The Secret Zombie History of the World

  ABADDONBOOKS.COM

  First published in 2013 by Abaddon Books™

  Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited

  Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Commissioning Editor: David Moore

  Cover Art: Pye Parr, with thanks to Molcher, David-Eliot Cooper

  from Histrionics (www.allthehistory.com) & Rob Temple

  Internal Covers: Gerard Miley, Nick Percival & Mark Harrison

  Design: Pye & Sam Gretton

  Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher

  Publishing Manager: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Viking Dead copyright © 2011 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Stronghold copyright © 2010 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Death Hulk copyright © 2006 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Tomes of The Dead ™, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-734-0

  ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-735-7

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by David Moore

  Viking Dead, by Toby Venables

  Stronghold, by Paul Finch

  Death Hulk, by Matthew Sprange

  Also by Abbadon Books

  INTRODUCTION

  IT’S SOMETIMES EASY to forget how recent a creation the zombie really is.

  Okay, so the word comes from a West African (via Afrocaribbean) tradition dating back at least a couple of centuries, but the zonbi of Vodou belief is usually represented as reasonably conscious, or (if mindless) a harmless slave of a bokor’s will, obeying orders without complaint. And while Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend – the main inspiration for the zombie genre – drew on an existing mythic template, his monsters are rightly vampires; the infected are entirely conscious, a fact that drives the main plot of the book.

  Your actual zombie, the mindless, shambling, nigh-unstoppable, flesh-eating and above all infectious monster of Hollywood, stepped fully formed and cold-blooded out of the screen in George Romero’s 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead (although the word “zombie” didn’t attach itself to the creatures until later). Strictly speaking, the poor things don’t belong in history at all; they’re fiends of the atomic age, shambling reminders of the implacable and ineluctably democratic nature of death.

  And yet. There’s something terribly old-school about them, isn’t there? With a zombie, all the grey areas of life go out the window. It can’t be reasoned with; it attacks without provocation; it’s a terrible danger, not just in itself, but through the infection it spreads. It’s even, conveniently, already dead! Killing it is a kindness, a merciful end to an indignity no right-thinking man or woman would tolerate. And zombies are so often associated with apocalypse, with the breakdown of society’s rules. So, what the hell; as long as we’re going on a legitimised killing spree, we may as well go the whole hog. Strap on some armour, pick up an axe or club. Get medieval on their asses.

  And I suppose they don’t fit so badly in history after all. If the walking dead of the past aren’t actual zombies as we know them, then there are plenty of different takes on the idea of living corpses to be found in other cultures that fit the bill: the ghuls of Arabic myth, the draugr of Viking belief, the Greek vrykolakas, even the dead revived by the Pair Dadeni in Welsh belief offer places to find stories of the rotting hordes.

  This was actually the original brief for Tomes of the Dead; stand-alone stories from throughout history, showing the grey hand of our non-vital cousins at work. It was even going to have a single continuity, with events from books earlier in the timeline potentially impacting later stories. We diverged from both the single-world idea and the emphasis on history pretty early on, with the second title The Words of Their Roaring set in modern London, but we’ve returned to it fairly frequently through the series, from the ancient Rome of Rebecca Levene’s Anno Mortis to the English Civil War of Mark Beynon’s The Devil’s Plague and beyond.

  THE THREE NOVELS collected in this omnibus are presented in reverse order of publication, so as to give you a chronology of sorts, from the earliest – Toby Venables’ Viking Dead, set in the year 976 – to the most modern – Matthew Sprange’s Death Hulk, set at the height of the Napoleonic Wars.

  Death Hulk was one of the first novels we commissioned, for the August 2006 launch of the Abaddon imprint. Matthew Sprange of Mongoose Publishing had been working with us on the Judge Dredd roleplaying game, and we approached him about kicking off one of our initial series. Death Hulk is a rollicking high-seas adventure tale in the spirit of Patrick O’Brian, with the cursed Captain Havelock standing in as a singularly tragic Jack Aubrey, accompanied by a veritable rogues’ gallery of salty mariners.

  Retired police officer Paul Finch is an old hand on the UK horror scene; a long-standing fan of his writing, Jon asked Paul to submit what turned out to be Stronghold, a tense, bloody siege tale set against the backdrop of Edward I’s Welsh wars. Paul has a fascination with English culture and history, which shows in the gritty reality of the meticulously researched Grogan Castle. Stronghold has since been option by a movie studio, Amber Entertainment, who intend to release it to film in the next few years.

  Toby Venables is a journalist, screenwriter and academic (with an award for an essay on the poetry of the Romantics). We dug up his Viking Dead pitch from the bottom of a slush pile; we weren’t even sure it was still on offer, and were relieved and pleased to publish his debut. I particularly enjoyed the beautifully realised and lovable (and surprisingly international!) Viking crew, and Toby’s use of point-of-view, switching between the seasoned captain Bjólf and his fish-out-of-water farmboy recruit Atli, all the better to round both men out.

