Summary: Transcript:<br> Hi! I’m Tonia Thompson—horror writer and creator of NIGHTLIGHT: The Black Horror Podcast. This week we celebrate our very first full episode with a new story from Justina Ireland, bestselling author of Dread Nation. If you haven’t read Dread Nation yet, you’re missing out on my favorite read of this year. Today’s story gives us a little taste of the Dread Nation world—one overrun with zombies in post-Civil War America. But don’t worry, this is a standalone story, so if you haven’t read Dread Nation, you’ll be able to fall right in and won’t hear any spoilers. And if you have read Dread Nation, well, you’ll get your fix for Black girls trained in skilled combat against the undead to hold you over until the sequel comes out.<br> So without further ado, here’s Letters from Home, by Justina Ireland.<br> <br> Letters From Home<br> By Justina Ireland<br> Sue lay in her bed and examined the letter in her hands. She’d swiped it off of Miss Preston’s desk earlier in the day on a whim, and now she didn’t have a clue what to do with it. She didn’t know what it said. She’d never learned to read, and Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls didn’t include reading in the curriculum. Killing the dead? Yes. Learning to set a fine dinner table? Most certainly. But reading?<br> What Negro girl needed to learn her letters?<br> But Sue, Big Sue to the rest of the girls at Miss Preston’s on account of her size, had seen letters like the one she held. Back when Jane McKeene had been a student she’d always carried letters from home like the one in Sue’s hand. Sometimes, she’d read them aloud. Sue liked to listen to Jane read and tell stories about her mama back at Rose Hill. Sue’s own mother was long gone, taken by the dead when Sue was too young to remember, and Jane’s own mother seemed as good a replacement as any.<br> Sue was considering asking one of the uppity Northern girls to read the letter for her in the morning when the screaming started.<br> Sue rolled out of bed of bed, hitting the floor in a low crouch. Her nightshirt tangled around her legs, and the echoing slap of bare feet hitting wood planks filled the room as the rest of the girls did the same as they woke.<br> “Shamblers,” one of them whispered.<br> “In the school?” another asked with a quaver in her voice.<br> “Seems like,” answered Sue, her voice deep and low. She wasn’t known for being chatty, and this really wasn’t the time to get into a lengthy dialogue about the likelihood of the dead, known as shamblers because of their lumbering walk, being inside of the combat school. Truth was, Sue knew this was going to happen, sooner or later. The dead always found a way.<br> When the dead began to walk at the battle of Gettysburg everything had changed, and here on seventeen years later it was the combat schools, decreed by law and enforced by white folks, that were supposed to keep everyone safe. So it was a keen irony indeed that the dead roamed the halls of the very place established to kill them.<br> Sue was a girl who could appreciate a fine bit of irony.<br> “What do we do?” asked another girl. Sue didn’t know the voice. It was hard to tell what was happening in the gloom of their room, but most of the girls were younger and less experienced than Sue, who was due to graduate any day now.<br> “We fight,” Sue said. “Get dressed, quickly. Boots, bloomers, leggings. Leave off the modesty corset, we ain’t got time, and get ready to move. We got to get to the arms room and get our weapons.”<br> The silence erupted in a hurried shuffling as the girls, nearly twenty in all, dressed quickly. Sue ditched her sleep shirt and pulled on a dress and leggings, quickly tying the stays and tucking the letter away for later. The mystery of it pulled at her, and she’d keep it for now.<br> While the rest of the girls dressed, Sue approached the closed door and pressed her ear to the wood.
