Dreadnought

Jasper Nichols said, “Maybe they tried. Maybe they couldn’t.”



“I didn’t hear any explosions,” said Theodora Clay, who was suddenly right beside Mercy, her head and shoulders out the window, straining to see, same as everyone else. “Look at them. They’ve just . . . stopped.”



The captain murmured, “I wish I had a glass. I can’t see a damn thing, between the sun and the snow. It’s all so bright, I can’t . . . it’s giving me a headache already.”



Mercy said, “Maybe Ranger Korman—” But she cut herself off and said, “Wait a minute. Where’d he go?” because it’d be just as simple to go get him herself.



The Texian was easy to find, because he’d been on his way to rejoin the first car when Mercy opened the rearmost door and stepped onto the platform. It struck her as odd to find the train stationary, but she was pleased to walk so easily; and when she saw Korman’s face on the other side of the second car’s window, she smiled at him with relief.



“Ranger Korman!” she said when he opened the door to join her on the coupler.



He did not greet her back, but said, “What’s going on up there? Can’t you see the train?”



“Yes and no,” she told him. “You seem to be carrying all sorts of interesting toys; you got anything like a spyglass hidden in that waistcoat of yours?”



“Yup,” he told her.



“Well then, bring it out if you’ve got one,” she said. “There’s something funny about the Shenandoah. Just sitting there on the track. They aren’t stuck in the snow, are they?”



“I can’t imagine,” he replied, and he reached for the ladder that rose beside the rearmost door of the first passenger car. As he climbed, he added, “This isn’t enough snow to bog down anything with the power to move that fast. Though now that we’re stopped, it’ll be a pain in the ass to get started again.”



“I’m coming with you,” she said, understanding that he meant to get a better look from the roof.



“Suit yourself,” he told her without looking back, and without offering to help her.



Within seconds, she was standing beside him on top of the first passenger car roof. Lieutenant Hobbes called out from below them, “Hey, up there. Is that you, Mrs. Lynch?”



She called back down, “Me and Ranger Korman. We’re just taking a better look. Hold your horses, we’ll tell you what we see.”



The ranger pulled out a long brass tube, and while fiddling with the adjusting screws, he pointed it at the Shenandoah.



After perhaps twenty seconds of examining the scene in this manner, he switched the device to the other eye. Mercy couldn’t imagine that this would make any difference, but she didn’t say anything; she only stood there and shivered, holding her cloak up around her shoulders tightly, and breathing in air so brittle and cold that it made her chest hurt.



Then he made a noise that sounded like, “Hmm.”



It was the sound a doctor made when he found that things were undoubtedly worse than suspected, but knew that it wouldn’t do anyone any good to worry the patient. Mercy knew that sound, and she didn’t like it one little bit.



“What do you mean by that?” she asked.



He did not move the glass. Only upon shifting to get up into his personal space did she realize he was holding it half an inch away from his eye, surely to keep the metal from freezing to the soft spots around it. He only said again, “Hmm.”



She liked it even less the second time. “What is it? What do you see?”



“Well,” he said. He stuck a p on the end so it came out as, Whelp.



“Oh, for Pete’s sake, give me that thing,” she said.



He let her take it.



Through the gloves she wore, she could feel the chill of the exposed brass. She took the ranger’s lead and held it very slightly away from her face. It took her a bit to find the spot she was seeking. Then the rear of the Rebel train slipped into the magnifying circle, and she followed it with the lens all the way up to the engine. And she froze, as still and breathless as the jagged mountains on either side of her.



“You see them, too?” Korman asked.



“I see . . . someone. Something.”



“Do those look like uniforms to you?”



“On the Confederates? No, wait, I see what you mean. Yes, they look like . . . like light-​colored uniforms. On some of them, not on all of them. And they’re . . . they’re attacking the Shenandoah!”



“That’s what it looks like,” he said. “And I hate to say it,” he breathed roughly, as if he truly did hate to say it, “but I think we’ve found our missing Mexicans.”



She pressed the lens as close as she dared against her own eye, searing her skin with the burning ice that collected on the spyglass’s metal rim. Yes, she could see them, pounding their hands against the engine, and against the railcars, and trying to crawl up onto the train. A handful of men were treed atop the back of the engine and the fuel cart, kicking at the invaders and using the butts of long guns to bash them back to the snow.



