Dead Reckoning (15 page)

The three of them spent the night in the livery stable. Gibbons’s contraption seemed like a good place to hide if the zombies returned.

The next day was devoted to something Gibbons apparently considered even more vital than making a record of the missing and figuring out just
why
Brother Shepherd felt the need to create a zombie army to slaughter the “wicked” (something much at odds with Br’er Raymond’s insistence that The Fellowship of the Divine Resurrected was completely opposed to violence just to begin with). Jett and Gibbons spent the morning combing through Trooper Lincoln’s little spell book
for useful information. To Gibbons’s indignation, there wasn’t much in the grimoire about zombies.

Jett already knew what
didn’t
kill a zombie—which was what Gibbons seemed to want to know most—so she’d cudgeled her memory for everything she remembered from the ghost stories Tante Mère had loved to tell her and Phillip. The only specifically zombie-related information she’d been able to come up with was that you could kill one by feeding it salted porridge with a silver spoon—and certainly that seemed as if it ought to work, considering the salt-free meal she’d “enjoyed” at Jerusalem’s Wall. Despite her vigorous ridicule of Jett’s “silly superstitions,” Gibbons had sacrificed one of her own silver spoons to experimentation, and at high noon—when the creature lay as if dead—they’d put a bowl of salty porridge into its cell.

The two of them returned a little after dusk to see whether it had worked.

* * *

“It’s as dark as the inside of a goat’s stomach in here,” Jett muttered, breaking the silence.

Gibbons snickered as she walked over to the lantern. “I suppose you—”

Suddenly there was a sharp thud, and the cell door rattled. Gibbons jumped in surprise and dropped her tin of matches. The rattling continued as she retrieved
the matches and lit the lamp. In its soft glow, Jett could see that the zombie was on its feet again. The porridge was untouched, and from the creature’s behavior, the only thing it was interested in devouring … was them.

“You’re wearing a cross, are you not?” Gibbons asked as they regarded the zombie straining to get at them.

“Yes …,” Jett answered slowly. “Rosary, anyway. It’s got a cross on it,” she added, since she knew Gibbons wasn’t Catholic.

“Is it, um, blessed?” Gibbons asked, awkwardly.

Jett nodded. Gibbons held out her hand, and Jett slipped it over her head and handed it to Gibbons reluctantly. “What are you …?” she began. “Hey!” she yelped as—to her horror—Gibbons strode purposefully toward the cell.

“Hold it still!” Gibbons demanded as the zombie flailed wildly at her.

“
How?
” Jett demanded. But she gritted her teeth and seized the zombie’s outstretched arm. It didn’t feel
alive
, despite the fact its owner was flailing around like a gigged frog, and Jett groaned in revulsion.

Fortunately she didn’t have to hold on for long.

“Let go!” Gibbons cried a moment later. She jumped back, with Jett’s rosary swinging from her fist.

The touch of a blessed object will break a curse.
Apparently Gibbons meant to try all the things Jett had told her until she found something that worked.

Jett let go of the zombie’s arm and staggered back clumsily. Its fingertips grazed the front of her shirt in the instant before Gibbons yanked her out of the way. She grabbed at Gibbons to keep from falling and was surprised to discover Gibbons was shaking.

Why, she’s just as scared as I am!
Jett thought. Watching Gibbons charge right up to the cell, it hadn’t occurred to Jett she was seeing bravery and not idiocy.
She may be a damnyankee, but she’s got grit when it counts.

“Are you all right?” she asked hoarsely.

“It didn’t work!” Gibbons said in frustration. She took a deep breath. “Never mind! I’ll find something that will.”

By now they were standing in the open doorway once more. Jett stepped out onto the sidewalk. “I still don’t see why you’re worrying so much about figuring out how to kill ’em, anyway,” she grumbled. “White Fox and me can ride back to Jerusalem’s Wall and drag Br’er Shepherd out by the ears. Or just ride out to any of the big spreads around here and tell the boss who’s got their cattle.”

“And what if stringing him up—since I doubt the cattle barons will turn him over to the law—just sends his zombies on an uncontrolled rampage?” Gibbons demanded.

“What if it doesn’t?” Jett answered crossly.

