Excerpt:

"It was April 6th in the year of our Lord, 1864. I won't forget it. We were in Sabine Crossing, near the town of Mansfield. We were heading towards Shreveport, looking to cut off the Red, and split Louisiana off, and break the Confederate's spirit and back in Texas. We were in this little hellhole of a swamp when we heard the moans. The Lieutenant was spooked, said the moans weren't natural. I thought he done lost what was left of his senses, tryin' to scare the kids."

"We were knee deep in the muck and mire, and there was a light up ahead. Figured it was an enemy campfire. It was late, and cold, and we figured we could get the drop on 'em and take it out quick and warm ourselves and get some warm food in our bellies."

"So we started doing the usual, get in close enough to deal with the issue, and start to scout it out. I'll never forget what I saw. Heard rumors that down in the swamps of N'awlins, using those black gals from the Isles for some shit, but I never expected to see it. Gal was all in white, swamp mud had wrapped her up, clinging to her like a mess. She looked like the bride of the bleedin' bogs."

"But it was what she was doing that stuck in my mind.. she had a little gal. Not more than ten. And all around her, were these dead Greys. Throats cut, evey last one of them was dead. And this thing.. had the gal on a tree stump, and she was bleeding out."

"The moans? Woman was making them, fingers all up in herself, having a grand ole time, the hag was. And with her last moan.. that primal scream? They moved. The dead Greys. They started to move. She stopped chanting that damnable language.. and they /rose/."

"My men freaked. We opened fire. They tore into the ranks of those damn poor souls, but they kept coming. The woman.. she wasn't screaming anymore. She was directing 'em, tellin' 'em what to do. One of the boys, a sharpshooter named Clay, used to snipin' doves back in Boston. He decided to take out the gal. One shot did her in. We thought they were done. We were wrong. They kept coming, and starting to eat one of the men. We... hell, we couldn't kill them, they were already dead. We broke ranks and ran."

"Remember passing through Dallas, hearin' rumor of it back in the East, the Confedeate soldiers starved so much that they were eating their own and Union soldiers. Union soldiers doin' the same thing.."

"They said it was a plague a few years later, as it started up the coast. A plague born in the South.. and it claimed Lincoln's life. When he rose, all hell broke loose. By then, I was in Colorado. When the Plague started this way.. we closed it down. Blew the tracks, the bridges.. everything. The Indian shamans, they have their own defenses against the Plague of the Damned. Me? And for Purgatory, Colorado? We got guns, men.. and if that ain't enough, damned if I know. My name's Wallace Forest, people call me Rusty cause of the musketball I carry in my knee. This town's my responsibility. These people.. all the family I got left."