He returned to the corridor and continued along its walls. Then he saw it—the last door the other two had gone through where he imagined within he’d find a kitchen block area and then the freezers themselves. This sealed it in his mind—Swigart had become it, and he’d gone straight toward the frozen eggs without the slightest idea that Kelly knew precisely what he was up to. It was obvious they’d gone in here as the lock to the final door had been cut away via an underwater laser, the same as the hand-held laser device David had returned to his hip.
“You getting this topside, Forbes?” he asked.
“All of it, yes.”
David heard static firing up from his com-link, and wondered if it was coming from inside the freezer, and if so, what was causing it, and what was it someone was trying to say. He desperately tried to make it out even as he rushed for the freezer area now flooded with seawater from the outside. He must be careful not to tear his suit or he’d wind up like Mendenhall. Forbes’ voice came at him with the same message.
Still he rushed and yanked the door, keeping it at arm’s length where it flapped in the water, managing to slip inside where he saw a well-preserved pair of dead men floating—yet another of several dead zones within Titanic. His mind quickly deducing from their appearance to be the two of the three would-be heroes of 1912 , the two who had not escaped Titanic, but who instead had come down here to protect against anyone’s taking a single egg off the ship. Two heroic figures—Declan Irvin and Alastair Ransom—features and clothes perfectly preserved. They looked just as David had pictured them, frozen in time, one young and smooth-faced, a bullet to the brain, the other one old, a mask of wrinkles, no bullet to the head, but a massive contusion.
There was no sign of life in the ante room here, but someone had been here and had disturbed the actual freezer compartments at the rear. Tables, chairs, debris, intact cargo boxes floated round David now as he searched this place with its sealed compartments unsealed by the dive Titanic took to these depths, that and time, and now that thing inside Lou, he reckoned.
It appeared that Lou, possibly with Kelly in tow, had made a beeline for this freezer, but they were nowhere in sight.
“Where the hell are they?” asked Forbes from above as David peered into the freezer compartment where a stack of at least twenty-five, perhaps thirty bodies resided atop one another in a corner—some of them showing Y-section sutures, an obvious sign of having been autopsied, others cut open, revealing the horrid frozen sacs spoken of in Declan’s journal.
He reported in to Juris Forbes: “Swigart’s come and gone; no sign of Kelly.”
Forbes banged something hard, presumably with his fist, the sound reverberating in David’s ear. “What in Sam Hell is going on down there, David? Where the hell’s Lou and Dr. Irvin?”
“Have you found the journal? Have you read a word?”
“It’s just so much gibberish; tell me what you’re thinking right now, this moment, sailor!”
“I’m thinking Lou—or something inside Lou is driving him, controlling him—and it had an eye on this freezer compartment from the moment we began our descent if not earlier.”
“What’re you saying, David?”
“I’m saying Lou is our killer, and he’s infected.”
“Killer? Infected?”
“With a parasitic disease organism controlling his will.”
“A what?”
“A disease organism that will turn Scorpio into a ghost ship, Captain.”
“This is crazy! This is Lou we’re talking about… Lou. David, you sound like a lunatic!”
“I fear he’s used up Kelly and is headed back to the sub with plans to leave the rest of us down here with the wreck.”
“Used her up? Explain yourself, Ingles.”
“Killed her; he’s killed her as he did Alandale and Ford.”
“I suggest you get back to the sub, now David. The pressure down there is getting to you; your vital signs are off the charts. Do it, do it now!”
David saw the evidence clearly now that Declan’s journal was accurate to the letter; here were the egg sacs nestled in the bodies, clinging to them it seemed in this dead zone. He knew he must end things here for Alastair Ransom and for Declan Irvin, whose bodies were so close by. David snatched out his laser knife and fired its beam directly at the bodies, and the laser, powerful enough to cut steel under water easily burned up the flesh of the bodies and the egg sacs that remained here.
He fired away and the bodies began to immolate and smoke like an oil plume. In fact, the fire began to rage, and the heat chased David back, kicking with his fins, swimming past the intact bodies of Declan and Alastair. He pointed the laser beam at Alastair’s remains, wondering if he’d approve of David’s turning him to ash in this place of death, but he couldn’t bring himself to set him aflame. He took a final look at Declan’s features, pointed the knife but again unable to fire on the body of the hero of the journal.
Again, he was unable to fire the beam, not with Declan’s perfectly preserved eyes here staring back at him. He decided to leave well enough alone, but there came up a screeching noise like a thousand tuning forks coming at David. On the com-link, Forbes and others, hearing the keening of the dying things in the eggs he’d torched.
The sound was horrid but only lasted seconds before silence fell, and David, rushing out of the area now had only one thought—to find Kelly and get her safely back to the sub and to tell her he’d destroyed the creature’s eggs.
Forbes was shouting at him from above like an angry god. “What’re you doing, David? Ingles! Talk to me!”
With danger on all sides of him, he held one hand on his sheathed laser knife, and he snatched hold of hand-holds, pulling himself along, trying to conserve energy, realizing that what he’d seen and done had cost him dearly in liquid air and emotions. The sight of Mendenhall’s awful death kept flooding into his sight as he carefully picked his way toward the outer hull ahead when he realized he’d come to a hopeless dead end in the maze. It dawned on him that the only way out was to return to the surface using the exact route he and Mendenhall had taken down—the Grand Staircase. But just getting back to it would be a struggle, and this cemetery he was swimming in was getting to him.
THIRTY FOUR
On leaving the freezer and the flames he’d created, David felt comforted that the store of damned eggs had been destroyed, but he worried over the eggs that Lou—or what Lou had become—had gotten off with. He also worried whether of not Lou had harmed Kelly, overpowered her, or turned her into his human shield? His last line of defense?
Going after Kelly and Lou, David feared that Lou was back aboard Max and long gone. If only Mendenhall hadn’t been so damned stubborn and about those bloody automobiles, David felt he might’ve had a chance at Lou.
He feared there was no hope for him or Kelly now.
The absolute aloneness filled David with emptiness. An aching void. No one should be alone down here with Titanic.
David cleared the entryway ahead of him, and the push gave him a start that sent him up a gangway where he found himself swimming through a squash court, followed by a handball court; he was somehow inside one of the three gymnasiums on board. Now he passed a surreal weight room, a tennis court. He located another door ripped from its hinges and the entry or rather exit and a stairwell leading up. He followed this upwards for what seemed an eternity when he came to the ruined remains of the wireless room. He saw the Marconi wireless itself, now a rust-encrusted large brick, and from here, he looked out from where an outer door had been ripped from its hinges.