Raising Stony Mayhall

by Daryl Gregory

  Stony perched at the end of one of the beds. Mr. Blunt found a clear channel, then sat beside him. He crossed his legs with a squeaking sound. One pant leg had ridden up, exposing a length of gnarled wood where his leg should have been. Mr. Blunt saw him staring and laughed. He rapped on the wood and said, “Shin splints.”

  “That’s a terrible joke,” Stony said.

  “I’m a warped man.”

  “Please, stop it.”

  Onscreen was a black-and-white movie, a comedy with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant chasing a baby cougar around a big house. Mr. Blunt kept up a running commentary on Howard Hawks and Grant’s homage to Harold Lloyd. “Grant famously ad-libbed here. It’s the first time in film anyone used the word gay to refer to homosexuals.”

  “Uh, okay,” Stony said. He could not get over the fact that he was sitting in a room with other dead people, people like him. He’d grown up thinking he would be alone the rest of his life—whatever a life counted for in his case—hiding in basements and barns. He’d convinced himself that the world of Jack Gore was a fantasy. But here he was, on the run with the Living Dead Army.

  “So what do we do now?” Stony asked. “Sit here all night?”

  “The life of a fugitive is not easy, my boy,” Mr. Blunt said. “In ’68, I spent five weeks in a dump. An actual dump! I dug my own bunker deep into the garbage pile. I could have lived there forever if it weren’t for the dogs. They knew I was in there, and it drove them crazy.”

  “I dug, too,” Stony said. “I dig. I do a lot of digging.”

  “A common urge,” the man said. “The Lump says that we struggle between two desires, to rise”—his fingers splayed like the spines of a wooden fan—“and to return.” They clacked back together.

  “What’s the Lump?”

  “It’s a who,” Delia said. She tossed Stony his baseball cap. “Walk with me.”

  “Outside?”

  “I think we can risk an excursion.” She pulled on her big sun hat and led him into the parking lot. They walked quickly to get out of the light. At the edge of the lot she looked around, nodded toward an area of deeper dark, and said, “That way.” They marched over uneven ground. A rancid odor drifted in on the wind, slipped away, then returned, stronger. “What is that?” Stony asked. “Something die out there?”

  “You can smell?”

  He knew farm smells, and some summer days they’d catch a whiff of the hog plant outside Easterly. “I think it’s a slaughterhouse,” he said.

  “This is a cattle state,” Delia said. “Plenty of big processing plants. Humans have a gift for large-scale murder.”

  Stony thought, Humans? After a few moments he said, “I just realized that I haven’t said thank you yet. For rescuing me.”

  “It’s what we do,” she said. “About the only thing we can do.”

  “I’m still kinda in shock. Back at the house, when you took off your helmet?” He shook his head. “I’m just having some trouble adjusting.”

  She looked at him. “You thought you were the only one, right? All those years, the only living dead boy in the world.”

  “I thought they killed us all.”

  “Almost all. Just shy of a hundred fucking percent. Some of us who escaped the cleanup gangs were protected by family, though God knows why, after the things we tried to do to whoever was nearest. But mostly it was blind luck. Every one of us has an amazing story—waking up after the fever in a cellar that the humans had missed, or in the bottom of a pile of bodies that hadn’t burned all the way through, or managing to climb out of the fucking grave too late for the party. That’s because all the ones without an amazing story were shot, decapitated, burned, or sent to Deadtown.”

  Stony jerked to a stop. “Wait—what?”

  “I said, or sent to—”

  “Deadtown is real?”

  “It’s just a prison, kid. Really, a couple of prisons—they keep moving it. Some of our people nicknamed it after those books, not the other way around.”

  “Okay, you’re blowing my mind. There’s a prison, and there are undead people … but are you saying we didn’t kill any humans? I mean, you and Mr. Blunt are like me, you’re not … crazy. But everything I’ve read—”

  “Don’t trust the media, Stony.”

  “But they couldn’t make up all those deaths. Seventy thousand people?”

