I did not expect to see Horsecock’s head, his jaw torn from his skull and all his hair burned off.
The kid said, “What does it mean, Captain?”
I shrugged. “What do you think it means? It means we’re fucked.”
Ordering us to the surface would have meant our most certain death. Even periscope depth was risky. But it was the only way to reorient ourselves.
What if we had been going around in circles? What if we were lost in the middle of the Pacific? I didn’t think this boiler had been designed for the long haul. Just one mission, then the bolts rust off on their own, and every last scrap sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Like hell it would, not with me as Captain.
“Does anyone else have a compass?” I turned to the men. “Any of you?”
A lot of slackjawed faces, that’s all I got in return.
“On a submarine? Not a one of you?”
A voice from the back of the pack, muffled: “Why don’t you have one yourself?”
Fighting words on any other day. But he was right. Why didn’t I have a compass? Why didn’t the Captain have one—or at least I never saw him with one. He didn’t have a pocket watch either, another essential tool on a sub. What else was I missing?
I looked at Horsecock’s head where the compass should be. I squinted and peered closely at some of the gauges. The numbers were gone. Instead were words, like, “Mommy” and “Fire” and “Ghosts” and “Blood”.
“Oh, shit.”
On to the next set of gauges. Needles pointing to “Skizrr” and “Lrrlrrl” and “Agupgghup”.
The next, a whole bank of them, all in the red zone, screaming, “!!!!!!” and “!!!!!!!!!!!”
Next. “No” and “More” and “No” and “More”.
I pulled back, stumbled over broken limbs and fell on my ass in the rising seawater and bilge. A hand grabbed the front of my shirt. I turned my head.
A sailor with a blonde flattop and blood gushing from a gash where his left ear used to be. He said, “Tell my uncle to sell my car and take care of his bills. He owes that woman so much money.”
Another hand grabs my pants. Another face, more pale, lips barely moving. “Cap’n, please, don’t let me die without shooting a man. Point me the right way and I’ll let him have it!”
Another, creeping from behind, hand half-skeletal, caressing my cheek. A voice in my ear. “This ain’t war no more, is it? What is it, Cap’n? What is it now?”
I pushed myself off of them, stumbled back to the periscope and hung on like it was a life raft.
Whose idea of a joke was it to build a ship like this with gauges like that? But no one had said a word.
All this time, they had been working at those stations and not a one of them had said It’s all gibberish!
Didn’t they know?
My mouth was dry. I had to work at getting the moisture to say, “Take us to periscope depth.”
“Sir?”
“Someone, please, just…do it.” I didn’t know how to give that order. I should’ve known, but I couldn’t do it. “Please.”
The rise. It was a weird feeling. It felt too fast. My heart raced. This wasn’t the way it should be. Maybe our tanks were damaged. Maybe the kids running the boat were too eager, pushed it a little more than they should’ve.
I didn’t know.
I just knew that the faster we rose, the harder my heart beat, the more sweat rolled down my face, and my head pulse with pain, making me grind my teeth. Until….until.
“Periscope depth, sir.”
I gripped the handles, but I wasn’t ready to look yet. I didn’t know what to expect and wasn’t sure I cared anymore. Wherever we were, I just wanted to check the sun or the stars as quickly as I could and get us on the right route again.
I was just turning my head to peer through the sights when the air went weird around me, my breath sucked out of my lungs, it seemed.
Then the water, a torrent, dropping straight down onto all of us, knocking the crew off its feet, trying to sweep us away, deeper into the bowels of the ship, trapped in all directions.
An alarm sounded. One of the men shouted, “Someone’s opened the main hatch! Trying to sink us!”
Only one thing to do. “Surface! Now! Now! Get us up there!”
All that water, shin high, knee high, waist high. Shit!
Revel. He was either trying to take us down or escape. God only knew how anyone could open the hatch while we were submerged. Or at least, I sure as hell didn’t know. We broke the surface just as the water hit chest high, and I fell, the cold of it shocking me.
