A Christmas Carol II--Contagion Page 5

  ‘I think it’s an admirable idea,’ the older man muttered, just at the moment Cratchit pulled the trigger, so that his shot went high and wide. Scrooge reached out for the gun but Cratchit pulled it back.

  ‘Not likely – you put me off. I get another go!’ He reloaded with sweaty fingers from the bag of cartridges Tacker had placed on the windowsill and aimed again. Scrooge made every appearance of having no interest in Cratchit’s target practice whatsoever, but glancing out of the corner of his eye, and noticing that he was ready and just about to shoot, Scrooge happened at that moment airily to enquire:

  ‘What sort of order were you looking for?’

  Cratchit looked to the American. ‘Dwight,’ Cratchit uttered, ‘he’s trying to distract me on purpose. Stop him doing it!’

  Scrooge feigned innocence and, holding his hands up, walked away.

  ‘Can you get on with it?’ asked Tacker. ‘The dead guy’s nearly at the window. You can’t miss him.’

  A loud report filled the room quickly followed by Cratchit’s shout. ‘Yes! I got his arm off! Oh my G—, he’s still coming. Scrooge, quickly.’ He handed over the gun, nervously reloading. Scrooge raised the weapon and aimed carefully.

  ‘Get him in the head,’ said Cratchit.

  ‘No, that’s what stops them, and we need him for target practice,’ said Tacker. ‘Get him in the b—s.’

  Scrooge fired and saw the creature’s right leg splatter at the knee, making him fall sideways.

  ‘Okay, near enough,’ said the American. ‘Now, this is a superior weapon, it’s our top-of-the-line product. It’s twelve bore again, only single barrel, but has a hollow stock which holds ten shells, and you reload by cranking the handle here.’

  Scrooge began to load the weapon, while Cratchit walked away from the window with Tacker. ‘How many units are you hoping to sell?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got lots of other people I’m pitching to. I’ll listen to any offers.’

  ‘What’s your unit cost? Now, we’d need a ten per cent discount on orders in three figures …?’ The two of them moved away, Tacker answering the questions and Cratchit thinking, pausing and asking still further ones.

  Meanwhile Scrooge was getting used to the ‘pump-action’ shotgun in his arms. He found that as he got quicker at shrugging the shotgun off his shoulders and reloading, he also became quicker at aiming and firing with satisfactory results, and found himself letting off three good hits every ten seconds. He was also discovering that, while the creature he was shooting seemed not to suffer the slightest pain from being shot, its body did come away in chunks, and while perfecting his aim he had carved such a huge hole in the middle of the chest and side that (with his right arm extended and his left blown off at the shoulder) he looked more like a walking question mark than a human shape.

  And yet after each blow, a dull consciousness moved back into those eyes, and the creature began its attempt to get closer, even more sluggishly than before, as leaden as someone who has just slipped for the third time down an icy slope, and is trying to climb it again with less hope than ever. It swayed there, with no legs to walk with, but just Scrooge’s countenance in its eyes, and it slavered, and waved its only arm, and beckoned towards him.

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Scrooge, seeing those eyes more closely than before, and crossing himself. ‘It’s our cab driver from earlier on. Whatever this ungodly infestation is, it doesn’t just affect the dead. The living can be infected as well.’

  He reloaded his shotgun thoughtfully, watching the dead body try to drag itself along the paving stones with its one hand. Reaching the shotgun out of the window and pointing it straight down, he fired into the back of the head which exploded like a dropped plant pot, scattering its brown decayed contents in every direction.

  Scrooge continued to stare down at it for a moment and when he was finally satisfied he sniffed twice, made a quiet harrumph, pulled his head back in and began polishing the shotgun.

  With their practice session concluded, the three men convened around Scrooge’s desk. There they sat sipping different drinks (Scrooge a cup of tea, Cratchit a tot of brandy and Tacker gulping from a large tumbler of whisky as though it was so much ginger ale). They discussed figures and margins costs and sales, wholesale and retail, shipping expenses and excise duty, as businessmen always must.

