Live and let Drood sh-6

by Simon R. Green

  People farther down the Pier began to cry out as even the everyday tourists sensed something was wrong. Panic moved quickly through the crowds as they felt what Molly and I already knew: that there was something in the fog. Something bad. In ones and twos and then in groups, they headed for the exit. Walking quickly and then hurrying, and finally breaking into an undignified run as the fog struck a chill into their hearts. Young lovers held on to each other tightly, running hard and not looking back, while parents dragged screaming and protesting children along with them by brute force. The retired senior citizens abandoned their deck chairs, and hurried after the departing crowds as best they could. White-faced staff abandoned the stalls and shops and the games arcade, and ran for their lives. Even the fake ghosts came running out of the fake haunted house, throwing aside their sheets and costumes so they could run faster.

  None of them wanted any part of the advancing fog and what was moving inside it.

  I looked round just in time to see Madame Osiris s tent disappear abruptly, just before the fog reached it. She may not have seen the fog coming, but she knew enough to get the hell out of Dodge. Molly and I looked at each other and smiled briefly. It would take a lot more than some sudden bad-tempered weather to scare us. We stood our ground, facing the fog as it crept towards us. I peered into the thick fog as it ate up foot after foot of the Pier, but though I could sense something moving along with it, I still couldn t see a damned thing. And suddenly I had a very bad feeling about this fog.

  We could depart, I said carefully to Molly. If you like. To a better position I m just mentioning the possibility.

  No, said Molly, just as carefully. We don t back down, ever. Might give other people ideas Besides, aren t you curious to see what s inside it?

  Well, yes and no, I said. There s curious, and then there s curious.

  The temperature plummeted. My breath was suddenly steaming on the air before me, along with Molly s. All the hairs were standing up on my arms and the back of my neck. I shuddered briefly despite myself, and it wasn t because of the cold. I had a sudden sharp feeling of my own mortality. The fog advanced deliberately towards us, thick and swirling and pearly grey, with strange lights coming and going deep within it and something that might have been shadowy shapes deep in the heart of it. The air was damp, beading on my face, and I could taste sea salt on my lips.

  What is this cold I m feeling? I said to Molly. The cold of the grave?

  I don t think so, said Molly. She wouldn t take her gaze off the fog for a moment, even to glance at me. More like the cold of the sea. The kind of cold you only feel in the deepest, darkest part of the ocean. At the very bottom of the sea, where everything falls when it s dead. There s something in the fog and it s coming for us, Eddie. I can feel it.

  I nodded quickly. I could feel it, too. A growing sense of presence, of something else here on the Pier with us. Even though the crowds and the tourists were long gone. Something new, or perhaps something very old, had come to Brighton Pier, in the fog, out of the sea. Looking for me and Molly.

  My fingers are tingling, I said. And not in a good way.

  That s nothing, said Molly. My nipples are hard as rocks.

  Oh, great, I said. Distract me. That s all I need.

  Molly laughed. Not everything is about you, Eddie.

  This time, I think it is, I said. I think this is all about me. About getting rid of the Last Drood.

  I can see things moving in the fog, said Molly.

  Human shapes heading straight for us.

  You ve got better eyes than me, I said, glaring helplessly into the grey fog churning before me. Close, now. Just a few more feet and I d be able to reach out and touch it.

  Madame O sold us out, Molly said flatly. She told someone we were here. I shall have words with her later.

  Not necessarily, I said. I told you we were being watched. Crow Lee is a power in his own right, as well as being the Most Evil, et cetera, and this is well within his capabilities. He wants to stop me from rescuing my family. He wants to take me down while I m vulnerable. I smiled, and somehow I just knew it wasn t a very nice smile. Poor old Crow Lee. He thinks I m naked. He doesn t know about my new armour.

  Right, said Molly. We ll show him.

  We could still run, I said.

  Too late, said Molly.

