Not Dead Yet: A British Zombie Apocalypse Series - Books 1-3, page 52
“Sir…”
“I know, it’ll be the bloody house next.” I groaned into my hands and resigned myself to the task because eventually, the time comes in a man’s life when he can no longer ignore the fact his vicino di casa happens to be John Spencer-Churchill, the 7th Duke of Marlborough. “Smith,” I shouted, “prepare the packed lunches and ready the carriage … we’re off to see the neighbours.”
Arriving was harder than expected, as it turned out, because his lordship had channelled the River Glyme so that it now surrounded the estate, along with almost all the grounds, a huge undertaking, so that now, Blenheim Palace was an island. Not only that, but he’d destroyed the bridges. Now, the once beautiful Grand Bridge, which had stood since 1710, was no more and not even the stones had been left behind. In its place was a makeshift bridge of barrels and planks, tethered together by rope, which could either be severed or put to flame at a moment’s notice and was such that the horses had hesitated across it. The man who’d been to extreme measures to have me drop by was certainly making doing so a challenge.
Thirty minutes after leaving Strapper Palace the carriage finally rumbled down the cobbled approach toward the seven-acre pile set within two thousand acres of prime English muck and, still seething, and rightly so, I ordered Smith to steer over his lawn, perfectly manicured as it was with copious lilies and bluebells, and to aim for the conspicuous group of men clustered around the appalling sight that was an obscene variety of those fiendish brutes of cast iron which were all lined up along the river like whores at a brothel.
It was hard to miss us rattling towards them, four horses kicking up turf, and how do you like it, you swine, and it was the one man without uniform who parted from the rest to stroll towards us, glowing fuse in one hand and what appeared like a deformed golf club, propped over a shoulder, in t’other. If I’d hoped to make him incandescent with rage I was to be disappointed.
“Captain Strapper,” he called out across the closing divide, arms opened in welcome, “well, if it ain’t the man himself.” He scratched his head and almost ignited his hair. “Though I must say, I’m rather perplexed my weapons of war never tickled your fancy a little sooner?” It was posed as a question.
I leapt from the carriage and was on the verge of firmly pressing forth with my many justified complaints when I was checked by the arrival of three burly gunners, their uniforms dampened by the water used to slop out the big guns after every shot, hands and faces scarred by gunpowder burns, arms thick like tree limbs from spending years handling heavy iron balls and moustaches that screamed don’t tussle with us, or our employer.
Suddenly I was all meekness. “Well, I’m in London most of the week,” I waved it away and glanced beyond the quartet and across the river, towards the forest, where much of it had been swatted away. Most of the trees were mangled and those few that still stood seemed to lean at unnatural angles. I pitied the wildlife. “You never thought to pop round for tea and scones?” The question was as far as I now dared take my quarrel but regrettably, the insinuation that I knew his game was lost on him.
“One moment, Captain.” He twirled his club and brought it between his legs, glanced down into the grass, lining up the thick end, which resembled a mallet, with a large ball that happened to be nestled between two bluebells. “Heads, Timothy!” He shouted and swung the thing like a pendulum, narrowly missing his jewels, before driving it forwards and launching the ball between the heads of two of the gunners and obliterating the flowers.
Neither man even twitched and I watched as the ball landed close to a hoop dug into the ground. “A strange way to play golf, my lord.”
The club returned to his shoulder. “Bah, we’ll have none of that Scottish rot here, my boy, it’s called croquet, a new game, and when we finally overcome the zombie threat, we’ll rid ourselves of the golf menace too. Just you wait. No more, you understand? Let the superior game dominate, I say.” He sniffed, “you have a croquet lawn, Captain?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I cared for neither game, despite having a golf course on two of my estates, but I was getting sidetracked and thought to put it more tactfully, “now, about the matter of…”
“One moment,” he held up a silencing hand and the explosion very nearly ruptured my bowels. In the distance, the strangest cannon I’d ever seen reeled back on its carriage but that was nothing compared to the after-noise, peculiar you might say, like a constant high-pitched whistling and then the leaves of a hundred trees were being peppered by countless small specs of iron, the trajectory impossibly wide for regular canister fired from a standard gun. Marlborough cupped his hands and called out to the battery, “too wide, not enough zing. Give it more powder, but not too much, and tilt it lower.”
