I trust you aren’t getting into too much mischief, Jane. You were always such an impetuous child, and I genuinely hope you aren’t letting your temper get the better of you.
The attack leaves me in a black mood for the rest of the day. I talk to no one, only opening my mouth to answer questions when asked. My job is to walk the top of the exterior wall.
I’d thought the walls around Baltimore had been a sight, but Summerland’s wall puts it to shame. It stands at least the height of three men and looks to be made of stacked mud bricks. There are bits of grass mixed in with the mud bricks to hold it together, and the wall is at least half as wide as it is tall. I ask one of the girls standing next to me, “How did they build such a thing?”
She glances at Bob and Bill before answering in a low voice. “You know the story of the Pharaoh and the Israelites?”
The holy book is not my favorite tome, but I know it well enough. I nod and she continues, “Let’s just say this wall was built like the pyramids: most of the builders didn’t live to tell about it, and ain’t no Moses come to liberate them.”
After that we are split into teams and assigned sections to patrol.
On the way out here, we had picked our way through an inner, double-strung bobbed wire fence and the interior fence, which boasts five lines of wire. It’s a crime that a place with such excellent defenses would have such terrible weaponry available to the patrols.
Behind me Bill’s smug satisfaction radiates off him in waves, and the spot on my back that met his boot aches. More than once I imagine sinking my rusty sickles into his skull.
But I don’t. Instead, I shove my anger down, burying it deep, letting it temper my soul. Auntie Aggie always said the hard times make us stronger. If things continue like this, I will be nigh on invincible by the time I take my leave of Summerland.
I am teamed up for patrol with the dark-skinned boy that winked at me earlier in the day. His name is Alfonse, and he seems to be a nice enough fellow, if maybe a little too chatty. After twenty minutes of him relating to me his life story, I finally tell him, “I ain’t interested in anything you have to say unless it’s how to get out of here.” He clams up after that, shooting me a few black looks when he thinks I ain’t looking.
The wall we walk gets more disgusting the more of it I see. On the far side, in the space between us and the rest of the world, are some dead. Actual shamblers, walking around, moaning for a bite to eat, all grouped up like they’re going to share a secret. There ain’t a lot of them, but there’s enough. The wall is too high for them to climb, but it’s got some footholds in it so a person could climb down if needed, and I’m about to do so and end them when Alfonse says, “We ain’t supposed to kill them, just make sure they don’t try to climb the wall.”
“What’s the point of that?” I asked, the sound of their wailing making me feel more than a bit stabby.
Alfonse shrugged. “The sheriff has this idea that killing one just attracts more of them. If you do it, you’ll get in trouble, and the sheriff is quick with the whip.” The sickly sweet stink of rotting corpses hangs heavy in the air, and every time the wind shifts, I gag.
Me and Alfonse are walking our stretch of wall for what must be the tenth time when I hear the most god-awful, bloodcurdling scream.
A little ways down the wall behind us, a girl has slipped into the no-man’s-land of the prairie. Another girl is climbing down the wall, to save the girl who fell, it appears.
And a knot of shamblers is already running toward the both of them, hell-bent on dinner.
I turn to run to their assistance, but Alfonse grabs my arm. “We ain’t supposed to leave our posts.”
“Alfonse, you any good at math?” He shakes his head, and I sigh. “Well, I am. Two people with glorified butter knives ain’t going to be able to take on that many shamblers, especially when a few of them look to be new turns.” It comes out in a lightning-fast bit of speech, and then I’m running full tilt along the wall.
I forget my blisters, my hunger, my thirst. Everything fades into the background as I count the shamblers, note their gait. You have to kill the freshies first. They’re the fastest, the smartest. The ones that have been running for a while are always slower, like a clockwork toy that just won’t wind. From my observations there looks to be three that are moving well, the rest of the group kind of straggling behind.
By the time I get to the girls I have a stitch in my side and my feet are screaming, but I push it all aside. I pick my way down the wall, jumping too early and dropping a sickle, nearly losing my balance when I hit the bottom. I grab my fallen weapon and pick my first target, a Negro girl wearing clothing that looks eerily like mine, and leap, sickle swinging to take the thing down.
