Richard Brown - Titanic With ZOMBIES

A number of distraught passengers began to come up the stairs from the lower decks. Most hardly acknowledged the gathering of officers and ran straight out the door to the aft well deck. Those that did stop tried to communicate the horror that was going on down below, often through broken English.

“Charles, what do you suggest we do with these people?” Murdoch asked. “They keep coming. Some have been scratched or bitten.”

“We can’t do anything with them,” Lightoller said. “For now we need only worry about the dangerous ones spreading the infection.”

“But how long do you think it will take for these to—you know—change?”

“I don’t know for sure. Not long. That’s why we need to hurry and find the others.”

They found two more of the others one floor down on D-deck near the third-class hospital. The two infected were walking around in circles trying to grab at anything that moved—a young mother and her baby the latest attempt.

Lowe again shot out the knee of one of them, and then let Murdoch finish it off, while Lightoller stealthily slipped behind the second one and shot him in the back of the head. Nervous Moody seemed content with staying in the back.

“I think we should split up,” Lowe said. “This is going to take too long.”

“It’s safer this way,” Murdoch countered. More passengers rushed passed them, some dripping blood. The stairs were becoming crowded with people seeking safer ground. “We’ve already killed three.”

“Yes, and it took us...” Lightoller flipped open his pocket watch and checked the time. 11:31 p.m. “It took us better than ten minutes. What about the other fifteen? All it takes is for some unlucky person to open a door and any one of them could be halfway across the ship, just like what happened last night.”

“I’d feel better if we stayed in at least teams of two.”

“No need to fret, Mr. Murdoch,” said Lowe. “You can stay with me.”

Murdoch frowned at Lowe.

“Okay, we’ll split in two,” said Lightoller. “That way we can still cover one another. I suggest you and Lowe stay on D-deck while me and Moody go down to E.”

SMITH

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

Captain Smith, troubled by the sound of the warning bell, hurried from the dimly lit chart room to the pitch black of the wheelhouse. The lights were kept off at night so it would be easier to see out of the front windows. Quartermaster Hichens was little more than a dark shape behind the wheel, Alfred Oliver also in shadow at his side.

“Was that the lookout?”

“I believe it was, sir,” said Oliver.

Smith looked over as Boxhall opened the door to the wheelhouse, bringing in a rush of cold air with him. Before Smith could say another word, the telephone rang, and Boxhall quickly answered.

“Yes. Understood,” Boxhall said, and hung up. Then he looked over at Smith. “Sir, there is an iceberg right ahead.”

Smith looked out the front window, barely able to make out the black multi-pointed silhouette of the berg against the starry sky. “Christ. Hard a’ starboard!” he ordered to Hichens, and then used the engine room telegraph to signal full speed astern , reversing the engines. Hichens began turning the wheel to the left.

Smith and Boxhall rushed out of the wheelhouse and leaned against the railing, just as they had not twenty minutes earlier, and gazed out at the mountain of ice directly ahead.

“Why is she not turning?” asked Boxhall.

“Is it hard a’ starboard?” Smith yelled back at the bridge.

“Hard a’ starboard, sir,” Quartermaster Hichens answered back.

Finally, the ship’s nose began to turn to the left.

“Come on now,” said Smith, seeing the iceberg move along the front bow, and praying that she would miss. “Spare us this once.”

Then came a thunderous scraping sound from below followed by a sudden jolt in the ship’s momentum. Smith and Boxhall braced themselves against the railing as the wooden deck beneath them shuddered. The massive iceberg moved gradually along the starboard side of the bow, chunks of it breaking off onto the well deck. It continued down ship, rubbing off smaller shreds of ice against the lower decks.

Smith hurried back to the wheelhouse. “Hard a’ port,” he said to Hichens, who began turning the wheel all the way back to the right. The captain moved the engine room telegraph from full speed astern to half ahead, and then upon further consideration, rang down to stop.

“Sound the alarms and close the watertight doors,” he said to Boxhall. He checked the clock mounted in the wheelhouse. 11:40 p.m. “Enter the time into the log.”

BROWN

In cabin number 23 on the starboard side of E-deck, Margaret Brown sat awake in bed reading, when the sudden vibration nearly dislodged the book from her hands.

She sat up and looked out the porthole next to the bed, her breath instantly taken away by the giant, silvery blue wall of ice emerging from the darkness.

“Oh, no,” she said aloud, continuing to stare in disbelief as the iceberg she was certain they had hit moved past her field of view and then disappeared.

She changed out of her nightgown and left her room. The halls were already bustling with people wondering what was going on, some even showing injuries, which Margaret found odd.

A man with disheveled clothing and hair was lying across from the elevators, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Margaret grabbed him by the collar and tried to stir him awake, fearing that he’d fallen down and hit his head during the collision.

“Help! This man needs help!”

As the words left her mouth, she began to realize this poor soul looked a lot like Miss Brennan prior to her death. Pale face. High fever. Only, she now noticed a small amount of blood trickle down from his wrist and into the palm of his hand. She gently pulled up his sleeve uncovering a large gash in his forearm.

This man was infected.

It was around lunchtime when she became aware of the gossip going around—over two hours after she had apologized to Mr. Andrews. She felt like she was losing her touch for not connecting the distressed look on his face to something more than just lack of rest. However, instead of rudely rushing to him for answers this time, she had decided to find out what she could on her own.

As the day drew on, it became clear that the third-class general room, guarded at all times by one of the ship’s officers, was being used to house more of the infected. What wasn’t clear to her was how all this came to be, how the three sick patients in the third-class hospital managed to infect more passengers.

Margaret stood up, wondering if the dying man at her feet had escaped from the general room. Then she heard the engines come to an abrupt stop.

A steward came off one of the elevators.

“Hey you there, this man is infected. He needs to be helped immediately.”

“Okay, okay, calm down. There are lots of people who need help, ma’am. I assure you we are trying our best.”

“What do you mean lots of people?”

“Just take a look around, will you. I suggest finding a safe place and staying there.”

“We’ve hit an iceberg, haven’t we?”

“No, no. That’s foolish.”

“Is it? We’ve stopped moving.”

“Yes, and I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation. Now, like I said, if you want to help, go back to your room and wait for more information.”

“To hell with that,” Margaret said, pushing the steward aside and following a swarm of other passengers inside one of the elevators. She got off two decks up on C-deck.