Someone waved back, pulled out an obscene mallet of his own and a second later there was a ball hurtling towards us.
“Heads!”
I was already hiding behind one of the horses and recoiled when it struck the carriage wheel. “Damn your eyes, my lord, but I did not come here to get shot at.”
“Plenty of time for that, Captain, plenty of time for that.” Whatever that meant. He gestured with his head. “This way, let’s talk.”
I caught up as he strolled in the direction of the present source of my ire while his men followed inconveniently close. “About my being here, my lord, but it turns out the great county of Oxfordshire is home to more than just…”
From around the side of the palace, there was a great pack of hounds charging towards us, maybe twenty or thirty of the dastards, each yapping like the devil’s whelps, and I was in the process of judging the distance to my open carriage door whilst ever regretting having made this trip when I recognised they were Jack Russells, the dogs used for hunting, an activity I’d partaken in more times than I could count. I breathed.
“Don’t mind the children, Captain, they’re getting restless now the forests are out of bounds. Here, Damocles, first again,” he tossed the mutt a treat and a second later we were surrounded by them, slobbering and begging for attention, “looking for a new pet? Just kidding, Wolfie, I’d never part with you. Mitton, on the other hand. Heads Jack. Mind if I call you Jack?” The dogs parted, as did the gunners, and he sent another ball across the lawn. “There’s a tough shot for you, Timothy,” he called and lowered his voice again, “he’s one of my engineers … knows a thing or three about pea-shooting. But they finally got their way, Jack.” He snarled, suddenly changing tact entirely.
My shrug was delayed as I tried to fathom the man’s sanity. “Who got their way, my lord?”
His knuckles turned white as he gripped harder the croquet mallet. “The hunt, Jack, it’s all ended now … too bloody dangerous out there amongst the planks. Makes you wonder, don’t it, who’s really behind this thing … zombies and the like.” He paused in expectation I’d fore say where he was going with this line and when I didn’t he grunted loudly. “The bloody animal emancipationists.”
My eyes, which had glazed over, regained focus on the three gunners to his rear, as I searched for any sign I was not alone in finding this kook’s words insane beyond all comprehension, though nary a one even blinked as they continued staring emptily ahead, cheeks scarred from burns. His insanity might have been humorous had he not been my neighbour who, by the way, was in possession of a few dozen artillery pieces all pointing athwart my land, as if I’d forgotten.
“I’m sorry, I…”
“Yes, you heard me, Jack, it’s the bloody fox shaggers who’re behind it but the joke’s on them because we still plan on going out this Sunday anyway, ain’t that right Mitton? Mind, not that you’re any good, the complete waste of Spratt’s biscuit that you are.” He stooped to affectionately pat the hound whilst another, one of the larger, uglier mutts, began taking a carnal interest in my boot.
I decided against reminding John Winston Spencer-Churchill, the 7th Duke of Marlborough how it was the Irish famine victims who’d been the first to zombify. I doubted a history lesson would change his mind anyway, not when his family had such a questionable past as they did. Most of the Churchills are, and have always been, notorious gamblers, homosexuals and deviants, and ne’er was there more dubious a character than the original, the so-called greatest soldier of his time, of whom Blenheim was built as a thank you gift from the nation for his military victories in Europe. It was a little known fact how the ambitious John Churchill the First, as second-in-command of the army almost two-hundred years before, had been involved with the attack on Brest harbour, only, the French had been ready for the English arrival, on account of Churchill having kindly written to tell them we were coming. The result was a French victory, the loss of two ships and over a thousand men including the English commander himself, the Marquess of Carmarthen. And guess who was to be made replacement commander-in-chief of the forces?