Here’s the thing. If these were my sickles, my beloved, sharp, well-weighted combat sickles, they would’ve gone through the shambler’s neck like a hot knife through lard. But these are not my sickles. So the blade gets stuck halfway, the beast snapping its teeth at me and clawing at my arms as it tries to get free.
I place my foot behind the shambler’s and use my sickle to push it backward. Once it’s down I use a mule kick against the curved edge to force the blade through. The head goes rolling off down into the culvert and the body goes still.
But my kill has taken time. The other two patrol girls, whom I don’t know, are grappling with the remaining two freshies in close quarters, shoving them and swinging their scythes ineffectively. The rest of the pack is still fifty yards away and moving like elderly folks, hunched over and slow. If I can take down the other two, then we might have a fighting chance.
I switch my grip on my weapons as I run up behind the one closest to me. I cross my arms and use a blade on each side of the neck and pull the metal through. But as I’m trying to yank the sickles through the shambler’s neck I get a good look at its face, and my heart stutters to a stop.
The dead girl reaching for my throat is Maisie Carpenter.
Maisie was in her last year when I got to Miss Preston’s. The last time I saw her was the night of Professor Ghering’s lecture, when she stood along the wall, nodding in agreement as I protested using that poor man in that professor’s ill-conceived experiment. And now, here she is.
My penny goes cold, and the sensation is enough to snap me out of my poorly timed ruminations. I grunt and yank the blades the rest of the way through Maisie’s neck. It’s not as efficient as a swing, but with the rusty blades it’s the best I can do. Still, it takes entirely too much effort. In the time I’ve taken down two shamblers, I could normally have taken down five or six.
One of the other girls finally gets her scythe up and swings it at a shambler’s neck. The thing goes to the ground; it’s another girl dressed like an Attendant. I recognize this one as well. It’s the girl that ran off, leaving Mayor Carr’s wife to her fate.
Looks like I found the answer to what happened to the girls assigned to the fine ladies of Baltimore. I file the fact away for later, another piece of a puzzle I ain’t sure I understand or even want to parse.
I rest my hands on my knees and breathe deeply as the antique shamblers amble close enough to be a threat. I have to take care of them quickly, before any others show up to see what’s going on. After all, we still have a wall to climb. The other two girls stand a few feet behind me, their expressions dazed and more than a little shocked.
“Go on, get back up. I’ll take care of these.” I don’t have to tell them twice. They run toward the wall, trying to find the handholds that’ll allow them to climb to the top. That’s the problem with walls: they don’t just keep the enemy out.
The remaining shamblers are practically ancient, wearing uniforms from the war, and it takes very little effort to separate their heads from their bodies. They’re all extremely decayed, a few of them missing arms. One has a cavalry sword hanging from his belt, and after I put him down I unsheathe the sword and test its weight. It’s a real sword, not a decoration like the major used back at Rose Hill. I ain’t partial to swords—the time on the reverse is too long if you miscalculate your swing—but it’s better than a couple of rusty gardening blades.
I use the sword to put down the rest of the decrepit pack. The euphoria, that light-headed feeling I get after every battle, is stronger than ever, most likely because this is the first time in a very, very long time where I could have died. Another few seconds removing poor Maisie’s head, another couple of shamblers, and I could be lumbering and dragging along just like them.
After the last of the old dead has been dispatched, I wipe the sword off on the nearest body. I toss the sword onto the top of the wall and locate a couple of possible handholds before backing up a few steps to get a running start. I run and jump, my hand digging into the uneven spots in the wall. I haul myself up to the top, groaning from the effort, kicking and scrabbling in a downright ungainly manner. But I’ve managed to clear the wall, and that’s a feat in and of itself.
A crawling sensation tickles across my skin as I stand. That’s when I see Bill, below me on the inside of the wall, his rifle trained on me. Next to me, the girls have their hands up in the air. “Put ’em up!” Bill says.
I raise my arms over my head, sword at my feet. To the right of me the other two girls raise their arms a little higher, hands shaking. Their eyes are wide, and they’re clearly terrified.
Bill stares at us for a long time. He’s sweaty and unsettled, like maybe lunch didn’t agree with him. “Sir, what seems to be the problem?” I ask, keeping my voice calm.
