Nightmare Fuel / Crossed

Crossed in general is all the horror of the zombie/infected apocalypse, but to its logical extreme.

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General

• The Crossed in general. The Reavers from Firefly are known for their horrific M.O. of raping people, eating them and sewing their skins to their clothing, but for the most part, all of this horrificness remains offscreen. What the Crossed do to anyone they come across? You get to see it. Oh, and they can also think and devise a strategy to hunt you down, even moreso if the Super-Crossed is doing the job.
• While the Crossed themselves are unhinged maniacs, some humans manage to outdo them in sheer cruelty:
  • Joseph Pratt from Family Values does not seem to be a bad man at first glance, but even before the Crossed outbreak it is shown that he abuses and rapes his daughters, a habit he keeps even after the C-day.
  • Steve from Homo Superior is a Torture Technician who already gained infamy due to her horrible treatment of prisoners, and even though she does mellow down a bit, it does not stick for long. Even worse, upon being offered by the infected Ashley and Ashlynn to become a Crossed, Steve willingly accepts the offer.
  • Harold Lorre from Psychopath manages to be one of the most sick and inhumane bastards in the whole franchise, not just because he is so sadistic with killing other people and mutilating their bodies afterwards in an unspeakable manner, but because he is such a good manipulator that no one in his group suspects a thing until the very end. And even when Amanda escapes, Harold's hallucinations continue haunting her mind and eventually lead to her wiping out a group she joined with in Breakdown, not to mention the fact Harold himself manages to escape with his life from the situation, still hellbent on getting his love interest back.
  • The Gamekeeper from Wish You Were Here probably trumps Harold Lorre in terms of being an irredeemable bastard. While he is no doubt a skillful and adapted man, he constantly torments the luxury couple for whom he used to work before the C-day (even raping Agnes repeatedly) and treats every other member of his group as expendable, showing no sympathy to people dying around him. Even without the Crossed nearby, the Gamekeeper is still a horrible person, but the scariest thing is that he is necessary for the other members of his group to survive and he knows it, freely abusing his power all the time. This is a harsh and realistic reminder that no matter what, Humans Are the Real Monsters. And such people do exist in real life.
  • Curtis Wentz from the Gavin Land arc is a movie director, but beneath a fancy facade hides a gruesome rapist who is heavily implied to have raped and murdered Gavin's daughter, ensured Land ended up in prison, and sent a man to subject him to Prison Rape. In addition, the letter he sends to Land while the latter is in jail describes a young boy (implicitly Gavin’s son) getting kidnapped and subjected to nearly the same treatment, poetically called "Land's End". Even though after the C-Day he seems to have had a change of heart, both Land and the reader will have a hard time accepting his claims, and the former eventually kills him in the end.
• The fact that we never get any sort of complete understanding of where the virus came from. Was it a genetically engineered weapon that was accidentally released? Was it an alien life form that somehow ended up on Earth? Was it a mutated strain of rabies that jumped from apes to man? Or perhaps the most terrifying possibility is simply that God decides that he's fed up with humanity's shit, and sends a plague to purge humanity. Given the... signature shape of the rash that forms on the faces of the victims, the argument for the last one can definitely be made.
  • Thin Red Line outright reveals that the Crossed Virus really IS supernatural (or possibly extraterrestrial), which does not help matters at all. For even more added horror, while we already know that the Crossed Virus is unlike anything else in the world, we still don't know if it was some kind of supernatural or alien entity that caused the pandemic to happen, or if the Crossed Virus somehow started the pandemic by itself.
  • If Homo Totor is to be believed, the virus has been around since prehistoric times and was the cause of the Toba Catastrophe. The pandemic in 2008 was the recent incarnation of the virus and possibly the result of the Homo Totor DNA awakening in modern man. And in spite of the Homo Tortor story being an in-universe fiction, the fact that the evidence of ancient Crossed was present by Nelson even before the C-Day means that it did come from somewhere and at least has some basis in truth.
• Really, one needs to just look at the covers to most issues. Each one a macabre mural of madness and murder, each more grotesque than the last. Special mention goes to "torture" variants, which pretty much speak for themselves. It does not help the case that on many covers the Crossed individuals are looking straight at the reader.

Volume One

• The first issue ends with a pointed lesson for anyone looking for a "magic bullet" solution to being chased by evil zombies: just keep running. Joel's family learned it the hard way.
