The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead

by David Wake

  “In!”

  The others didn’t need any prompting and forced the door open.

  Charlotte grabbed the lantern as they piled through, and just in time as the untoten hands grasped and clawed at them. The lantern slipped from her grip as she put her hands to the door. It didn’t go out. They pushed the door back, pushed and pushed and shoved and heaved. Hands appeared around the frame, above, to the side and even underneath. Charlotte fired through the door and then used the empty revolver as a club, banging the impervious flesh as hard as she could.

  Georgina took over, bashed down with the butt of the Lee–Enfield as Charlotte bent to reload. Three rounds between her fingers, and again.

  If only she had time to reload the spare revolver. Earnestine heaved, her boots slipping and sliding on the floor. She kicked the lantern, which sparked but stayed lit.

  Inch by inch, they coerced the door back into position and no!

  It flung open. Untoten fell through the door.

  Charlotte stood and fired, six rounds, one after the other at the targets.

  “Run!”

  Georgina, carrying the crazily swinging lantern, was already moving away.

  As they ran, Charlotte yelled out instructions: “We form a British Square and fall back along the passage.”

  “There are only three of us!” Earnestine shouted. “How can we form a square?”

  “No… it’s when – argh – one, fire, two drop back, three reload, then one stand and fire.”

  “That’s what we’ve been doing.”

  They paused, using up their lead to reload, pushing five rounds from a clip into the magazine. She handed out a clip each from the medium kit bag. As her sisters fiddled with the metal and pushed in the bullets, Charlotte reloaded the revolver: three rounds between her fingers, again, swap over, three rounds, again… drop one because it’s the British Bull Dog. She took a charger clip too. There was no time for anything else as the creatures were nearly upon them.

  “Yes,” Charlotte continued, “but… like when we sing a round, then one of us is always–”

  “Got it! Come on.”

  “Count your ammo,” Charlotte commanded. “Ness!”

  Earnestine fired, the charge blazing at the end where she’d damaged the barrel, and then she ducked and went to the back.

  “Gina!”

  Georgina fired and followed Earnestine, who was now down on one knee flicking the bolt of her rifle.

  “Lottie!” said Charlotte. She aimed – fired, ‘one’, and then whipped around, back to the end of the line, and down to reload. She opened her mouth to shout Earnestine’s nickname, but she heard the gunshot.

  And then Georgina’s.

  And it was her turn again.

  They’d moved back three paces and the untoten had advanced perhaps two. She picked off the leading creature – ‘two’ – and ducked to go around again.

  Another two shots rang as she twisted, reloaded and then stood.

  Yes, the gap was widening: not fast because the passage allowed them to advance two abreast. They’d be utterly overwhelmed if it hadn’t been for the rear ranks stumbling over veritably dead corpses of their comrades.

  Aim, fire! ‘Three’.

  She went round again, suddenly reminded of barn dancing: dosey doe, take your partner by the hand… she shot another. ‘Four’.

  Earnestine shouted: “Last round!” and she fired.

  Then Georgina: “Last round.” Her shot ricocheted sounding a high–pitched whine.

  On Charlotte’s move, she saw the far door: it looked solid and would perhaps hold them for a while.

  “Ready to run for it?”

  Georgina was running already, having mistaken the command. She had the lantern, thank goodness, but her speed meant that it was increasingly difficult to see the approaching untoten.

  “Go, go!” Charlotte shouted. She fired her last round – made it count – and then she pulled out the Webley revolver and fired: one, two, three… aim, four, five… six. She turned and ran, the silhouettes of her sisters jumping as the lantern bounced around, and then a glorious rectangle of wonderful light appeared. Georgina vanished into the frame and then Earnestine. Charlotte jumped through, she heard the door slam behind her, a bolt going across like a Lee–Enfield loading but heavier.

  They’d made it.

  She blinked, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the brightness after the gloom of the sewers.

  Even the air smelt fresher.