“Even though that makes just as much sense, since I am currently without facts on which to base a theory, that only means Brother Shepherd’s discovery—whatever it is—remains at Jerusalem’s Wall for anyone to use. It isn’t enough to discover he’s behind this if we have no way of destroying his zombie army.”

Jett sighed. “Guess you might be right.” Gibbons had the uncanny ability to make raving lunacy sound like absolute common sense. “What do we do after we kill off all his zombies?” The more times she said the word “zombie” aloud, the more peculiar it sounded.

“Why, we search his laboratorium of course! It is impossible to imagine he doesn’t have one!” Gibbons said optimistically.

The zombie rattled the bars of its prison, and her smile dimmed just a bit. She pulled the door closed behind her and followed Jett onto the sidewalk. “Here,” she said, holding out Jett’s rosary. “Thank you for loaning it to me.” Jett took it with a twinge of reluctance (even though she knew Gibbons had only touched the zombie with it briefly) and tucked it into her pocket.

“I shall think of something,” Gibbons said firmly. “I know it.”

* * *

Gibbons stared morosely at the makeshift map pinned to the wall of the saloon. White Fox was out hunting, in hopes of adding some fresh meat to their diet, and Jett had gone up to the graveyard to acquire some “graveyard dust,” another of her folk remedies. Gibbons didn’t think it would be any more successful than the others, but she had to try it anyway. She was glad she was alone right now. She hated to fail, and she was currently out of new ideas.

If the graveyard dust doesn’t work, the only thing left is to
pray
over the creature, though I don’t have any idea what prayers to say over a zombie! We don’t have either garlic or roses—and anyway, Father said they were for use against vampires—so I can’t try those. And all of these things are sheer hoodoo, besides—I know they are!

She chewed on her lower lip, glancing from the notebook in her hand to the map on the wall, then made another careful “X” on her map. It was too old to show most of the recent towns—and individual homesteads wouldn’t have been indicated anyway—but White Fox had drawn careful maps of his information, and she was following them now. If she couldn’t solve the most important problem, at least she could collect more data.

Brother Shepherd
has
to have used modern methods to create his legion of undead
, she thought, glaring at the map in frustration.
He certainly isn’t a hoodoo doctor. I
even have a sample of his work. I should be able to deduce his methods and counteract them!

She added the last marks to the map and then blinked at it in surprise.
There
is
a pattern!
she realized excitedly, and the spark of discovery was enough to make her temporarily forget her other problem.

* * *

“It’s obvious,” she said, waving her fork toward the map on the wall.

White Fox had returned with a brace of rabbits, and while they’d been cooking, Jett had taken her pouch of graveyard dust down to the jail and sprinkled it over the unmoving body in the cell. Gibbons had spent that time rechecking every site on the map. She didn’t want to share her discovery until she was sure it was true.

“Well, Jerusalem’s Wall is here. Makes sense—most of the disappearances are here, too,” Jett said.

“They’re not just
here
,” Gibbons said. “They’re
there
!” She gestured toward the wall again.

“Clear as mud,” Jett muttered.

“No,” White Fox said. “Gibbons is correct. The disappearances aren’t centered around Jerusalem’s Wall as one might expect. They follow two routes. The cattle trail north—and the southern railroad route.”

“There isn’t a southern railroad. You said so,” Jett pointed out.

“But if the railroads did use the southern route—now—they wouldn’t have to pay to secure right of way,” Gibbons said triumphantly. “He hasn’t cleared all of it yet, but I suspect he intends to. And if there’s no one there, no one can claim ownership of the land.”

“No,” White Fox said, sounding sad and troubled. “Before I left Fort Riley, General Custer said the Comanche have resumed their raids north of the Comancheria. They would not do that without reason.”

“They’re being shoved north by other hostiles,” Jett guessed. “The Apache, Wichitas, and Mescalero are clearing out.”

“Now we know why,” Gibbons said in satisfaction. “This isn’t about preparing for some ‘Jerusalem of Fire’ and it isn’t killing for killing’s sake. It’s about luring the railroads to build on the southern route because they can do it for free. And I’ll bet you anything that when they do, this Brother Shepherd is going to file claim to as much land on both sides of it as he can grab.”

“And once he owns the land, he can ask any price he wishes for it,” White Fox said. “He’ll make a fortune.”

