Feed

Eighteen

My aim has never been as good as Shaun’s, but it didn’t matter at close range: Head shots get a lot easier when there’s no real distance between you and your target. Even so, I kept my gun raised for several minutes, as much waiting to feel something as waiting for her to move. She was part of my team, part of our inner circle, and she was gone. Shouldn’t I have felt something? But there was nothing beyond a vague sense of loss and a much stronger sense of onrushing dread.

The sound of Rick retching snapped me out of my fugue. I leaned back against Shaun’s arm, sliding my sunglasses back on and feeling their familiar weight settle against my face before I lowered my gun and turned toward the other surviving member of our team. “Rick, what’s your status?” He made more retching noises. I nodded. “About what I figured. Shaun, head for the van and get three more field kits.”

“And you’ll be doing what, exactly, as I leave you alone in the middle of nowhere with the dead things and Captain Vomit?”

I unzipped the pocket of my jacket and pulled out my PDA, holding it up. “I’ll be standing here, keeping an eye on Captain Vomit and calling for help. We’ll need to provide clean test results before they’ll approach us with anything more useful than bullets. We’re going to need a full biohazard squad out here; we have two corpses, we have a contaminated truck, we have Buffy’s blood on the ground—”

Shaun froze, going white as he looked from the slivers of glass embedded in the knees of my jeans to my hands, which were red and raw from where the door handle had stripped the skin from my palms. “And we need clean test results,” he said, in a voice that bordered on numb.

“Exactly,” I said. He looked scared. I distantly wished I could find it in me to be scared, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t making it past that damned numbness. “Go.”

“Going,” he said, and wheeled, breaking into a run as he headed for the van.

Rick was still on his hands and knees making soft retching sounds, but the actual vomiting had stopped. I moved to stand beside him, attempting to comfort with my presence as I tapped in an emergency channel call on my PDA. Opening a broad emergency channel while standing near a state highway would broadcast my message to every police scanner, hospital hazmat department, and federal agency within the receiving range. If there was help to be had, we’d have it.

“This is Georgia Carolyn Mason, license number ABF dash one-seven-five-eight-nine-three, currently located between mile markers seventy-seven and seventy-eight on southbound Interstate 55 with a hazard zone upgrade for the vicinity and a priority-A distress call. Status is stable, awaiting test results on surviving party members. Request acknowledgment.”

The reply was immediate. “This is the Memphis CDC. A biohazard team is being dispatched to your location. Please explain your presence in the hazard zone.”

It isn’t technically illegal to drive the federally maintained highways—people still have to get from place to place—but it’s unusual unless you’re a trucker, and even they have to file routes stating exactly where they expect to be at each step along the way. Caravans are held to many of the same restrictions. When the rulings first went into effect, some people complained that the government was limiting personal freedom, but they quieted when it was pointed out, rather harshly, that this wasn’t as much a matter of tracking the movements of individuals as it was a matter of charting the mobility of potential outbreaks. Most people shut up as soon as “we just want to know where the zombies are going to be” came into the equation.

“Route registry forty-seven dash A, designation Ryman/Tate equipment caravan, registered drivers present at the scene are Georgia Carolyn Mason, Class M license; Shaun Phillip Mason, Class A license; Richard Cousins, Class C license; Charles Li Wong, Class A license. Registered passengers Georgette Marie Meissonier, Class C license. Purpose of trip registered as movement of heavy equipment from Parrish, Wisconsin, to Houston, Texas. Registered duration, four days, allowing for reasonable rest stops and sleeping periods for the available drivers. Two of our trucks are still on the road; I’m not sure of their status. If you give me your network key, I can transmit our precise route.”

The man’s tone was gentler when he spoke again; my information had been fed into his computer and was checking out clean. “That won’t be necessary, Ms. Mason. Why are y’all calling for a hazard team?”

“Someone shot out the tires on three of our vehicles. We’re down a car, with possible injuries to the driver. The rear equipment truck flipped. The driver, Charles Wong, was killed in the impact and reanimated before we were able to reach the vehicle. He infected his passenger, Georgette Meissonier. Her test results are recorded in a standard field test unit, manufacturer Sony, model number V dash fifteen dash eleven dash A, and were registered via wireless upload with the CDC mainframe at the time of confirmation. Due to the possibility of inaccurate positive with that model number, we did not take immediate action but maintained a safe distance until Ms. Meissonier began to experience pupil dilation and memory loss. Once her infection was confirmed, she was put down honorably.” There was the grief and outrage, at last, beginning to chip away at the edges of my numbness. “We have hot blood in the cab of the truck and on the ground outside the truck, as well as two hot corpses in need of removal and disposal.”

“The team will not approach until preliminary test results for the surviving members of your party have been uploaded, and they will not offer direct physical assistance until you’ve been tested again on the CDC field units they provide,” the man cautioned, some of the warmth leeching from his tone. Two bodies and a lot of hot blood on the road outside Memphis could spell an outbreak much larger than our little team. We both knew it. Now we had to contain it.

“Understood.” My PDA started beeping, signaling an incoming call. “Sir, may I ask, what is your name?”

“Joseph Wynne, Ms. Mason. Stand tight; our team will be there soon.”

“Thank you, Joe,” I said.

“God be with you,” he said. The line clicked off.

Shifting my PDA to my other hand, I pressed the Receive button. “Georgia.” Shaun was running toward me, the field kits clutched against his chest. I raised my free hand, and he lobbed one at me. It was more than a simple game of catch; there are a hundred small tests and checks for infection that don’t depend on medical science. If he could throw, and I could catch, the odds were better that we were both clean. I saw him relax when I caught the kit, even though he didn’t slow down.

Senator Ryman’s voice came through the receiver, made sharp and tight by panic: “Georgia, what’s this I’m getting on the scanner about an accident? Is everyone all right out there?”

“Senator.” I nodded to Shaun. He put Rick’s testing kit down next to him, and the two of us popped the lids off our respective kits in comforting unison. Routine is the most reassuring thing there is. “I’m afraid I have to answer in the negative, sir, but the CDC is dispatching a biohazard team to our location. Once we have an all-clear, we’re going to need a fresh truck and a team to move the equipment.” I hesitated before adding, “We’re also going to need a new driver. Rick doesn’t have his Class A license, and I don’t want to leave my bike behind.”

There was a long pause, during which I tucked my PDA between my shoulder and my ear, freeing my hand, and mouthed a silent “one, two” at Shaun. On two, we both rammed our forefingers down on the unit the other held. The prick of the needle puncturing my thumb made me wince, nearly dislodging the PDA.

Finally, while the lights were blinking red to green and back again, the senator said, “Georgia… is Chuck…?”

I closed my eyes, blocking those ever-hateful lights, and said, “I’m sorry, Senator.”

He paused again. “Georgia…”

“Yes, Senator?”

“Buffy. Wasn’t she…”

“I’m afraid that when the truck rolled, we were unable to save either of the occupants.”

“Oh, Christ, Georgia, I’m sorry.”

“So am I, sir; so am I. Can you arrange for another truck and driver to be sent to our location, and alert the rest of the convoy that we’re being unavoidably delayed? We’re just outside Memphis. You should be able to pull us up on the team GPS.”

“I’ll have someone on the way inside the next ten minutes.” The third pause was longer than the other two, and when he spoke again, he sounded more exhausted than I’d ever heard him, even after we received the news of Rebecca’s death. “Georgia, have the rest of you… have you…”

“The tests are running now. If anything changes, we’ll call you.”

“Thank you. I suppose I should let you get to it.”

“That would be best.”

“God save you, Georgia Mason,” he said, and ended the call before I could say good-bye.

Lowering the PDA, I opened my eyes, looking to Shaun’s face and avoiding the lights entirely. “He’s sending help,” I said.

“Good,” he replied. “We’re not infected.”

I allowed myself to glance down to the field kits, whose lights had settled on a steady green. I took a single shallow breath, followed by another deeper one, and nodded. “Better.” Turning, I looked at Rick. “Rick, we need a blood test.”

“What?” He raised his head, eyes wide and blank.

“A blood test. The field kit is next to you. The biohazard team won’t approach until we’re either checked out clean or dead.” I pulled my finger free, feeling the antiseptic tingle in the pinprick wound, and shook my hand briskly before depressing the signal button at the base of the kit. That would activate the built-in wireless transmitter, uploading the results into the CDC mainframe. A manual upload is only necessary in the event of a negative; the CDC doesn’t care, under normal circumstances, about the fact that someone isn’t about to turn into a zombie. Buffy’s results uploaded themselves the second the lights settled on red. Once you’ve tested positive, the CDC knows. Disabling the upload functionality of a blood testing unit is a federal offense.

Shaun mirrored my actions. He held out his hand and I passed him his test kit, which he dropped into one of the plastic bags he pulled from his belt. My test kit went into a separate bag, which he handed to me. Again in semi-unison, we pressed down the pressure seals, leaving our respective thumbprints on the corners of our bags. If they were tampered with in any way, the seals would turn scarlet and the kits inside would become worse than useless; they would become suspect.

“I… I’m not sure I can,” said Rick, swallowing. “Buffy…”

“Buffy’s dead, and so is Chuck. We need to know if you’re clean.” I handed the bag back to Shaun and moved to crouch next to Rick, picking up his test unit and popping off the plastic cover to reveal the pressure pad and needle inside. “Come on. You know the drill. It’s just a little pinprick.”

“What if the lights go red?”

“Then we’ll sit with you until the CDC gets here; they have better units than we do, and they’re on their way,” I said, keeping my voice as reasonable as I could. I felt like crying. I didn’t dare. Rick looked like he was barely holding himself together; if I started to cry, his control might shatter. “Unless you actually start to convert, we’ll take no actions.”

“If the lights go red, you’ll take action immediately,” he said, and his voice was suddenly cold, devoid of hesitation. “I want that bullet in my brain before I know what’s going on.”

“Rick—”

He leaned forward, jamming his thumb down on the needle’s point. “I’m not upset that you shot her, Georgia. I’m upset that she had to go that far before you could.” He tilted his face upward, looking to Shaun, then to me. “My son converted before he died. Please do me the great kindness of letting me die while I remember his name.”

“Of course,” I said and straightened, stepping back to my customary place beside Shaun. He raised his right hand, placing it against the middle of my back, while his left hand moved to rest, ever so lightly, on the holster of his pistol. If we lost a second teammate today, the bullet wouldn’t be mine. Sometimes you have to spread the guilt around.

“I didn’t know you had a kid, Ricky-boy,” said Shaun, his tone almost jovial. “What else haven’t you been telling us?”

“I wear women’s underwear,” Rick said. Then, very slightly, he smiled. “I’ll show you his picture sometime. He just… he’s the reason I left print media. Too many people there remembered him, and too many of them had known his mother. Too many people looked at me differently after I lost them. I still loved the news. But I didn’t want to be the news. So I found another way to get the story out there.”

The lights were flashing, red to green to red. “What was your son’s name, Rick?” I asked.

“Ethan,” Rick said, his smile growing more sincere and coloring with sorrow. “Ethan Patrick Cousins, after my father and his mother’s grandfather. Her name was Lisa. His mother, I mean. Lisa Cousins. She was beautiful.” He closed his eyes. “He had her smile.”

The lights stopped flashing.

“We’ll remember their names for you, if it ever comes to that,” I said, “but it won’t be today. You’re clean, Rick.”

“Clean?” He opened his eyes, looking at the test kit like it was some alien thing he’d never seen before. Then, slowly, he removed his finger from the needle and pressed the transmission button. “Clean.”

“Which is a damn good thing because there was no way I was taking care of your mangy cat,” said Shaun.

“He’s right,” I said, moving to offer a hand to Rick, to help him off the ground. “Shaun would have tossed her out the window at the first truck stop we passed.”

“Now, George, don’t be silly,” chided Shaun. “I would’ve waited for one that had a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign. It wouldn’t do for Lois to not have any friends.”

Rick and I exchanged a startled look before we burst out laughing. I started to cry at the same time, and pulled Rick to his feet before slinging my arms around his shoulders and using him to steady myself. Shaun walked over and put his arms around the both of us, joining our laughter and smashing his face into my hair to hide his own tears. I knew they were there; Rick didn’t need to. Some secrets don’t need to be shared.

We stayed that way until the sound of tires alerted us to the approach of the biohazard convoy. Hastily, we pulled apart, trying to get ourselves into something that approached composure; Rick wiped his face with one hand, while Shaun dried his cheeks and I raked my fingers through my hair before shoving my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose. Looking to Shaun, I nodded and started toward the sound of the approaching vehicles, carrying my bagged test in one hand, digging my license beacon out with the other.

The convoy stopped about twenty yards away from the forerunning vehicle; my poor, abandoned motorcycle. The Memphis CDC didn’t play around. They’d sent a full unit: two troop carriers with their standard Jeep-style frames surrounded by steel-reinforced clear plastic armor, a white medical van nearly twice the size of ours, and, most ominously, two of the vast armored trucks media pundits call “fire trucks.” They were huge, painted safety orange with red biohazard signs blazoned on all sides, and their hoses didn’t squirt water; instead, they delivered a nasty high-octane variant on napalm mixed with a concentrated form of insecticide. Once a fire truck sprays something down, it’s sterile. The soil would be dead for decades, and anything that happened to be in the radius and alive when the trucks came wouldn’t be breathing afterward, but the area would be clean.

One of the men in the foremost troop carrier raised a microphone as we approached, and the loudspeaker at the front of the car blared, “Put down your testing units and step back. Clean units will be put in their place. Do not approach personnel. Failure to comply with instructions will result in termination.”

The headlights of the convoy were almost blinding, even through my sunglasses. I raised the hand with my license to shield my eyes, and squinted at the troop carrier. “Joe? Is that you?”

“Got it in one, darlin’,” the voice replied, less formally. “Just go ahead and set those units on down, if you’d be so kind?”

“I’m leaving my license beacon with the test,” I called. “It includes important medical data.” If these people made me take my glasses off, the glare from their headlights would probably blind me.

A new voice, female and substantially more clinical, came over the loudspeaker. “We know about your retinal condition, Ms. Mason. Please comply with instructions.”

“We’re complying, jeez!” shouted Shaun, dropping his bagged testing unit and putting his license beacon on top. I bent to put mine down, somewhat more gently, and Rick did the same. The three of us then started backing away.

We made it about twenty feet before Joe’s voice came over the speaker again, saying, “That’s far enough, darlin’. You three hold tight, now.” The door of the medical van opened and three technicians in biohazard containment suits emerged. I could hear the chugging of their positive pressure unit as it cycled the air, keeping outside particles from entering their sterile zone.

Moving with the sort of grace that implied hundreds, if not thousands, of hours spent in the bulky suits, the technicians walked over to collect our test kits and beacons, putting three sealed kits in their place. With this accomplished, they retreated, and Joe’s voice called, “Please approach, open the testing units, and stay where you are until you’ve checked out clean.”

“It’s like playing Simon Says,” muttered Shaun as we started forward.

“Where I grew up, Simon didn’t usually have a truck full of napalm pointed at you,” said Rick.

“Pansy,” said Shaun.

The testing units left by the CDC technicians were Apple XH-229s, only slightly less advanced than the top of the line. Shaun whistled low under his breath.

“Wow. We really are a threat.”

“Something like that,” I said. I picked up the first kit and broke the seals with my thumbnail before removing the plastic lid. It was designed to cover my whole hand, all the way to the base of my wrist. There were at least fifteen visible points of contact. Grimacing, I rolled my sleeve up and slid my hand inside.

The mist of antiseptic across my skinned palm was deceptively soothing, a feeling that lasted only a second before needles drove themselves into my already damaged flesh, starting to sift through my blood looking for active viral bodies. The lights began to cycle, moving from red to yellow to green as the more advanced medical processes kicked in.

I was so intent on the lights and what they could mean about my future that I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me over the drone of the positive pressure units, or feel the hypo until it was pressed against my neck. A wash of cold flowed over me, and I fell.

The last thing I saw was a row of lights, settling on a steady green. Then my eyes closed, and I didn’t see anything at all.

Nineteen

I woke in a white bed in a white room, wearing white cotton pajamas, with the cloying white smell of bleach in my nose. I sat up with a gasp, screwing my eyes shut in an automatic attempt to keep them from being burned by the overhead lights before I realized that I’d opened my eyes while I was lying on my back. I looked directly into the lights, and it hadn’t hurt at all. A lack of sensitivity to pain is one of the many warning signs of early Kellis-Amberlee amplification. Was that why the CDC decided to attack us? Was I in some sort of fucked-up research facility? Rumors always abound, after all, and some of them just might be true.

Cautious now, I reached up to touch my face. My fingers found a thin band of plastic resting above my eyes, balanced to put next to no pressure on either the bridge of my nose or the sides of my head. I knew what it was when I felt it; they’ve been using polarized UV-blocker strips for hospital treatment of retinal KA for about fifteen years now. They’re expensive as hell—just one can add five hundred dollars or more to your bill, even after insurance, and they’re fragile, to boot—but they filter light better and less noticeably than any other treatment mechanism we’ve found so far. I relaxed. I wasn’t amplifying. I was just a CDC kidnap victim.

It says something about the situation that I was able to find this reassuring.

I began studying the room. It was empty, except for me, the white bed with its white sheets and white duvet and white pillowcases, a white bedside table with foam-padded edges that rendered it effectively useless as a weapon, and a large tinted “mirror” that took up most of the wall next to the door. I squinted at the glass, looking into the sterile hallway beyond. There was no one watching my room. That spoke well for my continued nonzombie status. They’d have had guards out there if I was infected, assuming they had some reason not to have just shot me already.

If it hadn’t been for my ocular condition, that “mirror” would have seemed like the real thing, allowing me the illusion of privacy while letting any attending physicians watch me from a distance. The days of beeping monitors and bulky machines are over; everything is streamlined now, all micromesh sensors and carefully concealed wireless monitors. It’s as much for the protection of the doctors as it is for the comfort of the patients. After all, every reason to go into the room with someone who might go into viral amplification at any moment is another reason to stop practicing medicine and go into a safer profession. Like journalism.

Not that journalism seemed particularly safe at the moment. I closed my eyes. Buffy was right there waiting for me, looking up with virus-dark eyes as the infection took hold and the essential core of her dissolved. I got the feeling she always would be there. For the rest of my life, she’d be waiting.

Kellis-Amberlee is a fact of existence. You live, you die, and then you come back to life, get up, and shamble around trying to eat your former friends and loved ones. That’s the way it is for everyone. Given what my parents do and what happened to their son, it might seem like it’s had a huge impact on my family, but the fact is, all that happened before Shaun and I were old enough to understand. The virus is background noise to us. If it hadn’t existed, Shaun and I would have found something else to do with our spare time, something that didn’t involve poking zombies with sticks. Until Chuck and Buffy, it had never actually taken anyone away from me. It touched people I cared about. It killed acquaintances, like the security guards we lost in Oklahoma, or Rebecca Ryman, who I knew from pictures, if not from actual meetings. But it never touched me. Not until Memphis.

I opened my eyes. All the brooding in the world wasn’t going to bring Buffy and Chuck back, and it didn’t change the facts of the situation: The Memphis CDC had, for whatever reason, drugged us and transported us to a holding facility. I didn’t have my clothes, my weapons, or any of my recording equipment. My ears were bare; they’d taken my short-range cellular devices along with everything else. Even my sunglasses were gone, replaced by a UV blocker that, while doubtless more effective, left me feeling naked.

