To her right, at the far end of a wide pier, squatted an old oyster-shucking facility that had long since moved to a brighter part of town. It was partially boarded and none too inviting, but any port in a storm, Josephine figured. She was on the verge of dashing toward it when some new presence caught her eye, and she hesitated.
A small, still silhouette stood near the wharf’s edge, outlined against a sky-high stack of folded nets that no one had used in half a century.
“Settle down, child. Give me some light,” the silhouette said.
Stunned, Josephine stood there. From two sides, then three sides, the creatures came closer.
“Child, you heard me. Raise the lamp. ”
She recognized the voice, which in no way made the speaker’s appearance less stunning. Josephine said, “Ma’am?” and then hastily, as if she’d only just remembered she was holding the thing, lifted up the lantern and turned the crank to raise the wick. She did this in a rush, rolling the small metal knob and making the glass-cased lantern into a brilliant beacon in less than a second.
It was counter to all sense. The creatures could see her more clearly. They knew where she was and that she was virtually trapped, if indeed the mindless things could be said to truly “know” anything at all.
And now the monsters could see the speaker, her shape shrunken by tremendous age.
The
woman was sturdily built and nearly squat, as if the years had melted a larger woman into something smaller and wider, but no less commanding. On her head she wore a feathered black turban fixed with a gem that couldn’t possibly have been real, and across her shoulders hung a long red jacket in a faux mandarin style. It flowed neatly over her dove gray gown, and from the bottom hem of this gown peeked two small black points—the tips of her shoes.
In her left hand she held a cane made of knotted wood. Her ring-covered fingers curled around the top, her jewelry flashing like sparks off a flint.
Josephine would sooner have run right into the arms of the nearest monster than tell this woman no. She held the lamp up high, letting its light douse the scene, bringing whatever terrible clarity it was bound to show.
The ancient colored woman in front of the nets raised her cane until she held it by the center, in her long-fingered fist. She swung it back over her head for momentum, and brought it crashing down against the coal-black column of a broken gas lamp that hadn’t been lit for years. The single resulting gong reverberated across the wharf, radiating in a wave that shook the boards beneath Josephine’s feet and brought every flesh-eating beast to a sudden, total standstill.
They posed statuelike and utterly unmoving, staring into space or at the newcomer. Even their gnawing, slathering jaws ceased their eternal chewing.
“Ma’am Laveau,” Josephine croaked. Then in French, “I don’t understand. ”
In French the woman replied, “What’s to understand? Come here, dear. Come to me. ” She beckoned with her free hand. “The zombis won’t be so cooperative forever. ”
As if it’d heard and recognized the truth of this matter, the creature nearest to Mrs. Laveau shook its head. The old lady shook her head, too, and reached into a pocket—from which she withdrew a small bag filled with powder.
She blew a pinch of the powder into the monster’s face and it flinched. In that flinch, even at a distance, Josephine could see a glimmer of what had once been human; but it was gone as quickly as it’d appeared.
Once again, the thing was immobile.
“Come, child. Let’s go. We’ll walk, and they’ll stay. ”
“For how long?”
“Long enough. You trust me?”
“Yes, ma’am. ”
“Then walk with me. ” She pocketed her powder and beckoned again.
This time, Josephine obeyed immediately. The lantern shook as she ran toward the old woman, and the boards of the wharf creaked beneath her feet. Her fear was a shocking, unfamiliar thing, and her body was so prepared to fight or run or die that her hands quaked and her teeth chattered, but Mrs. Laveau patted her shoulder and smiled. “There, you see? The dead must be reminded of their place. ”
Four
Captain Cly closed the enormous door behind himself and kept his head low as he descended the stairs. Two floors deep, beneath the initial bank basement where the door was located, the “vaults” remained one of the safest corners of the city—the deepest, most secure, and most like a collection of ordinary homes. This bunker-within-a-bunker also served as storage for the most direly needed essentials: clean water, ammunition, gunpowder, gas masks and their accoutrements, and grocery supplies to keep the population fed.
Over in “Chinatown,” nearer the wall’s edge on the far side of King Street Station, the oriental workers kept stores of their own, as their food preferences did not strictly overlap with the doornails. But in the last year, some of the doornails had taken to wandering toward the Chinese kitchens in search of unfamiliar food—while likewise some of the Chinese had shown an interest in dried salmon, occasional fruit tarts, and intermittent baked sweets.
Food was a language all its own. And it was in no one’s best interest for anyone to starve.
The halls were not particularly mazelike, and they were as well lit as anything else beneath the city’s surface. The ceilings were lower than Cly might have preferred, but this set the vaults apart from few other places in the world; so he watched his forehead and made his way along the first corridor without complaint, silent or sworn aloud.