Titanic 2012

hard-won whiskey bottle as well, he used the sturdy base of his cane to bang at the door, the bottle tucked securely under his arm. He began to tug at the door, fighting the water pressure holding it closed. He managed to pry it open an inch, two, going for three when he realized the muzzle of his own gun was between his eyes.

“Ransom! Damn it, man! I might’ve killed you!” Declan pulled the gun away and helped force the door open, water spilling in, the first layers already beginning to crystallize from the cold within even here, the outer chamber to the deep freeze units where the dissected and stacked bodies of the victims lay in state.

“No man aboard a ship of thousands should die alone, Declan.” He held up the brown whiskey bottle.

Declan shook his head and pointed with the gun at his bottle of Vodka and a single glass he’d set up. The gun went off, shattering the glass, inches from the whiskey bottle. And the sound tore into Ransom’s ears and rattled his senses.

“What the hell?” Ransom grabbed the gun from Declan in one swift motion. “You are a dangerous man, Irvin. I’m taking charge of my bloody gun, and I don’t appreciate your stealing it, or making plans like this without my input!”

“You looked in your element at the card table.”

“I was and I just swam through another element, and I’m damned cold, damned cold.”

“Soaked, yes, you are.”

“Another reason to get plastered.” Ransom opened his whiskey and took a long pull on it.

“Now Declan, my boy, would you care to tell me the real reason you’ve come down here to babysit a stack of stiffs?”

“I-I told Thomas—didn’t he inform you? I thought for sure he would.”

“To guard against anyone’s trying to get at those babies inside there?” Ransom indicated the deep freeze, using the gun as pointer.

“That’s right; I figure we’ve come too damn far to let these things get out now.”

“Did ya now? Figure that, I mean?”

“I did.”

“Drink up, my friend.” Ransom swallowed more whiskey, but Declan shrugged to indicate he wasn’t interested in drinking.

“There’ll be time to drink.” Declan shivered and paced.

“You don’t even drink whiskey, Declan. You stick to wine, remember?”

“Situation like this can make a good man go bad,” he replied.

“So here you are with a bottle of Vodka? What’s really going on here? You gonna torch the place? Using the booze and the gun? What, you couldn’t find a match on board the Titanic that you had to steal my gun?”

“Did not… didn’t think you would… you’d need it where you are… you’re going… .Where we are… we’re all going.”

“And why, son, are ya deflecting all my questions? What has you feeling so paranoid and guilty-sounding, eh?”

“What’re you talking about?” Declan’s pacing had become agitated, frenetic.

“To build a fire, using the Vodka as an accelerant,” Ransom repeated, pressing the issue. “You don’t drink strong alcoholic beverages. So why’d you lift the Vodka instead of the Merlot? Is it that you mean to ignite a fire or not?”

Declan stared at the gun now pointed at him. “What for… for what are you doing this? Why are you afraid of me, Alastair? Why’re you afraid of me?”

Alastair took note of the change in voice, the boy’s cadence as he paced, his speaking slowly, enunciating each word either out of care or because he was fighting the thing’s use of him. It both sounded and appeared that Declan was struggling to keep control of his mind and will.

“Well, son, you see, I believe that you came down here to torch the bodies and eggs with the best of intentions.”

“That is correct, Alastair.”

“But by the time you got here, you decided instead to build a controlled fire in the center of the room here.”

“A fire… a controlled fire?”

“I just saw it, Declan, flit across your eyes, your brow—both the truth and the black thing inside you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’re it.”

“No, that’s ridiculous. Don’t be a fool. I took the Vodka for courage. That is all.”

“To thaw them out—the strongest of the lot,” Ransom indicated the inner freezer. Get them above deck and onto a lifeboat—preferably one that Tommie’s not on. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You are… yes, you are wrong.”

“Then tell me I’m right!”

“Yes, you are right.”

Ransom felt a huge sadness welling up, threatening to overtake him and destroy his resolve. “You’re down here to thaw out your god damned babies! Then get the healthiest above decks, get ’em onto a lifeboat!”

“You are drunk, Alastair, and you sound insane.”

“I wish that was the only problem here, Declan.”

Declan laughed but it was not his laugh; it sounded like something like an animal in pain. Declan turned rather mechanically to show Ransom his back, as if to say he wouldn’t so much as honor Ransom’s foolishness. Then with arms wide, hands open, he turned back to face Ransom, stepped close and suddenly lurched at him with the speed of light, forcing Ransom to fire, putting a bullet between Declan’s eyes.

Declan fell at Ransom’s feet, dead.

Ransom turned his eyes away, groaning, praying a second bullet, this one to his own head, would end the horrible suffering he felt in his heart. Ransom knew that for a time Declan had known he was infected, and he courageously fought its will as it grew in power over him. Isolating himself with the eggs, Declan most certainly hoped the ship itself would end the very thing that had killed Titanic this night. All the while the thing within him was obliging as it wanted its young.

Alastair knew no other cure; there was no other recourse but to end Declan’s suffering as one soldier must do for another. The knowledge he was infected must have been crushing for Declan.

Ransom released a cry of profound sadness, realizing that now he alone was the gatekeeper to this particular corner of Hell. No one in or out, not ever… as Titanic began to tilt so strongly that Declan’s body began to incrementally slide across the room, and now both the Vodka and the whiskey bottle smashed to the floor to paint the metal with a brown, heart-shaped stain.

“Take all the rest of us to hell, God—but you take that boy into your heart.”

Ransom, his back to the wall, slid to the floor, wanting to cry; he had no recollection of the last time he had cried, not even as a child. Life had always been hard for him. Hell, he thought, life was hell and other people made it more hellish. Nature itself was filled with freakish monsters, some human, some animal, some parasitic—all of them feeding on one another like Darwin said, for survival of the fittest.

Death would bring peace. An end to a fevered mind, his pain, his suffering, all his losses. One partition in his mind thought of Hamlet, but this was overtaken by images of Jane and Gabby back in Chicago, his friends Philo Keane and Dr. Christian Fenger. Men who’d helped him escape a certain death by hanging, and then the evolving picture went on about how far he’d come since then while, ironically, how little he’d learned or changed since then. How in a sense he must have been spared so as to be here now aboard Titanic to do the work of… of God or whatever power had moved him to not flee Belfast when he’d had the chance to do so, long before he’d gotten involved with that young man lying dead across from him now.

It was a story never to be told. No one would ever know the lengths to which they’d gone, the three of them.

He ruminated over what precisely had brought Declan Irvin to cross his path and set them on this journey. It was a strange fate for such a trio to have become of one mind bent on destroying a common enemy.

No matter that Declan lay dead, Ransom could not be more proud of him. In fact, Ramsom felt a kinship with the boy—a true bond, and he would proudly have called this young man his son.