Death Boat

"'Now ve [we] are through with your accursed evil! Now ve [we] haff [have] nothing more to fear!' - Nameless Survivor"“Death Boat” is a black-and-white horror comic that was first published in the first issue of the Warren Publishing comic series Vampirella. The paranormal horror story is written by Don Glut with art by Billy Graham. The story was released on September, 1969 along with other stories in the first issue of Vampirella.

Plot Summary
A disastrous fire aboard a luxury ship leads to a group of survivors fleeing from the sinking ship aboard a raft. However, they are not yet away from the danger. First, the waters are filled with sharks who slowly stalk the raft of six survivors.

Michael Rogers comforts the others, especially the sole woman aboard, Angella--whom he saved aboard the ship-- by telling them that the sharks cannot get them in the raft. But peace still does not reach the passengers especially when the next day they awaken to one of their own dead.

The dead man has a mysterious wound on his body leading to one passenger to speculate that it was a shark. The others rebuke this notion, arguing that sharks can't jump aboard the raft and one survivor shouts that it was a vampire who killed the man. Fear grips hold of him as he attacks one of the men whom he assumes to be the monstrous vampire.

Michael attempts to stop the man, but to no avail, the man kills the other survivor who he suspected of being a vampire and proudly declares them now safe from the evil. Michael becomes enraged by the senseless death fueled by paranoia and superstition and kills the murderer in turn.

The next morning Angela awakens to discover that another passenger aboard the raft has died from mysterious wounds. Only she and Michael are left and she believes that one of them must be the vampire, so she stabs him in the chest with an iron knife and pushes him off the raft.

As her consciousness churns with guilt, she comes to remember an old legend about vampire's shapeshifting abilities and comes to a startling realization just as the lifeboat under her twists itself into a monstrous new form.

Collections

 * Vampirella Archives Vol. 1