Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

them vampires. Then…

… One of the sleepers stirred, woke up. His mind was alert; it was more completely vampire than the others; before Zek could cover her telepathic spying, he had 'seen' her!

She stopped waving and told Darcy: 'Let's go. One of them read me. He didn't see anything much, only that I'm more than I appear to be. But if they run off now we'll lose them.'

'We'll see you later,' Ben Trask called out as Darcy turned the boat away and sped for the tip of the far promontory.

Passing from the view of the watchers on the Lazarus, he throttled right down and allowed the boat to cruise close up to a flat-topped, weed-grown rock barely sticking up out of the sea. Jazz and Manolis came out of the cabin, put on their masks and adjusted their demand valves, and as Darcy cut the engine they stepped from the boat to the rock and so into the sea.

'Jazz,' Zek called down, 'be careful!'

He might have heard her and he might not; his head went down and a stream of bubbles came up; the swimmers submerged to fifteen feet and headed back towards the Lazarus.

'More distraction,' said Darcy, grimly, as he throttled up and turned back out to sea.

'Darcy,' Zek called to him, 'keep just a little more distant this time. They'll be wary, I'm sure.'

As Darcy headed straight out to sea and the Lazarus came back into view, so Ben Trask got down on his knees and took a sterling sub-machine gun out of its bag under the seat. He extended the butt and slapped a curved magazine of 9 mm rounds into the housing, then lay the gun between his feet and covered it with the bag.

Half a mile out, Darcy turned to port and came speeding back towards the white ship. There was activity aboard now, where the three on the deck hurried round the rail, pausing every few paces to look over into the water. Jazz and Manolis would be there any time now. Darcy piled on the speed and Zek commenced waving as before. The men on the deck came together at one point at the rail and again Zek felt binoculars trained on her almost naked body. But this time the interest was other than sexual.

Then, as Darcy leaned the boat over on her side and recommenced his circling, they heard the rattle of the Lazarus's anchor-chain as it was drawn up, and the throbbing cough of her engines starting into life. And now a fourth man came ducking out of the lounge onto the deck… cradling a stubby, squat- bodied machine-gun in his arms!

'Jesus!' Ben Trask yelled. And it might have been that his shout of warning was a signal to let the battle commence.

The man with the machine-gun opened up, standing there on the deck of the Lazarus with his legs braced, hosing the smaller craft with lead. Zek had scrambled down off the cabin roof; as she ducked into the tiny cabin the windshield flew into shards and Darcy felt the whip of hot lead flying all around. Then Trask stood up and returned fire, and the gunner on the Lazarus was thrown back as if he'd been hit by a pile-driver. He bounced off a stanchion on the deck, came toppling over the rail and splashed down into the water. And another crewman ran to retrieve his gun.

Darcy was round the white ship now and putting distance between them as he forged for the open sea; but as Zek came back out of the cabin, she grabbed the wheel and yanked it hard over, shouting: 'Look! Oh, look!'

Darcy let her have the wheel and looked. The man with the gun on the deck of the Lazarus was firing down into the water, shooting at something which drew slowly away from the white ship's flank. It could only be Jazz or Manolis, or both of them.

'You handle her!' Darcy yelled, and he moved to where Trask was still firing and drew out a second bag from under the seating. But as he loaded up the second SMG there came more of the angry wasp-buzzing of sprayed bullets, and Trask cried out and staggered back, only just managing to prevent himself going over the side. The upper muscle of Trask's left arm had a neat hole punched clean through, which turned scarlet and spilled over with blood in the next moment. Then Darcy was up on his feet, returning fire.

But the Lazarus was moving; she reversed out of the bay and began to turn slowly on her own axis, and the water boiled furiously where her propellers churned. They couldn't stop her now and so let her go, and Zek went to Trask to see if there was anything she could do. He grimaced but told her: 'I'll be OK. Just wrap it up, that's all.'

Heads broke the surface of the water as Zek tore Trask's shirt from his back to make a bandage and sling. Darcy throttled right back and drew alongside Jazz where he slipped out of his lung's harness and trod water, then helped him clamber aboard, and Manolis came knifing in in an expert flurry of flippers. In another moment he, too, had been dragged up into the boat — at which point the motor gave a gurgling cough and stopped dead.

'Flooded!' Darcy cried.

But Ben Trask was pointing out to sea and yelling, 'Jesus, Je-sus!'

The Lazarus had turned round and was coming back. The throb of her engines was louder, faster as she bore down on the smaller vessel, and her intention was obvious. Manolis, working furiously to get the motor restarted, glanced at the waterproof watch on his wrist. 'She should have gone up by now!' he yelled. 'The limpets, they should have — '

And when the Lazarus was something less than fifty yards away, then the mines did go off. Not in one unified explosion, but in four.

The first two exploded near the stern of the white ship, with only a second or so between them, which had the effect of first throwing the stern one way and then the other, and also of lifting it up out of the water. Slewing and wallowing as the engines seized up, the Lazarus was still advancing under something of her former impetus; but then the third and fourth limpets went off where they'd been placed towards the stem, and that changed the whole picture. With the stern already low in the water from massive flooding, now the prow was pushed up on the crest of white-foaming waters, and as her nose slapped back to the tossing ocean so the engines exploded. The back of the boat was at once split open in gouting fire and ruin, and hot, buckled metal was hurled aloft in a fireball of igniting fuel.

As the glare of the fireball diminished and a huge smoke ring climbed skyward on the last hot gasp of the ship, so she gave up the ghost, settled down in the water and sank. Scraps of burning awning fluttered back to the tossing ocean and the drifting smoke cleared; the sea belched hugely and offered up clouds of steam; the gurgling and boiling of the waters continued for a few seconds longer, before falling silent…

'Gone!' said Darcy, when he could draw breath.

'Right,' Jazz Simmons nodded. 'But let's make sure she's all gone. And her crew with her.'

Manolis got the motor going and they chugged over to where the Lazarus had gone down. An oil slick lay on the water, where bubbles surfaced and made spreading rainbow colours. Then, even as they watched, a head and shoulders came bobbing up, lolled over backwards, and the lower part of the blackened body slowly rotated into view. He lay there in the water as if crucified, with his arms spreadeagled and great yellow blisters bursting on his neck, shoulders and thighs. But as they continued to stare aghast, so his eyes opened and glared at them, and he coughed up phlegm, blood and salt water.

Manolis didn't think twice but shut off the motor, picked up a speargun and put a harpoon straight into the gagging vampire's chest. The creature jerked once or twice, then lay still in the water. But still they couldn't be sure. Zek looked away as they reeled him in to the side of the boat, tied lead weights to his ankles and let him sink slowly out of sight.

'Deep water,' Manolis commented, without emotion.

'Even a vampire is only flesh and blood. If he can't breathe he can't live. Anyway, the floor of the sea is rocky here: there will be many big groupers down there. Even if life were possible, he can't heal himself faster than they can eat him!'

Ben Trask was white and shaky but well in control of himself. His shoulder was all strapped up now. 'What about the one I knocked overboard?' he said.

Manolis took the boat to the middle of the bay where the Lazarus had been moored, and Darcy gave a shout and pointed at something that splashed feebly in the water. Even shot, the vampire had made it half-way to land. They closed with him, speared him and dragged him back out to sea, where they dealt with him as with the first one.

'And that's the end of them,' Ben Trask grunted.