Ganymede

Three

Night at the Café du Monde was illuminated with strings of hanging lanterns anchored to gas lamps on pillars; candles in jars made the small tables bright enough for beignets and coffee blended with chicory root. These small bubbles of light pocked the darkness and gave the impression of privacy in public, a place where people might be seen, but they might not be observed. It was never quiet, always bustling with the kitchen fryers and workers calling back and forth, taking and filling orders. The café always hummed with the noise from the river off to one side, and the street on the other — ships’ horns and paddle wheels, horse carts and singing, drunken partiers, the patrols and bickering of soldiers, and the music of a dozen bands playing for their supper within half as many blocks.

Josephine Early was careful to keep the lace from her gloves away from the candles, and the napkin in her lap was covered in powdered sugar — but not a drip of coffee. She was joined by Marylin Quantrill and Ruthie Doniker, both of whom nibbled and sipped along with her. Together they chatted about virtually nothing, and at length, until the four slowly sobering Texians at the table beside them finally rallied and staggered back to their barracks.

Marylin raised the white mug to her lips, blew at the steamy mists of the still-warm beverage, and said, “We aren’t meeting much luck at the airyard, ma’am. Lots of fellows are interested in us, but only for the usual reasons.”

“And we aren’t finding useful foreigners, either.” Ruthie, darker and by some accounts prettier, sighed and discreetly adjusted her bodice. She was thin as a waterbird, and twice as graceful. “Nothing but Rebels and Texians. And a very pretty Spaniard, but he wasn’t a pilot. Perhaps a new customer, though?” She lifted her mug and an eyebrow at the same time, and hid her smile behind her coffee.

“A new one for you?” Josephine asked. “Be careful, love.”

“A new one for me, maybe. He is very beautiful, and the Spanish … they are almost as easy as the French in these things.”

Marylin asked, “What about you, ma’am? Have you found anyone to fly for us?”

Josephine wrapped both hands around her drink, even though the night was almost hot and the beverage’s steam might’ve been too much for a woman who wasn’t accustomed to it. “I sent off a telegram to a man who might help us, if he’s willing to make the journey.”

“For you? I cannot imagine a man would say no,” Ruthie insisted.

“Hainey said no.”

“But he had, how would you say? Extenuating circumstances.” Ruthie’s French was stronger than her English, but she practiced at every opportunity, working to expand her vocabulary. She said extenuating with the accents in all the wrong places. She was a voracious reader who had seen the word spelled, but never heard it spoken.

Josephine corrected the pronunciation with context, rather than rebuke. “This other pilot comes with extenuating circumstances of his own. He’s terribly far away, for one thing. And for another, I suspect he does not wish to see me.”

“Why?” Marylin frowned.

“We haven’t spoken in many years.” That was all she offered. “It doesn’t matter. We need a pilot, and he’s a good one. If he’ll come, we’ll be lucky to have him. But it’s only been a few days, and the telegram had quite a distance to travel. I had to send it through Mr. Hainey, and wait for the message to reach the Washington Territory.”

“Washington?” Marylin gasped. “That’s practically the other side of the world!”

“Practically, yes. Realistically, it’s only two or three thousand miles.”

Ruthie’s eyes narrowed with cunning, and a hint of mirth. “He must have a very impressive ship.”

“Pirates usually do have good equipment, and last I knew of him, that was how he earned his living. And I know you don’t like pirates,” she cut off Marylin before the protest could be mounted, “but we can trust Cly if we have to.”

To return to their previous conversation, Marylin asked, “Is he perfect?”

Josephine considered the question. “No, he isn’t perfect. He’s just about the biggest man you’ll ever lay eyes on — if he hadn’t gone into raiding, he could’ve had a career in a circus, easy as you please. He could’ve been the world’s most amazing strong man.”

Ruthie noted, “A very big man would not be good. The craft we need him to pilot … it was not made with a giant in mind.”

