Brown Richard

Titanic With ZOMBIES

http://www.richardbrownbooks.com

Copyright @ 2012 Richard Brown

For Kelly Brown.

May Hugh Jackman always keep you safe.

WARNING!

If you exhibit any of these conditions,

proceed with caution!

Pregnancy

Heart Problems

High blood pressure

Motion sickness

Weak stomach

Fear of water

Fear of dying

Fear of not dying

No sense of humor

Easily offended

“When anyone asks how I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say, uneventful.  I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.  You see, I am not very good material for a story.”

- Captain Edward J. Smith

“You weren’t there at my first meeting with Ismay.  To see the little red marks all over the blueprints.  First thing I thought was:  ‘Now here’s a man who wants me to build him a ship that’s gonna be sunk.’  We’re sending gilded egg shells out to sea.”

- Thomas Andrews

“Control your Irish passions, Thomas.  I’ll not have so many little boats, as you call them, cluttering up my decks and putting fear into my passengers.”

- Bruce Ismay

“The press is calling these ships unsinkable and Ismay’s leadin’ the chorus.  It’s just not true.  I know this isn’t scientific, but this ship’s warning me she’s gonna die and take a lot of people with her.”

- Thomas Andrews

April 11, 1912

ELISE BRENNAN

Elise Brennan waited amongst a crowd of other passengers to board the White Star Line tender Ireland.  The tender America had just left the dock at Queenstown with over sixty passengers and was en route to the RMS Titanic anchored off Roche’s Point.

Elise, a native of Westmeath, Ireland, and only seventeen-years-old, hadn’t planned on sailing across the Atlantic by herself.

Times had been tough since the death of her mother less than a year ago, and her father, a farm labourer, had purchased the third-class tickets with what little money he could spare.  The last of their family, he and Elise had sold everything they owned and would make for the great city of New York in search of new opportunities, like so many other Irish immigrants before them.

But then her father had died suddenly of heart failure only three weeks ago.

Elise imagined the stress of starting over at his age had been too much for him to handle, and his heart simply gave up.

With no other choice, Elise prepared to embark on the journey to New York alone, without the love and wisdom of her father, and by way of the newest ship in town.

The papers called it, The Ship of Dreams.

The creation of Bruce Ismay (the managing director of the White Star Line) and Lord James Pirrie (a partner at Harland and Wolff), the Titanic and its sister ship, the Olympic, were said to pave a new way for big, luxurious passenger liners.

The two ships were built over the course of three years in Belfast by Harland and Wolff, under the direction of Thomas Andrews, the nephew of Lord Pirrie.  The Olympic was first to launch, and conducted its maiden voyage on June 14, 1911.

Elise remembered that June well, as it was just after her mother passed away.  Her mother had been a housekeeper all her adult life, and while she didn’t earn much, the loss of her income had placed immense pressure on Elise’s father to make big changes for the betterment of his daughter.

Ten months later, Elise stood on the dock in Queenstown, after a series of train rides from Westmeath, to take part in the Titanic’s maiden voyage, and in many ways, a maiden voyage of her own, but in the company of strangers.

Elise watched as port officials finished loading the last of the luggage into the Ireland.

She had said her goodbyes to the place she grew up, from the hills to the plains to the many rivers that divide them; to her friends whom she promised to write; and to her parents, who would forever remain buried in this land, yet whose memory she would carry no matter her station in life.  God willing, in a week she would be an American.

One by one, port officials began checking tickets and allowing passengers to board.  The crowd pushed in closer, anxious to get moving.

Elise examined the sea of faces.  In front of her was a woman with three sons, the youngest maybe two-years-old, all clinging fearfully to their mother’s skirt.  To her right, an older gentleman around her late father’s age, as solemn and quiet as she, presumably taking the trip alone as well.  To her left, a young husband and wife with four children, the kids loud and rambunctious, playing off each other’s energy.

It was just after one of the four children, a boy around five or six, had accidently bumped into her, and she had smiled down at him with understanding eyes, that she felt the piercing sting on the nape of her neck.

Something had bit her.

She immediately massaged the sore spot with her index finger, returning a small amount of blood.

What kind of bug could possibly be out this chilly afternoon and amongst such a large an active crowd, she wondered?

A ruckus erupted behind her as a short and burly man with a bald head bullied his way backward through the crowd.  Many furiously cursed his lack of manners, while Elise just stared in bewilderment.  It wasn’t until the little boy beside her asked if she was okay that she understood what had happened.

She blazed through the path created by the bald man and ran under an awning used to shelter passengers from less friendly weather.  Today it was mostly empty aside from a few security personnel who lumbered about.  She yelled at them to help her, but they only insisted she slow down and explain herself.

Forty yards ahead, her assailant climbed over a stone ledge up on the left that led to a row of hotels and pubs.

Elise made it over the ledge and around some bushes on to the open road just as the bald man escaped out of sight in an alleyway.  She stopped to catch her breath and looked back at the dock.  From this vantage point, she could see the dock was nearly clear of passengers.  Almost everyone was on the Ireland now, waiting for the final few to board so they could be ferried out to the Titanic.

She looked back at the alleyway.

The bald man was long gone.

As she climbed back down the ledge, she found a small needle covered in dirt, its glass barrel smashed.  She didn’t dare pick it up or tell security in fear that they might not allow her on the ship.  They adhered to a strict policy and would treat any potential illness very seriously.  Even if her life could be in danger, she couldn’t risk being stuck here, alone and penniless.  On the ship, she could at least receive free medical attention.

The crew of the Ireland waited for Elise to make her way back down the dock.  She was the last passenger to board.  The others eyed her with wordless irritation, as though she had purposely delayed them.  She caught sight of the little boy who had most likely been the only witness.  He was playing with his siblings, completely absorbed in his youth.  He had obviously said nothing to his parents.

Elise rubbed her neck again.  The spot where the needle had gone in no longer bled, and it no longer hurt.  Most of the pain had come and gone with the initial prick, all that lingered now was a growing fear that her health and well-being could be in jeopardy.  She could think of no rational explanation for what had happened, and as best she could recall, she had never seen the bald man before in her life.

Who was he?

What did he want with her?

But more importantly—what had been inside the syringe?

What was now inside of her?

Before dropping any passengers off, the Ireland first had to stop by the Deep-water Quay to load mail bags carried by train.  The short trip to the Quay was quite rocky, with the wind and waves off the shoreline battering against the small boat.  A few rowboats ran alongside carrying local venders out to the Titanic to sell crafts and other native goods to wealthy passengers.

The Titanic was anchored roughly two miles from the dock at Queenstown.  It had already picked up the great majority of passengers the day before in Southampton, England, and then later on in the evening in Cherbourg, France.

Elise had a firm grip on the metal hand railing as she stood on the top deck of the Ireland and looked out at the magnificent port side profile of the Titanic as they drew closer.

The ship stood over twenty stories tall, a marvelous creation of modern engineering that embodied mankind’s never-ending quest for greatness.  There was a strong, masculine contrast to the black and white paint that covered most of the ship’s exterior, further exemplified by the four yellow and black tipped funnels equally spaced down the center, two of which currently expelled dark grey clouds of smoke.  But more than anything, Elise was astonished by the number of portholes—there had to be five hundred just on the port side alone—and hoped her room would have such a thing.

At the top of the foremast flew the red, white, and blue of the American flag with the forty-six stars of the United States, the ship’s destination.  On the mainmast was the red swallow-tailed pendant with a single five-pointed white star signifying the Titanic as a member of the White Star Line.

Elise listened as many of the other passengers chatted amongst themselves, amazed by the sheer size and grandeur of the ship, the largest passenger vessel ever produced.  They were equally excited to check out the amenities on board, even though most would be travelling in steerage, as the ship was advertised as having excellent service and accommodations in all areas.

Elise was just glad they stopped leering in her direction.  She felt fine despite the mysterious incident that had occurred back on the dock.  Sure, she was nervous to be leaving her homeland, knowing she might never return, but she was also hopeful of the possibilities that lay ahead.  The Titanic symbolized the first step of a journey toward a new beginning.  How could she possibly worry in the presence of such shared anticipation and childlike wonder?

They passed the tender America as it headed back to Queenstown having already docked and unloaded its passengers and luggage.  The captain of the Ireland made a wide circle and slowly came up on the port side of the Titanic.  Elise waved at many of the passengers standing high above on the Titanic’s second-class boat deck.

Moments later, the small tender came to a stop even with the foremast of the Titanic.  As the boat rolled back and forth, crew of the Ireland rushed to tether the ship to the Titanic via two thick ropes, and then began securing the gangway into place.

Passengers were allowed to board first, then the local venders, who passed from their rowboats into the Ireland and then into the Titanic.  After all the passengers were on board, port officials loaded the luggage and mail.

Elise made her way through the gangway and up a flight of stairs to the forward well deck.  She joined many of the other passengers against the railing and looked down as the Ireland took on a handful of passengers to be ferried back to the mainland.  For those below, the journey on the ship of dreams was already over.

At around 1:30 p.m., a series of whistles indicated the Ireland was departing.  Soon after the tender was out of sight, the Titanic weighed anchor and prepared to depart.

After having survived inspection and the challenge of finding her room, Elise went back up to watch as the large ship made a quarter-circle and then headed down the Irish coast.  Hundreds of seagulls soared above guiding the way.

The Titanic steamed down St. George’s Channel passing the Old Head of Kinsale, its lighthouse faintly visible four or five miles away.  They also came dangerously close to a small fishing vessel.  The fishermen aboard cheered as they were hit with spray from the bow of the Titanic.

Elise began to weep as the lush green fields of Ireland began to disappear into the distance.  She said a final prayer for her mother and father at rest, for her friends she was leaving behind, and for the land that she loved.

As the sun began to set, the coastline receded to the northwest and the last of the Irish mountains slowly slipped away under the cover of darkness.

CAPTAIN

EDWARD J. SMITH

Captain Edward J. Smith stood in the wheelhouse on the Titanic’s bridge and looked out into the dark of the night, the steep bow of the Titanic gently rising and falling before him.  At the command of the ship’s wheel was Quartermaster Robert Hichens, with Alfred Olliver assisting.

It had been a stressful few days preparing for his final voyage as commodore of the White Star Line, and at sixty-two-years-old, Captain Smith looked forward to the rest and relaxation that would hopefully accompany his retirement.

Smith had been with the White Star Line for over thirty years, and had previously held the helm of such ships as the Baltic, the Majestic, and the Adriatic.  He had also served in the Royal Navy Reserve, helping to transport troops to South Africa during the onset of the Boer War in 1899.  But despite all his experience, navigating a ship as large and demanding as the Titanic was a whole new challenge.

He had learned a lot as captain of the Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship, and he hoped to use that knowledge to make for an even smoother trip this time.

Smith strode up next to Quartermaster Hichens.  “How does she feel?”

Hichens had a light grip on the wheel.  “Great, sir.  Like every man’s dream.”

Smith smiled and said, “Good,” and then exited the bridge.

The air outside was crisp and cool.  A light wind blew from the southwest.

First Officer William Murdoch was standing under the lamplight of the bridge’s wing cabin as Captain Smith approached.

“What is the status of the cleanup?”

“Still ongoing, sir,” said Murdoch.  “A bit more troublesome than expected.”

Yesterday, on the short trip from Southampton to Cherbourg, a fire had broken out in a starboard coal bunker in one of the boiler rooms.  A number of crewmen had been assigned to keep hosing down the burning coal, and to clear out the bunker.

“Have you seen Wilde?”

“I imagine he’s sleeping.”

“I trust you hold no ill feelings?”

“None at all, sir.  I fully understand why the decision was made.”

“It’s only temporary,” said Smith.

William Murdoch had originally been selected as chief officer for the Titanic’s maiden voyage.  But then on the advice of Smith, White Star had decided to bring on Henry T. Wilde from the Olympic, forcing Murdoch to step down to first officer.  Wilde had a good understanding of the ship’s handling, and Smith felt he could offer valuable assistance during the Titanic’s first trip across the Atlantic.  Wilde was scheduled to return to the Olympic once they got back from New York.

Smith patted his first officer on the shoulder.  “You’ll make a fine captain one day, Murdoch.”

“As fine as you, sir?”

“I do believe so.”

April 12, 1912

THOMAS ANDREWS

Morning came as the sun rose over the stern of the ship in a glorious display of brilliant color, its golden light gleaming atop the endless seascape and glowing ever brighter as it ascended into row after row of circular white clouds.

Being the first real morning at sea, many passengers came out to watch the natural spectacle.  They stood on one of the uppermost decks and watched the swell of the sea extend outward from the ship to the horizon line—watched the white foamy road left in the Titanic’s wake be wiped away by the blue-green waves that curled inward from opposing sides.

Those not outside admiring the sunrise could be found enjoying a nice breakfast in the dining saloon.  First-class passengers could choose to have breakfast delivered to their stateroom, while those in steerage were just glad to be fed, since only a few years back they would have had to bring their own food to last the entire trip.

After breakfast, passengers would wander off in different directions to explore the ship.  The men often went in packs to the barber shop for a quick shave, women to the swimming pool or to try out the Turkish baths.  The gymnasium was also proving to be a hot spot of activity.

On this Friday morning, however, one passenger in room A-36 at the top of the aft first-class staircase chose work over adventure.

His name was Thomas Andrews.

He sat at a desk covered with plans and charts, scribbling notes and observations on to a small notepad.  One entry in particular dealt with converting part of the reading and writing room into additional staterooms, as the room had proven less popular than initially imagined.

Thomas Andrews was the managing director and lead designer at Harland and Wolff, the shipyard that had built the Titanic, the second of three ships to be built under his careful eye; the first being the Olympic, and the third still in production, the Britannic.

Andrews had overseen construction from start to finish, and had come along for the maiden voyage of the Olympic in June a year earlier to scout for any possible improvements.  Now aboard the Titanic, he had the same task before him.

There was a light knock at the door.

“Come in,” Andrews said, not looking up from his notes.

Steward Henry Etches entered the room carrying a tray of fruit and tea.

“Where would you like this, sir?”

Andrews gathered some of the papers and piled them on one side of the desk.

“There will be fine, Henry,” he said, pointing to the spot he had cleared.

“Might I be of anymore assistance?”

“No.”  Andrews smiled thinly up at the steward.  “Thank you.  That’ll be all for now.”

BRENNAN

Elise had felt fine when she went to bed.

She shared a room on D-deck at the stern of the ship with a woman much older than her, also travelling alone.  They had talked briefly on her arrival the previous afternoon, but the older woman seemed more interested in keeping to herself.

Elise had found better company in the general room, including a number of other women around her age, and a French man whose advances were less than subtle.

Dinner that night had been equally satisfying.

Corned beef, sweet corn, boiled potatoes, fresh biscuits.  Even dessert.

Her stomach had never felt so full.

In her things, she had brought along a diary to document her trip to America.  So far, all it contained was trivial information about the ship, her roommate, the food.  She had left out the part about Queenstown—the incident.  She hadn’t even thought about it much.

She had showed the doctor the mark on the back of her neck during inspection yesterday.

She had lied and told him it was from a bug bite.

And he had said there was only a slight amount of redness that would probably go away soon, but to come see him again if she began noticing any other symptoms.

The first of the “other symptoms” came in the middle of the night.

She had woken suddenly in a cold sweat, her heart drumming inside her chest.

A moment later she was vomiting in the washbasin between the two beds, over and over again, each time reminded of what she ate for dinner.  Thankfully, her roommate was a heavy sleeper.

Exhaustion lulled Elise back to sleep as well.

When she woke the second time, it was morning and her roommate was gone.

Her symptoms were not.

She visited the doctor again and told him about the vomiting.

The chills.

The lethargy.

The brutal headache that felt as if her brain wanted to grow beyond the limits of her skull.

The doctor had given her some Dover’s Powder and recommended lots of rest.

Rest?

It didn’t happen.

Hours later, she felt worse.

She remained in her cabin for most of the day, developing a high fever and continuing to vomit here and there and everywhere—all liquid, some of it blood.

In between sessions, she would write in her diary.

Everything, no more holding back.

The truth.

And the truth was there would be no dinner tonight.  No fun, relaxation, or making new friends.  No more enjoying the marvelous new ship.

Would she even make it to America?

Would she even make it through the night?

While the sun set in the west and passengers moved from the dining saloons to the smoking rooms, Elise lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, the realization finally taking hold.

She was going to die.

She knew it.

By the time she stumbled out of her room and up the stairwell, she no longer knew anything.  Not where she was from.  Not even her name.

The people she passed were blurry shadows, their voices a demonic cacophony of slurs.

They couldn’t help her.

They didn’t even try.

Elise Brennan came to a rest on the aft well deck at the ship’s stern, face up to the starry night, shaking from the cold and mumbling incoherently.

MARGARET BROWN

9:42 p.m.

Margaret Brown sat in the first-class lounge across from Colonel John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest passenger on the ship, and his second wife, Madeline.

Margaret had been travelling with her daughter Helen and the Astor party on a tour of Europe that led them from Egypt to Italy to France, when she received a telegram that her five-month-old grandson was ill.  She immediately booked passage on the Titanic, while Helen stayed behind in Paris where she attended the Sorbonne.

They were discussing some of the sights they had seen when Thomas Andrews walked up.

“It was nice dining with you tonight,” said Andrews.  “Are you enjoying everything so far?”

“Very much so,” John replied.  Madeline smiled and nodded in agreement.

John Jacob Astor had been the topic of much gossip after divorcing his first wife and marrying nineteen-year-old, Madeline, who was twenty-eight years his junior, and one year younger than his son, Vincent.  He had fled the states to get away from the public eye for a while, finally forced to return after Madeline became pregnant.

Andrews sat down in the empty seat next to Margaret.  “And you, Mrs. Brown?”

“Of course I’m enjoying myself.  You’ve put together one fancy ship here.”

The first-class lounge was decorated like the Palace of Versailles, the walls covered in rich wooden carvings and gold sconces.  In the center, a three-foot wide chandelier filled the room with light.  With plenty of seating and tables of all different sizes, many passengers were using the room to socialize over a game of cards.

“If you ain’t married yet, I bet you will be soon.  And who is this Mrs. Brown?  Call me Margaret.”

“I am married, in fact.  My wife’s name is Helen.”

“No kidding.  That’s my daughter’s name,” Margaret said.

“I have a daughter named Elizabeth.  She’ll be two in November.”

“Well done, Mr. Andrews, well done.  I wish you and your family all the best.  I tell you what, I love my kids and grandkids to death, but I think I’m gonna take a break on the marriage thing for a while.  I do hope one day my daughter will have the good sense to marry a man as hard working and well mannered as you.  Closer to her age, of course.  Don’t wanna end up like old John here.”

Margaret broke out into laughter.  Andrews responded with a reluctant smile.

“Oh, Molly.  All that money and still no self control,” said John, shaking his head.

“You ain’t gonna lecture me on self control, now are ya?  And speaking of which, you know I hate the name Molly.”

John surrendered his hands in the air.  “I’ll never say it again.”

“It seems I’ve wandered into more than I bargained for,” Andrews said, loosening up a bit.

“See, Mr. Andrews, I’ve been poor before and I may be poor again, but no amount of money is gonna change me.  And John can go ahead and deposit that in the bank.”

A short time later, the Astor’s said goodnight and left for their stateroom.  At her request, Thomas Andrews escorted Margaret out to the A-deck’s partially open promenade on the port side of the ship.  The change in air temperature was startling after the heated comfort of the first-class lounge.

The deck was empty.  No one else was brave enough to battle the cold.

Margaret gazed out into the dark expanse of the Atlantic, unusually still this evening.

“It’s so peaceful,” she whispered.  “I know that must sound funny coming from me, a loud gal born on the Mississippi, but even I can appreciate a little tranquility every now and then.”

“Nothing funny about it at all.  We could learn a lot from the sea and all the memories it holds.  I think we would be wise to try and replicate that kind of enduring timelessness in our own lives.”

Margaret looked over the hand railing at the water below.  “How cold do you think it is?  The water, I mean.”

“Colder than the air.  Thirties, perhaps.”

“So I guess swimming is out of the question.”

Andrews smirked.  “Only if it’s in the pool.”

They walked down the promenade deck, passing the first-class smoking room and the Verandah Cafe & Palm Court.  Andrews talked about some of the changes he planned to make with the ship, while kindly listening to Margaret’s many suggestions, one of which was to stain some of the wicker furniture green.

“That’s actually not a bad idea.”

“You sound surprised,” Margaret said.

“Not at all.  Perhaps surprised that I hadn’t thought of it first.”

“If that’s a compliment, I’ll take it.”

They reached the end of the promenade deck and stepped beyond the overhead enclosure and out into the open air.  The wind blew much harder here than on the partially enclosed deck, although not nearly as hard as on the bow due to the ship’s forward momentum.

Andrews sat down on a wooden bench, the ship’s mainmast pointing high up into the dark sky in front of him, while Margaret peered over the white railing to the aft well deck below.

A young woman was stumbling around like she’d had too much to drink.  By the look of the quaint dress she wore, Margaret guessed she was probably from steerage.

A second later, the woman collapsed underneath the outstretched arm of a white cargo crane.

“Miss!  Miss!”  Margaret yelled.

Andrews got up from the bench and walked up next to Margaret.  “What’s the problem?”

Margaret pointed to the woman curled up on the ground.  “I think she may have passed out.  She’ll freeze out here.”

“Come.  Let’s go down and help her.”

SECOND OFFICER

CHARLES H. LIGHTOLLER

The three senior officers worked four hours on and eight hours off.  Second Officer Charles H. Lightoller was assigned the six to ten.  He stood next to First Officer Murdoch in the chart room as they checked the ship’s progress.

At only thirty-eight-years-old, Charles Lightoller had already experienced more to life than most men twice his age.  At thirteen, he began a four-year apprenticeship at sea.  One year into it, he found himself shipwrecked for eight days off a small, uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean.  The next few years he would survive a cyclone and help save a ship known as the Knight of St. Michael that had caught fire.

In 1898, he went to prospect for gold in the Yukon but was unsuccessful.  He even briefly worked as a cowboy in Canada, before finally hitching a ride on a cattle boat back to England.

Lightoller had come to the White Star Line looking to settle into a more stable career, and over the course of twelve years, moved up the ranks aboard such distinguished vessels as the Majestic and the Oceanic.  When he was offered a role on the Titanic under the command of Captain Smith (whom he had worked under on the Majestic), Lightoller jumped at the opportunity.

Thought by many as having a steadfast and unyielding temperament, Lightoller had little patience for those who did not take this brand of work seriously, and had no problem letting them know.  He was often seen staring off into the horizon smoking his pipe.

During each four-hour watch, the officers were expected to perform a number of tasks, such as checking the maps, checking weather reports and wire messages, scanning the horizon for other ships or icebergs, checking the water temperature, and occasionally supervising the helmsman on the bridge.  When a watch concluded, the officer must give a report to his relief in order to keep everyone up to date on the latest information.

It was just after ten and Lightoller’s four-hour evening watch had come to a close.  It was Murdoch’s watch now, and Lightoller would begin again at six in the morning.

“We’re running at twenty-one knots.  We’ve covered a little over five hundred miles since we left Queenstown,” said Murdoch.  “Not exceptional, but certainly within reason.”

“The captain seems pleased,” Lightoller added.  “Slower speed means less vibration and a smoother ride, and overall passenger’s comments have been positive.”

Murdoch nodded in agreement.  “Still, given the current rate, we should be in New York by Wednesday morning.”

Lightoller followed Murdoch from the chart room to the bridge.  Quartermaster Hichens was at the wheel with Sixth Officer James Moody standing by his side.  From the large window that looked out on to the bow, lookout’s Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee could be seen standing in the crow’s nest atop the foremast scanning the night sea.

Lightoller briefly engaged in light conversation, and then bid them farewell and headed out to do his final sweep of the ship.

He began at the upper most deck, the boat deck, and walked the length of the ship with a cold wind blowing at his back.  Along the way, he passed the captain and officer quarters (where soon he would go to rest), the forward entrance to the first-class staircase, and also the gymnasium.

The boat deck got its name from the twenty lifeboats that lined the outer edge, sixteen of which were connected to davits by ropes.  Two of these called emergency cutters were always kept swung-out for quick descent, as in the case of a passenger accidently falling overboard.  The four boats not attached to davits had collapsible canvas sides for easy storage and to maximize deck space.

Between the third and fourth funnels was the engineers mess room.  A few of the crew said hello to him as he briefly stepped inside and out of the wind to load and light his pipe.  He took a heavy drag and then left to continue his security check.

The end of the boat deck came just past the entrance to the second-class staircase and elevators.  Lightoller used a vertical iron ladder to climb down to A-deck and then another to get to B-deck.  From here, he could see there was no one on the stern of the ship.  Most passengers had already headed to their staterooms, and those that hadn’t yet resigned to bed were inside one of the lounges or smoking rooms, out of the bitter air.

Lucky them, Lightoller thought. The wind was making it hard for him to keep his pipe lit.  He huddled under the enclosed starboard walkway to relight, when he saw them hurrying toward him.

He didn’t recognize the woman, but the man was clearly Thomas Andrews.

“Is there a problem?”  Lightoller asked.

“A woman collapsed on the deck just below here,” said Andrews.  “If you could be so kind to help us.”

“And who is that?”  Lightoller pointed at the shipbuilder’s female companion who didn’t stop to chat and continued down a short set of stairs.

“Oh, forgive her.  That’s Margaret Brown.”

Lightoller followed Andrews down the steps to the aft well deck.  The woman Andrews spoke of was lying motionless on the ground under a rotating crane, Margaret down beside her.

“Come on now, can you hear me?”  Margaret lightly patted the young woman on her face to get her attention, unsuccessfully.  “She’s so cold.  She’s barely even breathing.”

“I don’t think she got this way from drinking too much,” said Andrews, looking panicked.

“She needs to see a doctor immediately.”

“Guess we’ll have to carry her then,” Lightoller said, taking one final puff before extinguishing his pipe.  “Grab her feet.”

A small third-class hospital was located just below them on D-deck.  Margaret led the way down the stairs with Andrews and Lightoller following with the young woman in tow.

They ran into Catherine Wallis, the third-class matron, on the landing for C-deck.  Catherine was in charge of helping third-class passengers get around the ship, or with things such as using the toilets, which many of them had never seen before, and was to monitor and report any signs of illness.

“Is Dr. O'Loughlin on duty?” asked Lightoller.

“Not this late,” Catherine replied.

“Better go wake him up.”

Catherine took a long look at the young woman currently being held up under her arms by the second officer.  “That’s Miss. Brennan.”

“You know her?”  Margaret asked.

“Yes, ma’am.  Elise Brennan.  I helped her to the hospital this morning.  She complained of stomach pain.  What’s happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” said Lightoller.  “But I don’t think this is stomach pain.  As I said, better wake up the doc.  We’re taking her down to D.”

Catherine hurried up the stairs to C-deck where William O'Loughlin stayed.

Lightoller and Andrews carried the young woman named Elise down one more flight of stairs and then around a corner to the small hospital opposite the stairwell on D-deck.

The third-class hospital contained three rooms, one main room for examinations, and two small bedrooms for patients.  A larger hospital with more beds was located further down D-deck beyond the second-class dining saloon.

Once inside the hospital, Andrews and Lightoller lifted Elise on to the examination table.  Margaret helped by wrapping her in some spare blankets she found in a storage closet.

“They need to hurry up.”  Lightoller slipped back out into the stairwell but saw no sign of Catherine or the doctor.

“She seems to be warming back up real fast,” Margaret said.

“Is that a good sign?”  Andrews asked.

“Heck if I know.”  Margaret gently brushed her fingers down Elise’s face trying to soothe her.  “Come on, dear.  Stay with us.  Listen to my voice.  Just stay with us.”

