Dread Nation

by Justina Ireland

  The rest of the girls are pulling on their boots and heading out the door, so I hurriedly do the same. I barely have time to spare a thought for Katherine. Did she wake up in a feather bed, toast and coffee served on a silver service? Wherever she got to, it has to be better than this.

  The sound of many boots on the back stairs rolls like thunder, and as we exit the saloon a couple of bleary-eyed cowpokes leaning against the back of the building raise their heads and curse us out. No one I’m with says anything, so I stay silent, too.

  Once we’re out on the street we fall into two lines. The boys are pouring around the back of the general store. They must have a room up above it, like we girls do at the Duchess’s. No one in our group looks to be much older than twenty, and I wonder if everyone here is like Ida, someone rounded up from one of the patrol schools and sent out here.

  I crane my neck to see if Jackson is amongst the boys, but I don’t find his ocher skin anywhere. A midnight-skinned boy, tall and rangy, catches my eye and gives me a wink, but I look away before he can get the wrong idea.

  The sheriff comes down the street atop a large, ill-tempered-looking beast. I elbow the person next to me, a small girl from Georgia who Ida introduced as Sofi.

  “Is that a . . . ?”

  Sofi looks at me from the corner of her eye. “A horse? You for real? Ain’t you never seen a horse before?”

  I shake my head, and I wonder what kinds of places in the Lost States have horses amongst so many shamblers. The animal is big and the color of cinnamon, with a long nose and a tail of straight hair. There’s more hair along the thing’s elongated neck, and its hoofed feet make a hollow clip-clopping sound in the packed dirt as it walks down the road toward us.

  “We ready?” Sheriff Snyder calls, and I crane my neck around. Behind me are Bob and Bill, each on a horse of his own, their shotguns slung across their saddles. They give a curt nod, and the sheriff turns his horse around and starts off toward the edge of town, the thing walking pretty fast with its long, spindly legs.

  The columns on each side follow at a trot, and I glance over at Sofi as I realize that we’re supposed to run wherever we’re going. Her face is impassive, as is everyone else’s, as we’re herded forward.

  Old Professor Ghering called Negroes livestock the night of the fateful lecture. I can’t help but think of him as we scurry along.

  The pace ain’t too fast, nothing like the wind sprints we had to do at Miss Preston’s, but my boots are new and I haven’t had much to eat over the past couple of days, so even a little bit of a run feels like too much. By the time we’ve cleared the rickety buildings of the town and get into the outskirts of the settlement I know that this trip is going to be brutal. The horse in front of us kicks up too much dust, and I’m still weak from the train ride, but I get the feeling that not keeping up would be much worse than a few blisters and a side cramp.

  We’ve gone about a mile at our shuffle run when one of the boys calls, “Sheriff, sir!”

  The sheriff, who is rolling a cigarette, glances back over his shoulder. “Mm-hmm?”

  “Might we sing, sir?”

  The sheriff strikes a match and lights his cigarette, then gives a curt nod.

  I have no idea what the whole conversation pertains to until the same boy closes his eyes and sings out, “You get a line and I’ll get a pole!”

  Around me everyone responds with a chorus of “Honey! Honey!”

  “You get a line and I’ll get a pole,” the boy calls out again, his voice strong and even. This time everyone responds with “Babe! Babe!”

  And then everyone sings together “You get a line and I’ll get a pole, and we’ll go down to that fishing hole, honey, oh baby mine!”

  The sound of that many voices raised in song brings goose bumps to my arms. It reminds me of home, the way the field hands would sing during the worst of the work, the hard things like hoeing or tilling. It was a way to make the work go faster, to take their minds off the difficult task at hand. They’d sing about far-off places and about days gone by, about silly things like peach cobbler and the devil trying to steal their soul. It was something I always felt outside of back on Rose Hill, since Momma wouldn’t let me go into the fields. She always said it was too dangerous, but I wondered if maybe it was something else, like she was afraid that she could lose me to a song.

  I ain’t sure how I feel about the need for work songs in a place like this.