“No, but he’ll fit. He was always good at working around his size, and unless he’s collected sufficient money to custom-build his own ship, I expect he’s still flying in cramped quarters today.”

Marylin pondered aloud, suddenly sounding more optimistic. “You said he’s from Washington, ma’am. He’s not a Rebel or a Texian, but not a Yankee either — so the airyard will let him come and go, and that’s something.”

“Furthermore, Cly never cared about the war, and he’s friends with Hainey, so he isn’t in a rush to kidnap runaway negroes home to the Rebs, not even for the money they offer these days.”

After another sip, Ruthie said, “Good to know he’s not that kind of pirate.”

“I wouldn’t employ that kind of pirate. It’s a goddamn ridiculous thing, too,” the madam complained, picking at the edge of a beignet. “Except for Alabama and Mississippi, there’s no difference between free coloreds and the rest anymore. It’s nothing but spiteful, Georgia putting up bounties and insisting on their return.”

“But, ma’am, wasn’t Hainey one of the Macon Madmen?”

“Oh, even if Hainey weren’t a bona fide crook, they’d want him back regardless. Nothing but spite,” she repeated. “I just can’t abide it. Anyway, Captain Cly isn’t that sort.”

“I hope he decides soon. It’d take him a week just to get here, if he’s that far away — and if his ship is half as good as we could hope. And how much longer until you-know-who wants his report?” Ruthie meant Major Daniel Alcock, who intended to make a final decision on the Ganymede project within the next weeks.

“End of the month. I could probably beg a few extra days through the start of May, but I’d rather not have to. It’d look desperate.”

Softly, Marylin asked, “Ma’am, are we desperate yet?”

Josephine bought herself a few seconds by taking a bite of beignet and savoring its fluffy sweetness. She washed it down with coffee and replied, “No. Not yet. But if Cly doesn’t respond within the week, I’ll have to assume he isn’t coming — and then we’ll be desperate.”

She opened her mouth to add something, but closed it again when she spied two men walking toward the café. They were speaking in low tones, their heads too close together for either of them to be up to any good, and they both wore the brown cotton “summer” uniform of the Republic of Texas.

“Ma’am?”

“Don’t look now,” she murmured. “I mean it—don’t look.”

“Who is it?” Ruthie wanted to know. She lifted her mug and pretended to drink — while she only whispered from behind it.

Josephine did the same. “I’ll be damned if it’s not Colonel Betters and Lieutenant Cardiff.”

Not only were they two of the highest-ranking Texians stationed in the city, but Lieutenant Cardiff was one of the investigators leading the search for the Ganymede. It was an open secret. Any Union spy or sympathizer knew about Cardiff and his wheedling into the affair of the “missing” craft. His name had become a watchword for the guerrillas in the bayou and out at the lake. They knew he was looking, and knew he was coming.

For the time being, all they could do was hide from him.

The look on Marylin’s face said she was exerting superhuman willpower to keep from turning around. “What are they doing?” she asked.

“Conspiring.”

Ruthie said, “They are going the wrong direction, yes? Barracks are back the other way.”

“Hush.” Josephine lowered her eyes and leaned forward to touch Ruthie’s arm. She laughed lightly, and the other ladies joined in for the sake of show. Still wearing her pretend smile, she said in an ordinary voice — in case anyone should overhear them after all—“Perhaps you two had better run home without me. I have some business to attend to before I settle in for the night.”

“Ma’am, are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. Besides, we left Hazel in charge. She does all right when things are slow, but she’ll want your help if business picks up.”

Marylin and Ruthie understood, but they didn’t like it. Marylin fretted with her coffee mug and whispered, “But, ma’am, they’re headed—” She could only guess, since she was forbidden to turn and see for herself. But they weren’t coming toward her, so they must be walking away, in the other direction. “—down to the river, I think.”

