Raising Stony Mayhall (7 page)

Stony waited as long as he could before interrupting. “Mom—Mom. Have you ever seen this book?”

She spun on him. “Did neither one of you even
think
of doing the dishes while I was gone?”

“It’s about zom—”

She knocked the paperback out of his hands. “Don’t you use that word!”

He stood very still. Junie didn’t move.

Mom turned back to the sink and twisted the hot-water faucet. Stony picked up the book and went back outside.

Kwang met him in the backyard. “Did you ask her about trick-or-treating?”

“Not a good time,” Stony said. He showed him the book. “Are there more of these? The library has to have more of these.”

* * *

Jack Gore
, the words on each back cover proclaimed.
A hard-bitten cop bitten hard
. Gore had been turned into one of the walking dead, but instead of being shot and burned after the outbreak, he’d been taken to a walled city located somewhere in the Midwest. Jack was like Stony: dead, but not one of the mindless monsters the newspapers and magazines had described. And he
solved crimes
. In
The Head Case
, a human woman tries to smuggle in a human brain in a jar, to sell at Deadtown’s black market. “But it’s not just any guy’s brain,” Stony said.

“Whose is it, Abby Normal?” Kwang asked.

“You have to read it.”

“Just tell me, jerkwad.”

“Okay, this woman, Delia? She stole
Einstein’s brain
. Except they don’t know if it’s really his, or a fake. And there are all these people who want it, and Jack Gore is caught in the middle between the cops, these undead gangsters, and these guys called the Stitch Brothers—”

“So which is it? Real or fake?”

“I’m not telling you
that.
”

There were four other Deadtown books listed inside the front cover, all by C.V. Ferris. Stony made Kwang promise to go back to the library and ask for them. “We have to find him,” Stony said. “He
knows.
”

“Who what?”

“Ferris. The author. I think he’s living dead.”

“Uh … no.”

“But he can’t just be making it up—it’s too much like me! See, the outbreak made all the dead crazy for a while, and then they, like, recovered.”

“There’s no such place as Deadtown, Stony. There’s no prison city out in Indiana or wherever they took all of you after the outbreak.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Stony, you know what they did to them. You’re the one who showed me the pictures.”

Stony was annoyed. When did Kwang become the sensible one?

Kwang said, “You didn’t ask your mom yet, did you?” Halloween was tomorrow night. Last year, Stony had dressed up in a rubber Nixon mask and sneaked out to meet Kwang. He made it as far as the Cho house before his mother’s clairvoyance kicked in. She came squealing into the Cho driveway, and hauled him home before he could collect a single treat.

“I better not,” Stony said. “You remember how she freaked out last time. And she’s having a hard time right now.” Two weeks had passed and they still hadn’t heard from Chelsea. Every day Mom went a little crazier with worry. “I think she’s having kind of a nervous breakdown,” Stony said. “Last night she went to bed right after supper and never got up.”

“That’s perfect,” Kwang said. “She’ll never know you’re gone.”

“Not tomorrow. She’s going to be on high alert.”

“Well fine, if you’re too much of a wuss …”

Stony burned to go. If he didn’t, Kwang would just meet up in town with his football friends. That’s it, end of friendship. And next year, Kwang probably wouldn’t want to go out at all. He’d already made noises about being too old for trick-or-treating.

“Meet me at the fort at seven,” Stony said.

Finally he decided, What could she do, ground him?

He conceived a two-part plan. Part one consisted of begging. He explained that he’d be dressed as a mummy,
wrapped head to foot, and that no one could possibly see anything. That they would only go to five houses. That Junie and Kwang would cover for him. (Junie said, “What? No! I’m going with the youth group.”) He promised that he wouldn’t even
speak
—Kwang would do all the talking.

No, his mother said, as he knew she would. No, no, absolutely not.

He argued for a good fifteen minutes, even raising his voice (which he hardly ever did), while his mother grew more and more angry. What’s gotten into you? she kept saying. He almost bailed out on his plan then. Mom was still on edge from Chelsea’s disappearance, and it didn’t seem fair to hit her when she wasn’t at the top of her game. Then he thought of Kwang taking off without him, and he played his trump card.

“I’m going out,” he said. “And you can’t stop me.”

