Raising Stony Mayhall

by Daryl Gregory

  He had only a few hours until daylight. By then he had to be miles away.

  He walked to an expanse of wood-paneled wall covered by his old Kiss poster, put a finger into the small hole next to Paul Stanley’s star-painted eye, and pulled. The panel slid out from the wall. Behind it was a thick metal door that Mr. Cho had rescued from salvage for him. He pulled open the door to reveal a narrow closet lined with sheet metal. There was just enough room for a pallet of old blankets and a small bookshelf that held his favorite books and two flashlights. It was his secret vault. His fortress of solitude.

  Jesus, what had he been thinking?

  Hanging from a hook above the pallet was a long overcoat with high lapels, and a broad-brimmed hat—a costume straight out of Jack Gore’s closet in Deadtown. He put the hat into the suitcase. Then he shrugged into the coat, forcing his dead arm into the sleeve.

  He heard the distant sound of helicopter blades. From the floor above him, a door slammed open, and a voice called his name.

  He didn’t climb up through the trapdoor—he didn’t want anyone to know about that route—but went out through the cellar door. Outside, the sound of the helicopters was thunderous. A chopper had passed over the house and was flying in the direction of the hospital. He hurried around to the front of the house and saw the lights of a second helicopter, a few hundred yards away, rising up out of the dark. It had set down in the yard in front of the Chos’ house and now it had nosed forward, heading toward him. He pressed himself against the wall of the house—and miraculously, it passed overhead, barely clearing the roof. He watched the lights of the two aircraft disappear in the distance.

  A motorcycle sat in front of his house, a Triumph with a bottle-green gas tank. He edged up to the front door and leaned in. In the living room, a man in jeans and a brown leather jacket stood with his back to Stony, a black motorcycle helmet still on his head. He was listening to someone in the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the house.

  Stony pushed through the door. The rider turned at the sound. The helmet had a full, black-tinted visor, masking the face, but something in that movement made him realize it was a woman. Behind her, a taller figure stepped out of the kitchen.

  She was dressed in white painter’s pants, and a black, formfitting top, and a purple, frayed scarf. Her hair was longer than he’d ever seen it, frizzed out, wild, windblown and electrified.

  “Stony!” Crystal pushed past the motorcyclist and threw her arms around him. “Oh my God, we thought you’d been hurt.” A crazy thing to say. He was the last person who could be hurt. She told him she’d called home, but the phone was busy, and then when she called back Mom was leaving for the hospital. Junie and Kwang had been in an accident.

  “Are they okay?” Stony asked.

  “I don’t know. Mom was going to find out. Were you there?”

  He told her what had happened, but rushed and jumbled, and without detail: Kwang drunk, the accident, the fight at the party, Junie high on something. How the firemen saw him. How he’d run.

  The motorcyclist had gone into the kitchen and returned carrying a blue metallic helmet. “Crystal,” she said. “We’ve got to go.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Stony said.

  “This is Delia,” Crystal said. “You can trust her. There are other people looking for you, Stony, government people. We’ve heard them on the radio. Delia will get you out of here.”

  Stenciled on the front of her helmet in small type were the letters LDA. She flipped up her visor. Stony blinked at her, amazed.

  “See?” Crystal said. “You can trust her.”

  “They’re already at the hospital by now,” Delia said. “Two teams of fast responders. It won’t take them long to figure out where your sister and your friend live and send a team here. Five, ten minutes tops. You have to come with me. Now.”

  Stony couldn’t stop looking at her face.

  “It’s either us or them,” Delia said. “And trust me, you’d much rather ride with me than burn with them.”

  “Go,” Crystal said. “Go with her.”

  “I have a suitcase, some things—”

  “No fucking time, Stony. Are you getting on the bike or not?”

  He turned to Crystal. “Tell Mom. Tell her I’m so sorry.” She bent and kissed his forehead.

  Delia put the helmet in his hands. “Safety first,” she said.

  He followed her to the front yard. She started the motorcycle. He climbed behind her and tugged on the helmet with his good hand. “I’ll call as soon as I can,” he said to Crystal.

