After the darkness that had filled the rest of the submarine, coming into the brightly lit space was like staring into the sun. Tim blinked, taking a moment to let his eyes adjust, then looked around him. The reactor room. He had been here only a handful of times, during emergency drills. Other than that, there was no good reason for a sonar tech to go into the boat’s reactor room, although being chased through the submarine by a horde of vampires probably qualified.
The reactor room was enormous compared to the other rooms on the boat—spacious enough to give the engineers room to maneuver without stepping on each other’s toes. The reactor was a hulking cylinder of metal that spanned two of the sub’s levels. Crowned with a field of activators and control rods like antennae and winged by two massive pipes, one that brought in the coolant—usually seawater—and another that expelled the superheated water into the steam generator, it looked like something out of a science-fiction movie.
They weren’t alone. Six sailors—human sailors—stepped out from where they had been hiding on the other side of the reactor. Five of them brandished thick steel crowbars. The sixth held a two-foot spud wrench that must weigh twenty pounds. They lowered their weapons when they recognized Tim and Jerry.
“Where the hell did you come from?” the sailor with the wrench asked.
“The control room,” Jerry said. “They’re all dead up there.”
“We know,” he replied. “They’ve got control of the boat.”
“Have you seen Farrington?” another sailor asked.
Tim shook his head. “The COB is dead. Matson killed him down in the torpedo room.”
“Wait, Matson’s one of them?” the wrench man asked.
“He is now,” Jerry said.
The phonetalker mounted on the reactor room bulkhead rang, startling Tim. He looked at it, then back at the sailors. None of them made a move to answer it. He started toward it himself, but the man with the spud wrench put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Why?” Tim asked. “What’s going on?”
The phonetalker continued to ring for a few seconds, then stopped.
“That could have been the captain,” Tim said.
“It wasn’t,” the wrench man said. “They’ve been calling every few minutes for an hour now. They don’t say anything.”
“They’re just making sure we’re here,” another sailor said.
“So they know you’re here, but they haven’t tried to get in?” Jerry asked.
“Not yet, they haven’t.”
“That won’t last,” Jerry said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to get in, and when they do, you’re going to need more than crowbars and wrenches.” He pulled the key out of his pocket. “This opens the weapons locker.”
The man with the wrench looked like a hungry dog staring at a raw steak. “If we can get to those weapons, we can take back the boat. Where’d you get it?”
“Off the WEPS,” Jerry said.
“Lieutenant French? He’s all right?”
“We got it off his body,” Tim clarified. “He’s in a body bag down in the torpedo room.”
“LeMon Guidry’s body bag,” Jerry said.
“So Guidry’s in on it too?” someone asked.
The question came from the far end of the room, from the same spot behind the reactor where the six sailors had emerged. Tim recognized the voice even before he saw Captain Weber step out. The captain’s gaze met Tim’s, and a flicker of a smile crossed his lips.
“Spicer, I’d almost given up on you,” he said.
“Still kicking, sir,” Tim replied. “Thanks to PO2 White, sir. He saw what was happening before I did.”
The captain turned to Jerry. “Well done, White. I’m happy to see I made the right choice in accepting your transfer to Roanoke.”
Jerry looked genuinely gratified to receive a compliment from the captain. “Thank you, sir.”
“No doubt both of you are already aware of the grave danger we’re facing,” Captain Weber said.
“Yes, sir, I think so, hard as it is to believe,” Tim said.
The captain sighed. “It is hard to believe, Mr. Spicer. I always thought of myself as a good commanding officer, fair and understanding and not too much of a hard-ass unless I needed to be. I never thought I’d see a violent mutiny on my own boat.”
“Mutiny, sir?” Tim asked.
“Mutiny, Spicer, and the way I reckon, it’s been planned from the start. Now that I have confirmation that Senior Chief Matson is involved, I can see how they managed to keep it under wraps until it was time to make their move. Once he set up the quarantine in the torpedo room, they had a place they could meet and plot their takeover of the ship without interference. I’m starting to wonder if there was ever really a fever going around the boat, or if it was all a cover.”
“Sir, with all due respect, I saw how sick Steve Bodine and LeMon Guidry were,” Jerry said. “They couldn’t have been faking it, sir.”
“Couldn’t they?” the captain asked. “Only Senior Chief Matson had the medical expertise to judge whether they were sick, and you said yourself he’s one of them.”
Tim frowned. He had seen Matson toss Farrington like a beanbag across the torpedo room. He had seen blood, bite marks on the victims’ necks, glowing eyes in the darkness. This was no ordinary mutiny. Surely he and Jerry couldn’t be the only ones who saw that?
“Let me see that key to the weapons locker, White,” the captain said. Jerry handed it to him. “Gentlemen, come with me.”
Tim and Jerry followed him to the back of the reactor room, where several more men had congregated. Tim’s quick head count came to 28, including himself and Jerry. Was this all that remained of 140 men? The men in the reactor room, combined with the dead full crew in the control room, came to only 50—a little over a third of the crew. It didn’t seem possible that Matson could have flushed the rest out through the torpedo tubes, not this quickly. Were other pockets of survivors still out there? He supposed it was possible—he hoped it was possible—but he couldn’t imagine where else on the boat they could be safe.