Catherine Wallis delivered Dr. William O’Loughlin to the third-class hospital over ten minutes after the meeting on D-deck.  She had also managed to round up Dr. John Edward Simpson, O’Loughlin’s assistant surgeon, and the hospital steward William Dunford.

Lightoller and company stood back as the two doctors immediately went to work, unwrapping Elise from the blanket and checking her vital signs.

First for a heart rhythm using a stethoscope.

“Her heart is beating very slowly,” said O’Loughlin.  “Her temperature?”

“North of 104,” Dr. Simpson replied.

“Jesus,” Margaret gasped.

O’Loughlin checked her eyes.  “Unreceptive to changes in light or movement, but otherwise no obvious abnormalities.  Officer Lightoller, you say you found her like this outside?”

Lightoller was in the middle of lighting his pipe.

“No, I was the first to see her,” Margaret answered.  “She was stumbling around in circles, grabbing on to this and that, barely able to stand up straight.  Finally, wham!  She just fell over like a pile of bricks and that was it.”

“We ran into Mr. Lightoller on our way down to help her,” Andrews added.  “Then we ran into Catherine on our way down here.  Her condition has remained unchanged since we found her.  Other than, of course, her rising temperature.”

“Catherine said Miss. Brennan had come to see you earlier in the day,” said Lightoller, smoke rushing from his mouth.  “Is that true?”

“Yes,” said O’Loughlin.  “Though I first saw her yesterday during inspection before we departed Queenstown.  As you know, the British Board of Trade requires us to perform physical and mental evaluations for all passengers in steerage.  We check for lice, signs of tuberculosis, things like that.  At the time, Miss. Brennan seemed to be in good health.  She only complained of a bite on the back of the neck where there was a small patch of redness.”

O’Loughlin gently rolled Elise on to her side revealing the purple infected skin inhabiting her neckline—a foul odor emanating from it.

“It’s gotten much worse.  I told her to come see me if she noticed any other symptoms.  This morning, with the help of Catherine, Elise came to see me again.  This time she complained of head and stomach pain.  She said she had trouble sleeping and wanted something to help her relax.  I gave her some powder and told her to get lots of rest.”

“How did her neck look then?”  Lightoller asked.  “Is it possible she could have had a reaction to the powder?”

“It looked roughly the same as when I saw her the day before.  And while with any drug there is certainly a possibility of side effects, I do not believe this is an allergic reaction, Mr. Lightoller.  This is an infection.  And it has likely spread to her brain.”

“So you can’t do anything?”  Margaret asked.

“No, I’m sorry.  I fear the infection will only continue to break down her body.  While she may still be alive, she has fallen into a coma, and even if she should somehow come out of it soon, we may still be unable to help her.  Unfortunately, I suspect Miss Brennan will be with God before sunrise.”

Andrews sighed.  “Thank you for your honesty, doctor, but I must ask you.  Given this—this infection, terrible as it is.  Should we be concerned?”

“You mean is it contagious?” asked Dr. Simpson.  He met eyes with his superior.

Andrews nodded.  “Well, yes.  Could there be other passengers on board exhibiting similar signs?  Could our own lives be at risk?”

“Anything is possible.  I don’t have enough information to make an intelligent guess.  We could probably order another series of examinations tomorrow morning, but there is no way of knowing how far this thing could have already spread if it is indeed contagious.  For now, I think her room needs to be thoroughly searched and then cleaned.  Mr. Lightoller, I understand you are currently off duty?”

“I’m never off duty.  It’s Murdoch’s watch, but I would rather not bother him with this right now.  As it is I’m wide awake, I can give you a few hours.”

“Catherine, if you could take Mr. Lightoller to Elise’s room.  Simpson and I will continue to monitor her condition until you get back.”

“And what about her roommate?”  Catherine asked.

“Don’t tell her why you’re there,” O’Loughlin replied.  “But do be polite and find her another room.  William, if you could please prepare one of the beds for Elise.  She deserves to at least be comfortable in her last moments.”

“Yes, sir.”  Steward William Dunford left the examination room and went into one of the two patient rooms.

“Mr. Andrews, Mrs. Brown, you are free to stay or go as you wish.”

Elise Brennan’s room was located on the same deck as the third-class hospital, and so it took less than a minute for Catherine to show Lightoller the way.  Waking up Elise’s roommate, however, took a little longer.

They first tried knocking.

“What’s her name?”  Lightoller asked.

“Harriet Bell.”

When knocking and calling her name from the hall didn’t work, they had to go in the old-fashioned way—without permission.

Catherine tried lightly nudging Harriet awake, but the old plump woman just grunted, rolled over, and then continued snoring.

Lightoller used more direct methods—like knocking his boot repeatedly on the side of the bed frame.  “Up up now, time to get up.”

Harriet peeled down the bed sheets and looked up at Lightoller.  “Who are you?  What do you want?”

“Hello there, welcome back.  I’m Second Officer Charles Lightoller.  We’re going to need you to gather your things together immediately.”

“My things—but—but this is my room.”

“Yes, indeed, this was your room.  But there has been a slight change in plans.  Catherine here will show you to your new room.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course not, and I wish there was time to explain.  But there isn’t.  I’m deeply sorry, Mrs. Bell.  So up you go.”

Harriet slowly rolled out of bed and then crammed all her stuff into a few bags.

“I do apologize for this,” Catherine said, offering to carry one of the bags.

“Where is Elise?”  Harriet asked.

“Clearly not here, is she?” said Lightoller.  “Don’t worry about her.  We’ll make sure she gets her belongings.”

Harriet shook her head in disgust as Catherine led her out of the room and into the hall.

“Thank you, Mrs. Bell,” Lightoller called out.  “Enjoy your stay on the Titanic.”

Lightoller shut the door and got to work, though there really wasn’t much to search.

There were two kinds of baggage, wanted and unwanted.  The wanted things, such as clothing, literature, cosmetics, or anything needed on hand during travel, were delivered by the crew to the staterooms on the day of embarkation.  The unwanted baggage, larger items like furniture for families on the move, or in the case of William Carter, a Renault automobile, was kept below in the cargo hold.  Naturally, passengers in steerage were not afforded the same spacious accommodations available to the higher classes, and most didn’t have much to bring along anyway, so their level of wanted baggage was small in comparison.

Like Mrs. Bell, Elise only had a few bags.  One contained all clothing, the other an assortment of various personal effects like photographs and jewelry and scarves.

And a diary.

Lightoller sat on the bed and read the entire contents, feeling at first ashamed, and then horrified.

Elise had written a detailed account of how her sickness had evolved almost to the hour, but more importantly, where it had originated.  And she used the diary to reveal her secret.

The secret that she never told the doctors.

The secret that was now killing her.

That her condition had originated on the pier in Ireland—from a strangers needle.

Lightoller ran back to the hospital.

Thomas Andrews was standing in the stairwell just outside the door to the hospital.

“Are you leaving?”  Lightoller asked.

Andrews nodded.  “Yes, shortly.  It’s getting late and there’s nothing more we can do.  I already convinced Mrs. Brown to go to her room and get some sleep.  We don’t have to be here to pray for Elise.  We need to let the doctors do their work.”

Lightoller held up the diary.

“What is that?”

“I think we might have a serious problem on our hands.”

Doctor O’Loughlin and Simpson were discussing the characteristics of Elise’s condition among themselves, when Lightoller barged into the room and tossed the diary on to the examination table.

“You’re back already,” said O’Loughlin.

“It didn’t take long.  Found that in her room.  I think you’d better take a look at it.”

“Where is Catherine?”

“Don’t know.  I didn’t wait for her.”

Lightoller waited quietly smoking from his pipe as each of the doctors read the first two pages of Elise’s otherwise empty diary, their expressions changing from indifference to alarm.  Then Thomas Andrews took his turn.

O’Loughlin finally sighed, breaking the long silence.  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Why do you think she didn’t tell you,” said Lightoller.  “Because she was afraid.  And I can’t really blame her.  You’re an educated man.  You know she would never be allowed off the ship in New York if there was even a suspicion she was carrying a deadly virus.”

“I understand that.  I do.  But, still, how was I to help her if I didn’t know the truth?”

“Would it have made any difference?”

“It’s impossible to say.  Probably not, given the seriousness of her condition.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, there is certainly no point in arguing about it now,” said Dr. Simpson.  “What precautionary measures should we take, if any, to avoid possible contamination of the ship?”

“Well, if it’s a virus,” said O’Loughlin.  “It has an extremely fast incubation period, which could very well work in our favor.”

“It could also mean we’re all infected, could it not?” asked Lightoller.

“That would depend on the particular virus.  Unfortunately, the diary only tells us how she came to be sick, not the nature of the sickness itself.  It’s possible the syringe contained some sort of chemical agent or drug and that it is that substance and not a virus that is responsible for Elise’s condition.”

Steward William Dunford slipped out of Elise’s room carrying a wet cloth.  He dropped it into a bucket in the corner next to a medicine cabinet, and then looked solemnly out at the four other men in the room and spilled the news.

“I’m afraid she’s passed.”

“What?  Are you sure?” asked O’Loughlin.

The two doctors hurried past Dunford and into Elise’s room.  Lightoller and Andrews stayed by the door to the stairwell.

“Why do I have the feeling this is not over yet,” said Lightoller.  He checked his watch.  11:08 p.m.

“I don’t think any of us are going to get much sleep tonight,” Andrews replied.

“It’s not losing sleep I’m worried about.”

O’Loughlin and Simpson came back into the examination room a minute later, shutting the door to Elise’s room behind them.

“It’s true,” said O’Loughlin.  “Whatever caused her body to shut down, it didn’t waste any time.”

“I should notify the captain,” said Lightoller, heading for the door.

“No, not yet,” Andrews interjected.  “I don’t think any of us should leave this room until we can be sure we’re not infected, for the sake of everyone on the ship.”

“What about Margaret?  Or Catherine?”

“I shouldn’t have let—” Andrews jumped, as there was suddenly a knock at the door behind him.

Catherine Wallis opened the door and came inside.  “Harriet is all settled into her new room.”

“Thank you, Catherine,” said O’Loughlin.

“Wait a minute—Harriet—she’s been staying with Elise for more than a day now.”  Lightoller began to feel a glimmer of hope.  “If it’s a virus, wouldn’t she have caught it by now?”

“Mrs. Bell seemed fine,” said Catherine.

“My point exactly.  She didn’t seem ill at all.  Grumpy, sure, but not ill.”

“Good observation, Mr. Lightoller.  But I’ll need to examine her all the same,” said O’Loughlin.  “Catherine, could you show me to her room?”

Catherine looked upset by this.  “But she just went back to bed.”

“So wake her up,” Lightoller said.  “I don’t want to spend all night in this room if I don’t have to.”

It wasn’t five minutes after Dr. O’Loughlin and Catherine Wallis left the hospital that they heard the first of the sounds.

The moaning.

Thomas Andrews was actually first to point it out.  They had all been making small talk, when during a brief moment of silence the unusual sound caught his attention.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” asked Dr. Simpson.

“I heard something,” said Andrews.  He glanced over at Lightoller sitting beside him.

“Don’t look at me.  I didn’t hear anything.”

“Shhhh.”

Andrews, Simpson, Lightoller, and Dunford all sat quietly and listened.

Lightoller finally shrugged and began to light his pipe.  “All I hear is the hum of the engines.”

Everyone relaxed except Andrews.

“I swear I heard something.”

“What did it sound like?” asked Dr. Simpson.

“I don’t know.  I guess it sounded like a person—like a person in pain, I suppose.”

“A person in pain?”  Dr. Simpson repeated.

“Yes.  And I do believe it was coming from Elise’s room.”

“I think you need sleep, Andrews,” said Lightoller.  “Need I remind you Elise is—”

Again the moaning sound, much louder than before.  This time everyone heard it.

“Dr. Simpson, is it possible...”

“That Elise isn’t deceased?”

“Is it possible?”

“Mr. Andrews.  She wasn’t breathing.  Her heart wasn’t beating.”

“Perhaps I should check on her,” said William Dunford.  “Just to be sure.”

The guttural moaning grew louder.

Closer.

“Well, doctor.  Obviously Elise is not dead,” said Andrews.  “She’s alive.  Somehow she’s alive.”

Everyone stood up and huddled around the door to the second patient room.

A new sound now accompanied the moaning.

A dragging sound.

“Elise, is that you?” asked Dr. Simpson.

“Of course it’s her,” said Lightoller.  “Who else would it be?  Go in and check on her—what are you afraid of?”

“For God’s sake, let me do my job.”  Dr. Simpson put his hand on the door handle.  “Elise, go and lay back down on the bed.”

Elise bellowed something that almost sounded like NOOOOOO and then began beating her arms on the other side of the door.

Dr. Simpson took a deep breath before turning the handle and opening the door.

The formerly deceased Elise Brennan fell out on to him, clutching his shoulders with morbidly stiff hands, and aiming her open jaws for his face.  The doctor put his hands around her neck and tried to push her off as the struggle quickly moved to the floor.

Andrews yelled for Elise to stop.

She didn’t.

“Get her off of me!  Please!  Please!  Get her off of me!”  Dr. Simpson shouted.

Steward William Dunford was closest to the doctor and first to react.  But as he grabbed Elise’s arm, she turned and clenched her teeth into the side of his hand.  Blood spurted out from the newly shredded flesh.  Dunford screamed in anguish and fought to withdraw his mangled hand from her jaws.  Once free, he collapsed into a heap in the corner.

Lightoller was next up, though he wasn’t nearly fast enough to prevent Elise from sinking her teeth into the side of Dr. Simpson’s face.

“Oh God,” Andrews cried.

Lightoller grabbed Elise from behind by a fistful of her hair.  She immediately released her bite on the doctor and tried to snap at Lightoller.

“I don’t think so, dear!”

Dr. Simpson scuttled out from underneath her as Lightoller yanked Elise back to her feet and then slammed her face first into a wall.

“Andrews, come help me,” said Lightoller.  “Grab her right arm.”

Andrews did as instructed.  Lightoller secured the left arm and still had control of her head by her hair.  Elise tried to shake them off but wasn’t strong enough.  Her mouth was trembling in the anticipation of more warm flesh.

A voice from behind.

“What is going on here?”

Lightoller and Andrews turned Elise around so she was facing the door to the stairwell.

Dr. William O’Loughlin and Catherine Wallis looked frightened.  They cautiously surveyed the room, instantly struck speechless.  O’Loughlin peered around the examination table.  Two of his best men were crouched over in the far right corner, both a bloody mess.

“Simpson, are you okay?”

“Don’t get near her,” Dr. Simpson grumbled.  “She bit me on the face.”

“William...”

“My hand.  She got my hand, sir.  I think it may be broken.”

Dr. O’Loughlin slowly stepped closer to his associates, never taking his eyes off Elise.  Catherine wisely chose to stay back by the door.

“What happened here?”

“She went crazy—that’s what happened,” Lightoller replied.

“But—how—how is she...”

“Alive?  I don’t know.  You said she was dead.  How can a dead person come back to life?”

“They can’t,” O’Loughlin replied, moving closer to get a better look.  “Clearly our pronouncement of death was premature.  Elise.  Elise.  Can you hear me?  Why are you doing this?  Tell me what I can do to help you?”

“There’s nothing you can do,” said Lightoller.  “Unless you have a cure for insanity.”

Elise was still moaning and trying to escape.

If she wasn’t dead, she sure didn’t look alive.  Her face was as ashen and grey as the paint on the walls.  Her mouth was open in a snarl revealing the red blood glistening between her teeth—many of which had cracked or broken in half when she bit into Dunford’s hand.  Even more blood, globs of it, ran out of her mouth and down her chin.

Dr. O’Loughlin sighed.  “I fear you may be right.  Somehow, this poor girl has been cheated of an honest death, and further robbed of any genuine mental capacity.  When I look into her eyes, I see...well, nothing.  No life there.  She doesn’t know where she is, or who I am.  She doesn’t even know who she is.  All that she has left is the most basic carnal instinct, to survive by any means necessary.”

“By attacking us?”  Dr. Simpson said from the corner.  He had a cloth pressed against his face to slow the bleeding.

“By feeding on you.”

“And now I’m next—we’re next, aren’t we?” said Dr. Simpson, indicating William Dunford sitting nearby bandaging up his ruined right hand.  “We’re gonna turn out just like her.”

“There’s still no evidence indicating this is contagious.  Mrs. Bell wasn’t sick, not yet anyway.”

“Either way, all this speculation isn’t doing us any good,” said Andrews.  “What are we supposed to do with her?  Lock her up?  We must do something, and soon.  I think I can speak for Mr. Lightoller when I say we can’t hold her like this forever.”

“I need to tend to their wounds,” said O’Loughlin.  “Put her back in the room for now.”

Lightoller and Andrews led Elise under the doorway to the second patient room and then pushed her in and shut the door.  They put their backs against the door to prevent her from opening it.  Elise went back to moaning while banging and scratching at the other side.

Dr. O’Loughlin kneeled down between Dr. Simpson and William Dunford.

“John, I’m sorry about this.  I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible.”

“Don’t bother.  It’s not your fault,” said Dr. Simpson.

“May I take a look?”

Dr. Simpson removed the cloth uncovering the horrific display on the lower right side of his face.  Elise had completely bitten through the skin leaving behind multiple sets of teeth marks.  While most of the bleeding had stopped, the swelling and bruising had only just begun.

“How is it?”

“I won’t lie to you, John, it looks bad.  You’re definitely gonna have some permanent scarring.  My biggest concern is keeping it from getting infected.”

“As is mine.”

“I’m gonna have to clean it.”

Dr. O’Loughlin then checked on the steward.  The injuries to William Dunford’s hand, while being in a significantly better location, were even more severe than those on the assistant surgeons face.  Aside from the obvious visual sign of teeth marks, much of the skin and underlying muscle tissue had been torn and displaced, leaving his index finger hanging loosely at the knuckle.  Dunford had also lost a great deal more blood.

O’Loughlin got to work on their wounds.

Dr. Simpson cried out in pain when the tincture of iodine ran down into the hollow teeth-shaped ravines in his face, cried still when O’Loughlin scrubbed and picked out the dried bits of blood.  But it was nothing compared to what William Dunford would have to endure.

Catherine Wallis, finally forced to surrender her post at the door to the stairwell, had to assist in the amputation.

O’Loughlin put on some gloves and then got together all the tools he would need on a medical cart.  Dunford squirmed around on the examination table as O’Loughlin then injected a shot of morphine in the web of flesh between his index finger and thumb.

“Mr. Lightoller, do you think you could hold Elise off by yourself?  I could really use another hand.”

“I think so.”  Elise continued her physical assault on the door, though Lightoller seemed to have no problem keeping her contained.

Andrews went to the other side of the examination room, passing Dr. Simpson resting on a bench, and stood across from Catherine.

“I just need you to help keep him still.”

“Okay, I’ll try my best,” Andrews said nervously.

“William, I promise to be as quick as possible.  Here, put this in your mouth.”  He handed Dunford a cloth to bite down on.

O’Loughlin carefully picked up the amputation saw from the medical cart.  Everyone looked away as he then went to work sawing through the remaining bone and connective tissue.

Dunford wailed in misery.

When he was done, O’Loughlin picked up the dead finger and placed it on a towel on top of the medical cart.  He used a scalpel to shape the remaining skin and remove the smaller bits of tissue from the amputation site.  Finally, he sutured up the wound and wiped dry all the excess blood and iodine.  He gave Dunford a small dose of the oral opiate Laudanum for the pain, the same as he had given Dr. Simpson.

“What now?” asked Lightoller, leaning coolly against the door to the second patient room and smoking his pipe.  Elise was still active—still going at it with her fingers and hands.  Her nails had to be whittled down to nothing by now.

“How much longer do you think she has?” asked Andrews.

“Only God knows,” O’Loughlin replied.  “Hopefully soon He will grant her the peace she deserves.”

“Until then, she stays locked up,” said Lightoller.  He banged his fist against the door.  “Don’t want her taking a piece out of anyone else, aye.”

O’Loughlin nodded.  “I think you better go ahead and alert the captain now.  If he has no objections, I’d like to speak with him.  We will make sure Elise doesn’t get out.”

“You shouldn’t have much of a problem.  It’s barely been a challenge.  In fact...” Lightoller stepped away from the door.  “She hasn’t even tried turning the handle.”

“That is very peculiar indeed.  Her mind is even more incapacitated than I thought.”

“That’s good news for us.”

O’Loughlin glanced back at his assistant surgeon and hospital steward both sitting miserably hunched over on a bench and looking weary.  “We shall see.”

April 13, 1912

SMITH

Being the ship’s captain meant you were always on duty—even when you were asleep.

Knock, knock.

Captain Smith sat up and yawned.  The clock next to the bed said 12:12 a.m.  “Who is it?”

“It’s Charles Lightoller, sir.”

“One moment.”

Smith had given specific instructions to his officers to wake him if they had any serious issues, not because he didn’t trust them to successfully handle any situation—he had assembled possibly the finest crew he had ever worked with—but because he felt a genuine responsibility toward every passenger on board.  God forbid if something were to happen, something terrible, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he hadn’t done everything he could to prevent it.  While many among the upper class referred to him as the “Millionaires Captain,” Smith thought of himself a little differently.

He rolled out of bed and threw on a robe before answering the door.

“Charles, you look tired.  What’s the problem?”

“Sorry to wake you, sir,” said Lightoller.  “But we’ve had an issue with one of the passengers.  A young woman from steerage.  She’s very sick and, well, she’s lost all control over her actions.”

“What do you mean she’s lost all control?”

“She’s seriously injured two people already, Dr. Simpson and William Dunford.  Right now we have her confined to one of the patient rooms in the third-class hospital.”

“Where is Murdoch?”

“I don’t know.  I came to you first.  I got caught up in this after my watch concluded.”

“You said this woman is sick and violent?”

“Dr. O’Loughlin believes the sickness itself is making her violent.”

“How?”

Lightoller shrugged.  “He wants to speak with you.”

“I’ll change and meet you down there,” said Smith, starting to shut the door.

“That’s not even the worst part, sir.”

“What are you saying, Charles?”

After getting dressed, Smith accompanied Lightoller down to the third-class hospital.  Lightoller explained the rest of the story along the way, particularly emphasizing how the sickness that currently controlled Elise Brennan’s mind causing her to go insane could be contagious.

Could be.

When they reached the hospital and saw Dr. John Simpson, it seemed almost a certainty.

“His condition began to rapidly deteriorate right after you left,” said O’Loughlin.

“Aye, you could say that,” said Lightoller.

Dr. Simpson was sitting on the bench holding a hand up to the large purple welt on the left side of his face.  He looked like he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

“He has a fever.  A very high fever,” O’Loughlin continued.  “Just like Elise.”

“Where is the steward?” asked Lightoller.

“William is in the other room.  He also has a fever.  He began to feel lightheaded so I suggested he go lay down.  The bad news is I think Elise may have passed whatever ailment she has on when she bit them.  The good news is I don’t believe the virus is airborne.  So I went ahead and told Catherine to leave.  Andrews elected to stay.”

Thomas Andrews shook Captain Smith’s hand and exchanged pleasantries.

“What is that sound?” asked Smith.

“That sound is Elise,” Andrews replied.  “She’s in the other room.”

“Why is she...moaning?”

“I think the virus has made her incapable of normal speech,” O’Loughlin replied.  “Moaning has become her only way of telling us that she wants something.”

“What does she want?”

Elise began to beat her arms against the door.

“To get out,” said O’Loughlin.

“To get at us is more like it,” Lightoller added, lighting up his pipe.

Captain Smith walked over and stood in front of the door to the second patient room.  “How is it that you have her locked in there?”

“That’s the thing.  Along with the ability to speak, she’s also lost the capability of intelligent thought.”

“You’re saying she can’t even turn a door handle, doctor?” asked Smith.

“Exactly.  It is only the inability of her mind to learn and adapt that is keeping her locked up.”

“And I gather you’ve tried everything you can to help her, from a medical standpoint?”

“I can’t even get near her, captain.  Generally, a sick patient wants to get better, and will cooperate in any way I ask.  I’m afraid Elise has passed far beyond that point.  She doesn’t even know she is sick.  In fact, she may even think my intentions are to hurt her, not help her.”

Smith turned from the door to Elise’s room and looked back at Dr. Simpson trembling on the bench.  A slimy, white pus now oozed from the bite marks on his face.  The purple and black swelling increased by the second, giving the appearance that a large grotesque tumor was remapping the cellular structure of his face.

“How much longer does he have?”

O’Loughlin came up beside the captain.  “I don’t know.  Maybe a few hours.  Less if he’s lucky.”

“We have to keep this from spreading any further,” said Smith.  “We can’t take any chances.”

O’Loughlin nodded.

“We are already down one doctor.  We can’t afford to lose you, and we can’t afford to cause a panic.”  Smith turned to face Lightoller and Andrews.  “That means this problem stays here in this room.  The door will remain locked at all times, as this hospital will be off limits to any passengers.  This will stay between us and only us.”

“And Catherine,” said Andrews.

“I’ll have a talk with her in the morning,” said Lightoller.

Smith nodded his approval.  “Is there anyone else?”

“Margaret Brown,” said Andrews.  “I was with her when she spotted Elise on the deck.  She helped bring her to the hospital.”

“But as far as she knows Elise is dead,” said Lightoller.

“That’s right.  She went to her room before Elise went...well, crazy, I suppose.  So she doesn’t know about Dr. Simpson or William.”

“Then let’s keep it that way,” said Smith.  “If she asks, Elise died.”

“It may not even be untrue come sunrise,” said O’Loughlin.  “I can’t imagine her lasting much longer, as fast as the virus is progressing.  Sad as it may sound, we’re very fortunate she has no friends and family aboard.”

“Should we move Dr. Simpson into the room with the steward, just in case he should become violent?”

“I don’t think he will become violent,” said O’Loughlin.  “He’s dying, captain.”

“Elise was dying too,” Lightoller said.  “We had to carry her into the room, have you forgotten?  So she could die a nice comfortable death.  She was as docile as he is now.  How did that turn out?”

Everyone listened as Elise continued her assault on the door.

“He’s right,” said Andrews.

“I don’t think so.  While they might be infected, there is no evidence to suggest their bodies will respond in the same manner.  How do we know Elise didn’t have some underlining mental condition to begin with, and this virus is just exasperating it.  Of course, I can only theorize.”

“No offense, but I’ve had my fill of your theories,” said Lightoller.  “If it’s true you don’t know what this virus is and how it may react, then why should anyone listen to you?”

“Because I have a better understanding of medicine than you do,” O’Loughlin replied.

“You were the one that said Elise was dead,” said Lightoller, raising his voice.  “This is a security issue now.”

“Okay, let’s all calm down,” said Smith.  He took a deep breath and shook his head trying to clear the cobwebs.  What a nightmare.  He felt like he should still be asleep in bed, dreaming of better things.  “All I care about is keeping this contained.  With that said, I am the captain of this ship, and I think that Dr. Simpson should probably stay in the patient room with Mr. Dunford.  I’m sorry, but I don’t want to chance this thing getting out of control.”

O’Loughlin sighed.  “There is only one bed.”

“Then go find another one.  There are unoccupied rooms in the forward hospital.  Bring one of the beds back here.  Thomas, would you mind assisting the doctor?”

“No, that’s not a problem.”

“Thank you.”

Andrews followed O’Loughlin out of the hospital.

“I think the doctor has good intentions, but perhaps the situation regarding his assistant has become too personal and has clouded his judgment.  I need somebody I can trust to watch over this, at least for a little while.  So I’m putting you in charge, Charles.”

Lightoller took a long drag from his pipe.  “Does that mean I’m going to be sleeping here until we reach New York?  I don’t think I can take much more of that racket.”

