Dead Reckoning (28 page)

It was a prayer for the dead.

* * *

It was the end of April, and even at midmorning the temperature was ovenlike. The steady wind provided no relief from the heat, and Gibbons thought longingly of San Francisco’s cool breezes. Thanks to her Auto-Tachypode, she would be home again within the week. Despite her eagerness to return to familiar surroundings, it was with a certain amount of regret that Gibbons made her last preparations for departure.

“Think they’ll be all right?” Jett asked, walking from the ranch house to stand beside Nightingale. The black stallion was saddled and ready to go. Deerfoot stood beside him.

“As ‘all right’ as possible,” Gibbons said. She picked up the spool of fuse cord and used a scrap of twine to tie the spool to the rear door of the Auto-Tachypode. The fuse ran across the compound and through the open doorway of the bunkhouse that led to the underground cavern. The best thing to do, they’d all decided, was to destroy all trace of Brother Shepherd’s work, and give the rest of the dead as decent a burial as possible under the circumstances. Among the things they’d discovered while searching Jerusalem’s Wall was more than a dozen kegs of gunpowder. Early this morning, Gibbons had run a length of fuse cord down to the makeshift powder magazine she’d constructed—with White Fox’s help—in the underground complex.

“They can use Alsop as a starting point to resume their lives, or even become its new citizens,” she continued. “Even if—technically—they are accessories to murder.”

“What story could we tell that anyone would believe?” White Fox finished as he, too, exited the house. He stepped to Deerfoot’s side and vaulted onto her back in a single fluid motion.

Jett snorted. “I’m pretty sure making them tote
corpses for a week was punishment enough,” she said. She tucked the toe of her boot into the stirrup and swung onto Nightingale’s back.

The survivors of Jerusalem’s Wall had chosen to bury all their own dead in the cemetery in Alsop. The number of “blessed resurrected” who had been friends or kin of the former members of the Fellowship had been shockingly large, and if they’d attempted to bury all of Shepherd’s “allamatons” as well it would have taken months to dig enough graves. At Gibbons’s suggestion, they’d placed the rest of the bodies in the dormitory building closest to the old bunkhouse. At least a couple of sacks of quicklime scattered over them had made the presence of the bodies bearable while the final investigation of Jerusalem’s Wall took place.

While Jett and White Fox resettled Brother Shepherd’s former congregation in Alsop, Gibbons searched Shepherd’s “resurrection chamber” for information. She’d been troubled to discover Shepherd had been in regular correspondence with someone who’d encouraged his theories on “Musica Universalis” and helped him to expand them. Unfortunately, he’d copied those letters into his personal journal and burned the originals, so the name and location of his correspondent remained a mystery. And to her disappointment, she’d found little about Shepherd’s actual method of creating and controlling his
“allamatons.”

Perhaps once I return to my own laboratory and examine my sample of the “zombie cocktail” I will be able to discover the formula
, she thought hopefully.
I do not wish to borrow trouble, but until I have discovered the identity of Shepherd’s correspondent, I cannot be certain this … plague of zombies … has been ended once and for all. But at least it is ended
here—
and now I can tell Papa the disappearances have nothing to do with his “phantom airships”!

“And yet, Brother Shepherd’s followers truly weren’t aware of Brother Shepherd’s crimes,” White Fox said to Jett. “You did a good deed, Gibbons, to distribute his ill-gotten gains among them.”

Gibbons felt her cheeks warm at his praise. She looked quickly away. “It wasn’t as if any of us could—or wished to!—carry it off with us. And I abhor waste,” she added uncomfortably.

“You couldn’t fit so much as a silver teaspoon of it into your buggy anyway,” Jett pointed out. “Not with all those books and papers.”

“Vital to my ongoing investigation,” Gibbons said crisply, her composure restored. The Auto-Tachypode was indeed crammed full to bursting with the documents she’d salvaged from the “resurrection chamber.” She’d even lashed a trunk of papers to the roof.

“Investigate all you want,” Jett said. “Just don’t make any more of those things.”

“No,” Gibbons said, shuddering despite the warmth of the day.

There was a moment of silence. The three of them looked at each other. “There’s just one thing left to do,” Gibbons said.

