Then I made my decision. I’d set the explosives. I’d go tell Campbell what was going on. And we’d both go through the hatch. He was trained for underwater work. Maybe he could make it to the surface. I kept repeating that to myself, mentally. It was the only way I could keep moving.
If it looked like he was going to kill me and take the suit, I’d fight back. But he could either stay here and die, or take a chance at survival. It was all either of us could do.
My plan was driven by what I had seen so far, I think. I realize it sounds ruthless and chilling. And it was. But there was only one acceptable outcome now: destroy the Serpent and escape. I knew that I would do whatever was necessary to make that happen, including murder my last link to human kindness.
The timer was simple to operate, as Larsen had told me. Five pushes of one arrow set the red LED display to seven minutes. Four hundred and twenty seconds. An arbitrary number, but it seemed like enough.
My finger hovered over the red button. Then jabbed down.
I hurried up the ladder, the bobbing light in my hand creating wild patterns on the bulkheads around me. Then through the electrical control room, my breathing seeming to echo off the dead walls, water trickling down my face as I ran under the leaking pipe.
Into the control room, where I stopped. Campbell stood at the other end of the compartment, his light in my face. He lowered his rifle and, as the blobs of color faded from my vision, spoke.
“Christine… what happened? Where are they?”
“They’re all dead. I looked, but there’s no sign of the Serpent’s body. Nothing.”
I still couldn’t make out his features, but his voice told me what they must have looked like.
“We’re going to die.”
“We don’t have to,” I said, taking a step toward him but stopping short. I didn’t want to be too close to him if he decided I wasn’t going to be the one wearing the pressure suit. “There’s a way out.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “We need to do what Larsen ordered. We’ve-”
His words ceased as a hand emerged from the darkness behind him and fastened around his throat. He dropped his rifle, the weapon dangling from its strap, and reached up to the fingers crushing the life out of him.
I could see a pair of feet and legs behind him, but the assailant’s upper body was hidden by Campbell’s. Another hand pulled at the MP-5, though, and yanked it out of sight.
Campbell’s eyes screamed at me.
And then his face exploded as a burst of gunfire ripped through it, leaving behind a glistening pink crater. The hand around his neck pulled away, and Campbell collapsed in a pile of twitching limbs.
I’m not sure what I yelled. “No!” maybe. I just remember the anguish bursting out of me, raw in my throat, as I watched him die.
The Serpent stood behind him. It was naked; that much was apparent. Its skin was mottled gray and black, the camouflage turning its face into an indistinguishable surface with two eyes, a nose and a mouth. I could tell its mouth was there because it was smiling.
The pistol came up. I had begun squeezing the trigger before I even realized I was going to shoot. The Serpent was there in front of me when the first slug left the barrel, I swear.
Then it was moving, an impossible smear of darkness amid shadow. It ducked right, trying to put the periscopes between us, and I kept shooting. Sparks exploded from the walls and equipment. The steering control station vanished behind a puff of smoke, the diving switches shattered, spraying glass across the floor, and the sonar screens broke with the dull pop of a failed vacuum tube.
It kept moving aft, circling, its movements both fluid and jerky. The gun seemed to fire in silence, each flash capturing and preserving the action. I could hear only the beating of my heart. Slow, like the rest of the world.
My last shot ricocheted off the nav periscope, sending a billion tiny fragments of metal whirring back at me. I didn’t blink.
And it was there. In front of me again. One hand on the barrel of my gun. I knew what was coming and tried to let go, but one finger caught in the trigger guard as it wrenched the weapon out of my grasp. I felt nothing as the digit broke with a faraway snap.
The Serpent did nothing further to attack me. It just stood there, looking down into my face, still smiling. Its features swam in front of me as its coloration rearranged itself, then faded to a uniform, olive flesh tone.
As its face coalesced, so did recognition.
Vazquez.
“Just you and me now, Doctor. I have to tell you, it took a great deal of work to get us to this point, but it was worth the effort. And I can’t say it wasn’t fun, as well. I find blood invigorating.”
I couldn’t move. My body was unrestrained, but my mind had settled into a circular track of disbelief, denial and terror.
“Oh, come on,” he continued. “Not even a ‘hello’? No ‘Wow, Vazquez, you killed fifteen SEALs all by yourself, and that turns me on’?”
“Vazquez,” I whispered. I had meant to speak in a normal voice.
“Yes and no. I think I’m still me. But better. You have no idea what it feels like to see the whole world become so… obvious. So slow. So weak.”
The rifle in my left hand had begun to drift toward the floor, but Vazquez reached down and forced its light back up. His face was all I could comprehend. My environment was just a footnote to this moment, as were the past and future.
“You’re dead.” Again, a ragged whisper.
“Am I? I don’t feel dead,” he said, examining his body. “Although the boys did put a couple of holes in me back there. Maybe a weaker person would be dead now-look at this.”
He brought his right arm into the light. The bulging bicep was smeared with blood, but no wound was evident. Then he pointed at his stomach, which also was bloody but undamaged.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it? I headed aft for a few minutes, and that’s all it took to heal both of them.”
“The torpedo room. We all heard it.” But we hadn’t. We had heard what Vazquez wanted us to hear and drawn the conclusion he wanted us to draw.
“That was great. I killed a whole flock of birds with one stone there. Plus Matthews, who kind of looked like a bird.” He laughed, and I could taste the vomit in my mouth. “My skin had just started to change. There was no way I could hide that.
“Besides, my natural camouflage didn’t do me much good with clothes, so I had to get rid of them. Do I have to spell this out?” He didn’t allow me to answer. I don’t think I could have, anyway. “Clothes in the tube, then whoosh-out into the ocean. Plus you all think I’m dead. After that, it was just a matter of jamming myself into a dark corner and blending in with it. At the time, I was angry-furious, really-that I hadn’t been able to kill Campbell. But what he told you added a certain extra credence to my death.”
Vazquez was using words that I was sure hadn’t existed in his world when he woke up that morning. Obviously, his vocabulary was growing along with his intellect.
“And, of course, I got to kill Campbell in the end,” he added.
Yes, he had. He had killed everyone in the end. My brain paused in its pointless scurrying long enough to fix on an image of Campbell’s head disintegrating, the humanity and concern on his face erased in one bloody instant.
“But you’re still here. So am I. Which is exactly the way it should be. Can you see that? Didn’t you feel how much they wanted you? I did. But you’re mine.”
He had an erection. His member was just a dim shape, almost lost in the darkness between us, but it was there, aiming at my midsection like a gun barrel.
“You like that, bitch? I’m going to make sure you like it.” Now his hand was on my shoulder, squeezing hard, the bones beneath his fingers grinding against one another. He took a step back, yanking me toward him. “The nav table looks like a good spot. Bend you over or lay you down? Now that’s a tougher decision.”