Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(7)
In the old days, carriages were pulled by horses, and that’s why we call them ponies now. Horses were big, stinky beasts that snorted steam and had eyes of fire. At least, that’s what Lloyd, the older boy that used to cobble shoes back at Rose Hill, told me they looked like. I ain’t never seen a horse. The dead are hungry, and the thing they’re hungry for is flesh. Most horses met a sad fate at the hands of the shamblers back in the early days, eaten by the very same people who’d once cared for them. Momma said that’s why you had to be wary. “Janie, you mark my words, you be careful who you trust. You never know when the man you married is going to turn around and try to take a nibble out of your neck.”
That actually happened to Momma when her husband, Major McKeene, returned from the War between the States, which inevitably turned into a war against the dead. Of course, I ain’t ever planning on getting married, much less to a war hero that got changed to one of those restless dead, but you never really knew what was in store for you. I’m sure nobody ever expected the dead to get up in the middle of a pitched battle and start eating people, which is what they did at the Battle of Little Round Top. And no one expected those dead boys to bite their buddies and turn them as well. But that’s the way life goes most of the time: the thing you least count on comes along and ruins everything else you got planned. I figure it’s much better to just be all-around prepared, since the best defense is a good offense.
That’s why I’m smuggling my six-shooter under my skirts. We ain’t supposed to carry firearms when traveling into town, but I’m always ready for someone to try and take a bite out of me. Especially at the university. Everyone knows that academics are the most ruthless cutthroats around.
What I ain’t prepared for is the look that Katherine gives me from the other side of the carriage. My dress ain’t all that nice compared to hers. She is tucked into a pretty blue frock with a big flounce in the back. It’s not a bustle, on account of the fact that Miss Preston finds them hideous and banned them from the school, but the cut of the gown makes it look like she’s wearing one. It’s a lovely dress, especially with the way the corset cinches her waist to nearly nothing.
I fiddle with the curly mass of my bangs and slouch down, feeling like the plainest girl ever next to the fashion plate that is Katherine Deveraux. If I didn’t hate her before, I am absolutely positive I despise her now.
“What happened to your hair?” Katherine asks, breaking the not-so-companionable silence. My face heats as she stares at it, her light eyes taking in every flaw and faux pas. I try to sit up a little straighter, but that just causes the bodice of my dress to strain against my rib cage. Katherine’s eyes narrow. “And why aren’t you wearing your modesty corset?”
I take a deep breath and muster up all my bravado. I am not going to let spoiled Katherine Deveraux get the better of me. “Why, Kate, don’t you know? This is the way the ladies are wearing their hair these days. It’s called the Fritzi Fall. Very popular in New York City, and no one would be caught without a bit of frizz in Paris.”
Katherine grits her teeth. “Katherine. Not Kate. I’ll thank you to use my given name.”
I swallow a smile and shift, settling back against the seat. “As for a corset, well, every woman knows that wearing one of those things is pretty much suicide if you want to be able to fight effectively. A punctured lung if a stay goes awry, lost flexibility . . . I mean, how are you going to be able to do a reverse torso kick if you can’t even breathe?”
That wasn’t so much a lie as a half-truth. I had no idea what most women did outside the confines of Miss Preston’s. We didn’t wear true corsets. Instead, we bound our breasts with a fitted undersmock called a modesty corset. It was supposed to mimic the support of a corset without yielding too much in the way of flexibility. But wearing the thing is blazes hot in the summer, so I spend most days forgetting mine. I can perform our daily drills better without it on, improper or not. It’s not like the Lord saw fit to endow me with huge bosoms like he did Katherine. Plus, I like being able to breathe when I want.
“Jane McKeene, only you would think that we’d run into any shamblers in the heart of Baltimore—” Katherine stops short and studies me with a narrow-eyed gaze, her eyes settling back on my head. “Is that my bonnet? The one I lost last month?”
“Kate, the day I go around pinching your scrap bonnets is the day I dance a jig naked in the dining room. No, this ain’t your bonnet.”
That is a bald-faced lie. It is most definitely her bonnet. I nicked it from her during our school picnic last month out of nothing but pure pettiness. But I ain’t about to give it back to her right now, not with my hair acting the way it is. This bonnet is the only thing keeping me from looking like a startled chicken.
Katherine purses her lips in a perfect imitation of Miss Anderson’s lemon-eating face, but she doesn’t say anything else, and that’s when Miss Duncan climbs in with a smile. “Well, it looks like we are ready.” She rings the bell in the carriage, and the thing lurches forward like it’s drunk on rotgut. We settle back into our seats and begin the slow trek to the university.
While Miss Preston’s is housed in an old university, it ain’t the same university as where we’re going. I don’t know how many universities there were before the dead walked, but there must have been a few. The one we’re headed to is the kind where doctors learn to cut people open. I guess back in the day, when the dead first rose up, all of those future surgeons were pretty quick to figure out that cutting off the head of a shambler was the way to keep them from rising yet again. Either way, most of the students in that university survived, while the one where we go to school became a bit of a slaughterhouse. Most of those fancy folks were studying philosophy and such, and from what I can tell they made fine shambler chow.