  As had become his custom, Scrooge was at pains to make his guest feel welcome, by making him a sequence of cash offers so over-generous they were sure to put himself into bankruptcy. And as usual, Cratchit had to rephrase these offers rapidly, and repeatedly pull Scrooge aside for whispered conferences, where he explained the economics of the matter to him, over which the older man had once had such a limpet-like control and which now escaped him entirely. This was, these days, their way of doing business, and it made an amusing spectacle for Tacker who watched with an amiable smile, his mood further beguiled by nearly two-thirds of a bottle of whisky, a volume which he had consumed in only slightly more time than it took to pour.

  A deal was struck, hands were shook, a further toast was drunk, and the three men sat back for a moment, and noticed the clock which showed little more than an hour to go before Christmas Day. They had no carriage waiting, and still faced the problem of the man they had killed – or killed again, or the corpse they had killed – to consider.

  Their eyes all moved from the clock to the window.

  ‘Am I right in inferring,’ asked Cratchit cautiously, in the clear hope that he was mistaken, ‘that you think there might be more of these … I don’t know what to call it. A ghost? A creature?’

  ‘Unless Scrooge and I were completely misled by all of our five senses,’ said Tacker, ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Cratchit turned to his partner, who nodded in grave acknowledgement.

  ‘How many?’ he asked.

  Scrooge and the American hesitated, each reluctant to deliver bad news. ‘From what we could tell, and we did not wait to inspect too closely, they are abroad in all the streets about here. A host … An unknowable number.’

  At this, Cratchit stood up and sat down, ran his hands through his little remaining hair and glanced in all directions at once, betraying every sign of great distraction. Tacker cut short these anxious ruminations by saying shortly, ‘There’s something about you, Scrooge, that they like especially.’ He had been making Mr Scrooge uncomfortable for some moments by fixing him with a concerted stare, and that man’s consternation did not diminish as Tacker expanded upon his theory.

  ‘When that dead guy came in here, Mr Cratchit’s back was turned, his neck exposed. He was quite defenceless. And yet, Scrooge, he went for you. And think back to earlier, in our cab. It was to your window that they all crowded, not mine.’

  Cratchit became sensible that a doubt had been lurking inside him all this while, on exactly the same theme. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘It was as though he recognized you, or smelt something upon you.’

  ‘Do you wear a distinct cologne? Or a particularly noxious pomade?’

  Both of the Englishmen stared at him with such gormless incomprehension that he abandoned the line of enquiry. ‘What’s different about you, then?’

  ‘He’s richer,’ muttered Cratchit.

  ‘Now, now, my dear fellow!’ smiled Scrooge, placing a hand on his elbow. ‘If that is true this moment, it won’t be for long. I am an old man, you see – and you know you are my sole beneficiary and will be well provided for in the event of my death.’

  ‘That’s it!’ cried Tacker, leaning forward and nearly knocking the whisky bottle from the table. He pointed at the two men, one then the other, and momentarily seemed overwhelmed by the admixture of the drink he had drunk and the idea he had thought, so that he was struck into silence. The other two looked at each other, quite blank.

  ‘He’s a good guy,’ explained Tacker. The clock ticked twice in the intervening silence as he hoped for them to catch on, before realizing he needed to elaborate.

  ‘As I’ve heard it, th
is is a city of extremes. Of extreme poverty and riches.’

  The two Englishmen assented.

  ‘And of great moral extremes too – where there is great charity and terrible depravity, happiness and wretchedness side by side. Now think back, Scrooge – was every grave in the cemetery disturbed when we were surprised by our visitors?’

  ‘It was hard to tell,’ conceded the old man. ‘We were both in rather a panic. But on reflection I would say, no. Perhaps one in six graves was burst open, or fewer. Had every resident got up to meet us I doubt we would have affected our escape.’

  ‘Exactly. Something has happened, some dreadful imbalance or curse on the city. Perhaps through some kind of a spiritual disturbance, or curious mineral composition of the soil, a great number of tortured souls have retained some semblance of consciousness. Somehow in the deep and dark places, the mistreated and downtrodden, the crushed, the forgotten, have come back to a semblance of life, to take revenge on us. They are given animation by their hatred for happiness, and for the living – and they have somehow developed an ability to see it. They are drawn to it, like a light. As we’ve seen, once bitten, an ordinary person is infected by the same condition. They become mad and enraged, intent on devouring their fellow man.’

