There is a particular and odious smell which permeates the underworld.

Do not mistake me, I pray. I refer not the traditional underworld in the Greek sense, nor indeed to the somewhat warmer Christian iteration. I speak instead of the world beneath the greatest city in the world. London. Oh, there are smells above without number: fumes from coal, the sharp tang of steam driven engines, the reek of the Thames, those who do not wash as regularly as one might desire. But below street level, in the endless sewers, where all the discards and effluvia of the masses of people and animals above collect in fierce and noxious profusion, and simmer, and stew, and blend, and decay…

And, of course, the recently dead have their own distinct subset of smells. The recent dead such as the one who now stalked towards me, his bare feet sloshing through the sludge, white bone showing through grey and tattered flesh.

This particular reanimate appeared to have been, in life, a blacksmith. Or perhaps a dock worker. Even in his slowly rotting condition, he still had huge arms, broad shoulders, a massive chest, and when he reached me, he would no doubt tower over me, though I am not a short man.

Just my luck. These walking dead have only been appearing, and that rarely, for a few months. What are the odds that I would run into a blacksmith? Why should I not have the luck to meet freshly dead who were, in their living states, thin, stooped clerks, or scrawny, ill-fed beggars, or at the very least, rejects from the workhouse?

There was no help for it, naturally. I reached over my shoulder and pulled out my sword from its sheath strapped across my back. I have tried carrying one in the usual fashion, on a belt about the waist, but really, it ruined the hang of my jacket. Simply could not be borne.

"Argh!" announced my foe.

Or perhaps it was "Grargh!"

It was a trifle difficult to make out his exact phrasing, as he had certainly been dead for some time and his tongue appeared to be missing. His color was that disturbing mottled grey-white, which is so dreadfully distasteful. One of his eyes was hanging out of its socket, lying on his cheek like a desiccated grape and bouncing as he shambled forward in the slow but inexorable fashion of his kind. His scalp hung in strips, bone showing through beneath matted hair, and several fingers were missing.

The remaining fingers, however, spread out in claws at the ends of his long, long arms, looked quite capable of ripping my throat out and having me for tea.

And not in the pleasant sense of cups of Darjeeling, little pink cakes and cucumber sandwiches.

I took a two-handed grip on my sword and held it out before me. Really, I believe I looked rather dashing. It was a shame Rose wasn't there to admire me. Still, I would give her a blow-by-blow description of my bravery later.

That was, of course, if I survived, naturally. There is always a great deal of danger in our particular line of work. Not usually quite this much danger, piled up and shambling, I am forced to admit, but we have certainly had our moments.

I set my back against the dripping, seeping, oozing brick wall behind me—you do recall, do you not, that I was in the sewers?—and prepared for battle.

The reanimate stumbled forward, one step, two, three. He had appeared from the mouth of a tunnel directly across from the one I had exited some little time earlier. We inhabited, it appeared, some sort of junction deep within the elaborate drainage system of London. Opposite me, other mouths of other tunnels lined the walls. Brick vaulted above us, creating a huge nave which gave the appearance of a sort of utilitarian cathedral. High above, iron grates speckled the ceiling, and watery light trickled down here and there to sparkle in rainbows when it hit the puddles below. Not nearly enough light to see well by, of course, but my trusty bull's-eye lantern sat at my feet. The room was every bit of seventy feet across or more, and my foe was hardly moving at a brisk pace.

I sighed, kept my sword in my right hand and pulled my pocket watch out with the other. The fobs on the chain gave a cheerful tinkle as I snapped the cover open and angled it to a beam of my lantern.

Half past eleven. I was going to be late for luncheon if the gentleman didn't hurry.

I tucked my watch away and resumed my two-handed grip.

Have you ever noticed how, when things are looking bad, they can so suddenly grow far, far worse? It seems to happen to me quite often, I have found. Perhaps it is due to a misspent youth, or to the fact that I make my living as a conjurer? Tricking the public into believing the impossible—and paying for the privilege, mind you—five nights a week, with a matinee on Saturdays. The Amazing Blackthorne, at the Egyptian Hall, 111 Piccadilly. It is not my only occupation, as you may suspect from my present predicament, but it does pay the bills. Some of them, at any rate.

But allow me to return to my shambling blacksmith and the sudden transition from bad to worse. Behind him, from the stygian mouth of the same tunnel, came another reanimate.

And another.