Whistling Past the Graveyard Read online

  WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

  AND OTHER STORIES

  JONATHAN MABERRY

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2016 Jonathan Maberry

  Doctor Nine, ©2008 Jonathan Maberry, first published in Killers edited by Colin Harvey; Swimming Kangaroo Books.

  The Adventure of the Greenbrier Ghost, ©2008 Jonathan Maberry, first published in Legends of the Mountain State 2, edited by Michael Knost; Woodland Press LLC

  Calling Death, ©2010 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC, first published in Appalachian Undead, edited by Eugene Johnson and Jason Sizemore; The Zombie Feed Press.

  Flint and Steel: A Story of GI Joe, ©2010 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC, first published in Tales from the Cobra Wars, edited by Max Brooks; IDW Publishing.

  Death Song of Dwar Guntha: A Story of John Carter of Mars, ©2012 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Under the Moons of Mars, edited by John Joseph Adams; Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

  Chokepoint, © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in The Uninvited Magazine #2

  Clean Sweeps, ©2009 by Jonathan Maberry; first published in And So It Begins, edited by Mike McPhail; Dark Quest LLC.

  Long Way Home, © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Halloween: Magic, Mystery and the Macabre, edited by Paula Guran; Prime Books.

  Mister Pockets, © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror, edited by Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson; Grey Matter Press.

  Property Condemned, © 2012 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Nightmare Magazine #1.

  Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard, © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Nightmare Magazine #16.

  Cooked, © 2012 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Tales from the Fire Zone: Blackstone Audio.

  The Death Poem of Sensei Otoro, © 2012 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Hungry Tales: Blackstone Audio.

  Ink, © 2016 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Whistling Past the Graveyard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  JournalStone

  www.journalstone.com

  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-942712-67-1(sc)

  ISBN:978-1-942712-68-8(ebook)

  ISBN:978-1-942712-69-5(hc)

  JournalStone rev. date: July 22, 2016

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941827

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Art & Design:Robert Grom

  Image Credits: Grave Stone: Stuart Monk/Shutterstock, Crow: Marcin Perkowski/Shutterstock,

  Blood: Suzi Nelson/Shutterstock

  Edited by: Aaron J. French

  Dedication

  This is for William F. Nolan.

  Bill’s story, “And Miles to Go Before I Sleep,” was the first piece of short fiction I ever fell in love with. It was suggested to me by Ray Bradbury, who gave me Bill’s wonderful collection, Impact 20, on a snowy February evening in 1971. Ray had written the introduction to the book and said I would love all of the stories, but that one in particular. He was right. It also ignited within me a love of short form fiction.

  Thanks Ray, and especially thanks to you, Bill!

  And, as always, for Sara Jo.

  Introduction

  By

  Scott Sigler

  May 9, 2016

  Delve deep into the history of American entertainment, and you'll find yourself in an idyllic little town where the sheriff enforced the law with nothing more than down-home common sense, an aw-shucks grin, and a brook-no-bullshit attitude caked in casual calmness. Of course, that sheriff would have never used the word “bullshit,” because there just weren't no need to curse when you visited Mayberry.

  From 1960 to 1968, Mayberry was the setting for “The Andy Griffith Show.” Andy Griffith was the sheriff of a small town that epitomized the projected values of Main Street, USA. He was famous for not carrying a gun. His erstwhile, bumbling deputy Barney Fife did carry a gun, yet had only one bullet.

  Yeah. That was 1960. This is 2016, and there’s a new sheriff in town. This one most certainly does carry a gun. More accurately, guns. Lots of them. He also lives in a “Mayberry," of sorts, but it’s spelled a bit differently—“Maberry,” as in, the mind of author Jonathan Maberry.

  People are all different, but there are tells that let you instinctively group them by nation, by region, and if you're from that region, sometimes even by a specific town or city block. People talk a certain way, act a certain way. Their values, both the ones they openly espouse in the light of day and the ones they hide away in the dark, they can be fingerprints that thumb-down on a particular zip code. That's what Jonathan's stories are like—no matter where the kids wind up in the big bad world, no matter if they succeed or fail, they all graduated from the same high school—within a few sentences, you can just tell these stories came from the same place.

  Let’s call this place “Maberryland.” It's a small town set somewhere in America’s mountains, where maps aren’t all that accurate, where families have lived for ten generations, where cell phones rarely get service and where outsiders simply do not go. Which is good, actually, because while outsiders may walk in vertical, they usually leave horizontal. If they leave at all.

  Jump in a time machine with me. We travel from 1960-68, the era of The Andy Griffith Show's eight seasons, to 2006-2016, the first ten years of Jonathan’s writing career. In the 45-odd years between the two, the Hollywood image of American law enforcement has shifted, to say the least. We leap from Andy Griffith—an unflappable pacifist—to the signature creation of Jonathan’s mind, Joe Ledger, a man who embraces both his justified rage and the face-shearing violence that comes with it.

  A man who has his Maberryland High School varsity jacket hanging up in the back of his closet.