I lost my bearings, felt the current pulling me down, like a drain. I reached above my head and hoped it was up. Tried to grab something, anything, to hold onto.
It was another sailor who caught me, gripped tightly and refused to let go. He pulled me above the water as the instruments around me steamed and sparked, the lights gone again.
As my hand began to slip from his, others grabbed hold and heaved me into the open air, where I sucked in a lungful of foul air. I blinked water out of my eyes and remembered where I was.
Looked up at six sailors, all pales like statues, holding me up. I found my footing again and shouted, “Help me get to the bridge! We have to stop him!”
They lined up, arms linked, and helped me wade across the control room to the ladder leading to the bridge. I climbed into the sail, a couple of sailors tailing along, with moonlight shining in from above, waves sloshing into the hatch and soaking us, chilling us. We held tight and kept climbing.
He couldn’t have gotten far. Worst case scenario, I’d still be able to launch a fucking torpedo at him.
Finally up on the bridge, I took it all in. The middle of nowhere, no land in sight. The waves were like mountains, growing and shrinking, tossing us to and fro as if we were made of paper.
I did a three-sixty, having the shield my eyes from the wind and spray. And there he was, in his one-man liferaft, just off the port side. The sea lifted him just as he caught sight of me, landed him right on the ship.
He stared up at me, helpless until the next wave.
But it wasn’t Revel.
It was Villeponteaux.
“I’m sorry,” he shouted. “I had to! I’m not going to die like that!”
“You’re a traitor! A coward!”
“Better that than someone’s supper!”
“Goddamn it, get back here and we can forget this ever happened!”
He shook his head. “I’m done, Sticks. I can’t take it.”
I looked below, the sailors still clinging to the ladder, and asked, “Do any of you have a gun? I need a gun. I’m going to shoot this bastard.”
But no one had a gun.
“Give me a wrench, then! Something I can throw at him!”
But then another wave washed over us, took Villepnteaux off the hull and out into the ocean. The raft tumbled and rolled before coming upright again, but I couldn’t tell if Villeaponteaux had survived. He was too far away by then. I watch his raft bob at the mercy of the sea.
The sailor below me called up, “Would you like to fire that torpedo now, sir?”
But I didn’t answer. I couldn’t do that, not to V. And probably not even to Revel. I felt for the Captain, then.
It was an awful job, one I was not prepared for, and it ached my heart realizing that the best I could do was not going to be enough.
“Son,” I shouted to the sailor below me, even though he was about the same age as me. “No torpedoes. Let’s just get our coordinates and dive again.”
I started down the ladder. They stepped to the side, let me squeeze by as they manned the con tower and began calling out to the control room below.
Once back on the deck, I was surprised to find it almost dry. The water had drained away somehow.
The crew was at stations as if nothing had happened, chattering numbers and letters back at each other, cranking and turning, bells ringing, the flicker
ing few lights back to work again. I marveled. What a boat.
This Patzer or Pincher kraut had known exactly what the fuck he was doing after all.
“Is everybody okay?”
They all stopped the chatter and turned to me, lips parted, wide-eyed, and all of them even more pale than before, as if their skins had drained the rest of their color in the deluge.
Their blood had turned as icy as the waters we were diving under. Not a one of them answered me this time.
I tried again. “Casualties?”
The same stare, but one finally piped up, “The second section is gone, sir.”
That was an entire third of the crew. “Gone? Like, escaped? That’s impossible.”
“No sir. Gone. Not here.”
“Dead?”
“Gone.”
I said it again. “That’s impossible. What sort of bullshit…I don’t….you’re looking at a court martial for a joke like that, son.”
Another one spoke, never looking up from his gauges, no emotion in his voice. Just a flat Midwestern accent saying, “It’s no joke. See for yourself, sir, if you must.”
I was about to march over and give that sailor the back of my hand, teach them all a lesson, but the closer I got, the more familiar he got. It hadn’t been that long ago, out there on the beach together looking for Revel.
