by Joe McKinney
“Hey, I’ve got to pee,” I said.
“There’s a good place over there by the fence.” She pointed to the remnants of a white split-rail fence that ran along the ridgeline where we’d camped. “Better take the pistol, though. Rattlesnakes are apt to come out at night.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
I didn’t see any rattlesnakes, which is good, because I don’t do well with snakes. Even still, I took my time doing my business, my butt down in the tall grass, my head full of at least a million reasons why crossing the wall in this place was a bad idea. But despite all my studying and all my knowledge of the technology the Quarantine Authority had at its disposal, something about Jessica’s simple faith in crossing at Weimar kept quieting my fears. She seemed so sure of herself. Maybe this was doable, I thought. Maybe all the people Jessica had heard of actually did find a way to the other side, and maybe all the rumors back in Free America were true. Maybe we really could do this.
By the time I was ready to start back, I’d made up my mind to follow her the whole way.
I rounded the old live oak that sheltered our campsite and was about to step into the circle of fading firelight when I heard voices. Jessica’s and someone else’s. A man’s voice.
I froze, my hand dropping to the pistol tucked into the front of my jeans.
I could only make out snippets of their conversation, but from the little I could hear I realized that I’d made a mistake. That wasn’t a man’s voice. It was a boy’s. A teenager. He sounded like he was fifteen or sixteen, a kid, but still close enough to a man to be dangerous. I had my hand on the pistol when I heard something behind me.
I spun around to see an older man and a dog staring at me.
“There’s no need for your gun, miss,” the man said. “I’m sure you ladies have seen your fair share, but my grandson and I are harmless. We’re not armed.”
“That doesn’t seem very smart.”
“Why in the world would I need a gun?”
The question caught me by surprise. I didn’t quite know what to say. I looked from him to the dog and back to the old man. I had nothing.
“What’s your dog’s name?” I finally said.
“Guthrie,” he said.
“Named for Arlo or Woodie?” It was the first thing that came to mind, but evidently, it was the right thing, for his smile grew wide.
“Both, actually. Nice to meet somebody who remembers the joys of good music.”
“My Dad,” I said. “He was kind of an old hippie.”
“Sounds like someone I would have liked,” the man said. “My name is Frank. That’s my grandson over there talking to your friend. His name is Will.”
I nodded. I was starting to like this man, though my hand hadn’t gone far from the pistol tucked into my pants. It didn’t matter how nice his smile was. And certainly not after what had happened earlier.
“You mind if we go over to the campfire there?” he asked. “I’m a bit chilly.”
“Sure,” I said, turning to allow him a path to the fire. “Lead the way.”
We entered the campsite and I took up a position next to Jessica. I could tell from her body language that this was a good thing, that she wasn’t afraid of these men. It wasn’t like before, when she spent long stretches of silence trying to shrink into herself, contemplating whatever lay beyond her death. This was different. There actually seemed to be mirth in her eyes as she listened to the old man tell of what had led them here.
They were coyotes. That they admitted from the start. In fact, they told us they had just come from a successful trip across the wall, for they knew of a good spot to cross.
Frank liked to talk, and as he was the first coyote I’d met who wasn’t a drunken rapist with bad teeth, I started asking him questions. I was worried he’d be offended, but I think he was actually kind of amused by the whole interview process.
“Wasn’t much of a stretch for us,” he said. “Will here was living with me on my ranch about twenty miles from here. I’ve had a flag flying off my doorstep since I came back from Vietnam, and when the government started building the wall, Will and I, we did our part. We even helped those sons a bitches put up some of it. The way I saw it, it was my patriotic duty.
“Course then everything went to hell. I figured even an officer coulda told we wasn’t infected, but they locked us up anyway. I couldn’t believe it. I stood there on the Zone side of the wall and carried on a twenty minute conversation with a major, and all I got was fucked.”
He looked at us then and actually blushed.
“Er, I’m sorry about my language, ladies. I don’t usually talk that way in front of women. But it gets a fella awful mad thinking about it.”
After what Jessica and I had just been through, I wanted to laugh.
But instead I said: “So you two became coyotes. How many people have you helped across?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at his grandson, as if he might know, but the boy just shrugged. “I guess we’ve taken, what, a couple hundred?”
“A couple hundred?” I said. “No.”
“About that,” Frank agreed. “We don’t work cheap, though.” He said it almost as an afterthought. “We’re in this for the greater good and all, but we still gotta live, you know?”
“How about a truck?” Jessica said.
The directness of her offer surprised me. I gave her a questioning look, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She was looking right at Frank.
“We have a Ford pickup, with a quarter tank of gas. Get us across and it’s yours.”
Frank seemed as stunned as I was. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. He looked to his grandson, then back to Jessica. “Where is this pickup of yours?”