My mother once told me that no woman is naked when she comes equipped with a bad mood and a steady glare. Fixing that fact at the forefront of my mind, I walked over to the room’s single door and tried the knob.

It was unlocked.

That wasn’t necessarily good.

The hallway was as sterile as the room where I woke up, all white walls, white floors, and stark white overhead lighting. More of those large faux-mirrors were spaced every ten feet, lining both sides of the corridor. I was in the isolation wing. That was even less reassuring than the unlocked door. Pushing the UV blocker up the bridge of my nose in a gesture that was deeply reassuring if not strictly functional, I started down the hall.

Rick was in the third room on the left, lying atop his bedcovers in white cotton pajamas identical to mine. The CDC isn’t big on gender stereotyping. I knocked on the “window” to warn him that I was coming before opening the door and stepping inside.

“Do they actually have room service in this place? Because I’d just about die for a can of Coke right about now. Reanimation strictly optional.”

“Georgia!” Rick sat up, relief and delight warring for control over his features. “Thank God! When I woke up in here alone, I was afraid—”

“What, that you were the last one left? Sorry, guy, but you don’t get promoted that easily.” I leaned against the door frame, assessing him. He wasn’t visibly injured. That was good. If we needed to exit in a hurry, maybe he could keep up. “I am, in fact, immortal when annoyed.”

“Wow.”

“Wow?”

“You’ll never die.” He paused and raised his right hand, making vague gestures toward his eyes. “Georgia, you’re not—”

“It’s all right.” I tapped the band. “UV-blocking plastic. The latest thing. Technically better than my sunglasses, even if everything is a little bright right now.”

“Oh,” he said. “Your eyes are brown.”

“Well, yeah.”

He shrugged. “I never knew.”

“Life is an education.” Keeping my tone as light as possible, I asked, “So were you just waiting for me? Have you seen Shaun?”

“No—like I said before, I woke up alone. I haven’t seen anyone since the CDC Mickeyed us. Any idea what the hell is going on here?”

“I’m thinking it’s more like they roofied us, and right now, I’m marginally more interested in finding my brother.”

He gave me a speculative look. “You’re more interested in your brother than in figuring out the truth?”

“Shaun’s the only thing that concerns me more than the truth does.”

“He’s not here right now.”

“Which is why we’re going to find him.” I stepped back into the hall. “Come on.”

To his credit, Rick rose without argument. “They didn’t lock the doors. That means they don’t think we’re infectious.”

“That, or it means we’re already in the middle of an outbreak, and they’ve sealed this whole wing.”

“Aren’t you just a little ray of happy sunshine?”

I slanted a tight smile in his direction. “I always have been.”

“I understand your brother a little bit more with every day that passes.”

“I’m choosing to ignore that remark.” The hall was empty, stretching in both directions with no distinguishing features either way. I frowned. “Know anything about isolation ward layouts?”

“Yes.”

His answer was surprisingly firm. I glanced toward him, eyebrows raised in silent question. He shrugged.

“Lisa and I spent a lot of time in places like this.”

“Right,” I said, after an uncomfortable pause. “Which way?”

“CDC iso wards all follow the same basic layout. We go left.”

That made sense. Zombies don’t learn, and if there’s a chance your personnel are uninfected, you want them to know which way to run. It would also serve as a herding mechanism; those that had already amplified but were hoping for a way out would charge straight into the air lock, where a positive blood test would buy them a bullet to the brain.

Rick started walking. I hurried to keep up, and he glanced at me.

“I’m sure Shaun’s fine.”

“Mmm.”

“If he’d amplified, we’d be seeing signs of the outbreak. Or at least smelling fresher disinfectant.”

“Mmm.”

“I’d like to take this opportunity to say, off the record, that your eyes are much more attractive when you don’t hide them behind those freaky-ass contact lenses. Blue really doesn’t suit you.”

I gave him a sidelong look.

Rick smiled. “You didn’t go ‘mmm’ at me that time.”

“Sorry. I get a little anxious when I don’t know where Shaun is.”

“Georgia, if this is ‘a little anxious,’ I never want to see you when you’re actually uptight.”

I shot him another sidelong look. “You’re awfully relaxed.”

“No,” he said, in a measured tone, “I’m in shock. See, the difference is that if I were relaxed, I wouldn’t be walking along, waiting for the reality of Buffy being dead to hit me like a brick to the side of the head.”

“Oh.”

This time, his smile was small and tight and held not a trace of humor. “Ethan taught me about CDC isolation. Lisa taught me about shock.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. We walked through the white halls, our white-clad reflections flickering like ghosts in the tinted-glass “windows” until something new appeared up ahead: a steel-barred door with an intercom and a blood testing unit set into the wall next to it.

“Friendly,” I said, as we approached.

“The intercom connects to the duty station, and the test unit has an automatic upload function,” said Rick.

“Friendly and efficient,” I amended. I stopped in front of the door and pressed the button for the intercom. “Hello?”

Shaun’s voice answered immediately, full of the rampant cheer only I was likely to recognize as his way of masking grief and fear. “George! You decided to rejoin the world of the living!”

Something in the center of my chest unclenched and I could breathe again. “Good to see you haven’t decided to leave it,” I said. “Next time, leave me a damn note or something.”

“Afraid that’s my fault, Ms. Mason,” said a deeper, Southern-accented voice. “We try not to leave anything that could serve for a weapon in the rooms. That includes paper. You understand the necessity.”

I frowned. “Joe?”

“That’s right, and I’m pretty properly glad to see you’re both all right.”

Both? Rick hadn’t said a word since I activated the intercom. I turned and scanned the edge of the ceiling until I found a small discolored patch, off-cream against the white of the tile. Looking directly into it, finger still on the intercom button, I said, “You must have been real popular with the girls in high school. They love Peeping Toms.”

“Hey, don’t rag on the man, George. This way I get to see your adorable pajamas. You look like Frosty the Snowman. If he were on the rag, I mean.”

“Frosty’s going to be kicking your ass in a minute,” I said. “Can someone tell me what the hell is going on here, before I get seriously pissed?”

“Door won’t unlock without a blood test, George,” said Shaun.

“Of course it won’t.” Turning, I slapped my hand down on the reader panel, barely even flinching as the needles bit into my skin. For every needle I felt, there were five more I didn’t. The thicker needles on CDC kits are more for psychological reassurance than anything else—people don’t believe they’ve been tested unless they feel the sting. Most of the information the CDC needs comes from hypos so small they’re essentially acupuncture needles, sliding in and out without leaving marks.

A light over the door flashed on, going almost immediately from red to green, and the locks disengaged with a loud “click.” I removed my hand from the panel.

“I assume alarms go off if Rick tries to follow right through?”

“Got it in one. Head into the air lock, let the door shut, and he can follow you.”

“Right.” I gave Rick a quick nod, which he returned, and opened the door and stepped through.

If the hallways seemed featureless, the air lock they fed into was antiseptic. The walls were so white that the stark light they reflected was enough to make my eyes ache, even through the UV-blocking strip. Half squinting, I shuffled to the middle of the room.

The intercom crackled, and Joe’s voice said, “Stop there, Ms. Mason.”

“Close eyes, hold breath?”

“Exactly,” he said, with faint amusement in his tone. “It’s always a pleasure to work with someone who knows the drill.”

“I’m not really in a ‘pleasure’ place,” I said. “Maybe after I have some pants on.” Standing around and grousing wasn’t going to get me to my clothes, or my brother, any faster. Closing my eyes, I removed the UV blocker, took a deep breath, and held it.

The smell of bleach and disinfecting agents filled the room as a cool mist drifted down from the vents in the ceiling, blanketing me. I forced myself to keep holding my breath, counting backward from twenty. I’d reached seventeen when the fans kicked on and the mist pulled away, sucked into drains in the floor. It would be pulled into channels of superheated air, baked until any traces of infection that had managed to survive the chemical bath were burned away, and then pumped into an incinerator, where it would be destroyed. The CDC does a lot of things, but it doesn’t fuck around with sterilization.

“You can open your eyes now, Ms. Mason.”

Sliding the UV blocker back into place, I opened my eyes and proceeded to the door on the air lock’s far side. The light above it was green, and when I touched the handle, it swung open without resistance. I continued on.

The duty station was one of those hybrid beasts that have become so common in the medical profession over the past twenty years: half nurse’s station and medical triage, half guard point, with alarm buttons posted at several spots around the walls and a large gun cabinet next to the watercooler. A good medical duty station can provide an island of safety for the uninfected, even as an outbreak rages on all sides. If your air locks don’t fail and you have enough ammo, you can hold out for days. One duty station in Atlanta did exactly that—four nurses, three doctors, and five security personnel kept themselves and eighteen patients alive for almost a week before the CDC was able to fight through the outbreak raging through the neighborhoods around the hospital and get them safely out. They made a movie about that incident.

Shaun, who had his own clothes on, the bastard, was sitting atop the counter with a cup of coffee in his hands. A man I didn’t recognize was standing nearby, wearing a white doctor’s coat over his clothes, and Senator Ryman was beside him, looking more anxious than the other two combined. Nurses and CDC techs moved past the station, talking among themselves like extras in a movie background—they completed the setting, but they weren’t part of it, any more than the walls were.

The senator was the first to acknowledge my arrival. He straightened, relief radiating through his expression, and moved toward me, catching me in a tight hug before I had a chance to register what he was planning to do. I made a soft “oof” noise as the air was shoved out of my lungs, but he just squeezed tighter, seeming unfazed by the fact that my arms remained down by my sides. This was a hug for his comfort, not mine.

“Don’t think she can breathe over there, chief,” drawled Shaun. “Pretty sure she hasn’t kicked the oxygen habit just yet.”

The door opened and closed again behind me, and Rick said, sounding surprised, “Why is Senator Ryman trying to crush Georgia?”

“Post-traumatic shock,” said Shaun. “He thinks he’s a boa constrictor.”

“You kids can laugh,” said the senator, finally letting go. Relieved, I stepped back before he could decide to do it again. “You scared me to death.”

“We scared ourselves pretty badly, too, Senator,” I said, continuing my retreat until I was next to Shaun. He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing. There was a world of relief in that simple gesture. I leaned into his hand, looking toward the stranger. “Joe, I presume?”

“Dr. Joseph Wynne, Memphis CDC,” he said and walked over to extend his hand in my direction. I took it. His grip was solid without being crushing. “I can’t begin to say how glad I am to speak with you face-to-face.”

“Glad to still be in the shape to speak,” I said. Pleasantries accomplished, I frowned. “Now, can someone fill me in on why I was standing next to a highway, doing my civic duty, and suddenly woke up in a CDC iso ward? Also, if I could get hooked up with my clothes, that’d be awesome. I feel kind of naked here, and that’s weird when there’s a United States senator in the room.”

“That’s a funny story, actually,” said Shaun.

Releasing Joe’s hand, I craned my head around to eye my brother. “Define ‘funny.’”

Shaun picked up a bundle from the counter on the other side of him and passed it to me. My clothes and a plastic bag containing my gun and all my jewelry. As I hugged the bundle to my chest, he said, with all apparent sincerity, “Someone called the CDC two minutes before you did and told them that we’d all been killed in the accident.”

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. Then, swiveling my head around to direct the stare to Joe and Senator Ryman, I demanded, “Is this true?”

Looking distinctly uncomfortable now, Joe said, “Well, darlin’, we have to react to every call we get…”

“You had test results from us. You knew we weren’t dead.”

“Those types of test results can be falsified,” Joe said. “We did the best we could.”

I nodded grudgingly. Under the strict interpretation of the law, the CDC would have been within its rights to come into the valley, shoot us, sterilize the surrounding area, and deal with our remains. The fact that it took us alive for extensive testing was unusual, because it represented an unnecessary risk on its part—no one would have questioned it if the CDC had killed us.

“What made you take us alive?” I asked.

Joe smiled. “Ain’t many people who can make a call that drastic to the CDC and sound that calm about it, Ms. Mason. I wanted to meet anyone who could do that.”

“Our parents taught us well,” I said. Raising the bundle of clothes and gear, I asked, “Is there a place where I could get dressed?”

“Kelly!” Turning, Joe flagged down a passing woman in a doctor’s coat. She was fresh-faced and wide-eyed; she couldn’t have been any older than Buffy, and her long blonde hair, clipped back with a barrette, created the illusion of resemblance. A knot formed in my throat.

Joe gestured from the woman to me. “Georgia Mason, Dr. Kelly Connolly. Dr. Connolly, if you could please show Ms. Mason to a changing room?”

Shaun slid off the counter. “C’mon, Rick. I’ll show you the men’s room.”

“Much obliged,” said Rick, snagging his own clothes from the counter.

“Certainly, Dr. Wynne,” said Kelly. “Ms. Mason, if you’d come this way?”

“Sure,” I said, and followed her.

We walked down a short hallway, this one painted a warm yellow, and Kelly opened a door leading into a small locker room. “The nurses change here,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. Putting my hand on the knob, I glanced to her. “I can find my own way back.”

“All right,” she said. Hesitating, she looked at me. I looked back. Finally, she said, “I read your site. Every day. I used to follow you on Bridge Supporters, before you managed to schism off.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? To what do I owe the honor?”

She reddened. “Your last name,” she said, sounding abashed. “I did a report in medical school on human-to-animal transmission of the Kellis-Amberlee amplification trigger. I found you when I was looking for information on your… your brother. I stayed for the writing.”

“Ah,” I said. She seemed about to say something more. I waited, watching her.

Her blush deepened. “I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that I’m sorry.”

I frowned. “About…?”

“Buffy?”

It felt like all the blood in my veins had turned to ice. Careful to keep breathing, I asked, “How did you know about that?”

She blinked, surprise unconcealed as she said, “I saw the notice that she’d been added to the Wall.”

“The Wall?” I said. “But how would they know to… oh, Jesus. The cameras.”

“Ms. Mason? Georgia? Are you all right?”

“Huh?” At some point, I’d looked away from her. I looked back, shaking my head. “I just… I didn’t realize she’d already be on the Wall. Thank you. Your condolences are appreciated.” I turned and walked into the changing room without waiting for her to respond, closing the door behind me. Let her think I was rude. I’m a journalist. Journalists are supposed to be rude, right? It’s part of the mystique.

Thoughts chased themselves through my head like leaves tumbling in the wind as I stripped off my CDC-issue pajamas and began getting my own clothes on. It took longer than normal because I had to pause every step along the way to get the appropriate recording devices, cameras, and wireless receivers into their assigned pockets. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to find anything for weeks.

Buffy’s death was on the Wall. I should have known it would be, since her family would have been notified, which meant there would have been an obituary, but somehow, knowing that simple fact—that she’d joined all the other victims of this endless plague on the Wall—made her death all the more impossible to deny. More, it reminded me of one crucial fact: We were connected to the rest of the world, even when we were isolated. The cameras were always rolling. And right now, that was what concerned me.

I slid my sunglasses into place, removing the UV blocker as I shoved them up the bridge of my nose. They made me feel less naked than anything else. Reaching up, I tapped my ear cuff. “Mahir,” I said.

Several seconds later, Mahir’s sleep-muddled voice came over the line, saying, “This had better be good.”

“You realize your accent gets thicker when you’re tired.”

“Georgia?”

“Got it.”

“Georgia!”

“Still got it.”

“You’re alive!”

“Barely, and we’re in CDC custody, so I need to make this fast,” I said. Mahir, being the good lieutenant that he is, shut up immediately. “I need you to download the footage from the external cameras on the van and my bike, check to make sure it’s complete, and then wipe the originals.”

“I’m doing this because…?”

“I’ll explain later.” When I wasn’t making the call from inside a government installation, where all communications were likely to be monitored. “Can you do it?”

“Of course. Right away.”

“Thanks, Mahir.”

“Oh, and Georgia? I’m very grateful that you’re still alive.”

I smiled. “So am I, Mahir. Get the footage and get some sleep.” I tapped my ear cuff, cutting off the call.

Adjusting the collar on my jacket, I schooled my face back toward neutrality and left the changing room, heading for the duty station. The cameras. How could I have forgotten about them, even for a few minutes?

We keep the external cameras recording constantly. Sometimes we’ve found things when we’ve gone back to do review, like the time Shaun was able to use some shots of a totally normal highway median to track a pack of zombies hunting near the Colma border. Depending on the angle the shooter was working from, we might be able to use the latest footage to find a murderer. Assuming, of course, that whoever it was hadn’t already been able to get to our hard drives, and that Buffy hadn’t told any of her “friends” about our filming habits.

I was starting to feel like a conspiracy theorist. But that was all right because this was starting to feel very much like a conspiracy.

Rick had less equipment than I did; he and Shaun were back at the duty station when I arrived, and Rick had acquired a mug of coffee from somewhere. I started to give it a longing look, and stopped as Shaun handed me a can of Coke, still cold enough to have condensation beading on the sides.

“Truly, you are a God among men,” I said.

“Now I’m a God, but tomorrow, when you have to stop me from playing with dead things again, you’ll be right back to calling me an idiot, won’t you?” Shaun said.

“Yup.” I lifted the can, cracked the tab, and took a long drink before exhaling. “CDC has decent taste in soda.”

“We try,” said Joe.

That was the opening I needed. Lowering the can, I turned toward him, secure behind my sunglasses. “You received a call reporting us dead?”

“Time stamp puts it at two minutes before your call came in. The report flashed my screen while I was talking to you.”

That explained his request for detailed credentials. “Did you get a name? Or better, a number?”

“Afraid not, on either,” Joe said.

Shaun broke in: “It was an anonymous tip made from a disposable mobile phone.”

“So the number’s in their records—”

“But it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Cute.” I continued watching Joe. “Dr. Wynne—”

“Joe, please. A girl comes back from the other side of ‘legally dead,’ she gets to call me by my Christian name.” My surprise must have shown because he chuckled without amusement, saying, “The CDC gets a call that says you’re virus-positive, you’re dead until we confirm it’s a hoax. It’s a standard legal and safety precaution.”

I stared at him. “Because it’s not like anyone would hoax the CDC.”

“No one should be, and believe me, Ms. Mason, when we find the people responsible, they’ll be learning that lesson right well.” Joe’s smile drew down into a scowl. An understandable one: Most of the people who go to work for the CDC do it out of a genuine desire to better the human condition. If anyone’s going to find a cure for Kellis-Amberlee, it’s almost certainly going to be the Centers for Disease Control, with its near-global approval ratings and even more extensive pocketbooks. Young idealists fight tooth and nail over CDC postings, and only the best ever get them. That means the CDC employs a lot of very proud people, ones who don’t take things that besmirch the honor of the institution sitting down.

“I’d be willing to bet that whoever made that call was also responsible for shooting out our tires,” I said.

“Well, Ms. Mason—”

“Georgia, please.”

“Well, Georgia, it seems like a bit of a sucker bet, and I don’t customarily take those. It isn’t often someone tries to pull a fast one on the CDC, and a fast one that happens to center on a convoy that’s been attacked by snipers, well…”

“Do we have any ballistics on the gun the shooter used?”

Joe’s expression turned remote. “I’m afraid that’s classified.”

I glanced at the senator. His own expression was equally distant, his eyes fixed on some point beyond our heads.

“Senator?”

“I’m sorry, Georgia. Doctor Wynne is right; information relating directly to the police investigation of this matter is classified.”

