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Callahan opened the gate separating the first and second class areas of the ship from steerage then stepped back to allow Officer Moody to enter. At first, this part of the ship seemed quiet, almost deserted. They locked the gate behind them and walked side by side down the stairs. Davis, whom they couldn’t persuade, ‘not for all the tea in China,’ as he succinctly put it, to stay at the swimming pool, brought up the rear.
As they neared the bottom of the stairs, they heard a commotion from farther down the corridor; a door slammed, raised voices followed by a scuffle. Moody lengthened his stride and Callahan had to break into a trot to catch him before placing his hand on the officer’s arm, physically holding him back.
“I don’t think you should be too hasty. If there is something on this ship killing people, rotting their bodies from the inside and leaving their husks to feed off the living, I would not be too quick to encounter it.”
“We must offer our aid to the living; besides, how many of these living corpses can there be?” Moody shrugged the American’s restraining hand away and continued to walk purposefully towards the disturbance. Reaching a corner he looked down the shorter transverse corridor. He stopped so quickly that Davis, glancing over his shoulder at the safety of the stairs behind them, failed to notice and walked into him at full tilt.
“I’m so sorry, sir.” His words were instinctive, and he fully expected a dressing-down from Moody, but his superior hardly noticed the collision, so intense was his focus on the crossway. Able seaman Davis looked in the direction of Moody’s shocked stare.
“What ... the ... fuck ...” His words trailed away as he tried to make some sense of the melee of people filling the short passageway. After the incident in the swimming pool, he thought he had seen enough disturbing sights to last him a lifetime, now he realized that was a mere sample of the horrors to come.
The corridor contained thirty or so people, all of whom appeared dead, their bodies in varying states of decomposition and most dressed in the plain, practical working class clothes of the immigrants travelling steerage. One wore the remains of a White Star seaman’s uniform although it, like its wearer, only had one arm, the hat set jauntily on a head missing half its face.
Most had gathered in two groups, their attention focused on shapeless bundles lying on the ground. From the nearest of these two groups, a pair of legs protruded from beneath the general melee. They were smartly dressed in the same White Star uniform the half-faced corpse wore and the shoes were unmistakably well polished.
Then briefly, as if allowing the crewmen a glimpse of what was in store for them, the throng parted to reveal the eviscerated remains of a member of the search party sent to investigate this section of the vessel. The assembled throng had torn open the man’s abdomen, ripping his organs from the exposed cavity before leaving his entrails pooled in a sticky-looking heap on the blood-soaked deck. Such was the extent of his traumatic death that his identity would have to remain a mystery. A young woman with wild, curly hair the colour of marmalade sat feasting from the ragged neck wound, dipping her fingers into the throat’s open bore then licking them clean, like she was stealing from a honey pot.
Farther down the corridor, two men tussled over a human leg ripped forcibly from its original owner, several tendons and the straggling remains of its arteries dangled from the jagged stump. Blood still dripped from the severed end, spraying both the walls and those standing nearby, as the feuding monsters swung it back and forth. The others didn’t seem to mind, one even opened his mouth trying to catch the flying droplets on his swollen black tongue.
Davis sank to his knees and stared at the remains of his fellow crew member with unseeing eyes, his senses shutting down to protect his fragile mind from the atrocity he was witnessing.
It was Callahan who reacted first. He grabbed Moody by his shoulder and dragged him back from the corner. Out of the corner of his eye, he detected movement. The undead, which were no longer huddled masses gathered around their fresh kill, were beginning to move towards the three sailors. Only two or three at first, but more were leaving the throng to join them with each passing second. Individually, their movements were ungainly and awkward, but as a pack, they moved with inexhaustible determination, like wolves running down their prey. Determined, relentless and focused solely on the kill.
“Sir!” Callahan’s voice had risen in pitch, his gestures becoming more frantic as the pack closed in.
Moody looked at the American tugging urgently on his arm, a moment of confusion clouding his features. Then, comprehending the approaching danger, his expression turned to one of gratitude as the two men stumbled away from the seething mass of death and decay.
It was only as they reached the relative safety of the stairs they discovered able seaman Davis had not followed them. Pausing, Moody looked back ready to encourage one of the most experienced seafarers under his command to make a final bid for safety. The words died in his throat as he watched Davis, still kneeling in a catatonic stupor, being engulfed by the first wave of diseased corpses. For a fleeting moment, Davis turned towards his fleeing comrades as if pleading for their help.
Then he was gone.
Moody watched the feeding frenzy for a few seconds. He didn’t know if it was because he felt he owed it to Davis or whether it was as penance to absolve his own guilt at abandoning a man, although not deliberately, to certain death. If it was the latter, it did not work. With a heavy heart burdened with the guilt only a survivor knows, he turned and followed Callahan up the stairs. They locked the gate behind them hoping to contain the rotting core of the deadly plague before it threatened the entire ship.
In silence, they hurried to tell the captain of their discovery, their search for the missing bodies all but forgotten. Neither man dared put his fears into words, but both knew the plague had already spread throughout the ship and no amount of locked gates would keep them alive until they docked in New York.
