by Peter Bunzl
Lily sat in the semi-darkness with her back against the door, holding the Wonderlite out in front of her. Its flickering flame lit up the observation booth. She listened in dread to the quiet groans and clanging as the zombies bumped against the outside of the booth, while she tried desperately to think of a plan to get them out of there. She could hear the creatures’ feet sloshing through the water – it was beginning to pour into the lab. The base must have started flooding faster since they’d arrived. Perhaps their docking and entrance onto it had partially broken the airlock, which could only be bad news.
Robert and Caddy were arguing quietly beside her. Malkin gave them an occasional angry, panicked woof. Dane sat further off, lost in his own thoughts.
Lily closed her eyes for a second. She drifted, then jolted awake. Whatever happened, no matter how late it got, she couldn’t fall asleep. Not until they were all safely out of here and back at the surface. She had no idea how that could happen. “We need to come up with something,” she told the others. “And soon.”
“What time is it?” Robert asked.
Lily took out her pocket watch and flipped the lid. “Twelve-thirty.”
“Half an hour into the New Year,” Caddy said. “Happy New Year, everyone!”
“Oh, yes,” Malkin snapped, grizzling at the ends of his green coat. “Happy New Year! We’re only thirty minutes in and already the three of you have helped this idiot boy reanimate a set of vicious undead underwater zombies. Well done. Well done indeed, all of you. What a stellar start to eighteen-ninety-eight!”
“I’m not an idiot boy!” Dane complained.
“And we didn’t help him raise the dead,” Caddy said. “He was going to do that anyway.”
“All right,” Robert said. “Why don’t we all just try to look on the bright side—”
“What bright side?” Malkin interrupted. “There is no bright side. There’s just zombies.”
“Well,” Robert said, “I, for one, think that the year can probably only get better from here on in.”
“Don’t you mean worse?” Malkin growled.
“All right,” said Lily. “That’s enough. We’re going to have to work together to get out of this one.” She couldn’t believe how much they were at each other’s throats. Being down here did that to you, she had noticed. In the hours they had been underwater, it was as if a confusion had settled over her like a fog, and it felt like there was no day or night, just shadows and sea.
She still didn’t know how they could get out of the observation room and back across the base to the Diving Belle without the zombies attacking them, but they would have to make a move soon if they wanted to beat the flooding.
Suddenly there was a far-off scratching and the screech of voices. The quiet chatter of the others on the far side of the room fell silent. They were listening too.
Then Lily heard a furious rattling.
Through the porthole she glimpsed the rotting form of a zombified figure. It was bent forward, trying the doorknob.
Lily jumped up and frantically checked the lock. They had locked the door, thank clank! The zombies wouldn’t be getting in.
Caddy snuggled against Robert in the dark. “It’s silly really,” she said, her voice tinged with worry, “but just to be close to you feels like protection.”
“Did you see that?” Lily whispered to everyone. “Something’s happening. What are they doing?”
“Trying to open the door,” Robert muttered.
“But that’s impossible,” Caddy said. “They’re barely alive. How can they remember how to open doors?”
“Perhaps they’re gathering their memories back,” Malkin suggested. “Maybe their bodies have some residual recollection of moving around this place.”
“Do you think that means they’ll remember me after all?” Dane asked hopefully. “My parents…”
Robert shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Lily spoke with urgency. “We need to get past them if we’re to get back to the Diving Belle and make it to the surface before this entire ship floods.” As she said this, she heard a drip, drip, drip in the room they were in.
They all looked up to see new trickles of water leaking in through the roof panels.
“If we don’t find a way out of here soon past those crazed corpses,” Lily said, “then we’ll all drown.”
“The Diving Belle’s right at the far end of the base,” Robert replied. “We’ll never get all that way with them chasing us.”
“And if they catch us who knows what they’ll do,” Caddy said.
“Perhaps if we wait long enough, they’ll wander off and we can make a break for it?” Dane suggested.
“The only way that’s going to happen is if someone can create a distraction,” Lily said, and she stared straight at Malkin.
“What are you looking at me for?” Malkin said.
“You’re the perfect one to do that job,” Lily said.
“Oh, no.”
“Yes, you are,” Robert said. “They can smell the life in us. They want it. But you, Malkin, you’re the fastest and the smallest – they’re less likely to notice you until you want them to.”
“That mouse is smaller,” Malkin said.
“He’s not going anywhere.” Dane clutched Spook to his chest.
“You’re more intelligent than Spook is, Malkin,” Lily told the fox. “You can sneak amongst them and they won’t even notice you. Then, when you get further down the corridor, you can make a loud noise to draw them away.”
“That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard,” Malkin snapped. “And that’s bearing in mind that you’ve involved me in some seriously stupid plans in the past – jumping out of airships, wading through sewers, sneaking around flying circuses full of scary clowns, and all at your behest. But, this, this is the dumbest plan of all. This plan really takes the dog biscuit.”
“It’s the only thing we can do,” Lily told the fox. “We’ll open the door really quickly and you must slip out. But remember, don’t let them see you. You saw what they did to Miss Buckle.”