  Mayberry was clean and polished, a fresh-baked apple pie of a town where the only real fugitive was Old Sam, a legendary lunker of a carp that escaped Andy, Barnie, Opie, Goober and Floyd the Barber. Ha-ha! That crazy fish got away again!

  Maberryland is dirty, sweaty, unapologetic. There’s fishing here, sure, it’s just that your boat is a Navy SEAL SOC-R, your tackle box is eight feet long and contains a mini-gun, a Remington 870, a rapid responder folder knife and some C4. "Old Sam" is a genetically engineered monster grizzly-squid with one tentacle holding the dead man’s switch of a low-yield nuke poised to wipe out NYC. Sure, you can bring Opie along for a day of dappled sunlight, because this Opie went to Maberryland Junior High—he knows fifteen ways to kill you with his bare hands, has an AR-15 strapped across his back and is carrying that blowgun he made in shop class.

  Mayberry’s entire law enforcement complement had one bullet. In Maberryland, one bullet doesn’t even cover the high-caliber Jonathan sprinkles on his morning Cheerios. We’re talking at
least an eight-round mag before the day even begins, with slices of C4 spread on yummy MREs (if you don’t know where your mom hid the C4, there’s extra in the SOC-R’s tackle box).

  If we had to focus on just one point where Mayberry, USA and Maberryland differ, it is this: the former is a place without killing—the latter is a landscape of carnage, a Megadeth opera of bullets, brain matter, bravery and brawn. Are there smart people in Jonathan's stories? Of course there are, Jonathan’s work makes it clear he does not brook stupidity in life or in his characters. But does intelligence ensure the win? Rarely. Even for the brightest of characters, in Maberryland the simple argument over a parking spot often devolves into a gnashing, spit-splattered, knife-slashing battle of who wants to live more.

  When it comes to Jonathan’s fiction, the small town metaphor works in another way as well. Small towns are the home of regular folk. Jonathan doesn’t do his wet-work in the land of generals, politicians or super-powered heroes. You come to Maberryland to read about the people on the front lines, death-dealers soaked in the blood of their enemies.

  Some people write about the decision-makers. Jonathan writes about operatives, those that do the up-close nasty work, as in the tale “Death Song of Dwar Guntha.” Who writes a story about the world of John Carter from Mars that doesn’t feature John Carter? Jonathan Maberry does. John Carter is untouchable, bulletproof and godlike—not so the men that serve under him. Those poor bastards can die, which makes them permanent residents of Maberryland.

  Take the story “Clean Sweeps,” for example, where far-future grunts have the same dirt-eating job as the grunts of this century and centuries long past—killing and being killed on the front lines, because of the decisions of others.

  Or in the story “Chokepoint,” where the zombie apocalypse begins. Are we in the tent of some high-ranking colonel? Or the CDC lab where the brightest and best puzzle out this strange infection spreading across the land? No. We’re with four grunts, guarding a bridge, with no support, no communication and no explanations.

  Oh, I didn’t mention that zombies live in Maberryland? Sorry about that. Because they do. Hordes of them. So do vampires. Vamps love Maberryland. In short: Andy Griffith’s down-home charm wouldn’t be worth two wet farts in this place, and One-Bullet Barney Fife would be a vamp’s blood-doll bitch in ten seconds flat.

  Jonathan even manages to make the unstoppable force that is GI Joe more grounded and realistic in "Flint & Steel,” perhaps the only story in that particular universe that made me think, “You know maybe it wouldn’t be all that fun to be a Joe…"

  Yes, Maberryland is the place where grunts live, but don’t think you’re safe because you’re not in the armed forces. In this town, the word “grunt” doesn’t apply to just soldiers. It applies to everyday Americans, the workers, the toilers, the luckless, those that never had a chance—the very bones of the nation. It’s the fog rolling through the peaks of Appalachia, where a young man seeking his family past unfortunately finds it in “Calling Death.” It’s a sociopathic little girl whose pretty pony fun-time doesn’t involve ponies at all, but rather her hapless sister and a lovely man known as “Doctor Nine.” It is the plague of meth and hopeless children in “Crooked.” It’s an inner city tattoo parlor where black and white take on different meanings in “Ink.” It’s even Sherlock Holmes, who gets a taste of West Virginia justice in “The Adventure of the Greenbrier Ghost.”

  But this collection isn’t just about Maberryland. Up the road a piece, a little higher in the mountains, there’s a little town called Pine Deep. Sure, you've heard of it, you've heard of the "Most Haunted Town in America." This is where Jonathan’s fiction career began. His first three novels were the Pine Deep Trilogy, consisting of Bram Stoker Award-winning GHOST ROAD BLUES, DEAD MAN’S SONG, and BAD MOON RISING. If you’ve been itching to come back to this place, you’re in luck—here there be four stories that baste you in the horror gravy of this tiny Pennsylvania town: “Long Way Home,” “Mister Pockets,” “Property Condemned," and the titular “Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard."