  And then she saw: the room was vast, cathedral–like, and full, utterly full, of writhing untoten.

  Chapter XXIX

  Miss Deering-Dolittle

  Earnestine found herself standing in what looked like the future: bright and shining with manifest machinery.

  “It’s an underground station… a new one,” she said.

  They were on a landing, like the circle of a theatre looking down into the auditorium of stalls and stage below. There was a staircase that descended to a strange scene, a Dante’s inferno framed by the modern Victorian arches, and another leading up to some kind of upper circle.

  Below, with an angry hiss of steam, a train lurched along the rails and then stopped. Like a giant piece of clockwork, a gantry of cabling lurched from one goods wagon and moved back to fix itself onto the next in line.

  “They’re using it to bring the corpses into London,” said Earnestine, the final piece of the puzzle falling into place. “And through the underground system they can reach from Euston to Waterloo and even Kensington.”

  Under the gantry, there was a brilliant flash, a lightning bolt so much brighter for being contained inside. The curve of the tunnel, covered in white tiles, concentrated the effect like a concave mirror. An acrid smell displaced the stench of death that permeated everything. The young ladies blinked trying to remove the afterglow of the flash.

  Moments later, the undead began to spill out of the wagon, more and more, with their control boxes fizzing with life as the monsters shambled along the platform searching for a way out.

  “This isn’t good,” Earnestine said. “All the stations have exits to the surface, if they’re here then… we have to stop this.”

  Charlotte reloaded, shoving the revolvers back into the front of her jacket when she was done, and then she checked her rifle.

  Again, the rolling stock shifted, clanked, and then moved on one carriage forward, and the framework of electrodes moved away from the upper gallery to attach to the next boxcar.

  “It’s all autonomous,” Georgina said.

  Charlotte passed a charging clip to Earnestine.

  “We need to put a spanner in the works,” Earnestine insisted.

  “We can’t go down there!”

  “We must.”

  “No, no, no…”

  “Whatever we do, we have to do it soon,” Charlotte interrupted: “Those things will be through that door soon, and if those down there spot us, they can just come up those stairs.”

  “We have to try,” Earnestine said. She pushed the ammunition down into the magazine.

  “Then let’s go!” said Charlotte, but Earnestine put her hand out to stop her.

  “That would be suicide,” Earnestine said.

  “We decided to commit suicide quite a while ago.”

  Georgina was looking around, her eyes tracking various pipes and cables: “It must be controlled from somewhere… I think… there.”

  She pointed: the ‘upper circle’ consisted of a landing over the rail line and halfway along there was a wide opening from which shone bright, galvanic light. The framework of electrodes hovered nearby and then moved back again to create the next squad of untoten.

  “Worth a try,” Earnestine said, and she bent low to climb the stairs and work her way along the landing to the opening.

  There was a low moan, coherent amongst the murmuring.

  “Lummy, that’s torn it,” Charlotte said.

  “Achtung!”

  A man, dressed in whi
te with dark goggles, appeared as he stepped through the opening to stand on the landing.

  Georgina shouldered her rifle.

  Charlotte was quicker, dropping the man with a single shot. He was the first ‘living’ man they’d ‘killed’.

  “He was a technician,” Georgina said.

  A voice shouted from below, full of command and confidence: “Ach, my Liebchen, so you all survived. How resourceful of you English, but no matter. You will witness Der Anbruch des Totenreiches – the Dawn of the Empire of the Dead.”

  Georgina fired!

  Her shot was wide.

  The Graf, somewhere amongst the mechanisms and machinery down on the station platform below, ducked anyway.

  “Naughty!” he chided, his booming voice projecting over the noise to their upper circle.

  To kill the Graf, they’d have to cross the station, and to do that they’d have to face the army of untoten growing by the carriage load every few minutes. But that technician must have been doing something. The galvanic energy arced again, the blue light slicing the air and leaving her feeling blind.

