The Terror

by Dan Simmons

  Crozier finally stood — stiff with cold and body aches — lifted the two heavy volumes, and carefully set them back in their place on the shelf set into the aft bulkhead.

  31

  GOODSIR

  Lat. 70°-05′ N., Long. 98°-23′ W.

  6 March, 1848

  The surgeon woke to shouts and screaming.

  For a minute he did not know where he was and then he remembered — Sir John’s Great Cabin, now the sick bay on Erebus. It was the middle of the night. All the whale-oil lamps had been extinguished and the only light came through the open door to the companionway. Goodsir had fallen asleep on an extra cot — seven men seriously ill with scurvy and one man with stones in his kidney were sleeping in the other cots. The man with stones had been dosed with opium.

  Goodsir had been dreaming that his men were screaming as they were dying. They were dying, in his dream, because he did not know how to save them. Trained as an anatomist, Goodsir was less skilled than the three dead expedition surgeons had been at a Naval surgeon’s primary responsibility — dispensing pills, potions, emetics, herbs, and boluses. Dr. Peddie had once explained to Goodsir that the vast majority of the medicines were useless for the specific sailor’s ailments — most merely served to clean out the bowels and belly in an explosive manner — but the more powerful the purgative, the more effective the seamen thought the treatment was. It was the idea of medicinal help that helped the sailors heal, according to the late Peddie. In most cases not involving actual surgery, the body either healed itself or the patient died.

  Goodsir had been dreaming that they were all dying — screaming as they died.

  But these screams were real. They seemed to be coming up through the deck.

  Henry Lloyd, Goodsir’s assistant, ran into the sick bay with his shirttails hanging out from under his sweaters. Lloyd was carrying a lantern and Goodsir could see that he had no shoes on. He must have run straight from his hammock.

  “What’s going on?” whispered Goodsir. The sick men had not been roused from sleep by the screams from below.

  “The captain wants you forward by the main ladder,” said Lloyd. He made no attempt to lower his voice. The young man sounded shrill and terrified.

  “Shhh,” said Goodsir. “What’s happening, Henry?”

  “The thing’s inside, Doctor,” Lloyd cried through chattering teeth. “It’s below. It’s killing men below.”

  “Watch the men here,” ordered Goodsir. “Fetch me if any of them wakes or takes a turn for the worse. And go put your boots and outer layers on.”

  Goodsir went forward through a milling of warrant officers and petty officers coming out of their cubicles and struggling into their clothes. Captain Fitzjames was standing with Le Vesconte at the head of the hatchway open to the lower decks. The captain had a pistol in his hand.

  “Surgeon, there have been men injured below. You’ll come with us when we go down to fetch them. You will need your slops.”

  Goodsir nodded dumbly.

  First Mate Des Voeux came down the ladder from the deck above. Cold air rolled down with him, taking Goodsir’s breath away. For the past week Erebus had been rocked and battered by a blizzard and staggeringly low temperatures, some reaching down to −100 degrees. The surgeon had not been able to spend his allotted time on Terror. There had been no communication between the ships while the blizzard raged.

  Des Voeux brushed snow off his slops. “The three men on watch haven’t seen anything outside, Captain. I told them to stand by.”

  Fitzjames nodded. “We need weapons, Charles.”

  “The three shotguns up on deck are all we’ve issued tonight,” said Des Voeux.

  Another scream came up from the darkness below. Goodsir could not tell if it came from the orlop deck or deeper, from the lower hold deck. Both hatches seemed to be open below.

  “Lieutenant Le Vesconte,” barked Fitzjames, “take three men down through the scuttle in the officers’ mess to the Spirit Room and hand up as many muskets and shotguns — and bags of cartridges, powder, and shot — as you can. I want every man on the lower deck here armed.”

  “Aye, sir.” Le Vesconte pointed to three seamen, and the four shoved their way aft through the darkness.

  “Charles,” Fitzjames said to First Mate Des Voeux. “Light lanterns. We’re going down. Collins, you’re coming. Mr. Dunn, Mr. Brown — you’re with us.”

  “Yes, sir,” chorused the caulker and his mate.