“That’s precisely why I’m not doing it,” Malkin said. “Besides, the water’s rising out there and you know I can’t walk through it. It rusts my insides.”
Before Lily could respond, Dane butted in. “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe you won’t have to.”
They turned to see him fiddling with something in the corner. It was a box on the wall with a transmitter, a receiver and a numbered keypad.
“What is that?” Lily asked, holding up the Wonderlite and approaching him.
“It’s the base’s internal intercom,” Dane explained. “To relay messages from one place to another. It’s like a telephone only without an exchange. You can punch the number of the speaker you want your message to come out of and you can call any other point on the base.”
“So?” Robert said, fiddling with his cap.
“So, those things are attracted to noise – maybe, when they hear it, they’ll go and investigate?”
“It’s worth a try, I suppose,” Lily said. “But does it still work?” She was thinking of the blown lights. “If the generator’s down, won’t it be out too?”
“Don’t worry,” Dane said. “There’s an emergency power system. A smaller backup generator. It cuts out the lights so it can keep the comms and the life support systems running for as long as it can. I think that’s what’s happening, which means there’s still some power.”
“How long is ‘as long as it can’?” Robert asked with a gulp.
Dane shrugged. He didn’t know. He dialled a number on the keypad beneath the transmitter, then pressed the confirm button. The intercom let out a static hiss.
“See?” he said. “Now, everyone stand behind the door,” he commanded. “As soon as they wander towards the sound, you’re going to have to open it and we’ll all make a run for it.”
“Good idea,” Lily said. “Let’s do it.”
Robert shook his hea
d. “It won’t be enough.”
“Why not?” Dane asked.
“It’ll only distract them as long as you’re here to call into the machine. Once we leave the room the noise’ll stop and the zombies will turn around and come straight back this way.”
“Wait!” said Caddy. “I know how we can make it work.”
She had found something else. A phonograph on a wheeled stand that was pushed into the corner. Beside it was a stack of wax cylinder records. Incongruously, one of them was even printed with a picture of Miss Aleilia Child. It must have been a recording of her singing!
Dane’s eyes lit up. “Of course, I forgot those were here. Matilda used to play music to her test subjects, or to herself and Miss Buckle. They always loved listening to singing while they worked.”
Caddy pushed the phonograph over to the intercom, and positioned its horn against the intercom transmitter. Then she loaded up one of the wax cylinders. Lily and the others watched as she started to wind the handle of the machine to make it work.
“Someone still needs to be here to hold down the button on the transmitter,” Dane said.
“Not if we wedge it,” Caddy said. “Everyone look around for something to do that with.”
They all searched the room quickly. Lily found a first-aid box in the corner with a red cross on the front, which was full of splints and bandages. She took the longest splint she could find and wedged it against the button on the transmitter.
Meanwhile, Dane dialled in the number for one of the other speakers on another part of the base. Caddy had finished winding the phonograph. She placed the needle on the cylinder and, a moment later, the first strains of classical music echoed from far away on the other side of the ship, followed by Miss Child’s operatic singing voice…
The zombies began to edge away from the glass porthole in the door, their heads snapping round as they searched for the source of the sound. Gradually, as the crackling record went on, the music grew louder. Slowly, the zombies twisted and shuffled off in the direction of the noise.
Robert watched with bated breath their dark shadows drifting away through the binoculars until they were all out of sight.
Lily’s heartbeat was jagged in her throat. She peered around the door and waved the Wonderlite around, checking that the lab room beyond was really empty.
“Ready?” she asked the others, the word coming out in a hoarse whisper.
Caddy shook her head. “I-I don’t know if I can go. I’m still scared.”
“There’s no choice,” Robert said. “We have to take this chance to survive.” He put a comforting arm around his sister’s shoulder.
Dane hid Spook carefully away in his coat, while Lily picked Malkin up and draped him round her shoulders again so he wouldn’t have to walk through the water outside. Then she opened the door and the six of them crept out into the lab.
It was empty. They could hear the zombies down at the end of the corridor, clamouring towards the music.
Lily started sloshing as quietly as she could through the water towards the door, but something hard bumped against her shoe. She held the Wonderlite down by the floor and felt around in the murk. The thing glinted beneath the surface. She pulled it out.
It was the Ouroboros Diamond, cracked from the energy that had passed through it, but somehow still in one piece.
Lily stuffed the diamond in her pocket, then rose and beckoned to the others.
“Come on!” she whispered. “Let’s go.”
They crept through the lab door and into the room beyond filled with empty cages. Lily couldn’t see much, beyond the ring of the Wonderlite in the dark.
Out in the corridor she held it aloft and waved it around.
“Careful,” Malkin growled. “Don’t burn me with that!”
“I won’t,” Lily whispered. The flame from the Wonderlite seemed to last for ever. She thanked her lucky stars that Kid Wink had given it to her earlier. She would recommend the thing to everyone once they got out of here… If they got out of here…
As they walked down the corridor, the ghostly strings of the orchestra and the voice of Miss Child echoed around them. Robert took out his compass and checked the needle. North. They were headed back in the right direction.
