned, making both men jump. His eyes opened.

“Guidry?” Abrams mumbled, his voice cracking.

“He’s alive!” Oran exclaimed. “We gotta get him out of here. We gotta get somewhere safe.”

“The reactor room,” Jerry said. “That’s where everyone’s holed up.”

Oran got Abrams onto his feet and helped him walk, carrying the lantern in his free hand. Jerry retrieved his M1911 pistol, then walked back to Matson’s body. Swallowing his fear, he forced himself to take the dead body by the legs and drag it across the deck toward the hatch. It was slow going. Matson was heavier than he looked, and the broom handle poking through his chest seemed to snag on everything. Jerry thought about pulling it out but decided against it. He needed to show the others how to kill these things, and besides, he wasn’t convinced Matson would stay dead if he pulled it out. He wouldn’t put it past these creatures to come back to life a second time.

“What are you doing?” Oran said. “Leave him!”

“I can’t. I need him so I can convince Captain Weber of what’s really going on. He thinks it’s a mutiny, and if we’re going to survive this, he needs to know the truth.”

“Survive?” Oran laughed bitterly. “Nobody survives the rougarou, my friend. Where there’s one, there’s more. Too many. All you can do is try to last as long as you can, and pray that when your time comes it’s quick.”