Raising Stony Mayhall

by Daryl Gregory

  “Future generations are always at risk,” Stony said. “Nuclear war, global warming, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis—pick your poison.”

  “Don’t be flip.”

  “Alice, my people are being killed, they’re committing suicide, they’re being experimented on. I can’t just stand by and do nothing.”

  “What about your family? What about Mom? You’re willing to trade her in for your ‘unique point of view’?”

  “That’s—” He couldn’t speak. She knew where his heart was. She could drive a stake straight into it.

  “What about the rest of the fucking planet, Stony? All the living, breathing people that you’re gambling with?”

  He took a breath. “I think about that all the time, Alice.”

  Alice studied the rearview mirror. Watching Nessa? After a minute she said, “Okay. When is it happening, this public hanging?”

  “We’re calling it D-day,” he said. “June first.”

  “That’s in two months. You couldn’t have told me sooner?”

  He thought, Would it have made a difference? But instead he said, “I’m sorry. But you can’t tell anyone.”

  “The hell with that. I’m calling Crystal and Ruby tonight.”

  “You can’t do that! Crystal’s phone is probably tapped.”

  “Then I’ll send her one of the TracFones you sent me.”

  She was so angry. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. Nothing tonight had gone as he’d expected.

  “Can I call you in the morning?” he asked.

  “I’ll be driving back.”

  “Tomorrow night then.”

  “I thought you said it was too risky to call.”

  “I’ll send you a new phone as soon as I can,” he said. “Two phones.” Then he lifted the diary. “Can I keep this?”

  “Mr. Cooper didn’t have the key, but I don’t imagine you’ll have too much trouble.”

  She was right; it looked like he could snap it with his bare fingers. “Alice, I can’t thank you enough. For everything—this trip, talking to the Coopers, taking care of Mom—”

  “Stop it,” she said. “You don’t get to be the nice one. Not when you’re about to blow up the world.”

  * * *

  Later, Stony would think of these weeks as the Farewell Tour. Stony and Nessa circled back to Michigan, then worked their way back east, stopping at safe houses in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. On the Tuesday of the last week of April he was in a basement den, talking to four LDs, all of whom had been in hiding since the original outbreak, and their breather sponsor, a man in his late seventies with ropy muscles and a sarcastic laugh. His motivation for protecting the LDs had something do with his antigovernment, antitax belief system. He’d proudly shown Stony the automatic rifle he kept in the living room for the day the Diggers tried to break into his house.

  “No one is asking you to come out in the open right away,” Stony told the LDs. “First will be the television campaign. I can’t tell you the exact date, but you’ll know it when you see it. Then the book will come out. Then we’re going to have blogs and videos, an entire website to put a human face on our people. We are going to be so public, so open, that the Diggers won’t be able to attack us without looking like Nazis.”

  The three men and one woman stared at him, hollow-eyed. The people had been like this in so many of the houses they’d visited. Forty years of hiding had taken its toll. Yes, they were still LD, but the split seemed to be 20 percent L and 80 percent D. Most of the people were Lumpists—or at least wore the Lump pendants.

  “Once the first phase of the public relations campaign is over, we’ll be able to bring you to Calhoun Island. No more hiding in basements! I’ve been there, and I can promise you, it’s paradise. Sunny beaches, crystal clear water, and fresh air.”

  One of his cellphones vibrated in his pocket—a short buzz that meant a text message. That wouldn’t be Alice, then—she never texted.

  “Why not now?” one of the LD men said. His voice was a thing of scrapes and rasps, an engine that had not been started in ages. “Move us now.”

  “The logistics are complicated,” Stony said. The cellphone buzzed again, another text. “We’ve been able to move households to the island in cases of emergency, but it’s not easy, and right now, in the current environment, it’s extremely risky. Once things loosen up—once we feel more secure—we’ll be able to move anyone who wants to go.” The phone vibrated again and he dug it out of his pocket. It was the red phone—and only two people had its number. “Excuse me,” he said. “I know this is so rude, but I really need to take this.”

  He walked to the other side of the room, near a stone fireplace that looked like it hadn’t been fired in decades. The message was from a number he didn’t recognize, but that wasn’t surprising; Delia and Blunt changed phones as often as he did. There were three messages, and from the time stamps it looked like they’d been queued up and sent at once. They were all picture messages. He opened the first one and saw that it was a photo of a computer monitor, and the monitor was showing a document. There were two columns of text on the document, but the picture was too small for him to make out the characters. The caption said only “b.” Mr. Blunt.

  He zoomed in on the picture close enough to read the top three lines:

  elena gomez bog

  eric haslett mad

  terry alsup iad

  He looked at the other pictures, and they, too, were of documents on a screen. None of the others had captions. He wrote a one-character message in reply: “?” When that was sent, he forwarded the pictures to Delia.

  “I’m so sorry,” Stony said, returning to the group. The LDs were talking among themselves. The woman looked at him and said, “What if they don’t care?”

  “Pardon?” Stony said.

  “What if they don’t care about looking like Nazis?” she said. “It hasn’t stopped them before.”