“I bet he’s got”—Jett snapped her fingers as she tried to think of the word—“undated Deeds of Claim on file in Austin. Once the railroad goes through, he gets someone to backdate his claims. If the land’s empty, who’s going to argue?”

“And so he’s chosen to kill—or terrorize—everyone in its path,” White Fox said. “With an army of undead.”

“So which came first?” Jett asked. “The zombies? Or the Fellowship of the Blessed Resurrection?”

“That,” Gibbons said thoughtfully, “is a very good question.”

* * *

White Fox couldn’t decide how a task that had seemed simple (if dangerous) had become so large and complicated in less than a week. The more they uncovered of the cause and reason for the destruction of Glory Rest and so many other settlements, the less they seemed to know. And so much of it was guesswork. They knew the settlements were being attacked by undead creatures. They knew the man calling himself “Brother” Shepherd was involved. Beyond that, what they truly knew was less substantial than a handful of wind.

And if I hadn’t had the luck to meet both Jett Gallatin and Honoria Gibbons, I wouldn’t have known even that much. I would have been among those who died here four days ago.

So many chance events had combined to save him. His decision to stop at Burnt Creek to watch over Gibbons. Jett’s arrival with the warning about Alsop. Gibbons’s preparation of the shelter that had saved all of them. He knew the
wasichu
placed little credence in
omens or guardian spirits, but White Fox had to believe they had guided him to this place to do their work. And more than that, had given him allies any warrior would be proud to fight beside. Gibbons’s unflagging bravery as she searched for the truth. Jett’s courage in facing her fear and allying herself with them for a cause she had no stake in.

He stepped out of the telegraph office, a salvaged basket full of neatly rolled tapes under one arm. Gibbons wanted to go through the messages sent to Alsop to see if any of them might contain another scrap of information. Alsop hadn’t had a telegraph office for long enough for the received messages to become a nuisance; the basket was only half full.

He was about to return to the saloon when the sound of a gunshot shattered the quiet. He turned toward the sound, and saw a tin cup balanced atop the fencepost of the livery stable corral spin into the dirt. As he walked in that direction, five more shots followed in quick succession, and five more targets disappeared. Before the last one hit the ground, Jett dropped the empty pistol into its holder and tossed her second Colt from her left hand to her right. Her long black frock-coat swirled as she moved, and six more targets followed the first.

“What are you doing?” White Fox asked when he reached her.

“Practicing,” Jett answered. “Nothing else to do while Gibbons is making up her mind about what to do about Br’er Shepherd.” She gestured toward the jail. “And trying to kill our houseguest.” She holstered the second gun and went to gather up the plates and dishes and set up her targets again.

“And how long do you intend to continue … practicing?” White Fox asked.

“Making too much noise for you?” Jett asked, pausing in the middle of setting a cup on the top of the fence. “I could go out by the church and practice there.”

“No,” White Fox said. “I only wonder … why.”

Jett tossed the cup to the ground and leaned back against the fencepost. She folded her arms across her chest, regarding him steadily beneath the brim of her black Stetson. The impersonation was a good one. They might have ridden the trail together for some time before he suspected the truth.

“This rig-out saves me a lot of problems,” she said, gesturing at her clothes. “But if I can’t back up the tale I’m telling, well …”

“A hard life, spent always at war,” White Fox said.

“I didn’t start the war!” Jett said sharply. Her words turned his into something he hadn’t intended.

“The war is over,” White Fox said. “Don’t you think—”

“Jett! White Fox! I think I’ve figured out where I went wrong!” Gibbons said, running up to them.

“Do tell,” Jett said, digging into her pocket for bullets and beginning to reload her guns.

“I thought I was on the wrong trail when we tried the porridge,” Gibbons said excitedly. “But now I don’t.”

“It didn’t work,” Jett said, spinning her gun’s cylinder before dropping it into its holster. Her hand was still full of bullets.

“It didn’t
eat
it,” Gibbons said.

Jett began to load the other gun. “So, you’re going to walk in there when it gets up tonight and hand-feed it?” she asked neutrally.

“Don’t be silly!” Gibbons scoffed. “That would be unduly reckless. But the three likeliest methods of destroying a zombie all involve salt. Porridge has salt, and so does graveyard earth.”