“No, you will still sleep in your cabin and go about your normal watch.  I just want you to check on the hospital periodically and give me updates.  Don’t tell anyone, including the other officers about this.  People see a crowd down here and they might start to suspect something is wrong.  If we all do our part, only three dead bodies will leave the ship in New York.  Do you understand?”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

They continued watch over the infected until Andrews and O’Loughlin returned with the spare bed.  Then they helped set it up in the first patient room across from the bed William Dunford occupied.  William’s hand was heavily bandaged, so it was difficult to tell its condition; though by the way the steward was gasping for air and staring blankly up at the ceiling, it certainly wasn’t improving.

They carefully moved Dr. Simpson into the room.  He could hardly walk so they had to guide him most of the way.  After they set him down, he looked up at O’Loughlin and attempted to mutter something through lips twice their normal size—something that sounded an awful lot like kill me.

“Get some rest,” O’Loughlin said.  “You’re gonna be fine, my friend.”

Captain Smith watched from a distance, wondering how many times during his long career had Dr. O’Loughlin been forced to lie to a dying patient, and if any of the lies were more difficult than this one.

O’Loughlin stayed with his assistant surgeon for a minute and then finally left the room, closing the door behind him.

“I’m sorry,” said Smith.

“It’s okay.  Sometimes all you can do is just step aside.  Only God can save them all.”

“There are still other passengers on this ship in need of your services.  There is no need to hang around here.  But I do thank you, all of you, for bringing this to my attention.  This hospital will remain closed and locked for the remainder of the trip, and under no circumstances should any of the patients leave this room, or should you speak of this to anyone.  Do I have your word?”

The group nodded and said a collective, “Yes, sir.”

“Goodnight, gentlemen.”

DR. WILLIAM O’LOUGHLIN

Not more than thirty minutes later, when he was sure the coast was clear, O’Loughlin quietly returned to the third-class hospital.  He unlocked the door and stepped inside, immediately struck with the realization that his worst fear had already materialized.

Thirty minutes longer.  That’s all it took.

Perhaps an hour in total from the initial contraction of the virus.

So much for a slow incubation period.

O’Loughlin placed his hand on the door of which his friends and colleagues remained imprisoned behind, and then lowered his head.

“Please God forgive me.”

His friends responded by continuously thrashing their bodies against the door, trying to break free so they could tear him limb from limb.

While moaning...moaning.

“And forgive them.”

BROWN

Eight hours later Margaret Brown wandered around the ship searching for Thomas Andrews.

It had been a long night.  After the ordeal in the third-class hospital, sleep had not come easy.  She had stayed up late worrying about the young woman named Elise Brennan.

Would she live?

Would she die?

Could the virus that had sent Elise into a coma be contagious?  Could it be traveling silently through Margaret’s own blood, as she lay awake in bed pondering these terrible things?

She had no answers.

It was only after reading for a good while that her eyes became heavy and her restless mind finally released its grip.

When morning came, however, her thoughts went right back to where they left off.  She declined an invitation by the Astor’s to attend prayer service, and further declined breakfast in the dining saloon.  She was on a mission for answers, and the only people who could provide them would be the doctors from the previous night, Second Officer Lightoller, or Thomas Andrews.  One of which would hopefully ease her mind.  None of which she could find.

She had begun her search at the third-class hospital, but the door was locked and no one answered to her knocks.  The larger hospital down D-deck was open although she didn’t recognize any of the staff currently on duty.  Margaret asked a nurse named Evelyn Marsden if she had seen Dr. O’Loughlin or Simpson.

Evelyn had replied, “Not since yesterday.”

“Do you know anything about a patient by the name of Elise Brennan?”

“Sorry, there is no patient here by that name.”

Moving on, Margaret then went up to the boat deck and asked around for Second Officer Lightoller.  A quartermaster referred her to Captain Edward Smith, who upon learning her name, pulled her aside and told her the bad news.

Elise Brennan was dead.

According to the captain, Elise had never come out of the coma and simply died during the night.

Margaret was reluctant to let it go at that, probing for answers about the virus, but the captain assured her of passenger safety and insisted there was no more to the story.  There was nothing left to contain because there was nothing left.  It was over.  He concluded by asking her to please keep the conversation between them private.

Margaret agreed.

If he could lie, she could too.

The captain was hiding something.  She didn’t doubt he had the best of intentions and was at heart an authentically honest man, all the best qualities of a lousy liar.  Why would he ask her to keep the conversation between them if there was no story to tell—if it was over—if there was nothing to worry about?

The captain’s words ended up having the opposite effect he intended.

She was more worried now than ever.

She didn’t bother searching for Lightoller anymore, who she thought was sleeping, and who would likely prove even more difficult to break than the captain, and instead searched out her new friend Thomas Andrews.  If anyone would tell her the truth, it would be him.

Up in his room at the top of the aft first-class staircase, a steward was in the process of cleaning and gathering together used plates and silverware.  He met Margaret in the doorway and introduced himself as Henry Etches.  He then told her that Andrews had met with a few of his associates this morning to tour the ship.  He didn’t know when they would be back, but told her she could leave a message.

Margaret politely declined the offer and continued her search across the ship, checking the dining saloon, the lounge, the Café Parisien, the reading and writing room.

Everywhere.

As is often the case, it was only after she gave up that she finally found him.  He was on the boat deck in front of the gymnasium, not far from where she had spoken with Captain Smith.  Two men flanked him on each side examining one of the lifeboats.  They never saw Margaret until she was upon them.

“Planning on going for a ride?”

All five men turned their attention to Margaret.  Andrews looked surprised to see her, and not in a good way.

“Well, I certainly hope not,” one of the men in a leather cap replied.

“Margaret, it’s good to see you,” said Andrews.  “Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Mrs. Margaret Brown.  We just met last night.”

“Nice to meet you all.  Mr. Andrews, you feeling all right?  You look a little—I don’t know—wishy-washy.”

Andrews frowned.  “I feel fine.”

“Oh, thank goodness.  I was afraid you might have come down with something.”

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Andrews said to his associates, and then led Margaret around the corner of the gym to a spot out of sight.

“Was I not subtle enough?”  Margaret asked.  “I’ve never been too good at that.”

“Listen, Margaret, I can’t—”

“Who are those men?”

“Members of my design team.  They came along to assist me.”

“Oh, how nice.  Trained problem spotters.”

“Sort of.”

“They didn’t see me coming.  What’s wrong with the lifeboats?”

“Nothing.  Margaret, please, I really must go.  Can we talk another time?”

“Not until you tell me what happened to Elise Brennan?  I know she’s not dead.”

Andrews’s fidgety demeanor confirmed her suspicions before he even said a word.  He looked back around the corner of the gym to make sure no one was within earshot.  His associates were talking and laughing amongst themselves.

“Who did you talk to?”

“The captain.”

“The captain told you she’s not dead?”  Andrews sighed.  “Of all people.”

“No, he was the one I talked to.  He told me she was dead.  You told me she wasn’t.”

“I’m confused.”

“So am I,” Margaret replied.  “So are you gonna tell me what happened after I left last night or what?”

“You know, I shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

“Come on, I promise I won’t tell nobody.”

“There’s been a lot of promising going on,” Andrews whispered.  “Look, I can’t talk about this right now.  Come to my room later this afternoon.  I’ll tell you everything.”

“Splendid.”  Margaret took off around the corner to where the four men were waiting.  “Sorry to be a pain in the rear and waste everyone’s time.”

“No worries,” one of the men said.

“How many people can you fit into one of these boats anyway?”

“About sixty-five.  Maybe seventy.”

Andrews rejoined the group.  “Not nearly enough.”

“Enough for the trade board,” another man said.

“I wanted more boats but I was overruled,” Andrews said to Margaret.  “As it stands we only have enough boats for a little over half of the passengers on board.”

Margaret shook her head in disgust.

“Nothing to fear though,” Andrews continued.  “This ship is as strong as they come.”

“I’ll take you at your word.  Back to work, boys.”  Margaret clapped Andrews on the shoulder and then left for the forward entrance to the first-class staircase.

SMITH

“Four hundred and eighty-four was the first days run,” said Bruce Ismay.

Captain Smith nodded.  “Yes.  We did better than the Olympic.”

“Indeed.  Better by twenty-six miles.”

Smith and Ismay sat across from each other in the reception room on the starboard side of D-deck.  Two cups of coffee were on a table between them.

The reception room was one of many places on the ship where first-class passengers could go to relax and converse with their companions.  The decor was more casual than that of the lounge or smoking room.  There was a good number of available chairs, all represented by a green and white color scheme that carried over to the walls and potted plants nestled up next to most of the support pillars.  The carpet with its rusty red color and geometric patterns offered an unusual but visually pleasing contrast.

“Yesterday’s run was not quite what I expected.  A gain of thirty-five miles over the first day, but fell short of the Olympic.  I have nothing but confidence that we can and will do better going forward.”

“There’s still over three days left,” said Smith.  “I think tomorrow’s run will be more than satisfactory.”

“There is no reason to think not.  Now that we know the boilers can withstand the pressure, I say we make a bold statement,” Ismay said ardently.  “We must turn all the heads at Cunard.”

Ismay, being the managing director at the White Star Line, had a lot to gain in the ever-escalating battle over the Atlantic.  Britain’s Cunard Line was their main rival in the race, and had absorbed a bit more of the market in recent years with the success of the Lusitania and Mauretania.

Captain Smith took a long sip from his cup of coffee and then said, “I’m not so sure that is a good idea.  While everything has gone rather smoothly...”  Smith stopped and thought for a moment about the ongoing incident on the other end of D-deck—the unexplainable illness that if not properly contained could threaten all the lives on board and leave an ugly final mark on his otherwise remarkable career.  “Hasn’t the ship itself already made enough of a statement, Mr. Ismay?  Cunard is on their heels.”

“Imagine the surprise if we arrive in New York on Tuesday.  What will the papers say?”  Ismay smiled wildly as he built his case.  “Everyone already knows that Titanic is second to none in size and luxury.  But her speed, captain...her speed should not be underestimated.”

“Neither should the danger of pushing her too fast,” Smith replied.  “We could be approaching thick sections of field ice soon.”

“Are there any reports of this?”

“Yes.  The La Touraine reported ice yesterday, and the steamer Rappahannock signaled similar warnings as it passed us earlier today.  So far, we haven’t spotted anything yet.  Still, we will maintain our southerly route around the Grand Banks to avoid excessive fog and thus any hidden icebergs.”

Ismay wore the expression of a man who wasn’t used to being challenged, a man who without even saying a word often exuded confidence and strength just through his appearance.  He was rather tall and always kept himself well manicured and dressed in the finest attire.  To top it off, he had sharply defined facial features and a dark mustache that seemed to over accentuate the scowling indignation he now showed toward Smith.

“The boilers are holding up.  The engines are working well.  You said it yourself, Cunard is on their heels.”  Ismay spoke slow and assuredly.  “You may be retiring after this but the future of the White Star Line goes on.  Let’s show the papers that the Titanic is more than just luxury.  Let’s give them a headline they won’t soon forget.”

They sat for a moment in silence.  Smith finished off the last of his coffee as he gazed to his right out a large arched top window.  In the corner of the room, a pianist sat down behind a grand piano and began playing something by Chopin.

Smith scratched at his beard, considering Ismay’s proposal that he increase the ship’s speed.  He understood Ismay was simply doing his job, doing what anyone in his position as managing director would do.  He had to sell the line, always sell the line.  Public image was very important in this business, and so he had to keep reinforcing their strength in the industry, as their competitors would surely reinforce any perceived weakness.  All the same, Smith didn’t like feeling as though his opinion as captain wasn’t being respected.

But none of those things—not the fairly routine warnings of bergs in the area, nor the unrelenting diminishment of his pride by Ismay’s less than admirable motives—was the reason he decided to go ahead with the increase in speed.

The real reason, all three of them, lay unusually self-contained on the other end of the ship.

Self-contained.  For now.

But for how much longer?

Last report from Second Officer Lightoller before lunch showed no change in the situation from his first report at sunrise, which could be construed as both a good thing and a bad thing.  Good because the barrier between the virus and the rest of the passengers on the ship seemed to be holding up, and bad because he had expected the three of them would be dead by now.  And as long as they remained alive, the risk of further infection would always be there nibbling on his nerves.  Getting to New York by Tuesday, one day earlier than planned, was one less day he’d have to sweat this terrible thing out.

ANDREWS

There was a long moment of silence, easily the longest they had shared since they met.

Margaret had come to his stateroom just as he had asked her to earlier on the boat deck, and then he had told her everything.  Over tea.

And now he felt like a traitor.

He had promised Captain Smith that he wouldn’t tell anybody about what had happened last night.  Smith had done his part in squelching any panic.  He had managed to ward off Margaret’s persuasive personality.  When confronted, he had lied.

Andrews caved.

He had considered lying, but Margaret was the kind of woman who wouldn’t respond well to being made a fool.  She guarded her emotions closely.  She wouldn’t believe his lie anymore than the captains.

And now that the truth was out in the open, he waited on the tip of his chair to see how she would respond—her rare silence puzzling him.  Naturally, she was wrestling with the authenticity of the story.  He knew how it sounded.  It sounded unbelievable.

Crazy.

Margaret stared at him with the fierce, examining eyes of a private investigator.  She was inside his head, prying around, searching for clues.

Finally, she said, “You expect me to believe that?”

“Unfortunately, as outrageous and disturbing as it may sound, it’s all true.”

“You swear?”

“I swear I’ve told you everything I know.”

Andrews sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.  While he still felt ashamed for having betrayed Captain Smith’s confidence, he also felt relieved to have told the story to someone, least of all to Margaret, who more than anyone else on the ship probably had a right to know given her close contact the previous night with Elise Brennan.

“Everything you know?”

“Yes.  I left sometime after midnight.  I can’t speak for anything that may or may not have happened since then.  I haven’t spoken with any of the others today about it, and I don’t intend to.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s out of my hands.”

“You don’t care what happens to them?  You made it sound like they are basically prisoners.”

“It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that there is nothing more I can do.  It’s a medical problem, and a security issue, neither of which are my area of expertise.  Elise attacked two people and so she remains in isolation.  If Dr. Simpson and William Dunford have since come down with the same condition, then they too should probably remain locked up.  For everyone’s safety.”

“So it’s possible the captain wasn’t lying after all?”

“You know, I hadn’t really considered the idea that Elise could actually be dead.  Dr. O’Loughlin had certainly doubted she would make it through the night.  I just assumed that when you came to me and said that Captain Smith told you she was dead that he was just following the plan.”

“The plan to lie to me?”

“Well, yes.  I never gave much thought to the underlining sincerity of his statement.  Of course I didn’t hear it directly from him.”

“I can usually tell when someone is feeding me fiction, and he sure sounded like he was telling tales.”

Andrews shrugged.  “Perhaps.  I’m not going to make it my business to get further involved.”

“I respect that.  Thank you for at least being honest with me.”

“Margaret, promise me you won’t tell anyone what I’ve told you.  Promise me you won’t make it your business to get involved.”

“Don’t you worry about that.  You have a reputation I wouldn’t dare spoil, Mr. Andrews.  You have my word.  Will I see you at dinner this evening?”

“I’ll be there.”

LIGHTOLLER

10:11 p.m.

His second watch was over, and Lightoller had only to complete his final walk of the ship before heading to his cabin for some much needed sleep.

Considering the extreme events of the previous night, today had gone smoother than he had expected.

The captain had placed him in charge of monitoring the third-class hospital and the three sick and maniacal patients quarantined therein.  He had already checked-in three times today.  Once at the start and close of his first four hour watch this morning, and again at the open of his second watch shortly after six in the evening.

While the first visit had yielded some unpleasant news to return to the captain—that the poor souls in room number one had caught the “crazy” bug from the young woman in room number two—the last two reports showed virtually no change.

From the moment he had the door unlocked, they could sense he was there, no matter how quiet or still he tried to be.  He figured they could smell him, which he attributed to his smoking.  Once they had identified his presence, the three would then begin to claw at the doors and vocalize their feelings toward him in their special way.

He didn’t spend much time with them.  Maybe a few minutes each visit.  This had just become part of his daily routine; one that he didn’t think would last much longer.  He expected soon he’d walk in and hear no movement from either of the rooms, no futile attempt at speech.

Because they would be dead.

And he’d be glad to deliver the news to the captain, and Smith would be equally glad to hear it.  Not because these three deserved to die, but because in Lightoller’s mind, they were already dead.

What good is living without the self awareness to control one’s actions, without a mind capable of love or friendship, capable of creating long lasting memories, or to even figure out how to do such simple things like working a door handle?  And even if by some off chance they could be saved, they would likely never be the same, in need of constant care and assistance.

What kind of life is that?

Just let them die, Lightoller thought, descending the third-class staircase.  Let God cure them of what man cannot.

As he reached the landing to D-deck, a few passengers came around the corner and made their way past him up the stairs.  When they were gone, he unlocked the door to the hospital, stepped inside, and then closed and relocked the door behind him.

“Shit,” Lightoller whispered.

They were still alive, with no apparent decrease in energy.  They shuffled up to the doors and began pounding and scratching away.

Lightoller slowly crossed the room and sat down on a bench.  He pulled a tuft of tobacco from the pocket of his uniform and began to load his pipe, humming to himself.  When finished, he took a drag and laid his head back against the wall, struggling to keep his eyes open.

He hadn’t gotten much more than three hours of sleep last night.  He managed another hour or two after his first watch ended during the afternoon, but it wasn’t nearly enough.  Sleeping in small increments was never as satisfying as a good long night of careless dreaming.  Tonight he hoped to catch back up.

But not here.

Definitely not here.

Not with that awful noise in the background.

The sound that stirred him back to attention didn’t come from one of the three living dead though—it came from the main door to the hospital.  Someone had inserted a key into the lock.

A moment later, Dr. William O’Loughlin came into the room.  He shut the door behind him and walked over to the first patient room, completely unaware that Lightoller was sitting over in the corner.

Lightoller watched the doctor whisper to himself, seemingly grief stricken, and then finally revealed his presence.  “Need something?”

Dr. O’Loughlin jumped at the sound of the voice, and then looked over at Lightoller, alarmed, trying to catch his breath.  “Jesus.  You scared me.  What on earth are you doing here?”

Lightoller stood up.  “I should ask you the same thing.”

“I’m a doctor.  This is a hospital.”

“Have you forgotten what the captain said?”

“No, and I haven’t said a word to anyone.”

“You just came by to do what then?”

“To check on the patients.”

“They’re not patients.  And you know it.”

“They may be dying, but they are still human beings.  I don’t expect you to understand.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Am I not allowed to offer my prayers?”

“You can pray all you like, doctor, just not here.  This room is off limits, captain’s orders.”

O’Loughlin hung his head and began pacing around the room.

“This isn’t about praying, is it?  What are you really doing here?”

“I told you,” O’Loughlin scowled.  “I came to check on them.”

“To see if they were still alive?”

“Yes to see if they were still alive.”

“You feel guilty.”

“What if I do, is that so wrong?  They don’t deserve to be locked up.”

“They’re not locked up.”

“You know what I mean.  They’re sick.  They’re not criminals.”

“That may be, but whatever sickness they have is causing them to act violently.  What do you suggest we do with them, let them roam free on the ship attacking other passengers?”

“No, of course not.  But I don’t think we should just wash our hands and leave them to die either.”

“They can’t be saved.”

“How do you know that?  We haven’t even tried.  We expected them to be dead by now.  But it’s been over twenty-four hours since they last had any food or water.  Are we to just let them starve to death?  It’s inhumane.  Who are we to play God?”

“I’m not playing God,” said Lightoller.  “There are two-thousand other passengers on this ship.  Somebody has to look out for them.  I won’t risk endangering their lives.  I won’t have that on my conscience.  If three people must die to ensure their safety, so be it.  I’m sorry if a few of them had to be your friends, I truly am, but your job here is done.”

O’Loughlin stared at the floor.  “What do you know about saving lives?”

“I have a job to do just like you.  Need I get the captain to remind you of your responsibilities?”

O’Loughlin shook his head and sighed.

“It’s time to go, doctor.”

April 14, 1912

O’LOUGHLIN

Time to go back, O’Loughlin thought, checking the time.

It was after midnight, over two hours since the confrontation with Second Officer Lightoller.  Since then he had been going over everything in his head, hatching together a plan.

The pros and cons.

The risks and rewards.

There was a lot to consider.  The second officer was right in that they couldn’t let the virus get beyond the confines of the hospital, and O’Loughlin was determined to not let that happen.  A catastrophe like that would be career ending.  Where they disagreed, where their professions collided, was in the treatment of the patients.

Lightoller wanted to simply walk away, a valid approach last night when a quick death seemed imminent, and one that O’Loughlin had accepted at the time.  The virus had taken hold so monstrously fast that he’d never imagined they’d still be alive twenty-four hours later.

But somehow they were.

And that changed everything for him.

If they’ve been able to survive this long, perhaps they could make it until they reached New York.  There was a limited amount of testing and evaluation that could be done on the ship.  On land, they could have access to much better medical services and equipment.  More doctors.  More opinions.  Maybe even find out who the mystery man was that infected Elise.  If they could find out the origin of the virus, maybe they could find a way to treat it.

Maybe.

Or maybe it would all be wasted time.

O’Loughlin had never been one to settle for the easy answer.  In medicine there were few.  Around every corner lay a tough decision.  This time was no different.  But if there were even a slight chance he could save those three, two of them his colleagues, then he would do whatever he had to do, even if he had to do it alone.

He wouldn’t just let them starve.

So he gathered together a tray with two loaves of bread, three empty glasses, and a large pitcher of water.  Not a meal worthy of first-class, but it was something.  And then he quietly headed back to the hospital.

The stairwell was empty when he arrived.  Most in steerage were probably sleeping, and those that weren’t were probably one deck up in the general room.  O’Loughlin carefully set the tray down by the stairs and then unlocked the door to the hospital.  Before going back for the tray, he made sure that no one, particularly Lightoller, was inside the hospital waiting for him.

He brought the tray inside and set it on the exam table and then shut and locked the door.

His friends were awake and active, as usual.  The virus had a stimulating effect.

A heavy wooden bench sat directly between the two patient rooms.  O’Loughlin pushed the bench over until it was in front of the door to the first patient room, hoping the bench would act as a barrier just in case he wasn’t strong enough to keep his sick friends from pushing the door open completely.

The plan was simple.

He would open the doors just far enough to slide the bread into the rooms, and then do the same with the water.  As long as he kept his limbs out of the door, everything would be okay.

Simple.

He grabbed the food tray from the examination table and placed it on one side of the wooden bench.  Then he moved the bench out about six inches to give space for the door to open, and then sat down next to the tray.

The door trembled in its frame as Dr. Simpson and William Dunford went to work playing the drums on the other side.  They voiced their discontent with the most unnatural of sounds.

O’Loughlin ignored their warnings, and went ahead and turned the doorknob.

The door came open in a hurry and slammed against the wooden bench, pushing it out a few extra inches.  A second later, an arm emerged through the opening.  The fingertips were worn down to the bone, oozing congealed blood.

O’Loughlin froze, staring at the arm he was sure belonged to Dr. Simpson.

A ghastly odor wafted outward from the room—the stench of death and decay.

And it was in that moment that O’Loughlin realized he had made a huge mistake.

He pushed back hard against the door punishing the arm in the doorjamb.  He continued again and again, pushing back, expecting his assistant surgeon would eventually retract his arm and allow the door to close.  But it seemed their sanity wasn’t the only thing the virus took.

Dr. Simpson showed no willingness to retreat, no sign that he felt any pain at all, despite the grotesque popping sound that accompanied the breaking of his forearm.  He kept clawing outside the door, moaning more voraciously than ever, determined to seize O’Loughlin between his ruined fingers.

O’Loughlin looked down at the tray of bread and water next to him, and wondered how he could have been so foolish.  He might not have been in the room last night when Elise went crazy, but he saw firsthand the destruction she had inflicted—the dead look in her eyes that followed it.  Yet he allowed his good feelings toward his former associates, perhaps even his ill feelings toward Lightoller, to cloud his better judgment.

And now here he sat looking down at a useless tray of bread and water.  Trapped.  While the former shells of his associates pushed back against the door, wanting to get out, wanting to get him.

The useful tray was across the room sitting on his supply cart.

He’d only have a few seconds.

He used all his strength to push the bench back as far as he could—Dr. Simpson’s arm still dangling battered and bruised in the doorjamb—and then darted across the room.  As he came to the supply cart, he could already hear the sound of the wooden bench’s stumps rapping against the floor behind him.  His friends were slowly inching the door further and further open.  Luckily, O’Loughlin found what he needed right away.  It was right on top where he had left it, still filthy with blood from the previous night.

The amputation saw.

He got back to the bench just as Dr. Simpson was wedging part of his shoulder and head around the door.  What O’Loughlin saw then nearly caused his heart to stop beating.

The right side of Dr. Simpson’s face looked like it had exploded, leaving a gaping hole where most of his teeth and some ragged remnants of muscle tissue were left exposed.  Because of this, his mouth was locked in a permanent, drooling snarl.  A few scattered hairs of his mustache remained on the other side.

But his eye was the worst part.

The right eye looked strangely like a fishing lure bobbing on the surface of a lake.  Only the lure was a bloody elongated eyeball and the lake was the skinless socket of a half-wrecked nightmarish face that belonged only in the furthest reaches of hell.

The left eye, however, was still intact and usable.  And it was staring right at O’Loughlin.

Inch by inch, the wooden bench slid further out.  The creature that was Dr. Simpson was almost free.

O’Loughlin unfroze and lunged forward, jabbing the pointy end of the saw into the assistant surgeon’s face.  Then he pulled the saw out and did it again.

And again.

Like he was hammering a nail into a wall.

Each time Dr. Simpson withdrew his head a little bit.  On the final time, as O’Loughlin pulled the saw back out, the dangling right eye caught the teeth of the saw severing the optic nerve that held it in place.  The eyeball bounced off O’Loughlin’s coat and landed on the tray between the bread and water.

The head was now out of the way but the broken arm remained.  O’Loughlin hurried to push the bench back to its original position, accidently spilling some of the water from the pitcher in the process, and then got to work on the arm.

Sawing.

Forward and back.  Forward and back.

Oily, dark blood seeped out of the arm and ran down the doorjamb.

Dr. Simpson still showed no sign he felt any pain and increased the pressure against the door.

The bench slid back out an inch.

O’Loughlin struggled to push back against the door as he put most of his weight into sawing through the arm.  He was halfway through the bone, the most strenuous part, when the battle came to an abrupt end.

He slipped and fell backward, his head nearly striking the exam table, and landed on his back a few feet from the first patient room.  The amputation saw flew out of his hand and skittered across the floor, far out of reach.

He looked down at his shoes.

A small puddle was in front of the bench.  The pitcher of water had defeated him.

A moment later, his friends plowed through the door and lumbered over him, hungry.

This is it, O’Loughlin thought.

William Dunford looked slightly better in appearance than Dr. Simpson, despite missing his right arm.  It lay behind him on the floor, the hand still heavily bandaged.  His face was a pale grey color, though still recognizable.

The smell that poured out from the room made O’Loughlin start to cough, a smell that no living thing could possibly produce.

But the two men standing in front of him weren’t living things, O’Loughlin now knew, not anymore.  These two were something entirely new.  Not alive, and not dead.  Existing somewhere in between.

The undead.

It was time to panic.

O’Loughlin rolled on to his chest and crawled toward the main door.  His two undead associates hurried after him, tumbling over the wooden bench, knocking the two loaves of bread and the remaining water to the floor.

O’Loughlin carefully stood up, unlocked and threw open the door, but something from below prevented him from crossing the threshold.

He looked down.

The something was William Dunford—he was holding on to O’Loughlin’s ankle with his left, and only, arm.  Behind him, Dr. Simpson was unsuccessfully attempting to stand up in the puddle of water.  O’Loughlin worked to shake his leg free, but Dunford had a powerful grip, and he used it to pull himself closer—his mouth open, ready to feed.  He kicked Dunford repeatedly in the face with his free leg, yanked and twisted and squirmed, and still couldn’t detach the steward from his ankle.