  Delia looked over her shoulder at him. The left side of her face, from temple to jaw, was exposed bone. Her lidless left eye seemed to pierce him. “Welcome to the Living Dead Army,” she said. “Hang on.”

  He’d never moved so fast. His experience was limited, of course, but the speed seemed crazy, even on the empty road. He gripped her waist with his good arm and bent his head into the buffeting wind. With his mouth next to her helmet he yelled, “Where are we going?”

  She didn’t answer. They were heading north, or mostly north, along back roads, avoiding the highways. The sky to his right glowed faint pink. His mother used to sing a hymn called “I Will Meet You in the Morning.” Junie liked to sing harmony, in a low, soft alto he loved. He knew that she was dead. She’d been dying beside the road. He thought, I should have given my heart to Jesus. It didn’t matter if he didn’t believe. It would have made Junie so happy to save him.

  After twenty minutes he saw a town in the distance. He guessed it was Effington, or else Manchester. Then Delia abruptly slowed and pulled up behind a white van that was parked along the edge of the road.

  Delia cut the engine and said, “Hop off. We should be—”

  The back doors of the van swung open and a figure leaped out at them. Stony shouted and pushed himself backward off the bike.

  Another ghoul—this one in a brown three-piece suit and a dark gray homburg. The man landed, looked at Stony, then at Delia. “You found him?” He sounded shocked and happy.

  He was shorter than Stony, and his face was pocked with dozens of tiny dark holes that went bone deep. Under his suit he wore a French blue shirt and a striped tie of brown and yellow, firmly knotted. He wore thin black gloves over large hands.

  “We got lucky,” she said. “No problems here?”

  “None. A few cars passed us, but none of them gave us a second glance.”

  Delia said, “John Mayhall, Mr. Blunt.”

  He pulled back from Delia. “My boy, it’s an honor,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you, most of it unbelievable.” He pulled off one glove and extended a hand. The entire hand was carved hardwood, polished and gleaming. The knuckles were wooden ball joints.

  Stony hesitated, then put out his own hand. The long wooden fingers closed around him, sliding with the faintest sound. He did not squeeze, though Stony felt the prosthetics could crush his bones. He could see no springs or wires that made the contraption work.

  Meanwhile, Delia had single-handedly lifted the Triumph into the back of the van. “Nothing on the scanner?” she asked someone inside.

  “They traced the car and went to the Cho house first,” a male voice called back. “They went to the Mayhall house next and questioned Crystal. No mention of you or a motorcycle.”

  “Wait,” Stony said. “They’re in my house?”

  Mr. Blunt looked at his shoes. Delia said, “Don’t worry, they’re not going to do anything to your family.”

  He pulled off his helmet. “You’re lying.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But we don’t have time to talk about this now, and it doesn’t change a thing. Get in the van, John.”

  “No, not until you tell me how you met Crystal, how you found me—”

  “Ah, you think maybe that we’re part of a conspiracy,” Mr. Blunt said, drawing out the word. “And we most certainly are.”

  Delia looked annoyed. “We have nothing to do with the government, Ston
y. There’s an underground network out there, made up of the living dead and breathers who are sympathetic to us. We try to contact those people, though in this case Crystal found us.”

  “But where? I thought she was in New Mexico. You got here so quickly.”

  “Stony, we’ve been driving in this direction for two days. Crystal said you’d be at home. Nobody thought you’d be—” He was sure she’d been about to say “stupid enough.” She said, “We were thirty miles out when the first report went out, from the scene of the car accident. By the time we got into Easterly, they were already reporting your escape. We just got to you first. Happy? Now get in the van.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Delia stared at him. “How the fuck does it matter?”

  “I’m not going until you tell me where we’re going.”

  Mr. Blunt lifted a squeaking arm. “The boy’s staying here,” he said. “In Effington.”

  “You don’t understand what I’ve done,” Stony said. “I can’t let them arrest Crystal, or my mom. I have to know I can get back.”

  “Then you’re an asshole,” Delia said.

  “You can’t—what?”

