Morning dawns slowly about the city.
Ivy lies in bed for an hour fretting over money and weddings and the pain in her arm. She is still first down to breakfast, but not before discovering a scrap of paper torn from an old envelope has been slipped under her door. The jagged handwriting looks like that of a schoolboy, who, though instructed in penmanship, cannot be bothered by the finer points:
Horse back already. Didn’t want you fretting on his account. M
Well, isn’t that just incredibly thoughtful. Her cousin’s gloating, sarcastic voice rings in her ears as Ivy shreds the paper on her way downstairs.
She discovers the girl of all work flushed, jabbering at her, yawning many times as she works, clearly behind.
After breakfast, Ivy slips out on her own to look for her fox at the edge of the lavender and sienna city, sun rising behind her. The cathedral is already buzzing with preparations when she returns, unsuccessful, to the house to get herself ready. Are Oliver and Glendaleen even Catholic? Makers are broadly stereotyped as agnostic, if not atheist, back East. One of the reasons for their less than warm welcomes in certain communities.
She has hardly sat down in front of a tiny mirror with her hairbrush when there is a fast tap at the door. Señorita stands there, a mound of teal dress and white chemise in her arms. Complete with sleeves.
Ivy gasps.
The girl has removed most of the intact sleeve and painstakingly stitched each rip. With the good sleeve she cut away, she replaced the top, around the shoulder of the left one. Then, using material cut from extra folds around the chemise skirt, she constructed two flowing white sleeves like no fashion in either Boston or the West Ivy has seen.
Ivy hugs the girl, thanking her, then scrambles through her handbag for every cent she has left of what she has collected from Melchior for her own use. Señorita, in tears, seems far more overwhelmed by the riches of the two dollars Ivy turns out than Ivy is by the magical dress. “Gracias, señorita. Es para mi familia. Gracias.”
If there must be a wedding, at least she need not feel embarrassed to attend. With her hair in place, handbag on her arm, and the only piece of jewelry she still owns, her mother’s ring, on her right hand, Ivy sets out for the cathedral on her own—having run across neither of her male companions and willing to skip seeing Sam if it means she can also avoid Melchior.
She finds a queue just starting and joins in with ladies in Sunday best and gentlemen in black frock coats with wide lapels, white shirts, and neckties. Ivy feels grounded as she steps below the vaulted ceiling. The indecency of the Territory fades as she smiles at polite men with scrubbed faces, tipping their hats, and clean women in at least a touch of lace and trimmed hats. Even if their dresses are not from Boston.
Her own goodwill has just about blotted out thoughts of cash and devices when a cool, mocking voice says, “How in thunderation did you get that rag back? Thought it a goner.”
Ivy whirls to face her cousin with her chin lifted and her hands resting at her sides. He is also adorned in clean frock coat—did he just buy it? Grinning at her. Though there are dark circles under his eyes, his face is shaven and clean, exaggerating his sharp, crisp features. So terribly handsome ... so unfair. Like so many things out here.
“You will kindly keep your distance this day, lest you spoil it.” She turns, head up, shoulders back, and makes her way to a seat near the front.
The ceremony is formal, yet short. Ivy almost laughs to see Oliver in tails. He fidgets as if looking for a knob or gear until the bride appears in pink and white and his whole aspect melts into soppy adoration, eyes filling with tears at sight of her. Watching him, Ivy wonders if she will ever be lucky enough to find someone who looks at her the way he looks at Glendaleen. If only that lady herself was not such a menace—no, hardly fair. Glendaleen has not prevailed upon Oliver to overcharge them. Yet.
After the ceremony, the party moves to the Palace. Its portal provides midday shade where long tables have been laid with growing quantities for food for the wedding party brought in by local women. Inside, all has been cleared for musicians and dancing, while doorways into former government offices are locked.
In honor of the bride and groom, a European waltz is struck up. Ivy’s shoulders relax as she tries to forgive Glendaleen her faults. She does move with grace, though Ivy suspects Oliver would be better at making a contraption to dance on its own than doing the dancing himself.
