Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (32 page)

Master Hawksworth snapped into a Striking Viper pose. “Did that thing just
speak
?”

Before anyone could answer, there was a loud thump across the room. Another quickly followed, and Dr. Keckilpenny’s trunk rocked and scooted a few inches across the floor.

“Doctor,” Elizabeth said, “do you have any idea why your luggage would be moving?”

“Oh, yes. That’s Westlake. Or was it Eastbrook? Whichever, he’s the guard who was killed in the house the other night. Capt. Cannon let me keep him as sort of a spare, in case Mr. Smith didn’t work out. It appears
he’s reporting for duty.”

Elizabeth stared at the doctor, aghast.

Master Hawksworth began edging toward the stairwell.

“Come, Elizabeth Bennet. Let us leave this lunatic to his obscenities.”

“My work won’t seem so obscene when it saves your life.”

“Ha!” the Master spat. “What will save us is strength, not the devilry of warped meddlers.”

“Ha
ha
! What will save us is ingenuity, not the brute force of blood-thirsty simpletons!”

“I can show you what brute force is capable of,” Master Hawksworth said, even as he kept sliding toward the stairs.

“I’m sure you could. I would expect no more nor less from the likes of you. The only thing that surprises me is that Miss Bennet would choose to be your pupil.”

“Buh ruhzzz! Buh ruhzzz!” Mr. Smith said.

“You stay out of this,” Dr. Keckilpenny snapped.

“Whether you like it or not, I am Elizabeth Bennet’s master, whereas you, to her, are nothing.” Master Hawksworth turned to Elizabeth and held out his hand. “Come. We are leaving.”

“Pah! The Elizabeth Bennet I know bows to no master save her own mind. And in that, I am something a buffoon like you could never be: her equal.”

Master Hawksworth curled his hand into a fist and stepped toward Dr. Keckilpenny. “I warn you. Do not insult me.”

“You’re right. Why should I bother when you make an ass of yourself with no assistance from me?”

The Master bent his knees and curled his hands like claws, beginning a Panther’s Pounce.

He never finished it. Elizabeth’s kick sent him flying halfway across the attic.

“Stop it! Both of you!” She planted herself between the men again. “You’re acting like children!”

With stunned slowness, Master Hawksworth pushed himself up off the floor. Yet it wasn’t anger Elizabeth saw upon his face when he turned to look at her. It was something approaching wonder—almost
worship
.

“Elizabeth Bennet, you are a marvel,” he said. “I will not pretend to command you again. Instead, I will ask you. I will beg you. Please. Leave now. With me.
Stay
with me. I need you. There is a hole in my heart . . . a hole only you can fill.”

“If there’s a hole in you anywhere, it’s in your head,” Dr. Keckilpenny declared. “Clearly, Miss Bennet intends to stay up here. With me.”

“Oh!” Elizabeth cried out. She flung up her hands, and it was as if a dam within her burst, and everything she’d been holding back came pouring out. “The holes in you both are so vast I think it would take the two of you together to make one whole man!” She swung a sharp glare on Hawksworth. “You! You came to us as a Master, yet you’ve not mastered your own fear! You can jump, you can strike poses, you can do
dand-baithaks
by the score. But there is one thing you cannot or will not do: fight! Oh, maybe you can work up the courage to thrash some helpless weakling.”

“Hey,” Dr. Keckilpenny said.

“But when have you willingly faced a worthy foe?” Elizabeth went on. “You never sparred with my father in the dojo. Never even sparred with
me
! And you always seemed to disappear or go conveniently lame when it was time to deal with
zombies
.”

The Master flinched, and Elizabeth knew she would never think of him as “Master” again.

“Your ‘shameful secret’ is obvious to me now, as it should have been all along,” she said. “You are a coward, Geoffrey Hawksworth.”

Hawksworth lowered his head and said nothing.

Elizabeth turned to Dr. Keckilpenny and found him eyeing his rival looking altogether too smug.

“And you. Do you know what you are?”

“Mad?” the doctor ventured.

