Free Whistling Past the Graveyard by Jonathan Maberry Page B

digging like crazy.” His eyes glistened. “What did Granddad say? You just told me… That those men were so obsessed with earning that bonus that they went crazy, picking and digging like the Devil was whipping them.”
    “And then that whole mountain just up and fell,” agreed Granny softly.
    “It killed them fast. Killed them before they could get with God.”
    She nodded.
    “Like the mouth of Hell opened up and swallowed those boys,” Joshua said, his voice thick, his eyes filled with bad, bad pictures. “God.”
    “I already said it,” whispered Granny. “God didn’t have nuthin’ to do with what happened.”
    The moans were constant now. The voices clear and terrible. The metallic clinks distinct.
    Joshua laughed. Too quick and too loud. “Oh…come on ! This is ridiculous. Granny, I don’t mean any disrespect, but…come on. You can’t expect me to believe any of this.”
    “I didn’t ask you to.”
    That wiped the smile off his face.
    “Granddad left because of this sound, didn’t he?”
    Granny didn’t bother to answer that.
    The moans answered it.
    The clank of metal on rock answered it.
    “No,” said Joshua. “You want me to believe that they’re still there, still down there in the dark, still…digging?”
    Granny smoked her cigarette.
    “That’s insane,” he said, anger in his voice now. “They’re dead! They’ve been dead for years. Come on, Granny, it’s insane. It’s stupid.”
    “Son,” she said, “I ain’t told you none of that. I ain’t told you nuthin’ but to listen to the wind and tell me what you think that is.”
    The voices on the wind were filled with such anger, such pain.
    Such hunger.
    The incessant clanks of pickaxes against rock were like punches, and Joshua actually yielded a step backward with each ripple of strikes. As if those pickaxes were hitting him. More wetness glistened on his face.
    “Granny,” he said in a hollow voice. “Come on…”
    Granny rocked in her rocker and smoked her cigarette.
    “All these years?” asked Joshua, and she could hear how fragile his voice was. It had taken three weeks of the sound before Hack had up and left. A lot of folks played their TV or radio loud and late to try and hide the sound.
    One by one, people left the mountain. Took some only months; took others years.
    Joshua Tharp stood in the yard and winced each time the wind blew.
    He won’t last the night, she thought. He’ll be in his car and heading back to the city before moonrise.
    “All these years…digging…”
    His eyes were suddenly wild.
    “Has…has…the sound been getting louder all these years?”
    Granny nodded. “Every night.”
    “’Every night,’” echoed Joshua. He stood his ground, not knocked back by the ring of the pickaxes this time. Granny thought that either he had found his nerve or he had lost it entirely.
    “I ‘spect one of these days they’ll dig theyselves out of that hole.” She paused. “Out of Hell.”
    The picks rang in the night.
    Again and again.
    Then there was a cracking sound. Rock breaking off. Or breaking open.
    Joshua and Granny listened.
    No more sounds of pickaxes.
    There were just the moans.
    Louder now. Clearer.
    So much clearer.
    “God…” whispered Joshua.
    “God had nuthin’ to do with the collapse,” said Granny. “And I expect he’s got nuthin’ to do with this.”
    The moans rode the night breeze.
    So loud and clear.
     

 
     
    Author’s Note on “Flint and Steel”
     
     
    Max Brooks wrote one of the landmark zombie novels of all time, World War Z. I know Max and he’s a cool cat and a talented writer. When he reached out and asked if I wanted to write a story for an anthology he was editing, I said sure before I even asked what it was. Turns out he was not editing a zombie book. Max was editing an anthology of novellas set in the world of GI Joe. Yeah, that GI Joe.
    Understand, when I was a kid (I’m older than Max) GI Joe was twelve inches high, fought in World War II, and