Novel - Dead Reckoning (with Rosemary Edghill)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Gibbons knelt down beside the corpse and dug something Jett couldn’t see out of a pocket. Then she pried its mouth open. (Jett made a small unhappy sound of protest. Gibbons ignored her.) She tipped the bag over “Maxwell’s” mouth and poured.

  “Salt is salt,” she said matter-of-factly, tucking the little bag back into her pocket and getting to her feet.

  “Will it work?” Jett asked.

  “Time will tell!” Gibbons answered. Cheerfully.

  * * *

  It was just before dusk. Gibbons had spent part of the day shooting the sun with a sextant (to determine the latitude and longitude of Alsop, she explained) in order to make sure they’d be back at the jail in plenty of time to watch Gibbons’s subject revive.

  This time, both of them reeked of cologne.

  One of the things Gibbons had wanted was a list of the townspeople so their next of kin could be notified. Jett didn’t feel right about picking over things belonging to dead people, but she’d found a big bottle of Florida Water among Dr. Butler’s things, and, well … Meade Butler wasn’t going to be needing it. She hadn’t bothered to mention to Gibbons the two of them would probably be on that list themselves soon. Brother Shepherd might be done with Alsop, but he wasn’t done with Texas.

  That’s what worries me. By the time anyone believes Br’er Shepherd can raise the dead, they’re likely to be dead themselves.

  She leaned back against the rough-hewn newel post and pulled out her watch. It was big and heavy and silver, like the one Father had owned. His was in some damnyankee’s pocket now. She’d won hers at cards. She flicked the case open.

  “Seven minutes to sundown.”

  The sky was still bright, but night came swiftly in the desert—once the sun made up its mind to set, down it went, and day became night before you could hit the ground with your hat.

  Gibbons opened the door of the jailhouse. With a blue silk handkerchief tied over her nose and mouth, she looked like the world’s most eccentric outlaw. She stepped inside just long enough to hang her lantern on its hook. In the light of the lamp, they could both see … exactly nothing happening inside the cell.

  “Five minutes,” Jett said.

  “It might not be so … close … in there if we left the door open,” Gibbons said in distaste. The rotting meat smell was strong enough to pierce through the scent of Florida Water, and the two mingled unpleasantly.

  “And have every vulture in the Territories roosting on the roof,” Jett said. “I don’t know why they haven’t showed up already.”

  “Because no matter what this smells like to us, it obviously doesn’t smell like carrion to Cathartes aura,” Gibbons said grandly. “The turkey vulture has a keen sense of smell and can locate prey up to a mile away, you know.”

  “Is there anything—” Jett began.

  The corpse of Finlay Maxwell flung itself at the door of its prison.

  It had moved so fast neither Jett nor Gibbons saw it get to its feet. The zombies they’d seen before moved with deliberation. Jett thought they couldn’t move any faster.

  She’d been wrong.

  Its body hit the bars of the cell door hard enough that air was forced from its throat in an unearthly moan. The air in the jail had turned cold every time it rose—something Gibbons couldn’t entirely explain, though she’d offered Jett half a dozen theories—but now the air pouring through the open doorway was as chill as the inside of an icehouse. Maxwell’s mouth was open in a horrible silent scream, and Jett thought of every hideous story she’d ever heard about people who woke from illness only to find themselves in the darkness of a coffin, accidentally buried alive. How much more horrible would it be if life—if awareness—were called back into a body truly dead?

  It drew back momentarily, but only to grip the bars in its hands and rattle the door in a frenzy.

  “There was rust on the hinges,” Gibbons whispered in a small voice.

  For a moment Jett didn’t understand. Then she did. Rusted hinges might give way.

  “Get back,” she said, drawing one of her pistols. “If it gets out, I’ll shoot out the lamp.” If she could spray the zombie with burning kerosene, its clothes would catch fire, and maybe that would slow it down. Jett didn’t mention that even she might not be fast enough to get a shot off before it reached them.

