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“Are you a difficult man, Ranger Korman?”
He didn’t exactly answer. “Boy, if they think I’m difficult…” His voice trailed off, then returned. “There’s worse trouble than me weighing against Texas. Maybe not yet, but soon. And bad. ”
Josephine went straight to the meat of it. “Zombis. That’s what Madame Laveau calls them. ”
“The walking dead men? Same thing?”
“Same thing. ” She nodded. “And it surprises me to have a Ranger under my roof, wanting to talk about it. ”
“Why’s that?”
“Up until Betters and Cardiff went missing, you couldn’t convince Texas anything was wrong down by the river. Not for love or money, and believe me, I tried both. ”
“Pardon me for putting it this way, but nobody would believe you. I know, because I’ve been trying to warn them for months—and I’m one of their own. Nobody wants to hear it. ”
Josephine looked him up and down, reaffirming her initial impression that this was a dyed-in-the-wool, run-of-the-mill, straight-out-of-the-mold upstanding Republican, at least by all appearances. Why would he meet resistance from his own men?
Horatio Korman eyed her back, likewise weighing something as he assessed her. Coming to a decision, he said bluntly, “Mrs. Laveau said you were there the night Colonel Betters and Lieutenant Cardiff were killed. She said you saw what happened. I’m not accusing you of anything, Miss Early, but right now we’ve got Texians down on the riverbanks hunting something they don’t understand—trying to defend this city from it—” He tapped his finger on the armrest to emphasize the point. “And they’re having the shit scared out of them. I was directed here on the basis of other people’s reports, soldiers and merchants who’ve worked down there, people with friends who’ve gone missing. My boss sent me to New Orleans to get me out of their way, yes—but they might’ve done us all a favor. ”
“And how’s that?” she asked cautiously, giving away nothing.
“Because no matter what you tell me, I’m likely to believe it and likely to help you. These … zombis, or whatever Mrs. Laveau wants to call them. I’ve seen them myself, and I know what they’re capable of. ”
“You’ve been down to the river?”
“No, and that’s the bad part. It’s a national secret at the moment, but those things, those zombis, they’re not just down by your river. They aren’t just in New Orleans. They’re in north Texas, and the turf west of that, too—all the way to the Utah territories and maybe farther west than that. Texas is getting positively lousy with them. ”
A shiver went tickling down Josephine’s neck. “Are you … are you sure?”
“I’ve seen them myself, at the Provo pass. Seen them by the hundreds. And I almost didn’t escape to sit here now and tell you about it. ”
“But how could they possibly be anywhere else? Lots of folks think they’re a voudou thing—spell-blind or ritual-maddened men, maybe even created by Marie Laveau herself! Lord knows half the city thinks she’s in charge of them. ”
“Count me in the other half,” Korman said dryly
, his mustache bobbing. “And you, too, I bet. ”
Slowly, she bobbed her head in the affirmative. “Yes—me, too. Tonight she said we had to learn to manage them now, before they become unmanageable. ” The thought made her head hurt. Then her exhausted brain caught up to something else he’d said a moment before. “I’m sorry, did you just now say you’d seen hundreds of them?”
“That’s right. Mexicans, and other assorted folks they’d picked up along the way. They’d been migrating, if you could call it that. Maybe wandering is more like it, but they roamed from a spot southwest of Oneida all the way up to the Rockies. ”
“Dead men?”
“Women, too. ”
“Dear God,” she breathed. “If only we knew what was making them—what was causing them, I mean. ”
His mustache bounced upward at the corners. He was smiling. “Ah, that’s where me and you might have some useful things to tell each other. Nobody believes what I tell ’em, same as nobody believes you when you say that the dead are walking. That’s why you didn’t report what happened to those men, isn’t it? You thought McCoy—or whoever was in charge until he got here—would’ve thrown you in the clink, figuring you had something to do with their deaths. ”
“Of course that’s why,” she lied. She’d kept the information to herself because if she’d shared it, she would’ve had to explain what she was doing following the men. And that’s what would’ve gotten her thrown in jail. “They were swarmed, Ranger Korman. Absolutely overwhelmed. Two Texians, armed to the teeth, and there were too many of the things for it to matter. What’s doing this? You have to tell me!”
“I’d be happy to tell you. Goddamn, I’ve been telling the world, but the world isn’t listening. Zombis happen one of a couple of ways, all of it going back to a very strange gas that’s being toted down from the Pacific Northwest. ”
Stunned full of questions, Josephine had no idea what to ask first. She stammered, “Gas? A gas? From where?”
“Gas, you heard me. Like hydrogen, only not like hydrogen at all. This gas comes out of the ground, and it has something to do with volcanoes—that’s all I know. ”
“They have volcanoes in the Northwest?” she asked, mystified. “I had no idea. ”
