On Her Majesty's Behalf (11 page)

But something about the way the King was holding on to it so tightly kept nagging at Burke.
It was almost like he wanted it to be found . . .

“Sergeant Drummond, could you come here, please?”

Drummond, who had been watching the proceedings from the far side of the room, came over as he'd been bid.

“Major?”

“I believe King George has something in his hand, Sergeant. Something important, though I can't really explain why. As the only representative of the British Crown here at the moment, I'd like to ask your permission to retrieve it. Before you answer, understand that I'm going to have to break one or more of the King's fingers in order to get it out.”

To Burke's surprise, the sergeant didn't even hesitate. “If you don't mind . . .” he said, then held out his hands as if to take the King's forearm himself.

Of course.

“Certainly, Sergeant. And thank you.”

Drummond nodded but didn't say anything as he sat on the edge of the bed and laid the King's arm across his lap. Holding the dead man's wrist securely with one hand, he took hold of the King's thumb with the other hand, took a deep, calming breath that everyone in the room could hear, and then snapped it with a dull crack.

When that didn't prove sufficient, he repeated the same action with the King's index finger.

In the end, the King didn't want to give up his secrets lightly, and it took three broken digits before Drummond was able to slide the piece of paper King George was holding free and pass it to Major Burke.

Burke opened the slip of paper and read the two words that were written there in a hurried scrawl.

“What the hell is Bedlam and who is Veronica?” he asked aloud.

 

Chapter Fifteen

“Bedlam”

Bethlem Hospital

London

T
HE OBJECT OF
Major Burke's attention was at that moment staring out the window of the third-­floor ward for female patients, wondering how she was going to get her men down three floors and out of the building proper without losing them to the horde of ravaging undead that still wandered the hospital grounds.

Frankly, she didn't have the bloodiest idea.

No pun intended.

Veronica Windsor, princess of Great Britain and Ireland, continued loading rounds into the cylinder of the Webley Mk VI revolver she'd picked up from a dead soldier as she pondered the question. She knew they were running out of ammunition as well as food and wondered which staple would ultimately be their undoing.

Would they die of starvation or fall victim to the rampaging creatures that had once been their friends and fellow workers?

Neither opportunity sounded all that enticing, actually, but without a plan she was effectively stuck for the time being.

Which was all the more frustrating, as she shouldn't have been here in the first place.

On the morning of the attack, her mother, Queen Mary, had been due to make a planned visit to Bethlem Hospital. More commonly known as Bedlam, the hospital was both a medical facility and a sanatorium for patients with various medical afflictions, and the Queen's visit was to show her support of the changes the hospital board had made in recent months to improve the facility's reputation. Having awoken with a severe headache, the Queen asked Veronica to come in her place. She was halfway through the tour when the bombing started.

At first the leader of her protective detail, a Black Watch captain from the King's own Guard named Samuel Morrison, hadn't wanted to expose her to the danger presented by the bombs hammering the city streets. “We'll stay here, hunker down, and return to the palace when the attack has passed,” he said. By the time they realized that the green gas that was starting to flow through the city streets was a far greater threat than the bombs themselves, many of the patients and staff inside the hospital had been exposed to the chemical agent through the windows that had been broken in the bombing run and had become infected. Within minutes dozens of them had been transformed into flesh-­hungry ghouls who then fell on their comrades, ripping and tearing their flesh with their teeth and bare hands.

Veronica had never been more terrified in her life.

None of the protection detail had been carrying gas masks and there were a few frantic moments spent assembling makeshift ones from portable respirators and oxygen tanks in a supply room off the main ward while two of her guards stuffed wet towels into the cracks around the door in an effort to keep the gas out.

Their efforts had given the others time to get their masks in order, but the two soldiers had paid the price, transforming right in front of Veronica into horrible, undead creatures like those she'd heard roamed the battlefields of the Continent.

The next several days had been a blur, with Captain Morrison and his men doing their level best to protect her from the ever-­increasing number of creatures wandering about the hospital grounds. Each time they thought they'd found a safe haven to hide and let their wounds heal, the damned zombies found them again.
It was almost like they were sniffing them out, like hounds on a fox!

Her protection detail started with six men, plus Captain Morrison. Now they were down to her, Morrison, and three others. All of them had suffered minor wounds of one kind or another, mostly cuts and bruises from fending off the undead, but Veronica knew it would only get worse as they grew weaker from lack of food and water.

After noticing the zombies seemed to be a bit less active in the bright sunlight, Veronica and her team had waited until the middle of the day and then had slipped away to the third floor. They had piled several corpses in front of the first set of double doors and then retreated behind them, locking several sets of double doors between them and the entrance in the hope that they might manage to escape notice until they could figure out what to do next.

Thankfully, their plan worked.

Now, days later, they had exhausted their supplies and needed to make a decision about what to do next.

“I think we should stay put,” Morrison said, his voice intense despite the whispering. “Someone is eventually going to come looking for us, and if we start wandering around, we might miss the rescue team when it comes.”

Staring out at the ravaged city from her window perch, Veronica knew there was no rescue coming, however.

They were on their own.

“Look out the window, Sam,” she said softly, using his first name for emphasis. “Where do you think this hypothetical rescue is coming from?”

Sam refused to do as she asked, however. He kept his eyes on the floor and waved his hand in the general direction of the rest of the European continent.

“I don't know,” he said sharply. “Out there somewhere.”

Veronica stared at him, until, feeling the weight of her gaze, he looked up to meet it.

“We both know that's not going to happen,” she said. “Have you seen even one emergency response crew in the last few days? A fire brigade? An ambulance team? Hell, even a bloody bobby would do! Anybody?”

Morrison shook his head.

“Nor have I. I'm starting to suspect that there won't be any, either. They would have been here by now if any were still in operation. This is a hospital, for heaven's sake!”