  • Speaking of Joel's family, Joel's wife was injured while they were escaping the Crossed and she tried to sacrifice herself for her daughter and husband. But, Joel was terrified of losing his wife and tried to deter the Crossed with salt because he saw one die from it and got his hopes up. At first, it appears the plan works as the Crossed do stop in their tracks... but the next panel proves Joel wrong in the worst way possible. Joel is violently raped while being disemboweled, his furious wife is also raped while suffering from a head injury (her last words are cursing Joel for not listening), and their daughter probably got the most merciful fate by comparison as she was just dismembered by the Crossed (either by hacking her to death with a cleaver or by simply pulling her apart) and was hopefully spared the fate of being violently raped. This scene was an Establishing Series Moment for the whole Crossed franchise as it showed how dark it will get.
• The Crossed are capable of using weapons and reasoning out how they get "made". Speaking of magic bullets, at one point in the original run Cindy and Stan discover the Crossed actually lacing bullets with their own semen in order to turn more folks, including Randall from the main group.
  • Speaking of Randall, the panel where he is revealed to be infected. As Scott the paramedic goes to look after him, we see Randall's face. It has a cross-like rash, meaning that he has been infected. And then Randall opens his eyes as his face contorts into the one of a madman. As it cuts to others, Scott lets out an off-panel scream before being silenced. We never find out how exactly did Randall kill Scott, and this is one of the only few deaths that we don't actually see in person, only getting the implication of it.
  • And also imagine being Kelly while running away from him. Aside from being blind, you now have an actual Crossed trying to get you. A pretty scary situation.
• A group of survivors are telling tales of the past. An older man starts talking about his romantic lovers... and how he would tie them down and murder them. This was before the Crossed virus. Even though said man was trying to get over with his past life after the C-Day, everyone else is still freaked out by such a reveal. The older man is taken out into the woods next morning. He is not seen again. This is the human court system now.

Badlands

• The final issue of the first arc, Of the World in Its Becoming, is pretty tense and horrific at how utterly helpless the protagonists are. It opens with Harry being bisected with a saw, and we get a good view of his infected upper half trying to crawl away while laughing before expiring, all while his murderers make fun of his misery from behind. Worse still, what's left of the group tries to retrieve the gun and has to split up in two directions. The plan fools only a small part of the horde, and the rest still choose to charge at Ian, Ricky and Mark. After Ricky and Mark are both picked off and infected (with the latter outright being shown raped, complete with a Gross-Up Close-Up), it seems that Ian will manage to take the last of Crossed swarm out... Until he makes a mistake at standing too close to Harry's corpse, and as a result he gets splashed with infected blood, just like what happened to Penny in Ian's flashback back in the first issue. The issue, and the arc as a whole, ends with Ian about to blow himself up with a grenade, all while other members of his group are standing behind him, having been turned Crossed. And yes, that includes John, Rob and Alec.
  • And speaking of Ian's flashback, we get to see an infected woman hurling a baby into the car and having him mutilated with car blender. Even worse, said infected blood gets on Penny's face, and thus she allows herself to be run over by another Crossed.
  • At one point, Ricky notices though the binoculars that Pat seemingly joined the main horde, despite having his tendons cut off and not having a cross on his face... Until it's revealed that someone skinned Pat alive and decided to wear his face as a mask''.
• The carnival massacre in Yellow Belly - made worse by showing children getting killed or infected, as well as a guy who is about to get his head smashed with a sledgehammer by a Crossed weightlifter. And then there is Eli getting attacked by his infected father (fortunately, this happens off-panel), all while Edmund can helplessly hear before falling asleep due to his coping mechanism.
  • Said father hides both boys in separate barrels and then tries to rush a Crossed clown with a wooden plank. At first, he gets the edge by knocking a hat off his face - only for two more clowns to tackle him from behind. Poor Edmund gets to witness his father getting stripped naked, then raped and beaten by all three Crossed, before he gets up, now himself infected, - and suddenly turns towards the barrels his sons were hiding in, causing Edmund to soil his pants.
  • The massacre in Palmer the following morning, which includes Edmund's mother being killed in a cruel way, most of Edmund's classmates being gruesomely murdered, including Hank Smith getting his jugular vein ripped out by his Crossed girlfriend and Edmund himself being forced to kill Sweeney, who was still alive and uninfected by that point.