  We sing as we shuffle along for the next few miles. Eventually I get the hang of it, and I join in, grateful for something to take my mind off the blisters forming on my feet.

  When those shamblers gather round,

  Honey! Honey!

  When those shamblers gather round,

  Babe! Babe!

  When those shamblers gather round, swing your scythe and bring them down,

  Honey, oh baby mine!

  Ain’t no use in looking sad,

  Honey! Honey!

  Ain’t no use in looking sad,

  Babe! Babe!

  Ain’t no use in looking sad, shambler’s bite ain’t all that bad,

  Honey, oh baby mine!

  When my eyes go shambler yellow,

  Honey! Honey!

  When my eyes go shambler yellow,

  Babe! Babe!

  When my eyes go shambler yellow, then it’s time to end your fellow,

  Honey, oh baby mine!

  Swing your scythe and take me down,

  Honey! Honey!

  Swing your scythe and take me down,

  Babe! Babe!

  Swing your scythe and take me down, before I turn the whole damn town,

  Honey, oh baby mine!

  By the time we get to the end of the song I ain’t enjoying it so much.

  “Halt!”

  We all stumble to a stop. There’s a cook wagon in the middle of the field, something I’ve only seen from drawings about Western life. A grizzled old colored man stirs a big pot of something over a fire, and a couple of small, dark-skinned boys run to and fro as the old man barks out orders.

  “All right,” the sheriff calls, turning his horse around so he can look down on us. “You got ten minutes to eat. Now git.”

  Everyone rushes to the cook fire, pushing and shoving to get next to the little boys, who hold wooden bowls that the old man ladles some kind of porridge into. I stand back, not bothering to shove my way into the throng. Once the melee has cleared I walk up to the front.

  The old man looks at me with rheumy eyes. “Ain’t nothing left,” he says, scraping the pot. He manages to produce a bit of burned mush from the bottom and puts it in a bowl for the little boys to share. To me he hands an empty bowl.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Don’t you sass me, missy. I gave you the bowl because you’ll need it for lunch. Now clear on out.”

  I blow out an angry breath and go to stand next to Ida, who is poking at her burned porridge piece in dismay.

  The big girl, Cora, looks at me, shoveling her porridge into her mouth with her hand. “You’d better learn, Negro. Them fancy manners ain’t gonna keep you alive for long out here.”

  I watch Cora eat, and feel a little ill. There are no utensils to eat the porridge, so the options are use your hands or starve. The rest of our group stampeded to the trough like hogs because they knew there wouldn’t be enough food for everyone. And this is all after we were herded out to the work site.

  Ida sidles up to me, her expression worried. “Watch out for Cora. She’s one of his favorites,” she says, eyes hooded as she watches the big girl reach into a boy’s bowl and scoop out a mouthful of porridge. “You want a little?” she asks, and I shake my head.

  “No, you eat it. I ain’t all that hungry, anyway.” It’s a lie. I’m starving, but Ida is tiny, and she looks like she needs the food more than I do.

  “Let’s go!” the sheriff yells from his horse, cracking a whip over our heads. Everyone shoves the rest of their porridge into their mouths
and forms back up into their lines, bowls clutched in their hands.

  Once again, we start running, our destination unclear. This time when everyone starts singing, I don’t join in.

  We stop a short while later, our second run of the morning much shorter than our first. The ground is flat, the sun is already hot, and the grass is high, but I barely notice any of it on account of my aching feet. My boots are laced tight, and each step is painful, blisters already forming. I don’t even want to imagine what my feet look like under the leather.

  The sheriff turns around and gives us all a steely gaze. “Fence menders, get to your business.” About half the boys and girls run off and each pick up a spool of bobbed wire, slinging it over their shoulder before they head off to a fence line a few hundred feet in the distance, the waist-high grass parting as they move through it. Cora is one of the fence menders. So fence mending must be easier than patrolling, if what Ida said about her being one of the sheriff’s favorites is true.

