“Son, do you have an estimate of how many people on board are now infected?” asked Smith.
“We’ve no sure way to know just how far it’s spread, and Mr. Lightoller’s plan is hopeful, our last chance at life for ourselves and all aboard, but I fear it comes too late. We must prepare our minds for the worst—prepare to take life in order to preserve life.”
“Spoken like a true doctor,” said the captain, taking Declan’s hand and shaking it. “We must all do our duty—however… terrible.”
“Whatever we succeed in doing, not a single cell of this infestation can survive,” Ransom said. “The ramming of an iceberg assures that, while Lightoller’s plan relies on perfection.”
Smith nodded “Something old men like us know doesn’t exist.”
“I have never seen it in life—save for a woman I love.”
“This ship was perfect at one time.” Smith swallowed hard, a man on the verge of breaking down.
“I suspect sir, that Murdoch had it right; that we should scuttle the lifeboats while we can; there is bound to be pandemonium.”
“We give Charles a chance; even so, gentlemen, we have here entered into a conspiracy, a cabal to see Titanic to the deep.” Smith dejectedly walked off, going for the bridge where he likely needed to hold onto something solid. He stopped instead and stuffed the Marconi messages about the miles-long ice field ahead back into his pocket. He then added, “I think I am of no further use here. I think I will turn in.” Fatigue and confusion appeared on Smith’s face, worrying Ransom, who began to think Smith more like Ian Reahall than himself.
“Call me if there is a need.” Smith said, then left through a second door that led out onto the boat deck.
Lightoller and Thomas had returned to hear the captain’s last words. The two looked from Declan to Ransom and back but could learn nothing from their sad expressions. Lightoller went to the small window in the door, and there he stared out at his captain. “He’s a gallant cruise liner captain, he is. Now one who finds himself in a war. Look at him. Like a lost ghost wandering about the ship out there.” Lightoller had to fight back a tear. Ransom put a firm grip on his shoulder.
“Wonderful old chap, really,” added Lightoller. “We must prevail, gentlemen. We must.”
“We arm ourselves first, and if you get anywhere near that black thing again, shoot to kill.”
“Shoot to kill, correct. Now we must organize that search party if we’re to beat the clock.”
“Had I a gun when we stormed stateroom 148, I would have killed or wounded it,” replied Alastair, teeth clenched, eyes clear. “You organize your search, Mr. Lightoller. Meantime, we will rely on the dog’s nose.”
“But we need every man if my plan is to work… to beat Murdoch’s orders.”
“Declan, Thomas—tell Mr. Lightoller what you told me about this thing’s young.”
“They have no stomachs, no digestive system, not even mouths,” said Declan, his eyes meeting Lightoller’s.
“But I have heard them scream.”
“Some sort of vibration to pierce our ears; not sure how it manages that. May never know for certain but I theorize a bony or cartilage-lined hollow space where an attached muscle is fused to the bottom layer of skin rapidly contracts and relaxes a skein of flesh that—”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” admitted Ransom.
“That acts like a cone, a speaking cone like those on a phonograph which vibrates to create soundwaves—theoretically.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Dr. Irvin.”
“What gets me is how badly it smells of sulfur,” added Thomas.
“Sulfur… like sulfuric acid?” Lightoller’s expression turned to despair.
“Look, sir, we haven’t the equipment to study them in any sort of detail,” continued Declan. “But we believe they feed through a strange form of osmosis or as we saw, in and out of the orifices. And the little ones may very well be capable of simply worming their way through human flesh like ring worms you pick up from a pond. How they get into the bone for the blood there, I don’t pretend to understand. But they seem capable of it with the same ease you and I breathe air.”
“Perhaps those thin, tubular veins we’ve seen attached to the bones of the men we’ve dissected,” said Thomas, “those are probes that bore into the bone.”