“Why aren’t they shooting?” she asked.



“Might be out of ammunition by now.”



She shifted the glass enough to scan the area better and then gasped, sucking in more of the icy air and choking on it with a little cough.



“What?”



“Jesus,” she said, handing him the lens. “Jesus, Korman. Look out past the engine. There’s more coming.” She turned and stumbled for the nearest ladder, reversing herself back down it. “They’re coming, and there’s . . . Jesus,” she said again, and now she was down on the platform, shoving the door open. Behind her, she could hear the ranger following in her footsteps, lowering himself with a couple of quick steps that had him right on her heels.



She flung open the car door. Panting, she confronted the captain. “They’re coming!”



“Who’s coming?” he asked, clearly frightened by her fear and trying to contain it, but requiring more information.



The ranger pushed his way past the door and answered. “The Mexicans. The missing ones, all seven or eight hundred of them, or however many there are—but it looks like more than that to me. Where’s that inspector you folks had up in here? Can’t keep their names straight.”



“Portilla’s dead,” Mercy told him without looking over her shoulder at the corpse. “And those men out there—something horrible’s wrong with them, just like all of us have been talking about. Just like the papers said, and just like the inspectors told us. Speaking of who . . . Cole?”



“Ma’am?”



“Please, you or Jasper. Go get Inspector Galeano.”



“Yes ma’am,” he said, and was out the back door in exactly the kind of rush she wanted to see.



A volley of shots fired from the Shenandoah; they rang back to the Dreadnought like distant firecrackers, shocking everyone on board into defensive positions and gasps.



But Mercy said, “No! No, they’re not shooting at us now. They’re shooting at those other people—only they aren’t people anymore, not really. Someone must’ve found some more bullets. Oh, God help them!”



“God help them?” Theodora Clay gasped. “Have you even been present on this train for the last hour?”



“Present and working like hell to stay alive on it, same as you! But those are men on that train—real ordinary men, alive and sane, same as you and me! And those other things, the things that are overrunning them . . . they aren’t human. I swear,” she said, almost gagging with despair. “They’ve been poisoned—poisoned into monsters!”



The rear door burst open, and Cole Byron came through it with Inspector Galeano, who was wild eyed and full to bursting with questions. The first one out of his mouth was, “Portilla?”



Mercy replied, “I’m real sorry, Inspector. I did what I could to save him, but I—”



“Please, where is he?”



“He’s there. And I’m sorry; I’m real sorry—”



Something big fired from the Shenandoah, something more like the antiaircraft artillery they’d used to pepper the Dreadnought before.



Mrs. Butterfield cried, “They’re shooting at us again!”



But this time the captain said, “No.” He was holding the ranger’s glass, leaning out the window. “No, Mercy’s right. Those men aren’t shooting at us. Holy Christ, what . . . what are those . . . they aren’t . . . they can’t be . . . people?”



“It’s the missing Mexicans,” the ranger said again. “Give him the glass,” he told the captain, indicating the inspector. “Let him look. He’ll tell you.”



The captain came fully back into the car and handed the looking glass to Inspector Galeano. “They’re attacking!” he said with wonder.



Theodora Clay threw her hands in the air. “Why would Mexicans attack a southern train? And furthermore, what do we care? Let’s fire up our own boilers and get moving, the Rebels be damned!”



The conductor came bustling through the forward door in a stomping rattle of cold feet and clutched shoulders. “What’s going on up there? Can you see it? I’ve got a scope up front.” Then he saw the inspector hanging out the window, staring through the looking glass. “Who are all those people?”



“The missing Mexicans,” the ranger said yet again.



Inspector Galeano drew himself back inside, his breath blowing white in the car’s interior, wafting about in the breeze. “They’ve been poisoned, and they . . . they look . . . it’s as if they are walking corpses!”



“There are hundreds of them,” said the captain. His hands were trembling, but Mercy did not call any attention to it. “Hundreds, maybe a thousand or more. Swarming like bees.”



The ranger took his glass back from the inspector, and, as if it was the rule that whoever held it had to look through it, he positioned himself on the seat and put himself back out into the open air again, gazing with that long, gleaming eye at the pandemonium on the tracks ahead.