  The fog swelled towards us like the waves of a silent pearl grey sea. The whole end of the Pier was gone now, swallowed up by the fog. I could just make out the dark shape of the fake haunted house to my right. New lights were showing in the windows: dark green glows, like the phosphorescent light you find on shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea. Dark silhouettes, distorted human shapes, moved slowly past the windows. Something bad peered at me from the illuminated doorway.

  Dark shadows, slow-moving human forms, stumbling forward on dragging feet, scraping across the wooden floorboards, appeared in the fog before Molly and me. They were almost upon us now. Not ghosts, not any form of projected image or any kind of illusion. These were solid, physical things. Dead men emerging slowly out of the fog. Dead men walking.

  Once I got a good look at them, I knew immediately what they were. Not ghosts or even zombies, but spirits of the dead called up out of the sea and given their old shape and form to do their master s will. Or what was left of them after so long in the depths. Disturbed from their rest and animated by some terrible outside will. Crow Lee. Had to be. There were dozens of the things, maybe hundreds, shuffling and stumbling forward to confront Molly and me. Grey and bloated, flesh eaten away by fishes and all the other things that live at the bottom of the sea that we don t like to think about. Some bodies had clearly been down there longer than others; just bare bones, held together with strips of ancient flesh and tatters of decayed clothing. The faces were the worst: rotten, eaten away, eyes and ears and nose and lips just gone but they could still see Molly and me. Every dead body oriented on us as they pressed forward. They could see us. They knew where we were.

  Can you tell what they want? I said to Molly.

  No. But I could probably make a really good guess.

  We could be mistaken, I said. Let s ask them.

  You do it, said Molly. You re the polite one.

  I took an ostentatiously confident step forward to face the army of the dead emerging from the fog, and immediately every dead body slammed to a halt. Not one of them moved. All their dead faces, their decaying heads, turned in my direction. I took a moment to make sure my voice would sound calm and confident. I doubted very much I d be fooling anyone, but it s the principle of the thing.

  Who are you? I said. Why have you come here? What do you want? Is there anything I can do to help you? To put you back to rest again?

  One of the nearest bodies stepped forward. Its bare feet made wet slapping sounds on the bare floorboards. With its bleached flesh and eaten-away face, its ragged clothes in rags, it could have been anyone. Only the manner of its clothes allowed me to identify it as male. It raised one half-skeletal hand to point at me, and water dripped steadily from the revealed bones.

  We re all that s left of those who died in the waters here, said the dead man in a disturbingly normal voice. The sea is giving up its dead against its will. None of us want to be here. But then, none of us wanted to die. Accidents, mistakes, murder; we all ended up at the bottom of the sea. In the cold, in the dark and the silence. Raised and sent here by someone who had a use for us. One last crime against us. And all the rage we have for dying, for dying badly, for not being allowed to rest in peace all that rage has been stirred up in us, so we can take it out on you and your woman. We don t know who you are or why someone wants you to die so badly, and we don t care. We can t care. We re dead.

  You can t hurt me, I said. I m a Drood.

  Means nothing to me, said the dead man. Means nothing to any of us. We are here to hurt you and break you and make you die badly. And then we ll take you back with us, drag you down into the depths of the sea, to the cold and the dark and the silen
ce. Forever.

  Nothing worse than a chatty dead man, Molly said briskly. I don t think that s his voice, Eddie. I think that s someone else speaking through him.

  Is that you, Crow Lee? I said. I ll be coming for you soon. And all the armies of the world, living or dead, won t be enough to stop me.

  Let us rest, said a soft, wet chorus of voices.

  We didn t want to die. But this is worse.

  You wouldn t think someone with the power to raise an army of the dead would feel the need for psychological warfare, said Molly. This is just meant to disturb us by appealing to our better nature. Lot he knows. I don t have one. I had it surgically removed long ago, when it got in the way of having serious fun.

