by D. R. Martin
It was a waiting game now, Johnny thought. He told Nina about the battle in the field. Soon the real fight would start—the all-or-nothing attempt to destroy the attacking bog zombies for good. He could tell that Nina was pretty jumpy from the quaver in her voice.
“I just want this over and done with, one way or the other,” she said. “My arm hurts like the dickens and I have a splitting headache. I’m exhausted. I feel like I can’t think straight anymore.”
That’s when Lieutenant McKenzie, standing near one of the pumps, told them to hush. “I have a report of incoming hostiles heading this way. We mustn’t reveal ourselves.”
Johnny quickly buttoned up his lip, and so did Nina. It would be awful if their yammering tipped off the bad guys.
The soldiers inside the stable had fixed bayonets to their rifles, ready to charge out into the midst of the enemy. Johnny looked at the soldiers—many of them not much older than him—and wondered who would live and who would die. Because this would surely be a terrible, treacherous hand-to-hand fight.
All of a sudden the lieutenant whisper-shouted, “Here they come! Get ready!”
Johnny and Nina stared out the window from several feet back, so they wouldn’t be seen. Johnny’s heart was beating so loudly that he worried the zombies might hear it. This was it, the moment of truth for the plan that Nina’s inside knowledge had inspired.
“Nina,” Johnny whispered urgently. “Put on your goggles. Quick. There may be ghosts around, too.”
Just as Nina secured her etheric eyepieces, one, then another, and another, and several more hulking figures loped toward the barn.
“NOW!” Lieutenant McKenzie bellowed.
Four electric pumps thrummed to life.
Within a couple of seconds, sprays of liquid were showering out onto the bog zombies.
Johnny couldn’t help himself and rushed to the window for a better look, with Nina right behind him. The zombies had stopped in their tracks, looking confused—their leathery faces and hands dripping, their cloaks and coats soaking.
The creatures just stood there, silently. A few of them looked down at the cobblestones covered with soapy bubbles.
Then the remaining three pumps came to life. They sprayed the zombies with a second liquid—this one creating a terrible stench.
Chapter 41
The air filled with the frightful, keening noise of something inhuman screaming in agony.
In the courtyard, zombies were scratching and clawing at their faces. Almost all the attackers who had gotten soaked were hopping about, ripping off their clothing, trying desperately to wipe the fluid they’d been sprayed with from their skin. Axes and swords and cudgels clattered to the cobblestones.
But even as the doused zombies fell to the ground in agony, a second wave of zombies came up behind them. And there was no more solution in the pumps. The next part of the fight would be man-to-zombie.
Lieutenant McKenzie pushed the stable doors open. “Now, boys!”
Several dozen Royal soldiers poured out to meet the new assault. As the horses in their stalls whinnied with terror, Johnny and Nina rushed to the stable door and stared out at the melee of man and zombie. Just in case, Johnny had Basil’s cricket bat in hand, and Nina a short sword she had borrowed from Dame Honoria’s collection.
Soldiers and zombies traded blows. Axe versus rifle and bayonet. Sword versus sword.
CLASH and CLANG!
SMASH and BANG!
THUD and THUMP!
BOOM and BUMP!
Men and zombies fell to the cobblestones. It was impossible to know who was winning. Everything was jumbled up and shadowy—a confusion of violence.
But one thing was for sure. If the first wave of zombies hadn’t been knocked out of action—and they were still writhing helplessly on the pavement, practically scratching their skin off—the fight might have already been over.
By now, the lieutenant’s platoon had managed to disable many of the newer zombie attackers with their slashing, stabbing bayonets, which proved effective at keeping axes and cudgels at a distance. The tide appeared to be turning.
Already, Johnny had seen several ghosts pop right out of the “dead” bog zombies—erupting out of the slashed and punctured skin. It appeared that many of the ghosts animating these ancient corpses had had enough of the fight. They flew straight up into the night sky and disappeared. Johnny wondered if they had been duped by Percy into thinking that they were invincible and invulnerable. But now that they were being beaten, fewer and fewer of them remained in the fight.
