“Wait here, sir,” Carr said. “I think I’ve got just the thing.”
He hurried off toward the back of the reactor room and returned a minute later. With him was an enlisted man carrying a bundle of long wooden rods. The sailor placed them on the deck in front of the captain. Each rod was two feet long and tapered on one end. Not a point, exactly, but it could be sharpened into one.
“Where did you find these, Carr?” the captain asked.
“They’re standard equipment, sir. They’re for fixing leaks. When seawater got into the auxiliary engine room of my last sub, I used these rods to plug the holes in the hull and stop the water. I reckon they’ll do just as well for killing vampires, sir.”
Much to Tim’s surprise, the captain smiled. Captain Weber had always been so aloof and imposing that until that moment, Tim wasn’t sure the man knew how to smile.
“Lieutenant Carr,” the captain said, “this is just what we need to take Roanoke back.”
A cheer went up from the other sailors. Tim felt it too. They were no longer helpless against the vampires. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief, like taking a deep breath after holding it for too long. Maybe they could survive this after all.
Oran Guidry’s voice broke him out of his thoughts. “Lieutenant Abrams, suh, you need to rest. Sit back down, suh, please.”
Lieutenant Abrams had gotten to his feet. He was even paler than before, white as paper, with dark rings around his eyes. His skin glistened with sweat, and his hair was damp and matted. Clutching the blanket around his shoulders, he raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light and squinted at them.
“I—I can’t control it anymore,” Abrams said. “I’m so hungry. I can smell the blood from Jerry’s wounds and the uniform he bled into. It’s driving me crazy!”
“You need to rest, suh,” Oran said again. He went over to Abrams and gently tried to guide him back to where he’d been sitting.
“No!” Abrams shouted, breaking away from him. “Don’t you understand? Don’t any of you see what I’m becoming?”
“Lieutenant,” Captain Weber said sternly, starting toward him.
Abrams hissed at him, revealing two long viperine fangs. The captain froze.
“Get it now?” Abrams said. “It’s too late for me. My memories are starting to go. I can’t remember my brother’s name anymore, or—or the name of the hospital where my mother worked. All I can think about is how much the light hurts my eyes—and how hungry I am.”
“Lieutenant, you’ve got to calm down,” Jerry said, inching toward him. “We can figure something out—”
“Stay back!” Abrams yelled. “It’s too late for that!”
Jerry stopped in his tracks. Abrams spun around and faced the reactor. He looked up at it fearfully, as though he could see something they couldn’t. Then his expression became one of serene determination.
“This is the only way,” he said.
“Lieutenant…” Oran started to say.
Abrams ignored him. He walked toward the reactor, throwing off the blanket and spreading his arms. As he drew closer, his body began to smoke, and his skin began to sizzle like bacon on a griddle. Undeterred, he walked up to the reactor and embraced it. His body burst into flames. Men cried out, some of them running to grab the fire extinguishers mounted on the reactor-room bulkhead. Oran was at the head of the group running toward the burning lieutenant, but they could get only so close before the flames drove them back.
Tim watched in horror. If Abrams felt any pain, he didn’t show it. He didn’t scream. He didn’t thrash about. He just stood there, embracing the side of the reactor like a long-lost lover and burning, until finally the men brought the extinguishers and turned them on him. The flames died away, and Lieutenant Gordon Abrams’ body fell backward onto the deck, a charred husk like Matson’s.
Oran ran to the corpse and knelt down over it. “Oh, no, Lieutenant. Why?”
Jerry helped Oran back to his feet. “It’s what he wanted: to die while he was still himself, while he was still in control.”
“There should have been another way,” Oran said, buckling at the knees. Jerry supported him and led him away from the blackened corpse.
Captain Weber looked down at Gordon’s smoldering remains. Then he turned to Lieutenant Carr.
“Radiation,” he said softly, sadly. “You were right, Carr.”
Tim stared in horror at Abrams’ corpse. He wished it could have happened some other way, but at least they finally had the proof they needed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“So how do we use radiation to kill the vampires without killing ourselves too?” Captain Weber asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that, sir,” Lieutenant Carr said. “As you yourself saw on your Geiger, sir, the radiation level here is within safety standards, and it’s very well contained by the reactor.”
“And yet Matson and Abrams went up in flames,” the captain said. “Why?”
“I don’t know, sir. We don’t know anything about what kind of changes were made to the crewmen’s biology when they became, erm, vampires. The best I could guess is that they have some kind of innate sensitivity to the radiation—something inside them that is affected in a way that we’re not. If I’m right, that’s why they haven’t entered the reactor room yet. Therefore, sir, I believe all we need is low-level radiation—enough to be dangerous to them but not to us. We can do that by taking it not from the reactor itself, but from the irradiated water that comes out of it.” He pointed to the massive pipe that led from the reactor to the steam generator. “We use seawater as a coolant, so the water in that outtake pipe still carries a dangerous level of radioactive neutrons until it’s recycled through a series of filters.” He pointed to the three massive holding tanks beside the reactor. “If we take some from the last tank, it’s still going to be radioactive, but it’s going to be low dosage, barely measurable. Here, watch.” He held a matchbook-size Geiger counter against the farthest tank. “See? It’s within safety limits, sir.”
“You’re sure it’ll be strong enough, Lieutenant?” Captain Weber asked.
“Aye, sir,” Carr said. “Judging from what happened to Matson and Abrams, even low levels of ambient radiation seem to affect the vampires much more strongly than us.”
Listening to their conversation, Tim Spicer could only shake his head in astonishment. Vampires. It sounded so silly, like something out of a children’s Halloween special on TV. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and Oh, Yeah, Vampires Are Real. Except that there was nothing funny or cute about the carnage he had seen in the control room, or the pitiful gasps for air he had heard from the doomed men in the torpedo tubes. He shook the terrible memories out of his head and glanced over his shoulder at Oran Guidry.
Oran hadn’t budged from his spot beside Lieutenant Abrams’ remains, which had been covered with the blanket Abrams had worn earlier. The two of them hadn’t served together very long, but they must have bonded during that short time. It was easy enough to imagine the camaraderie between Oran, LeMon, and Abrams flourishing in the small confines of the galley over the course of their shared watch sections. The thought of LeMon put a knot in Tim’s stomach. Oran hadn’t had any time to mourn his brother’s death before LeMon came back as one of those creatures. That had to be digging into him pretty deep. Perhaps that was why he had latched on to Abrams so tightly after rescuing him from the torpedo tube. Their bond had filled the hole left by LeMon.
“Lieutenant Carr, I need you to be sure this will fry the vampires,” the captain said.