Dreadfully Ever After (25 page)

This was Lady Catherine’s practice stock, held in captivity for those moments when only a moving target would do. As such, most were missing hands or arms or ears, and several had great gaping holes in their gowns where chunks of flesh had been blasted or carved away. They all had their legs and feet, though. What good would they be otherwise? When a practice zombie lost the ability to run, it quickly lost its head as well.

Not that any of these unmentionables were running. They came shambling out slowly, almost uncertainly, as if blinded by the light of day. Their pace picked up as they neared the center of the training floor, though, and eventually one of them grunted and broke into a lope. The others quickly followed suit.

Again, Darcy tried to dive toward the daggers so near at hand. And again, his cousin stopped him.

The dreadful at the head of the pack hurled itself into a shrieking leap—onto the butterfly, which it immediately crammed into its mouth. The unmentionable closest on its heels tried to pry its jaws apart and pluck out the prize, but it quickly lost interest, as did all its brethren.

The bait that had drawn them from their lair—the butterfly’s life-light—was gone. The zombies began milling about listlessly, obviously seeing nothing else of interest.

Anne and Darcy they ignored.

“We must find a way out,” Darcy whispered, barely daring to so much as move his lips. “This trick of yours won’t save us forever.”

“It is no trick, Fitzwilliam,” Anne replied. She spoke in a normal tone, not loud but not a whisper either. “I lied about that before, I’m afraid. It seems cruel now, making you pretend to be a tree, but I didn’t think you were ready for the truth.”

The unmentionables were still wandering around obliviously in the middle of the training hall. As Anne spoke, a few turned to look at her and then turned away again, utterly uninterested.

Anne took a step toward the dreadfuls. She tried to drag Darcy along, but he was the one anchoring her now.

“Come along,” she coaxed. “Don’t be shy.”

“I’m not shy. I just have no desire to be eaten.”

“But that’s just it, Fitzwilliam. That’s what I’ve been trying to show you.”

Anne uncoiled her arm from his and set off quickly, practically skipping, toward the practice stock.

“Anne! Come back!”

When she reached the nearest zombie—a bearded male with the stretched neck and cocked head and bulging eyes of a recently hung thief—she reached up and playfully tousled its ginger hair.

“I call this one Mercury,” she said. “Extremely quick on his feet. Two whole months he’s been here without losing a single limb! I’m surprised he didn’t get the butterfly. Perhaps he’s slowing down. It happens sometimes, as the legs begin to rot.”

“How can this be?” Darcy muttered. “How can this
be?
”

Anne hurried over to a corpulent femme-zombie that was contentedly munching on the maggots it scraped off its own face.

“Just look at Humpty go!” she hooted, and she gave the dreadful a mischievous poke in the stomach. “Dead all these weeks, and still she finds a way to keep eating. Watch out, my girl! All that fat will be the death of you—again!”

Laughing, Anne spun away and happily pranced in a zigzag through the herd. Darcy had never seen her so euphoric, so carefree, so ... lively.

“Hello, Romeo! Good morning, Juliet! You’re looking well today, Crusoe! And you, Gulliver! Goodness, Aphrodite, whatever happened to your hands?”

“These are your ‘friends,’ ” Darcy said. “The ones you told me you visit at night.”

“Yes. These are my friends.” Anne leaned against the beautiful (if olive-tinged) dreadful she’d called “Aphrodite” and wrapped her arms around its neck. “The best I’ve ever had. They don’t demand anything. They don’t judge. Not like Lady Catherine. Not like that wife of yours.”

Darcy flinched, but Anne didn’t seem to notice.

“They think we’re abominations,” she snarled. “Ha! What we are is exceptional!”

And then Darcy understood. It snapped into focus with shocking suddenness, like a spider dangling so close to the eye it’s but a smudge until you recognize it for what it is and wonder why you didn’t see it all along.

“You were bitten, too. You take the serum. You’ve been taking it for years.”

Anne nodded, and then she released Aphrodite and started back toward Darcy.

“So you see,” she said, “I alone can truly understand what you’re going through. I alone can help you come to peace with what you’ve become. I. Alone. But not alone any longer. For now we have each other. As it was always meant to be.”

