Here Be Monsters Read online

  The first appearance of the Scourge.

  Satan’s handiwork did not present as such of course. T’was Surgeon White, with benefit of a long looking glass to his eye, who saw them on the promenade of the opera house. A woman and boy came first, running as though the hounds of Hell snapped at their heels. They emerged from the far side of that soaring structure of giant seashells, and behind them came a shambling mob of hundreds. The low moaning of the wind, I belatedly recognised as issuing from human throats. Hundreds of them.

  “Look,” Surgeon White said, a redundant instruction as I had been alerted to the excitement on shore by the sudden tacking of Supply towards water’s edge. Our sister ships manoeuvred about in the semi-circular quay, with Sirius pulling up next to the stonework fort, where a furious communication ensued between the occupants and the commander of the marine detachment aboard. Too distant to hear any of it, I noted the precautions of the Sirius, the guns trained upon the stronghold, and could not help but admire the courage of the master and crew. In any duel of cannon the wooden ship must surely have fallen to a redoubt of solid rock. Would that we had known what armaments actually lay within! Captain Hunter might not have been so quick to follow Nelson’s dictum that no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.

  The greater drama, to my eye, lay on shore, where the mob had surrounded woman and child in a tightening half circle. She, a red-headed lady, was most remarkable for being dressed in her underthings, a rather thin blouse of some kind and what appeared to be unconscionably brief white pantaloons. She looked frantic for escape, but saw as I did, that there was nowhere to go but into the deep. Her son, who seemed to be about seven or eight years of age, dressed in mud-coloured shorts and a blue sleeveless jerkin, was pulling at her hand, obviously urging her in the direction of the water.

  “Sergeant Baker!” I yelled. “Your best marksmen into the rigging now! Covering fire for the woman and child on my order.”

  “Yes sir,” he replied and set to snarling and snapping in his reassuring way, sending half a dozen musket men aloft with loaders and a spare gun each. He knew his work, did Baker. Master Gilbert too needed no telling his duty, and we began to move towards the scene as he brought the helm about.

  I had the looking glass from Surgeon White and, training it upon the fugitives, both leapt into view with faces strained by a mortal terror such as I had never seen etched upon human features. The boy at that point stared at me, I am certain of it. He yanked at his mother’s arm again and pointed in our direction. She turned from the closing mob, and saw the reassuring bulk of the Charlotte and Supply closing in. The brave woman wasted no time, but grabbed the lad by his right hand and dragged him into the water.

  “Ready the gig!” roared Captain Gilbert from just behind my ear, causing me to leap near out of breeches and boots. “A fighting party, if you please, Mr. Hood. That boy and his mother will drown otherwise…”

  But for a wonder, both could swim! And they struck out directly for us. At this very moment the loudest voice I have ever heard bellowed forth from the ramparts of the Fort. Had it issued from the same proximity as Gilbert’s roar, behind my ear, I am certain it would have blown out my brains, such as they are, from their resting place within my skull.

  All turned as one, by which I mean no exaggeration. Every single soul upon the deck and in the rigging of the Fleet’s vessels twisted towards the source of that shout.

  “Get out of the ________ way! Move aside and give us a clear field of fire,” boomed the voice. I saw a man with a red trumpet to his mouth and assumed the amplified roar could only have issued from that instrument, although it still seemed too very loud to me.

  At any rate, whatever intercourse had been pursued between Hunter and the defenders of the fort, the Sirius promptly made way and then came the specific instant that I, as a military man, knew the world had forever changed. Three score men and women did I spy mount the ramparts of the Fort named Denison, all of them armed with miniature muskets. They took aim and opened fire.

  The immediate concatenation was deafening in a fashion that any one of us might recognise, but there came no respite for reloading. No second or third line stepped up to provide volley fire. The same thirty or more shootists simply squeezed their triggers again and again and again, until the uproar of gunfire was so constant and so huge that it overwhelmed all else and pained the ear as greatly as any long naval engagement with artillery.

