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Floaters 8
8Soon as the prowof the barge grazed the bulkhead, Patsy and Dewey leapt out and ran in swinging their poles like Little John crossing staves with Robin Hood. Dewey landed a terrific blow to one floater’s head, literally caving in the creature’s skull with a sickening crunch and hurling the thing into the water. Patsy wasn’t so lucky. He, too, swung, but his target, seemingly unhampered by its sopping jacket and trousers, was quick and caught the pole inches from its head, wrenched it out of Patsy’s hands and flung it over his shoulder. The thing was on Patsy in an instant. Taller than the Dove Rower, it bent over him as it bore him to his knees. Brown teeth snapped at him as he fended it off. The river reek of it burned his nose. Then it was lifted off him as Dewey’s staff caught it in the throat and flung it backwards. For a moment he thought he was going into the drink as his assailant clung to him, taking him with it, but a second blow from Dewey’s pole knocked it to the st
Floaters 9
9Bill Drummond and the little Bow Commoner Alby Budge came up the walk to the swing bridge where Will and Police Constable Foley were anxiously watching for Fish and Bogart’s arrival and arguing what to do if the tug didn’t make it or arrived after high water or if the living dead would even enter the lock. Both remembered how the severed hand, in trying to escape, adapted to its environment. Did the floaters have some sort of primitive survival instinct that would keep them from entering the basin? Foley suggested they might march their troops back toward town and help the authorities destroy them. But only halfheartedly. They might be of some small service, but the floaters would still infest the waterways. And there was still the chance Quincy Bird’s crew and Kate and the girls would succeed in flushing the canal’s floaters down to the basin. Thinking of Kate brought a lump to his throat. She could handle herself, and she had some tough company with her, but still ..
Floaters 10
10The tug was approaching, lights ablaze, barge in tow. Habitually straight-faced, Will couldn’t help cracking a grin. He exchanged glances with Foley, Drummond, and Budge. Their smiles matched his own. The tide was at its peak. Both the lower and upper gates to the barge lock were open. The water had risen nearly a foot in the basin as the river flowed in. The river was dark, the fog building, but as the tug drew closer, Will saw through the spyglass the floaters in the water. A chill ran through him. The water around the tug and barge swarmed with the living dead. Though he saw no sign of stroking arms, of kicking feet, they kept pace, surrounding the vessels like a flotilla of monstrous fish.So many!He turned the glass to the tug. The bow was lined with London’s youth. Among them, big Dirk Bogart stood out. He’d lost his bowler and his unruly mane corkscrewed in all directions, reminding Will of that Greek monster woman, Medusa, with snakes for hair. A couple lads were wavin
Floaters 11
11It was amazing justhow much energy fear could give you. It could shut you down so you gave up and curled up in a ball and let the terror take you. Or you could seize it, slap reins on it and ride it into the maelstrom. Kate’s skin tingled as if her nerves had risen to the surface and her senses were hyperacute. Objects—fence-boards, roofs, chimneys etched against the sky, the ripple of reflected light upon dark water—all seemed sharply defined as if outlined by a pale yet luminous light. She was near jogging, but nowhere near tired. They had lost one in the fray. Bev Bennet, of Queen Jane’s brood. And Nell Quigley had succumbed. They’d left her in a warehouse doorway, telling Annie Dawes, her Dove Row mate, they’d be back for her, though Kate had a creeping suspicion she wouldn’t be there when they returned.She heard the flood before she saw it. A tumultuous rumble like logs rolling down a flight of stairs or a lashing wind driving torrential rain. Her gaze swept up the c
Floaters 12
12The destructor lay betweena chemical plant and a barge works. The cluster of ornate brick buildings, stabling, and cart yard covered an acre. A one-hundred-eighty-foot chimney towered over the complex. Like the sawmill, the destructor was silent tonight, its furnaces cold, the great crushing cylinders that pulverized the parish waste before incinerating it over the flames still. Patsy led them up an inclined roadway to the tipping platform in the main building’s second floor where, during normal operation, cart after cart of house, trade, and street refuse is tipped into the feeders. In the crusher, refuse is ground between massive rotating cylinders until it is of a uniform consistency, after which it is burned over a 2,000-degree fire. Nothing goes to waste. The clinkers are crushed to suitable size for roadway and footpath foundation or ground even finer in the mortar mill for mortar and cement. The burning process produces steam which, in turn, powers generators to supp
Floaters 13
13The rain lasted threewhole days and nights. Bazalgette’s magnificent sewage system, unable to contain its fetid cargo, released tons of feces, dead cats and dogs, river rats and floaters into the Thames. Fourteen people drowned and hundreds in the low-lying districts of South London saw the mud reach the six-foot mark in their parlors. Beds were piled on tables, clothes and mattresses rendered filthy and unusable. In one home a chair was driven through a ceiling and hung suspended after the water receded. Sunday joints washed out of the ovens and the brick wall of a local convent was swept away. Outhouses, sheds and chicken coops sailed down the streets. The hospitals filled with patients suffering from bronchitis. And inhabitants were days at removing the oozy banks that shored against their homes. By a lucky coincidence, the moon was at quarter and the outgoing tide greater than the incoming and the flood currents so fierce most of the floaters that survived burning were
Floaters 1
1The swells were drunk.There were three of them. Young toffs, their fine suits looking worse for wear after a night of East End carousing. Still joking and pulling at a shared bottle as the wherry made its way upriver. Midnight was long past and dawn too far off for Jenkins’ taste. Father Thames was in a foul mood. Night was thickest on the Surrey side, the glassworks and wharves invisible behind the greasy banks of fog. On the City side, the electric lights of the Temple Pier and Victoria Embankment glowed through the murk like will-o’-the-wisps. Despite the dark and the fog, old Clarence Jenkins, who had been dipping his oars in these muddy waters since before the Great Stink, knew every dock and water stair on both sides of the river and could find his way blindfolded. He loved the dear old cantankerous river in all its lights and liked to think of it as his, but lately the relationship had soured. He wanted to attribute his failing affection for the river to age. He was g
Floaters 2
2The knives and beltswere out. Will Tagget brandished a big chopper as he circled Bill Drummond. It was all prearranged. Will and his Lambeth Walk Lads had agreed to meet up with the Drury Lane Gang on the Lambeth side of Westminster Bridge where, as per custom, insults that never failed to provoke were exchanged and the gangs would give each other what for. The row wasn’t so much about territory—a bridge and a river divided them after all—as about bragging rights.Bill Drummond of the Drury Lane Monkeys kept his only slightly smaller blade steady. Body crouched, elbow bent, his beady eyes watched for an opening. Drummond was a good bladesman, Will gave him that. But Will’s grim grin proclaimed he was better.Across the water, the half-hour boomed from Westminster. The clock tower and House of Commons were lost in fog. All that marked the far shore were the lamps of the Victoria Embankment. Even here, on the Albert Embankment behind St. Thomas, the fog was so thick you coul
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