The old man named Farley, confused and exhausted from running about Titanic and hiding now for another day and night asked, “All right, Varmint and me, we’ve done everything you blokes’ve asked, and gone ’long with every ‘whattaya-think’s-best-notion’ you fellas’ve had,and it’s got us all nowhere except starvin’ it has. Now I got a right to know. Just who is it you’re chasin’ anyway?”
“A dead man.” Ransom replied it in deadpan.
“Oh… sure… I see… uh-huh…” Farley scratched at his beard and then released Varmint who took off like a shot. Back of them, they heard men stomping down the stairwell. They raced past huge cylinders and boilers the size of buildings.
“Looks like casks of beer for a giant,” observed Thomas. “And it’s making me thirsty.”
“Hotter’n hell down here,” commented Farley. “Varmint don’t like it.”
They rushed on past giant pistons and shafts that put them in awe given the sheer size of these machines, and next they passed one room where stokers and firemen struggled with flames within, heat and black smoke like a malevolent force trying to escape. They could feel the heat, and trying to keep up with Varmint, they were all sweating profusely when they came to a halt in back of the dog who’d begun barking and alerting on a huge door as it might in the field when hunting quail.
They all stared at a door marked FREEZER UNIT – Authorized Personnel Only.
Alastair snatched the door wide. The four men and the dog looked in on a large open area with freezer units along the walls; stacked to the ceiling were frozen perishables, breads, sausages, whole gutted frozen chickens, pheasants, ducks, rabbits, turkeys, geese, and inside a deep freeze compartment beef and swine carcasses dangling from meat hooks. “A man could live in here if it weren’t so damn cold,” muttered Farley, his teeth chattering. “Look at all this?”
“Supplies enough to feed the thousands on board for the trip to New York,” said Ransom, picking about the items, wondering what could the dog’s nose have possibly picked up here.
At the center of the room stood a fixed, huge chopping block the size of a grand piano. Along another wall was a metal table—or rather an elongated sink the size of a trough with a tabletop board for butchering as well.
Everything is big on the Titanic, Ransom thought as he looked about the room. “The dog can’t be right. Nothing here. Besides, no way he can sniff out anything that’s frozen.”
“Hold on,” said Declan, opening one of the freezer doors, finding nothing inside other than hanging beef, venison, and hogs on hooks.
Thomas pulled open a second freezer door. Still more frozen goods—geese, chickens, lamb shanks, pork, as well as huge cases of ice cream and frozen pies. “Nothing here,” he added.
Regardless of the cold, Varmint had gone about the large entry room sniffing and scratching, and Farley, disregarding the others and their pronouncements shadowed his dog, now scratching at some locker against one wall—locked with a padlock. Ransom banged at the lock with his cane, saying, “Need a damn gun.”
“I’ll have a go at it with my pig sticker,” said Farley, indicating the lock. “I’ve a knack for such things.”
“Here,” said Ransom. “You may need these.” He handed Farley his burglar’s tools wrapped in a leather wallet.
Farley stared at the tools laid out before him, his eyes dazzling. “They’re… lovely… just lovely,” he said.
“You get that lock open, and they’re yours,” promised Ransom.
“Oh… I’ll get ’er open, Constable.”
Again they heard the stamp of feet and shouting—their pursuers. The sounds reverberated out in the closed corridor. Ransom went to the door to slam it closed and lock it from the inside when Lightoller met him there, Declan’s journal in hand, shouting, “I believe you! I’m here to help!”
Ransom looked beyond Charles Lightoller to see Murdoch leading a group of strong-armed men of the black gang variety coming straight for them. “Get inside here!” He pulled Lightoller into the freezer entry room and slammed the door closed. Then he sent the wheel lock spiraling and when he heard the tumbler snap, he rammed his cane into the wheel to hold it locked against the outside.
Murdoch’s shouting and banging was muffled, but the rage and anger was unmistakably palpable, despite the impenetrable metal door.
Lightoller held the journal up to Declan and Thomas. “This is… this is so unfortunate.” Lightoller was hardly older than the interns, and he was obviously shaken at having come to the conclusion that these strangers to him had indeed a case, a horrible one at that. “I will do all I can to help you convince the captain of just how dire our circumstances are.”
