The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead (44 page)

A monster was overhead, slavering and its raw eyes searching down. Her rifle went off in her hands, an instinctive reaction, and the bullet found its target more by luck than any skill. The head exploded, spraying brains across the beautifully constructed arched ceiling.

Earnestine half–rose, realised where she was, back in the first part of the reload–aim–fire sequence, and crouched again. The bolt came back and the empty round flashed briefly in the firelight to fall upon the brass–flecked floor, the objects bright and shiny amongst the filth. How many rounds had she fired? The thought leapt into her mind, pushing everything else out: she’d fired… out of ten… she didn’t know. There were lashings of spent cartridges on the floor, so if she divided by–

Charlotte’s revolver started firing.

Divide by eight… count to three, ten rounds, five in a charging clip… there were too many numbers! Her hands moved automatically, the bolt going in and she rose, aimed, fired!

“Tactical withdraw!” Charlotte screamed; her face ignited like one of those new–fangled photographic flashes with each detonation of fire and thunder from her service revolver. “Rorke’s Drift!”

Mrs Arthur Merryweather

They backed up.

Georgina stumbled as she was trying to reload. There were untoten around them now on both sides trying to outflank them. Bodies twitched impossibly on the floor. Georgina’s knee connected with the platform and her rifle sprang free to clatter across the wrought iron metalwork. She yelped and Earnestine’s strong hands grabbed her by her blouse, lifted her and flung her across the platform surface. Georgina fell awkwardly on top of her rifle and this, more than anything, shocked her into fighting.

She turned, sitting on the floor, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing!

The trigger was loose and quite useless.

She hadn’t reloaded.

Two creatures grabbed Earnestine, pulling her back. Charlotte appeared as if from nowhere, fired at the right hand one and then emptied her revolver downwards to shoot those that were grabbing Earnestine’s ankles and legs. The youngster flipped the big black gun open skilfully. Unbelievably, Georgina heard the tinkling bell–like sounds as the six spent cartridges pinged off the hard stone floor.

The monster that held Earnestine bared its teeth; bloody canines came down towards the young lady’s bare throat.

There was a metal–on–metal sound and Georgina’s rifle reloaded as if by itself, her body now reacting like it was its own clockwork model. She lunged forward, half crawling, and shoved the barrel into the mouth of the undead man. And fired, blowing its head off at less than point blank range.

“Get on!” Georgina yelled, feeling the rasp of air forced across her throat, but hearing only her blood pounding in her skull.

Earnestine came up and over the edge. Her lips opened and she mouthed ‘rifle’, spittle drizzling across Georgina’s face. Earnestine’s weapon was loose, rotating almost majestically as it dropped hard against the gantry, its butt vibrating the surface and its barrel belched fire. The roof above exploded, brick shrapnel and mortar dust hailed down. The rifle hovered and then slowly, ever so slowly; it toppled like a felled tree disappearing into the charnel house below.

“Bally thing–”

Earnestine turned and disappeared after it.

“Ness!!!”

Georgina wasn’t sure if she’d shouted, or whether it was Charlotte, as she flipped her own rifle, hefted it round and struck an approaching untoten. She hit another, double–handed backhand, then under arm like a croquet mallet. The fake human burst offering no resistance and Georgina tumbled forward, the rifle’s heavy momentum carrying her over the edge. She landed on something soft, something disgustingly soft and–

Everything was suddenly slavering corpse, a massive face, teeth and false breath, reddened eyes mad with fury and rage; blood flecked across Georgina as it came down for the kill and–

Earnestine stood briefly in Georgina’s vision, rifle in hand as the untoten split apart from the shot. Charlotte was above them, standing on the platform and firing like a demented harpy engaged in her own struggle and yet she was making every shell count.

Georgina fired another round and rolled herself onto the gantry using her momentum to bring herself to her feet. Her gun was to her shoulder and she fired again, the reloading now just part of the action.

Earnestine hurdled onto the platform too, again turning and firing.

Charlotte had reloaded, a blur of fingers popping rounds from the medium kit bag. She fired again, not at those nearest enemies trying to climb aboard, but further away.

