“If the dead got through the electric fence in the front, then the circuit is broken. As for the bobbed wire, well, I reckon we have a lot of motivation to get through,” I say. Ida snorts in amusement.
We’re moving quickly, a moderate pace that can accommodate everyone, when a shout goes up.
“They’re coming!” yells a voice from the rear of our group.
“Move!” comes another.
“We gotta run faster, Sue!” I scream.
My penny goes icy.
And then we round the corner of a house to where the northern gate is—and run right into a pack of shamblers.
It takes only a heartbeat to see what happened. Our friends guarding the gap lost their nerve and broke ranks, skedaddling out onto the prairie, leaving the breach open. They didn’t get far. The horde must have sensed them leaving and, within the barriers of the exterior fences, swung around the city wall, the edges of the pack catching the folks fleeing out ahead of us. Several prone forms lie just beyond the gate, shamblers upon them. The wet sounds of feasting turn my stomach.
But not only did their cowardice spell their doom, it’s about to spell ours as well. A dozen or so dead meander in the shadow of the log fence. Lily screams and raises her rifle, getting off a single wild shot.
It’s a lucky thing the girl doesn’t shoot anyone in the back.
Our formation goes to hell, and we’re stuck in the midst of a proper melee, everyone spreading out to give themselves space to work. Katherine’s swords flash, but I don’t have enough room for my sickle swings. I push Lily behind me, and I get my left sickle up just in time to put down a tall male wearing Union blue. But swinging my right sickle would mean hitting Ida or Katherine, and I can’t do that. There’s nowhere to run.
And the dead are lunging right for me.
The world slows. The shambler in front of me was once a young white woman, blond hair, milky eyes. I have just enough time to admire her dress—a blue brocade frock that belongs in a ballroom. She throws her entire body at me, and I throw up my forearm to catch her throat.
But I am too slow, and my penny is ice-cold, and I miss her throat.
I miss.
But she does not.
I scream as her teeth sink into my forearm, but I don’t hesitate. I push her backward, using her body to block the rest of the oncoming dead and to give Katherine and the rest of the girls behind me space to fight. The girl doesn’t let go easily, and it’s only my boot in the shambler’s midsection that gets her off me, a fair chunk of my forearm going with her. Blood sprays across the remaining dead, but I’m swinging and swearing, the sounds of the girls from Miss Preston’s and the Summerland patrols matching my own.
We fight like our lives depend on it, even though I know, my life’s blood falling into that Kansas dust, that mine is over.
Soon there’s just the gate, littered with the remains of harvested shamblers.
The world is quiet, everything fading away, blood thrumming in my ears. I can feel the gazes as they land on me, the soft inhalations as people realize what the blood steadily leaking down my arm means.
“Jane,” Katherine says, taking a step toward me.
I have no words for her. I have no words for anyone. But I lock eyes with Sue, and she understands.
“Come on!” she says, pointing out the gate to freedom. “Jane will cover the rear, but we need to move, now!”
Ida and Lucas and Lily are frozen, and everyone else hesitates as well, but only for a moment. They know that I’m done for, and ain’t no amount of sentimentality is going to change my fate. They all move past me, not looking back, and I’m glad for it.
But Katherine doesn’t budge.
“You need to go,” I tell her. I hate the way my voice shakes, and how my head feels too light by half. Tears burn hot trails down my cheeks, but I ignore them.
“You are going to bleed out if you do not see to that arm,” she says, voice as cool and calm as a lake on a hot summer’s day. She rips off one more strip of her dress and uses it to bind my arm tightly. My left hand tingles, my fingers going numb. For some reason, that makes me laugh.
Katherine quirks an eyebrow at me. She is still so composed, so controlled, as always.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I say.
“Jane—” Her voice cracks, and her eyes well with tears. She clears her throat to speak, but before she does I point toward the prairie with my sickle.
“I’m bit, Kate. Get the rest of Miss Preston’s girls on a line and escape while you can.” My heartbeat echoes in my head, and I wonder how long I’ll have until I start to turn. Ten minutes? Thirty? It doesn’t matter. It ain’t enough.
“I’m not going,” Katherine says. “I’ll stay here with you.”
“Y’all need to keep moving. I’m going to hold them off as long as I can. Here,” I reach under my shirt and pull off my penny, the leather breaking free easily. “Take this.”
Katherine shakes her head but holds out her hand, and I drop the luck charm in it. Tears fall down her face now.
More shamblers have met the group just outside the gate, and a little ways away Sue and Ida hack at the dead, trying to clear a way for everyone.
“I’m going to wait with you, give you a proper end, Jane,” Katherine says, setting her jaw like she does when she gets it in her head about the right way to do a thing.
“No. You do that and you’re going to need last rites right along with me. Besides, who is going to look after Lily?”
Katherine looks over to where the girl cowers, eyes wide as the dead close in. Lily won’t make it on her own, and there’s no one I trust more than Katherine to keep her safe. Either way, we’re wasting valuable time, and they need to get out of Nicodemus while that’s still a possibility.
“Don’t be sad, Kate. Jackson told me that life starts off bloody and ends that way, and I’ve always believed him. I guess I’ll get to see him again, even sooner than I expected. Keep Lily safe. Maybe go home, see your momma. Have a good, long life, do all the things you dream of.” Emotion makes my words stick in my throat, and I cough to force them out past the lump of everything I want to say to her. “And, Katherine—”
Her eyes widen at me and I pull her in for a quick hug, and these last words I say near her ear so no one else can steal the moment from us.
“Thank you for being my friend.”
I let her go. She is speechless; tears now fall unchecked down her cheeks, and it’s too much for me to bear. I give her a quick grin, one more memory for her to carry with her, and then I dash off back the way we came.
If I’m going to die, I’m going to do it fighting.
My left hand is completely useless, quickly going to pot as the loss of blood and the shambler’s bite work against me. I barely notice when my sickle falls out of my hand. I can’t feel anything down my whole left side of my body, not even the chills. It’s just a slow-spreading numbness, and I ignore it and turn my attention to the dead.
They seem to be moving slower. They’ve gathered after eating their way through the houses, and there are too many of them now for them to run much, so they just do their slow stride down the dusty lane. They don’t seem to care much about me, but I care a whole lot about them.
Putting down the dead with a single sickle ain’t easy, but I keep swinging, taking down as many as I can, jamming them up so they can’t go loping after Katherine and the rest of the colored folks fleeing the town. It ain’t as much as I want to give. But I can only pray it’s enough.