Just then Farley shouted, “Eureka!” and he threw the padlock across the room, the sound of it rattling off the metal floor. Elated, the old man tore open the locker, gasped and fell backward, his dog barking and going to him.
Ransom and the others approached the huge footlocker to see not only Davenport but two other bodies stacked below him. Three corpses! One undoubtedly Burnsey, another Davenport, but to whom did the third corpse belong?
“My god,” said Lightoller. “It’s Davenport, Burnsey, and-and Dr. O’Laughlin!”
“Guess he believes us now,” muttered Thomas with a little shake of the head.
“Whoever the bloody carrier is now,” began Ransom, “it’s certainly worked its way up the social ladder, now hasn’t it?”
“What are ye talking about?” asked Farley.
Lightoller parroted the question.
Ransom pointed to the dead. “It starts with a lowly member of your black gang, a stoker… works its way up to an officer—an influential ship’s surgeon, no less.”
“Yeah, not just any officer—your medical officer,” said Declan. “Second only to your captain.”
“What’re you saying?” Lightoller shrugged.
Ransom threw up his hands. “No doubt this thing has learned about hierarchy in human society, so now it’s become interested in rising to the level of your captain—the man in charge!”
“We can’t let that happen!”
“We must open these bodies up,” Declan said, going to a stash of hanging utensils and huge carving knives. “Thomas, we’ll have to make do with what is at hand. They took my scalpel when they arrested us, and I’ve not seen it since. It would be useless for bone at any rate. We’ll have to do more than simply crack open the chests of each victim.”
“The egg-sacs ought to be enough to convince Captain Smith,” added Ransom. “And we need to get to him before the carrier gets at him.”
“If he hasn’t already done so; if Dr. O’Laughlin was it the entire time we met with them… who knows?”
“Or it’s our friend Murdoch out there!” The horrible pounding on the other side of the impenetrable door had become incessant.
“The door opens outward,” said Farley.
Ransom was the only other one among them who understood how important this fact was. “He’ll soon be removing the hinges, and once removed, he’ll be coming in—likely with guns pointed.”
“We must work fast then!” shouted Thomas. “Get these bodies onto the table and the sink. Help me out.”
Ransom, Thomas, and Declan did not hesitate, going for the bodies to lift them and place them onto the surfaces so as to work on them. Both Farley and Lightoller held back, aghast at the sight of the awful result of the disease that had made mummies of these men. The dog, too, held back, a low growl reminding Ransom that Varmint held no love for him.
“Lightoller, lend a hand!”
“I-I-I…”
“They’re not contagious!” shouted Ransom. “At least not in this state.”
“If they were,” added Declan, “the three of us wouldn’t be here!”
Declan and Thomas carried Davenport to the sink and placed his dehydrated corpse there. Ransom took hold of Burnes’ by the underarms while Lightoller grabbed the ankles and they moved the stoker’s body to the chopping block. Just as they made the block, one of Burnes’ feet came off in Lightoller’s hand, causing him to leap back, gasping as the foot skittered into a corner where Varmint grabbed it up in his mouth. Farley shouted for the dog to give it up, and he obeyed, dropping it into Declan’s gloved hand.
Here they were presented with room enough for the young doctors to work on O’Lauglin’s remains as well as Davenport and Burnes. Declan and Thomas next conveyed Dr. O’laughlin’s corpse to lie beside the two stokers.
“Death alone makes all men equal,” said Ransom to no one in particular. “Stoker, porter, doctor, Indian chief.”
“You got that right,” agreed Farley, still shaken. “Now Varmint and me, we want outta here, now!”
“No opening that door, Mr. Farley, until we deem it time.” Ransom stood in his way as Declan and Thomas began cutting open the corpses. Declan began with Davenport at the sink, running the water in an attempt to soften the tissue before making the Y incision. “At least,” he muttered, “we don’t have to concern ourselves with blood.”
Thomas didn’t wait; he opened up Burnes’ chest.
