Steven Kent - 100 Fathoms Below

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.

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.

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.

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?