Then he heard the scream.

O’Loughlin looked out into the stairwell at a young woman no more than twenty-five standing at the base of the stairs.  She stared at him with a look of horrified shock.  O’Loughlin stared back blankly, gasping for each breath, as all the world around him seemed to fade into a dreamlike silence.

He didn’t ask her to help him.  He knew he didn’t deserve the help, and she didn’t deserve to be put in that kind of danger.  She was too scared to move anyway, too scared to speak or even scream again.  Her look expressed all of his worst fears coming true.  And his, all the guilt.

“Go find help!” he yelled.

But she didn’t move.  She had her eyes fixed on him, slowly widening, while the thing that was once William Dunford wrapped its solo arm around his right leg from behind and slithered up toward his waist.

She finally conceded and ran up the staircase after a second creature, one with only half a face, clutched the good doctor’s shoulders from behind and took a mouthful of flesh from the side of his neck.

SMITH

For the second night in a row, Captain Smith found himself being woken suddenly by one of his officers.  This time it was First Officer William Murdoch, who was more distraught than Smith had ever seen him.  Murdoch spit out the entire story as fast as he could.

A young woman from steerage had practically jumped into his arms, he recounted, begged for him to do something.  Through her sobs, she tried to explain.  She spoke of horribly disfigured monsters on D-deck, creatures Mary Shelley couldn’t even imagine.

Murdoch didn’t believe her.

She was delusional.

Then he went down to see for himself.

She had stayed up on the boat deck under the watch of Sixth Officer James Moody, defiant in her unwillingness to follow Murdoch back down there.

Upon reaching the landing on D-deck, the first officer understood why.

“As I came down the stairs I could see the hospital door was open,” Murdoch told Smith.  “And when I got closer I saw blood all around the door, and all over the floor.  Some even on the walls.  So I carefully stepped inside the hospital...and I swear to God, sir...”  He paused to gather himself.  Smith now noticed Murdoch was trembling.  “It was like a damn butcher shop in there.”

Having heard enough, Smith immediately ordered Murdoch to wake the others and then meet him on the bridge.  Less than ten minutes later, all the officers gathered in the wheelhouse waiting further orders.  Of them, only Murdoch and Lightoller had any clue why they were there.  The captain first spoke with his second in command, Chief Officer Henry T. Wilde, in private, and then after Wilde left the bridge, turned and addressed the rest of the group.

“I’ll try to be as brief as possible, gentlemen, because we don’t have a lot of time.  I promise to give you a more thorough explanation later.”

Smith took a deep breath.

“Mr. Murdoch has brought to my attention a very serious situation on D-deck.  There were three patients staying in the hospital down there who were carrying a deadly virus, and despite our best efforts to keep it contained, keep them contained, it seems they’ve somehow escaped.  I can’t stress enough how dangerous these individuals may be.  The virus causes them to become extremely violent and noncompliant, as both Lightoller and Murdoch can attest.”

“How will we know who they are?” asked Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall.

“You’ll know,” Lightoller replied.  “Trust me.”

“The biggest problem is we don’t know where they are,” Smith continued.  “Most likely they are still down on D-deck.  So for now we’re going to order all passengers not already sleeping to their staterooms, hopefully to limit any further contamination.  Chief Officer Wilde has already begun gathering as many crewmembers as possible to assist in the lockdown.  I’m going to remain on the bridge with Quartermaster Hichens so you can find me here if you need me.  Pittman, Boxhall, Lowe, and Moody.  I want you guys to spread out and take different sections of the ship.  Be on the lookout for anything suspicious, and more importantly, make sure everyone gets to their rooms.  We don’t need passengers panicking, or worse, curious.  Be as respectful as you can, but don’t be afraid to exercise force if you must.  As I said, we mustn’t allow any further contamination of the ship.  Please go now and be careful.”

Smith checked the time.  12:54 a.m.

“Report back in an hour.”

The four officers nodded and then hurried out of the wheelhouse.  Smith signaled for Murdoch and Lightoller to follow him outside, beyond the listening range of Quartermaster Hichens who was at the wheel.

“I want you to go down to D-deck and find those three patients.  Start at opposite ends and then meet up in the middle.”

“I’ll start at the stern,” said Lightoller, “with the third-class hospital.”

Murdoch seemed more than satisfied with that arrangement.

“Before you go, let me be absolutely clear with both of you.  When you find those three,” Smith said, “I don’t want you to try and save them, nor do I want you to try and restrain them.  I want you to put them out of their misery.”  The two senior officers responded with icy cold expressions.  “Get the guns.  It’s time we end this madness.”

LIGHTOLLER

The guns were in a locked storage chest in Murdoch’s cabin.  White Star policy ordered that there be a minimum of four revolvers on board, one for each of the senior officers—Smith, Wilde, Murdoch, and Lightoller—and that they be held and maintained under the care of the first officer.

Murdoch sifted through the chest and handed Lightoller one of the four-inch-barreled Webley revolvers, and then set a box of ammunition on the floor between them.

“What should I be expecting down there?” asked Lightoller.  He broke open the top-loading revolver and began inserting the rounds.

“What do you mean?”

“At the hospital.  You were just down there, right?  I saw the look on your face when I said that I’d start there.  What should I be expecting?”

Murdoch finished loading and looked up at Lightoller.  The troubled look on his face told terrible tales worse than any words could.

“Expect hell,” he finally said.

Lightoller nodded.  “Better take some backup then.”  He pocketed a handful of ammo.  Murdoch did the same, and then relocked the remaining contents of the chest.

They left the room and hurried off in opposite directions.

Wilde and the junior officers must have done a good job clearing the way; the ship was as still and serene as Lightoller had ever seen it.  The fact that it was so late, and the coldest night so far, also didn’t hurt.  His hands, however, ached with each powerful gust of wind, as he held the revolver stoically down by his side.

He ran into Sixth Officer James Moody on the aft well deck.  At twenty-four-years-old, Moody was the youngest of the junior officers.  Lightoller had served briefly with him on the Oceanic.

“How is it?”

“Quiet.  No trouble,” said Moody.  “Just finished clearing the general room and smoke room.”  Moody noticed the gun in Lightoller’s hand.  “And you, sir?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

Some passengers stepped out of the entrance to the second-class staircase above.  Moody quickly moved in and began ushering them back inside.  Lightoller continued through the door to the third-class stairwell and down to D-deck into the hell Murdoch had said to expect.

It poured out of the hospital.

Dark red blood.

Everywhere.

There were a number of bloody handprints on the floor with small pieces of pink flesh sprinkled about like dead bugs caught in tree sap.

The hospital door was half-open.  Lightoller raised the revolver and pushed open the door the rest of the way.

From somewhere came a scream, breaking the eerie silence of the stairwell.  Then the sound of stomping feet, running.

For a moment, Lightoller considered taking the bait, but it seemed he wasn’t the only one with that idea.  The scream had stirred something else awake.

Lightoller cautiously stepped inside the hospital.  The door to the first patient room was wide open, its contents gone except for an arm.  The back of the door had long valleys of missing wood where the patients had tried to claw their way out.  Tried.  And they had come damn near close to succeeding, but the door was otherwise still in one solid piece.  They hadn’t escaped then, as Lightoller had assumed.  No, someone had come in and opened the door, and the bread and water strewn across the floor gave the guilty party away.

“O’Loughlin,” Lightoller whispered.

The doctor had attempted to do what any doctor would have done in his position.

He had tried to save them.

And I should have known, Lightoller thought.

But where was the doctor now, and where were the patients?  Of them only one remained, still hopelessly stuck behind the closed door of the second patient room.

Her.

The first.

Elise Brennan.

The captain gave specific orders on what to do if they found any of the patients.

Put them out of their misery.

Here goes.

Lightoller hunkered into the corner next to the second patient room, cocked back the hammer on the revolver, and then swung open the door.  Elise stumbled out into the exam room confused and disoriented, grasping at air.  She crashed into a bench and almost lost her balance.

Lightoller slowly came out from his hiding spot behind the door and whistled.

“Hey you.”

He raised the revolver.

Over the course of twenty-four hours, the once attractive Elise Brennan had morphed into nothing short of an abomination.  In her diary she had wrote about being stuck in the neck with a needle on the dock at Queenstown.  Since then her neck had gone from red to purple to black, and had grown like a tumor out of control into something that now resembled a second head.  And this new head pulsed angrily, having already eaten most of her nose and one of her eyes, and threatened to take the rest of her face.  Elise deserved death like a caged animal deserves freedom.

She took one step toward Lightoller.

Her last step.

The bullet opened a fissure between her two heads causing a fountain of blood and brain matter to spray up and rain down.  She collapsed to the floor and writhed, severely wounded but still moaning and trying to crawl on her hands in an expanding pool of dead blood.

It took one more shot for Lightoller to finish the job—this one sailed directly through her brain stem.  She went limp immediately.

One down.  Two to go.

He left the hospital.

Crimson tracks led around the stairs to the men’s lavatory.  Inside, a corpse lay broken and destroyed in the corner.  The victims head looked like it had been smashed against the washbasin until its brains fell out.  Despite the face being horribly rearranged, Lightoller knew immediately who the victim was; they had left an arm back in the hospital room.

Put them out of their misery.

Someone had gotten here first.

Two down.  One to go.

As Lightoller went to leave, he heard whimpering coming from one of the stalls.  He tapped the Webley’s barrel on the stall door and said, “Hello?”

After a brief hesitation, the person in the stall unlocked and opened the door.

Lightoller peered down at the older gentleman sitting on the toilet, fully clothed.  Seeing the gun pointed at him, the old man reared back and surrendered his hands in the air.  They were covered in blood.

“Christ,” said Lightoller.  “So...you did this?”

The old man looked confused for a moment and then shook his head.  It was obvious he understood very little English.  “I help,” he finally replied, still blubbering like a baby.  “Doc—tor.”

Lightoller let the word settle in his brain.

Doctor.

O’Loughlin or Simpson?

Where were they?

“Up,” Lightoller said, backing out of the stall.  “You’re coming with me.”

The old man followed Lightoller back to the stairwell.  A lighter set of red footprints led to a door to a section of second-class rooms left of the hospital.  He had been so focused on the hell pouring out of the hospital earlier he hadn’t noticed this door was cracked open.  He could already hear voices on the other side.

Going through that door was like stepping through a portal into another dimension.  The stillness of the small third-class stairwell was gone.  Here was what he had expected to find all along.

Chaos.

People were everywhere, crowding the halls.  A middle-aged woman with short curly brown hair approached him and tugged at his coat.

“Officer, officer!”

“What’s wrong?”

She led him all the way down the hall and then around the corner to the right.  As they passed the landing to the second-class staircase, Lightoller realized the old man he had found in the lavatory wasn’t behind him anymore.  The halls were even more crowded on this end, everyone pushing forward to get a better view of something.  When they noticed Lightoller in uniform, most people calmly stepped aside and cleared a path.

The crowd thinned out at a narrow hallway that led to a final set of rooms in the section.  At the end of the hall, hunched over on the floor with its back to the crowd, was the last of the three patients.

Dr. Simpson.

Beneath the doctor were two bodies.  The first was a half-naked woman with a large hole for a stomach, the contents currently being consumed by the doctor.

He had torn through her clothing.

He had chewed through her skin.

He had pried open her ribcage.

All to get at the warm meat inside, the vital organs and intestines that had once worked around the clock to keep this woman alive, now used as fuel for an appetite that had no end.

Lightoller tried to quiet the crowd around him as many yelled and cried and demanded that something be done, while the doctor plunged his head inside the dead woman’s chest cavity and removed her heart with all the ease and indifference of a vulture.  When he was done eating her heart, he stopped for a moment and crooked his head back at the crowd gathered thirty feet behind him.  Then he made a move for the second body causing Lightoller to step out from the pack.

The second body lying motionless under the doctor appeared to be that of a young boy of nine or ten.  There was some blood on his face and his clothing, but no visible signs of decay, or in the case of his mother next to him, disembowelment.

Lightoller strolled toward the doctor with the revolver raised out in front of him.  Dr. Simpson stumbled to his feet.  The first shot hit him in the upper chest, near the heart, the second a few inches to the left.  Lightoller was surprised as neither shot put the doctor down or even slowed his forward progress, if anything they only seemed to make him angrier.

For the third shot, Lightoller aimed higher and put a hole in the neck.  But still, nothing.

He had one shot left and no time to reload.  In a second, the doctor would be upon him.

Lightoller pulled the trigger and watched as the bullet shattered the doctor’s teeth and split his head open between his jaws.  A spray of bone fragments and dark red blood exited Dr. Simpson’s head from the rear.  He wobbled in place for a moment and then toppled to the ground.

Lightoller took a few steps back so the doctor wouldn’t land on his feet.  He reached in his coat pocket, took out a handful of bullets, and then quickly reloaded the Webley.

“Just in case,” he said, and fired a final shot through the side of the former doctor’s head.  The crowd behind him breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“Is anybody hurt?” Lightoller asked.

“Charles,” a familiar voice said from somewhere in the back.  People moved out of the way to allow First Officer Murdoch to the front.  “You okay?”

“Fine.”

Murdoch looked over Lightoller’s shoulder at the corpses down the hallway.  “Fine, huh?  I heard the gunshots.  What happened?”

“Just following orders.”

“All three?”

“No, just the one with the busted head.  But there are two others.  One is in the third-class hospital, the other in the lavatory.  You find anything?”

“Yeah, there’s a bunch of injured people at the main hospital.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know...a dozen or so.”

Lightoller sighed.  “I was afraid of that.  We’re gonna have to quarantine them.”

“The staff is doing their best to work on them right now.  Can’t find O’Loughlin though.  Went to his room but the door is locked and he’s not answering.”

“It doesn’t matter.  O’Loughlin can’t help them anyway.  If they’ve been bitten, they can’t be saved.  We have to gather them all together, and we need to clean up this mess.”

Murdoch stared passed him.  “Um...Charles.”  The expressions of many in the crowd followed Murdoch’s lead, overcome with disbelief.

“We have to get everyone back to their—” Lightoller finally realized Murdoch wasn’t listening to him anymore.  “What...what is it?”

He turned and looked down the narrow hallway at the young boy standing statuesque, looking down at his mother.  The boy then raised his head and stared back at the crowd, as if he had sensed all the eyes watching him.

Everyone fell silent.

Lightoller gripped the revolver tighter, his hands starting to sweat, watching the boy’s eyes carefully examine the crowd.  The boy didn’t look lost or scared or upset, as one would expect given the unfortunate state of his mother.  Lightoller knew the look well, having seen it many times over the last twenty-four hours.  The boy’s eyes were glossed over.  His soul had already departed to a better place.

He was dead.

Lightoller raised the revolver and slowly cocked back the hammer with his thumb.

A short, scrawny man in a flat cap grabbed his arm from behind.  “No, what are you doing?”

Lightoller turned and put an elbow in the unlikely hero’s chest, shoving him backward.  “Get your damn hands off me!”

“He didn’t do anything!  He’s just a child!”

“He’s infected!”

Murdoch stepped between Lightoller and the angry passenger.  He brandished his revolver so everyone could see it.  “All right.  Back up,” he said to the crowd.  After creating a comfortable space, he turned and looked back at the young boy.  “You sure you want to do this, Charles?”

“If you’re asking me if I want to kill a kid, the answer’s no.”

“I understand, but—”

“But do we have any other choice?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish we did.” Lightoller raised the Webley again.  “God, forgive us.  I wish we did.”

The young boy began stumbling down the hall, his moans almost inaudible over the loud ruckus generated by the crowd.  They were begging Lightoller not to shoot, yelling at Murdoch for being an accomplice to such injustice.

Halfway down the hall, the boy stopped and again examined the crowd, as though acknowledging the pleas to spare his life.

The man in the flat cap tore through the hands holding him back and made a move toward Murdoch.

“Don’t make me do it,” Murdoch said, pointing his revolver at the skinny hero.  “Get back!”

The hero gradually retreated.

Lightoller didn’t look back at the commotion behind him, dare he remove his eyes from the infected boy staring gravely at him.  He had always lived his life ready for whatever challenge lay around the next corner.  He had never backed down.  He had never quit.  Life was but a series of choices, some tougher than others.

But killing a kid...

He questioned whether he had the guts to pull the trigger, even if it was the right choice, and if he could live with the result.

One of those questions would be answered immediately, the other in time.

The boy snarled and then scampered fearlessly full speed at Lightoller.  A second later, he was falling to the ground, dead blood running from the bullet shaped hole in the center of his forehead.  There was a snapping sound as the boy’s head whipped forward and then thudded against the floor.

Dead.  For good.

Lightoller took a deep breath and wiped away the sweat from his brow.  Then he stepped over the boy’s body, walked to the end of the hall, and put a couple of shots into the head of the mother.  As he walked back, he met eyes with Murdoch, unsure of what he wanted to say.  He needed rest.

“I’m sorry,” Murdoch said.

Lightoller nodded, gathering his emotions.

Many in the crowd were stunned by the young boy’s sudden rage, wondering if the second officer had been right about the boy being infected with something terrible.  Others were too overwhelmed with grief to think about anything beyond crying.

“What now?” asked Murdoch.

Lightoller filled his lungs again with another deep breath, trying to settle the electric tension that ran from his chest to his fingertips.  His heart hurt in more ways than one.

“Get these people back to their rooms,” he finally replied.  “I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

Murdoch began pushing the crowd back down the hall, ordering everyone to return to their staterooms.  Lightoller went to the main hospital beyond the second-class dining saloon on the starboard side of the ship.

The main hospital mid-ship was much larger than the third-class hospital at the stern.  It contained six patient rooms (each with two beds), a waiting and exam room, and a full bath on each end.  Two of the patient rooms were designed specifically for infectious cases, but weren’t nearly large or sturdy enough to contain this ugly plague.  Either Murdoch had been conservative in his estimate of a dozen infected, or the number had grown in the last ten minutes.  Lightoller’s count was closer to twenty.  Luckily, no one had turned yet, but many were close to death.  Most had been bitten on their hands or arms when they had tried to defend themselves.  By now, all had reached the final stages of the virus, becoming docile, looking drugged.

Two of the junior officers, Fourth Officer Boxhall and Fifth Officer Lowe, had found their way down to the hospital having already cleared the upper decks.  Lightoller asked Boxhall to assemble a crew of hospital and cleaning staff to begin clearing and disposing of the bodies down deck.  Then with the help of Lowe, he gathered the sick passengers into the second-class dining saloon, where they would wait for Murdoch to return before making any more decisions.  Family of the infected stayed to comfort their sick loved ones, unaware of the coming quarantine.

Murdoch returned a few minutes later.

“We can’t keep them here.”

“I know that,” Lightoller said.  “But the hospital won’t work.  We need a room large enough to accommodate this many people.”

“Where?”

“I was thinking the third-class general room.”

Murdoch frowned, considering the idea.  “I don’t know.  There’s got to be something better.”

“We don’t have a ton of options here.”

“Say we put them in there, then what?”

“Then we make sure they stay there until we arrive in New York,” Lightoller answered.  “I don’t have to tell you what this virus is capable of, you’ve seen it.  We don’t have much time before these people get their second wind.”

Murdoch sighed.

“It can get much worse.  Whatever we do, we need to do it now.”

“Okay, okay.  The general room.  We’ll put them there.”

The general room was located at the top of the third-class stairwell on C-deck, beside the third-class smoke room.  Decorated like a lounge with white pine paneling and teak furniture, the general room was one of only a few places for passengers in steerage to gather indoors.  Thus, the room was usually bustling with activity; reading, writing, and swapping stories the most popular.  Since Sixth Officer Moody had successfully cleared out the few night owl occupants earlier, the general room was empty when Lightoller and company showed up with the caravan of infected passengers, many in such bad shape they had to be held up by family members.

Officer Lowe helped sit the infected along one of the two long benches, while Lightoller stood by the door dreading his next move—telling the families the truth.  Murdoch had left for the bridge to confer with Captain Smith, lest he have any misgivings with the plan, and left Lightoller to deliver the bad news.  Thankfully, most were from second-class and spoke English as a first language.

“Listen, I need everyone’s full attention, as I won’t be repeating myself,” Lightoller began.  “What I have to tell you won’t be easy to accept.  You’re here because you don’t abandon your friends and family when they get sick or injured, and you pray for them to get better.  I admire that.  I really do.  Unfortunately, I’m the person who has to tell you that sometimes prayers aren’t answered.”

Many of the non-infected gasped at the bold statement, while the infected amongst them heard nothing, their minds too absorbed by the deadly virus that would soon terminate and then reanimate them.

“I—I don’t understand,” a young woman said.  She held her infected daughter’s head against her bosom, running her fingers through her hair.

“I know you don’t, miss.  You see, your daughter contracted a virus when she was bitten, a virus that is already responsible for five deaths on board the ship.”  Lightoller glanced down at the bloody markings on the child’s arm.  “I wish it could just end with those five.  I wish I could tell you that your daughter will pull through this—that maybe she will be the exception, but I won’t lie to you.  The virus acts extremely fast and for it there is no known cure.  I only hope that all the carriers of the virus are either dead or in this room, for the sake of everyone else on board.  That’s why we brought them here, and that’s why they can’t leave.”

“You expect me to just abandon my little girl here all alone,” the young woman said, sobbing.  “She’s all I have, and I’m all she has.”

“Where is her father?”

“Her father’s dead.”

“Well, I won’t tell you to leave your daughter, that is a decision only you can make.  I can only warn you of the outcome if you stay.  And that goes for everyone.  Should you choose to stay behind and watch your loved ones die, know that you will fall to the same fate.  Once these doors close, there is no coming back out.  Your friends and family did not choose to die, I recommend you don’t either.  That’s all.  I’ll give you a few minutes to say your final goodbyes, and then times up.”

Lightoller paced around the room, watching the non-infected passengers hug and cry and tell their sick family and friends how much they loved them.  The whole scene made him nauseous.  He couldn’t help but feel partly responsible.  He had, after all, been left in charge to secure the hospital, and allowed O’Loughlin to break through his defenses.  All he could do now was wallow in his regret, while sad eyes tore at his heartstrings.  He had delivered something akin to the last rites to eighteen people, and had felt more like their executioner.

Murdoch returned from the bridge, nodding at Lightoller across the room.

Lightoller strolled over.  “What did he say?”

“He was very stressed.  I don’t think he quite expected it to be this bad.”

“None of us did.”

“Still, he trusts our judgment.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“Did you tell them?”

Lightoller nodded.  “They were shocked, as expected.  Some of them are even determined to stay.  I can’t say I blame them.  It’s a lot to accept in a short amount of time.  I just wish they’d find the strength to save themselves.  But it’s their choice.”

Fifth Officer Lowe stepped up beside them.

“The captain said he wanted one of us to stand guard outside the door at all times,” Murdoch said.

“Given what happened at the hospital, I’d say that’s reasonable,” said Lightoller.

“You’re first,” Murdoch said to Lowe.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re gonna need protection.”  Murdoch pulled the Webley revolver from his waistband and presented it to Lowe.

“Got my own.”  Lowe pulled open his coat and showed off the seven-shot Browning revolver.

Murdoch shrugged.  “Very well.”

“We better get a move on, aye,” said Lightoller.

“Yes, indeed.”

Lightoller stepped out and said, “Everyone, it’s time.”

Along with the young mother who wouldn’t leave her daughter, three others chose to stay, leaving a total of twenty-two locked inside the general room.  Lowe stood watch outside while Lightoller and Murdoch retrieved a small table and chair from storage.  They set the table up opposite the door to the general room.  Lowe placed his revolver on the table and sat down.

“Need anything else?” Murdoch asked.

“Cup of coffee would be nice.”

Lightoller smirked.  “We’ve got some unfinished business to attend to right now.  Maybe we’ll bring you one when we get back, if you’re still here.”

“I can’t leave,” said Lowe.  “So thanks, I guess.”

“Just don’t let anyone alive or dead through that door.”

“The dead can’t walk, so...”

“You’d be surprised,” Lightoller replied.

As they walked away, Murdoch turned to Lightoller and whispered, “What unfinished business?”

“Follow me.”

Lightoller led Murdoch down the third-class stairway one floor down to D-deck.  He quickly glanced into the men’s lavatory, and then in the third-class hospital.  The cleanup was going better than he expected.  Boxhall had done an admirable job assembling a team so quickly and for such an unpleasant task.

They continued through the second-class section of rooms where most of the passengers had been bitten, and where Lightoller had encountered Dr. Simpson and the mother and son.  He was again pleased to see a lot of progress had already been made.  All the bodies were gone, though the images he wouldn’t likely forget for a long time, especially the look on the young boy’s face.  He had to tell himself to remain focused, even as a chill ran up his spine.

“Where are we going?” Murdoch asked, following Lightoller through the second-class dining saloon back to the main hospital.

“You said you went to O’Loughlin’s room but he wouldn’t answer, right?”

“Yes, and the door was locked.”

Lightoller stopped at a small staircase across from the infectious rooms that led up to C-deck.

“I think you may have caught him at a bad time.  He might answer now.”

O’Loughlin’s room was right at the top of the stairway on the right, positioned for quick access to the hospital in case he was needed for an emergency.  A surgical room was on the left.  Dr. Simpson’s and Steward William Dunford’s rooms were further down the hall.

Lightoller stopped in front of O’Loughlin’s room and knocked on the door.  A moment later, they heard the moaning.

“Told you he might answer.”

“He’s infected?  How did you know?”

“I didn’t.  Not for sure, at least,” Lightoller said.  “I caught him sneaking around in the third-class hospital earlier in the evening.  When I confronted him about his intentions, he became defensive.  Two of the patients were his friends, and he had issues accepting the reality of what had become of them.  So he went in there later and tried to feed them.  I’m sure you noticed the bread and water all over the floor.  Instead, he became the food, and you know the rest.  He probably came back here and locked the door after being bitten, knowing the dangerous monster he’d become—the monster we now have to destroy.”  O’Loughlin moaned louder, as though he didn’t approve of what Lightoller was saying about him.  “You loaded?”  Lightoller removed his Webley and checked the cylinder.

Murdoch drew his gun and did the same.

They both thumbed back the hammer on their revolvers and then took turns kicking in the door.  The door finally gave way and broke open, knocking the doctor backward to the floor.  The two officers raised their revolvers and waited for O’Loughlin to right himself before shooting.  The doctor had something repulsive growing out of his neck and numerous other pus-producing lacerations across his face and hands.  His clothes were stained with blood from head to toe.

O’Loughlin took two steps toward the open door before being peppered with gunfire.  Both Lightoller and Murdoch knew to aim high, placing most of the rounds into the head and neck.  They shot until their guns went click and they were out of rounds.  No need to reload.  They had done enough.  O’Loughlin crumbled to the floor in an awkward position with his back twisted unnaturally.

Lightoller looked over at Murdoch shaking in his boots.  “You okay?”

Murdoch drew in a deep breath and said, “No.”

“I think we’ve both had enough of this for one night.”

ANDREWS

He had gone to bed early, and slept good and long.  Upon waking Sunday morning, he felt refreshed and full of vigor, ready for what he hoped to be a day of relaxation.

Since Thursday, Andrews and his team had inspected almost every inch of the ship from the top down, so far compiling only a small list of aesthetic changes, but no major problems.  Mechanically the ship was sound.  The crew talked up the improved working conditions.  Passenger comments were also almost unanimously positive, often remarking on the smoothness and predictability of the ship’s motion as it coasted gracefully up and down across the water.  Seasickness was an issue few had to face.

Satisfied with the way things were going, Andrews gave his team the day off, and planned to resume inspections on Monday.