  Henry Collins, the second master, said, “Without guns, Captain? You want us to go down there without weapons?”

  “Bring your knife,” said Fitzjames. “I have this.” He held up the single-shot pistol. “Stay behind me. Lieutenant Le Vesconte will follow us with an armed party and bring extra weapons. Surgeon, you stay by me as well.”

  Goodsir nodded numbly. He’d been pulling on his slops — or someone’s — and seemed to be having a child’s difficulty in getting his left arm through the sleeve.

  Fitzjames, his hands bare and wearing only a tattered jacket over his shirt, took a lantern from Des Voeux and plunged down the ladder. From somewhere below rose a series of terrible crashes, as if something was breaking timbers or bulkheads. There were no more screams.

  Goodsir remembered the captain’s command to “stay by me” and fumbled his way down the dark ladder after the two men, forgetting to take a lantern. He did not have his bag of medical instruments and bandages with him. Brown and Dunn clattered after him, with a cursing Collins bringing up the rear.

  The orlop deck was only seven feet below the lower deck but it seemed like another world. Goodsir almost never came down here. Fitzjames and the first mate were standing away from the ladder, swinging their lanterns. The surgeon realized that the temperature down here must be forty degrees below that of the lower deck where they ate and slept — and the lower deck’s average temperature these days was below freezing.

  The crashing had stopped. Fitzjames ordered Collins to stop his cursing and the six men stood in a silent circle around the hatch opening to the hold deck below them. Everyone except Goodsir had a lantern and now extended it, although the small spheres of light seemed to penetrate only a few feet of the misted, freezing air. The men’s breath glowed in front of them like golden ornaments. The hurried footsteps banging on the lower deck above them seemed to Goodsir to be coming from miles away.

  “Who was on duty down here tonight?” whispered Fitzjames.

  “Mr. Gregory and one stoker,” replied Des Voeux. “Cowie, I think. Or maybe it was Plater.”

  “And Carpenter Weekes and his mate Watson,” hissed Collins in an urgent whisper. “They were working through the night to shore up that stove-in part of the hull in the starboard for’ard coal-storage bin.”

  Something roared beneath them. The sound was a hundred times louder and more bestial than any animal sound Goodsir had ever heard — worse even than the roar from the ebony room at midnight during Carnivale. The force of it echoed off every timber, iron brace, and bulkhead on the orlop deck. Goodsir was sure that the men on watch two decks above in the howling night could hear it as if the thing were on deck with them. His testicles tried to crawl back up into his body.

  The roar had come from down in the hold deck.

  “Brown, Dunn, Collins,” snapped Fitzjames. “Go forward past the Bread Room and secure the forward hatch. Des Voeux, Goodsir, come with me.”

  Fitzjames stuck his pistol in his belt, held the lantern in his right hand, and clambered down the ladder into the blackness.

  Goodsir had to use all his will just to avoid pissing himself. Des Voeux hurried down the ladder next and only an overwhelming sense of shame at the thought of not following the other men combined with a fear of being left alone in the dark set the trembling surgeon into motion after the first mate. His arms, hands, and legs felt as insensate as if they were made of wood, but he knew it was fear, not the cold, that caused this.

  At the bottom of the ladder — in a black cold somehow mo
re thick and terrible than the hostile outside arctic had ever felt to Harry Goodsir — the captain and first mate were holding their lanterns out as far as they could reach. Fitzjames had his pistol extended and fully cocked. Des Voeux was holding a standard boat knife. The mate’s hand was shaking. No one moved or breathed.

  Silence. The crashing, thudding, and screams had all stopped.

  Goodsir wanted to scream. He could feel the presence of something down on this dark hold deck with them. Something huge and not human. It could be twelve feet away, just beyond the puny circles of the lantern glow.

  Along with the press of certainty that they were not alone came a strong copperish smell. Goodsir had smelled that many times before. Fresh blood.

  “This way,” whispered the captain and led the way aft down the narrow starboard companionway.

  Toward the boiler room.

  The oil lamp that always burned in there had been extinguished. The only glow that came through the open door was a dim red-and-orange flickering from the few bits of coal burning in the boiler hearth.

