Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  Yet just as he could finally grab for it, at the very moment he felt the first dull tickle of fur work its way up his dead nerves, the light swerved again and was gone.

  Mr. Crickett stopped and turned. There was no light behind him. All he saw was a great long swath of thick red and gold fabric, like a carpet so luxurious no one would ever dare set foot on it. Why such a thing should have been dumped in the middle of the street was just the sort of question a dreadful wouldn’t think to ask itself, thinking not being on its agenda at all. Which is why the large hump in the middle of the dumped-carpet-thing didn’t capture Mr. Crickett’s interest either … until it spoke.

  “Ahhh!”

  “Oh!”

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “It felt like a dog.”

  “Why would a dog be—?

  “Shhhh.”

  “Right.”

  Mr. Crickett didn’t understand the words, but he knew what they meant. Meat!

  He threw himself upon the lump and bit down with all his might.

  “My head! Something’s biting my head! Make it stop! Make it stop! Noooooooooo!”

  These, to an unmentionable, were the sweet sounds of success, and Mr. Crickett bit down with all the more gusto. He didn’t even notice when a rabbit and, shortly after, a portly dark-haired man scampered out from under the robe he was chomping on. For a robe it was they’d been hiding under—one so long that, just a quarter hour earlier, its train had been carried by eight pages, each boy the eldest son of a powerful lord.

  Brummell shot away to the north. George IV, the Prince Regent, didn’t shoot away anywhere. A dozen dreadfuls were on him before he could run ten feet, and within a minute his fine clothes were ripped off, his skin was stripped away, his copious insides were no longer inside him, his bones were broken apart and redistributed in every direction, and his head became the centerpiece of a spirited tug of war between three unmentionables.

  Through it all, Mr. Crickett gnawed on. There had been no blood at first. The fabric was too thick for a quick, clean bite. But with some diligent munching and clawing, Mr. Crickett was able to chew through to—and then into—the man beneath. The robe muffled both the screams and the radiance that would have attracted more zombies, so Mr. Crickett didn’t have to share his meal with anyone.

  He had the brains of George III, last English king of the house of Hanover, all to himself.

  CHAPTER 36

  “What is your plan?” Nezu asked Lizzy as they peeked around the corner at Bethlem Royal Hospital.

  Of course, he hadn’t bothered asking Kitty if she might have a plan. That would require him to talk to her, something he had been avoiding all day. Kitty wasn’t insulted, though—or wasn’t more insulted, at any rate. It was natural to assume Lizzy was in charge, the way she’d been acting. Clearly, she would no longer be following Nezu’s lead. He had to follow hers or be left behind.

  Bedlam wasn’t the first destination she’d insisted on. Once they’d escaped the screaming, stampeding masses around Westminster, they’d hurried to the Shevington house in One North. There, Lizzy, Kitty, and Mr. Bennet made ready for combat, changing into battle clothes and collecting their weapons, while Nezu mustered his staff of servant-ninjas.

  “It’s a good thing we’re not worried about making the wrong impression any more,” Kitty said once the entire party—the Bennets, the dogs, Nezu, and half a dozen black-masked ninjas—had crammed into their stolen barouche and set off for Twelve Central.

  “I doubt if there’s anyone of influence left to judge us,” Mr. Bennet said, gazing off at an especially thick column of black smoke rising to the south. “That’s Westminster Abbey, if I don’t miss my guess. It would appear that someone knocked over a candelabra or brought down a chandelier in all the uproar. I daresay the whole of high society is, at this moment, being either roasted alive or eaten.”

  Even as he spoke, another black pillar rose into the sky, not far from the first.

  The checkpoints between sections didn’t slow them down much, for they’d been abandoned, the gates left up. The soldiers had either been ordered to Westminster or simply deserted. Whatever the case, a steady stream of dirty, shabbily dressed people was pouring from Twelve Central, some pausing to loot half-heartedly as they made their way out of the city.

  “You’ll turn that thing around if you have any sense!” a toothless old woman shouted at them as their carriage rolled under the watch towers.

  “What do I need sense for?” Kitty called back, waving her battle axe over her head. “I’ve got this! La!”

