by Chris Pauls
The Guides should have been overwhelmed immediately. But they were students of their commander, Major Pierre Louis Napoleon Cavagnari. He was Italian by birth but British where it counted, Smith always believed. The major was a great leader of men and an even greater teacher of the proper art of sword fighting.
Smith and the other soldiers had learned well. Though numbering fewer than seventy, they killed at least six hundred Afghan soldiers before being overrun. Once the Guides exhausted their ammunition, they charged forth from the consulate’s protective walls and fought with bayonets and swords. It was a bloody nightmare not unlike what Smith had just relived on Deck Z—missing limbs, decapitated heads, and the horror all desperate battles bring.
Many times in the ensuing years Smith wished he’d perished with his brothers. Bloody and finally beaten, he and the others had been left to die. He’d crawled among the dying men—trying desperately to bandage wounds, tie tourniquets, cover the torn ends of dismembered body parts. All for naught. It was his destiny to be Britain’s sole survivor of the battle at Kabul.
Smith’s own weapon had been a rapier, an agile sword that had served him well. Some years later, Smith found a blacksmith who fashioned a new blade. It resembled a rapier but incorporated elements of the long sword—light, yet strong, a blade that could slice as well as stab. He named it Kabul to remember the lesson of the day he was left for dead: Arrogance diminishes wisdom.
“Aaaaaaargh!” cried Weiss. Captain Smith forcefully turned the scientist’s fist, guiding the shoulder back into its proper place with a hard thrust and an audible pop. Weiss’s eyes went wide, then shut tight. He clutched his shoulder, now back where it rightly belonged.
“Feel better?” asked Smith.
“I … yes,” said Weiss, gingerly rotating his right arm to test his shoulder. “Still sore, but everything seems back in working order.”
“A doctor couldn’t have done better, Captain,” said Hargraves.
“Not even O’Loughlin himself,” agreed Andrews. “It does not bode well that we’ve still had no sign of him.”
“No time to worry about O’Loughlin now,” said Smith, who got to his feet. “Mr. Weiss, if you’re strong enough to continue, we have a ship to save.”
Just then, a quiet creak sounded from behind the pile of crates. Andrews and Hargraves froze. Smith slipped Kabul from its sheath as the stack wavered slightly.
They were not alone.
“Show yourself, demon!” bellowed Smith, raising Kabul high above his head.
A small sob emerged from the darkness behind the stack of crates. Andrews held a hand up, forestalling Smith’s blow. He pulled away a carton, as more rats scurried from their hiding places. Shivering in the corner, too frightened to speak, was a little girl.
“Lou,” Weiss choked. “Dear God, Louise!”
“Answer my call next time, girl,” growled Captain Smith, “unless you want your bloody head cut off.”
Andrews pulled Lou forward. She immediately collapsed to the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees, rocking to and fro as if to calm horrific visions threatening to destroy her from the inside.
“Louise,” said Weiss, lifting her head gently. “Look at me.”
Lou looked up till dim awareness crept back into her eyes. “Mr. Nosworthy?”
The German examined her for signs of sickness, then allowed himself a weak smile. Her eyes were dark, sunken, and red from crying, but there was no evidence of black contagion in her nose or mouth. “Actually, my name is Theodor Weiss,” admitted the scientist. “Call me Mr. Weiss.”
“Mr. Weiss?” Lou repeated vaguely, emerging from her shock.
“Where’s your family?” Hargraves asked.
Lou flinched. “Ain’t got none, not no more.”
Though Weiss dreaded bearing the news, Lou deserved to hear the truth about the woman who seemed so determined to put her on a better path in America. “I have seen your mother …”
“I don’t got no mother!” hollered Lou. “She’s gone, just like all the others! They’re all gone, the cleaning woman, them boys—they’re all changed!” She angrily wiped more tears from her dirty cheeks.
The men were awkwardly silent—consoling an anguished child was a talent none of them possessed. No matter; Lou was in no mood to be soothed. The only sound was the moaning of the zombies, growing louder and nearer than ever. Some even scratched or clawed the door outside. The party had been found.
