“Gideon, my problem ain’t with vaccines—it’s with your vaccine. It’s based on the same faulty science as the one that got me all caught up in this mess back in Baltimore, ain’t it?”
“Professor Ghering’s formula was promising, but it had fundamental flaws. Ones that I’ve since addressed.”
“Fine—even so, how is it that you think we’re going to convince everyone that the vaccine works? You want I should march out to that horde, bid it good day, get bit, and then come skipping back like the prodigal lamb?”
Gideon takes off his hat and runs his hand through his hair. “I think you’re mixing your metaphors, Jane. And look, I understand your reluctance. Here’s the issue: most people here aren’t worried the inoculation won’t work; they’re afraid that getting injected is going to turn them. If you could tell folks that you got the vaccine and didn’t turn, that would convince a fair number of people to submit.”
“No, Gideon. And not just no, but hell no,” I say. “And now that you mention it, how is it you came to be such a fixture in Nicodemus in the first place?”
“I’ve been splitting my time between here and Summerland in secret for the past year,” he says, not quite meeting my gaze. “I’m in charge of the town’s defenses, and they’ve been giving me the resources I need to do what I never could in Summerland. We’ve taken to manufacturing our own gunpowder efficiently, and we’ve increased the strength of the fences as well as added an electric fence that’s powered by a series of windmills and a nearby creek.”
I study him for a long minute before crossing my arms. “I don’t understand. If you knew this place existed, only a couple days’ journey, why didn’t you help folks get out of Summerland and come here, where they wouldn’t have to risk their lives with shoddy defenses and forced patrols?”
He grimaces slightly. “I tried, but . . . I failed. I’ve been living here in town for the past year or so, pretending my trips away from Summerland were for research on the movements of the dead out here on the prairie. I only made my way back to town often enough to make sure Sheriff Snyder and the preacher didn’t get suspicious, take my lab from me, or report anything back to my father, whose grace was the only thing keeping me safe out here. Even so, I was ready to run, to make a clean departure, but that’s when you and Katherine arrived and, well, I knew I couldn’t leave. Not yet.”
“Well, I suppose that’s something,” I say. The mention of Katherine’s name revives a bit of the old jealousy. I imagine Gideon watching Katherine’s arrival with interest, thinking what a lovely bride she’d be. And then I squash the feelings, because she’s one of the few people I trust. I’m quickly running out of allies, so there’s no room for pettiness right now.
Gideon clears his throat nervously and starts talking faster. “The council will most likely be meeting tonight to discuss what to do with you. Let me tell them that you’ve volunteered to help me with my vaccine—to allow it to be tested on you. I won’t send you out to be bitten; I’m sure there are other ways to test the efficacy other than direct contact with the dead.”
“Gideon . . .”
He’s a brilliant scientist, it’s true. Maybe he could find some way to concoct the miracle shambler cure that could finally curtail the plague. But then I think of Othello, the poor Negro that made no mistake but to believe in the fantasy of Professor Ghering’s anti-shambler vaccine. He was fine until he got bit, and after that, well, he turned shambler just like everyone else. Gideon would have just thought of him as another negative test. And I ain’t signing on to be part of anything like that, cure or no.
“You can’t go around lying to people to get them to participate in your experiments,” I say. “It just ain’t right. You’re playing with folks’ lives here.”
Gideon shifts in his chair uncomfortably. “I understand that, but this vaccine is worth it. It could save the world. It will save the country, at least! Imagine, a land where the dead have no interest in the living, where no man or woman turns shambler ever again, where the undead are just another nuisance to be exterminated. We can make that a reality, and you could be a part of it.”
I laugh, some of my desperation leaking through. His expression falls. “We have to put all the old ideas aside, Gideon. Fortified towns, newfangled defensive technology . . . none of it ever makes a difference. While you’re busy experimenting and failing and experimenting again, more and more people get turned, and that just means more dead around to hunt folks down. Nowhere can be safe forever. And I’m sorry, but your vaccine ain’t the answer. I watched people turn on the patrols back in Summerland. And that’s all the evidence I need.”
His expression goes slack. “Jane, I’m sorry you feel that way.”
His words are like a slap, his tone dismissive and haughty. All the things I’ve been telling him, facts and truths, he just dismisses as the opinions of a woman. The boy is a muttonhead. A very cute one, but a straight muttonhead nonetheless. He’s willing to ignore what is right in front of him, and why? Hubris? Or something else?
Just pondering it puts me in a bleak mood, because I get the feeling that nothing I can tell him is going to sink in.
He’s going to do just as he pleases.
I shake my head. This is the last thing I need right now. I need to change the subject, because it’s clear as day that we ain’t going to come to any sort of harmony on this inoculation business. “And when exactly were you planning on evacuating Nicodemus, in between all these science projects and murder trials?”
He frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“You might have hightailed it out of Summerland before the proper horde arrived, but Kate and I watched that wave of dead overwhelm it. And while that horde snapped at our heels, we stumbled upon another pod on our way here. The whole mess of them might have slowed down a bit, but by nightfall, this town will be overrun.”