No, treachery and lunacy ran in the veins of this family and it was my firm belief that Britannia would be better off without them, their ill-gotten assets confiscated and the whole rotten lot of ‘em locked in the tower. The 7th Duke himself was a known profligate who spent most weekends at Ascot, pissing away the wealth, as well as a fantasist, who doubtless yearned for the fame of his ancestor. I can’t imagine it was easy for the fool, finding a real, genuine war hero, a one Captain Jack Strapper, moving into a newer, bigger and better palace adjacent to his own but sometimes in life, you have to play the cards that are dealt.
“I must admit, Jack, the hunt will be all the more pleasurable knowing we’re getting one up on those dastards, especially after what they’ve unleashed upon us all,” he swatted at the air, “care to join us?”
I shook the hound off my leg. “The cannons, my lord…”
“Beautiful, ain’t they? And I know you’ve been champing at the bit to see them, to touch them, perhaps even fire one,” the infuriating maniac jabbed a thumb in their direction and restarted at a clip, “well, ne’er fret, for I’ll keep you in suspense not a moment longer.”
It was like visiting the freak show. I’ve known cannons, unfortunately, indeed, at times it seemed like I could never escape them, yet these guns, positioned in a long line before the river, barely even resembled those contraptions I’d come to loathe so much, although I’d little doubt they were lethal. There were cannon with abnormally wide mouths, narrow mouths, huge wheels, no wheels, some mounted high, others not at all. There was one abomination that had three barrels, ignited from a single touchhole and another, with an appearance most sinister, that was mounted upon an eight-foot tripod and possessed a crank.
The imbecile noticed my unease. “I thought you’d like that one. It’s based on Puckle’s old design. We’re trying to figure out how to fire heavy shot rapidly, amongst other things.” He picked up a disfigured looking rifle from a table and regarded the firearm as though it was useless. “Regular bullets don’t do near enough damage, not even with a clean shot to the tackle, and it’s especially no good when most of the canister flies overhead, but nudge them with a heavy ball of iron and they’ll come unstuck, all right. The problem is the bleeding things are too slow to reload, so we need to find a way of doing it quicker … not that a soldier such as yourself needs telling these things. Corporal,” he indicated to a half-drenched, stout looking rogue, his rolled up sleeves revealing arms scorched and shrivelled by burns, “couldn’t give us a few screws of the crank, could you?”
The corporal stamped his boot and marched smartly towards the weapon, donned gauntlets of thick leather that reached his elbows, scaled the steps and commenced turning the long lever. I jerked at the first snap and whizz, saw the flash and sparks and finally, heard the plops as ball after ball sagged into the river. The corporal continued gyrating his arm, which was working to feed a continuous chain of iron through the gun before coming out the other side minus its central component, the ball, larger than a standard musket shot, sure, though far smaller than what had been tearing up my land and what his lordship hoped to tell against the dead.
Marlborough had to shout over the din. “Each turn doses the pan with powder, drops the ball into the chamber and reels one off.” The splashes, a full fifteen yards away, were frightening the fish. “Of course, it still needs work … that’ll do, Corporal … the thing is, if we use any more powder, we risk the poor bugger behind the gun, use smaller balls and we might as well tickle the enemy with feathers.” He saw my look. “At least we’re ruddy well trying, Jack, though rest assured,” he opened out his arms to encompass the riff-raff of broken soldiers and failed engineers fidgeting with dangerous devices around us, “this is far from all we’re doing.”
I had no desire to venture further into this man’s depraved mind, as he took it upon himself to personally shoulder the burden of saving the nation, by rejigging ancient, tried and tested stalwarts of war to his own ill-conceived designs, no less, but my eyes were drawn to a nearby table that contained a large array of odd firearms, most of which looked like they were designed and crafted as a joke by the enemy, none of which, I was sure, would pass an army review board. What kind of man would possess such things?
