A dozen chains away, I saw 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 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 a 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 journey 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 gray matter and she toppled like a rotten tree given out at the roots. An iron axe-head protruded from her cleaved skull and behind her stood the near naked woman we had rescued from the forecourt of the Opera House.
“I am most grateful, madam…” I began, but lost my words as she stepped forward and despatched the zombee 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 the 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 wreck.
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 close quarters battle without much further incident.
The female survivor, now more modestly clothed in ship’s blanket but still armed with those killing implements she had taken up against the undead foe, soon made herself available to arrange parley with her comrades in the little fort. Much did we have to discuss, including the difficult matter of sustaining ourselves for the immediate future, having lost the greater proportion of our stores to the shambling fiends. A black irony that, given the utter lack of interest they had in feeding upon anything so prosaic as ship’s biscuit or salt pork. The adventures by which we took our succour from the storehouses of the dead city itself are worthy of a separate address and I have promised the gentlemen of the Royal Society to return before long and do just that in concert with my good friend and comrade Surgeon White.
However, I would delay you from supper, my friends, by overly extensive recollection of the negotiations which followed and the rendering of our due thanks to that handful of survivors. So I shall not, other than to attest that they were indeed cast adrift from their own time and place in creation by the marvels of their scientific arts, applied with desperate and ill-considered haste to the question of the Scourge in their own day. I am a simple soldier, not a professor or philosopher, and greater intellects than mine have pondered the larger questions of their arrival for nigh on twenty years.
Suffice it to say, gentlemen, that for all the curses they laid upon us, great marvels did they bring too. Not least among them my own rare fortune in meeting my good lady wife, Jennifer, and my adopted lad, Thomas, upon the deck of the Charlotte that day. Our initial coming together was not heavily laden with good omen, but I would like to think on balance that it has worked out for the better, just as I feel confident the history of our Empire has been set upon a path to brighter uplands in the future by these most unusual developments. All we must do to secure that future is stand fast against the Scourge.
Thus 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 unholy dead, 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 God-forsaken wastes of the twenty-second century.
Goodnight and God keep you.
Acknowledgments.
This jaunty little tale was a collaborative effort in part, with suggestions and scenes coming from many regular readers at my personal blog Cheeseburger Gothic.
I’ve thanked them before, but will do so again. They’re a good crew.
I also dips me lid to my editor Deonie Fiford for cleaning up the original manuscript, and Patricia Lye for proofing the final.
The cover art, which I love, is by William Heavy and formatting by Guido Henkel.
If you’d like more zombie stomping adventures with Watkin Tench, let me know on Twitter @JohnBirmingham, via my mailing list or at the blog.
I for one am very curious to know exactly how they got out of time travelling Zombie Sydney.
License.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. JB will be your new best friend if you do. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then it'd be so much cooler if you bought your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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