Dawn of the Dreadfuls Read online

  “Thank you for your patience, My Lord,” Mr. Bennet said. “Our preparations are now complete. It’s on to the vicarage, where I hope the Reverend Mr. Cummings will prove as susceptible to your powers of persuasion as so many before him.”

  The insufferable man offered up one of his little smirks, and it was for the baron now to guess what intent lay behind another’s smile.

  The vicar they found preparing his Easter sermon, and he was displeased to be called away for anything of lesser importance. He was a meek, mewling sort generally, his rectoral style leaning more toward unctuous sanctimony than hellfire and damnation. It was one of the few reasons the baron had been able to tolerate the man: Anyone who took all that good-and-evil claptrap too seriously would’ve proved a thorn in his side.

  Upon hearing what Mr. Bennet and the ensign proposed to do, however, Mr. Cummings unleashed a self-righteous rage the likes of which he’d never even hinted at from the pulpit.

  “It’s abominable! Unspeakable! Sacrilege!”

  “First and foremost, it is necessary,” Mr. Bennet replied coolly. “And, secondly, it is overdue. As for all those other things, I can but agree. Your complaint, however, would best be lodged in the form of prayer, for is it not a higher authority than any of us who has, for His own mysterious reasons, loosed ‘unspeakable abominations’ upon us first?”

  “YOU BLASPHEME!”

  “I apologize if I do,” Mr. Bennet said with a shrug. “I merely thought to observe.”

  He glanced at Ensign Pratt, then Lord Lumpley, signaling that it was up to them now to help the vicar see the light.

  “I tell you, Sir, this is of the highest strategic importance,” the ensign squeaked. (Though an officer, he was little more than a boy—and one so diminutive and baby faced he made the young troops he commanded look like a company of snowy-bearded Methuselahs.) “Captain Cannon absolutely insists that we proceed without delay.”

  “I do not answer to Captain Cannon! I answer to almighty God!”

  “As must we all, Mr. Cummings,” the baron said. “Yet I have no desire to stand before Him any earlier than I have to. If Captain Cannon and Mr. Bennet feel that this unpleasant necessity will delay that day for any of us, I think it prudent to see it through forthwith. And you can be assured that this is an attitude I will not keep to myself if any in the community raise objections.”

  “Have you not heard a word I’ve said? I object!” Mr. Cummings roared. “I cannot allow you to defile hallowed ground!”

  Lord Lumpley jerked back as if struck. Hang his “powers of persuasion.” This self-righteous upstart needed to be squashed like a bug!

  “You cannot allow me?” he said. “Might I remind you, Mr. Cummings, that the Archbishop of Canterbury has been a guest in my home?” And nearly emptied my damned wine cellar! “That the Prince Regent is a close, personal friend?” Why, I’ve seen the man naked! “That I am the sixth baron of Lumpley and a knight of the Bath—which makes me the closest thing you grubby bumpkins have to royalty in this miserable backwater?”

  Mr. Cummings, Mr. Bennet, and Ensign Pratt all popped their eyes wide in surprise.

  Oh, the baron thought. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that last part out loud.

  The vicar sucked in a deep breath, the scowl on his face making it plain how he intended to use it. It had been a long, long time since anyone had dared rebuke Lord Lumpley in public. Now his state of grace was about to end.

  The baron steeled himself for thunder, but heard a soft, melodious whisper instead.

  “Gentlemen, please,” Jane said, “if I may offer a suggestion?”

  The girl was sitting in a corner of the vicarage’s cramped drawing room, so silent the men had, for a time, forgotten she was there at all. Though she’d asked for permission to address them, she didn’t wait for anyone to give it.

  “It seems to me,” she said, her soft voice gaining strength without losing its gentle lilt, “that you are speaking of all or nothing when a compromise could easily be reached. The Reverend Mr. Cummings has his sacred duties to think of, and it does him credit that he takes them so seriously. Yet if he would consent to do as my father and Captain Cannon ask just once—simply in the way of a trial, without necessarily following through to the admittedly gruesome conclusion they seek—then we will know whether this course of action is truly warranted. If Papa and the captain are mistaken, we will quickly know, and the matter can be laid to rest permanently … so to speak. And it should be made clear to Mr. Cummings that arrangements have been made to ensure that, whatever we do, privacy and dignity will be maintained as much as possible and, of course, that the vicar himself isn’t just welcome to observe these proceedings but is respectfully entreated to oversee them.”