“Perhaps indeed,” replied Declan thoughtfully. “They take up residence inside the human or animal body, send out thin, tubular veins and feed from every vital organ, mining for every drop of fluid in the body until nothing remains. In adult form, as we have seen, this parasite can control the limbs and even rudimentary thinking—and if the carrier is any indication, it grows in sophistication as it feeds on us.”
“We’ve given it a name,” said Thomas to Ransom.
“What’s that?” asked Lightoller.
“Parasite Rex… .”
“Rex? As in—”
“Yes, as in King of all parasites.”
THIRTY THREE
David Ingles, shaken still by Jacob Mendenhall’s implosion, remained agitated while in search of Kelly, terrified that something awful had happened to her as well, as still no one had heard from either her or Lou. The continued loss of contact with both divers had them all in the dark. Forbes had been able to raise the divers at the aft section a mile away but not here—and since the implosion David’s link was going in and out as well.
What could be wrong with the transponders that had been placed on the ocean floor for their communications link?
Gambio and Bowman were talking about the Café Parisien that they had found, saying it was filled with elegant dishware, each pewter utensil and plate embossed with the White Star Line logo. They were excited, knowing that each plate alone would bring in thousands of dollars, but their celebration was immediately silenced when Forbes informed them of Mendenhall’s horrible death and that he had two other divers out of audio and video contact.
“I’m going to try to locate Kelly and Swigart,” David informed Forbes.
“We’ve tried every possible frequency and have raised neither of them, David. Be careful; we don’t want to lose you, too.”
“Thanks… you getting this?”
David had gone for the refrigerated cargo hold, believing Swigart—driven by the creature—had targeted this very compartment from the get-go. He feared the worse had already happened to Kelly; that she had already joined her ancestor here in Titanic. Although in her case, if she were gone, it was no accident.
He saw a giant black-lettered sign that simply read ‘G’ and he realized that he was indeed on Deck G where the refrigerated cargo holds were located. Where is she? Where is Kelly, he kept asking himself. And where is Lou?
“What in God’s name’s happened to them?”
David’s mind raced, filled as it was with the image of Mendenhall’s body imploding, and now he feared that the same had happened to Kelly—if not worse. It all made sense, separate them, and use Kelly to be the final conduit to getting those damnable demonic eggs out of frozen storage.
He passed by floating mail room bags, a pair of sturgeons the size of his legs careening by, and he curiously watched them go to the roof overhead. Following the only sign of life here with his eyes, he gasped on seeing fleshy bodies being picked clean where they’d become jammed among jagged beams overhead, forced there and held by what appeared a pair of giant pinchers—steel girders and loose wires.
How would he ever get into the freezer where he intended to finish what those in 1912 had hoped to do—destroy forever any hope of those eggs getting out and into the wider world.
He found a hatchway with a wheel lock, flapping open in the water, its hinges cut away by a laser beam directed from a single direction, telling him that only one of the two remaining divers, Swigart or Kelly had been here. Whichever one had come and gone, the lone diver had been able to remove the thing from its hinges, much easier than prying it open against the pressure of the water—especia
lly if it were locked from the inside. David guessed it to be the final resting place for the diseased bodies that had been desperately collected aboard Titanic at the height of the infestation.
Either Lou or Kelly was most likely already inside the freezer but which of the two? He imagined it to be Lou. So David must go cautiously. Knowing this, he drew the laser knife from its holster on his hip and inched forward.
More well-dressed corpses floated here in the corridor. He imagined more like them floating about the entire ship. He studied them for any sign of Kelly among them but soon realized to his relief that she was not here among the dead.
David glided on, trying not to pay attention to the growing number of corpses floating about him now. This was one of two freezer units here. It appeared that in 1912 there’d been a mad rush on to locate and enter the sealed cargo holds down here in a last ditch effort to cheat death even if it meant waiting for it at the bottom for however long one might cling to life. It also appeared that many had been locked out by those already inside.
No sign of Kelly. No sign of Lou.
