On Her Majesty's Behalf (9 page)

“What about while on the surface?” he asked.

“That's the job of our primary diesel engine,” Wattley told him, pointing to another hulk of machinery deeper in the compartment. “Without the water resistance, we can make eleven, sometimes twelve knots on a good day.”

Burke frowned. That didn't sound like much compared to the twenty or so knots he knew a German König class battleship could reach. While he didn't expect to meet a vessel like that on the Thames—­
Good God, he hoped not!
—­he was still surprised that the disparity was so high and mentioned it to Captain Wattley.

“You're thinking like a surface captain and not a submariner, Major. Follow me.”

Wattley waved to the engine room chief and then turned and headed back the way they had come. He passed through the control room and into the wardroom where the crew took all their meals. Beyond that was another crew accommodation space, this one with hammocks still hung throughout the compartment, and then finally a large space with racks of torpedoes on either side.

“You're standing in the forward torpedo storage compartment. From here the weapons chief arms the eighteen-­inch torpedoes we carry and loads them into the bow tubes for use against the enemy.”

Wattley smiled. “We don't need to be faster than the König or Kaiser class dreadnoughts. We just need to be able to sneak up on them long enough to fire a few of these pretties in their wake and sit back to watch the fireworks.”

Burke would feel much more comfortable knowing he could escape an engagement if it went wrong, but he'd give Wattley the benefit of the doubt given that he was the submarine captain and Burke was not.

Wattley asked about the state of things at the front, and Burke was happy enough to share what he knew as they made their way back to the control room and the exit from the boat. Wattley didn't follow him topside but bid him good-­bye at the base of the ladder, returning to his preparations while Burke went to round up his squad.

B
ACK AT THE
mess hall, Burke waited for his men to finish eating and then led them outside. Commandeering a truck and driver, he had the driver take them back over to the docks to where the
Reliant
was berthed. From there it was a simple five-­minute walk to the
Reliant
's individual slip.

Burke was walking next to Jones, his haversack slung over one shoulder, when the conning tower of the boat came into view and Jones stopped short at the sight of it. “That's a submarine,” he said.

“That's right,” Burke replied. “The HMS
Reliant
. Quite the modern vessel, I'm told.”

“But . . . it's a submarine.”

Burke frowned. “Yes, a submarine. What's the problem?”

Ahead of them, the rest of the squad slowed, then stopped as they realized that Jones and Burke had fallen behind.

Sergeant Drummond turned and headed back in Burke's direction. “Everything all right, Major?” he called.

Burke waved him off. “Go on and get the others settled, Sergeant. I'll be along directly.”

Drummond nodded and did as he was told, heading for the gangplank with the rest of the squad in tow. There were a few curious backward glances, but that was all. Once they'd passed out of earshot, Burke turned and faced Jones directly.

“What's the problem, Jones?” he asked.

A look of embarrassment crossed the man's face as he said, “I can't swim, sir.”

His answer caught Burke off-­guard.
Can't swim? What the hell does that have to do with anything?

“I'm not following you.”

“I can't
swim,
sir,” Harrison said, stressing the latter word as if that was enough, but to Burke it still didn't make any sense.

“What in the blue blazes does swimming have to do with the submarine?” Burke asked. “It's not like you have to get out and push!”

You hope,
his conscience said.

Burke ignored it.

“I told you, sir, I can't swim. What if there is a . . . a
problem,
sir?”

A look of horror crossed the man's face at the word
problem,
and at last Burke began to understand. It wasn't his ability or lack thereof that was bothering Jones; it was the idea of getting trapped in what was little more than an oversized tin can hundreds of feet beneath the surface in the event of an emergency.

Jones was afraid.

Burke almost didn't believe it. Of all the men under his command, Jones was the last person he'd expect to balk at the sight of the boat. He'd personally seen Jones jump out of a burning airship with nothing more than an experimental gliding device strapped to his back, go toe-­to-­toe against the twin Spandau machine guns on a diving Fokker D.VII with just a Lee Enfield rifle, and face down ravaging hordes of the undead with a smile on his face. A quick submarine ride across the Channel should be easy after all that.

