I know, I know...

...it's very early to start posting up stuff from a new book, but I'm excited by this. This isn't the end of the first chapter, but I want ot put it up and then go on to finish the chapter off. It gives a good idea of what is to come, introduces the concept nicely along with the protagonist.
There's going to be a lot of sex in this one. There might also be zombies. I knew about the sex, 'cos that was the inspiration (there is a story to that and I will tell it in another post), but it wasn't until today that I realized it couldn't be all beer and skittles. Something bad has got to happen to my character. That's not just 'cos the need for an arc to the story, it is a requirement of this story. That's why it will have to be zombies too - the hero would see it that way because that's a meme he would have grown up with and a way to visualize his problems.
I hope that doesn't make much sense yet, I don't want people to go 'oh, yeah, that's where they fit in', when they arrive.
Anyway, this is it:

Jack

"Wentbridge, Wentbridge. All passengers for Wentbridge.  Excuse me; young  sir? You're getting off here, aren't you?"

Jack heard the voice and felt himself not so much awake as rise from the bottom of a black lake toward it. Exhaustion crushed him like a weight of water.  The surface an impossible distance above his head and him wanting nothing more than to sink back into the darkness, the voice came again, injecting unwanted buoyancy.

"Are you alright, sir? You're looking very peaky. You are getting off here, aren't you?"

A sudden banging beside his head. Glass. Knuckles on glass. Someone rapping their knuckles against the glass of a window. He'd been asleep with his head resting against the window and now someone was knocking on the glass. He started and his eyes twitched, lids almost parting.

"Jacob! Jacob! That one's mine darling. Can you be getting him up for me? I've to drive him to the house."

The voice was Irish, a woman's. Muffled by the glass, but still with a bubbling huskiness almost enough to make him open his eyes to see who owned it.

"Trying Mrs. Maguire, but I've seen slaughtered sheep faster to move than this one. He alright, is he?"

"Ah, the poor love's been ill with the scarlet fever, so he has. Can you give him a hand up, darling?"

"For you Mrs. Maguire, the very shirt off me back."

"A thousand thanks Jacob, but it's the boy I'm after and not your laundry. That one yer mammy can do for ye."

Someone chuckled and hands slipped under Jack's armpits from behind. His arm was raised and wrapped around skinny shoulders.

"Upsdaisy. Up you come now sir, can't be keeping Mrs. Maguire waiting now, can we?"

Half lifted; he pushed legs like dead meat against the floor to help raise himself. His eyes fluttered open and colours danced for a moment before shapes coalesced. An old, old lady, clothed in something last fashionable when Victoria was single, sat on the seat facing.  She looked at him with concern.

"Can someone get this gentleman a glass of water? He looks faint. I fear the heat has been too much for him."

Cut-glass accent. Home counties. Was he there? Jacob sounded west country.  Jack, lost in fog, knew only he was on a train and had to get off. He reached out a free hand and felt the top of the seat. Wood, solid, good to lean his weight on. Steadied between the seat and Jacob, he tried to pull his mind to the jobs at hand; standing first, walking next, getting off the train. Luggage? Did he have luggage? He couldn't cope with luggage.

"My bags?" His voice croaked with the rasp of a hinge never oiled and not used for far too long. His mouth was dry and he wanted water badly. "Where are my bags, please?"

"Oh, don't you go worrying yourself over them. They're in the guard's van and Matthew will get them off for you. Now can you just come this way…"

Jacob was a skinny youth and Jack's weight caused him to struggle. Jack, ashamed of his weakness, marshalled his will and directed legs to walk. They staggered instead, but, grasping for the support of the seat backs, he and Jacob lurched down the carriage to the door and the brightness of the sun beyond.  He half fell into the arms of Mrs. Maguire. Like falling into a warm bed, the flesh smelled of lemons and sweet, summer sweat. Fresh laundered linen brushed his face and calmed his nerves.

Jacob climbed down from the carriage and helped Mrs. Maguire steer Jack to a small, horse-drawn buggy. Has a name, thought Jack, and I know it, but it was lost in the fog. He tried to pull himself up to the buggy's passenger seat, but had to be wrestled aboard like a sack of onions. He slumped forward, elbows on knees, head in hands, fighting the fog and a wave of nausea. How was he so sick? What had happened?

Like an actor responding to a cue, a voice came out of the back of his mind.

"You're very lucky to be alive and have no complications, young man. Scarlet fever is easier to treat nowadays with Dr. Moser's horse serum, but still drags most sufferers to an early grave. You'll need weeks to recover and somewhere better than this wen, but you'll heal in good time, have no fear."

Handlebar moustache; a beard to rival Darwin's; a face from another century. The stethoscope around his neck confirmed the bedside manner. A doctor. His name? Lost in the same fog. Finders? Something like. The face was familiar; known from early childhood perhaps, gruff voice, Lowlands Scot, an aura of competence – someone to trust.

