Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (14 page)

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!”

__________________

ONCE HE’D PICKED HIMSELF UP and carefully dusted himself off, Lt. Tindall deigned to thank Elizabeth’s sisters. But there was an icy edge to his tone, Elizabeth thought, especially when compared to Capt. Cannon’s warm compliments on the girls’ courage and prowess. Lydia and Kitty seemed not to notice the younger man’s frostiness, however. In fact, they barely glanced at the captain, as the lieutenant’s fair-haired, square-jawed comeliness proved so mesmerizing it trumped even the sight of an armless, legless man riding in a wheelbarrow.

The headless, lifeless man lying in the road they ignored, too, though it was easier to see the effort that required. As soon as they could, both girls put their backs to the body, and when Lt. Tindall trundled his commander
away so that they might “regroup the column,” their inevitable titters sounded, at first, forced and joyless.

“Ooh, he looks good in red,” Lydia said.

“He’d look good in anything,” said Kitty.

“Wherever did you find him, Lizzy?”

“Yes, Lizzy—where have you been?”

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“Even Master Hawksworth was worried.”

“‘Even’?”

“You’re right.
Especially
him!”

“Oh, I almost kissed the deer!”

“Me, too!”

“Jane came the closest, of course.”

“Mary was nowhere near it.”

“It’s a shame, really. For what other kisses can the poor girl look forward to?”

“I can guess which ones she
wishes
were—”

“Come,” Elizabeth cut in, setting off down the road. If someone didn’t interrupt her sisters, they’d still be standing there chattering come nightfall. “There are soldiers scattered throughout these woods like so many acorns. Let us help gather them up.”

It took but a few minutes of searching to bring everyone together again. The soldiers that didn’t come creeping sheepishly out from behind trees and rocks were herded up the road by Lt. Tindall and Capt. Cannon. While they collected their discarded muskets and cleared the zombie carcass from the road, Lydia and Kitty stood to the side, attempting to engage the lieutenant in idle conversation. (Lydia: “What a shame your darling hat was eaten. We can recommend a haberdasher in town, if you like.” Kitty: “He does all our bonnets!”) Through it all, however, Lt. Tindall remained as stiff as a tin soldier, and once the party was moving on to Longbourn again, he ignored the girls altogether.

Unfazed, they simply went back to peppering their sister with questions
about where she’d been and what she’d been doing. They found Dr. Keckilpenny particularly fascinating, of course—especially when they learned (after much wheedling) that he was young and rather handsome, in his gangly, gawky way.

“I wonder what Master Hawksworth would make of that,” said Lydia.

“He’d probably do a Panther’s Pounce right on this doctor fellow’s head!” Kitty laughed.

“Ooooo! Let us see!”

Lydia grabbed Kitty by the arm and practically dragged her toward the forest, where Master Hawksworth and the others were still searching for Elizabeth.

“Surely that can wait until we reach Longbourn,” Elizabeth said. “We still need to show the captain and his men the way to the house.”

“One can do that as easily as three!” Lydia called back over her shoulder.

“But there might be more dreadfuls about!”

“Oh, I don’t think so. And anyway, we’ve still got our swords!”

And Lydia tugged her rather alarmed-looking sister into the shadowy murk of the woods.

“I hope you will excuse my sisters’ impetuousness,” Elizabeth said to Capt. Cannon and Lt. Tindall. “They are so young. . . .”

“Yes. Quite,” the lieutenant sniffed, clearly wondering—if not asking—about the kind of young lady who could run around the countryside alternately gossiping and decapitating the living dead.

The captain, for his part, blew out a snort not unlike the whinnying of a horse. “There is nothing to excuse, Miss Bennet. I can but wish my own troops had half your sisters’ boldness!”

To a man, the foot soldiers cringed and drooped their shoulders, and as Elizabeth led them up the lane, they marched with such shambling, shuffling steps they seemed no livelier than a platoon of dreadfuls.

