“Buckingham Palace has been taken by zombies!”

Professor Laslow speared the remains of a Beefeater on the end of his umbrella and swung the other end hard, arms extended, sending the grisly husk tumbling over the rail and onto the marble floor fifty feet below. As more shambled up the staircase he retreated backwards down the hallway, drawing a revolver from his surcoat pocket. This is Sir Humphrey’s revolver, he thought, emptying the chamber uselessly at the approaching horde, God, I only pray he managed to escape in time!

“We cannot hold them off, it is useless!” His companion cried in frustration.

“Nonsense,” Laslow said, and explained his plan.

They retreated into a drawing room and barred the door with a brass candle-holder. It wouldn’t save them, but it might buy a few crucial seconds.

“Your plan may work, Laslow, I’ll give you that. But it all depends on Sir Humphrey reaching the Prime Minister in time. I don’t trust that blundering fool.”

“I could say the same about you, Finnegan Helm.”

His companion laughed in his sneering, icy way. He picked up a heavy chair as though it were a bundle of sticks and threw it in front of the door. Laslow could see that he still bore a scar on the side of his throat. Meanwhile, walking corpses battered themselves mindlessly against the splintering wood.

“Indeed,” Helm chuckled, “who would have thought that the celebrated Professor Barclay Laslow and the notorious smuggler Finnegan Helm would be found working together after all these years of rivalry?”

Laslow was silent, scanning the room for an escape route. Somehow, he knew Finnegan Helm was at the bottom of all of this, he just didn’t know how. Through the window, he could see London burning and the night sky choked with ash.