Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(59)
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.