“About a hundred yards down the rise there, behind a clump of hackberry.”
Frank smiled. He didn’t believe us. “That might be okay. You mind if we see it?”
EIGHT
Frank’s expression changed as we pulled the vegetation away from the truck. He recognized it. That much was obvious right from the start.
“Where did you get this?” he said. The good natured friendliness was gone from his voice now. He was suddenly alert, scanning the dark landscape all around us for signs of trouble.
“They won’t come looking for it,” Jessica said. She reached inside the cab and pulled out one of the assault rifles Tommy and Jake had left behind. “I can guarantee you that.”
“You took this from them?” Frank asked.
“Like I said, they won’t come looking for it,” Jessica said.
She let that one sit for a moment. The two men looked uncertain, maybe even a little frightened. Clearly the men Jessica had dealt with so handily had been men with reputations. But eventually their uncertainty was replaced by a grudgingly offered respect and renewed curiosity. We had changed in their eyes.
“You’ll give us this?” Frank said.
“You’ll get us across?” Jessica countered.
Frank paused for a long moment, then smiled. “We can do that,” he said
“Then the truck is yours.”
“Okay then.” He nodded at his grandson. “I guess we have a deal.”
NINE
I got frightened by how quickly things happened after that.
I’ve always been the kind who plans ahead. When I go on trips, I have a schedule laid out. I’ve done my research. I know what to see and how to get there and how much I’m supposed to pay.
But now, as Will explained to us how this was going to work, I felt panicky. My heart raced. Where were the details? I had tons of questions and none of them were getting answered.
Jessica, meanwhile, seemed to take it all in stride. She listened to Will with a detached air I found unnerving. I couldn’t believe she was so calm about it, like we were discussing plans for dinner or something.
I finally found my voice when he started putting bells on the dog.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
�
��This?” he asked. He had taken a harness, a lot like the kind they put on service animals for blind people, and strung bells down its length. He slid the harness into place and scratched Guthrie behind the ears. The dog seemed to love the attention. He wagged his tail eagerly, sending a wave of music through the bells lining his flanks. “Guthrie here runs diversion for us.”
A few minutes later I saw what he meant.
Weimar had a greenbelt that ran north to south through town, running underneath the highway. Judging from the old growth vegetation that formed around its banks I figured it must have also doubled as some sort of drainage system. It was the kind of thing a small town that relied on thru-traffic for its livelihood would have kept hidden behind a screen of tall trees.
This was apparently Will and Frank’s secret, for Will led us down to a cross street very close to the greenbelt. It was dark and the streets were lit only by starlight. I could see very little, but I could hear the zombies moaning, and they were getting closer every minute.
Will leaned down and whispered into Guthrie’s ear.
For the dog this was clearly some kind of game. It began to bark and spin around in a circle, like it was chasing its own tail, sending the music of bells into the night.
The bells were answered by a chorus of moans that seemed to come from all around us at once.
“What in the world are you - ”
But I didn’t get to finish my objection. Will put up a hand and motioned at the dog. Guthrie sprinted forty yards or so down the street, right into the face of a growing crowd of zombies, and began to bark.
“What’s he - ”
“Shhh,” Will said. “Don’t make a sound.”
Zombies poured out of the buildings, so many in fact that for a moment I lost sight of Guthrie. But then he reappeared, still barking furiously, the bells on his harness like Christmas music in the cold night air, and he sprinted away.
My pulse quickened. The zombies were actually following him. This just might work.
But then he stopped. He turned and watched the zombies, almost like he was waiting for them to catch up.
“Go,” I whispered. “Come on you stupid dog. Run!”
“No,” Will said. He turned his palm toward me without moving his arms. “No sudden movements. They key on movement and noise. Just wait. Guthrie knows what to do.”
And he was right.
The dog was good at what he did, and I began to see why Weimar had the reputation that it did. Within a few minutes, Guthrie had managed to lead all the zombies away from our position with an air of practiced efficiency that would have been the envy of any Border collie. I heard him barking in the distance, apparently happy as a clam.
“He’ll be okay?” I asked.
“He’s a dog,” Will said. “Why wouldn’t he be?”
I couldn’t deny the sense in that.
When the zombies were gone, Will led us down to the bottom of the greenbelt and began pulling away vegetation. I looked over at Jessica, hoping maybe to catch a glimpse of what was going through her mind. She had grown quiet since we left the campsite, and that bothered me. But she neither returned my glance nor gave any indication that she was anxiously waiting on Will’s next move. She just stood there, patient as a saint, a strange, almost vacant acceptance on her face. She seemed to have gone robotic, much as she had been in the truck with Jake and the two brothers.
“This is it,” Will said. He stepped back to reveal an open standpipe, a gigantic open maw, like the opening to a cave. “Go through here. When you come up on the other side, you’ll be in Free America.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Yep. Pretty much.”
