Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

CHAPTER 32

ELIZABETH HAD ONE CALL to make before she went out to find Master Hawksworth and her father and whatever dreadfuls they’d managed to find. There was someone she wished to say hello to and, depending on how things went, perhaps good-bye as well.

The guard outside the door to the attic was as quick to level a Brown Bess as Pvt. Jones, only he had even more reason to do so. Elizabeth could deduce as much from the dark stains the maids hadn’t quite managed to scrub from the floor and wall.

“Good evening,” she said, and that was enough for the soldier to lower his musket, sighing with relief. No passwords were needed to tell friend from foe in this war. Any word—that was enough.

“Evening, Miss. Here to see His Queerness, are you?”

“Dr. Keckilpenny. Yes.”

“Need an escort up?”

“No,” Elizabeth said firmly. “That’s quite all right.”

“Suit yourself. It certainly suits me. Oooo, the awful sounds his pet makes. If I had to actually see the thing . . .”

The soldier shivered, then stepped aside to let Elizabeth pass.

Halfway up the dimly lit stairwell, she began to hear some of those sounds the man had mentioned. Groaning, grunting, the clomping of heavy footfalls.

Only, when Elizabeth reached the top of the steps, she saw it wasn’t “Mr. Smith” making the noise at all.

“Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaance,” Dr. Keckilpenny said as he spun and capered about the attic. “Dance. Dance!” He waved his arms in time to the muffled waltz filtering up through the floorboards. “Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuusic. Music. Music!”

Mr. Smith watched him from a few feet away, black drool dripping from his open mouth, arms swept back to the sides, straining against his chains.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” he said.

“No, Smithy. Muuuuuuuuuuuusic. Daaaaaaaaaaaance.”

Dr. Keckilpenny threw his gangly form into a slipshod arabesque and performed a wobbly spin that left him staring, eyes wide, at Elizabeth.

“Oh! Miss Bennet! What a wonderful surprise! And here I was just thinking of you.”

“Really? I’m honored that the mere thought of me should make you want to dance.”

Dr. Keckilpenny put on one of his sideways-crescent grins. “You’re not far off there, actually. May I tell you about it? What I was thinking, I mean?”

When Elizabeth didn’t answer straightaway, his smile sagged.

“Of course, you may,” Elizabeth said. “I need to be elsewhere tonight, but I can certainly delay my departure long enough to hear why a dignified man like yourself should wish to perform ballet for a dreadful.”

“Dignified? And here I thought we were getting to know each other so well.” The doctor held out his hands toward the chest in which Mr. Smith had been hauled up to the attic. “Please, have a trunk.”

Elizabeth walked to the chest and took a seat atop it.

Mr. Smith swayed in her direction.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

“No, Mr. Smith. Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl,” Dr. Keckilpenny said. “Or, I suppose, young laaaaaaaaaaaaady.”

Mr. Smith made a sound that was part snarl, part wail and not “girl” or “lady” in any way whatsoever.

The doctor sighed.

“You see how it’s been . . . and this is Smithy at his best. Last night he was positively wild. Flinging himself at me, shrieking, yowling. One minute he was being a perfect gentleman, as zombies go, the next it was nothing but snort snarl slobber howl.”

“Was that around the time the other unmentionable got loose in the house?”

Dr. Keckilpenny tapped a long finger against his chin. “Now that you mention it, it was. Most curious. I wonder if they can sense each other’s presence. By smell, perhaps?”

“I hear you lost your guard.”

“Yeeeeesss,” the doctor drawled, still tapping away, eyes squinting up at nothing. “Pity, that. Good thing I didn’t step out for a midnight snack or I’d have been one.” He clapped his hands together and focused on Elizabeth again. “But that’s neither here nor there. I was about to tell you about Mr. Smith’s re-Anglification.”

“His what?”

“Re-Anglification! That’s what I call my process. Or plan to call it. If it works.”

Dr. Keckilpenny darted over to a dark corner of the room. On the floor was a jumble of assorted bric-a-brac, and the doctor knelt down next to it.

“Mr. Smith isn’t just a dead man, Miss Bennet. He’s a dead Englishman. And if—as we’ve discussed before—some part of his mind still survives, then this is how it might be reached, and even revived.”

Dr. Keckilpenny began grabbing dishes and holding them up to display their contents.

“Trifle. Currant scones. Cup of tea. Good! Mangled viscera? Bad.” He pointed at a small stack of books. “Shakespeare. Milton. Dr. Johnson. Good!” He reached out for a plate covered with a stained napkin, then changed his mind and simply pointed at it. “Body parts? Bad . . . when they’re not attached.” He swung his finger to a pile of framed portraits. “The king. The prime minister. The Prince Regent. Good! Sort of.” He gestured at a sealed jar in which a loaflike mass floated in brackish brine. “Brains? Bad bad bad.”

“Grrrrrrrrrrrr,” Mr. Smith said.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrr, bad,” Dr. Keckilpenny replied. “Words, good!”

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

“I hope you’ll forgive the observation,” Elizabeth said. “But Mr. Smith doesn’t strike me as any more English than when we captured him.”

The doctor nodded sadly. “Yes, I know. He’s definitely responding to something, though. The last hour, he’s seemed more alert. Aware. Almost perky.”

