At the top of the ladder, he put the bucket down on the deck and started to pull himself up. In the darkness outside the control room, two blazing amber eyes came rushing toward him. Jerry scrambled for the bucket on his other side, but the vampire was faster. He couldn’t see who it was in the dark—the lantern beam was pointing in the opposite direction. Hands grabbed his arm and tried to haul him up out of the hole.
If Jerry let the vampire pull him up, he was as good as dead. He locked his legs around the ladder and pulled back, trying to break the creature’s iron grip. He strained so hard, he bit into the lantern’s handle. His assailant was impossibly strong, and it felt as if his arm would be pulled out of the shoulder socket. He squirmed and twisted, and the material of his uniform tore in the vampire’s fingers. Jerry started to slip. The vampire grabbed him by the hand to try again, but this time the creature howled in pain as his hands began to spark and smoke, and he let go. The coolant Jerry had spilled on his hand—the vampire must have touched it. But before Jerry could grab a rung, gravity took over, and he fell back down through the hole. He landed on his side on the middle level, much too far away from the precious bucket of irradiated water still on the level above. His only other meager defense, the lantern, slipped out of his teeth and kept tumbling down to the bottom level, where it crashed to the deck and went out.
His arm flared with pain. The wounds from the fight with Matson had torn open again, and his elbow hurt like hell. Above him, he heard the vampire shrieking in pain as the irradiated seawater burned his hand. Jerry took some satisfaction in having hurt the son of a bitch, but it didn’t last long. Farther down the corridor, somewhere between the mess and Officer Country, he saw another pair of glowing eyes open in the darkness.
Shit. Without the coolant, he had nothing to defend himself with. Then he remembered: he had wet the rungs down to the bottom level with the stuff. He would be safer one more level down. He only hoped the irradiated water on the ladder rungs would be enough to kill the vampire or, at the very least, keep him back.
In a blink, the eyes crossed the corridor and stared down at him. He couldn’t see the vampire’s face, but he knew he had only a moment, if that, to get away.
With no time to waste, Jerry rolled and threw himself into the hole, letting himself drop straight down to the bottom level. He tried to control his landing, but the pitch darkness made it impossible. He hit the bottom-level deck with his face and left knee, both of which erupted in pain.
Through his agony, he heard footsteps coming toward him, slowly, leisurely, as if whoever was approaching had all the time in the world. It couldn’t be either of the creatures from the other levels—the footsteps were coming from the wrong direction, from the torpedo room.
Two glowing eyes looked at him out of the darkness.
“Well, well, well, look who finally fell through that mighty thin ice,” Lieutenant Duncan said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“I couldn’t save him,” Oran said. “I pulled him out of the torpedo tube, but I still couldn’t save him.”
Sitting on the deck beside him, Tim nodded in sympathy. Oran was still in a wounded daze after Lieutenant Abrams’ death. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. Bonds formed quickly on a submarine. It made Tim think of Jerry again, for the hundredth time since he left the reactor room. He was out there all alone, making a path to the control room. Tim only hoped that a bucket of irradiated seawater was enough to keep his friend safe.
The atmosphere in the reactor room had been tense and silent since Jerry left. A few of the men sat on the deck and, on the captain’s orders, were whittling the tapered ends of the wooden rods to points. No one spoke for long stretches of time, and when they did, it was to ask how long it had been since Jerry left the reactor room.
“LeMon, then the lieutenant. Who’s next?” Oran asked, as if Tim somehow knew the answer. “Why would God take them like that? Does he really hate me so bad? Does he hate all of us?”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. He wasn’t even sure there was a God, but if there were, he wouldn’t have anything to do with the vampires.
“I shoulda gone to confession more,” Oran said. “I always knew that, but there were things I didn’t want the priest to know. Things I did with girls, or smokin’ Mary Jane sometimes. Stupid stuff. But I skipped confession too often, and look where it got me.”
“I don’t think God would kill LeMon and the lieutenant and everyone else on Roanoke just to punish you for missing confession,” Tim said.
He had meant it to be comforting, but Oran only glared at him, as if he’d said the wrong thing.
“Sorry,” Tim said. “Your brother seemed like a good guy. I think if I’d gotten to know him, I would have liked him.”
Oran nodded. “He was a couillon for sho’, but he was my brother. I lost count of how many scrapes I pulled him out of over the years. But it turns out I couldn’t save him, either.”
“You tried,” Tim said. “You tried your best to save them both.”
“Except my best weren’t good enough,” Oran said. He lifted his chin. “If I’d been thinkin’ straight, I woulda been the one to take the coolant out there, not White. I owe it to LeMon and Lieutenant Abrams to make the rougarou pay. I hope I still get my chance. I’ll make them wish they never came to Roanoke, if it’s the last thing I do. I owe ’em that.”
“It’s been half an hour,” Captain Weber announced. “It’s time.”
Tim and Oran got to their feet.
“Sir, are you sure Jerry has had enough time?” Tim asked.
“Either Lieutenant Carr’s idea worked, Spicer, or White is dead,” the captain replied. “Either way, we’ll find out soon enough, because we can’t wait any longer. Gather up your stakes, gentlemen. We’re heading for the control room. Let’s show these bastards who Roanoke really belongs to.”
Oran was the first to reach the pile of sharpened wooden stakes, pulling one out for himself. The other men were slower to grab theirs. They were still scared and unsure about getting close enough to the vampires to stake them. Tim took a stake and hefted it, getting a feel for its weight and balance. It was roughly a foot and a half long and an inch and a half thick. He touched the point with his fingertip. It had been whittled sharp enough to pierce flesh if he put enough weight behind it. If it came down to it, though, would he be able to thrust it through the chest of someone he had worked with, bunked with? What about someone who had been an officer? He told himself yes, he could do it, but the thought frightened and sickened him. There was a world of difference between knowing you had to kill someone to save yourself and actually doing it. If the time came, he prayed he wouldn’t hesitate, because that could mean his death.
There were only ten stakes, which meant only ten men could accompany the captain outside, while the other seventeen stayed behind in the reactor room. Ten men didn’t sound like much against vampires who had already wiped out most of the crew, but it would have to be enough to get them up the main ladder to the top level, via the path Jerry had theoretically cleared for them with the radioactive water. Tim didn’t relish the idea of returning to the control room. He had seen the terrible carnage up there and didn’t want to see it again. But there was no other way to take back Roanoke.