  Beyond the fence, much closer now, is the imposing exterior wall. I’m guessing that’s where I’m bound.

  “Patrol, go get your weapons.” The sheriff points to a ramshackle-looking shed, and this time I run out ahead of the group, ignoring my throbbing feet. I am not going to fight shamblers with a bowl.

  I’m one of the first to the shed, Ida right behind me. When the girl next to me, Iris I think her name is, opens the door, my heart falls.

  These ain’t weapons. They’re garden implements. There are several sets of sickles and quite a few scythes, but none of them have been cared for. The blades are rusty, the edges dull, and the pair of sickles I pick up ain’t even weighted properly. No wonder the girls on patrol don’t last long.

  I grab the sickles and march over to Sheriff Snyder. I’ve had enough of this. I spent three years at Miss Preston’s honing my combat skills, refining my manners, getting an education. I ain’t no flunky to be prancing around the countryside just waiting to get bit. If I’m going out against shamblers, I need to be properly equipped.

  “Sheriff, might I trouble you for a moment?”

  The man looks down his nose at me, and his horse snorts and paws at the ground. “Why aren’t you lining up with your people?”

  “Sir, I do believe you should know that these weapons are highly inadequate for any kind of patrol.” I hold up one of the sickles and point to the curved blade. “These haven’t been sharpened in ages, they are rusted, and I doubt they could cut through grass, much less a shambler’s neck.”

  “Jane McKeene, I realize that you are new here, so I’m going to let you go back and have one of the girls explain how things work to you.”

  “Sir, I ain’t going to need to know how things work when I’m dead from a shambler’s bite. Would you please look at this sickle?” I hold it up higher so that he can see what a disgrace his “weapons” are.

  Quick as a snake, the sheriff’s boot lashes out, hitting me in the shoulder. I stumble backward, and something hits me in the back of the head. I drop the sickles, and as I fall to my knees someone kicks me again in the back, the boot digging deep between my ribs.

  “Hold there, now Bill. She’s still gotta work.”

  I climb shakily to my feet, rage coursing through my veins. The pain is a distant throb to my desire to do a little sickle work across Bill’s face.

  Ida runs to my side. “Don’t worry, Sheriff, it won’t happen again. We’ll school her up right.”

  The sheriff says nothing, just nods and spits, missing me by only a few inches. What is with these men and all their spitting?

  Ida grabs my arms and whispers into my ear, “That right there is suicide. The sheriff is a whole lot of mean and not a lot of smart. You might as well poke a rattlesnake. Your death’d be easier.”

  I say nothing, steeling my expression to blankness. I just pick up my sickles and storm over to where the rest of the girls gather.

  I’m getting out of here. But before I do, I’m going to get a little payback of my own.

  I trust you aren’t getting into too much mischief, Jane. You were always such an impetuous child, and I genuinely hope you aren’t letting your temper get the better of you.

  Chapter 23

  In Which I Taunt the Devil

  The attack leaves me in a black mood for the rest of the day. I talk to no one, only opening my mouth to answer questions when asked. My job is to walk the top of the exterior wall.

  I’d thought the walls around Baltimore had been a sight, but Summerland’s wall puts it to shame. It stands at least the height of three men and looks to be made of stacked mud bricks. There are bits of grass mixed in with the mud bricks to hold it together, and the wall is at least half as wide as it is tall. I ask one of the girls standing next to me, “How did they build such a thing?”

  She glances at Bob and Bill before answering in a low voice. “You know the story of the Pharaoh and the Israelites?”

  The holy book is not my favorite tome, but I know it well enough. I nod and she continues, “Let’s just say this wall was built like the pyramids: most of the builders didn’t live to tell about it, and ain’t no Moses come to liberate them.”

  After that we are split into teams and assigned sections to patrol.

  On the way out here, we had picked our way through an inner, double-strung bobbed wire fence and the interior fence, which boasts five lines of wire. It’s a crime that a place with such excellent defenses would have such terrible weaponry available to the patrols.

