Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Page 49

  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 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.

  He simply could not have allowed that vile creature to use Declan as it had others.

  Thomas would get free with the journal; perhaps one day the truth of Titanic’s ordeal this night of April 14, 1912 would come out. Some day, Declan would be heralded a hero—perhaps the only hero aboard Titanic. Some day.

  The ship listed, lifted, then repeatedly groaned like a dying elephant.

  He could only imagine the horror of those on the six or so decks still above water over his head. The door he had come through was surely under water by now. The freezer was completely sealed; air tight and water tight. He laughed at the sight of all the provisions around him, enough food and water to last a man years, and none of it useful now.

  He hadn’t wanted Declan to die down here alone, but the entire way down, he kept feeling a nagging, clinging doubt about the boy surgeon. How many of those infected corpses had he opened up? He and Thomas. What were the odds Declan wouldn’t get some sort of parasite growing within him? Or perhaps not. Perhaps the carrier had discarded another body for Declan’s in the brief time that Ransom had let the young doctor out of his sight. Then he recalled the stranger at the bar, slipping and falling into Declan, spilling his drink on him. Could that have been the transfer moment?

  Alastair felt an enormous grief intermingling with self-incriminations; could he have done anything at all differently?

  No one in any way, shape, or form was now coming through that door, and nothing inside here remained alive save him. Suicide? Was it suicide to end it now before the ship took her plunge? Before he reached bottom where he might actually remain the sole survivor of the wreck for as long as he could stand this solitary confinement?

  “Is it suicide under such circumstances if I end it before suffering until I run out of oxygen?”

  He toyed with the gun about his ear and head, shaking from the cold, still wet from his swim, becoming more miserable by the moment. There came more tearing and rending of the ship, and the angle of the floor was now so sharp as to send him sliding toward Declan’s body. He pictured their eternal sleep together, father and son.

  He was about to put a bullet through his mouth and brain as he slid toward Declan’s body when the creature that they had been chasing rose out of Declan’s lifeless mouth. It came out in a filmy, oily black shapeless mass.

  Ransom rolled to one side, got to his knees, and watched it rise to the ceiling like a levitating shaman. He then saw a black single eye within the thing, which he imagined to be a later stage development as Declan had declared the damn things eyeless in their egg sacs.

  The eye glared at him as if he were a next meal—and he was, should it get the upper hand.

  Ransom took aim at the single eye, but the thing darted straight for his eyes. Ransom fired at it repeatedly, and at the last moment, Alastair hit the floor beneath the table, hearing the entity slam into the tabletop. He knew he must avoid its touch at all costs. That if it got close enough to touch him, it would slip into him like quicksilver.

  He grabbed for his Woodbine match box, struck a match, and threw it into the pool of whiskey. This sent up an instant plume of fire that caught the creature aflame in mid-flight toward him.

  The thing exploded in flame, screeching as it flew about the room in a mad effort to extinguish itself, sucking up all the oxygen with it only to cause the monster to burn faster and faster until it fell before Ransom’s feet as a black and withered ball of oily flesh.

  “Finally dead, you life-sucking maggot!”

  Ransom fought to stand up only to find his feet on the ceiling. A moment later, he was slammed hard to one wall, when he realized what was happening. “This is it, the finale!” he shouted just to hear himself. The entire ship was lurching, lumbering like some dinosaur in her death throes. Titanic was readying to dive.

  Ransom found no way to brace for it. Then he heard a terrible rending and tearing of metal followed by the sensation that the ship was suddenly racing and spiraling downward like a runaway elevator car. He, Declan, and the remnants of the creature were all headed for the bottom. “With God knows how many others,” he said to himself.

  At the same time, Ransom felt the enormous pressure against him, building, he feared exponentially, and he felt confidant he need not put the gun to his own head, that Titanic would save him the trouble and the messiness of suicide.

  It was a long and heart-rending, freezing freefall of a ride. It had Ransom pinned to the floor like one of those butterflies stuck through with a needle and mounted on a wall.

  He tri
ed to raise his gun to finish himself off, to do the deed, but it was impossible to move his limbs; he was plastered to the wall or was it the floor. No telling anymore. Likely not till he hit bottom.

  These thoughts filled his mind when suddenly the seal all around the closed, locked door burst due to the incredible pressures as the ship sank deeper and deeper toward the bottom. The explosion of water into the freezer quickly began to fill the room, lifting Ransom’s body and sending him floating for the wall that had become the ceiling here. He held tight to the gun, assuring himself it was the best way to go even as the freezing water was claiming him, hypothermia setting in. Suddenly, his hand was shivering to badly to align the muzzle with his temple, and he was going in and out of consciousness with the freezing cold while thinking this is how I’ll go… frozen like a damned block of ice.

  The descent was like riding a giant bullet to the bottom, and the bottom came faster than expected, the powerful jolt of the ship’s nose digging deep and sending a jarring, powerful reverberation through the body of Titanic’s remains, the jolt also sending Declan’s body smashing against the opposite wall along with Alastair, like a ragdoll, hitting the same wall, pounding his head so hard against it as to mercifully kill him.

  Ransom’s final thoughts as the ship had plunged and just before its violent stop were of Jane Tewes’ face, her smile, her open arms that very last night she’d held him to her breasts.

  THIRTY NINE

  Titanic continued her screeching and moaning from her steep descent of two and a half miles to the ocean floor until her bow dug out a sixty-foot trough to lie in for eternity. By the time Titanic hit bottom, few survivors in the water remained alive, almost all were victims of hypothermia. Aside from Alastair Ransom and Declan Irvin, others who had remained aboard for the ride to the bottom either did so because they had become trapped inside the hull or had intentionally wanted to go out this way. Among them were some of the richest families on board who had secretly locked themselves away in a cargo hold, the one that included the bolted down automobiles in the sealed cargo hold at the bow below decks. They’d climbed into the cars for one hell of a ride.