Raising Stony Mayhall (39 page)

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.”

“Sorry about that,” Stony said. He watched the phone’s screen, waiting for an answer.

“You know, you say sorry a lot when you don’t mean it.”

“I’m—” He looked up, smiled briefly. “Two miles ahead, take the next exit.”

“Where are we going?” He didn’t answer. “Then how far are we going? Because I have to pee.”

“Not too much farther,” Stony said. And it was the truth: A few miles later he directed her to pull into an Exxon station and park away from the lights.

“Can you tell me now why we’re here?” Nessa said.

“I need to make some calls,” Stony said. “In private.”

“What?”

“Why don’t you go to the bathroom, get a snack or something. I just need a few minutes.”

She looked hurt. “Fine.” She grabbed her cloth shoulder bag, a huge colorful thing made in India, and stalked toward the gas station building. There was only one car at the pumps, and one other car parked in front of the building. He decided he could stay in the passenger seat.

He checked his phone again, but as he expected, there was no new message from Delia. He’d lied to Nessa, a bit. He didn’t need to make any phone calls, but he did need to wait here for a while.

He wished he hadn’t destroyed the flash card from the red phone; he wanted to look through those names in the pictures while he waited. Well, Delia would have a copy, and they’d look through them together.

He had recognized one of the three names he’d seen. Eric Hamm was one of Calhoun’s “employees,” an LD plucked from a group of immigrants to the island. Mr. Blunt had spent months tracking these recruits. All of them left the island by ship or helicopter, made their way to a Calhoun-owned compound in Pensacola, Florida … and never came out. As far as Blunt could determine they were still inside. For some time
now Blunt had wanted to break into the compound, but Stony had talked him out of it. They couldn’t risk Blunt’s life, and they couldn’t risk alerting the Commander.

As soon as the strange voice had called him from Blunt’s phone, Stony was sure that Mr. Blunt had done something extreme to get these names—and gotten caught. He wouldn’t have allowed the phone to be taken from him without a fight.

So, they probably had the names of Calhoun’s recruits. But what did the words after their names mean? Eric Haslett was mad. Elena Gomez was in a bog. Terry Alsup was … whatever iad was: in a ditch? They seemed too short for passwords. Too short even for code names. Abbreviations, then?

Nessa’s head appeared in the window of the station—she had a phone to her ear. She looked toward the van, then turned away from the window. He supposed she could be calling family, but doubted it. She’d be complaining to her boss.

He thought: Gomez is bogged, Haslett is mad, Alsup is I.A.D.—.

IAD. Dulles International Airport.

He opened his phone again. Even though Delia wouldn’t read the message for a while, he had to tell someone.

They r airport codes
, he typed.

A minute later Nessa was walking back to the van, still holding the phone. She walked up to the passenger door and held up the phone to him. She looked like she was keeping the lid on some strong emotion: anger, maybe. He opened the door.

“The Commander?” he said.

She put the phone in his hand. He checked out the parking lot again, then scanned the road in front of the station. No one else was outside, and no headlights were coming this way. He glanced at his wristwatch, then lifted the phone. “Hello?”

“Stony my boy!” His voice, bouncing a thousand miles over satellites and cell towers, boomed as clear as if the old man were standing beside him, shouting into his ear. He was using his stage voice, which meant that there were people around him, listening in.

“Good evening, Commander,” Stony said.

“I’ve heard you’ve had a Goddamn barnstormer of a trip. Vanessa says that the people admire the hell out of you. You’re like a Goddamn Bob Hope!”

“That was the goal.” Nessa stared at him with that same tense expression on her face. Her hand was inside her Indian bag.

The Commander said, “I just wanted to tell you, you were right and I was wrong. You’ve done a great service for our people. You’ve reminded them that we’re a community, a community that cares for each other.”

Stony made a vaguely affirmative noise and glanced at his watch again.

The Commander said, “I also wanted to say that I don’t have any hurt feelings about this.”

“What?”

“I didn’t trust you, and you didn’t trust me. That’s regrettable. But I think you’ll agree that the blame goes both ways.”

Stony said, “Would you like to tell me what we’re talking about?”

“Don’t do this, boy. I know about the spying. I know about those messages he sent to you—I’m holding the phone. Had to clean it off, but I’ll give him this, he was clever.”

“Where’s Mr. Blunt, Commander?”

“Jammed the damn thing inside Sheila’s body cavity! I don’t think we’d have found it for hours if you hadn’t called back.”

“Where is Mr. Blunt?”

“I’m sorry, Stony. Had to be done. In the navy, they shoot spies.”

“You were never in the fucking navy! You worked on a fucking
dock
!”

“Stony, get a hold of yourself.”

“You
shot
him?”

“Well, with Mr. Blunt we had to be a little more thorough. You know his history. We just couldn’t risk a comeback.”

Nessa had stepped back, and now the gun was out, a little black pistol. Her hand shook, and she looked stricken.

“Put that away,” Stony said. “Put it to hell away!”

Nessa took another half step back, then steadied the gun with her other hand.

The Commander said, “You won’t be able to act on those names, Stony. It’s too late. They’re scattered across the globe, and they’ve already received the signal. I sent it as soon as we discovered what Mr. Blunt had done.”