She stopped in front of Darcy and leaned forward into him, her arms encircling his neck just as they’d done with the zombie’s a moment before. Darcy was so numb with shock and confusion, he neither returned her embrace nor broke it. “You took a vow to remain at Elizabeth Bennet’s side till death did you part,” his cousin said. “Well, death has parted you. It touched you, and now your wife rejects you as a result. But death need never come between us, Fitzwilliam, for already we are neither wholly dead nor wholly alive. And do you know what that makes us?”

Anne pressed herself harder against him, bringing her lips up close to whisper breathlessly in his ear.

“Immortal.”

Mary’s surveillance of Bethlem Royal Hospital went much as it had the day before, with a few notable exceptions. Again, she saw the occasional free-roaming gaggle of dreadfuls lurch down the streets around the hospital fence. Again, she saw the hospital’s black ambulance roll off, only to return a few hours later with what seemed to be a new inmate for the asylum. Again, she saw attendants rushing out to help wrestle the madman inside. And again, the bedlamite-to-be seemed dark skinned and quite vigorous in his resistance, and his cries were either gibberish or something other than English.

What was different wasn’t just that Mary saw all this more clearly (for her perch in the brewery was indeed an improvement over her hiding place of the day before). Now when she muttered, “Curious” or “Queer,” there was someone beside her to say, “Quite” or “Indeed.” And it wasn’t just affirmations Mr. Quayle had to share, for he had packed in a compartment of his box a loaf of bread and an assortment of sliced fruits and cheeses, so that he and Mary (and Ell and Arr, both of whom proved surprisingly fond of stilton) could share a companionable picnic while watching the comings and goings down below.

“Look! At the south end of the fence,” Mary said as she slid a crust of bread into the view-slot of Mr. Quayle’s box. “There must be a dozen dreadfuls chasing that cat. I do believe that’s the biggest band we’ve seen yet.”

As the bread disappeared into the darkness, Mary thought she caught a glimpse of soft, moist lips and perhaps even, for just a second, a surprisingly perfect Roman nose.

There was a polite pause while Mr. Quayle chewed his food.

“Yes. It is alarming,” he said finally. “I’m sure you know well how the danger grows exponentially. If nothing is done, it won’t be long before such bands become herds. We can only hope the situation isn’t worse elsewhere in the city.”

“I find it hard to believe there could be anything worse than Section Twelve Central anywhere inside the Great Wall.”

“I have heard things about other sections, Miss Bennet, that make Twelve Central seem a veritable Garden of Eden. Fortunately, my obligations never took me to such places.”

“Because Bedlam is here.”

Mr. Quayle’s box creaked.

“I am nodding.”

On the horizon, a new column of smoke was adding to the ashy canopy that hung over London. This one was different than all those around it, though: roiling black as opposed to the white-gray of the factories and crematoria. Even as Mary watched it, another serpentine spiral of black smoke began coiling its way into the sky nearby.

“I think the time for picnicking has past,” Mary said.

Mr. Quayle’s box creaked again, though at a slower, more mournful pace.

“Be careful, Miss Bennet.”

“And you, Mr. Quayle.” Mary turned to the dogs. “And you, Ell. And you, Arr.”

The wagging of the mutts’ stubby tails put a small smile on Mary’s face. There was something to be said for this levity business, she was finding. Perhaps it was easier to appreciate when no one tagged a “La!” onto the end of every quip.

Moments later, she was circling around the block to approach the hospital from the main road, past the front gate. It would hardly do for Miss Mary Godwin to be seen walking out of a deserted brewery. And it was Miss Mary Godwin—of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Lunatics and Village Idiots—who was expected to pay a call at Bethlem Royal Hospital that afternoon.

In the course of her walk, Mary had to brain one zombie with a brick and scramble up the side of a building to avoid a flock of ten more. Eventually, though, she was walking up to the hospital wearing her most unctuous look of disapproving piety—which, being so well practiced, would have done any prude in England proud.

Once Mary coaxed the attendant at the entrance from behind his guard box (where he spent most of his time cowering so as not to be spotted by passing zombies), the man unlocked the gate with frantic fumbling fingers and waved Mary through. He was so anxious to shut the gate again, he nearly slammed it on her rump, and within seconds he was scrambling back to his hiding place.

“You can just follow the drive up to the front door, Miss,” he whispered from behind the guard box. “They’re expecting you.”

“Thank you.”