I looked at him, grateful for the way my sunglasses concealed the bulk of my expression. Only Shaun was likely to realize how upset I was. “You mean it’s classified from the media.”

“Now, Georgia—”

“Are you seriously telling me that if I were some random Joe Public, you’d answer my questions, but because I work for a news site, you won’t?” His silence was all the answer I needed. “Goddammit, Peter. We are dying for you, and you won’t tell us what kind of bullets they’re using for the job? Why, because being reporters means we automatically have no sense of discretion? Is that it? We’re going to run right out and cause a public panic, because, gee, no one’s going to suspect a cover-up when one of our own gets dead and we don’t say anything but ‘Death sucks’!” I started stepping toward him and stopped as Rick and Shaun each grabbed me by an arm. “Screw you,” I spat, not bothering to fight their hold. “I thought you were better than this.”

Senator Ryman looked at me, shaking his head in open bewilderment. “She’s dead, Georgia. Buffy’s dead. Chuck’s dead. You should be dead, all of you, dead and sanitized, not here and alive, shouting at me for not wanting you to rush right back out and keep getting yourselves killed! Georgia, I’m not keeping this from you because you’re a reporter. I’m keeping it from you because I’d rather you didn’t die.”

“With all due respect, Senator, I think that’s a decision you have to let us make for ourselves.” I shook my arm free of Shaun’s grasp. As soon as Shaun released me, Rick did the same. We looked at Senator Ryman together, waiting for his answer.

The senator glanced away. “I don’t want your deaths on my conscience, Georgia. Or on my campaign.”

“Well, then, Senator, I guess we’ll just have to do our best not to die,” I said.

He turned back to us. His expression was bleak. It was the face of a man who’d spent his life chasing a dream and was only now beginning to realize how much it might cost to get it.

“I’ll have the reports sent to you,” he said. “Our plane leaves in an hour. If you’ll excuse me.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t wait for an answer. He just turned and walked away.

Twenty

The senator and his security team came from Houston to Memphis via the Houston CDC’s private plane. Every CDC installation has one fueled and ready at all times. Not because there could be an evacuation—any outbreak large enough to require evacuating an entire CDC installation would leave a distinct lack of uninfected people to actually evacuate—but for the transfer of specialists, patients, and, yes, politicians and other such notables from one location to another in a quick, efficient, and, above all, discreet manner. It wouldn’t do to set off a public panic because someone had seen, say, the world’s leading specialist in Kellis-Amberlee-related reservoir conditions being flown into a populated area. The nation is constantly poised on the edge of a riot, and the CDC is very aware of how easy it would be to be the match that starts the fire.

The last time I was on a CDC plane and conscious of the experience, I was nine and on my way to visit Dr. William Crowell. Dr. Crowell was that “world’s leading specialist” I mentioned before, and he thought he might’ve found a cure for retinal KA. My parents, ever eager to do stupid shit in the name of a good story, flew me to Atlanta to let him test his treatment on me. His cure proved as artificial as his toupee and his “light therapy” left me seeing spots for a month, but I got to ride in an airplane and have an adventure without Shaun. For my nine-year-old self, that was almost enough.

They give you more snacks when you’re nine. Also, airplane captains may be willing to let cute little girls in dark glasses hang out in the cabin, but they’re not as understanding of adult journalists who just want to get away from their traveling companions. When you added the fact that the senator wouldn’t look me in the eye, while Shaun spent the entire flight trying to take his seat apart with a screwdriver swiped from one of the guards, it’s no surprise that I was happy as hell to touch down at our destination, even though landing came barely an hour after taking off.

My relief was partially fueled by the fact that CDC regulations forbade the use of wireless devices while in flight, and I hadn’t heard from Mahir before we left Memphis. I was switching things on before they even opened the cabin doors. Mail alerts began sounding immediately. I had more than five hundred pending mail messages, and none were the message I wanted.

Six more guards were waiting on the runway, including Steve, who held a wicker cat carrier in one hand. Rick let out a wordless exclamation and pushed past Shaun to snatch the carrier, starting to make cooing noises at the wide-eyed, brush-tailed Lois.

“Cat didn’t die,” I said, adjusting my sunglasses.

Shaun shook his head. “Man needs a girlfriend.”

“Hush. This is a touching reunion.”

“I stand by my statement.” Shaun tilted his head back, looking up at Steve. “You brought the man his cat.”

Looking amused, the enormous security nodded. “I did.”

“So where’s my present?”

“Will the location of your van do?”

“I think so.” Shaun glanced to me. “George?”

“I was planning on holding out for a million dollars, but as long as my bike’s included in the deal, I guess I can let you off easy. This time.” I flashed a thin smile. “Hey, Steve.”

“Good to see you breathing, Georgia.”

“It’s good to be breathing, Steve.”

Robert Channing—who got elevated from “chief aide” to “Chief of Staff” as soon as it became apparent that the campaign might have a genuine shot at the White House—pushed past the substantially larger guards, arrowing in on Senator Ryman like a hunting dog going for the kill. “Senator! We have twenty minutes to get halfway across the city, and you can’t be late or Tate’s going to take the stage alone.” His tone implied that this would be a horror beyond all reckoning.

“And we can’t have that, now, can we?” Senator Ryman grimaced, shooting an apologetic glance our way. “I’m sorry, but…”

“The job comes first,” I said. “Rick, give me the cat.”

Looking alarmed, Rick hugged the carrier to his chest. Lois yowled. “Why?”

“Because despite recent events and rampant stupidity, we’re still reporters, assuming we’re still allowed to be.” I slanted a sidelong glance at the senator. He met my eyes and nodded. Turning back to Rick, I said, “You’re going with the senator to cover whatever sort of appearance this is supposed to be—”

“Speaking to the Daughters of the American Revolution,” said Robert.

“Right, whatever,” I said, waving a hand to indicate my lack of interest in the specifics. “Rick, you’re going to attend whatever sort of appearance this is supposed to be, and you’re going to find something interesting to say about it. We’re going to go check the equipment and see what sort of dive we’re supposed to be camping out at.”

Rick nodded with obvious regret, holding the carrier out to me. I almost felt bad taking it from him. Only almost. I needed to talk to my brother, and loath as I was to admit it, I needed to do that talking alone. Rick and Buffy had a past; Buffy betrayed us; Rick was still in the equation. If we were going to keep working with the illustrious Mr. Cousins, we had to decide to do it together, and without Rick participating in the discussion. And if we weren’t, we needed to have all our ducks in a row before we invited him to seek employment elsewhere.

Sounding affronted, Robert said, “You’re staying at the Plaza with the rest of us. It’s five stars, all the latest in amenities, and fully licensed security. Senator, I’m sorry, but there isn’t any more time to stand around and chat. Come on, please.” Not pausing to allow any further discussion, he grabbed the senator by the arm and began steering him toward the waiting car. Rick followed, along with all but two of the security guards.

Steve was one of the guards remaining behind. The other was a Hispanic man I didn’t recognize but whose sunglasses were dark enough to either be prescription strength or render him effectively blind. He would have seemed tall next to anyone else; next to Steve, he looked like a normal human.

Shifting Lois’s carrier to my left hand, I looked toward Steve. “Babysitters?”

“Bodyguards,” Steve replied, without levity. “You folks came close to dying out there on the road. We’d like to see to it that you don’t do it again.”

“So we don’t do any long-distance driving.”

“Not good enough.”

Shaun stepped up beside me. “Are you planning to stop us from doing our jobs?”

“No. Just to keep an eye on you while you do them.”

I could feel Shaun starting to bristle. Being an Irwin means frequently taking stupid chances for the amusement of the cameras. A good Irwin can make going to the corner store for a candy bar and a Coke look death defying and suicidal. The idea of trying to post reports with a security guard looking over his shoulder was probably about as appealing to Shaun as the idea of censorship was to me. I put a hand on his arm.

“So you’re saying our jobs have become so dangerous that we need to be protected not from the hazards of the living dead, but from the hazards presented by our fellow man?” I asked.

“Not exactly how I would’ve put it, but you’re in the neighborhood,” said Steve.

Shaun relaxed grudgingly. “I guess it’ll sound good in the headlines,” he said, his tone implying that it wouldn’t do anything of the kind.

At least he was mollified. Leaving my hand on Shaun’s arm, I swung my head around until I was facing the second agent, not depending on my questionable peripheral vision. “I’m Georgia Mason; this is my brother, Shaun Mason. You would be…?”

“Andres Rodriguez, ma’am,” he replied. His tone was level. “Do I pass muster?”

“That’s a question for the grand jury. You can, however, take us to our hotel now.” Lois yowled. I amended: “Right now. I think someone’s getting cranky.”

“The cat isn’t the only one,” Shaun said.

“Behave,” I said. Keeping the hand that wasn’t holding the carrier on his arm, we turned and followed the agents to the car.

Steve and Andres took the front, leaving us with the back seat. A sheet of soundproof safety glass cut us off from our bodyguards, turning them into vaguely imposing silhouettes that might as well have been in another car. It was a small blessing, even if I couldn’t quite bring myself to relax. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t feel like I really trusted anything anymore.

Shaun opened his mouth when the engine started, but I shook my head, gesturing toward the overhead light. He quieted. Without Buffy and her tiny armada of clever devices, we had no way of knowing whether the car was bugged. It turned out that even with Buffy we’d had no real way of knowing whether the car was bugged, since she’d sold us out, but at least we’d believed we could protect our privacy.

Brow furrowed, Shaun mouthed “Hotel?” I nodded. Once we were in our own space with our own things, we could sweep for bugs and set up an EMP field. After that, we could talk in something resembling security—and we needed to talk. We needed to talk about a lot of things.

The drive from the CDC airstrip to the hotel took approximately twenty minutes. It would have taken longer, but Steve took advantage of the priority override available to government officials and law enforcement, turning on the car’s beacon and sliding us straight into the fast side of the carpool lane. The tollbooths flashed green as soon as we came into receiving range. Electronic pay passes have led to a general speed-up, but nothing moves your average driver as fast as knowing that someone else is picking up the ticket for his commute. We must have provided a free pass for dozens of commuters. That almost made up for the fact that we were cutting ahead of them during the beginning rush hour, when five minutes can make the difference between “home at a reasonable hour” and “late for dinner.”

Lois yowled the whole way, while Shaun made a vague, disinterested show of trying to pick the lock on his side of the car. My brother’s good with locks; the car’s security was better. He’d made no progress by the time we pulled off the freeway and turned toward the hotel, and he put away his lock picks with a silent expression of disgust.

The Downtown Houston Plaza was one of those huge, intentionally imposing buildings built just after the Rising, when they still hadn’t figured out how to walk the fine architectural line between “elegance” and “security.” It looked like a prison coated in pink stucco and gingerbread icing. Palm trees were planted around the exterior, where they utterly failed to blunt the building’s harsh angles. There were no windows at ground level, and the windows higher up the building were the dull matte of steel-reinforced security glass. The infected could batter on them for years without breaking through. Assuming they somehow made the intellectual leap necessary to figure out how to use a ladder.

Shaun eyed the building as we circled. It wasn’t until the car pulled off at the parking garage entrance that he offered his professional opinion: “Death trap.”

“Many of the early ‘zombie-proof’ buildings were.” I adjusted my sunglasses. The garage doors creaked open as Steve waved a white plastic fob in front of the sensors, and we drove on into relative darkness. “What makes this one so deadly?”

“All that froufrou crap on the front of the building—”

“You mean the trim?”

“Right, the trim. It’s supposed to be ornamental, right? Doesn’t matter. I bet it would bear my weight. So if I get infected but I haven’t converted, I can use the trim to climb the building looking for shelter. There are plenty of handholds. So I can get to the roof. And if this place followed the standard floor plan for the time period, there’s a helicopter pad up there, and multiple doors connecting it to the interior, so any survivors could use it to evacuate during an outbreak.” Shaun shook his head. “Run for the roof, it’s covered in the people who ran there before you. And they’re not looking for a rescue. They’re looking for a snack.”

“Charming,” I said. The car pulled into a parking space and the engine cut off. “I guess we’re here.”

The front driver’s-side door opened. Steve emerged, heading across the garage floor to the air lock. I tried my own door, but it was still locked; the safety latches hadn’t disengaged.

“The hell—? Shaun, try your door.”

He did, and scowled. “It’s locked.”

The car intercom clicked on. Andres’s voice, distorted by the speakers, said, “Ms. Mason, Mr. Mason, if you could be patient for a moment. My colleague is going to pass through the air lock and will wait for you on the other side. The lock on the right will be disengaged as soon as he’s tested clean, and Ms. Mason will be permitted to proceed. Once Ms. Mason has passed through the air lock, Mr. Mason will be permitted to go.”

Shaun groaned. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

The intercom clicked again. “Standard safety precautions.”

“You can take those safety precautions and shove ’em sideways up your—” Shaun began, pleasantly. I put a hand on his arm. He stopped.

“Mr. Rodriguez, it looks like Steve’s made it through,” I said, keeping my voice level. “If you’d unlock my door now, please?”

“Very well.” My door unlocked. “Mr. Mason, please remain seated. Ms. Mason, please proceed toward the—hey! What are you doing? You can’t do that!”

Ignoring the shouts from the intercom, Shaun finished sliding out of the car, blowing a kiss back toward the agitated shape of Andres before slamming the door and following me to the air lock. True to expectations, Andres remained seated, mouth moving as he swore at us through the glass.

“Nobody who cares that much about security is going to come out into the open with a possible infection,” I said, taking Shaun’s hand in my left, swinging Lois’s carrier in my right. She yowled, punctuating the statement. “We’re dangerous.”

“Man thought he could make us do this separately,” said Shaun. Taking the still-yowling Lois from me, he slid the carrier into the luggage hatch. The sensors would record the fact that the box contained a living thing, but they would also record its weight. Lois was too small for amplification and would slide straight through. “Man’s an idiot.”

“No, he’s an amateur,” I said, moving into position in front of the blood testing panel. I raised my right hand. Shaun stepped into position next to me and raised his left. “One…”

“Two.”

We pressed our palms flat.

Steve was waiting on the other side of the air lock, shaking his head. “You probably just scared Agent Rodriguez out of a year of his life,” he scolded, without conviction.

“Given that Agent Rodriguez just annoyed me out of a year of my life, I’d say we’re even,” I said, retrieving Lois from the luggage bin. “Do we need to wait on him, or can you show us to our rooms?”

“And our van,” Shaun said. “You promised me our van.”

“Your van is in the parking garage, along with Georgia’s bike,” Steve said. Fishing two small plastic rectangles out of his jacket pocket, he passed them to us. “Shaun, you’re in room two-fourteen. Georgia, you’re in room two-seventeen.”

We exchanged a look. “Those don’t sound adjoining,” I said.

“Originally, you were going to be sharing a room with Ms. Meissonier, Georgia, while Shaun and Mr. Cousins shared a room down the hall,” Steve said. “It seemed best to let you keep your privacy, given recent… events.”

“Right.” Shaun handed his key back to Steve. “I’ll just stalk along with George until you can get me my own key. Rick and Lois can have some valuable alone time to re-bond after their separation.” As if on cue, Lois yowled.

Steve’s eyebrows arched upward. “You two would rather share a room?”

His expression was a familiar one. We’ve been seeing it from teachers, friends, colleagues, and hotel concierges since we hit puberty. It’s the “you’d rather share a room with your opposite-gender sibling than sleep alone?” face, and it never fails to irritate me. Social norms can bite me. If I need to have someone guarding my back when the living dead show up to make my life more interesting than I want it to be, I want that someone to be Shaun. He’s a light sleeper, and I know he can aim.

“Yes,” I said, firmly. “We two would rather share a room.”

For a moment, Steve looked like he might argue. Then he shrugged, dismissing it as none of his business, and said, “I’ll have them send up a second key and get your luggage moved. Georgia, all your things and the equipment that you had marked as vital are already in your room.”

That meant they’d been searched—standard security—but I didn’t particularly care. I make it a rule never to keep sensitive data unencrypted where other people might get at it. If Senator Ryman’s security detail wanted to waste their time looking for answers in my underpants, they could be my guests. “Excellent. We’ll just head for our room, then, if you don’t mind? Assuming you don’t feel the need to accompany us.”

“I’m going to trust the two of you not to get yourselves killed between here and the elevator,” said Steve.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. Shaun snapped a salute and we walked away, Lois still yowling, to follow the wall-mounted signs leading us to the elevators in the lobby.

The hotel was old enough that the elevators still ran up and down in fixed shafts. It would have been an interesting novelty if I hadn’t been so wired and exhausted. As it was, I stared at the mirrors on the walls, trying to ignore my growing headache and the increasingly fevered pitch of Lois’s complaints. She wanted out of the box, and she wanted out now. I understood the sentiment.

Our hotel room was as old as the elevator, with hideous wallpaper striped in yellow, green, and brown, and a steel-reinforced window looking out over the central courtyard. Sunlight reflecting off the pool three floors down turned the water into a giant flare of light, shining directly through our window. I whimpered involuntarily, whipping my face around and squeezing my eyes shut. Shaun shoved past me to close the blackout curtains, and I stumbled blind into the room, letting the door swing closed.

The lights were off, and when Shaun got the curtains fastened the room was plunged into blessed darkness. He walked back across the room, putting a hand on my elbow. “It’s safe now,” he said. “The beds are this way.”

“That was a rotten trick,” I complained, and let him guide me.

“But funny.”

“Not funny.”

“I’m laughing.”

“I know where you’re planning to sleep tonight.”

“And yet somehow, still funny.” He stopped walking, pushing down on my shoulder as he took the cat carrier out of my hands. “Sit. I’ll get things set up.”

“Don’t forget the EMP screen,” I said, settling on the bed and flopping backward. The mattress was younger than the décor. I bounced. “And get the servers up.”

“I have done this before,” said Shaun. The amusement was evident in his tone, but it wasn’t enough to conceal the concern. “You look like hell.”

“You can tell that with the lights off?”

“You looked like hell before the evil day star punched you in the face. Now you look like hell in a darkened room. Easier on the eyes, no less hellish.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“We were surrounded by people, and you were getting your bitchy-and-thwarted on. It didn’t seem appropriate.” Rattling noises marked his passage across the room, followed by a thump and the sound of a lightbulb being unscrewed. “I’m swapping the bulbs in the bedside lights.”

“Thanks.”

“No worries. You’re more pleasant when you haven’t got a migraine.”

“In that case, toss me my big painkillers when you’re done with that?”

There was a pause. “You actually want them?”

“I’m going to need them after we talk.” I take a lot of generic drugs for the headaches my eyes give me. That’s not the same thing as my “big painkillers,” a nasty narcotic mix of ergot alkaloid, codeine, caffeine, and a few less-pronounceable chemical agents. They kill the pain. They also kill all higher brain functions for at least six hours after I’ve taken them. I avoid drugging myself whenever possible, because I don’t usually have the time to waste, but I was getting the feeling this might be the last “free” time we were going to have for a while. If spending it drugged out of my mind meant I had the stamina to handle the rest, well, I’ve done worse in my pursuit of the truth.

“Georgia—”

“Don’t argue.”

“I was just going to say that there’s time for a nap before we talk, if you want it, and painkillers after that. The Daughters of the American Revolution always talk for hours.”

