Dawn of the Dreadfuls

by Steve Hockensmith

  “True. Yet from his clothes and what was left of his hair, I fancy we could whip up a hypothesis, or make a decent guess, at least. Now …”

  The young man—for such he turned out to be when the paint came off his face—tapped a long finger against his chin.

  “When I came across him in that clearing, he was crawling around stuffing voles in his mouth. I saw no sign of fresh soil upon him, nor was that a shroud he wore—it was shabby, worn clothing. A wild-haired, bearded fellow, he seemed to be, as well. So. Supposition: He was a nomadic peddler or vagabond who died in the woods some time ago, perhaps at the hands of a gentleman of the road, perhaps lost in foul weather, perhaps … oh, I don’t know. Perhaps he was eaten by voles. It would explain his lust for revenge upon them. At any rate, he was never buried—which would be in keeping with the other zombies seen in the vicinity of late, as none so far have dug their way from an actual grave.”

  The man looked over at Elizabeth, obviously eager for her thoughts on his theory. He quickly furrowed his brow and brushed at his beak of a nose.

  Without meaning to, she’d been giving him that look again.

  “May I ask you a few questions?” she said.

  “Certainly … so long as ‘Were you dropped on your head as a child?’ isn’t among them. I’ve grown rather tired of that one.”

  “It’s actually The Zed Word I’m wondering about.”

  “Zombie? What of it?”

  “Well, there it is again. You use it. Quite liberally.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “It’s not polite.”

  The young man threw his arms out and railed up at the heavens. “Oh, we can’t have that, can we? We can’t go around being impolite when we’re about to be overrun by reanimated cadavers! Egad—the English! How can we face a problem squarely when we can’t even bring ourselves to name it?”

  And just as suddenly as it had begun, the tirade ended, and the man looked into Elizabeth’s eyes and smiled.

  “What else were you wondering about?”

  “Who are you?”

  The question popped out with far less subtlety than Elizabeth would have preferred, and the man opened his eyes wide again, clapping a hand to his cheek as if he’d just been slapped.

  “Oh, dear me! I’ve done it again! I am forever forgetting the importance of proper introductions. As there is no one here to do the honors for us …” He cleared his throat and, without missing a step, offered Elizabeth a bow. “Dr. Bertram Keckilpenny, at your service.”

  Elizabeth hoped her eyebrows didn’t fly up too high at that “Doctor.” Keckilpenny’s intelligence was obvious, but he hardly seemed old enough to be anything but a particularly gifted (and eccentric) second-year at Cambridge.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Elizabeth Bennet.”

  It seemed horribly forward, introducing herself like that, and she felt all the more self-conscious when Keckilpenny goggled his eyes at her yet again.

  “Bennet, you say? Bennet, Bennet, Bennet. Hmm. It seems to me that name’s ever so important, somehow. You’re not famous are you, Miss Bennet?”

  “Me?” Elizabeth laughed. “No, I should think not.”

  The laughter died on her lips when she saw what stood in their path.

  Up the lane a way was one of her neighbors—a gossip-prone crone by the name of Mrs. Adams. The old woman was watching their approach with a mix of horror and exhilaration on her face. She obviously couldn’t wait to tell someone, anyone, of what she’d seen, and she wouldn’t have far to go to do it, either: Meryton was just around the next bend.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Adams!” Elizabeth called to her.

  The woman managed a brusque nod, then turned and scurried toward town.

  “Your question has proved prophetic, Doctor,” Elizabeth said. “I believe I soon will be famous in these parts. Notorious, even … if I’m not already.”

  It took Keckilpenny a moment to grasp her meaning, so far removed were his thoughts from propriety and the need to keep up appearances.

  “Ahhhhh.” He looked over at Elizabeth’s dirty, blood-speckled sparring gown, then down at his own shabby attempt to dress like a moldy old dreadful. “Well, I should think any young lady able to face a zombie without flinching wouldn’t have any trouble facing her neighbors.”

  And he offered Elizabeth his arm.