  “There’s more kerosene in the saloon,” Gibbons whispered, still in that dreadful airless voice.

  Before Jett could say a word, Gibbons was off, running through the deepening shadows. Jett stood, so still she was barely aware of her own body, and watched the zombie tear and batter at the bars. It went from shaking the door to hammering the bars with its fists. Soon Jett couldn’t hear the door rattling any longer, and she knew it was because the metal was lodged fast and starting to bend.

  It was only a few steps to the stable. She could ride Nightingale bareback, come back for her saddle when it was safe to do so. She wished she was gutless enough to run. She knew she wouldn’t.

  “Here,” Gibbons whispered in between gasps for breath. She had a wooden keg of kerosene in her arms.

  “Pull the bung,” Jett said. “Kick it through the door when I fire.” Jett didn’t know if Gibbons would be fast enough to do what she’d asked. If either of them would be. But she knew they weren’t fast enough to get away from Maxwell.

  Gibbons knelt on the boards of the sidewalk and began worrying at the stopper. The zombie had stopped beating at the bars of its prison and was now throwing its entire body at the bars. Jett imagined she could hear the protesting creak of the metal as it slowly gave way.

  The popping sound as the bung finally came free was loud enough to make Jett jump. An instant later, she realized why: there was silence inside the jailhouse. The zombie had stopped moving, and now hung limply from the bars.

  “Goodness!” Gibbons said, looking up. “That was close!”

  “It’s dead,” Jett said in disbelief. “You killed it.”

  As Jett watched, the body sagged at the knees, slipped down the bars, and fell over. The night air was already starting to warm.

  “I certainly hope so,” Gibbons said fervently. She pulled the kerchief off and wiped her face with it, then sniffed the air. “It doesn’t smell quite as bad now,” she said analytically. With an expert whack, she set the stopper back into the keg.

  “I guess one part of the legend isn’t a legend,” Jett said, drawing a shaky breath. “Whether it’s ‘scientific necromancy’ or not.”

  “I guess it isn’t,” Gibbons said, sounding uncharacteristically subdued. She dug in her pockets until she found her little silver flask, and offered it to Jett wordlessly. Jett took a long swallow before handing it back. Gibbons drained it. “You did say when a zombie is released from the power binding it, its last act is to slay—or attempt to slay—whoever created it. I suppose you’re going to say we should have just let it out.”

  “Not me!” Jett denied. “Even if we’d known that, all it’d do is tell Shepherd there’s a posse after him.”

  “We’re not much of a posse, I suppose,” Gibbons said thoughtfully. “Still, we’re here. And now I can start trying to find out how he creates the creatures.”

  “I’m surprised you aren’t already in there with it,” Jett said darkly.

  Gibbons shuddered. “I think I’ll wait for morning.”

  * * *

  White Fox felt a shameful sense of relief at riding away from Alsop. It was not because he meant to flee the fight the spirits had led him to. The destruction of the zombies and the defeat of their creator would mean a justice he’d never thought to gain for his family, his people, his tribe. It was odd to think he was also to be the instrument of justice for his first family, but so it was. He’d marked the site of the wagon train’s destruction on Gibbons’s map without telling her what it meant or how he knew it, and it fit as perfectly into the pattern as another silken thread on a spiderweb.

  No warrior rode into battle without preparation. He was willing to be
patient until Gibbons had delivered the weapons for this combat. This journey might be a useless one, but at least it took him away from a place his thoughts populated with the ghosts of too many dead.

  Flatfield was a full day’s ride from Alsop, which was only to be expected: a ranch wasn’t its land grant alone, but the “unclaimed” thousands of acres of open range around it, and the ranches themselves were widely scattered. He wondered what would change when a steel-rail road crossed the land. Or when Gibbons’s Auto-Tachypode was as common a thing as a buckboard or a Conestoga.

  It was just past noon when he knew something was wrong.

