Dread Nation

Jane and Katherine head for the sheriff’s office, but they run into Ida, who tells them that another pack of shamblers has been spotted a few miles away. The white drovers refuse to fight the dead, and the Black workers won’t be able to hold back the horde on their own. Katherine becomes more determined to go talk to the sheriff, and she tells Jane to get the Duchess to spread the word that everyone needs to fight. Katherine leaves to find the sheriff, and Jane encourages Ida to get away from Summerland before it’s too late. Jane returns to the brothel, and the Duchess tells Jane that the sheriff knows that Katherine isn’t “a real lady” (423). Katherine and Jane are both in danger. Jane warns the Duchess about the coming horde, then rushes off to find Katherine.

When Jane arrives at the sheriff’s office, she finds that there is an angry mob of drovers forming outside of the building. She pushes past and finds the sheriff, the preacher, their henchmen, and Katherine inside. The sheriff points a gun t Jane, and when Jane brings up the impending horde, the preacher says that the Lord will protect them. Jane realizes that the sheriff is slipping into madness and can’t be reasoned with. A shoot-out ensues, and the sheriff and his cronies are shot and killed. The preacher is wounded, and Jane tells him that when she was a child, she shot and killed the major in his sleep, because “he brought with him all the fear and turmoil of that time” (435) when he returned from the Years of Discord.

Jane tells the preacher that the real danger in this world isn’t shamblers, but “men who will step on anyone who stands in the way of their pursuit of power” (435). She decides to leave the preacher alive so the shamblers can have their way with him. Jane reveals that the major was her father, and that her mother was a Black woman passing as white. Jane and Katherine gather more weapons, and as they go to leave, Jane discovers her lucky penny left behind on the floor.

Jane and Katherine flee the sheriff’s office. As the town devolves into chaos, the girls go to find Lily. Hordes of shamblers fill the town, and Jane and Katherine are joined on their run by the Duchess and her working girls. They collect Lily and the Spencers’ toddler. Jackson appears, and the group escapes from town in the Spencers’ wagon. As they flee, Jane wrestles with the number of murders she has committed now. About her father, she thinks that “it was easier to say that he’d turned shambler than to tell the truth” (448) about how she feared for her mother’s safety. Jackson gives Jane one more letter that was found at Miss Preston’s from her mother, a short note explaining that “Rose Hill is no more” and that she was betrayed by her new husband and that Jane can find her in “Haven, California” (449). Jane is overwhelmed with hopelessness, then determination to stop the Survivalists. She announces that they’re going to California.