Systemic Oppression and Change Theme Analysis

The day I came squealing and squalling into the world was the first time someone tried to kill me.

During the Great Discord, right after the dead began to walk and before the Army finally got the shambler plague under control, the building was empty. Back then people weren’t so much worried about education as they were not having their faces eaten by the undead. But then as the cities were cleared out and recaptured, folks got civilized once again. Shortly thereafter, Congress funded the Negro and Native Reeducation Act and dozens of schools like Miss Preston’s were created in cities as large as Baltimore and as small as Trenton.

I’m sure nobody ever expected the dead to get up in the middle of a pitched battle and start eating people, which is what they did at the Battle of Little Round Top. And no one expected those dead boys to bite their buddies and turn them as well. But that’s the way life goes most of the time: the thing you least count on comes along and ruins everything else you got planned. I figure it’s much better to just be all-around prepared, since the best defense is a good offense.

That’s why great former cities in states like Georgia are pretty much ghost towns these days. It’s always shambler season in Dixie. General Sherman’s March to the Sea, where he and his men marched across the South, burning and putting down the dead, wasn’t much more than a temporary setback for the shamblers. The waves of dead are like dandelions. Just when you think you’ve beaten the weed, it pops up somewhere new.

“Mayor Carr has declared Baltimore County safe for months now.”

I turn my head around. “The Survivalists would have you believe they saved Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston single-handedly if you listen to them long enough. It’s all that ‘America will be safe again’ nonsense—”

I learned two valuable lessons that day.

One: the dead will take everything you love. You have to end them before they can end you. That’s exactly what I aim to do.

And two: the person poking the dead ain’t always the one paying for it. In fact, most times, it’s the ones minding their own business who suffer. That’s a problem I still don’t have an answer for yet.

“On the reason behind the dead rising. Of course, we’ve all heard preachers insisting that it’s our sins, of one sort or another, that have caused this plague upon our soil. But the country’s best minds have been trying to ascertain a scientific basis, and they are quite divided on the cause and the reasoning behind it. I’m curious as to what you think.”

Survivalists believe that the continued existence of humanity depends on securing the safety of white Christian men and women—whites being superior and closest to God—so that they might “set about rebuilding the country in the image of its former glory,” the way it was before the War Against the Dead.

It’s the Survivalists that lobbied to retake the cities nearly a decade ago, the idea being that if the cities were safe they could provide an anchor to regain the continent. But I don’t know about all that. Momma used to say that a politician was a man that had perfected the art of lying, so I always read those articles with a certain amount of skepticism before turning over to the serials.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I say, “if you would be so good as to follow Miss Preston’s girls out of the lecture hall, we have the situation under control.”

That last bit is a lie, but the easiest lie to tell is the one people want to believe. Even though a man is being devoured onstage, they’re still more worried about their own hides. They begin to file out quickly but much more calmly, the professor all but forgotten.

It’s a cruel, cruel world. And the people are the worst part.

“I agree with you. Something is very, very rotten here. But you’re not going to get what you want from them, especially after throwing a knife into a man’s face at the dinner table. All they care about is how it will look in the papers. Now think for a moment. The man could have gotten bit out on the roads, but that’s unlikely, don’t you think?”

I shift from foot to foot. The fact Katherine is on my side is as much a surprise as her cool logic. The bite takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so to change a person. We were on the last course. How long ago had the man been bitten? Could he have somehow gotten the bite here, at the mayor’s estate?

“You sent the Spencers there, didn’t you?” Jackson asks.

Mayor Carr laughs. “The Spencers went willingly once they heard my offer. Safety is a precious commodity in these turbulent times.”

Jackson’s shoulders fall. “But the Spencers are Egalitarians. They were rallying against your senatorial campaign.”

The mayor gives an eloquent shrug. “It’s amazing what a few months fighting the undead and struggling to survive can do to change a man’s perspective. Some of my best allies were once Egalitarians. People care less about doing the right thing than they do about being safe, especially when they have little ones to look after.”

“I’m going to kill her,” I say, my voice low. I use the fine material of my skirt to scrub my face of the snot and tears, the chains around my wrists digging into the soft skin. I take a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m going to kill her, and Miss Preston and the mayor. All of them. I’m going to gut them like fish and use them as shambler bait, then I’m going to burn both the school and the mayor’s house to the ground and dance upon the ashes.”

“That’s good, Jane, that’s good. It’s good to have goals,” Katherine says, her voice trembling. She hiccups and begins to cry. I should offer her some soothing words, but I am a knot of rage and violence, and I ain’t got anything like her platitudes.

“Why do you think the Survivalists lied about Baltimore being safe?” she continues.

“Power,” Jackson says, bitterness lacing his voice. “It’s the only thing that men like them want.”

“People wanted to believe them,” I mutter, thinking about poor Othello from the lecture and his willingness to die for Professor Ghering’s delusions. “They wanted everything to go back to the way it was before the war. Before the killing, the shamblers, the walls, all of it. That’s how men like the mayor maintained control. You believe strongly enough in an idea, nothing else much matters.”

“If everything the Survivalists have been saying is a lie, then no one is safe,” Katherine says.

“We never were,” I say.

“So, I see you met the preacher.”

“I did. Charming fellow.”

“About as charming as the serpent in the garden. Watch yourself around him.”

“Slavery is illegal,” I say.

“Not necessarily. They got loopholes in that there Thirteenth Amendment. If you’ve been bitten by a shambler, the amendment says you’re no longer human, even if you haven’t turned yet, which means you don’t have rights as a person anymore.”

The preacher clears his throat, and shakes himself a little, as though casting aside the somber feeling in the room. He smiles widely at us, his eyes shining in the low light […] That man, that false prophet, might just be the most dangerous man in town.

“Trying to live in the past will get us nowhere but undead. That wall we built may seem fine, but it won’t last forever. The dead are adaptable. It’s just a matter of time before that barrier comes down.”

“It’s a simple Faraday machine. The wheel turns, making the magnets shift, and causes power to flow down the wires. In an effort to keep the town from collapsing, I retrofit the generator to run on physical labor. The undead never tire; they don’t need much in the way of sustenance to maintain locomotion, they need only be replaced every once in a while . . .”

“The Egalitarians got no interest in interfering with Summerland. They’re happy to give any of us refuge, but don’t expect them to take part in any sort of fight. They’re pacifists.”

I miss the old Katherine, the one I knew back in Baltimore, even as that girl was sorely vexing. I don’t like this quiet girl with the haunted eyes, and I’m starting to think that maybe I didn’t do her a favor after all. But I can’t change the past; I can only push headlong into an uncertain future.

Someday, if not today, you will see that this life is nothing without people to love.

“See, the problem in this world ain’t sinners, or even the dead. It is men who will step on anyone who stands in the way of their pursuit of power. Luckily there will always be people like me to stop them.”

No matter what we do, each town is just the same as the last. Another chance to be overrun, to watch as everything and everyone we love is put in danger time and time again. Doesn’t matter the name of the place, it’s only a matter of time until it’s swept away in a wave of the dead.

That doesn’t seem like any kind of future to me.

I hold the letter up, feeling calmer and more focused than I have in weeks. I told the preacher that there would always be men like him, and people like me to stop them. And I meant it. After the trials and tribulations of Summerland, I know my life’s path: Stop the Survivalists and all those like them. I’m done running away from trouble. Why not meet it head-on?

Stopping the Survivalists. It’s a lofty goal, but I ain’t ever been one for half measures.

“Kate, we’re going to California.”