Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“He was acting rather oddly of late,” muttered Smith. “He was a fine surgeon and a good man… hard to believe or that this thing inhabiting him might now be residing in someone else. And who might that be?” Smith looked suddenly tired, a cloud of depression deepening his eyes. “We must act fast. We must locate any and all victims like these three you put away, gentlemen and destroy these confounded eggs, and their mother! Short of that… well, what will we do? What can we do?”

“I can mobilize the crew, sir.” Murdoch held the firearm at his side, feet set apart. “We can search the entire ship top to bottom, stem to stern. Get that much underway.”

“How do we quarantine a ship at sea, gentlemen?” Smith looked defeated and confused. “We’ll have to enlist the help of Dr. Simpson.”

Dr. Johnny Simpson was O’Laughlin’s chief assistant, his right-hand man. Ransom suggested he be looked at ‘closely—extremely closely’.

Smith and the others stared at Ransom as if he might be mad. Lightoller said, “Hell, Johnny’s one of the finest men I know.”

“We are at war, Captain,” Ransom told them. “We must fight and our strategy must be to outwit this thing and destroy it or contain it one way or another—even if it means sacrificing good men to do it.”

Smith gave Murdoch a nod, setting him on the course he proposed. Murdoch nodded at Lightoller and Wilde. “Come with me gentlemen, now!”

“You need to put a guard on this compartment, sir,” suggested Ransom. “An armed guard with orders to shoot anyone trying to forcibly enter. I suspect this thing will come back for its progeny, sir, sir… do you hear me?”

“Done… done, Constable and please… accept my apologies for being… for not being… that is for disbelieving you… for not listening when I might have saved O’Laughlin. He was a good officer and a fine doctor,” he repeated, befuddled and dazed, looking in shock.

“And a friend. I could see that clearly.”

“I was hoping my last voyage before retirement would be uneventful.”

“For that, sir, I’m sorry; seems trouble and events have a way of finding men like you and I. I would hope that under different circumstances that we may well’ve been friends, Captain.”

Declan shook the captain’s hand. “Sir, I’ve read about your career in detail. I am honored to be in your presence.”

“No, young man… I am the one who should be honored by the three of you.”

“Where do we start in search of finding the disease carrier?” asked Thomas.

“Other than you men here, I have only one ally I trust,” replied Ransom.

“And who might that be? Lightoller?”

“Varmint.”

“The dog?”

“The dog, yes. His nose may be our last hope, gentlemen.” Ransom had reclaimed his cane, and with a little twirl of the silver wolf’s head, he recalled the gift of the cane; it’d come from his best friend in Chicago, Philo Keane, a professional photographer and sometime police photographer, always a willing listener. He thought of his other close friends and acquaintances back in America as well and simultaneously wished them here with him now and happy that they were not.

“Varmint wherever he and Farley’ve gotten off to.”

We need to get that dog back. He just might be able to point out the alien among us,” Declan was saying, but Ransom only half heard as his weary mind wandered.

Declan repeated himself, and then Alastair whispered, “The dog may be our last hope.”

With the blessings of Captain Smith, and with Lightoller and Mr. Farley and Varmint, along with a hundred crewmen working in pairs, the hunt for the monster began in earnest. This time other dogs from the kennels were pressed into service as well, and each team searched for the scent of the carrier. Everyone agreed their best hope lay with Varmint or one of the other dogs, but time was fast running out.

The captain had located the ship’s architect, Andrews, who’d provided the latest blueprints. Captain Smith then set a hundred men scouring in pairs and threes to every nook and cranny. But so far nothing, no results.

With hopes pinned on Varmint, Ransom and his young mates watched the dog for every nuance, any slight change in demeanor as he was led from deck to deck. At one point, he sniffed the air around the Black Gang and exhibited a pained expression but without the kind of results they’d seen in the freezer.

Given that both Burnes and Davenport had been stokers, it made sense to have the dog sniff these men in order to rule them out.

This plan failed; it ended in the various stokers reacting to the dog in every conceivable way, from indifference to kicking out at Varmint to falling to knees and giving the dog a big hug and a ruffle of its fur. But in no instance, not even with the stoker who’d kicked out at the dog and threatened the animal with a shovel did Varmint alert. In all, it seemed a dead end.

All the same, Lightoller intensely disliked the man who’d threatened Varmint, and he whispered to a subordinate, “Keep an eye on this fellow Morrell.”

The parade of searchers behind the dog had steadily grown as they next had Varmint sniff out the cooks, kitchen staff, pantries, pursers, maids, the two fellows who manned the Marconi wireless, officers and their quarters, again to no good end.

As the third body had been that of Dr. O’Laughlin, they followed up by having the dog walk through the officer’s quarters, which turned up nothing significant, although Varmint lingered about Will Murdoch’s personal items. Murdoch merely raised his shoulders and laughed a bit nervously. When Ransom escorted the dog to where Murdoch stood, again the dog did not become agitated. It proved just another dead end.

They moved on to the infirmary and repeated the performance with the assistant ship’s surgeon and what was now his staff of nurses. At this point it was difficult for anyone to believe that their approach was anything but 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.