Her face went white. “What did you say?” Her voice, Stony thought, was like a knife sliding between two ribs (
Head Case
, chapter 4).

He took a breath. “I said—”

“Go … to … your … 
room
.”

He stopped fighting. He turned and marched toward his bedroom, his mother two steps behind him. He walked into the room and before he could slam the door his mother slammed it for him. He tried to think of what his sisters would say, and finally yelled back, “Fine!” Then he loudly and conspicuously locked the door.

His bedroom was a converted pantry, a tiny room with one broom closet for his few clothes, and enough space for a bed and a dresser and a small writing desk. By his mother’s design, there were no windows. Maybe it was a bit paranoid to think that anyone could see into the house this far from the
road, or that strangers would sneak up to the house and peek in, but he’d never objected. He was comfortable in the dark.

He sat down on the bed. He stared at his hands, the floor, his shoes. He thought he heard his mother crying, but maybe that was Junie. After thirty minutes, nobody had checked on him.

He went to the closet, opened the door, and knelt. He pushed his shoes out of the way, then worked his fingers into the holes he’d bored into the rightmost floorboard. He lifted, and a two-foot-square section of floor lifted away.

“You are such a jerk,” Stony said.

Kwang laughed. He wore torn clothing smeared with dirt. He’d painted his face white, then darkened under his eyes, blackened his gums. He’d even made a fake red wound on his forehead. He moaned, lifted his hands.

“And I do not look like that,” Stony said.

“No, you look worse. Are you ready?”

He wasn’t, quite. Kwang helped him finish wrapping and taping. Weeks ago Stony had come across two rolls of white crêpe paper in the hall closet, which had triggered the mummy idea, but that went quickly and he’d had to supplement with toilet paper. The tissue would not stay together. He stood still while Kwang used silver duct tape to reinforce his back and legs. Last Stony wrapped his head, leaving an inch-wide gap for his eyes.

They hit the first five homes in quick order, then kept walking toward town, where the houses were closer together. “These are full-size Snickers,” Kwang said after one house. “Do you know how rare that is?”

He didn’t, but he was happy anyway. Their pillowcases grew
heavy, despite Kwang eating constantly as they went. Stony didn’t care for candy—he didn’t care much for anything, food-wise—but he loved the idea of
loot
. Each Three Musketeers and pack of Smarties was a sign of accomplishment; each Chunky a medal of honor. Even the lesser treats—popcorn balls, hard candies, caramel corn—were valuable for the weight they added to his bag.

Stony’s mummy costume had begun to shred, especially around the hands and feet, but none of the other trick-or-treaters (little kids, mostly) and none of the parents answering doorbells had asked him any questions or even looked at him curiously. Kwang said “Trick or treat,” Stony moaned, and the adults handed over the candy. It was foolproof.

They were walking along the two-lane when a white pickup pulled up alongside them and slowed. “Hey, Kwang!” The voice made it rhyme with
clang
.

The guy in the passenger seat was a teenage boy, maybe a junior or senior. Four other boys squatted in the bed of the truck.

Kwang stopped. “Hey, Brett.”

“What the fuck are you supposed to be, a white man?”

A boy in the back said, “I can’t believe you’re trick-or-treating, man.”

“Hey, I’ve got two pounds of candy,” Kwang said. “What the fuck do you got?”

Stony looked at Kwang. Whipping out the F-word, talking in some tough-guy voice?

“We got a lot better than that!” the kid in the back said. He lifted a beer can. “Get up in here, boy.”

Kwang glanced at Stony, and must have seen something in his expression. “That’s okay,” Kwang said. “He’s gotta get back home.”

“I said, get the
fuck
in the
truck
!”

Kwang laughed, shook his head, and started to climb up on the bumper.

“Are you crazy?” Stony said, keeping his voice low.

But Kwang was in the bed of the truck now. The boys grabbed his pillowcase from him and started going through it. “Pixie sticks!” one of them yelled.

Another said to Stony, “Hey, Toilet Paper Man. Are you coming or not?”

Kwang looked back at him, his face blank. Your choice, Stony. And Stony thought, This is a mistake. He did not like these muscle heads, and he didn’t trust them.

He climbed in.

