Together, they would go down to the river, to the warehouses, to the edges of the territory trawled by the organized boys in brown—with their rolling-crawlers and air support, their well-drilled sharpshooters and lookouts. They worked the fringes as a team, without the tactical advantage of numbers … but between them, they did their part to keep the things contained.
And to study them, and discuss their theories, their suspicions.
Tonight, like every night, the warehouse was dark.
Its huge double doors—built to accommodate ship-repairing cranes and equipment—had rotted and fallen off, and now lay flat and fragmented across the pier, leaving the interior exposed to the elements.
And to the zombis.
A pair of them wandered back and forth, wheezing as they shambled, seemingly in search of nothing at all—and, finding nothing, they merely changed their path and searched for nothing once more, in another direction. Josephine could see them from her vantage point atop an old shipping container, upon which she had lain down flat on her belly … all the better to alternately watch the riverbank and its forlorn, collapsing buildings through a spyglass, and over the edge of Little Russia’s barrel. Three other zombis were milling about, lurching and sagging, coughing and hunting.
She shuddered. She shook her head, braced her elbows, and closed one eye.
“Be patient,” whispered her companion.
She scrunched her eyes shut and resisted the urge to hit him. “I know,” she said instead, through gritted teeth. “And I am.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to get your dander up. I’m just trying to tell you that if you give this one on the left a minute or two, I think it’ll circle back around. You might be able to hit ’em both with one bullet.”
He was right, and she almost hated him for it—except that the implication of his suggestion was that he believed she was capable of making the kind of shot that could knock down two zombis at once. And that was no small measure of flattery, coming from a Texian.
She relaxed, very slightly. She returned her attention to the scene before her, illuminated mostly by moonlight flickering off the river, and by two skinny gas lamps that were too far away to do anything but stretch the shadows.
Josephine said, “I’ll take those two, and you pick off the ones hanging out on the right. If you don’t clip that big one soon, he’s going to topple clean over. That’ll mean a point scored for an alligator, and not for you.”
“I didn’t realize we were keeping score.”
“Everybody keeps score, Ranger Korman. Right now, I’m ahead by two. But if you can strike all three of the dead men on your right side, then you’ll only be down by one. I daresay you’ll catch up again, once we move down the block.”
He made a harrumph noise that wiggled his mustache, and he used his free hand to adjust his hat—lifting the brim up out of the way so he’d have a clearer line of sight. “I think maybe you’ve miscounted.”
“I think maybe you don’t like the idea of being beat by a woman.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Keep your voice down, Ranger, or neither of us will do any better tonight. Look, here they come around again, like toys on a track. Not a brain left in their heads, I swear to high heaven.” She took another breath, held it in, and exhaled slowly.
Then, as the zombis staggered into position—that critical point when two were both in the same line of sight—she clenched her jaw and pulled the trigger. Little Russia bucked in her hands, hurtling a bullet between two stacks of industrial crates, straight into the ear of one ambling zombi and out the other … and farther still, to lodge in the forehead of a second dead man right behind it. A big red circle splatted thereupon, and in perfect synchronicity, the two dead men toppled down to the planks. They dropped with a hollow, melodic thunk.
Before the other three shamblers had a chance to react, Horatio Korman’s revolvers fired—two shots each—and all three went down within a span of as many seconds.
Both of the lurking shooters, the woman and the Ranger, exhaled happily and sat up. Neither was the type to praise effusively, and neither wanted to heap too much kindness upon the other. Both of them had their reasons. But they exchanged a set of friendly glances, which would’ve surprised anyone who knew either of them.
Not that anyone knew about these strange dates. No one except Ruthie, who only suspected … and who had obligingly spread a rumor that Josephine Early was being courted by someone in particular, someone who didn’t want anyone knowing about his interest.
It was practically true.
Korman said, “Fine. I’m down by one. I’ll catch up to you later. But for now, we’ve already shot down more than I can use in a week of Sundays, and the pier is clean. Let’s watch another minute to be sure, and then I’ve got to get to work. I only have four dry plates on me, so that’s all the photographs I can take.” He sniffed, and pulled out a pouch of tobacco. “Between us, we’ve done the Quarter a favor tonight, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would say that, Ranger. So there’s one more thing we agree on.”
