The LEDs on the equipment dimly lit parts of the long, narrow space, but their light didn’t reach far into the torpedo room’s inky darkness, and they didn’t seem to bother Duncan in the least. He dropped Jerry on the deck and loomed over him, his eyes glowing like twin stars.
“Did you enjoy killing Matson?” Duncan asked. “It’s a thrill, isn’t it? To kill.”
“Don’t ask me,” Jerry said. “I’m not the one who staked his ass, though I wish I had.”
He was in bad shape. The fall had left him cotton-headed, and sucking air in through his mouth was making him dizzy. He tasted blood as it ran down his throat. The pain in his nose intensified, sharpened, as if someone had just now hit him in the face with a baseball bat. His hand was wet, but it wasn’t blood. It was water from the bucket that had splashed him earlier, when he was on the ladder.
Duncan grabbed a fistful of the front of Jerry’s uniform and, with one hand, hauled him up off the deck. He held Jerry aloft without seeming to exert any effort at all. Jerry’s feet dangled several inches off the deck.
“I told Frank Leonard that I was going to make your life on this submarine hell,” Duncan said. “Now I’m going to make your death hell instead.”
“I killed one of your kind already, possibly two,” Jerry told him. “Penwarden and Bodine. Even if you kill me now, the others will destroy the rest of you. You won’t have control of Roanoke for long.”
“Then you understand the joy of killing, as I do,” Duncan said. “Tell me, how did it feel to take their lives? To ram a stake through their hearts without hesitation? Did you feel strong? Powerful, for the first time in your life?”
“I didn’t use a stake,” Jerry said. “I killed them with sunlight. Burned them alive.”
“Impossible.” Duncan’s glowing eyes narrowed, and he pulled Jerry’s face closer to his. His fangs glistened in the colored lights. “There is no sunlight down here. That’s what makes it the perfect place to hunt.”
“Liquid sunlight,” Jerry said.
“There’s no such thing.”
“Guess again.”
He wiped his wet hand across Duncan’s face.
With an unearthly scream, the vampire let go, and Jerry fell to the deck, his broken knee stabbing him with agony.
There had been only a little coolant on his hands, but he was relieved to see it was still enough to hurt Duncan. Smoke drifted from his face, and in the dim light Jerry could see one of Duncan’s cheeks and the side of his neck bubble and blacken.
Jerry tried to get to his feet, but the world spun around him and he fell back on his butt. He turned himself over and managed to get on all fours, but the pain to his injured knee took his breath away. He fell onto his stomach and pulled himself across the deck. When he got to the torpedo tubes, he reached up for the handle of a lower tube’s breech door. He grabbed it and began to pull himself up, his head spinning from the pain. It was like climbing a ladder. Once he had pulled himself up enough to get his legs under him, he reached for the breech door handle of one of the upper tubes and hauled himself the rest of the way up. When he was standing at last, he turned and saw Duncan silhouetted against the equipment lights. He was about five feet away. Much of his cheek had burned away, exposing the teeth and jaw muscles beneath it, and the cords of muscle and tendon in the side of his neck glistened in the light of the LEDs. But he was still standing, still alive.
“You’ll pay for that, White!”
Jerry’s injured leg buckled under his weight. His head felt as if someone had clamped it in a vise. He shifted his weight to the other leg, but the pain made him dizzy. Knowing he would fall if he let go, he gripped the breech door handle with all his remaining strength, fighting to stay upright.
“I’m going to savor killing you,” Duncan said. “I’m going to make your death last a very long time, White. And when you rise again as one of us, you’ll be mine to torment for all eternity.”
Duncan lurched toward him. Jerry stepped to the side and swung the breech door open with one hand. With the other, he shoved Duncan toward the tube, wedging his head against the rounded inside wall. Then he slammed the round steel door as hard as he could. It hit Duncan in the smoking, exposed meat on the side of his neck and bounced open again. Duncan howled into the tube in pain and rage. Jerry slammed the door again. Again. On the fourth try, with a loud crack of bone, the door slammed all the way shut. There was a thump as Duncan’s severed head fell into the tube.
Decapitation—another way to kill a vampire.
