And I daresay you would be incredibly impressed with my marksmanship skills. I am a crack shot, far beyond any of the other girls, and that is not boastfulness. I often wonder if part of that might be due to your tutelage at Rose Hill.
I push my way through the crowd to the front of the room, where Othello has just about had his fill of the professor. Ghering is still mostly alive, but before I put him out of his misery I have to put down Othello.
While at Miss Preston’s I’ve ended enough dead to give myself a lifetime of nightmares. The trick is not to think of them as regular folks. When you do that, your emotions get all tangled up. You start to wonder whether it’s right or wrong and what kind of person that makes you for taking their life, whatever kind of existence it may be. Your brain starts doubting, and those second thoughts can get you killed.
But when you think of shamblers as things, as mindless creatures who have to be put down so that we might live, ending them gets to be a lot easier. The farmer doesn’t cry over slaughtering a hog.
So that’s what I think about when I slay shamblers. Not who they might have once been and what kind of life there is after death, but how them being gone makes the people I care about safer, and how each body gets me closer to getting back home to my momma and Rose Hill Plantation.
For Othello, his end puts me one step closer to my beginning. I don’t even flinch when I put the bullet in his head. This close to the stage, it’s an easy shot.
Suffice it to say, the result is untidy.
I climb the stairs to the stage and look down at Professor Ghering. He’s a mess. His throat is missing and his fancy waistcoat is soaked with blood. He ain’t breathing, and most folks would usually assume that means he’s not getting up again. But I know better. My time at Miss Preston’s has taught me a few things. In all my killing the dead, this is the first time I’ve stood over a man I thought deserved it.
“I ain’t sorry this happened to you. With a fool’s pride comes disgrace. Or something like that.” I don’t know what good it is to say I told you so to a dead man, but it makes me feel a little bit better, especially after being humiliated for speaking out. I shoot Professor Ghering right between the eyes, just as I did Othello, then once more, because seeing a man so casually turned for some blowhard’s cause has put me in a fine temper. I’m about to holster my revolver when there’s a low growl behind me.
The thing about a shambler’s cage is that it ain’t designed to hold anything long-term. When you set those traps up you’re supposed to hide somewhere nearby, so you can put the dead down real quick. Unfortunately Professor Ghering and his Survivalist cronies thought they were smarter than the average foot patrol.
So I shouldn’t be surprised when the iron lock finally breaks loose, releasing three blood-crazed shamblers.
What is left of the departing crowd goes frantic. People nearest the stage shout in alarm and begin shoving. Their fear draws the attention of the shamblers, and one of them jumps off the raised platform, right down into the seats.
I’m quicker on the draw, and once I get a bead on the shambler, I put him down with a head shot. But the crowd’s already spooked. I ain’t got time to worry about a bunch of dandies running for their lives.
Shamblers ain’t like normal people, but they do have an eerie ability to recognize a threat when they see it. Putting down their hunting buddy effectively made me a target, and when the two remaining shamblers turn toward me, slack mouths open in a hungry growl, I know I’m in for it.
They stalk toward me across the stage. Inside, my heart is pounding, my blood thrumming in my ears as the fear response urges me to run run run. But I ain’t no coward. I’ve got two shots left. I just need to make them count.
I line up my sights on the bigger shambler and squeeze the trigger. The revolver recoils, smoke filling the air. He drops and I take aim at the last one. She opens her mouth wide, growling low in her throat. She’s fresh dead, so she doesn’t have the blackened saliva that so many of the older ones do. Still, drool runs down her chin and the front of her calico dress. I feel bad for her. She wasn’t rich in life, her clothing belying her poverty, and even her death has been insulting. Changed into a shambler, locked up in a cage, paraded onstage. That ain’t a fitting end for anyone.
I think through all of this in the few heartbeats between lining up my shot and pulling the trigger.
Click. Empty.
Quickly I count through my shots. One in Othello. Two in the professor. One in the jumper, and another in the other male. That’s only five.
And one in the air to get everyone’s attention, Jane, you damn fool.