“Ohhh, God! God!” shouted Lightoller on seeing what Declan revealed to him at the sink; Declan had found a cooking utensil that clasped onto the thick skin flap and using it, he’d pulled back the flesh to expose the pulsating brown egg sacs in brackish fluid soup created from the human host. The eggs—or rather the creatures inside them— appeared healthy and anxious to come to fruition.
“Alien life… alien to all we know,” muttered Thomas.
“We suspect it a form of life that existed eons ago,” added Ransom, pacing, hearing people stomping by outside.
“It’d gone dormant in an animal unearthed in a mineshaft in Belfast—” said Declan as he continued to cut and fill Lightoller in—“where it got hold of some men and literally ‘walked’ onto Titanic.”
“So I’ve read. We have to contain these—these things.” Lightoller had gone as white as his uniform.
“Judging from the condition of the body and the egg sacs inside him, Dr. O’Laughlin’s body hasn’t been here long,” commented Declan. “We have to freeze the bloody eggs.
“That makes sense,” agreed Ransom, “but whatever we do here now, nothing of this creature can reach New York.”
The stoker’s body, too, was riddled with alien life—frozen when they’d begun, but the egg-sacs literally drew in heat from the men and the dog here, drew energy from the living, and it had begun pulsating as if anxious to split their membranous outer shell. The egg-sacs were translucent, and the fat, half worm, half-tadpole things inside could be seen in silhouette as oily black when the light hit them just so.
“I want to cut one of these damnable little demons open,” declared Declan.
“Alive? Too dangerous,” replied Thomas. “Here.” He stabbed into and through the membranous sac before him, killing the hatchling, but it sent up a hellacious screech. Ignoring the death screams, Thomas efficiently ripped the gelatinous, black creature the size of a man’s palm from its sac and splayed it open on the chopping block typically used to cut meat portions. His gloved hands turned oily black.
With Declan looking on, Thomas said, “Damn, look at this abomination.”
“There’s no… I mean nothing; makes no sense.”
“Since when has any of this made any damn sense?” shouted Thomas.
Alastair looked in over their shoulders, gasping. “Where’s its eyes?”
“Hasn’t any.”
“Where’s its mouth?”
“Got none.”
Declan added, “No digestive system either; feeds through some sort of weird osmosis, taking in nutrients through its epidermal layer of skin.”
“It can somehow suck blood from bone, too, remember?” asked Thomas.
Farley had snatched a sight of the things and so had Varmint who sent up an angry volley of barking. Both dog and owner now hugged the door, anxious to put as much distance between themselves and these awful smelling corpses and the strange life in the sacs as they could. Farley suddenly tore away Ransom’s wolf’s head cane and spun the door lock. Ransom pushed the man away, and he tumbled and fell atop Ransom’s cane.
Ransom tried to hold the spinning lock, struggling with Murdoch and the men with him the other side of the door to get inside; Lightoller rushed to Ransom’s side to help stem the tide, but it was too late as the door was thrust open and Murdoch, Wilde, and two pursers held guns on them all.
Declan had already cracked Dr. O’Laughlin’s chest, causing the others to hold back. The sight of the once so proud Dr. O’Laughlin, not merely dead, but his body like some sort of ugly planter of fertile ground for the alien life forms inside him made Murdoch lose his lunch. Officer Wilde’s reaction was much the same, and the others held back. Murdoch and Wilde shouted for the burly stokers to leave at once and say nothing to anyone.
All guns were lowered.
“Where is your captain?” asked Ransom. “He needs to see what is aboard his ship, and he needs to see it now.”
No one readily answered. Lightoller found a call box and rang for the bridge, and in a moment was pleading for Captain Smith to come down to the central freezer units here below the bow decks. “I tell you, sir, it is absolutely urgent, yes! Murdoch and Wilde are here with me, and yes, we’ve apprehended the escaped prisoners, but sir—you must come and have a look. There’s been an awful… terrible turn of events, sir. Come! Come post haste!”
“If this doesn’t convince your captain that Titanic is a plague ship, nothing will,” remarked Ransom, who realized only now that Farley and Varmint had slipped out and were gone.
