Steven Kent - 100 Fathoms Below

At the captain’s command, Tim and the other men saluted the fallen. Captain Weber read the service out of the Navy Military Funerals handbook.

“O God, whose days are without end, and whose mercies can be numbered, make us, we beseech Thee, deeply sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of human life; and let Thy Holy Spirit lead us in holiness and righteousness all our days: that, when we have served Thee in our generation, we may be gathered unto our fathers, having the testimony of a good conscience; in the communion of the Christian Church; in the confidence of a certain faith; in the comfort of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope; in favor with Thee our God, and in perfect charity with the world; All which we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

“O God, we pray Thee that the memory of our comrades who have fallen in battle; may be ever sacred in our hearts; that the sacrifice which they have offered for our country’s cause may be acceptable in Thy sight; and that an entrance into Thine eternal peace may, by Thy pardoning grace, be open unto them through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

When he was finished, tradition dictated that it was time to commit the bodies to the deep, but first Captain Weber wanted to do one last thing. He put down the handbook and picked up a cigar box that had been sitting at his feet. He opened it, pulled out the fallen sailors’ dog tags one by one, and read each name aloud. He included the names of the sailors who had become vampires, drawing a stifled sob from Oran Guidry when he heard LeMon’s name. But no one made a peep in protest, not even the men who had turned their backs earlier. It took a long time to read out 78 names, but the captain didn’t pause, not even to blow warm breath into his freezing hands.

Finally, when he was finished, Captain Weber moved on to read the committal. “Unto Almighty God we commend the souls of our brothers departed, and we commit their bodies to the deep in sure and certain hope of the resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord, Jesus Christ, Amen.”

The seven sailors in dress whites lifted their shotguns to their shoulders, ready for the salute.

The captain put the handbook down again, laying it on top of the cigar box at his feet.

On the hull, one of the bodies sat up. The body bag convulsed as the corpse inside began to squirm, struggling to get out.

“What the fuck?” Tim said aloud.

And then all the bodies sat up, all except the eight who had been staked or burned. Seventy bodies in all, seventy vampires trying to tear their way out of their body bags and tightly wound sheets. The men bearing shotguns acted on instinct and fired at the nearest vampires, but all it did was blow holes in their wrappings, making it easier for them to tear their way out.

The body in the bag closest to Tim pushed, stretched, clawed at the plastic.

“Fall back!” Captain Weber shouted. “Everyone back in the boat! Now!”

The crewmen sprinted for the two open hatches. But in the freezing Arctic air the salt spray from the ocean had turned to frost on the submarine’s iron hull, and men slipped and fell, which only caused further panic. Tim lost sight of the captain. Nearby, a vampire tore free of its wrappings. It was a young redhead Tim recognized as Goodrich, the auxiliary tech. He hissed, baring his long fangs, and grabbed the leg of the shotgun-bearing sailor running by. The sailor turned his shotgun around and used it as a club, smashing Goodrich in the head with the buttstock.

Tim didn’t see what happened next, because suddenly the hulking engineer Ortega was rushing at him. Tim had rolled Ortega’s body in bedsheets only hours ago, and now here he was, on his feet. Tim could see Ortega’s tongue moving through the gaping hole in his throat. One of the men blasted Ortega in the face, the shotgun pellets tearing through his skin. Ortega lost his balance on the slippery hull, fell, and slid into the water.

Tim bolted for the nearest hatch, the one leading down to the maneuvering room. All around him, body bags ripped open, but he didn’t take his eyes off the hatch up ahead. By the time he reached it, the other hatch had already been closed and locked and the other sailors had already fled down into the submarine. He started down the ladder, then saw he wasn’t the last sailor into the boat after all—there was one more still on the hull, an enlisted man running for the hatch.

Tim held it open for him, but he didn’t know how much longer he could. One of the no-longer-dead bodies was tangled in its body bag and pulling itself toward him across the icy hull, hissing and grasping for him.

“Come on!” Tim shouted. “Move your ass!”

The sailor was almost there, four feet away at most, when a shape came rushing out of nowhere, fast as lightning, and tackled him so forcefully they both slid across the frosted hull and into the water below.

Damn. Tim had to act now. It was too late for the sailor. If the vampire didn’t kill him, the freezing water would. More shapes raced like a flash toward Tim and the hatch. One of them—Keene this time—reached through the opening and tried to grab him. Tim slammed the hatch on Keene’s wrist, crushing bone. The vampire yanked his hand back, and Tim pulled the hatch shut. He locked it, sealing the resurrected creatures outside.

Above him fists pounded on the hatch. So many of them.

Tim hurried down the ladder from the hatch, cold and out of breath. The dead had become vampires, every last one of them. If the captain had waited even one more day to bury them at sea…

Stubic had told Jerry something about him not being the only vampire still trying to take control of Roanoke. At the time, he had assumed that Stubic meant he was going to turn Jerry into a vampire. Now Tim understood what Stubic had really meant: 70 more vampires had been waiting in the wings.

He had to get to the control room. He threw off his parka and ran out of the maneuvering room, through the reactor room, and into the middle-level corridor outside. He climbed the main ladder to the top level.

The control room was in chaos as men scrambled to their stations. The captain had the conn and didn’t even seem to notice as Tim sprinted into the sonar shack.

“Rig for dive!” Captain Weber shouted. “Make our depth six-zero-zero feet. When we reach that depth, make our speed twenty knots.”

As the order was repeated and executed, the dive alarm sounded. Tim braced himself in his seat as the floor began to tilt.

“Gentlemen, we wanted to commit our dead to the sea,” Captain Weber said. “It’s time we did so.”

Roanoke dived into the subzero depths while the diving officer ticked off the feet.

“Spicer, switch to active sonar,” the captain ordered.

“Aye-aye, sir, switching to active sonar,” Tim replied, working the dials and knobs in front of him. The cascade on his sonar screen blazed into sharper focus.

“I want to know when every last one of those bastards is off my goddamn boat, Spicer.”

Tim concentrated on the sonar screen. As the active sonar pinged off them, it looked as though some of the vampires were falling away from the submarine and drifting off into the depths. When Roanoke finally reached 600 feet, they accelerated to 20 knots, and the rest of the vampires were peeled off the hull like leaves off the hood of a speeding car.

“The hull is clear, sir,” Tim reported. “They’re all gone.”

“Any chance vampires can swim?” Captain Weber asked. It sounded like the setup for a joke.

“At this depth, they’re frozen, sir, just like Stubic was,” Jerry said. “The cold won’t kill them, but it’s enough to keep them dormant.”