The shambler ain’t waiting for me to figure out what happened to my last bullet. She vaults toward me, a murderous blur set on a collision course with disaster. I swear—under my breath because a lady’s Attendant never curses aloud—and brace myself for impact.
A shot rings out, and I turn to see an Attendant in the middle of the aisle, her hands shaking. Behind her is a crumpled heap of crinolines and lace. The Attendant’s charge has passed out, and the woman’s serving girl is trying to alternately drag her or revive her with smelling salts while the Attendant provides a distraction.
Unfortunately the Attendant is providing the wrong kind of spectacle, because the shambler lurches off the stage and after the trio in the aisle. I launch myself off after her.
The shambler runs up the aisle toward the prone woman, who I can see now is the mayor’s wife. The serving girl looks up, her eyes round as saucers as the shambler bears down on her.
“Shoot it!” I shout to the Attendant in the aisle, but she drops her sidearm and runs, the girl with the smelling salts close behind. Needless to say, neither of them were ever Miss Preston’s girls.
“Damn it to hell,” I yell, this time not quite able to keep the language to myself. The shambler is close enough to Mrs. Carr to get a good bite out of her, and I decide to do the stupidest thing ever.
Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a shambler by the toe.
I dive at the dead woman, grabbing her one-handed by the ankle. She goes down, flat on her belly, only a few inches away from the unconscious woman. The shambler kicks out, her heel catching me in the mouth and splitting my lip. I grunt and my grip slips. She tries to drag herself toward Mrs. Carr, and I grab the shambler’s ankle again with both hands and haul her back, groaning as I climb to my feet.
The dead woman lets loose a sound somewhere between frustration and fury. She twists around in my grip, lunging for me. The woman is faster than I expect, and I take a stumbling step back. My feet tangle in my skirts and I fall, the shambler following.
I throw up my hands, using my forearms to block the weight of her torso before she can take a bite out of my face. She claws at me as I hold her back, my hands locked around her throat. I push her up and away, locking my elbows and hiding my face in my shoulder, trying to avoid her scrabbling hands. She pulls at the brim of Katherine’s bonnet, more interested in yanking my face to her teeth than in freeing herself. I’m trying to figure out how to get her off of me when there’s a loud report and something cold and wet splashes on my face.
The shambler goes limp and I push her to the side, climbing to my feet as I wipe blood and the shambler’s brains off of my cheek. I look around to see who just saved my bacon, and I meet the eyes of the most remarkable man I’ve ever seen.
He stands at the back of the room, a rifle in his hand. His straight dark hair is chin-length, his jaw square, his skin the same deep brown as mine. He wears a strange outfit, some kind of canvas pants that I’ve never seen before with a checkered shirt. My mouth falls open, part shock and part plain old rudeness. I ain’t too proud to admit that I stare at him as he watches me. But it ain’t entirely my fault. I never saw an Indian before.
Of course I’ve read the newspaper weeklies about them: “The Chieftain’s Son,” “Plains Bride,” and my favorite, “Two Braves of Yellow Rock,” which is a story about two Cherokee brothers, one that chooses the white man’s way and the other who becomes the chief of his tribe. Momma loved those stories, and when the paper would come we’d read them together, marveling over tales of a frontier untouched by the blight of the restless dead.
Momma used to say the Indian was even worse off than the Negro, because instead of being taken from his land he’d had his land taken from him. The man looks across the rapidly thinning audience at me, just as I’m staring at the fellow that saved my life. But then the Indian gives me a scowl, as though I am the most repugnant thing he’s ever seen, and turns and leaves the lecture hall.
Well.
Katherine comes running up, a revolver in her hand, huffing and puffing as she tries to get a full breath.
I glare at her. “Where’ve you been?”
“I had to run all the way down the street to find those dimwits. They were still searching for the shambler you sent them chasing after.” Katherine looks at me and frowns. “What happened to my bonnet?”
I don’t answer her. I just take it off, hand it to her, and walk out to find Miss Duncan.
I’ve had enough higher education to last me a lifetime.