  “Get along the landing,” Earnestine yelled.

  “Nein!” the Graf shouted. “Stoppen Sie.”

  Stoppen? Why? What was so important?

  “Ziehen Sie den Netzstecker!”

  The wide opening turned into a large room with tiles on the walls between stone corners and a magnificent domed roof constructed in brick. There were pipes, metal wheels with handles and engineering that made it seem like they’d walked into a giant steam engine.

  “It’s a pumping station,” Georgina said. Earnestine didn’t understand her at first and then realised: all these tunnels were connected: the sewers, the underground railway, the flood water culverts – all seemed to intersect here in a mishmash of levels and landings.

  “I’ll cover the stairs,” Charlotte hollered. She took the medium kit bag with all its ammunition off Earnestine and ran back to the landing.

  There was a growl from one side.

  Even though the untoten was dead, and his bulky body crushed and distorted, Earnestine recognised him at once. She felt the blood run cold from her face heralding a faint: “Kroll…”

  Mrs Arthur Merryweather

  Earnestine had frozen.

  When Georgina entered the pumping room, the huge monster turned towards her for a moment, and then lurched back towards Earnestine.

  Georgina waved her arms: “Here! Here!”

  The creature turned again, but despite Georgina being closer, the creature returned to its first target.

  The reanimated man opened its mouth, spitting and then tried to form words: “Der… ring… do… little.”

  Earnestine’s reply was barely audible: “Kroll… how?”

  “You killed… me.”

  Earnestine’s reply was a mere whisper: “You tried to kill me.”

  The golem’s attention was now entirely on Earnestine and she was trapped. Georgina lifted her rifle, rammed the bolt home and… aim, fire!

  Click!

  No ammunition: she’d wasted her last bullet fruitlessly trying to hit the Graf.

  Georgina backed towards the landing.

  “Charlotte, ammo, ammo!” she shouted, nearly conjugating the word.

  “Here.”

  Charlotte held out a handful of bullets.

  Georgina went over, grabbed them, pushed two into the magazine with shaking hands.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked.

  “An untoten’s talking,” Georgina said.

  Charlotte concentrated on the untoten approaching up the stairs and didn’t look round.

  “Does it have a big skull?”

  “Yes! Very big!”

  “Doctor Mordant said they might retain brain function if they had a large head.”

  “Did Doctor Mordant say how to deal with them?”

  “She might have done.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t listen.”

  “You didn’t–”

  “It was boring!”

  “Education is never boring, it’s… never mind.”

  Back in the pumping room, Kroll had stepped towards Earnestine, its great hands reaching forward like claws.

  Aim… squeeze.

  A tile just above Kroll and Earnestine exploded.

  Bolt home: last round.

  If she fired now she might hit Earnestine.

  As Georgina inched forward, her foot kicked the fallen white–coated technician.

  The man had a device in his hand.

  Georgina grabbed it and ripped it from the man’s black, rubber gloved fingers.

  There was a switch: it made a light come on.

  Kroll jerked as the contacts in his skull box fizzed and sparked.

  Georgina strode closer, the buzz in Kroll’s head increased and the creature reared back, distraught.

  It screamed.

  “This repels them,” Georgina said, but no sooner had she finished than Kroll lashed out smashing the device away. The thing skittered across the tiled floor. Kroll grabbed at his head in pain and then wrenched at the brass box attached to his skull. He pulled it out, wires coming from inside his cranium and dripping with thick viscous matter.

  “I am… free!” it said.

  Earnestine raised her rifle and shot it.

  Georgina looked away from her sister, not wanting to see the triumphant expression, and saw something that didn’t fit the iron and brick design: “That’s not part of the pumping station.”

  It was a brass and mahogany box, the size and shape of a writing desk and styled much like the hand held device. This was the key, she thought: there were lights, tiny bulbs to indicate various settings, but suddenly they went out. As Georgina started to go over to get a closer look, Earnestine tapped her on the shoulder and pointed.