“Yes! Mad! And cold, despite all your jokes. You treat the dead as your playthings, and the living—they don’t enter into the equation at all! Not so long as you’ve got your toys in your ivory tower!”

“Precisely!” Dr. Keckilpenny began brightly. “And all that’s left to make it paradise is a suitable playm—”

The heart for quips left him before he could even finish the word, and he sighed and slumped and said, “Oh, it’s hopeless, isn’t it?”

“You look for hope in the wrong place. Both of you,” Elizabeth said. She felt spent now, empty. “What each of you lacks I cannot give you . . . and would not if I could.”

She turned and started down the stairs, hoping she’d reach the bottom before the tears came.

She did.

After a long, still moment, Master Hawksworth left the attic, as well. It was obvious he wasn’t going after Elizabeth, however. He simply had no choice but to follow in her footsteps.

“Buh ruhz,” groaned Mr. Smith. “Buuuuuh ruhhhhhhzzzzzzzzz.”

Dr. Keckilpenny slouched over and slumped back atop his chest, which was now rattling so fiercely it was scratching the floorboards.

“No, Smithy. Not ‘buuuuh ruhhhhzzz,’” he said. “The word is
damn
.”

__________________

“ELIZABETH.”

At the sound of her name, she left the blackness. She’d been sleeping but not dreaming, as with the dead—the restful dead, anyway.

She saw her haggard father kneeling beside her, sucked in a lungful of the malodorous air, heard the banging and scraping on the window boards and the raspy, incoherent cries outside. And she longed for oblivion
again as memory returned.

She’d spent hours—it seemed like days—fighting back one breakthrough after another. Sometimes with her father, sometimes with her sisters, sometimes with soldiers or servants or men from the village. Never with Master Hawksworth. Whatever battles he was or wasn’t fighting, he was facing them without her.

She couldn’t remember falling asleep, nor did she recall crawling under the dining room table with the mothers nestling sleeping or weeping children. Yet here she was.

“Come with me,” her father said softly. “It begins soon.”

Elizabeth was too groggy to even ask what “it” was. She simply got up and followed.

Lydia and Kitty, she found, were passed out together atop the table, while Mary was slumped, drooling on herself prodigiously, against a grandfather clock in the hallway.

“Papa?” Elizabeth said.

Mr. Bennet just put a finger to his lips and shook his head. He was letting her sisters sleep. But why not her?

The soldiers were gone from their positions along the hall, and when Elizabeth and her father reached the foyer, she saw why. The whole company was packed in there together, bayonets affixed to their Brown Besses. Ensign Pratt was at the back, his cherubic face as round and pale as a full moon. In front, by the door, was Capt. Cannon in his wheelbarrow, turned to face his men.

“. . . been telling yourselves you’re not ready for all this,” he was saying. “Because you lack training. Because you lack experience. Poppycock! What does that count against what you
are
. Englishmen! And not just that. Londoners! Young, tough ones who’ve already faced on the streets of Spitalfields and Camden and Limehouse foes more implacable, more cunning, more tenacious than any mere shambling rotter! Footpads, sneak thieves, pimps, degenerates—now
those
are fiends to fear! So you’re not good at marching. So you don’t know a field marshal from a major
general from the company cook. I don’t care, and neither should you. Because by God, you boys already know how to fight! And mark my words: This day, you
shall!
”

The soldiers were cheering as Elizabeth and her father started up the stairs. When the Bennets were about halfway up, the captain noticed them and said something to his Limbs, who stood beside him looking weary and grim.

Right Limb looked up at Mr. Bennet and saluted.

Elizabeth’s father nodded solemnly as he carried on up the staircase.

“Papa, what is going on?” Elizabeth asked.

“You will soon see, my dear. I have arranged for box seats.”

The rooms on the second floor were overflowing with huddled guests from the ball, all still in their mussed finery. Though Elizabeth didn’t see her mother, she knew she was among them somewhere. Mrs. Bennet’s snores were quite distinctive.

Up ahead, toward the end of the hall, Elizabeth saw Lt. Tindall speaking earnestly to her sister Jane.

