A Zombie Christmas Carol (14 page)

There they were, in the heart of it; on ’Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them often.

At first glance, everything looked the way he was accustomed but a second glance revealed some substantial and concerning changes. First, each man was armed. Some carried swords, others pistols and perhaps the more paranoid a mixture of the two. The men were also being watched by a scarred man, possibly an ex sailor or soldier who watched the street with a wary eye. Tucked in his belt were a number of pistols and on his belt a long, curved blade though it was nothing other than a cheap and rusty weapon, probably lost or abandoned many years before. Rust or not the weapon had the potential to cut deeply.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.

“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s dead.”

“When did he die?” inquired another.

“Last night, I believe, some of the creatures managed to break into several of the establishments in his area. Perhaps they were to blame.”

“Why, what was the matter with him?” asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. “He escaped the first outbreak and he hardly stayed to fight like my children did. Shame they did not copy him as they might have lived. When he came back he carried on as normal, I thought he’d never die.”

“God knows, maybe one of them broke into his house,” said the first, with a yawn.

“Broke into his house, well, they are certainly the only ones that would bother, it is not as though he had possessions of any note or interest. I heard that after the undead were forced out his was the only house not stripped clean by the urchins,” said another as he leaned in with a grin.

“You see, his place was already stripped clean, by him!” he laughed.

The rest of the little group erupted into laughter, the only silent man in the group being the rough looking guard, still leaning against the wall and watching the street.

“What has he done with his money?” asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.

“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, yawning again. “Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn’t left it to
me
. That’s all I know.”

This pleasantry was received with general laughter.

“It is likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; “for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it. He had few friends before the attack and they must have all died during it. It is hardly likely he would have bothered to do anything to help them. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?”

“I have not eaten well in a few days so don’t mind going if food is provided,” observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. “But I must be fed, if I make one.”

Another laugh.

“Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,” said the first speaker, “for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go, if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met. Since the scouring of the city we have had even less contact, though I hasten to add it is hardly a relationship I miss. Bye, bye!”

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very wealthy, and of great importance.  Like the small group of merchants and Bankers these two men were well protected. In fact, it seemed excessive, as each man appeared flanked by another. The guardians wore thickened garments on their limbs and carried an array of weapons about their body. Scrooge was at first taken aback by their brash show of weapons in a public street. Then he recalled their descriptions of some great calamity and the number of weapons seemingly carried by men of all classes. It was as though the streets had become a warzone for which every man and woman had to be ready. Scrooge looked away from the weapons and back at the two well-dressed gentlemen.  He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.

“How are you?” said one.

“How are you?” returned the other.

“Well!” said the first. “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?  That makes a dozen in the last month, though in his case none were more deserving.”

“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it?”

“Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not a skater, I suppose?”

“No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!”

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the Future.  In his time, Jacob had been a noted man in his field of work much like himself, but the Spirit was hardly likely to have made a mistake and taken him back to visit his old friend was again. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them.  It was disheartening to him as he realised how few people he had any connections of note. In fact, the more he thought about it the more he accepted that his work relationships were all that he had. The small numbers of family left had nothing like the darkness that the Spirits had shown he alone possessed.

But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy.

They referred to a man, a coward by any definition, who had abandoned the city during the great crisis and then had returned. It seems there was bitterness by some of the men, as the man had returned when others had not. It was a thought that Scrooge could well understand. To have left those acquaintances that a man loved or cared for was simply unreasonable. Indeed, how could a civilised gentleman abandon the weak or the poor in such a time as this?

Scrooge snorted to himself, considering that the fate of the man they were watching well deserved. This man was wretched in life and now wretched in death, a fate he seemed to have truly deserved.

He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch.  He looked for a man of similar stature, perhaps carrying a weapon like the other men he had seen moving about the city. As he looked about, he realised that of course he would not see himself.  It gave him little surprise for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this. At this stage, he could be fitter, stronger, dressed in different attire or even off somewhere else. How could he have any idea what he would look like in the Future?

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.  As in other parts of the city, there were the carts though in this area there seemed to be far more of them. Bodies dumped upon them though some looked as though they had died from malnutrition rather than violence. Two people rolled in the dirt and as Scrooge looked closer, he noticed one had been bitten, and was going through the later stages of the transformation into the evil walking dead. The other person appeared unhurt and simply going about the business of robbing the soon to be dead person before they turned on him.

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Its doors reinforced with wood and a selection of weapons lay upon every possible entry point. It was a den of iniquity where every soul inside was able and willing to defend it against all intruders. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. A stack of loaded pistols and swords untidily placed against the one wall, whilst there were three curved daggers laid out in a curious semi-circle on the floor. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement. On his side, he carried a foul looking iron rod that had more in common with a cudgel than any military weapon. It was crude and unattractive but functional and well suited to its purpose of keeping the old rascal alive. There was a reason why such a man lived, when younger men suffered to be burnt or buried.

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each other. Along with the three strangers came three young boys, each of them armed with a variety of odd weapons. The first carried what looked like a Saracen sword. It was short and curved but when in the boy’s hand looked like a weapon in the hands of a Titan. The second boy carried an iron pipe of about a foot long. The third had a staff almost as long as he was tall. The boys stayed close to these adults and moved to protect them as they spotted each other.

After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh and the three boys moved to the dark edges of the room to watch the appraisal.

“Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” cried she who had entered first. “Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it!”

“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other two an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an’t such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.”

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.

A screech outside brought an ill chill to the room. As the group fell silent, the three boys rushed to the door, each brandishing his weapon and each wanting to be the first to confront the sound. They waited and the noise faded until silence returned.

“Are we ready?” asked old Joe.

As he spoke they moved closer, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.

“What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the woman. “Every person has a right to take care of themselves.
He
always did.”

“That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No man more so.”

“Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, woman; who’s the wiser? We’re not going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I suppose?”

“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. “We should hope not.”

“Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s enough. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.”