“Then that’s where I’m going, too. Chins up, ladies.” She slipped her hand down to her left thigh and patted a bulge that no one could see. “Little Russia and I will be just fine.”

She rose from her seat and placed her half-empty mug on the table, then folded her napkin and put it beside her plate. Nodding coolly at her companions, she set out in the wake of the two Texian officers, who had now passed beyond her sight … but Marylin was right. Josephine knew where they were going. There was nowhere else to go, not if they’d taken that turn she’d seen — down the steps and away from the city lights.

Down to the river.

Josephine always made a point to wear quiet shoes. Even if she sported the most fashionable boots in the whole city, she’d glue wool felt to the bottoms and replace it as needed. It was a small precaution, but never had it served her quite so well as when she stepped along the damp-swollen stairs and along planked walkways that flanked the river’s banks between the piers.

Her dress rustled as a matter of course, but it was the sort of sound that was easily lost in the Quarter, beside the water most especially. The noise of her skirts blended seamlessly into the soft rushing of the Old Man as he worked his way to the Gulf. Her passage was masked by the calls and wings of night birds, and the dipping paddles of rum-runners coming in for the night, unwilling to crank the diesel engines on their small, flat crafts. It was lost in the sound of low, loose waves lapping up against pilings and the broad sides of the larger boats that were moored along the way.

She followed the Texians’ footsteps and the grumbling trail of their conversation — too distant to be heard with any clarity — down along the rickety wharves and alongside warehouses that no one examined too closely — not even the Republicans, unless they had strict orders to do so. And even then, only in the daytime.

This was a dangerous place, dangerous to any given group of men — armed and strong and unencumbered by corsetry or ankle-length skirts. No one knew this better than Josephine, and no one liked it less.

As the city glow was eaten by distance, and the banks, and the taller buildings that cast devious shadows thicker than ink, the only light to be seen bounced off the river in splintered fragments and skinny ribbons. It sparkled along the currents, cast by the lights on mercantile ships and riverboats chugging through the night, or sometimes by a quickly shuttered lantern or a smattering of torches left lit but fading at the edges of civilization.

This gray space between the city and the river … it was dying, and it was not a place to be visited frivolously. But not for fear of the rum-runners, smugglers, and other assorted criminal fiends. Even the worst of that motley lot shuddered and moved carefully along this borderland.

No, the banks were avoided for fear of something else.

Josephine wasn’t sure how long she’d been on the Texians’ trail, or how far she’d walked in silence. She must be coming up on Rue Canal soon; it must be there up ahead, over the nebulous edge where the city was so impossibly far away and out of reach. Even the music from the saloons, lounges, and gentlemen’s clubs was muffled here, or snuffed out altogether. Stray notes drifted in pairs and clusters, their tunes lost to the thick, wet air and the increasing distance.

Gradually, by carefully conducted shuffles and short, brave sprints, Josephine came near enough to catch their words. She could not see their faces, and for that matter, she could not tell them apart. She watched them in glimpses, around the side of a stack of crates stuffed with straw and heaven knew what else.

She shivered despite the warmth, pressing her back against the crates as firmly as she dared, as if she could will herself closer than the crates would allow. The stays of her corsetry jabbed into her hips, and her bosoms were thrust uncomfortably high as she compressed herself as tightly as her clothing would allow.

At first the conversation was idle office gossip, complaints about a stenographer, and then it moved on to concerns about money, troops, and supplies. Finally they both paused, like men who had been avoiding a topic and were now forced to confront it.

“I don’t like it out here, especially since I don’t know what we’re doing — so why don’t you help me out and tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry to lead you so far out into the boonies, sir, but I have my reasons. I can’t trust the barracks, or the office on the Square. We’re being watched, sir,” the speaker announced. Josephine’s heart nearly stopped.

