“Hey,” he shouted down the alley at the trio. No response from the afflicted. “Hey,” he shouted again. Waif-boy noticed first. He perked his head up like a prairie dog and looked around with dull eyes. Jacob raised his pistol, taking a moment to breathe. He pulled the trigger. Jacob’s bullet knocked the boy backwards out of his crouch, splaying him out flat on his back.
Jacob took a bead on the other two and finished the work. He reloaded his pistol, clearing the old cartridges from their chambers and thumbing in fresh ones. He looked down at his belt and his dwindling ammunition. Jacob holstered his pistol with a grunt and tugged his belt up higher.
Probably should have just killed them with his sword. But, then again, look how well that went in front of Washington Square.
Jacob took a moment to look around. The fence wasn’t too high. He could probably jump it, or go through it. But there was no telling what prowled the other side. He looked up at the institute’s windows. They were close enough to touch, it seemed, just on the other side of the fence. They’d really been going for maximum use on their space.
He looked up at the back wall of the shops he stood behind. They were three-stories-tall. The bottom floor consisted of the shop itself, and the top two probably housed living quarters. Whatever was inside, whether it be afflicted or people, it’d probably be dangerous. He remembered the buildings all had balconies on their fronts. He walked back through the alley and looked up. A balcony for each floor stretched across the entirety of the street-facing side.
Yeah, he reckoned he could climb that. He went to it.
He unhitched his horse and brought her over. He climbed up and used her saddle as a stepping stone, climbing up to the second floor. She shifted uncertainly at first, but the Templar made it just fine.
As he stood on the railing of the second floor balcony, Jacob tried to remember why this was a good idea. He also tried to remember why he hadn’t just stayed behind and ridden with the troops. They were on their way after all. He used an ornate, ironwork balcony support and finished climbing to the third floor, only catching his boot in the leaf-work once.
He looked up at the roof, heard movement inside the building, and continued the climb. He still couldn’t figure why he’d done it. Goddamn, this had to be one of his stupider ideas.
He dragged himself over the edge of the roof and lay their for a moment, baking in the sun. At least no one was trying to kill him up here. That was a nice change of pace. He sighed and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply for a moment, listening to the gunshots and cries for help coming from inside the institute.
After what didn’t feel like long enough, or, conversely, too damned long, he sat up. He stood and walked over to the alley-ward edge of the building. On the institute’s grounds beyond the fence, a small group of afflicted milled around. Jacob guessed most of them had been called to the front by Potestas. Sounded like he was about ready to make his move.
Only fifteen or so feet separated Jacob from the institute’s rear wall. He could see across into the third floor, and down into the second floor. He stuck out a raised thumb and measured the distance. He could make it.
He looked down at the alley, the institute’s grounds, and the fence separating the two. While it was only fifteen feet straight across, it was probably over thirty feet to the earth. He breathed deeply. He really hoped this would work.
Jacob walked back to the other side of the building. God, this was stupid. He breathed deeply again. Really stupid. He sprinted alley-ward, his boots thudding on the tar and shingles, his coat flying out in his wake.
He stepped up on the edge of the roof and launched out into the seemingly vast expanse of space that stretched between the rooftop and the rear windows of the Mechanics Institute’s second floor. Air rushed past his ears, his coat flapped around him, and the windows kept coming.
He tucked his head down, covering his neck with his chin, and pressed his hat to his head. Jacob realized he was grinning as he smashed through the panes of glass, splintering the grilles that kept everything together, and raising a hell of a racket. He tucked himself into a ball before he landed on the hardwood, rolling across the floor and hitting a decidedly solid meeting table.
He looked out from within his cocoon of armor and oiled wool.
He’d made the jump. He slapped the hardwood floor. He’d actually made it. Jacob started to laugh. How the hell had he made it? Truth be told, he didn’t care all much about the how part, just that he had. Maybe he did just need to have a little faith?
He stood and shook the glass off his coat. He took his hat off, dusted off the felt, and stuck it back on his head with a wide grin. Hadn’t even lost his hat. Goddamn!
