A Christmas Carol II--Contagion Read online

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Scrooge.

  ‘The village of Little Puddlecombe. Charming spot. Picked it up for a song.’

  ‘The manor house, you mean?’

  Peewit coughed modestly. ‘Well, the whole village, in fact. But the manor house came with it. Handsome building, high battlements, and stocked for the whole winter. Ah, talking of stocks! Now!’ He clapped his hands and opened the hamper at his feet.

  ‘I have goose liver pate and a game pie, mustard and potted horseradish sauce to go with the sliced beef. But – silly me! – you’ll want champagne first, and I’ve got some cold punch if you don’t …’

  As the little fellow busied himself with the duty of being a host, the other two men looked out at the night. Now the excitement had passed, the cold was quite disagreeable, and they both hugged themselves and kept their own counsel.

  Scrooge remained lost in his thoughts, looking down, as Peewit offered him a glass of champagne. He had accepted it before he paid attention to what it was, and handed it back. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘Have you got any brandy?’

  ‘Too late! You’ve touched it so you’ve got to drink it!’ giggled Peewit. ‘But ah – how about a tot of brandy to make it a champagne cocktail? Now – there you go. Surely this is the most civilized balloon ride you’ve been in this year, Mr Scrooge?’

  Making no comment, Scrooge sipped his drink (which was admittedly a reviving concoction), and looked over the side again, pondering whether death at the hands of the zombies might be less excruciating than spending a few hours in a small balloon basket with this dementedly jolly companion. Peering down into the streets below (they were now above Holborn Hill) he saw something which arrested all his other thoughts.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he muttered, and touched the elbow of his American friend to gain his attention.

  ‘Wow,’ said Mr Tacker. ‘Will you look at that?’

  They both leaned out as far as they could and watched the street far below, down which thousands of the undead monsters were wandering in a thick crowd. With the disinterested fascination of children looking down on a huge swarm of ants from a balcony, they witnessed the zombies pursue the balloon’s trail down Kingsway, and round Aldwych, and onto the Strand.

  ‘Definitely following us,’ said Scrooge. ‘Do you think the happiness theory still stands?’ They both turned and regarded Mr Peewit, who was at that moment opening another bottle of champagne and telling Felicity all about the remarkable collection of shooting guns housed at his new country manor.

  ‘I am assured it is the finest display of such weapons in all England,’ he boasted in his piping little voice. ‘And now, I know, my dear, that guns are perfectly beastly things, but one’s friends do so enjoy shooting partridge and pheasant, and one does so enjoy eating them oneself, you know?’

  ‘G— d— it, why did I try to bring guns to sell to the British?’ Tacker drawled lifelessly, and as Scrooge’s sympathetic glance settled upon him he saw a light come into those eyes, which had been absent for several hours, as though that initial thought connected to another more useful one, and then that to an even more exciting idea still.

  ‘Scrooge!’ he whispered, ‘I’ve got a plan. Where are we now?’

  ‘Near the top of the Strand – look, there’s Drury Lane. My goodness, they can’t still be playing Hamlet: The Musical? I was asked to invest in that, I could have made a bomb—’

  ‘Shut up! A bomb is exactly what we are going to make. Listen. My ship is moored not far from here, and it’s packed with explosives …’ He whispered the rest of his plan into Scrooge’s ear, and the Englishman at once agreed that they had to act quickly.

  ‘Mr Peewit,’ asked Scrooge, with an air of casual enquiry, ‘how does one steer this thing?’

  ‘Well, it’s not easy, you know,’ he said. ‘Takes a good deal of practice, but one can pull on these ropes to allow hot air out so we go down …’ As he explained the rudiments to Scrooge, out of politeness to what he assumed was some sort of American Christmas game, Mr Peewit affected not to notice that Tacker was winding a thick rope around his right leg until it was bound fast. The end of the rope was tied to his ankle with a final flourish, and the instructions on flying the balloon similarly tied up, Mr Peewit raised his spectacles to examine his foot, and was going to make a remark along the lines of what fun it was to enjoy such japes at Christmastime, and weren’t they all having such a wonderful flight together, when the gravity in the other men’s eyes gave him pause. He saw that the rope attached to his foot ran over the side of the balloon, and looped back up again to be fixed to one of the wooden hoops for that purpose, and he had a presentiment that gravity of another sort was about to become his presiding concern.

