Raising Stony Mayhall (44 page)

Ruby said, “You planted that here.” Her tone was disbelieving. “When you were in high school.”

“I read a lot of spy books. And at Kwang’s house they let me watch
Hogan’s Heroes.
”

“Watch what?”

“You’re yanking my chain again.”

“Seriously, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It was a sitcom about a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Come on, Colonel Klink? Sergeant Schultz? Hi
lar
ious Nazis. Anyway, all those prisoners had secret passages, like stairs under a bunk that flipped up.”

“Did all your ideas come from TV and movies?”

“Pretty much.” It took him three tries, the matchsticks practically disintegrating at his touch, but he finally managed to light one of the candles. He saw her shocked expression through the flames, then she looked away.

“What is it?” he asked. “Did I scare you?”

“Nothing, it’s just—well, sometimes it catches me by surprise that you’re, well—”

“A zombie.”

She shook her head. “Come on. Off to the barn.”

He decided to let it pass. Act normal. “So, which passage?” he asked.

“Right to the barn,” she said. “Left to the Chos’. Middle to Bumblefuck, Egypt.”

“Gold star,” he said. The barn tunnel was the first he’d dug when he was a kid, and the passage was much shorter than he remembered, in both height and length. They walked stooped over for perhaps twenty yards, a slight breeze in their faces, until they came to a ladder. It rose only six feet and dead-ended against the wooden floor of the barn. Stony climbed up a few rungs and pushed. The floor didn’t budge. He decided not to look down at Ruby to see what she thought of that.

He climbed two steps higher so that he was bent under the floorboards. Then he straightened and pushed hard. The floor rose six inches. He began to shove it aside—and the rung snapped beneath his feet. He fell to the floor of the tunnel and the candle went out.

“I was supposed to escape how?” Ruby asked.

“I’ll fix that,” he said. He got to his feet, then boosted her up so that she could crawl into the barn. She even managed to keep the candle lit. He pulled himself up through the hatch in the floor, a square barely three feet by three feet.

“We could have just walked over,” she said. The house, visible through the half-open barn door, was a short distance away.

“But now we’ve tested the escape tunnel,” he said.

The barn had been left largely undisturbed, probably because there’d been nothing in it worth selling or stealing. In the corner, under the hayloft, were a score of ancient seed sacks that had been there since Ervin had stopped farming.
More seed was up in the loft. He went to the stack and tried to pry the canvas bag from the top. Mold or some kind of growth had cemented the bags together. He wedged his arms under the edges of the top bag, gripped hard, and yanked. The bag tore free, and white, dusty soy seed spilled onto the floor.

Ruby said, “You have a strange look on your face.”

He looked at Ruby. “I know how to save us.”

“What? How?”

“I know how to save us!” He cradled what remained in the bag, nodded at the pile on the floor, and said, “Grab some of that. Come on.”

“Stony, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. What are you doing with this stuff? It’s getting dark.”

“Something my mother taught me,” he said. “Your grandmother. Please, just trust me.”

He walked out about fifty feet in front of the house. He tilted the bag, and began to pour a line of seed on the ground. Slowly he began to walk along the front of the house, leaving a trail. “Fill in where I miss, okay?” he told her.

“No.”

He stopped, adjusted the bag.

She said, “I’m going inside, and I’m going to sit there with my gun aimed at the door, unless you tell me what the fuck you’re doing.”

“I’m making a circle.”

“You’re not helping.”

He looked toward the road. The sun was going down, gilding the tall grass. “It’s a magic circle,” he said. “Everything inside the circle is mine, and cannot be harmed.”

“What the hell, Stony. Magic?”

“Look, I know it doesn’t sound rational. But we’re a little bit beyond rational right now.”

She stared at him for a long moment. A few white seeds
slipped through her fingers. “Fuck it,” she said. “Magic circle it is.”

She followed behind him. He went slowly, staring at the seed as it poured into the grass.
Everything in this circle is mine
, he said under his breath.
Integrity is all
.

“Are you, uh, praying?” Ruby asked.

“It’s kind of a mantra. Integrity is all.”

