Shane leads us to the main square, where the Ku Klux Klan were running riot just a few short hours ago. Now a lot of them are dangling from ropes. Biddy Barry and her crew have hanged them from lampposts, chimneys, out of bedroom windows. Some are still alive, writhing while they choke, faces turning purple.
Others are being led to their death. Most don’t go quietly. They either beg for mercy or howl and curse their executioners. Quite a few laugh hysterically and vow to oversee the completion of their racist mission from Heaven.
The insiders who worked with the KKK are also being hanged. They’re treated even more harshly, kicked and beaten as they’re dragged along. Many are stripped and humiliated. Some are attacked and torn to death before they can be hoisted from the ground.
Biddy Barry is coordinating everything from the center of the square. She roars commands at those around her, demanding updates, sending out scouts to sweep the town again, telling them to check under every bed and in every cupboard, not to overlook a single traitor or Klanner, to also make absolutely certain that no zombies remain at large.
The Angels are gathered nearby. I do a quick headcount and I’m pleased to see that everyone made it. Some are wounded, but all are standing, so I don’t think any of the injuries are too serious.
“You should not have deserted us,” a grim-faced Ashtat criticizes me as I join the group.
“I’d hardly call it deserting,” I protest. “I had other fish to fry.” I nod at Dan-Dan, who’s beaming at the hanging Klanners, approving of how they’re being dealt with, showing his supposed allies not the slightest bit of loyalty.
“You should have helped us secure New Kirkham first,” Ashtat snaps. “The hundreds of people here should have taken priority over the dozens on the trucks.”
I start to argue, but she’s probably right, so I simply nod meekly.
“Any idea where they took the prisoners?” Carl asks.
“No. Fatty here will tell us later.”
“It’s a good thing I’m thick-skinned,” Dan-Dan sighs. “You can be so hurtful.”
“Are you okay?” I ask Carl. His left arm is hanging loosely and there’s a nasty gash along his forehead.
“Yeah. It happened in the crash. Nothing a dip in a Groove Tube can’t cure.”
“And the rest of you?” I look around.
“I lost a couple of fingers,” Pearse says glumly, showing me his right hand.
I grimace. “Did you save them? Dr. Oystein might be able to reattach them.”
“That’d be hard,” he winces. “A revived chewed them off and swallowed them. I didn’t get a good look at its face. I’d have to slice open every corpse to try to find the fingers, and they probably wouldn’t be in any shape to sew back on after an ordeal like that. I’m not bothered. I can do without them. As long as I’m able to scratch my bum, I’m happy. I won’t even go in a Groove Tube, not for a minor thing like this.”
“That’s stupid,” Conall huffs. “Who are you trying to impress?”
“Not you, that’s for sure,” Pearse retorts. “Where were you when I was having my fingers bitten off?”
“Stopping the zombies behind that one from bashing your skull open,” Conall tells him. “Now I wish I hadn’t bothered.”
The pair scowl at one another, then laugh and bump fists, Pearse using his good left hand.
“Sorry I had to cut out on you,” I mumble to Jakob.
“You should be,” he says without looking at me. He’s studying the hanging humans.
“But I did return with Dan-Dan,” I note. “If we can swap him for the prisoners, my gamble was worth it, right?”
Jakob grunts. “What about Owl Man? Did he get away with the others?”
“Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to–”
I stop. I’ve just thought of something. I turn to Rage to ask him a question, but I’m interrupted by the booming tones of New Kirkham’s mayor, the formidably blunt Biddy Barry.
“Is this the ruthless she-wolf who gave pursuit?” She steps up and beams at me. There are bloodstains on her fisherman’s sweater and bruises on her cheeks where she was struck. But otherwise she looks much the same as she did when we first met earlier today. “What’s your name?”
“B Smith,” I answer.
“I admire the hell out of a girl who has the balls to think she can take down a couple of truckloads of fanatics by herself,” Biddy laughs. “I’d shake your hand if I could, but the way things are, you’ll understand why I’m keeping my distance.”
