Dead Reckoning (12 page)

Jett glanced at White Fox. “So he said. First time I ever heard of the Bluebellies investigating much of anything.”

* * *

White Fox could see the fear Jett tried to conceal with bad-tempered words. He’d seen her terror the previous evening and knew how intolerable she must find it to be trapped and waiting for the return of the enemy she had fled from.

“My investigation is in the nature of a favor to one of the soldiers at Fort Riley,” he said. “I am a civilian scout attached to the Tenth.”

“The Buffalo Soldiers,” Jett said, nodding. “They’re good folks to have at your back in a scrap.”

He saw Gibbons was surprised at Jett’s comment, but he was not. The Buffalo Soldiers were comprised of former soldiers, and there had been Negro soldiers fighting on both sides of the recent war. Nor was everyone in the South the monsters of cruelty Miss Stowe had portrayed in her novel.

“How’d you end up with them?” Jett asked. “If you don’t mind me asking,” she added politely.

“It is a story I am more than willing to tell,” he answered. “Though I fear it is not particularly interesting nor unique. Some thirteen years ago, a mixed hunting party of Sac and Fox came across the wreckage of a wagon train. They rescued the young boy—a child of four—who was its only survivor, and raised him as their own.”

“But wasn’t anyone looking for you?” Jett asked, understanding without more explanation who that boy must have been. “I’ve never heard of the Agency leaving a white child in the hands of Indians.”

“My tribe had little to do with the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” White Fox answered. “The remains of the Meshkwahkihaki moved west of their own volition after Black Hawk’s War and owned—under Anglo law—the land on which they lived. I was ten years old before I saw my first white man, a good and learned soul.
Doctor Singer was both minister and physician, offering both skills freely to anyone who would accept them. Through the years, he urged me to rejoin those whom he spoke of as being my own people, but he never strove to compel me to do so. I knew I would never find my place among them, but I also came to realize I was not truly Meshkwahkihaki either. Working as an Army scout gives me a place in both worlds.”

There was more to his story than he’d told, but he did not feel it was yet time to share it. He had not become a scout out of free choice. Two years ago he’d been away from his village on a trading expedition. He’d returned to find his village destroyed, his tribe and their livestock slaughtered. He’d ridden to the nearest fort, bent on vengeance, only to find his people had not been the victims of yet another white massacre. Upon hearing his story, the fort’s commander sent a troop to investigate, and—much against his will—White Fox had come to believe the soldiers and the nearby Anglo settlers were truly innocent of the outrage. He’d been offered a job with the Army after that and had taken it in hopes of finding some way to bring justice to his murdered people. He’d never discovered who had been responsible, but in his searching he’d found there’d been a similar massacre twelve years before, one identical in nearly every detail.

A wagon train.

In the spring of 1853, a party left Independence, Missouri, to begin the six-month journey that would take some of its members to California, some to Oregon, and some to Utah. There’d been nearly a hundred wagons in the train, for all three routes lay together until Omaha, Nebraska. From there, fifty wagons had continued toward Oregon.

The regiment that later came across the wreckage of that wagon train described it as a slaughterhouse. Every living thing had been dismembered as if with axes, and the wagons themselves had been broken into kindling. The time and place matched the wagon train from which he’d been rescued, and what the Meshkwahkihaki hunting party had seen had matched the army’s description. He’d never thought to see a scene of such violence with his own eyes until the day he had discovered himself cruelly orphaned yet a second time.

He brought his tale to a close by recounting the mystery of Glory Rest in more detail than he had provided to Gibbons on the previous evening. “Caleb Lincoln, on whose behalf I went to Glory Rest, had good cause to be alarmed. And what I found there—and afterward—makes me—”

He broke off mid-sentence as the air within the jail suddenly turned chill and foul. Gibbons instantly leaped to her feet to douse both lamps. For long moments the three of them sat in the dark, straining their ears for
some sound from the outside. The spoiled-meat reek was stronger with each passing moment, and White Fox thought of herds of buffalo killed by white buffalo hunters and left to rot where they fell. Then the silence was broken by a weighty thud—Finlay Maxwell had fallen from the bunk to the floor.

