Titanic 2012: Curse of RMS Titanic

THIRTY SEVEN

Titanic’s Grand Saloon and entryway were advanced design and magnificent construction—even by modern day Victorian standards found in the richest estates in England and America. Completely enclosing the winding marble staircase, gilded columns supported a vast framework of the most expensive and exquisite wood sculpture found anywhere. Carved walnut flowers adorned the stairwell from floor to ceiling. The luxuriousness of this place filled the senses: ankle-deep oriental carpeting, horse-hair sofas, and crystal chandeliers throughout—all now slowly drifting to hang at an unnatural angle.

Suddenly from outside and high above the ship came a strangely persistent roar like the sound of a passing train. “What is happening?” was on everyone’s lips.

“I suspect,” said Declan to his friends, “it’s caused by excess steam from the idling engines.”

“That’s it. Declan’s got it,” added Ransom.

Declan explained to Thomas, “Steam makes its way up a pipe to the top of the smokestack and is released there.”

“Makes conversation difficult, to say the least,” added Thomas. “Perhaps if we get drunk enough—” Thomas laughed more—“we won’t have any need of conversation.” Ransom laughed too, but young Declan could find no more laughter in himself; he’d gone suddenly silent. He watched passing ladies and gentlemen who had been abed now lumbering by the windows of the Grand Saloon, a parade seeking the boat deck on both port and starboard sides. The men and women wore grey and beige life jackets over their expensive suits and fur coats, some of the ladies even wearing huge feathered hats in peacock fashion.

Thomas and Ransom joined Declan at the window. “Looks like the souls on their way to the boat that’ll take them across the River Styx, don’t they?” asked Ransom. “Dante’s Inferno,” muttered Thomas.

“The parade’s begun… news is finally getting ’round the ship,” Declan told his friends.

“Lifeboats.” Ransom shuddered at the thought. “A mechanism of suicide to avoid death.”

They saw Thomas Andrews leaning against a mantel at the far end of the room, staring into a fireplace as if reading the flames. The man looked as lonely and dejected as a hopeless, jilted lover.

“He’s learned the worst of it, I suspect,” said Ransom.

“I imagine Smith’s finally told him the whole story,” added Declan.

“That’d explain the blank stare on his face.” Thomas lifted two bottles, one of ale, the other whiskey and poured Varmint a heftier drink, then poured for Alastair, while Declan poured another of wine for himself. When Andrews looked in their direction, Thomas hefted the whiskey bottle high as if to invite him to join them.

Instead of joining the ‘losers’ at the bar, Andrews stepped to the bandleader, whispering into Wallace Hartley’s ear, and Hartley then nodded repeatedly. Andrews next took the stand, and the bandleader shouted for everyone’s attention, gaining all but the card players’ notice. At their table, the card sharks were fixated on their poker game so their chatter continued.

Andrews, in a solemn tone, introduced himself and added, “I am speaking for your captain, Captain Smith who wishes for everyone to go to your staterooms, find the life jackets tucked below your beds, and make your way up to the boat deck.” He paused a moment, long enough to give Ransom and his party a nod as they toasted him. “We appear to have struck an iceberg, and it could get… well, dicey.”

No one moved.

No one wanted to leave the well lit, warm room for the chilled April 14^th night, and certainly, no one wanted to get on board a lifeboat. A lifeboat in the mind of most equated to being marooned, a lingering death at sea, or moreover suicide.

Behind them, however, the bartender fled for his berth and his life jacket and a possible seat on a lifeboat. Ransom sauntered around the bar, lifted four brandy bottles, and eased over to the card game and asked in.

The man who seemed in charge of the sharks looked him up and down.

A second asked, “What’ve you got there?” inquiring about the four bottles dangling from his fingers.

“Chips… chips, of course, and I should like to play for a pair of shiny, new shoes,” he replied.

Shoes?” asked their leader, the others laughing.

“I would like a size eight and a half. Anyone here an eight and a half?”

The card players broke into even more raucous laughter, but one whom the others called Konrath snatched off his shoes, slammed them onto the card table, and announced, “I’m a nine. Let’s play cards.”

The leader, a fellow the others called Walker, conferred with his cohorts primarily with eye and head movements, indicating he agreed with Konrath. He finally pointed to an empty seat for Ransom and said, “Join us, Constable.”

