“Damn.”
When she finally dared sit up and catalogue her wounds, she found, to her infinite relief, no twigs sticking from her side, no shattered femurs jutting from her thighs, no digits missing, no long strips of skin flapping loose and bloody. She could even stand up and limp around. So it only felt like she’d crushed every bone and organ in her body.
She’d raced into the forest faster than a fleeing stag. Now she began hobbling out again with all the speed of a three-legged tortoise.
Her sisters were nowhere in sight, and Elizabeth could only assume they were far off now, smothering the buck with kisses. Yet after she’d taken but a few steps back toward Longbourn, she noticed something moving off to her left—a dark shape blotting out rays of dappled sun. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one who’d fallen behind.
She turned and started toward the shifting shadows. They were being cast by movement in a small glade, she saw as she drew closer. And there were two shapes.
It was Kitty and Lydia, surely, the two of them taking advantage of their father’s indulgence to pause and pick wildflowers—or gossip about her and Master Hawksworth.
But hadn’t she seen them heading the other way, mere strides behind the stag?
The thought came to her too late. The “Lydia?” was already halfway off her lips as she stepped into the dell.
Two dreadfuls looked her way.
They were on the other side of the clearing, turned toward each other, as though they’d been chatting away like two friendly neighbors. One must have been weeks if not months dead, for its clothes and flesh had rotted clear through in spots, and what remained was tattered and gray. Not much was left of its face—just clumps stuck to skull, some still heavy with thick, black hair. It had sported a beard, back when it wasn’t an “it.”
The other unmentionable was male, as well, yet it was far, far fresher. Though its skin was tinted green, it had yet to rot enough to begin falling off, and the clothes were dirty and frayed but hardly worm eaten. The mouth was set in a large O, the eyebrows arched high on its forehead. Whatever had killed it seemed to have been a considerable surprise.
Elizabeth knew the feeling. She started to let another “Damn” slip, but caught it just in time. It seemed unwise to have a curse on her lips with Judgment so close at hand.
The more decayed of the dreadfuls gurgled a sound at her, part growl, part groan, then began staggering toward her with startling speed.
Fast as the zombie was, and bruised and battered as Elizabeth was, she might have outrun it had she tried. Yet something—shock, training, or mere foolishness, she had no time to decide which—kept her from turning away.
She reached down, unsheathed the ankle dagger she’d worn to the dojo that morning, and assumed the Natural Stance. When the unmentionable was twenty feet off, she let the blade fly, and—to Elizabeth’s relieved surprise—it buried itself between the creature’s red, rheumy eyes.
She quickly decided on her next step: retrieve the dagger from the dead dreadful’s head so she could turn on the other zombie and throw it again. Unfortunately, there was a snag to her plan.
The dreadful didn’t die. It just kept coming toward her, arms out, mouth open wide, dagger handle jutting from its face.
Elizabeth didn’t even get through her mantra once—“Smooth stone beneath still AHHH!”—and the unmentionable was on her, grabbing for her shoulders and snapping at her neck. She hopped back and, for the second time that morning, set a foot streaking into someone’s nether regions.
Or some thing’s nether regions, this time. Which made all the difference.
The unmentionable’s unmentionables might have just been squashed flat, but the creature showed no sign of noticing. Instead, it merely took hold of the foot that had been planted in its mushy-rotten groin, pulled it up toward its mouth, and leaned in for a bite. Elizabeth toppled backward to the ground, unable to do anything but watch in horror as her toes approached the dreadful’s gaping maw.
Just before the zombie could launch into its first chomp, there was a loud pop, and a spray of black pulp shot from the side of the creature’s head. As slowly as a felled tree, the unmentionable tilted, teetered, and then toppled forward onto Elizabeth.
By the time she managed to struggle out from under it, she found the other zombie crouching down beside her . . . with a smoking flintlock in its hand.
“I do apologize,” the dreadful said. “It took me ever so long to get a clear shot.”
CHAPTER 14
BY THE TIME THE UNMENTIONABLE had helped Elizabeth to her feet, it was obvious he wasn’t an unmentionable at all. He was a man—albeit one with tousled hair, filthy clothes, and face and hands smeared with either thick green greasepaint or pea soup.
“What are you doing out here dressed like that?” Elizabeth asked, far, far too unnerved for a simple “Thank you” or “How do you do?”
The man grinned, flashing big, pearly white teeth.
“Testing a theory!” he enthused (and it was a disconcerting thing, seeing what looked like a dreadful enthuse). “I thought it might be possible to mingle with the zombies. Disguise life. They are frightfully dim, you know. That’s one of the few advantages we have over them. We’re easy to kill, and they’re thick as bricks. I’ve often wondered, if people didn’t make a habit of screaming and running around and such every time they saw a zombie, would the poor things even know whom to eat? Simply remaining calm might be the best defense we have, it seemed to me. Muss your hair, cock your head, and groan out a few oooohs and ahhhhs, and the undead might well shuffle right past!”
Despite everything—her stinging scrapes and throbbing bruises, the stench of rotting flesh on the air, the lingering jolt of terror she could still feel tingling over her goosepimpled skin—Elizabeth found herself smiling back at the man.
BY THE TIME THE UNMENTIONABLE HAD HELPED ELIZABETH TO HER FEET, IT WAS OBVIOUS HE WASN’T AN UNMENTIONABLE AT ALL.
“Was it working?” she asked.
“Well, no,” the man said, still grinning. “When you arrived, I do believe our friend here was about to eat me. Then perhaps you would’ve had the chance to save me. That throw you made with your knife was absolutely smashing, by the by! Had the blade been but a little larger, it would have done the job admirably. As it is, I don’t think it penetrated the medulla oblongata. That’s the trick, you know—severing the connection between the cerebellum and the spinal cord. Or, barring that, making sure there’s nothing left for the spinal cord to connect to. It’s one of the great puzzles about the zombies, if you ask me: Why would the undead need their brains? If they’re animated by, oh, evil or whatever you want to call it, how could anything purely physiological have any effect on . . . oh, dear. There’s something hanging from one of my nostrils, isn’t there?”
“No, no . . . it’s just . . .”
Elizabeth kept gaping at the man as he rubbed his rather prodigious nose. When he was done, there was a bare spot on the tip where he’d wiped away the paint, a little dot of pink shining out from the chalky green.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Elizabeth said.
“No, indeed. I’ve just arrived from London with a company of His Majesty’s finest. Well, I hope they’re his finest. His Majesty’s youngest and most ill trained, they seem to me. Not that I know anything about military discipline. And they’re in fine, new, spotless red coats, at least, so I suppose that counts for something. They’re all off that way.” He flapped a long arm toward the west, then reconsidered and squinted to the east. “Or was it that way? I’ve managed to get myself more than a little lost, I must admit. At any rate, the soldiers are setting up camp outside that little village close by here . . . somewhere.”