Jones, however, didn't think so.

“I . . . I can't go in there, sir.”

Burke laughed, trying to make light of the situation. “Sure you can, Jones,” he said, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “Nothing to it.”

But Jones was shaking his head. “I can't, sir. I really can't.”

The corporal took two steps back as he said it, as if to punctuate his statement.

Burke frowned, uncertain of what to do next. Manhandling Jones aboard the boat didn't seem to be the answer; the man's fear would make him go hog-­wild the moment he thought they were going to force him aboard. Doing so would just give the British sailors aboard the boat a reason to ridicule the U.S. Army, never mind one of his men.

No, that wasn't any kind of solution at all.

If he couldn't force him aboard or convince him to make the choice on his own, there seemed to be only one other solution.

“It's all right, Jones,” he said, not unkindly. “You've done enough. I'll find something for you to do here at the port until we get back and keep the reasons to myself; no one else needs to know.”

The original squad had been made up of volunteers, including Jones. As much as he wanted Jones by his side for the mission ahead, he couldn't, in good conscience, force him to come along. The man was terrified, that was easy to see, and Burke had no doubt that the fear would get worse if Jones couldn't conquer it before boarding. Being trapped inside the
Reliant
was going to be hard enough on all of them; they didn't need a raving lunatic along to keep them company.

Burke clapped a hand on Jones's shoulder, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “See what you can do about arranging transportation for us back to MID headquarters for when we return, yeah? And make sure it's something reasonably comfortable. I don't want to be the one to tell the Queen of England that she's going to have to ride in the back like some common piece of luggage, understand?”

Jones was staring at his feet, refusing to meet Burke's gaze, but he nodded slightly to show he understood. Burke decided that was going to have to be good enough.

He clapped Jones on the shoulder one more time and then turned away, his steps heavy as he covered the last few dozen yards to the submarine slip. Jones was a helluva soldier, for all his authority issues. Burke was going to miss having his skill with a rifle . . .

The sound of running feet behind him drew Burke's attention. He turned and was just in time to see Jones jog up the gangplank behind him. There was still fear in the man's eyes, but Burke could see he had it under control. His next comment proved that was the case.

“If I drown in this blasted tin can, I swear I'll haunt you forever, Major!”

Burke laughed. “Welcome aboard, Corporal, welcome aboard.”

 

Chapter Twelve

On the River Thames

L
ONDON WAS
ALL
but unrecognizable.

From his position in the conning tower next to Captain Wattley, Burke stared out at the devastation around him and wondered just how Sergeant Drummond had ever managed to cross more than forty kilometers of such destruction and live to tell about it.

After boarding the HMS
Reliant
earlier, Burke and his men settled into the compartment that had been assigned to them. Some, like Sergeant Drummond and Private Bankowski, slipped into the canvas hammocks hanging from the ceiling and tried to catch some sleep while the rest simply found a convenient stretch of decking out of the main traffic pattern running through the compartment and did the same.

It was raining when they slipped their berth but Captain Wattley made the decision to remain on the surface; the winds weren't strong enough to kick up the kind of swells that would necessitate a dive beneath the surface, and the low cloud cover would make it unlikely that any German aircraft would be patrolling in this weather. It was a decision that pleased Burke almost as much as it did Jones. As far as Burke was concerned, boats were made to stay on the surface of the water, not dive beneath it.

At twelve miles per hour he knew that it was going to take them practically all night to cover the 150 miles between Le Havre, their starting point, and their destination midway along the Thames estuary. Perhaps longer, if they ran into any trouble.

Burke kept his eye on Jones, who had borrowed a deck of cards from one of the British sailors and was passing the time by teaching Private Cohen to play poker. Jones seemed to be doing just fine, his initial fear of the boat not showing at all, and eventually Burke stopped worrying about him.