Captain Weber continued through a doorway into the small maneuvering room behind the reactor room. Nicknamed “the box,” its walls were lined with banks of bulky gray equipment and covered in countless levers, switches, and dials, making the narrow space feel even more cramped. The captain leaned against one of the machines. When he spoke, Tim had to lean in to hear him. With the turbine generator going and the propeller shaft spinning, the aft end of the Roanoke was a surprisingly noisy place.
“Tell me what happened to Senior Chief Farrington,” Captain Weber said.
Tim told him the story, with Jerry adding details he missed. When they got to the part about the torpedo tubes, the captain kept his expression calm and composed, but Tim could see the fury in his eyes. Drowning those men like that was callous. Soulless.
Of course it was soulless, Tim’s inner voice reminded him—Matson wasn’t human anymore! He pushed the thought away. If he let the idea of his crewmates turning into bloodthirsty supernatural creatures linger too long, he would lose his mind.
“Currently, Roanoke is running on autopilot,” Captain Weber told them. “I heard you mention you were up in the control room. You saw that slaughterhouse. The mutineers came up in a swarm. They smashed every light they could find, just as they did all over the rest of the boat, to keep the crew disoriented and unable to see them. It gave them the advantage. They attacked without warning or mercy. I got lucky. I managed to get away, but I wouldn’t have made it two feet if PO Antopol hadn’t gotten between me and the mutineers. He gave his life so I could escape.”
Ah, damn. Tim hung his head. He knew Antopol. He was a great guy and an even better poker player. Tim couldn’t count how many hands of seven-card draw he had lost to his fellow sonar tech.
“These men found me and brought me to the reactor room,” the captain said. “We’ve been safe here so far, but we can’t sta
y. We have to take back control of Roanoke immediately. The only problem is, we can’t go back up to the control room until we know it’s safe. We can control our speed from here in the maneuvering room, but not our bearing. We’ll just continue sailing in a straight line until we’ve got hands on the helm again, but that is unacceptable. These waters are much too dangerous to be sailing blind.”
“Because we’re so close to Soviet territory, sir?” Jerry asked.
“No, White, because we are in Soviet territory. I’ve already informed the other men out there, and Spicer is aware, so I suppose it’s time to tell you as well. This is no run-of-the-mill reconnaissance op. Our orders have taken us directly and covertly into Soviet territory.”
“Sir, you’re saying we’re in Soviet waters with no control of Roanoke?” Jerry asked. “We’re sitting ducks, Captain.”
“Precisely why we can’t let them find us,” the captain said. “And that means taking back control of the boat ASAP. The mutineers were smart; they sabotaged the radio before they made their move. We’re cut off with no help on the way.”
“Sir, are you sure we’re safe back here?” Tim asked.
“We have been so far. But I imagine it’s only a matter of time before they launch an assault.”
“But, sir, don’t you find it strange they haven’t yet?” Jerry asked. “If they killed everyone in the control room that quickly and easily, they’re not going to be afraid of a few sailors swinging crowbars.”
“I’m not one for looking a gift horse in the mouth, White,” the captain said.
“I understand, sir, but something doesn’t feel right,” Jerry said. “What if this is exactly where they want us? We’re stuck in the aft compartment with only one exit, and with who knows how many of them right outside the hatch. And then there are the phone calls, sir, like they’re checking to make sure we’re still here.”
“You think it’s a trap?” the captain asked.
Jerry shrugged. “I don’t know, sir, but it can’t be a coincidence they’re not even trying to come in. For all we know, they broke a seal on the reactor and are flooding the whole compartment with radiation. Then they wouldn’t need to come after us. The radiation would kill us for them.”
Captain Weber tapped a small gray plastic box clipped to his pocket. “I had the same thought, White, and took precautions. I’m wearing a Geiger, and the level is normal. Besides, half the men down here are engineers. If there were a radiation leak, they’d know about it. These guys check the equipment five times an hour.”
Jerry frowned. “There must be some other reason they haven’t come in here. Maybe the lights?”
“There’s one reason I can think of,” the captain said. “The mutineers have promised to hand me over to the Soviets, along with Roanoke. They want me alive. It’s hard to get any sensitive information out of a dead captain.”
The captain was right about one thing, Tim realized. Their enemies had used the isolation of the torpedo room to gather and plan their attack on Roanoke. It was where Bodine had hidden when the crew was looking for him, and probably where the other crewmen turned vampires had hidden when they went missing too. But the captain was wrong about this being anything as mundane as a mutiny. He had to get Weber to listen, to believe, or things would only get worse.
But the captain wasn’t interested in further conversation. He held up the key to the weapons locker.
“If we’re going to take back control of Roanoke, gentlemen,” he said, “this key just tipped the scales in our favor.”
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 te
ll 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.”
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