  Her conciliatory tone, her well-chosen words, her obvious good sense, and, above all, her generous spirit—they worked a spell on Mr. Cummings that he couldn’t resist. By the time she was through, not only was his frown gone, he was smiling upon her pleasantly, utterly pacified.

  Mr. Bennet, meanwhile, beamed with a pride tinged with regret. For all his efforts to turn Jane into a warrior, peacemaking clearly suited her better. She’d certainly done a better job of it than the baron had with all his bluster, and even he paused to appreciate her sweetness and sagacity—before being distracted by her décolletage as she rose to go.

  The party left the vicarage to see her suggestion through. Once outside, they collected Ensign Pratt’s men, who were leaning against the stone wall that ran along the road, smoking pipes and grumbling amongst themselves.

  “Pick up that gear and fall in!” the ensign roared. (Or tried to. It came out more like a mewl.) “Snap to it, now! Hut hut!”

  The soldiers hopped up and grabbed the poles and rolled canvas and bags of tent pegs Lord Lumpley and the Bennets had brought from Netherfield Park. Yet one pile, the baron noticed, went untouched until all the other items had been claimed.

  Only the slowest and unluckiest men ended up with the shovels.

  “Come on!” the ensign yipped. “Look alive, look alive!”

  Once Pratt had lined up his squad, the whole group—the soldiers, the Bennets, the vicar, and (because he’d been too slow thinking up a way to get out of it) the baron—turned and headed toward the cemetery.

  __________________

  CHAPTER 25

  DR. KECKILPENNY did a few more spins—“This is the way, I’m sure of it. Then again …”—before Elizabeth could ask him where exactly he was trying to lead her.

  “That little lake on the estate.” He turned toward Lord Lumpley’s manor house, then whirled round toward the forest, then back to the house, then back to the trees. “You know the one. Where the girl zombie came out of the water.”

  Elizabeth nodded somberly, unsure which memory disheartened her more: a stricken Emily Ward shuffling toward her, bloated and rank, or her own failure to end the girl’s curse with a swift slice of the sword.

  “I’m afraid you haven’t been right yet,” she said. “It’s this way.”

  She led him up the lane that led to Longbourn, and Meryton beyond.

  “Thank you. Once again, I find myself indebted to my native guide.” Dr. Keckilpenny nodded at the katana at Elizabeth’s side. “And it reassures me to see you’ve brought something a tad more formidable than that wee stickpin you were using the other day—not that you didn’t use it as well as one might. I’ve managed to misplace my pistol, you see, and my net here isn’t going to do us much good if we happen upon a zombie herd. So our lives could be very much in your dainty hands.”

  “It flatters me that you seem so sanguine about that, Doctor. And surprises me. Not all are so liberal in their thinking when young ladies take up the sword.”

  “For anyone who has made a serious study of The Troubles, it is not liberality but simple good sense. Clinging to the old ways in times such as these would be like …” Dr. Keckilpenny rolled his eyes heavenward and chewed at his lower lip. “A drowning man clutching a brick? Does
that make sense? Metaphors are not my forte.”

  “I beg to differ. That one was rather good.”

  “Really? Thank you. I shall have to use it again sometime, provided I can remember it.”

  They took their next few steps without speaking. But Dr. Keckilpenny, rather like Elizabeth’s mother, seemed averse to silence, and soon he looked over and said, “Well, aren’t you going to ask me why anyone should wish to capture a zombie?”

  “I thought it obvious, given your interests. You want to examine it. Observe it at close quarter. Learn from it.”

  “Precisely!” The young doctor flashed one of his toothy grins. “Then you don’t think me mad?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Curiosity hardly makes one mad.”

  Dr. Keckilpenny’s smile grew so broad Elizabeth almost wondered how his lean, narrow face could contain it.

  “What a splendid sentiment! And so, so rare. I should translate it into Latin and declare it my motto. Now, how would that go? Curiositas non novo a vir rabidus, perhaps? I’m not sure. I was always so much better with Greek, but it doesn’t look nearly so good carved into marble.”

