Skin Trade Read online

  Fresh game made for the best leather, while aged and desiccated corpses made an inferior but passable product. Revenants in a sloppy state of rot were useless and always destroyed on sight. Mr. Boudreaux went into great detail in explaining the difference in value between the male and female pelts—in particular, the difference in the prices of well-preserved genitalia. Dominic snickered as Pete and I squirmed at the in-depth descriptions of how to skin a revenant’s groin.

  As Mr. Boudreaux spoke so casually of his work, it dawned upon me that part of this insistence that revenants were indeed animals came from a deeper place than mere hatred or loathing, and that if I were to ply this so-called skin trade, I would have to assume the same attitude as those around me. I had to think of the revenants as animals.

  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that I’d been skinning and tanning my fellow human beings for profit.

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  Chapter Five

  We rolled into Camp Jackson just before noon.

  The place was calmer than I expected, not quite the bustle of activity I assumed it would be with the Badlands nearby. As we pulled in, I looked out across that endless picket fence and barbed wire that made up the physical border. It stretched north and south as far as my eyes could see, but otherwise appeared innocuous. Common. Every few hundred feet there stood a soldier with a gun slung across his back, leaning on this run-of-the-mill structure and peering into that blank distance of dust and prairie. If it weren’t for the guards and the smattering of tents and lean-tos, the border would’ve looked like nothing more than a fence, just a landowner noting the edges of his property, rather than our nation’s only defense against the wandering undead.

  Dominic guided the goats up to a ramshackle gate, reining them to a halt at the motion of a soldier. The soldier came round to Mr. Boudreaux’s side of the wagon and touched his forefingers to the brim of his cap in part greeting, part salute.

  “Afternoon,” the soldier said.

  “Bonjour,” Mr. Boudreaux said.

  “What’s your business?”

  “Hunting.”

  “That so?” The soldier eyed the back of the wagon, nodding at Pete and me before returning his attention to those up front. “Got your permits?”

  “But of course.” Mr. Boudreaux dug about in his vest’s inner pocket until he yanked free a leather wallet, which he offered to the soldier.

  The uniformed man took a step back as he looked down at the wallet and stammered, “Is that … I don’t think I can-”

  “It is rawhide,” Mr. Boudreaux said with some level of impatience. “La vache? Yes?”

  Dominic made a soft mooing noise.

  “Ah-ha, right.” The soldier snapped up the wallet and stalked away with it.

  “Amateur.” Mr. Boudreaux turned back to me and Pete. “You two check in with that man over there so he may gather your particulars.” He pointed at some soldier near the gate.

  “What particulars?” I asked.

  “He needs to take a full physical description, so if you return, those at the border will know it is you and not some crazy renegade trying to slip past. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good. When you’re done, you may wander a bit until we are ready to go. I suggest you enjoy the free time. It will be the last you shall see for many, many days.”

  Pete and I took the advice, each of us rolling out of the wagon with a grunt. My legs and back already ached from the rough ride. (I hoped to get used to the travel, but suspected things would get worse before they got better.) We gave our names and such to a sullen-faced soldier, who recorded our particulars with all the enthusiasm of a bored goat. For a nervous moment, I thought he might have us strip, but thankfully he was able to collect the requisite information with our clothes on. After this, Pete took off for the fence, eager for his first real look out across the Badlands. I left him to his moment of excitement, favoring the row of outhouses for a quick moment of solitude before camping on the open range robbed me of all opportunity for privacy.

  In the seclusion of the sun-heated shed, I contemplated how I would manage to keep the three men from learning my secret while living in such close quarters. At the workhouse, it was just a matter of timing and quick wit. In the Badlands, however, I doubted moments of privacy would be possible. Not only would I have to remain in eye contact with another at all times for security, but I would be expected to live as the men lived, with all the frankness that entailed. Perhaps a certain amount of timidity would allow me some downturned eyes, but I had a feeling that wasn’t going to be enough. I would just have to insist on privacy. Nay, I would have to demand it!

