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 we
re 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.”
Titanic With ZOMBIES Page 11