“Mister Maxwell, pray be quiet!” Gibbons said in a loud stage whisper, but her admonition had no effect. They heard thumping and banging as Maxwell staggered to his feet and lurched about his cell. More thumps told the listeners he was careening off the walls. Then the door of the cell rattled as he fell against it.

“If you don’t shut your noise the zombies are going to get all four of us!” Jett whispered loudly. In the distance, the sound of a window breaking could be heard. There was another loud thump from the far cell, then silence.

White Fox rose to his feet as Gibbons struck a Lucifer match against one of the bars of their cell. In the light he could see Maxwell lying immobile on the floor. The match burned down quickly. Gibbons dropped it with a hiss and struck another. Then—before either White Fox or Jett could stop her—she flung open the door of their cell and dashed into Maxwell’s.

“You bring those things down on us and I’ll kill you myself!” Jett whispered furiously.

There was another scraping sound as Gibbons
struck another match. In its glow, White Fox could see she was now kneeling beside Maxwell’s body.

“He’s dead,” Gibbons said in bewildered tones.

“And we’re gonna be if you don’t stop striking lights!” Jett hissed.

White Fox got to his feet and moved silently through the darkness toward the center cell.

“Whoof!” Gibbons gasped as she collided with him.

“I wish to see—” he began, just as Jett ran into him from behind.

“Will you both get out of my way?” she demanded.

* * *

The window looked out on the back of the buildings, and Jett had to stand on the bunk, then lean out as far as possible to see through it. For a moment she didn’t think there’d be anything to see from back here. Then she saw movement.

Half a dozen zombies shuffled past the window. Every one of them was carrying something, and the smell of them was enough to make her regret the meal she’d eaten.
So much for “men resurrected into the nature of angels” who don’t need food or any worldly goods!
She didn’t care how much proof Gibbons insisted on. Jett knew Brother Shepherd was behind this—somehow.

Another zombie shuffled by, closer than the first ones. Its head rocked and lolled on its shoulder with
every step it took. Its neck was obviously broken. Even dead she recognized him—it was Mister Trouble, the bully who’d been about to challenge her last night just before the zombies attacked. Not only had he died in the bar fight—he’d come back.
He smells just as bad dead as alive
, she thought, on the edge of hysteria.

She dropped down before Gibbon started bellowing about getting a chance to look out the window. Jett felt around in the darkness until she found her, then put her mouth by Gibbons’s ear to breathe a description of what she’d seen.

“I need to see!” Gibbons answered in an urgent whisper. Jett led her over to the window and knelt down as she guided Gibbons’s foot into the stirrup she formed with her hands. Gibbons quickly stepped up onto Jett’s back to peer through the window.

* * *

At first Gibbons thought it must be some trick to befool the credulous. None of the manifestations she’d seen so far would be easy to create under these frontier conditions, but since she’d been a child of twelve she’d been uncovering the tricks used by con-artists of every description. “Card ice” or “dry ice” was easy enough to manufacture if one had a few simple chemicals, and a wagonload of it would account for the cold. The stench of putrefaction wouldn’t even need to
be artificially manufactured: all one would need was rotting meat and a strong stomach. Add to that an artful costume and some greasepaint to counterfeit the pallor of the grave, and—presto!—zombies.

But the parade of the dead passing by in front of her began to shake her conviction, loathe though she was to admit it. A missing limb could be faked easily. A broken neck or crushed skull … could not.

For a single moment, terror overwhelmed her. She fought it down with the best weapon in her arsenal against emotion: logic. She did not have the leisure to be afraid. She had to find the method behind this. Once she had the method, these horrors could be wiped from the face of the earth. Science first. Then vapors.

“I must have a specimen to study!” she whispered in near-hysterical excitement as she jumped down from Jett’s back.

“You’re crazy,” Jett answered flatly, getting to her feet.

“How am I to determine how they are created without studying one?” Gibbons demanded in exasperation—grateful to feel exasperation instead of fear. Jett ought to be
glad
she was trying to find proof that zombies were real instead of calling her unfounded names.

“It would be far too dangerous,” White Fox whispered.