“No, there isn’t. We ran out of time when someone decided we’d outlived our usefulness. Time is now officially something we don’t have. Hit the lights as soon as you’re ready.”

“Right,” said Shaun. There was a click. The room brightened before I heard him move away again. “Servers need to initialize, and I’ll turn on the screens. Your computer’s on the desk if you want to get it hooked up.”

“Got it.” My headache screamed when I opened my eyes. I ignored it. The lower-wattage bulbs Shaun put in were bearable, if not exactly pleasant; I could deal. Sitting up, I bent forward to open the cat carrier, which was still sitting on the floor near the base of the bed. Lois was out in a flash, vanishing into the bathroom.

I rose and walked over to take a seat at my desk, where I started connecting cables. I was moving gingerly, to upset my head as little as possible, and that slowed me down; I was only halfway done when Shaun called, “Clear.” I put down the plug I’d been holding, and the air filled with an electrical buzz that made all the hair on my arms stand on end.

“You’d better have that set low enough not to fry anything,” I said, going back to work.

“What do you take me for, an amateur?” Shaun was trying to sound affronted. I wasn’t buying it. It’s easy to slip when you’re setting up a privacy screen—that’s part of why I’m not fond of using them. They also make my teeth itch. “It’ll short out anything around the perimeter, but as long as you don’t get any closer to the walls, you’ll be fine.”

“If you’re wrong, you owe me dinner.”

“If I’m right, you owe me dessert.”

“Deal.” I swiveled in my chair. Shaun was sitting on the bed, leaning back on his hands in a pose of such sheer relaxation that it had to be forced. Skipping the preamble, I said, “Buffy sold us out, and someone tried to kill us.”

“I got that.”

“Did you get the part where, legally, we were dead as soon as the CDC got the call saying we were infected?”

“I did.” Shaun frowned. “I’m surprised they didn’t come in shooting.”

“Call that the last of our luck,” I said. “The way I see it, they weren’t just gunning for Buffy. If they were, they wouldn’t have bothered calling the CDC after they saw her truck go down. Horrible accident, very tragic, but there’s no need to do that sort of mopping up.”

“Makes sense,” Shaun said and flopped over backward. “So what do we do? Pack our things and go running home?”

“That might not work, since presumably we already know something that’s worth killing us for.”

“Or Buffy knew something worth killing us for.”

“Whoever’s behind this has already proven that it’s the same thing. I can’t imagine we’ve got two conspiracies running in parallel. That means whoever had our tires shot out was also responsible for the ranch.”

“And for Eakly,” said Shaun. “Don’t you dare forget Eakly.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

“I dream about Eakly.” The statement was almost offhanded, but there was a depth of hurt to it that surprised even me, and I usually know what Shaun’s thinking. “They never saw it coming. They never had a chance.”

“So leaving isn’t an option.”

“Leaving never was.”

“What are we going to do about Rick?”

“Keep him on, of course.”

Raising my eyebrows, I leaned forward to rest my elbows on my knees. “There was no hesitation there. Why not?”

“Don’t be an idiot.” Shaun sat up, falling into a posture that was the natural mirror image of my own. “Buffy got bit, right?”

“Right.”

“Buffy was dying—that’s not right. Buffy was dead, and she knew it. She told us what she’d done and how to find out more about it, right? Rick was there, and she didn’t finger him for a snitch. She was sorry for what she’d done, George. She didn’t mean for anyone to die. So why would she’ve gone and left us with a cuckoo in our birdhouse?”

“What if she didn’t know?”

“What if?” Shaun shook his head. “They tried to kill Rick, too. If his car was a little less reinforced, or if he’d hit at a slightly different angle, he’d have been a goner. There’s no way to stage that. And the call to the CDC said we were all toast, not just the two of us. So what if Buffy didn’t know? Rick’s not a moron. He’d have said something by now.”

“So you say he stays.”

“I say we can’t afford to lose anyone else. And I also say that with Buffy gone, I’m an equal partner in this enterprise, so get up.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Get up.” Shaun stood and pointed to the bed. “You’re going to take a nap, and you’re going to do it right now.”

“I can’t nap. I’m waiting for Mahir to call me back.”

“He can talk to your voice mail.”

“No. He can’t.”

“Georgia—”

“Just wait.”

“No.” Shaun’s voice was firm. “I’ll get the rest of the equipment set up, I’ll get the servers running, and I’ll check your caller ID every time your phone rings. If Mahir calls, I’ll wake you, without consideration for the fact that you’re going to work yourself to death. I’m agreeing to that, but I’m also making an executive decision, and my decision is that you, Georgia Carolyn Mason, are going to bed. If you do not like this decision, you may appeal to the court of me hitting you in the back of the head as soon as you turn around.”

“Can I have my painkillers?”

“You can have two pills and a pillow,” Shaun said. “When you wake up, the world will be a magical wonderland of candy canes, unicorns, and fully assembled servers. And Rick stays. Deal?”

“Deal.” I stood, stepping out of my shoes before sitting back down on the bed. “Bastard.”

“Close your eyes.” I did. Shaun removed my sunglasses, pressing two small round objects into my hand. “Swallow those and you can have these back when you wake up.”

“That’s dirty pool,” I complained, popping the pills into my mouth. They dissolved almost instantly, leaving the bitter taste of codeine behind. I wobbled and let myself fall sideways, eyes still closed. “Dirty pool player.”

“That’s me.” Shaun kissed my forehead. “Rest, George. It’ll be better when you wake up.”

“No, it won’t,” I said, resigning myself to the inevitable. “It’ll just be later. Later isn’t better. Later is just when we have less time.”

“Sleep,” said Shaun.

So I did.

Twenty-one

I awoke to the sound of Rick and Shaun arguing quietly, undercut by the comforting static buzz of servers and computers; true to his word, Shaun had managed to get the network up and running while I slept. I stretched experimentally and was pleased to discover that my head neither hurt nor felt like it was stuffed with medicated cotton wool. I’d live. I’d pay for it later—my headaches come from minor damage to the optical nerves, and the more I use artificial stimulants to ignore it, the more likely it becomes that the damage will be permanent—but I’d live.

“—telling you, we’re letting her sleep until she wakes up. Work on your report.”

“It’s the Daughters of the American Revolution. They haven’t said anything new since the American Revolution.”

“So it should be an easy report.”

“Asshole.”

“Hey, man, I just want you to do your job and let my sister get some sleep. Is that so wrong?”

“Right now? Yes.”

“Pet your cat and finish your report.” Shaun sounded exhausted. I wondered how long I’d been asleep, lost in my dreamless, drug-induced wonderland while he wrangled the servers and waited for Mahir to call.

I must have sighed because I heard footsteps. The mattress bowed as Shaun leaned against the edge, asking, anxiously, “George? Did you want something?”

Another eight hours of sleep, replacement eyes, and Buffy back from the dead. Since I wasn’t likely to get any of the things I really wanted, I sighed and answered, “My sunglasses?” My voice was dry and scratchy. I turned my face toward Shaun, my eyes still closed and eyebrows raised in silent punctuation to the question.

He touched my hand with the tips of his fingers before he pressed my sunglasses against my palm, saying, “You’ve been out for about ten hours. I’ve tried Mahir three times, but there’s been no response. Becks says she spoke to him after we did, when she had to request a delete and re-upload of some of her journal files, but that’s the last time stamp anybody has.”

Becks…? Oh, Rebecca Atherton, the Newsie he stole from me after things went wrong in Eakly. I slipped my sunglasses on and opened my eyes, taking a moment to orient myself before sitting up. Getting my eyes to focus took a little longer. Shaun put a hand on my knee, steadying me, and I covered it with my own, turning my still blurry eyes toward the distant glow of the computers against the far wall. There was a patch of blobby darkness there that looked out of place against the green, and I nodded to it, saying, “Hey, Rick.”

“Hey, Georgia,” the blob replied. “Feeling any better?”

“I’m half-blind, and it feels like a flock of seagulls crapped inside my head, but it doesn’t hurt, so I guess I’ll live.” I squeezed Shaun’s hand. “How was the DAR meeting?”

“Boring.”

“Good. At least something in this world can be counted on to stay dull.” My eyes were starting to work. The blob had a head now. “You planning on sticking around, or do we need to post your job opening, too?”

Rick paused. “Shaun said you’d already discussed it.”

“The two of us, yes. The three of us? Not so much.” I shrugged. “I figured you should get a say. You plan to stick around? We’re not doing so well on the survival figures, I’m afraid. One out of four sort of sucks.”

“I’d rather take my chances with you than anyplace else I can think of, if it’s all the same.”

I raised my eyebrows high enough that they crested above the tops of my sunglasses. “Oh? What’s the logic behind that?”

“I know I haven’t known you or your brother for long, and you don’t have much reason to trust me; what I’m about to say probably won’t help with that. But Buffy was a friend of mine for years. She was a good person, and she never meant to hurt anyone, but if I don’t stay with this team long enough to make sure you remember that, one day the news is going to get out, and she’s going to be remembered not as a great writer and a good friend, but as the cause of the Eakly Massacre and the cat’s paw behind the death of Rebecca Ryman. The best she’ll be able to hope for is ‘traitor.’ And I won’t have that.” I could hear the frown in his voice. “I’m staying because I have to. You can try to make me leave if you want to, but it’s not going to be fun for any of us.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Giving Shaun’s hand a final squeeze, I stood and walked over to sit down at my computer. This close up, my screen was a little fuzzy, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. “If you feel that strongly about staying, you stay. We’re glad to have you.” My screen blinked at me, prompting for a password. I entered it. Shaun could get me online, but that didn’t mean he could access my files. Starting to type, I asked, “What’s our general status?”

“Buffy’s death hit the newswires five minutes after it happened,” said Shaun, moving back to his own machine. “But that’s not the fun part.” He paused, portentously, until I glared at him. He’s good at detecting glares, even through dark glasses. “You want the fun part?”

“Yes, Shaun,” I said. “I’ve been asleep for ten hours, and I want the fun part.”

“Fine. Here’s the fun part: Our deaths hit the wires at the same time.”

My eyes widened. “What?”

“We were all reported dead,” Shaun said. “Half the news sites had the story before anyone could contradict it, and half of them are still listing you as deceased.”

I looked to Rick, who nodded.

“Whoever called the CDC made sure the call was ‘accidentally’ made on a channel that several local news sites monitor for gossip,” he said. “We all got listed as dead before we even made it to Memphis. They printed a retraction about Shaun when he posted to complain about the CDC coffee, and about half the sites did the same for me when I threw up the DAR blurb.” He quirked a smile. “I’m not interesting enough to spread as quickly as a Mason.”

“And me?” I asked, too annoyed not to.

“Still dead,” said Rick. “They’ve got some great conspiracy theories going, too, about Shaun and me concealing your death until we can prove you weren’t doing something forbidden by your licensing.”

“Thus invalidating my life insurance,” I said, putting a hand over my face. “Is there any more good news?”

“Only Buffy made it to the Wall,” Shaun said. “She’s the only one whose death has actually appeared in the public CDC database.”

I bit back a groan. “How many people think we faked our own deaths to up ratings?”

“A lot,” Shaun said, voice going grim. “On the plus side, if we’d really been doing that, it would’ve worked. We gained another three points of market share while people waited for the grisly details to pop up.”

“And have they?”

“On us? No. On Buffy? Yeah. It’s all over the place. Somebody broke into our main camera upload and—”

“I get the picture. I’ll get our official report up tonight so we can put these damn hoax rumors to rest and let people know I’m still breathing. Buffy deserves better than to have her death tarred with some publicity stunt we didn’t pull.”

“How official is this official report going to be?” asked Rick.

“You mean, ‘am I going to include the call the CDC got?’” I asked. He nodded. So did I. “Yes, I am.”

“Is that—”

“Wise? Safe? A good idea? No, on all three counts, but I’m going to do it anyway.” I pulled up my e-mail and started scanning the list of senders, looking for Mahir’s name. “Somebody who’s depending on secrecy wants us out of the way. So screw ’em. We’re taking that secrecy away.”

“And when they start shooting?”

“Who says they’ve stopped?” Even with Buffy’s astonishingly well-constructed filters, the amount of spam that had managed to get through was daunting. I began deleting. “That reminds me. We need to hire a new head for the Fictionals.”

Rick shot me a sharp look. “Doesn’t that seem a little abrupt? Buffy just died.”

“Buffy’s death was abrupt; this is necessary. The Fictionals aren’t like the Newsies or the Irwins. They won’t keep working just because they don’t know how to hold still. They need management, or it turns into a million works in progress and nothing that actually progresses. Unless we want to start getting angry letters from people wanting to know where the next installment of some fifty-part serial romance is, we need a new division head.”

Shaun blinked. “Buffy didn’t name anyone?”

“Buffy thought she was immortal. Talk to Magdalene; even if she won’t do it, she can probably suggest somebody who will.” Suddenly tired again, I set my spam purge to run on auto and minimized the window, pulling up the staff LW&T directory. That archive contained a current copy of the last will and testament of every employee currently on the After the End Times payroll, including details on the dispensation of their intellectual property. Properly filed and witnessed wills are legally required for all businesses whose normal routine brings them into contact with federally established hazard zones, the infected, or members of the working press. Journalists: as dangerous as zombies under modern American law. According to the directory time stamps, Buffy’s file hadn’t been updated since we left California.

I entered my password to open the file. Both Shaun and I possess the legal authority to access all files stored on our servers, just in case of situations like this. The document flashed open. It was a read-only copy of the actual document, which was being held, according to the header information, by the Meissonier family lawyer back in Berkeley. For our purposes, it was more than sufficient.

Shaun slid out of his chair and stepped up behind me, resting a hand on my shoulder. Buffy left the bulk of her personal possessions to her family, her written works and literary estate to the site as a whole, and her nonfiction—which is to say, her personal files—to Shaun and me. We had the right to use her data however we saw fit. There was no mention of a successor, but that didn’t matter because that last rider told me everything we needed to know.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. “She knew she was going to die over this. And she knew she was doing the wrong thing, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself. She knew.”

“How can you say that?” asked Rick.

Shaun answered for me, saying, “She left us her personal files. Why would she do that if she didn’t know we’d need something that’s in them? Maybe she felt like she had to do this, but that doesn’t mean she managed to convince herself that it was right. George…”

“Rick, I need you to find a new head for the Fictionals.” I hit Print and closed the file. “That’s your assignment for right now. Well, that and the DAR report. Shaun, I’m going to need to do a news report on what happened, but—”

“But the bulk of it’s an Irwin thing. Got it.” Shaun squeezed my shoulder before returning to his own machine. “What about Buffy’s files? The server she told us to access?”

“I’d really like that camera footage Mahir has; I was hoping to get that out of the way first. But yeah, the files. I’ll head over there now.”

“George—”

“Just be quiet while I deal with this,” I said, almost more curtly than I’d meant to, and began to type.

After the End Times maintains two file servers for employee use. One, the so-called “public” server, is open to uploads and downloads by every blogger we employ, as well as every blogger even remotely affiliated with the site. If you do any work for us at all, we open an account for you on the public server, and those accounts are rarely revoked unless there’s active abuse. There’s just no point, especially since we have a tendency to reuse freelancers. Why burn goodwill on a server purge? More important, why waste time by forcing your IT person to set up the same accounts more than once? When we’re a little bigger—if we live that long—we’ll need to reconsider that policy, but it’s served us well so far.

The private server is a lot more locked down. There are presently seven people whose accounts include access to that server, and one of them is dead. Me, Mahir, and Rick from the Newsies; Buffy and Magdalene from the Fictionals; Shaun and Becks from the Irwins. That’s where we keep the important things, from private financial records to stories about the campaign that still need to have their facts verified. That server is as hack-proof as it can be because one unverified story leaked under my byline would be enough to seriously cripple, if not kill, the news section of our site.

The news is serious business. If you’re not willing to treat it that way, you shouldn’t be anywhere near it.

I opened an FTP window and fed in the address for our secure server. When it prompted me for a user name and password, I typed in soundingsea, followed by the password February-4-29. Shaun and Rick abandoned their workstations and moved to stand behind me, watching as the screen flickered once, twice, and then rolled as a video player seized control of my machine. Tapping the Escape key did nothing to stop the program from opening, and so I settled back in my seat, comforted by the presence of my team. We weren’t much, and we were dwindling by the day, but the three of us were all that we had left.

The screen stopped rolling as the much-beloved face of Buffy Meissonier became clear. She was seated cross-legged on the counter of our van, wearing her patchwork vest and a tattered broomstick skirt. I recognized that outfit; she’d been wearing it the day we left Oklahoma City, when we’d barely been speaking to one another. She’d wanted us to give it up. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, they say. Well, it was a little late now, but at least I understood why she’d wanted so badly to make us all head home. She’d been trying, in her misguided way, to save our lives.

Looking into the camera, Buffy smiled. “Hey,” she said. Her voice and expression combined to paint the picture of a woman tired beyond all reckoning, so worn through that she was no longer sure she could be patched back together again. “I guess you guys are watching this. Schrödinger’s video recording—if you can see it, it’s too late for you to tell me what the picture quality is like. Isn’t that always the way? It’s my masterpiece, and I’ll never see the reactions. I guess that means I won’t have to live with the reviews, either. I should get down to business, though, because if you’re watching this, you probably don’t have much time left to waste.

“My name is Georgette Marie Meissonier, license number delta-bravo-echo-eight-four-one-two-zero-seven. I am of sound mind and body, and I am making this recording to testify that I have willingly and knowingly participated in a campaign to defraud the American public, beginning with my business partners, Shaun Phillip Mason and Georgia Carolyn Mason. As a part of this campaign, I have fed news reports and private feeds to third parties, with the understanding that they would use this information to undercut the presidential campaign of Senator Peter Ryman, and planted recording devices in private spaces, with the understanding that the material thus collected would be used to further undermine the campaign.”

On the screen, Buffy paused to take a deep breath, looking suddenly very young behind her exhaustion. “I didn’t know. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, and that I’d never work in the news again, but I didn’t know anyone was going to get hurt. I didn’t know until the ranch, and by then, I was in too deep to find a way out again. I’m sorry. That doesn’t bring back the dead, but it’s the truth, because I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that when this was over, we’d be a stronger nation because of what I’d done.” A tear escaped her left eye, running down her cheek. It would have seemed overly theatrical if I hadn’t known Buffy as well as I did—knowing her, it wasn’t theatrical enough. She was really crying. “I see them when I dream. I close my eyes, and they’re all there. Everyone who died in Eakly. Everyone who died at the ranch. It was my fault, and I’m so afraid we got this job because someone who could manipulate the numbers knew I was for sale, if you offered the right price. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.

“If I knew who I’d been sold to, I’d tell you, but I don’t. I went out of my way to never know, because if I’d known… I think, if I’d known, I would have realized it was wrong.” Buffy looked away from the camera, wiping her eyes. “I got in too deep. I couldn’t get back out. And you won’t let us go home. Georgia, why can’t we go home?” She turned back toward the lens, both eyes brimming with tears. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to see this. Please. Can’t we just go home?”

“God, Buffy, I’m sorry,” I whispered. My words dropped into the silence that followed her plea like rocks into a wishing well, with as little effect.

