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She walked into the darkness of the crew’s mess. An aisle ran down the center. Small, four-person booths lined either side. In those booths, she could make out lumpy shadows, the still forms of corpses, the crimson shade of dried blood.

This was where they had tried to bring her.

A dim light filtered in from up ahead, shone down from the open, overhead escape trunk hatch.

Her eyes adjusted enough to make out something on the ground just in front of her.

A severed head.

And she recognized it: Bobby Biltmore, an ensign from Kansas.

Congrats, Bobby — at least you’re actually dead.

She stepped over the head and kept moving through the aisle, waiting for one of the corpses to rise up and grab her, pull her under a table, do to her what they’d done to the others.

The smell of rot, fighting for dominance against the scent of her own cooked flesh.

Only a few more feet to go. The shadows seemed to move, to take shape and reach out for her. Her hand tightened on the pistol’s grip, squeezed hard enough to somehow force back the scream building in her chest and throat.

Candice Walker felt another vibration.

Fish in the water … torpedo launch. The targets wouldn’t just sit there, they would fire back. That meant the Los Angeles only had minutes to live.

She focused on the light ahead. A ladder led up to the escape trunk hatch. The ladder usually hung from brackets on an adjacent bulkhead — someone had connected it.

Candice reached the ladder and started up, her only hand holding the gun, using her elbow and smoldering stump to keep her balance as exhausted legs pushed her higher.

She climbed up into the cylindrical escape trunk: empty, thank G.o.d. At five feet in diameter, there wasn’t much s.p.a.ce, but she didn’t care — salvation lay one more ladder up, one more hatch up into the dry deck shelter.

That hatch, too, was already open.

She stayed very still. She saw someone walk by the hatch. She saw a face, a flash of color. Wicked Charlie Petrovsky. He was wearing a bright-red SEIE suit: submarine escape immersion equipment.

Candice Walker’s pain didn’t vanish, but it took a backseat to the rage that engulfed her. Was Charlie like her? Or was he like them? Either way, it didn’t matter — she needed that suit.

The sub vibrated again. Another torpedo had just launched.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair! She’d done more than anyone could ask. She wanted to live.

Candice sniffed once, tightened her grip on the pistol, then quietly started up the ladder.

WICKED CHARLIE PETROVSKY