• Whatever an infected Nathan does to Jared in The Golden Road is in no way a pleasant sight. The poor guy gets dismembered with a meat hook, and while we do not see most of the process, we get to see the progress, by first showing Jared's head with hollow eye sockets and most of face missing and then (by the time Gideon and other students find him) a bloody mess. Even worse? Clooney did it as a part of his plan to get back at Gideon, whatever all the casualties might be. Jared might have been a bit of a jerk, but even he did not deserve to die such a cruel death.
  • Gideon's own fate is not much better. The infected citizens of Stumptown who had been scammed by Gideon in the past, all pounce on him, which includes some of his former employees, Clooney and other students. All we see of him next is that he got all his limbs amputated, and yet Gideon's still alive, albeit infected.
• In the final issue of Thin Red Line, Tom and Jackie are shown listening to distress signals from numerous passenger planes under attack from the Crossed as they fly towards the rogue Russian nuclear bombers. Just enough is heard to elicit all sorts of fridge horror, particularly towards the end, which is too much for Jackie.
  This is American Airlines Flight One-Zero-Seven broadcasting on all channels..
  ...Virgin Two-Six-Two declaring an emergency, we are descending..
  ...into the cockpit jesus stop them
  We're in hell those are kids we're in hell
  Jackie: Kill it, will you?
  Tom: Sorry.
• At the end of the Thin Red Line arc Harry and Gordon Brown part ways. Just before the bunker door closes, an infected Dr. Chopra suddenly appears behind an oblivious Brown, ready to pounce. A shocked and horrified Harry can only watch as the door closes shut.
  • The fate of George W. Bush from the same volume-namely the sheer uncertainty of what exactly happened to him. The phone call to the White House by the time they pick up features a voice just repeating the Madness Mantra of "Fuckalong, fuckalong, fuckalong Jack!" repeatedly. Whether this is Bush himself (either now Crossed or driven to madness by the Crossed) or simply a random Crossed who managed to somehow end up in a position to answer the President's phone, little is answered about what happened to him besides 'nothing good.'
• "Quisling" features a Crossed, nicknamed Smokey by the narrator, who is genuinely smarter and less impulsive than 99% of the Crossed seen elsewhere in the series. He's able to rally the other infected to him and force them to use actual tactics, which are effective enough to allow him to attack and take over a surviving military installation. The Crossed have their Genghis Khan and he's still out there.
  • Though Crossed +100 shows that the Crossed population in North America is severely reduced 100 years later, and these Crossed are largely inbred wretches who have no knowledge whatsoever of modern technology. Whatever Smokey did, it looks like it didn't stick. Beauregard Salt, on the other hand, managed to form a whole legacy that still lives on...
  • Smokey's Establishing Character Moment is pretty haunting: finding some humans hidden inside a truck, yanking out one of them who he proceeds to cruelly start dismembering, and then grinning as he closes the door on the others to save them for later and torture to death one by one over the next couple days. Try not to imagine being the last person taken out of that truck.
  • Another small thing on Smokey's part is that if you happen to catch his attention by misfortune, he will get you no matter what. Try to escape by a helicopter? He might be already there, waiting for you to hijack the aircraft and even take you hostage. You manage to evade him and get the helicopter airborne? Don't celebrate too early, Smokey will find something to hurl at the rotors and cut your escape short. Want to hide underground in a bunker? He will either utilize a human Quisling to trick you into opening the doors for him or, even worse, clog all the vents to the bunker so you will be at risk of either suffocating underground or having to let his horde in and face them all. Not even a bullet in the head is enough to put Smokey down since in the last Badlands issue he manages to recover from that as well.
• The penultimate issue of the Gavin Land arc opens with a group of soldiers bursting inside of a house where a small family hid in. At first, it's easy to believe they are there to evacuate civilians from the overrun San Diego. That is, until these soldiers pull their visors up and reveal the Crossed rash on their faces. Three guesses at what happens next. The mother tells her daughter to not look, and while we don't see the carnage in full, the aftermath is still shown.
• Homo Tortor:
  • The state of the Princeton University, with many mutilated and naked corpses strawn across the whole campus or impaled on pikes. The main building is also on fire, which is still raging even after an unknown period of time that has passed before Washington and his crew entered the university's grounds.
  • The advanced but unbelievably cruel and sadistic civilization of the Homo Tortor from 75,000 years ago (called the Blood Men) is made of this. When the actual Crossed outbreak starts in their city, the Blood Men getting massacred and turned is both satisfying and scary at the same time.