“I need me a gun,” she said flatly. “I’ll kill those things that did that to my mum.” A rat ran between her legs, and she unleashed a savage kick at the rodent, which flew into the wall with a crack, then lay twitching on the floor.
“Damned rats,” said Andrews. “They spread like the plague.”
“Rats,” said Weiss softly. Then, “That’s it! That’s the answer.”
“Explain yourself, man,” said Smith.
“I’ve been thinking of this the wrong way. I assumed the infection must be spreading person to person, but there’s too many of them. It doesn’t make sense. Each zombie we’ve encountered would have had to infect twenty others. There just hasn’t been time.”
“Indeed,” agreed Smith. “We came hoping for a handful, and yet it’s as if everyone was infected all at once.”
Weiss gestured animatedly as he pieced together the puzzle. “All along I’ve thought the Kaiser’s man infected the cook. That’s wrong.”
“He infected a rat,” concluded Hargraves.
“He didn’t want to infect the ship—he was testing my claim that the vial contained cyanide! Even if the rat didn’t survive, the disease would be passed along by the fleas on its hide. Rat fleas infected the cook! That’s how the infection is spreading so virulently!”
The captain stroked his beard. “Mr. Andrews is unfortunately correct. You cannot completely contain rats on any ship, but they are mainly found where the food is stored. That means from this deck on down. If the vermin have spread this to the men firing the boilers, Titanic will truly be dead in the water.”
Andrews said soberly, “We must close every one of the watertight doors from Deck Z to the bottom of the ship. There’s not a monster or a rat that can get through that steel.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting we trap ourselves down here with the monsters,” stammered Hargraves.
“Closing the doors will only prevent the zombies and rats from moving forward and aft,” explained Andrews. “That should confine the menace on any given deck. Some of the hatches and stairwells are open, but protected by our armed guards. Obviously, they will let us pass.”
“That’s the best option, but we’ll drop if we try to fight our way from one watertight door to the next,” said Smith. “We’ll need to make our way back to the bridge and the master door switches.”
“It sounds as if we’ll have to battle more monsters no matter which way we go,” sighed Hargraves.
“I’ll fight,” offered Lou. “God help me, I’ll fight!”
“Hold on,” said Andrews. “Perhaps there’s a better way.” He walked to the rear of the room with the lantern, revealing a second door. He put his ear against it and smiled. “We don’t need to get all the way to the bridge. There aren’t many phones on the passenger decks; they’re mostly in the working areas. We just need to get to the nearest one so the captain can contact the bridge—”
“And slam the barriers in a blink,” Smith finished. “A sound plan, Thomas.”
Andrews eyed them all. “I hate to suggest going down, but the closest phone I know of from here is in the baker’s shop, which should be just below on Deck F.”
“Chart us a path,” Smith declared.
The group eyed the locked door, and for a long moment they listened to the sounds of the zombie horde scraping fruitlessly at the handle outside. “Those mindless things are focused on the door we came through, but no one’s on this side,” he said. “There’s stairs just outside that lead straight down to Deck F.”
Weiss r
etracted his blade so he could use the stick for support. He put a hand around Lou’s shoulder. “Let’s get you to America.”
29
DECK Z, POTATO ROOM.
SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 1912. 4:55 P.M.
“Everyone ready?” Andrews asked.
The others nodded, Andrews extinguished the lantern, and the room went pitch-black.
“Be bloody silent from here out,” whispered the captain. Slowly, Andrews turned the knob and pushed the door open. Moans could be heard farther down the dank hall and around the corner, but the path to the stairs was clear—fifteen feet away to the right. Andrews held the door as Smith, Lou, Hargraves, and finally Weiss passed silently over to the shadowy stairwell and descended away from Deck Z.
Andrews brought up the rear. As his eyes strained to adjust to the dark, his shoulder collided with the edge of the stairwell’s metal Bostwick folding gate. A dreadful metallic clang reverberated through the hallways. Moans rose and quickened, followed by the whisper of shuffling feet.