  It was a gloomy speech in all, and was made all the gloomier because the untended fire was dwindling to dim embers as he spoke, and, several of the lamps also running low, shortly after he finished one of them went out with a gasping phut! that made the three men flinch as one. The room was now dark and the street outside, still illuminated by gas, showed a group of shapes crowding the entrance to the courtyard, where minutes before the way had been clear.

  The implication of Tacker’s speech was so mighty that it first struck Scrooge dumb, and then after a moment’s wider reflection startled him back into speech.

  ‘Good people, you say?’ he said.

  ‘It’s only a theory, but I would say perhaps happy people is closer.’

  ‘Why,’ trembled Scrooge, ‘then our companions at dinner must be the most endangered of the entire species! Remember how that ravenous monster in the restaurant went straight for Felicity, earlier this evening, before it bit the waiter? Poor girl, and her aunt and the old dowager too! And, of course, poor Mr Peewit is the happiest of creatures as well. He is sure to be a beacon to these benighted creatures …’

  ‘So there’s some upside, at least,’ said Cratchit.

  ‘Mr Cratchit, what am I saying?’ said Scrooge, taking his partner’s hands in his. ‘Your poor family, of course – we must hurry to them at once, and help protect them.’

  Cratchit took on a thoughtful air as he considered the suggestion. For the first time that day, something approaching hopefulness into his eyes. He was, it cannot be doubted, a moral man, a stout citizen and loving father, and only someone who did not know him might have supposed (as he cocked his head on one side and raised a contemplative eyebrow) that he was considering the death of several, if not all, of his family, in its positive aspect. We, however, know better, and can only speculate that some other thought took full sovereignty of his mind for those many seconds, which must remain beyond our power to guess. Either way, at last his obscure mental perambulations seemed to come to a satisfactory conclusion, and he said quite calmly:

  ‘If happiness is what throws mortals into danger, I should say that the Cratchits are not in the most immediate peril. Indeed, if most Friday nights are anything to go by, at this moment they are trying to murder each other with broomsticks and china vases, and generally acting like Blackbeard’s crew on half-holiday. I should say that one should feel sorry instead for any dead folk who try to approach those dozen or so screaming savages.’

  ‘You have a dozen children?’ asked Tacker.

  ‘Or thereabouts. Besides,’ he continued, having another thought, ‘the house in Hampstead is as sturdy as a fortress, and should keep those terrifying creatures out – or in, I should say – for a day or more, quite safely. So, if you’re right, our first thought must be towards Felicity, Emmeline and Lady Crimpton.’

  ‘It’s settled then,’ said Scrooge. An air of unwonted seriousness had come over him. Whereas he had seemed quite light-hearted at the prospect of personal danger to himself, the idea of something bad happening to so innocent creature as the young Felicity had clearly not occurred to him before now, and at this thought his eyes narrowed, and his expression became suddenly so mean and certain and pinched about the eyes that Cratchit thought he detected a hint of the old steeliness that had defined Scrooge’s manner so many years before. Looking upon this transformation he felt a chill deeper than he had felt when confronted with the dead man, but one that passed momentarily, as fast as Scrooge overthrew this change of mood and assumed his usual breezy manner.

  ‘We must go out, and find ourselves some transport. Which of us must risk going into the street to try to find a carriage is something we should toss coins for, perhaps, Mr T—’

  Both men looked round at the echo of several rounds of gunfire, to find the door open and the American gentleman vanished. Several more shots were followed by the sound of hooves and wheels on the cobbles outside, and a shout. They ran to the door to see the American in the driving seat of a cart with a whip in his hand, the hole he had just carved through the crowd filling in rapidly behind him.

  ‘Bring the crate, for G—’s sake!’ he snapped at them. They complied as fast as they could, dragging it to the door, but needed Tacker to get down and help them lift it up onto the back of the vehicle. This was all accomplished in the flashing of two minutes or less, but still proved to be not a speedy enough exit. On turning the cart within the confines of the courtyard, in the gaslight diffused among sleepy fog that had sunk down from the rooftops, they saw in front of them a dense crowd, almost a throng, blocking the entrance, and moving quietly and slowly towards them.