It calmed again when she heard, “Of course you’re being watched — we’re all of us being watched, all the goddamn time. It comes with the territory.” This man — Colonel Allastair Betters, Josephine gathered — made an impatient noise and crossed his arms. “Listen, son. I realize the locals are none too forthcoming, but you’ve got to scare up some results. General Dwyer knows it’s out there. Shit, we all know it’s out there, in the water someplace. I don’t understand why you’re having so much trouble getting your hands on it!”

“Sir, do you have any idea how much water they’ve got around here? That’s why I’m bringing you down here, because look — look at this old wharf. You can see, can’t you? Somebody’s been here recently, and moving something real big. And I think I know what it was.”

“I can’t see any indication of anything except mud, dust, and a few fornicating turtles.”

Seconds later, a brilliant flare lit up the wharf — so bright that it felt like an explosion, but it was only the striking of a lamp. Josephine turned away, deeper into the shadow, and hoped that she vanished. She also thanked her lucky stars she was wearing a dark blue dress, which, except for its cream trim, may as well have been black, so long as she stayed out of the light.

“Jesus Christ, my eyes!”

“Sorry, sir. But it’s important that you see this. They’re doing something, on these pilings — on this dock. Look at the boards, sir. They’re scraped up all to hell, and freshly so. You can see, it looks like a huge team of men has been stomping all over the place.”

Josephine dared another peek around the corner and saw the two men huddled over a long drag-mark that did in fact look very recent. A few of the weaker slats had splintered and now jutted up, making for a truly treacherous landscape, and others were merely scuffed clean of the mildew, rot, and the discoloration of a century.

“All right, all right,” said Colonel Betters. “I do see about a thousand footprints. It looks like a bunch of men have been running around, back and forth. What makes you think it’s tied to one of the Hunleys?”

“Sir, I think we’ve had it all wrong. I think they’ve already got it on the move — that they’ve unscuttled it, fixed it, and they’re sending it down the river.”

This was news to Josephine, insomuch as it wasn’t true — but she didn’t mind the investigator being so very wrong. The farther off-track he could be drawn, the better.

The colonel said, “Hm. I don’t know about that. This is a mess, but is it a mess that says a military watercraft has been man-hauled around? We know the scuttled Hunley holds nine men. Would something that big and heavy fit up here? Wouldn’t this whole wharf just come folding right down? Hell, Cardiff, this thing’s so fragile, I’m half-afraid to stand here and bounce on my toes after a steak supper.”

“Sir, you’re right. And no, I don’t think this set of matchsticks would hold a Hunley … not all in one piece. I think they’ve disassembled it. They’re moving it in parts. They’re sneaking it off, bit by bit, onto barges. Dozens of flat-bottoms go by every day. We could never search every craft that comes through the delta. It just isn’t possible; we don’t have the people. And these bayou boys, they’ve got friends in Barataria. They could buy help, if they needed it.”

From her spot behind the crates, Josephine considered their incorrect theory.

It wasn’t a half-bad idea, and just this once she was glad that her brother’s crew had been so slow moving the craft. If it’d gone any quicker, they might’ve disassembled it — and then what? Then the Texians would be on to them. Still, it was cold comfort.

The Union had said outright that they wouldn’t spare extra money on a recovery mission until it could be demonstrated that the Ganymede actually worked. And worked without killing anyone inside it.

To date, such a demonstration had not been achievable, not on any serious scale. The controls were a mystery to every sailor the guerrillas had brought aboard, and the bayou engineers had only just discovered how to rig up makeshift ventilation pumps. No one had died on board since the ventilation had been installed, so progress was being made. It just wasn’t progress enough.

Not yet.

Deep down, Josephine knew it was possible to move the Ganymede, and move it safely. She believed it with all her heart — she’d seen the elegant schematics left over from the Confederate Hunley’s last, best efforts before he’d drowned in an earlier prototype. She’d held the secret rolled-up blueprints in her hands and read all about the machine’s destructive capacity, as laid out by its now-dead creator.

