“Sir, we should go!”

“Put out that light, you idiot.”

“We won’t be able to see!”

“What’d you walk me into, Cardiff?” The colonel’s voice was rising, not from panic, Josephine didn’t think. She’d give him credit there — he was holding steady, feet planted and firearm level. Texians were repugnant, problematic, occupying, Confederate-allied bastards down to the very last man … but she couldn’t accuse them of being cowards.

“Sir, we should be quiet—”

“Turn it out!” he ordered. “I’ve heard about what goes on here, I’ve heard what people say.”

“People say a lot of things, sir.”

Lieutenant Cardiff struggled to hold his gun and turn down the lamp without dropping it, a prospect that flooded the watching woman with horror. What a thought, burning alive or being eaten alive — a choice no one should have to make.

His voice quivering, the lieutenant said, “So many people have made reports. Word from Austin says they’re sending a specialist — some Ranger with an interest in strange … things.”

Josephine began to calculate how far she was from the wharf, and if she could run past the men without them shooting her, and if she could swim in what she was wearing — if she made it over the side of the walkway and into the Mississippi where there were snakes, to be sure; and alligators, maybe; and bad men up to bad things, but none of it was as awful as what was coming.

“Sir, there are stories,” the lieutenant gulped. “But they’re only stories—goddamn locals, they think we ought to be afraid.”

“Goddamn locals aren’t always out to snow you, son. I don’t know about you, but I’m plenty afraid right now.”

Out of the darkness, up the walk that led to the wharf, something rose out from the murky night. It moved more slowly than a person should, and its posture suggested that something was broken, deep inside. When it stepped, it stepped unevenly, and with effort. Harder and faster the loud, harsh breathing came; for when it spied the Texians — or possibly Josephine, who was nearer to the thing and in its direct line of sight — its efforts rose. It let out a loud, hard cry, a noise that shredded the wharf and summoned more of its kind.

Faster it approached, one foot in front of the other, gracelessly, but with a purpose. Now it saw fresh meat and loped ever faster toward it — toward Josephine, who held out her gun but held her fire.

If she squeezed the trigger, the Texians would know she’d been there hiding, listening. If the hideous man-shaped thing reached her, it wouldn’t make a difference anyway — she’d be dead or worse by dawn. She held off as long as she could, waiting until the last moment … until the feeble moonlight sparked off the thing’s wet mouth and she could’ve almost counted its teeth.

One shot, two shots — both of them blasted like cannon fire in such a close space.

But not from Josephine’s gun.

The Texians had seen the incoming monster just in time, and it was their fire that took the thing down, and took it to pieces. Its head split in two, and the top half landed at Josephine’s feet. Its quivering torso went left, right, and toppled backwards to lie still upon the wharf’s edge.

She clapped a hand over her mouth and fought for composure.

Another one was coming. She wouldn’t be so fortunate twice in a row. She lifted the gun again and waited. The sloughing scrape of dead feet, the horrible rhythm of dead lungs.

More of them, incoming.

The first brute had only located and declared the prey. The rest would come in for the kill.

“Dear God!” the colonel barked. He opened fire again, two more shots that exploded and left the madam’s ears humming. The bullets landed with squishy thumps, the sound of arrows hitting melons, but Josephine didn’t dare take her eyes off the path from whence she’d come — not unless she wanted the creatures to come groaning up behind her. She braced her back against the crates and locked her elbows, holding the gun out and facing the wood plank path.

The colonel demanded, “What are they?” and now his voice was cracking, losing the battle-hardened calm that had served him well so far. “What are those things?”

“They aren’t real; they aren’t real. This isn’t real,” the lieutenant babbled.

A shot went wild and clipped the edge of the crate, casting splinters into Josephine’s hair and up against her face — where one left a brief, hot sting.

“It isn’t true!” Cardiff was shouting now, and firing again; she was almost certain the wilder shots were his. Another one, two, three blasts.

How many guns did the men have between them? How many shots?

Josephine cursed herself for not observing them better. She should’ve noticed, should’ve counted. Nothing to be done for it now.

“Pull yourself together, man!” the colonel ordered. Two more shots landed in something dense and wet. Then he tried a different tactic, addressing the incoming creatures directly. “Who are you? What do you want?” But it was a desperate, foolish thing, and the officer sensed it immediately.

“Cardiff,” he called. “What are these things?”

Three more shots rang out, and Josephine wished to God she could cover her ears, shut them out, give herself a moment of quiet so she could listen again, and better pinpoint the things that were to come.

Not a chance. Two more shots, and then the fall of something heavy that clattered and rolled. A gun, discarded as empty. Texians always went armed, and surely two officers like these would have backup, or so she told herself as she stared with all her might — unblinking, lest she miss a crucial moment — and watched for more monsters, arriving up the back way.

They were coming right for her. She knew it, even though her whole head was buzzing from the percussion of the gunshots so nearby.

Two more uneven shapes, ambling up the walkway.

Tightening her grip, readying her aim, she gave up on hiding from the Texians, who had problems of their own. Several more shots — she’d lost count how many — and the firing ceased amid a hail of rapid-fire swearing and struggling.

“Goddammit! What are these — get away from me! Get it off me!”

“Oh God! Oh God!”

“What are they — what are they?” the colonel continued to shout.

A hail of muffled blows and the rending of fabric. A scream from the lieutenant. A bellow from the colonel. The pounding slugs of something heavy — a gun in someone’s fist? — bludgeoning strikes in the midst of what sounded like a crowd but might be as few as three or four.

It didn’t take many of them.

And here came two more.

Every shot had to count. Josephine took a deep breath. If the Texians were still alive behind her, it wouldn’t matter if they heard her now. She rose to her feet in a leap that was made melodic by the lift and swish of her skirts and the cracking shift of her undergarment stays snapping back to attention, and as the first newcomer came over the slight rise and stepped onto the planks, she blew off its face with a single shot.

A second one was right behind it. She stopped that one, too — but her mark was off, a few inches too low, and the bullet tore a hole in the thing’s throat. It tumbled to its knees but started to crawl. Josephine took a brief running start and then kicked its head with all her weight and strength — sending the bulbous, foul-smelling skull flying off into the river, where it landed with a splash.

Was that all of them?

She didn’t see any more, but seeing wasn’t easy, and she was all but shooting blind. Whirling around to check the state of the Texians, she saw there was nothing to be done for them, even if she’d been inclined to. She didn’t mind two fewer Republicans in her city, not for a second, and if those two had known what she was up to, she’d have been thrown in jail or shot. She had no illusions about their shared humanity, or any fairy tales of cooperation to warm her.