Raising Stony Mayhall (46 page)

erhaps you were expecting a happy ending.

Sorry about that.

I don’t blame you for hoping. Even the most hardened of people—and who isn’t hard, these days—would welcome a respite from the miserable spiral into the abyss that the universe guarantees its citizens. Take Ruby, our Last Girl, who is determined to sift a happy ending from the ashes. I mean this literally. Thanks to Kwang’s newly appropriated backhoe, her sweet but misguided plan is finally under way, but she is frustrated by the pace of the excavation. When the house burned, it collapsed into Stony’s basement, creating an enormous fire pit. Sparks and flames inevitably crossed over to the barn. Both buildings burned through the night and cooked for days. Later, spring rains turned the pit to a swamp that refused to drain completely even through the heat of the summer. Amid the skeletal timbers, a few identifiable objects have surfaced: the barrel of the water heater, a surprisingly white toilet, a naked floor lamp like a great fishhook. Ruby fears that Stony’s bones have been
cremated by the fire, or else broken apart and scattered through the slurry.

“Don’t worry, they’ll find him,” her grandmother tells her. Wanda Mayhall has taken to sitting out here under a shade tree, keeping Ruby company. Wanda, at seventy-six, can sit with the best of them. Her hyperthyroid condition, undiagnosed while she was in prison, tires her out, though now that the emergency government is delivering her medications, she’s getting stronger.

Unlike almost everyone else in the enclave, Wanda has no beef with the new feds. It’s not like the old ones treated her all that well. Mrs. Cho, who on most days joins Wanda and Ruby on Backhoe Watch 2011, often says (politely, somewhat formally) that she wishes Wanda would keep her opinions about the government to herself. People in the enclave are sensitive. Wanda says that if you can’t speak your mind when you’re old, when are you supposed to do it? Right, Mr. Cho? But Mr. Cho knows better than to be drawn into the argument. He stays near the rumbling backhoe, silently indicating where Kwang should dig next, while the ladies bicker and gossip. They do this for hours, keeping up a constant fireside chat beside a fire that’s long gone out. Ruby finds this tremendously entertaining, as do many other residents. People stop by and trade stories, and sometimes they even ask about her son.

The story, after all these years, is out.

The townspeople who were living in Easterly back then can barely believe that she’d hidden an undead child from them for over fifteen years. Alice told her mother to expect a backlash from the enclave residents—they’re rabidly antizombie, as you might expect—but no one has been rude to her face. There’s something distinctly un-Iowan about attacking
an old woman, especially one who spent decades in prison, and who doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks.

Ruby is a different story. She’s been extremely vocal about how Stony saved her in Chicago, and how he protected the Chos, and made sure the Tines boys were watched over. There have been quite a few shouting matches in the past year, and one fistfight. (Ruby held her own.)

Willie Tines came by the burned house once, to pay his respects to Mrs. Mayhall. He told her he felt terrible about destroying her son and her farm. Like most of the residents of the enclave, he is a haunted man. His wife was bitten during the outbreak, when she ran into a group of LDs coming in from the north. The two boys escaped the wreckage and the monsters and made it to the nearest house—but you know the rest of that story.

“You have nothing to be forgiven for,” Wanda told him. “No more than any of us. A lot of people in town say they have you to thank for their lives.”

“Ma’am, nothing I did made a damn—made a bit of difference. We all should have died.” Better than almost anyone, Willie knew that the town should have been wiped out. It wasn’t just that the southern barricade was breached; it was that every one of their defenses failed. The zombies marched in from all directions. The living fled their homes and headed toward the schoolhouse, and the hordes followed them.

“And then they just … stopped,” Willie said. “They turned around and wandered away. Like they couldn’t even see us anymore.”

Wanda nodded. She’d heard versions of this story from everyone in town, though not everyone had played a role as heroic as Officer Tines’s. It would make an excellent movie, if there were still movies.

Tines said he’d come over to say good-bye—he was leaving town. “My wife got in touch with me,” he said. “She’s living—well,
staying
less than fifty miles from here. She misses the boys. And the boys miss her.” It was like he was asking for her blessing. Most of the town considered him a traitor for leaving the enclave to live with the dead.

“Family should be together,” Wanda told him. “Period.”

A few days later, a federal helicopter flies low over the enclave. It’s a big green Huey, two rotors, and it lands in the old soy field behind the burned house, sending ash and debris swirling into the air. USMRA is in big white letters near the nose: United States Midwestern Regional Authority.

Ruby jams her rake into a pile of ash and pulls off her gloves. Part of the reason the excavation is going so slowly is that she wants to check every load that’s removed from the pit. Kwang scoops out a pile, then dumps it on the ground, setting out pile after pile. Ruby, and sometimes Alice with her, goes through it, shoving aside chunks of wood and building material, looking for bones and teeth. It’s filthy work. It would be grisly work, too, except that they haven’t found any remains.

Ruby hurries over to the aircraft. She knows that the rest of the townspeople will be rushing over here any minute. It’s strictly against the covenant for a federal craft to enter the town limits, and people will be pissed. They’ll be especially pissed at Ruby if they find out that she’s the one who called them.

The big side door opens, and three soldiers in camouflage jump out, holding rifles. Just behind them comes a woman in a blue flight suit. It’s odd for the director of an eight-state area to be dressed like a pilot or a mechanic, but Delia’s never been interested in convention.

Ruby and Delia have never met in person, and they’ve only talked on the town’s landline phone once. All their other communications have been by letter, an old-fashioned medium revived by the fall of the cell towers. The USMRA maintains an intermittent postal service that they allow the breathers to use. Ruby assumes all their letters are being read by intelligence officers. Delia says, “I was beginning to think you were going to have the funeral without me.”

