Read A Plague of Zombies: An Outlander Novella for Free Online

thought might be the creature, climbing from branch to branch in search of refuge. Then he heard soft chitterings and hissing squeaks.
Bats
, said the calmly rational part of his mind—what was left of it.
    He gulped and breathed, trying to get clean air into his lungs to replace the disgusting stench of the creature. He’d been a soldier most of his life; he’d seen the dead on battlefields, and smelled them, too. Had buried fallen comrades in trenches and burned the bodies of his enemies. He knew what graves and rotting flesh smelled like. And the thing that had had its hands round his throat had almost certainly come from a recent grave.
    He was shivering violently, despite the warmth of the night. He rubbed a hand over his left arm, which ached from the struggle; he had been badly wounded three years before, at Crefeld, and had nearly lost the arm. It worked but was still a good deal weaker than he’d like. Glancing at it, though, he was startled. Dark smears befouled the pale sleeve of his banyan, and, turning over his right hand, he found it wet and sticky.
    ‘Jesus,’ he murmured, and brought it gingerly to his nose. No mistaking
that
smell, even overlaid as it was by grave reek and the incongruous scent of night-blooming jasmine from the vines that grew in tubs by the terrace. Rain was beginning to fall, pungent and sweet—but even that could not obliterate the smell.
    Blood. Fresh blood. Not his, either.
    He rubbed the rest of the blood from his hand with the hem of his banyan, and the cold horror of the last few minutes faded into a glowing coal of anger, hot in the pit of his stomach.
    He’d been a soldier most of his life; he’d killed. He’d seen the dead on battlefields. And one thing he knew for a fact. Dead men don’t bleed.
    * * *
    Fettes and Cherry had to know, of course. So did Tom, as the wreckage of his room couldn’t be explained as the result of a nightmare. The four of them gathered in Grey’s room, conferring by candlelight as Tom went about tidying the damage, white to the lips.
    ‘You’ve never heard of zombie—or zombies? I have no idea whether the term is plural or not.’ Heads were shaken all round. A large square bottle of excellent Scotch whisky had survived the rigours of the voyage in the bottom of his trunk, and he poured generous tots of this,including Tom in the distribution.
    ‘Tom—will you ask among the servants tomorrow? Carefully, of course. Drink that; it will do you good.’
    ‘Oh, I’ll be careful, me lord,’ Tom assured him fervently. He took an obedient gulp of the whisky before Grey could warn him. His eyes bulged and he made a noise like a bull that has sat on a bumblebee, but managed somehow to swallow the mouthful, after which he stood still, opening and closing his mouth in a stunned sort of way.
    Bob Cherry’s mouth twitched, but Fettes maintained his usual stolid imperturbability.
    ‘Why the attack upon you, sir, do you suppose?’
    ‘If the servant who warned me about the Obeah man was correct, I can only suppose that it was a consequence of my posting sentries to keep guard upon the governor. But you’re right.’ He nodded at Fettes’s implication. ‘That means that whoever was responsible for this’—he waved a hand to indicate the disorder of his chamber, which still smelled of its recent intruder, despite the rain-scented wind that came through the shattered doors and the burnt-honey smell of the whisky—‘either was watching the house closely, or—’
    ‘Or lives here,’ Fettes said, and took a meditative sip. ‘Dawes, perhaps?’
    Grey’s eyebrows rose. That small, tubby, genial man? And yet he’d known a number of small, wicked men.
    ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘it was not he who attacked me; I can tell you that much. Whoever it was was taller than I am and of a very lean build—not corpulent at all.’
    Tom made a hesitant noise, indicating that he had had a thought, and Grey nodded at him, giving permission to