  ‘Mr Peewit, you are a kind man,’ began Scrooge.

  ‘I thank you sir,’ said the other, smiling, nodding his head and nearly falling over.

  ‘A generous host.’

  ‘I certainly do my best.’

  ‘And you always have your guests’ best interests at heart.’

  ‘It gives me great pleasure that you acknowledge the fact,’ said Peewit, and in that heart which Scrooge had mentioned swelled a great happiness and pride.

  ‘So I’m sorry for what we are about to do, but you must trust us it is to help us all out of this predicament.’

  To their surprise, Charles Peewit made no protest, but stood as nobly as that great monarch, his namesake, once stood on the steps of the scaffold. He nodded, and even then, in full knowledge of what was about to happen, the trace of a smile could not be eradicated from his lips.

  ‘Sorry, chum,’ said Tacker, choosing this moment to employ some local slang (to the complete bafflement of the aristocrat who he was about to manhandle) and, heaving Peewit up over his shoulders, tipped him overboard. There was a thump of sorts as he came to rest, and the basket jostled mightily for a second before regaining its equilibrium.

  Felicity had been watching this conversation with a frown, and as Peewit disappeared over the side, sprang to Scrooge’s side, and tried to pull him back up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘You b––s!’

  ‘Look,’ pointed Scrooge. Peering down into the Strand, Felicity saw the many thousands of zombies, packing the thoroughfare from side to side, all following the progress of the balloon.

  ‘He’s like a beacon to them,’ said Scrooge. ‘If Tacker is right, and there are enough explosives on his boat, then perhaps we can lure them close enough, and possibly clear London of this plague.’

  Felicity nodded sadly as soon as she was satisfied of their reasons, and called down below: ‘Are you all right, Mr Peewit?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ came back the quite cheerful voice. ‘There goes my hat, whoopsidaisy. No champagne spilt up there, I hope?’

  ‘No, none!’ Scrooge shouted back.

  FELICITY CALLED DOWN BELOW: ‘ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, MR PEEWIT?’

  ‘Jolly good. I say, this is rather fun, don’t you know?’

  ‘Keep your spirits up!’ called Scrooge to him, taking control of the vessel as best he could. In truth he made but little difference to its course, but luck instead guided them the short distance until they saw Waterloo Bridge, and a thick crowd surging from the south to meet the even larger one already gathered at the north end beneath the balloon.

  ‘Stop it. Can you make it stop?’ asked Tacker. They were nearly over the boat now and Scrooge let out all the air he could, to lower their height and slow their progress.

  ‘Can you grab the railings, Mr Peewit?’ called down Scrooge. ‘We must affix ourselves to the ship, everything depends on it. Catch hold!’

  ‘Righto!’ called up the friendly voice, quite unfazed. ‘Throw me a rope and I’ll tie it. Getting quite close, I’ll make contact any second- OW!’

  As they saw him catch hold, they threw him all the ropes they could find and with his help they were soon tied to the side of the ship in three or four places, although the wind was dragging them hard to starboard, s
o that the balloon leant at a desperate angle. Mr Peewit, noticing that the zombie creatures were beginning to fall onto the ship’s deck and correctly surmising that he would be no use in battling against them while he hung upside down with a huge knot tied around his ankle, cast off from the ship and hung once more perpendicular from balloon out above the water, whistling his old school song.

  ‘Now,’ said Tacker, and he pulled a small metal canister from inside his coat. The others did not know what this could be, but he explained it was the prototype of an incendiary device. ‘I had no way of using it before,’ he said, ‘without putting ourselves in danger. Now’s my chance.’

  Priming the chemical device (as he explained) by removing the pin, he aimed for the gap which led down into the hold of his boat where the explosives were stored, and threw. But with the balloon listing at the end of a sixty-foot rope, it was an impossible shot, as Scrooge and Felicity had known the second he said he was going to try it. With an impressive force, he managed to throw it so it clattered onto the deck and exploded loudly and impressively enough for them to have to shield their eyes.

