A Christmas Carol II--Contagion Page 11

  ONE AFTER ANOTHER HEADS WERE SPLIT IN HALF, OR BURST RIGHT OPEN, AND DESICCATED BRAINS FLEW UP

  Scrooge found his own aim true and unforgiving. He held a pistol in each hand and, taking half a second to aim, he fired; aimed; fired. All idea of sound was lost in the general noise. They could only see what was happening as if in silence and then through a thickening cloud of smoke that overwhelmed their sense of smell too, with its odour of burning. One after another heads were split in half, or burst right open, and desiccated brains flew up and fell back down again like sloppy rain. Felicity and Tacker turned away to reload their guns, taking deep breaths. Cratchit was firing crazily, as they had expected he would when danger came at last, and missing with most of his shots. A few seconds later his twelve guns were all out of ammunition and he had to reload too.

  Not an atom of light passed up from the room below, so crammed were the undead into that small stairwell, and the humans began to sense that as many as they might kill, so many hundreds more were pressing from below that the line could not be stopped. This thought struck a real mortal dread into them, as they saw a wall of dead bone and flesh rising towards them. They could not remain, but fled up the stairs, and stopping at the next corner, turned to improvise a more modest barricade and fire again.

  As the horde below struggled to overcome the obstacles of furniture and grandfather clock, the jostling movement made the unmoving bodies filter to the floor like sediment to form a new carpet upon which the others could tread.

  They came, leering and gawping, and reaching out with their insensible fingers towards the bullets that they did not understand were waiting for them.

  Another volley struck them, broke their necks, smashed their heads, and propulsed gouting spurts of black slime in every direction, and once more the unmoving corpses at the front of the horde were pressed upwards by the force of the innumerable zombies below, and the human group retreated.

  They had to move fast and Zaltzwick tripped, falling behind them, and then slipped on a trail of scattered intestines and skidded back to within reach of the arms below. They plucked at his coat; they grabbed him; one hand aiming for his eye accidentally removed his glasses as though it was a matter of form with them not to dine until such jewellery was removed; and with a diminishing cry of ‘Hatstands!’ in the air, they fell upon him ravenously.

  The entrenched group above fired, and fired again. Scrooge did not miss once. His aim was precise, his reloading punctual, and when it came to retire further up the stairs he swept Felicity up brusquely and transported her in his arms, placing her down again with care, but with polite despatch. As he set her down for the third or fourth time, and before he could help improvise a barrier from the paltry materials to hand, his gun went off in his hand. The bullet smashed harmlessly into the wall by his side but the stock of his gun jumped back with the recoil, butting sharply against the side of his head, knocking all sense from it, and sending him at once into a reverie.

  THE THIRD APPARITION

  Scrooge swam down through dizzy thick clouds, as it seemed, until he saw that they were not metaphorical but were indeed clouds, and he was hovering high above a London that was burning. On every street buildings were on fire, and down every road crowds were running and screaming. There was a distant tap-tap of hurriedly assembled militias and newly-awoken regiments trying to form a beleaguered resistance with small arms. In the foreground, one structure dominated the landscape and he found himself focussing upon St Paul’s, and on the figure of a lone young man on the roof, his clothes torn and in a panic, retreating from unseen assailants further and further up the dome, as far as he could go, until he was only a few feet short of the cross which stood at the very top. He was beside himself with fear, screaming for help that could not come.

  Scrooge swam through the air, closer, until he saw that it was his beloved nephew. Now without his wife (presumably dead, or lost and alone), scared out of his wits, and shortly to die himself, either at the hands of the dreaded creatures, or by avoiding that fate plummeting to the ground either on purpose, or from misplacing a single footstep by the tiniest degree.

  Scrooge felt a rush of air over him, and all turned black, as though a cloak had been thrown over his head, a cloak which was instantly pulled off again, to reveal that he was standing in a graveyard. In front of him stood a figure he knew too well. Tall, covered in a dark gown that obscured his face, and still as the night itself, stood the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

  ‘I believe I understand the message you are trying to give me,’ he said to the Ghost.