“You know who I am then?”

“It’s our business to know who’s who on board,” said Walker with a serpent’s grin, “and you have become something of a celebrity here, chasing a killer they say.”

“Then my reputation precedes me.” Ransom snatched out a cigar he’d saved from his time in Dr. O’Laughlin’s clinic, and on chewing off the end, another player lit it for him. He puffed and sucked in the smoke, whirling it about his palate before exhaling. It appeared these once likely raw riverboat gamblers had traded in their winnings for a chance at men like Astor and other wealthy marks here on the high seas.

“Gambling with the richest men on the planet aboard this floating palace ought to’ve netted you fellows tons of cash.”

“Are you here to jabber or play?” asked the one they called Savile.

Ransom puffed anew, smiled wide, and let out a long sigh. “Ahhh… what more could a man want on his way to Kingdom Come, gentlemen?”

“How much should we concern ourselves, Constable?” asked Konrath.

“Oh, I am just an amateur at the game, I assure you.”

They all laughed and the rough-looking Konrath replied, “I was referring to Mr. Andrews’ call for the life preservers and the boats!”

“Frankly, there’s no place on the ship you can go that will be any better than right here, gents. Unless you can walk on your knees, or fashion a dress and a bonnet.”

The group sent up more raucous laughter over this.

“Looks like it’s every man for himself at this point, Thomas,” said Declan. “I have something I must do before the game’s entirely over.”

“Is it something I can help you with?”

“I think not… at least not at the moment. Wait for me here.”

The two young interns shook hands then grasped one another in a quick, manly hug in the manner of team members at the final bell. Their quick embrace brought gasps from a few tables, and at one, a loud, raucous overly-dressed and feathered elderly lady in her mid-to-late fifties shouted at the ladies at her table for tittering. “I hate that in our gender! It does not serve the women’s movement well at all, ladies, and for God’s sake, they’re twenty years your junior, those boys!”

In their attempt to calm the woman, Declan heard someone call her Molly.

Declan rushed off on whatever chore or mission he had put himself to. Thomas felt the slight tilt of the floor beneath him. He noticed the tables too had seriously begun to tilt as the ship listed to one side; even the card players now sat in chairs tilted awkwardly to one side, nearly going over.

No one seemed at all concerned about the dog, but then Varmint had curled into a ball at Thomas’ feet and remained asleep.

Within his mind, Thomas had hardly resolved to die on board this ship or in the freezing depths below.

His resolve flip-flopping, broken one moment, then set in stone the next, Thomas hadn’t the heart to speak of it aloud, not to Ransom, and certainly not to Declan, as both of them seemed so stoic and manly in the face of death.

He watched Ransom laughing, smoking and playing cards with the other men who had disregarded every word Mr. Andrews had uttered from the stage. The band continued playing, all of them just sitting with their various instruments, playing on as if it were any other night.

“I want off this damned ship,” he whispered to the dog at his feet. “How about you, Varmint?”

The dog lifted its head and nodded successively as if he might actually understand Thomas Coogan.

“We’ll get to Murdoch; he may be having second thoughts as well. Lightoller’s a lost cause—a choir boy, but Murdoch’s the soft one. He talks a big game but in the end… .”

Just then Declan came back down the flowing staircase, his journal in hand. He came directly to Thomas and said, “I recovered it from Lightoller. He’s assured me it will survive the sinking if he has to take charge of it himself.”

“Good… good idea. Give it to Lightoller.”

“No, no. I’ve been working him for some time, and I convinced him that you’re the man for the job, Thomas.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Declan placed both the book and the sabre tooth into Thomas’ hands.

“What? What’re you saying?”

Declan whispered while grimacing as if in pain, “Go to Officer Lightoller, port side boat deck. He’s already filling lifeboats with women and children. He’s expecting you.”

“I’m hardly a woman or a child, Declan!”

“No, you misunderstand. He’s had a horrible time of it, getting the crew to go along with things, despite captain’s orders. He believes himself clean of the creatures and plans to get on the last boat under his command himself, and he’s promised that he’ll take you along too.”

“But I thought Lightoller resolved?”

“Resolve falters for some.”

Thomas nodded. “We can’t all be heroes, can we now, Declan? So what about you?”

“Me? I’m going back to the freezer compartment where they’ve stacked every bloody diseased body found on board.”

