Dawn of the Dreadfuls Page 26

  For a time, at least, the unmentionables had full stomachs (those that still had them), and the assaults on the house tapered off while they enjoyed their picnic on the lawn. When the attacks began again, they were sporadic and easily beaten back. At first.

  By nightfall, however, the onslaught was once again relentless, and hardly five minutes went by without a board somewhere giving way. It took Elizabeth nearly half an hour just to walk down a hallway with a bust of the Prince Regent—which she intended to drop onto the zombies from a second-story window—for every few steps she had to set down the prince and pull out her sword and add to the collection of freshly severed limbs lined up along the wainscoting. One would-be intruder was particularly persistent, managing to squirm its way inside even after all but its head and chest and left arm had been sliced away. A woman in a tattered yellow ball gown smashed a chamber pot into its face as it slithered after Elizabeth, slowing it for a moment. When it whirled on the lady, hissing, Elizabeth was finally able to slice through the top of its skull, and its brain-filled crown fell forward onto the floor looking like a hairy bowl of porridge.

  BY NIGHTFALL, HOWEVER, THE ONSLAUGHT WAS ONCE AGAIN RELENTLESS.

  Elizabeth sheathed her katana and looked up at the woman who’d helped her—and was shocked to find that it was Mrs. Goswick.

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth said.

  Mrs. Goswick shook her head. “No. Thank you, Miss Bennet.”

  When Elizabeth finally got the Prince Regent upstairs and out a window, she was only mildly disappointed that it was too dark to see the damage he did down below. It was a cloudy, moonless night, sparing her the sight of the zombie host ringing them in. At last count, it had been nearly a thousand strong.

  “Do you think he made it?” Mary asked, stepping up to the window with a large, lumpy satchel. She reached in, pulled out a blue croquet ball, and hurled it down into the darkness. “The Master, I mean?”

  Elizabeth helped herself to one of the balls and threw it out the window with all her strength. A second later, there was a sharp clunk followed by the sound of something heavy falling to the ground.

  “Does it really matter?” Elizabeth said.

  Mary started to toss out a mallet but seemed to change her mind when she found its heft to her liking. She leaned it against the wall, then pulled out a ball and whipped it into the night.

  There was another clunk, and a zombie wailed.

  “I suppose not,” Mary said.

  She and Elizabeth kept throwing croquet balls until they were all gone, at which time Mary announced that she was off to look for loose bricks. She took the mallets with her to hand out downstairs.

  Elizabeth lingered a moment at the window, wondering if she might take advantage of a quiet moment to slip up to the attic and, if not apologize to Dr. Keckilpenny, at least assure herself of his well-being. She still felt a fondness for the man, despite the things she’d said the last time she’d seen him, and a part of her longed to put any awkwardness between them to rest.

  But then someone screamed “They’re coming through the wall!” and she was running for the stairs with her sword in her hand.

  It turned out to be a small hole—little more than a crack in the plaster just big enough for four broken, bloody fingers to wriggle into the drawing room. But it was going to get bigger.

  “They’re scratching away the mortar between the building stones,” Mr. Bennet announced. “When they get enough of it out, they’ll be able to pull out the stones themselves.”

  “And the walls with them,” Elizabeth said.

  Her father nodded, then hacked off the wriggling fingers.

  “Lizzy,” he said, “bring Lord Lumpley, Mr. Cummings, and Dr. Thorne to the front hall, if you would. Your sister Jane, as well, if she’s not with His Lordship. There’s a difficult decision before us, I’m afraid, and I’d prefer if it were made in council.”

  Minutes later, there they all were, gathered before the main doors even as the dreadfuls outside kept knocking upon it in their clumsy, insistent way.

  “Gentlemen,” Mr. Bennet said, “we are running out of time.”

  He spoke loudly, obviously not just addressing the baron, the vicar, and the doctor but everyone scattered around the foyer and lining the halls nearby.

  “Oh, my goodness! Running out of time, you say?” Lord Lumpley widened his eyes and slapped his hands to his round cheeks. “Whatever could make you jump to such a conclusion?”

