“If I wanted to hear what a vampire was thinking,” Jerry said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here praying for you to shut the fuck up already.”
He threw himself on top of Stubic, taking him down to the deck, the weight of his body pushing the stake deeper into the vampire’s chest. Stubic screamed as it pierced his heart. Blood sluiced from his mouth. He convulsed, his limbs smacking against the deck, but this time there was no escape from the stake. Jerry leaned on it with all his strength until Stubic quit thrashing.
He looked down at the dying vampire. “If you really do share your thoughts with each other, tell your green-eyed queen you failed, and that she can kiss my still-living human ass.”
Stubic’s blood-slick lips stretched into a smile. He spoke his last words then—words that chilled Jerry to the core. And with a last wheezing, triumphant laugh, the vampire died.
“Captain, she’s slowing and turning around!” Tim shouted.
Captain Weber came into the sonar shack and looked past Tim to the screen. “We’re not out of the woods yet, Spicer. Let’s make sure she keeps going.”
They kept watching the screen for another fifteen minutes. Tim heard the torpedo doors close again, after which the bear continued sailing away and didn’t turn back. He couldn’t believe it. It was as though his prayers had been answered. The Soviet sub hadn’t detected them, and neither had the surface ships. No torpedo had been fired. No one had been captured and interrogated. Roanoke had the proof it had been sent to find: that the prototype submarine existed. And the Soviets were none the wiser that a US nuclear sub had violated their sovereign territory.
The captain clapped Tim on the shoulder and announced, “We’re clear.”
Tim let himself breathe again. Seated at the next console, Aukerman let out a spontaneous cheer and high-fived him.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
They had to keep sailing slow and low, even through international waters, to avoid detection by the Soviet boats that patrolled nearby. It took 26 hours for Roanoke to reach a suitable place to surface in US waters—a spot 30 miles off Attu, the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands, and the westernmost point of land in the United States. By then, the battle lanterns mounted on the bulkheads had started to lose power. They were never intended to be the boat’s sole source of light for days on end. The crew used some of the Supply Department’s extra six-volt batteries to bring light back to the essential parts of the submarine—the control room on the top level; the galley, mess, and head on the middle level; and the torpedo room on the bottom level—and stockpiled all the remaining batteries they would need to keep the lights burning on the long trip home.
Before they surfaced, Captain Weber ordered Roanoke up to periscope depth. The instrument rose out of the floor, and he peered through the eyepiece, searching the surrounding waters. When he determined it was safe, he gave the order.
“Rig for surface.”
When Tim heard those three beautiful words from where he sat in the sonar shack, he had to fight back the tears. After being trapped in the dark, confined space of the sub with those creatures, the idea of breathing fresh air again, of seeing the sky again, was overwhelming. For a moment, he feared he might lose the fight and start weeping right there in front of his sonar screen. He supposed no one would fault him if he did.
The surviving crew had been dealing with their stress as best they could. Some spent what little rack time they had curled in a fetal ball behind the privacy curtain and crying softly to themselves. Others channeled their emotions into food, eating second and third helpings of the cold sandwiches, canned goods, and cereal Oran Guidry prepared for them.
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.