“No worries,” I smile.
“And you brought one back for us,” Biddy growls, eyeing Dan-Dan viciously.
“We need him to–”
“–swap for the captives,” she cuts me short. “Yes, your hulk of a friend told us. I hate to lose any of my people, but are you sure they’d want us to let this worm off the hook? I read plenty of horror stories about Child Catcher Wood back in the day. If the choice was mine, he wouldn’t be walking out of here in one piece, regardless of the dozens of lives that hang in the balance.”
“We can’t think that way,” I disagree. “We don’t know how many children Dan-Dan will go on to murder. Maybe we’ll get another chance to kill him before he can harm anyone else. Or he could have a heart attack.”
“He certainly looks ripe for a stroke,” Rage laughs.
“Hardly,” Dan-Dan retorts. “I’m in perfect health. I’m just big-boned, is all.”
“We can’t give up on them,” I tell the glowering mayor, ignoring Dan-Dan’s contribution. “If we don’t fight for each and every survivor, we risk becoming like him.” I point at the child-killer. “Or them,” I add, nodding at some of the hanging Klanners.
Biddy Barry sighs. “I don’t like being given a lecture by a zombie, but I can see what you’re saying. Okay, Lord Wood is yours. But give him a little love bite from me once the others are in the clear, okay?”
“Tread carefully, Mayor Barry,” Dan-Dan says hotly, “or I might decide to swing back through here one day and finish what I started.”
“If you ever swing back this way,” Biddy smiles sweetly, “it won’t be the only swinging you’ll do.” She points at the dangling members of the Ku Klux Klan, then turns her back on us. “Hate to love you and leave you, but I’ve got to make the hardest call of my life now.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
She pauses to look back at me and her eyes fill with sadness. She jerks a thumb at a huge group of humans standing motionless at the far side of the square. I hadn’t paid them any attention before. Now that I look more closely, I see they’re being held in place by guards with guns.
“Those are the people who did nothing when the Klanners invaded,” she says, suddenly sounding weary. “It’s easy to deal with racist scum and traitors. But what do you do with people whose only real crime is cowardice?”
“You can’t hang them!” I gasp.
Her features harden. “That’s what I have to figure out.”
As she marches away, I stare at the rest of the Angels with horror. “Are we going to let this happen?”
“How can we stop it?” Carl asks glumly.
“There might be nothing to stop,” Ashtat says. “They might settle it amicably.”
“And if they don’t?” I bark.
Nobody says anything. They all look uneasy. Then Rage scratches the back of his head and scowls. “Well, I guess we can either stay and watch the show, or head home early.”
“What the hell?” I yell.
“We’re not human,” he snaps. “We rescued these people from the Klanners and gave them back control of their town. Where they go from here is their business, not ours. We don’t have any right to lay down the law for the living. We deal with our own and they deal with theirs. We wouldn’t let them come to County Hall and call the shots, so we can’t dictate to them here. It’s their turf. Their people. Their kind.”
I stare at Rage miserably. “But we can’t just… we have to…”
“What?” Rage asks quietly. “Fight Biddy Barry and her supporters? Kill them like we killed the Klanners? Take the side of the neutrals over those who tried to stop the Klan from doing whatever they wanted? That’s our only option here, B. We’re undead killing machines, not some diplomatic peace corps.”
I try to think of a response to that, but nothing comes to mind. I hate to admit it but he’s right. We’re powerless now that the fighting has stopped, just a bunch of living dead teenagers who can do nothing further to shape the destiny of the people we have saved.
“Okay,” I croak. “I’ll keep out of it. Does that make you happy?”
“No,” Rage says glumly. “This one time, I don’t wish I was right at all.”
Then we trail after the mayor to watch events unfurl and find out if the living can be even more heartless and vengeful than the children of the damned.