  “Your sister and your mother risked their lives to save you. We risked our lives. People you don’t even know put their necks out to save you. And you, you’re going to go do what, surrender? No, John. No. You do not have a choice. Get in the fucking van.”

  A bench seat had been set against one wall of the van, opposite the motorcycle and a pile of blankets. Near the front, a bucket seat that looked as if it had been ripped from a sports car had been bolted to the floor.

  The man in the driver’s seat turned and waved. He was a round-faced black man with a thick beard and a high forehead. And he was alive. “That’s Aaron,” Mr. Blunt said. He pulled the van doors closed. “The beard.” Stony sensed that the title was some kind of joke, but he didn’t know what it meant.

  “Glad to have you,” Aaron said. He didn’t seem that glad—he seemed nervous.

  Delia reached up to the shower curtain rod that hung just behind the front seats and spanned the cabin like a roll bar. She tugged the blue vinyl curtain across, cutting them off from Aaron and the morning light shimmering through the windshield. “Keep to the speed limit,” she said through the curtain.

  “I know, I know,” Aaron said.

  Stony looked at the bench seat, then decided to leave that to Mr. Blunt. Instead he sat on the pile of padded moving blankets and leaned back against the motorcycle’s front wheel. The interior of the van smelled of stale cigarette smoke and something earthier, like the dense, worm-rich soil he excavated from the basement.

  The van lurched into motion, and Mr. Blunt put a metal hand to the low ceiling to steady himself. “Is it true what Crystal said? That they found you as a baby?”

  Stony didn’t answer.

  “And then you—and this is the part that we all find hard to believe—you grew up?”

  “Enough questions,” Delia said. She nodded to Stony’s arm. “It looks like you hurt yourself.”

  Stony glanced at his shoulder. His shirt was torn above his bicep, but of course there was no blood. He hadn’t been able to move his arm since the accident. Dead Weight, he thought. The title of the fourth Deadtown Detective novel.

  “You could move it if you wanted to,” Mr. Blunt said. “As the Lump says, ‘Integrity is all.’ ”

  “It happened in the accident. I think I ripped a muscle or something,” Stony said.

  “Doesn’t matter. If it’s still attached, you can move it. Still belongs to you, doesn’t it?”

  “Give it,” Delia said. She squatted beside him and circled his wrist in one cold hand. She moved the fingers of her other hand along his bicep, to the top of his shoulder. He looked at her face, looked away. The gray flesh of her cheek stopped at her bare jawbone, like a thin slice of old meat on a china plate.

  Her fingertips dug deep into his flesh. She frowned. “No pain?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Hold that thought.” She yanked down on his wrist, and at the same time slammed the palm of her hand against the top of his arm. He yelped, more from surprise than discomfort.

  “It was only dislocated,” she said. “You’re fine now.”

  He flexed his fingers. He was afraid to lift his arm.

  “I said, you’re fine.” She turned back toward the curtain.

  Stony raised his arm a few inches, then lifted his hand to the ceiling and back. “See?” Mr. Blunt said. “Integrity was not compromised, and so the self persists.”

  Once they reached a highway, the van accelerated and the interior became a rattling, thrumming tin can, making conversation nearly impossible. Thank God. Stony was free to stare at the metal floor. He knew he should be paying attention, trying to figure out where they were going, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His mind raced but he couldn’t focus on anything. His mother had to be crazy with grief and worry. Kwang could be hurt, maybe dead. And Junie—he couldn’t think about Junie. He craved sleep. He was jealous of that blankness, that thought-erasing void that he’d watched his sisters and mother fall into, that he’d read about in a thousand novels. He ached for it, just eight hours of mental silence.

  They rode over rough back roads and uneven highways, and the air grew thick with the smell of cigarette smoke: Delia, Mr. Blunt, and even Aaron seemed to be chain-smokers. About an hour in, Stony heard the chop of helicopter blades, but the van didn’t stop or speed up. Aaron had a CB up front with him; he spoke into it a few times each hour, and a staticky voice answered. He seemed to be talking to a car ahead of them on the road. After three hours or so, Aaron, Delia, and the person on the CB agreed that they needed gas. When they rolled to a stop, Stony got to his feet.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” Delia said.

