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MOORE COULD FEEL the tension radiating froates&039; broken slats and drove across the yard Kip was chewing nervously on a match he&039;d taken from his breast pocket When they came around a lumber pile Moore saw the other man&039;s eyes narrow a fraction There was the shelter and the delapidated wharfs just ahead As Kip pulled the jeep to a halt alongside the shelter Moore hian to feel uneasy; he stared at the weathered wall, knowing that behind it was the thing that had lured him down to the depths It had broken free by his hand Violence had followed it,forever the naive, pure pattern of life on Coquina Moore thought that the thing&039;s purpose - giving death - had soht it here

Kip cli some distance away on a storm-beaten trawler at the wharf&039;s end

Turk&039;s frozen, horrified face burned at the back of his brain He could see every detail, and for the first tiue fear crawled inside hi to fear It&039;s irrational, stupid, childish But so he did not want to think about When he realized Moore was standing beside hiainst the door

It swung open hesitantly, on rusted, whining hinges A foul darkness lay beyond the doorway, as if they stood on the rim of day and were about to cast theht Boat, Boniface had called it, Kip thought suddenly A creature of the night, a thing that used the darkness as a defense They stepped through into the shelter, Moore following the constable, their lights leading the way A wall of overpowering stench hit the froht into the sheen of water beneath the gangplank "That&039;s where I found the man You&039;ll see the dried blood up around the hatch opening"

Moore scanned the length of the U-boat It lay entirely in the darkness except for the streaht that flowed down from the roof holes The water around the hull was oily and thick, a deep ereen in which a few bloated fish had ainst the iron, and each slowflesh A chill ran up Moore&039;s back; he could iine the terrible ruht, what a h the deep canyons like some kind of sea predator

"Just a ht past Moore He focused the beam on a pile of timbers that lay on the forward deck near the hatch A coil of cable sat against the conning tower, on the port-side deck He didn&039;t recall seeing either the cable or the ti, but then, he couldn&039;t re very clearly except the dead ht over the cable, then back to the wood The tih they&039;d been stacked there, haphazardly Kip probed with the light back in the far shadohere the carpentry section had been The timber had been over there the last time he&039;d seen it Or had it been? He couldn&039;t res red eyes glittered and they heard the sound of high, panicked squealing

"What&039;s wrong?" Moore asked hi" He stepped into the darkness, away froplank onto the U-boat&039;s deck Moore stepped into soht he saw a little heap under the loorisly whiskered heads, curled black tails A s that had been fat wharf rats Glassy gelatinous eyes caught the light and Moore quickly looked away, stepping over theotten in and out of the shelter

Clots of bloodcircular hole Kip played his light across the wildly fros creaked softly, and the rustling of the rats filled the shelter with echoes

And then the two hts down into the hole

A ladder descended into the boat, but there seemed no rooht in at varying angles Pipes, bare bulkheads, thick bundles of cables, all illuminated briefly and then reclai he could see rusted floor platings and a sheen of water perhaps three inches deep He saw his reflection there, a shadoithout form or face

Kip, his teeth clenched around the asps, lowered hi below for the rungs He stepped onto the floor plates, splashing water, and waited for Moore to join him

They stood in a narrow, cramped chamber filled with pipes, flywheels, and coht around and motioned There were four sealed torpedo tubes at the boith hatches the size of upended kettle drums Two torpedoes seemed to rise up from the floor plates on iron tracks; thick cluus, clotted the tracks, but the torpedoes the one of them

"Careful," Kip cautioned, the sound of his voice an eerie noise that rang froain, illuus-coatedon chains so they could be folded back when not in use A narrow path led between the bunks into the black guts of the U-boat Beneath the bottom bunks were more torpedoes, secured in place with ht on the bulkheads; there were photographs, badly faded and hardly recognizable, still in place a dark-haired wo; a ed round; there was a postcardlike photo of a huge house surrounded by woods; a pretty blond woainst a backdrop of snow-covered hts revealed crates stowed in every possible nook and cranny A bucket had overturned, spilling out so was covered with the sickly hues of decay; a shoe, caught in the ainst one of the stored torpedoes Moore lowered his flashlight and saas left of a shirt, coiled like an octopus in a shadowy corner Moore thought: And what happened to whoever wore that?