EIGHT
It swiftly becomes apparent that the survivors who fought back are divided about those who stood by and let the KKK slice through the town at will.
About a hundred white people resisted. They’re in control now, along with the three hundred or so black or foreign residents who were rescued and released.
Nobody made a case for the Klanners or traitors. Pretty much everyone agreed that they should be hanged. But it’s harder for the group to decide what to do with those who took a neutral stance.
“Neutrality is no excuse,” an elderly man thunders. “Those who stood by and did nothing are just as guilty as those who were rounding people up.”
“But they didn’t do anything wrong,” a woman with two children argues. “They were scared.”
“Some roared encouragement,” a black man growls. “I saw a few of the bastards laughing and smiling.”
“Maybe,” the woman says. “But many others were crying and shaking.”
“Should we split them up?” another woman asks. “Save those who were afraid, hang those who were approving?”
“We can’t punish a person just for smiling,” someone else protests.
The debate rages on. Biddy Barry listens silently, considering all arguments, letting everyone have their say. I do a rough head count of the people being held. I reckon there’s three hundred and fifty or thereabouts, mostly men and women, but some children too. Adding them to the four hundred or so judges, and those who were taken away on the trucks, I figure this town of a thousand people must have lost about two hundred souls to the Klanners or zombies.
As I’m counting, I spot Emma and Declan, the mother and son we escorted from London. They shouldn’t be in there with the neutrals. They’d only just arrived, they didn’t know anyone, the attack would have shocked them and left them with no idea who was on their side and who was against them. I want to call out to Emma, march across and drag her and Declan to safety, but when I catch Emma’s eye, she looks away and wipes tears from her cheeks. It seems like she feels guilty, even if I don’t think she should. And the other citizens of the town feel that way too. They’re making no allowances.
Finally someone shouts for Biddy to give her opinion. Others take up the call and all faces turn in her direction. She nods softly and a hush falls over the crowd. Biddy looks around, measuring her words, then sighs.
“First things first. Does anyone want to punish the children?”
Nobody speaks up.
“Okay,” Biddy yells to the people whose lives are on the line. “Your kids can come to us. Whatever happens to the rest of you, they’ll be safe. If you want to keep them with you, that’s your right, we won’t use force to take them. But in that case they’ll be subject to the same judgment as the rest of you. Choose now.”
There’s a round of hushed conversation. Lots of children start to cry. Many of their parents sob too. A few scream for justice and mercy, but are quickly shushed by their companions. Most of those under guard look as guilty as Emma and seem prepared to accept whatever comes their way.
Almost all of the children start moving across the square. Some are reluctant and are only stung into action when their parents roar or even hit them. They come weeping and trembling, gathering in a pitiful huddle, ignoring the attempts of the adults on our side of the divide to comfort them.
Some of the parents hold on to their kids, unable or unwilling to release them. I think they’re selfish, yet I pity them. It must be horrible to abandon your young and face the threat of execution in front of their innocent eyes.
Declan is clinging to Emma. He’s normally quiet as a mouse, but now he’s shrieking, the sound of a siren’s piercing wail, desperate to stay with his mother. Emma moans, pries his fingers loose and passes him to an older boy, who drags the kicking Declan out of the crowd of ghostly-looking adults. Emma turns away and wails. I feel wretched. If we hadn’t brought them here, they would never have had to face this.
When all of the young have been sorted, Biddy addresses the crowd again. “First we have to ask ourselves whether this settlement can continue with so great a loss. Can… what… four hundred–odd of us hold New Kirkham?”
“That won’t be a problem,” someone huffs. “It’ll mean more space, food and water for the rest of us.”
“Supplies aren’t an issue,” Biddy agrees. “We can easily support a thousand, and more besides. But what happens if there’s another attack like today’s, if enemies like the Klan breach our defenses again? We might need the extra support.”
“That lot weren’t any help this time,” a woman shouts. “What makes you think they’d fight in the future?”
