“I will kill you, you conniving bitch!” I scream, straining against my chains and lurching forward as far as they will allow. Miss Anderson just laughs as Mr. Redfern helps her down from the train car, the door slamming closed. I scream, a sound of pure animalistic rage, and before I know it tears are running down my cheeks, my pain and frustration a living thing. All this time I despaired over my momma: whether she was alive, whether she’d be happy to see me when I returned, whether I’d imagined her tenderness and her love. All this time I waited for answers and got not a one, my slavish devotion answered with silence from her. Or so I’d thought.
“Jane, you have to calm down. It’s going to get hot in here, and they didn’t leave us with any water. Jane.” Katherine’s voice is tremulous, and I realize that I ain’t the only one being sent off into the unknown. Red Jack and Katherine are here with me, and I owe it to them to try to retain some of my sanity.
“I’m going to kill her,” I say, my voice low. I use the fine material of my skirt to scrub my face of the snot and tears, the chains around my wrists digging into the soft skin. I take a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m going to kill her, and Miss Preston and the mayor. All of them. I’m going to gut them like fish and use them as shambler bait, then I’m going to burn both the school and the mayor’s house to the ground and dance upon the ashes.”
“That’s good, Jane, that’s good. It’s good to have goals,” Katherine says, her voice trembling. She hiccups and begins to cry. I should offer her some soothing words, but I am a knot of rage and violence, and I ain’t got anything like her platitudes.
Outside, the train whistle blows, and I settle in for the long haul, planning my bloody revenge. On one side of me Katherine cries quiet tears and on the other Jackson says nothing, the sound of his heavy breaths the only indication that he is even there.
Life at Rose Hill is much the same as when you were here, although I must admit that we all sorely miss your sunny disposition. . . .
Chapter 17In Which I Am Welcomed to Summerland
The next few days are a lesson in slow torture. The train car is an oven, and the vibration of the wheels rattles our bones until I’m positive we will arrive out west little more than a bowl of jelly. Every so often the train jerks to a stop, throwing us violently to the side, the door opening up to reveal Mr. Redfern. He gives us water and hard bread before taking us out to relieve ourselves along the track. We have no weapons, so it’s nerve-racking to squat amongst the tall weeds and do our business. The movement and the fresh air are a brief respite before we are loaded back onto the train and we begin our journey once more.
I lose all track of time, although I do eventually pick up the packet of letters. It’s too dark in the gloom to read them, but there’s no mistaking my name scrawled across the front in my mother’s handwriting. I hide them in my skirt pocket next to Tom Sawyer. I ain’t sure when the last letter arrived, but just looking at them is enough to ignite my rage all over again.
One day I will return to Baltimore, and when I do, there will be hell to pay.
We don’t talk much on the trip. I suppose we’re all stuck in our own dark thoughts. At night, when the train car cools enough for us to sleep a little, I hear Katherine crying softly, trying to hide the sound of her tears by burying her face in her knees. I feel bad for her. She really did get the worst kind of deal. Here she is, following the rules for years, working toward nothing more than being some lady’s Attendant, and the powers that be decide she’s too pretty for such drudgery and ship her out west. It’s the worst kind of betrayal.
The third night that I wake to her crying, my guilt gets the better of me. “I’m sorry you got caught up in this. I’m sorry you won’t be an Attendant,” I say. Katherine laughs in the dark, the sound flat.
“Oh, Jane, I never much cared about being an Attendant. All I ever wanted was to be free.”
Her words give me too much to think about.
“Why do you think the Survivalists lied about Baltimore being safe?” she continues.
“Power,” Jackson says, bitterness lacing his voice. “It’s the only thing that men like them want.”
“People wanted to believe them,” I mutter, thinking about poor Othello from the lecture and his willingness to die for Professor Ghering’s delusions. “They wanted everything to go back to the way it was before the war. Before the killing, the shamblers, the walls, all of it. That’s how men like the mayor maintained control. You believe strongly enough in an idea, nothing else much matters.”
“If everything the Survivalists have been saying is a lie, then no one is safe,” Katherine says.
“We never were,” I say. The memory of Miss Preston’s betrayal stings anew.
There ain’t much