"His father's message came just this morning, doctor. His friend will put Master Jack up for the summer at his place in Devon while he recovers. You'll stay at the castle and can roam the grounds until you are well.  It'll be an awful adventure for you. They say Wentbridge is a beautiful place. Quiet, but very lovely."

The woman, another familiar face, smiled at Jack. Accent's from the Hebrides, he thought, face from an angel's grandmother. Grey hair, tightly bunned, grey eyes, lightly smiling, covering, barely, a worry. Not a woman to fret, said instinct, but holding a concern over him. He'd been, and surely still was, worse than they wanted him to know.

"Marvellous Janet, marvellous. Arrangements have been made; I take, for his travel?"

"Indeed Doctor Cameron. He'll go by the morning train and be met at the station."

"Excellent, excellent. So we'll see you when you get back then Jack."

The curtain of memory closed. There was nothing else in the fog until he'd woken on the train. Before? Injections, hospital beds, pain and confusion. Shards of a story he'd rather forget.

"That's right Mrs. Maguire. Eighteen tomorrow."

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he blurted out.

"An' I'm joining the regiment on the weekend.  They wouldn't take me before. Knew how old I was, see, and told me the railways needed men too. Can't stop me now, though."

Jack caught, though Jacob missed, the flash of pain that crossed Maguire's face. She wiped it off almost before it registered, replacing it with a smile Jack thought looked like the sun rising over a nudist colony.  Odd image to come out of the fog, said the voice in his head. What does it even mean? Must be something he'd heard.

"And isn't my Fergus there as well? You must be looking out for him. Both in the same regiment, he'll look after you, sure an' he will. Tell him, when you see him, the odd letter will never be taken as an insult now, won't ye?"

"Well, I will if I do, but they're saying it won't last much longer now. Probably all.."

"Over at Christmas, I know. God willing it will."

Jacob's flushed face darkened a moment and Jack saw the question he was struggling to form. So did Maguire.

"Ah, but you'll look the very devil of a handsome young buck in your uniform, an' you will so. Sure an' the girls will all be after ye. Well, never let it be said Bridie Maguire was at the back of that line. Come here an' give me a kiss now, for yer birthday an' going away an' all."

Jacob blushed red to the tips of his ears. He looked around; to note who was watching, Jack wondered, or for a place to run? A skinny, pimply, pasty-faced youth, the weight of rifle and pack would probably topple him. If this wasn't his first kiss, it was surely the best second place Jack had ever seen.

Maguire, even through the fog, struck as a woman words like Junoesque, voluptuous and, well, others denoting ' well-built'  with a strong emphasis on the 'well',  had been coined to describe. She knew about fun, he thought, and how to have it.

She grabbed Jacob by the shoulders and pulled him to her. He stood like a beast about to be slaughtered, not sure where to put hands and face. Maguire looked him coolly in the eye.

"Now ye'll need to be taking more of a grip on things than that, my lad. Try like this."

She took his hands and slapped them to her generous rump. The boy's eyes widened further than Jack thought humanly possible, but before he'd the chance to say or do anything, Maguire had his face between her hands and had plastered his lips to hers.

It was a kiss to pour lust into the loins of a bronze statue. If eyes on train or platform missed it, Jacob surely burned every one of the heartbeats it lasted into his memory forever. Jack remembered reading of a Confederate soldier who survived a tremendous battlefield blast to find himself utterly unharmed, though stripped of every scrap of clothing. Jacob looked a successful audition for a theatre performance of the part.

Maguire released him with a hesitation, a near reluctance Jack suspected was no part of an act. Husband at the war, came the voice from the back of his mind, hasn't done that in a while, I'll be bound.

"Woah, missus! I'll have a one o' them too an' you've got any to spare."

"Away wit ye," Maguire shouted to the driver, her grin one the devil'd buy at auction for his Sunday best. "The lad's off to the wars and needs something to keep him warm of a night-time."

"Well, I'm off to Coventry tonight and feel the same need. If you've done with him, can I have him back? I've a train to run and we're late already."

Jacob regained the train with a curiously crouched shuffle; Maguire the constant north to his compass's needle. She stayed on the platform to wave him off, give him a wink 'lascivious' stretched itself tight to describe and mouth something Jack thought was: 'Come back for more'.

A ticker tape of thought crossed and recrossed the youth's face, repeating and repeating the only important idea in his mind. Jack read it as the train pulled out. I did that, me. It was me did that, I did. They'd likely need iced water to get his mind to anything else for the rest of the day.

Maguire stayed on the platform, waving, till the train was down the line, her radiant smile fading as dark clouds moved across her mind. She walked to the buggy, hitched skirts and swung herself up with an athletic grace. She took the reins, shook the brown horse into movement and sank back into herself.

"That was kind."

She looked at him.

"I'm sorry young master, what was that?"

"He was going to ask about the fighting, wasn't he? You took his mind off it. That was kind."