MicroHorror

A small part of the Denali National Park in Alaska is home to a military cemetery. You can find it off a road permanently adorned with an UNDER CONSTRUCTION sign. Alaska officially has no military cemetery, which is just as well, because the bodies of all the soldiers in this cemetery were never announced as recovered. The soldiers’ families have buried empty coffins in other cemeteries. The real bodies are here, though, under ground that is frozen many months of the year. The cold keeps them sedate. The oldest date back to the Spanish-American War. The dates of the white marble tombstones swell during the years of World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam. The freshest graves are being dug every month, from Baghdad and Kabul. America’s soldiers have been hit by many unusual weapons, but the worst has been weaponized necromancy. Attempts to decapitate the soldiers’ bodies have become too risky too keep up: even undead, a soldier’s training is considerable. Shoving a corpse at its first stir into a concrete box and shipping it to Alaska is a much safer option. There’s perpetual talk of just cremating the dead soldiers where and when they are found. But there is patriotism to consider: these are American soldiers, and they deserve a military funeral.