Dead Reckoning (26 page)

The air turned suddenly cold.

Jett recoiled, clutching the key in her hand. Everything down here smelled of putrefaction—to the point she’d almost gotten used to the smell—but suddenly the stench was stronger. She dragged herself to her feet again, glancing anxiously over her shoulder. The corpse in her cell was still immobile.

Once more she fitted the key into the lock. It fit, but nothing she could do would make it turn. With a muffled curse, she threw it through the bars. The air was cold enough now to make her shiver. She breathed through her nose, trying to ignore the stink of corruption, because when she breathed through her mouth, she could
taste
it. Over and over she held her breath to listen. She was almost sure she could hear something. A sound like a wind blowing through dry autumn leaves, or a hundred voices all whispering at once. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood and chose another key. If she wanted to escape, she didn’t dare hurry.

She fit the second key into the lock, gripped it tightly, and twisted.

The key turned.

Suddenly she heard a distant thud, loud enough to drown out the whispering Jett wasn’t sure she heard. Another. Then: footsteps. Shepherd had opened the cellar doors. She’d been unconscious too long. He was coming back.

An instant more and she was easing the cell door
open. The room spun dizzily as she stepped through it. She was weaker than she’d realized. But if Shepherd was back, the cellar doors were unlocked. She looked around frantically for a weapon, any weapon. At last she picked up one of the lamps. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. She moved toward the doorway to hide.

But she’d miscalculated the time it would take Shepherd to get here. He came through the doorway when she was still in plain sight. She threw the lamp at him and ran toward another one. He batted the first lamp reflexively away. It struck the floor, where the alcohol inside it spilled from the reservoir. And suddenly the carpet was in flames.

“Get her!” Shepherd shouted.

He hadn’t come alone this time.

She grabbed another lamp and whirled around. The man behind her lunged for it—and for Jett—but he missed. The lamp arced through the air, struck the edge of the table, and smashed. A second man seized her around the waist, swinging her around. Jett kicked and fought, forcing him to lift her off the floor, then flung her head back as hard as she could. There was a crunch.
Broken nose
, she thought with a flash of glee. She managed to land a lucky kick that sent his partner sprawling into the middle of the flames. He howled in fear, beating out the fire with his hands.

Shepherd threw a pitcher of water over him before stepping up to Jett and punching her in the stomach. Hard. As she choked and gagged, he hit her across the face. It was an open-handed blow, but it was on the same side he’d hit her with the gun-butt earlier. For an instant, the world went white.

It took both of his bullyboys to hold her down on the marble slab as Shepherd wrenched her arms behind her back and cuffed her again. This time he closed the cuffs so tight she knew she would soon be unable to feel her hands.

The others yanked her upright, one holding onto each arm, and turned her to face Shepherd. She fought and struggled, but she couldn’t get loose.

“It’s time for you to join the purified army of the Blessed Resurrected, Miss Gallatin,” Shepherd said.

“No!” she shouted desperately. “Listen to me! Shepherd isn’t a holy man! There aren’t any Blessed Resurrected! He doesn’t bring the dead back to life—he animates corpses! He’s a thief and a madman!” For a moment she dared to hope her words had some effect.

“He pays well,” one of the men said.

Shepherd chuckled. “Brother Nathan was one of my first followers. He is a pure spirit, truly blessed with the wisdom of the Lord. As is Brother Saul.”

“I’ll see the lot of you burn in Hell!” Jett cried.

The man Shepherd had called Brother Saul laughed. “Save us a seat, darlin’.”

Shepherd gagged her with a handkerchief. She tried to spit it out, but he tied it so tightly it dragged her mouth open into a parody of a smile. Now she couldn’t speak.

But she could still scream.

They carried her up the stairs into the bunkhouse. The bunkhouse was bakingly hot, but after the chill of the underground rooms, the heat was a relief. Shepherd opened the outer door without stopping to close the cellar doors. As her captors dragged her outside, she saw it was just dusk. Shepherd’s whole “congregation” was standing in patient rows outside the door of the ranch house, as if they were soldiers on parade. Bizarrely, the organ she’d seen in the chapel had been brought out and placed to their right. A dozen tall wrought-iron candelabrum, their fat tallow candles flaring and guttering in the night air, provided light. Their presence gave the scene a weirdly exotic look.