Veronica shook her head. “No, we're on our own. And that means we need to stop sitting around on our asses and see about rescuing ourselves instead.”

Morrison sighed, though whether that was the belief behind her statement or the words she'd used to express herself, Veronica didn't know. Given he was twenty years her senior, and full of what she considered some rather antiquated beliefs as to how a lady, never mind a princess, should behave, she suspected the latter.

“What would you suggest?” he asked.

“We need to get to a wireless set, let someone know where we are and that we're all right. They couldn't have bombed the entire country! Someone must be out there, someone who can help us.”

The guard captain looked at her like she'd lost her mind. “Where did you expect to find a wireless set, Your Highness?”

“The British Museum.”

Morrison shook his head. “The museum doesn't have a wireless.”

“Yes, it does. Trust me when I tell you that there is more to the museum than you know, and a wireless is definitely on the premises. Get me there and I'll handle the rest.”

“I don't know . . .”

The museum was north of Charing Cross Station, close to Covent Garden. If those flesh-­eating fiends had spread through the city as easily as they'd spread through the hospital, it was going to be quite the trip. But there were things she needed to get at the museum, things that couldn't be left behind for the enemy to find, if they were audacious enough to invade.

Veronica didn't know what had happened to her parents, and she prayed that they were all right. But she had specific orders she was required to carry out in the event of an emergency and recovering certain items from the British Museum was one of them. Now that she decided they shouldn't wait to be rescued, those orders took priority. If her parents lived, a big “if” in her view, given how extensively the Germans had bombed the city, then she could always turn her charge over to them when they were all reunited. For now, though, she had a job to do; and the longer she waited, the more she worried that someone would beat her to it.

The
wrong
someone.

“I'm not asking, Captain.”

Morrison had been in the ser­vice of the Crown long enough to know an order when he heard one.

“Yes, Your Highness. The British Museum it is.”

H
ALF AN HOUR
later they made their move.

The ward they were in looked down upon a large, outdoor garden. An iron fence ran completely around the entire property, including that garden, but one thing made the garden section of that fence different from most of the other sections of the fence.

The garden had a gate.

It was currently chained and locked; they could see that from the room they were in. But Veronica didn't know a lock yet that could stand up to a ­couple shots from a .455-­caliber Webley revolver and she fully intended to blow that particular lock right to hell.

Once outside the gate, they would do their best to hook up with another group of survivors or locate a vehicle they could use to take them most of the way to the museum.

After that . . . well, after that they'd figure something out.

“Ready?” Morrison asked.

Veronica nodded.

Two of the soldiers—­Veronica was embarrassed that she couldn't remember their names—­stood guard on either side of the window while Morrison carefully opened it and then tied one end of their makeshift rope around his waist.

Directly below them was the roof to the first-­floor extension that jutted out from the side of the building. The plan was for Veronica and the other soldier, Stevens, to lower Morrison down to that roof. He would hold up there and stand guard while the rest of them came down one at a time. From there they would take out the ghouls in the garden, three of them, sprint for the fence, and be gone before any of the creatures inside knew what had happened.

They hoped.

Along with her partner, Private Stevens, Veronica braced herself to bear the captain's weight and then said, “Go!”

Out the window Morrison went. It took only a few minutes to lower him to the rooftop below and then it was Veronica's turn.

One of the guards took her place and then helped Stevens lower her down the side of the building. She watched the undead creatures stumble around in the ankle-­high grass of the garden as she slowly descended. They were not yet aware that fresh prey was only a dozen yards away, but she knew that it wouldn't take them long to head in their direction as soon as they noticed.

Drawing close to where Morrison was waiting for her below, she was suddenly glad that she'd taken up wearing men's-­style trousers and button-­down shirts several months ago. As with her language, it was another thing that some of those of the older generation, like her mother and father, frowned upon, but she had to admit that it was going to make running for the gate much easier than if she'd been wearing a corset and skirts.

Never mind avoiding the whole embarrassing situation of having Captain Morrison looking up at her as she came down the rope.

Morrison reached up and grabbed her around the waist with both hands and helped her the last few feet to the rooftop. Untying the rope from around her waist, he left it to hang there in case they needed to go back up in a hurry.

“Okay?” Morrison asked.

Veronica nodded.

Out in the garden, roughly thirty feet from their position, one of the monsters cocked its head to the side as if it had heard them.

No, that can't be,
she thought.
Morrison had barely raised his voice.

But as the next soldier began making his way down the rope, the ghoul turned its head in their direction and looked right at them.

For a moment Veronica's gaze met that of the creature and she saw that there was nothing human left in those eyes, just a bottomless sense of hunger . . .

It lurched into motion, headed in their direction.

“Company, Captain,” she said.

Morrison turned, saw the oncoming ghoul, and raised his right arm.

The creature's head snapped back a split second before the sound of the shot reached her ears. Veronica watched as the thing toppled over backward to lie still in the grass.

As if they shared one mind, the two remaining ghouls turned in their direction at the exact same time.

“I think we should be quieter . . .” she began to say and then two more shots rang out and both those creatures dropped dead as well.

By then events were too out of control for her to do anything about and all she could do was get carried along in their wake or get left behind.

The last two soldiers slid down the ropes, their boots thunking onto the steel roof. From somewhere below them Veronica thought she heard several of the creatures snarl in reply.

“Run!” Morrison yelled and that's exactly what they did.

The three soldiers with them grabbed hold of the edge of the rooftop, swung their legs over the side, and hung there for a second before dropping down the last few remaining feet into the grass below. Instantly two of them turned and raised their arms, ready to help Veronica do the same, but she'd been a tomboy all her life and certainly didn't need any help swinging down from so low a height. Ignoring their hands, she dropped down right next to them.