“It will save hundreds of lives—perhaps thousands!” If Jerusalem’s Wall was behind the zombies, well … Brother Shepherd had already said he was sending his “blessed resurrected” on a rampage.

“It will get us
dead
!” Jett insisted. “If—” She was undoubtedly about to go on, when the door of the jailhouse began to rattle. All three of them froze.

The rattling continued for a few seconds, then it was replaced by loud thumping. Something far stronger than any man was trying to break down the door. It was a heavy door and a heavy bolt, but as the thumping continued, Gibbons began to fear the door wouldn’t hold. The terror returned, and this time logic wouldn’t keep it at bay. Logic said:
That door can’t hold forever
. She heard a faint, distinctive click as Jett slowly eased the hammer back on her Colt.

Then all of a sudden there was silence once more. Before Gibbons could demand help to get to the window again, Jett had leaped to the bunk and was peering out.

“What is it? What do you see?” Gibbons demanded urgently.

“It’s the preacher-man,” Jett answered. “It’s Brother Shepherd.”

* * *

Brother Shepherd looked to be in fine fettle this evening. He was wearing a long frock-coat and a
low-crowned hat, and he looked like a doctor—or the preacher his people claimed he was. What he certainly didn’t look was
reanimated
. He was standing at the back of a freight wagon, wholly unconcerned by the zombies lurching past him to deposit their plunder in it. She was about to tell Gibbons and White Fox more, when suddenly Brother Shepherd threw back his head and began caterwauling.

The sound was half Rebel yell, half lamentation. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. There seemed to be words mixed into it somehow, but she couldn’t make them out. “Sounds like somebody stepped on a cat,” she muttered under her breath.

“It’s no language I know,” she heard Gibbons whisper.

Jett jumped down from the bunk. Brother Shepherd kept right on yowling. “Maybe if you—” she began.

She broke off with a hiccup of indrawn breath. There was an unmistakable sound of
movement
from the other cell.

The one that contained Finlay Maxwell’s body.

“He isn’t dead,” White Fox said, sounding baffled.

“But I checked,” Gibbons protested.

“He
was
,” Jett said.

“It isn’t locked,” White Fox said.

“Who locks up a
corpse
?” Gibbons demanded.

Just like before, they could hear the sound of Maxwell thrashing around his cell. Only it wasn’t Maxwell
now. It was a creature that meant to do Brother Shepherd’s bidding. Once it got out of its cell, it would open the jailhouse door …

“I need light!” Jett said urgently. She was already moving before either Gibbons or White Fox responded. She shoved open the cell door and launched herself into the darkness, navigating by memory. A moment later she had the jailhouse key-ring in her hands.

Someone lit one of the lamps, turning the wick down as far as possible. The faint glow was enough to let Jett see where she needed to go. The thing that had been Finlay Maxwell was in front of the door to its cell pawing blindly at the bars. The door rattled in its frame. Jett launched herself forward, shoving the key into the lock.

It didn’t turn.

The wrong one!
Jett thought frantically. She fumbled for the next key on the ring. The thing in the cell reached through the bars, patting clumsily at her as if it didn’t know what she was and moaning faintly. The key-ring fell from her fingers, hitting the floor with a jangle. She bit her lip hard and snatched it up again. Which key had she already tried? She couldn’t tell. She chose one at random and jammed it into the lock.

The tumblers clicked as Jett turned it.

At the sound, the zombie’s movements quickened. It clawed at her arm, her shoulder, its mouth open in a
horrible silent scream. She jerked the key from the lock and threw the key-ring as far behind her as she could. The thing in the cell clutched at her with impossible strength. Soon its hands would find her throat …

Strong arms—
living
arms—encircled Jett’s waist from behind. White Fox dragged her free of the zombie’s grasp. The moment they reached the far cell, Gibbons blew out the lamp in the center cell. Jett blinked back tears, grateful for the concealing darkness. She wouldn’t let them see her cry. She wouldn’t let anyone see her cry. She sat down on the bunk and tried to stop shaking.

Somewhere in those frantic minutes spent trying to lock the zombie’s cell before it could get out, Brother Maxwell’s squalling had grown fainter. Now the loudest sound was the thumping and rattling of the former Finlay Maxwell as it tried to free itself.