39

FORWARD STAIRWELL.

MONDAY, APRIL 15, 1912. 12:22 A.M.

Kabul clanked against the captain’s side as he and Andrews raced up step after step, past Deck G, past Deck F, on their way to the bridge. The sound of a woman screaming echoed in the stairwell. The captain cursed loudly and picked up his pace. Andrews followed as closely as he could. Even at sixty-one years of age, Captain Smith wasn’t easy to keep up with.

Finally, they found the source of the screams: Two small children and their mother cowered on a landing, chased into the corner by a hulking zombie. From half a flight down, Smith called out. “Hey, you big ugly lout! Over here!”

The creature grunted at the sound of the captain’s voice and turned. It was Joe Clench, or what was left of him, and he made the most imposing and horrifying zombie Smith and Andrews had seen yet.

Clench roared at the two men and took an awkward step toward them, away from the mother and her children. Not a brow raised in recognition on the behemoth’s face. With plodding steps it descended three stairs. Blackish ooze ran from the corner of the monster’s mouth. The repugnant effluence dribbled down to stain his uniform. The man was gone, but the rotted body lived.

“Run up those stairs as fast as you can,” shouted Smith to the mother. “Get up top and board a lifeboat. We’re abandoning ship.” Without a word, the family ran.

The captain felt a pang of guilt—by sending Clench and the other men off for welding torches, he’d sentenced them to a horrible fate. “I won’t let you suffer any further, Clench,” said Smith, “even if you were a pain in the arse.” The captain tried to draw Kabul, but it didn’t come out cleanly, stopping in the sheath. That was all the time the zombie needed to reach the small landing.

“Run, Captain,” hollered Andrews.

“Never!” growled Smith. Finally, the blade slipped free. A skillful feint to the zombie’s midsection drew its arms down, then Smith swung mightily at Clench’s defenseless neck and buried the blade several inches deep.

But Kabul was no longer up to the task. Weakened earlier by holding back the bakery fan, the blade snapped at the nicked point that caused it to stick in the sheath. Most of Kabul remained lodged in the beast’s vertebrae. Smith was left with little more than the hilt and a pitiful stub of metal in his hand.

The zombie didn’t even react to the sword stuck in its gashed neck. As in life, Joe Clench wasn’t one to let a flesh wound stop a fight. One arm swiped viciously, sending the captain sprawling to the ground. Kabul’s hilt spun away, and the zombie fell on top of Smith, enveloping him in its massive arms. Its clawing and gnashing about the captain’s head was shocking and relentless.

“Hey, Mr. Clench!” yelled Andrews, from two steps below.

The zombie turned at the sound of a living voice. As it did, Andrews leapt and punched with all his might, using the rounded portion of Kabul’s pommel, and struck the zombie dead in the mouth, knocking out its remaining teeth. Andrews kept pummeling its face until Mr. Clench fell away.

Andrews tried to help Smith to safety, but the captain would have none of it. He charged the zombie as it rose, despite the fact that it could no longer see. The force of Andrews’s blows had knocked out the ghoul’s eyes, which now dangled grotesquely from their sockets.

Smith wrenched what was left of Kabul from the zombie’s neck and rammed the broken blade into its ear, all the way up to the knuckles. Clench fell to the ground like a tree. Exhausted, the captain regarded yet another of his former crew members he’d been forced to kill. “Good-bye, Mr. Clench, I’m sorry.” Then he slumped to the floor himself.

As Andrews approached, Smith said firmly, “Don’t touch me.”

Then he looked up, and Andrews was stunned at the many deep gashes and black-colored cuts atop the captain’s head. The captain sagged against the landing wall, his head hung low.

“I am going down with the ship, Andrews,” Captain Smith said. “You are to report to the bridge and convey my order to launch all lifeboats.”

“The men need you, sir,” protested Andrews. “What if the chaos down here also reigns above? You can will yourself to remain in control.”

“My will,” scoffed Smith, “is to not endanger anyone aboard this ship. I can’t be trusted with command any longer.”

“You still possess all your faculties, Captain,” Andrews pleaded. “Perhaps you don’t have a lot of time, but neither does Titanic. This ship needs its leader.” He picked Smith’s cap off the ground. “There are innocent people to save. Be a beacon to them, sir.”

Andrews handed Smith his cap. “This will cover most of the wounds to your scalp. And as the hours pass, if your condition worsens …” Andrews sighed. “The sea awaits.”

Captain Edward Smith donned the cap, stood up, and nodded. “You’re quite right, Thomas. I will fulfill my duties, ‘til the end.”

Smith reached out to shake Andrews’s hand, then realizing that was no longer prudent, saluted him instead.