The Crossing: A Zombie Novella

Print Is Dead is a zombie-themed imprint from acclaimed indie publisher, Creeping Hemlock Press.

PRAISE FOR PRINT IS DEAD

"These guys know more about the undead than I do... and that's saying something, because I've been hanging out with zombies for as long as I can remember."
-George A. Romero,

writer/director of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD, and DAY OF THE DEAD

"This is the best of modern zombie fiction... you need to read the stuff these guys are putting out. It doesn't get any better than this."
-Joe McKinney,

author of FLESH EATERS and DEAD CITY

"PRINT IS DEAD is the terrifying new voice of zombie fiction. They're coming to get you..."

-Jonathan Maberry,

author of ROT & RUIN and PATIENT ZERO

PRAISE FOR JOE MCKINNEY

Joe McKinney is no longer a rising star on the horror scene; he has arrived. With each novel he writes he gets better and more mature.

-Scott Shoyer of Anythinghorror.com

If you are looking for a shocking and explosive read featuring the evil zombies of urban legends, this is the next series you need to read.

-My Overstuffed Bookshelf

Joe McKinney's writing is crisp, fast, and he seldom lets the characters (or readers) come up for air...an action-packed must read.

-R.B. Payne of Shroud Magazine

Welcome to Joe McKinney's Dead City universe, a relentless thrill ride where real characters do bloody things on nightmare streets. Break out the popcorn, you're in for a real treat.

-Harry Shannon, author
Dead and Gone
and
The Hungry

McKinney writes zombies like he's been gunning them down all his life.

-Weston Ochse, author of
Empire of Salt

THE CROSSING

Joe McKinney

NEW ORLEANS

2011

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed within are fictitious,

and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

The Crossing

Kindle Edition by Creeping Hemlock Press, December 2011

The Crossing
copyright © 2012 by Joe McKinney

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Cover design & book design by Julia Sevin

www.printisdead.com

www.creepinghemlock.com

THE CROSSING

This is dedicated to Ted Conover, for bravery in journalism.

ONE

A cold February wind fingered its way through the gaps in the walls. The little shack in which we’d taken shelter had been cobbled together from cinder blocks and castoff lumber, the roof a rusting sheet of corrugated tin held down by baling wire. Rotting sheets of plywood covered the windows. It was thin protection from the zombies massing outside. The place smelled of stale beer and sweat, mildew and rot, and the dim morning light revealed a lot of ice-encrusted trash on the floor - broken beer bottles; tin cans; a scattering of cigarette butts; an occasional spent shell casing - sad markers of others, like Jessica and me, who had taken refuge here.

Jessica hunkered down in the corner to get out of the seething wind. She had a tattered bath towel wrapped around her shoulders, but it was too threadbare to warm even her, withered as she was from starvation. She scanned the garbage, her breath pluming from the cold. I figured she was looking for something she could use. Depravation had made her keen that way. She never missed anything.

“
Looks like we’re not the first to hide out here,” she said.

I looked around. It was hard to believe this was luck, but she was right. We were lucky to find the shack when we did. The surrounding countryside was empty grassland, nothing but an occasional mesquite thicket to break up the soul-sucking emptiness of it. There were few places to hide from the zombies. I tried to imagine all the others who had come this way before us, how every bit of garbage on the floor was a marker representing anxious days and nights waiting for the zombies to move on down the road. There was a faded blood stain on the wall above Jessica’s head, spattered, as though from a gunshot, and as I stared at it, I felt overwhelmed by the emotional sediment of desperation and exhaustion that permeated the small space. I never really believed, even as a little girl, that a place could be haunted. But if ever a place had a right to be, it was that shack.

Jessica went to the wall and stared out through a crack. I joined her, noticing as I did the gap in the lumber was smeared with dried blood left behind by fingers that had tried to claw their way inside.