Again I looked at Jessica. I wanted some indication that she was okay with this, but all I got was a blank stare. She turned away from me, ducked her head, and slipped into the standpipe.
“Jessica, wait,” I said.
Only then did she turn to look at me.
“What?”
“You’re okay with this?”
She shrugged. I’ll never forget that. There was no expression, just a vacant shrug. She turned into the darkness of the tunnel and started walking. Will gave me an encouraging nod, and the next instant I walked into the tunnel, trying to catch Jessica.
The crossing itself was anticlimactic.
We entered a pipe about five feet in diameter, so I had to duck slightly to move through it, and began to feel our way forward.
There was about an inch of standing water in the bottom of the pipe, and every step made a splash that echoed down the length of the tube. It was dark, too. Even though Jessica was only an arm’s length ahead of me, I couldn’t see her.
It would have been the perfect setting for something scary, for every sound really did send reverberations away from us in both directions, but the truth is, I felt completely safe the whole way.
The crossing itself was a piece of cake.
I don’t know how long we walked. A couple of minutes maybe. But eventually we came up on the other side. I saw some shrubs, a patch of starlit sky, and then we were out, standing on the grass.
We had arrived in Free America.
But it was not the joyful homecoming I’d expected. I looked around. Something was wrong. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. But what was the problem? What was wrong?
There was a street off to our left and abandoned buildings, shop fronts mostly, on the other side of that. A cold breeze blew dust across the pavement. I heard moans in the distance, and even though all else seemed quiet, my gut told me we were in real trouble.
Jessica stepped into the street, looking back toward the quarantine wall.
A Quarantine Authority truck rolled down IH-10, moving slowly.
It came to a stop.
“Oh no,” Jessica said.
“What’s going on?” The truck was maybe a hundred yards away, which was close, but in the dark, I thought there was a chance they hadn’t seen us.
The truck started to pull away, and I thought: Good! Yes. Keep going.
“Jessica,” I said, “they’re leaving!”
She turned to me and shook her head. “We have to get out of here,” she said.
“But they’re driving off.”
It was true. The truck was accelerating away. It went down the highway a few hundred yards, and then suddenly its brake lights came on and it veered off the main lanes and back towards our position.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The truck bounced over the median, crossed a parking lot, and then accelerated down a surface street that would carry it around behind us.
“How did they...?” I asked.
“Hurry,” Jessica said. “Across the street.”
“Where?”
“Those buildings.” She pointed to the shop fronts across the street. “Hurry.”
I ran.
I made it all the way across before I realized Jessica was still standing in the middle of the street.
“Jessica?”
“You need to go,” she said. “Get out of sight.”
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t go with you.”
The truck was getting closer. I could hear its engine pulling hard. And something else. Voices, the sound of boots on the pavement. Men running. Someone shouted orders.
“Like hell. Come on, Jessica.”
“No, I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
She looked utterly deflated, miserable. “I can’t go with you.”
I could make out individual voices now and the clatter of equipment and guns. The soldiers were seconds away.
“But Jessica...?”
“That world doesn’t exist for me anymore. It’s all changed. I’ve changed. You can’t go home again. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Jessica, I – ”
“Don’t,” she said. “There isn’t time. I can’t go with you, and I can’t go back. But you need to
hide. Now!”
The truck came roaring around a corner halfway down the block. I was out of time. I had to act. There was a narrow alleyway between two buildings a few steps away. I backed into it, into the shadows.
Out in the street, Jessica stood her ground.
From my research on the Quarantine Authority I knew they’d have helicopters over the area in just a few minutes. They’d have heat sensing cameras and all sorts of sophisticated people-hunting equipment to bring into play, which meant I had only seconds to get away.
But I couldn’t look away from Jessica. Quarantine Authority troopers bore down on her, yelling for her to get down on her knees, while the truck skidded to a stop on the other side of her and hit her with a super-intensity floodlight.
I anticipated the gun shot, but when it came, I flinched just the same.
I turned and ran, tears streaming down my face, and as I slipped away into the night I realized the woman had given her life for my escape, and I never even knew her last name.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe McKinney has been a patrol officer for the San Antonio Police Department, a homicide detective, a disaster mitigation specialist, a patrol commander, and a successful novelist. His books include the four part Dead World series, Quarantined, and Dodging Bullets. His short fiction has been collected in The Red Empire and Other Stories and in Dating in Dead World and Other Stories. For more information go to http://joemckinney.wordpress.com
We hope you enjoyed The Crossing. Joe McKinney and Print Is Dead will reteam in April of 2012 for Dating in Dead World: The Collected Zombie Stories, Volume One.
Read on for exciting previews of other thrilling Print Is Dead titles…
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