Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

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!”