Dawn of the Dreadfuls Page 9

  “The quarry cannot move … not even to draw air,” Hawksworth said. His head was so close to Elizabeth’s she could feel his breath blow over her ear as he spoke. “You can see why in some traditions this method goes by another name: the Python’s Embrace.”

  He went on talking, but Elizabeth could catch only the occasional word—“… hold … minute … black …”—over the buzz growing ever louder in her ears and the pounding of her own heart. She could see the expressions on the other girls’ faces begin to change, their lascivious glee dying, eyes growing wide. The whole room began to go gray around the edges, a dark circle on the periphery of her vision tightening until Elizabeth seemed to be looking down a long tunnel with her sisters at the end. And then even they faded away, and all she could see was a distant smear of gauzy light.

  “… sleep …,” she heard Hawksworth say. “… death …”

  The light began to go out.

  Elizabeth wouldn’t let it.

  She brought her right knee forward, then kicked her foot back and up with all the strength she had left. It was a variation on the Fulcrum of Doom her father had taught her. The Axis of Calamity.

  It found its intended target.

  “Oooo!” Elizabeth heard Hawksworth say very, very clearly indeed, and the Python or the Panther, whichever, let her go, and she stumbled forward gasping for breath.

  Jane was instantly at her side.

  “Lizzy! Are you all right?”

  “Yes … yes, I think so.”

  With each lungful of air, Elizabeth’s world widened and brightened, until at last all the grayness was gone. And this is what she saw: Hawksworth bent over, head hanging low, hands in a most undignified arrangement. Mary was beside him, bending over to try to look him in the face.

  “Master? Do you require aid?”

  His first reply came out as a squeaky wheeze. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, took in a deep breath, and tried again.

  “I am in no more pain than I deserve. Go. Find your father. He can take over your training while I … meditate on this.”

  “Master,” Elizabeth said.

  She started to ask what had just happened, if something had gone wrong, but she stopped herself. The student was not to question the master’s actions. She started, then, to say she was sorry for panicking, but she stopped herself again. A warrior doesn’t apologize.

  Oh, how was she ever to truly talk to this man?

  There was only one thing she could say, so she said it.

  “How many dandbaithaks?”

  “For you, Elizabeth Bennet?” Hawksworth said. “None. The fault was not yours. I let myself become … careless.” He turned away and began hobbling, hunchbacked, toward the darkest corner of the dojo. “We will resume the Way of the Panther in one hour. Until then, leave me.”

  The girls bowed and began to file outside. Elizabeth left last, lingering in the doorway, unsure if there was more she still might try to say or more she longed to hear. Hawksworth settled himself, ever so slowly, into a stooped, cross-legged squat on the floor, his back still to her, and after a long, silent moment she moved on.

  She found her sisters already gathered around Mr. Bennet.

  “—and then she kicked Master Hawksworth in the …,” Mary was saying. Her cheeks flushed pink, and she leaned toward her father, hand cupped to mouth, and whispered in his ear.

  Mr. Bennet frowned … yet it seemed to Elizabeth his eyes were smiling.

  “Why did you do it, Lizzy?” Lydia asked as she joined them.

  “Yes, tell us, Lizzy!” Kitty said. “Were you cross or simply frightened?”

  “I was being strangled. Need I really explain beyond that?”

  “Didn’t you hear the Master say the Panther’s Kiss can be used as a ‘sleeper hold’?” Mary asked. “That he could bring you to the brink of unconsciousness without doing you any harm?”

  “It is rather difficult to hear properly when being throttled,” Elizabeth replied. “Shall I demonstrate?”

  She brought her hands up toward Mary’s throat, and her sister actually blanched and hopped back behind their father.

  “No, that’s quite all right, thank you.”

  Elizabeth dropped her arms to her sides, ashamed. She knew it wasn’t her younger sisters she was angry at, thoughtless though they were.

  “The Axis of Calamity, eh?” her father said. “I’m sure that made quite an impression on the Master … and perhaps, I’m beginning to think, just where he needed one most.”

