Steve Hockensmith - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Dawn of the Dreadfuls

“There, there, lad. Pull yourself together.” Mr. Bennet patted him on the shoulder. “As long as you’re not attached to the part with the mouth, you’ve nothing to—”

“Papa!”

Another hand had thrust up from the ground to grab hold of Jane. It was directly behind her, clasping the hem of her gown, and there was no way she could turn to get a clean swing at it.

“Fire! Fire!” Ensign Pratt cried again.

Several of his men rushed over and pointed their muskets in the general vicinity of Jane’s feet.

“No!” Mr. Bennet bellowed.

“Fire! Fire!”

Up till now, Lord Lumpley had been too shocked to do more than gawk. Yet something—pure irritation with the unworthies around him, perhaps—broke through his horror.

“Oh, shut up, you poxy-faced git!” he roared. “You won’t help the lady by shooting her damned legs off!”

The soldiers froze. Not only did the nobleman have a point, they were unsure how to react when their commander was called a “poxy-faced git.” The situation, like so many they’d faced of late, hadn’t been covered in their training.

“His Lordship is quite right,” Mr. Bennet said, and he unsheathed his sword, waved the soldiers away, and cut off the hand grasping his daughter’s dress.

“I am not poxy faced,” the ensign mumbled, throwing Lord Lumpley a petulant glare.

“Well,” Mr. Bennet sighed, “it appears the vicar’s permission wasn’t necessary, after all. The dead are nearly done disinterring themselves.”

Two oozing, squirming stumps now poked out of the soil. Directly between them, a small mound was forming as something new sought to bloom.

“‘Th-this is translated c-closely from the following prayer in the Sacramentariam of S-Saint Gregory,’” Mr. Cummings said, glassy eyes glued to his book, “‘which is presented to the reader that he may j-judge the manner in which our Reformers made use of the liturgical commmmmpositions of this gr-great mmmmm-man.’”

“I think you’re reading footnotes now, Mr. Cummings,” Jane said with remarkable gentleness, considering that she was, at the time, endeavoring to pry a hand off the hem of her dress with the point of a sword.

“Let the vicar read what he would,” her father told her. “I doubt if anyone could find the perfect prayer for consecrating this .”

He knelt down near the flailing stubs. They were wriggling their way farther from the earth while the little swelling between grew larger.

Any second now, the top of the dreadful’s head was going to break the surface.

“Obviously, I have miscalculated,” Mr. Bennet said. “Usually one can count on a steady rate of one-and-one-half feet per week, but our friend here is arriving ahead of schedule. Perhaps my mistake was in backdating from Mr. Ford’s conversion, when the plague might have in fact arrived much sooner. Ahhh, well. It’s not my first mistake, and I can only hope it won’t be my last.” He shrugged and turned to the soldiers clumped together nearby. “If someone would be so kind as to fetch one of the smithy’s hammers, please. So that I might make a demonstration.”

Half the soldiers whirled away to do as he asked, desperate for any excuse to put distance between themselves and the unmentionable about to sprout like some ghastly flower. The other half simply stared with their mouths agape.

“Papa, we are being watched.” Jane nodded at the road. “By Mrs. Long and her nieces, I believe.”

“Then it may as well be all Meryton, I’m afraid.” Mr. Bennet waved to their far-off audience. “Hello, there! Just enjoying a lovely little morning picnic! Would you care to join us?”

The women scurried off down the lane.

One of Ensign Pratt’s men returned with a heavy black hammer just as the ground split open to reveal a tuft of mud-clogged hair.

“Thank you.” Mr. Bennet took the hammer but made no move to use it. “Tell me, My Lord—I find I’ve lost track of the social calendar. The spring ball at Pulvis Lodge is set for tomorrow night, is it not?”

A scaly forehead, alive with writhing worms, rose out of the moist loam, as did the sound of low, muffled moaning. Yet still Mr. Bennet remained crouched mere feet away, doing nothing.

“The ball, you say?” The baron looked back and forth from the unmentionable to Mr. Bennet, seemingly unsure which he found more alarming. “Yes, yes—tomorrow, it is. Do you wish it canceled?”

More soil crumbled aside, and eyebrows became visible. They were followed a moment later by the eyes themselves—bloodshot, bulging, and wild with hate or hunger or both.

“Quite the contrary,” Mr. Bennet said. “I merely think it should be moved to a new venue. Someplace larger affording better protection for the guests.”

“Aren’t you going to do something about that?” Ensign Pratt yelped, pointing at the dreadful wriggling its way from the grave. The thing’s nose (what was left of it) was now above ground, and the handless arms were visible up to the elbows.

“When the moment is right,” Mr. Bennet said.

Mr. Cummings began reading aloud from what appeared to be the prayer book’s introduction.

“It has been the awwww-bject of the editor in preparing for the public the present edition to increase the utility of our admirable l-lliturgy by rendering it more generally and completely unnnnnnderstood. . . .”

“Are you saying you want me to host the ball?” the baron said. “You press your luck, Bennet.”

“Indeed, I do.”

The head was now out far enough to reveal the chalky, desiccated face of an old woman. The unmentionable’s contortions were growing wilder as the dirt loosened around it, and the ground began to swell up where its shoulders would, before long, pop up into the sunshine.

“Under normal circumstances,” Mr. Bennet said, “I could deny a man such as yourself nothing, My Lord. Yet these are hardly normal circumstances, I think you’ll agree, and I find instead that I must ask of you absolutely everything.”

“I say!” Ensign Pratt cried, his voice cracking. He seemed to be working very, very hard to hold in a “Fire!” “Could you settle this matter another time, perhaps?”

The dreadful’s moaning had turned to snuffling snarls as its mouth approached the surface. For reasons knowable only to itself, the creature seemed to find Mr. Cummings the most appetizing of all those present, and it locked its bugged-out eyes on the vicar and began jerking its head back and forth, chomping at mud in its eagerness to feast on flesh.

“All right. I suppose she’s out far enough,” Mr. Bennet said. “Jane, Ensign, men—observe.”

He hefted the blacksmith’s hammer and brought it down on the unmentionable’s crown. The whole skull exploded in a spray of pulp and bone, and the zombie instantly stopped its struggling, half its head splattered on the ground, the other half on Mr. Bennet’s breeches.

“Ahhh . . . note for next time,” Mr. Bennet said. “I forgot to take us by the butcher’s. You’ll probably want to procure suitable aprons before you proceed. It would be a shame to sully such splendid, spotless new uniforms with . . . oh.”

Ensign Pratt had sullied his splendid, spotless new uniform by fainting.

“‘Next t-time’?” Mr. Cummings muttered as the soldiers propped up their fallen officer and fanned him with their hats. The clergyman’s prayer book had slipped from his fingers and lay splayed on the ground, forgotten. “‘Proceed’?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cummings, but surely you can see my father and the captain were correct,” Jane said. “Everyone laid to rest in the old way the last few years will have to be dealt with.”

HE HEFTED THE BLACKSMITH’S HAMMER AND BROUGHT IT DOWN ON THE UNMENTIONABLE’S CROWN.