“Sound the alarms and close the watertight doors,” he said to Boxhall. He checked the clock mounted in the wheelhouse. 11:40 p.m. “Enter the time into the log.”
BROWN
In cabin number 23 on the starboard side of E-deck, Margaret Brown sat awake in bed reading, when the sudden vibration nearly dislodged the book from her hands.
She sat up and looked out the porthole next to the bed, her breath instantly taken away by the giant, silvery blue wall of ice emerging from the darkness.
“Oh, no,” she said aloud, continuing to stare in disbelief as the iceberg she was certain they had hit moved past her field of view and then disappeared.
She changed out of her nightgown and left her room. The halls were already bustling with people wondering what was going on, some even showing injuries, which Margaret found odd.
A man with disheveled clothing and hair was lying across from the elevators, slipping in and out of consciousness.
Margaret grabbed him by the collar and tried to stir him awake, fearing that he’d fallen down and hit his head during the collision.
“Help! This man needs help!”
As the words left her mouth, she began to realize this poor soul looked a lot like Miss Brennan prior to her death. Pale face. High fever. Only, she now noticed a small amount of blood trickle down from his wrist and into the palm of his hand. She gently pulled up his sleeve uncovering a large gash in his forearm.
This man was infected.
It was around lunchtime when she became aware of the gossip going around—over two hours after she had apologized to Mr. Andrews. She felt like she was losing her touch for not connecting the distressed look on his face to something more than just lack of rest. However, instead of rudely rushing to him for answers this time, she had decided to find out what she could on her own.
As the day drew on, it became clear that the third-class general room, guarded at all times by one of the ship’s officers, was being used to house more of the infected. What wasn’t clear to her was how all this came to be, how the three sick patients in the third-class hospital managed to infect more passengers.
Margaret stood up, wondering if the dying man at her feet had escaped from the general room. Then she heard the engines come to an abrupt stop.
A steward came off one of the elevators.
“Hey you there, this man is infected. He needs to be helped immediately.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. There are lots of people who need help, ma’am. I assure you we are trying our best.”
“What do you mean lots of people?”
“Just take a look around, will you. I suggest finding a safe place and staying there.”
“We’ve hit an iceberg, haven’t we?”
“No, no. That’s foolish.”
“Is it? We’ve stopped moving.”
“Yes, and I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation. Now, like I said, if you want to help, go back to your room and wait for more information.”
“To hell with that,” Margaret said, pushing the steward aside and following a swarm of other passengers inside one of the elevators. She got off two decks up on C-deck.
Just past the forward first-class staircase was John Jacob Astor’s suite of rooms, C-62/63/64.
John’s young bride Madeline answered the door in a cream-colored nightgown. It was hardly noticeable that she was pregnant.
“Where is John?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Brown.”
“Get yourself together. We should go find him.”
Madeline looked concerned. “Why?”
“Remember the infection everyone was talking about over dinner? Well, it’s on the loose. And to make matters worse, I think we’ve hit an iceberg.”
“An iceberg? So that was the—”
“The tremor you felt? It was.”
“Give me a moment.”
Margaret waited outside in the hall, watching as people frantically ran by as though they were being pursued by some dreadful monster. The injuries many among them displayed were as diverse as they were numerous.
This will be a night to remember, Margaret thought. Or one to forget.
LIGHTOLLER
“Watch out! Behind you!” Lightoller shouted.
Sixth Officer Moody turned and took two shots at an infected woman limping toward him, her face a cascading tower of rotting skin. Both shots put holes only in the wall behind her.
Lightoller pushed Moody out of the way and put a bullet in the center of her forehead.
“I can’t keep bailing you out,” Lightoller said. “That’s the second time now, aye. Keep it together. Otherwise you may as well go sit in a dark corner and let me do this myself.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Moody.
“Don’t be sorry. Be confident.”
“I guess I’m having a hard time with the idea of killing someone.”
“If you don’t kill them then they’ll kill you, or someone else. It’s that simple. Try not to think about how many people you kill, but how many you can save.”
Given the sheer number of injured passengers they passed, Lightoller wondered if he was simply spitting out empty rhetoric just to keep Moody calm. He was close to calling this mission a lost cause, and didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when the rest of these people turned.
Split off from Murdoch and Lowe a deck above, Lightoller and Moody had worked their way down E-deck toward the front of the ship, along the way encountering a few infected, some already dead, and dozens of newly infected. By Lightoller’s count, better than half of the escapees from the general room had perished, not including any Murdoch and Lowe might have disposed of. Still, he feared they were too late, and the damage had already been done.
Then came the unexpected jarring sound that had caused all the walls around them to shiver. Lightoller had no idea what caused the troubling vibration, possibly an explosion in the forward hull.
Pushing on, they came to the last set of elevators. Dozens of passengers bullied past them in a riotous panic. Those that couldn’t squeeze into one of the elevators, or grew tired of waiting for one to return, elected to take the stairs. Lightoller observed a good number of people with visible bite marks and scratches on various areas of their bodies.
“It’s no use.”
“Sir?”
Lightoller looked down at a small pool of blood on the floor across from the elevators. “I want you to go back to the bridge and tell the captain this isn’t working, not in the least. That it’s spread too far, and we may need to consider calling for assistance.”
“And what of you, sir?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m going to keep on down here. Try to find the source of that explosion.”
“I would rather stay an assist you, sir.”
“I don’t need assistance. No need for bravery, Moody. Just do as I say.”
Moody nodded and went around the corner toward the stairs, Lightoller the opposite direction.
Continuing forward.
Into the quiet beyond the crowd.
SMITH
“No sign of damage in the passenger areas, sir,” said Fourth Officer Boxhall, stepping into the wheelhouse. After the collision, the captain had sent him below to inspect for any sign of damage. “However, Carpenter Hutchinson insists the ship is making water. That the mail hold is filling rapidly.”
“Go down and confirm it,” said Smith. “Report back immediately.”