“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 tell 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.”