The torpedo room was long, narrow, and crowded. There was only one place to hide: in the gap between the bulkheads and the torpedo tubes at the far end of the space. Jerry hurried over, listening for Tim’s footsteps behind him. He heard the rustle of fabric against metal as Tim squeezed into a hiding spot. Jerry went to the opposite bulkhead and shimmied into the tight space. He could wedge himself into the gap if he exhaled first and didn’t take a deep breath. Not the most comfortable place to hide, but his options were few. Until he knew otherwise, he had to assume that Matson was in on it.
But in on what, exactly? He still didn’t understand what was going on. Corpses disappearing from their body bags and being replaced with others? Had Bodine and LeMon ever truly been dead, or was it all a colossal lie? Was there even really a fever, or was it a conspiracy with Matson at the head?
The hatch opened the rest of the way, and Matson walked into the torpedo room. Behind him came COB Farrington, holding a lantern. Jerry had a limited view from his hiding place, but the light from Farrington’s lantern helped him see.
“Are you sure it’s safe to come in?” Farrington asked. “I thought it was still a quarantine.”
Matson didn’t answer. He closed the hatch behind them. Jerry wriggled in the tight space, trying to reposition himself to see better. It wasn’t easy to do. Pinned into place between the torpedo tubes and the bulkhead, he didn’t have enough room to turn his head.
“You’re sure you haven’t seen Lieutenant French at all?” Farrington continued. “The captain said he came down to the lower level a few hours ago, but he hasn’t reported back. And with everything else that’s going on, this boat doesn’t need another missing officer.”
Jerry wanted to yell at Farrington to get the hell out of here, but he couldn’t. It would give him away, and he was wedged in too tightly, his arms pinned to his sides. If Matson found him, he would be trapped like a rat in a rain barrel, and the next thing he knew, he would be in a body bag next to Lieutenant French, or filling in for the missing body of Steve Bodine.
Matson circled around Farrington like a hungry shark. COB Farrington was in his 50s, older than Matson by at least a decade, but he was no slouch. He was a tall man with the physique of someone who had kept fit all his life. Jerry had no doubt that if they were to square off, Farrington would reduce the corpsman to a wet smear on the deck. So when Matson put one hand on Farrington’s arm and effortlessly threw him across the length of the torpedo room, Jerry had to bite his knuckle to keep from crying out in terror.
Then both men were out of his line of sight. He heard a dull clang as Farrington fell against a torpedo, followed by another thump, which must have been his dropped lantern. The beam of light juddered and bounced. Farrington shouted—a short, sharp exclamation that wasn’t a word so much as a cry of pain and alarm. There was the scuffle of feet, a hand desperately slapping the side of the torpedo, and then silence.
Matson came back into view, and Jerry watched as he lowered Farrington’s body to the deck. He couldn’t see Farrington’s face—just one arm that flopped to the floor alongside his torso. Jerry risked moving closer to the mouth of his hiding place for a better view. On the deck, Matson knelt beside Farrington and bent his head directly over Farrington’s neck. What followed were soft sounds, barely audible, but in the silence of the torpedo room, Jerry could discern them. He thought he was going to be sick. They were the sounds of sucking, of drinking.
A few hellishly long seconds passed, and then Matson was finished with whatever unspeakable thing he was doing. He lifted Farrington’s limp body off the deck as though it weighed no more than beach ball. Jerry got a good look at Farrington’s face as Matson carried him closer to the torpedo tubes. His eyes were open, staring vacantly in terror. There was blood on the side of his neck.
There wasn’t a lot of light to see by, so Jerry tried to convince himself the blood could be a shadow on Farrington’s neck and nothing more. But when Matson dropped Farrington’s body onto the deck, the light from the COB’s fallen lantern hit his neck just right, and Jerry saw slick red blood. He wondered whether, underneath that blood, there were two raised welts, just like on Lieutenant French’s neck.
Bite marks. Matson had bitten Farrington, and then… what? Drunk his blood like a vampire? But that was ridiculous. Vampires weren’t real. And yet, those same welts had been on French’s neck, and LeMon’s…
And the dead were up and walking again.
Matson left Farrington on the deck and went to the torpedo control panel between the tubes. Jerry shrank back into the shadows. Matson fiddled with the panel, clicking buttons and throwing switches that Jerry couldn’t see. Maybe he should make a break for it—slide out of his hiding place and bolt for the hatch. But it would take too long to extricate himself from this tiny space. Matson would be on him in a second, and he had already witnessed the corpsman’s unnatural strength. He had thrown Farrington across the room like a football.
He heard a soft whirring that reminded him of unscrewing the lid from a jar. It was the breech door of a torpedo tube, he realized. What the hell was Matson doing opening a tube? But even as he asked himself the question, a chill swept over him. When you wanted to hide a body on a vessel as small as a submarine, where would be the best place to put it?
Matson swung the heavy breech door open, and a sound filled the air that made Jerry bite his knuckle again. He heard a deep, greedy gasp from inside the open torpedo tube, as though someone were desperate for air. He heard a cough, a desperate moan—not just one voice, but a chorus.
There were people in the tubes. Dear God, the son of a bitch had loaded men into the tubes! Was that where the missing sailors had gone? Duncan, Penwarden, Lieutenant Commander Jefferson—were they all just an inch away from him now, slowly asphyxiating in the tubes, desperate for air that was only replenished each time the watertight breech door was opened? Just an inch away, but an inch of thick, unyielding steel. There was nothing he could do, not unless he wanted to share Farrington’s fate. He cursed himself for his cowardice, but Matson would kill him in a heartbeat.
The corpsman effortlessly lifted Farrington’s dead body off the deck and carried him to the open torpedo tube. Jerry closed his eyes, knowing what was coming and not wanting to see. But he heard it all—Matson stuffing the body in, the desperate, terrified gasps for air coming from inside the tube in response, and then the heavy clank of the breech door closing again. The torpedo room fell deathly silent once more.
Now that Matson had eliminated Farrington and hidden the evidence, Jerry hoped he would leave again. He didn’t. He sat cross-legged on the deck instead, half illuminated by Farrington’s fallen lantern, and stared into the darkness. Damn. Jerry’s heart beat so fast, it seemed about to break free of his rib cage. How long could he last in his tight hiding spot without giving himself away? How long could Tim?
As uncomfortable as it was in this tiny space, it was unimaginably worse for the men in the torpedo tube. There were four tubes in all, each 20 feet long. Four men could fit easily inside a single tube, but when Matson had opened one, it sounded like a lot more than four men in there. He pictured sailors crammed so tightly together they couldn’t move, suffocating as the sealed breech door cut off their air. How many? Six? More? The idea made his stomach jitter.
But now he was starting to understand a few things too. When he had gone to wake Tim earlier, he noticed that several of the racks, maybe a third of them, had been empty. The mess had been empty too, and the bottom-level corridor. Were all those men in the tubes?