  “If it’s the food supply you’re thinking of, Mr. Bennet, I’ve an idea about that,” said Dr. Thorne. (It was fitting that he should bring up food, actually, as his blood-smeared surgeon’s apron made him look like a particularly sloppy butcher. Which, in a way, is what he was.) “We’ve actually got all the meat we could possibly need, if we just looked at it as the dreadfuls do. At least a dozen of my patients died of shock after I removed a tainted limb, and of course I immediately took the next step and removed their heads, as well. The plague won’t take hold in them—so why just toss the bodies out a window?”

  “Wh-what? You can’t possibly m-m-mean—!” Mr. Cummings blubbered. He’d lost his Book of Common Prayer in a tussle with an unmentionable and had taken, for the sake of comfort, to clutching a book he’d picked at random from the baron’s library: Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised by the Marquis de Sade. “It’s unnnnnnnnthinkable!”

  The doctor shrugged. “If it’ll keep me from starving to death, I’ll do more than think it.”

  “It’s not actually starvation I was thinking of, Doctor,” Mr. Bennet said. “We have another, more immediate problem.”

  A look of discomfited surprise came over Dr. Thorne of the type that’s common among people who find that the previous minute’s conversation should be, and would if it could be, unspoken.

  “Oh?” he said limply. “Do tell.”

  Mr. Bennet obliged, explaining that the dreadfuls were capable of taking the house apart stone by stone and had, in fact, begun to do so. Many gasped at the news, and Mr. Bennet paused a moment, waiting for their clamorings and murmurs to fade before carrying on again.

  “They will get through. It is inevitable. So, as time is not on our side, nor are numbers, we must press the last advantage we have.”

  Lord Lumpley scoffed. “I wasn’t aware we had any in the first place.”

  “I believe the advantage my father alludes to doesn’t apply equally to all of us,” Elizabeth said, and she quoted an observation Dr. Keckilpenny had once made to her about the unmentionables: “They’re thick as bricks.”

  Mr. Bennet nodded. “We can safely assume they have no idea how many people are in this house. If we let them overrun it—or think they’ve overrun it—they might well wander off again never knowing they left survivors behind.”

  “And where will these supposed survivors be?” Dr. Thorne asked. “Hiding in the cupboards?”

  “Something like that.” Mr. Bennet turned to the baron. “Tell me—how extensive is your wine cellar?”

  “Vast. I have the largest selection of clarets, ports, and brandies in the Home Counties.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant,” Mr. Bennet said.

  Belgrave appeared at his master’s side as if stepping out from behind a mote of dust. “The cellar has been permanently sealed. Remember, My Lord?”

  “What do you mean, it’s been sealed?” Mr. Bennet asked.

  “It flooded,” said Belgrave.

  “It caved in,” said Lord Lumpley.

  One or the other might have been believed if they hadn’t spoken at the same time—and if someone else hadn’t spoken up, as well.

  “It did nothing of the kind!” declared a woman guarding the front doors. She was a stout old cook from the baron’s own kitchens, and in one hand she held a frying pan splattered with brains and chips of bone. “The cellar was always kept under lock and key, but the other day someone broke down the door. That’s why his nibs there had it boarded up. Flood. Ha!”

  “When
was all this?” Mr. Bennet asked.

  “Why, right after that Z-O-M-B-Y got into the house.”

  “Belgrave, sack this woman at once,” Lord Lumpley said.

  “You are dismissed, Mrs. Hutchinson.”

  “Ho! Like I care now!” The cook looked over at Mr. Bennet while waggling her pan at Belgrave. “Always it was this one alone who was allowed down there, and then all of a sudden the cellar’s shut up altogether? And kept that way even with a swarm of bogies at the door and no better place to hide? If you ask me, there’s something tricksy about the whole thing.”

  “She’s right!” one of the baron’s dressers called out.

  “Ask them why the cellar’s sealed!” added another.

  “Ask why the door was broken down!”

  Other servants joined in with “Yes!” and “Ask them!”

