100 Fathoms Below

by Steven L. Kent

  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.

  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.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  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.”

  The captain nodded. “Then let’s hope some well-meaning idiot doesn’t find them and thaw them out.”

  On Tim’s screen, the active sonar pinged off dozens of small shapes as they drifted away from the submarine. It was finally over.

  ***

  Tim went down to the berthing area to visit Jerry a few hours later. Oran was there, leaning into Jerry’s rack and helping him tighten the gauze around his knee.

  “Had to do this once for Monje’s knee after he got in a bad fight at school,” Oran said. He went quiet for a moment, then sighed. “Anyway, don’t you go fightin’ no more rougarou. That leg need to heal.” Jerry winced at the pressure on his knee.

  “That hurt?” Oran asked. “I can go get some aspirin from sick bay …”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it,” Jerry said. “It may hurt like a son of a bitch, but I earned this pain. I’m okay with feeling it for a while.”

  “Crazy bastid,” Oran grumbled. “Maybe you can talk sense into him, Spicer.”

  “I wouldn’t even try,” Tim said, laughing. “I just wanted to let you know the captain has set a course back to Pearl Harbor.”

  “Finally,” Jerry said. “After this, I just want to sit on the beach and soak up the sun for a month!”

  “You just make sure and heed what them medical officers tell you,” Oran said. “Don’t go running off to no beach like a couillon if they tell you to stay in bed.”

  “Let them try to stop me,” Jerry said.

  Oran shook his head. “Finding trouble—that’s your habit.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Tim said. “There’s more news, by the way. Captain Weber has made me acting chief of the boat.”

  “Congratulations, COB,” Jerry said. “I’m sure Farrington would be proud.”

  “I hope so,” Tim said. “It’s the first time a petty officer first class has been made chief of a boat, I think. I’d better not screw it up.”

  “You won’t,” Jerry said. He leaned back in his rack. “Look at us. The USS Roanoke, making history left and right.”

  “Do you think they’ll believe us?” Oran asked. “About what happened, I mean.”

  “They’ll have to,” Jerry said.

  Tim wasn’t so sure, although he kept his mouth shut. The navy would need someone to blame, but there was no longer any evidence of the vampires on board. It was more likely they would come up with an official story themselves: mutiny, a Soviet attack, or just a deadly virus that had swept through most of the crew—which, come to think of it, wasn’t that far from the truth.

  “I was thinking about all them rougarou we dumped in the ocean,” Oran said. “What if they wash up on shore somewhere before the sun comes out? What if that’s all it takes for them to thaw out?”

  “I can’t even think about that right now,” Tim said. “Far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to hear the word vampire or rougarou ever again.”

  “Nah,” Oran said. “I bet the sharks and crabs and killer whales got ’em anyway. Gobblin’ ’em right up in the water like little frozen snacks.”

  He laughed, but it was a nervous, doubtful laugh, as though he weren’t entirely convinced.

  Jerry smiled thinly but couldn’t bring himself to laugh with him. As he lay there in his rack, Stubic’s final words came back to him—words that still made him shiver.

  “What makes you think this is the only submarine we’re on?”

  EPILOGUE

  Waikiki, January 10, 1984

  Petty Officer Second Class Kenneth McNamee, helmsman of the submarine USS Swordfish, SSN-579, stood on a Waikiki side street and pulled a business card out of his pocket. He checked the address on the card twice, making sure he had the right place. It didn’t look like much—just a door at the far end of an empty alley. He would have thought it was a trick, but someone had made a welcoming aisle of lit candles up to the porch—just the kind of touch a Hawaiian brothel would add to class itself up. This had to be the right place.

  He approached the door cautiously after making sure no one saw him enter the alley from the street. He wasn’t worried just about the pickpockets and muggers who were sometimes in the employ of brothels. If the nav
y caught him here, he would be in some serious shit. And if they learned of McNamee’s particular proclivities, the shit would be deep enough to drown in.

  His unusual tastes had already gotten him in trouble once, back when he was a janitor at a public school in Paris, Illinois. He had lost that job, although it was no great loss. He couldn’t think of anything more soul-deadening than pushing a mop through school halls day after day. It was probably why he had gotten bored and allowed his mind to wander, pick out an object for his affections, think about her day after day until finally …

  The DA hadn’t prosecuted him right away. He was an old-fashioned guy, the DA, with that old “boys will be boys” attitude. He had given McNamee a choice: go to jail or leave town. He didn’t have to say it twice. Even if jail hadn’t been the other option, McNamee would have left. Paris, Illinois, may have been named after the City of Lights, but there the similarity ended. It was a two-street shit-burg in the middle of nowhere, and he was happy to leave it there. Joining the navy had been a no-brainer too. His own pop had been a navy man, so why not follow in the old man’s footsteps? As it turned out, those footsteps had led him to Hawaii and Naval Station Pearl Harbor.

  An old Filipina woman opened the brothel door, and McNamee found himself in a small waiting room. On the walls were pictures of naked women and embracing lovers. Sculpted figurines stood on shelves and in corners, all of them erotically themed except for one: a grimacing face that was depicted as being made of feathers, or maybe flames. The old woman walked over to an elegantly crafted wooden table and sat behind it.