But Jett spared only a passing glance for the grotesque set-dressing. The thing that riveted her attention was in the center of the compound. A post had been placed there, sunk deep into the ground. It was taller than she was, the raw wood still oozing where the twigs and bark had been hastily trimmed away. As Brother Nathan and Brother Saul dragged her
toward it, Sister Catherine stepped forward carrying a length of rope. Brother Nathan took the rope, and Brother Saul forced Jett back against the post. She smelled the sharp scent of pine gum. Brother Nathan lashed Jett quickly and efficiently to the post, then stepped back.

Sister Catherine came forward. Jett tried to speak, to warn her—
It’s a lie, everything Shepherd told you is all a lie, your boy Davey’s dead and he isn’t coming back
—but she couldn’t form intelligible words through the gag. She shouted as loud as she could and whipped her head from side to side.

“Don’t worry, Sister Jayleen,” Sister Catherine whispered, leaning close. “Brother Shepherd is a kind and merciful shepherd. You’ll see that soon.”

Jett stared at her in horror, her heart sinking at Sister Catherine’s words. Sister Catherine leaned closer and kissed her on the cheek, then turned away to resume her place among the congregation.

“My dear brothers and sisters in the Fellowship of the Blessed Resurrection,” Shepherd said. He walked forward to stand between Jett and his congregation. “I have told you many times that to build the Jerusalem of Fire is no easy task. Its path is a hard path—a stony path—a path walked in renunciation! The weight of such privation lames the foot and twists the back! Yet the body broken for everlasting Glory is raised up in
health and strength at the walls of the Jerusalem of Fire!”

As Shepherd began to preach, Nathan and Saul moved to stand on either side of the organ.

“Have I told you it is a hard road? I tell you yet again—your eyes will be washed in salt tears a thousand times before you see its end! And at its wayside stand many—the liars, the idlers, the thieves, the drunkards, the unchaste—eager to offer you comfort and ease! Many times have I spurned them! But you must have faith only in God, and from men ask proof!
Here
is my proof—the woman sent to seduce me from the path of righteousness!”

Shepherd gestured sweepingly toward Jett as a murmur ran through his congregation. He moved closer to them and spoke in confiding tones, but Jett could still hear him perfectly well.

“You might say to me, Brother Shepherd, you are a humble and a God-fearing man. You might say to me, Brother Shepherd, God has given into your hands the power of the patriarchs of old. Surely—
surely!
—it is your right to strike down this red-mouthed harlot who has set herself against the ordained will of God! And I would say to you, it is not I, but God Almighty, the Throne of Wrath, the builder of the Jerusalem of Fire who will punish or pardon. I have already forgiven this woman, and I will do so again before you all.”

He turned back to face Jett. “Corrupt vessel of sin and evil, I hold you blameless for your vileness and error! And yet—” He turned to face the congregation once more. “And
yet,
surely it is God’s right to punish—if He will punish—or pardon—if He will pardon! And so I have prayed to Him to send His holy angels to mete out his judgment!”

He strode to the organ and seated himself on its bench. As he did, Brother Nathan stepped behind it and began to pump the bellows. From the first terrible chords Shepherd wrung from the instrument, Jett realized what was about to happen. The Fellowship began to chant in time to the music, turning it into a grating wail of despair. Jett couldn’t get free, but there was nothing to keep the knotted ropes holding her from sliding around the stake. With a great effort she could turn herself until she was facing the bunkhouse. If she was going to die, she wanted to see it coming.

The wind turned suddenly, bitingly cold.

A moment later, the first of the zombies staggered from the open door of the bunkhouse. Somehow it was worse not being able to see them clearly, but from the movement of the shadowy shapes in the flickering candlelight, Jett could tell that more and more zombies were coming. The first ones had walked a few steps away from the door and stopped. As more emerged, they jostled the ones in front of them
forward a step at a time. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to which ones stayed at the back, which ones moved to the edges of the mob, which ones pressed forward.