“You—you can’t. Why would you do that? On D-day—”

“I was willing to give D-day a chance, Stony! But I was also pretty Goddamn sure that when we went public, the breathers would cut down any LD who dared step into the light. The backup plan was always in place. It had to be. What choice did we have?”

“Blunt was right. You’re insane.”

“I never expected us to see eye to eye on this. But what I’m doing is for the best interest of our people.”

Nessa said, “I’m supposed to take away all your phones now.” Her voice quavered.

“You’re aiming a gun at me?” Stony said. “Have you not listened to a single thing I’ve said?”

The Commander said, “Give her the cellphones, Stony. We’d like you to avoid calling the Diggers for a while. Then
Vanessa will take you to an airport, and if it’s at all possible, we’ll fly you out here to the bunker. You know better than anyone else that this is the safest place to be. I’m going to hang up now, okay?”

Stony clicked off the phone and handed it to Nessa.

“And the other one?” she said.

He dug into his pocket and fished out the silver Nokia he used for talking to Alice and Crystal. “There,” he said. From the road came the sound of an engine. Stony glanced through the windshield. A single headlight swerved into the parking lot.

Nessa started to turn toward the noise and Stony said, “What about my guns?”

Her eyes jerked back to his. “You have—?”

“No, I don’t believe in them. Motorcycle.”

“What?”

The bike flashed past, and a black boot caught Nessa under the ribs and catapulted her sideways. She hit the pavement, then bounced, tumbling, and came to a sudden rest, facedown. The pistol had disappeared—sent flying.

The motorcyclist braked hard, whipped back toward Nessa. The bike slowed, rolled forward, and stopped with the front wheel touching the woman’s head.

“Wait!” Stony said. “Don’t kill her.”

The cyclist pulled off the black helmet and set it on the gas tank. “She had a gun on you,” Delia said. Her jawbone gleamed in the reflected lights of the gas station. “Does this mean Calhoun knows about Blunt?”

“He killed him,” Stony said. “But it’s worse than that.”

“How can it possibly be worse?”

“He’s starting it,” Stony said. “The Big Bite.”

“Jesus,” Delia said.

Nessa moaned, started to lift her head. Delia looked down
at her, then said, “You need to tell me how to get onto that fucking island.”

“You won’t get to him,” Stony said. “He’s in a bunker. A whole series of bunkers. A city of them.”

“What did you do, Stony?”

“The spaceport was a decoy, something to fool the spy satellites. We needed the time to build something nuke-proof.”

A man—the clerk?—stepped half out of the station door, holding it open. Then he saw Nessa on the ground and started to jog toward them. Delia reached inside her leather jacket, withdrew an automatic, and fired two shots, well over the head of the man. He ducked and ran back into the building.

“You know, it’s almost a relief,” she said.

“Don’t talk like that,” Stony said. “It’s the end of the world.”

“For them, maybe,” Delia said.

hose who were transformed during the outbreak know everything they need to know. Even the fortunate amnesiacs, their memories scoured by fever, have since heard a hundred stories they can substitute for their own. She (or he) was bitten. Sometime later—a day, two days—she awoke to a strangely quiet world, the streets silent except for the moans of the still-hungry dead, the skies empty of planes. There was a taste in her mouth.

Ah, but those few who lived through it, who survived still breathing—they don’t talk about it much. When they do, someone inevitably says,
It was just like a movie
. Perhaps it’s because they saw the opening days of the outbreak through television screens. When the ghouls finally threw themselves against the door, when it was finally time to act, it felt as if they were being called in front of the camera, ready to recite their lines, to scream, to run.

But we’re jumping ahead again. It’s Ruby’s story we need to tell.

She was just twenty-two that April of the Big Bite, finishing her first year of law school at Loyola University. She was
living in a tiny, third-floor apartment in Lincoln Park. One window overlooked a slice of West Altged, a tree-lined street that had recently burst into full spring gorgeousness. The other window was semi-blocked by a semi-functional air conditioner.

Thanks to the rules drilled into her by her mother and aunt, Ruby was better prepared for the zombie apocalypse than most. She maintained a three-day supply of bottled water and canned food. She kept a 9-mm Heckler & Koch USP (a gift from Alice) in a gun safe in her bedroom, and an aluminum baseball bat by the door. Her front door was metal and could be secured by two deadbolts and a chain lock. She kept a backpack ready with clothes, antibiotics, ammo, and tampons.

When she heard of the outbreak that morning, she did not panic. The cellphone transmissions were jammed, and she could not get through to Alice, who lived on the other side of the city. But she was able to get a text message to her mother in Utah. Crystal told her to stay put. Do not answer the door, do not let anyone in, and do not leave the apartment. If she tried to flee the city, if she risked the highways, they might never find her.

Ruby had never been the most compliant of children, but in this instance her mother seemed to be making sense. She closed the windows and pulled the drapes. She sat on the floor of the living room, out of sight of the windows, with the HK beside her. She opened her laptop and was relieved to find that her Wi-Fi was on and the cable modem was still up.

Well, she thought. Facebook has certainly taken a dark turn.

The Internet was awash in second-by-second horrors: pictures, video, and eyewitness reports. Twitter had turned into an unrelenting stream of exclamation marks and bad
advice. Friends and acquaintances across the country and overseas reported various levels of infection. In some places no LDs were in sight. But in the largest cities, especially those in America, the streets were filling with undead. New York, Philadelphia, Newark, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati … Chicago.