“But why? The war’s over, Declan.”

“I mean to make certain nothing gets out of that freezer, not by anyone’s hand.”

“Don’t be crazy; come away with me.”

“No, I have to do this.”

“But why?”

“Its… the only sure way.”

“How do we know that the women and children on that final boat aren’t diseased? It would only take one to be contagious, and it starts all over again! On land somewhere.”

“We have to believe that at some point the carrier can reproduce no more, and in fact, that last fellow we found, when I cut him open, there was a poor showing indeed… looking like the early efforts we first saw back in Belfast.”

“You think the monster’s played out then?”

“I believe so, yes, weakened at least in terms of reproducing.”

“Come with me, Declan! No need to play the bloody hero. This is no time for dramatics and posturing. You’re a damn fine surgeon, a man the world needs.”

“The world needs a gatekeeper more this time ‘round. Suppose the carrier returns for even a handful of those eggs and makes it onto a lifeboat, and from there to New York? It will’ve all been for naught. Every bit of it!”

“There’s a guard on the damned freezer, remember?”

“Gone already—frightened as we all are.” He shrugged, “Poor fellow looking to save himself with the water rushing in.”

The two young surgeons looked long into one another’s eyes and embraced for the last time. In Thomas’ ear, Declan whispered, “Live on, Tommie—live well for me; live well and prosper! Ya bastard—become a fine old country doctor in the heartland of America, or back to Wales with ya.”

“Aye Wales and family, I suspect.”

“No New York or maybe even Ransom’s Chicago?”

“More likely home and family for me, after this.”

Varmint stood at Thomas’ leg now. Declan petted the dog again, saying, “Off with you both; Lightoller’s a softy. He’ll give the dog space too if he can.”

“I don’t feel right about this, Declan; I should stay with you. You and Alastair… see it through to the end.”

“No, old friend. One of us needs to live on and keep the record of what really happened this night aboard Titanic alive.”

“Then you do it; it’s your bloody journal, it’s always been your bloody fight!”

“No, we’ve been Dumas’ Three Musketeers, we have!”

“And you are Aramis, me Athos!” Thomas replied with a wane smile.

“And Ransom’s been Porthos—our raucous brag-a-bout, anxious for a smoke and a drink!” joked Declan, but it didn’t work.

“Declan, brother, you-you have Rachel to think of, man.”

“She’s my greatest regret of all, your sister, my secret bride.”

“Then come with me,” Thomas pleaded.

“No , Tommie. It’s for you to do. My destiny is here. Take courage in living on to a ripe old age, as I take courage in doing what I must do—kill this thing once and for all.”

“And that’s what I’m to tell Rachel and your child? That you sacrificed yourself on the altar of Titanic?”

“To kill this thing once and for all,” he repeated. “To slam it with the last blow. I-I wish you could understand. Sometimes one’s fate is written, and we’ve no way to change it.”

With Varmint at his heels, Thomas took the gilded staircase two and three steps at a time, angry, frustrated, rushing now for the boat deck and Lightoller, with Declan’s journal and the ancient tooth in his hands. Watching his best friend and secret brother-in-law disappear, Declan bit his lip, fought back a tear, and steadied himself. He glanced in Ransom’s direction and wondered if he ought to ask him to back his play, but the old copper looked so happy and in his element that Declan balked at the idea. Ransom had already won a wonderful, shiny pair of dress shoes, followed by successive hands at the poker game. He still maintained control of four bottles of whiskey as well. Let this good man, this Porthos character, die happy and successful, he thought.

Declan stepped around the bar and grabbed a bottle of 90 proof Vodka and started for the bowels of the ship, heading for the freezer compartment, armed with the gun that he had secretly managed to lift from Ransom shortly before. Using the liquor and the gun, he meant to burn the remains of the bodies in the freezer, igniting the egg-sacs unless his will and his resolve gave out. A powerful sense of urgency motivated him.

THIRTY EIGHT

Former Chicago Police Inspector Alastair Ransom glanced up to find Thomas going off with the dog and the journal; he watched next as Declan had stepped behind the unsupervised bar for a bottle, and he caught a glimpse of the shimmering clear liquid—Vodka—and when he suddenly stood from the table, knocking over a chair. He’d seen the dark, metal object in Declan’s hand—a gun.

