Gunsmoke Blues

by Balogun Ojetade

  The woman considered his offer. “What makes you think I would do that?”

  “We’re the Templeton Brothers,” the Axeman said, hoping that was reason enough. “We could be good together, you and us.”

  The woman paced back and forth, studying the Pack closely. Frog snarled as she inspected him. The other men drew their knives and did their best to look mean. The Axeman stood back, playing it cool. Eventually she said, “Well, like I said, I am very fond of tough peckerwoods… and Negroes that follow tough peckerwoods.”

  The Axeman nodded, ignoring the woman’s racial insult. “Frog,” he said to the man next to him. “Kneel down.”

  “What the hell, Boss?” Frog said.

  “You heard. Get on your knees.”

  Frog glared at the Axeman, but after a moment he did as he was told.

  “Do him first,” the Axeman said to the girl. “Then we’ll know if you’re for real.”

  The woman sidled up to Frog and grabbed him by his beard. She dropped to her knees and drew his head close to hers.

  “Not my neck, baby,” Frog begged. “Bite my arm. That’s how it works, right? A little bite on the arm won’t kill me, will it?”

  The woman drew her lips across the hairs on his cheek. “You’d better take off your jacket, then,” she told him.

  Frog didn’t waste any time doing it. He rolled up his shirt sleeve, revealing a meaty arm. “Do it,” he said. “Do it quick.”

  The woman opened her lips wide, rolling them back from her teeth. Her incisors were sharp, like a rat’s. She placed them against Frog’s skin and bit gently, just enough to draw blood. She licked and sucked at the blood for a moment until it ceased to flow. Frog watched with a look of horrified fascination. “There,” the woman said. “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

  The man shook his head and stood up. He put his jacket back on. “Am I a rat-kin now?” he asked, a dazed look on his face.

  “Soon, you will be,” the woman said. “If you’re strong enough to survive the transformation.”

  The Axeman unzipped his own jacket and dropped it to the ground. “My turn now.” He knelt, rolling up his shirt sleeve as Frog had done.

  The woman bit into his arm as before, sucking hard to draw out the blood. The Axeman shuddered. The woman’s bite felt tender, almost like a caress. He wanted it to last, and felt regret the instant she pulled her lips away. When it was done he looked deep into her eyes, feeling moved in a way he’d never expected. “You are a Templeton Brother, now,” he said with awe. “You are one of us.”

  “No,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Now you are one of us.”

  The moon’s rays crept from behind the thin cloud then, and he watched in stunned silence as she transformed into an immense rat. Her thin clothing ripped to rags as muscles rippled beneath her skin, and chestnut brown fur grew to cover her new body from nose to tail. What power she had concealed within her fragile human form. No wonder she had killed Toad with such ease. The woman had gone, and a monstrous beast paced the ground now, pawing roughly at the grass, snorting thick breath in the cold air. It rose onto its hind legs and let loose a wailing din filled with a sadness that the Axeman felt as much as heard.

  When the creature had finished it dropped back to all fours. “My name is Mary, your new leader,” she hissed. “Who’s next?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Department of Genetics, Tulane University, Kensington, New Orleans.

  Doctor Armantine Bastien looked gloomily out of her office window.

  Her latest student, Mary Church Terrell, applied herself diligently to her studies like a bee or an ant, always with an opaque shell of icy professionalism that prevented Armantine catching even a glimpse of her interior thoughts or motives.

  Mary resolutely refused to let Armantine into her world. She had tried to connect with the woman, but Mary seemed unable or unwilling to form any kind of emotional attachment. Perhaps she had no emotions. Her steely eyes were as cold as ice. If the eyes are a window to the human soul, Armantine thought. Then Mary must be soulless.

  Armantine sighed. Usually her young students had too many emotions on display, all bubbling to the surface and pulling in different directions at once. Armantine despaired at some of them. But at least she felt she understood them. Mary offered no clues to what she was thinking. Maybe Mary is so guarded because I am passing her off as my assistant, not as a student, Armantine pondered.

