Frankenstein's Legions

by John Whitbourn

  The Versailles community had gotten used to seeing the eminent doctor up to funny business, or leastways at the centre of peculiar scenes. Add to that a purely natural human aversion to Lazaran company, and in present circumstances Julius became almost invisible. Down numerous broad flights of stairs and along interminable gaudy corridors, he led his latest brew of less-than-life without challenge.

  Which, on the minus side, left him prey to his own thoughts. The temptation to skip this detour and simply head to his ultimate destination grew stronger with each step. Any interlude—let alone one of the sort envisaged—was squaring, maybe cubing, the already massive risk.

  But there’s solace and virtue in keeping going, and just walking is a classic cure for melancholy. By the time they were drawing near, Frankenstein had got a grip. The realisation came to him that when even the basic danger was mad and monstrous then multiplying it didn’t actually make much difference. Whatever he did, the end was probably nigh and there was cold comfort in that.

  So thinking, he came to the interrogation suite. There was the usual guard before its outer door. He knew Frankenstein by sight and still more about him by repute. Presumably it was that which caused a curled lip.

  ‘Yes, monsieur?’

  ‘There are two trespassers under interview. I was asked to pop in and see how things are progressing.’

  He wasn’t just any old guard (or Old Guard) designed to stand there and look menacing. This one was a cut above and authorised to ask questions, even exercise discretion.

  ‘Why?’

  Julius stood his ground.

  ‘I knew them from outside. I can corroborate their statements.’

  He was halfway there, but objections remained. A squad of them to be precise. The guard nodded at Frankenstein’s friends.

  ‘Why the company? I don’t see how they’ll help much...’

  Julius looked back, as if he’d quite forgotten there were Lazarans trailing after him.

  ‘Oh, they’re for later,’ he said. ‘Duties elsewhere. They can wait here.’

  You could see the guard was thinking ‘Oh joy! Their dead eyes all staring at me...’

  ‘I’ll check,’ he said. ‘Maybe you can take them in with you...’

  Maybe, maybe not. The question was never resolved. It transpired they were not required either in or out of the room.

  When the Guard cracked the door to enquire there were others more impatient than he. They got in before him. And in him.

  A stiletto blade shot from the ajar gap. It penetrated the Guard’s head with an ease suggesting abnormal force. Then, generating sounds Julius vowed to forget lest he lose sleep ever after, the blade’s tip reappeared. Hello again, it might have said, protruding an inch beyond the guard’s busby, and spat blood and matter.

  In fastidious reflex action, Frankenstein brushed the offending stuff from his lapel. It left a smear, a memento of the Guard’s billion+ brain cells and the memories they’d contained. Now all gone, alas, just like their former owner.

  Then an arm, brawny and blood-flecked, shot out from behind the door. It encompassed the dead Guard’s neck and drew him in, like a bouncer dealing with a drunk.

  If he’d been of that vast majority termed sensible, Julius would have been heading backwards at speed. However, the urgency of his mission overruled his feet. That and the fact that the arm seemed familiar.

  Limbs are generic, and pretty or plain according to type rather than stand-out. However, tattoos do help people distinguish. Julius was helped to think he’d seen this one before—and in a context that was benign. Or fairly so.

  Nevertheless, given what had just occurred, his staying put was an (in)action of high anti-sense—and his next act the category above that (should such exist).

  Julius tapped upon the door.

  ‘Hello? Anyone home?’

  There was and they were listening.

  ‘Is that...? Herr Frankenstein, is that you?’

  ‘It is, Foxglove, it is. How are you?’

  The door was flung open. There stood Foxglove with Lady Lovelace beside him.

  ‘Can’t complain,’ answered the servant. ‘In the circumstances...’

  Whatever the circumstances, he surely did have grounds for complaint. Life had obviously not been kind of late and what wasn’t bruise was caked blood. One eye was swollen closed but the other was clearly pleased to see a friendly face for a change.

  ‘No?’ said Julius. ‘Well, I’m sure you know best, Foxglove’

  ‘No he doesn’t,’ butted in Ada. ‘That’s my job.’

