Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(65)

“You’re right,” he says, not really answering my question. “You met the drovers? Mean as a shambler and about as bright?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them.”

“There aren’t any cattle here in Summerland. The only thing they’re driving are the undead. At the pastor’s and sheriff’s orders.”

The revelation leaves my mouth dry, and my hands itch for my sickles. “Why?”

“I can’t tell you that. I’ve told you too much already.” I just stare at him, and a soft sigh comes from the bed, a creak as his weight shifts. “The last person I told ended up turned. And I’m not about to endanger another Miss Preston’s girl.”

I think of Maisie Carpenter, mouth gaping, hands grasping. “You talking about Maisie?” He starts, and that’s all the answer I need. “How’d she end up out there on the plain?”

“She asked questions, too,” he says, his voice heavy with unsaid things.

I cross my arms, chilled despite the warm night. “What’s up with the other side of Summerland? Those nice houses?”

“Where the well-to-do folks live? They have their own stores, paved roads . . . You’ve probably seen the path that leads to the side of town, lined with electric street lamps?”

I remember the sounds of children playing my first day here, and the sight of those lights, and nod. The professor has just confirmed what Ida told me; now I need to hie myself over to that side of town and find Katherine and Lily.

I scratch at my braids and ask, “Why are people coming out here in the first place?”

“Money. Land. Empty promises. A lot of the folks out here were facing prison sentences if they didn’t go west, people like the Duchess and most of the roughnecks. The Survivalists think if they can make a go of it out here in the middle of nowhere then they’ll win more people to their cause.”

“I’d say they were pretty popular already.”

“Looks can be deceiving. The Survivalists have had trouble getting a foothold in the Northern states. People up there are more solitary, and still believe in the legacy of Lincoln.”

I snort. “And what exactly was that?”

“‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’”

I shake my head, because it’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Colored folks working with white folks, not just for them? Not in this lifetime.

“Anyway,” Mr. Gideon continues, yawning widely, “the idea is to make Summerland the city of the future. Electric lights. Running water. A wall that will keep the undead out. They provide safety, real safety, then people will make their way here, and we can start to rebuild something solid.”

“You don’t seem to believe that.”

“The Survivalists are going about it all wrong. You can’t force the Negro to bend to your whims. You have to convince him that you can offer him a better life. Slavery is finished. Trying to live in the past will get us nowhere but undead. That wall we built may seem fine, but it won’t last forever. The dead are adaptable. It’s just a matter of time before that barrier comes down.”

I watch him for a long time, trying to decide what to think about him. I decide I mostly like him, despite him pointing a gun at me. Twice. And I swear that ain’t just the fluttering feelings I’m getting from seeing him lying in a bed half naked, either.

“You don’t seem like you belong out here, Mr. Gideon.”

“I doubt that I do.”

I grin. “I know why I’m here, but who’d you tick off to get sent out here?”

“My father.”

It’s not a response I’m expecting, and any type of rejoinder dies on my tongue. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s been a learning experience, one I never could’ve gotten at Harvard.”

I tap out a rhythm on the wood behind me as I think. I nod, and swallow before I ask my final question. I haven’t seen Jackson all week, and his disappearance has been preying on my mind in a way I don’t like. It’s not that I have feelings for him, because I don’t, it’s that I’m worried about what it means that I haven’t seen him in so long. I remember the girl and her wide staring eyes, how easily Bill shot her, and I have the feeling that something equally bad happened to Jackson.

“There was a boy . . . He was thrown in a cell in the sheriff’s headquarters after we arrived together last week. I don’t suppose you know where he got to?”

Mr. Gideon shakes his head. “No. I didn’t see him when I was last there, and I can tell you that the jail only has a couple of cells for a reason. No need for them, when we have a sheriff with a short temper and a penchant for watching folks turn.”

The implications of his words hit me like a punch. I’ve heard of such folks, deviants who believe that some kind of enlightenment exists in watching the moment a man becomes a monster. It doesn’t surprise me that the sheriff would have such predilections, and I wonder if there ain’t some more sinister truth to the story about the loss of the sheriff’s sweet-tempered wife.

But Jackson . . .

Mr. Gideon seems to realize that the boy in question was more to me than just someone on the same train I’d taken here. “I’m . . . sorry,” he says.

Tears spring to my eyes, and a great big wave of ugly feelings wells up. “Okay, then. Thank you.”