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Bridget felt numb. She cried when she first returned to the suite, but now there were no more tears to shed. Esme, or what remained of her, had undoubtedly saved her life earlier that evening, and not for the first time. Bridget couldn’t help but wonder what would have become of her had not the beautiful young chambermaid, with a stubborn attitude and a dubious past, extended her the hand of friendship. What if she had not recognized a kindred spirit, separated only by their social position?
William’s body still sprawled across the bed in the other room. It was the first thing she had done on her return, checked to make sure the bastard had stayed dead. She had prodded him several times, the last one in his left ear, with the pointed end of her parasol. She understood over the last few hours the dead had, quite literally, developed a habit of coming back to bite you. Dead or alive, or somewhere in between, she wasn’t going to allow William to wreak his revenge on her, especially if it meant spending her final hours dining on human offal.
Then she had broken down and cried. She cried tears of fear for herself and her unborn child. She shed tears in grief for her dead friend Esme and finally, tears of relief when she comprehended that in all the slaughter and carnage on the ship, the unfortunate death of her husband would, like as not, go unpunished.
After her tears were spent, she went numb. She felt drained and emotionally exhausted.
Bridget sat staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. Lost in the frailty of her own existence, unaware of the dangers she still had to face if she were to escape with her life. The ship, fatally holed below the waterline, had begun sinking bows first into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic, the angle of the deck steadily increasing as more and more water flooded into the ship’s forward compartments.
An intense banging on her cabin door roused her from her stupor. Fear gripped her heart, constricting her chest. She quickly searched for something to defend herself with but could only find her flimsy parasol. By then the banging had stopped. Bridget, parasol poised, approached the door. A sudden and loud knock forced her heart up into her mouth.
“Sir, madame. Please vacate your suite and make your way to the boat deck. Captain’s orders.” The voice was firm and friendly. Cautiously, Bridget opened the door, parasol pointing menacingly at the steward standing in the hallway outside. “I’m ordered to tell you that, for your own safety, you are to come with me to the boat deck.”
“Are we sinking?” Bridget surprised even herself with her matter-of-fact tone.
“I’m not sure, madame. My orders are simply to escort passengers to the lifeboats where other crew members will be there to help you.” He looked uneasy as he spoke, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“I’ll get my overcoat and be right out.” Bridget closed the door as the steward moved down the corridor knocking on the other doors. When she returned, a small crowd had gathered a few doors away and were loudly discussing the evening’s events. The ship listing to starboard and sat bow down in the water, the general consensus among the group was that the great unsinkable Titanic was, in fact, sinking. Many were also voicing their concerns about the hordes of flesh eating monsters roaming the ship in search of food. News of the hordes’ arrival in the dining saloons and other parts of the ship had obviously spread rapidly, several reported hearing gunshots. With all this occurring at once people were understandably beginning to panic, and Bridget Grafton wasn’t immune to the feeling of unease rippling through the small crowd.
The steward rushed towards them, a couple of elderly ladies, struggling to keep up with his pace, trailed in his wake. “Is that everyone from your cabin, Mrs. Grafton?”
“Yes, Captain Grafton joined Mr. Guggenheim for after dinner drinks and has not yet returned.” The lie rolled comfortably off her tongue, a few of the other passengers looked at her awkwardly, wondering whether she was aware of the hordes rampaging through the saloon, killing everyone in their path. Bridget struggled to remain impassive as if unaware of the dangers facing her husband while her insides knotted up with guilt and fear.
The steward looked nervously at the other passengers for a few seconds, debating, no doubt, on whether to tell her of the evening’s events. Then, obviously thinking better of it, began hurriedly directing the group towards the stairway taking them up and finally out onto the upper deck.
Bridget gave a soft, relieved sigh and smiled pleasantly at the two old ladies, offering the most infirm looking one her arm for support. Without looking back, she followed her companions towards what she hoped would be safety, leaving her dead husband’s body to either be tragically lost in the ship’s wreck or, less tragically, eaten by the rotting corpse of a working class immigrant. An ironically fitting end, she thought, for such an arrogant, bullying snob.
