Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(6)

A lump blocks my throat, and I swallow it down right hard. I ain’t going to cry, but it’s a near thing. Because failing out of Miss Preston’s means going to one of the other Negro combat schools, and none of them are half as good as Miss Preston’s. Not only that, but I probably won’t be there long before I’m sent to work a patrol. Only fancy schools like Miss Preston’s are longer than a year, and I’ve heard tell of schools that ain’t more than six months. Six months! That ain’t enough time to learn to kill the dead proper-like. Half the Negroes from those programs end up a shambler their first month on the job.

I have no interest in working as a show pony for some coddled white lady, but an Attendant Certificate from Miss Preston’s means I can go wherever I want. It means I can make my own way in the world. And even though I want nothing more than to go back to Rose Hill and the life I left, I need to have options if Rose Hill no longer exists. As much as I’d like to quit Miss Preston’s and make a dash for home, I’m a smart girl, and running across the country half-cocked is definitely not my style.

I need that diploma.

The headmistress continues. “All of that having been said, you have some of the highest competency scores in the combat modalities. So I’m going to reassign your etiquette instruction to Miss Duncan, since she has some free time in her schedule. As for this most recent failure . . . I think it would behoove you to attend the lecture at the university tonight with Miss Duncan’s group. Get some real-world experience as to how a Miss Preston’s girl conducts herself.”

I squirm a bit in the chair, because there ain’t no way listening to some old white man drone on for the better part of the evening was in my plans. “Miss Preston, by ‘behoove’ did you mean—”

“I meant that you had best get some supper and wash up. The carriages leave after dinner. And if you aren’t on one of them, you can consider your enrollment to be terminated.”

I give Miss Preston a tight smile and stand. “Yes’m. That’s what I thought you meant.” I drop into a quick curtsy before leaving.

I head down to the dining room, though my appetite is gone. Even the golden stack of pork chops on my plate can’t erase the sick feeling in my middle.

I need to start taking my studies here seriously or I’m going to be out on the street, a vagrant for real.

That just ain’t happening.





One of the tenets of our instruction here at Miss Preston’s is to attain enrichment beyond the schoolhouse walls, an endeavor that often takes us into nearby Baltimore. I daresay I have learned almost as much in the streets of the city as I have in the classroom and on the practice field.





Chapter 2


In Which I Look the Fool


Half past five finds me running down the main corridor, hastily tying my bonnet. After a hurried dinner and a swift face-washing there was just enough time to change into the only nice dress I have before the carriage came. At least that’s what I thought, until Big Sue saw me in the dormitory.

“Aren’t you going to that lecture thing?”

“I am,” I said. I was trying to get my hair to do this front frizz thing that I saw in a fashion magazine I pinched from Miss Anderson. But my stubborn curls kept going up instead of down, and I was cursing the good Lord above for giving me hair that would’ve been better suited to sheep.

“Shouldn’t you be out there waiting on the carriage? It’s leaving at half past.”

I stopped my fiddling and turned to Big Sue. “Miss Preston told me the lecture was after dinner.”

“The lecture is at six, but the carriage is leaving at half past five. Haven’t you been paying attention? Miss Anderson and Miss Duncan’ve been talking about it all week.”

So that is how I end up running a full sprint through the school, sliding to a stop in the front yard just as Miss Duncan is closing the armored carriage door.

“Jane, how nice of you to join us. Come, you can ride along in the other carriage with Katherine and me. I’m going to head inside and see if we have any other stragglers.” Miss Duncan wears a fashionable riding ensemble, her hair curled and her creases knife sharp even in the humidity. I am now more conscious of my disastrous hair and ugly blue-flower dress.

I climb into the cab while Miss Duncan goes back into the school. Katherine sits inside, fiddling with a pair of the whitest gloves I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t say anything as I sit in the seat opposite, and that suits me just fine. I ain’t got nothing to say to her, anyway.

The pony is a newer model. It’s sort of like a train but without tracks, and the driver sits in his own protected car up front with the stove that heats the steam engine. The passenger compartment is made of steel, with bars over what would be glass windows in the wintertime. The glass has been removed on account of the heat, and although it is still powerful hot out, the beginnings of a breeze makes its lazy way through the compartment, providing a bit of relief.

I lean back in the wooden seat and try to relax. I don’t much care for the ponies; the noise they make, all that clanking and wheezing, tends to attract the dead. But it’s a long way through forested hills to get to Baltimore, and we’ll be returning after the sun goes down. Trying to travel by foot at night is a death sentence. It’s amazing how quickly the dead can creep up on you in the dark.