Steven Kent - 100 Fathoms Below

“If you find survivors, you bring them back here, to us,” Captain Weber told them. “If you find any of the mutineers, you put them down. Is that understood? They’re not playing around, and goddamn it, neither are we—not anymore. They didn’t show any mercy when they killed your fellow crewmen, and I don’t expect you to show them any in return. We’re going to take back this boat, gentlemen, and we’re going to do it with extreme fucking prejudice.”

Jerry loaded a full magazine into the pistol, put two extra magazines in his pockets, and followed Ortega and Keene to the hatch.

The rest of the sailors came to wish them good hunting. Tim was among them, desperate to meet Jerry’s eye, but Jerry ignored him. He listened halfheartedly to the others wishing them luck or telling them to be careful. A plan was already forming in his mind—a way to show everyone what was really happening aboard Roanoke.

A sailor cracked the hatch and peeked outside. Finding no one, he signaled the three scouts to go. They slipped out into the corridor, and the hatch slammed shut behind them.

In the moment before they switched on their battle lanterns, it was so dark that Jerry felt as if he were looking down into a bottomless well. He didn’t see any eyes glowing in the darkness. The vampires seemed to have fallen back, but to where was anyone’s guess. Lantern in one hand and gun in the other, they inched their way to the main ladder. Ortega and Keene started climbing up toward the control room, but Jerry didn’t follow them. Instead, he pocketed his gun and began descending the ladder to the bottom level.

“Hey,” Ortega hissed out of the darkness. “What are you doing?”

“You keep going,” Jerry whispered back. “Try to find survivors. There’s something I need to do.”

“We should stick together,” Keene said.

“Not this time. It’s better if I do this alone.”

“It’s your funeral,” Ortega said, annoyed. “Cap’s not gonna like it, though.”

At that moment, Jerry didn’t much care what Captain Weber thought about him—or, for that matter, what any of them thought about him. All he cared about was getting proof that the so-called mutineers weren’t who—or what—everyone thought they were.

Jerry listened to them climb the rest of the way up to the top level. Then he continued down the main ladder into utter darkness, jumping his left hand from rung to rung and holding the lantern in his right. It was slow going with only one free hand, and with each step downward he felt increasingly vulnerable. The vampires liked the dark. The lights had bothered them, but like many other predators, they were made for the dark. He had no doubt they could see him just fine even if his lantern weren’t giving away his position. Just because he couldn’t see their glowing eyes in the places where the lantern’s light couldn’t reach didn’t mean they weren’t there, watching him from just out of sight, waiting to grab him and sink their teeth into his neck. They had murdered those crewmen in the control room in a split second, before they could even get up from their stations. They could snatch him off this ladder just as quickly if they wanted to.

He listened for anything: footsteps, the creak of a hatch, breathing—if those creatures breathed. But the darkness remained silent around him. At the bottom of the ladder, he crouched, pulled out the pistol, and trained it on the open hatch of the torpedo room. Inside, the remains of Farrington’s smashed lantern littered the deck, but it appeared that nothing else had changed since he and Tim hid in there.

He spun around, in the direction of the Big Red Machine at the opposite end of the corridor, and pointed his lantern into the darkness. He couldn’t make his way toward the torpedo room without exposing his back to anyone hiding aft. Had they been there a moment ago, watching him, waiting to pounce, only to sink back into the shadows when he turned the lantern their way? What would happen if he took the light off the corridor? Would they come back? Would they get him?

He had to stop thinking that way or he could freeze up. He turned back to the torpedo room, determined to see his plan through. He took a step toward it, his finger on the trigger guard of the M1911.

A dark shape seemed to fold into the shadows of the torpedo room. Jerry saw it for only a fleeting moment. Someone was in there. Had Matson come back down? Or was it Bodine? Or LeMon Guidry? Or someone else who had been turned into a vampire?

As if in answer to his question, Matson’s voice floated out of the room.

“Did you really think you could hide from me in the dark, White? I can see you. I can smell you.”

Matson appeared in the doorway, right in front of Jerry, shielding his eyes from the lantern light with one hand. Gathering his courage, Jerry raised the M1911 and aimed at Matson’s center mass.

“Back away from the hatch,” Jerry said.

Matson didn’t move.

“I won’t ask again,” Jerry said.

Matson took three steps backward. Jerry followed him into the torpedo room. He thought again of the drowned men in the tubes and was tempted to shoot Matson here and now. A shot from this close would blow a nice hole his chest. Putting him down was the captain’s plan, and it sure as hell sounded satisfying, but he had another idea.

“You’re coming back with me,” Jerry told him. “I’m going to show you to the others so they can see exactly what you are.”

“And what, exactly, am I?” Matson asked.

“That’s easy,” Jerry said. “A bloodsucking, murdering pile of shit.”

He glanced over at the torpedo tubes. The LEDs on the control panel told him they were locked but no longer flooded.

“Do you have more men in there?” he said,

“There’s always room for one more,” Matson said.

The son of a bitch was smiling behind the hand that shielded his eyes, as if all this amused him somehow. Jerry skirted along the far bulkhead, working his way toward the torpedo tubes. Matson pivoted to face him as he moved. Jerry didn’t take his eyes off him. No more than ten feet separated them, but if Matson tried anything, Jerry would happily put a bullet through his forehead. He wouldn’t feel a second of regret.

“Open the breeches,” Jerry said.

“I can hear your heartbeat, White.”

“Open the goddamn tubes!” Jerry shouted.

“You must be terrified for your heart to beat so fast,” Matson said. “I can take that fear away for you.”

Jerry raised the M1911, aiming it at Matson’s face.

“I can take everything away,” Matson said.

He lunged, hissing and grabbing for Jerry. Jerry fired, hitting him full in the face. The blast knocked Matson’s head back in a spray of blood. Jerry had shot him at point-blank range with a .45-caliber round, but somehow he remained standing. Matson had a dark hole in the side of his face where his right eye had been, oozing blood. He casually reached into his eye socket and pulled out the bullet. It clattered onto the deck.

Jerry stared at Matson in bewildered horror. Not only had the shot not killed him, it hadn’t even inconvenienced him. The damage to his flesh seemed inconsequential to him.

Jerry only hesitated a moment as his mind tried to process what he was seeing, but that was all the time Matson needed. He grabbed the pistol by the barrel, wrenched it from Jerry’s grasp, and tossed it over his shoulder. It skidded across the floor to the far bulkhead. Jerry backed away. Matson swatted the lantern out of his hand, knocking it to the deck with a thud, its beam pointing uselessly up at the ceiling. Shit. Whatever Matson planned to do to him was going to be far worse than getting shot with a handgun.