Chapter 6

Tuesday, January 28, 1936

Royalton, Royal Kingdom

 

After a well-earned night of rest at the Hotel Chelmsford Park, Johnny found his way down to the dining room for breakfast. He was the last to arrive at the table.

Nina and Uncle Louie were marching through plates piled high with fried eggs, bacon, sausage, and cold toast. Mel and Dame Honoria had already finished eating and were sipping tea. Johnny wasn’t that hungry, so he decided to have a bowl of porridge with toast and jam.

“I have some urgent business to attend to,” Dame Honoria announced. “So I will be leaving for Wickenham in a few hours. Given that the fog has stopped most travel to the north, I suggest the four of you take a day or two to enjoy the metropolis.”

Nina looked as if she had died and gone to heaven. “Oh, I’ve wanted to visit the Queen’s Library forever. They have the original Carta de Iuribus on display there. That document laid the groundwork for the beginning of all democratic government.”

Chewing on a piece of toast, Johnny looked at Mel. “Did we bring enough money to see shows and exhibits?”

“This is my treat,” Dame Honoria said, removing several large banknotes from her pocketbook. “You deserve a chance to tour this great city. I’ll be taking Bao and Evvie, but the colonel and his men will stay here, to keep an eye on you. And do be careful—we just don’t know who or what might be lurking out there. Remember that Percy could have spies planted anywhere.”

With that warning in mind, the four visitors spent the day as tourists, inspecting Royalton on a grand sightseeing excursion. Johnny felt like a millionaire riding around in the big town car from Gorton’s Little Pills Limited, the company that Dame Honoria owned. They saw the King’s Palace, the great Regency Park and Reflecting Pool, Dorrminster Abbey, the Queen’s Library, and the vast Smithson’s Department Store—where Mel and Nina both made a few purchases. At the Royal Gallery, Johnny met one of his favorite painters. Nearly four centuries dead, Antonio Cirelli haunted the museum every day, telling people who could see ghosts the story of his famous portrait of 1525, Ragazza con una mela—Girl with an Apple.

The great city, in fact, looked as if there was nothing badly amiss about four hundred miles to the north. People thronged the sidewalks, going about their business, carrying umbrellas to deflect the light drizzle that had come in from the west. From a second-story teashop window, Johnny took some pictures of the hundreds of water-glistened umbrellas, as they jostled this way and that.

Uncle Louie decided to stay at the hotel that evening, complaining of sore feet from all the walking they’d done. And he wanted to write a letter to his girlfriend, Flo Zuckerberg, back in Zenith.

Johnny persuaded Mel and Nina to go with him to a musical production of Captain Justice and the Hawkmen in Royalton’s famed theater district. Watching the show from the balcony, Johnny was utterly enthralled. To see the captain and the chief of the Hawkmen flying around the stage on wires, dueling each other while singing splendid tunes—well, he’d remember it forever.

The show finally let out at eleven o’clock and the trio emerged onto the sidewalk with all the other theatergoers. The rain had stopped, but everything was glinting and glittering with the dampness. Colorful theater marquee lights blinked and winked up and down the street.

“I figured out a shortcut back to the Chelmsford,” Johnny announced, when they had finally escaped the crush of people.

“Well, then,” Nina said, “let’s go.”

Mel shrugged. “Lead on, Mr. Graphic.”

As Johnny set off, Mel turned and shouted back to the colonel and Sergeant Clegg, both mounted on their horses. The other troopers were back at the hotel, making sure everything was secure for the night.

Johnny led them at an energetic clip. They turned right, then left into an empty flea market. They were almost to the end of it, practically within sight of Chelmsford Park, when the slender figure of a pretty, blonde woman walked by them.

“Good evening, Mr. Graphic,” she said in a very quiet voice.

And she was gone before Johnny had a chance to even say “Hello.”

He had caught a brief glimpse of her face under one of the market’s weak gaslights. Where had he seen her before?

He didn’t have much time to think about it. Because right then, three hulking figures loomed up in front of them, blocking their passage. Johnny didn’t have a good feeling about this.

“C-c-can we do something for you?” he stammered.

The three figures stood silently, not replying.

Mel stepped in front of him. “If you don’t mind, gentlemen, we need to get back to our hotel.”

“I sure hope this isn’t a mugging,” Nina whispered into Johnny’s ear.

Actually, it was much worse. A point made emphatic by the rusty axes the thugs withdrew from beneath their formless coats.

That’s when the colonel and the sergeant trotted up on either side of Johnny, Mel, and Nina. The horse soldiers’ sabers made a metallic whishing noise as they came out of their scabbards.

“What do you want?” Johnny hoped his voice didn’t give away how scared he was.

One of the interlopers threw back its hood and revealed a dark, leathery face that looked a thousand years old.

That’s when it struck Johnny. Like two hammer blows.

The woman he’d just seen was Pamela Worthington-Smythe, Percy Rathbone’s special friend and co-conspirator. The face that had briefly appeared in the floatplane door on Old Number One three months ago.

