by Jack Dann
White muttered curses and shook his head as he passed the glass back to me.
‘What make ye of yon slaughter?’ he asked.
The vast mob had piled up at a stone barrier, waist high, which impeded all forward motion. Not a one of them attempted to mount it, as modest an obstruction as it was. Instead they stood rocking back and forth in a rhythmic motion, moaning as one while they were methodically felled by scarifying gunfire. The thing of it was this. Every single shot seemed aimed at their faces. Only once or twice did I witness a round strike home below the neckline, and then with the most salutary effect — which is to say none at all. From a short observation it became apparent that these monsters were immune to all but the most serious of wounds, a lead ball sent directly into their brains.
And monsters they were. Less than one hundred yards now separated us from the nearest of them and such propinquity allowed of an uncomfortably intimate inspection.
‘They should be dead,’ avowed the good Surgeon White. ‘Look at them, Tench. Just look at them.’
He did not need to reiterate the suggestion. I could not look away. I stood transfixed by that phantasmagorical sight. The recently imbibed grog lay unsteady in my vitals, threatening to rise as the stench of them assaulted us. One does not like to speak ill of the dead, gentlemen, but here I must. No member of that horrific rabble was whole of body. Their exposed flesh was a rich palate of advanced decay and gangrenous mortification, shining in sickly hues of mottled greens and grays. All manner of atrocity and flagellation had been visited upon their flesh. I witnessed those with limbs hanging by the merest thread of skin, with guts opened and viscera spilling, throats torn and faces flapping, jaw and skull bones shining whitely in the dawning morn’.
And the stench! The smell of the Scourge, the high, putrid, stomach-churning reek that accompanies them, is not easily conceived unless experienced by prior ill fortune. The lowest bilge or the ripest midden is as nothing to the miasma that emanated from that dreadful horde. There is something about the infection that seems to magnify the natural aromas of decay and effluvium the human body produces post mortem, such that even from our removed vantage, I was struck quite physically by the rankness that reached out to us. I heard several of the crew retching beside me, and felt my own gorge rise, yet with an effort I regained control and turned back to Surgeon White.
‘What hell is this, sir?’ I asked in shaking timbre. ‘Some malady of the soul and the flesh? A disorder of the mind? Some voodoo curse? I have seen Zombees of the Carib, Doctor, but naught of them do I see here. Here I see but monsters.’
‘Aye,’ said White, his voice a whisper, a drift of ash. ‘Monsters. Captain Tench,’ he continued, reaching a moment of decision. His speech accelerated like a fast steam ship with boilers roaring. ‘I cannot vouch for my speculations but on the evidence I must avow to a suspicion that some malady is at work here. Some sort of rabid infection, perhaps transferred in the saliva, or in the blood itself. I must advise you, sir, to order your men that under no circumstances are they to come to grips with these fiends, even if it means surrendering honour to expedience and retreating in the face of them. Destroy the head, sir. They must destroy the head by whatever means available, but not by hand to hand combat. A club, a sword, a bayonet thrust directly into the brain pan. Anything to stay beyond arm’s length. Ball and powder, of course, would be best.’
He grew wistful at that, squinting at the distant rifle company of Fort Denison. I knew that he, just like I, was wishing to Our Lord for weapons such as those as yet unknown allies did enjoy.
I called up Sergeant Baker and bade him in the strongest terms to pass on the physician’s warning. The first of the convicts appeared from below, blinking in the light, and dealing with a thousand confusions, not the least of which were occasioned by the armaments pressed on them. Baker and his men pushed them forward to the gunwale, with furious and lurid imprecations to do their duty as Christians and Englishmen, no matter how poorly they had once measured up as subjects of the crown.