Georgina was on the right flank and concentrated from right to left: Earnestine was on the far left working as if across a page. She only hoped that they overlapped, because Charlotte wasn’t even looking at the central area but kept firing, the revolver up and aimed with precision.

Except when one vile claw reached across and seized her ankle; she fired down, a single shot.

There was a respite, a blink of an eye.

Georgina risked taking in the wider picture.

Charlotte was firing at Thermopylae. It didn’t make sense at first, but then Georgina realised and loosed off a round in that direction when Charlotte was reloading. The untoten were struggling over the wall of bodies that had built up across the Spartan pass and this was slowing them down. The killing ground below the redoubt was cleared by Earnestine’s methodical approach and suddenly they were no longer under direct attack.

The blink of an eye became a pause.

Except there were still creatures coming into the area below from…

Georgina looked round, saw and shouted: “Behind us!”

Miss Charlotte

The enemy closed from both directions, a pincer movement cutting off any retreat. Charlotte didn’t know how they’d outflanked them, but it hardly mattered. The fog of war confused everything. If their task was to prevent the enemy reaching the sewers, then they had failed utterly.

“Down!” she shouted.

The others ducked either side and she let rip with both revolvers, flipping her head left and then right to take aim, firing alternately. They retreated backwards, giving ground. The British Bull Dog clicked empty first, but the Webley had another chamber. As they killed their opponents, so the bodies formed a slope and the creatures came higher each time they reached the edge, until finally one stumbled up and onto their redoubt.

Like a tide, the attack breached their defences.

It was over: each shot required them to take a step back. In the narrow brick–lined confines the noise was deafening. Georgina screamed long and hard letting all the air out of her lungs. Charlotte knew it was hopeless.

Left and right, they were boxed in, but strangely, the brick wall behind looked distorted further along, like a turning was appearing when Charlotte fired, the glow of the discharge etching a frame with light.

“Door!” Georgina shouted, pointlessly, and she grabbed Charlotte and dragged her along.

“Gina!” Charlotte yelled, shocked that Georgina had jumped up into her line of fire.

Charlotte reached the indentation in the wall. In the dark it had been invisible, but the sparks from the gunfire had highlighted the alcove.

Earnestine pushed up too, levelled her .303.

“That’s not loaded,” said Charlotte

“I know,” Earnestine said. She jabbed the barrel into the lock and levered down. The lock was fine, good solid Sheffield steel and it bent the barrel out of true, but the rotten, wooden door gave and the entire bracket came away.

“In!”

The others didn’t need any prompting and forced the door open.

Charlotte grabbed the lantern as they piled through, and just in time as the untoten hands grasped and clawed at them. The lantern slipped from her grip as she put her hands to the door. It didn’t go out. They pushed the door back, pushed and pushed and shoved and heaved. Hands appeared around the frame, above, to the side and even underneath. Charlotte fired through the door and then used the empty revolver as a club, banging the impervious flesh as hard as she could.

Georgina took over, bashed down with the butt of the Lee–Enfield as Charlotte bent to reload. Three rounds between her fingers, and again.

If only she had time to reload the spare revolver. Earnestine heaved, her boots slipping and sliding on the floor. She kicked the lantern, which sparked but stayed lit.

Inch by inch, they coerced the door back into position and no!

It flung open. Untoten fell through the door.

Charlotte stood and fired, six rounds, one after the other at the targets.

“Run!”

Georgina, carrying the crazily swinging lantern, was already moving away.

As they ran, Charlotte yelled out instructions: “We form a British Square and fall back along the passage.”

“There are only three of us!” Earnestine shouted. “How can we form a square?”

“No… it’s when –
argh
– one, fire, two drop back, three reload, then one stand and fire.”

“That’s what we’ve been doing.”

They paused, using up their lead to reload, pushing five rounds from a clip into the magazine. She handed out a clip each from the medium kit bag. As her sisters fiddled with the metal and pushed in the bullets, Charlotte reloaded the revolver: three rounds between her fingers, again, swap over, three rounds, again… drop one because it’s the British Bull Dog. She took a charger clip too. There was no time for anything else as the creatures were nearly upon them.