  “Then we’re no worse off than we are now,” Stony said. “Those of us who appear in public may be in danger, but you’ll be as safe here as you’ve always been. It’s not until it works that you have to risk anything. You’ll be safe.”

  A lie, or almost one. Alice could be right, and the publicity would create a frenzy for finding the undead that would rival the hunts of ’68. Or it could be that only the leadership—Stony, Calhoun, Delia, and the others—would be decapitated, leaving the houses without a central organization, a communication system, or Calhoun’s money. And that would be an end as final as if each house had been burned to the ground.

  But he couldn’t tell them that. Just as he couldn’t tell them that they had no choice. They were dying here.

  “My message to you is to hang on,” Stony said. “Change is coming.” He shook each person’s hand. “Just hang on.”

  The raspy-voiced man gripped Stony’s hand. “Is it true?” he asked. “You grew from a baby?”

  “Yes,” he said. They always asked this. “I was found by the side of the road, just after the outbreak of 1968. I was raised by a kind family who kept me hidden.”

  “And at the prison?” the man said. “Show us.”

  “Yes,” the woman said, and suddenly the other LDs seemed to grow more alert. “The Release.”

  “Show what?” the sponsor asked.

  Stony glanced at Nessa. She’d watched this scene a dozen times by now. He reached up and began to untie the bandanna. “The shot came at close range,” he said. “Only a few inches.”

  “Because they had you chained,” the woman said.

  “That’s right,” he said. “They’d tied me to the chair with chains.”

  “But the chains fell away,” she said.

  They all wanted this, the miracle story. “That’s what frightened them,” Stony said. “When the locks opened, the chains dropped, and the prison guard raised his pistol and fired.” He pulled aside the cloth so they could see the indentation. “Right here. I’ve patched it up since then. But the
hole went straight through. To here, at the back.”

  They stared at him, at full attention now. “It’s okay,” he said. “You can touch it.”

  One by one they put their fingers against the skin of his forehead. They were always gentle, as if afraid of poking through the plate. In his pocket, the phone vibrated again, this time repeatedly—a phone call coming in. He ignored it; he could call Blunt back in a few minutes.

  The rasping man was touching his forehead now. “How is that possible?” he said. “A shot to the head …”

  “It’s not possible,” Stony said. “It’s flat-out impossible. But as the Lump said, we’re all impossible. And so that means anything’s possible. We have the power to survive even terrible things. We will get through these dark days.”

  That was usually his final word, the last bit of inspirational fluff to keep them from killing themselves before D-day. The first time he’d said it to a group in a safe house, weeks ago, he felt as if this were some essential truth. By the third time it had taken on the tinny echo of a slogan. Now, after dozens of repetitions, the words were noise and he felt like a fraud, a bad actor droning his lines. A politician.

  “I’m afraid we have to say good night,” he said. “Nessa and I have to—”

  “This is awful!” the rasping man said. He looked distraught.

  Stony said, “I’m sorry?” The other LDs turned to the man, confused.

  “What if we can’t die?” the man said. “What if we can never die?”

  Stony looked from the man to the other LDs. He could see it in their faces: the question taking root, and behind their eyes the first blossom of fear.

  “I … I don’t think …,” Stony said.

  “What an interesting question!” Nessa said brightly, and tugged Stony toward the door. “But we’re way behind schedule.”

  From An Oral History of the Second Outbreak:

  … No, we didn’t know what we were protecting. Could have been the Commander’s secret recipe for all we knew. But it didn’t matter. We had a job to do, and we were prepared to hold the compound as long as possible, and the most important part of the compound was the Kitchen. I don’t know why they called it that. Maybe because of the fail-safe. It was fifty feet underground, only one way in, with two doors big as bank vaults and a no-man’s-land between them, you know, like an airlock. The whole place was locked down. It was a transmission dead zone, no network connections at all. Only four or five LDs had permission to work down there, and everyone understood that if the Kitchen was breached those people were toast.

  But nobody was supposed to get that far, ever. We were trained to kill anything and everything that moved. Diggers? The Army? LD hordes? Bring ’em on. But Mr. Blunt … They never covered Mr. Blunt in the course materials.

  I still don’t know how he got down there. All of a sudden he’s in the security cameras, walking right behind one of the Kitchen staff, like he’s got a gun to the guy’s back. There’s a long corridor between the two doors, about thirty feet, that’s the only part of the basement covered by cameras. At the end of the hall is the second door, and behind that is the Kitchen itself—nobody topside ever gets to see what’s in there. So we’ve got this intruder onscreen, with no ID. All we can see is the suit and half a face beneath that weird hat. I should have guessed then—of course I’d heard of Mr. Blunt—but I didn’t put it together. None of us did.

  Anyway, they send us down, Me and Devon and Sal and Mick, to check out what’s going down and shoot the fucker if need be. The first door locks behind us—only the topsiders can let us out now. I go in first, covered by the rest of them, guns out, full drill. And when I swing around the second door, the guy in the suit is just standing there. He’s got his back to me, standing in front of one of the computers. The Kitchen staffer is on the floor, flat on his stomach, arms spread, as if he’s afraid to move, which he probably is.