Despite the squalor and chaos just outside the gate, the hospital grounds were immaculately manicured, with a wide, lush lawn and flowerbeds exploding with gay spring color. As she strolled up to the column-studded portico of the hospital’s central facade, Mary could have been approaching the home of a blue-blooded country squire—a friend of Mr. Darcy’s or Mr. Bingley’s, perhaps. And, indeed, a well-dressed gentleman stepped out of the building to watch her approach, the condescending smile of a lord of the manor on his face. Drawing near, Mary could see that he was an unhealthy man, gray and gaunt, and if not for his smirk she might have worried that he was about to have a go at her brains.

“Sir Angus MacFarquhar, I presume?”

The gray man’s smirk grew smirkier. “No. Sir Angus is occupied elsewhere today. I am Dr. Sleaford, assistant administrator of Bethlem Royal Hospital. And you would be Miss Godwin of the SPCLVI?”

“That is correct.”

“I received the note you left with my subordinates yesterday demanding a tour of our facilities. I’m sorry no one was available to accommodate you at the time, but I’m happy to see that you returned, as promised. I’m certain you will find that Bethlem lives up to the high standards of your fine organization.”

“So you will allow me to inspect the hospital? With no restrictions?”

“If that is still your wish, Miss Godwin. We have been at cross purposes with the
SPCLVI
too many times in the past. It is the sincerest wish of both Sir Angus and myself that such quarrels should be put behind us. Despite its reputation, Bethlem is a happy place for all, whether they be merely a tad overeccentric or violently insane. I would urge you to take my word for this as reassurance enough, for despite the good cheer of life inside these walls, it can still be a shocking thing to see. If it makes a patient’s day a little brighter to spend it
sans
clothes, for instance, we don’t force the issue. Nor do we stand on ceremony if someone wishes to, say, smear themselves with feculence and chicken feathers and pass the time in spirited clucking.
Quisquis no vestri navis
, those are our watchwords here. ‘Whatever keeps your vessel afloat.’ It is a humane philosophy, but one that is not always the most pleasant to see in practice. Do you still wish to come inside?”

“I feel it is my duty.”

“I see. Come this way, then.”

Dr. Sleaford turned and headed toward the front door, and Mary started up the steps after him. How she would separate herself from him and locate Sir Angus’s laboratory, she still didn’t know. Yet it was thrilling to have the chance, at last, to improvise.

Dr. Sleaford opened the door and then stepped aside with a bow. “After you.”

“Thank you.”

Mary crossed the threshold into Bedlam.

The net came down over her head the second she was inside.

“I got ‘er!” a man yelled.

A steely ring clamped around Mary’s waist, pinning her arms to her sides, and she was jerked forward as the door slammed shut behind her.

Though her eyes had yet to adjust to the dim light, Mary could tell what was happening: Someone was trying to trap her with a zombie-catching net. She groped for the pole that led off from the binding ring at the bottom of the net, and, when her fingers found it, she grabbed hold and launched herself into a Whirlwind Kick that sent her spinning up into the air.

She heard several gratifying crashes and yelps as the pole was ripped from her attacker’s grasp and whipped in a circle around the room, smacking anyone in range at more or less chin height.

“She’s a flippin’ tigress!”

“Dr. S said she might be tough, but oi!”

Mary followed the sound of the men’s cries and, using the net pole like a battle staff, managed to jab one in the stomach and sweep the other off his feet.

“Gorblimey, Styles. What are you waitin’ for?”

Mary’s vision returned just in time for her to see that Styles was, apparently, the big bristle-faced man coming at her with another zed net. He brought it down over her and snapped it tight before she could dodge aside. When she tried to spin away this time, he was ready: The big man managed to keep his grip. Mary twisted as far as she could to one side, lining Styles up for the Fulcrum of Doom, when she noticed someone else darting in behind her.

“Not too hard, Topsy! Dr. S wants her brains still in ’er head!” And then Topsy brought down his sap just hard enough, and once again Mary couldn’t see ... or hear or smell or think or feel.

It was the smelling, of all things, that returned first. Mary became aware of the stench of excrement and mold and wet straw. Sound came next. She heard screaming and wild shouts and distant ... clucking? Which brought back thinking, of a sort. Enough for her to wonder
Where am I?
And that’s what opened her eyes.