On the screen, Buffy took a deep breath and held it before letting it slowly out. “You’re going to see this,” she said, lips tugging up into a small and bitter smile. “You have to see it. Or you’ll never know the truth. By triggering this file, you’ve mailed a video to my parents telling them how sorry I am, and how much I loved what I did. When it closes, you’ll have access to my private directory, including a file named ‘Confession.’ It’s locked and time stamped. If you don’t open it, it’ll be admissible in court. I didn’t trust everything to the servers. I think I know better than anyone else right now just how dangerous it is to trust people. You have something of mine that no one else has. Look there. You’ll find everything I’ve got, including the access codes for all those listening devices. Good luck. Avenge me if you can. And I’m sorry.”

Buffy paused, smiling for real this time, and added, “This—being here, with you, following this campaign—really was what I wanted. Not all of it, maybe, but I’m glad I came. So thank you. And good luck.” The picture winked out.

The three of us stayed frozen in our silent tableau for several minutes. A sniffle from behind my left shoulder told me Rick was crying. Not for the first time, I damned Kellis-Amberlee for taking that simple human comfort away from me.

“What did she mean, something we have that no one else does?” Shaun asked, putting his hand on my right shoulder. “All her luggage was in the truck.”

“But we have her laptop,” I said. Pushing my chair back from the desk, I rose, turning to face them. “Get me a tool kit and her computer.”

Never steal another reporter’s story; never take the last of another reporter’s ammo; never mess with another reporter’s computer. Those are the rules, unless you work for a tabloid, where they replace “never” with “always”… but once you’re dead, you’re meat, and all bets are off. I had to keep telling myself that as I used a screwdriver to work the bottom panel off Buffy’s laptop. Shaun and Rick stood nearby, watching. We’d already scanned the machine itself and found nothing—literally nothing. She wiped the drives at some point, probably before we left on the drive that killed her. When it came to paranoia, Buffy was world class. She’d had good reason to be, after Eakly.

It was somehow anticlimactic when the laptop’s bottom panel came free, tearing the tape stretched between it and the battery case and dropping a data stick into my hand. I held it up, showing it to the two of them. “The plot thickens,” I said. “Shaun, Becks used to be a Newsie. How’s she with computers?”

“Not as good as Buffy—”

“No one’s as good as Buffy.”

“But she’s good.”

“Good enough?”

“Only one way to find out.” He held out his hand. I gave him the data stick without a moment’s hesitation. The day I couldn’t trust Shaun, it was over. Simple as that.

“Get her online and get her going through these files. Buffy said there were time stamps and IPs. We need to see what they can give us.” I stood. “Rick, get back on that report.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Rouse Mahir,” I said, moving back to my machine. The chair was still warm; things were moving faster than they seemed. “I don’t care what it takes. We need to get a copy of whatever’s on that disk stored off-site, and I think ‘London’ qualifies.”

“Georgia?” Rick’s tone was soft. I glanced toward him. He hadn’t moved back to his own machine; he was just standing there, looking at me.

“What?”

“Are we going to survive this?”

“Probably not. You want out?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I just wanted to know whether you realized that.”

“I do,” I said. “Now get to work.”

Both nodding, Rick and Shaun did exactly that.

For all that Mahir seemed to be out, or asleep—or, God forbid, if this was somehow even bigger than it looked, already dead—his machine address still registered on the network. I tapped it in along with my priority code, activating a personalized screamer. If he did anything online he’d start getting loud, intrusive pings demanding that he contact me immediately. Screamers are generally viewed as extremely poor form outside of emergencies. As far as I was concerned, this qualified as an emergency.

Satisfied that I’d done everything I could be reasonably expected to do in order to find my second, I bowed my head, set my fingers to the keys, and went to work.

There’s something deeply reassuring about doing a factual report. You have every bit of information you need at your fingertips waiting to be smoothed out and turned into something that makes sense. Take the facts, take the faces, take the facets of the truth, polish them until they gleam, and put them on paper—or, in my case, put them in pixels—as an exercise for the reader. I set my feed for a live page-by-page, with a license confirmation on the upload. Anyone who really thought this was some sort of cover-up for my death could report the site to the licensing committee for abuse of my number, and that would cancel the rumors faster than anything else I could do. It’d make good news, too.

The e-mail started coming in as soon as my first page was uploaded. Most of it was positive, congratulating me on my survival and assuring me that my readers had known all along that I’d get out alive. A few letters were less friendly, including one I tagged for upload with the op-ed piece I was planning to write; it said Shaun and I deserved to die at the hands of the living dead, since sinners like us were about as ethically advanced. It would fit perfectly with the reality of how Buffy had been bought.

Page six had just gone up when Shaun called, “Becks says she’s cross-checking the IPs now. Most of them look to be scrambled.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she can’t follow them.”

Damn. “How about the time stamps?”

“They prove it wasn’t any of us, or the senator, but not too much other than that. Just going by the times, it could even be Mrs. Ryman.”

Double damn. “Got any good news for me?”

Shaun looked up from his screen, grinning. “How does access codes on all Buffy’s bugs sound?”

“Like good news,” I said. I would have said more, but my computer beeped, flashing an urgent message light at the bottom of the screen. I double-clicked the prompt.

Mahir’s face appeared in a video window, his hair unkempt and his eyes wild as he demanded, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“You weren’t answering your phone!” I said, embarrassed even as the words left my mouth. He was on the other side of the world; there was no way this situation could hold the same urgency for him.

“The local Fictionals were holding a wake and poetry reading in Buffy’s honor.” He brushed his hair out of his face. “I attended to report on it, and I’m afraid I had a bit too much to drink.” Now he sounded sheepish. “I fell asleep as soon as I got home.”

“That explains how you slept through the screamer,” I said. Twisting in my seat, I asked, “Shaun, we have a local copy of those files?”

“In the local group directory,” he confirmed.

“Good.” I turned back to my computer. “Mahir, I’m going to upload some files to your directory. I want you to save them locally. Make at least two physical copies. I recommend storing one of them off-site.”

“Should I delete them from the server once I’ve finished reading?”

His tone was light, attempting to joke with me. Mine wasn’t light at all. “Yes. That would be a good idea. If you can pull the rest of your files long enough to reformat your sector, that wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”

“Georgia…” He hesitated. “Is there something I should be aware of?”

I bit back the urge to start laughing. Buffy was dead; we’d been reported dead to the CDC; someone had tried to use us to undermine the United States government. There was a lot going on that he needed to be aware of. “Please,” I said, “download the files, read them, and give me your honest opinion.”

“You want my honest opinion?” His expression was filled with naked concern. “Get out of that country, Georgia. Come here before something happens that you can’t bounce back from.”

“England wouldn’t want me.”

“We’d find a way.”

“Entertaining as political exile might be, Shaun would go crazy if I forced him to move, and I wouldn’t go without him.” Impulsively, I removed my sunglasses and offered Mahir’s image a smile. “I’m sorry I may never get to meet you.”

Mahir looked alarmed. “Don’t talk that way.”

“Just read the files. Tell me how to talk after you do that.”

“All right,” he said. “Be safe.”

“I’ll try.” I tapped the keys to start the upload and his image winked out, replaced by a status bar.

“Georgia?”

Shaun’s voice; the wrong name. I turned toward him, a cold spot forming in my stomach as I registered the fact that he hadn’t called me “George.” “What?”

“Becks has one of the bugs online.”

“And?”

“And I think you ought to hear this.” Reaching over, he pulled his headset jack out of the speakers. The crackle and hiss of a live transmission promptly blared into the room, seeming all the louder in the sudden silence. Even Lois, crouched next to Rick’s monitor, was silent and still, her ears slicked back and her eyes stretched wide.

“—hear me?” Tate’s voice was almost impossibly loud, amplified by the bug’s internal pickups and Shaun’s speakers. “We are going to solve this problem, and we’re going to solve it now, before things get any worse.”

Another voice, this one indistinguishable. Shaun caught my eye and nodded. He’d have Becks running it through a filter as soon as we finished listening, trying to clean it up enough to determine the speaker. That was all we could really do.

“And I’m telling you, they’re getting too close. With the Meissonier girl gone, we can’t steer them anymore. There’s no telling how many of those damn bugs she planted around the offices. I told you we couldn’t trust a spook.”

I caught my breath as Rick started swearing under his. Only Shaun was completely silent, his lips pressed into a tight line. Unaware that he was being listened to, Tate continued: “I’m in her little boyfriend’s portable office. If there was any spot she wouldn’t bug, it’d be the one where she was doing her own share of the sinning.”

“He really didn’t know her very well,” Rick said, in a bitter, distant tone.

“Neither did we,” Shaun replied.

“I don’t care how you take the rest of them out,” Tate barked. “Just do it. If the CDC couldn’t finish them off, we’ll find another way. Understand me? Do it!” There was a slam, as if a receiver was being thrust rudely into its cradle, followed by the sound of footsteps. The hiss continued for a few more seconds, then cut off as suddenly as it had started.

“They only cut and save when there’s sound being received,” said Shaun needlessly. We all knew how Buffy’s saver bugs worked. Plant them and they’d press anything they heard to file, going dormant to save their batteries when the space around them was silent. She must not have been listening to her files. Just saving and transmitting them, serene in her own certainty that her side was the right one.

“Tate,” snarled Rick. “That fuck.”

“Tate,” I said. My eyes were burning. Finally sliding my sunglasses back into place, I looked from one to the other. “We have to see the senator.”

“Can we trust him not to be a part of this?” Shaun asked.

I hesitated. “How good is Becks?”

“Not that good.”

“Fine.” I swiveled back to my screen. “Screamers on everyone. Get the whole team online. I don’t care where they are, I want them here.”

“Georgia…?” said Rick, uncertainly.

I shook my head, already beginning to type. “Shut up, sit down, and get started. We have work to do.”

Twenty-two

It took two hours and seventeen minutes to gather every blogger, associate blogger, administrative employee, system administrator, and facilities coordinator employed by After the End Times together in one hastily opened virtual conference room. Our conferencing system has eleven rooms, and the eleventh had never been successfully hacked, but Buffy “built” them all. The code was hers, and I didn’t feel like we could trust it anymore. We would have invited the volunteer moderators—leaving them out didn’t seem right—but we didn’t have a way of contacting them without using unsecured channels. And that was the last thing I was willing to do just now.

With Becks, Alaric, and Dave—who was finally back from Alaska, having acquired several hundred hours of footage, and a minor case of frostbite—working in tandem, we almost had a functional replacement for Buffy. Alaric and Dave did most of the heavy lifting of setting up the room, freeing Becks to keep trying to sift through Buffy’s data. There was a lot to sort through.

The atmosphere started out jovial, if tinged with unavoidable melancholy. Buffy was dead; we weren’t, and every person who logged on seemed to feel the need to comment on both facts, congratulating us on our survival even as they mourned for her. The Fictionals were taking it the hardest. No surprise there, although I was pleased to see Magdalene stepping up to comfort the ones who seemed the most distraught. No fewer than four of the network connections we were getting off the Fictionals were coming from her house—Fictionals tend to be the most social and the most paranoid of the bloggers you’re likely to encounter, but Maggie, with her sprawling old farmhouse with the military-grade security system, has a talent for getting them to set the second aside in favor of the first. She could’ve been an alpha at her own site, if she’d wanted it, but what she’d wanted was to work with Buffy. That wasn’t an option anymore. I tapped an IM to Rick, reminding him to ask her about taking the department; if she was handling the mourning period this well, she’d definitely be an asset.

The grumbling started about an hour in, when the congratulatory celebration of our survival died down and it became apparent both that there were people online but working on some sort of secret project, and that we weren’t planning to tell anyone what was going on until everyone arrived. No exceptions, no allowances. Not this time.

The last person to log on was a Canadian Fictional named Andrea, mumbling something about hockey games and cold-weather romances as her connection finished rolling and her picture stabilized. I wasn’t really paying attention by that point. That wasn’t why we were here.

“Is everyone’s connection stable and secure?” I asked. Tapping out a predetermined sequence of characters on my keyboard caused the borders of the dozens of tiny video windows to flash yellow. “If the answer is yes, please input the security code now appearing at the bottom of your screen. If the answer is no, hit Enter. We will be terminating this conference immediately if we can’t confirm security.”

The grumbling slowed. People had been relieved to see us when we first called them, confused as I refused to let them off the line, and finally annoyed by our group refusal to tell them what was going on. Add draconian security measures and it became clear that something was up. One by one, the borders of the video windows representing our staff flashed white and then green as their security status was confirmed. Shaun’s window was the last to change states; we’d agreed on that beforehand. He would close the loop.

“Excellent.” I picked up my PDA, which had been cued to my e-mail client since the conference began, and tapped Send. “Please check your e-mail. You’ll find your termination notice, along with a receipt confirming that your final paycheck has been deposited to your bank account. Due to California’s at-will status and the fact that you’re all employed under hazard restrictions, I’m afraid we’re not required to give you any notice. Sorry about that.”

The conference exploded as everyone started talking at once, voices overlapping into a senseless barrage of sound. Almost everyone. Mahir, Becks, Alaric, and Dave stayed silent, all of them having ascertained from the process of getting the conference online that something huge was going on.

Shaun, Rick, and I sat quietly, waiting for the furor to die down. It took a while. The Irwins shouted the loudest, while the Newsies shouted the least; they knew me well enough to know that if I was supporting a grand gesture—and this was a grand gesture—there had to be a reason. They trusted me enough to wait and see what it was. Good team. I hired well.

I set my PDA aside when the shouting began to quiet, saying, “None of you work for us. None of you have any legal ties to keep you here. If you choose to log off at any point during the next five minutes, I’ll see to it that you have a letter of recommendation stating that your value as a journalist is entirely beyond measure. You’ll never have this easy a time finding another job in your life because I’ll pull strings to get you hired, I’ll make sure you’re settled, and then I’ll write you off. This is the all-or-nothing moment, folks: Walk away now if you want to walk, but if you do, you’re walking for keeps.”

There was a long silence, broken when Andrea asked, “Can you tell us why you’re doing this?”

“Buffy’s dead, and now we’re fired,” interjected Alaric. “You don’t think these things might be connected?”

“I just—”

“Not very well, you didn’t.”

“Do me a favor, dears, and shut up so our former boss can speak?” Magdalene sighed. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“Thank you, Maggie.” I looked around my screen, studying each video window in turn. “Andrea, the answer to why we’re doing this is a simple one: We don’t want any of you to feel obligated to stay with this site any longer than you already have. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the call the CDC received, reporting our deaths?” Murmurs of agreement. “It was received before we placed the call to tell them we were still alive. Someone shot out our tires, there was no one else on the road, and yet somebody told the CDC that we’d been killed.”

“Do you have time stamps on that?” asked Alaric, suddenly alert.

“We do,” I confirmed, nodding to Shaun, who began to type. Alaric glanced away from his video transmitter, signaling the arrival of the appropriate files, and quieted. “Buffy didn’t die in an accident; Buffy was murdered, and her killers thought they’d killed us too. There’s a lot more going on, but that’s the important part right now: Buffy was murdered. Her murderers would have been happy to do the same to the three of us, and that means I can’t put it past them to do the same to any of you. This is your chance to make a graceful exit before I tell you why they want us all dead.” I tapped my PDA again. “If you check your e-mail, you’ll see an offer of new employment—everyone but you, Magdalene, and you, Mahir. We need to talk to you off-line.” From Magdalene’s nod, it was apparent that she’d been expecting that request, or something similar. Mahir just looked floored. I’d been anticipating both responses. “Again, if you want to refuse, that’s fine. You will have five minutes to make your decision. If you haven’t decided within that time, I’ll disconnect you from this conference. Should you choose to leave this organization, you will have twelve hours to remove your personal files from our servers. At the end of that time, your access will be revoked and you’ll need to contact a member of the senior staff to obtain anything you haven’t downloaded.”

I paused, giving the others a chance to speak. No one said a word. “All right. Please review your contracts. If you accept, enter the security code listed under the space for your license number. If you do not accept, it’s been a pleasure working with you. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.”

More silence followed this announcement as people opened and read their new employment agreements. Nothing had really changed from their original contracts; they got the same number of shares and the same percentages of the various merchandising lines, and they were expected to hold to the same deadlines and levels of journalistic conduct. In another way, everything had changed from their original contracts because when those contracts were signed, nobody was trying to kill us. We weren’t offering hazard pay or guaranteed ratings. We were just offering a lot of danger, and the only real reward was the chance to be a part of telling a truth that was bigger than any of us on our own.

Andrea was again the first to speak, saying, “I… I’m sorry, Georgia. Shaun. I just… I was here because Buffy asked me to come. I never wanted to deal with this sort of thing. I can’t.”

“It’s all right, Ace,” said Shaun, soothingly. He’s always been good with this sort of thing. That makes one of us. “Thank you for all your hard work.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer,” said Andrea. “I… good luck, all of you.” Wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, she looked away from her webcam just before the picture blinked off, leaving a black rectangle on the corner of my screen.

That was the pebble that kicked off the avalanche. Screen borders started blinking white as people agreed to their new contracts; video windows started blacking as people mumbled their apologies and logged off. Some of the answers we got weren’t a surprise. I knew Alaric and Becks would stay. Shaun had given me the same reassurance about Dave. With Buffy gone, there was no one to vouch for the Fictionals, but it seemed likely that we’d lose at least half of them. What I wasn’t expecting was how many of my Newsies would be making their apologies along with them.

Luis put it best. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re doing the right thing. I know you. You’re doing the only thing you can. But people are going to get hurt, and I can’t afford to be one of them. I have a family. I’m sorry.” And then he was gone, disconnected like half the Fictionals and most of the administrative staff.

We were left with less than half of our original connections when the disconnections stopped, and the only windows not outlined in white were those belonging to Magdalene and Mahir. I looked to the window that held my anxious, former second-in-command and said, “I’ll call you when this is over,” before tapping out the code to close the connection. “Magdalene, you can stay, if you understand that you’re not currently employed by this site.”

“I’m assuming you’re about to go over the current risk situation, and that you’re not hiring me right away because my contract needs review, since you want me to do Buffy’s job,” said Magdalene, matter-of-factly. “Sound right?”

“Sounds exactly right,” said Rick.

“I’ll stay. It’s my problem as much as it is yours, and my department’s going to need me to know what’s going on.”

“Thank you,” I said. I meant it. She’d never really replace Buffy, but her response told me that she was willing to try. “Rick, transmit the files.”

“Done.”

“Everyone, please check your mail. You’ll find an attachment detailing what we currently know, including that whoever ordered Buffy’s death was highly placed in the current government. Tate is involved. This information isn’t just sensitive; it’s potentially enough to get any one of us killed. Read it, transfer it to off-line storage, and wipe your mail. Whether you’re involved with our ongoing efforts to find out what’s going on is going to be up to you, but if we’re convicted of, say, treason against the United States government, all of you have just placed your asses on the line. Welcome to our party.” I stood. “Shaun and Rick will be remaining to answer any questions you may have; Shaun speaks for the Irwins, and Rick, as my new second, will be speaking for the Newsies. Thank you for coming. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make a phone call.” Ignoring their protests, I walked into the bathroom, turning off the interior lights before closing the door behind me.

While Dave and Alaric were cobbling together a new conference room, Shaun and I had been isolating the bathroom in its own frequency screen, creating an envelope that could only be broken by transmissions made on a very specific set of bandwidths. Most of my equipment was as good as dead on the other side of that door, which was exactly how I wanted it to be. If I had that much trouble dialing out, the rest of the world was going to have one hell of a time dialing in.

