“Wow,” Edmund said, impressed.
Simon nodded toward the gun. “Be careful with that thing.”
Then he rushed to Niels’ side. He wasn’t moving. Please, don’t be dead. Please. If they’d come this far, risked so much, only to fail now …
Simon shook him. “Niels! Wake up!”
Slowly, the man’s eyes fluttered open.
“Thank God.”
Niels’ blinked at them in confusion.
“Are you all right?”
Niels nodded groggily and Edmund gave him a hand up.
“Nearly had you,” he said, nodding his head toward Kimball who was sprawled out on the floor.
Niels took in a breath and tried to clear his head. “What happened?”
“There isn’t time for that,” Simon said as he strode to the doorway. “We need to go. Now.”
They joined him at the door, but Edmund stopped and nodded back toward Kimball.
“What about him?”
“Leave him,” Simon said. The ocean would take care of him.
~~~
Everything had taken too much time. Far too much time.
The bow was nearly completely submerged now. If they went to the right, they’d be going under water. Simon urged them left.
The ship was listing badly now. The corridor toward the aft staircase was uphill. When they reached the grand staircase Simon realized how oddly angled it was. It lay almost flat now, stretching straight out in front them instead of up like some Escher drawing. But up they had to go. And quickly.
They passed A Deck and Simon knew there wasn’t time to get the key now. If he risked it, they could all die.
They raced as fast as they could up to the Boat Deck and outside. Water was racing up the deck now from the bow to the stern. They turned to outrun it, but there were hundreds of people on deck now. Most of the Second and Third Class passengers had finally managed to come up, but all of the lifeboats were gone and the ship had minutes to live.
Everyone, a mass of humanity, surged toward the stern as it rose out of the ocean and into the air. They pushed up against the railings until they could go no further. Simon knew they had to keep going up, as high as they could for as long as they could.
He saw several men climbing up onto the roof of the officers’ quarters.
“There,” he yelled.
They hurried over to it. Simon made a stirrup with his hands and helped Niels up first, then Edmund. The roof was too high for Simon to jump onto by himself. Edmund lay flat on his stomach and dangled one arm over the side.
Freezing cold water lapped against Simon’s leg as he reached up to grasp onto Edmund’s hand. He grabbed onto it, but just as he did, the water surged. Somehow, the icy wave managed to lift him up onto the roof. But as it did, it washed several men away. Simon could see one of them tangled in a coil of rope and two more simply disappeared.
Niels and Edmund clung to the railing and the three of them managed to keep from being carried away.
Simon looked around for his next perch, their next escape route, but there was nothing. Barring a miracle, they would go down with the ship. Then he caught sight of their one hope of survival—collapsible lifeboat B. It had been washed overboard as the crew attempted to prep it for passengers. He could see it, already swept off the roof and flipped upside down. It was a slim chance they’d be able to survive the water long enough to get to it, but they would find a way.
“Swim that way, as fast as you can!” he yelled, pointing out into the darkness just as the water took them.
It lifted him up again and then pulled him down. He and the others were sucked down into the darkness, into the cold. He’d heard the water described by survivors as being stabbed by a thousand knives, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything.
Chapter Twenty-Four
EVEN FROM HERE, SHE could hear the screams. Elizabeth sat huddled together with the other forty passengers of her lifeboat as they watched helplessly.
The bow of the great ship dipped well below the water, the stern rising out of the sea, dangling in the air. The lights blinked once and then went out. Then suddenly, one of the funnels broke off and started to fall.
Elizabeth gasped as she watched it collapse, crushing everything and everyone beneath it. Moments later, the ship snapped in two. The bow was under the water now, but everything else paused. The stern sat like half a ship on the surface of the water. Like a child’s broken toy. And then it tipped and slid down until there was nothing left but a grey cloud of smoke and the screams of the dying.
Elizabeth tried to listen for him, to hear his voice among the hundreds.
“Dear God, help me!”
“Help me! My God, help me!”
Men, women and children, begging for their lives.
“Row back,” Elizabeth said, gripping the arm of the nearest crew member. “We can help them.”
“It’s too dangerous. We don’t have room,” someone said, but she glared them into shamed silence and turned back to the crewman.
“Row back,” she said again.
The officer in charge nodded and ordered the men to row toward the wreckage.
~~~
It felt like a grave. Cold and dark. But Simon was not ready to die. He swam and fought and finally, he saw light above him. And he swam toward it.
He came to the surface in a rush and took in a deep breath. The air was so cold it burned his lungs. He looked around for the others. Where were they?
Not far from him, Niels appeared and finally Edmund.
“Swim!” he yelled needlessly, for there was nothing else for them to do.
As he heard the cries of men, women and children, struggling in the water, being taken by the water, he thought of Elizabeth and Charlotte. And he swam.
He reached the overturned lifeboat first. A dozen men were already precariously balanced on its hull. Niels wasn’t far behind. Simon reached out and pulled him the rest of the way. He handed him off to one of the men who helped pull him up onto the back of the boat.