It was Jitters. But it wasn’t Jitters. It wasn’t the scrawny, shaking kid who couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering. This was a calmer Jitters, not afraid of me coming at him with a fist ready to launch.
He didn’t move a muscle. Turned his face from his gauges to watch me, cool as a cucumber.
I had already reared back, ready to strike, but I dropped my arm. Jitters didn’t blink. Usually, guys out here had the opposite thing—getting the shakes after seeing death close-up like so. But Jitters, he’d turned into a stone cold rock. And I didn’t like it.
“Revel,” I said. “He got to you, didn’t he? He whispered to you when you were sleeping. He…mesmerized you. Snap out of it, son! Snap out of it!” I snapped my fingers in his face, five six seven eight nine ten times. He still didn’t blink.
In fact, he grinned at me. Turned back to his gauges, grinning ear to ear and said, “Captain, I really didn’t think I would like being a submariner. I was claustrophobic. I wanted to be on a destroyer, where I could see the sea. But now, I think I like this. It feels…calm. Soothing, somehow.”
“No, boy, no, it’s not that it all. It’s terrifying. The pressure, the closeness, the dark. Feel it, son, feel it pressing in on all sides. Like a coffin. Just like a coffin.”
“Oh, no, Captain. Not like a coffin at all. More like…the bottom of the sea. Give the order, and we’ll dive, sir. Are you ready to dive?”
I rubbed my eyes with my hand. When I took it away, nothing looked any different. I let out a deep breath, then said, “Sure. Dive.”
X
I let one of the more competent-looking fellas take the watch so I could go to my quarters…I meant, the Captain’s quarters, a small room set off from the officers’ bunks.
Inside, only one remaining officer, and he was a nutcase. He was lying in bed, staring at his hands, saying, “I wish I had a guitar” in a sing-songy voice, unaware of me as I passed by.
I hadn’t been in here once since taking over, so I wasn’t prepared for how “lived in” it looked, as if the Captain would be back any moment. His jacket, thrown across his bunk. Some books haphazardly stacked on the floor. And several rows of photos stuck above the small writing shelf, all of them boys in uniform, or in some cases shirtless.
At first I thought, Lovers. Then the truth occurred to me—these were sailors he’d lost under his command up to that point. Think back the last few hours, I wondered if he had enough wall space for me to fit the entire second section, Revel’s victims, and Villeponteaux.
But no, V didn’t deserve a spot on the wall. Instead, if I had his photo I would’ve thrown it onto the still sloppy floor, let water and boots tear it to pieces.
I sat on the bunk, squished out water, soaking right through. I was already wet enough, but this water chilled me more deeply.
I spread myself across it, on my stomach. I tried to imagine what it might feel like for V out on the waves, or when he inevitably sinks to the ocean floor, the storm and weaves subsided and nothing but the cold and the dark surrounding him. But all I felt was tired.
I fell asleep, I think. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know if falling asleep was even possible. But it sure as hell felt like I had.
Then I woke up with a snort and a snootful of water. It hit the back of my throat and I started coughing. I pushed up onto my elbows and hacked and hacked.
“I don’t know how you do it.” It was Revel, standing in my doorway. His arms were crossed on the steel above the opening, his forehead resting against them. “Seriously.”
The cold had zapped my strength. Instead of shouting an alarm or lunging for him, I sighed. Then said, “You mean how do I sleep when men are dying all around me?”
Revel shook his head. “No, I get that. I mean, I don’t know how you’re so solid under pressure. You could’ve been a real Captain, but that will probably never happen now.”
“It wasn’t a mutiny! The Captain was dead, the Ex-Oh hung himself, and the Loots were scared stiff. I did what I had to do.”
“I don’t doubt it. Very admirable, that’s all I’m saying.”
I rolled over onto my back. “Are you here to kill me now? Is it time to carve up the next leader? How are you picking them?”