  Full of self-righteous fury, I finished my business and stormed out of the latrine and straight into a passing soldier.

  “Whoa there!” he shouted as he caught and righted me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Not a problem. I wasn’t using that foot anyway.”

  I looked down and saw I was standing on the foot in question. Backing off, I dipped my head and apologized again.

  “Again,” the soldier said, “it’s nothing to apologize for. The sun blinds you when you come out of there. I know how it is.”

  I agreed, unwilling to confess that I was blinded by pent-up frustrations more than the glaring sun. “Well, thanks. I have to get back to my boss man. He is waiting on me.”

  “Boss man? You’re not a new recruit?”

  “No.” Though I was flattered that he would think so. I tried not to look him in the eye too long, because it occurred to me that he was a bit on the handsome side. He was but a few years older than I, lean and toned, and the uniform didn’t help matters in the attractiveness department. It would do nothing for my lie if I began blushing at the first handsome soldier to cross my path. “I’m not a new recruit.”

  “Then you must be with some traveling circus, huh? Tumbling act?”

  I giggled and shook my head. Good gravy! Could I possibly sound more like a girl?

  “Darn it,” the soldier said. “I thought you might be here to help us pass the time. Lord knows that’s the only thing we need help with around here.”

  “Don’t get much action here?”

  “Naw, Jackson is a pretty slow zone. We get the odd exile to send away now and again, but nothing coming back in this direction. I hear some places farther south, you can’t go five minutes without a stray trying to cross the border. I heard they once had a whole herd of the things trying to break through at Fort Wallace. But here …” His words trailed off as he shrugged. “What brings you out this way? Wait, I’m keen to guess.” He measured me for a moment, then snapped his fingers as he smiled. “You and your family wandered in too far from the borderlands? Happens all the time.”

  “No.”

  “Say now …” He paused to raise one eyebrow while narrowing the other eye at me. “You’re not an exile, are you?”

  I giggled again. “No! Certainly not. I’m with Mr. Boudreaux.”

  At the sound of the name, the soldier dropped the comical act. “Not the trapper.”

  “Do you know another Boudreaux?” I was jesting of course, but the soldier wasn’t amused. The young man whipped about, looking for someone. It took me a moment to realize he was making sure no one else was paying us any attention.

  Once he was sure, he leaned in close to me and whispered, “Don’t go out there with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Just … don’t.”

  “I have to go. It’s too good a chance to pass up. I need the job.”

  “Stay here. I’ll find you work.”

  “I can’t. You know that.” That was a fine suggestion as well as a preposterous one. These days, with work being about as rare as gold, a position in the U.S. Army was worth its weight in the glittering metal.

  “Look, those who go out there with that man … well, they do
n’t come back.”

  “I know. He said it was dangerous-”

  “No. I mean no one comes back, ever, save for him and his man. I’ve heard things about him. Stories, and they’re always the same. Four or five ride out, but only two come back, and he has some sorry tale about how the undead got another set of apprentices. But you know what I’ve heard? I’ve heard rumors that he’s-”

  “Private Blankenship!” someone shouted.

  We both jumped, each of us wound tightly by the ominous tone of the young soldier’s tale.

  “Get back to work, soldier!” the same voice cried.

  “Aye, Captain!” the young soldier shouted into the distance. He turned back to me, imploring me with those soft, handsome brown eyes. “Please. Don’t go with him.”

  “I have to,” I said. “It’s the only choice I have left.” I thanked him again for his offer and left him shaking his head at my obstinacy. He thought me stupid, but I knew what I was in for. I recognized the scent of trouble on the wind. Mr. Boudreaux and his strange skin trade reeked of risk, but what else could I do?

  When I returned, Pete was still at the fence, staring out across the stretches of open prairie. I joined him there, stepping up into a recess in a post and resting my folded arms on top as I too looked out into the quiet distance.

