Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(89)

“Yes, Miss McKeene?”

“How long does that illumination of yours last?”

“A couple of minutes. But I have more flares here with me. Shall I fire them at regular intervals?”

“That’ll do well. Please give us a cue before every launch.”

“Yes, ma’am.” There’s a teasing tone in his voice, and it’s enough to draw a smile from me.

The line is shoddy, but secure. The Negroes crouch in the ready position, while the drovers don’t look like they know what to do with themselves. You can always tell a combat school-educated fighter. Mr. Gideon’s flare has nearly gone out, darkness encroaching on the plain once more.

“Do not cross the line! Let the shamblers come to you!” I shout.

“Kill the fresh ones first,” someone says.

“Take one down, move on to the next—there’s always another!” someone else shouts helpfully.

Bits and pieces of basic combat advice continues to echo through the line. “Up and across, never down,” “Maintain your balance; lose your footing, lose your life,” and so on and so forth, until the night is filled with the shouts of roughnecks and Negroes, all of us ready to fight for our lives.

I wait, one heartbeat, another, straining my ears for the telltale sounds of the shamblers until my pulse pounds in my ears. The dead weren’t all that far off when the light faded, and the fact that we’ve yet to have one stumble into the light of our lanterns is more than a little strange.

I don’t much care for things I can’t explain.

“Flare’s up!” the tinkerer calls, and the night is lit once more. My blood goes cold despite the warm air, and the calls of encouragement on the line die a vicious death as we take in the sight before us.

The shamblers are there, a few feet outside of the glow cast by the lanterns, motionless. In the sudden absence of our shouts it’s easy to hear their growls, muted to the point that they’re less a moan and more a whisper of sound. They just stand there, weaving in place like drovers on payday, drunk and barely coherent. Waiting. Almost as if it were they who were hunting us.

Fear floods my mind, tries to make me believe I’ve lost before I’ve even begun. I adjust my grip on my sickles and roll my shoulders.

“Ain’t no one but the dead dying today!” I scream as the flare’s light softens. Defiance, rage, and terror lace my voice. I refuse to quit, and I won’t let my companions fail, either. “Only the dead die today!”

Up and down the line others take up the call. Impossibly, the shamblers answer our defiant roar with one of their own.

And then they’re upon us.

They come fast and hard, the freshies leading the pack. I detach a woman’s head from her body and move on to the man behind her. As I harvest, I shout out to my fellow combatants.

“Stay behind the line!”

“Make them come to you!”

“The newly dead die first!”

I continue to yell, swallowing hard when my voice starts to go. I mark time by the flares the tinkerer fires, and the third one has just gone up when to my left one of the roughnecks goes down, screaming as the dead begin to devour him.

The wet sound of the dead feeding and the man’s fading cries cuts through my heavy breathing and the growls of other approaching shamblers. I fall back enough to end the dead that surround the drover, kicking their heads to the side so I don’t trip over them, grabbing the knife that the roughneck still clutches in his hand and driving it through his eye. I ain’t got time to mourn the fallen, but I need to make sure there ain’t any enemies at my back. There are more dead to kill.

Even though I continue to yell encouragement, the drovers are being overwhelmed. We’re outnumbered nearly four to one, and it’s easy to see that the roughnecks ain’t soldiers. They fire blindly into the dark, and most of them grabbed guns but no bladed weapons. They’re quickly out of bullets. We lose a few drovers, and one girl from the patrol as well. When I see Cary bash a shambler’s skull in with the butt of his pistol I realize it’s time for another tactic.

“Riflemen, to the rear! Everyone else, close up those holes.” The drovers fall back, and the rest of us cover down to take up their slack. “Shoot until you’re out of ammo, then fall back.” I look behind me, but I can’t tell if anyone is listening anymore. The air is thick with the putrid scent of the dead, and my hands are slick with shambler goo. Still, the dead keep on coming, and I can’t do anything but continue to swing my sickles.

Time ceases to exist for me. There is only the constant moan of shamblers, the swing of my sickles as I harvest, the inevitable double thump when the creatures fall to the ground, head rolling one way, body the other. I’m amassing quite a pile of dead before me, and I take a few steps back, giving myself a bigger space to work. From down on the line someone calls out, “‘Ain’t no pain in heaven, but there ain’t no you, either.’”

Someone sings the next line, “‘Ain’t no shamblers in heaven, but there ain’t no you, either.’”

“‘Ain’t no killing in heaven, but since there ain’t no you, I’m gonna fight to stay here.’”

I don’t know the song and I’ve got a terrible singing voice, so I just listen, letting my arms move to the rhythm of the words as the voices continue to sing, lifting my spirits and making the fighting easier.