  Making no headway into Mary’s state of mind with a direct approach, Armantine had instead busied herself with some background reading. Her findings disturbed her.

  By pulling some strings, she had managed to uncover the original unpublished material Dr. Daniel Hale Williams had submitted to the International Journal of Virology, Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases. In it, the Doctor had seemingly gone out of his way to play down his claims. He had couched everything in the cautious language of an academic who knew that he was playing with fire.

  But if his experiments were to be believed, he had uncovered something previously thought to be impossible—a means of transferring genes from one living creature to another. The mechanism was already known to occur in plants and bacteria, but Dr. Williams claimed to have observed it in higher animals. If verified, that would have potentially been enough to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine, but Dr. Williams had gone further. The animals he had studied were none other than human beings. Even more alarming, the genes that he claimed to be transferable via this new pathway could supposedly endow the recipient with super-human strength, agility, sensory perception, and other qualities that were frankly impossible to believe. No wonder he had been ridiculed by his colleagues. No wonder the word rat-kin had appeared in newspaper articles.

  And yet the Doctor had been highly respected in his field before his fall from grace. He had described his experiments in minute detail in the paper, and at face value his work looked like a careful piece of scientific study. Armantine frowned at some of the ethical issues with the way he had conducted his experiments, but Dr. Williams should never have been treated the way he had. At the very least, an attempt to replicate his results should have been made by the scientific community. But of course the paper had never been published in the scientific journal. Only a misleading and sensationalized account of Dr. Williams’ claims had appeared in the popular newspapers.

  The paper had three authors listed in addition to Doctor Williams—Mary Church Terrell, and two other post-graduates, Mose Tompkins and Virginia Banks. Armantine had made enquiries about Mose and Virginia. Both students had returned to New Orleans, and had also switched their research into the genetics of infectious diseases, just like Mary.

  The conclusion was inescapable. Whatever the truth or otherwise of Doctor Daniel’s theory, all three students clearly believed in it, despite what Mary had said about wanting a fresh start. And together they were secretly studying it for some unknown purpose.

  Whatever that purpose was, they were working at it with zeal. Mary could be found in the laboratory all hours of the day and night, and what she claimed to be doing bore little resemblance to what she was actually doing. She was embarked on some secret research project of her own, and had gone to great lengths to conceal it from Armantine. A less attentive professor might not have noticed. But not much slipped past Armantine Bastien.

  Armantine had always thought of herself as a deeply rational person, naturally skeptical and hard to convince. Show me the evidence, she was fond of saying. Stubborn, her colleagues called her. But science was built on empirical evidence, and she could hardly push aside the weight of evidence that was steadily accumulating before her. She picked up her copy of the morning’s newspaper from her desk. The front-page headline read, Three Killed in New Beast Attack. The horrific incident had taken place at a railway station the previous evening. The uncanny similarities between the Beast attacks and the description of the disease symptoms so meticulously documented by Doctor Daniel were impossible to ignore.

  As mu
ch as she wanted to dismiss the notion as ridiculous, she could no longer turn aside from the simple explanation that matched all the available data: there was a rat-kin in New Orleans, and its name was Mary Church Terrell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Villere Street, Seventh Ward, New Orleans, waning moon.

  The funeral began with a slow march from John Scobell’s house, with the funeral home its final destination. A horse-drawn cart carried Scobell’s coffin. Directly behind the cart, an eight-member brass band played a somber dirge.

  People on the streets where the march passed joined in and went along with the mourners. This group was referred to as the “second line.” The first line, at the head of the procession, consisted of Ida B. Wells and several Black Dispatches.

  The brass band played a couple more hymns, gradually increasing to a swing beat, which alerted mourners that the mood was about to change. Then, suddenly, but seamlessly, the band launched into more upbeat music with tambourines and drums accompanying the brass instruments. The second line broke into a frenzied dance and raucous laughter.

  The wild music and dancing of the funeral was intended to help Scobell find his way to heaven and to celebrate his final release from the bounds of earthly life.