  We didn t ask to be called up into the light again, said the dead man, looking straight at me with his eyeless face. The dark will be that much harder to bear now that we ve been made to remember what light is like. The cold will be that much worse now that we ve been made to know warmth again. And since we can t take our anger out on the one who raised us, we ll take it out on you.

  Listen, I said. I don t know whether there s really any of you left in there or not. Whether these are your voices are not. But if you re really here, if you ve been made to suffer, I give you my word: I will avenge you. You hear that, Crow Lee? I will make you pay for this!

  The moment I stopped talking, they all surged forward, stumbling over their broken and decayed feet, reaching out to Molly and me with rotting hands. Grasping hands, full of all the awful strength of the raised dead. I armoured up immediately, the golden armour encasing me from head to toe in a moment. It seemed to me the dead hesitated, as though they hadn t expected that, and then the will behind them drove them on. I went to meet them, my hands clenched into golden fists. Because if they wanted a fight, I was just in the mood to give them one. After what had been done to my family, all their anger was nothing compared to mine. They threatened me and Molly and the rescue of my family. To hell with that, and to hell with them all.

  The nearest dead man grabbed on to my golden arm with both of his bony hands, and to my shock I could feel his cold wet grasp, right through the armour. It couldn t get through, couldn t get at me, but I could still feel it. And that wasn t supposed to be possible. I d never felt anything like it before. What the hell had Crow Lee raised here, and what had he put into them?

  I ripped the dead man s arm off and threw it away. Water ran like blood from the empty socket, but the dead man barely staggered. I punched him full in the face with my golden fist and knocked his head right off. The body didn t fall, so I kicked its feet out from under it and walked right over the thrashing body on the deck to get to the next. I waded into the army of the risen dead, striking about me with vicious strength. I showed them no mercy because they had none in them for Molly or me. I ripped them apart with my armoured strength, tearing them limb from limb, knocking them down and trampling them underfoot, because they were dead and beyond any pain. And because I didn t care. They were just in the way.

  They swarmed around me, packing in close, trying to slow me down so they could pull me down. They clung on to me with their dead hands, beat against my armour with their bony fists, and scrabbled at my neck and face with clawed hands. And I just hit them until they fell apart and fell away. They were actually quite fragile after so long in the sea, and all of Crow Lee s power wasn t enough to make them a match for Drood armour. Anyone else might have found the dead men terrifying, even dangerous but for me, in my armour, they were just targets. I hit them and broke them and it felt good, so good. I smashed through their ranks, ripped them apart, tore off their heads and threw them aside. I picked some up bodily and threw them off the edge of the Pier and back into the sea. Where they belonged.

  I fought my way into the heart of them, striking out through the curling mists, the dead pressing so close around me now I couldn t have missed them if I d tried. My golden fists made wet squelching sounds as they sank deep into rotting flesh and collapsed chests. I struck them down and walked right over them, hearing brittle bones crack and break under my heavy golden feet. They beat at me with their dead fists but they couldn t reach me inside my armour. Crow Lee thought he could frighten me, thought he could drag me down, because I didn t have my armour anymore without my family, because he thought I was just a man. He should have known better. On the worst day I ever had, I was still a Drood.

  Dead hands slipped away from me as fists broke and shattered harmlessly against my armour. I didn t feel their attacks. Sometimes they threw their arms around me, several of them at once, trying to pull me down through accumulated weight and numbers; but I d just break their arms and throw them away again. Sometimes, several of them at once would hang on to my arms, and I could feel their squirming hands through the armour like bloated wet spiders. And then I d throw them off me so violently they left their hands behind and I had to scrape them off me. Torn off heads rolled back and forth on the bare floorboards and I kicked them around like footballs. Sometimes the mouths still moved, jaws opening and closing as though trying to say something. I didn t listen. It wasn t going to be anything I wanted to hear.

  I struck them down, I tore them apart, picked them up and threw them away. And laughed while I did it.

