Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(8)
That was lucky for us, I guess. Not many girls get to go to school in such a nice building. A lot of the Negro girls’ combat schools are in old plantation houses, while the boys’ combat schools are in abandoned military barracks. I heard that in Indian Territory they tried to send Natives from the Five Civilized Tribes to combat schools, but they quickly figured out what was what and all ran off. The Army was too busy fighting the dead to chase them, so the government gave up and just focused on us Negroes.
I guess that’s another thing Miss Preston’s has going for it. No one runs off, because we have nowhere to go, and we have very nice accommodations, bloodstains notwithstanding.
While we travel, Katherine and Miss Duncan chatter on about the professor’s theories on why the dead rise and whatnot. I ignore them and stare out through the bars, watching the forest roll past. The trees have been cut along the road, felled and burned. That’s to give travelers a fighting chance out here on the byways. The dead ain’t like bandits. They ain’t going to come jumping out of the underbrush. Instead, they’ll come lumbering out of the woods like drunken farmhands. That ten or twenty feet of clear-cut land on either side of the road gives travelers enough warning to shake a leg or make a stand. Here in the great state of Maryland that usually means making a stand, since it ain’t no picnic running up and down them hills.
The rate of survival when a mob of dead set in on a settlement ain’t good, according to the headline I saw in the paper. But Maryland has been declared one of the safest states, on account of our work patrols and the very active militia, with Washington, DC, being nearby. I’ve heard in places like Pennsylvania it’s a lot harder to get around, except for in the winter, when the dead lie down and become dormant. That’s why great former cities in states like Georgia are pretty much ghost towns these days. It’s always shambler season in Dixie. General Sherman’s March to the Sea, where he and his men marched across the South, burning and putting down the dead, wasn’t much more than a temporary setback for the shamblers. The waves of dead are like dandelions. Just when you think you’ve beaten the weed, it pops up somewhere new. The Lost States of the South are called that for a reason.
We move along the road, the engine chugging and wheezing up the hills, the carriage rocking back and forth. Outside, near the wood line, there’s movement.
“Shambler,” I say, interrupting Katherine and Miss Duncan’s conversation.
“Where?” Katherine leans forward to see out the window.
I point past the bars, to where a little white girl with blond pigtails stands on the side of the road. She wears a flowered dress with a pinafore and her mouth gapes, a toothless black hole. The ponies are too loud for us to hear her raspy moans, but as we pass she jogs after us a bit, her yellow eyes locked on mine.
We’re quickly past the shambler, and Katherine sits back in her seat. Miss Duncan frowns. “I’ll let the patrolmen know when we get into town. Rare to see shamblers this close to the city. I do hope the Edgars made it home safely.”
“The Edgars?” I ask.
“The women who observed your training earlier today. Grace and Patience Edgar and their mother, Wilhelmina Edgar. They’re newly arrived from the Charleston Compound and were interested in engaging a couple of Attendants.”
“Yes, Mrs. Edgar said they’ve seen a few undead around their property of late,” Katherine interjects. “I imagine they’re likely being spooked by a couple of shadows, but if it finds them looking for a few girls from Miss Preston’s, I’m certainly not going to tell them otherwise.”
I roll my eyes. She’s obviously showing off for Miss Duncan. Of course Little Miss Perfect stayed to talk to the fine ladies. She’s practically the image of the Attendants they’re always advertising in the paper, the Negro girl holding short swords and smiling prettily: LADIES! DON’T GO IT ALONE! KEEP YOUR SELF SAFE WITH A MISS PRESTON’S GIRL!
“Mrs. Edgar told me the same thing.” Miss Duncan looks back down the road, her lips pursed in thought.
“But she can’t be right, can she?” Katherine asks. “Mayor Carr has declared Baltimore County safe for months now.”
I turn my head around. “The Survivalists would have you believe they saved Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston single-handedly if you listen to them long enough. It’s all that ‘America will be safe again’ nonsense—”
“Please, Jane, how many times must I tell you, there will be no talk of politics,” Miss Duncan admonishes gently. “That is entirely too coarse a subject for young ladies to discuss, even ladies of color.”
I sit back and cross my arms, biting my tongue on the hundred things I want to say in response. As Miss Duncan and Katherine resume their conversation, I reach into my shirt and touch my penny. It’s a luck charm Auntie Aggie gave to me before I left Rose Hill, and it hangs on a string between my bosoms. It’s warm at the moment, as it usually is; but there’s a small bit of magic in it, and when it goes cold, I know I’m in danger. I flick at the penny and eye the other two women in the carriage before I go back to staring out of the window.
I know you probably worry about the number of undead out here in the East, but Baltimore County is the safest in all the country. They say so in the newspaper, and you know the paper would never lie.