  The music and dancing was also a cathartic release for the mourners and a celebration of a life well lived.

  While New Orleans funerals were enjoyable to most, to Ida, a funeral was a tragedy at any time of year, but just before Christmas it seemed doubly so. Ida marched on with a forced smile, doing her best not to cry. If necessary, she would blame the tears on her cold, or flu, or whatever the damned thing was. She’d been feeling rundown ever since the night she’d first heard the news of Scobell’s death. Her eyes had been inflamed and stinging even before the march started, but she wouldn’t have missed this funeral even if she’d had to be carried in on her own death bed.

  “You really should go and see a doctor,” Dabney Espion told her as she blew hard into her handkerchief. “That cold’s getting worse by the day.”

  “Doctors can’t cure colds,” Ida whispered.

  “Well, just go home and lie down for a few days,” Dabney insisted. “Stay in bed with some hot tea. I don’t want to catch whatever you’ve got.”

  “Thanks for your sympathy,” Ida said. “Just for a moment there, I thought you cared.” She rubbed her upper arm where the madman in the Tremé had scratched her with his fingernails. The wound wasn’t deep, but it had flared up, red and angry. She had plastered it with iodine and taken some white willow bark, and it wasn’t bothering her so much now. The cold, or flu, was the real nuisance. Her arms ached, and she’d developed a sore throat and a runny nose. A kind of milky film had appeared over her eyes. She’d gotten herself an extra-large box of Smith Brothers Cough Drops to suck, and they were helping a bit.

  “I owe you an apology, actually,” Dabney said sheepishly. “You were right about that principal. I should have had more faith in you.”

  “What,” Ida said, feigning shock. “I’ve never heard you apologize to anyone before.”

  “Yeah, well. You were right. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. How could anyone have guessed it? A cannibalistic principal. It’s not surprising you told me it was a ridiculous idea.”

  “I could have been more open-minded. A bit more sensitive.”

  “Sensitive? But then you wouldn’t be the Dabney Espion we all know and love.”

  “I suppose.”

  The night after the principal had been arrested, Ida had lain awake tormenting herself. If she’d followed up on her hunch, the principal might have been arrested sooner. Then he wouldn’t have been able to kill that schoolgirl. And yet, what could Ida have done differently? She’d had no real evidence. On the contrary, she’d seen the man eating his victim in Place Congo with her own eyes. How could she possibly have known that more than one serial killer was at work?

  She wiped her eyes with the last remaining clean corner of her handkerchief. The milkiness that covered them came away, leaving a pale, creamy stain on the cloth.

  The Black Dispatches were supposed to be tough, but there was no shortage of tears that day. She’d had no idea that Scobell had been so popular. Hundreds of mourners had come to the funeral, and the Police Chief himself had made an appearance, in full uniform.

  Suddenly, the marching, music and dancing stopped. Standing a few yards in front of the mourners stood a small but imposing figure. Ida gasped when she saw who it was—the most surprising attendee of all… Harriet Tubman.

  Harriet sauntered toward the front line, patting one of the horses that pulled the cart on the back as she passed.

  “Hey, y’all,” she said.

  Murmurs spread among the mourners.

  “General Moses,” Ida said with a nod as Harriet came near.

  “Ms. Wells,” Harriet said, taking Ida’s hand in hers. “Please, call me Harriet.”

  Ida smiled.

  “I can’t stay long,” Harriet said to the crowd. “But I wanted to say a few words about my comrade-in-arms, my brother and my friend.”

  Harriet placed her hand on her chest. “For those that don’t know, my name is Harriet Tubman and I am a fellow Black Dispatch. Not many of us ‘round no’ mo’. Many done gone on with they lives now that the war is over, but a few of us recognize that the war ain’t never ended. The warriors done just got a little slicker; a bit mo’ powerful. John Scobell recognized that.”

  Harriet walked to the back of the cart and placed a hand on Scobell’s coffin. “John Scobell was a brave man,” she went on. “He believed in fighting to bring about a fair and just world, a world where ordinary people can live out their lives in safety.”

