Sunday Scene - Blackthorne and Rose - Agents of DIRE - K.G. McAbee

Blackthorne & Rose: Agents of D.I.R.E.

Time: 1859. Place: London. Jonathan Blackthorne, stage magician, and his beloved Lady Rose Blakeney-Barrington, brilliant inventor, both members in good standing of the Damocles Institute for Research and Exploration, are embroiled in a dangerous and deadly adventure. It seems that the enmity between Captain Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke has resulted in a plot so dastardly, so devious, so, well, odiferous, that the entire Empire may well be at risk. Walking corpses are one thing; dismembered bits of these revenants, still with the spark of life, another thing entirely.  God Save the Queen!

 

"But, Captain Burton," said Mr. Faraday as he shuffled papers before him. "I have read Lieutenant Speke's file. He has no scientific background whatsoever. In fact," he chose a sheet and held it up, "his only interests seem to be hunting and collecting. He does not seem to be particularly intelligent."

"He's not," Burton said, pausing in his journey up and down the room. "But he's stubborn and willful and holds a grudge against all who, he perceives, have wronged him. If a man like that somehow gains the power to create an army of the dead, do you think he would not use it to exact the revenge he craves more than life itself?"

Well, now, I thought as I sipped my tea. We are in even more trouble than I thought.

"Where is Speke?" asked Rose, going straight to the most important question, as is her wont.

"At his cousin's place in Wiltshire, according to latest received information," Faraday said, consulting another sheet, "where he has been for the last month."

"I saw him in London a week ago," Burton said.

"We must find him," Rose said, "and question him."

An explosion shook the building.

An alarm bell went off, seemingly in my right ear. I dropped my tea.

"The cellars," Rose said calmly, gazing at a panel on the wall to her right.

I looked and saw the bell marked 'cellar' shaking up and down on its strip of metal.

"I think we'd best see what's happening, don't you, Jonathan?" she asked.

I knew that glint in her eye. "I think the guards should check it out first and give us a report, my dear girl," I said, but with a sinking feeling.

"Nonsense! What utter balderdash! Captain Burton, shall we?"

Well, naturally, I was having none of that! I rose and took her arm.

"Thaddeus, Captain Burton, shall we?" I said.

Of course, a trip to the cellars of the Damocles Institute—after a morning in the London sewers—was hardly what I wished to do.

But when duty—or Rose, which in my case may well be the same thing—calls, what can an Englishman do?

Rose, Captain Burton, Thaddeus and I galloped down the several flights of stairs, went through the several doors of stout wood banded with metal—and descended into chaos.

The infernal regions—twice in one day.

The cellars of the Damocles Institute fill an entire city block and more, spilling out under roadways and into surrounding blocks. One can hear the rumble of the digging for the planned subterranean railways on nearly any day. One can also hear the smooth flow of waters in the sewers on rainy days.

But one should never be able to hear what we heard when we finally reached a door leading into the first cellar.

Men screaming and fighting for their lives.

"Stop!" I shouted. "We need weapons!"

Rose, as is usual, was far ahead of me. She dashed towards a storage room down the hallway—really, the dear girl must have the map of the entire Institute engraved upon her pillow—opened it and began distributing pistols and long knives to the rest of us.

Five guards clattered down the steps behind us and began arming themselves as well.

And all the while, we were serenaded by the most frightful row from below.

"This door leads to a short flight of steps, then to another door," Rose said, looking like a pirate as she strapped a bandolier of knives about her tiny waist.

"And what are we facing, Lady Rose?" asked one of the guards with an impressive calm as he took swords from the weapons cupboard and distributed them to his companions.

"I fear it must be the walking dead," Rose said succinctly.

"Ah," said the guard, "thought it might be something like that."

"Thaddeus, stay close to Rose," I whispered, though I knew he would never desert her.

"To you both, sir," he said and winked.

Burton was at the door, positively bristling with blades. The scar on his cheek where an African assegai had pierced it gave him the appearance of a fiercer pirate.

I took a sword and a pair of pistols. I fear did not resemble a pirate at all, unless a rather timid and fearful one.

Thaddeus and the guards took stations at the heavy door. Rose flung it open and we dashed into the fray.

Chaos indeed! At the bottom of the long flight of steps, three of the walking revenants were devouring a gentleman who was thankfully past feeling any pain. The gas lights on the wall flickered, casting the most astonishing glow upon a scene straight from Dante.

Men sliced at revenants that clawed their way up through a rough hole which seemed to have exploded upwards from beneath the cellar floor. Other men shot the attackers, or hit out at them with axes or hatchets. Detached limbs moved about the dirt floor, fingers pulling arms behind them. I saw a head beside the hole, its eyes staring in a disinterested fashion at the melee before it; another sat beside it, looking equally uninterested.

"We must close up that hole!" Rose shouted, trying to dash forward—really, the girl has no fear!—but restrained by Thaddeus. "Look, they're still coming through!"

And indeed they were. If Mr. Speke were indeed to blame, he must have created dozens, hundreds of the revenants.

"An explosive grenade," said Burton as if he were asking for a glass of sherry.

"Here you go, sir," said one of the guards who accompanied us, digging one out of the pouch hanging from his shoulder.

"Thank you, Perkins," Rose said.

Burton held the tiny, deadly thing to the nearest gaslight. Its fuse caught and sizzled like a nasty snake. He held it just long enough for me to open my mouth to scream, then gave it a lazy toss. It headed straight for the hole, which I calculated was about thirty feet away.

It hit dead center of the darkness and disappeared.

"Down, all who can hear me!" shouted Thaddeus.

We all crouched down.

And waited.

And waited.

It seemed to be hours but could have only been mere seconds before a loud boom shook the ground. Bits of body parts erupted from the hole, slamming into support pillars and people.

"Another, if you please, Perkins."

Another boom.

More body parts. Some wiggled most alarmingly.

The hole began to collapse in on itself, taking some—but not all—of the revenants with it. Smoke and dust rose in a blinding cloud, choking those of us who still breathed but doing nothing to slow the advance of the dead.

"Here, over here!" shouted Rose.

At first I thought she was in danger, but I realized she was merely trying to rescue as many as she could. Indeed, two men—a guard and a scientist, from their attire, though both were so splattered in gore and dirt it was hard to ascertain more—scrambled through the smoke towards us. The guard made it.

The scientist did not.

A hand, pasty white, the nails yellow as ochre, reached out of the billowing cloud of smoke and seized the scientist by the shoulder. He gave one despairing shriek and disappeared into the cloud.

Silence, save for the sound of the crunching of bone…

"Out, I believe," said Burton, waving smoke away from his face. "I suspect the other doors have been secured. We must make sure this one is as well."

I waited for no more and hustled Rose and the others up the steps. We locked and barricaded the door behind us…
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http://pulpliterature.com/upcoming-issues/issue-4-autumn-2014/ Where to Find More by K.G. McAbee About the Author K.G. McAbee has had a bunch of books and over a hundred short stories published, some of them quite readable. She takes her geekdom seriously, never misses a sci-fi con, loves dogs and iced tea, and believes the words 'Stan Lee' are interchangeable with 'The Almighty.' She writes paranormal, steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, horror, pulp, westerns and mysteries. She's a member of Sisters in Crime, Horror Writers Association andInternational Thriller Writers and is an Artist in Residence with the South Carolina Arts Commission. Her steampunk/zombie novella received an honorable mention in the 3rd quarter Writers of the Future contest, and her mystery ‘Dyed to Death’ won the Black Orchid Novella Award, sponsored by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. For more information, email her at kgmcabee@gmail.com