  The spirit, instead of replying, pointed ahead. In front of him Scrooge saw a deep and empty grave, or rather one that was not completely empty. A coffin had been placed in it, and a few dozen spadefuls of earth scattered over it, before for some reason the burial had apparently been abandoned.

  ‘I should have known better than to expect an answer from you,’ uttered Scrooge to the tall dark figure by his side. He couldn’t help feeling that he was, at this point, a few steps ahead of the Three Spirits and the message they wanted to impart. They were trying to re-instil a sense of defensive cynicism in him, and cynically he had reached that conclusion first. ‘I TELL you, sir,’ he thus proceeded, ‘you have nothing to teach me! I must return to my former wicked ways! I understand! I repent of my good and generous self and vow to be evil and grasping once more!’

  The bony finger pointed again, urging Scrooge to look down at the coffin. He did so impatiently. A scratching noise came from within the coffin, and then a familiar creaking and cracking of wood. The earth shook. Scrooge sighed, quickly glanced at the name on the headstone and turned to the Ghost again.

  ‘You’re too LATE!’ he said. ‘You can’t threaten me with death and turning into a zombie. I was already about a minute away from that when I passed out and was sent here!’ There came no verbal response, which in Scrooge’s experience of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, was not a shattering surprise, but nevertheless finding himself standing around in this imaginary graveyard made Scrooge really lose his temper.

  ‘You’re thick as b—— pigswill, aren’t you! Oh, to h— with this …’ and kicking the apparition as hard as he could between where he imagined the legs must be, and connecting painfully with what felt like a bony pelvis, he shoved the tall cloaked figure into the grave. It fell on top of the zombified version of himself that was breaking its way out of the coffin, presumably to scare him into some kind of action or teach him some lesson that for the moment he was content to ignore. Impatient to be back in the world and defending Felicity again, he stared at the grey sky, held his arms out and at the top of his voice demanded to be allowed to wake up. Which he did, with a start, to find he was still shouting.

  VERSE IX

  Ebenezer Scrooge did not allow the unexpected hiatus to prevent him from launching straight back into action, and making up for lost time. Felicity, who had been holding his head in her lap in fear it was permanently damaged, rose alongside him and they both aimed and fired their guns, in a movement of such harmony that you would have thought the splattering upward spray of blood and brains which greeted them was a firework celebration of their unity. When the current wave of dead bodies fell back, and Scrooge turned to reload, he demanded of Nodger:

  ‘How far from the top of the staircase are we?’

  ‘Not far, sir,’ came the reply, and in Nodger’s eye he saw that the man craved forgiveness, as though he had just done something weak. Scrooge was confused, but then saw the man place the gun in his own mouth and pull the trigger. Angrily Scrooge turned away from the explosion and the falling body, the man already forgotten, and discharged his own gun with precision into the crowd. The humans who were left were tired and shaky, and missing with their guns more frequently as time went on. Cratchit’s eyes were streaming and he was nearly insensible, in as much danger of shooting himself as he was anything else that moved.

  The old Scrooge was most certainly back by now, but that same c
old and calculating man perceived that an insane Cratchit was no help to his own and Felicity’s survival. He grabbed Bob by the scruff of his neck and yanked him to his feet in the most sympathetic manner he knew.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Snap out of it, man! Get control of yourself.’ His partner showed no signs of knowing him, but shook his head from side to side, gibbering. The only words Scrooge could make out were ‘trapped’ and ‘hopeless’.

  ‘Come, sir!’ Scrooge shouted, and deemed it necessary to administer two sharp slaps across his face. ‘Now! Be strong. You have everything to live for. A fine position. A huge and loving family who dote on you. Think of that. Think about Tiny Tim! How is the boy, by the way?’

  Slowly a kind of recognition came back into the man’s eyes, and he grabbed Scrooge’s lapels harder even than his own were grabbed, until cloth was heard tearing. As he came into himself again the flame of anger was undimmed, though, but intensified, and so bursting with rage was he that he failed to get his words out, and gibbered still.