“Suppose Murdoch is now infected,” Declan whispered in Ransom’s ear as Murdoch regained his feet. Lightoller helped Murdoch up, telling him about what he’d read in Declan’s journal, holding it before Murdoch. “Everything they tried to tell us, Will; it’s all true. We should never have left Queenstown. We’re in the middle of the Atlantic on a ship teeming with this… this parasitic, monstrous plague.”
Captain Smith pushed his way into the area, asking, “Lightoller, Murdoch, Wilde? What’s going on here?” He said this before seeing the dead Dr. O’Laughlin, Burnes, and Davenport along with the pulsating egg-sacs inside each victim.
“Captain,” said Lightoller, holding up Declan’s journal. “I read Mr. Irvin’s journal, and now seeing these monstrous life forms—”
One of the egg-sacs lifted, the creature inside stretching, fighting to get out when
it popped, sending up a bile-like brown fluid, part human blood, part alien gravy of some
sort… its food supply for now. The thing raised its blind, eyeless head out into the world
and was met with a bullet from Murdoch’s hefty, fat six-shooter. The powerful shot sent
the creature flying in twelve or thirteen pieces across the room to slam into a wall where
the splat made a sickening noise and everyone watched the dead parts slide down the wall
to the floor. At the same time, the explosion in the enclosed space made everyone go
deaf.
“Damn big gun!” Ransom shouted to Murdoch as he could not hear his own
voice. “A British made Webley MK-IV, right?”
“Yes, a break top revolver. It uses .455 Webley caliber.”
“Big chunk-a-lead-throwing six shooter. Saw a lot of ’em in Chicago,
unfortunately in the wrong hands. You think I could get one of those now?”
“That’d have to be cleared through the captain, Ransom.”
“I want one of those!” probably have had some Lee Enfield MKIII Short Rifles on board for close confines of a ship. It was in .303 British caliber a pretty potent round up to 300 yards. You can probably google those weapons if you need more particulars.
“If I thought it would do any good other than getting more men killed than these disgusting creatures,” Murdoch replied, “I’d break into the Vickers machine guns on board.”
“Hold on, you have a stash of Vickers?” Ransom’s mouth fell open.
“Well until a moment ago, it was secret cargo.”
“Really? Going to the US Military, are they?”
“Your Major Butt’s cargo.”
“Major Archibald Butt is aboard Titanic?” Butt had made a reputation the world over.
“Traveling with a journalist named Stead, yes.”
“Not William Stead, author of the book If Christ Came to Chicago? I know him from his time in Chicago. Wonderful man! Excellent journalist.”
“One and the same. Seems Stead is acting as biographer for Butts; meanwhile, the major’s cover is his acting as envoy for Taft… some sort of an exchange of letters between your President and the Pope.”
Ransom nodded appreciably. “A story leaked to the public, no doubt.”
“Meanwhile…”
“His true mission is to deliver those water-cooled machine guns to the U.S. Army. The picture comes clear.”
The Vickers was a British made, belt fed machine gun that entered service in 1912. Firearm technology made huge leaps from single shot style rifles and revolvers to semi and fully automatic in just a few short years, and Ransom had kept up with developments. Within the span of five to ten years this huge technological leap just happened seemingly overnight. The Vickers would be a hell of a new, if somewhat horrifying item in any army’s arsenal—quite the invention for its time.
Ransom had no illusions about the Brits selling thousands to the U.S. military in the event of war.
“Will you two shut up about guns and help us get the bodies into the freezers! Now!” Declan shouted, grabbing hold of O’Laughlin’s body first as the sacs in him were quivering more strongly than in the other two. Thomas grabbed the other end of the former Chief Surgeon of Titanic, and they laid the body below the hanging geese, ducks, chickens shanks of ham, and sides of beef.
After Lightoller shoved Declan’s journal into the captain’s hands, he helped Ransom to heft Burnes’ body into the freezer, placing him on the floor.
None of the others dared touch Davenport’s body, holding back, still in shock. Declan and Thomas removed Davenport and his egg-sacs to the same freezer.
They closed the freezer door on the bodies, and looked across at the newly initiated. “Perhaps now you will listen to reason,” said Ransom, going to Smith. “You cannot let this ship dock in New York harbor, sir.”