  Behind me Bill’s smug satisfaction radiates off him in waves, and the spot on my back that met his boot aches. More than once I imagine sinking my rusty sickles into his skull.

  But I don’t. Instead, I shove my anger down, burying it deep, letting it temper my soul. Auntie Aggie always said the hard times make us stronger. If things continue like this, I will be nigh on invincible by the time I take my leave of Summerland.

  I am teamed up for patrol with the dark-skinned boy that winked at me earlier in the day. His name is Alfonse, and he seems to be a nice enough fellow, if maybe a little too chatty. After twenty minutes of him relating to me his life story, I finally tell him, “I ain’t interested in anything you have to say unless it’s how to get out of here.” He clams up after that, shooting me a few black looks when he thinks I ain’t looking.

  The wall we walk gets more disgusting the more of it I see. On the far side, in the space between us and the rest of the world, are some dead. Actual shamblers, walking around, moaning for a bite to eat, all grouped up like they’re going to share a secret. There ain’t a lot of them, but there’s enough. The wall is too high for them to climb, but it’s got some footholds in it so a person could climb down if needed, and I’m about to do so and end them when Alfonse says, “We ain’t supposed to kill them, just make sure they don’t try to climb the wall.”

  “What’s the point of that?” I asked, the sound of their wailing making me feel more than a bit stabby.

  Alfonse shrugged. “The sheriff has this idea that killing one just attracts more of them. If you do it, you’ll get in trouble, and the sheriff is quick with the whip.” The sickly sweet stink of rotting corpses hangs heavy in the air, and every time the wind shifts, I gag.

  Me and Alfonse are walking our stretch of wall for what must be the tenth time when I hear the most god-awful, bloodcurdling scream.

  A little ways down the wall behind us, a girl has slipped into the no-man’s-land of the prairie. Another girl is climbing down the wall, to save the girl who fell, it appears.

  And a knot of shamblers is already running toward the both of them, hell-bent on dinner.

  I turn to run to their assistance, but Alfonse grabs my arm. “We ain’t supposed to leave our posts.”

  “Alfonse, you any good at math?” He shakes his head, and I sigh. “Well, I am. Two people with glorified butter knives ain’t going to be able to take on that many shamblers, especially when a few of them look to be new turns.” It comes out in a lightning-fast
bit of speech, and then I’m running full tilt along the wall.

  I forget my blisters, my hunger, my thirst. Everything fades into the background as I count the shamblers, note their gait. You have to kill the freshies first. They’re the fastest, the smartest. The ones that have been running for a while are always slower, like a clockwork toy that just won’t wind. From my observations there looks to be three that are moving well, the rest of the group kind of straggling behind.

  By the time I get to the girls I have a stitch in my side and my feet are screaming, but I push it all aside. I pick my way down the wall, jumping too early and dropping a sickle, nearly losing my balance when I hit the bottom. I grab my fallen weapon and pick my first target, a Negro girl wearing clothing that looks eerily like mine, and leap, sickle swinging to take the thing down.

  Here’s the thing. If these were my sickles, my beloved, sharp, well-weighted combat sickles, they would’ve gone through the shambler’s neck like a hot knife through lard. But these are not my sickles. So the blade gets stuck halfway, the beast snapping its teeth at me and clawing at my arms as it tries to get free.

  I place my foot behind the shambler’s and use my sickle to push it backward. Once it’s down I use a mule kick against the curved edge to force the blade through. The head goes rolling off down into the culvert and the body goes still.

  But my kill has taken time. The other two patrol girls, whom I don’t know, are grappling with the remaining two freshies in close quarters, shoving them and swinging their scythes ineffectively. The rest of the pack is still fifty yards away and moving like elderly folks, hunched over and slow. If I can take down the other two, then we might have a fighting chance.

  I switch my grip on my weapons as I run up behind the one closest to me. I cross my arms and use a blade on each side of the neck and pull the metal through. But as I’m trying to yank the sickles through the shambler’s neck I get a good look at its face, and my heart stutters to a stop.