“. . . honor-bound to do all I can to protect your person . . . and your purity,” Elizabeth heard him say as she and her father walked up. His back was to them, and so absorbed was he in his own words that he didn’t notice their approach.

Jane was blushing and looking away.

Mr. Bennet cleared his throat.

The lieutenant turned around.

“Oh. Is it time?”

“I believe so,” Mr. Bennet said. “Good luck, Lieutenant.”

“We have daylight, we have muskets, we have the element of surprise. We won’t need luck.”

The young officer offered Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth a bow, turned back to Jane and boldly kissed her hand, then pivoted and marched off toward the staircase.

“There goes a brave man,” Mr. Bennet said to Jane, and he continued
watching her for a long moment even after she’d replied with a simple “Yes.”

“Is His Lordship ready?” he finally said.

“He should be. He asked if I could come in and help him with his stockings perhaps half an hour ago. He was almost fully dressed then.”

Mr. Bennet cocked his right eyebrow. “Almost?”

Elizabeth cocked her left. “Help him with his stockings?”

“Yes. His dressers are all downstairs guarding the . . .” Jane flushed pink again. “I said no!”

“Of course, you did,” Mr. Bennet said. “Now, perhaps we should—”

The nearest door swung open.

“Would you have a look at these breeches, Miss Bennet?” Lord Lumpley said, his attention fixated (as usual) on his own nether regions. “They seem puffy in all the wrong . . . oh. Good morning, Mr. Bennet. Miss Bennet. I didn’t realize the moment had arrived.”

“It has,” Mr. Bennet said.

“I see. You may as well step in, then. We wouldn’t want to miss it, would we?”

The baron moved back to let the Bennets into his large—and, to Elizabeth, sickeningly empty—bedchamber. Every other part of the house was packed near to bursting, yet His Lordship had been allowed to keep an entire room to himself. Elizabeth knew there was good reason: The night before, he’d complained more about the invasion of the lower classes than the damned, and concessions had to be made. Yet it still rankled that his room was now filled with nothing more than some furniture, scattered clothes, and a few poorly concealed bottles of gin.

“I drew these back a crack to have some light to see by,” the baron said, walking over to a set of long, emerald green drapes. “I wasn’t up to taking a good look out, though. Not before I’d had my morning tea and toast.”

“I’m afraid we ran out of water for tea some time ago,” Mr. Bennet said. “The food’s all gone, as well.”

“Oh?” Lord Lumpley pouted, then shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing to hold us back then, is there?”

He drew the curtains aside, revealing a pair of glass doors. Just beyond was a shallow balcony and, beyond that, Netherfield’s long front lawn bathed in the crimson light of dawn. When the baron opened the doors, a sound like a thousand moans or the lowing of a vast herd of cattle swept into the room.

The four of them stepped onto the balcony.

Scattered here and there over the grounds were dozens of ragged, staggering figures—easily two hundred in all, if not three. It was easy to tell the first wave of sorry stricken from their victim recruits. Half the dreadfuls looked moldy and rotten, and they hobbled on legs that had barely enough flesh to hold the bones together. The other half one could have almost taken for living, so natural was the pallor of their skin. Their faces were slack and often blood smeared, however, and many had gaping cavities where their organs had once been.

When they saw Lord Lumpley and the Bennets, they began drifting toward the balcony, some of them shrieking or gnashing their teeth.

“My God,” the baron gasped. “Just look what they’ve done to the topiary.”

Elizabeth tore her horrified gaze away from the unmentionables just long enough to point it at him.

“Surely, Captain Cannon doesn’t think he can just march out and kill so many unmentionables,” she said. “His men are outnumbered at least three to one.”

“The captain doesn’t intend to kill them all,” Mr. Bennet replied. “He merely seeks to distract them. He very wisely had the stables sealed last night in addition to the main house. Captain Cannon plans to draw the main horde off so that someone can get inside and—presuming the dreadfuls haven’t already broken in to feast upon the horses—saddle a mount. That someone would then ride west to look for a battalion of the king’s army on the march from Suffolk. If all goes well, a rescue party might very well reach Netherfield before we’ve either starved or been eaten.”