The Crossing: A Zombie Novella (10 page)

“
I thought we were supposed to be counting them,” I said, but he ignored me. My still-warm laminated Census Bureau ID badge screamed New Guy. Not in so many words, of course, but the badge was bordered in green. Everybody else’s was bordered in blue. Census Blue, not New Guy Green. As in, doesn’t know how to find the bathroom yet. Too dumb to come in from the rain. Wouldn’t know a zombie if one lurched up his ass. A green aura glowed around me. Census-takers were low drones on the totem pole in government service: statisticians, compilers, actuaries, analysts, and then there were the field workers, the guys on the street who were on a level with sewage in the organizational flow chart. And
zombie
census-takers seeped into the ground below the sewage. And on top of all
that
, I was the new guy.

“
Man,” said Tully, blousing his cuff around the ankle-gun, going for a natural look. “Remember when you were a kid and you walked past a graveyard when they used to really
mean
something?”

Smith rolled his eyes. He was Tully’s partner, a big guy, mid-fifties, with the twin horrors of going gray and going bald racing each other to claim his head. He had years of government service tucked away around his waist and a face like an unfocused black and white photograph: small squinty eyes, thin lips, solemn expression.

“
Back when dead guys used to stay in one goddamn place like they’re supposed to?” Tully continued. “Remember how cemeteries used to have like a magnetic field or something around them? You could just
feel
it when you walked past one, like some kind of otherworldly radiation. Like hoodoo gravity, attracting all the creepiness, keeping it all inside, kind of dragging you into the darkness if you got too close.”

We were the last three in the locker room. The rest of the agents for the shift had already moved into the briefing room, and I could understand why no one lingered. The locker room was rundown, broken, on crutches and just plain old, with white floor tiles and three double-rows of dented sheet-metal lockers, probably bashed up from FDR joyriding in his wheelchair. The paint was this institutional sludge-green; that is, what hadn’t faded or flaked off after getting bored with government service since the War. Pick a War, since I was pretty sure there was a coat of drab green slathered up there which corresponded to any one you’d care to name for the last century.

I had locker number thirteen. I figured it was best not to ask who’d had it before me. I had already changed: black pressed pants, white shirt, black skinny tie, shiny black Florsheims, and my usual haircut: short, fifteen dollars, different barber every time at the Hair Factory.

Everybody else had filed out in jeans, sweatshirts and running shoes, except for the one other trainee. She was dressed for a business funeral, just like me.

Tully switched his left foot up onto the bench and strapped a sheathed Kobun boot-knife with a black checkered grip to the inside of
that
ankle.

“
Now
,” he said, “cemeteries aren’t good enough for dead guys anymore.
Now
corpses have to start taking constitutionals everywhere, like Chicago ain’t crowded enough already with shitheads and slackjaws without having all the goddamn falling-apart dead guys dropping their arms and eyeballs on the sidewalks like fucking dog shit everywhere you go.
Now
they gotta be standing on corners, hanging out in doorways, just chillin’ everywhere. Man, you can’t get away from them. I can still smell them in my sleep.”

He stood straight and shook both feet to make sure his armory didn’t come loose. He slid a Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic under his jacket, into a holster on his belt at the small of his back.

“
Remember when,” he said, checking the automatic to make sure it was secure. “Remember when just the thought of something creeping around inside a cemetery was enough to give you the willies? Instead of now, when it’s just S.O.P.?”

He slipped a black anodized throwing knife into a pocket sewn into the back collar of his jacket. He put a Colt Compact .45 automatic into his front belt holster.

“
Shit,” he summed up, shaking his head.

Smith shrugged himself into a gray windbreaker with CENSUS BUREAU printed across the shoulders in big white block letters. “That was a long time ago, Tully,” he said, not looking at either of us. “It’s a different world now.”

“
All I’m saying,” said Tully, “is that it’s a goddamn shame we’re not killing them again, is all.” He dropped a stun gun into the inside pocket of his Bureau jacket, and a couple of extra magazines of ammunition into the outside pockets. He stood straight again, working his shoulders around, checking for bulges, not even listing at all, as balanced as his throwing knife. He nodded to himself in the mirror on the inside door of his locker. He smiled.

I could have sworn I heard the metal detector in the lobby go off.

Smith rolled his eyes again.

“
What?” said Tully, looking at Smith. “I
need
all this. I keep telling you, we’re in the middle of an invasion, a Third World invasion. They can’t fight the Army, the Navy, and the Marines, because we’d kick their Third World asses three miles deep into the ocean. Raising the dead was the only way they could hurt us. Damn respectable scam, too. Fucks our legal and ethical and economic systems but good.” He made a fist and rammed it upwards with a twisting motion until he grimaced. “Right up our collective complacent assholes.”

“
Jeeze, Tully, spare the kid your theories for his first night at least, okay?” Smith turned to me. “Tully thinks the Pope put out a contract on JFK.” He shrugged.