There’d been—Jett thought—sixty zombies (at most) in Alsop the night the town was killed, and not many more the following night. There were three times that number here, and somehow she couldn’t keep herself from thinking there must be more down there in the dark: rotted corpses that had fallen to pieces, fragments too decayed to walk but still (horribly) animated, twitching bits of decaying flesh pulling themselves toward the stairs any way they could. Shepherd played on, but none of his congregation was chanting any longer. And still the zombies stood motionless. There was light enough for Jett to see the zombies clearly. The ones at the front almost looked as if they were still alive. Some of them.

What are they waiting for?
Jett raged, even though she knew. They were waiting for Shepherd’s order. However it would be given. “Come if you’re coming!” The gag reduced her scream to unintelligible grunts. She didn’t understand why Shepherd hadn’t set them on yet. Suddenly a horrible suspicion struck her.
He knows! He’s known all along I wasn’t alone!
Maybe he’d seen Deerfoot’s tracks. Maybe he’d sent Nathan or Saul to Alsop to spy. Maybe he’d gone himself.

Suddenly Jett realized the rhythm Shepherd set had stumbled, as if someone was banging a drum just out of time. The chanting faltered, and in that moment Jett realized what she was hearing.

Not a drum.

An
engine
.

Her friends were coming for her.

The Auto-Tachypode was moving with unimaginable speed—as fast as a steam locomotive. She could tell by the steadily louder sound of its engine. At the gallop a good horse could cover a mile every two minutes, but it couldn’t run flat out for hours. A horse was flesh and blood, not unliving fire and steel.

A horse would have more sense than to gallop into the middle of an army of zombies.

Jett didn’t think Shepherd knew what the sound of the Auto-Tachypode meant—he might not even be able to hear it over the renewed frenzy of his playing. And Gibbons had no idea what was waiting for her at Jerusalem’s Wall—even if she had, she wouldn’t believe there was anything her brains and her damnyankee
science
couldn’t face down. And White Fox … well, he was as loyal a
compadre
as Jett could ever hope to ride the trail with. He wouldn’t let Gibbons come alone, no matter what Gibbons was riding into. There was no way for Jett to warn her friends—or tell them to flee. Even if she hadn’t been gagged, Jett knew she couldn’t
ever be heard over the sound of Shepherd’s playing and the noise Gibbons’s hellish conveyance made.

Suddenly Jett could see light moving over the ground. The Auto-Tachypode was almost on top of her. She heard scattered screams behind her—almost loud enough to drown out the sound of the engine—and lancing through them, the shriek of the organ.

Shepherd struck a final howling discord from his keyboards. The music stopped.

The zombies began to shuffle forward.

The Auto-Tachypode jerked to a halt beside Jett. The burning lanterns hanging on each corner of the wagon gave it a spectral appearance, as if it were a Death Coach. Despite herself, Jett flinched. The Death Coach only came when someone was going to die.
It isn’t a Death Coach!
Jett snarled silently.
It’s Gibbons’s dangfool contraption!

Before it stopped bouncing against the brake, Gibbons and White Fox jumped down from the bench. Gibbons hadn’t vented the boiler, and the clatter of the engine was deafening. But even so, Jett could hear Shepherd start to play again.

“Don’t worry!” Gibbons shouted in Jett’s direction. But Gibbons looked terrified, and Jett had never seen her show fear. Jett had assumed this was a rescue mission—even if it was a doomed one—but instead of
coming toward Jett, Gibbons ran to the back of the wagon. She opened the door and leaped inside.

Run!
Jett begged silently.
You have to run!

White Fox got to the back door just in time to receive a narrow coil of canvas. He was wearing heavy leather gauntlets. One end of the coil had a gleaming brass nozzle attached. The other was still inside the wagon. He ran toward the zombies with the nozzle in his hands, unrolling the canvas behind, just as the Auto-Tachypode let out an ear-splitting shriek. Suddenly the canvas writhed and began to thrash as if it were alive. Now it was a long tube—like a hose, only not made of leather—and its entire length steamed gently. Even from where she was, Jett could feel its heat.

The first of the zombies was barely a dozen feet away now. White Fox stood pointing the brass nozzle at the zombies as if the hose were a weapon. Jett could see how hard he had to struggle to hold it steady. But still he waited.

Suddenly—though Jett hadn’t seen any signal—he released a coupling behind the nozzle. Water so hot it was half steam jetted out to strike the first ranks of the zombie army. In an instant, White Fox was hidden by billowing clouds of steam.