  “Mr. Gregory?” called the captain. Fitzjames’s shout was loud enough and sudden enough that Goodsir again came close to wetting himself. “Mr. Gregory?” the captain called a second time.

  There was no answer. From their position in the corridor, the surgeon could see only a few square feet of the floor of the boiler room and some spilled coal. There was a smell in the air as if someone was grilling beef. Goodsir found himself salivating despite the sense of horror rising in him.

  “Stay here,” Fitzjames said to Des Voeux and Goodsir. The first mate was looking first forward and then astern, swinging his lantern in a circle, keeping his knife high, obviously straining to see down the dark corridor past the narrow circle of light. Goodsir could do nothing but stand there and bunch his freezing hands into fists. His mouth filled with saliva at the almost forgotten smell of grilling meat and his belly rumbled in spite of his fear.

  Fitzjames stepped around the door frame and into the boiler room, out of sight.

  For an eternity of five to ten seconds there was no sound. Then the captain’s soft voice literally echoed from the metal-walled room. “Mr. Goodsir. Come in here, please.”

  There were two human bodies in the room. One was recognizable as the engineer, John Gregory. He had been disemboweled. His body lay in the corner against the aft bulkhead, but grey strings and strands of his intestines had been thrown around the boiler room like party streamers. Goodsir had to watch carefully where he stepped. The other body, a thickset man in a dark blue sweater, lay on his stomach with his arms by his sides, palms upward, his head and shoulders in the boiler’s furnace.

  “Help me pull him out,” said Fitzjames.

  The surgeon grabbed the man’s left leg and his smoldering sweater, the captain took the other leg and right arm, and together they pulled the man back out of the flames. The man’s open mouth stuck against the lower flange of the furnace hearth’s metal grate for a second but then came free with a brittle snapping of teeth.

  Goodsir rolled the corpse over while Fitzjames removed his jacket and beat out the flames rising from the dead man’s face and hair.

  Harry Goodsir felt as if he were watching all this from a great distance. The professional part of his mind noticed with cool detachment that the furnace, as poorly banked as the low coal flames had been, had melted the man’s eyes, burned away his nose and ears, and turned his face into the texture of an overbaked, bubbling raspberry flan.

  “Do you recognize him, Mr. Goodsir?” asked Fitzjames.

  “No.”

  “It’s Tommy Plater,” gasped Des Voeux from where he stood just within the doorway. “I recognize him by the sweater and by the earring melted into his jaw where his ear used to be.”

  “God-damn it, Mate,” snapped Fitzjames. “Stand guard out in the corridor.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Des Voeux and stepped out. Goodsir heard the sound of retching from the companionway.

  “I will need you to note … ,” began the captain, speaking to Goodsir.

  There came a crashing, a tearing, and then a resounding thud from the direction of the bow so loud that Goodsir was sure that the ship had broken in half.

  Fitzjames grabbed up his lantern and was out the door in a second, leaving his smoldering jacket behind in the boiler room. Goodsir and Des Voeux followed him as they ran forward past scattered casks and smashed crates and then squeezed between the black iron bulkheads that held what was left of Erebus’s fresh water supply and the few remaining sacks of its coal.

  They passed a black opening to a coal bin and Goodsir glanced to his right and saw a shirtless human arm protruding over the iron rim of the door frame. He paused and bent to see who lay there, but the light had moved away as the captain and mate continued to run forward with the lanterns. Goodsir was left in the absolute darkness with what was almost certainly another corpse. He stood and ran to catch up.

  More crashes. Shouts now from the deck above. A musket or pistol shot. Another shot. Screams. Several men screaming.

  Goodsir, outside the bobbing circles of lantern light, came out of the narrow corridor into an open, dark area and ran headfirst into a thick oak post. He fell on his back into eight inches of ice and sludgy meltwater. He couldn’t focus his eyes — the lanterns above him were only swinging orange blurs as he struggled to stay conscious — and everything at that moment stank and tasted of sewage and coal dust and blood.

  “The ladder’s gone!” cried Des Voeux.