Somewhere along the way, Burke had fallen asleep, only to be woken up several hours later by Sanders, the executive officer, who told him Captain Wattley was looking for the major to join him in the conning tower.

Now Burke and Wattley stood side by side, gas masks securely on, staring out at the devastated city as they headed into the heart of London.

The Tower of London rose on their right as they slipped beneath the Tower Bridge, and Burke could see that while some of the lesser buildings had taken some damage, the White Tower, the oldest of the group, still stood tall in the early morning light. The sight of the age-­old edifice still standing despite the Germans' bombing of the city gave him a small bit of hope amid the destruction he was witnessing around him.

They motored onward and glided beneath each of the other bridges connecting the north side of the city with its counterpart on the south. The London Bridge, the newly built Southwark Bridge, the Blackfriars Bridge—­all were intact and provided no barrier to their passage. There were a few anxious moments when they came up on the old Waterloo Bridge, site of so many of London's suicides in its early days, and found the crossing tilting dangerously to one side, but they managed to maneuver around the impediment and continue on their way without striking anything.

All the buildings they could see as they made their way deeper into the city were in various states of destruction. Some had been hit by falling bombs, some by falling buildings as the bombs took out the structures around them. Runaway fires claimed a lot of the rest, and Burke could still see patches of flame burning here and there against the dark night sky. Billowing clouds of smoke and ash drifted here and there amid the ruins, a visual reminder of all that had gone before.

Looking around, Burke knew it would be a long time before London was once again considered the jewel of the British Empire. There was
that
much destruction.

And he and his team were headed into the heart of it.

Burke reached up and adjusted the gas mask slightly, trying, and failing, to make it more comfortable. The rubber mouthpiece tasted like old tires and the clips on his nose pinched uncomfortably, but he guessed he'd have to make do until Professor Graves had a chance to check the air once they arrived at their destination. For now, he'd just have to deal with it.

Captain Wattley nudged him with an elbow to get his attention and then pointed across the water. A large freighter had run aground on the other side of the river, tipping up at an angle, and even from here Burke could see the bodies of the dead lying on the deck and hanging partially off the edge of the ship. Although he couldn't see their bodily injuries in any detail, the dark red stains covering most of their torsos didn't require much explanation.

Wattley said something to him, but Burke didn't hear it clearly; the sound was muffled thanks to the hoods of the gas masks each of them wore. He leaned in closer.

“What was that?”

Wattley gestured at the boat as they slipped past in the gray light of the early morning. “Why are they still dead? Why aren't they up and walking around again?”

It took Burke a moment to understand what it was that Wattley meant.

Shambler bites were infectious and those who survived being bitten by one often suffered a hideous death shortly thereafter as the virus or whatever it was spread through their system. Inevitably, those who died ended up rising again to join those resurrected by the gas, like one big happy family of flesh-­eating undead. The same might be expected here. The victims on the freighter had clearly been killed by shredders and, given that this new breed of undead were cousins to the shamblers, it made sense that their attacks might have the same effect.

Or, at least, Burke would have thought so.

Now he wasn't so sure.

Perhaps those who had survived the attack unscathed had returned to deliver the coup de grâce, a bullet through the skull, to their less fortunate comrades?

He suggested as much to Wattley.

“Come on, you can't be serious!” the captain replied. “Look at them over there; there must be nearly four dozen or more! It would have taken forever and the noise would have brought dozens more shredders down on them in the process.”

Wattley shook his head. “Nah, I'm betting there's more to it than that.”

But without stopping and boarding the freighter, which neither man wanted to do, there was no way of knowing for sure. As the wreck slipped into the distance behind them, Burke wondered if anyone would ever know what had happened aboard the vessel in its final hours.

Less than ten minutes later the bulk of the Westminster Bridge loomed out of the gray light of dawn ahead of them, Big Ben and the ruins of the Houses of Parliament rising behind it, and the captain began quietly passing instructions through a series of sailors stationed as relays to Lieutenant Sanders in the control room. The boat slowed as it approached the bridge and then slipped into its shadow. Burke stepped out of the way as men dashed up from below to handle the anchors and soon the vessel was at a full stop, bobbing gently in the waters beneath the bridge.