Although the horrible nightmare of Friday night was still hanging on the edge of his thoughts, and at times, his natural inquisitive mind would try to persuade him otherwise, Andrews remained committed to not getting further involved, just as he had told Mrs. Brown.  He had let it go.  He had joined her for dinner last night just as he promised, and they didn’t speak a word about it.  She had let it go, too, just as she promised.

Success.

But gossip can travel fast across a ship, even one as large as the Titanic, and by the time Andrews sat down for the Church of England service in the dining saloon, he had already heard numerous different versions of what had happened overnight, stories that just a few days ago he wouldn’t have believed.

Captain Smith presided over the church service, leading the group in prayer and singing hymns like “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” or “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” all the while pretending like there wasn’t a giant elephant in the room.

Afterword, the captain didn’t hang around to take questions, leaving most attendees to soak in their curiosity, and trying to piece fragments of various stories together.  Andrews noticed there was one common thread all the stories contained.

The general room.

And of officers standing guard.

Andrews left the dining saloon and hurried across the ship.  As he stepped out on to the promenade deck and into the fresh morning sun, a familiar voice called out his name from behind.  He turned to see Margaret Brown coming toward him, holding her voluminous red-feathered hat with one hand to keep the wind from blowing it out to sea.

They stood behind the mainmast looking down at the aft well deck, just as they had on Friday night where they had spotted Elise Brennan.

“You didn’t think you were getting away that easy,” Margaret said, smiling as wide as her hat.

“Forgive me.  I didn’t see you at the service.”

“That’s cause I wasn’t there.  It’s such a beautiful morning, I decided to sit outside and finish some letters over breakfast.”

“That sounds pleasant.”

“It certainly was,” Margaret replied.  “Anyway, I meant to pull you aside last night after dinner and thank you for being so understanding of me, and to apologize for my rudeness.  I shouldn’t have done what I did yesterday—interrupting you like that while you were working.”

“It’s quite all right.  I know you were just concerned, as was I.”

“Yes, and I’m glad we put those concerns to rest.  Still, I have a tendency to get a bit worked up at times, if you haven’t noticed.  It’s a good thing I’m not looking for acceptance, because I’ll probably never be accepted by many of my peers.  But you’ve been a good friend to me on this trip, Mr. Andrews.  You’ve helped keep my mind off my grandson.  For that, I thank you, and I hope you accept my apology.”

“I’m sure your grandson will be fine, Margaret.  I also value your friendship, and I often find myself envious of your candor.  The way you speak your mind so boldly and without fear of rejection.  You stand up when all of society is telling you to sit down, and I really admire that.”

Margaret glared at Andrews through dead serious eyes.  “Are you gonna accept my apology or not?  I ain’t got all day.”

“In that case forget everything I just said,” Andrews replied.  Margaret found his comment funny, as he had hoped she would.  “And I’ll accept your apology only without further discussion of it.”

Andrews parted company with Margaret feeling both surprised and relieved.  Surprised because she obviously had no idea what happened last night, and relieved because she had no idea what happened last night.  He had assumed when she stopped him that she had sought him out for information, as she had yesterday, but that wasn’t the case.  Somehow, Margaret of all people was totally in the dark on this one, quite amazing since the rumors were spreading like wildfire.  The terrifying nature of the stories forced Andrews to abandon his commitment to ignorance and seek out the truth.  No need to bring Margaret along.  She’d find out soon enough, hopefully from someone else.

Andrews entered the door to the third-class stairwell.  Chief Officer Henry T. Wilde sat behind a small wooden table opposite the general room.

“What is going on here?”

“If you don’t know,” said Wilde, “then it’s nothing you need to be concerned about.”

“Everything that happens on this ship is my concern.”

Wilde shook his head.  “Not this.”

Andrews made a motion toward the door to the general room.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Wilde took his hands off his lap and rested them on the table.  In his right hand, he held a small revolver.  Andrews looked down at the gun and then turned his attention back to the door.  As he reached for the door handle, he heard Wilde pull back the hammer on the revolver.

He glanced back at the chief officer, the gun still flat against the table, the barrel pointed at him.  “You’re really going to shoot me?”

“I don’t know,” said Wilde, sweat glistening under his eyes.  “I’d prefer you not put me to the test.”

“This is more serious than I thought,” Andrews whispered to himself.  “Don’t worry.  I’m not going to open it.  I know more than you think.”  He could easily hear the chorus of moans spill through the door.  “You’re using the general room as a prison for the infected, and by the sound of it, there’s quite a few in there.  Tell me...how did this happen?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.”

After a little more cajoling, Wilde finally gave in and told the whole story.  When he was done, Andrews left feeling sick to his stomach.  He hung his head all the way back to his stateroom, where he sat at his desk and imagined the headlines that would follow once the Titanic docked and word began to spread.  Boy, the editors would be happy, and the White Star Line would take hell trying to explain how they allowed such a deadly plague to pass through inspections.  With only a maiden voyage under its belt, the Titanic name would already be scarred.  The ship that Andrews built, the ship of dreams, was slowly turning into the ship of nightmares.  Whether caused by plague or not, he was disgusted by the horrific acts of violence displayed on a ship he had put his heart and soul into constructing.

“What else could go wrong?” he asked the quiet emptiness of his stateroom.

It offered no response.

SMITH

The wireless room was located on the boat deck not far from the bridge and officer quarters.  Inside, twenty-five-year-old Jack Phillips, and his twenty-one-year-old assistant, Harold Bride, worked to get caught up on the backlog of messages after the wireless set had broken down during the night.

Jack and Harold were not employed by the White Star Line, nor were they official members of the Titanic’s crew.  They worked for the Marconi Company, named after Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio telegraph, and once at sea, the pair took orders only from Captain Smith.

The use of radios on ships had only recently begun to take on more popularity, particularly among wealthy passengers, who marveled at the novelty of such an invention that would allow them to send out personal messages from the ship.

While many captains were hesitant to greet the new technology, Captain Smith tried to keep an open mind, seeing the potential of the device to become a valuable tool for navigation, or at the moment, for the reporting of ice in the area.

Smith stood behind Jack and Harold and read the latest message from the White Star steamer Baltic.  Earlier, he had received a similar message from the Caronia.  The reports of ice weren’t unexpected this time of year, however, the Atlantic was unusually calm today, and as dusk fell, icebergs would become harder to spot.  After what happened last night on D-deck, the ice warnings only reinforced the two bad choices facing Smith.

Keep the ship on its faster pace and risk the ice, or slow it down and risk further infection.

There was no right answer.

He left the wireless room and headed down to A-deck, where he ran into Bruce Ismay talking with George and Eleanor Widener, owners of the Philadelphia Traction Company.  The Widener’s had organized a dinner party for this evening in the á la carte restaurant on B-deck, which Smith had previously agreed to attend.

Smith apologized for the interruption, and handed Ismay the message from the Baltic.  Ismay glanced down at the little yellow slip of paper, and then without word shoved it in his pocket.

Smith walked away satisfied.

Later in the evening, just after seven, Smith found Ismay in the smoking room and asked if he still had the telegram.

“Yes,” Ismay said, and pulled the yellow paper from his pocket.

“Good.  I need to put it in the chart room with the others.”

Ismay handed it over.  “And what of this virus?  I trust you have it contained.”

“For now,” said Smith.

Ismay took a drag from his cigar.  “Good, let us try and keep it that way.”

“It’s not only your reputation that’s on the line.”

“Your reputation doesn’t matter, Edward.  You’ll be retired when this voyage concludes, so what do you care?  Don’t pretend to relate to my quandary.”

Smith sighed, struggling to hold back his irritation.  The managing director, with his boorish tone and dancing brown mustache, had a way of lighting a fuse in him like few others.

“Good evening, Mr. Ismay.”

LIGHTOLLER

10:27 p.m.

Lightoller sat at the small table outside the third-class general room, blowing into his hands to warm them.  The temperature outside was thirty-two degrees, or at least it had been when his watch ended at ten.  Could have gotten even colder in the last half hour, sure felt like it.

The walk across the boat deck had been slow and painful, and the thin walls enclosing the third-class stairwell did little to keep out the bone chilling air.  When he thought of lookout’s Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee sitting in the crow’s nest atop the foremast, the cold wind punishing their faces at twenty-two knots as they scanned for bergs on the dark horizon, Lightoller felt lucky to be indoors.

He had the next two hours on guard, babysitting the infected.  When midnight came, he planned to be in his bed wrapped up in a blanket.  Sleeping, hopefully.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so sleep deprived.  If Friday night was tough, Saturday night was unbearable.  It had been almost two a.m. before he made it to his room, and he had to be back up and on watch at six.  Best-case scenario, sleep for three and a half hours.  What he actually got was less than half that.

His mind had kept him up, even if his body was tired and his eyes felt heavy and sore.  He had sat up in bed thinking about everything that happened, about all the innocent victims, about the lives he had taken and those he couldn’t save.  No image haunted him more than that of the young boy he had shot in the second-class corridor.

While he didn’t regret pulling the trigger, as the boy was already dead long before the bullet hit him, Lightoller did feel regret for allowing the boy to become infected in the first place.  And for the twenty or so others now quarantined within the general room.  Not long ago they had dreams and aspirations, places they wanted to be, things they wanted to see.  They had families that loved them, and children who needed them.  Now their only desire was to spread the virus that was responsible for taking all of that away.

The virus that stole their humanity.

Lightoller slouched back in the chair, smoking his pipe and listening to the scratching and beating on the door in front of him.

That was the worst part of babysitting.  The noise.  It never stopped.  And at times, he swore the door was swelling outward and beginning to crack under the pressure applied by the infected pushing from the other side.

He had his Webley revolver on the table in front of him, a weak defense if they managed to break through the door.  He remembered what Dr. Simpson and William Dunford did to the door to the first patient room.  How much longer would this door last, and how would he take down twenty infected with just six bullets?

I wouldn’t.  I’d run like hell, he thought, smoke billowing from his pipe.  Aye, that’s what I’d do.

As the end of the hour approached, Lightoller found it harder and harder to keep his eyes open.  Sleep had decided to come and try to take him at the worst possible time.  He’d begin to drift away and be jolted back awake by the hot ash burning on his lap after dumping his pipe, or by his head rocking backward and hitting against the wall—both painful eye openers.

Just as he started to drift off again, he heard soft footsteps on the stairs.  A moment later, a woman who looked to be in her seventies reached the apex of the staircase and looked over at him.  Clasped in her hands was a single sheet of paper.

Lightoller sat up as the woman approached the table.  She looked familiar.  “How may I help you?”

“Do you remember me?”

“You were here last night.”

“Yes.  My name is Abigail Barnes.  My husband’s name is George.  Is he still in there?  Can you tell me how he is doing?  I came here earlier today, but the man who was here said he didn’t know.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you either, ma’am.  The last contact I had was last night when you were here.”

“Oh, dear.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m just so lonely now.  I don’t know how to go on without him.”

“As much as I wish I could give you good news, I can’t.  Everything I said last night was the truth.  I don’t know what more to say.”

“I understand.”  She lifted the piece of paper up and looked down at it.  Her eyes held all the sorrow of a new widows.  “Would it be okay if I read something to him?”

“I can’t let you inside.”

“Can I read it through the door?”

Lightoller took a deep breath, considering her request.  Finally, he sighed and said, “I suppose that would be fine.”

“Thank you.”

The elderly woman named Abigail shuffled up to the door to the general room and stood there for a moment looking like she had forgotten why she’d come.  She looked down at the paper and seemed to regain her focus.  Lightoller figured time must have snuffed out much of her hearing, because she didn’t look bothered by the inhuman sounds coming from the other side of the door—the noise that had never once stopped until, strangely, the woman began reading from the paper.

Then silence.

Her voice was barely above a whisper, but Lightoller could hear every word.

“My loving George.  The kindest man I’d ever known,” she began, her hands trembling.  “Being married to you for the last fifty-three years has been the greatest gift.  You took me away from an abusive father, and promised you’d take care of me.  To this day, you kept your word.  You were a great father to our three beautiful children.  You worked so hard to keep us safe and healthy, and you never missed an opportunity to make us smile.  There is so much more I would tell you, if there were words to express it.  My heart is telling me our time is over, and that we had a good run.  But my soul refuses to let it end here.  Should you find your way to heaven, I know you’ll save a spot for me by your side.  Where you go, I go.  I love you, George, and I’ll see you soon.”

She lowered the paper and looked over at Lightoller.  From across the room, under the dim overhead lighting, he could see the tears in her eyes.  Her words made him think of his wife, Sylvia, and how much he missed her and the boys.  He hoped she was at home thinking about—

The thin wood split apart with tremendous force, throwing dust and debris through the air.  Before Lightoller even knew what had happened, the grey, muscular arm that smashed through the door seized Abigail and pulled her arm back through the hole, pinning her body against the door.

Lightoller rushed around the table and grabbed a hold of Abigail.  The sounds coming from her mouth now weren’t beautiful or poetic.  They weren’t even words.  They were shrieks of intolerable agony.

He managed to pull her away from the door more easily than he expected.  After she collapsed back into his arms and he saw the blood flow out of her like water from a garden hose, he understood why.  In a matter of seconds, the undead creatures in the general room had chewed her arm off at the elbow.

Lightoller pulled her close to him, trying to comfort her in her last moments.

“Hold...me...George.”

There wasn’t time to explain to her that he wasn’t her husband.  As the blood raced out, so did the life in her eyes.  Any moment now, she’d be gone.  The infected did not intend to wait, as a dozen hands began clawing at the breach in the door, ripping open a larger hole piece by piece.

Lightoller carefully placed Abigail down against the wall and hustled back to the table to get his revolver.  Then he shot all six rounds through the opening in the door, realizing instantly how little it would delay their escape.  The door was almost shredded.  They could taste freedom.  It was literally at the end of their fingertips.

Better go now, Lightoller thought.  Before it’s too late.

He slipped the gun into his waistband, grabbed his pipe, and ran out of the stairwell.  He continued running up and across the ship until he reached the bridge, the icy cold air outside making it difficult to breathe.

First Officer Murdoch was standing between the bridge and the wing cabin.

“Aren’t you supposed to be—”

“We have a big problem,” Lightoller said, leaning over to try and catch his breath.  “They’re out.  They broke through the damn door and escaped.”

“You’re serious?”

“After the shit we went through last night, you think I’d lie to you?”

“Sorry, I’ll go inform the captain.  You keep watch here.”

While he waited, Lightoller reloaded his revolver.  His hands were so cold he could barely hold the bullets between his fingers.  He glanced up every few seconds to see if any of the infected had followed him.  He thought he had closed the door to the stairwell, but doors didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

Through the thick glass windows, Lightoller could see Captain Smith enter the wheelhouse, followed by Murdoch, Moody, and Lowe.  Smith then handed Sixth Officer Moody his revolver.  A moment later, all but the captain came back outside.

“Come on,” Murdoch said.

“What’s the plan?”

“He wants the four of us to go back there.”

Lightoller walked swiftly beside Murdoch down the boat deck, Moody and Lowe followed closely behind.  “Back where?  To the general room?”

“Yes.”

“For what?  There’s nothing we can do.  We are vastly outnumbered.”

“What other choice do we have?”

Lightoller sighed, causing a white puff of cold air to drift from his mouth.  “Last night two people managed to infect eighteen.  How many do you think eighteen could infect?  Fifty?  A hundred?  We can’t quarantine that many people.  It’s impossible.”

“I know that, but if we all go in together and take down enough of them, maybe we can slow the spread.”

“Or die a horrible death.”

“I don’t plan on dying tonight,” Murdoch replied.

“Then you won’t mind if I stand behind you.”

SMITH

Looks like it’s going to be another long night, Smith thought, slipping on his overcoat.

He had come to his personal sitting room only to retrieve the coat, and then he would head back to the bridge.  Normally, it would be First Officer William Murdoch’s watch, but with Murdoch off on an unscheduled hunting trip with three of the other officers, Smith was forced to stand watch in his place.

He had ordered Third Officer Pittman to accompany Chief Officer Wilde on a sweep of the ship, with the goal of once again getting all passengers to vacate all public areas.  It was a lofty undertaking, and just like the previous night, would likely produce mixed results.

First-class passengers often didn’t respond well to being told they had to leave the comfort of the free flowing Brandy and cigars and return to the quiet solitude of their staterooms.  The lower classes were used to falling in line, so they took less convincing.  Wilde was armed, and could be quite the intimidator when he needed to be, yet Smith knew some passengers would take a bullet long before surrendering their post at one of the lounges or smoking rooms.

Smith returned to the wheelhouse, where he was met by the assistant wireless operator, Harold Bride.

“Sir, Jack asked me to relay a message to you.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“The Californian has stopped, surrounded by ice.”  Smith gestured for Harold to go on.  “The rest was cut short, sir.  However, a few hours ago, the Mesaba also reported ice in our area, and advised to keep a close watch.”

“Okay, thank you.”

Smith followed Harold Bride out of the wheelhouse and strode up next to Fourth Officer Boxhall leaning against the handrail.  He was staring off into the dark horizon beyond the ship’s bow.

“It’s a cold night, but without much wind.”

“None whatsoever,” Boxhall agreed.  “The sea is calm.”

“Calmest I’ve seen in recent memory.  It will make spotting bergs more difficult.”  The breaking of waves was often one of the first visual cues that an iceberg loomed ahead.  “At least the stars have come out in full tonight.  Their reflections may be of use.”

Boxhall nodded, looking around at the bright stars shining as far as he could see.  “Indeed.  Quite wonderful a sight.”

LIGHTOLLER

The four officers approached the aft well deck, carefully looking out for any infected that might be wandering around.  Lightoller was glad to see that he had in fact shut the door to the third-class stairwell.

“Okay.  We go in slowly, and we watch each other.”  Murdoch reached for the door handle.  “Oh, and aim for the head.”

“A shot to the chest isn’t enough?” asked Moody.

Maybe it was just the freezing temperature, but Lightoller wondered if this was the first time Moody had ever held a gun.  The youngest officer was constantly fidgeting and readjusting his grip.

“No, it’s not,” Murdoch said.  “Don’t ask me why, only God knows.”

“What about shooting them in the legs?” asked Lowe.  Unlike Moody, Lowe wielded his personal seven-shot Browning like Jesse James ready to rob the town bank.

“Now that’s not such a bad idea,” said Lightoller.

“The head is a sure thing.”

Murdoch slowly opened the door about six inches and then peered inside the stairwell.  The other officers tried to look over his shoulder.

“See anything?” Lightoller asked.

“Not yet.  You sure they got out?”

“Aye.”

Murdoch opened the door the rest of the way and carefully stepped inside.  The rest of the unlikely gunslingers followed his lead.  Once inside, it was obvious where the infected had gone.

“Down the stairs,” said Lowe.  There were streaks of blood on the floor from the general room to the staircase.

“I kind of thought that might happen,” said Lightoller, looking down the stairs.  “But since they couldn’t use a door knob, I figured maybe there was a chance—”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lightoller saw a tall man appear from around the corner to the general room and lumber, arms extended, directly toward Murdoch.  His grey skin and beard of blood instantly confirmed he was infected.  Murdoch saw him coming as well, and squeezed off three shots in rapid succession.  The first shot missed to the right.  The second grazed the top of the right shoulder, tearing a hole in the attacker’s suit.  The third shot hit the head, but only enough to detach an ear.

Lowe stepped forward with the Browning and took the fourth shot, shattering the man’s kneecap into pieces.  Unable to balance on one leg, the tall, pale-skinned man fell face first to the floor.  Lowe then placed one final shot in the head.

“Thank you,” said Murdoch.

“What was that you said about a sure thing?” asked Lowe.  “You took three shots at the head and only got an ear.”

Lightoller and Moody exchanged smiles.

“I didn’t see you two do anything,” Murdoch scoffed.

“We thought you had it under control,” said Lightoller.  He walked around the corner to the general room to make sure there were no more surprises.  “Next time, take a second to aim.”

“I did.  He moved around too damn much.”

Lightoller looked down at the remains of Abigail Barnes outside the broken down door to the general room.  The infected had cleaned almost every inch of flesh off her body, leaving behind an old, frail skeleton slouched in a slop of blood.  He found four more sets of bones in the general room; the four who had decided to stay behind and take care of their sick loved ones.  At some point, the tables had turned, and their sick loved ones had taken care of them.

A number of distraught passengers began to come up the stairs from the lower decks.  Most hardly acknowledged the gathering of officers and ran straight out the door to the aft well deck.  Those that did stop tried to communicate the horror that was going on down below, often through broken English.

“Charles, what do you suggest we do with these people?” Murdoch asked.  “They keep coming.  Some have been scratched or bitten.”

“We can’t do anything with them,” Lightoller said.  “For now we need only worry about the dangerous ones spreading the infection.”

“But how long do you think it will take for these to—you know—change?”

“I don’t know for sure.  Not long.  That’s why we need to hurry and find the others.”

They found two more of the others one floor down on D-deck near the third-class hospital.  The two infected were walking around in circles trying to grab at anything that moved—a young mother and her baby the latest attempt.

Lowe again shot out the knee of one of them, and then let Murdoch finish it off, while Lightoller stealthily slipped behind the second one and shot him in the back of the head.  Nervous Moody seemed content with staying in the back.

“I think we should split up,” Lowe said.  “This is going to take too long.”

“It’s safer this way,” Murdoch countered.  More passengers rushed passed them, some dripping blood.  The stairs were becoming crowded with people seeking safer ground.  “We’ve already killed three.”

“Yes, and it took us...”  Lightoller flipped open his pocket watch and checked the time.  11:31 p.m.  “It took us better than ten minutes.  What about the other fifteen?  All it takes is for some unlucky person to open a door and any one of them could be halfway across the ship, just like what happened last night.”

“I’d feel better if we stayed in at least teams of two.”

“No need to fret, Mr. Murdoch,” said Lowe.  “You can stay with me.”

Murdoch frowned at Lowe.

“Okay, we’ll split in two,” said Lightoller.  “That way we can still cover one another.  I suggest you and Lowe stay on D-deck while me and Moody go down to E.”

SMITH

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

Captain Smith, troubled by the sound of the warning bell, hurried from the dimly lit chart room to the pitch black of the wheelhouse.  The lights were kept off at night so it would be easier to see out of the front windows.  Quartermaster Hichens was little more than a dark shape behind the wheel, Alfred Oliver also in shadow at his side.

“Was that the lookout?”

“I believe it was, sir,” said Oliver.

Smith looked over as Boxhall opened the door to the wheelhouse, bringing in a rush of cold air with him.  Before Smith could say another word, the telephone rang, and Boxhall quickly answered.

“Yes.  Understood,” Boxhall said, and hung up.  Then he looked over at Smith.  “Sir, there is an iceberg right ahead.”

Smith looked out the front window, barely able to make out the black multi-pointed silhouette of the berg against the starry sky.  “Christ.  Hard a’ starboard!”  he ordered to Hichens, and then used the engine room telegraph to signal full speed astern, reversing the engines.  Hichens began turning the wheel to the left.

Smith and Boxhall rushed out of the wheelhouse and leaned against the railing, just as they had not twenty minutes earlier, and gazed out at the mountain of ice directly ahead.

“Why is she not turning?” asked Boxhall.

“Is it hard a’ starboard?”  Smith yelled back at the bridge.

“Hard a’ starboard, sir,” Quartermaster Hichens answered back.

Finally, the ship’s nose began to turn to the left.

“Come on now,” said Smith, seeing the iceberg move along the front bow, and praying that she would miss.  “Spare us this once.”

Then came a thunderous scraping sound from below followed by a sudden jolt in the ship’s momentum.  Smith and Boxhall braced themselves against the railing as the wooden deck beneath them shuddered.  The massive iceberg moved gradually along the starboard side of the bow, chunks of it breaking off onto the well deck.  It continued down ship, rubbing off smaller shreds of ice against the lower decks.

Smith hurried back to the wheelhouse.  “Hard a’ port,” he said to Hichens, who began turning the wheel all the way back to the right.  The captain moved the engine room telegraph from full speed astern to half ahead, and then upon further consideration, rang down to stop.

“Sound the alarms and close the watertight doors,” he said to Boxhall.  He checked the clock mounted in the wheelhouse.  11:40 p.m.  “Enter the time into the log.”

BROWN

In cabin number 23 on the starboard side of E-deck, Margaret Brown sat awake in bed reading, when the sudden vibration nearly dislodged the book from her hands.

She sat up and looked out the porthole next to the bed, her breath instantly taken away by the giant, silvery blue wall of ice emerging from the darkness.

“Oh, no,” she said aloud, continuing to stare in disbelief as the iceberg she was certain they had hit moved past her field of view and then disappeared.

She changed out of her nightgown and left her room.  The halls were already bustling with people wondering what was going on, some even showing injuries, which Margaret found odd.

A man with disheveled clothing and hair was lying across from the elevators, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Margaret grabbed him by the collar and tried to stir him awake, fearing that he’d fallen down and hit his head during the collision.

“Help!  This man needs help!”

As the words left her mouth, she began to realize this poor soul looked a lot like Miss Brennan prior to her death.  Pale face.  High fever.  Only, she now noticed a small amount of blood trickle down from his wrist and into the palm of his hand.  She gently pulled up his sleeve uncovering a large gash in his forearm.

This man was infected.

It was around lunchtime when she became aware of the gossip going around—over two hours after she had apologized to Mr. Andrews.  She felt like she was losing her touch for not connecting the distressed look on his face to something more than just lack of rest.  However, instead of rudely rushing to him for answers this time, she had decided to find out what she could on her own.

As the day drew on, it became clear that the third-class general room, guarded at all times by one of the ship’s officers, was being used to house more of the infected.  What wasn’t clear to her was how all this came to be, how the three sick patients in the third-class hospital managed to infect more passengers.

Margaret stood up, wondering if the dying man at her feet had escaped from the general room.  Then she heard the engines come to an abrupt stop.

A steward came off one of the elevators.

“Hey you there, this man is infected.  He needs to be helped immediately.”

“Okay, okay, calm down.  There are lots of people who need help, ma’am.  I assure you we are trying our best.”

“What do you mean lots of people?”

“Just take a look around, will you.  I suggest finding a safe place and staying there.”

“We’ve hit an iceberg, haven’t we?”

“No, no.  That’s foolish.”

“Is it?  We’ve stopped moving.”

“Yes, and I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation.  Now, like I said, if you want to help, go back to your room and wait for more information.”

“To hell with that,” Margaret said, pushing the steward aside and following a swarm of other passengers inside one of the elevators.  She got off two decks up on C-deck.

Just past the forward first-class staircase was John Jacob Astor’s suite of rooms, C-62/63/64.

John’s young bride Madeline answered the door in a cream-colored nightgown.  It was hardly noticeable that she was pregnant.

“Where is John?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Brown.”

“Get yourself together.  We should go find him.”

Madeline looked concerned.  “Why?”

“Remember the infection everyone was talking about over dinner?  Well, it’s on the loose.  And to make matters worse, I think we’ve hit an iceberg.”

“An iceberg?  So that was the—”

“The tremor you felt?  It was.”

“Give me a moment.”

Margaret waited outside in the hall, watching as people frantically ran by as though they were being pursued by some dreadful monster.  The injuries many among them displayed were as diverse as they were numerous.

This will be a night to remember, Margaret thought.   Or one to forget.

LIGHTOLLER

“Watch out!  Behind you!” Lightoller shouted.

Sixth Officer Moody turned and took two shots at an infected woman limping toward him, her face a cascading tower of rotting skin.  Both shots put holes only in the wall behind her.

Lightoller pushed Moody out of the way and put a bullet in the center of her forehead.

“I can’t keep bailing you out,” Lightoller said.  “That’s the second time now, aye.  Keep it together.  Otherwise you may as well go sit in a dark corner and let me do this myself.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Moody.

“Don’t be sorry.  Be confident.”

“I guess I’m having a hard time with the idea of killing someone.”