He stepped into my room, leaned against the wall, hands behind his back. If one of them had a knife, I would let it happen. I was done. He said. “But I haven’t killed anyone. And you know I haven’t killed anyone.”
“Not even those Nips on the island?”
A shrug. “It’s not what you think.”
“Until all this happened, I thought it was pretty damned heroic. Gruesome, but heroic.”
“Guess it depends on your definition of a hero.”
“So why are you here, Revel? You won’t take orders. You’re not going to murder me. So please tell me why.”
He lowered his gaze. “Not yet. I’ll tell you later.”
“Later? You think there’s going to be a later?”
He gave me a big smile. “I haven’t been wrong yet. But listen to me, Captain, the sooner the better, okay?”
He was nuts. Just a real nut that had been cracked and all we had left of him was pieces.
I swung my legs off the bunk, ready to grab him, but he’d already darted away so fast I hadn’t seen him move. But in cramped quarters like these, I could’ve gone after him.
I could’ve tried. But I didn’t. “Another time,” I mumbled to him, even though he was long gone.
XI
“Sir, the men and I were wondering, sir…”
He was a young one, this seaman. The name on his uniform was Ballad. He stood before me in the control room, clutching his cap in both hands. A burnt cap. His scalp had been burned away, too, as had his eyebrows and eyelids.
So he was a teary-eyed, blistered-skin mess, but he was giving it his all to not show the hurt.
“Go on,” I told him.
“Well, sir, we were just wondering…do you need a new Ex-Oh? Because the fellas thought I would be the right guy—”
I held up my hand, stopped him. Looked him over. He was a nightmare. The lidless eyes, the melted skin, the skull where hair had been. I didn’t know this kid, but I knew he’d fought hard for the boat, his brothers-in-arms, and his country.
Or was he in league with Revel? Was this the plan all along? Did my mutiny get in the way of their own?
Still, I needed someone in that spot. I nodded. “Take the watch, Mr. Ballad.”
His smile didn’t help tame the creepiness of his face. But it was a face these seamen trusted. That mattered more to me than anything right now.
With one entire section missing, pres
umed…well, missing, the boat was quieter. We released the remaining section back to their bunks.
That left one-third of the day unattended. I planned on steaming straight on through. And if anyone was murdered this time, we’d hoist a few for the poor bastards back at port.
He shouted the same ol’ same ol’ at the boys and they all answered with the same ol’ right back at him, happy as clams, and so I took my leave, wandering off to visit the Engine Room.
It’s important for a Captain to visit each and every part of his ship, especially in the beginning, and even more so in times of crisis. Just seeing the Captain’s cool, calm demeanor as he passes through your station brings the fever down just enough.
You can shout at him, Just give us the word, sir! and he shouts back, The word is given! and all the men cheer and do the thing they were trained to do.
I opened the door to the Engine Room and was not greeted by anyone. I was not a comfort to any man. Most likely because there weren’t any men in there. In fact, there wasn’t even an engine in there.
The room was empty, the red alarm lights on, but no sirens. No engine at all. Just a long steel room with a large puddle in the middle of it.
Every few seconds a drop of water would fall from the riveted seam above and cause a ripple.
The echo of the drop was like SONAR.
I stared at the puddle from the doorway for a long time. The ripples were in slow motion. At least, it looked that way.
The lights were throwing me off. I stepped across the floor, slowly, bootsteps like a whole troop marching in time.
It wasn’t water. There was steam coming off it. It was…oil. Something above was leaking. But what? How could there be oil if there was no engine?
I slapped myself hard on the face. Wake up! I did it again and again. Wake up!
But nothing happened. I was still in an empty engine room watching hot oil noisily drip into a puddle. Every drop that hit gave me shivers.
I stepped closer still. I knelt beside it. It had to be four or five feet across by that point.
How long did it take to get so big? I thought back to the impact, the whole boat rolling. Something could have ruptured, a torrent at first before it slowed to a drip. I didn’t know.
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