Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

David must find Kelly, now. He swam as fast as he could, leaving all thought of any treasures in his wake. As he did so, he muttered, “Damn you, Mendenhall! Why couldn’t you have been patient! They had a hydraulic jack down here for us already! Right tool for the right job!”

But David was talking to himself; Jacob and his impatience, obliterated now along with his humanity, appeared all too human. Besides, if Jacob had been controlled by the creature, he would not have gone crazy over a cargo hold of shiny antiques, and so Kelly was alone with the monster somewhere inside this ship that seemed bent on killing them all, what with Lou and Kelly cut off, missing, and Jacob dead.

Meanwhile, David felt as if all the pressure around him was about to turn his head and body into so small a piece of remains as to fill a sandwich baggy. He felt horribly alone now inside Titanic . He gave a thought to the divers at the aft section of the derelict ship. There were freezer compartments there, too. In the original design of the ship, there had only been freezer holds at the aft section and not here below the stokers’ and crew’s berths; some 860 crew from maids to firemen lived on board. Below their quarters at the very bottom were the huge cargo holds—as with the automobiles. The final design placed additional freezer compartments for perishable supplies below at both ends of Titanic , the freezers ironically separated along her hull by successive stores of coal working boilers, and reciprocating engines, turbine engines, and below all this at the keel line, three shaft tunnels for the propellers and rudder.

He and Kelly might well have landed on the wrong part of Titanic ; it could be that the creature and its eggs were in the aft section’s smaller freezer compartments, and if so, they’d been wrong about Swigart and of course, now it was clear that Mendenhall was entirely too human to have been the monster. The creature would not have gotten itself killed over a stash of motorcars, no matter the make, model, or vintage.

David tried desperately to raise Kelly, so wanting to hear her voice; he shouted for Forbes to locate her even as he wondered now about Gambio, Bowman, Fiske, and Jens. Might one of them be the creature incognito with plans of getting to the bow section on a second dive, tomorrow?

David called up to those on the surface, “Tell me I’m not the only one left down here alive, Captain!”

“No… no, you’re not alone. Swigart’s vital signs are still giving us a reading—weak but something.”

“What about Kelly?”

“Unsure what’s going on there, but her vital signs went dead with her com-link. We suspect it’s only technical difficulties, magnetic interference. We’re doing all we can to get her back online.”

“Well damn it, Forbes! Do it! She’s in danger every second you don’t have her in your sights! What about the others at the aft section?”

“There’s been no drama with them, Ingles; drama seems to follow you!” Forbes did not sound happy to have David blast him with demands, and he was understandably upset. Now he had three deaths to explain to authorities whenever they got back to Woods Hole.

“I did all in my power to get Jacob to pay heed to his surroundings; the man got himself killed. I don’t own that one.”

“I wasn’t suggesting—”

“The hell you weren’t.”

“You’re breaking up, Ingles… only getting static. Check your equipment.”

“Is it the depths, the equipment, what?”

Everything went silent again. David, spinning about in the water, looked around on all sides of himself. He had become somewhat disoriented and for good reason. It was not every day you saw a man implode before your eyes or were showered with corpses. Aside from his stomach-wrenching worry over Kelly, David kept coming back to the fact that there was not enough left of Jacob Mendenhall to fill a pocket, or to hold a ceremony over.

The old man named Farley, confused and exhausted from running about Titanic and hiding now for another day and night asked, “All right, Varmint and me, we’ve done everything you blokes’ve asked, and gone ’long with every ‘whattaya-think’s-best-notion’ you fellas’ve had,and it’s got us all nowhere except starvin’ it has. Now I got a right to know. Just who is it you’re chasin’ anyway?”

“A dead man.” Ransom replied it in deadpan.

“Oh… sure… I see… uh-huh…” Farley scratched at his beard and then released Varmint who took off like a shot. Back of them, they heard men stomping down the stairwell. They raced past huge cylinders and boilers the size of buildings.

“Looks like casks of beer for a giant,” observed Thomas. “And it’s making me thirsty.”

“Hotter’n hell down here,” commented Farley. “Varmint don’t like it.”

They rushed on past giant pistons and shafts that put them in awe given the sheer size of these machines, and next they passed one room where stokers and firemen struggled with flames within, heat and black smoke like a malevolent force trying to escape. They could feel the heat, and trying to keep up with Varmint, they were all sweating profusely when they came to a halt in back of the dog who’d begun barking and alerting on a huge door as it might in the field when hunting quail.

They all stared at a door marked FREEZER UNIT – Authorized Personnel Only.

Alastair snatched the door wide. The four men and the dog looked in on a large open area with freezer units along the walls; stacked to the ceiling were frozen perishables, breads, sausages, whole gutted frozen chickens, pheasants, ducks, rabbits, turkeys, geese, and inside a deep freeze compartment beef and swine carcasses dangling from meat hooks. “A man could live in here if it weren’t so damn cold,” muttered Farley, his teeth chattering. “Look at all this?”

“Supplies enough to feed the thousands on board for the trip to New York,” said Ransom, picking about the items, wondering what could the dog’s nose have possibly picked up here.

At the center of the room stood a fixed, huge chopping block the size of a grand piano. Along another wall was a metal table—or rather an elongated sink the size of a trough with a tabletop board for butchering as well.

Everything is big on the Titanic , Ransom thought as he looked about the room. “The dog can’t be right. Nothing here. Besides, no way he can sniff out anything that’s frozen.”

“Hold on,” said Declan, opening one of the freezer doors, finding nothing inside other than hanging beef, venison, and hogs on hooks.

Thomas pulled open a second freezer door. Still more frozen goods—geese, chickens, lamb shanks, pork, as well as huge cases of ice cream and frozen pies. “Nothing here,” he added.

Regardless of the cold, Varmint had gone about the large entry room sniffing and scratching, and Farley, disregarding the others and their pronouncements shadowed his dog, now scratching at some locker against one wall—locked with a padlock. Ransom banged at the lock with his cane, saying, “Need a damn gun.”

“I’ll have a go at it with my pig sticker,” said Farley, indicating the lock. “I’ve a knack for such things.”

“Here,” said Ransom. “You may need these.” He handed Farley his burglar’s tools wrapped in a leather wallet.

Farley stared at the tools laid out before him, his eyes dazzling. “They’re… lovely… just lovely,” he said.

“You get that lock open, and they’re yours,” promised Ransom.

“Oh… I’ll get ’er open, Constable.”

Again they heard the stamp of feet and shouting—their pursuers. The sounds reverberated out in the closed corridor. Ransom went to the door to slam it closed and lock it from the inside when Lightoller met him there, Declan’s journal in hand, shouting, “I believe you! I’m here to help!”