Tim sighed and followed him. He was awake now, anyway. He may as well see this through. As they passed the mess, he stole a glance inside. The room was empty. It was well past midrats and still hours from first meal, but it was unusual to see the mess completely deserted. Even when the galley wasn’t serving, crewmen usually gathered there to talk or play cards. But there was no one. Was everyone still searching for the three missing officers?
They stopped at the main ladder. Tim looked up through the hole to the top level and saw lights, heard voices. Then he looked down through the hole to the bottom level and saw only darkness, heard only the hum of the air vents. He had a bad feeling about what Jerry was about to say.
“I think he went down.”
Tim sighed. “Yeah.”
Jerry went down the ladder first. Tim followed, thinking about the white-haired figure he had seen in the shadows. Even if it wasn’t LeMon, something had been off about him. The way he stood so still under the freshly broken light, just staring at the bulkhead as if he could see through to the other side…
Descending to the bottom level, he felt very exposed again. He had never realized just how vulnerable he was on a ladder. His back was fully exposed, and his arms and legs were too busy with the rungs to fight anyone off. If someone came up behind him, he wouldn’t even know until it was too late.
He chided himself. There was no sense spooking himself further, so he tried to put the thought out of his mind, but it clung tight. Some instinctive part of him was raising an alarm, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, telling him to watch his back.
When he reached the bottom level, he saw that all the ceiling lights had been broken. The whole level would have been black as India ink if battle lanterns hadn’t been mounted to the bulkhead at ten-foot intervals. He scanned the ceiling, following the conduit pipes from broken light to broken light.
“What happened down here?” he asked.
“The mess, the head, Officer Country, and now the whole goddamn bottom level,” Jerry said. “This isn’t the work of one man. It can’t be.”
“Warren Stubic, Steve Bodine, and LeMon Guidry all got sick,” Tim said. “We know that Stubic and Bodine became sensitive to the light. LeMon probably did too.”
“Then there are more sick sailors than we thought, because LeMon didn’t break all these lights himself.”
“Matson got sick too,” Tim said. “Maybe he helped before he got better.”
“Did he get better?”
“That’s what I heard. Matson came to retrieve LeMon’s body himself and brought it back down here with a couple of POs from the mess. But everyone who saw him said he looked like he’d made a full recovery.”
Jerry took a lantern off the bulkhead. It made a soft click as he pulled it free. Not a loud noise, but in the silence of the corridor it may as well have been the bang of a snare drum. He shined the light up and down the corridor. There was no sign of LeMon—or anyone else, for that matter. It was completely deserted, just like the mess deck. Where was everybody?
“So, what do we do now?” Tim asked.
Jerry trained the light on the torpedo-room hatch. “We see if LeMon Guidry is where he’s supposed to be.”
He walked up and banged on the hatch with his fist.
“What are you doing?” Tim demanded, coming up behind him. “It’s still quarantined. No one’s allowed in there.”
Jerry ignored him. He pounded again and shouted, “Senior Chief Matson! We need to talk to you!”
When there was no answer, he tugged on the hatch. It unlatched and swung outward a couple of inches.
“Matson?” Jerry called again.
He pulled the hatch open. It was dark inside the torpedo room. Except for the LEDs on the equipment, the lights had been broken in there as well. Tim pulled a battle lantern off the bulkhead and nodded at Jerry. The two of them moved slowly into the shadows of the torpedo room. Tim closed the hatch behind them, sealing them in.
He had to remind himself to breathe. The darkness was suffocating, filling his lungs like water. He felt like that little kid on Presque Isle again, praying all winter long for the sun to come back and drive away the endless darkness. Their two lanterns helped illuminate the dark space, but not nearly enough. He shined his lantern all over the torpedo room, checking every corner, every patch of darkness, but there was no sign of Matson. Strange. As far as Tim knew, the corpsman was still supposed to be stationed in the quarantine.
Jerry approached the closest body bag lying on the deck. Its flat black finish seemed to eat the light from his lantern. Tim went over to it and read the name on the tag: guidry, lemon.
“It’s him.”
Every instinct told him to leave it alone and just get the hell out of here, but he had to see this through. Too many strange things had happened on Roanoke already. If LeMon Guidry was in his body bag, that was one thing, at least, he could take off the list.
And if LeMon wasn’t in the bag? Tim didn’t want to think about that.
But Jerry didn’t appear to have any reservations. He crouched over the bag and unzipped it quickly, head to foot. Tim shined his lantern into the bag as Jerry spread it open.
“Oh, God,” Jerry breathed.
There was a body in the bag, but it wasn’t LeMon Guidry. It was Lieutenant Carl French, Roanoke’s weapons officer.
“Fuck two ducks!” Tim exclaimed. “We’ve got to tell the captain!”
Jerry looked up at him sharply. “Bring that light over here.”
Reluctantly, Tim came closer with the lantern. As he shined the light down on French’s waxy face, Jerry turned the corpse’s head to one side. There on the neck were two red welts.
“What are they?” Tim asked.
“LeMon had them too. So did Bodine.”
“Stubic?” Tim asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t look,” Jerry said. “But the last time I saw Matson he was rubbing his neck a lot. What if he has them too?”
“They look like… like bite marks,” Tim said. A chill washed over him. “Jerry, if Lieutenant French is here, where’s LeMon?”
“It was him we saw,” Jerry said. “I knew it.”
“But he’s dead,” Tim insisted. “That’s his name on the tag.”
Jerry stood up. He picked up his lantern and pointed it across the floor, until the beam found another body bag. This one was unzipped, spread open, and empty. He walked over to it and checked the tag.
“Steve Bodine,” Jerry read.
“Where’s the body?” Tim asked.
Jerry just looked at him.
“What the fuck?” Tim said. “Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away!”
Jerry returned to the body bag at Tim’s feet and shined his light down into it. “Let’s close this up again. Matson could come back any second.”
They zipped up the body bag and jumped at the sound of the torpedo-room hatch being opened from outside. Matson was already back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“The lights!” Jerry whispered.
They switched their lanterns off. Jerry turned toward the hatch. It wasn’t fully open yet. He heard a muffled voice outside and glimpsed the beam of another lantern through the crack. Someone had stopped Matson to talk.
Jerry turned back to Tim. “We have to hide.”
“But what if Matson can help?” Tim objected. “We should tell him what’s going on.”
“Tim, who do you think put Lieutenant French’s body in LeMon’s bag?”
In the dark, he heard Tim’s breath hitch. “Shit.”
“Find a place to hide, and stay quiet,” Jerry told him.