  She smiled gratefully and accepted, and the two of them strolled into Meryton with the stately grace of a lord and his lady about to be announced at a court ball. Elizabeth kept up conversation with Dr. Keckilpenny all through town, singling out points of particular interest to him (St. Chad’s Church, the adjacent graveyard, the haberdashery where Emily Ward had once worked), the better to blot out the titters and whispers from all around. The shock and shame of being uninvited to the ball had nearly killed her mother, and now this scene—when, inevitably, relayed back to Longbourn by her Aunt Philips—might well finish the job.

  Elizabeth silently castigated herself for thinking of this, even ever so briefly, as a possible silver lining to her humiliation.

  She finally found refuge from her neighbors’ reproachful stares when they reached the village green, for here it was soldiers doing all the staring. Some were putting up white-peaked tents, others were in the midst of marching drills complete with fife and drum, yet all (it seemed to Elizabeth) had their eyes on her.

  “Porter!” Dr. Keckilpenny called to one of them. “I say, Private Porter!”

  The soldier peered at him in confusion, then said, “It’s Corporal Parker, Sir.”

  “Yes, yes, Parker, Parker. Do be a good fellow and fetch the colonel, would you? There’s someone here I think he should meet.”

  “Very good, Sir. I’ll go get the captain.”

  Cpl. Parker favored Elizabeth with a smirk before hustling away.

  “I’m afraid I must bid you au revoir, Miss Bennet,” Dr. Keckilpenny said, and he tapped the side of his head with a crooked finger. “There is fresh data here, much of it, and I must set it all down in my journals before it degrades. Friend Parker’s name I can get wrong—as I get almost all names wrong until I’ve known someone at least a decade—but science demands precision. Before we part, however, I must thank you for taking the time and care to guide me here safely. You have my deepest gratitude,” the young man put his hands over his heart, “and admiration. Ah! Capt. Cannon!”

  The doctor looked off to the left, and before Elizabeth turned that way, too, she might have guessed from the sound of squeaking axles and grass being flattened that someone was pushing a wheelbarrow their way. As indeed someone was, though it wasn’t so much a wheelbarrow as a wheeled man.

  Strapped to a seatback mounted on a small cart was a big, bluff officer with bushy white eyebrows and mustache and mutton chops … and no arms or legs.

  “Limbs, halt!” he barked.

  The soldiers pushing him—one for each wooden shaft of the wheelbarrow—came to a sudden stop.

  “Dr. Keckilpenny,” the torso-man growled, “I’ve had two squads out combing the countryside for you when I can’t spare so much as—”

  “Oh, I know, I know, apologies, apologies!” Dr. Keckilpenny said cheerfully, and he began hurrying off into the camp. “But I’m back now, thanks to the young lady here. Allow me to introduce Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Miss Bennet—Capt. Cannon. Good-bye now. Must dash!”

  He darted around a tent and was gone.

  It seemed a decidedly unchivalrous exit, abandoning her to the fuming glower of a stranger, and such a truly strange one, at that.

  Capt. Cannon took a moment to look Elizabeth up and down—then surprised her with a warm smile.

  “You wouldn’t be a relation of Mr. Oscar Bennet, would you?”

  “Indeed, I would. He is my father.”

  “Capital!” the captain boomed. “Then once you’re rested and refreshed, you may lead me straight to him. He’s just the man we’ve come here to see!”

  ______________
____

  CHAPTER 15

  CAPT. CANNON’S GOOD CHEER didn’t last long: He turned grim again when Elizabeth told him, in answer to his question about her scrapes and bruises, that some she’d acquired courtesy of an unmentionable not half an hour before.

  “Limbs! Lean!”

  The soldiers behind him tilted his little cart up on its front wheel, lifting the armless, legless man closer to Elizabeth’s ear.

  “The dreadful,” Capt. Cannon whispered. “He didn’t nip you, did he?”

  “No.”

  The captain sighed with relief. He obviously knew firsthand what had to be done after a nip from an unmentionable.

  “Limbs! Pace!” he commanded, and his attendants lowered him again and began wheeling him first this way, then that. “So. Another rotter already. Blast!”

  “We’ve encountered one other unmentionable, as well,” Elizabeth said. “Aside from Mr. Ford, I mean. He was the first, from the church. I assume it was news of his … awakening that brought you to Meryton?”

  “Precisely. Your father has friends in London who … ah! Lieutenant Tindall! What splendid timing. Limbs! Halt!”