“We’re running into delays,” Ruby says. “We haven’t found the body yet.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t know, have you found my mother yet?”

It sounds like sarcasm, but there’s a note of desperation to Ruby’s voice. Delia’s voice softens. “Sorry, kid. We’re looking. Crystal was a friend of mine, and I’m not giving up. But you have to understand that it’s still pretty chaotic out there.”

Crystal hadn’t contacted anyone in the family, and no one had seen her. She could be dead, or turned and suffering from amnesia, or … anything. Breathers are fighting with LDs, LDs are fighting each other, and whole areas of the country are still without power—electrical or political. Ad hoc governments—half school board, half street gang—are seizing authority in the vacuum. And that’s just in the United States. Everybody in Easterly thinks it’s got to be a lot worse in the rest of the world.

“After your service we’ll do one of our own,” Delia says. “A full state funeral. The Lump will officiate.”

“Whatever,” Ruby said.

“Of course, we’d like to display the body. If you find it.”

Ruby is shaking her head. “Absolutely not. We never agreed to that.”

“I don’t think you realize what he means to his people.”

“I don’t think you realize what he means to his family.”

Perhaps that’s a smile on Delia’s face—but Delia’s half skull turns every expression into a leer. She says, “Your uncle had a talent, kid. He made families wherever he went.”

After a moment of silence, Delia shrugs. “Just think about it.”

“I’ll talk to Gram and Alice.”

“Tell them we’re going to publish his papers,” Delia said. “We’ve got almost a complete collection of
Sunday Deadlines—
the Deadtown prisoners kept them hidden from the guards all the way until the Big Bite. Plus we’ve started an oral history project, recording all the stories of the outbreak before they’re forgotten, and a lot of those stories are about Stony. If you’ve got anything he’s written—anything at all—we’d sure appreciate it.” Ruby has never told Delia that she has Stony’s memoir, and has suggested it was all lost in the fire. But Delia suspects she has it, and Ruby knows that Delia suspects she has it. To explain the various relationships in play—between Ruby and Delia, the living and the dead, the locals and the feds, and midwesterners and easterners—would require several economists, a team of anthropologists, and a theologian.

Delia says, “We’re planning on a Stony Mayhall Library. We can build it near here, if you think the rebels wouldn’t burn it down.”

“I want money for a memorial,” Ruby says. “Nothing big. Just something out by the highway, where they found him with his mother. Something simple, just their names maybe.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Delia says.

Kwang has shut off the backhoe, and he’s walking stiffly toward them. And down the lane comes Alice, pedaling like the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
. Ruby, seeing that her time is running out, says, “Did you bring me the package?”

Delia calls up into the helicopter, and someone throws down a thick square wrapped in paper and tied with twine.
Delia hands it to Ruby. “Straight from Calhoun’s personal collection.”

Ruby looks at the parcel. It’s heavier than she thought it would be. “You know, I can’t figure out why the Commander would commit suicide in his bunker like that.”

“Yeah, tragic,” Delia says. “Very Adolf Hitler.”

“Hitler was losing. Calhoun was about to win everything. But you were there on the island, right?” At her look, Ruby says, “Stony told me you were going there. You must have tried to get to Calhoun. He killed your friend, right? Mr. Blunt?”

“My best friend,” Delia says. After a moment, she says, “I got to the island a couple of days after the bite. I never got into the fortress, though. No one could get inside it.”

“Right, right,” Ruby says. “I heard that.” She frowns. “But you know what’s weird?” Her voice has taken on an innocent, I’m-Just-So-Curious tone. “Stony helped build that place, and it’s just not like him to leave out a secret passage. A back door or something. He was kind of OCD about that kind of thing. I mean, that’s what he told me once.” He’d told her no such thing. But Ruby has read Stony’s memoir, several times, and has come to certain conclusions about his character. “Did he tell you about anything like that—a way to get into that bunker?”

Delia goes very still. She’s ready to say something, but then Kwang huffs up. One of the soldiers steps in front of him, blocking his way. Kwang calls, “Everything okay, Ruby?”

Delia signals for the soldier to let the man pass. She says, “You must be Kwang.” She pronounces it correctly, rhyming it with
swan
. She offers her hand and says, “Stony always looked forward to your letters.”

Kwang says, “No offense, Director, but a bunch of angry townspeople are going to be showing up with pitchforks soon.”

“I’ll be on my way,” Delia says. “We’re flying back to headquarters in St. Louis, but I’ll be in touch.” She nods at Ruby. “Let me know when you find him.”

Ruby and Kwang step back and watch the Huey take off. As the helicopter clears the edge of the enclave, Kwang says, “We found him.”

He shows her the plastic arm he’s spotted, melted almost to a blob. After a few minutes of combing through the latest pile they find a long bone, a femur, blackened but distinctly human. The hunt is on in earnest.

That night Ruby and Alice move all the bones they’ve found to the house that they and Gram are “borrowing.” The owners evacuated during the outbreak and haven’t returned. Ruby has set up two foldout tables in the basement, and there they begin the jigsaw puzzle portion of the process.

Alice is the expert here, but Ruby is a fast learner. By the third day of reconstruction Alice only has to make a shape with her hands and say, “Look for a bone that looks like this,” and Ruby retrieves it from the dwindling collection. The skeleton is all but complete. The rib cage and spine and three limbs are in place, and the skull, deeply fractured, rests on one cheek, looking away as if embarrassed by his nakedness. Of the missing bones, it’s quite possible that he’d misplaced those before the fire.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Alice says to her.

“You do?” Ruby says.

“It’s wrong. You can’t make a shrine out of him. He doesn’t want to be a religion.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know what Delia wants. Stony’s an icon to them. They
want something to worship so they can all feel good about their undead paradise.”