Even with the screen’s keys coded into my PDA, it took almost five minutes to establish a connection with Mahir’s phone. His first words were delivered in a sharp, wounded tone: “What the hell was that about? Have I given you some reason to doubt my dedication to this site? Have I ever done anything other than precisely what you asked of me? Because I’m not feeling terribly valued at the moment, Miss Mason.”

“Hello to you, too, Mahir,” I said, leaning against the bathroom sink and removing my sunglasses. The glow from my PDA was enough for me to see by. It wasn’t enough to relieve my headache, but it was a start. “You are terribly valued. That’s why I fired you.”

There was a long pause as he tried to sort through that sentence. Finally, he admitted, “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”

“Look. There’s every chance in the world that things are going to go wrong.” I wished that I was lying to him. I’ve never wanted to be a liar so badly in my life. “We’re playing in an arena we’re not equipped for, and there’s nobody we can call who has the tools we need to get equipped for it. We’re either going to find what we’re looking for, or we’re going to go down in flames.”

“What does that have to do with firing me? You seem happy to take everyone else down with you. What robs me of my right to a seat on the Titanic?”

“The fact that I need you to be receiving the signals in the Coast Guard tower.”

There was a pause. Then: “I’m listening.”

“If this goes as badly as it has the potential to go—if it goes all the way wrong—we could wind up dead, and everyone who works for the site could wind up charged with treason against the United States government. If whoever’s behind all this can somehow turn it from their plot into our plot, that means every employee of After the End Times is in a position to be charged with terrorist involvement in the use of live-state Kellis-Amberlee to bring about human viral amplification.”

“… oh, my God,” said Mahir, sounding horrified. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“I didn’t think you had,” I said, grimly.

The Raskin-Watts ruling of 2026 didn’t impact just America. How could any country, however opposed to the United States government it might be, afford to look like it was soft on the matter of the infected? It couldn’t. Every industrialized nation in the world with an extradition treaty had stepped forward by the end of 2027 to state that any individual found guilty of using or conspiring to use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon would be turned over to the government of the affected nation or nations in order to stand trial. Being outside the boundaries of a country no longer protected you from that country’s laws, if you were foolish enough to cross the one line everyone had agreed to draw in the sand.

The United States doesn’t apply the death penalty to many crimes these days. Terrorism remains an exception to this particular rule. Use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon and die. That plain. That simple. That universal.

“Georgia, I appreciate the thought, I truly do, but I don’t think sparing me is going to save the rest of you.”

“It’s not intended to,” I said.

“Well, then, what is it intended to do?”

“It’s intended to give you time to download everything off the server, burn it to disk, and run for Ireland,” I said. Ireland has never had an extradition treaty with the United States. It still doesn’t. “If you can get across the border, you can probably lie low for years.”

“And do what? Hope they forget that I’m an international terrorist?”

“Make sure the world finds out the truth.”

The pause this time was even longer. When Mahir spoke again, his voice was quiet and very distant. “I’m not sure whether I should be flattered that you trust me this much, or disturbed that you’ve just informed me that my life is your contingency plan.”

“Does that mean you won’t do it?”

“Are you mad? Of course I’ll do it. I’d have done it if you’d asked me upfront, and if you’d asked me in a month. It’s the only way.” He hesitated before adding, wistfully, “I just wish I were better with the notion of you doing this unsupported. Rick’s a good fellow, but I’ve not worked with him long enough to feel like I’m leaving you in competent hands.”

“What he can’t manage, Shaun will,” I said. “I’m going to cut off your official server access at midnight. I’ll be mirroring all our findings on the old server address. You remember the old server?” The “old server” was a box we rented from Talking Points when we were all part of Bridge Supporters. We’d used it to back up our files when we were on the road, since Bridge Supporters wouldn’t post anything that hadn’t been through full validation and didn’t store anything uploaded by a beta blogger for more than twenty-four hours. We hadn’t used it since well before the campaign trail began, and almost no one outside the clerical staff at Talking Points knew I still had the lease. It wasn’t entirely secure, but it wasn’t ours, either. Mahir could access it without leaving a trail that would prove he was still a part of our group.

“I do,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t call you after this.”

“Not a good idea. I’ll contact you when I can.”

“Right.” He chuckled. “Cloak and dagger, that’s us.”

“Welcome to journalism.”

“Indeed. I do wish I’d met you in the flesh, Georgia Mason. I truly do. It’s been an honor and a privilege working with you.”

“You may still get the chance, Mahir; I’m not ready to count us out yet.” I slid my sunglasses back on. “Be good, be careful, and be alert. Your name is still connected to After the End Times. I can’t change that.”

“I wouldn’t want you to. You do the same, won’t you?”

“I’ll try. Good night, Mahir.”

“Good night, Georgia… and good luck.”

The click of the call disconnecting sounded more final than it had any right to. Snapping my phone closed, I straightened, sighed, and reached for the door. It was time to get back to my team.

We had an awful lot of work to do.

Twenty-three

Six weeks is a long time in the news, even when you’re not working on a big project. Following a political campaign is a big project, one that’s capable of taking up the resources of an entire team of dedicated bloggers. Training a new division head is also a big project. The Fictionals tend to require the least amount of hand-holding, being largely content to sit around, tell each other stories, and look surprised when other people want to read them, but the person in charge of keeping them on-task needs to be more focused than the rest of the breed. There were contracts to sign and review, permissions to change, files to transfer, and a thousand little administrative things to handle that none of us wanted to deal with. Not with Buffy’s blood still fresh in our minds.

Buffy caused her share of problems during those six weeks. Maybe she was gone, but she was still very much a part of the team—and not a productive one. Becks spent the bulk of her time hunting through our code and communications feeds looking for bugs and back doors. I’d clearly never realized how paranoid Buffy really was, because the number of confirmed recording devices hidden internally was over three digits, and Becks was still finding feeds for wireless listening devices hidden in just about every office, public gathering place, and conference center we’d been to since this whole thing started. “If she’d wanted to go CIA, she could have owned the place,” Shaun muttered on the day Becks confirmed that there were still bugs running in Eakly.

“But would they have put up with her fixation on sappy purple poetry?”

“Guess not.”

Alaric and Dave followed Becks through our systems, rebuilding the mess she made as she rooted out Buffy’s worms. Together they were almost up to the task of remaking the things Buffy had built alone, although it was starting to wear on them; they’d signed on as journalists, not computer technicians. “Hire new field systems maintainer” was near the top of my to-do list, right under “uncover massive political conspiracy,” “avenge Buffy’s death,” and “don’t die.”

And even with all of this going on, we still had a job to do. Multiple jobs, really. Not only did we need to keep following the Ryman-Tate Campaign—which continued to gather steam, now buoyed by not one, not two, but three major tragedies, earning us a lot of extra news cycles in the traditional media outlets, as well as online—we needed to keep our beta bloggers on-task and updating the rest of the site. The news marches on, whether you’re walking wounded or not. That’s one of the beautiful things about the news. It’s also one of the most frustrating.

Two weeks in Houston. Two weeks of sending Rick on every assignment we could get away with sending him on, while Shaun and I locked ourselves in our hotel room and planned for a war we’d never signed up for, against an adversary we’d never volunteered to fight. Whose side was Ryman on? I was guessing he wasn’t a part of Tate’s plan; no sane man would sacrifice his daughter like that. Then again, Shaun and I were adopted to satisfy the Masons’ desire to prove the zombie war had been won by the living, and they’ve never stopped us from walking into the jaws of death—if anything, they’ve encouraged it, living for the ratings, because when they lost Phil, the ratings were all they had. So who are we to judge the sanity of parents? We sat up until almost dawn every night, working through the darkness, making plans, making contingencies for those plans, looking for a way out of a maze we didn’t see before we were already lost inside it.

Shaun pretended he didn’t know I wasn’t sleeping, and I pretended not to hear him punching the bathroom walls. Caffeine pills and surgical tape; that’s what I’ll always think of when I think of Houston. Caffeine pills and surgical tape.

I tried to talk to Ryman twice; he tried to talk to me three times. None of our attempts synchronized. I couldn’t trust him when I didn’t know whether or not he was working with Tate; he couldn’t understand why we’d pulled away, or why we were overworked and snarly with exhaustion. Even Shaun was visibly withdrawn. He’d stopped going out in the field with Steve and the boys when he didn’t need to file reports, and while he was still meeting his contracted duties, he wasn’t doing it with anything like the flair and enthusiasm Ryman had come to expect from him. From all of us. There wasn’t anything we could do about it. Until we knew if we could trust him, we couldn’t tell him what was going on—what we suspected, what we knew, anything. And until we told him what was going on, we couldn’t be sure we could trust him. It was a Möbius strip of a problem, endlessly twisting back on itself, and I couldn’t see a way out of it. So we pushed him away and hoped he’d understand the reasons when things were over.

After Houston, it was time to get back on the road, rolling across the country like nothing had ever gone wrong. Not nothing; Chuck was gone, replaced by a pale-faced drone who scuttled around doing his job and avoiding anything that resembled socialization. Our security detail tripled while we were moving, and Shaun was no longer allowed to ride out unescorted. He took an almost malicious glee in forcing his babysitters to follow him into the nastiest, most dangerous terrain he could find, and some of the footage he got out of it has frankly been amazing. The Irwin community has been buzzing about putting him up for a Golden Steve-o award this year, and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win.

We spent a month glad-handing our way across the western half of the country while the other candidates stayed in the air and the major cities, assuming major metro areas would have better anti-infection measures. Tell that to San Diego. The devil-may-care approach was winning Ryman big percentage points, enough to keep him in the news even as the media flurry kicked up by this latest tragedy died down. “Man of the People Keeps the World Grounded”—human interest gold. A few outlets made the requisite noises about how Ryman’s insistence on an old-fashioned campaign had dogged him with tragedy from the beginning, but the facts of Rebecca and Buffy’s deaths were enough to pretty much silence them. Maybe you could blame the senator for Eakly if you reached, but you couldn’t blame him for terrorist action or assassination attempts. America is the land of the free and the home of the paranoid, and yet, blessedly, we haven’t fallen that far. Yet.

Six weeks after Memphis, we were overworked, overtired, and about to hit the crowds in one of the country’s toughest, most essential markets: Sacramento, California.

You’d think Shaun and I would be excited about a stop in our state’s capital, being California kids bred and raised. You’d be wrong. California is essentially a bunch of smaller states held together by political connections, water rights, and the stubborn refusal of any segment to cede the cash-cow name “California” to any of the others. The California secessionist movement has been around since before the Rising—not the state quitting the country, but the various parts of the state quitting each other. Sacramento has no love for the Bay Area. We get the good weather, the good press, and the big tourism dollars, and they? They get the state government and a lot of hard to defend farmland. To say that there’s a little resentment there is to understate the case just a little. Whatever fellow-feeling Sacramento had for the rest of the state died when it stopped hosting the annual state fair and started hosting the annual “everybody hide in their houses and pray they don’t die”-a-thon in its place.

The air was hot and so dry it seemed to suck the moisture out of my throat as we stepped out of the Sacramento Airport and onto the partitioned-off loading zone where we’d be meeting the senator’s convoy. It was late afternoon, and the sun was bright enough to stab at my eyes through the lenses of my sunglasses. I staggered, catching myself on Rick’s shoulder. He shot me a questioning glance. Silent, I shook my head. We were all feeling the strain, Shaun as much as any of us, and if Rick said anything, Shaun would spend the rest of the afternoon fussing over me. There was too much to do for me to let him do that.

Senator Ryman had flown in the day before, along with Governor Tate and most of the senior staff. We were supposed to be right behind them, flying commercial air rather than via private jet; unfortunately, a medical emergency grounded our plane in Denver, forcing us to wait on the tarmac with a hundred terrified passengers to see whether our aircraft was about to be declared a closed quarantine zone. I’ll admit, for a few guilty moments, I was almost hoping it would be. At least then we’d be able to get some sleep before heading back to our home state. I was really starting to worry about Shaun. It had gotten to where he only went to bed when I put him there.

A familiar black car pulled up to the curb, and the door opened to reveal Steve, implacable and hulking as ever. “Miss Mason,” he said, with a nod in my direction.

One corner of my mouth curled upward. “Nice to see you, too, Steve. What’s our plan for the afternoon?”

“I’m your escort to the Assembly Center. The convoy leaves for the hall in ninety minutes.”

“That doesn’t leave much time.” I grimaced, grabbing a suitcase in each hand as Steve got out of the car and moved to start hoisting our equipment. Senator Ryman was giving a keynote speech to the California Republicans, and it promised to be the sort of evening that resulted in lots of sound bites, accidental quotes, and competitive reporting. We all needed to be on our game. I’d been hoping to manage it with more rest and less caffeine, but you can’t always get what you want. “Thanks for coming to meet us.”

“Of course.” A second car pulled up behind the first, Carlos getting out and joining in the collection of luggage. Our keepers—the unfortunate Andres and a blank-faced woman named Heidi, who I suspected had only been assigned to accompany us because my eyes meant I would have to go for a private security screening, and they didn’t want “private” to mean “away from our guards”—joined him, first in moving the luggage, then in his car. I suppose a night at the airport with the three of us had rather soured them on our company.

“Ready?” asked Steve.

“Ready,” Shaun confirmed, and we piled into the car, where blessed air conditioning washed over us. Steve glanced in the rearview mirror to be sure we were wearing our seat belts before turning on the flashers and pulling away from the curb.

I raised an eyebrow, and Shaun, taking his cue like a pro, asked, “We expecting trouble, sport?”

“There are a great many politicians in town,” Steve said.

I knew what that meant: It meant Senator Ryman was concerned that whoever had been responsible for the attacks on his campaign was here in the city and would try to take care of unfinished business. They only got Buffy on their first try, after all. I forced the jet of fury rising in my chest down, refusing to let myself get riled. He didn’t know the snake was in his camp; he didn’t know it was Tate he needed to be watching out for. So why the fuck did he let us fly commercial?

Shaun put his hand on my arm, seeing my sudden tension. “Easy,” he murmured.

“Hard,” I said, and subsided.

In the carrier Rick was clutching, Lois yowled. I knew exactly how she felt.

Our diminutive convoy cut through the airport traffic in a bubble of open space created by the flashers, heading for the outskirts of town. Once, Sacramento was known for hosting the state fair, along with various rodeos, horse shows, and other large outdoor gatherings. After the Rising made those impractical, the city found itself missing a lot of vital revenue and it started looking for another way to make money. Several local taxes, a few private donations, and several major security contracts later, the fairgrounds reopened, given new life as the Sacramento Secure Assembly Center. Open-air, with standing structures and mobile home hookups for traveling convoys, a four-star hotel, a conference center… and the country’s largest outdoor space certified as safe for public assembly. If you wanted to see a candidate speak outside, looking heroic and all-American against a blue summer sky, you did it in Sacramento. Presidencies were made there; no matter what your politics were or how clean a campaign you ran, it all came down to how the people reacted when they saw your silhouette against that sky.

According to the itinerary, Senator Ryman and Governor Tate were going to be spending the next seven days in Sacramento, giving speeches, meeting the press, and getting endorsements from California’s political leaders. Not just the Republicans. My notes indicated that several prominent Democrats and Independents would be coming to have their pictures taken with the man many were beginning to suspect would be our next president. Assuming the scandal when we outed Tate didn’t kill his career, of course.

“Jesus,” said Rick, whistling as the fence around the Center came into view. “You people don’t do anything small, do you?”

“Welcome to California,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. Shaun was doing the same. Rick glanced at us, wincing, and I smiled. “Don’t worry. They’ll leave you a little bit.”

After four blood tests and a call to the CDC databases to confirm that my retinal KA was legitimately registered and not a recent affliction, we were permitted to move into the Center. From here, blood tests would be required if we wished to enter a standing structure or leave the grounds; we’d also be subject to random testing by the Center’s staff, which could happen as often as twice an hour or as rarely as once a week. Shaun made a game of pointing out the security cameras and motion detectors as we drove toward the spot assigned to the convoy.

“Start moving like a dead thing and they’ll be on you in less than a minute,” he said, with some satisfaction.

“Please tell me you’re not speaking from experience,” Rick said.

“I’m smarter than that.” Shaun tried to sound affronted. He failed.

“Someone else got there first,” I said. “How long did he get in state prison?”

“Two years, but it was for science,” said Shaun.

“Uh-huh,” I said. I might have gone on, but the car was turning, pulling down a narrow drive whose signpost identified it as “Convoy Parking #11.” I sat up straighter, resettling my sunglasses. “We’re here.”

“Thank God,” said Rick.

The Sacramento sun hadn’t gotten any cooler during our drive. I shed my jacket and grabbed my laptop bag, scanning the assembled vehicles and trailers until I spotted my objective. A slow smile spread across my face.

“Van sweet van,” murmured Shaun.

“Exactly.” I started walking, trusting the security detail to bring the rest of our things. Our vehicles and the majority of our equipment were already in place.

“In a hurry?” Rick asked, trotting to catch up with me. Shaun gave him a look. He ignored it.

“I want to see if the boys have made any progress,” I said, pressing my palm against the pressure pad on the van door. Needles bit into my hand. The door unloaded a few seconds later. Looking back over my shoulder, I asked, “Steve, which trailer are we?”

“The one on the far left with your name over the door. Mr. Cousins is in the trailer next to it,” Steve said. “I assume you’re anxious to get to work?”

“Yes, actually—crap.” I paused, dismayed. “The keynote speech.”

“I’ve got it,” said Shaun. I must have looked stunned, because he shrugged. “I can wear a monkey suit and take notes like a Newsie. They’ll never know the difference, and I bet the invite just says ‘Mason.’ Steve?”

“Yes…” said Steve, looking perplexed.

“It’s settled. C’mon, Rick. Let’s let George get some work done.” My brother grabbed the startled Newsie by the arm and hauled him away. Steve smirked and followed, leaving me standing at the entrance to the van, wondering what had just happened. Then, not being one to look a bit of gift productivity in the mouth, I stepped inside.

We removed a few vital system components before letting them ship the van, like the backup drives, our files, and—most important—the data sticks that would unlock the servers. I made my way around the interior, taking my time as I brought each system up and online, ending with the perimeter cameras. There was a certain feeling of homecoming as the screens Buffy had worked so long to get installed began flickering on, showing rotating camera views of the outside. Nothing was happening. That’s the way I like it. Once everything was stable, I flipped on the security systems. They would generate enough static to block any outside surveillance less sophisticated than the CIA’s, and if we were being monitored by the CIA, we’d have been dead already. Sitting down at my console, I opened a chat window.

Most online networking is done via message boards—totally text, not quite real-time—or streaming video these days. Very few people remember the old chat relays that used to dominate the Internet. That’s good. That means that if both sides of the chat are on servers you control, you can fly so far under the radar that you’re essentially invisible.

Luck was with me. Dave was waiting when I connected.

What’s the story? I typed. My words appeared white against the black command window.

Georgia? Confirm.

Password is ‘tintinnabulation.’

Confirmed. Have you checked your e-mail?

Not yet. We just got in.

Log off. Go read. I don’t want to waste your time with a reframe.

I paused, staring at those stark white words for a long moment before I typed, How bad?

Bad enough. Go.

I went.

Reading the files Dave and Alaric provided took the better part of an hour. Getting myself to stop hyperventilating took another twenty minutes. When my lungs stopped burning and I was sure I could control myself, I shut down my laptop, returned it to its case, and rose. I needed to get myself dressed; it was time to crash a party.