Simon looked back for Edmund. His head was barely above the water. He was struggling. Each stroke was a labor. Simon pushed off from the side of the boat and swam back to him.
His own body was slowing down now, muscles cramping, seizing up. He knew he had, at most, fifteen minutes before his body shut down completely. The temperature of the water was below freezing. He’d taken ice baths after sport before, but those fifty-degree waters felt balmy compared to this icy twenty-eight. He could barely lift his arms, but he wasn’t going to let the boy die.
After what seemed an eternity, he reached Edmund, who was barely moving now. Simon turned him over onto his back and slipped an arm around his chest and under one arm.
“I have you,” he tried to say, but wasn’t sure the words made it past his chattering teeth.
He pulled Edmund back toward the boat, every moment an agony. But finally, he reached it.
“Help him up,” Simon said.
Niels knelt down carefully and reached out for Edmund’s hand, but the boy didn’t respond.
“Come on,” Simon said as he grabbed Edmund’s lapel.
As he rolled toward him, his face turned and Simon saw eyes—open, vacant, lifeless.
“No.”
A new sort of cold took root.
“Come on,” Simon said again as he shook him, but he didn’t move.
Edmund was gone.
All around him people were dying, crying out, and all he could think of was this one man. This one life. Ended. In the blink of an eye everything he could have been ceased to be. All the promises of a future broken.
It was so wrong, so wrong, that for a fleeting moment Simon refused to believe it. He could save him. He would find a way. He hadn’t come this far to lose him now. Simon gripped the boy’s lapel and shook him again, but even as he did, he knew death had taken him.
“He is gone,” Niels said.
Simon knew it was true. He also knew every m
oment he stayed in the water with him brought him one step closer to joining him.
“Simon,” Niels said and held out his hand.
Simon held onto the boy a moment longer.
“You’ve got to get out of there,” one of the men said. Simon looked up and saw Harold, the radio operator. “You can’t help him now.”
Simon looked back at Edmund, his lifeless eyes staring out into the night, and nodded. But before he let him go, before he let him sink to his grave, Simon forced his own seizing hands to work once more. He reached into Edmund’s breast pocket and pulled out the locket the boy was going to give Clara. His fingers were numb, but he gripped it in one hand and took hold of Niels’ with the other.
Niels and Harold pulled him onto the hull of the ship, each man carefully balancing to counterweight his arrival. Simon looked at Niels, knowing he understood. They all understood. And then he turned back to look at Edmund one last time and watched his body float away.
~~~
Elizabeth’s lifeboat rowed into the wreckage—blocks of ice and bodies and bits of wood. The end of the first hour had been the worst. The cries from the survivors fighting for their lives had started off as a chorus until one by one they were silenced. And then finally, all was quiet. It was as if the ship had never been.
But it had, and somewhere out there was Simon. She knew it. With each body they came across, her heart lurched in her throat. They pulled more people out of the water, eight more souls.
Then, just before dawn, they saw the outline of another ship and rowed toward it. The Carpathia had all of its lifeboats lowered, all of its gangways open, rope ladders dangling out above the sea.
She could see other boats ahead of theirs, moving closer to the ship that would save them. She strained to see Simon, but it was too dark, too far.
Two of the women next to her sobbed quietly, already mourning.
The sun was just inching above the horizon when her boat pulled alongside the Carpathia. Officers helped the passengers into slings and chairs lowered from the open gangway. A mail sack carried a small child up to safety. Some didn’t wait and climbed up the rope ladders themselves.
When Elizabeth finally set foot on the deck of the ship someone put a blanket around her shoulders and ushered her inside. Somehow a cup of hot soup was placed in her hands. She hadn’t noticed because all she could do was look for him. She walked through the smoking rooms and lounges where people were gathering.
She saw Madeleine Astor, but no husband. Louise and Emily Sheridan, but no husband. Over and over she saw the fresh widows the night had made and swore she would not be among them.
Hours went by. Hour after hour after hour. She looked everywhere, twice and then again. He had to be here.
She saw the Rivets, both quite alive, but Doctor Hass didn’t make it. So many hadn’t made it. She pulled her blanket more tightly around her shoulders and fought back the tears again. If she gave in to them, she was giving up, and she was not going to give up, not now, not ever.
She let out a shaky breath. “Look again,” she said softly.
She turned to start her circuit one more time when she saw Niels. He was trembling under a blanket as someone handed him a steaming cup of coffee.
She ran over to him, shouldering past people. “Niels!” she said and turned around, sure she’d see Simon standing nearby.
He gave her a shaky smile.
“Simon?” she said.
Niels looked at her, no, past her, and she turned around, her heart in her throat. Standing there, shaking fiercely but alive, so wonderfully alive, was Simon.
He saw her the same moment she saw him. Her heart stopped.
He took a stride toward her and she ran to him. His arms came around her and she buried her head in his chest. It was wet and as cold as ice. He was shivering badly, but he was alive. The sob she’d been holding back finally escaped.
He held her and kissed her and kissed her.