Now musket shot began to pour upon the mob from the decks of our own vessels, our meagre volleys adding drips and drops to the flood of fire still raging from the fort. Only a broadside from the Sirius, unexpected and terrifying, drowned out the staccato uproar, and then but briefly. The withering cannonade of grapeshot from half of one dozen six pounders and three of her eighteen pound pieces swept over the foul assemblage onshore like an evil wind, disarticulating rotten arms and legs, bifurcating trunks like hollow tree stumps, turning whole bodies to a rancid mist and yet … and yet … still some lived! If living it could be called. With a hand now preternaturally steady I raised glass to eye again and surveyed the carnage only to reel inwardly at the vision of some demonic wretches, inadequately fragmented by the broadside, dragging what remained of their leavings back towards the water’s edge. An intact cranium attached to a half or more of torso appeared to be vessel enough to contain whatever motive force drove them on. Only a discrete blow to the brain itself provided an assured coup de grace.
As orders to this effect rang out across the fleet, including from myself to all the fighting men aboard good Charlotte, I watched as her gig, almost forgotten in the wider horror, reached the woman and child. Both flung themselves into the reaching arms and hands of our gallant tars as though attempting to jump from a boiling pot. One of the poor, brave men, however, not swift enough to escape a reaching, rotted claw, suddenly screamed and toppled over into the water, which began to boil around his thrashing form. The foam turned red and he soon disappeared below. No order to heave to was needed. The small boat crew leaned into their oars with vigour inflamed by mortal terror as they raced back towards their mother ship.
As escapees and rescuers scrambled up the nets of the Charlotte, dripping nightmares followed them and I was thankfully spared leisured contemplation of the morning’s wickedness by the demands of our defence. The nets I had cut away with all despatch, and those few devils who made it to the top before the severance were held off with gaffing hooks while a single shot to the head was organised and administered by Sergeant Baker.
The poor woman was delirious with fear and her boy shaking as though possessed by a fit of St Vitus. ‘Sweet mother of Christ,’ White called out over his shoulder as he hurried to their aid. ‘Look upon fresh hell, Captain Tench.’
I followed where he pointed and felt my gorge rise as I too comprehended the new and awful exigencies of this battle. Four of our transports packed with convicts, stores and livestock had withdrawn to a safe distance from the fray, or so it had seemed. But these most exemplary precautions had taken them beneath the span of that great steel bridge and whilst all had been distracted by the terrible spectre of the walking dead to our port, on starboard an horrendous mise-en-scène unfolded. Hundreds of ghouls dropped through the air like fat, blackened fruits. Descent and the prospect of destruction upon impact seemed not to bother them at all and quickly I was given to comprehend the reason of it.
Even as their bodies struck spars and mast, parting in an obscene spray of chunk and offal, the ruined vestiges smashed into wooden decks and, presuming no damage to the cranium ensued, they recommenced their assault. Many simply speared into the deep, and many were indeed destroyed by the crushing or severing of skulls. But enough made it down there, gentlemen. Enough.
I shudder now to think of it, even though my own sight of the holocaust was oft impeded by distance and the intervening bulk of our other ships. Through the glass I saw all that I needed. A score or more of the plague carriers made the Borrowdale while I looked on, all but helpless. Some of the fiends survived by mere dint of crashing down atop some unfortunate crewman or marine and, horror upon horror, commenced without delay to feast upon them. The screams which reached across the water and over the uproar of gunfire will follow me to the very gates of heaven, where I can only hope I might finally receive blessed surcease. Just one incident of this satanic cannibalism did I allow myself to witness, and that because I
could not avert my eyes in time. I confess myself paralysed by the horror. Half a devil fell upon one of the few free woman travelling with the Fleet, the wife of a comrade indeed, and well known to me from the advantage of fond memories. I recognised her at a distance from her gay bonnet and parasol, which I well remember from pleasant walks with that poor family about the common of their village back in Dorset.