    • "Homo Tortor" are basically a race of red-skinned hominids that have zero restraint concerning anything combined with ultimate cruelty a human brain can dish out. During their arc the Homo Tortor slaughter a village, rape everyone, kill the old, the females and make effigies out of every bodily fluid of the victims before they leave with the young captives of which older ones have their limbs cut off for transportation and limbs eaten. The captives are taken to gigantic ships made of bones with blinded Neanderthals on oars driven by carefully adjusted screams of slaves being skinned alive and whipped, captives being fed shit and meat of the dead to survive. Occasionally some of the captives are used for torture and cannibalism, screams guiding Neanderthal oarsmen, who, again, are each blinded. Taken to a gigantic, absolutely terrifying city made of skulls and bones and sharp stakes, the captives see child slaves herded to be slaughtered, raped and eaten, and limbless adult captives skewered alive to be eaten while being cooked, meat sold for baby teeth as currency by the Homo Tortor. The Homo Tortor vivisect and torture for fun, rape for fun, skin for fun and cannibalise for fun. The city is a jagged rock colony surrounded by sharp bones with a twin monolith of the First Brother and First Sister, twincestuous rulers of Homo Tortor who just had young boy as third ruler, who himself wants to rape some captives for fun, and is slapped for "asking his parents for permission". The captives are painted with every bodily fluid from human organs and put to an arena to be untied by child slaves who run from them and even kill themselves to deny the captive "gladiators" the glee of revenge or the knives they used to cut them loose with. The co-rulers then turn on their incest child and slowly cook him alive and eat his body for a snack as captives are raped and devoured by wild animals. No other fiction in history has reached such a level, luckily the "Crossed" virus makes the empire of horror collapse on itself in one day.
    • For their arena events, the Blood Men use absolutely horrific primal animals that are stored just below the stadium. Before the beginning of the nightmare, Lion and his friends are all soaked with blood and ferments which makes these beasts both aggressive and horny at the same time!
  • Curtis's death. As he finds out that his bow is useless against a whole crowd of Crossed, he pulls out a pistol, but Washington is so determined on getting inside the bunker that he tells Ronnie that they need someone to keep the Crossed busy. So, what does Ronnie do? He throws Curtis right at the incoming mob of psychos, and a couple of panels show what do the Crossed do to him. It is not pleasant at all.
  • And shortly after Washington manages to bring the power back and open the door, Warren wastes no time shooting Ronnie in the knee and leaving him to die at the hands of the same Crossed that are brutalizing Curtis. And there is also the Death Glare Warren gives Ronnie right before he leaves him for dead.
    Warren: (Turns to Ronnie) Hey, big guy, give me your gun.
    Washington: The door's open! We're through!
    Warren: One second. (shoots Ronnie in the kneecap with a shotgun and kicks him right on the floor) Fucking murderer.
  • What's worse, Curtis is still alive and screaming as he is being tortured, and Ronnie is last seen desperately trying to crawl behind the door as it closes. Washington keeps telling himself that he's seen enough and that the door will muffle sounds of Ronnie's death. It's another lie, and Washington knows it. Indeed, the next issue opens with Washington describing the carnage going on behind the door, and that's even before he and Warren get to witness what happened in the bunker itself.
  • To top it off, Curtis's death was meaningless. Once Washington managed to unlock the transformator door, he finds several simple tumblers and brings power back on without any difficulties. And besides trying to not think about Curtis's screams being muffled by the Crossed, he now has to deal with killing a fellow man from his group that would probably be not needed.
  • And when Washington and Warren do enter the bunker, they find a literal massacre, with a large pool of blood and several body parts littering across the floor. The two's reaction sums it up best.
    Warren: Were... you hoping? That your ex would be alive?
    Washington: Amy? I... Maybe? But really... (while looking at the carnage inside of the bunker, with many bodyparts strewn around, and wincing in disgust) I can't even tell which one she is.
  • The way the arc ends in both stories is also pretty horrifying:
    • Lion's story: when it seems that Lion and Sandstorm will escape the Blood Men camp, the former suddenly falls off the giant mammoth they were riding and can only look helplessly as a gross-looking Eldritch Abomination (heavily implied to be the Blood Men's god) emerges and crushes him underneath.