  I shouted at him to get the fuck down, but Blunt, Blunt didn’t even move from the computer. He’s standing up, and taking a picture of the screen with his phone. Then he puts up a finger and says, “Just a second, almost finished,” and takes another fucking picture. Then I see that wooden hand, and shit, I know who it is.

  I fired my weapon. I think I hit him. I must have hit him.

  I’ve never seen anyone move like that, living or dead. He spun away from the computer and then there’s this sword in his hand—pop, like a magic trick, like that guy in the movies—and the next thing I know I’m on the floor and looking up at everybody. I can’t move my feet, and Blunt is whirling around the room like a fucking Dervish. I see Devon lose his gun arm, the finger still pulling the trigger. Then Blunt cuts down through Sal’s leg and she falls on the floor. And I think, Oh, that’s why I’m down here. I look down at my legs but my legs aren’t there. They’re about five feet away, one boot leaning into another.

  And I can’t believe it. It’s hard to get your mind around something like that. Oh, I’ve been cut in half. By a wooden guy with a sword. By fucking Pinocchio.

  Now Mick is down, too, and that’s all of us, laid out on the floor. Nobody’s dead, but every one of us is missing parts, and some of us are handling that a little better than others. Me, I figured out early in training how to turn off pain, but that’s not a trick everyone can hold on to.

  Now Blunt’s looking at his phone again. I tell him, You’re not going to get any bars down here. And he says, I’m aware of that. He plays with the phone a bit more, then he strolls over to me and points the sword at my neck and says, You almost made me break my promise. And I say, Yeah, what promise is that?

  He flicks his arm and the sword is gone. Up his sleeve I guess. He crouches down where my legs should be and he says, I don’t suppose they’re going to let me walk out of here. He says it like he already knows the answer. Because of course they’re not going to let him out. I tell him about the fail-safe—the aerosolized kerosene, the white phosphorous igniters. The whole Kitchen, I tell him, is designed to go up in a flash.

  And he laughs. If you can’t stand the heat, he says.

  But I’m not fucking laughing. I tell him that in about sixty seconds they’re going to open the jets and hit the WP and we’re all going to die. And he looks at me and says, but you can’t die, I took a vow. I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me or not.

  He thinks for a minute, then he cinches up the bottom of my uniform so my guts don’t spread out all over the floor. I was damn glad I couldn’t feel anything down there. Then he starts dragging me, right out of the Kitchen and down the hallway. He stops in front of the vault door and says, Do you have friends up there? I don’t say anything. I’m not about to be used as a hostage. Then he looks up at the camera and says, This woman doesn’t have to die. None of these people have to die.

  At this point, topside is seeing everything on the cameras, and with me and the rest of the team down, the protocol is to hit the button. Burn everything. I lay on the floor waiting for that smell, that Apocalypse Now smell. But nothing happens.

  See, I did have friends up there. And no LD wants to die in fire. It was stupid and it was sentimental, and if they didn’t hold off on hitting that button I wouldn’t be here now in this fucking chair.

  Anyway, Blunt shrugs, then goes back down the hallway, and he and the Kitchen staffer pull the rest of the team to the door. Their torsos, anyway. They left a lot of limbs behind. The Kitchen staff guy, though, he’s fine, just a couple of bullet holes.

  Then Blunt says to the cameras, I’ll be waiting in the Kitchen. And he just walks away. When he gets past the second door he shuts it behind him. I start yelling up at the cameras, hit the button! Hit the button! Because I know Blunt is up to something. Somehow that second door really isn’t locked, and soon as the main door opens for us he’s going to come sprinting down that hallway with his fucking samurai sword. But topside isn’t listening to me. They didn’t see what happened in the Kitchen. They didn’t see how fast he moves. They don’t know anything except that they
can pull their buddies out, then torch the bastard who did this to them.

  I hear the clunk of the vault locks opening. Then the B team is yanking me through the door, they’re pulling us all through, and in about five seconds we’re all on the other side, my three guys and the Kitchen staff guy. Then somebody topside hits the Big Red Button. I thought we’d hear something. An explosion or something. But the vault door didn’t even get warm.

  It wasn’t until ten minutes later, when we were back topside, that one of the B team said to me, Hey Sheila, did you just beep?

  When they were fifteen minutes out of the safe house, onto the highway, Stony’s red phone rang again. It was the number Blunt had used to send the text messages. “What’s going on?” Stony said.

  “Who is this, please?” a male voice said. It was not Mr. Blunt.

  Stony clicked off the phone and stared at it. A few seconds later it rang again. He rolled down the window.

  “What are you doing?”

  He broke open the back of the phone, pulled out the battery, then snapped the flash card. He rolled down the window and tossed the pieces, one by one, into the dark beside the highway.

  “Who’s been calling you?” Nessa asked. “Is it the Diggers?”

  “How could the Diggers have this number?”

  “You just look so worried, I thought—”

  “I don’t know who it is,” he said. Mr. Blunt had contacted him first, with the text messages. Then someone else had gotten the number and called him. Unless it had never been Blunt at all. He dug out his second phone and began texting Delia.

  “I would really like to know what’s going on,” Nessa said. “I can’t do my job unless you let me.”