by Matt Forbeck
A laugh leaped out of Quin's chest. "You light-fingered swine," he said. "I never figured you for a thief."
"Let's just say I like to squeeze as much as I can out of life."
That cut Quin's laughing short. He gazed out at the void beyond and the abyss below, and he wondered then about all the things he was doomed to miss in his life. He'd miss his parents for sure, but since he was moving to America, he'd already resigned himself to that. He knew then that the thing he would miss the most was Lucy.
He'd allowed himself to be talked into coming along on this trip for one reason, and one alone. Not so that he could be forced to accept his friend's generosity for sharing his first class cabin with him. Not so that he could get to New York City to look for a job in the spring, with all the promise of what a new world might hold. But so that he could be nearer to Lucy, both during the trip and when she registered at Radcliffe in the fall.
Perhaps it would be easier this way. At least now he wouldn't have to face the shame of having fallen in love with his best friend's girl. He wouldn't have to wrestle with the fact he couldn't tell her how he felt about her – but he couldn't keep it inside any longer either. That decision, that chalice, had been taken from him. All it had cost him was the remainder of his life.
Abe saw the miserable look on his friend's face and clapped him on the shoulder. "Lighten up," he said to Quin, unaware of his friend's deepest thoughts. "It could be worse."
Quin stared at Abe. "How?" he said, swinging his arms wide enough to encompass the entire doomed ship. The fore had tipped forward far enough now that tiny waves lapped at the rails on the bow. It would only be minutes before the water spilled over the tops of the lower decks.
Abe puffed on his cigar before holding it up in front of him, the tip of it glowing like a hot coal. "We're still smoking, aren't we?"
Quin couldn't help but smile at that. "We might as well enjoy them while we can."
The two friends smoked their cigars from the fore railing on the Promenade Deck as the Titanic sank further not only into the sea but chaos. The ship began to list to the starboard as the hole the iceberg had torn in there swallowed more and more of the ocean. Shouting sailors lowered lifeboats into the chill waters, some of them packed to bursting with terrified passengers while others left the Titanic's side with seats still empty.
"We should have gone with Lucy," Abe said calmly as his cigar burned down to a stub. "They had plenty of room in that boat of theirs."
"They should have put on more of the women and children," Quin said.
"For sure," Abe said, "but I didn't see them lining up then. We could have gone with her. At least then we could have been with her, all passed on together."
The thought that Lucy might perish out there on the water threatened to crush Quin's heart. "She'll make it," he said, rallying his confidence. "They have a wireless radio on board. They must have put out the distress call. Help is on the way."
"Here's hoping it gets here in time for her, because it doesn't look like it'll reach us." Abe flicked the remnants of his cigar toward the Well Deck below. It hissed when it hit the water, and then it was gone. Quin dropped his on the deck instead and ground it under his heel.
An orange flare went off overhead. They'd been fired into the air every five minutes or so, but to no obvious effect. They reminded Quin of the fireworks he'd enjoyed back home on Guy Fawke's Night, beautiful but transient. They burned so bright that it almost hurt to look at them, and then they were gone like they'd never been there.
"You fellows!" a broad, red-haired man in an officer's uniform shouted from the boat deck above them. "What the blazes are you doing lazing about down there? Come on up and give us a hand here!"
Quin glanced at Abe, who gave him a shrug and said, "What do we have to lose?"
Quin raced Abe to a nearby stairwell on the port side of the ship, just around the corner from where they stood. He took the stairs two at a time and emerged onto the Boat Deck. Quin stopped there so fast that Abe bumped into him and almost knocked him over.
A group of men stood on top of the roof of the officer's quarters, just around the corner from the bridge. They had something in their hands that looked like the bottom of a boat but without any sides.
"Are we going to have to build our own lifeboat?" Abe asked.
"At this point, I'd be willing to whittle myself one if we had enough time," said Quin.
"Sir," Quin called up to the officer, "how can we get up there to help you?"
"Don't you worry about that now, lad. We've enough hands up here to free this damned thing, but I need someone down there to catch it as we lower it down. Just stay right there with the rest of the men, and we'll have it right down to you."
The men on the roof of the ship worked as fast as they could to free the boat from the ropes that had lashed it down. As they lifted it from its spot, a handful of bats flew out from under the barely curved hull and flapped off into the night.
Abe laughed at the creatures as they disappeared into the distance. "Sure hope those little buggers can survive on snow and ice," he said, "or they're as dead as us."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dale Chase had had enough of the damn Titanic. As the only black man aboard the ship – at least, the only one he'd seen from his position as a stoker in the belly of the behemoth – he'd taken more than his fair share of shit from his bosses. They'd worked him longer hours than any of the others and given him the hardest and most dangerous jobs.