She was confident that this detonation would obliterate all trace of the madness and horror that had taken place at Jerusalem’s Wall. While Jett and White Fox had been sure the gunpowder would be sufficent, Gibbons knew that neither of them was as well versed as she in the properties of explosive substances. Fortunately, Shepherd’s laboratory had contained extensive stocks of sulfuric acid, glycerin, and white fuming nitric acid. It had been a simple matter for one of her education and training to use those chemicals to make
pyroglycerine
—or as it was now more commonly known in scientific circles, nitroglycerin. The volatile compound was not well known in the States as yet, though Mister Ascanio Sobrero had first synthezised it at the University of Turin in 1847. It was far more potent than gunpowder, and she had made quite a large amount of it. Once the gunpowder exploded, it would set off the jars of nitroglycerine … and bury the last evidence of Wilson Shepherd’s madness.

As Jett and White Fox waited at a safe distance, Gibbons mounted the driver’s bench of the Auto-Tachypode. Once she had, the other two rode to a safe
distance.
Here goes nothing
, Gibbons thought, taking a deep breath. But to her pleased delight, her machine started smoothly and (more or less) quietly. It really was both reliable and efficient. She released the brake and pushed the tiller forward.

* * *

“Gibbons’s device could be useful, once it is fully perfected. Such a conveyance will be able to reach places too distant or thinly settled for the railroads to go,” White Fox mused as he watched the Auto-Tachypode approach. They were still too close to the compound to weather the explosion safely, but neither of them truly trusted the Auto-Tachypode not to quit at a very inconvenient moment. Their horses twitched their ears at the sound of its engine, but made no other sign they’d noticed it.

Jett laughed. “I’ll keep Nightingale. Horses don’t explode. Or run out of steam in the middle of nowhere. And they can get you where you’re going even if you’re sound asleep.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “It isn’t really very practical.” White Fox studied Jett covertly from the corner of his eye. The young desperado on Nightingale’s back wouldn’t be taken for a girl on even the closest inspection. “What are your plans?” he asked at
last. Gibbons had a home to return to, and even he had a home of sorts.

“Head on up the trail,” Jett said, shrugging. “I sure as shootin’ don’t want to be anywhere around Alsop once word gets out—whatever word that might be,” Jett said. “This neck of the woods is going to be up to its ears in law after that.”

And “law,” White Fox knew, meant only one thing to Jett—the Union. The Northern oppressors who had put down the rebellion of the Southern states, and whose policies of “Reconstruction” weighed so heavily upon them.

“Perhaps,” White Fox agreed neutrally. “Though I suspect Brother Shepherd’s former congregation will be grateful simply to forget the entire matter.”

“Just as well,” Jett said thoughtfully. “This is 1867. Folks would have a powerful lot of trouble believing in a zombie army.”

“I hope you’re right,” White Fox said. Shepherd had believed. And so had his unknown correspondent.

As the Auto-Tachypode rolled toward them, the last of the fuse uncoiled from the spool attached to the back of the wagon and fell to the ground. Gibbons drew level with them and set the brake on her machine, then jumped down and ran back to the coiling end of the fuse.

“We’re going to be here a while,” Jett predicted, tilting her hat back. “Too much wind out here to strike a light.”

“I believe you underestimate Gibbons’s resourcefulness,” White Fox said mildly.

They watched as Gibbons pulled a tin about the size of a deck of cards from her pocket. The match she struck not only caught fire instantly, it didn’t blow out. She touched it to the end of the cord. There was a flare of light, and the end of the cord caught fire. In the sunlight, the tiny spark that sped down its length was nearly invisible. Gibbons turned and ran back to them, one hand holding her sunbonnet in place. Unencumbered by skirts or corset, she ran as fast as a young deer.

“What the devil did you light that with?” Jett demanded.

“They’re called ‘safety matches,’” Gibbons said breathlessly, as she clambered onto the driver’s bench. “They were invented by Mister Gustaf Erik Pasch of Sweden, and they are far superior to both the common Lucifer match and the so-called noiseless, or white phosphorous, match invented by—”

In a loud ratcheting of gears, the Auto-Tachypode moved grandly forward.