  “What do you mean, Papa?” Mary asked.

  Mr. Bennet ignored her.

  “Now, seeing as you’re back in my hands for the next hour, I’d say it’s time for something your training has, so far, entirely overlooked. Something I feel I owe you all, given the sacrifices I’ve asked you to make.”

  He paused until Jane finally asked the inevitable question.

  “Which is what, Father?”

  Mr. Bennet smiled. “Fun. There is, you will observe, a stag striking a most majestic pose upon that hilltop.”

  The girls followed his gaze to the east, and saw, not a quarter mile away, the great, antlered buck their father spoke of.

  “Kiss it.”

  “Kiss it?” Mary said.

  “Yes. Catch it and kiss it.”

  Lydia grimaced. “On the lips?”

  Mr. Bennet shrugged. “Or the nose or the cheek or whatever else you might prefer.”

  “You expect us,” Jane said slowly, “to catch a deer and hold it long enough to kiss it?”

  “Oh, goodness me, no!” Mr. Bennet chuckled. “Not all of you. But your training has, I suspect, brought you further, faster than you think, and one of you might manage it—and whichever of you it is will get the rest of the hour off to do whatever she pleases.”

  Jane was already halfway to the stag before anyone else was even running.

  Elizabeth took off after the deer with no hope of actually catching it. The big buck quickly saw the girls coming, wheeled about, and bolted. How were such as they to catch one of the fleetest creatures in the forest?

  Yet the distance between her and the hill disappeared with surprising speed, and even when she charged up the bluff and into the trees, she found herself hardly slowed at all. The deer kept to no path, of course, simply crashing through the bramble, and Elizabeth was soon doing the same—bursting through bushes, hurdling over streams and rocks, dodging tree trunks that flew past her in a smear of brown.

  All those dandbaithaks, all those laps, all those hours meditating and sparring and wielding the weight of swords and axes and heavy wooden staffs—it was working!

  All around, Elizabeth could hear her sisters laughing as they, too, discovered what they could now do. And she joined in.

  The stag began to zigzag, cutting left, then right as the girls closed in. Though Elizabeth was now closer to him than ever, he grew harder to see: The chase had led them into the darkest, thickest of thickets. Soon, all she had to guide her was the sound of the buck’s flight up ahead, but then even that began to fade. Elizabeth pushed herself harder, trying to squeeze out even more speed, and when she came to a tangle of thick vines, she sought to vault herself over it with one of the Master’s moves, the Leaping Leopard, instead of sparing the extra second to go around. She sprung up high enough to catch sight of the deer again, ghostly white shapes—her sisters in their sparring gowns—converging on it from all sides.

  Then her left foot caught on a vine, and she spun end over end to the earth.

  She landed on her left knee, rolled, landed on her back, rolled, and kept landing and rolling and landing and rolling until she finally came to a stop against the broad base of an old oak tree. She lay there for a moment, panting, and allowed herself a small indulgence she would not have otherwise engaged in even if only Jane had been there to hear it.

  “Damn.”

  When she finally dared sit up and catalogue her wounds, she found, to her infinite relief, no twigs sticking from her side, no
shattered femurs jutting from her thighs, no digits missing, no long strips of skin flapping loose and bloody. She could even stand up and limp around. So it only felt like she’d crushed every bone and organ in her body.

  She’d raced into the forest faster than a fleeing stag. Now she began hobbling out again with all the speed of a three-legged tortoise.

  Her sisters were nowhere in sight, and Elizabeth could only assume they were far off now, smothering the buck with kisses. Yet after she’d taken but a few steps back toward Longbourn, she noticed something moving off to her left—a dark shape blotting out rays of dappled sun. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one who’d fallen behind.

  She turned and started toward the shifting shadows. They were being cast by movement in a small glade, she saw as she drew closer. And there were two shapes.

  It was Kitty and Lydia, surely, the two of them taking advantage of their father’s indulgence to pause and pick wildflowers—or gossip about her and Master Hawksworth.

  But hadn’t she seen them heading the other way, mere strides behind the stag?

