I’m also planning on making her show me.
But the truth is, since having it out with her, I have felt a bit better. The loss of Jackson is still an aching wound, and I know it will be for some time. But focusing on keeping our group of survivors alive gives me something else to think on. I have to get us to Nicodemus. Only then will I let myself fall to pieces over Jackson—and ponder the difference between a survivor and a killer in this cruel world.
I’m thinking about Jackson’s letter from his sweetheart when under my shirt my penny goes icy. At the same moment, Sallie stops the wagon.
“Jane! Katherine! We got a problem!” she yells.
Katherine and I don’t hesitate. We run around to the front of the wagon. We’d been expecting the dead to come up from behind us, the horde that’s been trailing us from Summerland, but it turns out they weren’t what we needed to worry about. A dozen or so shamblers have congregated in the road, like flies on manure, swarming a wagon that looks very much like ours.
“Looks like some fellow travelers ain’t make it,” Nessie murmurs. She holds the pistol I gave her, Jackson’s gun, in a white-knuckle grip. Shame for lashing out at her earlier washes over me, heating my face. I reach up and take it from her, tucking it into my belt loop.
“Don’t want you accidentally shooting me in the back as we clear this mess,” I say, my voice full of the apology I can’t bring myself to say. Katherine was right. She and I are the ones trained to put down the dead. Not everyone is cut from that cloth, and expecting Nessie to be something she ain’t is unfair.
This part is best left to the killers amongst us.
Katherine and I walk toward the shamblers, slowly and cautiously. The dead are so busy feeding that they haven’t even turned to look at us. They’re down on hands and knees on the left side of the wagon, using teeth and hands to gorge themselves on the entrails of an unrecognizable man. They dined on his face and neck first, and the road beside the overturned wagon is scarlet with his blood. The attack must have been sudden, violent, and recent.
A few moments earlier, and it could have been us.
“Got any ideas?” I ask Katherine.
“Normally I would say we shoot them, but I am afraid that gunshots might spook the horse at this distance,” she says.
“Not to mention bring the other horde running.”
“Yes, the horde.” Katherine looks briefly behind us before turning her attention back to the dusty, blood-soaked road before us. “Well, I reckon we go in hard and fast. You want to lead off?” She eyes me warily; this is no doubt a peace offering for the thrashing a few hours earlier.
I unsheathe my sickles, turning them in my hands until my wrists are warmed up. “You’re going to have to show me that fancy hold you got me in,” I say, and her answering smile has more than just a smidge of relief.
I take a deep breath and sprint right at the dead. My skirts are high enough that they don’t tangle my legs too easily, but I have the momentary thought that trousers would be even better. I really miss the ones I used to wear when I ran the roads back around Baltimore. Maybe I’ll find myself some when we get to Nicodemus.
And then I’m swinging my sickle to take off the head of the nearest shambler, a man that wears the garb of a homesteader, work boots and rough homespun garments, all covered in splotches of red and black, his blood and that of his victim. A gurgling scream, a slice, and I’m moving on to the next one.
Whatever advantage I may have had in running up on the dead is now lost. They abandon their meal and come after me, growls rumbling deep in their throats. I take out four more, leaving another five, before Katherine draws even with me, her swords dancing complicated patterns that catch the sunlight as they sever heads.
I move wide left to give her room to work, taking out a couple of dead that decide I’m the easier target, and we’ve just cleared the last shambler when a shout comes from behind me.
“Hurry up! The horde is on the move!” Lily screams, the terror naked in her voice. She points to the rising cloud of dust on the horizon behind us, the air heavy like a deadly storm.
“Dammit!” I yell. The felled wagon is smack-dab in the middle of the road. Our wagon might be able to make it over the bodies, but there’s no way we can make it around the wagon without risking the wheels falling into the rut on either side of the road or snapping an axel. And the fallen horse attached to the damaged wagons is in no condition to move. Poor creature. Now I understand why we always used iron ponies, the horseless carriages driven by steam, back east. The dead don’t devour steel.
“Quickly, we need to unhook the horse and push this contraption out of the way,” I say.
Katherine glances over her shoulder, her blue eyes going comically wide. “There is no time,” she says. She hurdles the dead and runs to the front, hacking at the leather straps with her sword. I lean against the back of the wagon and get ready to push.
“Jane!” comes the shout from behind me.
“We’re clearing the road!” I yell. I don’t look back, don’t turn to see how much ground the horde has covered in just the last half minute. The stink of putrefaction fills my nose, a smell stronger than the ten shamblers we just downed could manufacture.
We are out of time.
I shove against the back of the wagon with all my might, grunting from the effort. The thing moves a little, but not enough. I turn around, putting my back against the wagon, and now I can see why folks are hollering at me.
The dead are less than a quarter of a mile away.
I push again, but it’s impossible with the bodies of the dead blocking the wheels. And there’s no time to move them all before the oncoming mass of shamblers reach us.
“Help me lift it!”
Katherine is next to me, and I immediately place my palms flat under the bed of the wagon and heave. Flipping it over won’t clear the road completely, but it’s enough space that Sallie should be able to squeeze our wagon by.
We grunt and strain, splinters digging into my palms from the rough wood. But the thing finally begins to rise, tilting over and landing with a crash that is swallowed by the terrified screams coming from our wagon.
“Go, go, go!” I shout.
Sallie doesn’t need the prompting. She stops the wagon just long enough for Katherine and me to clamber aboard, and then we’re flying down the track, the dead now at a full sprint behind us.
Most times, the dead ain’t fast, especially those that have been wandering about since the Years of Discord, those dark times just after the dead first rose in 1863. Some of the shamblers from that time are still dragging themselves around—one can often tell by the remains of their Union or Confederate uniforms. But these are fresh, and they continue to gain on the wagon even as Sallie urges the horse into a gallop.
These dead can’t all be from Summerland. There’s too many of them. Could there be other towns lost to the horde recently? It’s a grim thought, and I wonder—not for the first time—if we’re running toward salvation or ruin. Jackson had wanted us to forget about Nicodemus all together and make straight for Fort Riley. And maybe he was right. Is Nicodemus going to be able to withstand a horde like this?
And what if Nicodemus has already fallen to the same fate as Summerland?
“Jane,” Katherine yells, pointing at the dead. “They are gaining on us!”