  This was April, the end of the rainy season (such as it was) on the Staked Plains. The cattle drive that had disappeared a few weeks back had been one of the earliest ones; the drives would continue for the next two months, until the summer’s heat became too fierce and the water holes and creeks dried up. He should have crossed paths with trailblazers, the cowhands who rode a day or more ahead of a drive to scout the way. Or with the chuckwagon (always driven as if wolves pursued it), that went ahead of the herd so the camp cook could have a meal ready and waiting for the tired cowhands at the end of the day. Or the remuda, the string of remounts every herd rider needed on the trail.

  He saw none of those things, or even the tracks of their passage. But by midafternoon he saw the first corpses.

  He’d followed the circling vultures to a waterhole heaped with the bloated bodies of cattle. More lay around it, their bodies black with flies and feeding birds. All the bodies he saw had been fed upon—by vultures and crows in the day, coyotes in the night—but they were still intact enough they could not have been dead for long.

  There’s a hundred head here at least, he estimated. And this is roundup season. Mister Sutcliffe wouldn’t have overlooked the absence of this many animals. He would have sent range riders in search of them. And when they found them … they would never let a water source be fouled—or leave cattle dead of sickness unburned.

  Telling Deerfoot to stand, White Fox dismounted and walked slowly toward the corpses, flapping his hat to scare off the feeding birds. The vultures were too gorged to fly: they waddled away, shrieking imprecations at him. He searched until he found one of the bodies that was mostly intact and examined it quickly. He could not find any trace of a bullet wound.

  And its neck had been broken.

  It was the first such slaughter he found that day. It was not the last. By the time White Fox rode into Flatfield, he already suspected what he’d find there. He stopped at the gate to ring the iron bell, but no one came in answer. He rode on down to the outbuildings. Barns, corrals, bunkhouse … all empty.

  He drew his pistol before entering the house itself. He’d circled it to come in through the back. That would be where any ambush was laid. But the kitchen was deserted, the pot of soup atop the stove congealed and half-evaporated, as if the household had been interrupted just before suppertime. He didn’t find anyone in any of the common rooms, either. If not for Gibbons he wouldn’t have known what signs to look for, nor found them as quickly. But as he went through the rooms a second time, searching them as carefully as he’d ever searched the ground for a trail, he saw more than he wished to.

  The chimneys of the lamps are black with soot from a guttering flame. They have all burned dry. The logs in the fireplace are burnt to ash, and the ash has not been disturbed, yet every careful housewife saves ash for cleaning.

  The keyboard on the spinet in the corner of the parlor was uncovered. No musician who treasured their instrument would leave its keys exposed to the dust of the plains.

  In the library he saw two glasses half full of whiskey sitting on a table.

  The bedrooms were prepared for bed, but no one had slept here.

  When he returned to the pantry, he found the door to the root cellar open, and for a moment he dared to hope. But all that was there was a bible at the bottom of the ladder, open as if it had fallen. The cans and preserves, the bottles of whiskey and brandy that lined the shelves, stood untouched.

  He searched for hours, until he realized he only continued to search because he didn’t want to admit Flatfield and all who’d lived here were another casualty of Shepherd’s madness. The fact the house’s furnishings lay undisturbed only meant its occupants had been lured—or driven—from it before they were killed.

  But at last the red light of sunset warned him night was coming and he must seek shelter. He returned to the house one last time to collect some supplies: the still-full lamp he’d found in one of the bedrooms; salt and cornmeal from the untouched pantry; the humidor of cigars he’d seen in the study. The wasichu called what he meant to do “sorcery” and said it was wrong, but White Fox knew better. It was medicine for the spirit, just as herbs were medicine for the body. He didn’t want to risk camping in the open—not with so many predators attracted by the slaughtered herd—and the house itself seemed too much like a place of ghosts.

  He led Deerfoot into the stable and used the loop of braided leather she wore as a bridle to tether her to one of the center posts. He made certain she was settled, then closed the stable door and propped a full sack of feed against it. He couldn’t bolt the door from within, but this would keep it from swinging open. When that was done, he took the meal and salt and walked around Deerfoot sunwise, drawing a wide circle of salt and cornmeal on the ground. Spirit medicine wasn’t body medicine, but if the zombies returned, perhaps this would keep them from knowing he and Deerfoot were here. This was not Meshkwahkihaki medicine, but he dared to hope the medicine would answer his call, for in the long ago all the People had been one people.

