Titanic 2012

“You got that right,” agreed Farley, still shaken. “Now Varmint and me, we want outta here, now!”

“No opening that door, Mr. Farley, until we deem it time.” Ransom stood in his way as Declan and Thomas began cutting open the corpses. Declan began with Davenport at the sink, running the water in an attempt to soften the tissue before making the Y incision. “At least,” he muttered, “we don’t have to concern ourselves with blood.”

Thomas didn’t wait; he opened up Burnes’ chest.

“Ohhh, God! God!” shouted Lightoller on seeing what Declan revealed to him at the sink; Declan had found a cooking utensil that clasped onto the thick skin flap and using it, he’d pulled back the flesh to expose the pulsating brown egg sacs in brackish fluid soup created from the human host. The eggs—or rather the creatures inside them— appeared healthy and anxious to come to fruition.

“Alien life… alien to all we know,” muttered Thomas.

“We suspect it a form of life that existed eons ago,” added Ransom, pacing, hearing people stomping by outside.

“It’d gone dormant in an animal unearthed in a mineshaft in Belfast—” said Declan as he continued to cut and fill Lightoller in—“where it got hold of some men and literally ‘walked’ onto Titanic.”

“So I’ve read. We have to contain these—these things.” Lightoller had gone as white as his uniform.

“Judging from the condition of the body and the egg sacs inside him, Dr. O’Laughlin’s body hasn’t been here long,” commented Declan. “We have to freeze the bloody eggs.

“That makes sense,” agreed Ransom, “but whatever we do here now, nothing of this creature can reach New York.”

The stoker’s body, too, was riddled with alien life—frozen when they’d begun, but the egg-sacs literally drew in heat from the men and the dog here, drew energy from the living, and it had begun pulsating as if anxious to split their membranous outer shell. The egg-sacs were translucent, and the fat, half worm, half-tadpole things inside could be seen in silhouette as oily black when the light hit them just so.

“I want to cut one of these damnable little demons open,” declared Declan.

“Alive? Too dangerous,” replied Thomas. “Here.” He stabbed into and through the membranous sac before him, killing the hatchling, but it sent up a hellacious screech. Ignoring the death screams, Thomas efficiently ripped the gelatinous, black creature the size of a man’s palm from its sac and splayed it open on the chopping block typically used to cut meat portions. His gloved hands turned oily black.

With Declan looking on, Thomas said, “Damn, look at this abomination.”

“There’s no… I mean nothing; makes no sense.”

“Since when has any of this made any damn sense?” shouted Thomas.

Alastair looked in over their shoulders, gasping. “Where’s its eyes?”

“Hasn’t any.”

“Where’s its mouth?”

“Got none.”

Declan added, “No digestive system either; feeds through some sort of weird osmosis, taking in nutrients through its epidermal layer of skin.”

“It can somehow suck blood from bone, too, remember?” asked Thomas.

Farley had snatched a sight of the things and so had Varmint who sent up an angry volley of barking. Both dog and owner now hugged the door, anxious to put as much distance between themselves and these awful smelling corpses and the strange life in the sacs as they could. Farley suddenly tore away Ransom’s wolf’s head cane and spun the door lock. Ransom pushed the man away, and he tumbled and fell atop Ransom’s cane.

Ransom tried to hold the spinning lock, struggling with Murdoch and the men with him the other side of the door to get inside; Lightoller rushed to Ransom’s side to help stem the tide, but it was too late as the door was thrust open and Murdoch, Wilde, and two pursers held guns on them all.

Declan had already cracked Dr. O’Laughlin’s chest, causing the others to hold back. The sight of the once so proud Dr. O’Laughlin, not merely dead, but his body like some sort of ugly planter of fertile ground for the alien life forms inside him made Murdoch lose his lunch. Officer Wilde’s reaction was much the same, and the others held back. Murdoch and Wilde shouted for the burly stokers to leave at once and say nothing to anyone.

All guns were lowered.

“Where is your captain?” asked Ransom. “He needs to see what is aboard his ship, and he needs to see it now.”

No one readily answered. Lightoller found a call box and rang for the bridge, and in a moment was pleading for Captain Smith to come down to the central freezer units here below the bow decks. “I tell you, sir, it is absolutely urgent, yes! Murdoch and Wilde are here with me, and yes, we’ve apprehended the escaped prisoners, but sir—you must come and have a look. There’s been an awful… terrible turn of events, sir. Come! Come post haste!”

“If this doesn’t convince your captain that Titanic is a plague ship, nothing will,” remarked Ransom, who realized only now that Farley and Varmint had slipped out and were gone.

“Suppose Murdoch is now infected,” Declan whispered in Ransom’s ear as Murdoch regained his feet. Lightoller helped Murdoch up, telling him about what he’d read in Declan’s journal, holding it before Murdoch. “Everything they tried to tell us, Will; it’s all true. We should never have left Queenstown. We’re in the middle of the Atlantic on a ship teeming with this… this parasitic, monstrous plague.”

Captain Smith pushed his way into the area, asking, “Lightoller, Murdoch, Wilde? What’s going on here?” He said this before seeing the dead Dr. O’Laughlin, Burnes, and Davenport along with the pulsating egg-sacs inside each victim.

“Captain,” said Lightoller, holding up Declan’s journal. “I read Mr. Irvin’s journal, and now seeing these monstrous life forms—”

One of the egg-sacs lifted, the creature inside stretching, fighting to get out when

it popped, sending up a bile-like brown fluid, part human blood, part alien gravy of some

sort… its food supply for now. The thing raised its blind, eyeless head out into the world

and was met with a bullet from Murdoch’s hefty, fat six-shooter. The powerful shot sent

the creature flying in twelve or thirteen pieces across the room to slam into a wall where

the splat made a sickening noise and everyone watched the dead parts slide down the wall

to the floor. At the same time, the explosion in the enclosed space made everyone go

deaf.

“Damn big gun!” Ransom shouted to Murdoch as he could not hear his own

voice. “A British made Webley MK-IV, right?”

“Yes, a break top revolver. It uses .455 Webley caliber.”

“Big chunk-a-lead-throwing six shooter. Saw a lot of ’em in Chicago,

unfortunately in the wrong hands. You think I could get one of those now?”

“That’d have to be cleared through the captain, Ransom.”

“I want one of those!” probably have had some Lee Enfield MKIII Short Rifles on board for close confines of a ship. It was in .303 British caliber a pretty potent round up to 300 yards. You can probably google those weapons if you need more particulars.

“If I thought it would do any good other than getting more men killed than these disgusting creatures,” Murdoch replied, “I’d break into the Vickers machine guns on board.”

“Hold on, you have a stash of Vickers?” Ransom’s mouth fell open.

“Well until a moment ago, it was secret cargo.”

“Really? Going to the US Military, are they?”

“Your Major Butt’s cargo.”

“Major Archibald Butt is aboard Titanic?” Butt had made a reputation the world over.

“Traveling with a journalist named Stead, yes.”

“Not William Stead, author of the book If Christ Came to Chicago? I know him from his time in Chicago. Wonderful man! Excellent journalist.”

“One and the same. Seems Stead is acting as biographer for Butts; meanwhile, the major’s cover is his acting as envoy for Taft… some sort of an exchange of letters between your President and the Pope.”