by Eric Flint
Ferris spat fire at the one on the left. Trace swung his ax straight up, in two hands, and clove into the other's ribs. His wild swing threw it up and against the doorframe over his head; it collided and bounced back down, squalling and flailing at his head. Trace shook it off and jumped out after it.
He landed solid and plunged his hand into his vest pocket, swept out his arm in a fanning gesture like sowing wheat. Glowing grains of salt arced out from his throw, and the five beasts who had been converging on him suddenly leapt backwards, one of them falling right down and rolling over. It got up again, shaking its head, shrieking rage at him.
"Come on," Trace said, brandishing the ax. "Come on, you whore."
It pushed off on its knuckles and flew at him. He quick-drew the Colt and shot it out of the air, then buried the ax in its head before it could get up again. He wheeled at the sense of something behind him, but it was Ferris, who blew fire at the next one, missing but driving it away. Trace scattered another handful of salt and the creatures hissed and fell back further; he glanced over his shoulder and saw Boz and the conductor leap down from the car. Charles and Miss Eliza followed, and people were handing out the children, but Trace had no more time to look because they were circling him again. He and Ferris stayed back-to-back, while the beasts feinted and grabbed, shying back from the ever-widening lines he drew in salt.
There was a shout and a gunshot blast, and Boz hollering orders, and the crying of children and Miss Eliza's voice rising somehow calm over all. Trace saw their white nightshirts spreading at the edges of his vision, glimpsed Boz on his left and was glad, as they pushed their perimeter out further from the burning stock car.
It was almost light as day, now, and the heat was getting intense, as the treated lumber of the car began to flame in earnest—he spared a glance to see that everyone was out. Two men were just letting down the limp body of Brother Clark. All the passengers were out on the dicey shale slope, flinging salt around them as Miss Eliza directed, until they were all ringed in a shining white barrier, like a fence made of moonlight.
"It's workin'," Boz said breathlessly.
"Yeah," Trace said, and laughed. The beast nearest him snarled at his mirth and Trace bared his teeth at it. "You like that? Huh? You want some of this?" He whipped out his Colt and shot it in its snarling face. It bowled over backwards and Trace leapt after it.
* * *
"I count fourteen," Charles said, flinging another head into the smoldering remains of the stock car.
"Me too," Boz agreed. "Not countin' the three or four piles of ash, can't tell what they were."
"I can account for five piles of ash, personally," Ferris said.
"That makes twenty even," Trace said, kicking the canvas-wrapped bundle at his feet. He yawned and popped his back, then cocked his right arm back behind his head to stretch the shoulder. He was going to be damn sore in those muscles for the next few days, although at the moment all he felt was limp and weary in a not-unpleasant way. The sun was just coming over the rise, sending golden fingers of light over the ground and the sleeping pile of emigrants—those that could sleep, anyway. Some of them had just plain lapsed into senselessness, out of shock and exhaustion.
Trace sobered, looking over at them, their clothes smeared with soot and blood. He saw the conductor looking, too. The man's gaze traveled from the little knot of survivors, over the butchered cattle, across the train standing like a gutted monument to the massacre. The conductor rubbed a hand across his face, paying extra attention to his eyes. He wiped away clean streaks on his cheeks.
Boz put a hand on his shoulder. "You did your duty, mister," he said. "You did it good. You stayed with the train."
"Thank you," the conductor said in a shaky voice. He blinked several times, jabbed at his nose with a middle finger to push up spectacles that weren't there. He wiped his hand on his pants and offered it to Boz. "Thank you, Mister—?"
"Bosley," Boz said. "John Bosley."
"Pleasure to meet you," the conductor said.
Trace felt a touch on the back of his hand and looked down to see Miss Eliza smiling at him. She looked remarkably pretty and fresh, in her white nightgown, a shawl around her shoulders, with her hair hanging loose and a bit wild.
"Brother Clark is awake," she said, the corners of her lips twitching. "He doesn't seem to remember how he came to pass out. He thinks perhaps he breathed too much smoke."