He returned to the corridor and continued along its walls. Then he saw it—the last door the other two had gone through where he imagined within he’d find a kitchen block area and then the freezers themselves. This sealed it in his mind—Swigart had become it, and he’d gone straight toward the frozen eggs without the slightest idea that Kelly knew precisely what he was up to. It was obvious they’d gone in here as the lock to the final door had been cut away via an underwater laser, the same as the hand-held laser device David had returned to his hip.
“You getting this topside, Forbes?” he asked.
“All of it, yes.”
David heard static firing up from his com-link, and wondered if it was coming from inside the freezer, and if so, what was causing it, and what was it someone was trying to say. He desperately tried to make it out even as he rushed for the freezer area now flooded with seawater from the outside. He must be careful not to tear his suit or he’d wind up like Mendenhall. Forbes’ voice came at him with the same message.
Still he rushed and yanked the door, keeping it at arm’s length where it flapped in the water, managing to slip inside where he saw a well-preserved pair of dead men floating—yet another of several dead zones within Titanic. His mind quickly deducing from their appearance to be the two of the three would-be heroes of 1912 , the two who had not escaped Titanic, but who instead had come down here to protect against anyone’s taking a single egg off the ship. Two heroic figures—Declan Irvin and Alastair Ransom—features and clothes perfectly preserved. They looked just as David had pictured them, frozen in time, one young and smooth-faced, a bullet to the brain, the other one old, a mask of wrinkles, no bullet to the head, but a massive contusion.
There was no sign of life in the ante room here, but someone had been here and had disturbed the actual freezer compartments at the rear. Tables, chairs, debris, intact cargo boxes floated round David now as he searched this place with its sealed compartments unsealed by the dive Titanic took to these depths, that and time, and now that thing inside Lou, he reckoned.
It appeared that Lou, possibly with Kelly in tow, had made a beeline for this freezer, but they were nowhere in sight.
“Where the hell are they?” asked Forbes from above as David peered into the freezer compartment where a stack of at least twenty-five, perhaps thirty bodies resided atop one another in a corner—some of them showing Y-section sutures, an obvious sign of having been autopsied, others cut open, revealing the horrid frozen sacs spoken of in Declan’s journal.
He reported in to Juris Forbes: “Swigart’s come and gone; no sign of Kelly.”
Forbes banged something hard, presumably with his fist, the sound reverberating in David’s ear. “What in Sam Hell is going on down there, David? Where the hell’s Lou and Dr. Irvin?”
“Have you found the journal? Have you read a word?”
“It’s just so much gibberish; tell me what you’re thinking right now, this moment, sailor!”
“I’m thinking Lou—or something inside Lou is driving him, controlling him—and it had an eye on this freezer compartment from the moment we began our descent if not earlier.”
“What’re you saying, David?”
“I’m saying Lou is our killer, and he’s infected.”
“Killer? Infected?”
“With a parasitic disease organism controlling his will.”
“A what?”
“A disease organism that will turn Scorpio into a ghost ship, Captain.”
“This is crazy! This is Lou we’re talking about… Lou. David, you sound like a lunatic!”
“I fear he’s used up Kelly and is headed back to the sub with plans to leave the rest of us down here with the wreck.”
“Used her up? Explain yourself, Ingles.”
“Killed her; he’s killed her as he did Alandale and Ford.”
“I suggest you get back to the sub, now David. The pressure down there is getting to you; your vital signs are off the charts. Do it, do it now!”
David saw the evidence clearly now that Declan’s journal was accurate to the letter; here were the egg sacs nestled in the bodies, clinging to them it seemed in this dead zone. He knew he must end things here for Alastair Ransom and for Declan Irvin, whose bodies were so close by. David snatched out his laser knife and fired its beam directly at the bodies, and the laser, powerful enough to cut steel under water easily burned up the flesh of the bodies and the egg sacs that remained here.
