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carrying out a mutiny would be such a pain in the ass," I growled, grabbing it up. "Having fun, Clueless?" I asked. I didn't question who would be calling me. Who else would?
    "Loads," he gloated. "Like the fireworks? It's like the Fourth, huh? Well, except for the itty bitty mushroom cloud, that is."
    Fuck! It was a Nuke. "If you turn the Earth into molten slag, it's going to be a little difficult for you to get food, you know."
    "I won't turn it all to slag. I'll just take out the big players and then enjoy the rest."
    "What? You've never read On The Beach ?" I challenged.
    "What's that? Some beach bunny porn novel?"
    "I should have remembered my audience. You know... Only you could be stupid enough to pick up a vampire in a bar and become dinner, Greasy."
    "I don't recall movie monsters being on my qual card at S1C."
    "I don't recall much of anything being on that qual card that wasn't a mercy grade, and I scrubbed as many of those as I could."
    "I'm still here, aren't I?"
    "Yeah. And, I'm still here. One way or the other, we're getting off this tin can. Where you go after that is none of my concern. Go as far north as you can find settlements and keep your ass there for all I care. Feed on polar bears or something. The only thing I ask is for you to back off and let us go."
    "It's not that simple. We have to eat. We're going to eat, Len."
    "Eat each other. You're not getting one of us."
    His laughter echoed over the line, a truly mad sound, and then he was gone.
    I hung the phone back on the hook, my mind working fast. What could his plan be?
    His plan, it turned out, was using hoses and seawater to try and wash the garlic off of the men in the Mess Decks. 'Mess' was the right word for what happened. Not only had Clueless forgotten the crosses, but he'd forgotten some of his vampire lore. Shotgun blasts to the heart or neck did a pretty good job of killing them.
    I had a momentary rush of hope. If we could kill them all off... The reality of the situation crushed that in moments, the pure math our enemy. We didn't have all that many shotgun shells, and some would surely miss. It would take a lot more bullets from an M-16 or 9mm to accomplish the same level of damage. And, we were facing one-hundred and twenty-six undead. No fucking way could we kill them all! It was better to save the ammo for emergencies like the one we'd just faced.
    Worse, the vampires went on some sort of feeding frenzy, probably the smell of blood from their dead buddies. In short order, the bodies had been drained dry and carted off to the torpedo tubes for disposal. One rather overzealous undead tried to lick the cooling blood from the deck plates. That didn't last long. There was wet garlic mixed in with the blood, and he left in disgust.
    The next four days were pretty damned tense. I didn't sleep more than a few catnaps here and there, and I don't think anyone else fared better. We had one eye on the vampires roaming the boat and the other on the Russian subs we could hear trailing us.
    Of course, we were all worried that there might be another fast attack we couldn't hear trying to trail us as well. At least, the living crew members were worried about it. Not that there was a thing we could do about the situation. Since both boats were so quiet, it was likely we'd crash into each other before either one of us knew the other was there.
    Then what would we do? If we tried to run, they'd blast us out of the water. If we admitted what we were doing, they'd blast us out of the water, either because we were mutineers and somebody on board had fired a Nuke at a civilian target without orders...or because they believed nutcases had control of the ship and had fired... Ah, forget that discussion. You get the idea.
    Apparently, Clueless decided my idea for keeping themselves alive wasn't half bad. I almost regretted goading him about it three days into our flight from the Nuke incident. Almost... As long as they were living off of each other, they weren't