"Funny, I would have said he was blowin' it," Trace said, and they chuckled together, until her eyes suddenly brightened with tears. She put her fingers to her lips and looked away.
"I'm sorry about your brother," he said.
She managed a brave smile. "No greater love than this."
"Yes," he said gently.
She looked at her hands for a long moment, then lifted her head. "You're not coming to Oregon with us, are you?"
"No."
She gestured at the bundle under his boot. "That is the package, then, you are supposed to deliver to your employer?"
"Yeah."
"This wealthy lady you work for must be a great benefactress."
"She's wealthy," Trace agreed.
"And good," Miss Eliza said. Her eyes were gray, he saw for the first time, in the growing daylight. "I know that because you work for her. You are a good man, Mr. Tracy. And I see now your calling is higher than ours."
Trace winced, but made out he was only squinting at the sunlight. "Kind of you to say, ma'am."
"Listen," said Ferris, cocking his head. "I think our deliverance is approaching."
They all turned towards the north, and a moment later they all heard it: the long echoing blasts of an approaching locomotive.
* * *
Trace heaved his burden up the last narrow flight of stairs, through the attic door which the Chinese held open for him. Miss Fairweather stood next to the tin-topped table, gripping its edges, all but quivering with impatience.
He rolled the rucksack off his shoulder into the tin basin, selected a short skinning-type knife from Miss Fairweather's collection, and cut through the burlap, tore it away until the thing was exposed to daylight.
It was even uglier dead than alive. The eyes had sunk in, and the lips peeled back from the fearsome teeth. It had very little odor, however, and was dry to the touch, as if it had lain in the Great Salt Flats for a few weeks.
"Perhaps I should have specified a fresh specimen," Miss Fairweather said.
"That's as fresh as they come, lady," Trace said. "Been dead less than four days. We took the express back, and you owe me another hundred for payin' the brakemen to let us on with it."
"Oh, very well. But why does it appear so desiccated? Did you pack it in quicklime?"
"They just do that. Start fallin' to ash pretty quick. And the ones that burned up, there wasn't enough left to fill a tobacco tin." He felt in one pocket. "Brought you some of that, too, if you're partial."
She glanced at the tin he set in the corner of the table, but her primary attention was toward the body. "Head severed from the torso with an ax?"
"Yep. Bout the only thing will do it. Put three bullets in this one, just slowed him down a little."
"I see." She looked Trace over, once, assessing. "You sustained no serious injury?"
"Took my share of knocks," he said, and paused. "Lot of people lost more than me."
"So I've read," she said, reaching for a pair of slender tongs. "The railroad company is attributing the deaths to attacks by wolves."
Her dismissive attitude irritated him. "What do you call these, then?"
She made an unpleasant twisting motion and extracted a lead slug. "The popular term is vampire, in the sense that they feed on blood. That word has acquired unfortunate supernatural connotations which I find distracting. In the Canton region of China, where I believe these originated, they are called jiang-shi."
"Shang shee," Trace repeated, remembering the Chinamen in the moonlight.
"It translates roughly to 'hopping corpse
,' which is descriptive, if inaccurate. They are not dead, they are infected with some kind of wasting illness which I suspect is related to lycanthropy and anemia." She glanced up at him. "You weren't bitten, you or Mr. Bosley? I can't be sure it isn't transmitted through saliva, like hydrophobia."
"We weren't bitten." He watched her drop another lead slug on the table with a flat tonk. "They don't like sacred things."
She took up a tiny knife. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, they won't cross a line of blessed salt."
"Ah." She put the knife down again, looking almost pleased. "You read my notes, then."
"I read them."
"Salt has been used as a preservative since ancient times, you know. In China it is also believed to keep away evil spirits."
"Are crosses?" Trace said evenly.
She gave him a witchy smile. "The prevailing theory is that one's faith is the salient factor, not the symbol itself. Besides, these creatures have some bestial intelligence—I daresay you could wield a cream cake in a threatening manner, and they would shy from it."
"I know what I saw," he said. "I know what I felt."
