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She liked it even less the second time. “What is it? What do you see?”
“Well,” he said. He stuck a p on the end so it came out as, Whelp.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, give me that thing,” she said.
He let her take it.
Through the gloves she wore, she could feel the chill of the exposed brass. She took the ranger’s lead and held it very slightly away from her face. It took her a bit to find the spot she was seeking. Then the rear of the Rebel train slipped into the magnifying circle, and she followed it with the lens all the way up to the engine. And she froze, as still and breathless as the jagged mountains on either side of her.
“You see them, too?” Korman asked.
“I see . . . someone. Something. ”
“Do those look like uniforms to you?”
“On the Confederates? No, wait, I see what you mean. Yes, they look like . . . like light-?colored uniforms. On some of them, not on all of them. And they’re . . . they’re attacking the Shenandoah!”
“That’s what it looks like,” he said. “And I hate to say it,” he breathed roughly, as if he truly did hate to say it, “but I think we’ve found our missing Mexicans. ”
She pressed the lens as close as she dared against her own eye, searing her skin with the burning ice that collected on the spyglass’s metal rim. Yes, she could see them, pounding their hands against the engine, and against the railcars, and trying to crawl up onto the train. A handful of men were treed atop the back of the engine and the fuel cart, kicking at the invaders and using the butts of long guns to bash them back to the snow.
“Why aren’t they shooting?” she asked.
“Might be out of ammunition by now. ”
She shifted the glass enough to scan the area better and then gasped, sucking in more of the icy air and choking on it with a little cough.
“What?”
“Jesus,” she said, handing him the lens. “Jesus, Korman. Look out past the engine. There’s more coming. ” She turned and stumbled for the nearest ladder, reversing herself back down it. “They’re coming, and there’s . . . Jesus,” she said again, and now she was down on the platform, shoving the door open. Behind her, she could hear the ranger following in her footsteps, lowering himself with a couple of quick steps that had him right on her heels.
She flung open the car door. Panting, she confronted the captain. “They’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?” he asked, clearly frightened by her fear and trying to contain it, but requiring more information.
The ranger pushed his way past the door and answered. “The Mexicans. The missing ones, all seven or eight hundred of them, or however many there are—but it looks like more than that to me. Where’s that inspector you folks had up in here? Can’t keep their names straight. ”
“Portilla’s dead,” Mercy told him without looking over her shoulder at the corpse. “And those men out there—something horrible’s wrong with them, just like all of us have been talking about. Just like the papers said, and just like the inspectors told us. Speaking of who . . . Cole?”
“Ma’am?”
“Please, you or Jasper. Go get Inspector Galeano. ”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, and was out the back door in exactly the kind of rush she wanted to see.
A volley of shots fired from the Shenandoah; they rang back to the Dreadnought like distant firecrackers, shocking everyone on board into defensive positions and gasps.
But Mercy said, “No! No, they’re not shooting at us now. They’re shooting at those other people—only they aren’t people anymore, not really. Someone must’ve found some more bullets. Oh, God help them!”
“God help them?” Theodora Clay gasped. “Have you even been present on this train for the last hour?”
“Present and working like hell to stay alive on it, same as you! But those are men on that train—real ordinary men, alive and sane, same as you and me! And those other things, the things that are overrunning them . . . they aren’t human. I swear,” she said, almost gagging with despair. “They’ve been poisoned—poisoned into monsters!”
The rear door burst open, and Cole Byron came through it with Inspector Galeano, who was wild eyed and full to bursting with questions. The first one out of his mouth was, “Portilla?”
Mercy replied, “I’m real sorry, Inspector. I did what I could to save him, but I—”
“Please, where is he?”
