Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith

Author:Steve Hockensmith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Parodies, Regency novels, Humor, Zombies, Form, Elizabeth (Fictitious character), Humorous, Horror, Form - Parodies, Satire And Humor, Bennet, Fiction, Horror & Ghost Stories, Horror - General, Historical, General, Parodies & spoofs
ISBN: 9781594744549
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2010-03-22T05:00:00+00:00

THE THING FLAILED AT HER, WAILING, YET IT COULD COME NO CLOSER.

Dr. Keckilpenny nodded. "Every zombie's favorite delicacy. Nothing but the real thing would do, so I brought along my own supply. Don't ask me where I got it. Suffice it to say, the first thing one learns in medical college is how to acquire one's own specimens."

"And now you have another." Elizabeth turned to the slavering dreadful writhing on the ground nearby, its arms stretched out to paw uselessly at the muck and leaves between them. "What do you propose to do with it?"

"I propose," Dr. Keckilpenny said, the old gleam firing up again in his eyes, "to turn 'it' back into a 'him.'"

CHAPTER 26

AFTER SOME QUICK (and, thanks again to Jane, courteous) debate, a subject was settled on for the experiment the Reverend Mr. Cummings had agreed to. Since it wouldn't do to unduly disturb a respectable member of the community, the party would remove itself to a far corner of the parish grounds and pay a call on a connectionless pauper woman who'd been planted there three months before. This had the added benefit of seclusion, the gravesite being further removed from the road.

All the same, before a single spade bit into the earth, Mr. Bennet insisted that the tent canvases the troops had brought be strung up around the grave.

"It wouldn't do to have our trial here observed," he explained while the soldiers argued over the best spots to pound in their tent pegs. "We have been spared panic in Meryton, thanks to complacency and ignorance. It is to our advantage to preserve that just a little longer, if we can."

"In my experience, complacency and ignorance usually do a fine job preserving themselves," Lord Lumpley yawned, idly eyeing Jane as he leaned against a mausoleum nearby. "But if you feel you must put up your little dressing screens..."

"Why, though, Father?" Jane asked. "What advantage could come from hiding the truth?"

"He wishes to avoid another Birmingham," Ensign Pratt chirped. The junior officer was doing his best to loom up over his men as they began hammering pegs into the ground, but given his size, looming over anything larger than a dachshund was an impossibility. "People fleeing in huge mobs, clogging the roads, falling prey to the dreadful swarms."

"Not just falling prey to them. Feeding them." Mr. Bennet gave Ensign Pratt an approving nod. "I'm glad to know you're old enough to have at least read of The Troubles."

"Might have a hard time putting up those tents, Sir," one of the soldiers reported. He waved his hammer at a peg he'd just pummeled into the turf with one blow. "Ground here's all marshy like."

"I'm sure they'll hold, Roper. Carry on." The ensign looked over at Mr. Bennet. "At least it will make for quick digging."

"That it will," Mr. Bennet said, poking a toe into the spongy sod. "For everyone."

He threw his daughter a somber glance that moved her hand to her sword.

Ensign Pratt frowned, but Mr. Cummings didn't

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