Raising Stony Mayhall (35 page)

“What, no chauffeur?” Blunt said.

“I gave him the day off.” He drove north, up toward the green ridge that divided the island. The air turned warmer as they pulled away from the shore, but then cooled again as they
climbed the ridge. The road was walled by thick foliage, so Mr. Blunt could see nothing until they came to a break in the greenery, usually at the elbow of a switchback, when suddenly the island fell away beneath them and sky and ocean rushed in to fill the eye.

“How do you get anything done?” Mr. Blunt asked.

Stony laughed, and jerked the wheel into the next turn. “What do you mean?”

“This is completely unmotivating. There’s nothing left to do here. What are you supposed to do—
improve
it? The only proper response is to lie on the beach like a clam.”

“The Commander’s not into lying on the beach. Just wait.”

A few minutes later they crested the ridge. Stony nosed the cart into a gravel overlook. “See?”

Beneath them lay a vast plain of cement shimmering under a lens of heated air, a white beach before the blue water, like the footprint of an evaporated city.

Mr. Blunt looked at Stony.

“Yeah,” Stony said. “He kind of overdid it.”

At the far end of the spaceport was the gantry, three hundred feet tall and still unfinished. Steel and cement buildings huddled around its base. There was no rocket ship in sight, but several of the buildings were large enough to hide one.

“He’s serious?” Mr. Blunt said. “He’s really trying to build it?”

“I know, I know,” Stony said. “It’s kind of Howard Hughes-y.”

“No, it’s kind of L. Ron Hubbard. This is insane.”

“Come on,” Stony said. “We’re supposed to meet at the Command Center.” The way down was quicker—much. Stony zipped down with the engine off, nursing the brakes and leaning into the corners, and several times Mr. Blunt had
to grip the aluminum frame to stay in his seat. “At least three wheels, please,” Blunt said. Stony laughed. Between them they’d survived multiple gunshots and knife wounds. Blunt had outlived
burning
. One golf cart crash couldn’t hurt them.

Stony rolled onto the surface of the spaceport. The tropical sun turned the treeless expanse into a frying pan, and Stony knew that the heat lingered long into the night. Fortunately heat, like cold, was something only breathers had to worry about.

It took almost fifteen minutes to reach the base of the gantry and the buildings there; the huts they’d seen from the top of the ridge grew to be warehouses and offices the size of municipal buildings. The cement buildings looked like gun fortifications, or perhaps bomb test bunkers, with thick walls and long, narrow, glassless windows. Most of the buildings were empty, built in preparation for the Commander’s great project.

They parked next to one of the finished buildings, a four-story tower with blue glass windows. Mr. Blunt climbed out of the cart, straightened his tie, and looked around. “So how far along is it?” he asked.

“The spaceship?” Stony said. “He’s a decade away.” It had taken that long just to get the facilities in place: the gantry, the support buildings, the underground manufacturing facilities. As far as the public—and any government officials watching via satellite—was concerned, Calhoun, Inc. was investing in the commercial spaceflight industry. Zombie colonization of other planets was never going to get into a press release.

Stony said, “They do have a ship prototype, but it’s one-third scale.”

“You’re going to need some tiny astronauts,” Blunt said.

“Naw, we’re just going to send the Lump.” Stony laughed again. He hadn’t laughed this much since … well, since he’d
arrived at the island eight years ago. Chip wasn’t much to talk to, and Calhoun was always performing the role of the Commander, and the staff at the data center thought of him as a boss. Everyone else he communicated with online. Blunt reminded him of life in the house in L.A.—before Deadtown, before everything became so serious.

He thought, not for the first time, How the fuck did I get here?

“Come on,” he said. “The Commander’s waiting.”

They entered a large, granite-tiled lobby with empty display cases and large blank spots where the TVs would display commercials for the wonders of space travel. Etched into the polished cement walls were icons mixing the nautical with 1950s science fiction: great-finned rockets, elaborate compasses, ringed planets, tall ships. Probably the wrong message to send to investors looking for high tech (and despite Calhoun’s cash, they would need outside funding to get past the prototype stage), but the Commander was a slave to his own branding, as committed to his personal style as Tom Wolfe or Leon Redbone.

