Amateur Amalgam

April 2, 2025

I have returned from the grave!!!

Life has been mad hectic for a few months now, and not to mention the technical difficulties I’ve been having cause my computer is so old. But!! Now I am back to a kind of sort of routine and we can get this show back on the road.

This is a book that I read last year (as the next few will be too), and I wanted to get it out then, but that’s not how it worked out. So, without further ado, I present 100 Fathoms Below!

Plot:

100 Fathoms. The depth at which sunlight no longer penetrates the ocean. 1983. The US nuclear submarine USS Roanoke embarks on a classified spy mission into Soviet waters. Their goal: to find evidence of a new, faster, and deadlier Soviet submarine that could tip the balance of the Cold War. But the Roanoke crew isn’t alone. Something is on board with them. Something cunning and malevolent. Trapped in enemy territory and hunted by Soviet submarines, tensions escalate and crew members turn on each other. When the lights go out and horror fills the corridors, it will take everything the crew has to survive the menace coming from outside and inside the submarine. In the dark.

This was a really good read, and the writing style did actually keep me in suspense for what was gonna happen next, which is always a good thing. I think having us the audience know immediately what was going on (the Aswang mask, the book cover) and have the characters be in the dark and then have to rapidly adapt to the new genre they found themselves in was a good choice. It’s not the not knowing, it’s the knowing and not being able to do anything about it. It did get a little unbelievable near the end, but like – it’s a book about vampires, disbelief is very much suspended.

When I read I see what happens as a movie in my head, and this was a particularly entertaining thriller.

I like that we get to be in the heads of so many of the different characters so we can get a feel for the vibes on the sub. Normally, constant POV switches annoy me, but in this case (and being that it’s in third person) it definitely helps more than it hinders. As I am not a US Navy sailor, all the ceremony/ranks/jargon is definitely confusing, but the different perspectives help pull it together at least a little.

Spoilers Ahead!

Naval Station Pearl Harbour, Nov 16, 1983

We haven’t even started properly and already the first thing we learn about this man is he has an Asian girl fetish. As with all sailors about to be deployed, he’s out on his last night looking for fun before spending the next 3 months in a sub. As he has no interest in the tourist girls, he goes to a brothel – which is illegal btw (he even acknowledges it can get him dishonourably discharged) – and there he notices that he is curiously the only patron.

The front hall has an Aswang mask on display – big boy foreshadowing here – but he don’t know what it is and doesn’t get the chance to ask. Lo and behold, the girl who originally gave him the card for the place (and the one he’s been thinking about) is there. She leads him into the dark. There are many red flags about this whole encounter, but my guy clearly had blinders on.

The next day, we begin with the POV of another of the sailors on the sub (Tim) as he takes us through the startup and dive procedures on the ship, as well as introducing us to some of the crew. Everyone on the sub knows each other – or at least knows of each other – except for a new guy (Jerry) that transferred from another sub; this is important to note, cause at this point everyone thinks they’re in a regular drama, not a supernatural one.

The captain asks Tim to watch him cause on his last sub he lodged a complaint against the XO that cost him his career (unspoken rule that if you get passed over for promotion 3 times you’ll be stuck wherever you are till you leave or get fired). This causes problems cause one of the officers is a friend of that guy and he don’t like him, which means the whole sub don’t wanna deal with that either. We also bounce back to our original guy, Warren, who was very clearly bitten by a vampire cause he don’t remember anything that happened and also he’s got like a fever and the bite marks, etc.

He’s trying to hide this from the rest of the crew cause if they found out he was at a brothel he’d be locked up at best. At first he can pass it off as a hangover, but it gets worse and he hides in the bathroom. Unfortunately one of the other guys comes in and our boy attacks (the screen fades to black so we don’t know what he did yet – but like, we know). As this is the 80’s, there are only 2 black people on the sub and one of them is the second in command. A light fixture in the mess is broken and it’s his job to figure out who done it.

In the search for the culprit, we also find out that a sailor is missing – Warren. Unfortunately he is found frozen in the kitchen freezer. It is at this time that we notice the only other black guy on the ship acting funny. Once we establish that Warren was acting like he was delirious from fever, we quarantine the other guy – who’s last name is Bodine – with the body and the doctor in the torpedo room.

The second in command – Jefferson – tries to tell the captain that they need to head back, but the captain is like ‘we can’t do that cause we are on a top secret mission to enter Soviet waters and find out if they have a new secret submarine’. So they just go ahead with quarantine and hope no-one else is infected. Jerry hears a bang that wakes him and thinks he sees Bodine, then he goes to the bathroom to discover all the lights and mirrors are smashed.

