But that was all then, and this is now. Momma’s last note says California is where she was headed, but that don’t mean much in these end times. The question that matters more: Is she even alive? And what about Aunt Aggie, the woman that mostly raised me up? What do I do if she’s gone to the great beyond?
It’s too much to consider in one go. Before I can answer any of those questions, I have to keep surviving today.
“Yeah, okay, let’s go,” I say.
“Would you mind relacing my corset before we set out?” Katherine asks, pointing to her back. “Not too tight. Just enough to give me a little bit of security.”
I manage not to roll my eyes, but just barely. “I don’t know what it is about you and corsets,” I mutter, but oblige her request anyway. On the way out of town I’d cut the lacings to the contraption so that Katherine would have a bit more range of motion with her swords. We were fleeing from the restless dead, after all. But now that the danger has passed it’s apparently time to return to a modicum of respectability.
I lace and knot where necessary but leave the whole thing looser than I’d learned in my sartorial training back at Miss Preston’s.
“I suppose that will have to do,” she sniffs, and by that time the wagon with the rest of our party is far enough down the road that all we can see is the dust cloud it kicks up behind it.
It ain’t hard to follow. It makes such a creaking racket that if there are any shamblers around they’ll show themselves quickly enough. But unless it’s a horde, I ain’t worried. Jackson Keats, my sometime beau, walks beside the wagon that carries his sister, Lily, and the rest of our ragtag group. The Duchess, the former madam of Summerland’s house of ill fame and a white woman of fine moral character, sits in the back with tiny Thomas Spencer, while her girls Nessie and Sallie sit up front and drive the wagon. We are a merry band of survivors, and no one seems all that upset about leaving Summerland behind us. One day, our time there will be just another terrible memory.
“How long until we get to Nicodemus?” I ask, running up to the front, where Jackson leads the way as we walk the dusty track. We’re the only ones on the road, which makes me think anyone else who had fled Summerland must’ve taken a different route. There’d been a crossroads a little ways back, and Jackson had conferred with Sallie in a low voice before we’d continued on, taking a turn that hadn’t borne the same deep wheel marks that the other road did. At the time, I’d thought Jackson knew an alternate route, one that would leave us less open to attack, since Jackson was more familiar with the land in these parts than I am. But still, I’m a mite bit worried. Not because I don’t trust Jackson, but because I don’t like being beholden to a plan that ain’t my own.
And maybe the for-real truth is that I do have misgivings about placing my faith in Jackson. After all, once upon a time he was my beau before he decided to put me aside, and the only reason I ended up in Summerland was because we went looking for Lily and uncovered the mayor of Baltimore’s plan to build some kind of peculiar utopia out in the middle of Kansas. Now here we are, in between a whole lot of nothing and a ravenous shambler horde, with nothing but our wits and a handful of weapons. No plan, no rations, just hope.
It makes me nervous, how alone we are in the big, wide-open prairie. I don’t like feeling so exposed, like the entirety of my sins are being laid bare before that watery blue sky.
“Yeah, you and I need to talk about Nicodemus,” Jackson says, gaze steely, hand resting lightly on the revolver hanging by his side. “Not now, but once we stop for the night.” His jaw is set, and whatever warmth I might have seen in him back in Summerland has faded. Red Jack is back, ruthless and cutthroat, the boy who used to make my heart pound.
Today his attitude just annoys me.
I stop walking and pull him with me onto the side of the road, out of the path of the wagon. “What are you talking about? What’s going on in Nicodemus?”
Jackson crosses his arms. “I just said we’ll talk when we stop for the night. The town is a two-day ride, and we’re exposed out here. My words were about keeping us all safe, not an invitation to fight about it.”
“Fighting is how we get to safe, and it seems like maybe you got a plan that the rest of us should get clued in on.”
Behind Jackson, Katherine has left the wagon’s side, brows pulled together in a frown. “What’s going on?” she asks.
“Jackson says there’s something he needs to tell everyone about Nicodemus, but he wants to wait until we stop for the night. I think we need to have it out now before we get too far down the track.”
Katherine sighs. “What’s the problem with Nicodemus?”
“Nothing,” Jackson says. He takes a deep breath and then lets it out. “Your classmates from Miss Preston’s are in Nicodemus. There was just a conversation I wanted to have with Jane. Later. When there ain’t an audience.” He gestures with his head toward the wagon.
“Is something the matter?” the Duchess calls. The wagon has now passed us by and is slowly making its way down the road. I imagine the Duchess ain’t too fond of all the folks with weapons falling too far behind.
I tug Jackson by the arm and we start walking, keeping to the side of the road to avoid the worst of the dust. “Look, this ain’t the time for half stepping the truth of the matter, no matter how bleak. At some point that horde back behind us is going to be on our tail. If there’s something we should know about Nicodemus, out with it.”
Jackson sighs and rubs the back of his neck, lowering his voice. “All right, fine. The town, well . . . it’s a bit crowded. There was hardly enough room for the people who were there back when I left. And with the rest of the folks fleeing the horde heading there, I think it would be a better plan to not go there at all but to rather head to the eastern part of the state, make a run for Fort Riley and the Kaw River.” He presses his lips together.
I look at Katherine, and her expression of confusion mirrors my own feelings. There’s more to his decision than that, and we both know it. “What ain’t you telling us?” I ask, but Jackson just shakes his head.
“Drop it, Jane, and trust me for once, will you?” He takes off his hat and swipes away the sweat with the back of his hand before resettling it into place. His bowler is flecked with ominous-looking dark spots just like my wide-brimmed hat, and I wonder if he stole his from a dead man like I did. “There ain’t nothing worth seeing in Nicodemus. It’s just as cursed as Summerland, the same old evils prettied up with whitewash.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and starts walking. “It’s a Negro settlement, founded by Freedmen and runaways from the Five Civilized Tribes. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have issues. You can’t trust those Egalitarians any more than you trust the Survivalists.”
I have no doubt what Jackson is saying is true—the Egalitarians were against using colored folks to bulk up patrols and defend towns, but they were still hardheaded in their own way. The best-case scenario would be to avoid a town altogether and just strike out for California. But that’s a fool’s errand with no rations, and Jackson knows that just as well as I do.
“Runaways?” Katherine says, bringing me back to the matter at hand.