Pamela must have been spying on Johnny and his companions. Percy Rathbone might even be around here somewhere.

And these fiends blocking his way had to be bog zombies!

Johnny was jolted out of his very brief paralysis by a most welcome voice.

“Master Johnny, Commander, Miss Nina. Please move back. We’ll handle these characters.” Colonel MacFarlane’s voice was tinged with deep contempt.

The colonel on Buck and Sergeant Clegg on his ghost horse clattered past the kids on the glistening cobblestones, toward the approaching brutes. The two cavalrymen briefly made eye contact. The colonel nodded and they charged.

In a few heartbeats, they were on top of the bog zombies, their blades flashing in the dimly lit flea market.

The zombies fought back with their axes. Johnny was horrified to hear the terrible scream of Sergeant Clegg’s horse when one of those rusty weapons grazed its flank. The sergeant tumbled off his saddle and lost his saber. But he quickly pulled out what he called “my Old Equalizer,” the double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun that he wore on his right hip.

As one of the three zombies charged him, Clegg hoisted the gun and fired.

The zombie’s head blew to pieces. A ghost popped out of the leathery body as it sagged to the cobblestones. It was a Steppe Warrior, though not one that Johnny recognized. The ghost came at Clegg, sword drawn. The sergeant recovered his saber just in the nick of time, and the two ghosts slashed away at each other, as the bog body shriveled and shrank into a pitiful pile of flattened flesh.

“We have to get out of here,” Johnny yelled. “The colonel and Clegg can take care of things.”

“No argument here,” Mel snapped back.

Nina groaned. “That man’s head exploded!” Without her etheric goggles, she hadn’t seen what caused the ghastly sight. “Oh, maaaan… Here we go again!”

The three young people pivoted around and ran in the opposite direction from the fight. They were almost to the end of the old flea market when two more hulking figures appeared out on the cross street, blocking their way. Behind them, cackling with laughter, stood Pamela.

They were trapped.

The two monsters trotted toward them with un-zombie-like briskness, their terrible features hidden by their hoods.

Johnny desperately looked around for some kind of weapon, anything that could slow the zombies down. All he saw was a loose cobblestone by the brick wall to his left. Well, it was something, anyway. When he plucked it up, he noticed a nearby shop. A hardware store, its dusty windows full of implements and tools. Then he had a better idea for the cobblestone. He lifted the rough, rectangular paver and heaved it through one of the windows, making a loud percussion of shattered glass.

Nina looked shocked. “Are you nuts?”

Johnny shook his head. “Something to fight with.” He pointed at tools inside the smashed window.

He darted over and grabbed a sturdy shovel with a sharpened point. Then he jumped nearly a foot in the air when the roar of another shotgun blast filled the flea market. He turned quickly and saw a second bog zombie slump to the pavement, releasing another ghost—some kind of medieval knight.

Sucking in a huge gulp of damp air, Johnny turned back to face the two zombies at his end of the flea market. Instead of waiting for them to attack, he bolted toward one of them.

He hefted the shovel and positioned it over his shoulder.

Before the bog zombie could lift its axe, Johnny swung the shovel like some big-league home-run hitter.

The edge of the shovel blade caught the creature on the left side, making a meaty thwap. Johnny hopped backward, thinking it best to stay out of range of that nasty-looking axe.

The zombie stood there a moment, appearing only slightly dazed. Then it threw back its hood, revealing a face out of a nightmare. As battered and tattered as old leather, oddly contorted, with a large dent above its squashed left ear. It stared at Johnny with dead black eyes. The thing seemed rather annoyed with him.

Meanwhile, out of the corner of his eye, Johnny could see that Mel was holding her own—having had the good luck to find a length of steel pipe in the shop window. She was parrying her bog zombie’s blows and keeping it safely away.

For her part, Nina had simply ducked into a doorway, out of sight.

Johnny was about to take another whack at his bog zombie when someone shouted from out on the street.

“Oy there! What’s this all about?”

Startled, both Johnny and his foe glanced to see who it was.

There stood a Royalton policeman, in his dark-blue uniform and peculiar high-domed helmet. The red-bearded copper had his wooden baton in hand, and he looked like he was willing to use it.

Johnny was the first to respond. “These, these…”

He shut up. He wasn’t supposed to say “zombie.” Rex Ward had told them so.

Instead, he hollered, “These people attacked us, officer!”

The policeman gasped, having now seen the oddly shriveled bodies sprawled at the far end of the flea market. Johnny got the impression that the man could not see the colonel or the sergeant. The policeman yanked out his alarm whistle and began blowing on it. The piercing tone of the thing must have carried for blocks.

Pamela had already vanished. The zombies that Johnny and Mel had been fighting also dashed away—right past the wide-eyed copper—as did the remaining creature that the colonel and Clegg were closing in on.

For a long moment, the policeman couldn’t take his eyes off the defunct zombies sprawled on the cobblestones. Then he turned to Johnny, Mel, and Nina, glaring.

“I think you young people are going to have an awful lot of explaining to do.”