Lieutenant Duncan’s headless body dropped to the deck in front of the torpedo tubes, twitching and spurting blood from the ragged stump of his neck. After a moment, it stopped moving and went limp.
“It’s been a pleasure serving with you, asshole,” Jerry said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
When Tim and Oran returned to the main ladder, the last of the men escorting the captain were climbing up it. Tim let Oran climb ahead of him, then started up. It filled him with hope to see the men ahead of him step off the ladder safely. Maybe Jerry had completed his mission and the vampires were either dead or staying clear. Hell, they would probably find him sitting at his planesman station, wondering what had taken the rest of them so long. Then things could finally get back to normal around here.
Normal. He wasn’t even sure what that word meant anymore. In a world where vampires were real, what else was “normal”? Werewolves? Dragons? Goddamn mermaids and unicorns?
He could feel his thoughts rambling and tried to refocus. He needed to keep his head in the game. Getting distracted by his own crazy thoughts was a good way to end up dead.
When he got to the top of the ladder, Oran said, “Spicer, look!”
There on the deck was the big plastic bucket, with only a small amount of irradiated seawater left inside. It was just sitting there beside the ladder. It didn’t look as though Jerry had dropped it. It hadn’t even spilled. It was as if he had simply left it there. But why? It couldn’t have been deliberate. Had a vampire sneaked up on him, grabbed him from behind? No, Jerry would have struggled. He would likely have dropped the bucket, spilling the coolant water everywhere. Hell, he would have splashed the vampires with it, and they would have burned just like Penwarden and Bodine. There was no blood, no body, no sign of a struggle.
The men pressed on into the control room. Tim handed his stake to Oran, who had left his in Bodine’s chest, and picked up the bucket. He took it with him into the control room, just in case.
The lights twinkling from the equipment were almost enough to illuminate the space, but the captain ordered the control room rigged for red so they could see better. The red lights in the ceiling of the control room, the only fixtures that hadn’t been destroyed, snapped on for the first time since the underway’s very first dive. The purpose of rigging the control room for red was that it helped the eyes adjust faster to the dark when surfacing or coming to periscope depth at night. So when the red lights came on in the control room, Tim’s eyes didn’t need time to adjust. He could see everything right away. The bodies of the dead were still exactly as he had found them before, though the thick stench of old spilled blood in the confined space was overpowering. Tim heard a man vomit, which only made the room smell worse. There was no sign of Jerry. Had he never made it this far?
“They didn’t move the bodies,” Tim said. “They didn’t put them in the torpedo tubes like the others. Why?”
“Maybe they were feedin’ on ’em all this time,” Oran said. “Maybe dead blood just as good to them as livin’ blood.”
“Then why don’t we just let ’em have the dead?” another enlisted man asked in a shaky voice. “Maybe we can make a deal. We give ’em the dead bodies, and they leave us alone.”
“Rougarou don’ make deals,” Oran said.
A dark shape raced out from the shadows of the captain’s egress and into the control room, moving faster than Tim had ever seen anyone move before. The blur of motion resolved itself into
LeMon Guidry. The red light wasn’t bright enough to hurt his eyes, but one of his hands was burnt, blackened and withered as if it had come in contact with the irradiated water. Had Jerry made it up here after all? What happened to him? But there was little time to speculate before LeMon attacked.
The vampire swung his good arm, knocking two sailors back like rag dolls. Then he made a beeline for Oran. Oran saw him coming, but before he could get his stake up, LeMon grabbed him by the arm and threw him into the fire-control console that ran along one side of the control room. The wooden stake went clattering across the metal deck. Oran slid down, leaving a splotch of blood on the console.
Tim and the other sailors turned their lanterns on LeMon, shining them into his face. LeMon hissed and threw a protective arm over his eyes.
Forgetting himself, Captain Weber fired three rounds into LeMon’s chest. The vampire didn’t even seem to notice. The enlisted man that Tim had been talking to raced forward to stake LeMon. LeMon reached out with uncanny speed and grabbed him, tearing out his throat in one swift movement. He dropped the sailor, leaving him to bleed out where he fell on the deck. LeMon hissed, his chin glistening with blood in the red light, one arm shielding his eyes again. The other sailors fell back, keeping their lanterns trained on him but not willing to risk attacking him outright after seeing the fate that befell their crewmate. Tim grabbed for one of the bowls at the bottom of the bucket, ready to splash LeMon with irradiated seawater, when another vampire came streaking out of the shadows.