They'd done their best to break him, calling him names, spitting on him, and giving him endless hell, but they'd failed. He'd taken every bit of it without complaint. He didn't give a damn about any of them, and he wasn't about to let them get to him, no matter how hard they tried. He just wanted to get back to Brooklyn, back to his home, and if the only way he could afford that was to work his way across the ocean in the bowels of the biggest ship on the seas, then that's what he was going to do.
From the start, though, the whole trip hadn't gone to plan. He'd gone over to England as a piano player in a band, thanking God Almighty for Irving Berlin and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" finally bringing his favorite sound to the masses. It had seemed like that music had opened the entire world to him like a flower, and all he had to do was reach out and pluck it.
Hadn't he played with Scott Joplin – the Scott Joplin – back in New York? Hadn't they played the "Maple Time Rag" together on the same stage? And after that transcendent moment, hadn't Scott encouraged Dale and the others to leave the States and find their fortune overseas?
It had seemed like a fine idea at the time. Leave all their troubles behind and find a new way in the Old World, a place where they could capitalize on their differences, where they'd seem exotic and rare, just like Cole and Johnson. But it hadn't worked out so well for them.
There had been problems almost from the start. Albert Pulliam – the purported band leader and manager – hadn't actually had the seed money he'd promised the rest of them. The investors had gotten shy at the last moment, he'd said, and only given him enough money to get to England and get started. It would have to be up to them to play well enough to make it on their own from there.
But then the concerts that Albert had supposedly set up for them vanished too, and they'd been reduced to playing in bars and even on street corners. It had made for many long, cold, and hungry nights that winter, and the tensions over money soon started to rip the band apart. To top it off, that Rose Wilson had started making eyes at Dale, even though she'd been Albert's girl.
Dale couldn't blame her for looking for greener pastures. Hell, he'd been thinking about ditching Albert himself. Despite that, he'd made a point of not laying a finger on Rose, no matter how clear she made it that she'd prefer he put his hands all over her. Albert might have been a rotten businessman, but even as mad as Dale might be at him, he knew better than to mess with a friend's woman.
That hadn't stopped Albert from suspecting something though. He'd come in drunk one n
ight, having blown what little money they'd made, and he'd thrown the first punch. After beating the man until he didn't want to fight any more, Dale packed up the few things he had and left.
Desperate to get back to Brooklyn but unable to afford a ticket, Dale had started working at the shipyards, doing the dirtiest work they had, hoping to find some way to get back home. He'd caught the eye of the White Star Line, and the managers there had signed him up as one of the stokers for the Titanic, despite the objections of Dale's new bosses.
He'd put up with the abuse he'd sustained every day since then. If this was his only chance to get back home, he was damned if he'd let someone push him too far and ruin it.
In the few minutes he had off, he'd stolen away to sneak around the ship, knowing that if they caught him they might toss him overboard. He'd never seen such opulence in his entire life. To him, the Titanic looked a lot like how he imagined Buckingham Palace would seem if you gave the building a watertight hull and tossed it into the sea.
He kept well out of sight, though, only moving about late at night, after most of the people on the ship were asleep. On the first evening on the open sea, he'd heard music wafting from somewhere on the ship, and he'd skulked as close as he could toward it. Although he hadn't dared to approach the band and offer to join in, he'd played along, drumming his fingers on his legs as if they held all eighty-eight keys.
At that moment, Dale had thought that despite all his troubles everything was going to be all right. He'd even started to compose a song about it, something he planned to debut as soon as he arrived back home and had a piano to play. He could see the end of this horrible movement of his life from here, and he couldn't wait to turn the page to see what notes he would get to play next.
And then they'd hit that damned iceberg.
Dale had been down working the double-enders in boiler room 6, shoveling endless loads of coal into the gigantic boiler that stood almost three times his height. It had been hard, back-breaking work in infernal heat, made even worse by a slow fire that had started in the aft coal bunker on the starboard side. It had reached deep into the dry coal at the bottom of the bin, and no matter what he and the other stokers had tried, they hadn't been able to put the fire fully out.
But the sea took care of that for them. After the iceberg knocked a hole in the hull, right next to where Dale had been standing, the icy waters beyond had come jetting in. The saltwater drenched Dale and sent up a cloud of steam that he'd had to flail through to find the doorway, doing his best not to lay a hand on the searing boilers on every side of the way out.
He'd reached the door just in time, as someone had decided to lower it to seal the bulkhead. Dale understood why – they had to try to save the ship, after all, and the life of one man didn't measure up much against all the rest, no matter his race or wealth – but he was damned if he'd be caught behind it. He saw it coming down fast and had to dive forward to slip under it beforehand.
His boot had gotten caught on the raised lip of the hatchway, and he'd almost lost his leg to the door. Only quick thinking had gotten him to slide his foot out of his boot rather than mess with the laces. That left him short a shoe, but it beat an amputation any day.