“If you don’t kill them then they’ll kill you, or someone else.  It’s that simple.  Try not to think about how many people you kill, but how many you can save.”

Given the sheer number of injured passengers they passed, Lightoller wondered if he was simply spitting out empty rhetoric just to keep Moody calm.   He was close to calling this mission a lost cause, and didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when the rest of these people turned.

Split off from Murdoch and Lowe a deck above, Lightoller and Moody had worked their way down E-deck toward the front of the ship, along the way encountering a few infected, some already dead, and dozens of newly infected.  By Lightoller’s count, better than half of the escapees from the general room had perished, not including any Murdoch and Lowe might have disposed of.  Still, he feared they were too late, and the damage had already been done.

Then came the unexpected jarring sound that had caused all the walls around them to shiver.  Lightoller had no idea what caused the troubling vibration, possibly an explosion in the forward hull.

Pushing on, they came to the last set of elevators.  Dozens of passengers bullied past them in a riotous panic.  Those that couldn’t squeeze into one of the elevators, or grew tired of waiting for one to return, elected to take the stairs.  Lightoller observed a good number of people with visible bite marks and scratches on various areas of their bodies.

“It’s no use.”

“Sir?”

Lightoller looked down at a small pool of blood on the floor across from the elevators.  “I want you to go back to the bridge and tell the captain this isn’t working, not in the least.  That it’s spread too far, and we may need to consider calling for assistance.”

“And what of you, sir?”

“I’ll be fine.  I’m going to keep on down here.  Try to find the source of that explosion.”

“I would rather stay an assist you, sir.”

“I don’t need assistance.  No need for bravery, Moody.  Just do as I say.”

Moody nodded and went around the corner toward the stairs, Lightoller the opposite direction.

Continuing forward.

Into the quiet beyond the crowd.

SMITH

“No sign of damage in the passenger areas, sir,” said Fourth Officer Boxhall, stepping into the wheelhouse.  After the collision, the captain had sent him below to inspect for any sign of damage.  “However, Carpenter Hutchinson insists the ship is making water.  That the mail hold is filling rapidly.”

“Go down and confirm it,” said Smith.  “Report back immediately.”

“Right away, sir.”

The next to stop in was Chief Officer Wilde with Third Officer Pittman.  Captain Smith could tell immediately by the tousled look of their clothing that something had happened.

“We were attacked, sir.  By those awful things,” said Pittman.  “But we managed to escape without nary a scratch.”

“It’s out of control,” Wilde added.  “And I regret to say there is nothing we can do to stop it.”

“We may have bigger problems, Henry.”

“Indeed, I know we’ve struck ice,” said Wilde.  “Air is escaping from the forepeak tank, and water has begun flooding in.  Hemming confirmed this.”

Smith sighed.  “Would you say the damage is serious?”

“I’m afraid it’s more than serious, Captain.”

Smith checked the compass to see if the ship had begun listing.  He had checked it shortly after Boxhall first went down to inspect for damage, and found no significant change in level.  This time he wasn’t so fortunate.

“Dear God,” he muttered.  “Already five degrees to starboard.  Two degrees down by the head.  Pittman, summon Andrews.”

Smith and Wilde entered the navigating room connected to the wheelhouse.

“What’s wrong?” said Smith.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t want to say anything with Pittman here.  But I see the way you’re holding your hand.”

Wilde leaned into a corner and hung his head.

“Be honest with me, Henry,” said Smith.  “What happened down there?”

“It’s absolute chaos,” Wilde finally said, looking up to meet eyes with the captain.  “Worse than you can imagine.  So many injured in so little time I—I can’t explain it.  I wish I could.”

“And...?”

Wilde pulled up his left coat sleeve.  “I was bitten...by one of them.”

Seeing the faint red of blood on the CO’s hand caused Smith’s heart to sink.

“I kept it quiet from Pittman, at first hoping it didn’t puncture the skin.  When I found a moment to myself, I confirmed that indeed it had.  What does this mean?  Am I infected?”

Before Smith could answer, Thomas Andrews came into the navigating room with an armful of charts and blueprints, Pittman behind him.

“He was already on his way, sir,” said Pittman.

“Good, thank you.  If you could take watch of the bridge for now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thomas Andrews laid out a large side view blueprint of the Titanic’s deck plans on the chart table, and then began discussing different possible scenarios in which the ship could stay afloat.  In a matter of minutes, all such hopeful thought would be struck down by the stark reality of truth.

April 15, 1912

SMITH

Fourth Officer Boxhall returned from below with a litany of bad news.

As the carpenter had said, the mail room was full of water and had risen to within a foot or two of the top of the stairs.  The forward cargo holds were also flooded, and boiler room number six had already filled to a depth of over fourteen feet.

“As of right now, water has begun to spill over into the fifth boiler room,” said Boxhall.  “Crewmen are working to pump it out.”

“It will do little good,” said Andrews.

“Is there anything we can do?” asked Smith.

“She was only designed to stay afloat with the first four compartments flooded, but not five,” Andrews said, indicating the forepeak and three cargo holds on the blueprint.  “As the bow sinks, the water will spill over each bulkhead one after another until—”

“Until what?” said Bruce Ismay.  He came into the navigating room wearing a large coat over his pajamas.  “What are you saying, Thomas?  The Titanic cannot sink.”

“But she can,” said Andrews.  “And, regrettably, I’m certain that she will.”

Ismay bit his lip and relaxed his posture.

“How long do we have?” asked Smith.

Andrews studied the blueprints, doing the mathematical calculations in his head, and then said, “Maybe an hour.  Two, if we’re lucky.”

“It appears you’re going to get your headlines after all, Mr. Ismay,” said Smith.  Then he ordered Boxhall to calculate the ship’s exact position so they could send out a distress call.

Ismay and Andrews sulked away in silence.

Alone again with Wilde, Smith picked back up on their prior conversation.

“How are you feeling?”

“I believe I have a fever,” Wilde replied.

Smith studied the chief officer.  “I can’t say for certain.  But if you were bitten, then you are most likely infected.  How is your hand?”

Wilde pulled up the left sleeve again.  His hand had turned purple and swollen considerably.  “I suppose it doesn’t much matter now, does it?  If we’re all going to die, that is.”

“Perhaps, though I intend to spare as many as possible.  I’d appreciate it if you would go to your quarters and remain there.  For the sake of others.  I hope you understand.”

“Whatever I can do to help, in these, my final moments.”

“Thank you, Henry.  It’s been a pleasure.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Moments after Wilde left, Murdoch and Lowe entered the wheelhouse.  Smith explained the grim fate of the ship, while Murdoch caught him up on the spread of the infection.

“The best we can hope for is that someone is nearby and responds to our call,” said Smith.  “For now, begin preparing the lifeboats for loading.  And please protect yourselves.  Where are Lightoller and Moody?”

“We split off.  Have they not returned?”

“No, they have not.”

Murdoch shrugged.  “Well, I’m sure they’ll come around soon, sir.”

Ten minutes later, Captain Smith entered the wireless room with the Titanic’s estimated position in hand.  He handed the coordinates to Harold Bride.

“Send the distress call.”

Bride slipped the piece of paper in front of Jack Phillips, who was wearing the wireless set.

“What call should I send?” asked Phillips.

“The regulation international call for help.  That’s all.”

Smith left the wireless room and walked along the boat deck, inspecting the officers as they readied the lifeboats.  Murdoch was on the starboard side uncovering lifeboat number seven.

“Where is Wilde?”

“He had something to tend to,” Smith replied.

“Should we swing out the boats?”

“Yes, go ahead.  Then begin loading, women and children first.  I take it you’re still armed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.  See to it that no infected make their way on to the lifeboats.  I’ll tell the others the same.”

ANDREWS

From the moment he realized the ship would founder, Thomas Andrews, by his own calculations, had at best a couple of hours left on this earth.  How he was going to die was still to be determined, but he had decided right away that he would not take a seat on one of the lifeboats, even if the chance were offered to him.

He knew the math better than anyone.

There were over twenty two hundred passengers on board and only twenty lifeboats.  The fourteen standard lifeboats could carry roughly seventy passengers each.  The two emergency cutters and four collapsible boats could hold around forty-five.  Assuming the loading of the boats went smoothly (which didn’t seem promising since Captain Smith had cancelled the lifeboat drill), a little over half of the passengers might survive.

And at least a thousand would perish.

Of course, the infection also played a part in trimming the numbers.  After multiple attempts, the virus had proved impossible to contain, and in a short time had spread to nearly all areas of the ship.  How many lives had it already claimed, and how many more would succumb to the unthinkable illness before the sea put its cold stamp on it for good?

Andrews sat behind the desk in his stateroom sobbing for the ones who couldn’t be saved, and for his own personal family, praying they find the strength to carry on without him.  He thought of his wife Helen.  They wouldn’t make it to their four-year anniversary in June; their marriage was coming to an unexpected end tonight.  Nor would he be around to help raise two-year-old Elizabeth.  In fact, she’d grow up never knowing him at all, or not remember the short time where she had—from this point forward he would only exist to her in photographs, stories, and melancholy newspaper articles.

Thus, he sat with his head in his hands wondering how best to make use of his final moments.  He could remain closed within his room sulking in regret and waiting for the water to crash through the walls and take him under, or he could die with some small measure of dignity.

Andrews left his stateroom and began helping the crew warn passengers of the coming doom.  There was no use lying to people to avoid a panic, the panic had already long come.

He walked from one end of the ship to the other, up and down decks, knocking on doors and urging people to put on their lifebelts and begin heading up to the boat deck.  Some people did exactly as he asked, while others either completely ignored him or couldn’t grasp the severity of the situation.  Many stayed hidden in their rooms, afraid to come out.  Everyone was well aware of the infection by now, and its effects were painted all over the ship.  Around every corner was another corpse, its flesh mangled and half-eaten.  Blood stains everywhere.  The critical status of the ship, however, was still very much unknown to a large segment of passengers.

The number of wounded he passed along the way was startling.  The newly infected often crowded into the hospitals or just ran around looking for anyone they thought could help them.  Those further along in the cycle sat hunched over in chairs or lying on the floor, trembling and foaming at the mouth.

He tried his best to ignore those of the non-violent variety, even going out of his way to walk around them.  Those that he couldn’t avoid he asked to return to their rooms.  It tore at his heart to do so.  Not helping people in need went squarely against his nature, but these people couldn’t be helped, not in any real sense.  Becoming infected, while no fault of their own, guaranteed they wouldn’t have a seat on a lifeboat.  Like him, they were already dead.  They just didn’t know it yet.  Soon the sea would sign their death certificate.

Those of the violent form were also quite numerous, though he didn’t try nearly as hard to avoid them.  Sometimes he would even help fight them off if he saw them attacking a crowd.  He didn’t have a gun or knife or any other conventional weapon, all he had were his hands and the certain knowledge that in no more than an hour or two he’d be dead.  This unfortunate truth brought a level of toughness out of him that he’d never exuded before.  For the first time in his life, he had no fear.

No more timid Thomas Andrews.

He strolled along the A-decks first-class open promenade tossing any chairs that weren’t nailed down off the side of the ship.  Perhaps someone could use them to stay afloat later if it came to it.  Above him on the boat deck, he could hear the officers beginning to load the lifeboats, along with the occasional gunshot.

As he came to the entrance to the aft first-class staircase, a dozen passengers came running out, hollering in fright at the disfigured monster behind them.  Not long ago the monster had been a woman from first-class.

Somebody’s wife.

Somebody’s mother.

Now she was just a moaning thing with an appetite to feed in her finest fur coat.

Half of her hair had fallen or been pulled out.  One of her arms was severely dislocated at the shoulder, pointing the wrong direction.  Her jaw was broken open and locked to one side.  A wide trail of blood and guts ran down from her neck to the bottom of her dress.

She had been busy.

Andrews waved and yelled to draw her attention away from the innocent passengers she’d been pursuing.  She took the bait and went straight for him against the railing.  A moment later she was falling from the ship in a dead dive.

Andrews looked over the side and watched her hit with a big splash, flailing only once before disappearing into the dark water.  Throwing her overboard had been much easier than he expected it to be, and he was no worse for wear.

He turned back around, hearing the awkward sounding footsteps behind him.

This time it was a grossly overweight man dressed in a ruffled tuxedo.  This one probably just woke up, because there wasn’t a drop of blood on him.  Aside from the ashen color of his skin, his left eye was the only indicating sign that he was infected.  Having swollen to three times its normal size, the eye had been forced from the limiting confines of its socket and now looked ready to burst.

Unafraid and battle tested, Andrews went right at the fat man.

This one wouldn’t be so easy.

It took more than a minute, and the help of a few younger male passengers nearby, to finally send the sharply dressed monster over the railing.  The splash he produced was tremendous, rousing a smile among many of the men.

Not Andrews.

He pressed the others to find a lifebelt and hurry up to the boat deck.  Then he sauntered away, his former confidence gone.

The scratch on his neck barely broke the skin.

But it was deep enough.

LIGHTOLLER

“Bloody hell,” Lightoller whispered.

He was standing on the F-deck spectator gallery looking down through the thick glass into the squash racquet court.  The court extended two decks high and thirty feet in length.  First-class passengers could pay two shillings to use the court for one hour.  It was vacant as it had closed for the night, but that didn’t stop the water from seeping in from under the door.

We’re taking on water, Lightoller thought.  God almighty, that can only mean one thing.

A breach in the hull.

After separating from Moody, Lightoller had made his way into the third-class permanent section of the bow, which contained about two dozen rooms, each with multiple bunks for single men only.  Single women and families were kept apart at the stern.

He ran into a few passengers along the way but no infected.  After taking the stairs on the port side down to F-deck, the ghostlike silence intensified.

The one good thing about the infected was you could almost always hear them coming, hear them moaning, to be exact.  They had no problem voicing their intentions even if it eliminated the element of surprise.  The bad thing was this could cause one to become complacent and let their guard down, especially if other problems were demanding equal attention—like water filling the squash court below.

Lightoller turned the corner and headed down a set of stairs parallel to the spectator gallery.  Two feet of freezing cold water met him at the bottom, piercing through his boots and pants so painfully fast he nearly lost his balance.  He let out a small whimper and then retreated back to the staircase.  From there, he looked out at the post office across the way.  Letters and mailbags floated on the surface as the water level continued to rise at a remarkable pace.

Then he saw something else in the water.

It looked like a person floating face down.

As it passed the stairs, Lightoller pulled the body out of the water and turned it over, face up.

“Ah, Christ.”

It was a man.  His eyes were open.  The skin of his face was frozen blue.

Dead.

Drowned.

Probably a crewman that had followed the water up the stairs from the Orlop deck.

As he leaned down to gently set the body back down in the water, another body came up.  This one was still alive, somewhat.  It leapt out from beneath the icy cold water like a shark and latched on with both hands to Lightoller’s coat.

Lightoller instinctively grabbed hold of its neck as though he meant to strangle it, when all he really wanted was to push it off—keep its mouth and all its teeth from sinking into him.  It glared down with dead white eyes, growling, snapping open its jaw, and giving off that unmistakable putrid scent of decomposing human flesh.

Overhead, the lights began to flicker on and off.

On.

Off.

Lightoller felt his hands slipping on the wet, slimy flesh around the infected man’s neck.  He wanted to reach down for the gun on his waistband but knew it was too risky.  It was a war of inches, and he couldn’t afford to give one centimeter more.  He lacked the positioning and leverage needed to use his full strength, and the sharp edge of the stairs was beginning to pinch into his spine.  Standing, they were perhaps similar in size.  On his back, he was a much smaller fish about to be eaten.

It was only a matter of time, of seconds.

This thing was a mere two inches away from making him its meal, or making him one of them, when a deafening blast from behind changed everything.

Lightoller’s hands finally slipped off its neck and the infected fell forward.  For a moment, he swore he felt the teeth rip into his face, but then he realized it was just the cold dead skin pressing against him.

“Are you all right?” said a voice from above.

Lightoller rolled the infected off him and cocked his head around.  Standing at the top of the stairs was Sixth Officer Moody.

“Glad to see me?”

Lightoller looked over at the infected again lying limp beside him, and the ugly black hole in its head.

“I did it.  Yes I did.”

“And you could have shot me,” said Lightoller.

“But I didn’t.”

“But you could have.”

Lightoller carefully stood up.  He noticed the water level had risen more than a foot since he’d come down a minute ago.

He was glad to be alive.

But for how much longer would the feeling last?

“Did you go to the bridge?” Lightoller asked, climbing back up the stairs.

“No, I never made it.  I got about halfway then turned back,” said Moody.  “I wasn’t about to leave you down here by yourself.  We promised to cover one another, remember?”

Lightoller made it to the top of the stairs and stood beside Moody.  “Yes, I also remember telling you I didn’t need assistance.”

“But, sir—”

“And I guess I was wrong, aye?”

Moody smiled like he’d just opened the greatest Christmas present.  Lightoller winked and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good shot.  Thanks for bailing me out.”

“Anytime, sir,” Moody said, still smiling big and wide.  “Anytime.”

“Now let’s get the hell out of here, shall we?”

They headed past the squash court to the port side and then back up the stairs to E-deck.

Rounding the corner, they heard before they saw.

A horde of infected lumbered in every direction.  Well over a dozen.  Blocking the stairs up.  Blocking the way mid-ship.

Blocking every way out but one.

“We’ve got to go back down,” said Moody.

Lightoller had already brandished his revolver and began picking off a few of the infected.  As the horde closed in on him, however, he quickly gave in to reason.

“Go!”

Moody headed back down the stairs.  Lightoller followed behind him, looking back occasionally to fire off a couple more shots.  It did little to keep the infected at bay.  They had no apparent fear of stairs, though their coordination wasn’t quite in tune.  Rather than step, they sort of stumbled down.

Back on F-deck, Moody stopped suddenly.  “Which way?”

“Take a hard left.  There.”  Lightoller pointed to a second set of stairs just past the squash court.  “We’ll circle back up and confuse them.”

Moody charged up the stairs.

“No,” Lightoller shouted from behind.  “We need to wait for enough of them to follow us down first.”

“Understood,” said Moody.

“Stay ready.  On my word.”

The impromptu strategy seemed to be working.  The undead passengers piled down the stairs one after another, their collective moans swelling into a melody of miserable terror.

Lightoller waited for the first of the infected—a middle-aged woman with a beautiful silk scarf around her neck and a bloodied nose and split lip—to get within five feet of him before putting a bullet in her colorless face.  She made a gargling sound like she’d choked on the slug and then collapsed.  The others continued forward, plodding over her body as though she was just part of the floor.

“Okay.  Let’s go.”

Moody led the way up the stairs and back around the bend.  Across the hall, the last of the infected were heading down the opposite staircase.  “It worked,” he yelled, spinning around to make sure Lightoller was still behind him.  “It’s clear!”

Had he not turned his back, Moody would have surely seen the infected man come from around the bunker.  Instead, it was Lightoller stepping off the stairs that saw him first.

There was no time for any warning.

The infected man seized Moody by the shoulders from behind and went for the open flesh of his neck like some mutated vampire.  With less than a second to act, Lightoller pulled the trigger on the Webley.

The infected man staggered backwards.

Moody dropped to his knees.

With no time to properly aim, Lightoller had successfully prevented Moody from being bitten, though not without a price.

The sixth officer winced in pain and put a hand to his right shoulder. The bullet had sheered through his black officers coat, grazed his skin, and then found a permanent home in the infected man’s neck—the infected man who had already regained his footing, oblivious to the kind of pain Moody felt, and who now came forward to strike again.

Lightoller steadied the revolver.  Behind him, he could hear the others coming back up the stairs.

This time he didn’t rush the shot.  He took the extra second to aim, knowing the only thing standing between Moody and certain death was him.

And yet it didn’t matter.

Click.

Because the cylinder was empty.

Moody looked up at Lightoller just as the infected man came down upon him, his final expression wearing all the remorse that Lightoller felt weighing heavy on his heart.

Lightoller dug deep into his pocket for the last of the ammo.  If he could not save Moody from becoming infected, he could still spare him the pain of being eaten alive.

Two more infected came around the corner of the bunker.  They had likely been drawn to the sound of the gunshot, or Moody’s screams.

Lightoller looked down at his hand.

Four bullets.

That’s all he had left.

Then an infected woman came up beside him from the stairs and grabbed hold of his arm, causing all four bullets to fall to the floor.  Lightoller spun around and struck the woman in the face with the empty revolver, then backed off as more limped toward him.

They had him surrounded, forcing him into a corner.  His only defense was a strong will to survive—to elude this deadly plague—to escape this sinking ship—to return in one piece to his wife and children.  Whatever it took, he’d keep fighting until the cold end.  He’d find a way, even if the only way were through them.

Luckily, it wasn’t.

Not yet.

He backed up as far as he could and felt the hard brass of a doorknob jab into his lower back.  A moment later, he was standing in the dark linen closet, while dozens of the infected gathered outside to guard the door.

He used the first match to have a look around the cramped closet.  Towels.  Bed sheets.  Pillows.  All useless things given his predicament.  Taking a nap was probably out of the question, unless he longed to be buried in a watery grave.

He used the second match to light his pipe.  Then he sat down with his back flat against the wall, the pipe in his mouth, and tried to think of a plan.  Through the choir of the undead, he could hear Moody’s cries finally fade away.

BROWN

“I’m not gonna tell you again, sweetheart.  Get into the boat.”

“No, I won’t go without John,” Madeline said defiantly.  “Or without our belongings...what will become of them?”

“They’ll be at the bottom of the sea,” Margaret replied.  “Right where you’ll be if you don’t get into the boat.”

“I don’t see you getting in.”

“I’ll get in right after you.”

“I bet you wouldn’t leave your husband.”

“Honey, I left that man three years ago.”

John Jacob Astor finally stepped between the two.  “Madeline, please.  Think of the baby.  This boat is for women and children only.  I’ll find another boat.  We will be together again soon, I promise.”

Madeline stared into the wooden lifeboat where four dozen other women were already seated inside, some with babies bundled in their arms or small children crammed at their feet.

First Officer Murdoch offered a hand to help young Madeline into the boat.  “Come on, miss.  We don’t have all night.  If you don’t want to go, I’m sure there are others who would take your place.”

“She’s going,” said John.  “Aren’t you dear?”

The lifeboat gently rocked against the side of the ship, held in place by a single rope on each end connected to a pulley system.

Madeline sneered.  “Look at this wretched thing.  Why it’s not even safe.  Like this awful lifebelt you made me put on.”

Murdoch rolled his eyes.  “Move along then,” he said, and pushed them aside.

“I thought we already went over the lifebelt,” said John.  “I showed you how it works.  I refuse to discuss it further.”

Not twenty feet away, a skirmish broke out between a number of passengers waiting to get into lifeboat number five and a walking corpse with dark brown hair and high cheek bones.  The corpse lost, but not before ruining a few peoples chances at securing a seat.

“You think staying here is safe?” Margaret asked.

Madeline pouted and then looked lovingly up at John.  “You swear you’ll find another boat?”

John took his young wife by her thin hips and pulled her close to him.  “I will.”

“Well, isn’t that sweet,” said Margaret.  “Now can we get a move on?”

“Don’t worry about me.”  John continued speaking directly to Madeline, ignoring Margaret’s request.  “I have to head back to the room to get something from the safe first.  Then I promise I will find my own boat.”

Madeline finally submitted to the pressure.

As the first officer helped Madeline aboard, Margaret whispered to John.  “What’s in the safe?”

“Twenty-five hundred in cash,” John replied without hesitation.

“You think that’s gonna buy you a ticket out of here, do ya?”

“I pray it doesn’t come to that.”

Margaret climbed into the lifeboat next with the help of Murdoch and took a seat beside Madeline.  John stayed on the boat deck looking over the side as Murdoch and one of the deck hands began lowering the boat.  By the time they reached the open promenade deck one level down, he had disappeared.

Madeline began to cry.  Margaret hardly noticed, however, as she had spotted a friend on the promenade deck walking by himself and looking rather unwell.  He was the architect of the soon to be famous Titanic, Mr. Thomas Andrews.

He turned around at the sound of his name.  Even from a distance, Margaret could see the dark bags under his eyes and the sweat gleaming from every pore on his face.  He was beginning to look a lot like—

One of them, Margaret thought.  But that can’t be, could it?

Andrews looked directly at Margaret and then hurried off.

“What in the heck,” Margaret said, and stood up.  The lifeboat swayed as the balance momentarily shifted.  “Hey, Mr. Andrews.  Where are you—”

“Madam, sit back down now,” yelled George Hogg, a lookout and one of three crewmen in charge of lifeboat number seven.

“I’ll do you one better.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Madeline.  She had stopped crying in a flash.

“You stay here,” Margaret said.  Then she grabbed hold of the railing even with the lifeboat and pulled herself through an open window on to the promenade deck.

Now Madeline stood up.

“You sit down and stay there,” Margaret barked.

“Yeah, sit down,” Hogg echoed.

Madeline reluctantly obeyed, while Margaret ran off to catch a fleeing Thomas Andrews.

SMITH

The Titanic sat dead in the water, its bow beginning to shift slightly downward.  The bridge and wheelhouse were empty.  All hands were on deck, the boat deck, working with a shared objective to save as many souls as possible.

An overwhelming task, for sure.

Crewmen were stationed at every entrance to the boat deck for the purpose of crowd control.  But they were unarmed and could do very little to contain the disorder, as evidenced by the dead bodies lying all around.  Blood ran all along the once magnificent wooden deck, seeping into the cracks between the boards, soon to be washed away.

The depravity exhibited by the infected was unimaginable.  They resembled human beings only in form.  In every other way, they were a thing of evil, minions of the devil himself, incapable of being reasoned with, of thinking, of emotion.  They were slaves to their desires, acting purely on instinct.

So far, they made up only a small percentage of the passengers, but with each minute that passed, the scale tipped further in their direction.

If there was any good to come from the ship foundering, it was that the infection would not make it to the shore, sparring countless persons such a grim and unpleasant fate.  The cold dark sea would provide the final quarantine.

Captain Smith peered over the edge of the ship.  Lifeboat seven had been launched with a full load and gradually slipped off into the distance.  A moment later, the crew in charge stopped rowing as a battle had broken out.

“Are you making certain no infected get into the lifeboats?” Smith asked of First Officer Murdoch, who was helping load lifeboat five.

“Trying my best, sir.  Checking them as thoroughly as possible.”

“Try harder, Mr. Murdoch,” said Smith, still looking out at the infected uprising occurring on lifeboat seven.  “It seems that a few may have slipped through the cracks.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Smith walked up and down the deck in a daze, mumbling to himself, wondering what in God’s name they did to deserve this.  Two crewmen on the port side had taken it upon themselves to do a little deck cleaning, carrying the dead bodies one by one to the edge, and then tossing them overboard.

Also on the port side, standing in a circle near the entrance to the first-class staircase, was the orchestra.  Led by violinist, Wallace Hartley, the small ensemble would normally be inside providing entertainment to the first-class passengers via the dining saloon or lounge, but Smith had asked them to brave the cold in hopes that the music would help calm the passengers.  It didn’t appear to be working in that regard, but the current cheery ragtime number did present a clear contrast to the sound of screaming chaos.

Coming up to the bow, Smith thought his eyes were deceiving him.

“Is that a steamer approaching,” he asked Fourth Officer Boxhall, pointing in the direction of the flickering lights far off in the distance.

“I hadn’t noticed, sir.”

“Try to signal it with the Morse lamp, would you?  And have Rowe fetch the rockets.  Tell him to fire one every five minutes.”

“Right away.”

The Carpathia was supposed to be the closest ship to their position, roughly fifty-eight miles to the southeast.  It would arrive in no better than four hours.  This ship visible on the horizon, however, could be no more than ten miles away.

LIGHTOLLER

Of all the places to die, Lightoller thought, striking his final match.  He had already smoked the last of his tobacco, so he used the short flame to check the time on his pocket watch.