    • Washington's story: after finishing reading the above story, Washington is understandably confused of what that was when a figure beneath a cloak presses a spacebar on a keyboard of the computer, revealing security camera footage of the entire bunker infiltration by Washington's group. Just as the student is about to turn around, two figures nail his palms to the table, and reveal themselves fully as Crossed. The First Brother is Nelson himself, while the First Sister is Amy, Washington's former girlfriend. When Washington desperately asks whether the story was made up or not, the two Crossed reveal that while Lion's story was made up, it served as inspiration for the new Homo Tortor based civilization. Then, after Warren gets captured by a pack of Crossed, he is brought to Nelson's followers, who severely mutilated Washington, now labeled First Child, and put him on a "chair" made of wooden planks (read: nailed his arms and legs to the wooden planks and also cut his stomach open before putting hot coal into it, perhaps to cook his inner organs to serve for food later), just like what happened to the First Child of the Nelson's story. The final issue ends with Warren about to receive the same treatment while Washington can only repeatedly scream in terror that the whole Homo Tortor thing was true, just as his head starts to distort, as if something wants to burst out of it. In short, Washington did find the truth he was ready to die for... just not the one he hoped to learn.
  • The Homo Tortor story itself is pretty nightmarish, but the fact that two Crossed individuals decided to recreate it in real life is even worse.
• Lesser of Two Evils has a lot of them.
  • The very beginning of the story has some of this. In the background, news coverage discussing the government's response to the outbreak plays over abandoned, desolate streets. It takes a few panels to see the initial carnage outside a hospital, but then there is a cut to inside the hospital where at first glance it seems like a group of nurses and EMTs are still trying to care for patients despite being surrounded. However, as things move on, it turns out that aside from the patient strapped to the operating table everyone in the operating room is infected. They end up giving her a breast implant using human skulls to enlarge them. Bear in mind the poor woman is alive and uninfected until after the procedure is completed.
  • The same group of Crossed medical professionals later discovers the main group of survivors. While they can't get to them, they do pass the time by mutilating one of the Crossed, specifically by removing his genitals and replacing it with an iron rod that the survivors label a horsecock.
  • Morgan and Olivia instill a sense of Paranoia Fuel in the survivor group when, citing their survival guide, point out that they can't be sure canned food or fish aren't contaminated. This makes the survivors' existence even more precarious.
  • The scavenging party departs the bridge and makes their way to the highway. It at first seems like there's no Crossed in sight and they decide to search a car in the middle of the road for supplies. One of them notices a puddle of liquid near the trunk. It's urine. When they open the trunk they discover a naked man, uninfected but with his eyes removed who naturally begins screaming in terror assuming the scavenging party is more of the Crossed. This leads the actual Crossed to find not only the man (who might have been deliberately left as a bait which would attract their attention by screaming) but the scavenging party as well.
  • When the scavenging party gets to the pharmacy, one of them is attacked and killed not by the Crossed, but by a lion that escaped from the zoo. Just helps remind us it's not only the Crossed that are a threat in this world.
  • The last scavenging party member tries to commit suicide while hiding under the car... Only to survive the gunshot to his forehead. The poor guy has little time to react with horror as he is quickly infected by the Crossed sticking their fingers into the fresh bullet hole...
  • The biggest fuel though has to come from The Reveal that Morgan and Olivia's disruption of the group dynamic was done entirely on purpose. And it wasn't even a simple attempt to weed out the weak or stupid either-the two girls explicitly state that their entire goal was the destruction of the survivor group in order to take what they had. All because their survival guide told them this was necessary for survival. It's only a small comfort that Tyree escapes and reunites with his father Richie, while the girls get taken down by the Crossed.

Wish You Were Here

• The first volume of Wish You Were Here is also terrifying for how easy it is to get infected. One Cavaite becomes a Crossed from eating a fish which apparently had Crossed flesh in its stomach. The Cavaites have to overcook fish to decrease the risk of someone getting infected like that and sometimes it still happens. What happens to Roshan's brother is even worse, and parental concerns at its heaviest. One minute the kid is just running through the fields in territory considered perfectly safe, playing near some birds. Then a horrified Shaky tells the parents that those birds can carry body parts and other stuff they're eating around in their mouth for miles. Frantically, they race over, but the toddler is already curiously picking up an eyeball dropped from one of the birds' beaks, which is quickly shown to have come from a Crossed, as a Crossed rash appears on the boy's forehead.