Ivy remains by the wall with the rest of the party until, two by two, couples break off from spectators to join in—not one of them in gloves.
She resists a sigh. Josiah White would have attended a wedding with her. Him in fine white gloves, her in silk elbow gloves, elegant dress never having known a spot of dirt. For the first time ever, Ivy wishes terribly to see Josiah. For all his flaws and immaturity, at least the boy can waltz.
“May I have the pleasure of a dance with the loveliest lady here?”
Ivy looks around. Sam holds out his left hand to her.
He wears the apropos frock coat, yet similarities between him and their company end here. While they seem stiff and uncomfortable, tugging at collars or fidgeting in chairs, Sam, in starched, clean whites and blacks, looks like nothing short of a duke. Perhaps he is. She never asked. He stands square, tall, looking at her steadily with smiling eyes. His face is clean, his neither brown nor blonde hair soft and un-mashed by hat bands. His hands and fingernails are crisply clean—although bare—and his teeth, which she never noticed before, are white and even. She feels, meeting his eyes in that moment, both that she has stepped into the foyer of a graceful manor house, and that she has never seen anyone so perfect in her life.
“I....” Ivy tries to swallow. “Have no gloves.”
“I neither.” A crease forms at his brow. “I beg your pardon. Do you imagine your father might forgive if he understood the circumstances?”
It never previously occurred to Ivy that a polite person could dance without gloves. Not a lady or gentleman.
“He is a practical man.” She gives Sam her hand. “Thank you.”
He kisses her fingers as if on introduction and leads her onto the floor. He rests his right hand lightly on her back, pausing for the tempo, then stepping off.
“May I ask how you saved your dress? It looks exquisite and I admit I thought it finished.”
She stares into his eyes, moving easily with him from her own long practice and his light pressure at her back or hand. She cannot even feel her previously sore arm. Or her feet.
“The girl at the boarding house. I also thought it impossible.” Her speech is breathless, low, as if confiding a secret rather than bantering through a dance.
“Remind me to seek her out if ever I need the services of a seamstress. I am delighted you got it back.”
“As am I.” Something seems ... off about her own step, though it takes her another turn to make the connection. “Three beats—my apologies.” She knows that. She has known how to waltz nearly since she could walk, dancing by standing on her father’s feet.
“Not at all.” He still smiles. “You are a beautiful dancer.”
Different ways to interpret that remark. Yet she can hardly take in the words, much less reply.
“I did not see you last night after our parting,” Sam says. “I beg your pardon. Was all well?”
“I ... yes.” She cannot remember what happened last night. Why is he apologizing? “I ... turned in early.”
Music concludes, the dance ends. Ivy stands as stone while Sam takes a step back and bows. She hardly manages a quick curtsy. Surely that dance was ten seconds. Not acceptable.
A new tune, a bit faster, new beats.
Sam looks from the band to her. “Do you know the five-step waltz?”
“Of course.”
“Then, may I have another? I would not presume to fill your card for the evening.”
“A thousand,” she whispers.
Ivy steps and turns, looking into Sam’s eyes as she trave
ls worlds through them, intensely aware of every centimeter of skin and fabric in contact, when she hears someone outside scream.
Fifteenth
A Few Down
Music falters as Ivy and Sam reach the door along with Oliver and others. In the street, a woman is screaming, calling out in Spanish. Beyond open double doors Ivy spots her racing through the Plaza, dragging a little boy by the wrist.
“Stay here,” Sam says as he runs out.
Ivy feels a wave of cold race down her spine. She turns to the maker. “Oliver, we need fire. Branches, pans of coals, whatever you can find. Get men together and bring fire. Make the rest of the party remain indoors. Barricade the doors, windows—do not let people out.”
Ivy is ready for arguing, bewilderment, questions. Instead, the little man snaps her a salute. “Done, miss.”
Ivy could kiss him. Instead, she dashes into the street after Sam and more from the wedding party who have converged on the woman and child, asking questions in Spanish.