Gideon shakes his head. “Oh, there’s no concern there. I have something that will keep the town safe, you’ll see.” He gives me a secretive smile, and I decide right there that whatever Gideon’s got up his sleeve, I probably ain’t going to like it.
“The dead won’t get through our fences. They are far more advanced than Summerland’s.”
“You think a bit of wire and science is going to keep out thousands of hungry shamblers?” I ask.
He flushes and stands. “Look, I didn’t come here to fight, Jane. I’m trying to help.”
“I get that, Gideon, but so far you’ve ignored the fact that every plan that you or anyone else felt was the one to finally stop a shambler horde has failed completely. Do you even know what it’s like to fight the dead?” I’m yelling, and all I can think of is Jackson on his knees, begging me to end him sooner than later. “First your nonsense about your vaccine, now keeping out a horde with a fence and whatever else you’ve tinkered together? The world ain’t your lab, Gideon! You can’t go back and redo the experiment when you don’t get the results you hoped for.”
His expression goes stony, and I know I’ve misstepped at some point, but I can’t seem to stop the flow of emotions.
“Jane, you have no idea what I have experienced.”
“I don’t, but this? This is madness!” I pull at the ends of my braids in frustration and start pacing.
Gideon stands and retrieves his hat. “I just wish you could have some faith in me.”
I collapse onto the cot and rest my head in my hands. “Faith is for people that got hope, Gideon, and I’m afraid that’s been in short supply for a long minute.”
The silence stretches on into something ugly, and he sighs. “I’m going to go. You seem to be out of sorts, and it’s understandable. You’ve had quite a trek across the prairie, and I think maybe you just aren’t seeing things clearly right now.”
I press my lips together, because I see things more clearly than he knows. Nicodemus ain’t any different than Summerland, or Baltimore for that matter. Same old nonsense, just prettier packaging. And none of that is going to ma
tter anyway if we don’t do something about that horde. The thing about shamblers is they don’t care what a body believes in, as long as they can sink their teeth into it.
“Thanks for stopping by,” I mutter, because I know Gideon is trying to help. His brain has only been taught to think about problems one way. He doesn’t understand that sometimes it takes a bold solution to solve a problem, one folks ain’t expecting.
Like a well-placed bullet.
Gideon is almost to the door when he turns back, walking all the way up to the bars. “Consider my proposal, Jane.”
There’s no way on God’s green earth I’m letting him poke and prod at me again like some kind of specimen. And I sure as hell ain’t letting the good people of Nicodemus and Summerland decide my fate.
As Gideon leaves the sheriff’s office I make a decision.
First chance I get, I’m running.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
—Psalms 133:1
—KATHERINE—
Chapter 10
Notes on a Plot to Save Jane McKeene
I pace the boardwalk in the front of the Nicodemus sheriff’s office, trying to listen in on Gideon and Jane’s conversation without appearing to eavesdrop. A day-old biscuit and a thin stew, which was the food the kind women of Nicodemus had passed around to the refugees, sits uneasily in my belly. I want a proper bath and a change of clothes, but I refuse to have either until I know that Jane’s welfare is assured, at least for the time being.
The entirety of Miss Preston’s, as well as a good number of girls from the other combat schools, are gathered outside the sheriff’s office as well. Our presence has proven enough to keep the Summerland folks at a distance, for now. Most everyone has dispersed to whatever other tasks they might have. A small knot of people still watch the sheriff’s office, but they are not a threat as long as there are Miss Preston’s girls about. It is strange to see people I once shared meals with—a fair number of the fine folks of Summerland seem to have escaped the horde as well as the drovers and roughnecks—scream their rage out over their inability to kill a girl. It is monstrous, and yet another reminder that the dead are not the only threat in this world.
The combat-school girls are wound tight due to the approaching horde, which is now close enough that I get a whiff of decay on the hot breeze every now and again. Nearby, Sue leans against a wall, sharpening an overlarge knife with a whetstone and a bit of oil. She is out of sorts. She keeps advocating a strategy of flight, but no one seems to be listening to her.
“That horde will be here by nightfall, and after Baltimore I ain’t of a mind to fight my way out,” she said, and jutted her chin at the town’s main gates, once again securely closed. “That ain’t going to keep a determined horde out, not forever.”
She is right, but before we can do anything we need to get Jane out of jail. This accusation of murder, on the heels of Jane having to administer last rites to Jackson? Well, I am not sure what her emotional state might be, and I worry that her brashness will only find her swinging from a rope, justice or no. Jane is the proverbial bull in the china shop, and while she is highly effective against the dead she is terrible at navigating the intricacies of human interaction.
Which is why I feel as though I should force my way into the sheriff’s office and do the talking for her. Gideon might draw water with the leadership here in Nicodemus and be clever besides, but he has not spent the past three years watching Jane flit from one near disaster to another.
Truth be told, I am also not sure I trust the man.
“Jane in there?”
The voice pulls me from the runaway train of my thoughts. I turn to find the girl Jane was friendly with—Ida—standing behind me with a few of the other Negroes that I recognize from Summerland’s patrols. Next to her, looking as nervous as a cat in a kennel, is a Negro girl with brown skin and straight hair pulled back into a single braid. She is not redbone like Jackson, but there is something vaguely different about her. It is something about her eyes, and as I am studying her she smiles.
