“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.”
“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?”