  “I need to call my mom.”

  “You can’t do that. The Diggers are probably waiting for your call.”

  Diggers? he thought. “My sister Alice, then. I have to tell them about Kwang, about—I have to tell them where I am.”

  “You’re not anywhere yet,” Mr. Blunt said.

  Delia said, “Later, Stony. We’ll get a message to your family when we can. We have three hundred miles to go today. Now, do you eat?”

  “Do you?” He meant both of them—Delia and Mr. Blunt.

  “I don’t, but some of us never got out of the habit. Aaron can get you a snack if that would make you feel better.”

  “No, I mean—” He stopped himself. What was the polite way to ask, Do you eat brains? “Everything I’ve heard about you. The hunger, the rage—”

  “The taste for human flesh,” Mr. Blunt said.

  “No. Yes.”

  Mr. Blunt laughed. Delia fixed Stony with that bulging, milky eye. “There’s no you here, Stony. Just us. The faster you drop all that mass-media bullshit they’ve been feeding you, the healthier you’ll be. Do you know anything about yourself? What you are?”

  “Amnesia’s not uncommon among us,” Mr. Blunt said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “See?”

  Delia said, “Everything you need to know, you already know. Do you have an uncontrollable urge to kill? Are you trembling with desire to bite into warm flesh and eat their organs?”

  He thought of the party, the boys on the stairs. Only a few hours ago, when Junie was alive, when Kwang was unhurt. “No,” he said. He didn’t feel like killing now, and he’d never felt the urge before tonight. Still, he felt like he was lying.

  “That’s right, Stony. Once the fever passes, you can control it.”

  Aaron came back to the vehicle, then opened the curtain a few inches. “Okay then.” He seemed calmer than he’d been when Stony climbed in the van. “Everyone ready?”

  They were living dead: They could have driven all day, all night. But Aaron was human, and eventually he needed to sleep. Near midnight he pulled in to a motel outside of Rawlins, Wyoming. The othe
r car, Stony learned, would be stopping fifty miles from here. Delia said that Stony would meet the rest of the crew when they reached home.

  “Which is where?”

  “Need-to-know basis.”

  “I just want to know where we’re going.”

  Mr. Blunt said, “Did you choose that name, or was it given to you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s an appropriate nom de mort,” Mr. Blunt said.

  “You mean, like ‘Delia’?” Stony said. She didn’t answer. “In the first Deadtown Detective book, Delia’s the name of the girl who tries to sell Einstein’s brain. And in book three she’s caught smuggling guns to the prisoners.”

  “I never read them.”

  “Stone Dead,” Mr. Blunt said. “Stone Cold. The Gravestone …”

  Aaron pulled around to the rear of the motel and backed the van up to the building. “I’ll check it out,” he said. Mr. Blunt had put on a wide-brimmed fedora, chocolate brown with a black band. Delia grabbed a straw sun hat from a bag on the floor and handed Stony a Cleveland Browns ball cap. He couldn’t wait to get out of the cramped vehicle.

  A knock on the back of the van door: all clear.

  They hopped out one by one, crossed the short stretch of sidewalk, and then entered the room. In that brief moment in the open, Stony got the impression of vast emptiness surrounding them. The motel felt like the only building in a hundred miles of dark prairie, a lone ship at sea.

  Delia was last in. She shut the door and Mr. Blunt said, “Another mission accomplished.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Aaron said. He looked both exhausted and relieved to be out of the van. “I’ll be in the next room. Wake me at five.”

  After he left, Mr. Blunt said to Stony, “He likes to sleep alone. He’s a good man for a breather, but he can’t quite bring himself to close his eyes when we’re around.”

  The room was bigger than the interior of the van, but not by much. Two double beds, a green carpet, a tiny TV, pressboard dressers. Mr. Blunt turned on the TV and began flipping through channels filled with snow. Delia sat by the window, keeping an eye on the van through a gap in the curtain.