The Jon Lymonday Teaser: Free sample of A Big Bluff and Some Green Stuff

Tuck in to a free helping of Jon Lymon's Jake Rodwell zombie apocalypse series A Big Bluff and Some Green Stuff:

Not for the first time in its career, Blaine’s torch found the vacant circles of a skull’s eye sockets. Flecks of grey which once formed skin were dotted around the pronounced cheekbones and bordered a set of decayed teeth that Blaine estimated were rotting long before the body became a corpse. Blaine tipped back the flamboyant wide-brimmed Tricorn hat that covered the skull, strands of long grey hair obstinately clinging to the bone. He ran his hands along the hat’s fine beaver pelt, coating his fingers in a grey dust.

“Is it just pots and pans?” Jack called down.

Blaine frowned as he stepped back from the corpse, a smell sharp on his nostrils. The body was secured to the wall by means of a iron neck brace. Probably throttled the poor guy to death. Why hadn’t all the skin rotted away? He trained his light beam on the body, sections of ribcage protruding from beneath a dusty felt black waistcoat.

“Blaine? Answer me.” Jack was getting agitated.

This guy was someone big back in the day, Blaine thought.

“Blaine?”

“Stay up there,” Blaine called over his shoulder.

A sudden crash caused Blaine to swipe his torch beam left. Jack had unceremoniously landed on the floor beneath the hole he’d created and was hurriedly untying rope from his waist.

“How are we going to get back up?” Blaine asked.

Jack tugged at the rope causing a metallic scrape along the floor above as the barrel shifted. “Your bad back will have to take the strain,” he said. “Now what have we got here?”

Jack flicked on his own torch and pushed past Blaine.

He stopped when he saw the corpse propped up against the wall.

“What the…”

“Never seen a dead one before?”

Jack shook his head. “Not in my own home.”

“A high ranking naval officer, I’d say.” Blaine leaned close and showed Jack the corpse’s necklace. Jack’s eyes widened. The name Rothman was engraved into it.

“There’s a portrait of this fella in the bar upstairs.”

“They captured his good side, I hope.” Blaine reached between the corpse’s bony legs, barely concealed by a pair of flared slacks, dull grey now when once they had been shiny silver.

“What you doing with his crown jewels?” Jack asked.

Blaine held up his hand, clenched into a fist. As he slowly unfurled his fingers, a rusting grey chain snaked out.  Jack grabbed it and shone his light on it. Blew off dust. Looked at Blaine. “Pots and pans?”

Blaine ignored him and turned to explore more of the crypt as Jack’s eyes narrowed.

“There’s something in his right,” said Jack.

“Don’t touch it.”

Blaine turned back to see Jack teasing a roll of parchment out of the dead man’s grip. Lit by Blaine’s torchlight, he unfurled the scroll.

“Let me read it,” Blaine asked, holding out his hand.

Jack refused and read the message to himself, studied the illustration, then handed the American the paper. “Is this the real reason you wanted to get down here?”

Blaine read. “Wow.”

“Some kind of confession?” Jack asked.

“More like an apology. Something’s wrong with it all, though.” said Blaine, referring to the letter.

“What?”

Blaine shook his head. Jack eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not visiting Bluff Cove for pleasure, are you?”

“I get a lot of leads in my line of work, Mr Horton. Most end up nowhere. Some lead to a few cracked pots and pans. Then there’s the exceptions. This is an exception.” He stopped and shone his torch on Rothman. “And all these years you’ve been keeping a tight grip on a big secret right beneath old Jack’s feet, huh?” He turned back to Jack. “Looks like he had something he wanted to tell someone. But a lot of things just ain’t adding up.”

“Like what?”

“Like who wanted to torture him?”

Jack looked at the neck brace and couldn’t think of a decent answer.

“And another thing,” said Blaine, his torch beam exploring the rest of the cellar, its damp brick walls and uneven flooring. “Why has he still got some skin and his eyes?”

Jack looked around, uneasily. “He is dead, right?”

Blaine rapped Rothman’s hollow skull and pointed to the rusting neck brace. A few flecks of skin dropped from his face. “As a dodo. But usually the eyes go. I mean, I’ve seen this before, in extreme conditions. The elements preserve the features.”

“The air’s salty around here.”

Blaine smiled weakly. “Maybe that’s it.” He checked the neck brace. It was still firmly attached to the wall by means of a short chain. “OK, I need to get to work on this. Make calls. Get a few of my guys down here. Are you ready for that? Is Bluff Cove ready?”

“This is my village. The people here will do whatever I tell them.”

“Are you ready to put your life on the line?” Blaine held up Rothman’s letter.

“Now hold on a minute,” said Jack, snatching back the parchment. “This is Cornwall, not the OK Corral. The only things people die from around here is boredom and alcohol-related illness.”

“I’m just kidding you, pal. But if that map’s on the money, and there’s as much as that letter says there is, we’re going to have a fight on our hands keeping this to ourselves. We’re going to have to plan quickly. You know the location the letter’s referring to?”

Jack nodded. “Access will be a problem. The owner is reclusive.”

“Not a good start.”

“Me and the guy don’t get along.”

“Worse still. So he’s unlikely to play ball, OK. We’ll have to think of a gameplan.” Blaine sounded the most sinister Jack had heard him. Then his tone lightened. “I think we should discuss our next steps upstairs in your office. Over a drink.”

Blaine put his hand out for the parchment.

Jack tucked it into his own inside jacket pocket and walked back over to the rope. “All in good time, Mr Blaine.”

“We’re going to need each other’s help on this,” Blaine called after him. “So let’s start working together, huh?”

The men eyed each other in the torchlight, then Blaine reached out and Jack moved toward him and firmly gripped and rigorously shook his hand.

It took ten minutes for the duo to haul themselves up and out through the hole. When their torchlights had faded, a feint creak echoed across the crypt as Rothman’s half skin, half bone skull turned and his eyes rolled for the first time in three hundred and twenty-nine years.