This man was who. “We can’t keep doing things the same old way, Jack, sending good men after bad, the same old way, and failing in the same old way. We’re not facing the frogs any more but a different kind of enemy and so, if we’re to defeat them, we need a new way of doing things.” He looked briefly up at the sky. “My fourth great-grandfather would know, god bless him, the hero he was…” he saw I was about to interject and was quick to persist, “…knew a thing or two about war … it’s true, he did … an innovator, you see, Jack? Before him, we relied on rabbles to fight our wars, and they were happy to do it, volunteer and call themselves soldiers but the first sign of hardship, long marches on empty stomachs, a night on the cold hard ground or heaven forbid, sight of an enemy, and they were off, Jack. Suddenly the men remembered land that needed tilling, sheep that needed shearing and roofs that needed thatching.” He looked again to the heavens and cuffed at an eye. “It was my ancestor, the beautiful man, who solved all that, Jack … modernised, you see, made them more professional, and it was he who always made sure a warm meal and a caring shoulder awaited at the end of a day’s march.” So that was the secret. For a moment I thought he was about to break down but he settled for merely grabbing my lapels and growling in a sudden fit of sentiment. “We owe it all to him, Jack.”
I didn’t ask if he meant Britannia or his family personally, but if he wanted me here to talk about the history of soldiering, the least he could have done was offer a brandy.
John Winston Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, two time Member of Parliament for Woodstock and presently sitting plum and forgotten in the House of Lords had once managed to make the lofty position of lieutenant in the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars, daddy was colonel, you see, though to his credit, Johnny did get to see action in such far-flung and exotic locations as Oxford, a full eight miles to the south. I’d have placed the man in his late thirties, who already had seven surviving children, and thus ensuring Britannia would be stuck with this loathsome family into perpetuity. He had a shrewd face that was prone to the odd spell of animation, often for no apparent reason, and long untrimmed whiskers that gave the appearance of an ill-groomed Schnauzer. Other than that, he was a most unremarkable man, both in looks and reputation, which was doubtless made even more apparent when in the presence of such eulogised warriors as myself.
He thrust the rifle at one of his lackeys, leaving him grasping only the deformed golf stick, and poked it towards a table that brimmed with elaborate contraptions of death. He delved into a tinpot and allowed the small musket balls from within to sift through his fingers. “Laced with prussic acid from crushed apple seeds…” the damned bloody maniac, “we fired a few rounds into the test subjects, alas, they simply persisted with that inane bleating they’re known for. Twelve hours later we got tired of it and decided to toss them off the Iron Bridge into the Severn, see whose fellow made it to the bend first. I lost five guineas, as well as seven men to cyanide poisoning that very night, and between them they ravaged the entire bloody laboratory whilst we slept.” He shook his head sadly. “But we tried, Jack, we ruddy well tried.”
I took a large and deftly sidestep to the left and sought temporary solace in the strangest firearm, if indeed it could be called so, that I’d ever seen. It was a carbine, short barrelled, or should I say, twelve short barrels, each projecting at a different angle, from left to right, which gave it a perversely wide appearance, especially where the muzzles fanned out horizontally. It almost reminded me of the Nock volley gun, one of which was on display at the Horse Guards, though that had only possessed seven barrels, a poor show by comparison. No, the designer of this had been kind enough to add several more to this death trap, which guaranteed a bruised shoulder for anyone daft enough to use it.
“It’s meant for last-ditch defending, twelve balls,” he leaned in closer and spoke sotto voce, “I can see its use should you happen to be ambushed whilst squatting on the pan but other than that…” he sighed, “what good is it unless you hit them all in the nob?”
“Aye.” But it was a splendid, if obscene, piece of work, the weapon’s moon-touched designer having crafted it so finely that one could be forgiven for failing to heed the stock. Because my eyes were finally drawn to the jewels; rubies, emeralds, diamonds and sapphires that were liberally encrusted into an M-shape, “aye, indeed.” Could I picture myself with such a weapon? It undoubtedly might be useful with your back against the wall. Even failing to hit the heads and taking the obvious and potentially harmful recoil into account, such a blow would most certainly slow any oncoming horde long enough to make an escape, no matter where. Useful, for sure, but forgetting all that tosh, I wanted the thing mounted upon the wall of my new study because it would make a fine conversation piece amongst the generals, admirals, politicians, ambassadors, royalty and other assorted dignitaries at my first cocktail party, indeed.