Elizabeth looked at the hollow-eyed thing leaning toward her groaning. “Perky?”

The doctor nodded again, this time with excitement. “I think it might be the music. It hath charms to soothe a savage breast, you know, and you won’t find many breasts more savage than a zombie’s. That’s what got me thinking about you, Miss Bennet. If the sound of a waltz could stir something in Mr. Smith, just think what the sight of one might do.”

“I don’t understand. What has that got to do with—”

Dr. Keckilpenny started walking toward Elizabeth. She knew what he was going to say before he said it.

What she didn’t know was how she would reply.

The doctor offered her his hand. “Miss Bennet, may I have this dance?”

Elizabeth said nothing, but she did take his hand and stand.

Dr. Keckilpenny walked her out to the center of the room, then slipped his right hand around her waist while lifting her left hand up high.

“A waltz,” he said, his voice as soft as she’d ever heard it. “How like the count to choose something so risqué for a country dance.”

“The baron,” Elizabeth corrected as the two of them began to move in time to the muted music of the ball. There was a little warble to her voice that surprised her.

She should have been out dreadful-stalking with Master Hawksworth. That’s where she’d intended to be. So why was she letting Dr. Keckilpenny spin her in sweeping circles around an attic?

“Grrrrruh!” Mr. Smith barked. “Grrrrrrruh!”

“That’s progress, perhaps,” the doctor said. “What are you trying to tell us, Smithy? Are you asking for the next dance?” He looked down into Elizabeth’s eyes in a way that made her dizzy. Or maybe that was just the waltz. “Well, you can’t have it.”

Mr. Smith’s gruff, yapping growls grew louder, and he began to struggle, stamping his feet and straining harder against his chains.

“GRRRRRUH!” MR. SMITH BARKED. “GRRRRRRRUH!”

“I do believe he’s jealous,” Elizabeth said. “The way you’re holding me, he probably thinks you intend to devour me.”

“Not a bad theory, Miss Bennet. Shall we put it to the test?”

And he pulled her tightly to his chest and leaned in and kissed her.

Instantly, entirely by instinct, Elizabeth broke his hold with the Wings of the Phoenix, an upward sweep of the arms that sent him flying back into the nearest wall.

The doctor let out an “Oof,” then stumbled forward, off balance. When he regained his footing he gaped at Elizabeth, looking as much puzzled as hurt.

“Have I offended you? It was purely in the interest of scientific inquiry.” He cocked his head and furrowed his brow. “I think.”

“Doctor, I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

But someone did.

“Buh ruh,” Mr. Smith said. “Buh ruh!”

Dr. Keckilpenny burst out laughing. “Did you hear that? We did it! We did it, Miss Bennet! He said . . . something!”

He took a step toward Elizabeth as if he intended to hug her or take her hands in his, but then he suddenly stopped and spun toward Mr. Smith again.

“Oh. Right. Sorry. Well well well.”

“Buh ruuuuuh!” Mr. Smith brayed. “Buuuuuuh ruuuuh!”

His struggles grew more frantic even as his words—whatever they were—grew louder.

“It’s just like last night, when he went into his frenzy,” Dr. Keckilpenny said. “Only with the ‘buh ruh,’ now. I wonder if—”

“Doctor, listen. The music.”

“What of it? I don’t even hear . . . oh.”

The music had stopped.

Elizabeth whirled around and shot down the stairs. When she got through the door at the bottom, she found the sentry gone.

From down the hall, toward the master staircase and the foyer beneath, she could hear a great commotion: murmuring, shouting, the shuffling of many feet.

Elizabeth unsheathed her katana and sprinted toward the sound.

“What is the meaning of this?” she heard Lord Lumpley roar.

“Isn’t it obvious?” a familiar (and very welcome) voice replied just as she reached the top of the main stairs. “We’re crashing your party, My Lord.”

Down below, Elizabeth could see her father and Master Hawksworth squared off against the baron and Jane as a teeming stream of people flowed around them into the house.

There was Mr. Maleeny, the blacksmith, with his family; Mr. and Mrs. Littlefield, who ran the local bakery; Mr. Lawes, the carpenter, with his sons Humphrey and Giles; the McGregors, who sold lamp oil and perfume; the Calders and the Masons and the Crowells and many more. All of them tradesmen or tradesmen’s kin. And they weren’t even coming in the servants’ entrance.

“Blast you, Bennet!” Lord Lumpley railed. “You can’t do this!”

“I think that you’ll find, very soon, that it’s done,” Mr. Bennet said. “And just in time, too. We aren’t the only uninvited guests who’ll be calling on Netherfield tonight, I’m afraid.”

“So they’re here?” Capt. Cannon called out. What with the throng clogging the entrance hall, his Limbs couldn’t maneuver him any closer than a doorway on the other side of the room.

“Yes,” Mr. Bennet said to him, and Elizabeth heard a sudden, barely suppressed fury in his voice. “The hordes are descending at last, Captain. Not five minutes behind us are dreadfuls beyond number.”

“What should we do?” Elizabeth asked.

Mr. Bennet looked up at her and, seeing the katana in her hands, smiled.

Master Hawksworth looked up at her and, seeing Dr. Keckilpenny step up close behind her, frowned.

“Oh, tonight’s the easy part,” Mr. Bennet said. “All we must do is survive.”