“If we keep this up, we’ll need more than one hand to add ’em up.”
“Don’t get your hopes too high. Why didn’t you bring more plates? I thought you were supposed to be researching these things, proving they exist, or whatever it is Austin wants from you.”
He rolled himself a cigarette and licked the paper to wrap it tight. Then he stuck it in his mouth and talked around it while he answered her question. “For one thing, they’re heavy. For another, they break if I do too much running around. This photography equipment is a goddamn mess. It’s barely worth the trouble, I tell you. I hear there’s a fellow named Eastman who’s working on making something lighter. I hope he hurries up. I look forward to the day I don’t have to tote fifty pounds of spare parts just to get one stinkin’ shot.” He struck a match on the cargo crate beneath his rear end and lit the cigarette.
“Less trouble than stopping to draw pictures, I expect. You going to keep all that to yourself, or offer a lady a smoke?”
“By all means.”
“Hand me the pouch. I’ll roll my own.”
He passed it over to her and watched as she established her own cigarette. He told her, “I’m not much of an artist. And even if I did take the time to sit around on my spurs, twiddling a pencil around a sheet of paper, everyone would say I’d made it all up. But a photograph—that’s evidence, is what that is.”
“After a fashion.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means—pardon me, I’ll need a match, thank you—that no one’s believed you so far, despite your photographs.” She inhaled, drawing the smoke deep into her chest and closing her eyes happily. “Your evidence doesn’t seem to be working out so well.”
He argued, “Plenty of people believe me. You believe me. Half of New Orleans believes me, and the other half has its head jammed up its back passage. I know a whole train full of people who believe me—Union soldiers, most of them. I wish to God I knew what they’d told their commanding officers once they got home from Utah.”
“You don’t know?”
“I can’t get hold of anybody. For one thing, there are political considerations.” He said the last two words with snideness, clearly copying the tone of someone who’d raised them as a concern. “But there’s at least one fellow who I think would have my back, if someone were to fight me on it. A captain by the name of MacGruder. Problem is, he’s been transferred. No one will tell me where he went to, but wherever he is, I bet nobody believes him, either.”
“Go figure,” she murmured.
“When I took my leaders back up to the pass at Provo, there was nothing left. Nothing!” he said a little too loudly. “Not a miserable trace of what had occurred, except a shell here and there, or a bullet left lying in the snow. I don’t know who covered it up, but someone, somewhere, did. Someone wants it kept quiet.”
“But not you.”
“But not me. And not you either, ain’t that right?”
“That’s right. Not me either.”
They smoked together in silence, the woman and the Ranger in civilian clothes, a man who’d still never be mistaken for anything but a Texian. When their cigarettes were nubs too small to hold any longer, they snuffed them out on the roof of the container and spent an awkward span of seconds in silence.
Finally, Josephine said, “I’m not trying to help Texas. You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m not trying to save New Orleans. I guess that makes us about even.”
“I don’t even trust you.”
“The feeling’s mutual.”
She smiled. “It’s just as well. So!” She made a show of standing up and changing the subject as she changed her position. “Do you think it’s safe to go down there and take your pictures? Collect your samples?”
He stood quietly, squinting out into the darkness, toward the gas lamps and their stretched shadows, and the river with its shimmering moonlight, and the stars that gave no light at all—but plenty of ambience. He said, “I don’t hear anything else coming. Do you?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Then how about we start with these, and you keep a lookout while I do my business. Are you all right with that? Don’t worry, you won’t be doing a damn thing to help Texas. I promise you, Texas isn’t listening to me. Yet.”
“I don’t mind playing lookout. As long as you don’t mind losing tonight.”
“Losing?”
“You’re still down by one.”
“I told you, there are still more of these things farther down the river.”
“You also told me you’re short on plates.” She strolled to the ladder, built into the side of the cargo container, and began to descend it. “And the night is growing late, Ranger Korman. I have a business to run. And God knows, I have some sleep to catch up on.”