“Wandering alone, love?” said Madoc Blue, the rum strong on his breath. “I’m ready to teach you how to dance.”
Fresh fear spurted through Gavin’s every vein. His breath came in short gasps and his fingers went cold around the neck of his fiddle. The bow clattered to the deck. Blue pressed his body against Gavin’s, his weight shoving Gavin harder against the extractor’s warm brass wall with his forearm across Gavin’s throat. Blue leaned in, his beard scratchy against Gavin’s face. Gavin choked, barely able to breathe.
“You think I’m stupid and ugly, pretty boy?” Blue growled. “You think I can’t get women?
Gavin tried to answer, but he couldn’t get enough breath. His free hand flailed uselessly, looking for something, anything that might help.
“When there aren’t any women on deck,” Blue snarled, “a man’s gotta use whatever he can get his hands on.” He grabbed the string that held Gavin’s trousers up and snapped it with a sharp, one-handed jerk. Gavin tried to yell, but Blue’s forearm prevented him. The lack of air made him dizzy. “Got three or four friends who’ve had their eye on you, love. Once I break you in, I can show you around, collect a little money for your services. What do you think of that, hey?”
And then Gavin’s flailing hand found the hilt of Blue’s knife in his belt. He snatched it out of the holder and slashed downward. Gavin felt warm blood spurt against the thin cloth of his trousers. Blue screamed and instantly let Gavin go. He staggered back, clutching his upper leg. A loose flap of meat the size of Gavin’s hand hung there by a hinge of skin.
“You little shit!” Blue howled. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
He lunged for Gavin, who didn’t even think. He stepped aside and swung the knife again. It plunged up to the hilt into the side of Blue’s neck. Blue’s eyes flew wide-open. He made a terrible choking noise and clawed at the knife hilt with curved fingers, then fell twitching to the deck. The air filled with the stench of blood and bowel as he died.
Gavin didn’t have time to react, or even think. Blue’s screams summoned the rest of the men, who were only a dozen yards away. In an instant, Gavin found himself surrounded by angry pirates. Blood covered his hands and spattered across his face, and he was holding his trousers up with one hand. The other still clutched his fiddle.
“It’s the fiddler boy.” “He killed Blue!” “Cut his balls off!” “Throw him overboard!” “String him up!” “Shit! There’s blood everywhere!” “The captain!” “Make way for the captain!”
Captain Keene, short and stocky, shouldered his way through the crowd. He took in the scene, including Gavin’s torn trousers, with a glance. “What the hell happened?”
“He killed Blue!” someone shouted.
“I’m not asking you, Biggs,” Keene bellowed.
Gavin looked at the men. His mind froze. He couldn’t think. It was all too much. “I–I…,” he stammered.
“Did you kill him?” Keene asked.
“He… attacked me,” Gavin said. It was hard to talk. He wanted all those eyes to go away. “He-he shoved me against the extractor. He said he wanted…”
“Ah,” Keene said with understanding. “Well, you ain’t his first, but it looks like you’re definitely his last.” This got an uneasy chuckle from a few of the pirates. Gavin let himself hope that everything would be all right. Then Keene said, “But you’re a prisoner, boy, and you killed one of my men.” He raised his voice. “Saw his hands off and throw him overboard.”
Shock numbed Gavin. He barely felt the fingers that snatched his fiddle away, barely noticed that he was being hauled toward the crate where he’d been playing merry music only a few minutes earlier. One of the pirates drew his cutlass. It gleamed green in the phosphorescent light. Gavin’s hands were yanked down to the crate and laid across the rough wood, wrist up. The pirate raised the blade.
“Captain!”
The speaker was Stone, the pirate who had requested “Londonderry Air.” The pirate holding the cutlass halted. Keene folded his arms across a broad chest. “You got something to say, Stone?”
“He’s still a boy, Captain,” Stone said. “You called him one yourself. It don’t seem quite right to give him a man’s punishment, sir.” He held up Gavin’s fiddle. “And he plays so nice. Be a shame to lose that because he fought back against the likes of Madoc Blue. Sir.”
The hands holding Gavin down were tight enough to leave bruises, though Gavin didn’t have the strength to struggle. Above him, he could see distorted stars through the pirate’s clear cutlass. Keene looked at Gavin for a long moment, surrounded by silent pirates.
“Fine,” he grumbled at last. “Boy’s punishment. Twenty-four lashes.”
The hands suddenly shifted from holding Gavin down to wrenching him around. His mind spun, unable to take it all in. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Stone still holding his fiddle, another glimpse of two men covering Blue’s body with a piece of gray canvas, and then his wrists were being strapped to the heavy netting. Someone ripped the shirt off his back. Cold night air washed over his skin, and that broke the stupor. He shouted and struggled against the bonds, but they were too tight. The first mate swung his whip around. It slashed the air, hissing like a snake.
And then Stone was beside him, his hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about your fiddle,” he whispered urgently in Gavin’s ear. “I’ll keep it safe.”
He backed away and the first lash tore a red stripe of pain across Gavin’s back.
Chapter Three
The lead zombie pulled the cab door open. Behind it, half a dozen other zombies groaned in an eerie chorus. Alice Michaels gave an unladylike yelp, jerked her violet skirts away, and kicked the opposite door. It banged open, and she flung herself out of the cab to the sidewalk, stumbling over crinolines and hoops. The zombie climbed into the cab, moaning and muttering. Alice slammed the door shut and twisted the cheap handle so hard it broke. The zombie fumbled with the latch but couldn’t get it to work, and the possibility of simply climbing through the open sides of the cab didn’t seem to occur to it. It reached for Alice with bloody fingers. Heart pounding, she backed away until she flattened against a rough brick wall. The cab driver, meanwhile, leapt from his seat and fled down an alley. A pair of zombies shambled after him. The coward hadn’t even stayed to help her. Alice flicked a glance at the foggy street and stared.
Plague zombies in various stages of deterioration filled the byway. They were-had been-men and women, boys and girls. It looked to be every zombie in London. They limped and hobbled and dragged themselves through the mist, skin sloughing off their muscles, open sores festering in the dim gaslight. The hackney horse snorted in fear. Terrified, Alice pressed herself against the wall. A tiny whimper died in her throat. It was every nightmare she’d ever had come to life. The plague had taken her mother, brother, and fiance. Now it was lurching toward her in a crowd of mottled, oozing flesh.
Screams from frightened horses and shouts of panicked people filled the air. Alice stayed perfectly still, trying to remain as inconspicuous as a woman in a ball gown could. Her breath came in quick, short pants as she tried to overcome her fear and make sense of what she saw in the street. The crowd of zombies oozed around night- delivery carts, rocking them, shoving at them-they were working together. It was impossible. Plague zombies suffered from an advanced case of the clockwork plague, a disease that attacked both body and brain. It separated skin from muscle and opened up holes in the dermis. It attacked neural tissue, creating dementia, palsy, and paralysis. Nine times out of ten, it killed. The plague was highly contagious, but only after initial contraction, when the victim was asymptomatic, and toward the end, when the victim looked more monster than human. At this stage, the victim’s eyes also became sensitive to daylight, forcing a nocturnal existence that might last for a year before death finally claimed them, though most died of starvation or exposure long before then. Ironically, it was the contagious aspect of the disease that allowed plague zombies to exist within London-the police and other authorities were afraid to get too close for fear of contracting the illness themselves.
But for their contagious nature, zombies were usually harmless scavengers who looked more frightening than they actually were. They didn’t have the mental capacity to work together in their final months. Yet this mob was doing exactly that.