Ransom, knowing it gone, felt for his weapon in the now empty holster he’d strapped on when Murdoch had offered him the firearm.

His sudden action had all the other card players on their feet, each man with a weapon trained on him.

“I am unarmed, gentlemen!” he shouted, a part of his brain chastising him for not following through and getting himself shot dead here and now, a quick escape from death’s plan for him. “Bleedin’ kid’s stole my gun, gentlemen. It’s a sad day when your own good friend pickpocket’s a man. You’ll have to forgive me now.” He made a move to pick up his winnings, a matter of habit, when all the guns trained on him cocked.

One going by the name Klondike Konrath pointed his gun at the shoes on Ransom’s feet. Walker used his gun to indicate the winnings and the whiskey. “You have to give us a chance to win back our lost merchandise.”

Ransom frowned, shook his head, lifted his cane, and said, “Gents, I agree; you should be given a chance to win back my earnings. I’ll just take the shoes and—”

The others protested his sudden departure. “We let you put up the liquor for shillings, and now you’re going to walk off with our cash?”

“And my shoes?” asked Konrath.

“Without giving us a chance to win it back!” asked another he’d come to know as John Fitch the Fifth.

“I see I am outnumbered, gents, but it has been forever ago since I’ve a good bar fight, so let’s have at it!” he sent out a nose-crushing right fist into the closest one, Walker, sending him hurtling to the floor. As they were all drunk and stunned, the others stood for a moment in surprised agitation. One threw up his hands and backed off, but two others came at Ransom, one on either side, as Walker shouted, “Hold him for me, boys!”

Ransom kicked out at a chair and caught it just right at the crook of his foot, sending this handy weapon flying into their leader’s forehead before he could fully recover from the first blow. The chair hit Walker hard enough to knock him back to the floor.

Watching it all transpire, Architect Andrews smiled at the brawl aboard his sinking ship. It made as much sense as the band slipping into a rousing fight song to accompany the brawl aboard at a time like this. It made perfect sense.

Ransom dispatched the other two men on either side of him by side-stepping one’s blow to bring home a whiskey bottle to the other one’s jaw, whiskey and glass flying. This left only one man left standing other than Ransom, Konrath, who went for a small, concealed derringer. Ransom brought his hand around to clutch the gun hand, squeezing it so tight as to make the firearm drop. Both men then noticed that the bone-handled derringer was swept away by the angle of the floor. From her listing to the port side bow, everyone who understood anything about sailing knew now that Titanic, while advertised as unsinkable was in fact at this moment sinking.

Ransom quickly dispatched the fourth and final drunk with a single blow to the cranium when he whipped up his wolf’s head cane and struck the man in the jaw with it, stunning him on the upswing, but then on the downswing, he caught him as he expected—square to the back of the skull. With this, the job was done.

Ransom then rapped the table so hard with his cane that it created the sound of a gunshot. Unlike Andrews before him, Alastair got their attention. “I was about to say, gentlemen, you can divvy up my winnings among you. Take it all to hell with you, but I keep the bloody shoes.”

“W-What about the Whiskey?” asked Savile.

“Are ya all deaf and dumb?” shouted old Mr. Farley who was at the bar now and drinking straight from a fat brandy bottle. “Damn fools, the ship’s going down. There’s all the most expensive champagne, brandy, and whiskey you can drink right here, if only you had the time! But they gotta win it in a poker game to make it worth their while.”

“Best get drinking, fellas,” added Ransom, grabbing one of the whiskey bottles on the table and leaving the other two tilted at a dangerous angle.

“Just wanted a chance to earn back what you won from us,” shouted Walker after struggling to his feet under the influence atop a slanted floor. But Ransom had exited the nearest side door for the promenade, looking in all directions for Declan.

He wondered what Declan was up to as the young man left carrying a bottle of Vodka of all things. The lad looked dejected enough to get besotted and use the gun on himself. Now Ransom raced to catch Declan, fearing it’d be too late if he did not intervene. Despite everything, his raucous lifestyle and all the railing he’d ever done at God, mankind, Mother Nature, and now this monster on Titanic, Alastair still felt that suicide, above all things, was the worst thing a man could do—on even footing with murder. He had himself killed other men both in the line of duty and off duty, but he felt he’d never killed a man who hadn’t had it coming—like that godless maniac Chicago reporters dubbed The Phantom of the World’s Fair.