  The captain’s “pacing” stopped just as a handsome, flaxen-haired young officer came striding up to offer a crisp salute.

  “Sir,” Lt. Tindall said, “we never found him.”

  “That’s because he’s back in his tent scribbling in his journals. Miss Bennet here was kind enough to return him to us.”

  “Miss Bennet?”

  The young man turned a curious stare on Elizabeth. She thought she caught a slight wrinkling of his nose when he noticed her contusions and dirt-smeared sparring dress.

  “That’s right,” Capt. Cannon said. “She’ll be taking me to her father forthwith. And, Lieutenant, the game’s afoot. I will require an escort. Regroup your search party and report back here.”

  “Right away, Sir.”

  Lt. Tindall saluted again and hurried off.

  “He’s been out looking for Dr. Keckilpenny?” Elizabeth asked the captain.

  “Yes. Our ‘necrosis consultant’—whatever that is—managed to get himself lost all of thirty minutes after we reached Meryton. And the doctor might be young … and inexperienced … and rather an odd duck, truth be told …”

  Capt. Cannon seemed to lose his train of thought, and Elizabeth prodded him with what she guessed his next word was meant to be. “But …?”

  “But the War Office wanted him with us, so I couldn’t let him stay lost. I see the lieutenant’s ready for us. Shall we, Miss Bennet?”

  And so began the march to Longbourn. The soldiers did most of the marching, actually. Elizabeth simply walked, though she kept finding herself stepping in time to the tromp-tromp-tromp of the infantrymen’s heavy footfalls. Lt. Tindall was to one side of her, Capt. Cannon and his Limbs to the other, while behind were a dozen troops, each with a Brown Bess on his shoulder.

  As if Elizabeth’s entry into Meryton hadn’t attracted notice enough, now she was leaving at the head of a parade. At least this time no one laughed.

  It would have been impossible to carry on a quiet conversation with the captain now that the under-greased wheels of his cart were squeaking and rumbling along the road, so Elizabeth turned to Lt. Tindall instead. He presented quite a pleasing profile, yet with his ramrod bearing and unwavering gaze—never blinking, always straight ahead—he hardly seemed amenable to banter, and she said nothing. Of course, it wouldn’t do for her to make conversation with the foot soldiers, either (though they were all around Elizabeth’s own age and seemed much more prone to friendly smiles than she would’ve imagined battle-hardened warriors to be). So it was a long, silent, awkward journey back to Longbourn.

  As they neared her family’s small estate, Elizabeth became aware of a very different sort of discomfort than mere embarrassment. A strange chill was running up and down her arms and over the back of her neck, and it seemed to grow stronger with each step. It wasn’t a cool breeze; the air was dead still and unseasonably warm. It was more like her skin was feeling some other swirl in the ether, not a wind but a shift. A change.

  A presence.

  They were just passing the spot on the road she’d led Dr. Keckilpenny to from the forest sometime before. The dreadful the young doctor had killed would be but sixty or seventy yards off, hidden behind hillocks and bramble. Elizabeth dredged up the memory of it, trying to recall every detail, each dollop of gore upon the ground.

  Was it possible to stun a dreadful? Could one of the sorry stricken be knocked unconscious but not killed?

  Did a zombie still prowl the woods around Longbourn?

  Instinctively, Elizabeth looked over at Capt. Cannon, as she would have turned to her father had he been there. Or Master Hawksworth.

  “It’s the stench,” the captain said, and Elizabeth knew he was speaking to her though he was peering off into the woods. “Even when you don’t know you’re smelling it, you are.”

  “Sir?” Lt. Tindall said. He hadn’t noticed a thing.

  “On your guard, men,” the captain rumbled.

  The soldiers slowed their march to a scuffling stumble, and Lt. Tindall put his hand to the hilt of his sword.

  Elizabeth suddenly missed her katana.

  “There’s the bugger!” one of the soldiers cried out, pointing at a huge, knot-rippled tree up ahead.

  Standing beside it was a shadowy figure cloaked in black.

  “It’s a flippin’ road agent!” another soldier laughed, sounding relieved.

  Indeed, Elizabeth could see as they drew slowly closer, the man was wearing a mask and tricornered hat, and he had a flintlock pistol clutched in his right hand.