“
I never said any such thing,” said Tully, with an air of misquoted irritation. “I never said His Holiness put out the contract personally. He likes to keep his velvet gloves clean, you know? That’s what he’s got Cardinals for. And it wasn’t JFK, either. It was Michael Kennedy. Skied into a tree, my white ass. That had the Vatican’s fingerprints three-deep all over it. And if you’re not going to actually
listen
to me, then don’t go around quoting me. Conspiracies are all in the details.”

I looked at Smith. I looked at Tully. I didn’t mean anything by the way I looked at them. Really I didn’t. They were my new partners. They were going to initiate me into the mysteries of the Census Bureau. I wasn’t quite regretting joining the Bureau yet, but I was seriously considering having second thoughts.

“
Well, you can live in whatever fairy-world you want to, I guess,” said Tully, shaking his head, turning away from both of us. “It just doesn’t pay to try and educate some people.”

I looked at my watch. 11:15 p.m. The beginning of my first day.

Smith must’ve seen me look, must’ve seen me fidget. “Our shift starts in forty-five minutes,” he said. “But before that, the Assistant Director of the Chicago Office in Charge of Zombies—and that’s not her official title, by the way—wants to talk to everybody. So you’re going to get your first standard, government-issue pep-talk tonight. And before
that
, I also have a word or two of wisdom for you.”

Great. My first government-issue pep-talk. I tried not to dance a jig.

“
First,” said Smith. “Don’t even
think
about shooting any zombies with that thing.” He pointed a big, meaty finger at my brand-spanking-new, government-issue revolver. “No matter what Tully says. And as a matter of fact, don’t even think about taking that gun out of its holster, ever.”

He drew his own revolver, identical to mine.

“
This gun is not used for shooting,” he said, holding it up and pointing to it like he was posing for a gun-safety coloring book. “The trigger stays unpulled. Let me clarify. The trigger will never even see your fingerprint. Understand?”

It was only a revolver, for Chrissakes, not an M-32 Heavy Assault Rifle. I’d seen better weapons chipped out of stone. A standard-issue, Census Bureau Little Buster 25 caliber revolver. In other words, a standard-issue, cheap-ass, punk piece of shit, like something Stephen Baldwin, that guy in the upper-right square on
Hollywood Squares: the Next Millennium
, would pack to make himself feel like he had a cock.

Smith must’ve seen the look in my eyes. Must’ve seen the way I handled the Little Buster, like it was my mother’s diaphragm. The guy may have been old and fat, but apparently his squinty little eyes saw everything.

“
Let me clarify again,” he said. “You shoot that thing over my dead body, you understand, Jett?” He held his thumb and index finger an inch apart, right up in front of my nose. “I have to fill out
that
many forms if you shoot that gun while you’re a trainee and my responsibility, which is half again as many as I have to fill out if I decide it’s necessary to shoot you myself first.
You
figure out which is less trouble for me.”

Tully grinned behind Smith’s back like he’d just found an extra pistol in his coat pocket.

“
You have that gun for show only, Jett, understand?” said Smith, using a Playskool-approved tone which I didn’t think suited him well, but I figured it was best not to say so. “You have it because the equipment list says that every Census agent is supposed to have one. You have it because when you quit, tomorrow, next week, next month, however long you last, you’re going to be asked to give it back, and so you have to have it in the first place in order to be
able
to give it back.

“
Tully handles any gunplay, understand? Tully’s my backup, and he’s your backup, too. You’re here to observe, to learn, to stay out of the way, and especially to make sure that your gun stays nice and clean and safe and unfired.”

I nodded.

He slipped his revolver back into his holster with a little
snick
. The Little Buster wouldn’t shoot through a personnel file anyway, much less an actual person. I had a Ruger 9mm in a shoulder holster and a KA-BAR straight-edge knife sheathed at the small of my back, but I figured now wasn’t the best time to mention them.

“
Okay,” I said.

“
Good,” said Smith. He stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the team.”

Tully huffed.

Abracadabra, I thought. The magic of life. I was lost, and now I’m found. Transformed, just like that, into a member of the team. Abracadabra. I shook his hand.

“
What’s our procedure in the field?” I asked, now that I was one of the guys, now that I knew the job was completely and utterly safe, since I wasn’t expected to ever draw my weapon, which sort of glossed over the fact that I had been issued said weapon in the first place. I figured I may as well try and learn how I wasn’t going to need the weapon I had been issued.

“
I’ll handle that question,” said Tully, grinning. “What we do, kid, is we walk right up to the zombies and we shoot them—
Bang!
—right in the back of the head.”

END OF PREVIEW

COMI
NG SOON FROM PRINT IS DEAD

CARNAGE ROAD by Gregory Lamberson

SLAB CITY by Nate Southard

PALE PREACHERS by Tom Piccirilli

THE LIVING by Kealan Patrick Burke

VESPERS by Tom Piccirilli

AND MORE…