He fired away and the bodies began to immolate and smoke like an oil plume. In fact, the fire began to rage, and the heat chased David back, kicking with his fins, swimming past the intact bodies of Declan and Alastair. He pointed the laser beam at Alastair’s remains, wondering if he’d approve of David’s turning him to ash in this place of death, but he couldn’t bring himself to set him aflame. He took a final look at Declan’s features, pointed the knife but again unable to fire on the body of the hero of the journal.
Again, he was unable to fire the beam, not with Declan’s perfectly preserved eyes here staring back at him. He decided to leave well enough alone, but there came up a screeching noise like a thousand tuning forks coming at David. On the com-link, Forbes and others, hearing the keening of the dying things in the eggs he’d torched.
The sound was horrid but only lasted seconds before silence fell, and David, rushing out of the area now had only one thought—to find Kelly and get her safely back to the sub and to tell her he’d destroyed the creature’s eggs.
Forbes was shouting at him from above like an angry god. “What’re you doing, David? Ingles! Talk to me!”
With danger on all sides of him, he held one hand on his sheathed laser knife, and he snatched hold of hand-holds, pulling himself along, trying to conserve energy, realizing that what he’d seen and done had cost him dearly in liquid air and emotions. The sight of Mendenhall’s awful death kept flooding into his sight as he carefully picked his way toward the outer hull ahead when he realized he’d come to a hopeless dead end in the maze. It dawned on him that the only way out was to return to the surface using the exact route he and Mendenhall had taken down—the Grand Staircase. But just getting back to it would be a struggle, and this cemetery he was swimming in was getting to him.
THIRTY FOUR
On leaving the freezer and the flames he’d created, David felt comforted that the store of damned eggs had been destroyed, but he worried over the eggs that Lou—or what Lou had become—had gotten off with. He also worried whether of not Lou had harmed Kelly, overpowered her, or turned her into his human shield? His last line of defense?
Going after Kelly and Lou, David feared that Lou was back aboard Max and long gone. If only Mendenhall hadn’t been so damned stubborn and about those bloody automobiles, David felt he might’ve had a chance at Lou.
He feared there was no hope for him or Kelly now.
The absolute aloneness filled David with emptines
s. An aching void. No one should be alone down here with Titanic.
David cleared the entryway ahead of him, and the push gave him a start that sent him up a gangway where he found himself swimming through a squash court, followed by a handball court; he was somehow inside one of the three gymnasiums on board. Now he passed a surreal weight room, a tennis court. He located another door ripped from its hinges and the entry or rather exit and a stairwell leading up. He followed this upwards for what seemed an eternity when he came to the ruined remains of the wireless room. He saw the Marconi wireless itself, now a rust-encrusted large brick, and from here, he looked out from where an outer door had been ripped from its hinges.
He was staring across now at the officer’s quarters where he and Jacob had entered the Grand Staircase. Beyond this, through a tattered series of worm-eaten boards, David saw Max’s lights where the sub hovered above the deck precisely where Lou had placed the sub on automatic. He thought of the sub’s safe confines, and he whispered to himself, “Lou hasn’t gotten away yet.”
David could hardly believe his luck. He snatched up his laser cutter again, keeping the safety on, holding his breath and his position, searching for signs of life other than the albino crab just over the doorway to the Marconi Room.
“Get to the sub, David.” Forbes ordered, his voice more commanding than ever. “Save yourself. Your four hours on the pak is nearly up. Inside Max, you can breathe, re-circulate the liquid air.”
“So you have someone to point the finger at. I get it, Captain.”
“Don’t be foolish, David.”
“Read the damn journal, Captain.”
“I have Dr. Entebbe doing that right now, son.”
Son, David thought. They start calling you son when they’re worried about your state of mind. “Look here, Captain, have you had any contact, visual or otherwise with Lou or Kelly, sir?”
“None, and you?” Judging from his voice, Forbes’ agitation was increasing by the moment. “David, first Mendenhall dies within inches of you, and now your other two dive partners are missing? Then you fucking incinerate part of the ship’s interior? Violating the dead? Turning bodies in ashes! Do you know how this’ll play in the press? How it sounds, David?”
Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Page 43