“Yes,” Charlotte continued, “but… like when we sing a round, then one of us is always–”

“Got it! Come on.”

“Count your ammo,” Charlotte commanded. “Ness!”

Earnestine fired, the charge blazing at the end where she’d damaged the barrel, and then she ducked and went to the back.

“Gina!”

Georgina fired and followed Earnestine, who was now down on one knee flicking the bolt of her rifle.

“Lottie!” said Charlotte. She aimed – fired, ‘one’, and then whipped around, back to the end of the line, and down to reload. She opened her mouth to shout Earnestine’s nickname, but she heard the gunshot.

And then Georgina’s.

And it was her turn again.

They’d moved back three paces and the untoten had advanced perhaps two. She picked off the leading creature – ‘two’ – and ducked to go around again.

Another two shots rang as she twisted, reloaded and then stood.

Yes, the gap was widening: not fast because the passage allowed them to advance two abreast. They’d be utterly overwhelmed if it hadn’t been for the rear ranks stumbling over veritably dead corpses of their comrades.

Aim, fire! ‘Three’.

She went round again, suddenly reminded of barn dancing: dosey doe, take your partner by the hand… she shot another. ‘Four’.

Earnestine shouted: “Last round!” and she fired.

Then Georgina: “Last round.” Her shot ricocheted sounding a high–pitched whine.

On Charlotte’s move, she saw the far door: it looked solid and would perhaps hold them for a while.

“Ready to run for it?”

Georgina was running already, having mistaken the command. She had the lantern, thank goodness, but her speed meant that it was increasingly difficult to see the approaching untoten.

“Go, go!” Charlotte shouted. She fired her last round – made it count – and then she pulled out the Webley revolver and fired: one, two, three… aim, four, five… six. She turned and ran, the silhouettes of her sisters jumping as the lantern bounced around, and then a glorious rectangle of wonderful light appeared. Georgina vanished into the frame and then Earnestine. Charlotte jumped through, she heard the door slam behind her, a bolt going across like a Lee–Enfield loading but heavier.

They’d made it.

She blinked, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the brightness after the gloom of the sewers.

Even the air smelt fresher.

And then she saw: the room was vast, cathedral–like, and full, utterly full, of writhing untoten.

Chapter XXIX

Miss Deering-Dolittle

Earnestine found herself standing in what looked like the future: bright and shining with manifest machinery.

“It’s an underground station… a new one,” she said.

They were on a landing, like the circle of a theatre looking down into the auditorium of stalls and stage below. There was a staircase that descended to a strange scene, a Dante’s inferno framed by the modern Victorian arches, and another leading up to some kind of upper circle.

Below, with an angry hiss of steam, a train lurched along the rails and then stopped. Like a giant piece of clockwork, a gantry of cabling lurched from one goods wagon and moved back to fix itself onto the next in line.

“They’re using it to bring the corpses into London,” said Earnestine, the final piece of the puzzle falling into place. “And through the underground system they can reach from Euston to Waterloo and even Kensington.”

Under the gantry, there was a brilliant flash, a lightning bolt so much brighter for being contained inside. The curve of the tunnel, covered in white tiles, concentrated the effect like a concave mirror. An acrid smell displaced the stench of death that permeated everything. The young ladies blinked trying to remove the afterglow of the flash.

Moments later, the undead began to spill out of the wagon, more and more, with their control boxes fizzing with life as the monsters shambled along the platform searching for a way out.

“This isn’t good,” Earnestine said. “All the stations have exits to the surface, if they’re here then… we have to stop this.”

Charlotte reloaded, shoving the revolvers back into the front of her jacket when she was done, and then she checked her rifle.

Again, the rolling stock shifted, clanked, and then moved on one carriage forward, and the framework of electrodes moved away from the upper gallery to attach to the next boxcar.

“It’s all autonomous,” Georgina said.

Charlotte passed a charging clip to Earnestine.