For some unfathomable reason, Jane smiles. I cross my arms. “I do not see why that passage is amusing.”
“‘Conscience doth make cowards of us all.’ That’s from Hamlet. Do you know what that’s about?”
It is not as though I am ignorant of Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer’s Night Dream were frequent favorites for the showcases in a few of the entertaining houses back in New Orleans. I never had cause to watch any of them as a child—mostly because they were performed in the nude—but I can tell Jane has something to say, and so I just look at her until she does.
“Hamlet is about a prince trying to kill the man who killed his daddy, which happens to be his uncle.”
“His uncle is his father?” I cannot keep the horror from my voice. Classic or not, this play sounds depraved.
“No, the murderer is Hamlet’s uncle. After he kills Hamlet’s father, he marries the queen, Hamlet’s mother. His daddy’s ghost is the one who clues him in on the whole plot, but Hamlet’s not sure if he can trust the ghost, so he goes through this elaborate plan to get the new king, his uncle, to confess. In between, he spends most of the play talking about how awful everything is, and how unfair his life is. Finally, Hamlet ends up stabbing his uncle, but not before Hamlet himself is poisoned.” Jane goes quiet for a moment, and I wait. “Anyway, if I can get my hands on a copy, I’ll read it to you. It’s very good. A lot of people die, but they deliver these great soliloquies before they go. Well, at least the men do.”
“I would like that,” I say, and I mean it.
Our travels have brought us to a crossroad and, just beyond it, a bridge. We’re close to Sacramento now, and the dirt wall levees here are finished and intact. They’re also built higher than they were downriver. A levee is a wall of a sort built between a river and the land on either side, dirt and rocks piled up wide and high. The Sacramento River’s levees are covered with tall grass, and from where we stand the water is not quite visible. But there are no dead, and that is a good sign. I am still a bit rattled after this morning, and more reluctant to face the dead than I have been in years.
I am not fond of surprises.
We climb the road to the bridge. Here, the river is muddy and narrow. It’s not half so majestic as the Mississippi, but it is still a power in its own right. The water looks slow, but as the odd corpse or tree branch bobs by the speed of the current is revealed.
“Looks like the bulk of the horde has passed through,” Jane says.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the city in the distance, where there is a line of smoke rising, as if from a factory. Perhaps Sacramento is still safe after all.
Jane fishes the spyglass out of her pack, lifts it to her eye, and lets loose with a string of curses that would cause even the most experienced working girl to blush.
“Look,” she says, thrusting the bronze tube at me.
When I hold the spyglass to my eye, the city is painted in smoke and flame. Figures make their way through the chaos, but the jerky motions are not that of the living. Sacramento may have once been a jewel on a river, but now it is a fiery hellscape.
“My God,” I breathe. If Sacramento is overrun, that means the dead we saw downriver were just the beginning. Soon, tens of thousands of shamblers will be making their way, unabated, toward San Francisco.
The promise of California is no more. Even if the dead could not find their way en masse across the Rocky Mountains, the West will still succumb.
The dead always find a way.
“Well, what now?” I ask.
Jane’s jaw clenches. “We continue on to Sacramento.”
“You . . . even if Gideon had been here, you cannot truly think he would have remained in the city, do you?”
“No,” Jane finally admits, reluctantly.
It is the first real sign of reason I have heard from her since our reunion.
“Halllooooo,” comes a call.
Down in the river, heading right for us, is a grizzled old white man in a small rowboat. He appears to be a prospector; he wears a dusty, battered hat, canvas pants, and an unkempt beard that has mostly gone to gray.
“Hello!” I call back, because it would be rude not to. Jane just glares at the man.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a bit of rope or an oar, would you?” he asks.
“No, sir,” I say, cupping my hands around my mouth so that my voice carries. “You would not happen to know what is happening upriver, would you?”
“Didn’t your homestead get a rider? They sent out a hundred men on horses the first night. The city has fallen! They say some rich folks were having a soiree, as they do, and one of them must have been infected. All turned! No one knows how one of them could have gotten bit. But that’s how it started.”
The little boat picks up speed as it approaches, and goes under the bridge we are standing on. Jane and I switch sides to keep talking to the old man.
“It was a rich person who first turned?” Jane yells.
“So I heard. But who knows? Some folks was claiming the infection came from some food they’d had sent up from the Chinese in ’Frisco; others say it was a Californio day laborer who turned first. There’s more than enough blame to go around once folks get to speculating.”
The man is drifting downriver now, and Jane leans over the railing of the bridge so he can better hear her. “Why is the city on fire?” she calls.
“Who knows?” The old man shoots back with a cackle. “Most likely some fool thinking he could end the threat of a horde before it could get out of the city. But I was at Gettysburg, I know the truth. The dead always get theirs.”
“Thank you for the news,” I say. “And good luck!”
“As long as I’m still breathing my luck is fine! You and your girl be careful.”
Whatever else he says is swallowed up by the distance.
“Well,” I say, looking at Jane. The muscle in her jaw is working again, and I can only imagine what is going through that mind of hers as she sorts through our options.
“This is Gideon’s doing,” she begins. “I know it. He’s behind what happened here. You want me to give up on my revenge, but Katherine . . .” She closes her eyes, and a tear escapes down her cheek. It is the first time I have seen her cry since Jackson. She swipes it away angrily and no others follow. “I ain’t . . . I can’t let Gideon Carr get away with what he did to me and everyone else.”
I hold my breath. If Jane is still bent on finding Gideon, the only place we are going to find a clue as to his whereabouts is in that city of death on the horizon. Even if Jane is beyond fear of anything but failure, I am not. I close my eyes and say a silent prayer.
She gives the smoke in the distance one last look and sighs. “The only lead I had was in that city, and I ain’t about to quit now. I’m going to see this through, and neither fire nor flood is going to stop me.”
I swallow around the lump in my throat. My anxiousness is nearly overwhelming, and I want to give in to the feeling. But I cannot.
I can only keep moving.
The silence weighs heavily between us. I could try to navigate my way back to the wagon train, but traveling by oneself is dangerous. If I follow Jane to Sacramento I will be walking right into the middle of a horde. And while Jane has nothing to fear from the dead, I am very much not vaccinated and vulnerable.