1:05 a.m.

He fanned the match out and then leaned back and listened to the moans of the infected outside the door.  By now, he had expected to be free of the dark linen closet.  He had devised the most brilliant of plans very early on.

Wait them out.

Eventually the tortured souls standing guard would go find easier prey, or some unlucky mate would run by and draw their attention away.  And then...?

Why then he’d sneak out like a housecat.

He just needed to be patient.  Wait them out.

So brilliant.

Forty-five minutes later, they were still there, still driving him crazy.  Once the cold water snuck under the door like a snake and bit into his feet, he knew the window of escape was about to close.  The water was only ankle high, but was rising fast.  He’d have to make a stand soon or drown.

He checked his pockets again for the hundredth time, digging into every corner.  Not one bullet.

He searched the shelves one final time.  Towels.  Bed sheets.  Pillows.  All still useless.

The best weapon he had was trying to kill him in the coldest of manners.

The water.

No more sneaking out like a cat.

He’d swim out like a fish.

BROWN

Margaret felt like she’d wandered into a time loop.  Once more, she was looking for Thomas Andrews, and again he managed to elude her.

After leaving lifeboat seven, she had quickly lost sight of him behind a swarm of passengers.  A fight had broken out, preventing her from being able to safely follow him further down the promenade deck.

The infected class refused to go down quietly, their numbers having doubled in the last half hour, and higher numbers meant more violence.  Around every turn was another battle, another sickening display of malevolence.  The blood of hundreds of passengers stained new patterns into the carpeting, splattered against the richly adorned walls, dripped from the polished brass light fixtures.

The most magnificent ship ever built, with luxury and class like no other, had now become littered with corpses—some slumped over on the floor with their insides hanging out, others defying death and walking around searching for their next victim.  In a short time, the Titanic had become the setting for a war between the living and the undead.

And the undead were winning.

Margaret avoided going into battle herself, circling and weaving around the infected as best she could.  But such good fortune wouldn’t last long.

The door was unlocked, but Andrews wasn’t in his stateroom.  Likewise, he wasn’t in the dining saloon, the reading and writing room, the lounge, or either of the cafes.  Margaret went as far down as C-deck before giving up; the number of infected were simply too strong in the lower decks.  If he was down there, he was probably either dead or one of them.

The thought of her new friend becoming one of those things made her feel ill.  He was such a kind and gentle man.  If he had to die, he deserved to die with his dignity, and all of his limbs, still intact.

Margaret hurried back up the aft first-class staircase, hoping there were still lifeboats left.  She was almost up to the boat deck when she realized there was one room she hadn’t checked.

The first-class smoke room.

It had slipped her mind, likely due to her having never been inside, as the room was always off limits to women.  But that wouldn’t matter now.

Margaret carefully headed inside, amazed as she took in the room for the first time.  The smoke room, with its mahogany paneled walls and colorful stained glass windows, somehow hadn’t been touched by the devastation that engulfed many of the other public rooms.  There wasn’t one dead body, not even an overturned chair.  Everything was as it should be.  Immaculate.

It was also the perfect hiding place for Thomas Andrews.  He was standing in front of the fireplace, looking up at a painting of Plymouth Harbour hanging above, his back turned to her.

“There you are,” said Margaret.  “What do you think you’re doing in here?  Aren’t you at least gonna try and save yourself?”

Andrews hung his head but didn’t respond.  Outside, a rocket shot off and exploded in the air, cutting through the stiff silence.

“Mr. Andrews?  Are you okay?”  She began walking toward him.  “I know this must be tough on you, but you got to get past it.  You have a family to think about.  Mr. Andrews?”

She stopped right behind him, suddenly startled by the horrible sound she heard.  It was barely above a whisper, like slow, dry breathing, but it was unmistakable.

Thomas Andrews turned around and stared at Margaret with buggy white eyes and a grave face.

Margaret reared back and fell between two chairs.  Andrews followed her down, grabbing at her feet as she slipped underneath the table and out the other side.  Back standing, Margaret pushed the table over, trapping him.

“You’re gonna have to try harder than that,” she said, looking down at him struggling underneath the table.  “But I get why you ran now.  You knew what you’d become.  Maybe I knew then too but didn’t want to believe it.  Maybe I just needed to say goodbye.”

Andrews reached out for Margaret like he wanted her hand to help him, but he didn’t try to push the table off.  He lay there, full of helpless rage, writhing back and forth, unable to understand why he couldn’t move.

Margaret walked to where Andrews had originally been in front of the fireplace.  In a sheath beside the fire was a brass poker with an intricate design engraved into the handle.  She picked up the poker and walked back over to Andrews.

“Poor guy, I know you’re suffering, and I can’t stand to see people suffer.  I really wish there was a better way of doing this, but I’m afraid this is the best I got.  We both have somewhere to go, and not a lot of time.  Me...I’ve got a lifeboat to catch.  And you...”

She gripped the poker hand over hand and then brought it up slowly over her head.

“Well, hopefully this will help you get where you’re going a little faster.”

She brought the poker down on the side of Andrews’s head.  It drove through his skull with remarkable ease and came to a sharp stop against the carpet.  An appalling odor, and a splash of dark blood, broke free from the crushing hole.

“To heaven,” Margaret said, her hands still wound tightly around the brass poker, trembling.  “Hopefully, to heaven.”

Andrews instantly went motionless as all remaining brain activity ceased and his soul was finally allowed to go free.

Margaret left her friend in the smoke room with the poker still embedded in his skull and hurried back up to the boat deck.  From the looks of it, the officers were having an even harder time than before at getting the lifeboats lowered.  Many passengers finally got the idea that the ship was going to sink and made for the top deck in droves, bringing with them waves of the sick and violent, and despite the crew’s best efforts, they couldn’t keep them off the top deck to save their lives.

Margaret got a seat on number six.  Quartermaster Robert Hichens was in charge this time, and she hoped he would be less of a bastard than George Hogg from boat seven.

LIGHTOLLER

The water was up to his waist now, and so cold he felt like he was wearing a pair of ice undies.  If he didn’t get moving soon, he might never be able to have any more children, or worse yet, see the ones he already had ever again.

Upon opening the door, a flood of water poured in and pushed him back against the closet shelving.  He allowed the water to stabilize and level off before attempting to move.

Had he waited too long?

The water outside was almost shoulder high, but thankfully he didn’t see any infected.  They had either moved on willingly before the brunt of the water arrived, or had been swept away with the current when it did.  Most likely the latter.  They could even be under the water still, drowned or drowning.

Or alive.

Like the one that attacked him on the staircase on G-deck—the one that would have killed him had Moody not decided to come back.  He felt ashamed that he wasn’t able to return the favor when Moody needed him, but dying now would make Moody’s death all the more in vain.

I’ve made it this far, Lightoller thought.  It’s just freezing cold water.

He took a deep breath and dove under.

It was a good thing he had committed the layout of the ship to memory because he could barely see anything, and the cold saltwater felt like it was burning away his eyes.

He swam straight out of the linen closet and then as deep down as he could.  Not five yards beyond the closet, he encountered the first infected.  The overhead lights from the stairs leading down to F-deck helped illuminate the water, allowing Lightoller to easily see it in time.

The infected woman was thrashing about under the water, her eyes as open as his, searching for the way out, which happened to be just a little farther down on the right.  Not for him, however, as he could now see many sets of legs.

The stairs leading up to D-deck was crowded with infected.

Lightoller came up for a second to take a breath and then went back down.  Once he passed the stairs, the water drastically reduced in volume, back to a little over waist high, allowing him to stand again.  As he emerged from the water, the infected behind him on the stairs immediately took notice, moaning and floundering in the water to try and get over to him with no luck.  Of all things they were—dedicated overeaters—swimmers they were not.

Lightoller turned his focus from those trapped against the stairs and looked down the long hallway up ahead.

More.

Four men and three women hobbled around with their heads crooked to the side like a bunch of dilapidated drunks trying to remember which room was theirs.  Water played around at their knees.

“Shit,” Lightoller whispered, knowing he’d have to find another way.  The hallway was too cramped to slip past them and he didn’t have bullets to mow them down.  Meanwhile, the water had already risen another foot up to his chest.

He turned to his left and looked over at another set of stairs leading up on the starboard side past the master at arms station.  It looked free of ghouls from where he stood.

He slogged through the water toward the starboard side and then slowed down as he came upon the staircase.  He checked the door to the master at arms but it was locked.  Then he gradually inched through the water until he could see on to the staircase.

One infected, standing about a third of the way up, hunched over like he was about to do a belly flop into the water.

Lightoller whistled to get his attention.

The infected man looked up and growled, but didn’t move an inch, as if he knew not to get into the water.

Was this one smarter than the rest?  The others on the port side would have tried anything to take a piece out of him.  If this one wouldn’t move off the stairs, then he would be difficult to pass without injury.  It had the benefit of higher ground, and much less water to slow it down.

Lightoller looked around frantically searching for a better escape route, and that’s when he saw it.

Enclosed within a glass case, hanging on the wall on the other side of the staircase.

The key to his salvation.

A small red fire axe.

Instead of trolling through the water, Lightoller dove under, swam past the stairs, and came up in front of the axe case.  He removed the revolver from his waistband and used the butt of it to smash open the glass.  Then he took out the axe and held it up out of the water to examine it; one side had a typical flat sharp blade, the other a pick-shaped pointed one.

Perfect, Lightoller thought.

Apparently, the infected man on the stairs didn’t think so, nor was he smarter than the rest, because he finally decided to flop into the water.

“Aye.  Come get me.”  Lightoller gripped the axe with two hands and waited for the infected man to get within range.  “I’ve got something for ya.”

He swung the pointed end of the axe through the infected man’s forehead, cracking and caving the skull in on the brain.  It was as easy as poking a finger through an eggshell.

The infected man dropped his arms and stood frozen in the water, held up only by the axe rooted in his head.  The axe had fixed itself so deep, Lightoller had to twist and pry apart the skull to get it back out.  Once the axe was free, the dead man floated away face down.

Lightoller swam over to the stairs and then climbed up until he was out of the water.  Then he sat down to rest.

The cold made his lungs feel like they had shrunk to half their normal size, making it difficult to breathe, and his legs and midsection were so numb he wondered if he’d even be able to stand back up.

He took out his pocket watch and checked the time.  It had stopped at 1:15 a.m.  He sighed and threw the watch in the water.  Then he took off his drenched officer’s coat and laid it on the stairs next to the fire axe.

It’s not over yet, he thought, putting his head back and listening to the familiar sounds coming from above.

The staircase he rested upon led up to the third-class open space, which was, as the name implied, simply a large open space designated for third-class gatherings.  It was almost the same size as the second-class dining saloon, and was often used as a spot to dance or play music and games.  There were tables and chairs all along the perimeter for spectators.

But it didn’t sound alive up there right now.

No.

It sounded dead.

He’d wait and let his muscles reload, let the blood in his veins begin to flow, until the water told him it was time to go.

How long he had, he did not know.

But he’d wait and rest before going back into battle, before throwing all caution to the wind.

SMITH

“Come alongside,” Smith shouted through a megaphone.  He waved his arms attempting to get the attention of the eleven lifeboats already launched.

He had ordered the seaman in charge of each boat to row a good distance out to avoid a pile up during the launching process.  Now he needed some to return.  Many had left without a full load or had dwindling numbers due to the sick sneaking aboard and then later wrecking havoc when the infection made them hungry.

“Come alongside,” Smith yelled again.  He knew all of the boats should still be within earshot of his megaphone, yet none returned.

“They’re ignoring you, captain,” said Fifth Officer Lowe, loading lifeboat sixteen.  “They’re afraid of being overrun, and I can’t say I blame them, sir.”

Smith bit his tongue and nodded.

Lowe fired off two shots with his seven-shot Browning, killing two infected as they tried to rush the boat.  Then he stepped inside the lifeboat and blew away one more.

“When you get down there, try to secure the boats together and condense everyone in to as few boats as possible.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” said Lowe.

“That’s all I ask.”

Most of the forward lifeboats had now launched, and so passengers began heading toward the stern.  Some of the male variety, fearing they wouldn’t get a seat off the sinking ship, jumped over the side and tried to swim out to the fleet of wooden boats.  Few survived.  Others, both well and unwell, went over the side without consenting.  Even fewer of them survived.

Smith walked back to the wireless room to check in on Jack and Harold.  The Carpathia kept in contact but was still hours from their position, and the steamer slowly slipping away on the horizon never responded to their signals.  As the burst of light from the last rocket burned out, so went all hope.

All the while, the orchestra played on.  Alexander’s Ragtime Band, their current tune.

LIGHTOLLER

Chop, chop.

Whether he was ready or not, the water didn’t care; it was actively consuming the staircase, reminding the second officer of its cold vengeance.

He decided to leave behind his coat, as it would only slow him down.  He also left the empty revolver for the same reason.  The axe, on the other hand, would hopefully speed things up.

Lightoller quietly crawled up the stairs to the third-class open space, trying not to draw any attention from the herd of infected.  The open space contained four staircases aligned in a rectangle, with the two staircases leading up to C-deck closest to the bow.  It was a straight shot from where he was, but he’d have to pass dozens of infected along the way.  There was no way of slipping around them either, no way to lead them in a circle as he had before.  Once he came out of hiding, they’d swarm on him like a colony of roaches.  He’d have to be swift.

And deadly.

He popped up and dashed directly at the first infected in his path.  It was a skinny, middle-aged man wearing a white shirt and suspenders.  He didn’t have a drop of blood on him until the fire axe connected with his head.  Then the dark red blood splattered out of the hole in his skull like an exploding jar of marmalade, everywhere, exciting the crowd.

That did the trick, Lightoller thought, as every grey faced soul in the room turned and acknowledged him.

After the first kill, the rest wouldn’t have a face.  They wouldn’t be wearing this or that, be skinny or fat, or even be male or female.  They’d just be things in his way, and he’d chop them down one by one.  They’d be a blur.

Like his axe.

The next one lost its head thinking it could sneak up from the side.  It rolled away, the mouth still trying to snap at air even without a body, tripping up others following behind.

The third took the butt of the axe to the chest, knocking it backward.

The fourth was lucky it staggered when it did, as the axe missed its target and connected squarely with the shoulder.  Lightoller planted a front kick in its sternum then spun and put the pick-shaped end of the axe into the mouth of another.

Two went down with one swipe, and one more said goodbye to its head.

So far so good.  Except he had only made it about a third of the way and the herd was closing in fast, surrounding him.  They just kept coming and coming.  No matter how many of their friends fell, they knew eventually they’d get him, and so did Lightoller.

Change of plans.

There were tables and chairs set up against the wall to the right.  Ordinarily, they were an excellent place to sit and play a friendly game with a fellow passenger.  Lightoller would use them like squares on a chessboard.

He lifted off a chair to get on to the first table and then quickly hopped over to the second.  He didn’t stop to time each jump; he didn’t want to lose his forward momentum, or let the infected catch up.

He made it to the fourth table before his foot slipped causing him to fall off, and the axe to fly out of his hand.  The table fell over too, but thankfully not on him.

In spite of the slight pain in his back from the fall, the plan had worked well.  He had managed to cross most of the open space, leaving the majority of the horde in the dust, and the staircase to C-deck just yards away.

The axe had slid under the table in front of him, trailing blood along the way.  He hurried under the table, grabbed the axe, and then crawled out the other side.  As he stood back up, he felt relieved to have the axe back in his hands.  Then he put it in someone’s chest, smashing apart their ribcage.

He chopped two more down on his way around the corner of the staircase, and then decapitated another who had sadly tumbled down the stairs in a rush to get a quick meal.  At the top of the stairs were double doors that led out on to the forward well deck.

The thirty-two degree air outside hit Lightoller like an angry ex-lover, made worse by his sopping wet clothing.  But he was glad to be free of the confined quarters below, glad to see the stars again lighting up the night sky.

He went up a series of staircases on the port side, delighted to finally pass some people who weren’t infected, all the way up to the boat deck.  First Officer William Murdoch was right at the top of the stairs helping load lifeboat two.

“Speak of the devil,” Murdoch shouted, seeing Lightoller walk up bloody axe in hand.  “We thought you were dead.”

“As did I, more than once.”

Murdoch handed a baby over to a woman sitting in the lifeboat.  Lightoller instinctively took notice of any infected nearby.  There were none in the general vicinity, but he watched as a few further down deck surprised a crowd of unsuspecting passengers.

“Where is Moody?”

“He didn’t make it,” Lightoller said.  “We got cornered.”

“That’s a shame,” Murdoch replied.  “Well, I’m happy to see you.  We could use the help.”

“It looks like it.”

“I don’t think the ship can stay up much longer.”

“No, it’s filling fast.  I barely outran the water.”

“I can tell.”

“How did all this come about?”

“Oh, you don’t know?  We hit an iceberg on the starboard side.  Thing apparently came out of nowhere, and we’ve been going down by the head ever since.”

“Unbelievable,” Lightoller said, looking out at all the lifeboats in the distance.

“Right, you’re gonna freeze to death if you don’t change out of those clothes.  Also, if you still have your gun you might want to pick your shots wisely because we ran out of ammunition.”

Lightoller shook his head.  “I left it behind.  But I got this,” he said, holding up the axe, “and it’s been getting the job done.  Excuse me.”

He went to his cabin not ten feet away on the left and quickly changed into a dry, blood-free uniform, including a new coat, and then returned to the deck to help Murdoch lower lifeboat two.

BROWN

No one said a word.

There was nothing to say.

There was nothing to do.

They had stopped rowing out some time ago, and now they sat rocking back and forth in the water, snuggled together for warmth, watching the massive ship and all their loved ones they had left behind be slowly swallowed by the Atlantic.

Minute by minute, the bow sunk further and further down, until finally the water came up over the railing completely submerging the forecastle and well decks, marking the beginning of the end.  The white front anchor crane disappeared below the surface not long after, with the foremast and attached crow’s nest being the only thing left visible on the bow.  Because of the forward pressure, the stern would now start to rise at a quick pace.

Margaret shared a large blanket with two others, frozen in shock.  It had all happened so fast.  Just over two hours ago, she had been lying in bed reading, waiting for the calm comfort of sleep to take her.  Now she was wide-awake, tears welling up in her eyes even as the frigid air tried to fight them off, listening to the screams and cries of less fortunate passengers who knew their deaths were forthcoming—viewing the disaster from afar like an audience member to some mass execution.  The fact that the ship’s lights remained on, making the demise of so many easier for her to observe, was all the more unsettling.  But there was nothing she or anyone could do but wait and pray it wouldn’t last much longer.

So she sat there quiet, feeling guilty for being in a lifeboat, for having a family to return to, for being blessed with wealth.

For the unfairness of life.

SMITH

“You have done a great service, and should be proud,” said Smith, bracing himself in the doorway of the wireless room so he didn’t fall backward.  He had come one final time to relieve Jack and Harold.  “There is nothing more expected of you.  In times like these it is every man for himself.”

“Captain, you don’t have a lifebelt on,” remarked Harold Bride.  “What are we to make of that?”

“Not a thing,” Smith replied.  “Save yourselves.  My retirement is written in stone.”

He left the wireless room and sauntered back on to the boat deck, passing the orchestra.  They finished playing Songe d’Automne, and then as a team used their violins and cellos in a way they had never imagined—as weapons.  They fought strong and hard against a particularly bad outbreak of infected that had taken over most of the boat deck, and like so many others, eventually lost the battle.

Captain Smith crossed over to the port side, observing the continued chaos and loading of the final lifeboats.  All sixteen numbered boats had been launched, along with collapsible C.  Pittman, Boxhall, and Lowe had all safely made it off the sinking ship and in command of a lifeboat.  Moody had not been so lucky.  Murdoch and Lightoller’s fates were very much undecided, as they were still on deck about to launch collapsible D, constantly fighting off the onslaught of infected.

“Mr. Lightoller, it’s your turn to go,” said Smith, approaching the pair.

“Not damn likely,” Lightoller replied.  “I can still be of help here, captain.  We need to free the two remaining collapsible boats from their lashings before they go down with the ship.”

“We haven’t much time.”

“We have to try, sir.”

Smith nodded.  “Go ahead.”

LIGHTOLLER

He climbed on to the roof of the officer quarters where collapsible B was tied up, and then began splitting the ropes with his trusty axe.  On the starboard side, crewmen had set up oars at an angle against the roof to gently slide boat A down.  A moment later, they shrieked as the oars slipped away and the boat fell on top of them.

Lightoller hacked away at the ropes, feeling the ship begin to descend at a faster rate.  The water had now poured over on to the promenade deck and within minutes would approach the bridge.  On the boat deck, the screams and cries of hundreds of passengers intensified, as they trudged around the blood-spotted wooden deck in utter terror.  Some decided not to wait any longer and jumped off the side of the ship, choosing a cold death over becoming a warm meal.

He had one more rope to split and the boat would be free.  As he shifted around to the front, he looked out at the crow’s nest and saw what looked to be a man and a woman huddling inside.  Since the infected couldn’t climb ladders, the nest was no doubt an excellent place to hide out early on, but unfortunately for the two lovebirds, things had changed.  The icy cold water now posed the biggest threat, and in no time would follow through on it.

He kneeled beside the final rope and then flinched at the sound of a loud bang behind him on the port side.

A gunshot.

Then another, and a scream.

Lightoller turned and looked down upon the boat deck.  A dozen or so passengers scrambled back in a half-circle, fearing that they’d be accidently shot if they stepped in to help First Officer Murdoch.  An infected man had him by the collar, dragging him down and nearly off the side of the ship.

Lightoller climbed on top of the small white railing that wrapped around the roof of the officer quarters and then leapt off, soaring directly over many of the scared passengers.  He held the axe with two hands over his head, and as he landed, brought it down hard into the back of the infected man’s skull, splitting it in half like a rotten block of firewood.

The force from Lightoller coming down on them caused Murdoch to roll off the edge of the ship.  He managed to catch himself just in time, holding on with both hands as his body dangled over the side.  Lightoller pushed his most recent kill aside and then reached down to grab hold of Murdoch.

“I can’t hold on,” Murdoch cried.

“Yes, you can.”

Murdoch was able to plant a foot on the frame of a window from the partially enclosed promenade deck and use it to help climb up.

“There you go,” Lightoller said, pulling and lifting the first officer the rest of the way back on to the boat deck.

Now that he no longer needed to use both hands to hold on, Murdoch put one against his neck.  Blood trickled out between his fingers.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Yes.  He bit me.”

“Damn,” Lightoller muttered, leaning over the first officer.  “I’m sorry, Will.  I should have gotten down here sooner.”

“It’s not your fault,” Murdoch replied, wincing in pain.  The blood kept coming out of his neck.  “Could you hand me my gun?”

He had dropped the Webley revolver during the fight with the infected man.  It was now lying a few feet away.  Lightoller handed it to Murdoch.

“One left,” Murdoch said, flicking open the revolver and checking the cylinder.  Then he looked back up at Lightoller and offered the gun.

“You keep it.  I don’t need it.”

Murdoch struggled to hold the gun out, taking short breaths.  “But would you help me, Charles?”

“No,” Lightoller said without a moment’s consideration.  “Don’t ask me to do that.  I wouldn’t blame you if you did...but there are some things a man has to do on his own.”

“You’re right.”  Murdoch finally brought the gun down and rested his arm on his chest.  The other hand remained pressed against the wound on his neck.  “Go now.  Leave me.  There is still hope for you.”

Lightoller left the first officer lying on his back by the edge of the boat deck, and climbed back up on to the roof of the officer quarters to finish what he had started.  Not thirty seconds after he walked away, he heard the gunshot, and knew Murdoch was now free from the nightmare.

He went back to work removing the last bit of rope holding down collapsible B.  It was a grueling balancing act, as the ship was now leaning forward at a severe angle, raising the stern ever-upward like the lighter side of a seesaw, with the Titanic’s three giant propellers emerging from the water.

Below him, Lightoller could see the bridge was flooding rapidly.  He tucked the axe into his belt so he could hold on to the railing to keep from sliding off the roof.  Collapsible B, with nothing now to hold it in place, succumbed to gravity and slid off, flipping upside down as it connected with a rush of water splashing up over the bridge.  Lightoller watched as it floated off to the port side.

Then behind him, the cables holding the forward funnel began to snap one by one under the pressure, followed by a great sound of tearing metal.

No more holding on for dear life.

Lightoller took the same path as boat B.  He slid feet first into the cold water, instantly forced under by the encroaching waves.  As he swam to the surface, he could still hear the inharmonious sound of ripping metal, muffled by the water but still delivering a painful resonance.  He made it back up to the surface and gasped for air, the cold water already beginning to put a vice grip on his lungs.

Above him, the forward funnel with its base now crumpled and sheared apart, began to lean like it would fall over at any moment.  So he swam faster and with more incentive than ever before to get out of the way.

Seconds later, the funnel broke off and plunged forward into the water, narrowly missing the second officer, and producing significant waves on both sides.  Lightoller was again swept underwater.

Dark and disoriented, he held his breath and tried to swim back up, failing to get very far.  He tried a second time, again forced back down.  He was near an engine room air intake, he now realized, and as the water rushed down it would suck him against the grate.

Feeling defeated and in need of oxygen, his head began to swell.  Any moment now, he would blackout—take in a big breath of liquid death.

But then a rumble from below.

An explosion.

The cold water rushing through the air intake had hit the boilers, and with enormous speed and force, blasted Lightoller off the grate and propelled him back to the surface like a torpedo shot from a submarine.  He coughed up some water and then took in as deep a breath as he could, still dangerously lightheaded.  He could hear voices nearby in the water, and after taking in five or six strong breaths, began to swim toward them.

He came upon three men trying to scale the bottom end of collapsible B.  It was a tough task, but once the first managed to climb on, he helped pull the others up and out of the water.  As he swam closer, Lightoller thought two of the men looked familiar.

“Got room for one more?”

“Sure thing, mate,” one of them said, and reached out a hand for Lightoller.  He hauled him up on to the overturned boat.  The other two that Lightoller had recognized were Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, the Marconi wireless operators.

“Is there help on the way?”

“The Carpathia, Baltic, and Olympic,” said Bride.

Then as a group, the four men turned and looked back at the Titanic.

SMITH

The ship was now submerged up to the third funnel, its lights still casting a glow over the water.  There was a series of thunderous crashing sounds, as any mobile items on board such as pianos and trunks, or smaller things like china and silverware, all fell forward.  People were also sliding down the deck, spinning in circles, screaming or moaning all the way to their deaths.  The rest desperately clung to railings or staircases or whatever was within reach, trying to delay the inevitable.

Captain Smith had his back flat against the wall to the tank room between the third and fourth funnels, facing up at the stern.  From where he stood, he spotted only one infected nearby, a tattered looking man in a long coat hanging on to the foot of a woman from steerage.  Most of the other infected had either already been dropped in the drink or were down on lower decks losing their balance along with everything else.

The woman from steerage had her back turned to Smith, showing her curly blond hair and long beige dress.  The thing behind her dangled face down on the wooden deck, trying to pull itself up, while she held on to the railing with one hand trying to break free, screaming for help.

As sad as it made him to listen to the woman’s pleas, Smith wouldn’t dare try to climb up the steep deck.  Perhaps if he was a younger man.  She was a good thirty feet up from his position.  But then, what would be the point of it anyway?  The lifeboats were gone.  In minutes, the Titanic would be plummeting to the bottom of the Atlantic.  Even if he could save her, she’d die in the freezing water.  It was, as he had said to Jack and Harold, every man for himself.

Then she lost her footing and fell to the wooden deck, sliding down two or three feet before grabbing back hold of the railing.  The infected man was still attached to her ankle, but now that she was down at his level, he could more easily pull himself up her body.  As the woman squirmed, Smith finally saw the real reason for her cries—bundled up in a blanket against her bosom.

A baby.

