They left the reactor room, moving at a snail’s pace into the mess. At the front of the group, Tim held his stake ready and kept an eye out for Jerry. The lantern beams swept over the two mauled bodies of Keene and Ortega slumped at one of the tables. He heard the captain whisper the dead sailors’ names sadly, apologetically. Tim knew how seriously Captain Weber took his responsibility for what happened on his boat. The massacre of his crew had to be taking a heavy toll on him.
Then the lantern beams fell on something else: a shape sprawled on the deck a little farther down the corridor. A few men gasped in surprise. It was a corpse, as charred as Matson’s and Abrams’ in the reactor room. Its features were burnt beyond recognition, but its elongated upper canine teeth glistened in the light. Its hair had burned away, leaving a black and blistered scalp.
The captain paused. “Someone needs to make sure it’s dead.”
“I got it, suh.” Oran went to the body, holding his stake ready just in case. When it didn’t move, he turned down the back of the corpse’s collar to reveal the name tag.
“It’s Ensign Penwarden, suh,” Oran said.
Captain Weber nodded. “It looks like the coolant worked after all.”
Tim felt the smile grow on his face. Son of a bitch, it actually worked! That meant Jerry, wherever he was, just might be safe. With that bucket of irradiated water at his side, he had to be, didn’t he?
A howl came from the head, high-pitched and blood-curdling. All eyes cut toward the hatch. The howl came again, long and loud and anguished. It didn’t sound human.
“What the hell is that?” the captain asked. “Guidry, check it out.”
Oran approached the hatch to the head, holding his stake like a dagger. Tim didn’t like it. There was something in there, and sending Oran in alone seemed a bad idea.
“Sir, permission to assist Guidry?” Tim asked the captain.
“Okay, Spicer, but be careful. Remember, I need you in that sonar shack,” Captain Weber said. “The rest of you, come up with me to the control room.”
While the captain and the others began to climb the main ladder to the top level, Tim moved to Oran’s side.
“You ready?” he asked, lifting his stake.
Oran nodded and gritted his teeth. “More than ready, ami.”
They opened the hatch and stepped cautiously into the head. In the light of their lanterns, they saw Steve Bodine—or what was left of him—lying on the deck. Half his body was burned to charcoal just like Penwarden, but the other half was still intact.
He was alive but unable to do anything more than swipe at them with his one good arm. Bodine spat and hissed like a cornered cat, baring his fangs. Tim surprised himself by not hesitating. He put down his lantern, knelt over Bodine, and lifted his stake with both hands over the vampire’s chest.
Oran put down his lantern and grabbed Tim’s wrist with his free hand. “No.”
“It has to be done, Oran.”
“I know. Let me. Penwarden bit LeMon and turned him into one of these things, but I didn’t get to kill the connard for it. I can’t properly avenge my brother until I kill one. You understand?”
Tim nodded. “Okay. Just make it quick.” He stood up, and Oran knelt down in his place, stake in hand.
For a moment, Tim saw Steve Bodine not as he was now, but as he used to be, the likable kid from Oklahoma City who had an accent that could charm most any city girl, and who kept his hair stubble-short to hide the fact that he was going prematurely bald. The skilled helmsman; the driven, determined sailor that Lieutenant Commander Jefferson had taken under his wing to guide and mentor. But that wasn’t who was lying on the deck in front of him. This creature had Steve Bodine’s face, but in his inhumanly glowing eyes were only unrecognizable hatred and hunger.
Oran brought the stake down hard, plunging it into Bodine’s chest. Blood spattered out of the wound, and the vampire let loose an ear-piercing shriek.
“Couillon!” Oran spat. “That’s for my brother, LeMon Guidry. Remember his name when you wake up in hell!”
Bodine shrieked and flailed, and blood ran from his mouth. It lasted only a few seconds, but Tim knew the image would stick in his mind’s eye, maybe forever. Finally, Bodine fell still. His eyes closed, and he looked as if he was finally at peace.
“Feel better, Guidry?” Tim asked.
Oran stood again, then turned around and vomited into the sink.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The lens of Jerry’s battle lantern had shattered when it hit the bottom-level deck. So had his knee and, from the feel of it, the bone above his right eye. He could breathe only through his mouth. His nose felt as if someone were squeezing it shut and twisting it with pliers. Probably, it was broken too. That was what happened when you threw yourself ten feet down a dark hole onto a metal floor. Stupid thing to do. He had escaped from two vampires only to end up injured and helpless in front of a third.
He heard the other men leaving the reactor room on the level above him, but he was too weak to call out for help. Duncan dragged him by his collar across the deck and into the torpedo room. If it hurt to be hauled over the raised lip at the threshold, he barely noticed. The pain of his broken bones was far worse.
The LEDs on the equipment dimly lit parts of the long, narrow space, but their light didn’t reach far into the torpedo room’s inky darkness, and they didn’t seem to bother Duncan in the least. He dropped Jerry on the deck and loomed over him, his eyes glowing like twin stars.
“Did you enjoy killing Matson?” Duncan asked. “It’s a thrill, isn’t it? To kill.”
“Don’t ask me,” Jerry said. “I’m not the one who staked his ass, though I wish I had.”
He was in bad shape. The fall had left him cotton-headed, and sucking air in through his mouth was making him dizzy. He tasted blood as it ran down his throat. The pain in his nose intensified, sharpened, as if someone had just now hit him in the face with a baseball bat. His hand was wet, but it wasn’t blood. It was water from the bucket that had splashed him earlier, when he was on the ladder.
Duncan grabbed a fistful of the front of Jerry’s uniform and, with one hand, hauled him up off the deck. He held Jerry aloft without seeming to exert any effort at all. Jerry’s feet dangled several inches off the deck.
“I told Frank Leonard that I was going to make your life on this submarine hell,” Duncan said. “Now I’m going to make your death hell instead.”
“I killed one of your kind already, possibly two,” Jerry told him. “Penwarden and Bodine. Even if you kill me now, the others will destroy the rest of you. You won’t have control of Roanoke for long.”
“Then you understand the joy of killing, as I do,” Duncan said. “Tell me, how did it feel to take their lives? To ram a stake through their hearts without hesitation? Did you feel strong? Powerful, for the first time in your life?”
“I didn’t use a stake,” Jerry said. “I killed them with sunlight. Burned them alive.”
“Impossible.” Duncan’s glowing eyes narrowed, and he pulled Jerry’s face closer to his. His fangs glistened in the colored lights. “There is no sunlight down here. That’s what makes it the perfect place to hunt.”
“Liquid sunlight,” Jerry said.
“There’s no such thing.”
“Guess again.”
He wiped his wet hand across Duncan’s face.
With an unearthly scream, the vampire let go, and Jerry fell to the deck, his broken knee stabbing him with agony.