  No one else laughed. Even if they’d begun to, they would have stopped soon enough. What they found in Twelve Central shriveled up every “La!” Kitty had left in her.

  Filth, decay, emaciated bodies dumped everywhere—some of them beginning to get up again. Nothing Kitty had ever witnessed on the battlefield chilled her half as much as this.

  No one spoke again until they reached the hospital and Nezu asked Lizzy for her plan.

  “Attack,” she said.

  “That is your plan? ‘Attack’?”

  “The time for guile is long past.”

  Kitty was watching Nezu closely—she couldn’t help herself—and so she caught the glance he threw her way even though it lasted little more than a second.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Very well, then. The hospital does not seem to be heavily guarded any longer. I will send Ogata and Hayashi ahead to—Miss Bennet?”

  Lizzy was already drawing her sword and walking away.

  “HAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!” she cried, and she broke into a sprint, bound for Bethlem Hospital’s front gate.

  “I see,” Nezu said. He slid Fukushuu from its scabbard and dashed after her. “Tanoshimou ne!”

  “Ii desu ne!” the ninjas all roared as they raised their weapons and followed.

  Ell and Arr put up their heads, howled, and then joined the charge.

  “Kitty,” Mr. Bennet said, “one of us needs to stay here to look after the horses, and—”

  “I agree.” Kitty took off running. “So good of you to volunteer!”

  Just before she unleashed her battle cry (“HOOOOOOOO-YYYAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”) she heard her father spit out a livid “Blast!”

  He didn’t miss much, as it turned out. At least, not at first. The only resistance the raiding party met outside was purely verbal.

  “No!” the lone gatekeeper gasped when he saw Lizzy and the others approaching. He threw himself to the ground with his hands over his head. “Just keep going! Ignore me! I’m not important!”

  Lizzy smashed through the gate, with Lady Catherine’s assassins (and Ell and Arr) at her heels. Seconds later, Lizzy was crashing through a window into the hospital, and Nezu and the ninjas did the same (adding somersaults to their entrances, of course). Kitty chose to enter through the front door, pausing, on a whim, to try the knob rather than burst through with a butterfly kick.

  The door was unlocked. As Kitty stepped inside the hospital, Ell and Arr scampered in with her. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but she could make out a great swirl of chaotic activity, and there were many shouts and wails and whimpers. She bobbed and weaved, her axe ready to parry and chop, until her eyesight returned enough to tell her she hadn’t plunged into the middle of a battle. This was simply Bedlam.

  The inmates seemed free to roam wherever they pleased; there were cells aplenty in sight but the doors to all were open, and the long hallway before Kitty was filled with giggling, weeping, yelling, whispering, shuffling, dancing, babbling, barking people. Many were half-dressed, some weren’t dressed at all, and not one of them appeared even remotely sane.

  Lizzy stalked through them so wild-eyed with bloodlust, she fit right in.

  “At last, I am ready to fight, and this is all I find? Where are the keepers? Where are MacFarquhar’s lackeys?”

  Ell and Arr barked and went bounding up a nearby stairwell.


  “They smell the Man,” Nezu said, hurrying after them.

  “The who?” Kitty asked as both she and Lizzy followed. The stairs wound upward in a spiral, allowing her to see nothing of Ell and Arr but their tails.

  They seemed to be wagging.

  “Their master,” Nezu explained. “I’ve never known his real name. To me, he’s just—ah!”

  They’d reached the top of the stairs, and there he was: the Man in the Box. Or at least Kitty had to assume the Man was there. All she could see was the Box. It was halfway down a long hallway, past several heavy opened doors, and it looked much the worse for wear. There were scuff marks and deep gouges along one side, as if it had been pried open, and the whole thing sat at a precarious angle thanks to an especially wobbly wheel.

  “LIZZY SMASHED THROUGH THE GATE, WITH LADY CATHERINE’S ASSASSINS AT HER HEELS.”

  Surely, the Man was inside, though, for Ell and Arr ran up and licked at the narrow slot that ran across one panel. Kneeling next to it, speaking softly, was Mary.