He raced to the deck from which they’d come, thinking Declan on his way to the top where he would dramatically put a bullet through his head and keel over the side, plunging into the frigid ocean below, but he found no sign of young Declan, here topside where the panic was now palpable.

Try as he might amid the crowd, he could not find Declan. He did however, run into Lightoller who was arguing with the same woman who had been afraid to cross a gangplank at Cherbourg from the cargo steamer, the one that Ransom had helped along at the time.

On seeing Ransom, the lady shouted, “If I can take the arm of this gentleman, I will do my best to board, sir. Otherwise, I go back to my berth and wait there.”

Charles Lightoller turned to see who it might be and the two came face to face. “Ah, Constable, it’s you.”

“Yes… looking for Declan Irvin; have you seen him?”

“No… no! Rather busy, you see.”

“Please, sir?” came the lady, her arm extended to Alastair. He took it and guided her across the one and a half-foot gap between Titanic’s rail, over which they must step from a ladder, to the rocking lifeboat which was currently less than one-third full. In the boat, a crewman was trying desperately to balance out the weight of passengers, telling everyone where to sit.

“Keep her steady there, man! Keep the boat steady!” ordered Lightoller of his men on board. “And keep in tight around the ship. Don’t venture too far! Do you understand?”

Ransom peered down into the boat from where he stood helping the young lady; he could feel her terror racing through him; she was trembling so hard. Helping her aboard and getting those in the boat to take hold of her, Ransom caught sight of Varmint and beside him, at the tiller with his arm draped around the dog, sat a glum Thomas Coogan who pretended not to see Alastair, or was he trying not to be seen? Ransom frowned but made no remarks to Thomas, instead turning to make his way back onto the deck and away from here when he stopped, turned, and made for the life boat in a rush instead. Lightoller placed a gun to his head, cocked it; ready to fire, he shouted, “Sorry but women and children first, Mr. Ransom, sir.”

“I just want a word with your man at the tiller.”

“Is that it? I swear if you leap into that boat as several others have done, I will shoot you and they can put your carcass over the side when the boat is lowered. The last big man to make me angry broke a child’s ribs, he did, and there’s no getting him out of the boat short of shooting him.”

Ransom saw the man who looked to be a good two-seventy, perhaps even three-hundred pounds. He whispered to Lightoller, “If you go off with that tub of lard and the creature is residing inside him, it could hide forever in that elephant.”

“Your dog made no move toward the man. I think he’s clean of the parasite—just missing moral fiber.”

“And what of Thomas Coogan?”

“Placed in charge of more than the tiller—the record, Declan’s journal.”

“And why not Declan?”

Thomas shouted from the boat, “Declan’s gone to the freezers, damn him—and damn you! Damn you both!” Thomas could no longer hold back the tears.

“That’s all I need to know!” replied Ransom, rushing off to find Declan, and as he did so, he ciphered out why Declan, gun in hand, would be going back to the freezer compartment where the bodies lay. Did he mean to get specimens for future study off Titanic in hopes of learning more about the parasite in a contained, safe lab somewhere? Or did he mean to keep out anyone daring to attempt to take anything from the freezer compartments? Or was there another motive? An unspeakable one?

Perhaps suicide was not an option for Declan after all.

As he rode the elevator down, changing out his worn out shoes for those he’d won from Konrath, Ransom wondered at how the engineers aboard Titanic had kept the electrical lights and power going for so long. Soon water was lapping at his new shoes, drenching his toes, and so he hit the emergency stop, pulled back the filigree door and leapt out into a flooded corridor. The same one used by the chamber maids and crew to keep from sight as they did their work like so many invisible beings aboard, some 860 of them he recalled from reading Declan’s notes on Titanic.

Declan had so admired and loved this ship; recalled Ransom.

Now this ship would be his grave.

He worked his way to the stairwell and found it flooded too. There remained one area left that might be free of water, a tubular stairwell sealed off and used by repairmen in the event it was needed—one on either side of the ship.

