***
Night passed swiftly with only a few sightings of London shamblers, shuffling by the building facades, having lost the scent of fresh prey. Duly with James Ross, Parry took first watch, rotating at the two-hour mark with Franklin and Barrow. The former, having fallen asleep twice at his post, awoke in terror both times when Barrow had mimicked an unmentionable moan, startling Franklin awake. Stout John Ross was prevailed by his nephew to withhold pride and stake watch near the ladies room, something he complained moderately about, though not overtly much, having noticed the attractiveness of Miss Griffin; his own wife having been an unmentionable’s supper less than a fortnight before. She did not return the interested looks.
Once again, come morning’s light, Barrow attempted to dissuade John Ross from accompanying them to Deptford, unfortunately for the Second Secretary, Ross proved intractable to subtle and not-so subtle hints. Ross had on the best intelligence gleaned from Scoresby, that the Hecla and Fury with the tugboat, Valiant, in company, had been provisioned with everything a set of Admiralty Lords could want and afford, before the victualling firm Donkin & Gamble had been permanently shut down by the scourge. To put it quite plainly, the Admiralty was turning tail and fleeing England’s rotting shores.
There was no room, Barrow insisted, seething, for charlatans like the elder Ross; he made sure the distinction was clear. In James Ross, he saw the potential for a future Naval Captain in case Franklin curried disfavor. This cowardly plan John Ross brought to light for the ladies benefit as they walked carefully through misty London streets.
“Indeed? Then, you were set on preserving male kind on distant shores, John?” Eleanor inquired plaintively, with Jane’s help she had done her hair as best as possible into a tight woven bun. From a strung clothesline on the neighboring rooftop, they had even gleaned worn shawls in blue and a somehow garish bright pink color. Jane had taken the pink, having a fondness for the unusual color; the wrong Ross had commented on it suiting her fine complexion. Jane had pretended not to hear.
“Well, uh...dear. That’s how men of the world work, we are subservient to our betters.” John Franklin tried to placate, coloring to the tips of his prominent ears. Parry had silently agreed, though he hadn’t assumed at first that he would have the pleasure of the entire Admiralty Board on his ships, it made sense in a derring-do sort of way. Not that the knighted Lords had any idea what to expect in the polar regions.
Quite satisfied with the conundrum he had created between his fellow Captains, John Ross tried unsuccessfully again, to enumerate his war hero status to Miss Griffin. His nephew took point and went on ahead to scout for blocked streets, hoping secretly he would be able to dispatch his friend with a bullet through the brain.
It was in this harried manner that they came upon the scene of unmentionable hoards being held back by red-coated Royal Marines and the white-wigged heads of the Lords in a line to board the small tugboat.
“Why the dirty scoundrels!” Barrow hissed, checking his pocketwatch. “Boarding wasn’t meant to begin until 12:30!”
John Ross laughed aloud, clapping his white-gloved hands cheerfully. “Aha! Seems your Admiralty double-crossed you, Mister Barrow!”
“We shall see,” Barrow grunted, sweeping ahead, raising his voice to a close shout. “My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, whatever can be the meaning of this? You rush about like frightened petticoats and I hope dearly for your sakes there is room enough for the most important of survivors.”
Franklin and Parry ushered the ladies ahead with the Rosses behind. Junior Admiralty Lord Sir George Cockburn turned ‘round at the hailing, beneath a pasty complexion, he turned the color of soured milk sighting them all. “Good God, Barrow, old devil you!” Before Cockburn could speak more of his dismay, bootsteps rapped sharply on the deck of the tugboat and a tall impressive figure swathed in a great coat and black chapeau stepped to the railing. “Alive yet, Parry?” The distinctly familiar voice rang out.
William peered through the brownish mist swirling around the Valiant and farther on, the anchored forms of His Majesty’s Hecla and Fury.
“Sabine?” He wondered aloud, surprise alighting his dark eyes.
“The very same.” Edward Sabine said, straightening to his proud height. John Ross’s mouth worked in fury and down and out indignation. Here was the man whom had orchestrated his humiliation at the Admiralty in 1818, how he longed to feed Sabine’s entrails to the unmentionable hunting hounds back at his castle in Stranraer.
“But, what is the meaning of this? I believed you in Hertfordshire.” Parry insisted, oblivious to the murderous machinations of the elder Ross.
“I was, selecting a servant to send you the missal of my niece’s demise three days ago, five of which previously I had been anxiously awaiting orders from His Majesty’s Navy.” Sabine paused for dramatic effect. “Here.”