There were two other shacks that we could see, both about the size of ours, and both surrounded by thick knots of the infected. From one of the shacks we could hear a man screaming. He was one of the people we’d been traveling with when the zombies found us. Jessica had said she didn’t trust him, that he seemed unstable, and from the way he was shrieking, I believed it. But crazy or not, his screaming was driving the infected mad. He’d yell and they’d beat on the walls with renewed fervor, answering his fear with an ululating chorus of moans.

We didn’t know who was in the other shack, but every once in a while one of them jabbed a sharpened stick through the walls at the crowd.

“
They’re idiots,” Jessica said in a whisper.

They were idiots. She was right about that. But I was too scared to talk. As disgusting as the shack was, we were safe. I didn’t want to say anything or do anything that would change that. I didn’t want those things out there to hear us talking. I just wanted to shrivel up into a little ball and wait for the horrors to pass us by.

Be the reporter, I told myself. Watch, observe, soak it all in. Don’t get involved. That was why I was here, after all, to report on living conditions in the Zone.

I almost laughed at that.

Like it or not, I was involved. I was involved up to my ears.

Just outside the door, a young female zombie had her face buried in the abdomen of a corpse. One of the men we’d been traveling with who hadn’t made it inside quickly enough. A lot of meat had been torn from his bones, and what was left of the body jerked and twitched as the zombie tore bits of the remaining flesh away. We probably could have slipped by her, but she would have sent up a moan to bring the rest of the zombies after us.

“
Why in the world would they bring attention to themselves like that?” Jessica said, still whispering. “They should know better.”

I shrugged, silently praying that she’d stop talking.

“
It’s okay,” she said, like she could read my mind. “Just whisper. They won’t hear us.”

“
How do you know?”

I looked through the crack in the wall again. Most of the zombies were too intent on beating against the other two shacks, and those few that weren’t with the main group were busy feeding off our dead companions. But still, scared as I was, I didn’t want to chance it.

“
They don’t hear so well,” she said. “They’ll pick up on our movement, though, so try not to make any sudden moves.”

She was right, of course. Moving would cause the light coming through the walls to flicker on our clothes, and that would be as good as jumping up and down and waving a flag. Though I’d known Jessica for only three days at that point, I found myself amazed yet again at her common sense grasp of tactics. She was like a soldier or some hardcore beat cop. Living in the quarantine zone had sharpened her survival instincts far beyond my own.

“
I bet you’re sorry you came, aren’t you?” she asked.

I was scared like I’d never been in my life, but I wasn’t sorry. Not a bit. I would have been dead without her, and when you get to the point that you can say that about another person, can you really be sorry about it? Doesn’t that create a sense of loyalty that’s worth a world of hardships?

Before I could answer she put a hand on my shoulder.

“
Look there,” she said.

I put my face up to the crack again. Something was happening over at one of the shacks. The building trembled. As we watched, a section of the wall caved in, and the zombies poured in through the breach, tearing the two men inside to pieces.

“
Oh my God,” Jessica said. There was no shock in her voice, just sadness.

“
They were brothers, weren’t they?” I asked.

“
Yes.”

The commotion caused even the female zombie in front of our door to join the swarm. My pulse quickened. Looking off to the right of the shack where the crazy man shrieked, I saw the field beyond was absolutely empty. If we were quiet, we just might be able to get enough of a head start to leave this crowd of zombies behind us.

Before I could say anything to Jessica, the crazy man burst out of his shack and tried to make a break for it. Several of the zombies lunged for him, causing him to swerve. But he was too scared to control his footing on the muddy ground and fell face-first into a puddle of water. He was up and running, still screaming, before any of the zombies could get to him. Jessica and I watched him go, shocked to see most of the zombies shambling after him.

“
Wow,” she said.

I agreed. I was impressed, despite the man’s lunacy. “Lucky for us.”

“
Yeah.”

We waited about two minutes, neither of us speaking. Only a few zombies remained in and around the shacks, and those were busy feeding on the fresh corpses of the two brothers. It looked clear to me, and I reached for the brace on the door.