The thing which struck her — for although science tells me it had once been a man or woman, I could not now privilege it with any appellation beyond that of a foul and soulless object — the thing, trailing gizzards and great ropey lengths of corruption, crashed into her shoulder and drove her to the deck. Would that the force of the blow had killed poor ––-. Alas she was but momentarily stunned, and quickly revived by the painful stimulus of first one, then two, then three of these creatures making a meal of her. Brave woman that she was she cried out her defiance and had at them with the only weapon to hand, her broken parasol. I saw it rise and fall repeatedly, but to no effect, and the resistance soon ended as all life ran from her wounds. As horrific as this was, worse followed as my colleague’s only love soon rose from the heap of her tormentors, and now suffering the most appalling disfigurements, joined in the assault on her former friends and shipmates. I saw her bite the neck of a corporal of marines whose only fault was to attempt to spirit her to safety and as he fell with great jets of his lifeblood painting the ambulatory corpse of––-, I turned away.
As any professional military man will attest, however, there is much succour to be had in attachment to duty and necessity. Of that I had an elegant sufficiency, as we now found ourselves ordered by the Flagship to sail into the diseased heart of that horrendous encounter beneath the bridge, there to take on any survivors who might yet escape.
Pride is a deadly sin, gentlemen, but I am proud that not a man amongst us on that day resiled from certain death, and what was more, from equally certain damnation. Even the prisoners, now armed with the means to revolt if they so wished, proved themselves not entirely beyond redemption as each gripped whatever weapon they now held and, spitting either prayers or curses at their fate, made ready at the end to die as free men. For none of us saw any way in which we might possibly achieve the stated aim of our orders. We were surely headed to our doom.
Our passage there was not without incident, as you might imagine. We were increasingly besieged by those waterlogged corpses drawn to us by the flight of the woman and child. A veritable raft of them did form o’er the next minutes, a floating carpet of moaning reaching phantoms that surrounded every ship on all sides, necessitating much cooperation between the firing parties of each vessel, and our new chums in the fort.
My own makeshift force however, I ordered to hold fire, knowing that we would presently require every advantage accruing to us through the possession of a well stocked armoury. Master Gilbert brought the helm around for a rendezvous with the Lady Penhryn, the nearest vessel, upon which a furious but sadly hopeless struggle was enjoined. It was vexing. Of all of the ships of the Fleet, the Lady, with the majority of women transportees, had but two lieutenants and three privates of His Majesty’s Marine Forces. A small, valiant party still held out on the quarterdeck, where these three marines and the same number of tars blocked all attempts by the shambling hordes to have at a dozen or more screaming women and children clustered at the stern.
Below them lay many corpses of the dead, in pieces. They stabbed, slashed and hacked at a solid writhing mass of reanimated flesh as it all but poured up the steps towards them. The deadly winnowing education of combat had taught these few defenders the efficacy of striking only at the heads or their attackers, among whom, I am sorry to say, were numbered many former comrades and shipmates, including the afore mentioned regimental officers, both friends of mine while the light of God had flickered within their breasts.
Sergeant Baker had a firing line of our marines drawn up in short order and I instructed them with all despatch.
‘Aim for their heads, lads,’ I called out. ‘The heads and … fire!’
Ten flints struck as one, followed by a single roar. The gun smoke lifted to reveal a small clearing, felled in the midst of that evil mass.
The second line stood forward and unleashed their volley in the same fashion to even greater effect and the rousing cheers of the Charlotte’s complement. Sadly I saw one of Lady’s marines slip and slide into the flailing mob, screaming proud defiance to the end. His partner smashing his skull as he fell, before returning to the dreadful repetitive work of cracking monster heads with a pair of iron bars.
I saw, a dozen chains away, a similar battle raging on the decks of the Sirius which had drawn up beside the Golden Grove and I could but wish them Godspeed.
Our own trial began at this point as we had drifted within the shadow of the giant bridge and exposed ourselves to invasion from above.
‘Look to the skies,’ I called out as Sergeant Baker began to roar at his reserve of armed prisoners, goading them from their fearful reverie as the very first crash of a demon slamming into the boards of our own deck resounded. A terrible, dull, crunching thud it was, an impact which speared the beast headfirst into solid oak, thus ending the immediate threat, but only for a moment.
