Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(88)
“My daddy was a Scotsman. I’m a Georgian.”
“That explains the accent. What brings you out here to the middle of the frontier?”
“Damn, girl, you sure are chatty for someone about to die,” he says.
“Oh, I ain’t about to die. This is a normal night’s work for me.” Already his breathing is easing up, and the wide-eyed panic in his face is receding. He’s forgotten that he’s running and started letting his body do what it was built to do, and now everything is a little easier. That’s good. He needs to save his energy for the shamblers.
The people ahead of us stop suddenly, and there are screams as a horse rears, whinnying in surprise.
“It’s the dead!” someone yells.
“Get on line!” yells the sheriff, terror in his voice.
We form up, moving with all haste. It’s an old Army tactic, marching in a row and mowing the enemy down as you move forward. The problem is we ain’t soldiers. We’re a few untried roughnecks with rifles and a bunch of Negroes with reasonably sharp knives. So instead of orderly precision, it’s chaos as everyone begins moving around in the dark, the moonlight too dim to see much.
“We need light!” I yell. “Turn up the lanterns!”
Someone heeds my call, and one by one the lanterns are turned up as high as they will go. From behind me, the tinkerer calls out. “Hold a moment, I’ve got something that can help.” There’s a hollow pop and then what looks like a shooting star flares suddenly to life over our heads, turning the night day-bright. I glance at the scene before us and gasp. I’d been expecting forty shamblers, nothing that a group our size couldn’t take care of. But there are easily a couple hundred undead moving toward us, many newly turned and moving so quickly that for a moment a dark wave of fear threatens to drown me. The nearest ones are about a hundred yards away, swarming over what I’m reasonably sure was once a horse and rider.
“Mother Mary,” Cary says, and I get a glimpse of his face, wide-eyed with panic.
“Listen to me,” I say. “You are not going to panic. You’re going to stay calm, and you’re going to survive this. You panic, you’re dead. You got that?” He whimpers assent, and I pat him on the back. “Good. Now listen. They ain’t going to try to fool you; all you got to do is let them come to you. Wait for them to get close, and kill them for good this time. That ain’t so hard.”
The shamblers’ growls grow louder. The lamps the riders carry illuminate the silhouettes of the dead, magicking them into lumbering caricatures of humanity. The closest members of the pack shift their attention to us.
“Get on line!” the sheriff calls again, alarm clear in the timbre of his voice. The fear amongst the drovers is thick now, and I ain’t surprised when one of the men bolts, hightailing it back to town. One of the riders curses and chases after him, and the indecision of the other white men is clear as they weigh their own lives against . . .
What? Why exactly are these men here? Wealth and fortune? A country like the one they had before the war, one that some of them only know from stories? When are these damn fools going to realize that world is gone, and they ain’t never getting it back? The tall tales they’ve been told ain’t worth their lives, either way.
But these drovers are here now, and without them fighting alongside us Negroes, I don’t see how any of us are going to survive the night.
I twirl my sickles. I’ve learned a lot in the past few years. Including that a group of panicked people ain’t that different from a herd of sheep. Nip at their heels a little and they’ll go wherever you tell them to.
“All right, get on line.” The words come out louder than I intend, and while I have the attention of my companions, ain’t no one moving their feet. Yet. “That wasn’t an invitation. Get moving, unless you want to be shambler bait. Line up, double arm interval. Mind your neighbor, make some friends. You ain’t got time for indecision.”
My voice carries over the moans of the approaching shamblers, steady and assured. Surprisingly enough people start moving, quick shadows in the dark.
“You there, with the lanterns. Hand them down, make a line.” The riders are hesitant to give up their light, and I snap my fingers in irritation, like Momma would’ve done. “You ain’t helping anyone shining it down in our eyes like that. Hand them down, and let’s get them lined up every few feet.”
The sheriff rides over, horse dancing in agitation, the beast’s temperament a mirror of its rider’s. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Saving your damn town. You might feel like a big man when you have your boys at your side and you’re pushing a bunch of Negroes around, but shamblers don’t care about your badge, or your guns, or the fact that you’re the preacher’s son. You’re just as scared as everyone else here, and so someone’s got to save our skins. Now you can stand here and try to stop me, or you can ride back and start preparing folks for the hell that’s going to rain down upon them if we fail.”
The sheriff is quiet for a moment, giving me the darkest of looks, before riding off without a word. I know that I’ll have some misery to sort through later, but for right now I’m more interested in surviving.
“All right, let’s take a big step back. You’re going to keep the lanterns between you and the dead. Keep talking, keep chattering. Remember, the dead don’t talk. Let your pals know you ain’t a shambler.” I turn out into the abyss before us, still lit softly by the tinkerer’s firework. The riders have fallen back behind the line of fighters on the ground, and the shamblers are quickening their pace as they move toward us. “Mr. Gideon!”