They took the middle elevator (the only one in service) up to the top floor of the tower. The room looked like a half-sized version of NASA’s Houston control room. The mandatory giant screen was in place, but the rows of desks were empty of computers and screens. By the western window was a small group of LDs. The Commander stood with his arms crossed behind him, gazing out at the empty gantry while he delivered his “promised land” spiel. Two of them were on Calhoun’s staff, but the other six listening to him were new arrivals: LDs who’d been evacuated from Pennsylvania when their safe house sponsor—a man in his early eighties—had been hospitalized. Stony had sent a team in before the sponsor died and his relatives tried to go into the house.

One of the newly arrived LDs saw Stony enter the room and gasped; the others turned.

Mr. Blunt looked at him. “I’ve been wanting to see this in person,” he said.

The group came for Stony, arms out. The first to reach him was a decrepit LD with a missing eye and a mouthful of brilliant dentures. “It’s an honor to meet you,” he said. “An honor. A real honor.” Stony shook his hand, then greeted each of them in turn. Were they shocked by his appearance? He was always afraid of disappointing them. He’d been handsome once. The bandanna covered the most grievous wound to his forehead, but the prison beatings had taken their toll on his face.

But no, they didn’t seem to be shocked. They didn’t seem to be seeing him at all. They wore the same glassy, awed expression that all the newcomers wore. He could have shown up in a floral print dress wearing Kabuki makeup and they would have looked at him in the same way, manufacturing their own vision of Stony Mayhall to match their desires, like conjuring the Virgin Mary out of a water stain.

“I’m so happy you made it here safely,” Stony said.

“Thank God you rescued us,” one of them said. “It was only a matter of time—”

Stony noticed Calhoun staring at them. He was too much of a performer to show jealousy—and his surgically maintained face could convey only a limited range of emotions—but Stony could sense his annoyance. “You should thank the Commander,” Stony said. “It’s his vision and organization that makes all this possible.”

One of the women had her hand on Stony’s arm. She wouldn’t let go.

“It’s coming, isn’t it?” she asked. She was bald, with a gray-blue face that looked like it had been flattened by an anvil:
crushed nose, broken front teeth, cheekbones pressed into planes. “The Big Bite?”

Stony drew away from her. “No, ma’am. No.”

“But you’re
here
. It’s time.”

“No! There will be no Big Bite. We’re not going to attack all those people. They’re just as human as us.”

The one-eyed man said, “But they’re killing us.”

And the woman said, “We’ve been waiting for you!”

Stony held up his hands: one plastic, the other dead flesh. “We’ve got another plan. And soon we’ll be able to tell you about it. But right now—” He nodded at Commander Calhoun. “Someone will show you to your new homes. You’ll be safe here. Right, Commander?”

“Damn straight!” the Commander said. He strode forward and put a hand on the distraught woman’s shoulder. “You won’t have to worry about the Diggers here. Now, Stony and I have to go, but Anna and Rafael here will show you to your new accommodations. Welcome to Calhoun Island!”

Stony and Mr. Blunt took the cue and followed the Commander to the elevator. The Commander held out his hand: “Damn good to see you, Blunt.” The hand was gloved. Calhoun wore at all times a full Integrity Suit, from toes to fingertips, leaving only his face exposed.

“Very good to see you, too, Commander. Quite the place you have here. A veritable Nassau NASA.”

The Commander squinted at him. “That’s right, you like words.”

“Yes,” Blunt said slowly. “I do.”

Several seconds of uncomfortable silence followed. Stony said, “I was telling Mr. Blunt that you were making progress on the ship.”

“Three years,” Calhoun said. The door slid open, and he
strode into the lobby toward the front doors. Stony and Mr. Blunt quickly followed. “Three years till first launch. I guarantee it.”

“Do you think we have three years?” Blunt asked.

Calhoun stopped, turned. “What do you mean?” His plasticene face managed to create a frown.

“The numbers don’t look good,” Blunt said.

“Goddamn it,” the Commander said. “Our people have been trying to write us off for twenty years. We will
make
three years if we have to.”

Outside, an SUV was waiting. A living man in khakis and a white short-sleeved shirt stood holding the passenger-side door. Franklin was one of the dozen breathers on staff on the island. He collected an astronomical salary, and his retirement benefits included immortality.

“Mr. Blunt, it was a pleasure to see you. Stony said that he’d been needing to see his old friends, and I’m glad to oblige. We’re doing great work here. Important work. You need anything, any Goddamn thing, you let me know.”