As he'd gotten to his feet, though, his boss had started yelling at him for not staying at his post. It was then that Dale decided, middle of the Atlantic or no, he was going to quit.
He threw down his gloves and stormed right past the boss. The man had put out a muscular arm to stop him, but the withering look of fury Dale focused on him made him put it right back and then move on to doing his job rather than shouting at someone who no longer worked for him.
Dale wasted no time in racing for the upper decks. By the time he'd gotten there, the people above had known something was wrong, but they still hadn't launched a single lifeboat. Knowing there wouldn't be any room for him on any of the boats anyhow, he hunted around for a lifebuoy and found one affixed to the side of one of the walls in the forward well deck.
Dale took the ring-shaped buoy from its steel bracket and brought it over to the port side of the ship, away from the hole the iceberg had torn into the Titanic's hull. Throwing the ring over one shoulder, he reached up and hoisted himself up over the high bulwark there and looked down into the waters below.
It was a long drop, and he knew that it would be cold enough to kill him if help didn't come soon. He sat there for a long time, his back to the people who came streaming out from Steerage onto the well deck. Staring down at the water, he listened to them slide from idle curiosity into horrified panic.
None of them paid him much attention, and if anyone spotted him and thought it was odd to see a soot-covered stoker perched atop a bulwark, they were too busy with worrying about their own lives to say much about it. He sat there in the night air, letting the frigid North Atlantic weather bleed off the heat he'd built up in his skin during his days in the depths of the ship. It wasn't until the ship developed a serious list that he began to shiver.
Dale knew then that this would be his last day on God's own earth. The icy ocean below would be the death of him. He didn't know if it would force the air from his lungs and drown him or leech every last bit of warmth from his bones, but he was sure that the Titanic wasn't long for this world and that there were no places for him on any of the lifeboats.
He'd have taken it personally, but Dale could tell from the horrified calls of the throngs of people on the decks and promenades behind him that he would be far from the only one to die tonight.
When the ship pitched toward the starboard, Dale knew exactly what had caused it. The bulkhead between boiler rooms 6 and 5 had finally given way. The heat from that fire they'd never been able to put out would have weakened the metal there, and it had only been a matter of time before it gave way under the tremendous pressure the water would put upon it.
As the waters rose up toward the well deck, Dale decided that his time to consider when he should leap off the boat had run out. He tossed the ring buoy out onto the waters below, and after a moment's hesitation in which he regretted the grief this would cause his mother, should she ever hear of it, he kicked off from the bulwark and dove into the ebony water below.
Dale didn't even feel the impact with the water. The icy temperature drove all other sensations from him, along with the air in his lungs. He wanted to scream in terror and pain, but the water had already closed over his head, and the cold had paralyzed him so that he couldn't have managed it, even if he'd had the air to pull it off.
As the lights of the ship receded above him, Dale realized that he needed to swim for the surface or he would just keep sinking straight to the ocean floor. Despite the cold forcing every muscle in his body to contract at once, he struggled against his own flesh and brought his arms up to reach for the surface. At first, Dale feared that he may have waited too long to start swimming, as the lights above him didn't seem to be getting any closer. Soon, though, he saw the lights growing brighter, and hope rose in him as he clawed his way to the surface.
Before he could break into the clean, cold, precious air though, something snagged his ankle again, much like the bulkhead door had done before. He reached down to see what it was and to pull his sole remaining shoe free from it if he could, but he saw that the question wasn't what had caught him but who.
At first Dale thought that the man who had grabbed him must have been drowning too. He couldn't think of any other reason for anyone to be in the water. As much as it hurt, the only way anyone would be in the near-freezing sea would be because the alternative seemed worse.
Despite identifying with the man holding onto his leg, Dale struggled to kick free. He could tell from the burning in his lungs that he couldn't last much longer, and if the man didn't let go they'd both drown for sure. Try as he might, though, the man's iron grip never slackened for an instant.
Dale bent over then and tried to pry the man's hand off his leg with his fingers. As he reached down, he got his first decent look at his attacker. He
was a thin man, young, with ruddy hair and the flat nose of an Irish boxer, and rather than panicking he did the last thing that Dale expected. He looked up at him and smiled.
Dale stared at the man, then noticed something about his attacker's teeth that transformed his shock into sheer terror. The man's incisors were as long as fangs, and he wasn't smiling any longer. He was baring them.
CHAPTER NINE
"If we don't make it through this," Quin said, "there's something I need to tell you."
"Oh, for Lord's sake," Abe said, as he held up his arms to help catch the lifeboat the sailors and a few other passengers on top of the roof were struggling to free. "Let's not ruin the moment, shall we?"
"What?"
Abe gave him a sidelong look. "I know just how this will go. You'll confess something horrible, and I'll want to tear your head from your shoulders, and it's only bound to distract us while we should really be concentrating on other, more important things."
