Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(66)

“You’re welcome, Miss McKeene. I’m afraid that we’re all prisoners here of one kind or another, for better or worse.”

“Oh, it’s for worse, all right. Most definitely for worse.”

I slip back out of his window without saying good night, making my way back to the room by the light of Summerland, and with a heavy heart. It’s much easier to get back into bed than it was to get out, and when I find my blankets I roll onto my side and cry silent, angry tears, clutching my lucky penny.

They killed Jackson. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s dead. Just like Maisie Carpenter. He’s probably somewhere out there on the plain, hungry and yellow-eyed, a shell of the boy I once knew.

I curl up into a ball, biting my fist to hide the sound of my sobs. I barely feel my teeth sink into my hand. I’m too focused on the agony of being torn in half, like something inside of me is being savagely ripped out. The one boy I was stupid enough to love is dead. I’d thought my heart broke when he’d told me he didn’t love me, that we were better off alone than together. In a world where people are always being ripped away by the undead plague, I’d thought his words had destroyed my heart.

I was wrong. This is what a broken heart feels like.





Jane, I caution you to prudence. I hope you are reading your Bible and using the Scripture to temper your emotions, to always keep a cool head about you. But if you do not find solace there, perhaps you should take up embroidery.

I suppose it is obvious that I worry about you, a little girl all alone in the world. I worry too much.





Chapter 25


In Which I Embrace My Recklessness


After Mr. Gideon tells me of Jackson’s demise something in me breaks. Jackson might not have been mine, and it might be his fault that I’m stuck in Summerland in the first place, but I still loved him. I didn’t want him dead, and knowing the sheriff and his boys could murder someone without so much as a how-do-you-do makes me despair at the chance I have to outsmart a bloodthirsty man like that. I should be coming up with a way out of Summerland, plotting and scheming. But I ain’t. Instead, I’m just surviving.

And barely at that. I’m weak. Moments after eating, my belly growls for more, demanding sustenance that ain’t coming. It ain’t that I’m working any more than I did when I was at Miss Preston’s; it’s that the sheriff don’t feed us enough. The portions at breakfast keep getting smaller and smaller, and even dinner—the only normal-size meal we get—is getting leaner by the day.

“It’s all the new families in town. The more white folks arrive, the less food we get. They’re quality, and they can’t miss a meal,” Ida says, running her finger across the surface of her empty plate before licking it.

“What do you mean?” I ask. I’ve just finished my own stew and am barely restraining myself from licking the plate. Even the roughnecks are looking hungry and perturbed. Their rations have been cut as well, meaning that there really is a problem with the food. This ain’t just another of the preacher’s initiatives to reform the Negro.

“Ain’t you been paying attention? There’s been two trains of families in the past week. Fancy folks, all bedecked in finery. Before that we used to get maybe one train a month, and never anyone wearing silk. Something’s happening back east, but who knows what,” Ida says. “You’d better just hope they don’t think about expanding the brothel, otherwise you’re going to be out of a place to sleep.” She casts a dark look across the room where the Duchess’s girls are calling out to the table of roustabouts. I don’t know why they bother. It’s Thursday. Those fellas are already broke. They spend their money as fast as we do.

There’s more folks moving into the nice part of town, but we haven’t gotten any new Negroes for the patrols. Something just doesn’t add up.

Maybe it’s time to take a little trip.

I think about it all that night and the next. I think about the other side of town as I push aside a girl to get my breakfast, a dark feeling welling up in my middle when she starts crying, just as hungry and desperate as the rest of us. I think about it as I watch a small pod of decrepit shamblers attempt to climb the wall, their hands digging uselessly into the dirt, my blade flashing in the sun as I slide down the exterior of the wall to take off their heads.

I keep thinking about the other side of town until I can’t stand it no more, kicking off my covers in the warm heat of the night. No more wallowing. It’s high time I find my friends and get an idea of what’s going on in this other side of town. There’s an itch in my brain, a thought that needs to be scratched. But more than that, I need food. My stomach growls so loudly that I cannot stand it, and next to me Ida is no better off, just as awake and miserable as me.

“I’m going to find some grub,” I whisper to her over the soft snores of the girls around us.

Ida props herself up on her elbow. “It isn’t safe, Jane.”

“We’re slowly starving to death, Ida. We won’t survive long on what we’re getting. We can either die peacefully or survive by any means necessary.”

Ida purses her lips in the near dark before nodding. “Be careful,” she warns.

I climb to my feet and grab my boots. Food and some answers—one or the other would be fine, but I’m greedy, so I’m hoping for both.