“What does that mean?”

“See, there was a guy named the Lump who—well, it’s complicated.”

“All of your stories are complicated.”

“It’s about keeping the body intact. If an LD can hold on to the idea of a body, then he can hold on to the idea of a self. Did I tell you about Calhoun’s Integrity Suit?”

“Calhoun has integrity?”

He told her how Calhoun lived in the suit, a second skin to keep himself from falling apart. “See, we all need the illusion of continuity. Your cells are replaced every seven years, without you even thinking about it. But for my people, staying intact is an act of will.”

Ruby said, “So you can’t die unless you want to.”

“Oh, we can die.”

“But you just said—”

“It’s complicated.”

They made several trips back to the barn, opening bags of seed, racing the falling light. Ruby kept the flashlight tucked under one arm as they worked. They’d reached the west side of the house when Stony saw headlights swing off the road and head down the lane toward them.

“Ruby.”

She saw the lights and exchanged a look with him.

“You get inside,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

He thought about this. As she’d pointed out before, zombies
didn’t drive cars. Then he said, “I’ll be right behind the front door.”

“Move it, for Christ’s sake,” she said.

He hurried inside but left the door ajar a few inches. The car rolled slowly toward the house, easing into and out of the potholes in the dirt lane. Ruby stood about ten feet in front of the door, her left hand behind her back, holding the pistol.

The car, a light blue Buick LeSabre, stopped at the end of the drive, the headlights aimed at her and the front of the house. Stony stepped back a foot, keeping to the shadows.

No one got out of the car. Ruby shifted her weight. Her fingers flexed on the grip of the gun.

Then the car door opened and the dome light lit up, revealing two figures. The headlight warning tone chimed.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

A man stepped slowly out of the driver’s side but stayed behind the open car door. He was very thin and wore a white shirt. His arms stayed down, out of sight.

He looked at Ruby, tilted his head.

“This is not your house,” he said. His voice was firm, the accent still there but not as thick as it used to be.

Ruby slid the gun from her waistband and Stony yanked open the door. “Ruby! Easy.”

The man did not move. Stony stepped out into the light and held up a hand against the glare of the headlights. “Mr. Cho. It’s me, Stony.”

Mr. Cho stepped out from the shelter of the door. In his arms he held a shotgun. Ruby raised her pistol.

“Geez, hold on, you two!” Stony said. He stepped down from the porch, his arms raised. “Ruby, he’s a friend.”

She said, “Tell him to put down the shotgun then.”

Mr. Cho stared hard at her, then turned his attention to Stony. They had not seen each other since before the crash.
The night Stony totaled the man’s car and took away his son’s legs.

Mr. Cho set his gun on the car seat. He said something under his breath that could have been “Mayhalls.”

Ruby dropped her arm. Stony strode past her, and at the same time Mrs. Cho stepped out of the passenger seat. She wore a green pantsuit with a wide, floral print collar. Even in the near dark he could see her bright red lipstick.

He stopped, afraid of spooking her.

She walked to him and stared up into his face. She was tiny. Her face was so sad.

He said, “Hi, Mrs. Cho.”

She reached up and touched his cheek. “Oh, my boy.” Suddenly she threw her arms around him. It was a long minute before she let him go.

He said, “Mrs. Cho, this is Crystal’s—Chelsea’s daughter, Ruby.”

“Oh, I know this little girl,” she said. She went to her and took Ruby’s hands in her own. “Crystal sends me a picture every Christmas.”

Stony thought about hugging Mr. Cho, but of course that was out of the question. The man had never been hugged in his life. They shook hands and Stony impulsively escalated the intimacy by gripping Mr. Cho’s bicep.

“Where’s Kwang?” Stony said. “Is he home?”

Mr. Cho shook his head. “Bad luck. Up in St. Paul.”

“He’s got an Internet girlfriend,” Mrs. Cho said. “He hasn’t called since …” A hand fluttered. “All this.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Stony said.

“Ruby should come with us,” Mrs. Cho said. “The whole town is leaving before they get here. Everyone’s going to Camp Dodge, in Johnston.”