  Both Kitty and Lizzy called her name and ran down the corridor toward her. Mary had never been the most demonstrative of the Bennets (unless she was demonstrating disapproval), yet she smiled while suffering through her sisters’ hugs and kisses.

  “I do hope you weren’t worried about me,” she said.

  “Not for a second!” Kitty replied, even as she quickly wiped away the moisture that had collected under each eye.

  “It would seem we had little cause for concern,” Lizzy said. She looked around the hall, which was dingy and dark and fed into rooms that appeared even dingier and darker. “I can’t say we find you in the most cheerful of places, but you seem to have made yourself right at home.”

  “Oh, it was a bit uncomfortable at first,” Mary said. “But we made do.”

  She looked down at the Box fondly (or so it seemed to Kitty, much to her wonder) just as Ell and Arr slipped back into the harnesses attached to it. Both dogs then sat happily at attention, ears pointed, mouths open.

  “Miss Bennet,” the Man in the Box warbled in his rough, husky way. “If you would be so kind?”

  “It would be a pleasure,” Mary said.

  She ruffled the bristly fur on Ell and Arr’s backs and then gave each a pat on the head.

  “Good dogs,” the Man in the Box said.

  “Uhhh, Mary?”

  Kitty popped her eyes wide and nodded at the box.

  “Proper introductions will be made at a more suitable time,” Mary said. “For now, let us simply say that this is Mr. Quayle, and he is a friend. And there are others you should meet as well.” She turned to call down the hall. “You can come out now! It’s safe!”

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then one small shape emerged slowly from a shadowy doorway at the end of the corridor. A little girl. A boy followed her. Then a man, then a woman, and so on, until ten people were shuffling shyly toward them. They all had dark faces and sunken eyes and dirty clothes and the stooped postures and cringing steps of those who’ve come to accept mistreatment and misery as their lot.

  “They keep inmates so young here?” Kitty asked, appalled.

  Mary shook her head. “These aren’t inmates like the ones downstairs. They weren’t committed. They were snatched off the streets of Twelve North.”

  As the prisoners drew closer, Kitty could see that some looked Indian, some Mohammedan, some African. Not one had blonde hair or blue eyes or fair skin.

  There were terse mutters in Japanese, and Kitty glanced back to find Nezu’s ninjas joining them in the corridor. Lizzy didn’t even seem to notice.

  “For Sir Angus’s experiments,” she said grimly.

  “Yes,” Mary said. “They can’t tell us much about them, though. Only a few speak English, and some no longer seem to speak at all.”

  The children were only a few feet away now, and Lizzy stepped forward and knelt before them. The other prisoners shrank back as she approached, and Kitty couldn’t altogether blame them. They obviously had little reason to trust those they should meet in Bedlam, and Lizzy seemed to be struggling in her attempt to project gentleness and warmth. A murderous rage was bubbling just beneath the surface, and it wasn’t clear if it could mix with maternal tenderness or would, instead, boil it away like steam.

  “Can you tell me your name?” Lizzy asked the girl.

  She was thin yet still chubby-cheeked, with long black hair that reached almost to her tiny waist.

  “Gurdaya,” she said.

  To Kitty’s surprise, the girl’s accent was more North London than East Indies. Her family might have come from far away—before foreigners stopped coming to England at all—but she’d grown up right here in the capital.

  “How long have you been here, Gurdaya?” Lizzy said.

  “I don’t know. A long time.”

  Lizzy held out her hands and nodded at the girl’s arms. They were bony and bare, uncovered by the filthy smock the child wore, and Kitty could make out several ugly splotches on Gurdaya’s skin.

  “May I?” Lizzy asked.

  Gurdaya meekly put her hands in Lizzy’s.

  Elizabeth turned the wrists and leaned this way and that to get a better look at the child’s scars. Never in her life had Kitty heard Lizzy gasp, but she heard just that now.

  “They let a—let one of those things bite you?”

  Gurdaya nodded.

  “When?”

  “Weeks ago. Maybe months.” Gurdaya shrugged, less out of uncertainty, it seemed, than resignation. She took back one of her hands from Lizzy and pointed at a row of pockmarks on her upper arm. “They make me bleed, too. Then they take it.”

