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.”
Ortega and Keene each took a gun and stepped aside. Jerry reached in and grabbed one. The .45 caliber weapon felt solid in his hand and gave him a sense of comfort. Now, finally, he could defend himself against the vampires. He just hoped bullets would stop them. He had taken the weapons qualification course in basic, so he knew how to handle an M1911. He had fired on targets at 3 yards, 7 yards, and 15 yards, and had scored well above the minimum 180 points needed to pass. But he had never fired at a living target before—if “living” was the right word to describe these creatures—and prayed he didn’t freeze up when the moment came. Any hesitation out there could get him killed.
“If you find survivors, you bring them back here, to us,” Captain Weber told them. “If you find any of the mutineers, you put them down. Is that understood? They’re not playing around, and goddamn it, neither are we—not anymore. They didn’t show any mercy when they killed your fellow crewmen, and I don’t expect you to show them any in return. We’re going to take back this boat, gentlemen, and we’re going to do it with extreme fucking prejudice.”
Jerry loaded a full magazine into the pistol, put two extra magazines in his pockets, and followed Ortega and Keene to the hatch.
The rest of the sailors came to wish them good hunting. Tim was among them, desperate to meet Jerry’s eye, but Jerry ignored him. He listened halfheartedly to the others wishing them luck or telling them to be careful. A plan was already forming in his mind—a way to show everyone what was really happening aboard Roanoke.
A sailor cracked the hatch and peeked outside. Finding no one, he signaled the three scouts to go. They slipped out into the corridor, and the hatch slammed shut behind them.
In the moment before they switched on their battle lanterns, it was so dark that Jerry felt as if he were looking down into a bottomless well. He didn’t see any eyes glowing in the darkness. The vampires seemed to have fallen back, but to where was anyone’s guess. Lantern in one hand and gun in the other, they inched their way to the main ladder. Ortega and Keene started climbing up toward the control room, but Jerry didn’t follow them. Instead, he pocketed his gun and began descending the ladder to the bottom level.
“Hey,” Ortega hissed out of the darkness. “What are you doing?”
“You keep going,” Jerry whispered back. “Try to find survivors. There’s something I need to do.”
“We should stick together,” Keene said.
“Not this time. It’s better if I do this alone.”
“It’s your funeral,” Ortega said, annoyed. “Cap’s not gonna like it, though.”
At that moment, Jerry didn’t much care what Captain Weber thought about him—or, for that matter, what any of them thought about him. All he cared about was getting proof that the so-called mutineers weren’t who—or what—everyone thought they were.
Jerry listened to them climb the rest of the way up to the top level. Then he continued down the main ladder into utter darkness, jumping his left hand from rung to rung and holding the lantern in his right. It was slow going with only one free hand, and with each step downward he felt increasingly vulnerable. The vampires liked the dark. The lights had bothered them, but like many other predators, they were made for the dark. He had no doubt they could see him just fine even if his lantern weren’t giving away his position. Just because he couldn’t see their glowing eyes in the places where the lantern’s light couldn’t reach didn’t mean they weren’t there, watching him from just out of sight, waiting to grab him and sink their teeth into his neck. They had murdered those crewmen in the control room in a split second, before they could even get up from their stations. They could snatch him off this ladder just as quickly if they wanted to.
He listened for anything: footsteps, the creak of a hatch, breathing—if those creatures breathed. But the darkness remained silent around him. At the bottom of the ladder, he crouched, pulled out the pistol, and trained it on the open hatch of the torpedo room. Inside, the remains of Farrington’s smashed lantern littered the deck, but it appeared that nothing else had changed since he and Tim hid in there.
He spun around, in the direction of the Big Red Machine at the opposite end of the corridor, and pointed his lantern into the darkness. He couldn’t make his way toward the torpedo room without exposing his back to anyone hiding aft. Had they been there a moment ago, watching him, waiting to pounce, only to sink back into the shadows when he turned the lantern their way? What would happen if he took the light off the corridor? Would they come back? Would they get him?
He had to stop thinking that way or he could freeze up. He turned back to the torpedo room, determined to see his plan through. He took a step toward it, his finger on the trigger guard of the M1911.
A dark shape seemed to fold into the shadows of the torpedo room. Jerry saw it for only a fleeting moment. Someone was in there. Had Matson come back down? Or was it Bodine? Or LeMon Guidry? Or someone else who had been turned into a vampire?
As if in answer to his question, Matson’s voice floated out of the room.
“Did you really think you could hide from me in the dark, White? I can see you. I can smell you.”
Matson appeared in the doorway, right in front of Jerry, shielding his eyes from the lantern light with one hand. Gathering his courage, Jerry raised the M1911 and aimed at Matson’s center mass.