“Johnny!” Nina suddenly screeched.
Lurching out of the shadows to their right came a zombie. It lifted a heavy cudgel as if it meant to smash in their brains.
Trying to decoy the zombie away from Nina, Johnny spurted out of the barn and straight into the courtyard. Then he nimbly changed direction, cutting right. The zombie tried to follow, but the cobblestones were wet and very slick from all the liquid that had been sprayed out there. The creature’s hard, hobnailed boots slipped out from beneath it and it went down with a resonant thuuud.
It scrambled upright again, an expression of grim determination on its distorted, leathery face. Then it came after Johnny, who scampered like a demented monkey, trying to dodge the creature. He flitted right, left, and backward, just out of reach of that nasty-looking cudgel. A few swings came awfully close, one grazing Johnny’s left shoulder and smarting like the dickens.
The zombie finally stopped its pursuit and headed back to the barn, no doubt to see if it might have better luck attacking Nina. Johnny saw an abandoned mace lying just over by the stable wall. He managed to grab it and heave it at the zombie. It hit the back of the thing’s left foot.
“I’m over here, you dumb old blockhead!” Johnny shouted, hoping the mace and the insult would draw the zombie away from Nina.
It did. Faster than Johnny expected.
The zombie charged at him full speed, cudgel hefted as if to crush Johnny’s skull. For a second time, though, one of Johnny’s agile moves left his adversary down on the cobblestones, this time in a puddle of sprayed liquid. Its cudgel had rolled a couple of yards away, out of reach.
As the creature struggled to get upright again, Johnny rushed in and delivered a terrifically hard whaaack of his cricket bat to its left knee. His undead adversary howled with pain and tried to grab for its cudgel. Then Johnny hit the hand that was doing the grabbing.
The zombie was a stubborn one, though, and kept trying to get back into the fight. Johnny’s blows to knee and hand had certainly hurt it, but not put it out of commission altogether. But having to put its hands into the spray liquid seemed to be causing it even greater distress, as it tried frantically to wipe them on its filthy tunic.
“I think that guy’s a little mad at us, Sparks,” Johnny told Nina, who had come out to help him. “Better if we don’t stick around.”
“Back in the stable, then?” Nina replied. “Hide with the horses?”
“Best idea you’ve had all night.”
They backed away, keeping their eyes on their tormenter, which was still preoccupied with the condition of its hands.
To their left, they heard running footsteps. It was Lieutenant McKenzie, rushing toward them, his army saber held out in front of him. He approached the zombie, which looked up helplessly.
Johnny almost felt sorry for the repulsive old thing.
The lieutenant whipped his blade downward and to the left. The zombie’s homely head was suddenly dangling from its shoulders by a scrap of skin and gristle.
Not a second later, the green figure of a ghost spurted up and out of the zombie’s body, which collapsed in a heap. The specter seemed confused, frantic, looking for something.
Johnny was thunderstruck. It wasn’t some ancient warrior after all. It was a teenaged boy dressed in the ragged clothes of a nineteenth century street urchin—a beggar or pickpocket, most likely. Then the boy ghost caught sight of Johnny and flitted over like a humm
ingbird.
“I didn’t wanna hurt no one,” the boy ghost said, his nose just inches from Johnny’s. He had a round face and freckles, like Johnny, but black hair sticking out every which way. “But I wanted to be real again. Terrible bad. I wanted to be flesh again. So I took that rum old thing to live in. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.”
He made a head nod in the direction of the ruined bog zombie that sprawled on the cobblestones. “Trouble is, the living won’t let us be. Your lot don’t want us ghosts to be real again. That’s why we’re fightin’ for our rights, for our place in the real world. Good ol’ Lord Percy’s told us so, and we believe him. It’s not over, boy. Not by a long shot. Just you wait.”
Johnny was speechless. He didn’t know what to say. This ghost—which a couple of minutes ago had been a frightening monster trying to beat Johnny’s brains into jelly—almost sounded sensible.