  ‘Phew-ee!’ called Peewit from below.

  But the boat was largely unharmed. Showing themselves as mad with hunger as they had been before, more than ten thousand of the creatures were now crammed into the nearest part of the bridge, crushing each other against the rails so that bodies were cut in half and torsos were thrown down onto the deck where they propelled themselves along with their arms, still working their jaws and chewing the air, while hundreds more full-bodied ones followed them.

  ‘I know what I have to do,’ said Tacker solemnly. There was no protest from Scrooge or Felicity, nor could they think of anything whatever to say. Possibly every zombie in London was now gathered in this one place, and they had a final chance to make this blow against them. Before the others could formulate a reply, Mr Tacker had swung himself out onto the rope and was climbing down it, hand over hand, until he was on the deck.

  The creatures swarmed over the rails even faster at the sight of him there, falling in their hundreds, as many into the river (where they helplessly sank) or crushed by the fall onto the deck, as there were those who got up or struggled along on broken limbs, trying to chase Tacker. He skirted the flames caused by the useless bomb, and stood at the prow, priming a second device and keeping it in his hand over the gap above the hold, in which he had said were hundreds of tonnes of explosives. He let the creatures get as close as he dared, until there were perhaps two or three thousand zombies on the ship, and from a distance it seemed as though it seethed with maggots. At last Tacker waved towards the balloon, smiled briefly, pulled the trigger of the bomb, and let go.

  It only occurred to Scrooge as he saw Tacker drop it that not only was he about to see the most spectacular fireworks display London had played host to since the Great Fire, but that they were much too dangerously close to it. Launching himself at the hamper, and finding there a carving knife, he was hacking desperately at the cords attaching them to the ship when he heard an explosion. The bomb had exploded, and Ebenezer caught a last sight of Tacker being set upon by creatures, fighting them off with a gun in either hand. He made out a distant cry of:

  ‘F— yeah! Take that you f—ing c—sucking motherf—ing a—holes! Suck my—’ before the last thread of the rope snagged on the blade, tore free and the balloon lurched violently in the wind. It swung away with force as gravity corrected itself, and was then buffeted by a far more violent burst of wind, instantly followed by a terrific roar that seemed to encompass the whole world. Scrooge and Felicity were forced against the side of the basket hard enough to knock the wind from them, and then thrown higgledy-piggledy from side to side among a debris of champagne bottles, loaded shotguns, pats of butter, meat pies, muskets, cutlery, puddings, and the stuffed head of a wildebeest.

  Scrooge righted himself and clutched hard at the side of the basket, peering out to see the damage, and found it hard to make anything out in the huge plume of smoke and the debris falling in a wide circle, making a shockingly beautiful pattern in the air and splashing down, as though it was some demonic fountain built to worship the god of destruction itself, spraying burning wood and shattered rock. Such was the strength of the explosion, air rushed around them like a hurricane as the balloon was swept away. Already far in the distance, Scrooge caught a brief glimpse of the site of the explosion: the bridge, with a hole as though a gargantuan bite had been taken out of it by a mythic beast of the ocean, cast across with flaming wreckage and still bodies. The ship was torn in half and was sinking so quickly that it was now scarcely visible, its two ends no taller above the frothing waves than two thatched cottages – and now it was gone entirely. Not one moving figure did he see there.

  ‘Mr Peewit!’ said Felicity.

  Scrooge pulled in the rope and his hopes sank faster than the balloon rose in the air, for it was too light, and before he had taken it in to half its length, he found in his hands a frayed and cindered collection of threads where thick stout rope should be, and beyond that, nothing. He was sick and dizzy, and had not the heart to tell Felicity, but she saw what was in his hands. They both subsided weakly on the floor again, and sitting there with each other in their arms were rocked by the motion of the wind, and the corresponding motion of the basket, and the not unconnected forward and backward motion of their thoughts, until they slept.