“Come on now!” said the captain from below in the dark.
“I can hold them off!” returned Andrews. “Wait for me at the landing.”
Andrews quickly set down the kerosene lantern and unfolded the metal gate, stretching it tight across the top of the stairwell. He reached for the padlock, but it wasn’t hanging from its usual spot on the latch.
Andrews fell to his hands and knees and swept the ground blindly in the dark. Where was the damned lock? Then he jumped in fright as the gate rattled: three monsters stood above him, putrefied hands wrapped around the gate. When it did not move, they growled in rage and shook the bars with a ravenous fury, not realizing the metal barrier opened by sliding sideways.
A tiny girl still in pin-curls, but with a black-stained face devoid of life, reached through a space in the folding gate and got hold of Andrews’s pant leg, yanking hard. The architect kicked at the child, breaking her grip. He readjusted his trousers, and that gave him an idea.
He removed his leather belt and looped it through the folding gate and its metal frame. The creatures bellowed, trying to reach him through the gate’s openings. One grabbed his jacketed arm, but Andrews jerked backward, slamming the zombie into the steel webbing, and the fiend let go. Finally, Andrews cinched a knot he hoped would secure the gate for at least a short time and then retrieved his lantern.
“Yaaaargh!” Andrews bellowed at the creatures and made his escape down the stairwell. That felt good, he thought.
Power still functioned on Deck F, and the corridor blazed with light and the rumbling of the ship’s turbines. Weiss recognized their location immediately and raced off without a word to the laundry closet where he had been tortured by the Agent. In a moment, Weiss returned with an armful of pillowcases as Andrews rejoined them.
“These will protect our faces,” Weiss explained. “Against both fleas and mucus.”
Captain Smith caught on and used his penknife to cut eye slits in the linens.
Weiss turned to Lou. “I found these for you.” He held up a pair of trousers. “We’ll need to cuff them, but they should protect your legs.”
“Thanks,” said Lou. She shimmied them up under her skirt. “Better for running, that’s for sure.” She looked up and laughed. “We look like a bunch of train robbers!”
“Where to now, Mr. Andrews?” asked Captain Smith.
“Let me see,” Andrews said. “The bakery is past the turbine casing, stewards’ quarters, and near more stairwells that should serve as escape routes if we need them. Follow me.”
The group trotted swiftly and silently, without speaking. Behind several doors they heard anguished moans, but no cries for help. No one raised the possibility of stopping to investigate any of the noises. They knew what made the sounds, and it only spurred them on.
They remained unchallenged until they turned the final corner to the bakery, then their luck gave out. A collection of zombies in black-stained kitchen uniforms appeared to be feeding on some hidden form in the doorway of the third-class galley. Lou screamed, and every zombie looked up.
The group froze for a moment, then Andrews reached for the final kerosene-filled squash ball. Smith grabbed his arm. “Not now, man,” Smith said. “The numbers don’t warrant it. Save it for when we really need it.”
Weiss snapped the blade on his walking stick into position. “Are we to stand and fight, Captain?” asked Weiss.
“Blimey,” said Lou, momentarily forgetting her terror. “I could do with one of those.”
Captain Smith addressed Weiss. “No, not this time. The noise will only attract others, and I don’t want to get surrounded again. Mr. Andrews, plot us an alternate route. Is there another phone?”
“None unless we travel down another deck,” said Andrews. “Our best bet is still to find another way to this …”
Seven of the zombies now neared the party.
“Be fast about it, man,” urged Hargraves.
Andrews started running back the way they had come, then made a hard left. The others followed, needing no more prompting. “There’s a back way into the bakery,” Andrews called. “But I’m not certain this route will be any easier.”
Guarding their rear, Captain Smith unsheathed Kabul and looked back. The zombies were pursuing, but they were falling farther behind. Perhaps speed and stealth might win the day where brute force failed.
Andrews turned the corner and stopped abruptly before an ascending flight of stairs. A balding zombie in a matted brown vest fell down the steps head-first and landed on his bloated stomach.