Kip sloshed through the water, bent down and picked at the shirt It fell into pieces in his hand, covering his fingers with a yellowish residue He held a scrap of it before the light as if mesmerized by it, and then abruptly let it drop back into the water The shirt fraght beneath a bunk Kip wiped his hand on a trouser leg

A passageway stretched ahead of them The air seemed putrid and thick here; Kip found it difficult to draw a full breath There had probably been no air at all in here until that hatch was torched through, and not enough had circulated yet Over the graveyard stench there was another odor: cloying, sickly sweet, harsh on the lungs So inside here for forty-odd years? Kip waited until Moore&039;s light caught up with his and then he crouched forward, ducking under pipes, and started into the corridor The darkness seehts, and up ahead small shadows scurried for safety The men couldn&039;t walk side-by-side because the corridor wasn&039;t wide enough It was like crawling down the throat of a huge beast into the sodden entangleans and bone "Jesus," Moore said softly, hearing his voice jump back at him, "it&039;s hard to breathe in here It&039;s a claustrophobic&039;s nighte central pipe above theh the boat like a rusted spine Kip shined his light through one of the openings off to the side, toward a crae space filled with crates, two more bare mattresses, and a table bolted to the floor plates A rohite shirts hung fro, andswirls of rust and filth froone about their duties here, all part of the efficient ed to keep their sanity in this place day after day, week after as beyond coarette sled with the stenches of diesel oil and fuelEven now Moore felt trapped, as if the bulkheads and ceiling were gradually closing in on hiht ahead What had started as an irritation had beco at the back of his throat, and when he drew in a guarded half-breath his lungs were seared He heard Kip cough violently once, then again

Moore leaned inside the next opening, probing with the flashlight as Kip moved on ahead On a metal table there was a radio console; a set of headphones dangled from wires, and a chair had been overturned The shadoere deep and thick, clinging to the corners like solid cobwebs; they resisted the thin spear of light Rising off the rotted debris in the water was that terrible crypt s sharply He was about to rejoin Kip when he thought he heard so

There was only the sound of Kip , doubling and tripling, vibrating full force off the bulkheads Moore flashed his light into that radio rooainst the back of the chair, and it took him another moment to realize it wasbehind Rats down here? What had they done, gotten down into the boat after the hatch had been opened, lured by the sled, ripped to pieces like the ones piled on the deck He shuddered How had that occurred? What in God&039;s na the ooze of the water at his feet; he shined the light back in the direction they&039;d co ined it He kept his light steady for a few an tothe filth that floated around hi - shirts, underwear, shoes - e a picture of a girl coyly hiking a skirt up over a thigh There was a date on it: Noveht He was about toof dizziness swept over hiainst iron to keep hi face-forward Black spots swirled before his eyes and his lungs seeht his shoulder "Are you all right?"

"Just ato catch his breath "There&039;s bad air in here, David" He shook his head, waiting for the spots to clear "Okay I&039; ahead Beyond the narrow bea and ous and rust had scrawled strange multicolored patterns The boat was a fester of decay Moore felt filthy and conta but he h Oddly, he feared en and the fu profusely, the droplets running down his ar up on his face He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, wondering what it was that frightened hi inside here It was only a machine a machine of war, yes but now only a dilapidated relic of days past It was not the closeness of the place, or the darkness, or the sense of being buried alive No It was so else, a sixth sense he had and had possessed all his life, that was now trying to whisper to hiht s on each side and came to rest on the outline of a sealed iron hatch farther down the passage

His legs began ishly, and carried him to that hatch as if he were drawn to it It was not closed after all, but cracked open an inch or so An empty crate lay in his path and he pushed it aside Before hie rat Flesh still clung to the head and front half of the thing, but its hind quarters and sto had been gnawing greedily at the carcass

Get out, he heard a whispering voice say; his skin crawled, writhing on his spine and arms Get out while you can

Moore stepped to one side of the passage and drew back the rereen curtain; it fell away, across his ar table with a mold-sht, amid a clutter of old books and papers on the table, and Moore held it up to the light