  HERE, THEN, WITHOUT much further ado, are three of the best historical novels from the Tomes of the Dead series. Follow Toby Venables’ Viking captain Bjólf Erlingsson, Paul Finch’s English knight Ranulf FitzOsbern, and Matthew Sprange’s British Captain James Havelock as they lead the battle against the raddled, rotting, bone-gnawing, flesh-eating blank-eyed hordes of the dead across nearly a thousand years of the past.

  Enjoy.

  David Thomas Moore

  Oxford, 2013

  PROLOGUE

  SKALLA SAT, HIS hand resting on the pommel of his sword, his chin resting on his hands, staring at the pile of bodies.

  The still-warm corpses steamed in the cool air of the clearing. Behind him, his black-clad men, done cleaning their weapons, stood in silence, waiting – for what, they knew not. Some, perhaps, suspected. But only Skalla knew for certain.

  To his right, he heard feet shifting nervously among the damp leaves. That would be Gamli. Like the others, he was impatient to get out of this place. But there was more to his restlessness than that. Skalla had had his eye on Gamli for some time, aware that he had started to lose faith in their masters. More than once he had questioned their orders. It took a brave man to do that, or a stupid one. Skalla knew Gamli was no fool – but
he also knew the man’s boldness hid deeper fears. Fears that could spread, infecting the others, contaminating them with doubt. That, he could not allow. It threatened everything they had built here.

  He ran his fingers through the black bristles on his chin, then up to the scar that passed through his left eye. It ran from his forehead down across his cheek, and had left the eye sightless – milk-white and dead. He pushed at the edge of his helm, relieving the pressure on his forehead for a moment. The scar tissue itched badly today. It always did after combat – the result of the heat and sweat. Not that what had just passed could truthfully be termed ‘combat.’

  There had been six in all. Perhaps seven. He couldn’t remember. They were the ones who had been locked up the longest, those meant to be forgotten. The ones who ran, who broke down, who refused to work, who fought back. The biggest heroes and and the biggest cowards. All the same, now. They had also been kept separate all this time – well away from the various wonders and horrors that had been unfolding. That, Skalla suspected, was one of the real reasons for this little outing to the woods. True, his masters had no desire to waste further food on these lost causes. But they were also wise enough not to waste an opportunity. They would make some use of them, even in death.

  And so, they had marched them to this lonely spot, shackled and at spear point, and forced them to cut logs for firewood. They had performed the tasks well, considering their chequered histories – some, almost with gratitude. Perhaps, thought Skalla, it simply felt good to have a purpose again. He had not told them they were gathering wood for their own funeral pyre.

  The killing had been quick. Regrettably, the kills were not as clean as he’d hoped. There were struggles, cries, prolonged agonies, repeated blows. From the start, it had not been the most straightforward task. His men had been reluctant to venture into these woods, even during daylight. Then there had been the orders themselves. No damage to the head or neck – that’s what their masters had specified. The order had bemused Skalla’s men, and in the heat of the slaughter – one could hardly dignify the killing of these unarmed, underfed wretches with the term ‘battle’ – he could not be sure how closely they had adhered to it. At least one had taken a glancing sword blow across the top of the head – protruding from the heap, Skalla could see his hairy, blood-matted scalp, flapped open like the lid of a chest, the yellow-white bone of the skull grinning through the gore. But it didn’t matter now. It was done. They would see soon.

  “We’re done here,” said a voice behind Skalla. It was Gamli. He had stepped closer to where Skalla was sitting. Clearly, he was itching to leave. Perhaps he understood more than Skalla had realised.

  “We wait,” said Skalla.

  “For what?”

  “Until we are sure.”

  “Sure?” Gamli’s voice was edgy. As always, he tried to cover it with a kind of swagger. “What is there to be sure of?”

  “That they’re dead.”

  Gamli laughed emptily, his throat tight. “Then why not burn them now and have done with it?”

  “Are you questioning me, Gamli?” Skalla’s eyes remained fixed on the corpses.

  A kind of panic entered Gamli’s eyes. “Not you. I would never... but the masters. There are doubts about them.” He looked around as he said this, as if expecting support from his fellows. None came.

  Skalla did not move. “I pledged my sword to them,” he said, “and you swore an oath of allegiance to me. You do not question one without also questioning the other.”

  Gamli stood motionless, robbed of speech.

  “Step back into line,” said Skalla.

  Before he could do so, a sound came from the heap, and an arm flopped out of the tangle. The men’s hands jumped to their weapons. The arm hung there, motionless – quite dead. Olvir – one of the three crossbowmen – broke the silence with a nervous laugh. “For a moment, I thought...” He was interrupted by a low groan from the centre of the heap. Skalla stood slowly, hand still upon his sword, and, stretching to his full height, slowly flexed his shoulders. It was part of his ritual before combat.

  “Gas. From the bodies,” said another of the men, nervously. “They can do that.” Olvir began to cock and load his crossbow. The others followed suit.