“You got bit,” he says, moving the rifle from one of us to the next.
I look at the other girls, one of whom has started crying quietly. Bill didn’t even bother to climb the wall, there’s no way he can know what went on right below it. I turn back to Bill. “No sir, none of us got bit. Sure, took us a bit longer to put down the shamblers than it should’ve on account of the poor quality of weapons we’re given, but we are all safe and sound.”
Bill turns the gun on me, then the girl next to me, then finally the one on the end. “No, you ain’t. Them shamblers bit you. Ain’t no way you’re coming off that wall!”
By this point Bill is yelling and gesturing, spittle flying, and I’m a little shocked at how he’s gone from spiteful bully to raving lunatic. I glance at the girls, to see if either of them was in fact bit, when thunder splits the humid air, warm fluid spattering my face. I turn to Bill, whose eyes are wide and surprised, and then back to the girls. The one closest to me is flat on her back, most of her jaw missing, eyes wide and staring.
A deep sadness rips through me, followed quickly by anger. I didn’t even know her name.
I whip back to Bill, who is now frantically chambering his next bullet. My anger loosens my tongue, and I drop my arms and bend down to grab my sword, gesturing at Bill with it. “What the hell is the matter with you? All you had to do was look at her arm! What kind of bastard just goes around shooting people?”
But Bill can’t or doesn’t hear me. He lets out a frightened squeal as his eyes go wide, staring at the girl on the end. She’s dropped her head and she’s starting to shake, the full body shudder of someone turning. A low growl comes from her throat, and Bill hastily raises his rifle. The shot goes wide, but it gets the girl’s attention, and her head snaps down, yellow eyes locked on Bill.
I bring the sword up and through her throat, hard and fast. The blade does the job, her body falling on the shambler side of the wall, her head tumbling the other way.
Bill is frozen, and so I climb down the wall, grabbing what handholds I can but mostly sliding. It takes a good while, and my temper is hot as I make my way, sword in hand. The dark cloud has settled over my thoughts once again, and I’m only half-aware of what I do.
I march up to Bill where he stands, wide-eyed. His joints finally loose and he tries to point the rifle at me, barrel shaking. I knock it to the side in one motion. He’s all out of shots, anyway.
I point the sword at him, the rusty tip only a few inches away from his nose, the blade dripping the poor girl’s lifeblood in the space between us. I’m sad and angry and a whole host of other feelings, but mostly I’m fighting very hard not to kill Bill.
“You just murdered an innocent girl, you cowardly bastard. All you had to do was check their arms! How hard is that?”
Bill just stares at me.
“Say something, you sad sack of manure! Give me a reason not to take your head off.”
Bill says nothing. He looks away, shaking. I want so much to end him here, to vent my anger and frustration and fear in a single swing of a rusty cavalry sword.
But I don’t.
I take a deep breath and wipe the blood off on Bill’s shoulder before I prop it on my own. If I kill him, I have no doubt that the sheriff will execute me while that no good pastor and most of the town looks on in judgment, and I ain’t fixing to die just yet.
“If you point a gun at me, you’d better use it, because next time I might not remember that a lady doesn’t go around lopping the heads off of random folks, you goddamn yellow-bellied jackass.”
I turn and walk back to the wall, climbing it easily this time. A few feet away Alfonse stands, openmouthed, waiting for me. I give him a long look. “Don’t. Say. A. Word.”
He nods and we pick back up where we left off, walking up and down our portion of the wall. The moans of the shamblers seem farther away now, like they’ve lost interest now that fresh meat isn’t in the immediate vicinity. Inside, my thoughts churn. This can’t be the first time Bill has shot an innocent person out of fear. Do we truly mean so little around here? I laugh mirthlessly at the obviousness of the answer. Maisie, and the other girl, the one I didn’t know . . . it wasn’t an accident that she ended up in a field full of shamblers. Maisie was always top-notch when I knew her; there’s no way she got bit during a routine patrol. So how did she turn?
I ain’t sure I want to know.
As I walk the wall for the remainder of the day, one thing becomes clear. There is no such thing as the good life in Summerland for Negroes. The only thing here for us is death.
Whatever form that might take.