Twenty-four

Unfortunately for my need to hurry, the instructions regarding the senator’s keynote speech and the dinner party to follow were clear: Formal attire was required for all attendees, even media representatives. Maybe especially media representatives—after all, everyone else paid fifteen hundred dollars for the privilege of eating rubber chicken and rubbing elbows with Senator Ryman, while we were getting in on that damned “freedom of the press” loophole. If they shut us out, we’d be free to start playing dirty. If they let us in, cosseted us, petted us, and put us in our places, they could maintain the semblance of control. Maybe it’s never stopped a real scandal from growing legs, but it’s done a lot to keep the little ones under the table where they belong.

The campaign staff had been careful with our luggage, placing mine and Shaun’s on our respective sides of the trailer we’d be living in for the duration of the Sacramento stop. That was, sadly, before Shaun tore through like a hurricane, looking for his own formalwear. My suitcases were buried beneath a thick layer of Shaun’s clothing, weaponry, paperwork, and other general debris. Locating them took the better part of ten minutes, and determining which case contained my own formalwear took another five. I cursed Shaun the whole time. It kept me distracted.

Men’s formal attire is sensible: pants, suit coats, cummerbunds. Even ties can be useful, since they work as makeshift tourniquets or garrotes. Women’s formal attire, on the other hand, hasn’t changed since the Rising; it still seems designed to get the people wearing it killed at the first possible opportunity. Screw that. My dress was custom-made. The skirt is breakaway, the bodice is fitted to allow me to carry a recorder and a gun, and there’s a pocket concealed at the waist for extra ammo. Even with all those alterations, it’s the most confining garment I own, and the situations that call for me to wear it almost invariably require hose and heels. At least modern pantyhose are made with a polymer weave that’s virtually puncture proof.

I’d wear the heels. I’d wear the hose. I’d even wear a layer of tinted lip gloss, since that would make it look like I’d applied makeup for the occasion. There was no way I was going to put my contacts in for what was, essentially, a snatch-and-grab to get me to the senator and my team, convince them I had news, and get them back to the compound. Still swearing, I yanked the shawl that went with the dress out of the side pocket of my garment bag, clipped my ID badge to the right side of my chest, and went storming back out of the trailer, heading for the motor pool.

Steve was on duty, standing at a relaxed sort of attention as he monitored the radio channels for security or vehicular needs. He straightened when he saw me coming, chin bobbing downward as he took in the way that I was dressed. It was impossible to see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but he took no pains to disguise the motion of his head, which rose again as he studied the tailoring of my dress, the shawl around my shoulders, and finally, with a quirk of one eyebrow, my sunglasses.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

“I was planning on doing a little gate-crashing,” I said. “Give a girl a ride?”

“Didn’t you send your brother in your place?”

“Something came up. It’s important that I get over there.”

Steve studied me for a moment, his expression implacable. I looked back at him, keeping my own expression just as composed. We both had a lot of practice, but I was the one who had more to lose if I slipped up. It was Steve who gave in, nodding marginally before he said, “This got something to do with Eakly, Georgia?”

His partner died there. We knew there was a conspiracy. How likely was it that we’d still be alive if our security detail was a part of it? There might be listening devices. There was nothing I could do about that, and we were in the end game. It was time to go all-in. “This has everything to do with Eakly, and with the ranch, and with why Chuck and Buffy died. Please. I need you to get me to that dinner.”

Steve remained still for a moment more, mulling over what I’d said. He was a big man, and people often assume big men must be slow. I never assumed that about Steve, and I didn’t assume it now. He was getting his first real look at a situation my team and I had been living with for months, and it took some getting used to. When he did start to move, he moved quickly and with no hesitation. “Mike, Heidi, you cover this gate. Anybody radios for me, you say I’m in the can and I’ll radio back when I’m done. Tell them I had franks and beans for dinner, if you think it’ll keep them from asking more.”

Heidi tittered, a high, nervous sound entirely out of keeping with her professional exterior. Mike frowned, expression betraying a slow confusion. “Yeah, we can do that,” he said. “But why…?”

“We hired you after the ranch, so I’m not going to smack you for asking that question. There’s reasons.” Steve glanced at me. “I’m guessing that if it was safe to give those reasons in a place as open as this one, they’d have already been given.”

I nodded. I wouldn’t have said as much as I had if he hadn’t invoked the specter of Eakly first, but I wasn’t going to lie to the man when I was asking for his help. Even if I thought I could pull it off, which I didn’t, it would have been wrong.

“Just do it, Mike,” said Heidi, aiming an elbow at the unfortunate Mike’s side. He bore the blow stoically, only allowing a slight grunt to escape. Heidi withdrew her elbow. “We got it, Steve. Watch the gate, monitor the radio, don’t tell anybody you’re gone.”

“Good. Miss Mason? This way.” Steve turned, his legs eating ground with frightening efficiency as he led me to one of the motor pool’s smaller vehicles. It was a modified Jeep with a hard black exterior that made it look like nothing so much as a strange new type of beetle. He produced the keys from one pocket and hit a button; the doors unlocked with a beep. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t open the door for you.”

“Of course,” I said. In a two-person vehicle this new, there would be blood test units built into the door handles to prevent some unfortunate driver from ending up sealed in an enclosed space with one of the infected. Chivalry wasn’t dead. Chivalry just wanted to be certain I wasn’t a zombie before I got into the car.

Even when concerned enough to abandon his post—and that’s what he was doing, given that he hadn’t radioed our whereabouts to base—Steve remained a careful, cautious driver. He sped down the roads back toward town at precisely the speed limit, without turning the flashers on. They would have attracted too much attention, especially from any members of our own camp who might start to wonder what he was doing out there. Our departure from the compound had been recorded, but those records were legally secured, save in the instance of an outbreak causing privacy laws to be suspended.

The hall where Senator Ryman’s keynote speech and the associated dinner party were being hosted was downtown, in one of the areas that was rebuilt after the Rising. Shaun and I did a series of articles on the “bad” parts of Sacramento a few years ago, taking cameras past the cordons and into the areas that were never reapproved for human habitation. Burnt-out husks of buildings stare out on cracking asphalt, the biohazard tape still gleaming across their doors and windows. In the white marble and clean chrome paradise of the government assembly hall, you’d never know that side of Sacramento existed. Not unless you’d been there.

It took three blood tests to reach the foyer. The first was at the entrance to the underground parking garage, where valets in plastic gloves brought the test panels, clearly expecting us to allow the polite fiction that there weren’t guards with automatic weapons flanking the booth. Those men stood there like statues, sending goose bumps marching across my arms. It wasn’t the security; it was how blatantly it was displayed. No one would argue if they gunned us down. I had my recorders running, but without a security schematic, I couldn’t afford to transmit across what might be compromised airspace, and without Buffy, I didn’t have a security schematic I could trust. We needed her so badly. We always had.

Steve stayed behind in the garage, standing silent guard over the car; without my press pass and invitation, he’d never make it into the party without making a scene, and we didn’t want to do that. Not yet. I was pretty sure there were a lot of scenes in my future. Assuming the senator listened long enough that we could keep on having a future.

It took a second blood test to get out of the garage and into the elevator. The third blood test came as a bit of a surprise; it was required to get out of the elevator. How they expected me to have been exposed to the virus during the ten seconds I’d spent between floors was a mystery to me, but they wouldn’t have spent the money on a testing unit if it hadn’t happened at least once. The elevator doors didn’t open until the light over the door went green, and I spared a moment to wonder what happened when more than one person took the elevator at a time. Then I stepped out into the foyer and into a world that had never known the Rising.

The mystery of the extensive security was solved in an instant, because this huge, lavishly appointed room looked like it was lifted straight from the pre-infection world. No one carried visible weapons or wore protective gear. A few folks had the clear plastic strips over their eyes that signaled the presence of retinal Kellis-Amberlee, but that was it. The place even had picture windows, for God’s sake. It took careful scrutiny to see that they were holograms, looking out over an image of a city too perfect to be real. Maybe that’s how it was once, but I doubt it; corruption’s been with us a lot longer than the living dead.

Even without visible weapons, there was security. A man with a portable bar-code scanner in one hand stopped me not two steps out of the elevator. “Name?”

“Georgia Mason, After the End Times. I’m with the Ryman campaign.” I unclipped my badge, handing it over. He swiped it through his scanner and passed it back, frowning at the display. “You should have me on your list.”

“According to this, Shaun Mason has already checked in with those credentials.”

“If you’ll check your list of associated journalists, you’ll see that we’re both registered as being attached to the Ryman campaign.” I didn’t bother trying to win him over with my scintillating wit. He had the look of a natural bureaucrat, and that sort of person almost never yields from the stated outline of their job.

“Please wait while I access the list.” He made a seemingly careless gesture with one hand. Only seemingly careless; I could see four people in the crowd who were now looking in our direction, and none of them was holding a drink or laughing. If four of the guards on duty were being that blatant, the math of professional security meant there were four more who weren’t.

The scanning unit beeped as it connected to the wireless network and queried the files available on the press corps cleared for entrance. Eventually, it stopped beeping, and the officious little man’s frown deepened.

“Your credentials are in order,” he said, sounding as if the very fact that I hadn’t lied was inconveniencing him. “You may proceed.”

“Thank you.” The watchers had melted into the crowd now that they were sure I wasn’t gate-crashing. I clipped the badge back to my chest, putting several feet between myself and the man with the scanner before reaching up to tap my ear cuff. “Shaun,” I muttered, quietly.

There was a pause, the transmitter beeping to signal that it was making a connection. Then Shaun’s voice, close by and startled: “Hey, George. I figured you’d be neck-deep in site reviews by now. What gives?”

“Remember the punch line I forgot yesterday?” I asked, scanning the crowd as I moved toward what I presumed was the entrance to the main dining hall. “The really funny one?”

Shaun’s surprise faded, replaced by wariness. “Yeah, I remember that one. Did you figure out the rest of the joke?”

“Uh-huh, I did. Some friends of mine found it online. Where are you?”

“We’re at the podium. Senator Ryman’s shaking hands. What’s the punch line?”

“It’ll be funnier if I tell you in person. How do I get to the podium?”

“Straight through the big doors and head for the back of the hall.”

“Got it. Georgia out.” I tapped the ear cuff, killing the connection, and walked on.

Shaun and Rick were a few feet to the left of the crowd of people the senator was glad-handing his way through. They’d paid for the privilege of meeting the man being predicted as our next president, and they were by God going to meet him, even if it was only for the few seconds it took to shake a hand and share a smile. On those few seconds are presidencies made. Here, behind the believable “safety” of a double-checked guest list and that guest list’s triple-checked infection status, old-school politicians felt free to revert to their old habits, pressing the flesh like it had never gone out of style. You could tell the ones who were genuinely young from the ones who’d had all the plastic surgery and regenerative treatments money could buy, because the young ones were the ones looking nauseated by all the human contact around them. They hadn’t grown up in this political culture. They just had to live with it until they became the old men at the top of the hill.

The senator didn’t look uncomfortable at all. The man was in his element, all toothy smiles and bits of practical wisdom sliced down to sound-bite size in case one of the nearby reporters was broadcasting on an open band. He’d known to do that sort of thing long before we joined his campaign, but having a constant press entourage had forced him to master the art. He was good. Given enough time, he’d be great.

Shaun was watching for my arrival, his shoulders set at the angle that meant he was tenser than hell and trying to hide it. They relaxed slightly as he saw me cutting through the crowd, and he nodded for me to approach. I shook my head, mouthing ‘Where’s Tate?’

Holding up a finger to signal me to quiet, Shaun pulled out his PDA and scrawled a message with the attached stylus. My watch beeped a second later, the message other side o/room w/investors what’s going on????? scrolling across the screen. The message I need to talk to Sen. Ryman w/o Tate hearing would have taken too long to type on the tiny foldout keypad. I deleted the message and kept walking.

“Georgia,” Rick greeted as I drew close. He was holding a flute of what appeared to be champagne, if you didn’t pay too much attention to the bubbles. Sparkling cider: another trick of working the crowd. If people think you’re getting as drunk as they are, they forget to be careful around you.

“Rick,” I said, with a nod. Shaun was shooting me a concerned look, and failing in his efforts to hide it. I put a hand on his arm. “Nice tux.”

“They call me Bond,” he said, gravely.

“Figured they might.” I looked toward the senator. “Gonna need to wade in there. I wish I had a cattle prod.”

“Are we going to find out what the situation is any time soon, or are we supposed to follow you blindly?” asked Shaun. “I ask because it determines whether I’m hitting you in the head sometime in the next eight seconds. Very vital information.”

“It’s a little hard to explain here,” I said. “Unless you know who’s broadcasting locally?”

Shaun groaned, attracting startled glances from several bystanders. A plastic smile snapping instantly into place, he said, “Jeez, George, that was a terrible joke.”

“I didn’t say it was a good punch line, just that I’d remembered it,” I said, stepping a little closer. Pitching my voice so low it verged on inaudible, I said, “Dave and Alaric had their big breakthrough. They followed the money.”

“Where’d it go?” Shaun was even better at this than I was. His lips didn’t even seem to move.

“ ‘Where’d it come from?’ would be a better question. It went to Tate. It came from the tobacco companies, and from some people they haven’t traced yet.”

“We knew it was Tate.”

“The IPs they’re pulling are from D.C… and Atlanta.”

There’s only one organization in Atlanta important enough to bring me running the way I had, especially when we’d already known at least a part of the conspiracy. Shaun’s eyes widened, need for secrecy eclipsed by sudden shock. If the CDC had been infiltrated…

“They don’t know for sure?”

“They’re trying, but the security is good, and they’ve nearly been caught twice.”

Shaun sighed. That was audible, and I elbowed him in the side for it. He shook his head. “Sorry. I just wish Buffy were here.”

“So do I.” Palming a data stick, I slipped it into his pocket. To an observer, it would have looked like I was going for his wallet. Let them call security. It’s not like there’d be anything for them to find. “That’s a copy of everything. There are six more. Steve doesn’t know he has one.”

“Got it,” said Shaun. Always back up your data, and scatter it as far as you can. I can’t count the number of journalists who have forgotten that basic rule, and some have never recovered from the stories they lost. If we lost this one, getting discredited was going to be the least of our worries. “Off-site?”

“Multiple places. I don’t know them all; the guys did their own backups.”

“Good.”

Rick had been observing our semi-audible conversation without comment. He raised his eyebrows as it stopped, and I shook my head. He took the refusal with good grace, sipping from his glass of “champagne” and continuing to scan the crowd. There were a few people who seemed to be holding the bulk of his interest. Some were politicians, while others were people I recognized from the campaign. I glanced to Rick, who nodded toward Tate. Got it. These were people whose loyalties he thought he knew, and thought belonged to our resident governor. Who just happened to be the man most likely to have caused the deaths of an awful lot of innocent people, as well as being responsible for the corruption and death of one of our own.

None of those people was standing close enough to hear our conversation unless one of them had listening devices planted on or around the senator. If I was going to risk anything, I needed to do it now. “I’m going in,” I murmured to Shaun, and began working my way through the crowd surrounding Senator Ryman.

I’ll give the flesh-pressers this: They didn’t give ground easy, not even as I was none too gently elbowing my way into their midst. A lady old enough to have been my grandmother drove the heel of her left shoe down on the top of my foot with a degree of force that would have been impressive in a younger woman. Fortunately, even my dress shoes are made of reinforced polymer. Even so, I bit my tongue to keep myself from swearing out loud. Casual assault might be A-okay with security, but I was reasonably sure shouting “cock-sucking bitch” wouldn’t be.

After a lot of shoving and several painful kicks to my shins and ankles, I found myself to the right of the senator, who was busy having his hand pumped up and down by a barrel-chested octogenarian whose eyes burned with the revolutionary fervor one only ever seems to see in those who discovered either religion or politics at a very young age. Neither man seemed to have registered the fact that I was there. I was neither the assaulting nor the assaulted, which left me on the outside of their present closed equation.

The handshaker showed no signs of stopping. If anything, his pumps were increasing in vigor as he started hitting his stride. I weighed the potential danger of octogenarian assault against waiting for him to tire, and settled on action as the better part of valor. Smoothly as I could, I moved to place my hand on Senator Ryman’s free arm and said, in a sugar-sweetened tone, “Senator, if I could have a moment of your time, I’d be most appreciative.”

The senator jumped. His assailant looked daggers at me, which moved up the scale to full-sized swords as the senator turned and flashed his best magazine-cover smile my way. “Of course, Miss Mason,” he said. He deftly twitched his fingers free of the handshaker, saying, “If you wouldn’t mind excusing me, Councilman Plant, I need to confer with a member of my press pool. Everyone, I’ll be right back with you.”

Fighting into the throng had taken almost five minutes. Getting out of it required nothing but the senator’s hand at the small of my back, propelling me along as we made our way to the clear space to the left of the dais. “Not that I mind the save, Georgia, since I was starting to worry about the structural integrity of my wrist, but what are you doing here?” asked Senator Ryman, his voice pitched low. “Last I checked, you’d stayed at the Center, which is why your brother’s been here annoying the staff and eating all the shrimp canapés all evening.”

“I did stay at the Center,” I said. “Senator, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but—” Someone shouted congratulations to the senator, who answered it with a grin and a broad thumbs-up. It was a perfect photo-op moment, and I snapped the shot with my watch’s built-in camera before I even thought about what I was doing. Instincts. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Buffy was working for someone who wanted to keep tabs on your campaign.”

“You’ve told me this before,” he said, more briskly. I recognized the impatience in his eyes from dozens of media briefings. “It’s all some big shadow conspiracy looking to bring me down. What I don’t understand is why this is suddenly so pressing that you need to rush over here and risk making a scene on what might be one of the most important political evenings of my life. There are a great many movers and shakers here tonight, Georgia—a great many. These are the men who could hand me California, as you’d know, if you’d bothered to read the briefing papers and attend my speech.” If you’d bothered to do your job, said his subtext, so clearly that it might as well have been spoken aloud. I’d let him down. My reporting, which he’d come to depend on as one of the tools of his campaign—the objective reporter, won over by his politics and his rhetoric—was supposed to have been there, and it wasn’t.

The senator had heard my excuses with increasing frequency in the time since Buffy’s death, and it was clear that he was getting tired of them. More than tired; he was getting frustrated with them, and by extension, with me.

Talking faster now, in an effort to keep him from shutting me out before I could finish, I said, “Senator, I’ve had two of my people running traces for weeks now on every bit of data we could find. They’ve been following the money. That’s what it always comes back to—the money. And they’ve managed to find—”

“We’ll talk about this later, Georgia.”

“But Senator Ryman, we—”

“I said we’d talk about this later.” He was frowning now, his stiff, political smile, the one he used during debates, or when chastising recalcitrant interns. “This is neither the time nor the place for this discussion.”

“Senator, we have proof Tate was involved in what happened to Buffy.” The senator froze. Finally sensing that he might listen, I pressed my case. “We’ve had audio for a while, but my team found the payments. We found the contacts. Buffy wasn’t the start. Eakly was the start. Eakly and the ranch—”

“No.”