A few hurried clerks clad in Admiralty colors dragged portmanteaus up the rickety planking onto the deck of the tugboat, two red-coated Marines stood with muskets, flanking the deck. Cockburn straggled after them, his white wig threatening to topple off his head as he noticed in fright, the unmentionables had begun to break through the line.
Hardly noticing anything above a possible conspiracy, Franklin stepped forward. “See here, man, we are all friends and have the same interests in mind such as preserving English manhood and duty to King and Country. Now, do let us onboard, old chap.”
Discreetly, Jane drew her small Derringer pistol, sensing the oldest sin in the world about to occur on a blood-stained London dockyard, betrayal. Eleanor clutched her husband’s arm, trying to get his attention as the first shambler stretched forth rotting arms as if to embrace her. The younger Ross rushed forward and dislocated the creature’s neck with a sharp twist.
“That may be true, friends.” Sabine said, spreading his hands out, a dirk knife in his left palm. “But, there are only two ships and they are only for first rate men.” So, saying this, he stepped forward and slashed the ropes suspending the gangway between the quay and the ship’s deck. Cockburn fell back, cursing Sabine and Lyon. Eleanor gasped, a scream forcing its way up through her parched throat. The abandoned Royal Marines broke apart from the unmentionables, running as one for the dock as George Lyon’s flamboyant figure strode on the Valiant’s deck in sight, issuing orders to the skeleton crew they’d mustered. A few dove in the muck-filled Thames, trying to swim for the straggling rope left trailing along the greasy water in the slow tugboat’s wake.
“We must do something!” Jane shouted, tucking the pistol away for a more satisfying shot, taking up her father’s sword from the makeshift scabbard at her waist. “Yes! But, what?” Parry took up her side, drawing his own captain’s sword. Franklin helped a weeping Sir George Cockburn up, “are there any small boats? Anything at all that we could use to get off land?”
Cockburn shook his head briskly, faux sausage curls whipped his ruddy cheeks then he nodded, pointing shakily to the victualling office far behind the tide of unmentionables slowly overwhelming everything living in their path. “...S-Should be a small pinnace.”
“How can we get there?” Eleanor gathered up her skirts, drawing a small dagger from an improvised inner-leg holster.
“What about them there vessels?” John Ross breezed up, having left his nephew and Barrow dispatching unmentionables. Cockburn sent the crafts bobbing in the water closest to them a dismissive sniff. “Captain Sabine dismantled the workable parts night before last. Our only hope is to try and overtake the Valiant before they take possession of Hecla and Fury.”
“And that’s bloody nigh impossible.” Jane snapped, running her sword through a doughy woman halfway recognizable as Lady Berkeley. Parry downed a male unmentionable clad in a dandy’s tattered silks who resembled Lady Berkeley’s earthly companion, Lord Berkeley. From the corner of her eye, Jane appreciated the fine, manly figure William cut.
“Where there is a will, there is somehow a way, madam.” Replied he, proceeding to c
arve a path for them to make an escape. Along the waterfront, the stench became more pronounced. Many bodies floated belly upside up, whitened eyes staring unseeingly to the muddled sky. Jane could see above the damp sweat unpleasantly clinging her high-necked gown to her body and the oppressive weight of the leather cuirass protecting her chest; something intriguing was going on thereabouts the nefarious Captain Sabine’s ship. The tugboat was setting a dead-end course for a derelict paddleboat similar to the kind she and Captain Franklin had taken out on an outing at the Woolwich docks.
Aboard the Valiant, Sabine was shouting orders and trying to regain control on the ponderous craft as it swung starboard. Unfortunately, she couldn’t revel in his misfortune as there were many unmentionables clawing at her pretty pink kitten heels and skirts. Together, Eleanor and William liberated her from one particularly stubborn undead. Cutting its arms off had done anything except leave clinging paws fisting handfuls of her Spring dress between moldering fingers. Eleanor prised the clawing hands from her friend, flinging the greasy green-skinned appendages far out to sea leaving Jane swooning in William’s arms. Franklin had fallen back to see if he could be of any assistance, but glimpsing Miss Griffin’s lady-like weakness move the romantically sensible Captain Parry, he kept his true feelings aside.
Oblivious to the happenings of the rest of the party, John and James Ross reached the small outer building beside the Victualling Board’s offices. The elder Ross let loose a particularly virulent torrent of sailor curses that had the ladies been closer, would’ve had them blushing. Barrow had pulled back the tarpaulin securing the pinnace’s interior, revealing the smashed inward timbers, tar oozing between broken planks like black tears.