And she was confident to the point of obsession that if the Ganymede could be given to the Federal government, and reproduced, and brought into the war … then even Texas would back away, and at last the Rebs could be choked into surrender.

Much earlier in the war, the Anaconda Plan — an attempt to blockade the supplies to the whole southeast — had failed. But then, it’d been tried only with ordinary warships. Imagine how much more effective it could have been — and might be again! — if the blockade were undertaken with craft that swam below the water’s surface. Just consider the possibilities of such extraordinary machines, hidden and powerful, able to destroy ships from the Gulf or the Atlantic without having ever been seen.

It could end the war. Maybe the simple threat of it could do so. How much more could the Rebels really stand, anyway? Any idiot could see they were living on the cusp of what was sustainable; any fool could pick up a newspaper and understand in seconds that this couldn’t go on much longer.

Of course, everyone had been saying so for years.

“Tell me, then. What does this mean? How do we respond, in case you’re right?”

“First, I think we should clear out the bayous. Make a huge push — just wipe those bastards out of the wetlands for good. We’ll round up a few, twist some thumbs, and find out what they’ve done with the ship. Maybe if we’re lucky, they haven’t finished moving it off yet.”

After a pause, the colonel asked, “The damn thing failed, and failed again. Do you think the Union really wants it?”

“Mr. Hunley was a genius, sir, and so were the fellows who took up his work after he died. If the blues think they can start up that machine, they’ll pay for it, and pay top dollar. If they aren’t funding the operation already.”

“We may as well assume they are. Those swamp rats, they don’t have the money or resources to make such a stink on their own. Out there in the sopping wet middle of noplace, there’s not even anything worth stealing. Someone’s keeping them in guns and ammo.”

“Sir, I—”

“Wait. Hush.”

“Sir, what—?”

“Hush, I said.” He dropped his voice so low that Josephine could scarcely make out the words. “Do you hear that?”

The lieutenant whispered back. “Hear what, sir?… Oh. I think…”

“What is it?”

“Sir, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Josephine Early wasn’t sure. She heard it, too, very faintly — it was coming from the far side of the men, from below the wharf, nearer the water. Crouching down, she reached for the Schofield under her skirt and retrieved it from the heavy-duty garter where it had been fastened. She removed her gloves and stuffed them into her pocket, then grasped the gun carefully, readying it, adjusting her grip.

“It sounds like … like someone having a hard time breathing.”

“Yes, sir, something like that. Where’s it coming from?”

“There … no. Over there. Or maybe over there.” He indicated several directions, none of them certain.

The woman behind the crates closed her eyes, in case it’d help her listen harder. She concentrated and breathed as shallowly as she could — until the pounding of her heart was nearly as loud as the distant wheezing. Her hips and lower belly ached against her foundation undergarments from maintaining such a cramped posture, and her head was beginning to throb.

“Cardiff, I don’t like this.”

“Me either, sir. Maybe we should be on our way.”

The colonel wasn’t quick to move, but he was quick to reach into the gun holster he wore hanging off his shoulders. Josephine couldn’t see what he carried, probably a Colt service revolver — something loud and high caliber, being a Texian and a man of authority. Very likely, it was the kind of gun that could take somebody’s head off in a pinch.

Against all reason, she was glad to see he had it. He was going to need it, but not to defend himself against any hidden Union spies like herself, crouching behind crates. She was sickeningly confident of that much. She knew it from the rushing sound of broken breaths being dragged in and out through rotted throats. She knew because the sound was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, drawing closer, coming toward the lantern light on the dead-end wharf.

The lieutenant drew a handgun as well, more nervously than the colonel. He instinctively retreated until his back was nearly pressed against the commanding officer’s — and he held the lantern high, throwing the light as far as he could, hoping to get a glimpse of whatever was approaching from the darkness.

Josephine didn’t want to see it, but she needed to.

