100 Fathoms Below

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Tim hurried down the ladder from the hatch, cold and out of breath. The dead had become vampires, every last one of them. If the captain had waited even one more day to bury them at sea…

Stubic had told Jerry something about him not being the only vampire still trying to take control of Roanoke. At the time, he had assumed that Stubic meant he was going to turn Jerry into a vampire. Now Tim understood what Stubic had really meant: 70 more vampires had been waiting in the wings.

He had to get to the control room. He threw off his parka and ran out of the maneuvering room, through the reactor room, and into the middle-level corridor outside. He climbed the main ladder to the top level.

The control room was in chaos as men scrambled to their stations. The captain had the conn and didn’t even seem to notice as Tim sprinted into the sonar shack.

“Rig for dive!” Captain Weber shouted. “Make our depth six-zero-zero feet. When we reach that depth, make our speed twenty knots.”

As the order was repeated and executed, the dive alarm sounded. Tim braced himself in his seat as the floor began to tilt.

“Gentlemen, we wanted to commit our dead to the sea,” Captain Weber said. “It’s time we did so.”

Roanoke dived into the subzero depths while the diving officer ticked off the feet.

“Spicer, switch to active sonar,” the captain ordered.

“Aye-aye, sir, switching to active sonar,” Tim replied, working the dials and knobs in front of him. The cascade on his sonar screen blazed into sharper focus.

“I want to know when every last one of those bastards is off my goddamn boat, Spicer.”

Tim concentrated on the sonar screen. As the active sonar pinged off them, it looked as though some of the vampires were falling away from the submarine and drifting off into the depths. When Roanoke finally reached 600 feet, they accelerated to 20 knots, and the rest of the vampires were peeled off the hull like leaves off the hood of a speeding car.

“The hull is clear, sir,” Tim reported. “They’re all gone.”

“Any chance vampires can swim?” Captain Weber asked. It sounded like the setup for a joke.

“At this depth, they’re frozen, sir, just like Stubic was,” Jerry said. “The cold won’t kill them, but it’s enough to keep them dormant.”

The captain nodded. “Then let’s hope some well-meaning idiot doesn’t find them and thaw them out.”

On Tim’s screen, the active sonar pinged off dozens of small shapes as they drifted away from the submarine. It was finally over.

Tim went down to the berthing area to visit Jerry a few hours later. Oran was there, leaning into Jerry’s rack and helping him tighten the gauze around his knee.

“Had to do this once for Monje’s knee after he got in a bad fight at school,” Oran said. He went quiet for a moment, then sighed. “Anyway, don’t you go fightin’ no more rougarou. That leg need to heal.”
Jerry winced at the pressure on his knee.

“That hurt?” Oran asked. “I can go get some aspirin from sick bay…”

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Jerry said. “It may hurt like a son of a bitch, but I earned this pain. I’m okay with feeling it for a while.”

“Crazy bastid,” Oran grumbled. “Maybe you can talk sense into him, Spicer.”

“I wouldn’t even try,” Tim said, laughing. “I just wanted to let you know the captain has set a course back to Pearl Harbor.”

“Finally,” Jerry said. “After this, I just want to sit on the beach and soak up the sun for a month!”

“You just make sure and heed what them medical officers tell you,” Oran said. “Don’t go running off to no beach like a couillon if they tell you to stay in bed.”

“Let them try to stop me,” Jerry said.

Oran shook his head. “Finding trouble—that’s your habit.”

“That’s an understatement,” Tim said. “There’s more news, by the way. Captain Weber has made me acting chief of the boat.”

“Congratulations, COB,” Jerry said. “I’m sure Farrington would be proud.”

“I hope so,” Tim said. “It’s the first time a petty officer first class has been made chief of a boat, I think. I’d better not screw it up.”

“You won’t,” Jerry said. He leaned back in his rack. “Look at us. The USS Roanoke, making history left and right.”

“Do you think they’ll believe us?” Oran asked. “About what happened, I mean.”

“They’ll have to,” Jerry said.

Tim wasn’t so sure, although he kept his mouth shut. The navy would need someone to blame, but there was no longer any evidence of the vampires on board. It was more likely they would come up with an official story themselves: mutiny, a Soviet attack, or just a deadly virus that had swept through most of the crew—which, come to think of it, wasn’t that far from the truth.

“I was thinking about all them rougarou we dumped in the ocean,” Oran said. “What if they wash up on shore somewhere before the sun comes out? What if that’s all it takes for them to thaw out?”

“I can’t even think about that right now,” Tim said. “Far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to hear the word vampire or rougarou ever again.”

“Nah,” Oran said. “I bet the sharks and crabs and killer whales got ’em anyway. Gobblin’ ’em right up in the water like little frozen snacks.”

He laughed, but it was a nervous, doubtful laugh, as though he weren’t entirely convinced.

Jerry smiled thinly but couldn’t bring himself to laugh with him. As he lay there in his rack, Stubic’s final words came back to him—words that still made him shiver.

“What makes you think this is the only submarine we’re on?”