“Here’s a little thank-you present, mate,” the ghost smirked. He snapped back his right arm and punched Johnny in the nose.
Johnny tumbled backward into the stable, onto something squishy and smelly. He rubbed his throbbing beak, and there was blood on his fingers. Looking up, he saw Nina. But the urchin wraith had vanished.
Nina grabbed Johnny’s hand and hauled him to his feet. “I think that kid didn’t like you very much,” she said with a grin.
“Dah feelig’s mooojel,” Johnny said.
“Here’s a handkerchief for your nose.”
“Thaaags, Sbargs.” Johnny blew some blood out into the beige linen and waited for the twinkles in his vision to fade away.
Then it struck him.
There was no more noise from the courtyard. No sound of blade on blade, of cudgel on flesh.
He and Nina stepped out of the stable and saw soldiers standing over dozens of bog zombie remains. Johnny wasn’t sure what to call a corpse that had come back to life and had “died” again. But whatever the word was, these were it.
Lieutenant McKenzie walked over to join them. “I never thought I’d be so grateful to a group of civilians. But without your idea for the spray solutions, many good men and women might have died. And this realm might have lost its monarch.”
“You’ve got Nina to thank for being such a sharp secret agent,” Johnny said. “Without her clue, we might never have figured it out.”
“It just made sense,” Nina said, reprising her idea. “If the zombies’ skin needed to be oiled or greased, then degreasing them would make their lives, so to speak, more difficult. And what dissolves grease? Ordinary washing detergent.”
Johnny beamed at her. “It was a swell idea, Sparks.”
Nina shrugged and smiled back at him. “Well, the second round of spray was Mel’s idea, and it was pretty clever. She figured the bacteria in liquid fertilizer would cause the zombie skin to start decomposing.”
“And they had a good supply of the stuff around here,” the lieutenant laughed. “Worked a treat, didn’t it? The old things are discombobulating right before our eyes. But before we claim a victory, we’d better find the brigadier and your companions. It sounds as if the fight has moved to Castle Henry itself.”
Chapter 42
Lieutenant McKenzie ordered several of his men to tend to casualties—three soldiers had gone down with ax and cudgel wounds, another had a concussion from slipping on the cobblestones. Amazingly, no soldiers had been killed. Then the lieutenant led Johnny, Nina, and his remaining troops the two hundred yards to the king’s grand country house.
The fight had indeed come together there. The brigadier and his soldiers were battling to keep a troop of bog zombies from storming the front entrance. Hundreds of men and zombies engaged in desperate hand-to-hand combat.
Helping the soldiers in their efforts were workmen from the estate. Armed with buckets, the workers rushed toward the creatures, dousing them with the remaining liquid.
Up above, Johnny saw that another battle was being fought.
Ghosts on horseback and free-flying wraiths were soaring in and out of the royal mansion—dueling with swords, shooting arrows and guns, and wrestling each other as they tumbled through the air. There were Steppe Warriors and cavaliers battling marines from the Great War and cavalrymen from the Peninsular Campaign. Sergeant Clegg, his sawed-off shotgun in his right hand, had joined the battle, chasing after what looked like a Northern Raider. And Johnny spotted Colonel MacFarlane high above Castle Henry, crossing swords with his old foe, Burilgi the Steppe Warrior.
Staring skyward at the skirmish through her goggles, Nina whistled in astonishment. “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Come on, Sparks. Let’s see if we can get inside. Maybe we can help protect the king.”
They threaded their way up the circular drive in front of Castle Henry, past the grand equestrian statues and fountain, and up the central stairs—dodging soldiers and bog zombies as they went. Inside the royal mansion it was practically a madhouse.
Ghosts were dueling and fighting all over the place. Glorious antique furniture had been upended. Glassware and china smashed to smithereens. Paintings knocked askew on the walls. Priceless sculptures tipped over and broken. Tapestries slashed, crumpled on the marble floors.
Johnny and Nina huddled by a huge, heavy rosewood china cabinet for several long minutes, as a Steppe Warrior dueled a dead army officer—an SGS man whom Johnny had seen on the train north out of Higgsmarket. If he and Nina had tried to move forward, they would have gotten sliced and diced.