  Simultaneously, both sides realised there were wider perspectives to take in. Behind Frankenstein’s ‘friendly face’ were a gaggle of dead-white ones. Behind Lady Lovelace and her flunky lay a picture of carnage.

  ‘How...?’ said Julius.

  ‘Who...?’ asked Ada.

  They cancelled each other out but Julius, being a gentleman, deferred to the lady.

  ‘They are with me and harmless,’ he explained away his Lazaran company, before adding out of honesty: ‘for the moment. Things are afoot...’

  ‘Hmmm...,’ assessed Ada, just like her old self.

  Julius took stock of the battlefield scene behind Ada’s shoulder. One, two, three, deceased interrogators were visible, slumped as they had fallen. Frankenstein indicated his close study should be taken as a silent question.

  ‘Neither you nor God seemed minded to intervene,’ said Lady Lovelace, ‘so we had to save ourselves. Poor Foxglove couldn’t hold out much longer.’

  ‘But how?’ Julius persisted. The last time he’d seen them both were bound.

  ‘Time hung heavy whilst we scoured France for you,’ Ada said, glancing up and down the corridor to confirm privacy continued. ‘So I had this fitted.’

  She lifted her right arm and let her sleeve fall. A sudden upward flick of the wrist caused the previously seen stiletto to shoot out with speed. It quivered to a halt mere inches from Frankenstein’s face.

  Julius was doubly impressed. The weapon emanated from under the skin and must be lodged alongside the long bone.

  ‘One of the precious few advantages to Lazaran lack of feeling,’ Ada explained. ‘Muscles can be arranged to either fire or retract it.’

  She admired the now tarnished blade against the light.

  ‘Pretty much immune to body searches!’ Ada paid tribute to someone’s workmanship. ‘Leastways, the frogs didn’t detect it, so I sawed through my restraints and beckoned a torturer close. Then...-’

  ‘… He came close,’ interrupted Foxglove, made bold by feeling the fairer sex shouldn’t swap murder-notes. ‘Suffice it to say, Milady dispatched him and came to my aid whereupon I...-’

  His turn to be cut off in full flow.

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Julius, waving aside the doubtless vile tale. ‘My imagination will supply all additional detail. Meanwhile, suffice it for me to say well done: hurrah! Also time runs short: will you join me?’

  ‘That was our intention,’ snapped Ada, ‘even if only to use this on you...’ Again she raised her armed-arm. Her point made, she then retracted the stiletto into its fleshy holster. Julius heard springs creaking and finally the click of a catch.

  Yet Julius was not yet totally absolved. Nor trusted.

  ‘How come you keep company with Fouché?’ Ada quizzed him, her enhanced limb still poised.

  ‘Who?’

  It took a tense second, but happily Lady Lovelace chose to believe the innocence and ignorance in his eyes. It took her two more seconds to blow ‘the Bureaucrat’s cover. Frankenstein could be left to judge for himself the significance of such a well-oiled weathervane working for Napoleon. There can never be two powers in any land, not for long; nor, as Scripture says ‘in sundry places,’ can one man serve two masters. The Convention’s own Minister for Police was showing in the most practical way possible who he thought would win.

  ‘So,’ Ada said, ‘it seems you haven’t betrayed us—not consciously at any
rate. Perhaps we may walk together once again. For a while.’

  Talk of treachery was a bit rich coming from her. Frankenstein could easily have brought up the scene at the aerodrome, for instance. But he was in a forgiving mood—and they were in a corridor in compromising circumstances…

  ‘Then, madam,’ he said, ‘by all means let us walk—and in haste. I have pressing business and this place will not lay undiscovered forever...’

  Ada nodded agreement.

  ‘‘Tis true—but give me one further moment: there is something I must do...’

  Before anyone could argue she rushed back into the room and did it. One of the dead interrogators on the floor got the benefit of Lady Lovelace’s pointed toecap in the face. Repeatedly. She grunted with the effort put into each savage kick. Frankenstein averted his eyes. Foxglove looked pained, as though it was he suffering under the blows.

  When Ada returned she was smiling.