  “What is this, the damned French Revolution?” Lord Lumpley roared. “Mind your place!”

  Belgrave looked like he wanted to slip behind another mote of dust.

  “I’m with them,” a man said, and as he stepped into the entrance hall, a dozen hushed voices whispered his name.

  Jonathan Ward.

  Emily Ward’s father.

  “What’s in the cellar … My Lord?

  “Or is it more a question of who?” Elizabeth said. She wasn’t looking at Mr. Ward or Lord Lumpley or Belgrave. She was looking at Jane.

  Her sister was standing just behind and to the right of the baron, still playing the faithful bodyguard, staying true to their father’s pact with the nobleman even after all they’d been through. On her face now, however, was a look of horror equal to the one she’d worn when she first saw Emily Ward dragging her rotting carcass from the water.

  Another monster was being revealed to her: the one directly before her. And she wasn’t the only one seeing it for the first time. A wave of angry mutters and exclamations of dismay spread first through the foyer then down the halls along each wing, until it seemed the whole house was abuzz.

  “This conversation has become highly insulting, not to mention utterly insane,” Lord Lumpley said.

  Mr. Bennet shook his head sadly. “Once again, I find I am a fool. I ascribed to mere lechery what should have suggested a far deeper flaw. In your case, a deeper evil.” He turned to Mr. Ward. “I examined your daughter’s body the day she … returned. I would prefer to say this privately—or not at all, ever—but I think it should be known: Emily Ward was with child when she died. I didn’t get to see the girl dreadful who attacked my daughter here the other night—it was burned before I could do so. But I suspect I would have found her condition the same as poor Miss Ward’s.” He pointed an unblinking stare at Belgrave, and with his cocked head and cold eyes, he took on the look of a bird of prey watching something soft and furry scurrying through the grass. “And I presume there were others? Buried down in the cellar before you simply started throwing them in the lake?”

  “This is madness!” Lord Lumpley bellowed.

  Belgrave edged away from him, mumbling under his breath.

  “What was that?” Mr. Bennet demanded, taking a step toward him. “Pray, speak up!”

  “He told me to do it,” Belgrave said, jerking his head at the baron. “Whenever another one popped up to make trouble.”

  “What rot! I never told you to kill anyone!”

  “You said to get rid of them. Permanently.”

  “Yes! Exactly! That’s not kill, is it?”

  “You knew.”

  “I most certainly did not! I just knew they stopped pestering me.”

  “Yes—until the next one came along. There was always a next one.” Belgrave glanced past the baron. At Jane. “There always would be. You couldn’t help yourself.”

  Elizabeth could hear no more. She moved toward Lord Lumpley not knowing if she intended to simply strike him or break his neck, though either would be preceded by the Fulcrum of Doom.

  Mr. Ward started stalking the baron’s way at the same moment.

  “They’ve lost their minds!” Lord Lumpley cried. “Jane—protect me!”

  He took a step back, starting to put himself behind his guardian angel. He was stopped by something long and straight and slick red that shot from his body just above the pelvis.

  It was a katana, coated with blood. The blade jerked upward, into the baron’s belly, then zigzagged down again.

  Lord Lumpley blinked.

  “Jane …?”

  Then he slid forward off the sword and was dead before he hit the floor.

  Though the zombies kept moaning and banging away outside, every living thing was hushed and still. Only Jane made any noise, first with her heavy breathing, then the moist shhhhhhhhhhh as she slid her katana back into its scabbard.

  The silence was finally broken by a smattering of uncertain applause.

  “I don’t th-think that waaaaas c-called for,” Mr. Cummings said, but the clapping just grew a little louder.

  The only other dissenting voice belonged to Jane’s own mother, who’d let loose with a disappointed “Ohhh!” as the favorite of all her daughters’ suitors was carved up like a roast duck.

  Belgrave, of course, had a less than enthusiastic reaction, as well: He simply started running. He seemed to have lost his senses, for he dashed toward what looked like solid wall—part of the paneling that ran along the underside of the staircase. When he reached it, however, a section of it slid back at his touch, revealing a black passageway into which he started to disappear.