“You can’t do that,” Stony said. “That’s near Des Moines. You’ve got to stay away from the cities.”

“National Guard is there,” Mrs. Cho said.

“No, listen. The open road is no place to be. You’ve got to stay here, with me and Ruby. Tell your friends, too—they’ll be safe here.”

“We’re building a magic circle,” Ruby said.

Stony frowned at her, then turned back to the Chos. “I’ve got a bunker, okay? Tell your friends it’s a bomb shelter. I can keep them safe.”

Mrs. Cho and her husband did not look at each other, but they seemed to be communicating. After a moment, Mr. Cho said, “They will not understand.”

“Okay, right, I’m undead. I’ll hide. They won’t even know I’m here. But you have to believe me, this is the best place to be when the mob comes.”

“Impossible,” Mr. Cho said.

Mrs. Cho said, “The radio said the zombies are coming. Thousands.”

“Mrs. Cho—”

“Thousands!”

Mr. Cho said. “Already in Ames. Very close.” He nodded to Ruby. “There is room in our car. Your family cannot afford to lose anyone else.”

Ruby ran a hand through her hair. She looked back at the house. Then she said, “I’m staying with Stony.”

It was full night when he completed the circle. Eight bags of seed to make an egg-shaped ellipse about fifty feet out from the walls of the house. Above, the moon was a hair’s breadth short of full. The white seed glowed.

He heard a gunshot in the distance. Then another. He turned. The sound, if he judged correctly, came from the south end of town, where Ruby had driven through the roadblock. He waited thirty seconds, a minute—and then gunfire rolled like thunder.

He hefted the ninth bag and tore open its top. He started at the circle and poured a line that ran up to the porch, then to the front door. He nudged open the door with his foot.

Ruby, Mr. Cho, and Mrs. Cho sat on the improvised chairs, the candle burning on a box between them. Ruby held one of Mrs. Cho’s sandwiches. At their feet, plastic water bottles gleamed.

Of course they’d heard the gunfire, too.

“I think it’s time that you all retired to the basement,” Stony said.

o you remember Officer Tines? He was the young patrolman who pulled over the pickup truck full of Kwang’s friends that Halloween night in 1978. Kwang fell into his arms, mock-drunk, to allow the toilet-paper-wrapped Stony to escape. Yes—that guy. His full name was William Randolph Tines, but his friends and family called him Willie. (Drunk teenagers still called him Officer Tines, or else.) Willie wasn’t born in Easterly, but he came for the police job in 1976 and never left. Just adopted the place. He was thirty before he married Nancy, an apple-cheeked girl who was way too serious about politics, but pleasant besides that. They had four children: three brown-haired boys and a tall yellow-haired girl who poked up between them like a dandelion. They moved out to the unincorporated area north of town, a bigger place on a three-quarter-acre lot. His kids played every sport imaginable, and his daughter turned out to be a hell of a fast-pitch softball player; she got a partial scholarship to Iowa State. Willie was a good father. Not to say he was perfect. He hit forty like a bad spot in the road, started drinking more, then had an affair with a certifiably crazy
woman who worked at the yarn store. But then he found Christ and straightened right up. Everyone said so. And even during the bad years he never missed a day of work or one of his kids’ games.

It’s important you know all this so you understand that Willie Tines was not a bad man. It’s just that, like everybody else on April 29, he was on the wrong planet at the wrong time.

He’d been working the roadblock on the edge of town for thirty-six hours, ever since they’d learned of the outbreak. The barricade wasn’t much: three barrels, a bunch of planks, and a pickup pulled across the road. His “deputies” weren’t that impressive, either. There were only three cops in Easterly, so Willie had drafted four municipal employees, middle-aged guys who were snowplow drivers in the winter and landscapers in the summer. They’d brought their own weapons. For the first thirty-five hours there’d been nothing to do but wave good-bye to the people fleeing town, and wave through the few cars coming in. Willie was there when the pretty dark-haired girl rolled up in that big delivery van, claiming to be Kwang Cho’s niece. And he was there at dusk of the second day when the first zombie shambled down the road at them.