Lily wondered how long the phonograph recording would play for. Would it keep the zombies occupied, or would they realize it was a hoax? Wax cylinder recordings like that one usually only ran about five minutes. “Stay close, everyone,” she whispered, and they moved as quickly and quietly along the corridor as they could.
They reached the end of the passage and passed the generator room at the hub of the base, where they heard different-sounding groans coming from within the walls. It must’ve been the complaints of the emergency generator.
“We’d best hurry,” Lily said, holding the flame of the Wonderlite aloft to light their path as they waded through the knee-deep water, following the steady stream of chill stale air that wafted up the shifting passageway.
Finally, they arrived at a place where the passage dropped sharply downward and the entire corridor in front of them was flooded like the surface of a lake.
“We’re just going to have to keep going,” Lily said. Clasping Malkin closer against her chest, she scrutinized the deep lake of seawater spread out across the passage in front of them. “It’s the only way out of this mess.”
She, Robert, Caddy and Dane, who’d put Spook in his breast pocket to keep him safe, waded deeper into the water. It reached much higher than when they’d walked this way before on the way to the lab – now it was at chest height. That meant the water was rising even faster than that time they’d been stuck in the London sewers. Why did they always seem to get into these pickles?
They rounded the next corner and Lily’s heart sank. Ahead of them was a set of closed doors. Robert slammed against the door and shook it. It juddered, but refused to open. Something heavy must’ve washed against the other side and jammed it shut. “We have to go back,” Lily exclaimed.
“And do what?” Robert asked.
“Find a different route,” Lily replied. “There should be another way. The base is circular. There must be plenty of other passages that will still take us back to the Diving Belle.”
“I don’t think—” Malkin said.
“Hush!” cried Caddy over their discussion. Something was up…
Suddenly, Lily noticed that silence had descended on the ship. The music that had been wafting through the corridors had finished. And now it was gone, the only things they could hear were their own voices and the splashing water pouring in through the cracks above.
They waded back towards the point where the water had got deeper and climbed across a bulkhead to a shallower, dryer part of the corridor beside the central generator room.
Then Lily heard the undead, scrabbling closer.
Suddenly one appeared around the bend in the corridor. Its clothes were ragged and rotten. It held out its hands, clawing at the air with green and discoloured nails, and gave a hideous cry. Soon others lurched around the corner to join it. Their crumbling and decaying bodies crowded together to block the path, and Lily perceived with a giddy certainty that there was no way past them. The base swayed beneath her, the floor shifting under her feet. Was this it? The end of everything?
The passage was blocked by deepening water and the tightly-jammed door in one direction, and by zombies in the other. What were they to do now? How would they get out of this? If only there was time to think, perhaps Robert could work something out.
One by one, the zombies began wading towards them. Robert peered at their angry faces, his pulse quickening. The zombies’ eyes were shrouded in darkness, their mouths dragged open in terrifying breathless silent screams.
Lily glanced about. There was a room off this passage a bit further up, whose door was wedged ajar. “Quick!” She motioned towards the room. “In there.”
They squeezed into the room, as the zombies closed in.
�
�Now shut the door!” she commanded.
Robert goggled at her in alarm. “We’ll be trapped,” he protested. “With no way out!”
“It’s all right,” Lily said, with as much calm as she could muster. “I have a plan.”
She pointed at the diving suits and oxygen tanks hanging on hooks in rows behind them. They were swaying slowly from side to side with the movement of the base. Robert suddenly remembered that they had passed this room and seen them on the way in. Lily must’ve recalled that and the airlock beyond the room. It was a way out! But only if they put on the diving suits and tanks and stepped into the ocean…
The zombies were still wading through the rising tide, down the corridor towards them, getting steadily closer. Robert, Caddy, Lily, Dane and Malkin all pushed against the door. It slowly ground closed against the knee-deep water, which sloshed the other way. They got it shut just in time.
The door had stopped the zombies, for now. There was an emergency lamp on the table, Lily’s hands shook as she lit it with the Wonderlite. She tried to ignore the quavering dread inside her and focus instead on something practical.
“We have to get into these,” she said, pulling down one of the diving suits and a tank from a hook. She nodded at the far door. “Then we’ll step through the hatch, open the airlock, exit the ship and go around it on the outside,” she explained as she hurriedly started to clamber into the diving suit.
Robert shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. I can barely swim.”
“Me neither,” Caddy said. “We have to find another route.”
“There isn’t one,” Lily said. “This is the only way back to the Diving Belle. We’ll just have to swim together as best we can.”
“We won’t need to,” Dane said, stuffing Spook deeper into his pockets. “There’s a rail that runs along the outside of the Shadowsea. It was so the crew could clip themselves onto it while they were building the base, bolting the parts together. If each of us hooks our suit onto that rail we can pull ourselves safely around,” he explained. “That way it won’t matter if you can swim or not.”