Titanic 2012

whiskey bottle to the other one’s jaw, whiskey and glass flying. This left only one man left standing other than Ransom, Konrath, who went for a small, concealed derringer. Ransom brought his hand around to clutch the gun hand, squeezing it so tight as to make the firearm drop. Both men then noticed that the bone-handled derringer was swept away by the angle of the floor. From her listing to the port side bow, everyone who understood anything about sailing knew now that Titanic, while advertised as unsinkable was in fact at this moment sinking.

Ransom quickly dispatched the fourth and final drunk with a single blow to the cranium when he whipped up his wolf’s head cane and struck the man in the jaw with it, stunning him on the upswing, but then on the downswing, he caught him as he expected—square to the back of the skull. With this, the job was done.

Ransom then rapped the table so hard with his cane that it created the sound of a gunshot. Unlike Andrews before him, Alastair got their attention. “I was about to say, gentlemen, you can divvy up my winnings among you. Take it all to hell with you, but I keep the bloody shoes.”

“W-What about the Whiskey?” asked Savile.

“Are ya all deaf and dumb?” shouted old Mr. Farley who was at the bar now and drinking straight from a fat brandy bottle. “Damn fools, the ship’s going down. There’s all the most expensive champagne, brandy, and whiskey you can drink right here, if only you had the time! But they gotta win it in a poker game to make it worth their while.”

“Best get drinking, fellas,” added Ransom, grabbing one of the whiskey bottles on the table and leaving the other two tilted at a dangerous angle.

“Just wanted a chance to earn back what you won from us,” shouted Walker after struggling to his feet under the influence atop a slanted floor. But Ransom had exited the nearest side door for the promenade, looking in all directions for Declan.

He wondered what Declan was up to as the young man left carrying a bottle of Vodka of all things. The lad looked dejected enough to get besotted and use the gun on himself. Now Ransom raced to catch Declan, fearing it’d be too late if he did not intervene. Despite everything, his raucous lifestyle and all the railing he’d ever done at God, mankind, Mother Nature, and now this monster on Titanic, Alastair still felt that suicide, above all things, was the worst thing a man could do—on even footing with murder. He had himself killed other men both in the line of duty and off duty, but he felt he’d never killed a man who hadn’t had it coming—like that godless maniac Chicago reporters dubbed The Phantom of the World’s Fair.

He raced to the deck from which they’d come, thinking Declan on his way to the top where he would dramatically put a bullet through his head and keel over the side, plunging into the frigid ocean below, but he found no sign of young Declan, here topside where the panic was now palpable.

Try as he might amid the crowd, he could not find Declan. He did however, run into Lightoller who was arguing with the same woman who had been afraid to cross a gangplank at Cherbourg from the cargo steamer, the one that Ransom had helped along at the time.

On seeing Ransom, the lady shouted, “If I can take the arm of this gentleman, I will do my best to board, sir. Otherwise, I go back to my berth and wait there.”

Charles Lightoller turned to see who it might be and the two came face to face. “Ah, Constable, it’s you.”

“Yes… looking for Declan Irvin; have you seen him?”

“No… no! Rather busy, you see.”

“Please, sir?” came the lady, her arm extended to Alastair. He took it and guided her across the one and a half-foot gap between Titanic’s rail, over which they must step from a ladder, to the rocking lifeboat which was currently less than one-third full. In the boat, a crewman was trying desperately to balance out the weight of passengers, telling everyone where to sit.

“Keep her steady there, man! Keep the boat steady!” ordered Lightoller of his men on board. “And keep in tight around the ship. Don’t venture too far! Do you understand?”

Ransom peered down into the boat from where he stood helping the young lady; he could feel her terror racing through him; she was trembling so hard. Helping her aboard and getting those in the boat to take hold of her, Ransom caught sight of Varmint and beside him, at the tiller with his arm draped around the dog, sat a glum Thomas Coogan who pretended not to see Alastair, or was he trying not to be seen? Ransom frowned but made no remarks to Thomas, instead turning to make his way back onto the deck and away from here when he stopped, turned, and made for the life boat in a rush instead. Lightoller placed a gun to his head, cocked it; ready to fire, he shouted, “Sorry but women and children first, Mr. Ransom, sir.”

“I just want a word with your man at the tiller.”

“Is that it? I swear if you leap into that boat as several others have done, I will shoot you and they can put your carcass over the side when the boat is lowered. The last big man to make me angry broke a child’s ribs, he did, and there’s no getting him out of the boat short of shooting him.”

Ransom saw the man who looked to be a good two-seventy, perhaps even three-hundred pounds. He whispered to Lightoller, “If you go off with that tub of lard and the creature is residing inside him, it could hide forever in that elephant.”

“Your dog made no move toward the man. I think he’s clean of the parasite—just missing moral fiber.”

“And what of Thomas Coogan?”

“Placed in charge of more than the tiller—the record, Declan’s journal.”

“And why not Declan?”

Thomas shouted from the boat, “Declan’s gone to the freezers, damn him—and damn you! Damn you both!” Thomas could no longer hold back the tears.

“That’s all I need to know!” replied Ransom, rushing off to find Declan, and as he did so, he ciphered out why Declan, gun in hand, would be going back to the freezer compartment where the bodies lay. Did he mean to get specimens for future study off Titanic in hopes of learning more about the parasite in a contained, safe lab somewhere? Or did he mean to keep out anyone daring to attempt to take anything from the freezer compartments? Or was there another motive? An unspeakable one?

Perhaps suicide was not an option for Declan after all.

As he rode the elevator down, changing out his worn out shoes for those he’d won from Konrath, Ransom wondered at how the engineers aboard Titanic had kept the electrical lights and power going for so long. Soon water was lapping at his new shoes, drenching his toes, and so he hit the emergency stop, pulled back the filigree door and leapt out into a flooded corridor. The same one used by the chamber maids and crew to keep from sight as they did their work like so many invisible beings aboard, some 860 of them he recalled from reading Declan’s notes on Titanic.

Declan had so admired and loved this ship; recalled Ransom.

Now this ship would be his grave.

He worked his way to the stairwell and found it flooded too. There remained one area left that might be free of water, a tubular stairwell sealed off and used by repairmen in the event it was needed—one on either side of the ship.

When he arrived at the sign signaling the deck where the freezers stood waiting for him, Alastair opened the door and was hit by a wave of water that slammed him against the far wall of the tunnel, nearly knocking him unconscious. He found himself floating but fighting to stay above water. He somehow found the door handle in his hand, but his cane and bottle long gone. His watch, waterlogged, had stopped at 1:48am. He cursed this turn of events, while holding onto the hatchway, he saw the top of the freezer compartment wherein lay the bodies of the victims, and where Declan had headed. The power of the rushing water threatened to tear him from the hatchway, but Alastair held firm, withstanding the pressure until it lessened to the point of calm as the room filled with cold sea water that soaked and chilled him. He dropped his feet in an attempt to find footing, and as he did, he saw the whiskey bottle bobbing about near the freezer door, while his cane’s shiny silver head winked at him in the poor light as it swirled in a small vortex.

He half-walked, half-swam, his cane swept away with his watch as his fob and chain had been ripped from him. He was also missing his signature top hat and one well worn coat, but he had on a brand new pair of shoes, courtesy of Mr. Konrath. All the same, he feared for his life here and now amid the rushing water. “I’m going to drown before the damn ship sinks,” he shouted, his voice bouncing off the steel bulkheads.

He managed to get to the door where his cane awaited him. He snatched it up, and taking charge of his