  There was a series of raps in quick succession—thup-thup-thup — and the tails of Belgrave’s topcoat were pinned to the wall by three throwing stars.

  “La!” Lydia snorted from across the hall. “I knew these silly things would come in handy sooner or later!”

  Mr. Bennet grabbed Belgrave by the shirt collar before he could shrug free of his sleeves and escape.

  “A secret passage, eh? Would there be more of these?”

  “Oh, yes, Sir!” Mrs. Hutchinson said. “All through the house. We weren’t supposed to know about them, but we used to hear Belgrave and His Lordship slinking around in the walls like rats.”

  “Capital, capital,” Mr. Bennet said. “Belgrave, you have just won yourself a temporary reprieve. Mary, Kitty, Lydia—if you would be so good as to find the cellar and tidy it up in whatever way you find necessary. Elizabeth—you might want to attend to your elder sister. She’s looking a touch peaked.”

  Indeed, Jane was staring at her handiwork—filet de noble—looking pale. Elizabeth hurried to her side expecting to arrive the same moment as the inevitable tears. Yet Jane’s eyes, though wide and full of confusion, remained dry.

  “I was beginning to believe he actually cared for me … that perhaps he wasn’t the scoundrel you made him out to be. How could I have been so very, very wrong?”

  “He thought he could take advantage because you have a good heart.”

  “Had a good heart, perhaps.” Jane nodded at the baron’s crumpled, bloody form. “People with good hearts don’t do things like that.”

  “Oh, Jane—your heart is still good. It’s just that it’s strong now, too. Hardened. Armored.” Elizabeth took her sister by the hand. “The heart of a warrior.”

  Jane looked into Elizabeth’s eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, speaking in the firm, unwavering way of someone making a vow. “And nothing shall ever pierce it again.”

  “Ummm … should I have that beheaded and taken up to one of the windows?” a maid asked meekly, pointing at her former employer. “It might keep some of the unmentionables happy for a moment or two.”

  “Breach! Breach!” someone shouted from the south wing.

  Jane and Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet all started toward the sound of the call, but they weren’t needed: A cluster of men and women jumped in together to hack and slash at the zombie soldier trying to wiggle its way through a fresh gap in the plaster. Within a few seconds, the dreadful was in pieces and the hole in the wall blocked off with
an upended chest of drawers.

  “You were right, Father,” Elizabeth said. “We can’t keep them out forever.”

  Mr. Bennet nodded. “The time has come, I think, to stop trying.”

  __________________

  CHAPTER 37

  FIRST, THE THREE YOUNGEST Bennet girls had to clear the wine cellar of its dreadfuls. (There were two still squirming like worms from the packed-dirt floor, their progress slowed by the quicklime that had apparently eaten away most of their connective tissue.) Then it was time to clear the wine cellar of both its wines and its many rows of wine racks—all of which proved excellent fodder for zombie bombardment once it was hauled up to the second floor. After that, the packing began.

  They started with the walls. The house, it was quickly discovered, was a Swiss cheese of secret passages and hidden vaults. With Belgrave’s reluctant help—which turned quite a bit less reluctant whenever Jane was in the vicinity—dozens of people were soon tucked away out of sight.

  Which meant there were that many fewer to fight back the unmentionables breaking through. And there were steadily fewer still as more and more people were sent into the cellar to join the children and the elderly and the wounded already there. Eventually, there was no one left guarding the windows and doors at all, and the cellar was stuffed wall to wall.

  “Time for you to go in, too,” Mr. Bennet said to his daughters. “Seal the door from the inside, as we discussed, and I’ll put the false wall in place out here. It won’t be pleasant down there in the dark, I’m sure, but the air holes should—where do you think you’re going?”

  Lydia and Kitty were hurrying off down the hall, toward the sound of splintering wood and phlegmy moans.

  “Our friends from outside are letting themselves in a trifle early!” Lydia called over her shoulder.

  “We’ll just go and ask them to wait!” Kitty added.