"I have no doubt of that." She gave him a considering look. "I shall want a full report from you, either written or dictated to Min Chan. I want to know everything you remember about these creatures—their eating habits, how they moved, how many you saw . . ." Her voice trailed off as he held out a sheaf of paper, folded and tied with twine.
"Had to kill a few hours, comin' back on the train," Trace said. "Figured you'd want the particulars."
She took the packet, pulled open the slipknot, and unfolded the papers. She turned a page, then another, eyes scanning rapidly. "Mr. Tracy, for someone who exudes such abhorrence for this kind of work, you are remarkably good at it."
"I never objected to honest work," he said, thumbs hooked into his gun belt.
Her gaze slid toward him. "And you feel I've been dishonest with you?"
"You could have told me what I was ridin' into out there. You could've told the railroad."
"Oh, certainly. And they would have immediately provided their porters with crosses and a coffer of sacred salt." She tossed his notes onto the adjacent worktable. "Forewarned is not necessarily forearmed, Mr. Tracy. Neither is foreknowledge the same as machinating a situation, so please don't assume I put those people in harm's way merely to force your hand."
"Didn't you?"
"Had I not paid for their passage, some other collection of unfortunates would have filled their seats. And under the circumstances, one might suppose a congregation of God's chosen had better odds of survival—would you not?"
He stared at her, amazed that she could acknowledge the power of faith in one breath, and scorn him for having it in the next.
She made a dismissive gesture, turned back to the corpse. "You were always free to turn down the job."
"Yeah, until you start danglin' offers to cure—" He stopped, on the brink of laying himself bare, but it was too late.
"To cure you?" A bark of laughter escaped her lips. "If you believe your gift to be a curse from God, what makes you think I can lift it? I hesitate even to assume it can be removed—it is as much a part of you as your sight. If that were extracted from you, would you be a better man for it?"
He shifted his feet, thinking It ain't the same.
"And I certainly never implied I could cure your condition. I said I may be able to help you with it."
"How?"
"By providing you with opportunities to use it." She took up a magnifying glass and bent over the corpse again, as intent as a vulture. "Ignoring them will not make them stop coming to you. You must learn to control your perceptions—to close your eyes to them, as it were. Practice is the only sure means to control."
"I thought you couldn't see them."
"I don't," she said succinctly. "I've known others who could."
Trace opened his mouth, impatient, to ask another question, and then abruptly realized he was doing exactly what she wanted him to do—begging information from her, a piece at a time. Damned patronizing bitch. He ground his teeth, tapped his hat against his thigh.
She ignored him. She picked up a tiny knife and made a long cut down the front of the torso. It parted with the whisper of dried leaves underfoot. At least this one was dead, Trace thought, and then realized he wouldn't have cared if that hell-demon suffered or not.
"So this is how it's gonna be?" he said eventually. "You dangle the carrot and I follow?"
"I daresay that is up to you, Mr. Tracy. The donkey wouldn't follow the carrot if he didn't expect a reward for his efforts."
Trace snorted and put his hat back on. "I'll keep that in mind," he said.
* * *
Trace chewed a bit of straw while he watched the shop wives and clerks come and go in the restaurant. His stomach was comfortably full, and for the first time in recent memory, so were his pockets. The waitress gave him a saucy glance as she passed by with her hands full of plates.
They ate here often, he and Boz did, when they were in town. The owners knew him and didn't kick up ugly about serving a colored man. In the back near the kitchen, but that was all right, the food was good and they could sit down together and talk in relative private.
"What're you chewin' on, now?" Boz asked after a while.
Trace was tempted to say he was cleaning the steak out of his teeth, but he did have a thought or two on his mind. He'd let Boz do much of the talking through dinner, and it was good news: they were completely out of debt, now, and had a respectable sum in the bank. Boz was looking at a new saddle for his horse, and new boots for himself.
"Remember the other day," Trace said meditatively, "I was gettin' on you for sittin' back in the colored car, and you said I was a hypocrite, cause I was lettin' you-know-who push me around?"