  To her surprise, Elizabeth found herself laughing.

  “Ahhhh,” Dr. Keckilpenny said, “now you think me mad.”

  “Not at all. Though I suppose I could ask why you’d bother making a study of the unmentionables. We have a chronicle of The Troubles at home, and from what I’ve read—”

  “Which one?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Which ‘chronicle of The Troubles’?”

  “Gibbon’s A Complete History of the Most Tragic and Awful Events Following the Rise of the Sorry Stricken from Their Graves and the Ensuing Horrors Which—”

  “Yes yes yes, I know it well.” Dr. Keckilpenny waved a long hand before his face, as if dispelling an unpleasant odor. “Rubbish, every word. But do go on, please.”

  “Well, according to Mr. Gibbon, the greatest minds in England tried to study captive dreadfuls when the strange plague first appeared, the only result being that many of those great minds were very quickly ripped from their vessels and devoured.”

  “Assuming all that’s true—and when it comes to the history of the plague, I’ve found that to be a foolish thing to do—” Dr. Keckilpenny paused just long enough to wink and put a finger beside his beaklike nose. “I would point out that we are now in the nineteenth century. Time has marched on, and knowledge with it. The menace may have returned, but there are modern men of science ready to confront it. And this time, science shall prevail.”

  “Perhaps. I think I know, however, how my mmm—”

  The word Elizabeth had said so often, so freely of late—master—stuck in her throat.

  Was it that she was beginning to see Geoffrey Hawksworth as something less than a master … or something more?

  She brought a fist to her lips and coughed demurely until she could carry on.

  “Ah, how my instructor in the deadly arts would respond to that. Science, he would say, has created no weapon more dependably lethal than a sharp blade wielded by strong hands.”

  Dr. Keckilpenny gave Elizabeth the same look of amused bemusement she’d seen a thousand times on her father’s face.

  “Oh?” he chuckled. “Well, I should very much like to see how your instructor would fare with his sharp blade and strong hands were he up against a single man armed with a—”

  There was a sharp crack, and a little burst of dirt and gravel flew up a few inches from Elizabeth’s right foot. Elizabeth and Dr. Keckilpenny stared down at the newly dug pockmark in the road, then stared at each other, then stared straight ahead.

  A soldier was before them, perhaps forty feet off, a musket clutched in his hands and a puff of smoking floating off above his head. It was the same sentry who’d challenged Elizabeth and Jane and Mr. Bennet when they’d approached Netherfield Park that morning.

  “Uhhhh … who goes there?” he said.

  “I am not a military man, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt,” Dr. Keckilpenny replied. “But in my experience, one asks that before one shoots.”

  “Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir. It was an accident, Sir.”

  “Think nothing of it, Corporal Holmes. What’s a little crossfire between friends?”

  “It’s Private Jones, Sir. And thank you, Sir. It won’t happen again, Sir.”

  “Good, good. We’ll just be on our way, then. Miss Bennet?”

  The doctor bowed and swept an arm out toward the road ahead.

  “Actually, this is where we leave the lane anyway,” Elizabeth said. “We’ll need to cross this meadow and go over that knoll to reach the lake.”

  Dr. Keckilpenny pivoted so his arm was now stretched out toward the hill beyond. “Lead on.”

  The close call with a musket ball squelched, for a time, anyone’s taste for banter, and it wasn’t until they were halfway across the field that Dr. Keckilpenny looked back over his shoulder and said, “I suggest we return by a different route.”

  Elizabeth glanced back, too. Three other soldiers had joined Pvt. Jones, drawn by the sound of gunfire, no doubt. The sentry was simultaneously gesturing at Elizabeth and the doctor and squinting down into the barrel of his Brown Bess as if he’d lost his ramrod in it.

  “I agree,” Elizabeth said. “Though I wouldn’t worry overmuch about being shot by mistake, since most of the soldiers I’ve seen have neither the skill nor the inclination to fire their muskets at all. I know that you said you’re not a military man, yet don’t you find it queer that Captain Cannon should come to Hertfordshire with such poorly trained troops?”