“Got any plan in mind?” Nina asked, peering around the corner of the cabinet to see how the duel was going. “How did you figure we could help protect the king?”
Johnny didn’t have a good answer. “I guess I just thought we would wing it.”
All of a sudden there was a terrible crash of breaking glass and china. Johnny and Nina stuck their heads out into the passageway, around the corner of the massive china cabinet. One of the ghosts had missed a strike and instead smashed a glass door in the cabinet—wrecking a number of valuable figurines.
Now the two ghost combatants had moved a few dozen feet away, to the right, toward the end of the hallway. They were still fighting fiercely, sword to sword, but the SGS man seemed to be gaining the advantage.
Nina gestured to the left. “Let’s go this way.”
They tiptoed out and away and were almost back down to the spot where the main floor hallway joined up with the central atrium. Up above hung a huge, golden chandelier. The marble floor had patterns of colorful stone embedded in it, in a large circular design.
“If I were a king, where would I hide out?” Johnny pondered, gazing around.
“If you were a king,” Nina whispered, “I’d want to hide in another country.”
Johnny gave her a mock scowl. “I betcha he’s downstairs in the dungeon,” he speculated, not knowing if all castles came with dungeons.
“No, actually he’s not,” said a papery voice right behind them.
Johnny practically jumped out of his skin.
No one was better at sneaking up on a guy than a ghost. And Corporal Marchiano was a particular master of ghostly surprise. The Zenith trooper was always sneaking up on Johnny back home at Birchwood.
The boy and the ghost shook hands and exchanged greetings.
But Corporal Marchiano was not alone. Rex Ward was with him, along with Private Boo and a couple of living people—obviously servants—in tailcoats and white ties. One of them was Oates, the man whom the king called his “ghost eyes.”
“Hey, Rex,” Johnny exclaimed. “You’re okay! It’s so good to see you.”
“And you, too, Master Graphic.” Rex took Johnny’s hand and shook it vigorously.
“What are you doing here?”
Rex whispered in Johnny’s ear. “Look carefully at the gent there.” He gave a head nod in the direction of the smaller servant in the tails.
Johnny did just that, wondering what the ghost was on about. Then, all of a sudden, it hit him.
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It was the king!
In the disguise of a servant.
The king winked at Johnny, as if they were secretly sharing a very good joke.
Johnny winked back, then whispered to Rex. “You’re sneaking him out?”
“Too many blasted hostile ghosts flying through every room,” Rex sniffed. “We have to move him to a safer location.”
“Then let’s get out of here, guys. C’mon, Sparks.”
Rex Ward took the lead, heading for the main door that Johnny and Nina had entered through. The king and Oates came next, with Marchiano and Boo on either side of them. Johnny and Nina brought up the rear.
“You’re awful quiet, Sparks,” Johnny said as they walked out into the night.
“Got that stinking headache back, I guess,” she replied, her voice thin and shaky. “A good night’s sleep would do wonders.”
“Bet it would,” Johnny agreed, figuring his friend was just out of sorts. Who wouldn’t be? “This’ll be over soon, and you can snooze around the clock back at Wickenham.”
From the look of things, the fight outside was as good as done. Bog zombie bodies were sprawled all around, and hundreds of royal soldiers stood guard. Up in the sky, the fighting specters had vanished. Johnny wondered how Colonel MacFarlane and Sergeant Clegg had fared. He sure hoped they were okay.
“Your Majesty!” came a stouthearted shout from out by the grand fountain.
It was Brigadier Stafferton, trotting toward them, with Lieutenant McKenzie right on his heels. Both officers jerked to a halt and snapped off crisp salutes.
“Thank heavens you’re safe,” the brigadier exclaimed. He hastily added, “…Your Majesty.”
“I was exiled all evening to the wine cellar,” the king said with a wry half-smile. “Usually I enjoy spending time with my clarets and white wines. But yes, I’m fine.”