• The very first issue of Wish You Were Here has a Crossed rape and stab a dolphin to death while singing about his mother. And when Vincent attempts to escape a group of them, he fails and gets dragged on their boat where he is predictably tortured and infected.
• The London outbreak as witnessed by Shaky in one of his flashbacks. The poor guy spends most of the time running away and hiding from the Crossed. Even his father, brother and girlfriend are either killed or infected. At one point he slips and falls down the stairs and into the London underground, which is swarmed by a lot of Crossed doing their horrific errands, and he only escapes thanks to another survivor fighting off nearby with a gun. Even being picked up by the river cops on Thames river provides little relief as the boat in question is attacked and destroyed by a group of Crosssed soldiers. Then, Shaky spends a week running and hiding until he is ambushed by a group of Crossed while trying to use the bushes. Had the Gamekeeper's group not intervened, Shaky's story would have been over there and then.
• The infected Boy gets released by Shaky in an attempt to get included to the sortie, and when he tries to kill Rab, he proves to be even more horrifying than other Crossed seen prior. While your typical Crossed are trying to kill you, they at least let out hammy taunts and death threats. The Boy, on the other hand? Completely silent (due to having been mute even before becoming the Crossed), but just as ferocious.
• The sight of the Crossed attacking the Drift Fleet. One of the biggest survivor groups in the series gone just like that in one bloody page. And the last Wish You Were Here volume opens with Cava residents actively defending their island from the entirety of the former Drift Fleet members, including Dora, who personally claims the life of one of the Cavaites.
  • As bad as it was, it gets even worse when Shaky discovers an infected Tabitha seaching through his sketches. Keep in mind that Tabitha was pregnant by this point, and Shaky's question about the baby goes unanswered.
• Halfway through the final volume, Shaky and certified badass Scary Black Man Des finally go to Clay Loan to deliver the envelope to the Nun and set up a meeting between her group of organized Crossed and the Cava-ites. As soon as Shaky writes his answer, Des takes the envelope (which Shaky had been carrying around the whole time in his pocket and handling with his bare hands) and licks it in order to seal the thing. The action is so unconscious, so simple and ingrained, that it doesn't even register that the thing might have been booby trapped (as we find out later, it was rigged with the Crossed urine, and for Shaky himself too, Des just happened to take the bullet unknowingly) until he mentions that it tastes "sorta salty". What follows is equal parts Nightmare Fuel and Tearjerker as the stone-faced and previously-unflappable Des is immediately thrown into a massive Freak Out as he frantically explains his past to Shaky before he can turn completely.
  Des: *licks the envelope* .... Sorta... salty. *realization sets in, he begins to panic* Sh-Shaky. Listen... Listen! I lost my son inna first fuckin' days of all this!
  Shaky: What?
  Des: Oh God. Oh God! M-My boooooy! I left 'im behind! Fuckin' ran! My poor Isaac...
  Shaky: *turns around* Des, what's with y-
  Des: *falls to his knees, clutching the sides of his head* Hhhhhate! You 'ear me? It's... It's fuckin' overwhelmin'! Like...rest of you? I've seen, bruv. Believe! Survival. Fear, innit? That's what drowns the noise... But me? I hated. Hated myself for losing one kid. Hated the other one for survivin'. And hated every fuckin' thing in between cos it's easier'n thinkin'! *pulls off his helmet* Truth is. Ffffffuck! T-Truth is...
  Shaky: *realizes what's happening* Oh no. *points his gun at Des*
  Des: *grimaces as the Cross forms on his face, tears welling up in his eyes* Truth is I'm lookin' forward to this. *reaches for his gun, the transformation starting to take hold* My daughter. HA!!! T-Tell her. HA HA HA!!! Tell her I love her.
• Sure, the Gamekeeper had it coming, but his death is so gruesome that we only learn about it from Rab's words as be observes the scene from afar through binoculars. As Shaky and Aoileann pull him out of the boat, Shaky shoves a flare gun into his mouth and pulls the trigger. Rab describes everything what happens, which includes the Gamekeeper's eyes emitting smoke.
  Rab: Hhh. Th'man's heid's on fire. His eyes're smokin'. He cannae scream.