“Cherokee,” she says.
I blink. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re thinking that I ain’t just a Negro, and you’re right. I got Cherokee in me, too. My people came on the long walk with the Five Civilized Tribes. Not of their own accord, mind you, but come west we did.”
I realize I have been staring, and a powerful flush comes over me. “I apologize. My journey here has been long and fraught, and I may have lost some of my manners along the way. I am Katherine Deveraux.”
“Callie,” the girl says, grinning, and I am reminded of Jackson saying that the town had been settled by runaway Negroes, some of them formerly enslaved by the Five Civilized Tribes, along with a group of Quakers. I do not think the girl is a Quaker, so I peg her as the former. Her front tooth is chipped, and it gives her an impish air.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” I say. I gesture behind me to where Sue has paused in her knife sharpening to watch my conversation with this new group of women. She pushes off the boardwalk to stand next to me. “This is Sue.”
“Uh-huh,” Ida says, looking Sue up and down but ignoring me altogether. I get the idea that she does not care for me, and the usual litany of reasons runs through my mind. My pale skin? The way I carry myself? The way a few of the fellows in the gaggle behind her have taken off their caps and are now giving me that thrice-cursed look men always give me? I do not know, and I do not especially care. I know how to work with a woman who does not like me, and I refuse to let a bit of pettiness stop me from saving Jane’s ungrateful hide.
“I suppose you are here about Jane?” I say, crossing my arms.
“Yup,” Ida says, resting her hands on the sword she carries. “There ain’t no way we’re about to let those folks from Summerland lynch her.”
“So you’re here to break her out?” Sue says, twisting her lips to the side. “Because that’s what I’m about.”
I draw myself up. “No one is rushing in and breaking anyone out without any kind of plan. What do you aim to do after you secure her freedom? Will you run? With no supplies, and a horde bearing down on us?”
A few of the folks behind Ida shift and mutter something under their breath, but Ida is unmoved.
“Better to die out there, fighting for our lives, than to die in here scrabbling for food and getting told what to do by white folks.” Ida holds her hands out to gesture to the town.
I frown. “I thought this was a Negro settlement?”
Ida shakes her head. “Maybe now, but how long do you think that’s going to last? Them Summerland folks are already running around, trying to push everyone this way and that. How long until they got the colored folks running patrols while all the white folk stay safe inside the wire?”
I drop my arms, all the fight going out of me. Ida is right. I could see the looks of disbelief on those pale faces when the mayor introduced himself. The peril outside might have some people behaving themselves for now, but it will not last.
However, I cannot let the panic of a few folks take hold, either. That is the problem with fear—it is like wildfire, traveling fast and hot, leaving only ashes behind.
“It seems to me that it is in our best interest to make sure that does not happen, that we can keep the people of Summerland in check,” I say, gesturing a little ways down the street where people gather. “There are definitely more of us than there are of them.”
“That’s what my daddy figures,” the girl—Callie—says. She flushes and ducks her head. “He’s the mayor, and he and the council figure that with a good number of well-trained folks they can keep order and ensure that nothing bad happens. He says that at their heart, people want to do the right thing, and as long as the right thing is an option, nothing can go wrong.”
“That seems to be overly optimistic,” Ida says, glancing down the road toward everyone lining up for the evening meal. “Especially given the number
of angry white people stomping around town.”
Ida is right. Mayor Washington sounds a bit naive. How is a man with so little sense going to keep order in the maelstrom churning beneath him?
My heart begins to pound, and I take a deep breath and let it out. I can feel the edge of one of my panicky moods trying to settle over me. When I was younger, Maman used to call them my “worrying fits.” I would find myself frozen with indecision for fear that any choice I made would be the wrong one, earning the wrath of Maman or one of the other ladies of the house. Later, when Maman found a protector, I would lie awake at night worrying that we would be put out on the street like Amelie Dupree, whose companion had dumped her and her children unceremoniously after he decided he could no longer afford her small house in Tremé. Life out here is fraught, but even life within city walls is dangerous. It is just that the danger takes different forms. And for some blasted reason my mind was convinced that if I did not worry through all the possible pitfalls, they would befall me sooner rather than later. Folks might think my pretty face made my passage through this world easy, but that was far from the truth.
I take another deep breath and realize that Ida and Callie are giving me a peculiar look. I muster a wan smile and fan my cheeks. “This heat is getting to me, I apologize. What was it you just said?”
“I said that I don’t think those Summerland people are going to take direction from a Negro mayor,” Callie says.
Ida nods. “Agreed. Especially not as terrified as they are right now. And when white people are scared it’s the Negro that bears the brunt,” Ida says with a twist of her lips. “This place is a powder keg. We need to make haste before it explodes, because we all know what’s going to happen when it does.”
“It’ll be Summerland all over again,” says one of the colored girls behind Ida.
“And I ain’t about to let that happen,” says one of the Negro men next to the girl. “I’ll fight folks before I let them turn me into a mule again.”
Deathless Divide Page 10