  From deep within the pile came a weird, semi-human grunt, and the whole tangle suddenly shifted. As one, the men drew swords and raised crossbows. The uppermost body – a skinny man, whose abdomen was split open, and whose right arm had been all but severed – slithered from the top of the heap. The hand that had loosed itself from the pile twitched, its fingers inexplicably starting to straighten.

  “It’s beginning...” said Skalla. The hollow moan repeated itself, and was joined by two more in a kind of desolate, mindless chorus. As they watched in horror, dead limbs moved, arms flailed and grasped, lifeless eyes flicked open.

  “This can’t be happening,” said Gamli. “Not to them...” From the heap, one of the men – a solid, muscular fellow who had taken two crossbow bolts through the chest, one of which had pinned his right hand to his sternum – staggered unsteadily to his feet. For a moment, he seemed to sniff the air, then turned and lurched towards them.

  Skalla spat on his palms and raised his sword. “Aim for the heads,” he said, and swung the blade with all his strength at the dead man’s neck. Such was the force of the cut that it sliced clean through, knocking the attacker off his feet and sending his head bowling into the bushes. Already two more were on their feet – the skinny man, his right arm hanging by a sinew, his glistening guts dangling between his legs, and the scalped man, his cap of hair flapping absurdly to one side like piece of bearskin, who Skalla could now see had been killed by a heavy sword blow to the left side of his chest, the upper and lower parts sliding against each other gruesomely with each lurching step. A crossbow bolt hit the skinny man in the shoulder, spinning him round. “In the head!” barked Skalla. As the skinny man resumed his steady progress a second bolt thudded into his eye, knocking him flat. A third flew uselessly past the scalped man’s ear. His arms reached out, grasping at Skalla, as another three grotesque figures rose stiffly behind him.

  The rest of Skalla’s men, momentarily mesmerised by the scene unfolding before them, now threw themselves into the fight. Gamli stepped forward first, grasping the scalped man’s outstretched arm and hurling him to the floor. Drawing a long cavalry axe from a strap at his back, he flipped it around and with one blow drove its long, steel spike through the exposed skull. As his other men hacked mercilessly at two of the remaining ghouls, Skalla advanced to finish off the third – a once-fat man with folds of saggy skin beneath his ragged, filthy tunic. Skalla recognised the stab wounds in his chest – wounds that he himself had delivered with his knife. The fat man’s left arm – bloody and slashed where he had attempted to defend himself from Skalla’s blade – waved before him, his right – bloodier still – hanging crippled and useless by his side. Skalla raised his sword steadily, waiting for the right moment. The man’s hand, formed into a claw, swayed and snatched at Skalla, his jaws opening and closing like those of an idiot child, dribbling bloody drool down his chest. Skalla began to swing – but something caught his foot, pulling him off balance. He stumbled and fell heavily onto the damp earth.

  Looking at his feet, he saw that the seventh prisoner – his spinal cord severed, his legs useless – had dragged himself along the forest floor, and now, teeth bared, Skalla’s ankle gripped in both hands, was gnawing at his leather boot, his blue-tinged jaws opening and closing mechanically like a landed fish gasping for air. Skalla recoiled in disgust, kicking at the ghoul’s slavering, gap-toothed mouth – but the tenacious grip held, and over him now loomed the fat man, moaning and clawing at his face. Too close for an effective blow, Skalla abandoned his sword and scrabbled for his knife – but, before he had time to draw it, another sword blade was driven hard into the fat man’s mouth, sending him choking and tottering backwards, his teeth grinding horribly against its metal edge. Skalla rec
ognised the hilt: Gamli’s sword. Skalla swiftly regained his feet, took up his own weapon once more and brought it down with a crashing blow, cleaving the skull of the crawling man in two. He gave a nod of acknowledgement to Gamli, and scraped the man’s brains off his black boot with the point of his blade.

  It was over. And his men, thankfully, had escaped unscathed.

  “So it’s finally happened,” said Gamli, surveying the carnage that surrounded them – the men they had hacked down for the second time that day. “Our worst fear has come to life.” The others exchanged anxious glances.

  Skalla ignored him, wiping clean and sheathing his sword as he hunted around for the head of the first corpse-walker. He would take that back to his masters.

  “I’m sorry,” said Gamli, bowing his head. Skalla turned to face him. “I will not question you again.”

  “No,” said Skalla. “You will not.” And without blinking he stabbed Gamli in the side of the throat with his knife, severing both carotid arteries, then pulled the blade forward through his windpipe. Gamli collapsed in an eruption of blood, his last cry turned to a choked gurgle of air bubbling and frothing from his neck.

  As he pumped crimson onto the forest floor, a contorted expression of disbelief frozen upon his face, Skalla looked upon him for the last time. “I did not kill you before only because I needed your sword,” he said matter-of-factly, and stepped over the body. The other men drew back as he approached. He scanned their faces one at a time, then sheathed his knife.

  “Burn them,” said Skalla, the still-living Gamli convulsing behind him. “All of them.”