Dreadnought

hundred of them, or however many there are-but it looks like more than that to me. Where’s that inspector you folks had up in here? Can’t keep their names straight.”

“Portilla’s dead,” Mercy told him without looking over her shoulder at the corpse. “And those men out there- something horrible’s wrong with them, just like all of us have been talking about. Just like the papers said, and just like the inspectors told us. Speaking of who . . . Cole?”

“Ma’am?”

“Please, you or Jasper. Go get Inspector Galeano.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and was out the back door in exactly the kind of rush she wanted to see.

A volley of shots fired from the Shenandoah; they rang back to the Dreadnought like distant firecrackers, shocking everyone on board into defensive positions and gasps.

But Mercy said, “No! No, they’re not shooting at us now. They’re shooting at those other people-only they aren’t people anymore, not really. Someone must’ve found some more bullets. Oh, God help them!”

“God help them?” Theodora Clay gasped. “Have you even been present on this train for the last hour?”

“Present and working like hell to stay alive on it, same as you! But those are men on that train-real ordinary men, alive and sane, same as you and me! And those other things, the things that are overrunning them . . . they aren’t human. I swear,” she said, almost gagging with despair. “They’ve been poisoned-poisoned into monsters!”

The rear door burst open, and Cole Byron came through it with Inspector Galeano, who was wild eyed and full to bursting with questions. The first one out of his mouth was, “Portilla?”

Mercy replied, “I’m real sorry, Inspector. I did what I could to save him, but I-”

“Please, where is he?”

“He’s there. And I’m sorry; I’m real sorry-”

Something big fired from the Shenandoah, something more like the antiaircraft artillery they’d used to pepper the Dreadnought before.

Mrs. Butterfield cried, “They’re shooting at us again!”

But this time the captain said, “No.” He was holding the ranger’s glass, leaning out the window. “No, Mercy’s right. Those men aren’t shooting at us. Holy Christ, what . . . what are those . . . they aren’t . . . they can’t be . . . people?”

“It’s the missing Mexicans,” the ranger said again. “Give him the glass,” he told the captain, indicating the inspector. “Let him look. He’ll tell you.”

The captain came fully back into the car and handed the looking glass to Inspector Galeano. “They’re attacking!” he said with wonder.

Theodora Clay threw her hands in the air. “Why would Mexicans attack a southern train? And furthermore, what do we care? Let’s fire up our own boilers and get moving, the Rebels be damned!”

The conductor came bustling through the forward door in a stomping rattle of cold feet and clutched shoulders. “What’s going on up there? Can you see it? I’ve got a scope up front.” Then he saw the inspector hanging out the window, staring through the looking glass. “Who are all those people?”

“The missing Mexicans,” the ranger said yet again.

Inspector Galeano drew himself back inside, his breath blowing white in the car’s interior, wafting about in the breeze. “They’ve been poisoned, and they . . . they look . . . it’s as if they are walking corpses!”

“There are hundreds of them,” said the captain. His hands were trembling, but Mercy did not call any attention to it. “Hundreds, maybe a thousand or more. Swarming like bees.”

The ranger took his glass back from the inspector, and, as if it was the rule that whoever held it had to look through it, he positioned himself on the seat and put himself back out into the open air again, gazing with that long, gleaming eye at the pandemonium on the tracks ahead.

He said, “And they’re coming.”

Theodora Clay said, “What?”

As the exclamation made the rounds, the ranger came back inside, swiftly, nicking his arm on a triangle of unloosed glass from the window frame. He snapped the looking glass shut and jammed it into his pocket. “They’re coming!” he said again. “A huge goddamned wave of them! You-” He seized the conductor by the vest. “You get this thing moving! You make it move right now!”

“Let me see the glass!” Mercy demanded.

But he said, “If we don’t get out of here, and fast, you’re not going to need it.” And he shoved past her to the rear door, saying over his shoulder, “Get those civilians back in that car-get everyone in there who’s hurt, or who can’t shoot. Everyone else, up front! We need people who can shoot!”

The soldiers were disinclined to take orders from the ranger, but the captain gave the view from the window another steady gaze and reiterated them. “Out!” he shouted. “Everyone without a gun, get out! Get back into the forward car; you’ll be safer there,” he continued, beginning to herd them backwards the way they’d come.

The conductor was already gone, having obeyed the order to flee sooner-perhaps because he had his own glass, and was able to judge for himself that nothing good was coming his way. Mercy could not hear him or see him, but before long, she could hear the Dreadnought rising again, awakening from its temporary pause and firing up, blowing its whistle in a long, piercing, hawklike scream.

As the few remaining civilians were ushered away, Theodora Clay said, “No. No, I won’t go, not this time. Take my aunt and stuff her in that car if you must, but I’m staying. Someone give me a gun.”

“Ma’am,” said Lieutenant Hobbes. “Ma’am, you have to leave.”

“I don’t, and I won’t. Someone-arm me, immediately.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” the captain told her.

But she held her ground and continued to fuss and fight as the rest were sent away. The ranger returned to check the first car’s progress. He asked, “How are we doing? Where’s that conductor? He’d damned well better be up front, lighting the damn engine or whatever it is he does. We haven’t got another minute!”

At which point, Miss Clay spotted an opening. She flung herself at the ranger, who appeared half horrified, half repulsed, and wholly suspicious of the gesture. She pressed her well-dressed bosom up against his chest and whined, “Oh, Ranger, you wouldn’t believe it-they’re trying to send me away, up into that first car!”

He replied, “Get off me, woman. We have bigger problems to attend to!”

But she didn’t get off him; she clung to him like a barnacle and wheedled, “They say everyone without a gun has to go back up front-stuffed there, useless-and I won’t have it.”

On the verge of seizing her wrists and flinging her away, he wanted to know, “Why’s that?”

She dropped away from him, as cold and prim as if she’d never touched him, except this time she was holding one of his Colts. “Because now I have a gun.”

“Woman!”

“Oh, you’ve got plenty of others,” she said dismissively. “I felt at least three. Shoot with those, and let a lady defend herself.” She turned away from him, concluding the conversation. She flipped the gun’s wheel open, inspected the contents, and spun it shut again. She let it swing from her fingers and held it out in her hand, testing its weight, before throwing it into her palm with an easy tip.

Even the ranger paused, though she wasn’t aiming anything at him. “Where’d you learn to swing one of those?”

She glanced at him sideways, then returned her attention to her inspection of the firearm. “My father’s a gunsmith. He does quite a lot of work for the government. A lady can learn plenty if she’s paying attention. Now, can I talk you out of a handful of bullets, or will I have to content myself with these?”

The ranger shrugged, dipped into a pouch on one of his gunbelts, and pulled out a fistful of the requested ammunition. He clapped it into her open palm and said, “Maybe you’re not perfectly useless after all.”

“And maybe you’re not a perfect barbarian. I’m always willing to be surprised by such things.”

“Y’all two stop flirtin’ over there,” Mercy groused. “We’ve got trouble.”

“Worse than that,” said the lieutenant. “We’re about to have company.”

Captain MacGruder said, as quickly as he could force the words out of his mouth, “There’s no way to barricade ourselves inside, not really. The best shots will have a better chance up on the rooftop. We’ll split our ranks, abandon the second passenger car, and concentrate on defending the smallest space possible.”