He reached Crew’s Mess and saw more dead men than he could count. Chief Zimmerman was in the center of the space, sprawled in a chair, a coffee cup spilled in front him, a brown puddle at his feet. His eyes were wide open, and looking right at him, as if angry at him for missing his stint in the scullery.
He fought off a growing tide of panic. Was it a nightmare? He only wished he was still sleeping. He fought the urge to return to his rack, the last place he’d felt safe. Was it radiation? He remembered guys at bootcamp who had exchanged stories about the hazards of nuclear power, how it would make your testicles shriveled and their hair fall out. At sub school, these had been countered by bland praise by engineering officers on behalf of nuclear power, stories of its harmlessness that were only slightly more convincing. Had the ship run out of air? Had they been attacked by some exotic weapon? None of these made sense, none explained why he was still on his feet.
Staring at the dead bodies of his shipmates, he tried to figure out what to do. Like most of the new men, he was supposed to report to the Crew’s Mess for all manner of alarms and battle stations; the space was now filled with their bodies. Should he now go to control? If there were men alive anywhere, he thought, that’s where they might be. Could they radio for help? Is that something they can do underwater? It occurred to him that he didn’t even know for certain that the ship was underway.
That seemed like a vital piece of information. Maybe this disaster had befallen them pierside, and he could just climb out of the boat, into safety. He pictured a team of scientists topside, men in spacesuits with Geiger counters, trying to determine if anyone was alive on the
He ran forward to control, trying to avoid looking any more dead men in the eyes as he went. On the ladder to control the XO was blocking him, his gaping mouth showing missing teeth. Is that a symptom of something? Didn’t high radiation make your teeth fall out? Winn fought the urge to reach into his mouth and feel.
Up the ladder and into control.
Bodies were everywhere in the cramped space. Two dead men in their seats, the helm and lee helm. The Diving Officer was strapped into his chair with a large hole between his shoulder blades. On the floor near him was an enlisted man Winn knew: Diaz. In Diaz’s seat was someone Winn didn’t recognize. He must be a nuke, he thought, those guys kept to themselves in those rare times they weren’t in the engine room. But why would a nuke be on the helm? Control had the look of a fierce struggle that had been frozen in time. Winn smelled the tang of cordite in the air, a recent gunshot.
“Hello?” He shouted to no one.
He turned to see the Officer of the Deck, sprawled on the ground, masked in an EAB; Winn walked over to get a better look. The mask was half filled with thick, congealing blood. The OOD’s hand was extended and Winn followed it with his eyes; he saw the .45 lying on the deck.
He picked it up. It gave him an odd sense of comfort, even though he couldn’t imagine what good the weapon would do him now. But the pistol was, after all, one of the few pieces of equipment on the boat that he’d been trained to operate, in two sweaty days at the range at Great Lakes Naval Training Center. He stuck it in his belt.
When he stood, his eyes caught the red digital numbers of the bearing repeater. One hundred and fifty feet, five knots.
He sighed with despair at the confirmation. At some level he’d so vividly pictured himself along the pier, climbing to his salvation, that it took him a disorienting, crushing minute to comprehend again that they were in fact underwater. He pictured 150 feet of ocean above him, an infinity of water in every other direction.
He would have blown to the surface right then, on his own, had he known how. He’d heard of the “chicken switches” that would fill the main ballast tanks with air and bring them to the surface so fast that the ship would actually broach, and leap out of the ocean. He’d been promised that they would do it early in their patrol as a training evolution, and that it was one of the more thrilling things that could happen on a submarine.
But control was covered in valves, and switches, and buttons, and he had no idea which would bring them to the surface. He realized that he might just as easily, in his ignorance, throw open valves that would sink them to the bottom of the ocean.