  ‘That one,’ she said, ‘I particularly disliked.’

  In reality that was all, but for form’s sake she felt the need to add:

  ‘And he was very cruel to Foxglove...’

  * * *

  At the ‘secret door’ Frankenstein occupied himself with his Lazaran attendants, fussing and dressing their ranks till an inconvenient brace of servants had gone by. By that time ‘Team Frankenstein’ was augmented by Lady Lovelace and Foxglove, marching concealed in their midst. Ada needed no blending in, but Foxglove’s battered features and hands were whitened with wig powder Julius had brought along for that purpose.

  Further forethought emerged from a knapsack one of the Revived soldiers was carrying. Out came a supply of small packets similar to that fed to the Lazaran earlier: though these were less well wrapped. Frankenstein bustled round to ensure each was swallowed as per his system.

  ‘Eat!’ he commanded, as before, and the slack jaws complied.

  Then Frankenstein drew a deep breath, declining to look into the abyss yawning before him—and knocked on the door.

  Nothing. Maybe. Or was that just the slightest sound of someone coming to the alert, someone keen that no one else should know of it?

  ‘Dr Frankenstein here,’ he said to the door. ‘Reporting with a fresh treadmill team. The old one’s for recycling.’

  There: he’d spiced it up as much he dared, without overdoing things to the point of suspicion. It had the authority of his name, the prospect of novelty for a bored guard, plus a hint at grim fate for some present. Added together it ought to add up to persuasion.

  And it did. The door opened. Behind stood one of the Old Guard; perhaps even the one he’d seen before, because the breed tended to a muchness. The man presented arms but, as scrutiny ticked off all the expected sights, degree by degree the firearm and its threat descended.

  ‘That’s news to me, monsieur,’ the man said warily.

  The worse thing Julius could have done was try to justify himself. In the little-big world of Versailles, indeed in the wider world outside, Frankenstein’s kind was up there and the Guard’s sort down there. The man should regard it as completely normal not to kept informed.

  So it proved. Frankenstein didn’t deign to answer but implied by every non-verbal sign the birth of impatience. He moved forward and the crucial moment for resistance passed. Julius and gang passed through the door and mobbed the stairwell.

  Suspicion remained however—though that was probably just as natural to the guard as deference.

  ‘Shouldn’t the new lot be in lift-team uniform?’ he asked. ‘What they’ve got on belongs to shock-brigade grenadiers. Some staff-officers what come through here are picky about that kind of thing...’

  The intelligence was flooding in now. So, this route was frequented by those powerful enough to be pedantic.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ replied Julius, anxious to spin things out. ‘I wasn’t informed. I can always get them to change clothes I suppose...’

  The guard was sorry he’d spoke. Only those with very specialist tastes liked watching Lazarans disrobe. Particularly the ‘jigsaw’ jobs...

  ‘Well…,’ he prevaricated, calculating how long till he was off-duty and out of the frame. Meanwhile, as the man sought for suitable delaying words something else caught his eye. Alertness flared anew.

  ‘Hang about: one of ‘em’s a woman!’

  ‘Was a woman,’ corrected Julius, clutching at straws now.

  ‘Was, is; don’t matter!’

  ‘Oh, but it does,’ said Julius, ‘because…’

  The guardsman waited politely for a while, but when the meat of the sentence failed to arrive...

  ‘Because?’ he prompted, the start of a growl in his throat.

  ‘Because…,’ said Frankenstein. ‘Oh, deal with him, Foxglove, will you?’

  He certainly would. The Englishman had suffered a lot from the French of late and was gagging to repay in full.

  He put the guard down in one, with a rabbit punch from behind. A dishonourable blow perhaps, but powered by powerful emotions. The man tumbled like a factory chimney, unlikely ever to rise, and Julius deftly caught his musket lest it fall and fire.

  Speaking of fire, the first primed Lazaran went off at that moment, rendering all this unpleasantness unnecessary. Not before time: indeed rather poor timing. If it had occurred only a few seconds earlier the guard would have had other things to do than ask impertinent questions. He might even have lived (though probably not for much longer, so there was no harm done).

