Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“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.”

Ransom nodded appreciably. “A story leaked to the public, no doubt.”

“Meanwhile…”

“His true mission is to deliver those water-cooled machine guns to the U.S. Army. The picture comes clear.”

The Vickers was a British made, belt fed machine gun that entered service in 1912. Firearm technology made huge leaps from single shot style rifles and revolvers to semi and fully automatic in just a few short years, and Ransom had kept up with developments. Within the span of five to ten years this huge technological leap just happened seemingly overnight. The Vickers would be a hell of a new, if somewhat horrifying item in any army’s arsenal—quite the invention for its time.

Ransom had no illusions about the Brits selling thousands to the U.S. military in the event of war.

“Will you two shut up about guns and help us get the bodies into the freezers! Now!” Declan shouted, grabbing hold of O’Laughlin’s body first as the sacs in him were quivering more strongly than in the other two. Thomas grabbed the other end of the former Chief Surgeon of Titanic , and they laid the body below the hanging geese, ducks, chickens shanks of ham, and sides of beef.

After Lightoller shoved Declan’s journal into the captain’s hands, he helped Ransom to heft Burnes’ body into the freezer, placing him on the floor.

None of the others dared touch Davenport’s body, holding back, still in shock. Declan and Thomas removed Davenport and his egg-sacs to the same freezer.

They closed the freezer door on the bodies, and looked across at the newly initiated. “Perhaps now you will listen to reason,” said Ransom, going to Smith. “You cannot let this ship dock in New York harbor, sir.”

“What do you propose?”

“We find the carrier, destroy him—or it—at the source, and we search the ship high and low for any additional bodies like these here—and we put them all on ice, freeze the bastard things, and then send them all over the side.”

“Sounds like a start,” added Declan, “but suppose we can’t determine who the carrier is at this point?”

“You have no idea who he is?” asked Smith, eyes wide, in rapt attention now.

“Afraid not. It infiltrates a human, uses him up. For a time, apparently, it goes for the weakest links first, Burnes, Davenport, then your surgeon. In fact, I suspect O’Laughlin was being controlled by it the entire time we were trying to convince you of the reality of this parasite, Captain Smith.”