  This collection documents Jonathan’s love affair with the short story. Novels are his bread and butter, but short fiction is his delicious dessert. I know how he feels, as I’ve been lucky enough to pen four short stories for Maberry-edited anthologies. I hope to write many more for him, and I sure as hell hope he keeps writing them himself.

  I want him to write more because Maberryland is just begging for a new cul-de-sac full of slightly sagging homes and suspicious mounds of fresh dirt. As you read through these pages, allow the zombies to roll out the welcome wagon, the vamps to invite you to the PTA meetings, the grunts to fire up the VFW barbecue and the unabashedly American chamber of commerce to take you fishing.

  There’s a new sheriff in town. And this one has a lot of bullets.

  -Scott Sigler-

  WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

  AND OTHER STORIES

  Author’s Notes on “Doctor Nine”

  This story is the very first of a loose cycle of tales told about a place called ‘The Fire Zone,’ which doesn’t quite exist in the real world, but which exists in the private worlds of every person. Down the hill from the bright lights of the Fire Zone is a darker place called Boundary Street. Bad things happen there. Worse things live there. I created the Fire Zone for an experimental play I wrote in the early 1980s, and elements of it have begun to appear in my fiction. “Doctor Nine” is not set in the heart of either the Zone or Boundary Street, but the influence of the latter informs this story.

  Oh, and ‘Doctor Nine’ was the name I gave to my personal boogeyman when I was a troubled little kid.

  Doctor Nine

  -1-

  They blew into town on a Halloween wind.

  The Mulatto drove the big roadster, and the Sage sat beside him, snickering into his yellow beard. Telephone poles whipped by, one after the other, and Zasha made a joke about their looking like crosses waiting for saviors. They all laughed and laughed, except for Doctor Nine who always smiled but never, ever laughed.

  The car tore through the veils of shadow that draped like sackcloth between the distant lampposts. The night was in no way larger than the car, though it tried—and failed—to loom around the vehicle. The car was really the darkness of that night; it was far more a part of the night than the shadows. You couldn’t imagine what that car would look like in daylight. It wasn’t that kind of car.

  Flocks of shapeless nightbirds flew on before the car and whenever the roadster would stop the birds would wheel and circle beneath the hungry stars. Against the fierce glow of the sneering moon the birds were tatters of feather and bone. Their call was more mocking than plaintive. The birds were always there; as long as Doctor Nine was there, they were there. It was in the manner of things and both the birds and Doctor Nine accepted the arrangement. It suited them all.

  The Mulatto never spoke when he drove. He never spoke at all. He could, but he chose not to, and his throat had gone dry and dusty over the years. When he laughed it was the whisper of rat feet over old floorboards. Knuckly hands clutched the wheel and his bare feet pressed gas and brakes and sometimes clawed the carpeted floor. Around his neck he wore a medicine pouch, which he’d taken from a Navajo crystal gazer, and some parts of the crystal gazer were in there, too. He wore jeans and a faded Dead Kennedys t-shirt, a stolen wristwatch, and seven wedding rings, one on almost every finger. He was working on a complete set. Little sparks of light flickered from his fingers as he wheeled hand-over-hand around bends in the highway.

  Beside him, the Sage ate chicken from a metal bucket. The bucket was smeared with chicken blood, and feathers drifted lazily to the floor. He offered a wing to Zasha, who declined with a wicked smile, but Spike bent forward from the back seat and plucked the wing out of the Sage’s fingers. In the brief exchange their hands were contrasted in a display-counter spill of light from a passing streetlamp: the yellow, faintly reptilian mottling on the Sage’s fingers, the thin webbing
which had begun to grow between his thumb and index finger; and the overly-long, startlingly delicate fingers of Spike, dusted now with a haze of brown hairs, nails as long as a fashion model’s though much sharper. The wing vanished into the back and Spike bent forward to eat it. He shot a quick, inquiring glance at Doctor Nine, who nodded permission and looked away out into the night. Spike ate with as little noise as he could manage, the bones crunching softly between his serrated teeth.

  Doctor Nine looked dreamily at the passing cars, imagining lives and hearts and souls contained within those fragile metal shells like tins of caviar. In the hum of the car’s engine he could hear the hum of life itself, the palpable field of human energy. As subtle as chi, as definite as arterial pumping. In the whisk of cars passing one another he heard gasps and soft cries, the stuff of nighttime encounters, expected and unexpected.

  “Take the next exit,” he said to the Mulatto and the big roadster followed a line of cars angling toward a big city that glowed like embers under a cloud of carbon smutch.

  Doctor Nine smiled and smiled, knowing that something wonderful was about to happen.

  -2-

  Bethy sat awake nearly all night watching Millie die. She thought it was quite beautiful. In the way spiders are beautiful. The way a mantis is beautiful when it mates, and feeds. If her sister thought it was something else…well, so what? Bethy and Millie had never seen eye-to-eye, not once unless Bethy was lying about it. Bethy was a very good liar. All it took was practice. It was a game they had started playing just a couple of hours after they all got home from camping. Mom and Dad were already asleep in their room, and Bethy had convinced Millie that it would be fun to stay up and pretend that they were still camping, still lost in the big, dark woods.