Lou ran to the front of the group and pulled her foot back to kick the thing, but Weiss stopped her just in time. “Don’t touch them, Lou!” he shouted.
The zombie rolled over, and as it did, Weiss thrust his bladed walking stick into its gaping mouth. The weapon rammed clean out the back side of its head, stopping the monster’s moans immediately. The rotting body went limp. Weiss looked up the stairwell to see a dozen or more zombies crowded at the top, who moaned louder at the sight of him and awkwardly began testing the steps down.
“It’s no good, Andrews,” Weiss announced, pointing up the stairs.
Captain Smith felt his frustrations and exhaustion getting the better of him. “Andrews, where in the hell are you taking us?”
“Stewards’ quarters, that way,” he responded. “We’ll work our way through them back to the bakery.”
Hargraves peeked back down the main corridor as their original attackers closed the gap. “Those others are nearly on us now. We can’t get anywhere without them following us.”
“I can help,” Lou cried. She ran through an open door into a dry goods storage area.
“Lou!” Weiss exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
She returned, proudly hoisting two five-pound bags of flour in her arms. “Got the switch at school for throwing one of these, I did. She’ll make a cloud all right.” Lou handed one to Hargraves, who grinned at the girl’s resourcefulness.
“Now, Mr. Hargraves!” Lou yelled. They threw their bags of flour high in the air, and the bags burst upon impact, filling the corridor with a white opaque cloud. As the blinded zombies floundered, bumping into the walls and each other, Andrews led the others down a jog to the left, and all five of the party slipped into the stewards’ quarters.
Andrews quickly locked the door behind them. The group stood anxiously in the dark. The room was filled with a pained clamor, and the party steeled themselves for an imminent attack.
It never happened, as the five went unnoticed. The suffering continued uninterrupted from around the room, gurgling and gasping, the spitting sounds of drowning men. How many were there? Lou could not guess. But it was worse than listening to the zombie moans outside. She was listening to people die.
“No one dare reach for a light,” muttered Captain Smith in a voice too quiet to be called a whisper. “This is a hornet’s nest. Don’t stir it.”
With a thump, a body hit the floor and a man h
owled in anguish. Writhing on the ground and ripping at his clothing, the man lay mere feet away from where the party stood. Smith knew the men who bunked in this room—many were stewards who had served him on Olympic, Baltic, and other White Star ships. They were good men, dedicated to their jobs and to the sea, several with wives and children. They didn’t deserve this.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee …” One of the stewards muttered a rosary punctuated with painful coughs.
“Some faculties remain,” Weiss said quietly. “They haven’t all changed, not all the way. We might move through unchallenged, but we haven’t much time. Mr. Andrews?”
“Yes,” returned Andrews in a hush. “The door at the back of the room. We just have to find it.”
30
DECK A, TITANIC FIRST-CLASS LOUNGE.
SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 1912. 6:30 P.M.
Titanic bandleader Wallace Hartley had been performing on liners for three years. A deeply religious man dating back to his days as a choirboy at Bethel Independent Methodist Chapel in Colne, Hartley had prayed many nights for the opportunity to lead his own band. He realized that dream some years later on the Cunard line of ships, and in 1912 his prayers were answered to the fullest when he was chosen to lead accomplished musicians on the finest ship in the world. But by then his wanderlust was anchored by the overwhelming weight of love.
Shortly before receiving notice from the music agency C. W. & F. N. Black that he had won the job of Titanic bandleader, Hartley had proposed to young Miss Maria Robinson, who was everything he hoped to find in a wife—kind, curious, a soprano. Titanic’s maiden voyage had interrupted preparations for their nuptials, but Maria was never far from Hartley’s thoughts, and their wedding day could not come fast enough. Being away from her was the hardest chore his heart had ever endured, yet when he began to feel less than thankful, he sternly reminded himself that God had seen fit to bless him doubly. Hartley was sure his life had been moved by God’s steady hand. The Englishman felt an obligation to the Lord to be dutiful, and right now that meant being a good bandleader. Soon, as God saw fit, it would also mean being a good husband.