  “They could,” Delia said. “If they wanted to, they could.” She paused. “It just so happens that in this case, they didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, we killed a lot of people. But it wasn’t our fault.”

  “You’re talking about the fever.”

  “It lasts twenty-four to forty-eight hours. During that time, you’re exactly what you’ve read about—a mindless carnivore. But the fever passes. You wake up. You may not remember who you were, or what the hell happened, but you’re sane. You’re not homicidal anymore.”

  “The government has to know this.”

  “Sure they know, Stony. They’ve captured enough of us.”

  “In Deadtown.”

  “Right.”

  Stony stepped away from her, shaking his head, then turned back. “We have to tell people.”

  “Really. Tell them what?”

  “Get the word out. Go on TV. We can show people that we’re not the monsters they think we are.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Why are you making fun of me?”

  “You ever hear of Eli Cohen?” she asked. They resumed walking. “Antiwar activist, bit of a whack job, but his heart was in the right place. In ’69 he met some of the LDs and tried to talk about it. He’s still in prison. Then in ’71 a reporter named Hockner managed to work his way into a safe house—turned out he was working for the government, and ten of us were captured. After that, we stopped talking to reporters. We were a fucking national security threat, Stony, and still are. They’ve killed every one of us who’ve stepped out into the open, or else black-bagged us and hauled us off to their secret medical prison. They can’t afford to have even one LD out in the wild, because we’re still a danger. We can still bite, Stony, even if we choose not to. And because of that, we’re the scariest disease carrier they can imagine. We can wipe them out. We can end the world.”

  ICBM.

  They’d walked in a wide arc, keeping the motel to their left. Delia turned to take them back the way they’d come, well outside the glow of the parking lot lights. They were silent for a long time, and then Stony said, “How many of us are there? This army of yours?”

  “You’ll never know. You’ll only meet a few of us at a time. And when you do, you can’t tell them that story about being a baby and growing up.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The only ones who know the truth are Aaron and Mr. Blunt. Everyone else, you tell them you were bitten two years ago by an LD you didn’t know, and you’ve been hiding out at your mom’s house since then, okay?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to. Just trust me.”

  “Trust you? I just met you.”

  She grabbed his arm and spun him around. Stony was stunned by her strength.

  “Listen, bucko, I saved your fucking life. There are political situations in the LD world that you do not understand. This miracle baby crap? Some of our people are superstitious—hell, some of them are bone stupid—and there are factions that will use that magic fundamentalist shit to make them do stupid things.”

  “What kinds of stupid things?”

  “Shut up. You will be educated, and your eyes will be fucking opened, and on that day you will thank God that I found you first and not some asshole like Billy Zip. But until that day, you’ll keep your mouth shut. Are we clear?”

  Stony stared at her. After a long moment, she released her grip on him.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay!”

  “Okay.”

  Stony wat
ched Delia march off. He thought, Miracle Baby?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1988

  Los Angeles, California

  young brown-skinned girl, perhaps eight years old, rode down the sidewalk on her bike, a purple and pink two-wheeler with a white basket. She seemed to pay no attention to the van pulling up behind her. It wasn’t until she heard the doors of the van open that she put out a leg to stop herself, and looked back—and then gaped as two clowns hopped out of the vehicle.

  Strange, colorless clowns: Their white faces were outlined in black, and they wore black shirts, black pants, and white gloves. The shorter one (who wore black sunglasses, which didn’t seem right, either) slammed shut the van’s sliding door. On it, in white letters, were the words “Goes Without Saying.”

  The clown in the sunglasses hurried toward the front door of the house they were parked in front of, but the taller one turned toward the little girl. His eyes went wide, and his mouth formed a surprised O. Then he crouched and held a finger to his lips. One black-rimmed eye closed in a slow-motion wink.

  The girl dropped her bike and fled. The man stood and watched her run down the sidewalk. Then he slumped his shoulders and dropped his chin, the very picture of disappointment.