Cockburn sagged against the inner wall of the shed, pulling the deflated white wig from his mousy brown hair. “God on High, we are doomed.” He moaned; Barrow tossed aside a spare spar with disgust. “Seems the curs did their damage well. Had I prior inkling, I’d have had Sabine stripped of rank or at least sent to chart the Niger.” Barrow swore bitterly.
Parry, inconspicuously holding Jane’s hand, cast a brief look at the unseaworthy vessel, his strong features betraying none of the hopelessness mirrored by the representatives of the Admiralty. “Gentlemen, we have a more pressing problem than moping about like micks. We either swim across the Thames, or simply go down as proud members of the English race.” He refrained from referencing sex, feeling Miss Griffin’s steely blue eyes fixated fiercely on his person.
“I say we swim, if anyone aspires to ask my opinion.” Franklin appeared behind Parry, his arm around Eleanor’s shoulders. No one deigned a response to the faltering example of English manhood. James Ross clasped the bayonet he had liberated from a Royal Marine, “we shall save as many as possible so that their souls might be liberated to God.”
“Well spoken, Lieutenant Ross.” William said, quite moved. In such turbulent times, one forgot the brain-seekers had too, been living, breathing subjects of the King’s, before the plague.
Then, came from across the water Sabine’s enraged shout.“Damn your eyes, Scoresby! What the Devil do you think you’re doing!”
As the unmentionable tide had been temporarily stymied by an overturned rowboat Eleanor had ingeniously contrived to place across the quay; Jane had forgotten the Valiant’s struggle to steer clear of the large paddleboat. Barrow was heard to say, “another waste.” With a haughty sniff. As with John Ross, Scoresby’s zombies seemed less disposed to consume him than he slay them.
Scoresby’s peculiar laugh floated across as he shoved a grappling seaman into the arms of a zombie clerk. Placing a boot against the rail, he slashed a rope free from the windlass, swinging up and over the side, dropping into a small boat, propelled by a fair-haired young man.
“Look!” Shouted James Ross excitedly, “’tis Francis!”
Parry shaded his brow, gazing out across the water, “my goodness, it is!” Instantly Franklin took up the loudest shout, drawing the small wooden propeller boat in their direction. The tugboat Valiant collided with a sickening crash of splintering wood and reinforced hull against the paddleboat, sending those on deck tumbling off their feet. Before the dazed and frightened members of the Admiralty Board could recover, dozens of starved zombies were climbing up from the paddleboat’s wheelhouse, clawing vociferously with groans of delight as shouts for help became cries of terror.
None of Parry’s party could enjoy the sight of the stricken devouring London’s fashionable, though secretly Jane relished the dying men’s screams, thinking it just. Scoresby hailed the men, helping to steer alongside the end of the dock, taking his moth-eaten chapeau from his head and waving it about madly. “All aboard!”
Only Mister Barrow sniffed at who had come to rescue him. Eagerly, James Ross scrambled ahead, dropping into the wildly swaying and pitching little craft to embrace the young Irishman clutching the crude tiller. “I’m so monstrously glad you’re alive, Francis!” In turn the other mumbled something to the effect of ‘glad you survived the night.’
“I deplore interrupting your reunion, boys. But, there are more pressing matters.” William said, the slightest hint of urgency in his tone. He didn’t have to look about twice to know the thunderous crashing sound was the rowboat blockade tumbling aside, allowing the zombies to renew their frenzied brain-seeking. Franklin yelped and jumped in, quite forgetting his wife on the quayside. Mister Barrow followed suit less scandalously, his lower lip curling at Scoresby’s bold grins in between spurts of describing his latest invention, not that anyone particularly listened.
At the risk of person, Parry assisted Miss Griffin while John Ross scooped up Mrs. Franklin despite her little shriek at the indignity. It needn’t be noted, Sir George Cockburn occupied the bow, urging the boys to cast off quickly, before the ladies had boarded. Franklin urged the same less loudly for Eleanor slapped him with the edge of her shawl when she dropped beside him on the narrow plank seat.
“Whoops, dear.” She secured the ragged ends with a small bow before her heaving breast, her expression fighting a smile off as her husband sniffled, rubbing his round cheek. Parry once again shook his head, sighing over a lack of chivalrous manhood present in John Franklin. Working as one, the two Rosses, Crozier and Scoresby pushed the small craft across the water, pulling firm strokes with the paddles aided by a clogged whirring sound from the wooden blades of the propeller.