  The thought came to her too late. The “Lydia?” was already halfway off her lips as she stepped into the dell.

  Two dreadfuls looked her way.

  They were on the other side of the clearing, turned toward each other, as though they’d been chatting away like two friendly neighbors. One must have been weeks if not months dead, for its clothes and flesh had rotted clear through in spots, and what remained was tattered and gray. Not much was left of its face—just clumps stuck to skull, some still heavy with thick, black hair. It had sported a beard, back when it wasn’t an “it.”

  The other unmentionable was male, as well, yet it was far, far fresher. Though its skin was tinted green, it had yet to rot enough to begin falling off, and the clothes were dirty and frayed but hardly worm eaten. The mouth was set in a large O, the eyebrows arched high on its forehead. Whatever had killed it seemed to have been a considerable surprise.

  Elizabeth knew the feeling. She started to let another “Damn” slip, but caught it just in time. It seemed unwise to have a curse on her lips with Judgment so close at hand.

  The more decayed of the dreadfuls gurgled a sound at her, part growl, part groan, then began staggering toward her with startling speed.

  Fast as the zombie was, and bruised and battered as Elizabeth was, she might have outrun it had she tried. Yet something—shock, training, or mere foolishness, she had no time to decide which—kept her from turning away.

  She reached down, unsheathed the ankle dagger she’d worn to the dojo that morning, and assumed the Natural Stance. When the unmentionable was twenty feet off, she let the blade fly, and—to Elizabeth’s relieved surprise—it buried itself between the creature’s red, rheumy eyes.

  She quickly decided on her next step: retrieve the dagger from the dead dreadful’s head so she could turn on the other zombie and throw it again. Unfortunately, there was a snag to her plan.

  The dreadful didn’t die. It just kept coming toward her, arms out, mouth open wide, dagger handle jutting from its face.

  Elizabeth didn’t even get through her mantra once—“Smooth stone beneath still AHHH!”—and the unmentionable was on her, grabbing for her shoulders and snapping at her neck. She hopped back and, for the second time that morning, set a foot streaking into someone’s nether regions.

  Or some thing’s nether regions, this time. Which made all the difference.

  The unmentionable’s unmentionables might have just been squashed flat, but the creature showed no sign of noticing. Instead, it merely took hold of the foot that had been planted in its mushy-rotten groin, pulled it up toward its mouth, and leaned in for a bite. Elizabeth toppled backward to the ground, unable to do anything but watch in horror as her toes approached the dreadful’s gaping maw.

  Just before the zombie could launch into its first chomp, there was a loud pop, and a spray of black pulp shot from the side of the creature’s head. As slowly as a felled tree, the unmentionable tilted, teetered, and then toppled forward onto Elizabeth.

  By the time she managed to struggle out from under it, she found the other zombie crouching down beside her … with a smoking flintlock in its hand.

  “I do apologize,” the dreadful said. “It took me ever so long to get a clear shot.”

  __________________

  CHAPTER 14

  BY THE TIME THE UNMENTIONABLE had helped Elizabeth to her feet, it was obvious he wasn’t an unmentionable at all. He was a man—albeit one with tousled hair, filthy clothes, and face and hands smeared with either thick green greasepaint or pea soup.

  “What are you doing out here dressed like that?” Elizabeth asked, far, far too unnerved for a simple “Thank you” or “How do you do?”

  The man grinned, flashing big, pearly white teeth.

  “Testing a theory!” he enthused (and it was a disconcerting thing, seeing what looked like a dreadful enthuse). “I thought it might be possible to mingle with the zombies. Disguise life. They are frightfully dim, you know. That’s one of the few advantages we have over them. We’re easy to kill, and they’re thick as bricks. I’ve often wondered, if people didn’t make a habit of screaming and running around and such every time they saw a zombie, would the poor things even know whom to eat? Simply remaining calm might be the best defense we have, it seemed to me. Muss your hair, cock your head, and groan out a few oooohs and ahhhhs, and the undead might well shuffle right past!”