Melchior. Ivy looks wildly around but does not see her cousin. He speaks Spanish. She finally needs him—just like him to be absent. Probably at the Palace stuffing himself. She never saw a body eat so much yet remain so fleshless.
But there is a man who speaks both languages perfectly. Grip stands beyond the group around the hysterical woman, hat pulled low to shade his eye, gazing down the street from whence she came.
Ivy runs to him. “What are they saying?”
Grip looks at her, gives her a quick glance up and down, then turns back to the distance.
“Curious persons just walked into town. Leticia’s dog ran out, barking at them. They caught it in bare hands....” He looks around to the gasping woman and questioning men. “Seems they are eating it.”
Ivy takes deep breaths, heedless of dust. Strange, but she was more afraid riding after outlaws than now. This has been only a matter of time since she first rode away from the ranch.
“Grip, do you have your gun on you?”
“Always.” He wears his old, faded morning coat for the occasion, out of his buckskins.
Ivy takes long strides to keep pace as he starts west, down San Francisco Street. “You must only shoot them in the head. Nothing else will do.”
He nods once.
“Ivy.” Sam runs to her. “You should return to the—”
“It is safest to make sure they are burned,” Ivy continues to Grip. “But sufficient damage to the brain will stop them.”
Men stand ahead in the street, shading their eyes or tipping down hats, all looking west. Past them, Ivy can just see a disturbance far ahead in the center of the road. Many dark figures huddle around something on the ground, reaching with quick fingers, bending their faces down.
A man with a Colt in his hand stands in the street fifty yards ahead of Ivy and Grip. He lifts the gun.
“Wait,” Ivy calls as loud as she dare. “Don’t shoot from—”
“Sheriff—” Grip starts.
But Sheriff Thurman pulls the trigger.
The noise crashes into Ivy’s ears, making her jump. Her heart leaps into her throat as the dark figures, one hundred yards off, look up in answer to the sound, none struck.
“Ivy, please. Return to the Palace.” Ivy can scarcely hear Sam. He might as well be whispering in a crowded room.
Grip draws his Merwin, Hulbert & Co. revolver from beneath his coat and steps past the sheriff, cursing the man under his breath as he goes, ending with, “Get the hell out of the way.”
Footsteps come fast after them. Melchior’s voice: “Sam, where’s that Henry?”
“The room. I do not generally carry such an object to a wedding ceremony.”
“No English country wedding.”
“Yes, I caught that.”
“You will not need it for long,” Grip says, lifting his revolver as he walks. “They’re closing.”
The distance between the two parties dwindles. Bit by bit the grayish, blackish, blood-streaked figures slide away from the dead dog, heads cocked as if still listening to the sheriff’s gunshot. Blood runs from their lips. Ragged clothes drag in tatters through dust. One has a bandaged arm, black with blood and infection. Another has no arms at all. Only rotting stumps and snapping teeth. Two or three are completely naked. Bodies masses of sores and cuts that ooze black blood, thick and coagulated as cold bacon grease, skin gray and blotchy.
Melchior walks in pace with Grip, Colt in his hand, past Ivy with Sam, telling her to go.
The two men halt side by side.
“Need a rifle to be perfect at this range,” Melchior mutters.
“If you cannot strike the skulls, do not shoot yet,” Ivy says, fighting to breathe and speak clearly. “Do not waste a shot on anything else. You will run out of bullets long before they run out of heads if you do not use every shot right.”
Melchior’s chest rises and falls with short breaths. As she glances at him, she sees the sungoggles the maker gave him in place. Marveling at the same time that he brought both Colt and goggles to a wedding, she feels some relief to know at least one of them can see clearly.
“Range?” Melchior asks.
“Not for that kind of shooting,” Grip says.
They move faster, alarmingly close, far too close, Ivy feels, not to have opened fire. But she is the one who told them to wait. She takes several steps back, watching Melchior and Grip. Why are they alone out there?
She looks around to see the sheriff and a couple of his deputies—or only armed townspeople—off to one side. She can hear them asking one another what the hell that is. Are they people? Is it Plague?