This had all been a terrible idea — on everyone’s part, and at least the colonel ought to have known better. Maybe he had known better, but he was cocky with his guns and his rank; maybe the lieutenant had been the ignorant one, seeing the place during the day when the sun had chased off the worst of the shadows.

If only they’d left the light off. If only they’d kept their voices down.

Every muscle in Josephine’s body was tighter than a violin string. She watched around the corner, crouched on one knee, gun held up at the ready, almost next to her face as if she were praying. She considered running, back out the way they’d come — but no, they’d see her, or hear her. They’d open fire, not knowing she wasn’t the most dangerous thing on the wharf, and not knowing she only meant to escape.

Besides.

She jerked her head away from the corner and listened.

Coming down the walkway, up from the river in staggering, shambling steps that didn’t keep time like an ordinary walker.…

Josephine retreated away from the crate’s edge, shrinking herself to the fullest extent possible, down at the bottom edge where the angle was sharpest and the shadow was deepest.

It wouldn’t help. They didn’t have to see her to know she was there.

The ragged, sickly gasps grew nearer. Josephine tried to sort them out — to determine how many were coming. She detected three on the far side of the Texians, who were sweating with fear; she was sure of two more, from farther back on the wharf; and one more … no, two more coming up the back way, cutting off the only obvious means of retreat.

“Sir, we should go!”

“Put out that light, you idiot.”

“We won’t be able to see!”

“What’d you walk me into, Cardiff?” The colonel’s voice was rising, not from panic, Josephine didn’t think. She’d give him credit there — he was holding steady, feet planted and firearm level. Texians were repugnant, problematic, occupying, Confederate-allied bastards down to the very last man … but she couldn’t accuse them of being cowards.

“Sir, we should be quiet—”

“Turn it out!” he ordered. “I’ve heard about what goes on here, I’ve heard what people say.”

“People say a lot of things, sir.”

Lieutenant Cardiff struggled to hold his gun and turn down the lamp without dropping it, a prospect that flooded the watching woman with horror. What a thought, burning alive or being eaten alive — a choice no one should have to make.

His voice quivering, the lieutenant said, “So many people have made reports. Word from Austin says they’re sending a specialist — some Ranger with an interest in strange … things.”

Josephine began to calculate how far she was from the wharf, and if she could run past the men without them shooting her, and if she could swim in what she was wearing — if she made it over the side of the walkway and into the Mississippi where there were snakes, to be sure; and alligators, maybe; and bad men up to bad things, but none of it was as awful as what was coming.

“Sir, there are stories,” the lieutenant gulped. “But they’re only stories—goddamn locals, they think we ought to be afraid.”

“Goddamn locals aren’t always out to snow you, son. I don’t know about you, but I’m plenty afraid right now.”

Out of the darkness, up the walk that led to the wharf, something rose out from the murky night. It moved more slowly than a person should, and its posture suggested that something was broken, deep inside. When it stepped, it stepped unevenly, and with effort. Harder and faster the loud, harsh breathing came; for when it spied the Texians — or possibly Josephine, who was nearer to the thing and in its direct line of sight — its efforts rose. It let out a loud, hard cry, a noise that shredded the wharf and summoned more of its kind.

Faster it approached, one foot in front of the other, gracelessly, but with a purpose. Now it saw fresh meat and loped ever faster toward it — toward Josephine, who held out her gun but held her fire.

If she squeezed the trigger, the Texians would know she’d been there hiding, listening. If the hideous man-shaped thing reached her, it wouldn’t make a difference anyway — she’d be dead or worse by dawn. She held off as long as she could, waiting until the last moment … until the feeble moonlight sparked off the thing’s wet mouth and she could’ve almost counted its teeth.

One shot, two shots — both of them blasted like cannon fire in such a close space.

But not from Josephine’s gun.

The Texians had seen the incoming monster just in time, and it was their fire that took the thing down, and took it to pieces. Its head split in two, and the top half landed at Josephine’s feet. Its quivering torso went left, right, and toppled backwards to lie still upon the wharf’s edge.