The infected man saw the baby too, its tiny pink face the only part not covered by the blanket—but first he took a mouthful of meat off the woman’s leg, chewing it like it was the most delicious thing in the world.  She screamed in agony as he took another bite from the same spot, and then went for the baby.

Deciding she’d rather fall to her death then allow her or the baby to be eaten, the woman let go of the railing.  She began to slide down with the infected man still on top of her, picking up more and more speed as they went.

Smith leaned down against the wall and grabbed the woman by the arm as she passed, stopping her from going down any further.  The infected man slipped off during the sudden stop and continued downward in an uncontrollable fall.

The woman looked up at the captain, her eyes red and filled with tears, clutching her baby with her free arm.  Smith took hold of her with both hands and pulled her up and around the corner of the tank room.

With no fear of falling, the woman handed the baby over to Smith.  “Please.  Keep her safe.”

“I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do for her.  If we had more time...”

Smith stopped gazing into the poor woman’s eyes and looked down at the baby bundled in his arms.  Despite the sound of madness all around, this beautiful little girl remained perfectly silent.  While her mother cried, knowing their lives would soon end, this child had no idea anything was even wrong.  She barely had a chance to know life.

Give it your best shot, old man, Smith thought.  What have you got to lose?

The young mother already looked like the infection was getting to her.

“I’ll do what I can,” Smith finally said, and stood up with the baby.

Just around the corner of the tank room was the engineers smoke room.  Smith carefully shimmied along the wall and ducked through the door.  A stoker lay in the center of the room covered in soot from head to toe.  He smoked from a pipe and stared up at the ceiling, his lifebelt lying on the bench beside him.  Three stools and a small circular table had fallen over into a heap in the corner.

“Well, look who it is,” said the stoker, noticing Smith enter.  “I didn’t know you had a baby, Cap.”

“It’s not mine,” said Smith.  “What are you doing in here?”

“Where should I be?  Out there?  Can’t a man enjoy one last smoke?”

“I suppose,” said Smith.  “Are you gonna use that lifebelt?”

The stoker smirked.  “For what...to die slowly?  Take it if that sort of thing suits you, I reckon I’ll stay right here.”

Smith hurried over and grabbed the lifebelt with his free hand.  Then he left the engineers smoke room with the same careful method in which he had entered, leaning at an angle against the ship and staying close to the wall.

He stopped at a railing that separated the first-class promenade section from the second-class.  The infected man who had attacked the baby’s mother had become caught against the railing.  Instead of passing by him, Smith chose the safer route, down a flight of stairs between the reciprocating engine casing and the third funnel.

A door at the bottom of the stairs led out to a hall that connected the first-class lounge to the first-class staircase.  The lounge down on the right was completely underwater, so Smith continued straight through another door back outside and on to A-decks partially open promenade.  Many of the large windows had been opened to help with the loading of the boats, but now only a handful of passengers remained on the deck.

Smith carefully crossed over to the outer edge and looked out upon the water.  Most of the boats were far away, but there was one he thought maybe he could reach.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked the baby in his arms, and then waited for the ship to sink a little further before leaving it for good.

LIGHTOLLER

Lightoller and Bride helped hoist more swimmers on to the overturned boat, many of them crew members.  They were determined to get as many people on the back of the boat as they could without disrupting the balance.  They had fifteen on board right now, and more were coming.

Suddenly, a collective roar echoed into the night as the lights finally went out, thrusting the ocean into darkness, and leaving the ship merely an outline against the star-spangled sky.

Upset by the new darkness, the Titanic made a loud bellowing sound like a gigantic sea monster.

“Christ, what is that noise?” asked Bride.

“Her back is breaking,” answered Lightoller.

The ship began to split between the third and fourth funnels.  Wooden decks splintered apart.  Metal railings twisted into new shapes.  Glass shattered and fell inward.  The cables connected to the two remaining funnels snapped and flew forward like fiery whips, slicing a number of passengers into two pieces.  Then the third funnel collapsed into the water and a huge gash opened through each deck and down into the hull, sending the stern, and the hundreds of frightened passengers assembled there, rushing back down to the ocean.

The water hurried to fill the split bow, forcing it downward at a sharp angle.  The ship’s propellers once again lifted out of the water as the stern was slowly pulled back upright.

Except for the sound of the water splashing at the base consuming the ship, the night was soundless.  Those passengers who had managed to hold on during the sterns sudden plunge, no longer screamed or cried out anymore, as though they had all decided as a group to hold their breath.  Lightoller and everyone hanging on to overturned collapsible B, as well as all the other lifeboats scattered around witnessing the Titanic go down from different viewpoints, all joined in on the moment of silence.

A moment that would change them forever.

One they couldn’t turn away from.

One they would never forget.

The stern stopped straight up in the air and seemed content to just rest there for a spell before beginning its final descent.  Less than a minute later, the Titanic was gone, the stern’s flagpole the last thing to go under.  Large pockets of air rushed back to the surface causing the water to bubble up for many seconds after the ship had disappeared.

The moment of silence officially ended.

The cries of those left in the water were heartbreaking to hear.  People begged for the boats to return.  Some even blew whistles.  In no time, however, their cries developed into a mash of noise like a crowd at a train station, making their individual voices less audible.

Lightoller helped three more helpless souls in the water on to the boat, two of them passengers and one more crew member, and could see another slowly swimming up.  Unlike the majority of others they’d rescued, this one didn’t have a lifebelt on.  Instead it floated out in front of him like a raft.  As the man got closer, Lightoller saw why.

There was a baby bundled up in a blanket lying on the lifebelt to keep it from getting wet, and it was being guided across the water toward collapsible B by the most senior officer of the Titanic.

“Captain, is that you?” asked Lightoller.

“Good to see you again, Charles,” Captain Smith said, approaching the edge of the boat.  “I have something for you.”

“That’s incredible.”

Smith pushed the lifebelt up against the boat so Lightoller could reach down and pick up the baby.  “Isn’t she wonderful?”

Lightoller looked down at the princess in his arms.  “Aye.  She sure is.  Now it’s your turn.”

Smith had a hand on the side of the boat but made no motion to climb on.

“Come on.  We’ll make room, won’t we boys?”

“Yes, captain, please,” another crewman said.

“You go on ahead.  Save as many as you can.”

“Don’t be foolish,” said Lightoller.  “Will you not save yourself?”

“No, I’m sorry.  I saved her.  That’s enough.  See to it that she lives a long life.”

Lightoller nodded.  “Aye, aye, sir.”

The captain let go of the boat and began swimming off.  A moment later, he turned back and yelled, “Good luck, gentlemen.  I’m going to follow the ship.”

They watched him swim away until he was just a speck on the dark water.

BROWN

Lifeboat six.

“We need to go back.  We can’t let all those people freeze to death,” Margaret said.  It had only been ten minutes since the Titanic sank and already the voices of those in the water grew faint.  “There’s plenty of room for a few more.”

“If we go over there, they’ll swamp us,” Quartermaster Hichens shouted.  “They’ll pull us under!  Don’t you get that?”

“The only thing I get is that you are a selfish little coward,” Margaret replied, and then addressed the other passengers in the boat.  “Those people out there breathe the same air as us.  Somewhere they got someone who loves them, someone who is gonna miss them.  Maybe that someone is in this very boat.  Maybe it’s you.”

“Most of those people are already sick and dying,” said Hichens.  “They can’t be saved, but they could kill all of us.  Have you already forgotten the trouble we went through?  I don’t expect anyone wants a repeat, madam.”

Earlier, a few passengers had become unresponsive, appearing to have died, only to wake not long after wanting to eat their blanket buddy.  From the look of the other lifeboats around, this had occurred a lot, as most had their numbers brought down immensely by the hidden infected.

Fortunately for boat six, just two sick souls snuck aboard, and with the help of a few others, and an oar, Hichens had them quickly banished from the boat.  He had been so proud of himself.

“How shameful,” Margaret replied.  “Trying to scare people.  Have you forgotten what happened after we ejected them from the boat?  They sank like a stone, that’s what.  They can’t swim.  And if they have a lifebelt on, they still won’t be able to get into the boat unless we let them.  So what are you really worried about?”

“Don’t argue with me.  I’m in charge of this boat.  It’s our lives now, not theirs.”

Margaret hung her head for a moment, upset no one else would stand with her.

“I know some of you got husbands, don’t ya?  Well, where are they?  They sure ain’t here beside you.  Are you really gonna sit here and do nothing while your men die out there?  I don’t understand it.”

“I swear,” Hichens huffed, “if you don’t shut your ugly trap, I’m gonna shut it for ya!”

“That’s quite enough,” a stoker said from the back of the boat.  “That’s no way to talk to a lady.”

“Sonny, don’t worry about me,” Margaret said, calm as could be.  “I’ve dealt with much worse than this one.  In fact, I’m just itchin’ for him to give me a reason to throw his ass overboard.”

Hichens settled back, noticeably concerned with the threat.

By the time Margaret was able to convince most of the boat to go back on a rescue mission, it was probably too late anyway.  The cries and calls to return had all but stopped, and the night had become dead quiet.

Not far away, Fifth Officer Lowe in command of lifeboat fourteen rounded up four other boats, tied them together, and then safely transferred his passengers to the other boats.  Then Lowe and a few crewmen went back through the sea of corpses to search for survivors.  Even from a distance, Margaret could hear Lowe call out repeatedly if anyone was alive, wishing she was able to help.

“It’s no use,” Hichens muttered.  “Going back for a bunch of stiffs.”

As the hour passed, everyone on board boat six began to lose confidence they’d be rescued.  They could drift out for days, hundreds of miles from land, with no food or water, and only the clothing on their backs and a few extra blankets to protect them from the extreme cold.  But then—

“What was that?” Margaret asked.  She had seen a faint glimmer of light to the southeast, and then a boom.  “Could it have been a rocket?”

“Maybe a flash of lightning,” said another woman, sipping liquor from a flask.

“Nonsense,” Quartermaster Hichens said.  “It was a falling star.  Best not to get your hopes up, anyway.  May I have a drink of that?”

The woman with the flask took a long swig and then said, “No, you may not.”

Lifeboat sixteen floated close by, and so Hichens ordered the two boats to be tied together and left to drift.  All the while, Margaret kept a close eye to the southeast for another glimpse of light.  Fifteen minutes later, she saw one.  It was just like the first, only brighter, the boom, louder.

“That’s no falling star,” she said.

Everyone kept their eyes peeled to the southeast.  There was no doubt now a steamer was coming their way, firing off rockets.  Then the light from its masthead slowly appeared out of the darkness.

Fourth Officer Boxhall in boat two closest to the incoming steamer lit a green flare to get their attention.

“They’ve come to rescue us,” a young woman exclaimed.

“Or to pick up bodies,” Hichens replied.

“You want to volunteer one, go right ahead,” Margaret said.  “But I’m with her.  We need to stop drifting, and start rowing.”

“Be calm, woman.  I’ll say what we do.”

“Ya know, I’ve had about as much of your mouth as I’m gonna take.”  A dozen other women shouted their support.  “We’re taking over.  We need to cut these boats loose and start rowing.  If nothing else, it’ll keep the blood circulating.”

“You won’t do nothin’ of the kind,” Hichens protested.  But nobody was listening.

Margaret ordered a man in boat sixteen wearing only his pajamas to cut the ties holding the boats together.  Quartermaster Hichens plodded across the boat to put a stop to it, but the Colorado millionaire stood in his way.

“Where you think you’re going?” Margaret asked.

“Get out of my way.”

“I told you I’d throw you overboard.  Take one step closer and call my bluff.”

Hichens cursed under his breath and settled back under a blanket at the tiller, while the two boats were released from one another.  Then the women took turns rowing toward the ship in the distance.

As dawn approached in the east, the stars overhead started to dim, and the outline of the steamer became visible, its single funnel leaving a trail of thick black smoke in the sky.  Soon they were close enough to read the name on the bow.

Carpathia.

One by one, the lifeboats transferred their passengers safely on to the steamer.  Lifeboat six patiently waited in line for their turn.

Four hours later, the rescue was complete.

After climbing the ladder on to the Carpathia, Margaret watched from the deck until the last passenger, the Titanic’s Second Officer Charles Lightoller, was brought aboard.  Then she left to attend a prayer service for those who had been saved, and a funeral service for those who had perished.

Realizing many had lost everything when the Titanic went down, Margaret immediately went to work assisting survivors and asking the wealthier passengers for donations.  By the time the Carpathia coasted into pier 54 in New York on Thursday evening, Margaret had raised close to ten thousand dollars to benefit the less fortunate survivors and the families of the fallen.

Despite it being a cold and rainy day, over thirty-thousand people came out to greet their arrival.

The first-class passengers were allowed to disembark first.  Among them, the White Star Line’s managing director, Bruce Ismay, who somehow found a seat on a lifeboat during the confusion.  By his side were two U.S. senators, William Smith from Michigan and Francis Newlands from Nevada, who had come with a subpoena requiring him to testify in a formal inquiry.  Since Monday morning, Ismay had sent out numerous wireless messages from the Carpathia explaining what had happened, covering his tracks and trying to get ahead of the blame.

Newspapers ran headlines like:

Margaret stepped off the gangway into the throng of waiting families.  Ahead of her was John Jacob Astor’s young wife, Madeline, who rushed by a band of reporters and disappeared into an automobile.  Days later, John’s body would be pulled from the sea with twenty-five hundred dollars in his coat pocket.

Margaret stood for a moment under the pier’s bright spotlights watching the tearful reunions take place all around.  Seeing she was alone, the reporters rushed over with cameras.

“There have been rumors of an infection on the ship,” one reporter said.  “Can you confirm this?”

“I can’t deny it.”

“With such loss of life, how were you able to beat the odds?” a different reporter asked.

“That’s easy.  Typical Brown luck,” Margaret replied.  “We’re unsinkable.”

May 21, 1912

LIGHTOLLER

They had just returned from a short recess.

It was the twelfth day of testimony in the British Board of Trade’s inquiry into the disaster, the second day for Charles Lightoller, who had already answered close to a thousand questions.

The British hearings took place in the London Scottish Drill Hall, an old but spacious building with room for an audience of well over a hundred, and where every sound seemed to carry an echo.  Lord Mersey was the commissioner presiding over the hearings, but it was Thomas Scanlan, representing the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, who currently had the floor.

It had been over a month since the Titanic sank and the press was still hungry for answers.

Over three hundred bodies had been recovered from the sea in the days after the sinking, some still alive and moaning even though they looked dead.  Word going around the newsrooms was these lingering infected had been quieted before being loaded on to one of the recovery ships, and then quickly transferred to an undisclosed military facility where they were cut open and examined—the findings of which remained classified.

Lightoller had testified in the U.S. inquiry in late April.  He and many of his peers had come under scrutiny by the harsh eyes of a headstrong Senator who sought to place blame on his employers.  Lightoller had kept most of his story a secret, telling only the necessary details.  He would certainly not tell them the most gruesome things he had experienced, fearing they might irrationally charge him with a crime.

After his testimony concluded, he was allowed to return to his native England, where he was delighted to experience the simple comforts of home, and to see his wife and two boys.  Prior to his embarking on the Titanic, Sylvia had brought forth the idea of having a third child, which Lightoller was eager to get to work on.

Settling back into normal life wouldn’t come easy though, as not a night went by that he didn’t think about the Titanic; about the many who had needlessly perished; about Murdoch and Moody and Smith; about all those that he had slayed, like Elise Brennan and the young boy.  But most of all, he thought about the infant he had kept warm and safe in his arms until the Carpathia arrived, the beautiful, nameless princess, and wished as Captain Smith had, that she would live a long and healthy life.

Lightoller sat back behind the witness stand and took a sip of water from a glass vile.  To his right was a large model drawing of the Titanic from the starboard side—to the right of the model, an even larger chart of the North Atlantic indicating the Titanic’s route and last known position.

Before the break, Thomas Scanlan had been drilling him on such things like the loading of the lifeboats, his knowledge of ice warnings, and the absence of binoculars in the crow’s nest.  Scanlan’s scathing assault was almost as vicious as some aboard the Titanic.  Lightoller thought it immoral that he wasn’t given an axe to defend himself.

Still.

He would give them what they want, play the part they assigned him, walk the high wire in their circus act, if doing so would get him beyond the Titanic and back to living.

Anything to get back to living.

SCANLAN: Can you tell us at what speed the ship was going when you left the bridge at ten o'clock?

LIGHTOLLER:  About twenty-one and a half knots.

SCANLAN:  The speed was taken down, I understand, in the log?

LIGHTOLLER:  Yes, the scrap log.

SCANLAN:  In view of the abnormal conditions, and of the fact that you were nearing ice at ten o'clock, was there not a very obvious reason for going slower?

LIGHTOLLER:  Well, I can only quote you my experience throughout the last twenty-four years, and I have never seen the speed reduced.

SCANLAN:  Is it not quite clear that the most obvious way to avoid ice is by reducing speed?

LIGHTOLLER: Not necessarily the most obvious.  It is one way.  Naturally, if you stop the ship you will not collide with anything.

SCANLAN:  Am I to understand, even with the knowledge you have had coming through this disaster, at the present moment, if you were placed in the same circumstances, you would still bang on at twenty-one and a half knots an hour?

LIGHTOLLER:  I do not approve of the term banging on.

SCANLAN:  I mean drive ahead.

LIGHTOLLER:  That looks like carelessness, you know.  It looks as if we would recklessly bang on and slap her into ice regardless of anything.  Undoubtedly, we should not do that.

SCANLAN:  What I want to suggest to you is that it was recklessness, utter recklessness, in view of the abnormal conditions, and in view of the knowledge you had from various sources that ice was in your immediate vicinity, to proceed at twenty-one and a half knots?

LIGHTOLLER:  Then all I can say is that recklessness applies to practically every commander and every ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

SCANLAN:  But is it careful navigation in your view?

LIGHTOLLER:  It is ordinary navigation, which embodies careful navigation.

SCANLAN:  First Officer William Murdoch followed you on watch, did he not?

LIGHTOLLER:  Yes.

SCANLAN:  Was he made aware of the conditions?

LIGHTOLLER:  He was.

SCANLAN:  But you’ve said before that Murdoch wasn’t on the bridge at the time the ship hit the iceberg.

LIGHTOLLER:  Is that a question?

SCANLAN:  Consider it as such.

LIGHTOLLER:  To my knowledge, Murdoch wasn’t on the bridge.  It was his watch, yes.  But I believe he was still below decks with Officer Lowe.

SCANLAN:  Who was on the bridge at the time of the collision?

LIGHTOLLER:  I don’t know.

SCANLAN:  Was the captain on the bridge?

LIGHTOLLER:  Perhaps.  I’d rather not speculate.

SCANLAN:  You’ve said previously that the captain ordered you and three of the other officers to go search for these infected.  Where was this order given?

LIGHTOLLER:  To Murdoch, in the wheelhouse.

SCANLAN:  About what time?

LIGHTOLLER:  Maybe an hour after my watch had ended.

SCANLAN:  What exactly did this order entail?

LIGHTOLLER:  We were to go down and search for the infected passengers.

SCANLAN:  And what were you to do with them when you found them?

LIGHTOLLER:  Contain them.

SCANLAN:  Contain them how?

LIGHTOLLER:  That was still to be determined.

SCANLAN:  But they had been contained previously?

LIGHTOLLER:  Yes.

SCANLAN:  How many would you say were infected with this virus at the time of the collision?

LIGHTOLLER:  Impossible to say.  Between twenty and fifty.

SCANLAN:  Was Miss Elise Brennan one of them?

LIGHTOLLER:  No, she was already deceased.

SCANLAN:  How did she die?

LIGHTOLLER:  Do you need to ask?  The infection killed her, of course.

SCANLAN:  But it didn’t kill all of them, did it?

LIGHTOLLER:  I believe it did.

SCANLAN:  What part did you play in the spread of the infection?

LIGHTOLLER:  None.  I never became infected, and therefore couldn’t spread the infection.

SCANLAN:  What I meant was, were there things you did or didn’t do which, in retrospect, could have quickened the spread of the infection?

LIGHTOLLER:  Not that I’m aware.

SCANLAN:  Do you believe any negligence on the part of the White Star Line led to the spread of the infection?

LIGHTOLLER:  No, I believe all proper safety regulations were followed.

SCANLAN:  So you don’t believe they should have been able to prevent the virus from coming aboard the ship?

LIGHTOLLER:  I believe if they had known about it they would have stopped it.  Whether they should have known, I cannot say.

SCANLAN:  But this young woman, Miss Brennan, knew she was carrying this infection when she boarded, is that right?

LIGHTOLLER:  No, she did not.

SCANLAN:  And how do you know that?

LIGHTOLLER:  She explained in her diary.

SCANLAN:  Were you the only one to have read her diary?

LIGHTOLLER:  No, it was read by at least three others.  Dr. O’Loughlin, Dr. Simpson, and Thomas Andrews.  Of course, they all died in the sinking.

SCANLAN:  Then you are the only survivor who has read the diary?

LIGHTOLLER:  I should say so.

SCANLAN:  And the diary did not survive?

LIGHTOLLER:  It is most likely with the ship.

SCANLAN:  Thus, you are the only record of what was in it?

LIGHTOLLER:  I believe we’ve established that.

SCANLAN:  How much of this diary would you say you can recall?

LIGHTOLLER:  All of it.

SCANLAN:  Every word?

LIGHTOLLER:  Those that matter.

SCANLAN:  Would you mind sharing those words with us?  I think everyone would like to know.

LIGHTOLLER:  Aye.  Sure they would.

ONE

HUNDRED

YEARS

LATER

Planet Earth is dead!!!

Was that enough exclamation points?  I can never tell.

You’re probably wondering who I am.

My name is James, but my grandma always called me Jimmy.

And you are...?

Well, if you’ve found this time capsule, then you must be one of the unlucky ones, meaning you’re still alive.  I’m sorry about that.

I’m sure you have one hell of a story to tell.

Maybe you’re part of a group.  Maybe you’re planning to rebuild.  If so, I wish you luck.

Me, I’ve decided not to stay.  I was always a reluctant believer, but I’m now convinced there are better places beyond this earth, and I’m ready to go.

You see up until the infection took hold, if you had asked me to tell you a story, I would have likely told you about how my great grandmother survived the sinking of the Titanic.  She was only an infant at the time, saved by the captain just after the ship went down.

But that was then and, well, depending on how many years have passed since my writing of this and your reading of it, you may not know what a Titanic is anyway.

I’ve got a better story, one that may mirror your own, full of action and adventure and death.

Where to begin?

I know.

At the gun shop.  Guns Unlimited.

It was February 13, 2012.  A Monday, around noon.  The day before Valentine’s Day, in fact.  But I wasn’t shopping for my imaginary girlfriend, Julie.  No, I wanted a gun for myself—needed one, just in case things got worse.

The biggest problem was I knew nothing about guns.  I'd never held a gun before, let alone fired one.

Sure I'd seen plenty of guns on TV and in movies, but how much of that was manufactured magic?  How many times would I have to shoot someone to make sure they stayed down?

But first I needed to know—

“Where do you put the bullets?”  I said, thoroughly examining the handgun Ted called a Glock.  The gun was cold and heavier than I expected.

Ted was the owner of Guns Unlimited.  He was a rather large man with equally large hands.  His skin was darkly tanned and he had freckles everywhere, more than I think I'd ever seen on one person.  I found myself staring at them curiously, even while he did his best to ease my anxiety and answer my stupid questions.

He took the gun from me.  It looked like a toy in his hands.

“See this.”

He pointed at what looked to be a button or switch of some kind on the left side of the gun, near the top of the handle.

“Push it to release the magazine.”

He demonstrated then handed me the magazine.

“And so the bullets go in here?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

I suppose that was fair.

“You sure you want to buy a gun?  I mean, you've thought this through?”

“Yeah, sure.”

He looked at me like I was a liar.

“Okay then, hang tight.”

He turned around and walked through an archway to the rear of the store.

“I really appreciate your help.”

“It's no problem,” he said from the back storage room.  “We all have to learn from someone.  My dad taught me when I was young.”

“I never knew my dad.”

Ted returned to the counter with a small box of ammunition.

“I could sell you a gun even if you have no clue how to use it.  I could let you shoot yourself in the face, and my hands would be clean.  But that's not good enough for me.  I want a clean conscience too.  So I take gun safety very seriously.  I really hope you're listening.  I don't want to see on the news that you committed suicide.  You ain't depressed or anything, right?”

“No sir.  Though it might be hard to shoot myself if I can't figure out how to load it.”

“I'd say it would also be difficult to shoot someone else, assuming you must.  You said you wanted the gun for protection.”

I nodded.

“Well then, since an unloaded gun is about as useful as a pecker on a priest, I guess you'll need a crash course.  Follow me.”

He led me across the store and through a heavy wooden door to an adjacent building.  The building was colder than the store and had a funny smell.  Later I would know the smell as gunpowder.  To say I was out of my element would be an understatement—I stuck out like a headless man in a hat store.

Ted explained to me that this was a gun range, a place for people to come and practice their marksmanship.  Ten dollars for a half hour was the current rate, but freckle face was happy to let me shoot a few rounds for free.

There were six stations with a maximum shooting distance of fifty feet.  Ted set my target up at fifteen.

He showed me how to load the magazine and then outfitted me with a pair of earmuffs and protective eyewear.

“Is all this really necessary?”  I asked.

“Yes, it’s the law.”

“Like wearing your seatbelt?”

Ted pointed out the different parts of the gun and then took a few shots downrange to demonstrate.

Bang.

Bang.

Holy crap.  I still didn’t know why I had to wear the goggles, but I was glad I had the earmuffs on.

Ted had put two holes in the paper man-shaped target right between the eyes.

Next it was my turn.

He handed me the gun.  “Always keep the safety on until you’re ready to shoot.  Did you pay attention to how I was holding it?”

“A little.”

He helped me into the correct position and then said, “Now go ahead and take the safety off.  Then aim and pull the trigger.  Try to hit the target in the chest.”

“Shouldn’t I try and hit the head like you?”

“No.  Start small.  The chest is a much bigger target, and just as effective.”

I took a deep breath and then pulled the trigger.

Bang.

“Not bad for your first shot,” Ted said.

I had hit the target in more of the stomach region, but at least I hit it.

“The gun almost flew out of my hands.  Is that normal?”

“You did okay.  You just gotta get used to it.  Every gun is gonna have a little recoil, or kick, some worse than others.  It just takes practice.  Go ahead and shoot off the rest of the rounds.”

“Are you sure?”

Ted nodded.

I aimed, fired.

Bang.

Bang.

BANG!

I started trembling.

I looked down at my pants.

How embarrassing.

I had wet myself.  I hadn’t done that since seventh grade when a Doberman chased me all the way home from the school bus stop.

I ended up buying the Glock that day, but Ted said I had to wait three days to take it home.

Three days later, I went back to pick it up.  Over the course of the next month, I would spend a lot of hours hanging out at Guns Unlimited.  Ted was glad I hadn’t killed myself or someone else, and was just as glad to take my money to use the range.

My speed and accuracy was improving.

I shot many other types of guns, and was saving my pennies to buy a shotgun.

I was feeling more and more confident that when something did happen, I’d be prepared.  It was like waiting for a hurricane that I knew was on its way.  It was only a matter of time.

The day ended up being April 15, 2012, two months after I purchased the Glock.

It happened out on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore.  One of the usual suspects attacked me from behind and pulled me down to the concrete.  I quickly drew my gun, stuck it in his ribcage, and pulled the trigger.

Picture the surprised look on his face when he realized the little book nerd had gotten the best of him.

But that’s not what happened at all.

I was the one left surprised.

Turns out shooting someone in the chest wasn’t just as effective, as Ted had told me.

At least not when they’re already dead.

Also by Richard Brown

The Gift of Illusion

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Brown Richard Titanic With ZOMBIES