  Delia called back, “Are you fucking coming or not?” Then she opened the door without knocking and went inside. Stony sighed—silently—and turned to follow.

  A dead man in a black toupee met them in the hallway, looking distraught. “The mailman’s in the bedroom,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do with him.”

  Roger was an Oldy, one of the Original Living Dead from ’68, his face as gray and mottled as a cardboard egg carton. He wore a bathrobe over a yellow Tweety Bird T-shirt and blue sweatpants.

  “I don’t know what you were doing with him at all, Roger,” Delia said. She took off her sunglasses. “You know better than this.”

  Roger pulled at the neck of his robe, looking insulted. He was one of the fifty-two in her parish scattered throughout safe houses in the Los Angeles area, and this was his third placement.

  Stony said, “On the hotline you said he’d surprised you?”

  “He walked right in the door without knocking! I think he was delivering a package, but still, you don’t just walk in like that, do you? I was sitting right there on the couch. I’d come up to watch The Pyramid. I know I shouldn’t have, but the reception’s so much better up here. The curtains were pulled, and I thought the door was locked. Bob always locks the door on the way to work.” Bob was the breather who owned the house.

  “The mailman saw you?” Stony asked. “He recognized what you were?”

  “I saw it on his face. He was going to run. So I had to … well, grab him.”

  “Jesus,” Delia said. “Did the neighbors see anything?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Show us where he is,” Delia said. Roger stumped down the hallway—one leg was a few inches shorter than the other. She asked, “Did you hurt him?”

  Roger hesitated. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Delia said.

  “We were rolling around a lot. He was fighting, yelling. In all the ruckus, I may have, uh, bit him.”

  Delia grabbed Roger by the shoulder and spun him around. “Did you kill him?”

  “No! It was just a bite, a little, tiny bite. I didn’t even mean to!”

  If you bit him, Stony thought, you’ve already killed him.

  They reached the back bedroom door. There was no sound. Stony said, “Did you knock him out or something? Gag him?”

  “I tied his hands with my belt! Then I just, well, sat on him. When I heard you come in, I told him not to move, or else, and I locked him in here.”

  Stony tried the door, but the knob didn’t turn. He looked at Delia.

  Delia said, “Roger, you do know that bedrooms don’t lock from the outside?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right.”

  Stony stepped back and kicked. The door banged open. There was no one in the room. The blue-green belt from Roger’s robe lay on the bed, next to a red blot the size of a half-dollar. There were two windows in the room, one filled with an air conditioner, the other wide open.

  “Where is he?” Roger yelled.

  “Gee, I don’t know,” Delia said. “It’s a fucking mystery.”

  Stony went to the open window. They were in a single-story bungalow, and the brown September grass was only five feet below. He leaned out and saw a blue-shirted figure dart between the houses and disappear.

  “We’ve got a runner,” Stony said. “Delia, go back to the van, see if you can find his mail truck on the next block—he’s probably heading for that. I’ll try to grab him before he gets there.” She didn’t answer. “Delia?”

  “Fine,” Delia said. “Roger, you’re coming with me. You’ve burned down another fucking safe house.”

  Stony dove through the open window, landed hard on one shoulder, and rolled to a standing position. Undead Advantage No. 12: throwing yourself around like a rag doll, without worrying about concussions or torn muscles. Number 13? The trick he’d learned years ago: relentless, tireless running.

  Stony sprinted in the direction the man had taken. He came out between two houses, and he’d closed the distance to within fifty yards. The mailman was running flat out, with a canvas bag flapping at his side. You had to admire him for hanging on to the mail.

  Stony shouted, “Wait!” The man glanced behind him, then looked a second time, and stumbled.

  Stony thought, That’s right, you thought we were shamblers, didn’t you?

  Thanks to Romero’s endlessly replayed documentary of the outbreak, everyone thought the living dead shuffled around like geriatric patients. But those were the fevered dead, brain-damaged and confused, at the mercy of recalcitrant limbs jerking to their own rhythm. After the fever passed, a sane LD only had to tell the muscles to move, and they moved. Jump, and they jumped. Free will, or its compelling illusion, was restored.