  “I do when I let myself notice it. Unfortunately—or, perhaps, fortunately—my mind is rather like a microscope or a spyglass: It can focus with great clarity upon one point, but all else is consequently blocked out. And for the past two months, my focus has been on zombies.”

  “Two months?” Elizabeth said. It hadn’t been one since Mr. Ford crashed his own funeral. Apparently, Dr. Keckilpenny was as haphazard with dates as he was with names.

  “Yes, and the most fascinating months of my life they’ve been!” the doctor enthused. “To think I once believed I’d never see a zombie. Their very existence flies in the face of science, and now we’ve been given a second chance to answer all the old questions. What could reanimate the flesh of the dead? What drives the resurrected to feed on the living? Why only people? Why only in Britain? Why are you taking out your sword?”

  It took Elizabeth a moment to realize this last was not one of the “old questions” but a very new and immediate one: She’d drawn her katana without even thinking about it.

  “I …,” she began, not knowing what words might come next. And then there it was, rising up from the level of instinct and pure sensation to tangible, relatable thought. “I smell something.”

  They’d stopped halfway up the wooded rise blocking the way to the lake, and Dr. Keckilpenny turned a wary gaze to the top of the hill.

  “Or some things, I warrant,” he whispered.

  He looked at Elizabeth again, and the two of them simply stood there, gazing into each other’s eyes, until, at a signal from neither, they both turned and started up the hill again at precisely the same moment. They moved slowly, choosing their steps with care, and when they reached the crest they crouched down, Elizabeth on one side of an old, rough-trunked elm, Dr. Keckilpenny on the other.

  Below was the lake. Beside it, three figures.

  One sat on the bank, back propped against a rotted-out log. The other two were stooped over it, scooping something glutinous and oozy from the top of its head.

  “Excellent,” Dr. Keckilpenny said under his breath.

  Elizabeth shot him a horrified glower. Then she stood and started toward the water.

  “Miss Bennet, wait … stop, please … Elizabeth!”

  The doctor might as well have not spoken at all. The only sound Elizabeth heard was the awful moist smacking of the unmentionables’ mastication. All she s
aw was the crimson-streaked pulp disappearing into their rotten maws. All she felt was her katana in her hands, and then the air streaking through her hair as she charged down the hill. And the only man she was thinking of was Lt. Tindall and the self-righteous sneer she longed to wipe from his face—and every other face that might sneer at her and her sisters.

  “HAAAAAAAA-IEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

  The nearest of the zombies sprang toward her, its mouth still oozing half-chewed goo. It had been a woman not so long ago. Now it fought to fully free its desiccated, purple-mottled arms from the tangles of its shroud, the better to get its clawlike fingerbones into Elizabeth’s eyes.

  Elizabeth took its arms off at the elbows with her first swing of the sword. The second took off its head.

  And it felt good.

  She had killed unassisted. She was a warrior, and a thousand times more worthy to call herself such than the lieutenant and his bumbling redcoats. She turned to face the other unmentionable’s charge feeling indomitable, unfettered, free.

  Which made it all the more of a shock when the net came down over her head and the leather straps cinched tight, pinning her arms to her sides. A jarring jerk tugged her off her feet, and she lost her grip on her sword as she crashed to the muddy bank on her backside. She could but watch, helpless, as the oncoming zombie—a male with gray, dirt-streaked skin that had yet to decay enough to fall away from the bone—lunged at her, its black tongue waggling obscenely.

  Then the dreadful, too, was splashing down into the mud, its hands inches from Elizabeth’s feet. The thing flailed at her, wailing, yet it could come no closer.

  The straps around her loosened, the net lifted away, and Dr. Keckilpenny bent down and offered Elizabeth his hand.

  “I’m terribly sorry about that,” he said, “but if you’ll recall, I wanted one of them alive … as it were.”

  Elizabeth pushed herself up without the doctor’s help. When she was on her feet, she noticed at last the bear trap clamped around the dreadful’s ankle and the short length of chain staked to the log beyond. She saw, too, that the body from which the unmentionables had been feeding wasn’t a proper body at all: It was simply clothes stuffed with straw topped by a chamber pot “head.”