  “How many do you think is out there?” he asked.

  It was a hard question to answer, and one that our country’s best leaders wrestled for more than a decade. At the height of the infection, it was said that there might be as many as several hundred thousand of the things roaming the plains, and that was just in North America! As time wore on, and the attacks became less frequent thanks to border patrols and well-constructed barriers, those projected numbers dropped into the low thousands. Now with a rise in criminals seeking asylum out west, those numbers continued to fluctuate.

  And it wasn’t just the U.S. that tried to answer this question. Everyone on earth tussled with the challenge of the undead. While, as a nation, we acted with as much speed as we could to contain the infection, those countries south and north of us fell victim to the disease and had to deal with their own undead uprisings. Other countries across the globe either limited their contact with us or cut us off completely.

  Rather than risk an answer, I sighed. Pete sighed with me, knowing the question was far too complex for either of us to contemplate.

  “Seems like none at all,” he said. “It’s so quiet.”

  “And beautiful.”

  “This countryside can be misleading,” Mr. Boudreaux said from behind us. “She often appears like a wild beauty, just waiting for the hand of man to tame her. But do not be deceived. Horrors hide just beyond her horizon. Sometimes closer. Much closer.”

  I hopped down from my place at the fence and said, “One of the soldiers claimed this zone was quiet, but they have more trouble farther south.”

  “He is right. The more southward you travel, the more likely the undead will form hordes. I think it is a dislike of the cold that drives them so far south, and instinct that drives them into packs. Up here, we get a modest number, true, but more than most can handle alone.”

  “If the game is more plentiful down there, then why don’t we trap farther south?”

  “Because I might be crazy to do what I do, but I’m not stupid. And neither are you. So stop asking stupid questions, and get in the wagon. Pete, you’ll walk ahead with me for a while. We’ll switch in a few hours.”

  Pete knocked me in the shoulder with a laugh and joined our master at the head of our little entourage, while I dutifully returned to my place at the back of the wagon. Dominic clicked his tongue and flicked the reins, at which Daisy and Maxwell grunted their disapproval but moved ahead. The last thing I saw as we left Camp Jackson was the handsome young soldier, standing at the mouth of the gate, shaking his head slowly at me as we pulled away.

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  Chapter Six

  The rest of the day was spent in talk and travel. We took turns walking alongside the wagon in pairs—Mr. Boudreaux and Pete first, then Dominic and me—keeping an eye out for signs of trouble. (Master and manservant were each well armed, but Pete and I remained without defense. I supposed it was more about keeping the goats from having to pull our weight the entire trip than about acting as scouts.) Thanks to Pete’s embarrassing stories about my foul bowels, I managed to finagle a certain amount of privacy for bathroom breaks. Mr. Boudreaux allowed me to wander downwind from the wagon but required I stay within range of sight. I used my long shirt to keep things down below covered as I did my business, unlike the men who just relieved themselves wherever they stood.

  As we moved along, Pete plied our host with questions about the skin trade and our place therein, all of which Mr. Boudreaux answered with measured patience. Technique and timing, traps and tricks, Pete wanted to know everything. In between the bursts of Pete’s anxious questions, the goats would grunt, or Dominic would whistle some forgotten tune, much to the delight of his master. And it was like that for a while. The grunting. The questions. The whistling. And the ever-slow travel.

  It was maddening!

  After a few hours of travel, we stopped for a break. Mr. Boudreaux managed to barter for a few fresh apples before we left the border, and we fell upon the bits of fruit like a pack of rabid animals. Pete, in his usual manner, proceeded to cut his apple into chunks. (He always complained that eating one from the core made his teeth ache.) As he cut the apple into pieces, he bore down too hard on the sharp blade and ended up slicing open his palm.

  “Son of a bitch!” he hissed as the wound beaded with blood.