  “Sluice gate controls,” Earnestine said. “Open the gate, let the water in.”

  “It says ‘flood control’. There would have to be water in the tunnels.”

  “They made it rain.”

  “Yes, they did, didn’t they?” Georgina felt a flicker of hope as Earnestine grabbed the handle and began to heave at the wheel.

  “It would have a certain irony,” Earnestine grunted. “Can’t – shift – it.”

  “Here!”

  The handle was cold, steel bolted to the iron wheel that was set into a pipe. She pulled… pushed, jerked it up and down.

  It turned a mere fraction of a degree, rust flaked at the axle.

  “It’s useless,” Georgina said.

  Earnestine shouted: “Charlotte!”

  “I’m busy,” came Charlotte’s reply, followed by distant firing.

  “Now!”

  “In a minute.”

  “NOW!!!”

  Charlotte ran over, while Earnestine shook her arms to loosen them.

  “I think–” Georgina began.

  “We all push together, one mighty effort,” Earnestine said.

  “Yes.”

  They took hold, squeezed around with six hands on the handle and spokes of the big iron wheel.

  “One for all,” Charlotte said.

  Earnestine took charge: “Two… Three… NOW!”

  The wheel squealed.

  Georgina yelled as she pushed, her hand crushed beneath Earnestine’s heavy pressure, and then it gave, span, and they were flung to the ground as if they had been thrown from a merry–go–round.

  Earnestine took the handle and pulled. With effort, it moved for her alone. The elder sister, so confident, turned the handle all the way round and round, until it came to a stop and then she stepped back, gasping and bent double with her hands on her knees.

  Nothing happened.

  Maybe it took time, Georgina thought, and wondered if this control really did open a gate somewhere.

  Still nothing happened.

  Earnestine straightened up suddenly: “Charlotte–”

  “Oh Lawks!” Charlotte sprinted back to
her guard position, taking up the rifle and slamming the bolt into position as she ran. She fired from the hip. A creature had reached the landing and was thrown back, toppling from sight to the station below. If it was on the landing, Georgina realised, then they’d lost control of the stairs down to the station. They’d be trying to come up to the landing next.

  It was hopeless, Georgina knew, but she was drawn to the strange brass control panel that was so clearly European amongst the good honest British engineering.

  “This is the master control for the boxes,” Georgina said, mostly to herself. “The devices on their skulls… we need to…”

  She began to fiddle with the screws that held the cover in place. If only she had a proper tool kit.

  Earnestine ran up and used the rifle butt against the edge.

  “Hey!” Georgina said, but she stopped herself when she realised that the cover had broken loose. She put her fingers under it, ignored the way it cut into her skin, and yanked it up to reveal the machine’s innards. It was all wires and brass fittings.

  “Do you know how to work this?” Earnestine asked.

  “It’s not like a steam engine.”

  They looked: it was a conglomeration of confusion, and just like a steam engine.

  “This makes no sense,” said Georgina.

  “It’s labelled!”

  “In German.”

  Georgina worked her way along the small parcel labels that were attached to the various wires. On them, in neat handwriting, there were words in that infuriating Germanic script. She read them out: “Anhalten, zurückkehren, angreifen, zerstören…”

  “Means nothing to me,” Earnestine said. “Why couldn’t they use Latin or Greek?”

  “I think this controls those boxes on their heads,” Georgina interrupted. “These cogs are used to select which individual or group to command.”

  Georgina pushed the cogs around until all of them were displaying.

  “Hurry!” came a plaintive cry from behind them.

  “Shhh, Charlotte, we’re concentrating,” Earnestine replied.

  “I’ll just try one,” said Georgina. She picked ‘anhalten’ and pressed the button: nothing.

  “Did you press it?” Earnestine asked.

  “Yes! Of course I pressed it. Look! Press! Press!” She stabbed at it again and again. “Why does nothing work?!”