I move to enter the university, but Katherine doesn’t budge. “You just lied to officers of the law,” she says. “And why were you talking like that? You never talk like that.”
I shrug. “Sometimes you have to live down to people’s expectations, Kate. If you can do that, you’ll get much further in life. Now quit dallying and get inside before they come back.”
I push Katherine ahead of me through the fine double doors, anxious to escape before what passes for lawmen return.
The lecture hall is inside and to the right of the main entryway and we easily find our classmates. They sit in the last two rows of the room, the space reserved for Negroes. If the hall had a balcony we’d be up there, but it doesn’t. Directly in front of us are a few of Baltimore’s educated colored men, who teach at the city college for Negroes. I recognize a few of them from their visits to Miss Preston’s. Most of them are Survivalists, and I don’t much care for their message of knowing one’s place and following along with the natural order. “Grow where you’re planted,” they say, while telling us what great futures we’ll have bowing and scraping for our white betters. Seems to me those “enlightened men” worry more about keeping the mayor happy than the plight of colored folks.
It’s surprising our class was even able to get seats. The lecture hall is packed to the rafters. Toward the middle of the audience is a group of well-dressed ladies, their pale skin glistening in the heat. Their dark-skinned Attendants are stationed along the wall, looking bored. Katherine eyes the white ladies, with their fine clothes and decorative fans. There is hunger in her gaze before her usual expression of disdain returns. I understand that look, though. Those ladies are the crème de la crème of Baltimore society, and their brightly colored dresses are the height of fashion. Who wouldn’t want to be one of them?
But that ain’t our future. Ours is leaning against that wall, ready to give our lives for a few coins, should it come to that.
In front of the ladies, closest to the podium, are the men. Most of them are large, their width an indication of their wealth, and Mayor Carr is largest of all. He’s a big bull of a man, dominating the second row, wearing the red-and-white-striped ascot of the Survivalist Party. Survivalists believe that the continued existence of humanity depends on securing the safety of white Christian men and women—whites being superior and closest to God—so that they might “set about rebuilding the country in the image of its former glory,” the way it was before the War Against the Dead. I don’t particularly hold no truck with the notion, since being a Negro pretty much puts me in the inferior column. But people really seem taken with the mayor, especially those that are just as pale as he is.
The only reason I recognize Mayor Carr is because his picture is in the newspaper nearly every week, the headlines proclaiming this victory or that accomplishment, usually in relation to containing the shambler threat and securing the Baltimore city limits. It’s the Survivalists that lobbied to retake the cities nearly a decade ago, the idea being that if the cities were safe they could provide an anchor to regain the continent. But I don’t know about all that. Momma used to say that a politician was a man that had perfected the art of lying, so I always read those articles with a certain amount of skepticism before turning over to the serials. The serials are the best part of the paper, anyhow. Reading about adventures out west or the tragedy of fine ladies with lecherous husbands always makes my day.
I don’t recognize any of the other men around Mayor Carr. They look a lot like him, with their chin whiskers and pale skin and bold ascots. There are a few members of the Egalitarian Party in the rows as well, with their yellow-and-blue-striped ties, but they are far outnumbered by the Survivalists.
I settle into a chair, perching on the edge, careful not to bump the gun strapped to my thigh. Up front, the professor, a bald white man with small spectacles and a florid face, has already started delivering his remarks. He stands at a lectern in the front of the room, wearing a suit that is several years out of fashion, rambling on about organisms and spoiled milk. When he starts talking about things like pathogens and disease transmission I look sharply at Katherine, who is staring at me like I just grew an extra head. I give her a smug grin. Her sainted professor is talking about the same science-y facts I did in the carriage.
That gets me to pay attention.
“So these pathogens, or very small creatures, are transmitted from one victim to another through the bite of an infected corpse. Over the years these pathogens have evolved, which explains the shift from the Gettysburg strain—which would turn the victim only after he expired—to today’s dominant strain, which initiates the transformation in the victim only a short time after they’ve been bitten. We’ve taken to calling this the Custer strain.” He chuckles a little at his own joke, but when no one in the audience joins him he clears his throat and continues. “It’s named after Custer’s stunning defeat in Cleveland at the hands of his own infected men, of course. Now, overseas in Scotland, at the behest of a doctor there, Mr. Joseph Lister, they have had great success with burning their dead, which prevents the corpse from rising after burial. In addition, a few of our own local academics, including Mr. Irvington, have just returned from a sojourn to British India. There, the raj has ordered the beheading of their dead regardless of whether they’ve been bitten. This has kept the rates of