When he arrived at the sign signaling the deck where the freezers stood waiting for him, Alastair opened the door and was hit by a wave of water that slammed him against the far wall of the tunnel, nearly knocking him unconscious. He found himself floating but fighting to stay above water. He somehow found the door handle in his hand, but his cane and bottle long gone. His watch, waterlogged, had stopped at 1:48am. He cursed this turn of events, while holding onto the hatchway, he saw the top of the freezer compartment wherein lay the bodies of the victims, and where Declan had headed. The power of the rushing water threatened to tear him from the hatchway, but Alastair held firm, withstanding the pressure until it lessened to the point of calm as the room filled with cold sea water that soaked and chilled him. He dropped his feet in an attempt to find footing, and as he did, he saw the whiskey bottle bobbing about near the freezer door, while his cane’s shiny silver head winked at him in the poor light as it swirled in a small vortex.

He half-walked, half-swam, his cane swept away with his watch as his fob and chain had been ripped from him. He was also missing his signature top hat and one well worn coat, but he had on a brand new pair of shoes, courtesy of Mr. Konrath. All the same, he feared for his life here and now amid the rushing water. “I’m going to drown before the damn ship sinks,” he shouted, his voice bouncing off the steel bulkheads.

He managed to get to the door where his cane awaited him. He snatched it up, and taking charge of his hard-won whiskey bottle as well, he used the sturdy base of his cane to bang at the door, the bottle tucked securely under his arm. He began to tug at the door, fighting the water pressure holding it closed. He managed to pry it open an inch, two, going for three when he realized the muzzle of his own gun was between his eyes.

“Ransom! Damn it, man! I might’ve killed you!” Declan pulled the gun away and helped force the door open, water spilling in, the first layers already beginning to crystallize from the cold within even here, the outer chamber to the deep freeze units where the dissected and stacked bodies of the victims lay in state.

“No man aboard a ship of thousands should die alone, Declan.” He held up the brown whiskey bottle.

Declan shook his head and pointed with the gun at his bottle of Vodka and a single glass he’d set up. The gun went off, shattering the glass, inches from the whiskey bottle. And the sound tore into Ransom’s ears and rattled his senses.

“What the hell?” Ransom grabbed the gun from Declan in one swift motion. “You are a dangerous man, Irvin. I’m taking charge of my bloody gun, and I don’t appreciate your stealing it, or making plans like this without my input!”

“You looked in your element at the card table.”

“I was and I just swam through another element, and I’m damned cold, damned cold.”

“Soaked, yes, you are.”

“Another reason to get plastered.” Ransom opened his whiskey and took a long pull on it.

“Now Declan, my boy, would you care to tell me the real reason you’ve come down here to babysit a stack of stiffs?”

“I-I told Thomas—didn’t he inform you? I thought for sure he would.”

“To guard against anyone’s trying to get at those babies inside there?” Ransom indicated the deep freeze, using the gun as pointer.

“That’s right; I figure we’ve come too damn far to let these things get out now.”

“Did ya now? Figure that, I mean?”

“I did.”

“Drink up, my friend.” Ransom swallowed more whiskey, but Declan shrugged to indicate he wasn’t interested in drinking.

“There’ll be time to drink.” Declan shivered and paced.

“You don’t even drink whiskey, Declan. You stick to wine, remember?”

“Situation like this can make a good man go bad,” he replied.

“So here you are with a bottle of Vodka? What’s really going on here? You gonna torch the place? Using the booze and the gun? What, you couldn’t find a match on board the Titanic that you had to steal my gun?”

“Did not… didn’t think you would… you’d need it where you are… you’re going… .Where we are… we’re all going.”

“And why, son, are ya deflecting all my questions? What has you feeling so paranoid and guilty-sounding, eh?”

“What’re you talking about?” Declan’s pacing had become agitated, frenetic.

“To build a fire, using the Vodka as an accelerant,” Ransom repeated, pressing the issue. “You don’t drink strong alcoholic beverages. So why’d you lift the Vodka instead of the Merlot? Is it that you mean to ignite a fire or not?”

Declan stared at the gun now pointed at him. “What for… for what are you doing this? Why are you afraid of me, Alastair? Why’re you afraid of me?”

Alastair took note of the change in voice, the boy’s cadence as he paced, his speaking slowly, enunciating each word either out of care or because he was fighting the thing’s use of him. It both sounded and appeared that Declan was struggling to keep control of his mind and will.

“Well, son, you see, I believe that you came down here to torch the bodies and eggs with the best of intentions.”

“That is correct, Alastair.”

“But by the time you got here, you decided instead to build a controlled fire in the center of the room here.”

“A fire… a controlled fire?”