• One Crossed special titled The Folly centers on Isaac, the son of the previously-mentioned Des. Isaac is a heavyset, overly imaginative and asthmatic kid who had broken his foot in the days before the outbreak began. His dad ends up abandoning him when he trips while trying to run away, but surprisingly he does not get killed in that moment, instead managing to take refuge on the top of a tower (the eponymous "folly", or ornamental building) located nearby. While he's safe at the top of the tower, he's stuck with the decaying body of the farmer who blew his head off with a shotgun right after Isaac reached the top, he has a limited supply of food, he dropped his inhaler while fleeing the Crossed, and his broken foot limits his ability to run so he can't escape. As the comic goes on, he begins trying to pass the time by devising a backstory for an elderly lady Crossed (who is regularly beaten and maimed by the other younger Crossed, many of whom used to bully Isaac before the outbreak) at the bottom of the tower. Eventually, she lures him down by putting his inhaler at the tower's door, which he goes to retrieve as he's having an asthma attack and will die otherwise. Surprisingly, she doesn't attack him when he goes to get it, but instead goes to the top of the tower to get the keys to the barn she used to own before the outbreak. Isaac gets detected by the other Crossed, but before they can get him, she attacks and butchers her fellow Crossed with a combine harvester. The way it's set up implies she retains some capacity for compassion despite being infected and that Isaac might manage to get to safety after all. That is, until the final panel, when she shrieks about how she's going to get the 'pigboy' (probably to alert other Crossed to his presence, though we never find out) as Isaac looks over his shoulder in terror.

Crossed +100, Mimic and American History X

• The very first issue has Future's group discovering one of its members, Forward Dietrich, torn apart by a pack of wolves. Not only was Forward a teenager, not only do we get a pretty sight of his carcass, but it also proves that even without as many Crossed around as before, Nature Is Not Nice and has always been such.
• The sight of the Salt Clan attacking Chooga and the reveal of Robbie Greer being Jokemercy.
• The entirety of the Sadistic Choice offered by Bashful's branch of the Salt Clan. They find out all the weaknesses of the human settlements, then surround them, and with their representative (usually Jokemercy) having one mother of a Slasher Smile demand a large number of people of a certain age to be sacrificed to them to rape and torture every year (keep in mind some of those settlements are fairly small and without many people in the first place). They also order that the settlers burn their archives, cut off the electricity and start reading Crossed scripture and that they raise a Crossed baby to teach it to be human-like (presumably for infiltration purposes). Any settlement that protests or refuses finds itself attacked in ways they hadn't thought about (like the Crossed coming through tunnels in Lubbock, Texas) and end up largely slaughtered. And some of those towns that do take the deal are trapped in that situation for years before Bashful's forces are pushed back. Any town where one of the babies dies (from natural causes or otherwise) is forced to sacrifice twenty people, then take in a new baby. The sight of the Crossed army showing up outside Murfreesboro and making their demands is a very frightening and effective cliffhanger ending, and while they are defeated there, it involved the grim task of sacrificing the hostages being turned over.
• Serial killer and cannibal Beauregard Leander Salt, the "Phonebook Killer," who was already so twisted, evil, monstrous and insane when he was "normal" that he didn't notice anything different at all when he was infected with the Crossed Virus. The infection did not reveal to him anything he didn't already know.
  • Salt's reaction upon seeing a Crossed wearing babies as shoes was that of pure joy, because the world was finally seeing things as he did.
  • The beginning of the outbreak doesn't even change Salt's morning routine. He goes to the coffee shop, grabs coffee and a danish and reads the paper, all while the rest of the patrons are being brutally raped and/or murdered. He displays more interest in the news about the financial crisis than in the activities of the Crossed in the cafe. The Crossed don't attack him at any point and he doesn't even notice the cross on his face until he returns home in the evening.
• The end of Crossed +100. One of Salt's descendants successfully infects the bulk of the army sent to destroy the Salt Clan for good. This is after it was revealed said descendant wanted to finish off the humans rather than following Salt's plan that required the survival of at least some uninfected humans. The final shot of the last issue is that descendant raising her arms to the sky in front of the new horde.
• The burning of the North Carolina settlement in the first issue of Mimic, particularly what happens to their leader. It happens half a century after the C-Day, and just to rub salt in the wound, the leader was the only person of the whole community to have witnessed the C-Day in person.
• Regular Crossed are frightening. Super-Crossed are frightening, but somehow, the feral troglodyte Crossed from "American History X" can feel even more frightening, possessing the kill-crazy viciousness of regular Crossed, lacking any idea of how to do anything else, not to mention having some very creepy appearances.

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