“You there,” said a voice behind him. A gun cocked. “You hold right there, monsieur.” Jacob felt the pistol trained on his back. From the sound of the hammer mechanism, it probably belonged to a big Navy Colt. Jacob’s grin faded.
Jacob sighed and raised his hands to the ceiling. He rolled his eyes and turned around. “Ya got me.”
His captor was a small creole man, older, well-dressed, and well-groomed. Jacob guessed his race as quadroon, a quarter colored, from his cafe-au-lait complexion. He also guessed the man used a bucket of grease each day to get his hair to slick the way it did.
“Take that revolver out and put it on the floor.” Jacob did as he said. “Kick it over here.” Jacob kicked the revolver over. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Jacob Smith.”
“The other two told us about you.”
“Yup. Christopher Freeman and Charlotte Gibson get here already, then?”
“Yes. Yes, they did.”
“In that case, you mind pointing that pistol somewhere else?”
The man looked down at the big pistol, then back up at Jacob. “My apologies, friend.” He pointed the barrel at the ceiling and carefully lowered the hammer of the revolver. Jacob walked over to where his revolver lay on the floor, gave the man a look, and retrieved it. He holstered it.
“Mind telling me what’s going on?” Jacob asked as he walked out of the room and into a hallway. The report of gunfire came from inside the building. He turned right, following the sound of it.
“We’re surrounded. What else is there to tell?”
“Are we armed?”
“Of course. Think we’d come here any other way with the city the way it’s been?”
“Didn’t think you’d come to begin with. Stupid of ya, you ask me.”
“The convention was too important to abandon. We needed to make the call for suffrage.”
“Gonna get the lot of you killed is all that’ll happen.”
They turned left at the end of the hallway and followed it. Jacob looked through the windows at the surrounding area. Beyond would be Common Street. He had to be sure and keep his bearings in this place.
“We’ll serve as an example to the other coloreds throughout the South, and—”
“I guess being a martyr ain’t too bad,” Jacob interrupted. “Only I never went in much for it. Pa always said a dead man was one that wasn’t much good at living life.”
“Pardon my saying, but what in the hell does that even mean, Mr. Smith?”
“No idea. Pa got killed before he could explain it. Guess he wasn’t much good at it, neither.”
They walked out onto a landing that looked over the first floor’s gigantic hall. The second floor landing wrapped as a balcony, encircling the whole of it. Across the way, Jacob saw men shooting down on the enemy from the upper windows.
He could see why they’d chosen this space for the Constitutional Convention. Simply put, it was gigantic, bigger than even the largest church Jacob had been inside. Tables and lecterns had been re-purposed for defense. Rather than using them as places of meeting, education, and governing, the delegates had thrown them against the windows as makeshift fortifications.
Easily two score men of all colors, shapes, and sizes, gathered below. Men pressed themselves to the doors, holdi
ng the barriers shut against the Kukluxers and afflicted. Christopher led the group from the center, his back pushed against the doors, hollering encouragement and cussing the quitters.
In one corner, away from the fighting, a miniature triage for a dozen or more wounded had been set up. Charlotte worked down there, wrapping bloody wounds in cloth strips made from various articles of thrown-off clothing. Two dozen or so corpses lay in another corner.
Desperation filled the air.
Jacob and his escort walked down the stairs and into the main hall. The battering ram boomed against the near-splintered door. Charlotte looked up from the man she’d been bandaging as Jacob stepped onto the floor of the main hall.
“Jacob?” she shouted.
“Howdy, Miss Gibson,” Jacob hollered back as she threw her bandages aside and came running over. She slammed into him in her excitement, throwing her arms around him. She pulled back and, standing on tiptoes, threw her arms around his neck. Uncertain what to do, Jacob kept his arms by his side.
“Thank God, Jacob,” she said, stepping back to look at him. “Thank God you’re here. Did you bring aid? I almost thought the worst. How did you even get in?”