  AN EPILOGUE

  Mr Scrooge woke upon Christmas Day to find himself quite a different man from the one who had woken twenty-four hours earlier. Instantly upon waking, he knew what day it was, yet he did not smile. He saw the bright blue sky above and all around, and did not take a breath of fresh air and thank the Lord that he was alive.

  The Scrooge who would have done such things was dead. And worse, he was a fool. Instead, Scrooge threw the blanket off himself and replaced it with care around the shoulders of Felicity, and set about tidying their confined space so that it didn’t, as he inwardly remarked, look like a Spanish wedding had occurred in it. He placed the food items back in the hamper, and the armaments stacked next to each other in the corner. He cleaned all of the ammunition he could find and placed it within the correct guns, after he had cleaned the guns themselves, and then, having brushed the wicker floor as best he could and thrown the crumbs out into the air for the birds and field mice to make their Christmas breakfast upon them (if they must), prepared a meagre breakfast of cold roast chicken, cold potatoes and mustard, and bread-and-marmalade, which (having gently roused his companion with encouraging words) they washed down with a bottle of cider.

  Then they looked out from their extraordinary vantage point, over a view neither would ever have expected to witness. Below and ahead of them stretched mile after mile of countryside, blanketed white by a foot-deep snowfall, the morning so young that not a single footprint yet blemished that perfect covering, and it was as though the very world had fallen asleep, never to wake, and been left for them alone. Felicity laid her head peacefully upon Scrooge’s arm, and he drew the blanket around her again, wary of the cold’s effect upon her young frame, after the previous night’s excitements.

  It was in the character of his old self to be content to remain unspeaking for hours at a time, and only to watch and look out for the best for himself in every situation, and calculate the surest way of getting the greatest outcome. Felicity seemed to understand this, and not to expect him to speak. Yet now something aroused him from his grim and content silence and made him look more closely at the hills and valleys that wound away below them.

  ‘I’ll be d——,’ he said and, reaching up, yanked on the rope that released hot air from the top of the contraption, and made them dip nearer to the earth. ‘It is!’ he muttered presently as he got a closer view, and causing a further huge gulp of air to escape by another tug on the rope they lurched downwards.

  ‘Hold on!’ he said, clutching her close and pulling on the rope once more, this time with such force that almost all the air escaped f
rom the balloon in one breath. The contraption plummeted sharply, pitched with a crash against the stone battlement of a building, turned on its end and emptied them with remarkable efficiency (and a certain amount of bruising) onto a turret, a much wider and grander kind than the one which they had escaped a few hours previously.

  The balloon continued its journey, and seemed likely to pull half the wall away in its efforts to drag the huge basket along with it, so seizing a grapefruit knife from the ground beside him Scrooge attacked the ropes until it was freed. The basket fell back and sat up pertly, and the freed balloon, now no longer a perfect sphere but a wobbling, buxom approximation of one, bounced away across the treetops of the nearby woods, looking no larger than a child’s play-ball, and producing the illusion that the trees, and church spire, and background of hills against which it was viewed, were no larger than a very detailed setting for a child’s doll’s house.

  ‘This is Peewit’s mansion,’ said Scrooge. ‘I can’t believe it. Almost as though the balloon found its way here by force of habit.’

  ‘He said it’s abandoned, didn’t he?’ asked Felicity, trying the door down from the roof, and surprised to find it open.

  ‘No – shut up for the winter, but ready for guests,’ said Scrooge, happily rubbing his hands. ‘Knowing him, I expect I know what that means. Plenty of food stored away in the ice-house, lots of good wine.’

  ‘And guns,’ she said innocently. ‘He mentioned guns.’

  He had indeed mentioned them. And as Felicity went about the house (cautioned strongly from unlocking any of the ground-floor shutters or doors except the small servant’s entrance at the back) he brought all of these weapons one by one to the landing beneath the roof. He moved every last round of ammunition there too. He established an armed-and-ready arsenal and moved three dozen of the best weapons (which made up scarcely ten per cent of the entire collection) up onto the ramparts of the manor house to look down on the grounds from every angle.