A Plague of Zombies: An Outlander Novella by Diana Gabaldon Page A

nature. Definitely a sound of human origin, though. The men stood quiet, waiting. A moment or two, and the sound came again.
    ‘That’s a different one,’ Sansom said, sounding alarmed. ‘It came from over there’—pointing up the slope—‘didn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, it did,’ Grey said absently. ‘Hush!’
    The first horn sounded again, a plaintive bleat almost lost in the noises of the birds settling for the night, and then fell silent.
    Grey’s skin tingled, his senses alert. They were not alone in the jungle. Someone—some
ones
—were out there in the oncoming night, signalling to each other. Quietly, he gave orders for the building of a hasty fortification, and the camp fell at once into the work of organising defence. The men with him were mostly veterans and, while wary, not at all panicked. Within a very short time, a redoubt of stone and brush had been thrown up, sentries were posted in pairs around camp, and every man’s weapon was loaded and primed, ready for an attack.
    Nothing came, though, and while the men lay on their arms all night, there was no further sign of human presence. Such presence was there, though; Grey could feel it. Them. Watching.
    He ate his supper and sat with his back against an outcrop of rock, dagger in his belt and loaded musket to hand. Waiting.
    But nothing happened, and the sun rose. They broke camp in an orderly fashion, and if horns sounded in the jungle, the sound was lost in the shriek and chatter of the birds.
    * * *
    He had never been in the presence of anyone who repelled him so acutely. He wondered why that was; there was nothing overtly ill favoured or ugly about her. If anything, she was a handsome Scotchwoman of middle age, fair-haired and buxom. And yet the widow Abernathy chilled him, despite the warmth of the air on the terrace where she had chosen to receive him at Rose Hall.
    She was not dressed in mourning, he saw, nor did she make any obvious acknowledgement of the recent death of her husband. She wore white muslin, embroidered in blue about the hems and cuffs.
    ‘I understand that I must congratulate you upon your survival, madam,’ he said, taking the seat she gestured him to. It was a somewhat callous thing to say, but she looked hard as nails; he didn’t think it would upset her, and he was right.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, leaning back in her own wicker chair and looking him frankly up and down in a way that he found unsettling. ‘It was bloody cold in that spring, I’ll tell ye that for nothing. Like to died myself, frozen right through.’
    He inclined his head courteously.
    ‘I trust you suffered no lingering ill effects from the experience? Beyond, of course, the lamentable death of your husband,’ he hurried to add.
    She laughed coarsely.
    ‘Glad to get shot o’ the wicked sod.’
    At a loss how to reply to this, Grey coughed and changed the subject.
    ‘I am told, madam, that you have an interest in some of the rituals practised by slaves.’ Her somewhat bleared green glance sharpened at that.
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘Miss Nancy Twelvetrees.’ There was no reason to keep the identity of his informant secret, after all.
    ‘Oh, wee Nancy, was it?’ She seemed amused by that, and shot him a sideways look. ‘I expect she liked
you
, no?’
    He couldn’t see what Miss Twelvetrees’s opinion of him might have to do with the matter, and politely said so.
    Mrs Abernathy merely smirked, waving a hand. ‘Aye, well. What is it ye want to know, then?’
    ‘I want to know how zombies are made.’
    Shock wiped the smirk off her face, and she blinked at him stupidly for a moment before picking up her glass and draining it.
    ‘Zombies,’ she said, and looked at him with a certain wary interest. ‘Why?’
    He told her. From careless amusement, her attitude changed, interest piqued. She made him repeat the story of his encounter with the thing in his room, asking pointed questions regarding its smell particularly.
    ‘Decayed flesh,’ she