“Troopers are on their way. For now, though, we need to keep these folks safe.” As an afterthought, he added, “And I jumped in through the second story.”
“You what?”
Jacob turned to the quadroon man and asked, “What was your name, sir?”
“Montegut. Baudin Montegut.”
“Where were you when you heard me come in?”
“Patrolling the rear windows.”
“Alright. That door,” Jacob said, pointing to where Christopher led the defense of the main door, “that ain’t gonna hold much longer. We’re gonna need a defensible position to fall back to. Can you collar some of your men and start building barricades on the second floor landing? I want every heavy table at the top of the stairs. You hear me?”
The man nodded. “What about—”
“Don’t ask me every time you need to make a decision, Mr. Montegut. You’re a grown man. Act it. Go to work.” Montegut’s face burned red. Jacob turned to Charlotte. “Miss Gibson, I want you to get the wounded upstairs. Those that can’t move on their own, we’ll have to leave behind.”
“But, I—”
“Miss Gibson,” Jacob said, grabbing her shoulders and looking down into her shocked face. “Look at me, Charlotte. There’s an army out there. These men knew what they were doing when they came here. We won’t be able to save everyone. You’re a Pinkerton. Now do your job.” He squeezed her shoulders. He’d called her Charlotte, he realized. “Do your job. I’ll do mine.” He turned back to Montegut, who still just stood there. “Mr. Montegut?” he asked.
Montegut sputtered and started, saying, “Mr. Smith, I—”
“—am not doing what I asked,” Jacob said. “Now go get them barricades up, or go to the grave knowing you failed your comrades.” He turned and walked towards Christopher at the front barricade. He spat to the side. The battering ram pounded again. The splintering door would only take a few more swings.
“Christopher?” Jacob called when he was about twenty feet from the door.
“Jacob?” Christopher asked, still pressed against the door. Strain showed on his face. “Come for one last stand?”
“Not if I can help it,” Jacob said. The battering ram pounded against the door again, causing Christopher to lose his footing a little. Jacob rushed to Christopher’s side and pressed his back against the door. “Got them building barricades on the second floor landing.”
“Troops coming?”
“On their way.”
“Here’s hoping we make it.”
“We’ve gotten out of worse,” Jacob said, grunting as the Kukluxers rammed the door again. “Goddamn they pack a punch, don’t they?”
“Reminds me of my time in the ring,” Christopher said, grinning. “At least there’s no mosquitoes.”
“Not yet,” Jacob replied. He looked up at the landing.
Montegut and some other men dragged a long table down the walkway. Charlotte led the last of the wounded up the stairs, hopefully out of harm’s way. Christopher was probably right. This was a last stand.
A Kukluxer shoved his pistol in through the window fortifications on their right and shot one of the delegates through the eye. Jacob thanked God that, at least, the dead man wouldn’t rise with the affliction.
“How much longer till we retreat?” Jacob asked.
The battering ram thundered on the door again. The door almost buckled this time around.
“Not much,” Christopher said. “Alright,” he hollered to the men manning the door and window barricades. “Mr. Smith here just informed me Maj. Gen. Baird’s on his way with the troops. We can hold out in this building, but we can’t hold this door.” The battering ram collided with the door again, splintering open one of the wooden panels. “When I give the word,” Christopher yelled, ducking from a grasping white-robed arm, “we make for them stairs. Y’all hear me?”
The men around them gave a general cry of acknowledgment. Jacob couldn’t tell how much desperation filled their voice, but he could tell they all knew the situation was grim.
Jacob pushed off from the door and turned. He saw white-peaked hoods through the door’s busted panel. He drew his revolver and fired two shots through it. One of the men fell, crimson soaking his peaked-hood from the inside out. The other bullet ricocheted off the stonework. The battering ram fell to the ground of the entry chamber on the other side of the double doors.
“Let’s get a move on, men,” Christopher shouted, pushing off from the door.