"Yeah."
"I know it ain't fair of me to get on you for that. I don't have to walk around in your skin, and I ain't got no call to tell you what's right. I guess you know what's best for you."
"Guess so," Boz said cautiously. "What'd she say to you, got you stewin' over there?"
"Ain't what she said, exactly." Trace reached out to pick up the last edge of cherry pie crust. "I just been thinkin'—how many of those people you think would've survived if you and me hadn't been there?"
"That Ferris fellow, maybe. Conductor. Handful."
"Yeah." Trace popped the last bite in his mouth, chewed.
Boz took a swig of coffee. "So you're thinkin' she sent you to help?"
"Doubt it. Feels more to me like she's testin' me."
Boz expression went carefully blank, but not before Trace glimpsed the scorn underneath. "For what?"
"Dunno." Trace dragged his finger through the pie plate to pick up the sweet juice. "There was this sergeant in my company, used to bully all the young kids. Tell them he knew all kinds of tricks—where to get extra food, where to get whiskey, how to shoot straighter and load faster. Most of it was hooey, but the kids who begged hard enough and ran attendance long enough, he'd teach 'em things. Give 'em little treats. Treat 'em like puppies. Told 'em he had a reputation for luck—that he'd been through more engagements than anybody in the company and never had a scratch. Told 'em they'd live longer if they did what he told 'em."
"Did they?"
"Saw him blown to bits at Antietam. Most of his unit went down with me in that ditch." Trace put his thumb in his mouth, cherry syrup to take the place of blood and dirt. "Miss Fairweather's like that sergeant—she needs somebody to boss around, somebody to make her feel brave. Like if she can convince me she knows what she's doin', she'll believe it, too."
"You do believe it," Boz snorted. "You're lettin' her yank you around like a pack mule."
"No." Trace shook his head. "No, I'm goin' where she leads me, for now. But the difference between her and that sergeant is, I think she does know some things—like where ghosts are hidden, and monsters are gonna attack." He paused. "And she knew about me
."
"So you think she's like you."
"Not exactly. Some ways she's like you—doesn't believe anything isn't real and solid. Least she won't admit to it. But there's no denyin' she knows things—stuff nobody else does, and I've looked. Believe me, I've been over most of this country lookin'."
"And you think she's gonna tell you what she knows?"
He cocked his head, thoughtfully. "See, that's the other thing. I'm guessin' she's been lookin' for somebody like me a long time. I figure that Chinese can't be a—a medium like me, else she'd send him out to do her dirty work. But now she's got me, and I get the feelin' she wants to tell, she just wants to be sure."
"And then what?"
"I don't know."
"You dunno." Boz's voice hardened. "So you just go where she tells you, maybe get one of us killed, until she decides you're ready for somethin' worse."
"Doesn't mean we can't do some good out of it. And if it is gonna be somethin' worse . . ." He drew a short, hard breath. "I had this feelin' on the train, like I'd been put there for a reason. And I've still got it. Like I'm being set up for somethin'. Like it ain't just her who's testin' me."
Boz looked away, as if offended, and Trace felt a surge of annoyance. He'd never made any secret of his faith, and he'd never held Boz's skepticism against him. Boz could at least show him the same tolerance.
But hard on the heels of his irritation was a shadow of unease. Believer or not, it sounded damned cocky to claim you'd been tapped for some divine purpose.
Boz was quiet for a long time, drinking coffee and watching the front door, people coming and going. "So where's that leave me?" he said eventually. "Trailin' along behind you, holdin' your guns, standin' by while you have tea parties with dead folks?"
"Pullin' monsters outside of nature off me, before they can bite my head off?" Trace retorted.
Boz met his eyes briefly and looked away again.
Trace felt cool fear touch the nape of his neck. "It's no different than fightin' Indians, Boz. Or wolves. Or cattle rustlers."
"Those things I can see," Boz said.
Trace had no reply for that. The silence stretched on, colder than before, until the waitress came by to ask if they wanted more pie.