Novel - Dead Reckoning (with Rosemary Edghill) Read online

  Gibbons was heading in the direction of the jail to add the basket to the rest of her supplies when she saw Jett and White Fox heading up the street at a brisk trot.

  “Come on!” Jett shouted, as soon as she saw her. “Get your buggy and fire it up! They’re coming this way!”

  * * *

  It was later than Jett liked when she and White Fox started back to Alsop. She comforted herself with the reminder that it was still daylight. She knew zombies were helpless during the day. But as they rode, the shadows began to lengthen. The edge of town was a couple of miles distant when the wind shifted.

  The wind was cold.

  Nightingale raised his head, his nostrils flaring as he tasted the air. A moment later, Jett smelled what he had.

  Rotting flesh.

  “They’re coming back!” she cried to White Fox. Neither of them had to urge their animals to gallop. The horses obviously wanted to get far away from whatever they smelled.

  As they approached Alsop, Jett saw Gibbons walking up the empty street lugging a large basket. She shouted out her warning, but instead of running toward wherever she’d tucked her steam-wagon, Gibbons stopped dead.

  “If by ‘they’ you mean your zombies, I certainly hope so! You obviously haven’t brought one back for me to study!”

  “You—You—You—” Jett sputtered in disbelief.

  “You must heed Jett’s warning,” White Fox said. “Unless this unknown enemy intends to assault Fort San Antonio instead, Alsop is their destination.”

  “Then my preparations can be put to good use,” Gibbons said briskly. “I’ve equipped the jail with everything we’ll need, and I am pleased to tell you I locked my vehicle against tampering. I suggest you take your animals to the livery stable, and then join me there. And bring Mister Maxwell with you—he’s unconscious on the floor of the saloon!” she shouted over her shoulder as she walked on.

  “She’s crazy,” Jett said flatly.

  “Perhaps,” White Fox said. “But she’s also right. A jailhouse is designed to withstand attack from within and without.” He swung down off his mare’s back and tossed her rein to Jett. “I will see to Mister Maxwell. Take Deerfoot with you. If she must flee to protect herself she will come when I whistle for her.”

  “Any varmint living or dead that tries to make off with Nightingale will think better of the notion before he’s much older,” Jett answered grimly.

  At the livery stable Jett saw Gibbons’s wagon parked in the back. Reckon that contraption wouldn’t get far in the dark, she told herself reluctantly. She’d still have preferred to make a run for it, but she had to admit there were more than a few hitches in that rope. What if the creatures decided to encircle the town this time? She might ride right into them …

  It was the work of only a few moments to untack both horses. She led them into stalls at the front of the barn and left them loose. She left the stable door open, too. White Fox was right. Their ability to run was the best protection the animals could have. With their saddlebags slung over one shoulder—and Nightingale’s tack, for there was enough silver on saddle and bridle to make it an attractive target—she headed for the jail at a quick jog. On the way she caught up to White Fox. He had Finlay Maxwell slung over one shoulder.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Dead drunk,” White Fox answered succinctly.

  As they entered the jailhouse, Gibbons dropped the bar across the door to seal them in. Two of the cells were filled with her store of provisions. White Fox carried Finlay Maxwell to the third. It was one of the end ones. He laid Maxwell on the bunk and covered him with a blanket. Jett dropped her saddle with a grunt of relief and carried bridle and saddlebags to the cell at the opposite end from Maxwell.

  * * *

  “Well, here we are,” Gibbons said brightly, lighting two of the lamps. Their warm, incongruously cheery glow filled all three cells. The two on the ends had a solid back wall and one side wall. The one in the center had bars on both sides and a tiny window above head height. The window was barred and too small for anyone to climb through even if it hadn’t been.

  “Caught like rats in a trap,” Jett grumbled, dropping her saddlebags to the floor.

  “You may make yourself useful, Mister Fox,” Gibbons added, ignoring Jett. She picked up two of the blankets and handed them to him. “Your room is next door.”

  White Fox smiled faintly and carried the blankets into the adjoining cell. He returned for one of the unlit lanterns and set it on the floor of the cell he was to occupy.

  Jett sat down on the cot by the wall, pulling off her hat and setting it aside. She stared toward the back wall of the cell as if it were a window, and in the soft glow of the lamplight Gibbons could see Jett was some years younger than she’d originally thought her to be. She wondered how Jett Gallatin had come to live as a man. I’ll probably get these walls to talk before she does! she told herself with a mental snort.

  “While we’re waiting to be overrun by your zombies,” Gibbons said, “why don’t we have something to eat? A cold supper is better than no supper. And you can tell me where that trail of yours led.”

  “Nowhere that made a darned bit of sense,” Jett grumbled. “And I don’t figure I want to listen to you tell me about how nothing I saw was so.”

  Gibbons blinked in surprise at the hostility she heard in Jett’s voice. Certainly she didn’t believe Jett had seen zombies here in Alsop last night. But neither did she think Jett had made up some story. “It’s true I find the possibility of zombies unlikely in the extreme,” she said slowly, “but it is not your account I dispute, merely your interpretation of it. It is very easy to be mistaken. If we discover you are right and I am wrong, I will assuredly tell you so. But meanwhile, I am investigating similar disappearances. I need all the data I can collect to make sense of them, and your report is vitally important.”

  Jett stared at her for a moment. “That is the long-windedest ‘sorry’ I’ve ever heard. But I guess I wouldn’t mind some of your cold supper while I tell you my part of the tale.”

  The three of them gathered in the cell Gibbons had turned into her temporary home, and over sandwiches and pie White Fox and Jett told Gibbons about tracing the trail back to Jerusalem’s Gate, and what each of them had found there. Gibbons frowned as she considered the new information. It didn’t fit into what she’d learned this afternoon, but she was too good a scientist to concern herself with that. In turn, she told them all she’d found in Sherriff Mitchell’s Charge Book and the newspaper archives.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Jett protested. “If the cattlemen wanted everybody else to clear off their range, why leave Jerusalem’s Wall alone? Or”—she frowned, thinking hard—“if the ranchers weren’t running the settlers off, why didn’t the paper complain about Jerusalem’s Wall as much as about the rest of the settlements?”

  “I really don’t know what to tell you,” Gibbons said with a shrug. “I have a number of facts, but so far they don’t suggest a theory—and there’s absolutely no point in coming up with a theory and looking for facts to support it. Some of the things about this Fellowship could be just oddities or coincidence, but I would like to know how this Brother Shepherd knew something had happened to Alsop. And what’s in that double-locked bunkhouse, too.”

  Jett snorted. “White Fox wouldn’t let me shoot the padlock off. But … what other disappearances? You said none of the stories in the Yell and Cry made any of the Eastern papers.”

  “No,” Gibbons agreed. “Nor the Pacific ones. But there’ve been more inexplicable vanishings than just those few the Yell and Cry mentions. I investigate such outlandish happenings.” Just as she’d done for White Fox, Gibbons told her story to Jett. “—so I came east on the trail of Father’s ‘phantom airships’—though I doubt their existence very much—and I met Mr. Fox, here. And he’s on the trail of the same thing.”

  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.