Jane Griffin began to relax, leaning on Captain Parry’s shoulder, watching quite a few zombies tumble off the narrow quay into the water with mild splashing sounds. She sighed at the obliviousness of their plague-ridden brains, egad t’wasn’t that difficult to swim - when something caught a hold of her trailing dress hem and yanked her indecently almost over the edge. Jane gave a most female scream of terror, flailing to catch herself as the sopping wet head and shoulders of Edward Sabine reached over the shallow side of the gunwales. Eleanor screamed along with Jane, unable to find anything to fend off the zombified Captain.
Meanwhile, John Ross hollered at both women to stop their yammering as they were nearly shrieking in his ear; Parry had his own troubles with the appearance of George Lyon on the opposite side. His one-time fellow commander’s grey eyes were slowly bleeding into a milky white of death, formerly pristine white teeth were now bloodstained from feasting on the flesh of Admiralty Lords and smelt of a cesspit when Lyon’s mouth parted to take a bite out of William’s leg. Scoresby attempted to take immediate action, but knocked poor Francis Crozier upside the head with a sword scabbard. James ducked, momentarily dropping his paddle in the panic. Scoresby shouted somewhat concerned, “sorry, old boy, you alright there?” Crozier, of course, didn’t reply. Mister Barrow immediately took up the steering, figuring if an Irish lad could learn how to work a crude propeller, whatever that was, an Englishman could too. How wrong he was. With a few false starts, the boat jerked to shuddering life, sending the few halfway standing occupants almost overboard as the craft chugged water, speeding toward the jutting edge of a partially s
unken craft.
“Turn!” Scoresby shouted in alarm, his flashing eyes wild with fright. “Turn, for God sakes, turn now!”
“A little assistance, Scoresby!” Parry choked out, slamming his fist into Lyon’s slack face. Grappling with the hands that refused to let go of his waistcoat, he fell sideways with the zombie pulling its maimed body after him into the boat. Franklin shrieked anew and went into a tizzy, first attempting to escape by jumping overboard then when he spotted the bobbing heads of more unmentionables drawn by the splashing and screaming, he pulled back hastily to find Lyon’s face inches from his own.
“Graaaaah!”
Franklin passed out into a dead faint. Bodily, John Ross pulled back Lyon’s slippery arms as Eleanor struggled to pull Jane’s pistol free from her cuirass, taking aim, her hands wobbled as the small boat careened through the water. “Fire!” Jane cried, barely able to keep the fleshier parts of herself from Sabine’s undead grasp. More zombies stretched forth rotting arms, clinging to the sides of the boat, thwarting the men’s efforts to assist. Rather than speak, Eleanor fired, the bullet finding point in Sabine’s forehead. Instantly his thrashings ceased, he fell back into the water without another cry. Jane scrambled forward, gasping her thanks. Eleanor dropped the emptied Derringer pistol to the bottom of the boat, nodding briefly. Together, they took up the oars, struggling to row toward the Hecla and her consort vessel, where a few curious onlookers thronged their decks. Succeeding in throwing off the last zombie, the Rosses and Scoresby made concerted effort to jab bayonets at those trailing behind them in the water, like sharks to the scent of blood, leaving Parry to attempt resuscitation of Franklin, the surviving Lord of the Admiralty and Crozier. Of the latter, he bore a simple knock on the head and was quite alright; Franklin refused to believe he wasn’t in Lyon’s grip of undeath, until his wife slapped sense into him with her dainty little hand. Lord Cockburn remained insensible for the remainder of the time.
Contact was made with the two ships and quite a few of Parry’s lower officers from his previous expedition, gave three hearty cheers, while crew members lowered rope ladders to the small boat. As the Franklins and Mister Crozier took to the Fury, old John Ross could be heard bickering with John Barrow over the fact that the Scotsman had ‘saved’ the Admiralty Secretary’s life. Barrow, of course, denied every word.
“Remind me again, Mister Ross, why I didn’t dump these two fools back on the Deptford docks?” William Parry asked tiredly, rubbing his wearied temples while Scoresby mounted the crow’s nest high above; Jane tucked stray dark curls behind her ears, answering for a nonplussed James Ross, “because that would take the cheer from the sup chamber, Captain Parry.”
“Hn... perhaps,” he grunted, discreetly offering her his arm.
Happily ever after-?