  Despite everything—her stinging scrapes and throbbing bruises, the stench of rotting flesh on the air, the lingering jolt of terror she could still feel tingling over her goosepimpled skin—Elizabeth found herself smiling back at the man.

  BY THE TIME THE UNMENTIONABLE HAD HELPED ELIZABETH TO HER FEET, IT WAS OBVIOUS HE WASN’T AN UNMENTIONABLE AT ALL.

  “Was it working?” she asked.

  “Well, no,” the man said, still grinning. “When you arrived, I do believe our friend here was about to eat me. Then perhaps you would’ve had the chance to save me. That throw you made with your knife was absolutely smashing, by the by! Had the blade been but a little larger, it would have done the job admirably. As it is, I don’t think it penetrated the medulla oblongata. That’s the trick, you know—severing the connection between the cerebellum and the spinal cord. Or, barring that, making sure there’s nothing left for the spinal cord to connect to. It’s one of the great puzzles about the zombies, if you ask me: Why would the undead need their brains? If they’re animated by, oh, evil or whatever you want to call it, how could anything purely physiological have any effect on … oh, dear. There’s something hanging from one of my nostrils, isn’t there?”

  “No, no … it’s just …”

  Elizabeth kept gaping at the man as he rubbed his rather prodigious nose. When he was done, there was a bare spot on the tip where he’d wiped away the paint, a little dot of pink shining out from the chalky green.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” Elizabeth said.

  “No, indeed. I’ve just arrived from London with a company of His Majesty’s finest. Well, I hope they’re his finest. His Majesty’s youngest and most ill trained, they seem to me. Not that I know anything about military discipline. And they’re in fine, new, spotless red coats, at least, so I suppose that counts for something. They’re all off that way.” He flapped a long arm toward the west, then reconsidered and squinted to the east. “Or was it that way? I’ve managed to get myself more than a little lost, I must admit. At any rate, the soldiers are setting up camp outside that little village close by here … somewhere.”

  “You mean Meryton?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Charming hamlet, that. A shame about the zombies.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  Elizabeth looked the man up and down again. Though he was tall and lean—clearly full grown, if nowhere near aged—there remained something childlike about him. Perhaps it was his natural exuberance, perhaps the wide, brown eyes so full of wonder. Perhaps i
t was the leaves and twigs in his dark hair, and the fact that he didn’t appear to mind them in the slightest. Whatever it was, it made him seem both irrepressibly curious and achingly vulnerable, and Elizabeth felt the strange urge to take him by the hand and ask if he’d like a piece of candy.

  “Did you bring more shot and powder for your pistol?” she asked.

  “What? Oh. Powder?” The man stared at his flintlock as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “No. If I did need this, I assumed, there’d hardly be time to reload for a second shot.”

  Elizabeth turned back to the dead dreadful stretched out on the ground and took hold of the dagger jutting from its forehead. After a little tugging, the blade popped free with a sickening slurp.

  “I think it might be best if I were to escort you back to Meryton.” She wiped the knife on the ground, then slid it back into its ankle scabbard, careful to keep any exposed leg hidden from the gentleman. “We can’t have you wandering lost alone in these woods.”

  Elizabeth waited for those big, brown eyes to blink, for the ebullience to be replaced by indignation.

  “You … escort me?” she expected to hear.

  “Splendid!” the man said instead. “That’ll give me a chance to ask about the zombies hereabouts. Was this the first one you’ve seen yourself?”

  Elizabeth answered as she led the stranger out of the woods to the nearest lane, telling him about Mr. Ford’s funeral and Lord Lumpley’s dreadful (in every sense) hunting party. He showed no sign of surprise when she mentioned her own role in both events, merely asking when she was done, “Are all Hertfordshire girls so intrepid?”

  “Only my sisters and myself, so far as I know.”

  “Ah. More’s the pity …” The stranger had been wiping his face as they walked, and now he waved his green-smeared handkerchief the way they’d just come. “And what of that poor soul back there? Did you recognize him?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “There wasn’t much left one could recognize.”