Lieutenant Commander Jefferson tore through the group of sailors, knocking them aside as if he were back on the football field. The sailors panicked, taking their lanterns off LeMon to shine them on Jefferson. LeMon leaped into the crowd, but Jefferson didn’t even look their way. He ran straight for Captain Weber, grabbing him by the uniform and pinning him against the bulkhead.
“Jefferson, stop!” the captain yelled.
But Jefferson wasn’t taking orders from him anymore. The vampire opened his mouth and bent over Captain Weber’s neck.
“No!” Tim cried.
He ran at Jefferson, lunging with the wooden stake. Jefferson twisted, and the stake’s sharp point only grazed his arm. Enraged, he bounced the captain’s head off the helm. Captain Weber went down, and Jefferson sprang for Tim, pulling him off his feet. The bucket fell out of his hand and landed on the deck. The coolant inside sloshed precariously against the sides.
“You shouldn’t have come out of your hidey-hole, Spicer,” Jefferson said. “Now your sorry ass is mine!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Jerry hobbled slowly across the torpedo room, holding on to the torpedo trays for support. He couldn’t put any weight on the smashed knee, or the excruciating pain would drop him to the deck. And if he fell again, he wasn’t sure he would ever get back up. He maneuvered himself out of the torpedo-room hatch, grunting with pain as he stepped over the raised lip at the bottom. In the corridor outside, he found that leaning against the bulkhead as he walked helped some.
He paused at the foot of the main ladder. He dreaded the thought of hauling himself up with a broken knee, but he couldn’t stay down here alone. He took a deep breath and put his hands on the highest rung he could reach, then pulled himself up enough to hop up with his good leg on the bottom rung. Then he repeated the process, getting both hands on the next rung and hopping up. The dragging leg hurt like hell, but by now everything did.
Normally, he would have climbed the ten-foot ladder to the middle level in a couple of seconds. Now it took him nearly three excruciating minutes. When at last he pulled himself up onto the middle level, he lay on the deck, breathing hard. He glanced up at the reactor-room hatch a few short feet away and thought about calling for help, but it was unlikely anyone who was still inside would hear him through the thick steel and over the engine noise. He was going to have to bang on the hatch if he wanted anyone to know he was out here. Gritting his teeth, he began to pull himself along the coolant-slick deck.
Shouts of alarm from the control room above made him pause. Then came a scream and the sound of someone crashing into a piece of equipment.
Shit!
He turned around and used the ladder to pull himself up onto his good leg. Bracing for more pain, he started up the rungs, using the same method as before. By now, he was perspiring heavily.
It felt like an eternity before he reached the top of the ladder. He pulled himself onto the top level and tried to stand, but with the broken knee his balance was shot. He managed to get up on his good leg while leaning against the bulkhead. At the end of the short corridor that led away from the ladder, he could see that the control room had been rigged for red. They had battle lanterns too—lots of them, from the look of it—and enough light bled into the ladder space that he should be able to find the bucket of coolant he had left there. But it was gone.
He heard three gunshots and then another scream. Shit! There was no time to waste. He hobbled away from the ladder, toward the control room. In the short corridor between the two, he found a dropped wooden stake on the deck. He bent down painfully and picked it up. He didn’t know what he could do in his condition, except maybe die. But if he had to die, he was sure as hell going to take one of those bloodsucking assholes down with him.
CHAPTER FORTY
Alive, Lieutenant Commander Jefferson had been a strong man—big, muscular, fit—but now, after his unholy transformation, his strength was astonishing. He held Tim up off the ground as if he weighed nothing at all. Jefferson’s lips peeled back to reveal long, sharp fangs that glistened in the red light. It didn’t matter how much Tim struggled, punched, or kicked—Jefferson wouldn’t be deterred from biting into his neck and drinking his fill.