“What do you propose?”
“We find the carrier, destroy him—or it—at the source, and we search the ship high and low for any additional bodies like these here—and we put them all on ice, freeze the bastard things, and then send them all over the side.”
“Sounds like a start,” added Declan, “but suppose we can’t determine who the carrier is at this point?”
“You have no idea who he is?” asked Smith, eyes wide, in rapt attention now.
“Afraid not. It infiltrates a human, uses him up. For a time, apparently, it goes for the weakest links first, Burnes, Davenport, then your surgeon. In fact, I suspect O’Laughlin was being controlled by it the entire time we were trying to convince you of the reality of this parasite, Captain Smith.”
“He was acting rather oddly of late,” muttered Smith. “He was a fine surgeon and a good man… hard to believe or that this thing inhabiting him might now be residing in someone else. And who might that be?” Smith looked suddenly tired, a cloud of depression deepening his eyes. “We must act fast. We must locate any and all victims like these three you put away, gentlemen and destroy these confounded eggs, and their mother! Short of that… well, what will we do? What can we do?”
“I can mobilize the crew, sir.” Murdoch held the firearm at his side, feet set apart. “We can search the entire ship top to bottom, stem to stern. Get that much underway.”
“How do we quarantine a ship at sea, gentlemen?” Smith looked defeated and confused. “We’ll have to enlist the help of Dr. Simpson.”
Dr. Johnny Simpson was O’Laughlin’s chief assistant, his right-hand man. Ransom suggested he be looked at ‘closely—extremely closely’.
Smith and the others stared at Ransom as if he might be mad. Lightoller said, “Hell, Johnny’s one of the finest men I know.”
“We are at war, Captain,” Ransom told them. “We must fight and our strategy must be to outwit this thing and destroy it or contain it one way or another—even if it means sacrificing good men to do it.”
Smith gave Murdoch a nod, setting him on the course he proposed. Murdoch nodded at Lightoller and Wilde. “Come with me gentlemen, now!”
“You need to put a guard on this compartment, sir,” suggested Ransom. “An armed guard with orders to shoot anyone trying to forcibly enter. I suspect this thing will come back for its progeny, sir, sir… do you hear me?”
“Done… done, Constable and please… accept my apologies for being… for not being… that is for disbelieving you… for not listening when I might have saved O’Laughlin. He was a good officer and a fine doctor,” he repeated, befuddled and dazed, looking in shock.
“And a friend. I could see that clearly.”
“I was hoping my last voyage before retirement would be uneventful.”
“For that, sir, I’m sorry; seems trouble and events have a way of finding men like you and I. I would hope that under different circumstances that we may well’ve been friends, Captain.”
Declan shook the captain’s hand. “Sir, I’ve read about your career in detail. I am honored to be in your presence.”
“No, young man… I am the one who should be honored by the three of you.”
“Where do we start in search of finding the disease carrier?” asked Thomas.
“Other than you men here, I have only one ally I trust,” replied Ransom.
“And who might that be? Lightoller?”
“Varmint.”
“The dog?”
“The dog, yes. His nose may be our last hope, gentlemen.” Ransom had reclaimed his cane, and with a little twirl of the silver wolf’s head, he recalled the gift of the cane; it’d come from his best friend in Chicago, Philo Keane, a professional photographer and sometime police photographer, always a willing listener. He thought of his other close friends and acquaintances back in America as well and simultaneously wished them here with him now and happy that they were not.
“Varmint wherever he and Farley’ve gotten off to.”
We need to get that dog back. He just might be able to point out the alien among us,” Declan was saying, but Ransom only half heard as his weary mind wandered.
Declan repeated himself, and then Alastair whispered, “The dog may be our last hope.”
With the blessings of Captain Smith, and with Lightoller and Mr. Farley and Varmint, along with a hundred crewmen working in pairs, the hunt for the monster began in earnest. This time other dogs from the kennels were pressed into service as well, and each team searched for the scent of the carrier. Everyone agreed their best hope lay with Varmint or one of the other dogs, but time was fast running out.
