By nightfall, however, the onslaught was once again relentless, and hardly five minutes went by without a board somewhere giving way. It took Elizabeth nearly half an hour just to walk down a hallway with a bust of the Prince Regent—which she intended to drop onto the zombies from a second-story window—for every few steps she had to set down the prince and pull out her sword and add to the collection of freshly severed limbs lined up along the wainscoting. One would-be intruder was particularly persistent, managing to squirm its way inside even after all but its head and chest and left arm had been sliced away. A woman in a tattered yellow ball gown smashed a chamber pot into its face as it slithered after Elizabeth, slowing it for a moment. When it whirled on the lady, hissing, Elizabeth was finally able to slice through the top of its skull, and its brain-filled crown fell forward onto the floor looking like a hairy bowl of porridge.
BY NIGHTFALL, HOWEVER, THE ONSLAUGHT WAS ONCE AGAIN RELENTLESS.
Elizabeth sheathed her katana and looked up at the woman who’d helped her—and was shocked to find that it was Mrs. Goswick.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said.
Mrs. Goswick shook her head. “No. Thank you, Miss Bennet.”
When Elizabeth finally got the Prince Regent upstairs and out a window, she was only mildly disappointed that it was too dark to see the damage he did down below. It was a cloudy, moonless night, sparing her the sight of the zombie host ringing them in. At last count, it had been nearly a thousand strong.
“Do you think he made it?” Mary asked, stepping up to the window with a large, lumpy satchel. She reached in, pulled out a blue croquet ball, and hurled it down into the darkness. “The Master, I mean?”
Elizabeth helped herself to one of the balls and threw it out the window with all her strength. A second later, there was a sharp clunk followed by the sound of something heavy falling to the ground.
“Does it really matter?” Elizabeth said.
Mary started to toss out a mallet but seemed to change her mind when she found its heft to her liking. She leaned it against the wall, then pulled out a ball and whipped it into the night.
There was another clunk, and a zombie wailed.
“I suppose not,” Mary said.
She and Elizabeth kept throwing croquet balls until they were all gone, at which time Mary announced that she was off to look for loose bricks. She took the mallets with her to hand out downstairs.
Elizabeth lingered a moment at the window, wondering if she might take advantage of a quiet moment to slip up to the attic and, if not apologize to Dr. Keckilpenny, at least assure herself of his well-being. She still felt a fondness for the man, despite the things she’d said the last time she’d seen him, and a part of her longed to put any awkwardness between them to rest.
But then someone screamed “They’re coming through the wall!” and she was running for the stairs with her sword in her hand.
It turned out to be a small hole—little more than a crack in the plaster just big enough for four broken, bloody fingers to wriggle into the drawing room. But it was going to get bigger.
“They’re scratching away the mortar between the building stones,” Mr. Bennet announced. “When they get enough of it out, they’ll be able to pull out the stones themselves.”
“And the walls with them,” Elizabeth said.
Her father nodded, then hacked off the wriggling fingers.
“Lizzy,” he said, “bring Lord Lumpley, Mr. Cummings, and Dr. Thorne to the front hall, if you would. Your sister Jane, as well, if she’s not with His Lordship. There’s a difficult decision before us, I’m afraid, and I’d prefer if it were made in council.”
Minutes later, there they all were, gathered before the main doors even as the dreadfuls outside kept knocking upon it in their clumsy, insistent way.
“Gentlemen,” Mr. Bennet said, “we are running out of time.”
He spoke loudly, obviously not just addressing the baron, the vicar, and the doctor but everyone scattered around the foyer and lining the halls nearby.
“Oh, my goodness! Running out of time, you say?” Lord Lumpley widened his eyes and slapped his hands to his round cheeks. “Whatever could make you jump to such a conclusion?”
“If it’s the food supply you’re thinking of, Mr. Bennet, I’ve an idea about that,” said Dr. Thorne. (It was fitting that he should bring up food, actually, as his blood-smeared surgeon’s apron made him look like a particularly sloppy butcher. Which, in a way, is what he was.) “We’ve actually got all the meat we could possibly need, if we just looked at it as the dreadfuls do. At least a dozen of my patients died of shock after I removed a tainted limb, and of course I immediately took the next step and removed their heads, as well. The plague won’t take hold in them—so why just toss the bodies out a window?”
“Wh-what? You can’t possibly m-m-mean—!” Mr. Cummings blubbered. He’d lost his Book of Common Prayer in a tussle with an unmentionable and had taken, for the sake of comfort, to clutching a book he’d picked at random from the baron’s library: Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised by the Marquis de Sade. “It’s unnnnnnnnthinkable!”
The doctor shrugged. “If it’ll keep me from starving to death, I’ll do more than think it.”
“It’s not actually starvation I was thinking of, Doctor,” Mr. Bennet said. “We have another, more immediate problem.”
A look of discomfited surprise came over Dr. Thorne of the type that’s common among people who find that the previous minute’s conversation should be, and would if it could be, unspoken.
“Oh?” he said limply. “Do tell.”
Mr. Bennet obliged, explaining that the dreadfuls were capable of taking the house apart stone by stone and had, in fact, begun to do so. Many gasped at the news, and Mr. Bennet paused a moment, waiting for their clamorings and murmurs to fade before carrying on again.
“They will get through. It is inevitable. So, as time is not on our side, nor are numbers, we must press the last advantage we have.”
Lord Lumpley scoffed. “I wasn’t aware we had any in the first place.”
“I believe the advantage my father alludes to doesn’t apply equally to all of us,” Elizabeth said, and she quoted an observation Dr. Keckilpenny had once made to her about the unmentionables: “They’re thick as bricks.”
Mr. Bennet nodded. “We can safely assume they have no idea how many people are in this house. If we let them overrun it—or think they’ve overrun it—they might well wander off again never knowing they left survivors behind.”
“And where will these supposed survivors be?” Dr. Thorne asked. “Hiding in the cupboards?”
“Something like that.” Mr. Bennet turned to the baron. “Tell me—how extensive is your wine cellar?”
“Vast. I have the largest selection of clarets, ports, and brandies in the Home Counties.”
“That’s not quite what I meant,” Mr. Bennet said.
Belgrave appeared at his master’s side as if stepping out from behind a mote of dust. “The cellar has been permanently sealed. Remember, My Lord?”
“What do you mean, it’s been sealed?” Mr. Bennet asked.
“It flooded,” said Belgrave.
“It caved in,” said Lord Lumpley.
One or the other might have been believed if they hadn’t spoken at the same time—and if someone else hadn’t spoken up, as well.
“It did nothing of the kind!” declared a woman guarding the front doors. She was a stout old cook from the baron’s own kitchens, and in one hand she held a frying pan splattered with brains and chips of bone. “The cellar was always kept under lock and key, but the other day someone broke down the door. That’s why his nibs there had it boarded up. Flood. Ha!”