Captain Weber, dazed but back on his feet, rushed Jefferson from behind and tried to pull him off Tim. And, of course, Jefferson didn’t budge. But he did release Tim before swatting the captain away like a bothersome fly.
Tim scrambled for the bucket of radioactive water, but Jefferson was too fast. He grabbed Tim and tossed him across the room as easily as he had tossed Captain Weber.
Tim collided with the dead body in the planesman’s station, then fell, banging his head on the metal base of the seat. For a moment, the whole room spun like a carousel. It took him a second to snap out of it. When he did, he saw LeMon and Jefferson moving like lightning through the red-lit control room, slaughtering sailors and smashing battle lanterns.
Terrified, Tim began to crawl along the deck on all fours. A hand grabbed him by the wrist, and he recoiled.
“It’s me,” Oran whispered.
Tim relaxed a degree. Earlier, LeMon had smashed Oran into the fire-control console so hard that Tim had thought the culinary specialist was down for the count. He glanced up and saw Jefferson shove a sailor against the bulkhead and tear into the screaming man’s throat with his teeth.
“We gotta get back to the reactor room,” Oran said. “They’re killin’ us, Spicer. We need a new plan!”
“The captain won’t go for it, and we can’t just abandon him,” Tim said.
Oran’s grip on Tim’s wrist slipped as the Cajun was yanked roughly away. LeMon had him by the leg. Oran cried out as his brother threw him hard against the deck.
“Gonna taste your blood now, brother,” LeMon said. “Better’n Ma’s étouffée.”
Shit. Tim stayed down, crawling across the deck on all fours toward the bucket, avoiding the fallen bodies in his way, old dead and new. He tried not to look at them. Their throats were open and bleeding, their faces locked in expressions of pain and terror. The irradiated water was their only chance. Something grabbed him in the dark, lifted him, and spun him around. Disoriented, he smacked into a bank of small, twinkling equipment lights. His face collided with a metal panel and he slid to the deck, dazed. Jefferson loomed over him. This is it, Tim thought. The end. He had tried to be a good sailor for the navy. He had tried to be a good crewman for Captain Weber. He had tried to be a good friend to men like
Mitch Robertson and Jerry White. There was so much more he wished he could have done, so many more parts of the world he wished he could have seen. Now none of that was going to happen. He braced himself and waited for Jefferson’s teeth to tear into him.
Jefferson bent down to bite him. Tim spotted the bucket nearby and sprang desperately for it, but Jefferson planted a foot in his back so hard he thought his spine would snap. He was pinned to the deck.
Jefferson laughed. “You’ve got some fight in you, Spicer. That’ll make killing you all the sweeter.”
Across the control room, LeMon straddled Oran on the deck while fighting off a handful of sailors who were trying to stop him from tearing into his brother’s neck. Captain Weber picked up a dropped stake and lunged at LeMon. He stabbed, but LeMon twisted, and Weber missed his heart, punching through the left shoulder instead. LeMon hissed with rage and pulled the stake out, but it was enough of a distraction for Oran to struggle free. LeMon rose to his feet and tossed the stake aside. Oran grabbed Captain Weber and pulled him away, then ran for the bucket. He snatched it up by the bail and spun around with it.
LeMon sprang as Oran flung the contents of the bucket onto him, water and plastic soup bowls alike. The bowls bounced and clattered to the deck as the coolant splashed over him in a wave.
“I’m sorry, Monje,” he said. “I couldn’t save you this time.”
LeMon screamed and burst into flames. He collapsed to the deck, convulsing as he burned, and then lay still. Oran dropped the empty bucket, which made a hollow thud.
Jefferson grabbed Tim and lifted him off the deck.
“Let go of him, Jefferson!” the captain yelled.
Oran grabbed a fallen stake and rushed at Jefferson, but the XO batted him aside with one arm.
Jefferson pulled Tim toward his slavering jaws.
The pointed end of a wooden stake burst through Jefferson’s chest with a spatter of blood. The vampire screamed, twisting and convulsing as he dropped Tim. He clutched at the blood-slicked stake and tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t come. With a prolonged hiss that ended in a pained gurgle, Jefferson fell to the deck, dead.
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