  ‘It’s unearthly,’ whispered Scrooge.

  ‘Okay,’ said Tacker from the driver’s seat, swiftly loading his rifle, and then pouring a fresh supply of ammunition into a dent in the skirts of the cloak on his lap. ‘This is our first big test. You might think you’re scared, but you’re not. Because we’re stronger than them, aren’t we?’

  Scrooge placed a fully loaded revolver into each pocket of his greatcoat and held a shotgun up to take his aim. He and Cratchit exchanged a look over the barrels of their guns. Cratchit shrugged.

  ‘Er … y-yes?’ answered Scrooge.

  Tacker looked round from his seat. ‘I’m going to need a bit more support from you guys on the morale side of things,’ he said. ‘Just overcome your gentlemanly instincts, and blow their brains out. Okay?’

  Cratchit saw that steeliness wink again in Scrooge’s countenance and felt it reflected now in his own resolve. ‘Yes!’ he shouted in response, and heard Scrooge do the same.

  ‘Okay then,’ said the American grimly. ‘On the count of three. One … Two …’

  He reached the conclusion of his countdown, and struck the horse with the whip so fiercely it could hardly have helped but let out a high whinny and dash forward towards the line of corpses at a gallop. In a second they were among the throng, bodies bouncing off the side of the cart, all three guns exploding together, once and then again. Showers of blood, scattered flesh and nuggets of bone jumped up at them through the smoke. It was a passage of gruesome horror as though they were momentarily in the midst of some demonic battle, smoke enveloping them so they felt they would presently be delivered directly into the consuming flames, and know no more.

  Yet in the next moment the fusillade was spent, the cloud of smoke slipped behind their shoulders and fell away, the wheels no longer bounced over hummocks of crushed bodies, and Tacker was steering them down an empty street at a fine lick.

  Scrooge dabbed a foul-smelling viscous substance from his cheek with a handkerchief and collapsed onto the hay alongside Cratchit, both watching the crowd recede behind them with a weird numbness. The dead men and women bumped against e
ach other and searched around stupid and half-blind, quite oblivious to their fallen comrades, into whose open mouths and exploded heads they carelessly trod.

  ‘It’s their slowness that horrifies me,’ said Scrooge. ‘The way they creep up on you, careless for their own safety. They just keep coming, no matter what.’ And he shivered all over.

  ‘Where to, old man?’ asked the driver over his shoulder.

  Scrooge climbed into the driver’s seat alongside Mr Tacker, and Cratchit sat to empty his weapons of spent shells and fill them with new ones, as Scrooge gave quiet directions.

  ‘I only hope we get there in time,’ Scrooge said quietly, ‘that none of our loved ones are hurt, and that they all live out the night. Are you whistling, sir?’ He turned to look at Cratchit, who had unthinkingly taken up rather a merry tune. Finding himself under the scrutiny of his elder, Cratchit stopped, and removing the cheerful expression from his face, replaced it with a more appropriate scowl, at the cost of some considerable effort.

  VERSE V

  The rooms of Miss Emmeline Twosome and her aunt, the dowager Lady Crimpton, were located in the corner apartment of a vast hotel, on the edge of a fashionable square as near to the geographical centre of London as anyone could care to be. It was quite evident to anyone who looked up from the street below that they were not only exclusive but expensive too, and without doubt most convenient to all parties who lived within, being within shouting distance of the shops of Oxford Street, should circumstances ever reduce such gentility into shouting for anything at all, which was surely impossible. The location of the rooms in such a charmed locality, however, as the fourth floor of an hotel, which delicacy prevents the author from identifying, presented the three gentlemen who sat out side in their stolen cart with rather a wearying challenge.

  The streets they had traversed in their ten-minute journey were disturbingly calm. They saw individual stragglers swaying in the road and small groups either clustered beside public houses or bent over together in the street, as though a crowd had leapt forth all at once to assist a fallen stranger. There was no other traffic upon the road but snow, and fog, and occasional clouds of smoke that told of fires burning out of control not far away.