  The man stopped running, turned to face him. His chest heaved, but he looked merely scared and confused, not terrified. Then Stony thought, Oh, right. I’m dressed like a mime.

  He slowed to a stop about ten feet from the man. “I just want to help you,” Stony said.

  The mailman looked Hispanic, perhaps forty years old. His shirt was untucked, and there was blood on his neck and his arm. Roger really had bitten him, maybe more than once. The mailman pointed back toward the bungalow. “Something—” He breathed deep. “Zombie. Bit me.”

  “You don’t have to use the Z-word,” Stony said.

  The man stared at him.

  “Why don’t you come with me,” Stony said. “We can get you some help.”

  He nodded slowly. Stony stepped forward, and the man suddenly slung his bag behind him and bolted for the nearest house. It was a two-story modernist cube with large square windows, surrounded by a chain-link fence.

  Stony swore and started after him. The mailman reached the fence, planted two hands, and vaulted over without breaking stride. The move looked so practiced that Stony wondered if he’d learned it in postal school. Advanced Canine Escape Techniques. Stony’s hurdle was less graceful; he was moving so quickly that he was able to clear the fence, but he landed awkwardly and covered the last twenty feet in a stumbling, headlong rush. He barreled into the man, mashing him against the door with much more force than he’d intended.

  The mailman squawked and began to slide to his knees.

  “Sorry!” Stony said. He stooped, then lifted the man into a fireman’s carry, and the mailman yelped in pain. “Sorry, sorry.” Stony carried him to the fence, nudged open the gate with his hip, and walked into the street. Behind him, the door opened and a voice yelled in Spanish.

  The blue van swung around the corner. Delia was driving, and Roger, thank God, was out of sight in the back. Stony struck a pose: hip cocked, head tilted, thumb raised. The van stopped with its bumper only a few inches from his left knee.

 
Stony pivoted to face the house. A dark-haired woman in an aquamarine pantsuit pointed at him and yelled, “Police! Police!”

  Stony swept his free arm back and bowed to her. The purity of the gesture was marred only by the thrashing captive on his shoulder.

  “We’re never doing that again,” Delia said.

  They hauled him out of the van like a roll of carpet; Stony held his feet and Delia gripped under his arms. During the trip from Mount Washington to Venice they’d secured his wrists with plastic zip ties, mostly to stop him from trying something stupid, and duct-taped his mouth.

  Stony said, “Do what, kidnapping?” But he knew she wasn’t talking about that.

  “And then you take a fucking bow? Are you insane?”

  “That was great,” Roger said from behind them.

  Delia’s safe house was actually two houses, Yellow and Blue, a back-to-back pair of run-down bungalows several miles from the beach, fenced off and partially shielded from the neighbors by overgrown trees. They’d parked the van on the cement patio between the houses, and so only had to carry the mailman in the open for a few seconds before they reached the back door of Yellow. Still, Stony could not help but glance up at the house next door, at the single window that overlooked their backyard.

  Delia caught him. “Quit looking for an audience, farm boy.” She stepped backward through the kitchen door, and then they were inside. “You like dressing up, don’t you?”

  “I thought maybe she’d think it was performance art and wouldn’t call the cops.” Stony shrugged. “I mean, it is Venice. Watch your head, Thomas.” They maneuvered around a corner and entered the living room. Thomas Sandoval was the name on the mailman’s driver’s license. He was still sweating and scared, but part of that was due to the fever coming on.

  “I’m not letting you talk to Mr. Blunt anymore,” Delia said. “He’s a bad influence.”

  It was true, the disguises had been partly Mr. Blunt’s idea. If you can’t hide it, he’d said, paint it red. He’d suggested Mardi Gras masks, but Stony decided that makeup was the better choice, especially if they needed to drive themselves. He was pretty sure it was illegal to drive with a mask on, and it certainly couldn’t help with your peripheral vision.