“Are you all right?” he asked finally as he eased her away to see for himself.
She nodded through the tears that were streaming down her face. He kissed her again and pressed his forehead against hers just as he had done earlier that night. A lifetime ago. Fifteen hundred lifetimes ago.
She ran her hands up and down his arms and chest, just making sure he was real, that she wasn’t dreaming. He just stared at her. One cold hand trembled as he reached up to cup her cheek.
“God, I love you.”
Elizabeth could only nod as she covered his hand with hers.
“You’re like ice,” she said and pulled the blanket from her shoulders and wrapped it around his.
He nodded, unable to stop shivering.
“We need to get you into some warm, dry clothes.”
He nodded again, still just staring at her.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He let out a shuddering breath. “Now, I am.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
SIMON RUBBED HIS HANDS together. He’d been doing that for the last few days.
She looked over at him as the car they’d hired drove them out of the city. “Still cold?”
He nodded. He’d told her some of what happened to him. Told her of the night he and Niels and the others spent on the back of that slowly sinking lifeboat. She was sure he’d kept the worst of it to himself. She didn’t press. He’d tell her when he was ready.
He managed a smile and reached over to take her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.
When the Carpathia arrived in New York tens of thousands of people waited on the docks. Hope after hope was shattered as people found out the tragic fates of their loved ones.
The injured were ferried to hospitals and the rest scattered in hotels or, if they were lucky, home. The press mobbed Margaret Brown when she finally disembarked. Her few words, “Typical Brown luck. I’m unsinkable,” made her a legend.
It was a moment she would be remembered for in the midst of something everyone else wanted to forget. Two thirds of the passengers had died. Only one out of every five men lived to see the shore.
Because of the tragedy new laws would come, but they were too late for so many. Elizabeth could barely believe she, Simon and Niels had made it.
They’d all been changed by what happened. So many people gone. She could have done more; she should have saved more. Guilt clung to her and it would not let go. Simon reminded her, again, that they couldn’t save everyone. But she should have saved someone. She should have done more.
And Edmund; the thought of him brought a fresh wave of pain. If they hadn’t gotten him involved, he might have lived. He might have lived to be with Clara. But he never would. He and fifteen hundred other souls would never see their loved ones again.
She squeezed Simon’s hand tightly. He smiled over at her and she was reminded yet again of how very lucky she was.
Elizabeth had thought about taking the necklace to Clara personally, but after some discussion they decided that might be too much, too upsetting for the girl. Instead, they’d written her a letter, telling her all about Edmund’s bravery, and mailed it off with the necklace he’d so longed to give her.
It was hardly enough. Nothing ever would be.
Now, with the key lost to the ocean, they had three weeks to spend here waiting for the eclipse. She’d never wanted to be home so badly before in her life.
They still had one last thing to do before they could call their mission a success, if something like this ever could be. And that was to deliver Niels to his meeting.
After the Carpathia docked, they’d rented a car to take them to upstate New York where this mysterious meeting was to occur. Niels sat quietly in his seat. His thoughts, as they so often were, somewhere far, far away.
When Simon told him they were coming with him, secrecy be damned, Niels didn’t argue. After all they’d been through together, there were no more secrets. Almost none.
The city gave way to the country. Elizabeth looked out the window and saw
the green leaves of spring. Flowers and life. She felt the vague stirrings of hope for the first time in far too long.
After another hour, their car pulled up in front of a large Victorian mansion set back on a lush green lawn. Niels got out of the car and she and Simon followed. They hadn’t come this far to let him go the last few steps alone. Finally, they’d see who this mysterious someone was who Niels Bohr was meeting with.
Niels rang the doorbell and they waited. A few moments later, the enormous door swung open and Elizabeth gasped out loud.
A small man with a neatly trimmed beard and a face Elizabeth would know anywhere looked back at them, completely unsurprised to see them.
“Teddy?”
He grinned happily and held out a small, brown paper sack.
“Peanut?”
If you enjoyed this book, please consider posting a short review.
Click here to view all of Monique’s books on Amazon.
Out of Time Series
Out of Time: A Time Travel Mystery (Book #1)
When the Wall Fell (Book #2)
Fragments (Book #3)
The Devils' Due (Book #4)
Thursday’s Child (Book #5)
Sands of Time (Book #6)
A Rip in Time (Book #7)
A Time of Shadows (Book #8)
Voyage in Time (Book #9)
Saving Time Series
Jacks Are Wild (Book #1)
Book #2 - coming soon!
Hollywood Heroes Series
The Frame (Book #1)
Book #2 - coming soon!
Visit moniquemartin.weebly.com to sign up for the new release newsletter and don't miss another of Simon and Elizabeth's adventures.
Have an idea for a time and/or location you'd like to see Simon & Elizabeth visit? Drop me a line or come on by Facebook and let me know. I have quite a few ideas for future adventures, but would love to hear from you! Visit: moniquemartin.weebly.com
Voyage in Time: The Titanic (Out of Time #9) Page 22
