The Crossing: A Zombie Novella Read Free

lock-step guarantee.
    But Jessica and her group didn’t believe it. Lots of people break through every month, she assured me. And I could tell she honestly believed it.
    Yet when I pressed her, she didn’t seem to have much of a plan.
    “ We want to get across somewhere between Flatonia and Weimar,” she said.
    I waited for more. But after a moment, I realized there wasn’t more.
    “ That’s it? You don’t know where? I mean, exactly? That seems like an important detail to me.”
    “ How can I know something like that? That’s up to the coyotes, isn’t it?”
    “ I guess so,” I said doubtfully. It seemed like an awful lot to take on faith, though. After all, to trust your life like that to a total stranger seemed crazy. But I answered myself with the same mental breath: Wasn’t that exactly what I was doing here with Jessica?
    “ How much do they charge?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “Nobody in the Zone has any money.”
    “ Well, how then?”
    She glanced around to make sure no one was looking, then showed me a handful of jewelry. They were nice, but nothing special, a few necklaces and charm bracelets, probably worth a couple hundred dollars at most.
    “ Is that how most people pay, with jewelry?”
    “ Mostly, yeah. It’s the easiest way. But I’ve heard people paying with all kinds of stuff. Gas they’ve siphoned off old cars. Drugs they found in pharmacies. Liquor. Anything people want you can usually trade with.”
    This was insane, I thought. I guess it showed on my face.
    “ What?” she said. She was amused by my distress, I could tell. She was almost laughing.
    “ I just don’t see how you can be so blase about it. Where exactly you’re gonna cross; how much it’s gonna cost; those things seem like a big deal to me. I mean, right? You see that? They’re important. It scares me you’re not more worried about it.”
    The bemused smile went away from her face, replaced by a bitter seriousness. “There’s always a way for a woman to pay her way,” she said.
    “ Jessica, I...”
    She didn’t flinch. “I won’t go on living this way. Not in the Zone like this.” She gestured to the soiled rags that passed for her clothes, at her emaciated body that barely hinted at a woman’s natural curves any more. “Tell me, what would you do?”
    “ I don’t know.”
    When I went on with my questions, I was more subdued. I’d been humbled.
    “ What do you plan to do when you get to Free America?” I asked.
    “ I taught Fourth and Fifth Grade before the wall went up. I thought maybe I could do that again.”
    “ What about friends, family? They could help you get back on your feet.”
    “ Maybe. I hope so. I had a boyfriend, you know. His name was Robert. He did IT stuff for an oil company. Made pretty good money. He was smart. We were living in an apartment together down in Corpus, but he left for a job in Oklahoma about a month before Mardell hit.” She ran her left hand down the length of her right arm, fingers touching the cuts and scars and fresh bruises there. “I guess there probably isn’t much chance of picking that up again.”
    “ You never know,” I said, in what I hoped was an encouraging tone.
    She gave me a weak smile. “I won’t kid myself. That old life is gone. It’d be like that Tom Hanks movie. Remember the one, he’s on that island...”
    “ Joe vs. the Volcano ?”
    She grinned. “The other one. The deserted island one. Remember? His plane crashes?”
    “ Castaway .”
    “ That’s the one. I was thinking of the end, after he gets rescued. Remember that? He goes home and his wife...what’s her name?”
    “ Helen Hunt.”
    “ Helen Hunt, that’s it. Remember what happens when he tries to go home? Helen Hunt’s character has remarried and they have that awkward moment on the doorstep. Life has passed him by, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
    I nodded. “You can’t go home again.”
    “ I remember hearing that. Was that from the