He gets Jefferson who tells him Bodine is dead, and when they go down to check the doctor opens the door and the body is in a bag. One of the cooks is there too cause he heard someone talking to Bodine. Unfortunately, the guy who was talking is now missing too. Things are starting to get spooky. The lights keep getting smashed. Then the cook’s little brother gets sick and when he comes up from quarantine, he recognizes that this isn’t his brother anymore – its a Rougarou (they cajun – it means vampire).

Obviously, as the only person with sense, he stabs him and everyone else freaks out. Jefferson has gone missing too at this point so they lock him in Jeffersons room. His boss comes to talk to him and while they are in there the vampires attack openly now. This whole time the ship had been getting quieter and quieter – there are about 140 men on board – and the halls less and less full, but it was so gradual that no-one noticed with all the other excitement going on.

Now while those two are fighting in Jeffersons room, Jerry wakes Tim (subs work on 18 hour days of 6 hour shifts) and says ‘I seen a dead guy’ so obviously they go to check it out. They notice more lights are out. Trying to come to terms with the whole ‘dead man walking’ thing, they go to the torpedo room to see whats up and find some body bags empty and some with people who should definitely not be in them. They hide as the doctor comes back with their boss (I forget his official title) and watch as he gets murdered.

Matson (the doc) then stuffs his body in a torpedo tube, which they can hear when the hatch opens has other people in it. He floods the tubes to drown them and then leaves. Tim and Jerry try to find the captain to tell him whats what, but get cornered by the vampires. Eventually they get chased to the reactor room, where the vampires will not go and find a group of survivors.

The captain is with them and they tell him what they saw. The captain is under the impression that this is a mutiny. Jerry (who took the weapons locker key from one of the bodies in the torpedo room) gives it to the captain and volunteers to go check things out outside. He intends to bring back evidence that it’s not a mutiny, but vampires.

He goes back to the torpedo room and gets attacked by Matson. Just as he’s about to be bit, our cajun big bro Oran stabs him with a mop handle. Steak to the heart, and sunlight baby! He and the two cooks (one of whom was bit and is showing symptoms of the fever) go back to the reactor room with the body and now everyone knows. Matson gets fried by something in the room, and one of the engineers figures it’s the radiation. It’s safe levels for people, but clearly not them. This is proven when the cook who was bit – not Oran – decides to sacrifice himself so he don’t become a vampire and goes right up to the reactor bursting into flame.

They come up with a plan – they cant take the reactor with them, but they can take the irradiated water from the cooling tanks – liquid sunlight. Jerry once again volunteers to clear a path for the others to the control room and unfortunately, while the water works, he gets attacked a few times and drops the bucket. He also drops himself and ends up shattering a knee. One of the vampires is the officer who’s friend he lodged a complaint against. Naturally he gets dragged into the torpedo room where the vamp intends to torture him before turning him and torturing him again. Luckily our boy Jerry manages to decapitate him first. A slightly unbelievable feat, but adrenaline is a hell of a drug.

Anyway, the rest of the guys make their way to the control room, only to find 2 vampires there too. Its a fight where a couple die, but once again our boy Jerry comes in clutch and kills Jefferson (Oran had to kill his little brother and it was very sad, but we weren’t in his POV so we didn’t get to see).

With all the active vamps dead, we now clear the bodies away (of the dead crew as well – there are only 23 left) and start making our way out of Soviet waters. Coming in they ran into an old sub that they managed to outmanoeuvre by going deeper and then silencing the sub (sonar on subs picks up sound inside other subs too, that’s wild!). This time they run into 3 (!!!) enemies. Two ships, both old, and what they think is an old sub. Lucky for them they don’t get noticed. Then Tim (who is the sonar guy) notices that the sub don’t sound normal. That means it’s the new prototype the Soviets are working on.

Once they make it out (having miraculously completed their mission successfully), they surface near Alaska and decide to give the men burials at sea. 78 bodies in total (the rest ejected from the torpedoes by the vampires). Unfortunately, the bodies start to wake up. They loose another few guys in the scramble to get back in. Jerry is resting and gets attacked by Warren (who you will remember was frozen so not dead). Fortunately for Jerry, being frozen made him blind. Also the splints for his knee are wood so he used that to stake him. The sub dives and the vampires on the hull freeze and detach, floating into the depths.

Our remaining crew head home, keeping in mind what Warren said to Jerry ‘You think this is the only sub we’re on?’

Very ominous.

Epilogue – Waikiki, Jan 10, 1984

The same scenario that played out in our prologue, except this guy is a pedophile. The same girl (aka the green eyed queen – who all the vampires kept talking about as the one they serve) leads him down the same hallway and bites him too

This was definitely more of a suspenseful horror than a scary horror (which is what usually comes to mind when I think of this genre), but I liked it alot. It’s not like amazing or anything, cause you could tell what was up, but it was definitely still a worthwhile read.