  Sitting arse-deep in vile slush, Goodsir could see better as the lanterns steadied. The forward ladderway, made of thick oak and easily able to support several large men hauling hundred-pound sacks of coal up and down, had been smashed into splinters. Fragments hung from the open scuttle frame above.

  The screaming was coming from up on the orlop deck.

  “Boost me up,” cried Fitzjames, who had tucked his pistol into his belt and set down the lantern and was now reaching up, trying to get a handhold on the splintered frame of the scuttle. He started pulling himself up. Des Voeux bent to boost him.

  Flames suddenly exploded above and through the square opening.

  Fitzjames cursed and fell onto his back in the icy water only a few yards from Goodsir. It looked as if the entire forward scuttle and everything above it on the orlop deck was on fire.

  Fire, thought Goodsir. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils.

  There’s nowhere to run. It was a hundred degrees below zero outside and a blizzard was raging. If the ship burned now, they would all die.

  “The main ladderway,” said Fitzjames and got to his feet, found the lantern, and began running aft. Des Voeux followed.

  Goodsir crawled on all fours through the ice and water, got to his feet, fell again, crawled, then ran after the receding lanterns.

  Something on the orlop deck roared. There came a rattle of muskets and the distinct blast of shotguns.

  Goodsir wanted to stop in the coal bunker to see if the man belonging to the arm was dead or alive — or even attached to the outflung arm — but there was no light when he got there. He ran on in the dark, ricocheting off the iron, coal, and water bunker bulkheads.

  The lanterns were already disappearing up the ladderway to the orlop deck. Smoke billowed down.

  Goodsir clambered upward, was kicked in the face by a boot belonging to the captain or mate, and then he was on the orlop deck.

  He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. Lanterns bobbed around him but the air was so thick with smoke that there was no illumination.

  Goodsir’s impulse was to find the ladderway up to the lower deck and keep climbing, then keep climbing again until he was outside into the clean air, but there were men shouting to his right — toward the bow — so he dropped to all fours. The air was breathable here. Just. Toward the bow was a bright orange glow, far too bright to be lanterns.

  Goodsir crawled forward, found the port companionway to the left of the Bread Room, crawled fa
rther. Ahead of him somewhere in the smoke, men were beating at flames with blankets. The blankets were catching fire.

  “Get a bucket brigade,” shouted Fitzjames from somewhere ahead of him in the smoke. “Get water down here!”

  “There’s no water, Captain,” shouted a voice so agitated that Goodsir could not recognize it.

  “Use the piss buckets.” The captain’s voice cut like a blade through the smoke and shouting.

  “They’re frozen!” shouted a voice that Goodsir did recognize. John Sullivan, captain of the maintop.

  “Use them anyway,” shouted Fitzjames. “And snow. Sullivan, Sinclair, Reddington, Seeley, Pocock, Greater — get the men to form a bucket line from the deck down here to the orlop deck. Scoop up as much snow as you can. Throw it on the flames.” Fitzjames had to stop to cough violently.

  Goodsir stood. Smoke swirled around him as if someone had opened a door or window. One second he could see fifteen or twenty feet forward toward the carpenter’s and bosun’s storerooms, clearly see the flames licking the walls and timbers, and the next second he could not see two feet in front of him. Everyone was coughing and Goodsir joined them.

  Men shoved against him in their rush to get up the ladderway and Goodsir pressed himself to the bulkhead, wondering if he should go up to the lower deck. He was no use here.

  He remembered the bare arm flung out of the coal bunker below in the hold deck. The thought of going down there again made him want to vomit.

  But the thing is on this deck.

  As if to confirm that thought, four or five muskets not ten feet in front of the surgeon fired at once. The explosions were deafening. Goodsir flung his palms over his ears and fell to his knees, remembering how he had told the crew of Terror that scurvy victims could die from the mere sound of a musket shot. He knew that he had the early symptoms of scurvy.

  “Belay that firing!” shouted Fitzjames. “Hold off! There are men up there.”

  “But, Captain …” came the voice of Corporal Alexander Pearson, the highest ranking of the four surviving Erebus Royal Marines.