Richard Brown - Titanic With ZOMBIES

Somebody’s wife.

Somebody’s mother.

Now she was just a moaning thing with an appetite to feed in her finest fur coat.

Half of her hair had fallen or been pulled out. One of her arms was severely dislocated at the shoulder, pointing the wrong direction. Her jaw was broken open and locked to one side. A wide trail of blood and guts ran down from her neck to the bottom of her dress.

She had been busy.

Andrews waved and yelled to draw her attention away from the innocent passengers she’d been pursuing. She took the bait and went straight for him against the railing. A moment later she was falling from the ship in a dead dive.

Andrews looked over the side and watched her hit with a big splash, flailing only once before disappearing into the dark water. Throwing her overboard had been much easier than he expected it to be, and he was no worse for wear.

He turned back around, hearing the awkward sounding footsteps behind him.

This time it was a grossly overweight man dressed in a ruffled tuxedo. This one probably just woke up, because there wasn’t a drop of blood on him. Aside from the ashen color of his skin, his left eye was the only indicating sign that he was infected. Having swollen to three times its normal size, the eye had been forced from the limiting confines of its socket and now looked ready to burst.

Unafraid and battle tested, Andrews went right at the fat man.

This one wouldn’t be so easy.

It took more than a minute, and the help of a few younger male passengers nearby, to finally send the sharply dressed monster over the railing. The splash he produced was tremendous, rousing a smile among many of the men.

Not Andrews.

He pressed the others to find a lifebelt and hurry up to the boat deck. Then he sauntered away, his former confidence gone.

The scratch on his neck barely broke the skin.

But it was deep enough.

LIGHTOLLER

“Bloody hell,” Lightoller whispered.

He was standing on the F-deck spectator gallery looking down through the thick glass into the squash racquet court. The court extended two decks high and thirty feet in length. First-class passengers could pay two shillings to use the court for one hour. It was vacant as it had closed for the night, but that didn’t stop the water from seeping in from under the door.

We’re taking on water, Lightoller thought. God almighty, that can only mean one thing.

A breach in the hull.

After separating from Moody, Lightoller had made his way into the third-class permanent section of the bow, which contained about two dozen rooms, each with multiple bunks for single men only. Single women and families were kept apart at the stern.

He ran into a few passengers along the way but no infected. After taking the stairs on the port side down to F-deck, the ghostlike silence intensified.

The one good thing about the infected was you could almost always hear them coming, hear them moaning , to be exact. They had no problem voicing their intentions even if it eliminated the element of surprise. The bad thing was this could cause one to become complacent and let their guard down, especially if other problems were demanding equal attention—like water filling the squash court below.

Lightoller turned the corner and headed down a set of stairs parallel to the spectator gallery. Two feet of freezing cold water met him at the bottom, piercing through his boots and pants so painfully fast he nearly lost his balance. He let out a small whimper and then retreated back to the staircase. From there, he looked out at the post office across the way. Letters and mailbags floated on the surface as the water level continued to rise at a remarkable pace.

Then he saw something else in the water.

It looked like a person floating face down.

As it passed the stairs, Lightoller pulled the body out of the water and turned it over, face up.

“Ah, Christ.”

It was a man. His eyes were open. The skin of his face was frozen blue.

Dead.

Drowned.

Probably a crewman that had followed the water up the stairs from the Orlop deck.

As he leaned down to gently set the body back down in the water, another body came up. This one was still alive, somewhat. It leapt out from beneath the icy cold water like a shark and latched on with both hands to Lightoller’s coat.

Lightoller instinctively grabbed hold of its neck as though he meant to strangle it, when all he really wanted was to push it off—keep its mouth and all its teeth from sinking into him. It glared down with dead white eyes, growling, snapping open its jaw, and giving off that unmistakable putrid scent of decomposing human flesh.

Overhead, the lights began to flicker on and off.

On.

Off.

Lightoller felt his hands slipping on the wet, slimy flesh around the infected man’s neck. He wanted to reach down for the gun on his waistband but knew it was too risky. It was a war of inches, and he couldn’t afford to give one centimeter more. He lacked the positioning and leverage needed to use his full strength, and the sharp edge of the stairs was beginning to pinch into his spine. Standing, they were perhaps similar in size. On his back, he was a much smaller fish about to be eaten.

It was only a matter of time, of seconds.

This thing was a mere two inches away from making him its meal, or making him one of them, when a deafening blast from behind changed everything.

Lightoller’s hands finally slipped off its neck and the infected fell forward. For a moment, he swore he felt the teeth rip into his face, but then he realized it was just the cold dead skin pressing against him.

“Are you all right?” said a voice from above.

Lightoller rolled the infected off him and cocked his head around. Standing at the top of the stairs was Sixth Officer Moody.

“Glad to see me?”

Lightoller looked over at the infected again lying limp beside him, and the ugly black hole in its head.

“I did it. Yes I did.”

“And you could have shot me,” said Lightoller.

“But I didn’t.”

“But you could have.”

Lightoller carefully stood up. He noticed the water level had risen more than a foot since he’d come down a minute ago.

He was glad to be alive.

But for how much longer would the feeling last?

“Did you go to the bridge?” Lightoller asked, climbing back up the stairs.

“No, I never made it. I got about halfway then turned back,” said Moody. “I wasn’t about to leave you down here by yourself. We promised to cover one another, remember?”

Lightoller made it to the top of the stairs and stood beside Moody. “Yes, I also remember telling you I didn’t need assistance.”

“But, sir—”

“And I guess I was wrong, aye?”

Moody smiled like he’d just opened the greatest Christmas present. Lightoller winked and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good shot. Thanks for bailing me out.”

“Anytime, sir,” Moody said, still smiling big and wide. “Anytime.”

“Now let’s get the hell out of here, shall we?”

They headed past the squash court to the port side and then back up the stairs to E-deck.

Rounding the corner, they heard before they saw.

A horde of infected lumbered in every direction. Well over a dozen. Blocking the stairs up. Blocking the way mid-ship.

Blocking every way out but one.

“We’ve got to go back down,” said Moody.

Lightoller had already brandished his revolver and began picking off a few of the infected. As the horde closed in on him, however, he quickly gave in to reason.

“Go!”

Moody headed back down the stairs. Lightoller followed behind him, looking back occasionally to fire off a couple more shots. It did little to keep the infected at bay. They had no apparent fear of stairs, though their coordination wasn’t quite in tune. Rather than step, they sort of stumbled down.