“Will do, Commander.”

“And Stony! Don’t forget about the VIB flying in tomorrow. Franklin’s got the room all set up.”

“I’ve been looking forward to it my whole life,” Stony said.

The SUV rolled away, and Stony and Mr. Blunt climbed back into the golf cart. Mr. Blunt asked, “Let me guess: Very Important Breather?”

“You got it,” Stony said. “Someone who can help us with D-day. You’ll meet them tomorrow.”

“You also haven’t told me yet what my new job is.”

“Right. That.” Stony started the cart and they zipped away from the command center, back the way they had come. He raised his voice slightly. “So you know those immigrants
back there?” Blunt nodded. Stony said, “Sometime in the next few weeks, one or two of them—usually the smart ones—will disappear.”

“You eat them? No, we taste horrible. Eaten by sharks then. Again, same problem—”

“Blunt, please. Calhoun sends them away, by ship and by helicopter. He says they’re going to Florida for ‘advanced training.’ Computers, logistics, blah blah blah.”

“From your tone—and I’m just guessing here—you don’t believe him.”

Stony laughed again. “They don’t come back, Mr. Blunt. I never talk to them again. I think Calhoun’s building his own team, loyal to him, without my influence.”

“Maybe he’s training astronauts,” Blunt said.

“Please. I need you to help me. I’ve never figured out how you do what you do, how you get through borders, how you avoid the police, especially now when—”

“I look like this. Point taken.”

“Well frankly, yeah. We’re monsters, Mr. Blunt. None of us, except maybe Delia, can move around like you do.”

“And you want me to find out what Calhoun is doing with these people,” Mr. Blunt said. “Where they’re going, what they’re doing.”

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it.”

“Choose?”
he said in pretend shock. “I get to choose?”

“Not really.”

A day later, Stony and Commander Calhoun sat in a room of the Commander’s mansion watching a video monitor. The screen showed the interior of an empty room two doors down. The Commander sat with his arms crossed, and his face had turned to stone. It was only when all the visitors and staff
were gone that the Commander stopped performing, stopped being the icon. It had taken years before he allowed Stony to see this offstage version.

“Do you think this will work?” Calhoun said.

“I don’t know,” Stony said. “I think she’ll go for it.”

“I meant all of it,” Calhoun said. “The whole plan. Do you think this can possibly work?”

Stony looked up. Calhoun was staring at him, hollow-eyed. His skin was glossy, his teeth perfectly white, but his eyes were ancient and terrified. Calhoun was more afraid of death than anyone he’d ever met. While so many LDs were becoming sleepers, throwing themselves into the abyss, Calhoun was doing everything in his power to pave over it, seal it up. He was going to the stars, damn it. He was going to be immortal. Stony understood this, but sometimes the depth of Calhoun’s fear shook him afresh.

“It’ll work,” Stony said. And now
he
was performing. Stony the confident, firm leader. The visionary. “Have a little faith,” he said.

“In
what
?”

There was movement on the screen. Franklin, Calhoun’s breather assistant, came into the frame first, followed by a white woman dressed in pastel yellow and green. “Please sit down, Ms. Stolberg,” Franklin said. He’d positioned himself so that there was only one available seat. “The Commander will be with us in a minute. Can I get you something to drink?”

Gloria Stolberg stood a couple of inches over five feet tall and carried perhaps forty extra pounds on a stout frame. Her red hair—dyed, teased, sprayed—had lost that morning’s battle with the island humidity. She was dressed for the tropics in a light cotton short-sleeved blouse and capri pants that looked like they’d been bought as a matched set at Target. She looked younger than her age.

She was sixty-three years old, one of many facts Stony had memorized. Resident of Passaic, New Jersey. Twice divorced and currently unmarried. Three children and seven grandchildren. Favorite book:
Angels Fall
, by Nora Roberts.

“I have to tell you,” Gloria said. “I think there’s been a mistake.”

The mistake, Stony thought, was wanting to meet your idol.

Onscreen, Franklin said, “I assure you, the Commander is a huge fan.” Gloria sat in the offered chair, which was well lit from the window, and faced the hidden camera. “Perhaps you’d like a piña colada?” Franklin asked her. “You might as well enjoy the Caribbean.”