  Beside me, Surgeon White swore, as small geysers erupted in the water around the woman and child, and for all the world I would have wagered that these savages had demanded we move aside so they be allowed to shoot down their own kind. The command to return fire was in my throat but Supply ran up signal flags ordering us to stand fast. I could scarcely credit it, and my head swirled with the outrage of the thing, but presently I saw the reason of it.

  The fugitives were being pursued in the water by fiends which appeared to rise from the harbour floor. The comrades of the woman and child were providing covering fire of an accuracy I would not credit had I not witnessed the affair myself. Examining the scene anew, I discerned a division of responsibility among the firing party, with a portion given to protecting their mates, while others engaged the mob.

  White muttered curses and shook his head as he passed the glass back to me.

  “What make ye of yon slaughter,” he asked.

  The vast mob on the fatal shore had piled up at a stone barrier, waist high, which impeded all forward motion. Not a one of them attempted to mount it, as modest an obstruction as it was. Instead they stood rocking back and forth in a rhythmic motion, moaning as one while they were methodically felled by withering gunfire. The thing of it was this: every single shot seemed aimed at their faces. Only once or twice did I witness a round strike home below the neckline, and then with the most salutary effect – which is to say none at all. From a short observation it became apparent that these monsters were immune to all but the most serious of wounds, a lead ball sent directly into their brains.

  And monsters they were. Less than one hundred yards now separated us from the nearest of them and such propinquity allowed of an uncomfortably intimate inspection.

  “They should be dead,” avowed the good Surgeon White. “Look at them, Tench. Just look at them.”

  He did not need to reiterate the suggestion. I could not look away. I stood transfixed by that phantasmagorical sight. The recently imbibed grog lay unsteady in my vitals, threatening to rise as the stench of the unholy horde assaulted us. One does not like to speak ill of the dead, gentlemen, but here I must. No member of that horrific rabble was whole of body. Their exposed flesh was a rich palate of advanced decay and gangrenous mortification, shining in sickly hues of mottled greens and grays. All manner of atrocity and flagellation had been visited upon their flesh. I witnessed those with limbs hanging by the merest thread of skin, with guts opened and viscera spilling, throats torn and faces flapping, jaw and skull bones shining whitely in the dawning morn.

  And the stench! The smell of the Scourge, the high, putrid, stomach-churning reek that accompanies them, is not easily conceived unless experienced by prior ill fortune. The lowest bilge or the ripest dung heap is as nothing to the miasma that emanated from that dreadful host. There is something about the infection that seems to magnify the natural aromas of decay and effluvium the human body produces post mortem, such that even from our removed vantage, I was struck quite physically by the rankness that reached out to us. I heard several of the crew retching beside me, and felt my own gorge rise, yet with an effort I regained control and turned back to Surgeon White.

  “What Hell is this, sir?” I asked in shaking timbre. “Some malady of the soul and the flesh? A disorder of the mind? Some voodoo curse? I have seen Zombees of the Carib, Doctor, but naught of them do I see here. Here I see but monsters.”

  “Aye,” said White, his voice a whisper, a drift of ash. “Monsters. Captain Tench,” he continued, reaching a mom
ent of decision. His speech accelerated like a fast steamship with boilers roaring. “I cannot vouch for my speculations but on the evidence I must avow to a suspicion that some malady is at work here. Some sort of rabid infection, perhaps transferred in the saliva, or in the blood itself. I must advise you, sir, to order your men that under no circumstances are they to come to grips with these fiends, even if it means surrendering honour to expedience and retreating in the face of them. Destroy the head, sir. They must destroy the head by whatever means available, but not by hand-to-hand combat. A club, a sword, a bayonet thrust directly into the brain pan. Anything to stay beyond arm’s length. Ball and powder, of course, would be best.”

  He grew wistful at that, squinting at the distant rifle company of Fort Denison. I knew that he, just like I, was wishing to Our Lord for weapons such as those enjoyed by our as yet unknown allies.

