“Aye, Captain,” Guffin said.
Seldom stepped over to navigation and Lum Ansell kept steady where he was, humming a low song, as was his habit in the air.
Hink walked the planking, trying to pace the warm back into his bones and taking the time to think things through. Who he should have gone for was Barlow, not this ship plugger. For all he knew the man was new to the hills and didn’t have a darn idea of why Barlow was looking for him.
“He’s coming to,” Molly announced. “Want I should put the snore back in him?”
“No, he needs talking to, and I need to do the talking.” Captain Hink stopped pacing and stood in front of the man, who had a blanket thrown on him. Likely that was Molly’s doing. Sure, the man was a captive and they’d just as soon throw him out to kick the breeze if he so much as spit, but if he froze, they wouldn’t be able to chisel any words out of him.
Hink waited for the man to rouse himself enough to pull the blanket up around his chin and tuck his knees to his chest.
“Have a few questions for you, sailor,” Hink said. “And if you answer them nice and clear, and nice and true, I won’t have my second kick you out of this boat.”
He had to raise his voice enough to be heard over the engines and the wind and rain squalling around out there. From the rock and yaw of the Swift, it was darned clear they were airborne.
Hink watched as the man scratched the tally of each of those things in his brain.
“I don’t want no trouble,” he finally said. Well, croaked was more like it. The smoke and the cold had run roughshod over his vocals.
“Then we’re of an agreement,” Hink said. “No trouble. You give me answers, and I’ll see that your boots are planted on solid ground. Here’s question number one: who is Captain Barlow answering to?”
“Said his name was the Saint,” the man said.
Hink tried not to let his surprise show. The man jumped so quick into telling him the truth, it caught him quiet for a second. Which worked out just fine. The man must have interpreted Hink’s surprised silence as an invitation to keep on babbling.
“I don’t know anything else, mister. Captain,” the man said. “All I know is the cap said there’s a general who had a need for us to do our job and do it quickly.”
“What was your job?” Hink asked.
“Find Marshal Paisley Cadwaller Hink Cage and bring him in.”
“Paisley?” Molly said, smiling. “What kind of pansy-pants name is Paisley?”
Hink did not answer her, though he sent a glare in her direction that would have burned through steel. His mama had her reasons for giving him so many names.
“So once you found this marshal, what was it you were going to do to him?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “Take him to the Saint for the thing he was holding out Vicinity’s way.”
“Holding?” Hink said, bending down over the man. “What thing? What thing is the marshal holding?”
“Don’t know,” the man said, cowering back from Hink’s questions as if each word was a rock thrown at his head. “Just heard Barlow say something about a holder and Vicinity and Marshal Hink Cage. I don’t know nothing more. I swear by it. I don’t know nothing more.”
Man was half scared out of his mind, that was sure.
“Captain,” Molly said. “You might want to step back a bit.”
Hink frowned and looked at Molly. She nodded toward his hand.
In that hand was the man’s shirt, and in that shirt was the man. Hink had reached out and grabbed him and hauled him onto his feet so he could yell in his face proper. Had done it without thinking, that temper catching hold of his hands and using them before his brain could send in suggestions.
No wonder the man was quaking.
“Sure thing,” Hink said. “Sure.” He let go of the man and took a step or two back. “Molly, we got anything hot to drink on this boat?”
“Might,” she said.
“See to it the sailor here gets something to knock the freeze off.”
Molly nodded and headed back to the keg stove at the rear of the ship to rustle up some tea.
Hink took off in the opposite way and came up behind Guffin. “Give over the wheel,” he said.
Guffin untethered and stepped back.
“We putting down in a pocket, Captain?”
Hink latched line to the frame and stomped his boots into the floor bracers. “We’re cutting over the range.”
“Over? Where to?”
“Vicinity,” he said. “Before the Saint’s devils get there first.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Cedar Hunt eyed the rising dead piled up in the center of the town. He needed to get Rose to the wagon, then ride out of here before the undead could follow. Only problem was the undead were between him and the wagon, and Rose was bleeding badly from that shoulder wound.
He backtracked, working in the shadows of the buildings and trying to get to the wagon around the other way.
The idea of leaving an entire town full of bodies being trotted around by the Strange set a rod of fear down his spine. How long would they stay in this town, and if they got loose, how many people would die?
The stack of bodies was still unstacking. Some of them slow and awkward, with no hands, arms, feet, or eyes to guide them. They crawled about, moaning and mewling. They might have once been human, but it was clear and sure from the way they moved, and from the unholy sounds coming out of them, that they were human no longer.
Others pulled up quick, catching on to the hows of walking. If not exactly graceful, they were at least steady and growing steadier with every step. First they walked. Then they broke into a jog. Fast. Headed his way.
He shifted his hold on Rose Small, who was still unconscious in his arms, and pulled his gun.
Shot down the two in the lead, but there were more, too many more, behind them. He couldn’t fight without putting Rose down. The townfolk paused over the two men he’d shot, they pushed at them, pulled at them. And then the men he’d shot stood back up.
Didn’t look like a bullet could kill a thing that was already dead. Leastwise not a shot to the heart or the head.
Cedar swore and started running. He needed an open door, solid walls, and something that could cause a whole hell of a lot more damage than his revolver.
The crack of a shotgun blew apart the night. Cedar jerked toward the blast.
The Madder brothers were driving the wagon hard his way, coming up from behind the undead and rolling over the ones who got in the way of the big iron-rimmed wheels.
Alun sat the driver’s seat, snapping the reins to push those big draft horses to full speed. The horses were more than willing to give it to him, dinner plate–sized hooves smashing through flesh and bone just as easily as through mud.
Cadoc Madder stood on the buckboard braced next to Alun. His geared-up shotgun was slung low at his shoulder. He took aim for the middle of the unalives again as the wagon rolled through them.
The flash of gunpowder lit up the night and Cedar’s sight went muddy.
When he could blink his focus back, he saw the dead that had just fallen picking themselves up, while others, too broken to walk, still found ways to crawl or drag themselves toward him.
“Don’t know what you did, Mr. Hunt,” Alun yelled, “but you’ve angered up a mess of Strange tonight. Never seen them so intent on taking one man down.”
“Rose is hurt,” Cedar said. “She’s bleeding.”
The Madders pulled the big wagon up beside him. Bryn was on his horse, and Rose’s and Cedar’s horses were tethered to the back of the wagon along with the mule.
Where were Mae and Wil?
Before he could ask, Mae leaned out of the wagon, throwing down the wooden steps.
“Hurry,” she said.
Cedar was up the stairs and into the wagon fast.
The undead were still coming, still running, slogging through the mud and muck. Not just the pile of people they’d gathered. More townfolk poured out from houses up a ways, places Cedar and the Madders hadn’t gotten to yet. Most of them seemed to have good strong legs beneath them, and were closing the distance fast.