  Inevitably, some of the dead got past me, ignoring me to head straight for Molly. Probably seeing her as an easier target. More fools, them. I caught glimpses of Molly through the fog as I fought, her standing her ground, her face calm and thoughtful as she lashed out at them with all the magics at her command. She called lightning and it stabbed down through the fog, blasting bodies into pieces and setting others on fire. But some of them were so damp, so saturated with water from their time in the sea, the flames couldn t get a hold. Steam boiled off them, but they kept going. She gestured sharply, and some of the dead just exploded, chunks of rotting flesh flying through the air like soft shrapnel. The explosive spells worked well, but I knew how much that kind of magic took out of Molly. She could only target one dead man at a time. And there were so very many of them.

  They pressed forward, reaching out to her with cold implacable hands, and she had no choice but to back away. She threw up a shimmering protective screen between them and her, and the dead men hesitated. Molly forced out a series of powerful Words, and the base of her screen dug deep into the floorboards, securing it in place. It had been powerful enough to hold off the shades in Egypt, but the raised dead were more solid. They pressed right up against the protective screen, throwing all their weight against it, and as more and more joined in, they slowly forced the shimmering screen back inch by inch. The screen s energies burnt dead flesh where it touched, but they didn t care. They couldn t feel it. They forced the screen back through sheer weight of numbers, and Molly had no choice but to back away before it.

  The dead shouldn t have been able to do that. They were just bodies. But Crow Lee had put a power in them that would not be denied.

  And it happened that I looked back just at the moment when the screen collapsed and the dead surged forward, reaching out for Molly. The fog seemed to hold back just so I could see it. And just like that, my cold and vicious rage fell away from me. Molly was in danger, and that was all that mattered. I turned round immediately and fought my way back through the army of the dead, desperate to get to Molly before the dead could get to her. The dead between us immediately closed together, blocking my way with their bodies, soaking up my increasingly desperate blows with their yielding flesh. And even though I struck them down and threw them aside, there were just so many of them. I d allowed myself to be drawn away, separated from Molly. I surged forward with all my strength, smashing through bodies like they were made of paper, and cried out to Molly.

  Hold on, love! I m on my way! Hold on till I can get to you!

  She heard me; I know she did. She looked right at me. But I was so far away and there were so many of them almost upon her. Both of us knew there was no way I could get to her in time. I screamed so hard it hurt my
throat, fighting desperately to throw off the dead as they clung to me, grabbing at my legs to bring me down. I fought on, knowing it was useless. Knowing they were going to hurt her and kill her and drag her off with them down into the depths of the sea. I knew there was nothing I could do and I thought I d lose my mind.

  But fortunately she was Molly Metcalf.

  She yelled out to me to brace myself, and immediately I stopped fighting and grabbed on to the safety railings looming up out of the fog before me. I grabbed on with both hands, ignoring the dead men as they hammered at me, trying to pry me loose. They swarmed all over me and I ignored them and just hung on. Praying for a miracle.

  And Molly came through. She carefully pronounced one really powerful Word, and a roaring wind came hammering down the Pier and swept the whole damned fog away. The wind blasted the fog right off the Pier and sent it back out across the sea and without its support the dead couldn t stay. They just faded away as the last of the fog dispersed and the raging wind swept the whole Pier clean.

  The dead man who d spoken to me first was the last to go. He hung on somehow, intact, looking right at me with his eyeless face.

  He ll never let us go, he said. He ll hold on to us, down in the depths, until he needs us again.

  I ll get him for you, I said. I slowly let go of the railings and moved forward to face him. I remembered the vicious joy I d felt in fighting and destroying him and his kind, and I felt suddenly ashamed. If they really were just victims of Crow Lee s will, I d done them a terrible wrong. They were just innocent bystanders, caught up in the middle of a war.

  I ll set you free, I said. Whatever it takes.

  Why would you do that for us? said the dead man.

  After everything we ve done, and would have done and will do again?

  Because that s what I do, I said firmly.