To a man, the delegates ran for the stairs, leaping and dodging overturned tables and chairs. Christopher and Jacob backpedaled at a jog, watching the door as they retreated across the expanse of the hall. The final boom from the battering ram sounded, throwing the doors wide as the Templars began to climb the stairs.
Gunfire erupted from the entry. Bullets flew through the air, whizzing around the Templars. Bullets ricocheted off the stone steps around and ahead of Jacob. They neared the top of the stairs and dove over the barricade. The delegates, their eyes determined, angry even, crowded behind the overturned tables, pistols clutched in steady hands. They wrapped around the balcony, extending out over the blockaded stairway. It would be a killing zone.
“Don’t shoot,” Christopher said breathlessly, “until you see the eyes in their hoods. You hear me?”
“And aim for the head if it’s an afflicted,” Jacob added.
Potestas was smart.
The afflicted came in first. They pushed through the broken front doors like a great herd of cattle being driven from a corral chute, spilling out across the hall’s floor, becoming a sea of rotting, once-human flesh. They were all colors: white, black, brown, green, yellow, grey. Their mouths hung open, their arms groped at the air. They must have numbered a hundred, maybe more. The afflicted surged forward, shoving each other to the ground, trampling the already broken furniture, trampling each other.
Montegut came at a run and crouched next to Jacob. “Mr. Smith?”
“Fine work, Montegut,” Jacob said without taking his eyes from the herd of afflicted. “We might live a while longer.”
“Thank you, Mr. Smith. We found something.”
“What?”
“Barrels of coal oil.”
Jacob grinned. Then he heard it. A bugle call.
He grinned wider and clapped Montegut on the shoulder, saying, “Take the barrels around the landing. Douse the stairs from top to midway. We just gotta hold out a little while longer.”
The barrel crew ran alongside the landing, rolling the barrels on the ground behind the barricade. The sounds of battle outside became louder. Baird’s men had added their own guns to the ruckus.
Kukluxers began taking up positions in the antechamber, firing through the windows and the broken doors. The afflicted had closed the distance already and beg
an to climb the stairs.
The delegates started to pour the oil. It flowed out, light and clear. It reeked, the smell of it filling the institute.
“Don’t fire till they’re finished with the oil, men,” Christopher yelled to the delegates. “One spark and they’re going up.”
The afflicted came trudging and crawling up the steps, their eyes vacant, their mouths slack. They ignored the coal oil, coming up the steps in a wall of flesh and disease. The barrel men finished pouring and stepped back from the landing. When the mass of afflicted reached just fifteen feet away, Christopher stood and raised his gun. The delegates rose with him. He fired, leading off a salvo from the delegates.
Flames erupted at the back of the afflicted as the crawling wall near the barricades fell back under the hail of lead. The explosion launched flaming bodies into the air.
Jacob, losing himself in the moment, watched a body arch up and almost reach the ceiling. It landed with a dull thud on the upper landing to his left, its body still alight. Smoke, blistering heat, and the acrid smell of cooking, rotten flesh filled the room as the delegates continued to fire into the horde.
Jacob broke off from the barricade and ran down to the landing towards the way he’d come in. He stopped and looked over the spectacle on the stairs. The afflicted near the back had slowed, the muscle and skin cooking from their bones, their eyes bursting from their sockets.
He turned to continue on his way. A wave of heat flashed his torso. There was a raspy moan.
Jacob spun to meet the threat, his pistol raised. The smoldering afflicted who, moments before, had been launched onto the landing grabbed hold of his shooting arm. He looked into the creature’s flame-blistered face with its tongue rolling out, saliva dripping from its maw, and the hair on its head burned away. This was as far from good as anything could get.
Waves of heat emanated from the afflicted’s cooking bones. The creature’s touch scorched Jacob’s skin through his armor. Jacob roared and tried to yank his arm away from the afflicted. He kicked at it, but he couldn’t break free. His finger jostled the trigger as he struggled, discharging the pistol by accident. The bullet flew well wide of the afflicted’s head.
The New Orleans Zombie Riot of 1866: And Other Jacob Smith Stories Page 22