* * *

Gibbons continued lecturing as she drove, but Jett knew by now there wasn’t a subject under the sun that Gibbons didn’t know upside down and backwards. Come sundown she’d probably still be talking about the cousins and sisters and brothers of whatever newfangled match she’d used. Jett was more interested in what it had
done
. As the Auto-Tachypode’s speed increased, Nightingale and Deerfoot moved from a walk to a canter. Seconds passed. Jett counted silently under her breath.
It should reach the powder magazine just about—

Suddenly there was a roar as fire and stone fountained into the sky. Even in the saddle, Jett could feel the ground shake. The force of the explosion took her completely by surprise. Nightingale reared, laid his ears flat back, and bolted.

If it hadn’t been for the possibility Gibbons’s go-devil would refuse to move—requiring her or White Fox to drag Gibbons (undoubtedly protesting) to safety—Jett would have left the stallion somewhere further from the explosion. But now she didn’t think
Mexico
would have been far enough, and that would probably have been where he stopped running if she weren’t in the saddle.

“Easy, easy, easy,” she murmured until he finally slowed.
She said she’d found some gunpowder
, Jett thought weakly.
And you dang fool, you took her at her word!

She looked around. Deerfoot and White Fox were a few hundred yards behind her—he’d managed to get his mare to angle away from Nightingale, for if the two horses had been running neck and neck, they would have egged each other on. Behind her, she could see a huge billowing cloud of dust. Of course Gibbons was turning the Auto-Tachypode around to head right back toward it.

Jett stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly, then yanked her hat off to wave it in Gibbons’s direction. When she was sure White Fox had seen, she pulled the bandana around her neck up over her nose and mouth and turned Nightingale back the way he’d come. He tossed his head reproachfully.

“I know,” Jett said. “Bet they heard that all the way to Atlanta. Come on. I need to keep that dangfool Yankee from killing herself—her and her dangfool
science
.”

Nightingale went as much sideways as forward as Jett coaxed him back the way they’d come. The dust was already starting to clear—or at least, to be blown somewhere else by the steady desert wind. Jett could see tiny limestone pebbles scattered over the ground. They looked like out-of-season hail. She could see only the vague outline of the Auto-Tachypode now. It had headed directly into the dust cloud.

“Wait up!” Jett shouted uselessly, over the racket of the engine. She spurred Nightingale to the gallop, still
shouting. She overtook Gibbons and forced Nightingale across the wagon’s path. Gibbons braked to a halt in a squeal of machinery. Jett saw with vague astonishment that she was wearing a sort of leather domino mask with what looked like spyglass lenses set in it. The engine noise dropped from an ear-splitting roar to a quieter idle, making it possible to converse—even though it required shouting.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jett bellowed.

“All I was doing was—” Gibbons broke off suddenly. Jett looked around quickly for the threat.

The wagon—and Nightingale—were barely a dozen yards from the edge of a gigantic crater.

“What the Sam Hill did you
do
?” Jett demanded.

“I didn’t think the gunpowder we found would be enough!” Gibbons shouted. “I made some nitroglycerine to increase the force of the explosion! Hardly much at all! Nitroglycerine is much more powerful than gunpowder—it’s the advance of Science!”

“‘Science’, my—”

A movement behind Gibbons drew Jett’s attention. White Fox and Deerfoot appeared through the billowing dust, moving toward the Auto-Tachypode at a cautious walk. White Fox’s hat and coat were white with dust; Jett looked down at her own clothes and snarled. She looked like somebody had hit her with a bag of flour.

“She used science!” Jett shouted to White Fox in exasperation.

White Fox nodded silently, signifying he’d heard. The three of them sat in silence for some time, just watching. As the dust cloud rolled majestically northward, herded by the wind, the scope of the destruction became visible. Jett knew what the ground looked like where a cannonball had hit. This was the same crater magnified a thousandfold. More. The bottom of the crater was mounded with broken stone, and despite her immediate irritation at nearly having been blown to Glory, Jett was privately relieved at the size of the explosion. She could hear the clicking and sliding of the stones in the crater as they settled. There was no longer any sign of any of the buildings that had once been Jerusalem’s Wall—or of the catacombs beneath it, and their contents.

“Nobody’s ever going to be able to figure out what that sidewinder was doing here now!” Gibbons said in satisfaction. Her words were an uncanny echo of Jett’s thoughts.