  Harriet paused to make sure that she had the full attention of her audience. There was no question that she did. “A world built on principles of fairness, equality and justice is what John Scobell lived for. So he protected the weak and the vulnerable against the strong, and he ensured that the law applied equally to all, whatever their background, be they young or old, rich or poor, and he worked untiringly to protect the Negroes of this great city well-protected.

  The world John Scobell fought for cannot come about by accident. Each one of us gotta work each day toward creating the kind of world he—and we—wish to live in. Those of us who are strong must do more, risk more, and sometimes sacrifice more than others to achieve this goal. The world demands that some among us put ourselves in danger in order to keep others safe. Scobell was one of those willing to do that, and everyone here today will acknowledge their debt to the man. What some might call heroism, Scobell thought of as duty. He died in the line of that duty, giving his life willingly in the service of those he sought to protect. As such, he serves as an example to us all.”

  Harriet paused, moving her gaze around all those present. Finally, she locked eyes with Ida.

  “I would also like to thank Scobell’s partner, Investigative Journalist Ida B. Wells. Ida was on duty with Scobell the night he was attacked, and did her best to protect him and keep him from harm. I would like to thank Ida, and commend her for her bravery and selflessness.”

  Ida felt her face and neck getting warm. This should have been all about Scobell, not her. And if Ida had been truly brave and fearless, Scobell would never have been bitten. She stared down at her feet, feeling eyes turning toward her.

  Dabney stood implacably by her side, and she suddenly felt very glad of his solid bulk and unflinching bullet head next to her. The big man stood silently, staring straight ahead. Yet another everyday hero, Ida thought grimly. She hoped she would never have to attend any more funerals.

  Harriet pounded her chest with her fist then joined the rear of the front line. The crowd was silent for a moment then a thunderous applause rose. The upbeat music began again and the dancing and marching resumed.

  Ida fought back tears, but it was no good. The tears flowed freely and she sobbed loudly.

  “General Moses didn
’t mention the Beast,” Dabney said after the service had ended. “I thought she would say something about it at the funeral.”

  The Beast was front page news across the country following the slaughter at the railway station the previous evening. The Police Commissioner had come under intense pressure to “do something’ about the Beast, but so far he had not commented officially. Ida wondered if he was waiting until after the funeral before making an announcement.

  “This funeral was Scobell’s time,” Ida said to Dabney. “Not some wild animal.” Although Ida hoped Harriet would join them in bringing down the Beast, the old freedom fighter had been right to focus on Scobell. It had been a time to grieve with dignity, a quiet moment amid the mayhem.

  The mayhem resumed, however, as soon as they left the funeral home. Tintype photographers and reporters, from around the world by the looks of them, lined the street outside hoping to catch the mourners as they filed away. Questions were shouted, and tintype cameras flashed. Ida turned away and drew up the collar of her coat to hide her face from the photographers. Scobell’s death was just a news story to them. Soon, the journalists would move on to something else. But there would always be a quiet space in Ida’s heart for her fallen friend and colleague.

  When Ida returned home that evening, she plopped down on the couch and kicked off her shoes. Her arms and legs felt as heavy as lead, and the scratch on her arm had flared up again, despite the iodine she’d been applying. White willow bark wasn’t really working, she had to admit. She felt like she wanted to lie down and sleep forever, but she had to get up early the next morning. As Harriet had said at the funeral, those who were strong had to do more. Ida wondered how strong she really was, and how much more she still had to do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Marais Street, waning moon.

  What Robert had done at the omnibus station was even worse than killing Reverend Clark. He and Virginia had attacked dozens of commuters, maimed or killed them mercilessly. He had read about and studied the tintypes of the aftermath of their butchery in the newspapers: terrified people talking about how a beast had savaged their loved ones; victims lying in hospital beds, some with gruesome injuries, some already in the grip of anaphylactic shock from the infection he had given them. Several had died; more would die of their wounds. Some would change and become like him. A monster.