They soon came upon us as a biblical rain of toads. Dark, heavy and pounding down like the fists of Satan himself. What a job of work it was, maintaining an orderly supporting fire upon the vile horde of inhumanity that had infested the for’ard decks of the Lady Penrhyn, whilst all the time being mindful that something worse than death was probably plummeting towards one from the heavens.
But Baker, a soldier’s soldier, had done my job for me, as the very best of non-commissioned men will always do. A corporal and five privates all armed with Ferguson pistols and axes were duly detailed to the single task of spotting imminent and unwanted arrivals on board the Charlotte and warning any who stood in danger of being thus felled to move themselves with extreme haste. Such of those vile creatures which did make it down relatively intact and hungry for fresh meat, were consigned to oblivion by this party, all save for one.
A scrape and the metallic clink of chains upon the deck sounded behind me. I turned and was confronted by a woman. One of ours gone over to the darkness. Her white, dead eyes and a slack jaw identified her as being contaminated. Shocked, I saw the child at her breast still suckling but it too had been cursed. She looked at me and uttered one, guttural word … ‘B r a i n s’ … as she reached out to me with a clawed hand. I had become immotile, this woman had given life to her child on our perilous voyage and I had promised to bear witness to her wedding with William Bryant and now …
A sick-making crunch cut off her rasping call for my grey matter and she toppled like a rotten tree given out at the roots. An iron axe head protruded from her cleaved open skull and behind her stood the near naked woman we had rescued from the fore court of the Opera House.
‘I am most grateful, madam …’ I began, but lost my words as she stepped forward and despatched the zombie child with a shot from what I took to be a pistol, although its design was in kin with the sharp angles and prepossessing bulk of so much machinery in this benighted hellhole.
‘Sweet as,’ she said tightly and somewhat incongruously before striding to the gunwale, taking a spot in the firing line as though a woman might do such a thing without a second thought, and unloading a second helping of death, this time permanent, upon the hellish multitude there swarming. Like her fellows on the stone fort, she handled a firearm with preternatural ability, placing her ball seemingly wherever she chose.
Good Charlotte crunched into the flanks of her dying sister ship, and lines to the embattled party were made fast as every muzzle available to us was trained upon the remaining ghouls. Now sitting directly under the bridge, we were spared the airborne hazard for the moment and could concentrate our best efforts upon effecting the escape of our comrades.
Many, if not all of you, will have read Surgeon White’s account of th
e rescue, which I must tell you fails miserably in one respect, by neglecting to credit the surgeon with his own most fearless role. A wide plank did he have laid between our vessels and with two pistols in hand he proceeded over, heedless of the fatal seas alive with the undead just beneath his feet. One unfortunate pitch or toss and he would have joined them down there.
More tars and marines followed him, setting up an impenetrable barrier past which none without a soul might pass. In this way, with safety lines secured to the few surviving passengers of the Lady Penrhyn, did we evacuate that poor accursed wrack.
Others, I am afraid, were not as fortunate. Whether by ill luck or lack of fair preparation, the Sirius did not return from her mission. She was overrun, and with her the other store ships and transports. Our commanders signalled us to withdraw from any further contretemps beneath the bridge, and, barring a short interlude where once again we received the enemy from above, we repaired from the battle without much further incident.
I deduce by the strained faces before me tonight that I have done enough to present to you some intimation of our vile circumstances, but, gentlemen, believe me when I say that whatever repulsion you may feel, was felt one thousand fold in our gullets on that day. Indeed, it would not be much of an exaggeration to admit to you that a shadow of repugnance has followed me through my days ever since.
And yet, I stand here, before my friends and colleagues, ready to bear witness and to avow my preparedness to do whatever necessary to preserve this realm from the terror of the Scourge, which every day threatens to spread beyond the Forbidden Seas to infect virgin lands and souls.
It cannot pass, gentlemen. And it shall not. Not while the British Empire stands vigilant and immeasurably strengthened by the scientific wonders salvaged from that dead city inexplicably cast down amongst us from the godforsaken wastes of the twenty-second century.