  “Let me see,” Mr. Boudreaux said. Pete held his hand out to the man, who clucked his tongue with the reproach of a mother hen scolding her young. “You should be more careful. Wounds like this can turn deadly out here.”

  “A little cut like that?” I asked. “He’ll heal in no time.”

  “A little cut like this welcomes the infection. All wounds must be treated and covered. The infection is in the blood, you see? The virus will try to get inside of you by any means possible. Luckily, I have a preventative. It will block the infection from reaching your blood by sealing off the wound.”

  We both watched in awe as Mr. Boudreaux produced a small leather pouch from his vest and shook some strange powder onto Peter’s wound. Peter hissed at the contact, but kept a brave face.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Always so curious,” Mr. Boudreaux said. And that was all he said on the matter. After the treatment was delivered, he bandaged Pete’s hand and bade the lad finish eating so we could all get back on the road.

  As we returned to our simple repast, I asked, “How far will we go before the work begins?”

  This question got a laugh from both Mr. Boudreaux and his manservant.

  “What?” I asked. “What’s so funny?”

  “The work has begun,” Mr. Boudreaux said.

  “How so?”

  “Once you cross the border, you are at work. Granted, it is restful today. Almost peaceful. But again, do not let that deceive you. The undead are lurking in the shadow of every tree.”

  “There aren’t any trees,” I said as I looked about at the surrounding brush.

  Mr. Boudreaux eyed me from his seat on the wagon with a mix of mirth and ire. “You think you’re very observant, don’t you, boy?”

  “I try to pay attention, sir.”

  “I see. Then I shall have to remember that.”

  On the road again, Pete returned to his questions about trapping and skinning, while I resumed my patrol alongside Dominic and rolled my interaction with Mr. Boudreaux over and over in my mind. Between the innkeeper’s words and the soldier’s warning, I felt like there was something about this whole affair that I just wasn’t seeing. Something important. Something staring me right in the face.

  Once the wagon’s shadow grew long and gaunt in the dyi
ng light, our party halted to make camp. The weather was favorable, saving us the trouble of setting up a shelter, but it was still enough work to unhitch and brush down the sweaty goats. Pete and I built a pretty impressive but discreet fire and prepared a meal under our master’s instruction. It seemed Dominic preferred the company of the goats, for once he had his share of rations, he clambered aboard the wagon rather than join us around the flickering flames. After the quick meal, Mr. Boudreaux gave Pete and me a sleeping pad and blanket apiece, but warned us not to get too comfortable.

  “The undead do not sleep,” Mr. Boudreaux said. “So you must be ready to awaken at a moment’s notice.”

  “Aren’t we going to take turns standing watch?” Pete asked.

  “Not tonight. No. Domi and I will split the watch. You are still unaccustomed to the rough travel and need more sleep than either of us. Sleep. Rest. We will wake the pair of you at first light.”

  “Yes, sir,” we said together.

  Mr. Boudreaux kicked dirt over the flames until all that remained were the smoldering ashes. He then joined Dominic on the buckboard of the wagon, leaving Pete and me to our task of resting. As an added bonus, we took to the ground in what we wore, not changing clothes, and I was grateful to have one less bullet to dodge.

  The night air cooled quite a bit, but the embers and the blanket kept me warm enough. I snuggled under the bedclothes, oddly comfortable on the hard ground after months of sleeping on the poor excuse for a cot the workhouse provided. The stars twinkled above to the tune of a variety of chirping insects. The whispers of Mr. Boudreaux carrying on a one-sided conversation at the wagon drifted across the breeze in garbled murmurs. Save for the ever-lingering chance of a revenant attack, it was almost pleasant.

  “Sam?” Pete asked in a whisper.

  I played possum, hoping to drift off and grab as much shuteye as I could.

  “Sam?” Pete hissed again. “Hey. Hey. Hey. Sam? You awake?”

  “I am now,” I whispered in return.