  ‘Scrooge … Tim … Tiny …’ he frothed at the mouth and his words tripped each other up until his eye slipped from Scrooge’s own and fell upon the advancing pack that scrambled stupidly on the stairs below. A terrible recognition dawned in those eyes as he made something out in the thronging mass, and he pointed as though transfixed by a revenging spectre.

  ‘There!’ he shouted. ‘There he is!’

  And there indeed he was. A full head above any of the other zombies, tall and lumbering, as close to muscular as any of those things could be, Tiny Tim rose towards them from the middle of the crowd, his teeth snapping, his pale dead eyes set in a mean wolfish glare, as though through some mystical agency his spirit was able to comprehend what he was doing, and loved every second of it. He bore up towards them, clawing the air, and this sight tipped Cratchit finally and irrevocably over the edge.

  ‘It’s you!’ he cried. ‘The bane of my life! I knew you would come! I’ve been waiting for you!’ He pulled a gun from each pocket and placed a large dagger under his arms. He turned to wish Felicity and Scrooge good luck in words that were lost in the gunfire. Then he threw himself down into the throng, screaming the vilest oaths and curses, firing shots that tore holes in Tiny Tim’s chest, and burst open his belly, and blew out one of his eyes, and blasted one hand into fragments. Cratchit fell beneath his son’s zombified corpse. For a moment they could see him, hacking away with the blade until the head was nearly severed. Then he was subsumed beneath the rising tide.

  They fired, reloaded, fired again. Scrooge picked Felicity up and she continued firing the shotgun over his shoulder as he carried her aloft. Tacker kept shooting tirelessly, but at last they could see he too knew there was nothing to be done: they could postpone, but not avoid the attack. At last they came to a roof with a trapdoor in it, and scrambling through they pulled it shut, and sat upon it.

  They found themselves outside and high up, on a small crenellated balcony in which they saw the final certainty of their fate. For it was enclosed, and abutted no other building, and there was now, to be sure, no escape. The night air tasted sweet in their mouths, and Felicity slid sideways to lie on the floor, sweating profusely and breathing hard. Around them the sky was clear and snowed-out, and the stars sparkled in happy ignorance of the events they shone down upon. Scrooge appreciated that here was one last moment of peace and beauty, but the man who would have been glad to see it was dead within him.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said to Tacker.

  The American nodded. ‘It’s been nice dying with you, man.’

  ‘Dying?’ said Felicity, sitting up. ‘But they have to climb a ladder to reach this door, and they have no way of doing that. We are safe, aren’t we?’

  ‘My dear, I would love to deceive you, but alas you would soon discover why this was not true. No, I would not describe us as safe. You saw how they climbed on the corpses of their fallen brethren? And how those behind pushed them forward relentlessly? They will continue to come, and clamber over each other until they break out into here. I daresay they will continue until they are tumbling off this parapet in their hundreds.’

  He gathered her to him to give her temporary comfort, or to apologize for delivering her this news. When she was resting against his chest, she nodded. ‘It is all over then. I must say, I apologize for my aunts. They can be hard to chivvy at times.’

  ‘Young lady, don’t mention it. I’m sorry we didn’t save them. Not that we would have been able to,’ said Tacker, lighting a cigar. ‘Smoke?’

  ‘Never too late to start, I suppose,’ said Scrooge, accepting.

  ‘Filthy habit,’ said a voice.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Scrooge.

  ‘Never catch me doing that,’ said the voice.

  ‘The sentiment does you great credit,’ answered Scrooge.

  The soft and gentle voice presently coughed with a great deal of polite embarrassment and paused before piping up once more. ‘If you will excuse me the very great offence of interrupting your conversation, gentlemen, may I offer you a lift?’

  While he had been conversing with it, Scrooge had presumed the voice to be Felicity’s. So utterly alien for him was the sensation of having another person’s head resting against his chest, he was quite innocent of the fact that were the voice hers, he would feel a pleasing little reverberation every time she spoke. So as he realised the voice was not hers, instead of behaving like the stealthy warrior that Scrooge considered himself to be at that moment, he and Tacker leapt up and Felicity, who had ebbed into a shallow slumber now the excitement was past, was unavoidably woken by this movement, and the three of them stared up at the enormous shape that bobbed above them, of a hot air balloon.