When they at last reached Longbourn, they found Mrs. Bennet
wearing a groove into the lawn with her pacing, weeping and wailing as Mrs. Hill toddled along behind to keep her supplied with fresh hankies.

“Oh, I knew this day would come! Off they trot into the wilds without a care in the world what should happen to their poor mother, and now the unmentionables shall have their luncheon! Oh, my sweet girls! My sweet, tender, juicy girls! How could Mr. Bennet—
Lizzy!
”

Mrs. Bennet raced to her daughter and threw her arms around her.

“Oh, Lizzy! At least
you
are still alive! Oh, my dearest, my beloved, my—”

She pushed Elizabeth aside and stepped toward Capt. Cannon with wide, moist eyes.

“Cuthbert?” she whimpered.

“Prudence?” he replied.

“Oh, Cuthbert! It
is
you! After all these years!”

“Limbs! Embrace the lady!”

The captain’s attendants put down the wheelbarrow and stepped forward with obvious reluctance.

“Limbs! Halt!” Capt. Cannon choked out. “Pru, if I’d . . . The Troubles . . . I didn’t think you’d . . .” He cleared his throat and straightened his back and started over again, as if addressing the woman before him for the first time. “You are the lady of the house?”

“I am,” Mrs. Bennet said softly, eyes downcast, and for a moment, Elizabeth thought her mother actually looked diffident.

A very
brief
moment.

“I have come to see Mr. Bennet on a matter of great importance,” Capt. Cannon said.

Mrs. Bennet reached back so Mrs. Hill could slap a dry handkerchief into her hand.

“He has abandoned me!” Mrs. Bennet cried, pressing the linen to her quivering lips. “Left me here all alone while he gallivants about the ghoul-plagued woodlands searching for our wayward daughter!”

“Mamma! I am not ‘wayward’! It’s just that—”

“OH, CUTHBERT! IT
IS
YOU! AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!”

Elizabeth clamped her lips together. The tale she had to tell—particularly injuring herself trying to kiss a deer and being set upon by dreadfuls not once but twice—would soothe her mother not a jot.

She opened her mouth again when she’d settled on the best possible distraction.

“Let us discuss all that later. Lydia and Kitty should be back shortly with Papa and the others. Until they return, we have guests to entertain, do we not?”

Mrs. Bennet shifted her gaze to Capt. Cannon and shoved her hankie back at Mrs. Hill, her tears instantly dried.

“So we do,” she said. “For surely these fine officers would consent to keep us company until they can see to their business with Mr. Bennet?”

“It would be an honor,” Capt. Cannon said. “Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”

Lt. Tindall had been watching the various reunions—Elizabeth and Mrs. Bennet, “Cuthbert” and “Prudence,” Mrs. Hill and the handkerchief—with something exceedingly close to a sneer. He answered the captain with a noncommittal noise halfway between a “Yes” and a growl.

“Right Limb!” Capt. Cannon barked. “Escort Mrs. Bennet inside!”

One of the soldiers marched up to the lady and offered her a crooked arm, which she accepted with a smile not for him but for the captain.

“Left Limb! Return to post and follow! Drawing room, ho!”

As Capt. Cannon’s wheelbarrow squeaked off toward the house, the lieutenant followed with all the enthusiasm of a puppy being dragged along on a leash. So out of sorts was he that he forgot to offer Elizabeth his own, very real arm. Or at least Elizabeth chose to believe he’d merely forgotten.

She herself was far more anxious to get inside. Not that entertaining guests with her mother was something she usually looked forward to. But when the caller was Cuthbert Cannon and the hostess his “Pru”—now that could prove interesting indeed.

__________________

ONCE CAPT. CANNON had been wheeled into the drawing room, Left Limb was put at ease in the corner while Right Limb was kept busy sugaring tea and tilting the cup just so, to keep its contents from his commander’s voluminous whiskers.

“Tell me, Captain,” Elizabeth said before her mother could make the day’s temperature the principal topic of conversation, “you have been to Hertfordshire before?”