“So they’re here?” Capt. Cannon called out. What with the throng clogging the entrance hall, his Limbs couldn’t maneuver him any closer than a doorway on the other side of the room.
“Yes,” Mr. Bennet said to him, and Elizabeth heard a sudden, barely suppressed fury in his voice. “The hordes are descending at last, Captain. Not five minutes behind us are dreadfuls beyond number.”
“What should we do?” Elizabeth asked.
Mr. Bennet looked up at her and, seeing the katana in her hands, smiled.
Master Hawksworth looked up at her and, seeing Dr. Keckilpenny step up close behind her, frowned.
“Oh, tonight’s the easy part,” Mr. Bennet said. “All we must do is survive.”
CHAPTER 33
OSCAR BENNET’S OLD DREAM, the one about his daughters fighting beside him in the honorable warrior way, was about to come true at last. He knew that when the moment arrived, however, only part of him would be able to appreciate it. The other part—the vast majority of him, in fact—would be too busy trying to keep his entrails inside his own stomach. So he paused to savor the moment now.
They were all lined up with him before the manor house: Mary, Kitty, and Lydia, who’d left Longbourn to track him down as he’d swept through the countryside forging his little diaspora; Jane, there over the objections of Lord Lumpley (who didn’t wish to be parted from his bodyguard) and Lt. Tindall (who insisted that his troops could do what needed to be done without endangering “those whose dainty hands should never have been soiled by instruments of war”); and finally Elizabeth, standing at the end of the line with Geoffrey Hawksworth quite literally looming up behind her, just as he’d loomed a little too large all through her training.
Mr. Bennet had his doubts about them all. Yet when he’d announced that the Bennets would be the last line of defense, guarding the front door while Capt. Cannon’s soldiers nailed wooden slats over the windows, his daughters’ only hesitation before following him outside was to collect their favorite weapons.
Long ago, he’d broken his vow to the Order to raise his children in the warrior way. They seemed poised to redeem his honor now, though. He could die a happy man. And very soon, he might.
It started with the occasional blast and flash of gunfire out by the road, where Lt. Tindall had stretched out his own thin skirmish line. The screaming followed, some human, some not, and not long after came the lieutenant’s far-off cries: “Stand your ground!” and “Hold fast!” and finally “Hold, damn you! Hold!” Then the soldiers started streaming back across the long, moonlit lawn. One by one and two by two they came, all of them sprinting wild-eyed toward the Bennets and the house.
“LieutenantTindall,” Jane said, taking a hesitant step toward the road.
Elizabeth stepped with her. “Perhaps we should—”
“No,” Mr. Bennet said. “The Enemy will come to us in its own good time. There is no reason to rush, and every reason not to.” He looked back over his shoulder at the little figure pacing nervously before a group of frantically hammering soldiers. “How much longer?”
“A few minutes,” Ensign Pratt squeaked. “If only this bloody house didn’t have so many bloody windows!”
“Language,” Mr. Bennet chided.
“Sorry, Sir. My apologies to the ladies.”
Lydia leaned in close to Kitty and whispered something, and they both giggled. Mr. Bennet found it comforting, somehow. The two of them would still be gossiping and laughing as they crossed the River Styx.
The first of the fleeing soldiers rushed past and darted through the front door.
“They have sent boys to do the work of warriors,” Master Hawksworth grumbled.
“Yes. It has been known to happen,” Mr. Bennet said. He pointed at a far corner of the lawn. “Ahhh, the guests of honor arrive at last.”
One of the men running toward them had a peculiar, herky-jerky quality to his stride, and his head was bent so far to the side it appeared to be resting horizontally atop his right shoulder. As he came nearer, it became clear he wasn’t dressed as a soldier. He was chasing one.
Mr. Bennet brought up his crossbow, took a moment to squint down the stock, and squeezed the trigger. The bolt shot across the lawn and buried itself in the dreadful’s forehead with an audible thunk.
“It appears the first kill of the night goes to me,” Mr. Bennet said as the unmentionable tumbled to the ground. “Sorry to be selfish.”
Within moments, there were zombies enough for all. Some ran from the shadows, some staggered, some crawled. Some were men, some women, some children. Some wore ragged shrouds, some bloody clothing, some absolutely nothing. Yet they all had one thing in common: They were headed toward the house.
“Remember your training, and we shall triumph!” Master Hawksworth bellowed, waving his sword above his head. “Battle cries, warriors! Battle cries!”
The girls brought up their katanas and screamed in unison.
“HAA-IEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Bennet said. “Haiee.”
He’d never put much stock in battle cries, actually, but they did seem to help the beginners. And his daughters, inexperienced as they were, showed no sign they might turn and flee inside as the soldiers had. They looked frightened, of course, with pinched, pale faces and wide eyes. Yet their feet were planted firmly in battle-ready stances, and their weapons didn’t waver.
Mr. Bennet nodded his approval, then turned back to the wave of death sweeping toward them. The swiftest dreadfuls were but a dozen strides away now, and he brought one down with another bolt before handing his bow to a soldier as he flew past blubbering hysterically.
“Put this in the house for me, there’s a good lad.”
He drew his sword just in time to slice the head off a zombie wearing the black robe and mortarboard of a university don.
“The Hawk and the Dove, Master?” he heard Elizabeth say, and he spared a glance her way, curious to see how Hawksworth reacted.
The Master was doubled up with his hands wrapped around his right leg.
“Ahhhh! My knee! Again! Blast!”
It had been the same earlier that day, when they’d spotted their first small herd of unmentionables. Hawksworth’s “old sparring injury” had hobbled him, for a time.
“Master!” Mary cried, and she put a bullet through a dreadful’s head and cleaved another’s in two to reach the young man’s side. “Do you need help?”
Hawksworth swiveled, grimacing, and began limping toward the door. “I will be fine. But, alas, I’m useless to you now! Try to carry on without me!”
“Go, all of you!” someone shouted. “For God’s sake, get inside!”
Mr. Bennet turned back toward the lawn. Lt. Tindall was weaving wildly up the gravel drive, all of his attention on Jane even as one unmentionable after another swiped and lunged at him.
Mr. Bennet started toward him, but a brief encounter with another mindless, slobbering don proved to be a distraction. By the time a second mortarboarded head was at his feet, Jane and Elizabeth were already on either side of Lt. Tindall, rushing with him toward the house along a newly made lane of crania, arms, and torsos.
Mr. Bennet’s chest went tight with pride even as he beheaded a groaning old woman with her intestines hanging out through a hole in her nightgown.
“Finished in the back!” he heard Capt. Cannon call out.
“Finished in the front!” Ensign Pratt yelped.
“Capital,” Mr. Bennet said. “Girls, I do believe a retreat is in order.”
Unmentionables kept coming at them as they backed toward the door, with more continuing to step out of the woods. There were too many to count—at least while chopping away at a new neck every few seconds—but Mr. Bennet thought he spotted at least half a dozen clad in red jackets and white cross belts.
The second he and the girls were inside, soldiers slammed the door shut and began nailing up boards to hold it in place.