  I called up Sergeant Baker and bade him in the strongest terms to pass on the physician’s warning. The first of the convicts appeared from below, blinking in the light, and dealing with a thousand confusions, not the least of which were occasioned by the armaments pressed on them. Baker and his men pushed them forward to the gunwale, with furious and lurid imprecations to do their duty as Christians and Englishmen, no matter how poorly they had once measured up as subjects of His Majesty.

  Now musket shot began to pour upon the mob from the decks of our own vessels, our meagre volleys adding drips and drops to the flood of fire still raging from the fort. Only a broadside from the Sirius, unexpected and terrifying, drowned out the staccato uproar, and then but briefly. The cannonade of grapeshot from half of one dozen six-pounders and three of her eighteen-pound pieces swept over the foul assemblage onshore like a hellish wind, disarticulating rotten arms and legs, bifurcating trunks like hollow tree stumps, turning whole bodies to a rancid mist and yet … and yet … still some lived! If living it could be called. With a hand now preternaturally steady I raised glass to eye again and surveyed the carnage only to reel inwardly at the vision of some demonic wretches, inadequately fragmented by the broadside, dragging what remained of their leavings back towards the water’s edge. An intact cranium attached to a half or more of torso appeared to be vessel enough to contain whatever motive force drove them on. Only a discrete blow to the brain itself provided an assured coup de grace.

  As orders to this effect rang out across the Fleet, including from myself to all the fighting men aboard the Charlotte, I watched as her gig, almost forgotten in the wider horror, reached the woman and child. Both flung themselves into the reaching arms and hands of our gallant tars as though attempting to jump from a boiling pot. One of the poor, brave men, however, not swift enough to escape a reaching, rotted claw, suddenly screamed and toppled over into the water, which began to boil around his thrashing form. The foam turned red and he soon disappeared below. No order to heave to was needed. The small boat crew leaned into their oars with vigour inflamed by mortal terror as they raced back towards their mother ship.

  As escapees and rescuers scrambled up the nets of the Charlotte, dripping nightmares followed them and I was thankfully spared leisured contemplation of the morning’s wickedness by the demands of our defence. The nets I had cut away with all despatch, and those few devils who made it to the top before the severance were held off with pole and hook while a single shot to the head was organised and administered by Sergeant Baker.

  The poor woman was delirious with fear and her boy shaking as though possessed by a fit of St. Vitus. “Sweet mother of Christ,” White called out over his shoulder as he hurried to their aid. “Look upon fresh Hell, Captain Tench.”

  I followed where he pointed and felt my gorge rise as I too comprehended the new and awful exigencies of this battle. Four of our transports packed with convicts, stores and livestock had withdrawn to a safe distance from the fray, or so it had seemed. But these most exemplary precautions had taken them beneath the span of that great steel bridge and whilst all had been distracted by the terrible spectre of the walking dead to our port, on starboard an horrendous mise en scene unfolded. Hundreds of ghouls dropped through the air like fat, blackened fruits. Descent and the prospect of destruction upon impact seemed not to bother them at all, and quickly I was given to comprehend the reason of it.

  Even as their bodies struck spars and mast, parting in an obscene spray of chunk and offal, the ruined vestiges smashed into wooden decks and, presuming no damage to the cranium ensued, they recommenced their assault. Many simply speared into the deep, and many were indeed destroyed by the crushing or severing of skulls. But enough made it down there, gentlemen. Enough.

  I shudder now to think of it, even though my own sight of the holocaust was oft impeded by distance and the intervening bulk of our other ships. Through the glass I saw all that I needed. A score or more of the plague carriers made the Borrowdale while I looked on, all but helpless. Some of the fiends survived by mere dint of crashing down atop some unfortunate crewman or marine and, horror upon horror, commenced without delay to feast upon them. The screams which reached across the water and over the uproar of gunfire will follow me to the very gates of Heaven, where I can only hope I might finally receive blessed surcease. Just one incident of this satanic cannibalism did I allow myself to witness, and that because I could not avert my eyes in time. I confess myself paralysed by the horror. Half a devil fell upon Elspeth Somers one of the few free women travelling with the Fleet, the wife of a comrade indeed, and well known to me from the advantage of fond memories. I recognised her at a distance from her gay bonnet and parasol, which I well remember from pleasant walks with that poor family about the common of their village back in Dorset.