She clapped a hand over her mouth and fought for composure.

Another one was coming. She wouldn’t be so fortunate twice in a row. She lifted the gun again and waited. The sloughing scrape of dead feet, the horrible rhythm of dead lungs.

More of them, incoming.

The first brute had only located and declared the prey. The rest would come in for the kill.

“Dear God!” the colonel barked. He opened fire again, two more shots that exploded and left the madam’s ears humming. The bullets landed with squishy thumps, the sound of arrows hitting melons, but Josephine didn’t dare take her eyes off the path from whence she’d come — not unless she wanted the creatures to come groaning up behind her. She braced her back against the crates and locked her elbows, holding the gun out and facing the wood plank path.

The colonel demanded, “What are they?” and now his voice was cracking, losing the battle-hardened calm that had served him well so far. “What are those things?”

“They aren’t real; they aren’t real. This isn’t real,” the lieutenant babbled.

A shot went wild and clipped the edge of the crate, casting splinters into Josephine’s hair and up against her face — where one left a brief, hot sting.

“It isn’t true!” Cardiff was shouting now, and firing again; she was almost certain the wilder shots were his. Another one, two, three blasts.

How many guns did the men have between them? How many shots?

Josephine cursed herself for not observing them better. She should’ve noticed, should’ve counted. Nothing to be done for it now.

“Pull yourself together, man!” the colonel ordered. Two more shots landed in something dense and wet. Then he tried a different tactic, addressing the incoming creatures directly. “Who are you? What do you want?” But it was a desperate, foolish thing, and the officer sensed it immediately.

“Cardiff,” he called. “What are these things?”

Three more shots rang out, and Josephine wished to God she could cover her ears, shut them out, give herself a moment of quiet so she could listen again, and better pinpoint the things that were to come.

Not a chance. Two more shots, and then the fall of something heavy that clattered and rolled. A gun, discarded as empty. Texians always went armed, and surely two officers like these would have backup, or so she told herself as she stared with all her might — unblinking, lest she miss a crucial moment — and watched for more monsters, arriving up the back way.

They were coming right for her. She knew it, even though her whole head was buzzing from the percussion of the gunshots so nearby.

Two more uneven shapes, ambling up the walkway.

Tightening her grip, readying her aim, she gave up on hiding from the Texians, who had problems of their own. Several more shots — she’d lost count how many — and the firing ceased amid a hail of rapid-fire swearing and struggling.

“Goddammit! What are these — get away from me! Get it off me!”

“Oh God! Oh God!”

“What are they — what are they?” the colonel continued to shout.

A hail of muffled blows and the rending of fabric. A scream from the lieutenant. A bellow from the colonel. The pounding slugs of something heavy — a gun in someone’s fist? — bludgeoning strikes in the midst of what sounded like a crowd but might be as few as three or four.

It didn’t take many of them.

And here came two more.

Every shot had to count. Josephine took a deep breath. If the Texians were still alive behind her, it wouldn’t matter if they heard her now. She rose to her feet in a leap that was made melodic by the lift and swish of her skirts and the cracking shift of her undergarment stays snapping back to attention, and as the first newcomer came over the slight rise and stepped onto the planks, she blew off its face with a single shot.

A second one was right behind it. She stopped that one, too — but her mark was off, a few inches too low, and the bullet tore a hole in the thing’s throat. It tumbled to its knees but started to crawl. Josephine took a brief running start and then kicked its head with all her weight and strength — sending the bulbous, foul-smelling skull flying off into the river, where it landed with a splash.

Was that all of them?

She didn’t see any more, but seeing wasn’t easy, and she was all but shooting blind. Whirling around to check the state of the Texians, she saw there was nothing to be done for them, even if she’d been inclined to. She didn’t mind two fewer Republicans in her city, not for a second, and if those two had known what she was up to, she’d have been thrown in jail or shot. She had no illusions about their shared humanity, or any fairy tales of cooperation to warm her.