“I just saw it, Declan, flit across your eyes, your brow—both the truth and the black thing inside you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’re it.”

“No, that’s ridiculous. Don’t be a fool. I took the Vodka for courage. That is all.”

“To thaw them out—the strongest of the lot,” Ransom indicated the inner freezer. Get them above deck and onto a lifeboat—preferably one that Tommie’s not on. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You are… yes, you are wrong.”

“Then tell me I’m right!”

“Yes, you are right.”

Ransom felt a huge sadness welling up, threatening to overtake him and destroy his resolve. “You’re down here to thaw out your god damned babies! Then get the healthiest above decks, get ’em onto a lifeboat!”

“You are drunk, Alastair, and you sound insane.”

“I wish that was the only problem here, Declan.”

Declan laughed but it was not his laugh; it sounded like something like an animal in pain. Declan turned rather mechanically to show Ransom his back, as if to say he wouldn’t so much as honor Ransom’s foolishness. Then with arms wide, hands open, he turned back to face Ransom, stepped close and suddenly lurched at him with the speed of light, forcing Ransom to fire, putting a bullet between Declan’s eyes.

Declan fell at Ransom’s feet, dead.

Ransom turned his eyes away, groaning, praying a second bullet, this one to his own head, would end the horrible suffering he felt in his heart. Ransom knew that for a time Declan had known he was infected, and he courageously fought its will as it grew in power over him. Isolating himself with the eggs, Declan most certainly hoped the ship itself would end the very thing that had killed Titanic this night. All the while the thing within him was obliging as it wanted its young.

Alastair knew no other cure; there was no other recourse but to end Declan’s suffering as one soldier must do for another. The knowledge he was infected must have been crushing for Declan.

Ransom released a cry of profound sadness, realizing that now he alone was the gatekeeper to this particular corner of Hell. No one in or out, not ever… as Titanic began to tilt so strongly that Declan’s body began to incrementally slide across the room, and now both the Vodka and the whiskey bottle smashed to the floor to paint the metal with a brown, heart-shaped stain.

“Take all the rest of us to hell, God—but you take that boy into your heart.”

Ransom, his back to the wall, slid to the floor, wanting to cry; he had no recollection of the last time he had cried, not even as a child. Life had always been hard for him. Hell, he thought, life was hell and other people made it more hellish. Nature itself was filled with freakish monsters, some human, some animal, some parasitic—all of them feeding on one another like Darwin said, for survival of the fittest.

Death would bring peace. An end to a fevered mind, his pain, his suffering, all his losses. One partition in his mind thought of Hamlet, but this was overtaken by images of Jane and Gabby back in Chicago, his friends Philo Keane and Dr. Christian Fenger. Men who’d helped him escape a certain death by hanging, and then the evolving picture went on about how far he’d come since then while, ironically, how little he’d learned or changed since then. How in a sense he must have been spared so as to be here now aboard Titanic to do the work of… of God or whatever power had moved him to not flee Belfast when he’d had the chance to do so, long before he’d gotten involved with that young man lying dead across from him now.

It was a story never to be told. No one would ever know the lengths to which they’d gone, the three of them.

He ruminated over what precisely had brought Declan Irvin to cross his path and set them on this journey. It was a strange fate for such a trio to have become of one mind bent on destroying a common enemy.

No matter that Declan lay dead, Ransom could not be more proud of him. In fact, Ramsom felt a kinship with the boy—a true bond, and he would proudly have called this young man his son.

He simply could not have allowed that vile creature to use Declan as it had others.

Thomas would get free with the journal; perhaps one day the truth of Titanic’s ordeal this night of April 14, 1912 would come out. Some day, Declan would be heralded a hero—perhaps the only hero aboard Titanic. Some day.

The ship listed, lifted, then repeatedly groaned like a dying elephant.

He could only imagine the horror of those on the six or so decks still above water over his head. The door he had come through was surely under water by now. The freezer was completely sealed; air tight and water tight. He laughed at the sight of all the provisions around him, enough food and water to last a man years, and none of it useful now.

He hadn’t wanted Declan to die down here alone, but the entire way down, he kept feeling a nagging, clinging doubt about the boy surgeon. How many of those infected corpses had he opened up? He and Thomas. What were the odds Declan wouldn’t get some sort of parasite growing within him? Or perhaps not. Perhaps the carrier had discarded another body for Declan’s in the brief time that Ransom had let the young doctor out of his sight. Then he recalled the stranger at the bar, slipping and falling into Declan, spilling his drink on him. Could that have been the transfer moment?