Someone handed him an Old Milwaukee. Kwang already had one in his hand. Stony watched in disbelief as his friend pulled the tab, pushed it into the mouth of the can with a practiced gesture, and took a big gulp. The pickup lurched forward. Stony took a sip of the beer, frowned at the sour taste, and kept it in his hand.

For the next hour they cruised around the streets of Easterly, shouting at kids and passing other high schoolers in cars. Nearly half of them seemed to be dressed as the walking dead. The pickup’s driver didn’t seem to be taking them anywhere in particular. Stony had studied maps of his hometown and the surrounding area, and he recognized the names of streets, but he could not stop staring at everything they passed: the split-level homes, the paved driveways, the Pontiacs and potted plants and lawn ornaments. Nothing was completely alien—newspapers and books had told him what to expect of the world—but each sight was accompanied by an inner
a-ha
, the satisfaction of a tourist checking off items from his guidebook. And all these kids! Each of them a classmate in the parallel
universe high school he should have attended: his chemistry lab partner who could do a dead-on Chewbacca; the stoner he traded jokes with in the parking lot; the girl with the braces that he asked to Homecoming. They would have signed his yearbook.
Stay cool, Johnny!

No wonder Kwang was growing tired of him. Even these yahoos in the truck were better friends than some dead boy haunting a few square acres of farmland. The boys called him Klang and Krang and Kwanto, and he called them by their nicknames, and everybody called everybody else asswipe and douchebag and faggot. They couldn’t seem to stop punching one another. And Kwang was one of them. He fit.

“Hey, TP.” The beefy boy, whose nickname was either Torque or Turk, squinted at Stony and said, “Who are you again?”

“I’m from Belgium,” Stony said. The boy frowned. Stony said, “It’s in Wisconsin.”

The boy nodded as if suddenly remembering the place. “You know, you can take off your costume now.”

“That’s okay. Where I come from, it’s a rule that you have to keep your costume on until the next morning.”

“Shit, really?”

“Well, it’s more of a guideline than a rule.”

But the kid was staring over Stony’s shoulder. “Hide the beer!”

Blue and red lights flashed behind them. Stony turned, still not understanding, and then the panic struck like a black sledgehammer. He saw the squad car and thought, The police have come for me.

Stony looked to Kwang, but he was jamming a beer can into the center of the spare tire—all the boys were frantically hiding evidence. The pickup pulled onto the shoulder. The squad car parked behind them, leaving its lights on. Stony
watched helplessly as an officer climbed out of the car. Stony thought, I am still in disguise. Do nothing, say nothing.

The cop flipped on a big flashlight and said, “What are you boys up to this evening?”

Brett and the driver of the truck had stepped out of the cab. Brett smiled and said, “No good, Officer Tines.”

The driver said, “We were just riding around. Seeing the costumes.”

“Uh huh.” Officer Tines shined the light over the faces. The beam seemed to rest on Stony’s face longer than the others, and he resisted the urge to close his eyes and scream.

“Everybody out,” Tines said. “And hand over your IDs.”

The boys began to climb down, and Stony followed, trying not to rip his costume further. What road were they on? They were somewhere on the north side of town, in a neighborhood of new, larger houses cut into the cornfields. That would put him how far from home—four miles? Five?

Officer Tines went down the line, collecting licenses and school IDs. Stony had nothing. He needed to run, but he couldn’t move. And then the cop came to him.

“I … I don’t have my ID with me,” Stony said.

Tines aimed the light into Stony’s eyes. “Are you wearing
contacts
?” Stony didn’t know how to answer. The cop said, “Take off the toilet paper, kid.”

Stony looked at Kwang, but his friend only stared back, eyes wide, perhaps as frightened as he was. Stony reached up, pulled a clump of tissue away, then another. One of the boys in line said, “Jesus Christ.”

The cop leaned forward. “You kind of overdid it, don’t you think?”

“He’s from France,” Turk or Torque said.

“Shut up,” Tines said. Then to Stony: “Where now?”

“He means Wisconsin,” Stony said. “It just sounds French.”

“La Croix?”

Stony blinked. Of course, La Croix! That almost made sense. “Yes sir.”

“Right.” He stared hard at Stony’s face. “Go stand over there.” He pointed to the patch of grass near his squad car. “The rest of you—any of you been drinking?”