Steven Kent - 100 Fathoms Below

The bodies of the dead had been stored with as much care as possible in available rooms on the middle and bottom levels. There were a lot of bodies, more than Tim wanted to think about, and their numbers included the eight crewmen who had become vampires. As much as Tim hated it, there was just no room to store the vampire bodies separately.

When they had a moment to spare, crewmen gathered outside those makeshift morgues, ignoring the stench that emanated from them. Some bent their heads in prayer. Others yelled curses at the vampires and banged their fists angrily on the bulkheads. It was another of the strange ways the crew dealt with what happened. But it wasn’t enough. Everyone’s nerves were on edge. Arguments broke out over nothing, and Tim had personally broken up two spats in the mess that were about to turn physical. The men needed to get back on land. They needed this underway to be over. So did he.

Jerry was still confined to his rack in the berthing area. Whenever Tim could, he left Aukerman in charge of the sonar shack and went down to visit his friend. Jerry was in even worse shape than before. The fight with Stubic had aggravated his broken knee and briefly reopened the wounds in his arms. He slept a lot, which was helping him heal, but Tim figured he wouldn’t mind being woken up to hear the good news that they were back in US territory.

“Spicer,” the captain said, coming into the sonar shack after the submarine had breached, “join me on the bridge.”

“Aye, sir!” Tim said, springing out of his seat.

The two of them put on their parkas and climbed the ladder to the bridge. Tim could barely contain his excitement. His breath came quick and hard. His need to see the world outside the submarine was stronger than he had realized. Tim opened the hatch that led out to the sail, and the two of them stepped up. The freezing wind hit him like a cold slap in the face, but he didn’t care. It was fresh air, and he was outside. That was all that mattered.

The North Pacific was quiet, a blessing on a body of water known for its squalls. Tim looked around at the frigid stillness that surrounded them. In the distance, the dark snowcapped mountains of Attu Island rose against a sky clear and lit up with stars. The thin crescent moon hung so low it looked almost fake, like a stage prop in a high school play. Tim had hoped to see the sun, but when winter hit the Aleutians the sun didn’t cross the horizon for weeks at a time.

“I want to bury them here,” Captain Weber said, his breath steaming the air in front of him.

Tim nodded. “It’s a peaceful place for it, sir.”

The captain took a deep breath of cold air. “After what they’ve been through, these men deserve a peaceful place to rest. And a beautiful one. I can’t think of a more peaceful, more beautiful place than this.”

Tim looked out at the quiet, still waters and agreed.

There were 78 corpses aboard Roanoke. With 23 survivors, that meant the vampires had flushed 39 men out of the torpedo tubes. Many of them had been stuffed into those tubes alive, then drowned once Matson flooded them. Tim couldn’t imagine the extent of their terror at the end. Their deaths would have been mercifully quick, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t died in fear. None of them deserved that. If only there was a way to go back into Soviet waters, collect all those bodies, and give them a proper burial at sea like the others…

Captain Weber had a pained, mournful look on his face. “The men will be buried with full honors. All of them.”

For the second time that day, Tim fought back tears.

The captain set the entire crew to work loading the dead into body bags. When they ran out of bags, they wound the corpses in sheets from the racks. Tim couldn’t cover them fast enough. The expressions on the faces of the dead were not peaceful ones. These men had died in terror, confusion, and agony. He would never get their faces out of his head, he knew. He would see them every time he closed his eyes.

Their faces were one thing; their wounds were another. While some had only two small puncture marks on their necks where the vampires had fed, others had simply been murdered in the quickest manner possible, their throats torn out entirely. He could see into their necks, see the shape of their tongues and the muscles that connected them to their throats. Several times, he had to pause his work for fear of vomiting. He never actually threw up, but some of the others did.

Once they finished winding the victims into their shrouds, it was time to wrap the vampires’ bodies. The other crewmen didn’t want to touch them—not out of fear, but out of anger. The sailors called them monsters, bloodsuckers, and worse, saying they didn’t deserve a burial at sea with the others. Tim felt differently. They were as much victims as the people they had killed. Petty Officers Warren Stubic and Steve Bodine, Lieutenant Commander Lee Jefferson, Lieutenant Gordon Abrams, Seaman Apprentice LeMon Guidry, Senior Chief Sherman Matson, Lieutenant Junior Grade Charles Duncan, Ensign Mark Penwarden—these men hadn’t been monsters, not even Duncan. They had been good men, most of them, navy men, until they died at the hands of vampires and became vampires themselves. These men had been their crewmates once, turned into monsters against their will, and in death, the men they had once been still deserved respect.

Unfortunately, other than the captain, Tim and Oran were the only ones who felt that way. Oran, in particular, wanted to make sure his brother’s body was treated with respect. Together, the two of them wrapped the vampires’ bodies in sheets while the other crewmen turned their backs in silent protest, until finally the captain ordered them to help.

After the dead were prepared for burial, the crewmen returned to mop and scrub the wardroom, the garbage disposal room, the officers’ staterooms, the auxiliary engine room, and any other spaces where the bodies had been stored, until no sign of them remained. Not that it would matter. Tim knew that nothing short of an exorcism would get the crew to return to those rooms. Captain Weber had been avoiding his own stateroom since the pile of bodies there had been taken away—even after every surface was scrubbed with bleach. He didn’t even use the captain’s egress or the fore ladder anymore. No one did.

When the time came, the men carried the dead to two of the hatches that led to the top hull, one in “the box” behind the reactor room and the other behind the control room. A rope system was devised to haul the bodies up the ladders, one by one. It was a lot of heavy bodies, but the crew didn’t stop until all 78 corpses were accounted for, lying shoulder to shoulder along the top hull, aft of the sail.

When the time came for the ceremony, the surviving crew gathered on the top hull, standing at parade rest. It was bitterly cold, without a breath of wind. The sea remained calm as if it too was honoring the dead it was about to receive. Tim only wished Jerry could see it too. He knew how badly Jerry wanted to be there, but the captain had ordered him to stay in his rack and rest.

After the horror the men had faced, anything that smacked of tradition would help things feel normal once again. Flying flags above the dead was a long-standing tradition, so by the light of the Milky Way, they flew the navy banner, the US flag, the Hawaiian flag, and Roanoke ’s own banner. No one spoke. Roanoke sat on the northernmost edge of the North Pacific Ocean, covered with the bodies of the dead, as quiet and motionless as an ice floe.

Seven sailors, wearing full dress whites under their parkas, lined up with short-barreled Mossberg 500 pump-action shotguns taken from the second weapons locker. The only one who refused to wear a parka over his uniform was Captain Weber. He didn’t even allow himself to shiver. This was his boat, his crew, and he clearly blamed himself for the deaths. He refused to let himself be comfortable in the freezing Arctic air.