There had been only a little coolant on his hands, but he was relieved to see it was still enough to hurt Duncan. Smoke drifted from his face, and in the dim light Jerry could see one of Duncan’s cheeks and the side of his neck bubble and blacken.
Jerry tried to get to his feet, but the world spun around him and he fell back on his butt. He turned himself over and managed to get on all fours, but the pain to his injured knee took his breath away. He fell onto his stomach and pulled himself across the deck. When he got to the torpedo tubes, he reached up for the handle of a lower tube’s breech door. He grabbed it and began to pull himself up, his head spinning from the pain. It was like climbing a ladder. Once he had pulled himself up enough to get his legs under him, he reached for the breech door handle of one of the upper tubes and hauled himself the rest of the way up. When he was standing at last, he turned and saw Duncan silhouetted against the equipment lights. He was about five feet away. Much of his cheek had burned away, exposing the teeth and jaw muscles beneath it, and the cords of muscle and tendon in the side of his neck glistened in the light of the LEDs. But he was still standing, still alive.
“You’ll pay for that, White!”
Jerry’s injured leg buckled under his weight. His head felt as if someone had clamped it in a vise. He shifted his weight to the other leg, but the pain made him dizzy. Knowing he would fall if he let go, he gripped the breech door handle with all his remaining strength, fighting to stay upright.
“I’m going to savor killing you,” Duncan said. “I’m going to make your death last a very long time, White. And when you rise again as one of us, you’ll be mine to torment for all eternity.”
Duncan lurched toward him. Jerry stepped to the side and swung the breech door open with one hand. With the other, he shoved Duncan toward the tube, wedging his head against the rounded inside wall. Then he slammed the round steel door as hard as he could. It hit Duncan in the smoking, exposed meat on the side of his neck and bounced open again. Duncan howled into the tube in pain and rage. Jerry slammed the door again. Again. On the fourth try, with a loud crack of bone, the door slammed all the way shut. There was a thump as Duncan’s severed head fell into the tube.
Decapitation—another way to kill a vampire.
Lieutenant Duncan’s headless body dropped to the deck in front of the torpedo tubes, twitching and spurting blood from the ragged stump of his neck. After a moment, it stopped moving and went limp.
“It’s been a pleasure serving with you, asshole,” Jerry said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
When Tim and Oran returned to the main ladder, the last of the men escorting the captain were climbing up it. Tim let Oran climb ahead of him, then started up. It filled him with hope to see the men ahead of him step off the ladder safely. Maybe Jerry had completed his mission and the vampires were either dead or staying clear. Hell, they would probably find him sitting at his planesman station, wondering what had taken the rest of them so long. Then things could finally get back to normal around here.
Normal. He wasn’t even sure what that word meant anymore. In a world where vampires were real, what else was “normal”? Werewolves? Dragons? Goddamn mermaids and unicorns?
He could feel his thoughts rambling and tried to refocus. He needed to keep his head in the game. Getting distracted by his own crazy thoughts was a good way to end up dead.
When he got to the top of the ladder, Oran said, “Spicer, look!”
There on the deck was the big plastic bucket, with only a small amount of irradiated seawater left inside. It was just sitting there beside the ladder. It didn’t look as though Jerry had dropped it. It hadn’t even spilled. It was as if he had simply left it there. But why? It couldn’t have been deliberate. Had a vampire sneaked up on him, grabbed him from behind? No, Jerry would have struggled. He would likely have dropped the bucket, spilling the coolant water everywhere. Hell, he would have splashed the vampires with it, and they would have burned just like Penwarden and Bodine. There was no blood, no body, no sign of a struggle.
The men pressed on into the control room. Tim handed his stake to Oran, who had left his in Bodine’s chest, and picked up the bucket. He took it with him into the control room, just in case.
The lights twinkling from the equipment were almost enough to illuminate the space, but the captain ordered the control room rigged for red so they could see better. The red lights in the ceiling of the control room, the only fixtures that hadn’t been destroyed, snapped on for the first time since the underway’s very first dive. The purpose of rigging the control room for red was that it helped the eyes adjust faster to the dark when surfacing or coming to periscope depth at night. So when the red lights came on in the control room, Tim’s eyes didn’t need time to adjust. He could see everything right away. The bodies of the dead were still exactly as he had found them before, though the thick stench of old spilled blood in the confined space was overpowering. Tim heard a man vomit, which only made the room smell worse. There was no sign of Jerry. Had he never made it this far?
“They didn’t move the bodies,” Tim said. “They didn’t put them in the torpedo tubes like the others. Why?”
“Maybe they were feedin’ on ’em all this time,” Oran said. “Maybe dead blood just as good to them as livin’ blood.”
“Then why don’t we just let ’em have the dead?” another enlisted man asked in a shaky voice. “Maybe we can make a deal. We give ’em the dead bodies, and they leave us alone.”
“Rougarou don’ make deals,” Oran said.
A dark shape raced out from the shadows of the captain’s egress and into the control room, moving faster than Tim had ever seen anyone move before. The blur of motion resolved itself into LeMon Guidry. The red light wasn’t bright enough to hurt his eyes, but one of his hands was burnt, blackened and withered as if it had come in contact with the irradiated water. Had Jerry made it up here after all? What happened to him? But there was little time to speculate before LeMon attacked.
The vampire swung his good arm, knocking two sailors back like rag dolls. Then he made a beeline for Oran. Oran saw him coming, but before he could get his stake up, LeMon grabbed him by the arm and threw him into the fire-control console that ran along one side of the control room. The wooden stake went clattering across the metal deck. Oran slid down, leaving a splotch of blood on the console.
Tim and the other sailors turned their lanterns on LeMon, shining them into his face. LeMon hissed and threw a protective arm over his eyes.
Forgetting himself, Captain Weber fired three rounds into LeMon’s chest. The vampire didn’t even seem to notice. The enlisted man that Tim had been talking to raced forward to stake LeMon. LeMon reached out with uncanny speed and grabbed him, tearing out his throat in one swift movement. He dropped the sailor, leaving him to bleed out where he fell on the deck. LeMon hissed, his chin glistening with blood in the red light, one arm shielding his eyes again. The other sailors fell back, keeping their lanterns trained on him but not willing to risk attacking him outright after seeing the fate that befell their crewmate. Tim grabbed for one of the bowls at the bottom of the bucket, ready to splash LeMon with irradiated seawater, when another vampire came streaking out of the shadows.
Lieutenant Commander Jefferson tore through the group of sailors, knocking them aside as if he were back on the football field. The sailors panicked, taking their lanterns off LeMon to shine them on Jefferson. LeMon leaped into the crowd, but Jefferson didn’t even look their way. He ran straight for Captain Weber, grabbing him by the uniform and pinning him against the bulkhead.