Alastair felt an enormous grief intermingling with self-incriminations; could he have done anything at all differently?

No one in any way, shape, or form was now coming through that door, and nothing inside here remained alive save him. Suicide? Was it suicide to end it now before the ship took her plunge? Before he reached bottom where he might actually remain the sole survivor of the wreck for as long as he could stand this solitary confinement?

“Is it suicide under such circumstances if I end it before suffering until I run out of oxygen?”

He toyed with the gun about his ear and head, shaking from the cold, still wet from his swim, becoming more miserable by the moment. There came more tearing and rending of the ship, and the angle of the floor was now so sharp as to send him sliding toward Declan’s body. He pictured their eternal sleep together, father and son.

He was about to put a bullet through his mouth and brain as he slid toward Declan’s body when the creature that they had been chasing rose out of Declan’s lifeless mouth. It came out in a filmy, oily black shapeless mass.

Ransom rolled to one side, got to his knees, and watched it rise to the ceiling like a levitating shaman. He then saw a black single eye within the thing, which he imagined to be a later stage development as Declan had declared the damn things eyeless in their egg sacs.

The eye glared at him as if he were a next meal—and he was, should it get the upper hand.

Ransom took aim at the single eye, but the thing darted straight for his eyes. Ransom fired at it repeatedly, and at the last moment, Alastair hit the floor beneath the table, hearing the entity slam into the tabletop. He knew he must avoid its touch at all costs. That if it got close enough to touch him, it would slip into him like quicksilver.

He grabbed for his Woodbine match box, struck a match, and threw it into the pool of whiskey. This sent up an instant plume of fire that caught the creature aflame in mid-flight toward him.

The thing exploded in flame, screeching as it flew about the room in a mad effort to extinguish itself, sucking up all the oxygen with it only to cause the monster to burn faster and faster until it fell before Ransom’s feet as a black and withered ball of oily flesh.

“Finally dead, you life-sucking maggot!”

Ransom fought to stand up only to find his feet on the ceiling. A moment later, he was slammed hard to one wall, when he realized what was happening. “This is it, the finale!” he shouted just to hear himself. The entire ship was lurching, lumbering like some dinosaur in her death throes. Titanic was readying to dive.

Ransom found no way to brace for it. Then he heard a terrible rending and tearing of metal followed by the sensation that the ship was suddenly racing and spiraling downward like a runaway elevator car. He, Declan, and the remnants of the creature were all headed for the bottom. “With God knows how many others,” he said to himself.

At the same time, Ransom felt the enormous pressure against him, building, he feared exponentially, and he felt confidant he need not put the gun to his own head, that Titanic would save him the trouble and the messiness of suicide.

It was a long and heart-rending, freezing freefall of a ride. It had Ransom pinned to the floor like one of those butterflies stuck through with a needle and mounted on a wall.

He tried to raise his gun to finish himself off, to do the deed, but it was impossible to move his limbs; he was plastered to the wall or was it the floor. No telling anymore. Likely not till he hit bottom.

These thoughts filled his mind when suddenly the seal all around the closed, locked door burst due to the incredible pressures as the ship sank deeper and deeper toward the bottom. The explosion of water into the freezer quickly began to fill the room, lifting Ransom’s body and sending him floating for the wall that had become the ceiling here. He held tight to the gun, assuring himself it was the best way to go even as the freezing water was claiming him, hypothermia setting in. Suddenly, his hand was shivering to badly to align the muzzle with his temple, and he was going in and out of consciousness with the freezing cold while thinking this is how I’ll go… frozen like a damned block of ice.

The descent was like riding a giant bullet to the bottom, and the bottom came faster than expected, the powerful jolt of the ship’s nose digging deep and sending a jarring, powerful reverberation through the body of Titanic’s remains, the jolt also sending Declan’s body smashing against the opposite wall along with Alastair, like a ragdoll, hitting the same wall, pounding his head so hard against it as to mercifully kill him.

Ransom’s final thoughts as the ship had plunged and just before its violent stop were of Jane Tewes’ face, her smile, her open arms that very last night she’d held him to her breasts.