“Today caught us all off guard,” Biddy mutters. “None of us expected an attack of this nature, to be turned on by our own people. We’re alert to the threat now. I think they’d show more courage next time.”
“I do not care about next time,” an Indian man says. He’s been holding a young boy in his arms. Now he raises the child and I realize the boy is dead. “My son has been taken from me. Those people stood by and let it happen. They must pay.”
There are angry murmurings. The issue is discussed further, but the mood has swung. Most are in favor of retribution.
“Okay,” Biddy says. “If we’re going to punish them, we have three options. We can construct a prison and keep them locked up for a period, maybe have them work for us while they’re under lock and key, to pay their way. We can drive them into exile. Or we can hang them.”
People start muttering and arguing, but Biddy raises her voice to silence them. “We could toss this back and forth for the rest of the night, and maybe that’s what we’ll end up doing, but let’s have a show of hands first. Think hard for a minute, then vote. If we have a clear majority, we can save ourselves a lot of time.”
A hush falls again as people get their heads in order. Then Biddy calls for those in favor of imprisonment to show their support. Surprisingly, only twenty-six hands go up.
“Exile?” Biddy asks, and a forest of hands is instantly raised. “Looks like we don’t have to bother with the final option,” she says, and I can see she’s relieved. I am too.
“It’s not right,” someone bellows. “They should be killed for what they did.”
“This is a democracy,” Biddy thunders. “If you don’t want to abide by the decision of the majority, you can join that lot by the wall.”
The challenger falls silent and there are no subsequent outcries.
“Okay,” Biddy sniffs, calming down again. “We’ll keep them here tonight, then release them in the morning. Where they go after that is none of our business, as long as they don’t try to come back.”
“You’re sending us to our death,” a woman in the crowd of neutrals says. “You might as well just execute us and have it over with.”
“That can easily be arranged,” Biddy says stiffly. “Step forward if you’d rather face the noose.” Nobody moves. Biddy waits a moment, then smiles twistedly. “I figured as much. Right, you can lie down and rest. We’ll give you water and food in the morning, and make sure you can exit clear of any u
ndead eyes. After that–”
“–they’re dead meat,” Jakob cuts in, taking everyone by surprise.
“I don’t think you lot have the right to get involved in this,” Biddy scowls.
“If we stand by and say nothing, aren’t we as guilty as they’ve been?” Jakob retorts, nodding at the condemned. “If their neutrality is a crime, surely we must be punished for it too?”
There’s an uneasy silence. We’re all staring at Jakob. Those of us who know him are more stunned than the others. He normally wouldn’t say boo.
“Sending them into exile is the same as execution,” Jakob says, moving forward to stand close to the mayor, saying all the things I wanted to say, but couldn’t get clear in my head. “You’re trying to kill them without staining your hands with their blood. They can’t survive out there in that large a group. They’ll attract attention and be killed.”
“Then let them split up,” Biddy says. “They can leave in small groups, even individually. I’m not saying it will be easy, but some will make it to safety. Don’t forget, we all had to find our way here in the first place.”
“If the zombie’s that worried, let him guide them,” someone shouts, and lots of people laugh.
“I’ll happily guide as many as I can if you drive them out,” Jakob says quietly. “But who’ll guide those of you who stay? When you lie awake at night, unable to sleep because of the torment you feel, who will offer you help? If you banish your friends, family and colleagues, you’ll morally cut yourselves off from the world. How long can New Kirkham stand if everyone here hates themselves? How long do you want to stand in isolation and shame?”
“They’re the ones who should be ashamed!” a woman screams.
“Yes,” Jakob says. “And that shame is punishment enough. If you let them stay, and they have to work beside the rest of you every day, remembering that they let you down…” He turns in a slow circle. “How can they make right their wrongs if you don’t give them a chance?”
There’s a long silence. Then a black woman says, “How could we trust them? How could we live with them, knowing they would have let us be taken?”