Footsteps outside on the stoop came uncommonly loud, or so Josephine thought. She started at hearing them, the scrape of hard heels on the stones, and then on the steps.
Marie Laveau brightened. “Ah. Here he is now.” She rose to her feet and Josephine rose with her, in perfect time to the door opening.
It let in a gust of air that smelled sharp and softly sour, like the river before a storm. And it let in a Texian.
He was approximately Josephine’s age, perhaps as young as forty, with a truly outstanding mustache occupying most of the acreage below his nose and above his mouth. It spread like a pair of wings, as if at any time his face might need to take flight. Despite the warmth of the evening, he wore a duster and, instead of the military leather boots of the enlisted boys, proper snakeskin cowboy boots.
Josephine thought he looked familiar.
If he knew what kind of business Josephine operated, it didn’t inhibit his manners. A shapely suede hat the color of old bones rested atop his head until he removed it, revealing a pressed-down swirl of dark hair that was beginning to go light at the temples.
He said, “Ladies?” And he shut the door behind himself.
“Yes, please come in,” Josephine said, too late for it to mean anything.
Marie Laveau added, “Nice to see you again, Ranger. I’d stay and chat, but it’s time I went on my way. My daughter is expecting me, and now that I’m so old, she worries if I’m gone too late.”
He held his hat in his hands and opened the door to let her pass, then closed it again behind her, shutting the old woman out into the night, where she preferred to be—and where she met no resistance. She was gone as quietly as she’d arrived, without even footsteps to remind them that she’d ever been there in the first place.
The Texian frowned, looked back and forth between Josephine and Hazel, and shook his head as if to clear it. “Pardon me, I was just wondering how she’d navigate the curfew home. And then I realized that she’s got her ways, and I shouldn’t worry about it.”
Hazel actually smiled, and Josephine’s mouth tightened involuntarily into something similar. “She got here on her own, she’ll get home on her own—I have no doubt of it. I’m sorry, but she didn’t tell me much and I’m not sure why you’re here.”
He came forward, seeming uncertain of how to proceed politely. Settling for a small bow in her general direction, and then one to Hazel, he told them both, “I’m Horatio Korman, a Ranger of the Republic. Are you Miss Josephine Early?”
“Yes, that’s me. Mrs. Laveau said that you and I should have a talk.”
“That was her recommendation, yes.” He glanced back at the door, as if not quite believing she’d really gone. “I get the feeling people tend to follow her recommendations.”
“Perhaps we could step into my office, upstairs. Hazel, I hate to ask you for yet another favor, but do you mind watching the parlor a little longer?”
“Not at all, ma’am,” she said, but her eyes were wide with curiosity, and a silent demand that she should be told all about it later. “I’ve been here this long, a little longer won’t matter. Besides, it’s been slow tonight, what with the curfew and all.”
Horatio Korman said, “Yeah, I’m real sorry about that. I mean, I didn’t do it. But. You know what I mean. I wish it weren’t the case.”
Upstairs she guided him to the wood seat with the shoulder-height back and padded arms that faced her desk, which she then sat behind. The show of authority might not have been called for, but it was as Laveau had said about power in the eyes of the beholder. She wanted the Texian to behold that he was on her business, her property, in her city.
The Ranger was not particularly ill at ease, not as far as Josephine could see. He was composed and confident, bordering on arrogant even just sitting there, but he’d shown a small sign of respect to both Josephine and Hazel on her premises, which was not something every Southern man did. She’d give him that much credit, but if he wanted more, he’d have to earn it.
She opened the conversation by saying, “You aren’t stationed here in New Orleans, are you? Rangers aren’t military, are they?” She wasn’t absolutely clear on the distinctions between the designations.
“No, we’re not part of the military, and no, I’m not stationed here. Not precisely.” He rested his hat on the chair arm and crossed one leg over the other, his ankle upon his knee. “I was sent here to look into a situation y’all been having, down by the river. Sent as punishment,” he mused, nearly to himself.
Josephine’s tone was icy. “I beg your pardon?”
Realizing her displeasure, he clarified. “The Republic wants me out of its hair, so to speak. My superiors wanted to get me out of Austin for a while, and I suppose someone figured the river was far enough away that I couldn’t bother them too much.”
“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.”