The captain had located the ship’s architect, Andrews, who’d provided the latest blueprints. Captain Smith then set a hundred men scouring in pairs and threes to every nook and cranny. But so far nothing, no results.
With hopes pinned on Varmint, Ransom and his young mates watched the dog for every nuance, any slight change in demeanor as he was led from deck to deck. At one point, he sniffed the air around the Black Gang and exhibited a pained expression but without the kind of results they’d seen in the freezer.
Given that both Burnes and Davenport had been stokers, it made sense to have the dog sniff these men in order to rule them out.
This plan failed; it ended in the various stokers reacting to the dog in every conceivable way, from indifference to kicking out at Varmint to falling to knees and giving the dog a big hug and a ruffle of its fur. But in no instance, not even with the stoker who’d kicked out at the dog and threatened the animal with a shovel did Varmint alert. In all, it seemed a dead end.
All the same, Lightoller intensely disliked the man who’d threatened Varmint, and he whispered to a subordinate, “Keep an eye on this fellow Morrell.”
The parade of searchers behind the dog had steadily grown as they next had Varmint sniff out the cooks, kitchen staff, pantries, pursers, maids, the two fellows who manned the Marconi wireless, officers and their quarters, again to no good end.
As the third body had been that of Dr. O’Laughlin, they followed up by having the dog walk through the officer’s quarters, which turned up nothing significant, although Varmint lingered about Will Murdoch’s personal items. Murdoch merely raised his shoulders and laughed a bit nervously. When Ransom escorted the dog to where Murdoch stood, again the dog did not become agitated. It proved just another dead end.
They moved on to the infirmary and repeated the performance with the assistant ship’s surgeon and what was now his staff of nurses. At this point it was difficult for anyone to believe that their approach was anything but a lost cause.
However, after a series of missteps that led them in blind searches and circles about the mammoth ship, Varmint hit on a trail that appeared promising. The Retriever grew more and more agitated as it followed along a first class passageway until he came to the stairwell leading to the first class passenger rooms.
“Like I said… this thing is moving up in the world,” Ransom whispered to the others in the corridor. “First class berths.” Varmint had passed one after another until he had come to this sudden stop before Room #148.
“Whose room it this?” asked Ransom.
Lightoller turned to the purser behind him and tapped the younger man’s clipboard. “Well, Mr. Phelps? Answer the question, man!”
“This is the stateroom of Mr. Olaus Abelseth, sir—a well mannered old gent, perhaps in his mid-sixties. Made his fortune in military uniforms, civilian garments, and supplies.”
Ransom insisted they open the door.
“Unusual circumstances dictate, Mr. Phelps,” said Lightoller, snatching his firearm—the one Murdoch had gotten into his hands—from his hip. “Open it.”
Carney Phelps used a first-class skeleton key, and in seconds, he shoved the door wide open. In a matter of seconds, they saw Abelseth on the floor in his death throes, turning to a wooden state before their eyes, when suddenly a screech and a black shape like a banshee tore itself from the dying man’s mouth and ripped about the room like a maniacal, winged angel of death. In the next instant, Lightoller fired several shots, missing repeatedly as the inky shapeless creature flew out an open portal and was gone up the side of the ship’s hull, leaving behind one agitated, barking dog and several stunned men in a quivering silence—ears in pain from the proximity to gunfire.
“It’s getting away!” shouted Ransom, quickly regaining his senses. “Give me the gun, now!”
Lightoller did so without hesitation.
Ransom raced back to the nearest stairwell, with Varmint ahead of him. The creature was a dark, oily-skinned spectral being that had left Mr. Olaus Abelseth of Scandinavia like all those before him.
“We’ve gotta transport Abelseth’s body to the freezer compartment!” Declan said.
“He can wait!” Thomas shouted over his shoulder as he’d already begun to follow Ransom. So had Lightoller, but not the young purser, Phelps. He had raced off in the opposite direction, terrified out of his mind. For the moment, Declan found himself alone with the body, and he helplessly, fearfully, imagined the creature swooping back into the room to target his body and slip into him as easily as it’d slipped out of the dead man at his feet.