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.
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.