  The first-fed Lazaran foamed at the mouth, and then drummed his boots against the floor in a desperate dance. He looked at Frankenstein in mute appeal but that false mother-surrogate had no solace to give. Even if he’d wanted to.

  Then the wrapping around the phosphorous must have finally decayed, releasing its load into the Lazaran’s stomach. It presumably fizzed and burnt in places intolerant to such rough treatment, producing pain even the Revived could feel. In his anguish the poor re-tread human went berserk. Dull-eyes bulging he struck out.

  His Lazaran comrades were nearest to hand and so it was they who were struck. And right from revival they’d been taught not to turn the other cheek, but be again the warriors they once (mostly) were. So they struck back. An ugly—very ugly—melee developed that Lady Lovelace and Foxglove snuck out of.

  Frankenstein handed Foxglove the late guardsman’s musket.

  ‘Save the shot, use the bayonet,’ he suggested.

  By Foxglove’s easy handling of it you could tell the servant was no stranger to weaponry, but reservations remained.

  ‘On who?’ he queried.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ replied Julius. ‘We just want chaos.’

  He proceeded to prove it by raising the bar to the lift-team’s cage and throwing its door wide. They watched him in enforced silence for a few seconds and then shambled towards freedom.

  Frankenstein let several through and then shot the next. Smoke from his ‘pepperbox’ clouded the scene and confused the issue.

  The scene was not alone in confusion: Lady Lovelace was coolly reserving judgement from the margins, but Foxglove looked perplexed.

  Meanwhile, the lift-team—first released and then shot—scaled several stages above mere perplexity. Yet there was remained the bedrock of their training. The warm-bloods did many inexplicable things but orders were still orders...

  ‘Mill about,’ commanded Frankenstein, as he twisted the chamber of his revolver to bring another cartridge online. ‘Explore this place. Ascend the stairs.’

  And, wonderfully obedient in the face of so much stress, many obeyed. Some chose one option, some another. Soon Frankenstein had the anarchy he wanted.

  Then he added to it by shooting one of the Lazarans he’d brought with him. And again, and again, till it was dead-again.

  ‘And you bayonet another,’ he said to Foxglove.

  Annoyingly the man looked to Lady Lovelace and only acted when she nodded approval.

  A blade doesn’t have the kinetic energy of a bullet,
even when backed by a powerful physique, and so it cost Foxglove great effort to finish off his chosen victim and raise cell damage to critical. That and the fact that the creature resisted. Only fancy fencing enabling Foxglove to fend off its claws and avoid (additional) injuries.

  There proved just no end to Frankenstein’s demands. As soon as one randomly selected Lazaran was down he pointed out another: the poisoned and berserk unfortunate. Maddened with pain it was currently wrecking the lift-cage, tearing off metal strips from its mechanism.

  ‘Now drive that one upstairs.’

  This time Ada’s seconding wasn’t sought. Foxglove deftly jabbed and warded, step by step directing the thrashing dying-again Lazaran to the staircase.

  It batted off the pricking blade, it sought to get to the shepherder behind, but then, driven by even stronger impulses, gave that up as a bad job and sought escape in the direction required.

  Escape, of course, it found none, for its problems went with it, but there must have been some easement in pastures new, if only through novelty. A new scene to suffer in; a change as good as a rest. Up the stairs it went, two at a time, till lost to sight.

  ‘You lot!’ ordered Julius, singling out a batch of Lazarans; those he’d brought with him and those he’d liberated now hopelessly intermixed. He indicated aloft. ‘Up you go too: at the charge!’

  The mournful faces consulted in silence and then went as bidden: to do precisely what they neither knew or cared. All that worrying about futurity was one facet of life gladly left in the grave.

  From somewhere up the staircase came identifiably human cries. They sounded like warnings, raised an octave by alarm. There followed shots and the sound of dead weight tumbling down towards the listeners.

  Of course, by then the general rough and tumble, and especially Frankenstein’s free way with firearms, had already raised the alert. From out in the corridor came the sadly familiar rumble of military boots heading in their direction.