  “Why, it must be the Black Thistle!”

  “The what?” Lt. Tindall said.

  “A highwayman,” Elizabeth explained. “Hertfordshire’s most infamous. But he hasn’t been heard from in months.”

  “The knife in his belly accounts for that, I’ll wager,” Capt. Cannon said.

  The soldiers all stopped, even the Limbs, though the captain hadn’t told them to halt.

  Capt. Cannon was right. Jutting from the bandit’s side, pinning his cloak tight to his body, was the rough-hewn wooden handle of a large knife.

  “Eep,” a soldier said.

  “Bloody ’ell,” muttered another.

  The Black Thistle unleashed a blood-freezing shriek and came charging toward them at a lurching lope.

  “Fire at will,” Capt. Cannon said coolly.

  Unfortunately, no one had the will to fire. Half the captain’s soldiers tossed down their muskets. All of them turned and ran.

  “Blast,” Capt. Cannon groaned, sounding more resigned than surprised or angry. His Limbs had turned and run off, too, so all he could do was watch the unmentionable come straight at him, its black cloak flapping as it ran.

  Elizabeth drew her ankle dagger and stepped in front of the captain’s cart, praying her second throw of the day would prove deadlier than the first.

  She never even got a chance to try it. Lt. Tindall immediately stepped in front of her, pushing her aside with a sweep of the arm that sent her stumbling back into what would have been the captain’s lap, if he’d had one.

  “Run!” the lieutenant yelled, bringing up his sword as the dreadful closed in. “You might yet escape!”

  “I don’t want to!” Elizabeth started to say.

  The unmentionable leapt at them with another deafening shriek.

  Lt. Tindall impaled it on his sword.

  The zombie grabbed the soldier’s head and stuffed it into its mouth.

  Fortunately for the lieutenant, there were two things in the way of a clean bite: the dreadful’s black mask and his own high-peaked shako hat. Bits of both were disappearing down the creature’s gullet as Lt. Tindall frantically jerked his sword this way and that in its belly, dislodging chunks of ragged, desiccated flesh it seemed to miss not at all. The zombie just kept chomping away, oblivious in its rapacity, holding Lt
. Tindall in place with gray, scaly hands … in one of which, Elizabeth noticed, it still clutched its flintlock pistol.

  The hammer was cocked.

  Elizabeth dropped her dagger, sprang toward the unmentionable, and tried to pry the flintlock from its grip. She quickly got the gun—and the hand wrapped around it, as well. It snapped off at the wrist with a dry crackle.

  The zombie threw Lt. Tindall aside and turned toward Elizabeth.

  “Give my regards to Satan,” she said, and she brought up the flintlock and pulled back on the finger still wrapped around the trigger.

  The hammer came down with a dull click … and that was it. Even if there were any powder left in the pistol, it had long since been turned to useless grit by rain and frost.

  “Drat,” said Elizabeth, though even to her own ears this sounded woefully inadequate, considering the calamity at hand.

  The dreadful took two steps toward her. Somewhere between the first and the second, its head was sliced off by two different swords that met in the middle of its neck. It took the rest of its body a moment to notice, though, and it pitched forward into the dirt with its legs still trying to walk.

  “Ewwww,” said Kitty as the Black Thistle convulsed and finally died.

  “La!” said Lydia, her katana, like her sister’s, smeared with black slime. “Oh, Lizzy, if you could only see the look on your face!”

  __________________

  CHAPTER 16

  ONCE HE’D PICKED HIMSELF UP and carefully dusted himself off, Lt. Tindall deigned to thank Elizabeth’s sisters. But there was an icy edge to his tone, Elizabeth thought, especially when compared to Capt. Cannon’s warm compliments on the girls’ courage and prowess. Lydia and Kitty seemed not to notice the younger man’s frostiness, however. In fact, they barely glanced at the captain, as the lieutenant’s fair-haired, square-jawed comeliness proved so mesmerizing it trumped even the sight of an armless, legless man riding in a wheelbarrow.

  The headless, lifeless man lying in the road they ignored, too, though it was easier to see the effort that required. As soon as they could, both girls put their backs to the body, and when Lt. Tindall trundled his commander away so that they might “regroup the column,” their inevitable titters sounded, at first, forced and joyless.