a lost cause.
However, after a series of missteps that led them in blind searches and circles about the mammoth ship, Varmint hit on a trail that appeared promising. The Retriever grew more and more agitated as it followed along a first class passageway until he came to the stairwell leading to the first class passenger rooms.
“Like I said… this thing is moving up in the world,” Ransom whispered to the others in the corridor. “First class berths.” Varmint had passed one after another until he had come to this sudden stop before Room #148.
“Whose room it this?” asked Ransom.
Lightoller turned to the purser behind him and tapped the younger man’s clipboard. “Well, Mr. Phelps? Answer the question, man!”
“This is the stateroom of Mr. Olaus Abelseth, sir—a well mannered old gent, perhaps in his mid-sixties. Made his fortune in military uniforms, civilian garments, and supplies.”
Ransom insisted they open the door.
“Unusual circumstances dictate, Mr. Phelps,” said Lightoller, snatching his firearm—the one Murdoch had gotten into his hands—from his hip. “Open it.”
Carney Phelps used a first-class skeleton key, and in seconds, he shoved the door wide open. In a matter of seconds, they saw Abelseth on the floor in his death throes, turning to a wooden state before their eyes, when suddenly a screech and a black shape like a banshee tore itself from the dying man’s mouth and ripped about the room like a maniacal, winged angel of death. In the next instant, Lightoller fired several shots, missing repeatedly as the inky shapeless creature flew out an open portal and was gone up the side of the ship’s hull, leaving behind one agitated, barking dog and several stunned men in a quivering silence—ears in pain from the proximity to gunfire.
“It’s getting away!” shouted Ransom, quickly regaining his senses. “Give me the gun, now!”
Lightoller did so without hesitation.
Ransom raced back to the nearest stairwell, with Varmint ahead of him. The creature was a dark, oily- skinned spectral being that had left Mr. Olaus Abelseth of Scandinavia like all those before him.
“We’ve gotta transport Abelseth’s body to the freezer compartment!” Declan said.
“He can wait!” Thomas shouted over his shoulder as he’d already begun to follow Ransom. So had Lightoller, but not the young purser, Phelps. He had raced off in the opposite direction, terrified out of his mind. For the moment, Declan found himself alone with the body, and he helplessly, fearfully, imagined the creature swooping back into the room to target his body and slip into him as easily as it’d slipped out of the dead man at his feet.
When they all arrived topside in the direction the creature, the disease organism had gone, up and along the outside hull of
Captain Smith had gone white and was unable to keep up with the others, but with the help of Wilde, he managed to catch up. “My god, Ransom. What are we faced with here? It’s absolutely vile.”
“There is no telling how many staterooms in first, second, and third class have a dead man or woman lying within and incubating these things, Captain.”
“And no stopping this monster,” added Declan, shaken at having actually seen the thing as it slipped from the body, from Stateroom 148, from gunfire, and from capture.
Some time later, a weary, hungry, exhausted, in-need-of-a-bath Alastair Ransom luxuriated in the steam room opposite Captain Smith. The two men knew they must speak of the unspeakable, and it must be done in secret. “We can only beat this thing one way, Captain,” Ransom began, “and you know it. In your heart, you know it.”
“What do you know of what’s in my heart?” asked Smith, irked by the suggestion.
“It’s written on your face.”
“So what do you read there, Alastair Ransom?”
“I see firm determination and profound sadness. But there’s no other viable solution. We can’t win against a disease-carrying creature that has likely spread its seed from one end of this ship to another. You sir, have a plague ship.”
“Perhaps if I’d listened to you and those boys when you came aboard back in Cherbourg, we might have contained it then and there without the loss of life I’m forced to now contemplate. But you three just had the look of scoundrels about you.”
“You might well have taken us more seriously… at our word, given the evidence we presented, my badge, the photos, and the sabre-tooth, had your Dr. O’Laughlin not been infected and using us at the time.”
He laughed a hollow laugh, his seaman’s glare boring a hole through Ransom. “You were a fool not to have gotten off at Queenstown when you had a chance—the three of you.”
“Three wise men who cometh from afar, only to fail unless we agree on the final solution, Captain.”
“Constable.” Smith lifted a dark, warm brandy and toasted. “To your good health, sir.”
Ransom lifted his brandy from where it sat alongside his burning cigar. “We’re both old men, Captain, and we’ve enjoyed this old planet perhaps long enough. Here’s to our long voyage.”
“Our final voyage, yes.” They drank. They smoked. They stared at one another like men looking into a mirror, until Ransom finally said, “We must bring enough of your officers into the plot to bring your ship to the bottom of the sea, sir, if we’re to succeed. Who among your officers has your complete trust, and who among the crew has their complete trust? This is what you need to be asking yourself.”
“I know these men well. I’ll see to it.”
Ransom leaned far forward. “And you know who can’t be trusted to carry out orders of such horrible consequence as this?”
“I do… I trust that I do, Constable.”
Ransom leaned back into his relaxed position, sweat pouring from him. Smith tossed more water onto the burning coals. A fog of steam separated the two men for a moment. When it cleared, Ransom saw the doubt flit across Smith’s features, a look that asked for any hope to grab onto, anything other than what Ransom had called the final and only solution at this point.
“We must be firm in our position, Captain, and you… you more than any of us, you have to be firm, clear, and concise in your orders to the men under your command, sir. Do you understand? You cannot give away your true feelings on the matter. You can’t order them to die with integrity and grit if you are not willing to do so yourself.”
“Don’t you lecture me about my duty, Mr. Ransom! You’ve no call to question my resolve.”
“If you are resolved then show it in every fiber of your being, else your men will detect otherwise and will mutiny over these orders. I swear that much I can predict.”
Smith breathed deeply of the steam-filled air, sucking it in as if it might solidify his will. He nodded successively. “May God have mercy on our souls… .”
“We have no choice, and God’s not likely to present us with an alternative.”
Smith stood. “I’ll do what’s right when the time comes.”
“You know that the time has come. You need to put this plan into motion as soon as you’re back in uniform. Wear your best, that white one I saw you in the first day we met, when you thought I was some sort of anarchist working for Cunard.”
“I suppose then Inspector Ransom,” –Alastair had told Smith everything about himself –“we shall meet in Hades.” Smith stood, dejected but resolved, and without another word, went for the showers, his locker, and from there to the bridge. He had a great deal to put into play.
Ransom, watching him leave, knew he’d never seen a man with so much on his shoulders. He didn’t envy the man his final task, giving such orders to his officers and crew.
Smith chose to gather his most trusted officers and crew into what was now Dr. Johnny Simpson’s hospital aboard