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Mr Scrooge, ‘it’s Mr Peewit. Sir, I never thought I should be glad to see you. Let me shake you by the hand.’

  ‘Best not,’ replied that stout gentleman, who was finding it hard to remain steady as it was, leaning over the side of the basket of his balloon. ‘I say,’ he remarked, ‘one of you catch this rope, or I might drift away.’

  They did so, and to Mr Peewit’s surprise they set about securing it in a great hurry, and wasted no time in small talk. Before he had much of a chance to steady the contraption against the side of the tower, Scrooge had thrown his lady friend in head first, scrambled in after, and then helped the large American man to follow them.

  ‘You’re very welcome, you know,’ said Peewit, beaming with pride to have them aboard. ‘Delighted for the company, to be honest. Have been sailing over the city for hours. Wonderful views …’

  Leaning past him and making no attempt to avoid knocking him clean out of the balloon’s basket, Scrooge roughly untied the rope that fastened them to the tower, and slung it away into the air. To the exquisite anxiety of all aboard (except for their exceptionally rich and dull-witted captain), the balloon remained quite still for a moment and hung there as though nothing else could be expected of it, before some silent breeze took hold of it, and swung it first a few gentle feet away and then, taking a firmer grip, lifted them up into the night air. It was just in time and they looked down at the trapdoor as it began to rattle, and then opened a few inches, fingers appearing around the sides.

  ‘Funny business,’ said Peewit, pouring himself a glass of champagne. ‘But there seems to be an awful lot of commotion in the streets tonight, what? Celebration and shouting, and I’m afraid quite a few fights too. Not an edifying sight. But still, Christmas, eh? You stare at me, sir.’ Thus he apostrophized the festive Mr Scrooge, for that gentleman had indeed fixed upon him a look of such frowning intensity that only one who had lived a life entirely filled with joy and free of disapprobation (as Mr Peewit had) could fail to feel physically endangered by it.

  ‘You mean, you were up here by coincidence?’ Scrooge asked, gripping the sides of the basket and shaking, contemplating how unlikely their rescue had been, after all.

  ‘Well no, I was up here on purpose, dear boy. I wasn’t
sleep-ballooning, you know? Why, what do you mean?’

  ‘Why, you d—–ed idiot, can’t you see for yourself? The streets are teeming with homicidal maniacs! We were nearly eaten alive!’

  Peewit pressed his spectacles to the top of his nose and took a sip of champagne. ‘Are you sure they meant to eat you?’ he asked. ‘It seems rather extreme behaviour. Surely some sort of misunderstanding, I should say?’

  Felicity was stood next to the kindly Mr Peewit, and had been regarding him in the light of a great saviour who had come out of the heavens, which although he was exactly that, in her gratitude he had taken on altogether a more celestial glow. Even her happiness, however, could not withstand the man’s exasperating stupidity and grasping him by the lapels, she lifted him bodily off the ground and brought his face forward until it was but a few millimetres from her own.

  ‘It is not a misunderstanding,’ she said in a determined way which demanded his agreement. ‘Our friends have been killed in front of us. Torn apart. We have watched them being eaten.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Peewit weakly.

  ‘The city is being devoured from the inside.’

  ‘This is bad news,’ offered the balloonist.

  ‘The dead are rising from their graves.’

  ‘Poor show,’ he whispered.

  ‘And we have endured several hours in their company.’

  ‘Most exasperating.’

  ‘So I suggest you believe us.’

  ‘I offer my sincerest condolences. If I had a hat, I would take it off out of respect.’

  Returning him to his feet, Felicity’s irritation somewhat appeased, she pointed out, ‘You do have a hat.’

  ‘Ah, indeed. Then …’ and with an extraordinarily over-elaborate display of grace he removed the item from his head, twiddled it in the air six or seven times and then performed a deep bow, to the inconvenience and complete puzzlement of the other two men in the balloon’s basket, who were obliged to get out of the way. ‘My lady, I am so very sorry for your trouble, and I exult in the privilege of being the agent of your escape. And perhaps we shouldn’t land at Richmond, if that is the case, but head out to my country seat.’