About Floaters:
“A tale of London’s scum that is visceral, shocking, and fast, Boatman’s Floaters is historical horror at its best.”—Multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author Lee Murray
Fire and plague. Certainly no strangers to London Town. But when legions of living dead rise from the Thames’ fetid waters to feast upon the living, the city teeters on the brink of antihalation. And while floaters seek blood, another army takes advantage of the chaos. Boiling out of their rookeries of crime, marauders swarm through London’s affluent neighborhoods looting and burning.
Hooligans vs the Living Dead: A Victorian Zombie Adventure!
With the beleaguered police and the Queen’s army battling twin plagues—human and inhuman—London’s criminal youth gangs join forces to save their city. Will Tagget, leader of the Lambeth Lads, together with his enemies Bill Drummond of the Drury Lane Gang, bull-necked George Fish of the Elephant and Castle Gang, shillelagh-wielding Dirk Bogart of the New Cut Gang, Quincy Bird of City Road, along with their female counterparts—Lambeth Kate, Queen Jane, New Cut Beth, Razor Lil and Dirty Deidre—set out on an adventure the telling of which might earn a man a lifetime of free drinks. If he lives to tell it.
Will these violent gangs put aside their rivalries long enough to get the job done?
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
Excerpt:
The quay was more crowded than Lambeth Walk on a Saturday night and more boisterous. But not with pedestrians. No leather-lunged proprietor shouting “Bravo!” when a crack shot rings the bell and bears off a coconut. No hand cart pushers hawking eel pies or books or sheet music or toffee, butchers’ meat, shoes, coats, buttons, or cure for the toothache. No good-humored, pleased-with-himself drunk out for a stroll and on the lookout for anything not nailed down. No mothers pushing strollers or corner organ grinder with his coterie of dancing children. No cocky young men with their bowlers aslant giving the girls a wink. No shouts of “Hot eels! Nice hot eels!” No welcome cry from the pea soup seller of ”Warm your hands and fill your bellies for a halfpenny.” No smells of fried fish or roasted chestnuts.
No, all was lurching, clutching horror. All rising and falling weapons and fountaining corruption. Infernal visions that reeked of the ignoble and ignominious terminus of life.
Will moved through a dreamlike reality that defied any notion of sanity, a waking nightmare in which creatures from the darkest imagination stretched taloned hands and tore life from the living.
Glancing up in a moment’s reprieve, Will saw the octagonal accumulator tower rearing above the heads of the teeming combatants and knew the oil tanks were close. The wind was rising, bringing with it the smell of London burning. Glowering clouds mounted in the west, their underbellies glowing dark red from reflected firelight. The city stood as much in danger of ravaging by fire as by the plague of the undead. Would the flames consume the city as they had in the Great Fire over two-hundred years ago when a gale-force wind carried sparks and burning embers block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood, so by the time the wind died and the fire exhausted itself, half the city was cinders?
Ahead of him, Frank Peck, covered in gore, cut a path through the dead clambering out of the blood-and-oil-fouled water. Did the big guy ever tire? Will no longer felt his arms and breathing had become a labored in-out through clenched teeth and every step a hard-won victory. He envied his friend’s anger. He’d never managed to stay mad at anyone for long. Get even, move on. Watch your back but otherwise forget about it. Life was too short and dwelling on yesterday’s injustices spoiled today’s opportunities.
He heard a cry—one among many. It took him a moment to realize Alby Budge was missing. He looked back and saw the Bow Commoner thrashing on the quay under the weight of three floaters. He tried to reach him, but the thrashing stopped and the press of combatants bore him along.
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About Garrett Boatman:
GARRETT BOATMAN is the author of Floaters, an 1890s novella from Crystal Lake Publishing, Stage Fright, a Paperback from Hell from Valancourt Books, and Night’s Plutonian Shore coming soon from J. Ellington Ashton Press.
Garrett’s obsession with horror began with his grandmother’s Bloody Bones bedtime stories. Later, a steady diet of Chiller Theatre and horror novels left him with a burning desire to contribute to the madness. Garrett lives with his wife Roberta in the hills of Western New Jersey and enjoys hiking and biking when he’s not writing.
Active member HWA and SFWA.
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