Dread Nation

As Katherine and Jane head into the university lecture, Jane notices the well-dressed white women of Baltimore, and their Attendants. She then spies Mayor Carr and his Survivalist friends, who believe that the fate of the country depends on “securing the safety of white Christian men and women” (64). The lecture begins, and the speaker—Professor Ghering—proposes a racist theory: that Indigenous and Black people have been less affected by the shambler plague because “neither the Indian nor the Negro is as highly developed as their European cousins” (67). He calls them animals, which enrages Jane and many of the crowd members.

Professor Ghering claims to have invented a vaccine that will render people of color virtually immune to the plague, and he has prepared a demonstration. His assistant Othello brings out a cage of shamblers, and according to Ghering, Othello will “willingly submit to a shambler’s bite in order to demonstrate the increased resistance of a vaccinated Negro” (71). Jane stands up in the middle of the lecture and voices her concerns, pointing out that if Othello turns into a shambler on the stage, he’ll attack the Professor first. Mayor Carr stands up and silences Jane by assuring the