The lieutenant was down and dying, writhing or perhaps only being tugged this way and that by the two monsters that jerked on his limbs, biting them, tearing off hunks of flesh — anything they could fit in their mouths.

The colonel was sitting upright, swinging with his gun, clapping a third one in the face while he held a fourth at bay with his hand. It wasn’t working. Number four ducked its head and tried to bite the colonel’s neck. Colonel Betters was not a young man, and his strength was failing. Any minute would be his last.

His eyes met Josephine’s. He didn’t say anything; he only looked at her there, holding the gun. She aimed it at him. He nodded, understanding in some final flash of insight that this was the last favor he was ever going to get — and it was coming from a woman who ordinarily wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire. But this was not a fire.

She pulled the trigger.

The colonel stopped fighting. His head slumped to his chest, and now the two ragged creatures met no resistance. They dived mouth-first into his carcass, moaning their enthusiasm even as one raised its head and wailed a shaky, raspy sound … a call that was returned from several sides.

“Shit,” Josephine swore.

The howler scrambled to its knees and scuttled toward her and she stopped it with a bullet between the eyes, its body snapping backwards and falling across the colonel’s knees. Its fellow monsters, no longer content to chew on the remains of the Texians, also rose from their gorging positions and reached out for the woman, who might have the bullets to shoot her way past them, or then again, she might not.

One, two.

She hit one in the temple and it spun away, rotating like a dancer until it tripped and fell off the wharf. It thrashed in the water and then it didn’t, sinking or merely stopping — Josephine couldn’t see that far, and was distracted by the creature she’d missed with her second shot. She fired another and caught it low in the neck. The bullet was so powerful, it blew the thing back away from her — if it didn’t send it down for good.

Behind her, from the way she’d come as she’d followed the Texians to their doom, she could hear more cries, more wheezing moans, more uneven footsteps. More of the famished, snarling, semi-dead creatures.

Her heart in her throat, she squeezed off another round and took an ear and a huge chunk of brain from the skull of the next attacker.

But she couldn’t stay there, hemmed in with the wharf stretching out over the water one way and a row of shipping crates to her left; higher than she could expect to climb in broad daylight and without the restrictions of her clothing. Back along the planked walkway two, maybe three more things were coming — and in front of her, the edge of the pier let out onto the manufacturing row, now mostly abandoned.

She heard the rumblings of more trouble from that way, but she chose it in an instant. It was the only direction where she might be able to find an open spot and run. If she could lose them in the row, or barricade herself inside one of the old factories, she might have a chance.

No going back.

No going out to the water — she could throw herself into the waves and hope the things chasing her couldn’t swim, but she’d likely drown in what she was wearing, and the river’s currents were riptide strong, killing hardier souls than her own every day.

A last resort, then.

She’d leave it for that — only if everything else failed.

Ducking down, she grabbed the lieutenant’s lantern and ran, her felt-softened feet making barely the lightest hiss with each footfall. The lantern wasn’t broken, and that was good. It hadn’t even been turned down all the way — she wouldn’t need a match to move it, she’d only have to raise the wick and pray there was oil enough to keep it bright.

But not yet.

Not while they were rallying, and homing in. Not until she had so much distance between them that she could afford the luxury of sight.

To her left and right reared cliffs of freight, or the wooden boxes that once contained it. In places, the passage narrowed to barely a doorway’s width, but she shoved forward, thinking she might have a bullet or two remaining. She was too distracted to estimate, and estimating wouldn’t do her any good. Either she had more ammunition or she didn’t.

She zigzagged through the maze and into an open stretch with muddy floors or no floors at all. Tripping, then recovering, she saw three lumbering shadows approaching from behind and to her left — and one more closing in from directly ahead.

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.”