“Range,” Melchior says again, alarmed now.
She can see the dead eyes, the dog’s blood on their rotting teeth and black gums, each puff of dust from each footfall.
“Range,” Grip says.
Both men open fire. As the first two risers drop like sacks of corn, the rest—a dozen, fifteen, twenty?—begin to run.
Bullets fly from the sheriff and his pals, striking arms and stomachs, chests and necks. One running figure is hit in the jaw and knocked to the ground with the force of the blow, only to scramble up again. Another takes three bullets to the chest and hardly staggers.
“Jesus Christ,” Grip whispers, cocking and firing, dropping two, three, with shots to skulls.
Sam has Ivy by the shoulder, cajoling abandoned, pulling her backward as she shouts at the sheriff’s men, “Only the heads! Shoot the heads!”
Close now, running in terrifying silence, no gasps or grunts or shrieks of pain. Only running, reaching with rotted, gray hands, fingers stained in old and new blood.
Crack. A much louder gun burst.
Ivy and Sam whirl to see Rosalía kneeling at the corner of an adobe house. Her skirts are fanned around her in dust, her Winchester 1873 carbine lifted in both arms, sighting down the length. She jerks down the lever, slams it into place, then fires again. Three, four risers she drops, but the last are nearly upon Grip and Melchior.
Melchior’s Colt clicks. “Snails.”
Twenty feet from them. Running. Strides away.
Grip shoots again. “Lining of my jacket—Pocket Army.”
Melchior drops the Colt and, with Grip firing his last round over his head, jerks the pocket revolver from Grip’s morning coat and fires at point-blank range into the face of a gray former man in the remnants of tails and waistcoat. At the same moment, a former woman in a bloody apron just behind him is thrown to the ground by a carbine bullet through its skull.
Dust lifts around Grip and Melchior, standing silently in the middle of the road. Melchior breathes so hard patches of dust are visible rushing toward his nose and mouth, then away. Grip’s left fist shakes in a death hold around the empty revolver.
“We need a shotgun,” Melchior says, shoulders heaving as he looks down at the twitching line of figures which starts at his boots.
“We need protection around this damn city.” Grip spits dust and turns to Ivy. “What no
w?”
It takes Ivy a moment to realize the three men are all looking at her.
“They must be burned. Oliver is bringing coals to start it. But they should be dragged together.” She tries to catch her breath, grateful for Sam’s hand at her arm. “Down the road, away from people, where a bonfire may be safely built. And all fire must be out by dark. It can be finished tomorrow.”
“Can we touch them?” Melchior asks dubiously, looking around at quivering bodies. “Spread the sickness?”
“It has to get into your bloodstream to spread. It’s not airborne and you cannot get it at a touch. But it is safer to wear gloves. If you have even a small cut on your hands or around your nails, the bacteria can get into your blood.”
Grip looks past her and Sam. “Rosalía! Find Mateo and bring gloves!” Turning back to Ivy, he asks, “Why do they smell...?”
“Dead? They are dead. A riser has no pulse, no heartbeat. They do not breathe. Blood blackens and coagulates in their veins. That’s why they need heat—sunlight, fire—but we can talk about that later. The important thing is the only activity in the living human system which keeps them going is the brain. Destroy the brain and you will stop them. The only safe and sure way to dispose of them is by burning.”
Grip turns toward the sheriff and his men, now approaching with craned necks, handkerchiefs held over their faces. “Granville, get your bunch gloves and shovels.”
Sheriff Thurman, a young man trying to cultivate a mustache with limited success, scowls, momentarily lowering the protective cloth.
Before he can speak, the tailcoated maker comes dashing through the gathering crowd and up to them. Oliver carries no iron pails of coals. He is not followed by men with burning branches. He holds one chunky metal device which vaguely resembles a gun, much larger than a revolver, but much smaller than a carbine or rifle, with an extremely thick barrel, large enough for a man to reach an arm into, and chunky stock with a canister attachment.
Lightfall One: Clock, Cloak, Candle (Lightfall, Book 1) Page 16