They had arrived at their destination.

Captain Wattley disappeared below to arrange for their transport ashore. Professor Graves took his place out on deck, lugging his haversack behind him. The gas mask he wore made him look particularly insectoid given his height and narrow frame, like a weirdly mechanical praying mantis, and Burke found that he had to resist the urge to laugh lest he insult the man.

Graves dug around in his haversack for a moment, removing an assortment of items.

“Here, hold this,” he said, his voice muffled from the mask. He handed Burke a small automaton that looked like a mechanical dragonfly, but with eight wings instead of four. A small glass jar hung from its belly.

“What is it?”

Graves ignored him. “Use this to wind it up, please,” he said, handing Burke a wooden hand crank.

Burke sighed, but did as he was told. He had come to know Graves a bit better over the last several weeks of working together and knew that once Graves tuned into a particular project, getting three words out of him was tantamount to getting blood from a stone.

He inserted the crank into a hold designed for it in the side of the dragonfly's body. He held the wings flat against the dragonfly's back with one hand while turning the crank with the other.

“Fifty times, please. No more and no less.”

Right.

While Burke was doing that, Graves pulled out several bottles filled with different colored powders or liquids and arranged them on the decking next to him. When he was satisfied with the arrangement, he took a roll of string from his pocket and tied the loose end of the string to a ring in the nose of the dragonfly.

“Now I want you to take the EDFFAMD and raise it . . .”

Burke interrupted. “The what?”

“The EDFFAMD.”

At Burke's continued blank look, Graves said, “The electronically driven free-­flying atmospheric measuring device,” and pointed at the device in Burke's hands.

“Right. Got it.”

“Raise it over your head and loft it into the air like you would a pigeon.”

The wings lay flat and unmoving as it headed skyward and for a moment Burke thought it was going to reach the top of its arc and drop like a rock right into the waters of the Thames, but then the eight little tin plates that served as wings popped out and flapped wildly, sending the little device soaring into the air.

Graves kept control of it via the string he held in his hands, and after it had buzzed around above them for a few minutes, he quickly reeled it in. Burke could see that the collection bottle hanging beneath the automaton was filled with some of the dense smog that was drifting across the city. Graves quickly popped a cork in the bottle and slipped it free of its clamp.

Burke watched as Graves set the bottle aside and mixed some of the powders and liquids from the other jars together in a mortar and pestle. He ground them into a dark-­gray-­colored powder, then he turned and handed the mortar to Burke.

“When I open the collection bottle, I want you to pour that mixture inside as quickly as you can.”

Graves was hard to understand through the hood, but Burke thought he'd gotten the gist of it correct and he did as he was asked, tapping the edge of the mortar against the side of the bottle gently to get as much of the gritty-­looking mixture out as he could.

When he was done Burke stepped back, expecting some strange chemical reaction to occur as Graves corked the bottle back up and gave it a good shake.

Nothing.

The mixture inside the bottle stayed exactly the same.

“Excellent!” Graves exclaimed, then reached up and removed his gas mask.

“No, Graves! What are you doing?” Burke shouted, reaching out to forcibly return the mask to the man's face, but Graves shook him off.

“Now, now, Major. I assure you I'm just fine. The gas has dissipated and we are in no danger of it from here.”

Burke reached up to remove his own mask, and then stopped.

“You're certain?” he asked.

Graves cast a withering look in his direction but didn't say anything.

“Okay, okay,” Burke replied, holding up his hands in surrender. He loosened the strap on his mask and slipped it off his head. Realizing he was holding his breath, Burke relaxed and tried to breathe normally.

The air held the acrid scent of burned concrete and steel, along with the stink of bodies decaying in the wind, but that was all.

Perhaps their mission just got a little easier.