  The thing which struck her – for although science tells me it had once been a man or woman, I could not now privilege it with any appellation beyond that of a foul and soulless object – the thing, trailing gizzards and great ropey lengths of corruption, crashed into her shoulder and drove her to the deck. Would that the force of the blow had killed poor Mrs Somers. Alas she was but momentarily stunned, and quickly revived by the painful stimulus of first one, then two, then three of these creatures making a meal of her. Brave woman that she was she cried out her defiance and had at them with the only weapon to hand, her broken parasol. I saw it rise and fall repeatedly, but to no effect, and the resistance soon ended as all life ran from her wounds. As horrific as this was, worse followed as my colleague’s only love soon rose from the heap of her tormentors, and now suffering the most appalling disfigurements, joined in the assault on her former friends and shipmates. I saw her bite the neck of a Corporal of marines whose only fault was to attempt to spirit her to safety and as he fell with great jets of his lifeblood painting the ambulatory corpse of poor Elspeth, I turned away.

  As any professional military man will attest, however, there is much succour to be had in attachment to duty and necessity. Of that I had an elegant sufficiency, as we now found ourselves ordered by the Flagship to sail into the diseased heart of that horrendous encounter beneath the bridge, there to take on any survivors who might yet escape.

  Pride is a deadly sin, gentlemen, but I am proud that not a man amongst us on that day resiled from certain death, and what was more, from equally certain damnation. Even the prisoners, now armed with the means to revolt if they so wished, proved themselves not entirely beyond redemption as each gripped whatever weapon they now held and, spitting either prayers or curses at their fate, made ready at the end to die as free men. For none of us saw any way in which we might possibly achieve the stated aim of our orders. We were surely headed to our doom.

  Our passage to perdition was not without incident, as you might imagine. We were increasingly besieged by those water-logged corpses drawn to us by the flight of the woman and child. A veritable raft of them did form o’er the next minutes, a floating carpet of moaning, reaching phantoms that surrounded every ship on all sides, necessitating much cooperation between the firing parties of each vessel, and our new chums in the fort. />
  My own makeshift force, however, I ordered to hold fire, knowing that we would presently require every advantage accruing to us through the possession of a well-stocked armoury. Master Gilbert brought the helm around for a rendezvous with the Lady Penrhyn, the nearest vessel, upon which a furious but sadly hopeless struggle was enjoined. It was vexing. Of all of the ships of the Fleet, the Lady, with the majority of women transportees, had but two Lieutenants and three Privates of His Majesty’s Marine Forces. A small, valiant party still held out on the quarterdeck, where these three marines and the same number of tars blocked all attempts by the shambling hordes to have at a dozen or more screaming women and children clustered at the stern.

  Below them lay many corpses of the dead, in pieces. The marines stabbed, slashed and hacked at a solid writhing mass of reanimated flesh as it all but poured up the steps towards them. The deadly winnowing education of combat had taught these few defenders the efficacy of striking only at the heads of their attackers, among whom I am sorry to say were numbered many former comrades and shipmates, including the aforementioned regimental officers, both friends of mine while the light of God had flickered within their breasts.

  Sergeant Baker had a firing line of our marines drawn up in short order and I instructed them with all despatch.

  “Aim for their heads, lads,” I called out. “The heads and … fire!”

  Ten flints struck as one, followed by a single roar. The gun smoke lifted to reveal a small clearing, felled in the midst of that evil mass.

  The second line stood forward and unleashed their volley in the same fashion to even greater effect and the rousing cheers of the Charlotte’s complement. Sadly I saw one of Lady’s marines slip and slide into the flailing mob, screaming proud defiance to the end. His partner smashed his skull as he fell, before returning to the dreadful repetitive work of cracking monster heads with a pair of iron bars.