  “They take your blood?”

  A boy, perhaps nine or ten years to Gurdaya’s seven or eight, stepped up beside her. He had the same café au lait skin and round cheeks and London accent.

  “They take blood from us all,” he said. “All of us who don’t develop infections or … change. They had our parents here, too, at first. They didn’t last long.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lizzy said. “So, so sorry. But they won’t hurt you anymore. That’s done. I promise.”

  She let go of Gurdaya’s hand, stood, and turned to Mary. She’d sheathed her sword, but Kitty noticed her hand grip the hilt.

  “Where are they?” Lizzy growled.

  “Most are in here.”

  Mary led her to one of the doors nearby. Kitty slid in beside them, staying close to Lizzy. It was one thing to slaughter your prisoners when they’re zombies. If Lizzy did as she seemingly intended, that would be something else entirely.

  “My, what a lovely cell,” Kitty said as they peered in through the small bar-striped window. The room beyond was pleasantly appointed in the style of a gentleman’s bedchamber. The furnishings were far more elegant than the occupants, however. Half a dozen rough-looking men lay strewn about on the bed and chairs and floor. Some were conscious, some not. All were bruised and bloody.

  “This was my accommodation for the night,” Mary said. “I traded it with my hosts only an hour or so ago.”

  Kitty cocked an eyebrow at her. “You couldn’t escape before then?”

  “The door is too sturdy to kick down, and picking locks is a Shinobi skill, not Shaolin.”

  “Fortunately, I was able to talk her through it,” the Man in the Box said.

  “Might I remind you,” Nezu broke in, addressing himself (again, the twit!) to Lizzy alone, “the dreadfuls are swarming, London is aflame, and we still haven’t found what your husband so desperately needs. I would think a little more alacrity is—”

  “Yes, yes,” Lizzy snapped. “What of it, Mary? Have you found anything that looks like a cure?”

  “Far too much that does. Sir Angus’s laboratory is overflowing with elixirs and powders and the like. Which is why we’ve been trying to get a little help narrowing the search.”

  “This way,” said the Man in the Box, and with a few simple quavery commands to Ell and Arr, he led them into
a chamber of horrors, complete with blood stains on the floor, gooey splatters on the ceiling, and a man seemingly about to be consumed by a wriggling gristle-covered skull and spine.

  “Hello!” the man said, sounding remarkably chipper for someone tied to a table with a zombie tethered inches away. “My goodness! So many friends you’ve brought with you. Were they hoping for a tour? I’m afraid we don’t do those anymore.”

  “This is Dr. Sleaford, Bethlem’s assistant administrator,” Mary said. “I believe he knows where the cure is, but he refuses to tell us, even with Judith here as inducement.”

  Kitty waved her battle axe at the skinless, limbless dreadful snapping its teeth at the doctor. “Judith?”

  Mary nodded. “She was introduced to us yesterday under much the same circumstances, though Dr. Sleaford’s position and ours were reversed.”

  “And he won’t talk?” Nezu asked. He’d stopped just inside the doorway, his ninjas spread out beside him.

  “Oh, he will talk. Most pleasantly. What he won’t do is answer questions.” A rueful expression came over Mary’s face. “He doesn’t seem to believe that we would let the dreadful bite him.”

  “What good am I to you if I’m dead?” Dr. Sleaford said, and he said it pleasantly, indeed. “True, I don’t know anything about this supposed cure you’re looking for. But there is a serum that can slow the progress of the strange plague. Such a thing would be worth thousands, tens of thousands even, if made available to the public at large. Release me, and I will share its secrets with you.”

  Lizzy stepped close to the gurney on which the man lay.

  “Dr. Sleaford, I will ask you politely once, and with fair warning: My husband’s life hangs in the balance. Where is the cure?”

  “I am sorry, Madam. But I swear to you, I know of no cure.”

  “I see.”

  Lizzy reached out and gave Judith’s trolley a nudge forward.

  The zombie promptly sank her teeth into Dr. Sleaford’s right arm.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Lizzy caught Kitty’s eye and jerked her head down at the dreadful, which was munching away happily on the doctor even though the masticated flesh had no throat to travel down.