  Last of all he took apart several cigars to make four small piles of loose tobacco, one in each quarter of the circle. He lit one of the remaining cigars at the lamp flame, then used its coal to light the loose herb. The smoke was sweet, and the air was still. He watched the smoke stream upward for a moment before stubbing the cigar out, returning to the center of the circle, and dousing the lamp. The last light of day was visible through the cracks between the boards, but it fled swiftly. He sat quietly. The only sound was Deerfoot chewing the oats he had found for her. The only sight was the fading glow of burning tobacco.

  With the leisure to think over what the day had brought him, White Fox realized he’d been counting more than he’d known on the possibility this journey would permit him to send word to the Tenth. Now—when it was too late—he realized he should have done so immediately upon their arrival in Alsop. Only he’d had nothing to report then, and by the time he did, the zombies had destroyed the telegraph office. His only alternative was a message rider, and he’d hoped to find one here. It wasn’t that he’d expected help—Fort Riley was far away—but his report would have been a record of events that was beyond “Brother” Shepherd’s reach.

  There was nothing he could do about that now.

  White Fox did not spend an easy night, but he spent a quiet one. When the dawn light shone through the gaps between the boards, he collected his belongings, swept the salt and meal away with a brief word of thanks, and rode for Alsop.

  * * *

  That morning Gibbons was so excited at the prospect of finally doing what she called “real research” she didn’t even stop for breakfast before enlisting Jett to help her move the corpse from the jail to her makeshift laboratorium. It was too heavy to carry, so Jett rolled the body onto a blanket and the two of them dragged it up the street. In the daylight, the body looked even worse than it had in the cell. Its hands and face were battered and broken where it had tried to hammer its way from the cell, and its skin had a waxy grayish undertone, as if the body was slowly dissolving. On the other hand, it didn’t smell quite as bad anymore, though that might have had as much to do with the half bottle of Florida Water Jett had poured over it as the removal of any curse.

  “This—would be a lot—easier if we used—your horse!” Gibbons gasped as she stopped to rest.

  “Nightingale’s got more sense than
both of us put together,” Jett answered. “He wouldn’t stop running till he hit the Rio Grande.”

  “Almost there,” Gibbons said determinedly, grabbing her end of the blanket again.

  It took them over an hour to cover the distance from the jail to the saloon, and when they got the body up the steps and onto the makeshift table White Fox had created from a door and two sawhorses, Jett collapsed into the nearest chair. Couldn’t have done that wearing a corset, she thought. Now and then, her costume had real advantages.

  “Now that you’ve got him, what are you going to do with him?” she asked warily, with the caution anyone would show who’d known Miss Honoria Gibbons of San Francisco more than a few hours.

  “I’m going to take him apart and see how he ticks!” Gibbons answered happily.

  Jett bolted to her feet as if she’d sat on a bee. “You—you do that,” she said quickly. “I’ll be—I’ll be around.”

  She made her escape before Gibbons could ask her to do anything else. Like help.

  She’d seen a tin bathtub in the back of the barber shop. It took her far too many trips to the town pump to fill it with water, and it wasn’t a hot bath, but she stripped to the skin and scrubbed herself until she’d scrubbed away the memory of having touched the cursed flesh that Gibbons was even now dismantling. By the time she emerged onto the street again, the Auto-Tachypode was back in front of the saloon. She’d heard the noise of it coming up the street, but by now that was a familiar sound. Jett could remember down to the day and hour the last time there’d been anything familiar in her life. It had been the night Court Oak burned.

  I’m not going to think about that, she told herself firmly. Not here, not now. Maybe not ever. I’ll find Philip and … and maybe we’ll go to California. Nobody cares who you used to be in California. I just have to find him first.