The word was soft but implacable. I stopped dead, run up against the side of that refusal like I’d just slammed into a wall. After a frozen moment, I tried again, saying, “Senator Ryman, please, if you’d just—”

“Georgia, this is not the time, and it’s not the place, especially if those are the accusations you’ve come here to make.” His face was cold. I’d never seen him look that cold toward anyone who wasn’t a political rival. “David Tate and I may not have always seen eye to eye on this campaign trail, and God knows, I’ve always known there was no love lost between the two of you, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to you say these things about a man who spoke at my daughter’s funeral. I can’t have that.”

“Senator, that man was just as responsible for your daughter’s death as if he’d infected her himself.”

Senator Ryman’s shoulders tensed, and his hand actually rose several inches before he forced it down. He wanted to hit me; that truth was written so clear across his face that even Shaun could have seen it. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t. Not here, not in front of all these witnesses.

“It’s time for you to go, Georgia.”

“Senator—”

“If the three of you aren’t off the premises in the next fifteen minutes, you’ll be spending tonight in the Sacramento County jailhouse, as I’ll have had your press clearance pulled.” His tone was calm, even reasonable, but there was no kindness in it, and kindness was the thing I was most accustomed to hearing from him. “When I get back to the Center, I’ll come by your trailer, and you’ll show me every scrap of proof you think you have.”

“And then?” I asked, despite my own better judgment. I needed to know how seriously he was willing to take this.

“And then, if I believe you, I’ll back you up when we call for the federal authorities, because what you’re saying, Georgia, what you’re accusing is terrorism, and if that accusation gets made without absolute proof behind it, well, there’s more than one man’s career it could destroy.”

He was right. If it got out that the Ryman campaign had been harboring a man who’d use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon—hell, that a man who’d use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon was actually on the ticket—it would ruin him. His political enemies would never let the scandal die. Some of them would probably say he’d supported Tate’s actions, even to the point of killing Rebecca, for the votes it bought him.

“If you don’t believe me?” I asked, shaping the words with lips that had gone numb.

“If I don’t believe you, you’re all on the next bus to Berkeley, and we’re parting ways before the sun comes up,” the senator said and turned his back on me, all smiles as he shifted his attention to the crowd. “Congresswoman!” he said, joviality coming back into his voice as if he’d flipped a switch. “You’re looking lovely tonight—is that your wife? Well, Mrs. Lancer, it surely is a pleasure to finally have the opportunity to meet you in the flesh, after seeing you in so many of those Christmas card photos—”

And then he was moving away, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the crowd, the important people of this little modern Babylon pressing all around me as they struggled for a moment of his attention, my colleagues standing not ten feet away, waiting to hear what I’d accomplished.

The truth had never felt like it was further away, or harder to make sense of. And I had never in my life felt like I was more lost, or more alone.

Twenty-five

Georgia, what just happened?”

“George? You okay?”

Both of them sounded so concerned it left me wanting to scream. I settled for grabbing a flute of champagne from a passing server, draining it in one convulsive gulp, and snapping, “We have to go. Now.”

That just redoubled their concern. Rick’s eyes went wide, while Shaun’s narrowed, accompanied by a sudden frown. “How pissed is he?” he asked.

“He’s pulling our press passes in fifteen minutes.”

Shaun whistled. “Nice. Even for you, that’s impressive. What’d you do, suggest that his wife was having an affair with the librarian?”

“It was the tutor, that was the Mayor of Oakland’s wife, and I was right,” I said, starting to stalk for the exit. True to form, they followed. “I didn’t say anything about Emily.”

“Excuse me, but does one of you mind telling me what’s going on?” interjected Rick, putting on a burst of speed to get in front of me. “Georgia just got us kicked out of a major political event, Senator Ryman’s clearly pissed, and Tate’s glaring. I’m missing something. I don’t like that.”

I went cold. “Tate’s glaring at us?”

“If looks could kill—”

“We’d be joining Rebecca Ryman. I’ll fill you in once we’re in the car.”

Rick hesitated, licking his lower lip as he registered the anxiety in my tone. “Georgia?”

“I’m serious,” I said, and sped up, going as fast as I could manage without starting to a run. Shaun took the cue from me, linking one arm through mine and using his longer legs to give me a little extra speed. Rick hurried along behind us, holding his questions until we got outside. Bless him for that much, anyway.

It took only one blood test to get back to the car. Since everyone on the banquet level was assumed clean after the checks they’d endured to get there, the elevator came at the press of a button, no needles involved until we wanted to exit. Like a roach motel—the infected could check in, but they couldn’t check out. My earlier curiosity about what would happen if more than one person took the elevator at the same time was answered as the interior sensors refused to let the doors open until the system detected three different, noninfected blood samples. Someone who unwittingly boarded the elevator with a person undergoing viral amplification would just die in there. Nice.

Steve was still next to the car, arms folded across his chest. He straightened when he saw the three of us come marching out of the elevator but he restrained his curiosity better than Rick had, waiting until we were reaching for the doors before he asked, “Well?”

“Threatened to yank our press passes,” I said.

“Nice,” said Steve, raising his eyebrows. “He pressing charges?”

“No, that’ll probably come after tonight’s episode of ‘meet the press.’” I climbed into the back seat.

Shaun did the same on the opposite side of the car, commenting, “She means ‘beat the press,’ don’cha, George?”

“Possibly,” I said.

“Now will you tell me what’s going on?” asked Rick, getting into the front passenger seat and twisting around to face us.

“It’s simple, really,” I said, sagging into the seat. Shaun already had his arm in place to support me, offering as much comfort as he could. “Dave and Alaric followed the money and proved that Governor Tate was behind the attacks on Eakly and the ranch. Also, PS, the CDC is potentially involved, which isn’t going to make me sleep any easier tonight, thanks. The senator wasn’t thrilled with the idea that his running mate might be the goddamn devil, so he’s asked us to go back to the Center to prepare our notes while he decides whether or not to fire our asses.”

There was a long silence as the other three people in the car attempted to absorb what I’d just said. Surprisingly, it was Steve who spoke first, in a low rumble closer to a growl than a normal conversational tone. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“We have proof,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning into Shaun’s arm. “People have been funneling him money, and he’s been funneling it on to the sort of folks who think weaponizing Kellis-Amberlee is a good thing. Some of that money’s been coming from Atlanta. Some of it’s been coming from the big tobacco companies. And a lot of people have died, presumably so that nice ol’ Governor Tate can be Vice President of the United States of America. At least, until the president-elect has some sort of tragic accident and he has to step into the position.”

“Georgia…” Rick sounded almost awed, overwhelmed with the possibilities. “If we know this for sure—Georgia, this is a really big deal. This is… Are we allowed to know this and not just report it to the FBI, or the CDC, or somebody? This is terrorism.”

“I don’t know, Rick; you’re the one who worked in print media. Why don’t you try telling me for a change?”

“Even in cases of suspected terrorism, a journalist can protect his or her sources as long as they aren’t actually sheltering the suspect.” Rick hesitated. “We’re not, are we? Sheltering him?”

“Pardon me for breaking in, Mr. Cousins, but if Miss Mason’s proof is as good as she seems to think, it doesn’t matter whether she plans on sheltering him or not. My partner died in Eakly.” Steve’s tone was normal now, almost casual. Somehow that was even more disturbing. “Tyrone was a good man. He deserved better. Man who started that outbreak, well. That man doesn’t deserve better.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I have no intention of sheltering him. I’ll talk it over with the senator, and if he wants to throw us off the campaign, he’s welcome to. I’ll mail our files to every open-source blog, newspaper, and politician in the country while we’re on the road for home.”

“This is crap,” Shaun said, withdrawing his arm.

“Right,” I agreed.

“Absolute fucking crap.”

“No argument.”

“I want to punch somebody right about now.”

“Not it,” Rick said.

“I punch back,” Steve said. A note of amusement crept into his voice, making him sound a little less likely to explode. That was good. Not that I’d object to seeing Tate get the crap kicked out of him—I just didn’t want to see Steve go to federal prison over it when the FBI would be just as happy to do the honors. Hell, after they had Tate in custody, and considering what had happened in Eakly, they might be willing to let Steve have his licks. Just as long as they got theirs first.

“Just have patience; this is all going to be over soon,” I said. “One way or another, I guess we’re finishing things tonight.”

“Let’s pick one way, okay?” said Shaun. “I don’t like another.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Neither do I.”

We finished the drive in silence, pulling through the Center gates and enduring the barrage of blood tests that followed with as much grace as we could muster. Three of us were exhausted, scared, and angry; Steve was just angry, and I almost envied him. Anger’s easier to run on than exhaustion. It doesn’t strip your gears as badly. Less than two hours after convincing him to abandon his post for my fool’s errand, Steve drove back into the motor pool, his car heavier by two journalists and a whole lot of free-floating worry.

“Don’t say anything, please,” I said, as we climbed out of the car. “I’m meeting with the senator tonight, when he gets back from his dinner. After that—”

“After that, I guess what needs doing is going to be clear one way or the other,” said Steve. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have gone into security if I didn’t know how to keep my mouth shut.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Steve smiled, briefly. I smiled back.

“George, c’mon!” Shaun called, already a good four or five yards from the car. “I want to get out of this damn monkey suit!”

“Coming!” I shouted, muttering, “Jesus,” before I turned to follow him back to the trailers.

Rick walked with us as far as the van; then he turned left, toward his trailer, while we turned right, toward ours. “He’s a good guy,” said Shaun, pressing his thumb against the lock on the trailer door. It clicked open, confirming Shaun’s right to enter. “A little old-fashioned, but still a good guy. I’m glad we got the chance to work with him.”

“You think he’ll stay on after we all get home?” I started rummaging through the mass of clothing on the beds and floor, looking for the cotton shirt and jeans I’d been wearing earlier.

“He can write his own ticket after this campaign, but yeah, I think he may stick around.” Shaun was already halfway out of his formal wear, shedding it with the ease of long practice. “He knows he can work with us.”

“Good.”

I was doing up the last of the buttons on my shirt when I heard the shouting. Shaun and I exchanged a wide-eyed, shocked look before we both went running for the trailer door. I made it out half a beat ahead of him, just in time to see a shell-shocked-looking Rick come staggering up the path with Lois cradled against his chest. I didn’t have to be a veterinarian to know that something was horribly wrong with his cat. No living animal has a neck that bends that way or hangs that limply in its owner’s arms.

“Rick…?”

He stopped in his tracks, staring at me, the body of his cat still clutched against his chest. I ran the last fifteen feet between us, and Shaun ran close behind me. That was probably the part they didn’t figure on: those fifteen feet.

Those fifteen stupid little feet saved our lives.

“What happened?” I asked, putting out a hand, as if there were a damn thing I could do. Seen this close, it was even more obvious that the cat had been dead for a while. Her eyes were open and glazed, staring blankly off at nothing.

“She was just… I got back to the trailer and I almost tripped on her.” For the first time, I realized Rick was still wearing his formal clothes. He hadn’t even had time to change. “She was just inside the doorway. I think… even after they hurt her, I think she tried to get away.” Tears running down his cheeks. I’m not sure he was even aware of them. “I think she was trying to come and find me. She was just a little cat, Georgia. Why would anyone do this to such a little cat?”

Shaun stiffened. “She was inside? Are you sure this wasn’t natural causes?”

“Since when do natural causes break your neck?” asked Rick, in a tone that would have been reasonable if he hadn’t been crying so hard.

“We should go to the van.”

I frowned. “Shaun—?”

“I’m serious. We can talk about this in the van, but we should go there. Right now.”

“Just let me get my gun,” I said, and started to turn toward the trailer. Shaun grabbed my elbow, yanking me back. I stumbled.

The trailer exploded with a concussive bang, like an engine misfiring.

The first bang was followed by a second and larger bang, echoed in the distance as another trailer—probably Rick’s—went up in a ball of blue-and-orange flame. Not that there was much time to make estimates about where the blast was coming from. Shaun still had my arm and he was running, dragging me in his wake as he rushed toward the van. Rick ran after us, clutching Lois’s body to his chest, all of us bathed in the angry orange glare of the blast. Someone was trying to kill us. At this point, I didn’t even have to wonder who. Tate knew we knew. There was no reason for him to play nice anymore.

Once he was sure I’d keep running, Shaun let go of me, dropping back as he tried to cover our retreat toward the van. I quashed the urge to worry about him, keeping my focus on the running. Shaun could take care of himself. I had to believe that or I’d never be able to believe anything else. Rick was running like a man in a dream, Lois bouncing limply in his arms with every step. And I just ran.

Something pricked my left biceps when we were about halfway to the van. I ignored it and kept going, more focused on getting to cover than on swatting at some mosquito with shit for timing. No one’s ever been able to tell the insects of the world that they shouldn’t interrupt the big dramatic moments, and so they keep on doing it. That’s probably a good thing. If drama kept the bugs away, most people would never emotionally mature past the age of seventeen.

“Rick, get the doors!” shouted Shaun. He was hanging about five yards back, still moving fast. He had his .45 drawn, covering the area as we retreated. The sight of him was enough to make my heart beat faster and my throat get tight. I knew he was wearing Kevlar under his clothes, but Kevlar wouldn’t save him from a headshot. Whoever blew up the trailers might be out there watching, and once they saw us scattering into the open, there was every chance they’d decide to finish what they’d started. And none of that mattered, because someone had to watch the rear, and someone had to open the van, and if we clustered together to make me feel better, neither of those things would happen, and we’d all die.

Knowing the realities of the situation didn’t do a damn thing to make me feel better about leaving Shaun to twist in the wind. It just meant I understood that we didn’t have a choice.

Rick put on a burst of speed, reaching the van a good twenty feet ahead of me. He finally seemed to realize he was carrying Lois because he dropped her body, reaching out to grab the handles of the rear doors and press his forefingers against the reader pads. There was a click as the onboard testing system ran his blood and prints, confirming he was both uninfected and an authorized driver before the locks released.

“Got it!” he yelled, and wrenched the doors open, motioning for us to get inside.

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I sped up, breath aching in my chest as I raced to get out of the open. Shaun continued moving at the same pace, swinging his gun unhurriedly from side to side as he covered our retreat.

“Shaun, you idiot!” I yelled. “Get your ass in here! There’s no one out there to save!”

He glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows rising in apparent surprise. Something in my expression must have told him that it wasn’t worth arguing because he nodded and turned to run the rest of the way.

I didn’t start really breathing again until he and Rick were both inside with the doors closed behind them. Shaun flipped the dead bolts on the rear doors, while Rick moved to do the same on the movable wall that shut the driver’s cabin off from the rest of the vehicle. With those latches thrown, we were effectively cut off from the rest of the world. Nothing could get in, and unless we opened the locks, nothing could get out. Barring heavy explosives, we were as safe as it was possible to be.

I took a seat at the main console and brought up the security recordings for the last day. The scanner came up clean, showing no attempted break-ins or unauthorized contact with the van’s exterior during that time. “Shaun, when was the last security sweep?”

“I ran one remotely while I was waiting for the senator’s speech to finish.”

“Good. That means we’re clean.” I leaned over to turn on the exterior cameras—without them, we were flying blind and would have no way of knowing when help arrived—and froze.

“George?”

It was Shaun’s voice, sounding distant and surprised. He’d seen me reach for the switches, and seen me stop; he just hadn’t seen why. I didn’t answer him. I was too busy staring.

“George, what’s wrong?”

“I…” I began, and stopped, swallowing in an effort to clear the sudden dryness from my mouth. Forcing myself to start again, I said, “I think we may have a problem.” Raising my right hand, I wrapped numb fingers around the hollow plastic dart projecting from my left biceps and pulled it free, turning to face the other two. Rick paled, seeing the red stain spreading through the fabric of my shirt. Shaun just stared at the dart, looking like he was seeing the end of the world.

In a very real and concrete way, there was an excellent chance that he was.

Twenty-six

Shaun broke the silence. “Please tell me that didn’t break the skin,” he said, almost pleading. “The blood came from something else, right George? Right?”

“We’re going to need a biohazard bag.” There was no fear in my voice. Really, there was nothing there at all. I sounded… empty, disconnected from everything around me. It was like my body and my voice existed in different universes, tethered by only the thinnest of threads. “Get one from the medical kit, put it on the counter, and step away. I don’t want either of you touching this.” Or me. I didn’t want them touching me when there was a risk that I could infect them. I just couldn’t say that. If I tried, I’d break down, and any chance of containing this would go right out the window.

“George—”

“We need a testing kit.”

Rick’s voice was surprisingly strong, considering the circumstances. Shaun and I turned to face him. He was white-faced and shaking, but his voice was firm. “Shaun, I know you don’t want to hear this, and if you want to hit me later, that’s fine, but right now, we need a testing kit.”

Storm clouds were gathering in Shaun’s expression. He knew Rick was right; I could see it in his eyes and in the way he wasn’t quite willing to look at me. If he hadn’t known, he wouldn’t have cared that Rick was calling for a blood test. But because he did, it was the last thing in the world he wanted. Well. Maybe not the last thing. Then again, it was starting to look like the last thing had already happened.

“He’s right, Shaun.” I placed the dart on the counter next to my keyboard. It was so small. How could something so small be the end of the world? I barely noticed when it hit me. I never thought it was possible to overlook your own death, but apparently it is. “Don’t just grab a field box. Get the real kit. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.” The XH-237 has never had a false result; it’s one hundred percent accurate, as far as anyone can tell.

Shaun would never believe anything else. He was staring at me in open disbelief. He was denying this as hard as he could. So why wasn’t I? “Georgia…” he began.

“If I’m overreacting, I’ll buy a new one with my birthday money,” I said, sagging backward in my chair. “Rick?”

“I’ll get it, Georgia,” he said, starting for the medical supplies.

I closed my eyes. “I’m not overreacting.”

Almost too quiet for me to hear, Shaun whispered, “I know.”

“I brought the bag,” said Rick. I opened my eyes, turning toward his voice. He held up a Kevlar-reinforced biohazard bag. I nodded and he put the bag on the counter, before stepping away. We knew proper protocols. They’d been drilled into us for our entire lives. Until we knew I was clean, no one touched me… and I knew I wasn’t clean.

Moving with exaggerated care, so both Shaun and Rick could see me every inch along the way, I reached for the bag and thumbed it open before picking up the dart. Dropping it into the bag, I activated the seal. It was a matter for the CDC now. Its people would break the seal after it was turned over to them, and what happened after that wasn’t my concern. I wouldn’t be around to see it.

I looked up once the bag was sealed and set aside. “Where’s the test kit?” It felt like the muscles in my eyes were relaxing. It could be psychosomatic, but I didn’t think so. The viral bodies responsible for the perpetual dilation of my pupils were moving on to greener pastures. Like the rest of my body.

“Here,” said Shaun, holding it up. He stepped closer and knelt in front of me. He was only inches outside the federally defined “danger zone” for dealing with someone who might be amplifying. I shot him a sharp look, and he shook his head. “Don’t start.”

“I won’t.” I extended my left hand. If he wanted to administer the test himself, he had the right. Maybe it would make him believe the results.

“You could be wrong. You’ve been wrong before,” Shaun said, sliding the testing kit over my hand. I flattened my palm until I felt the tendons stretch, and gave him the nod to clamp down the lid. He did, pinning my fingers in their wide, starfished position.

“I’m not wrong,” I said. Dull pain lanced my hand as the needles—one for each finger, and five more set in a circle at the center of the palm—darted out, taking blood samples. The lights on the top of the unit began to flash, cycling from green to yellow, where they remained, blinking on and off, until one by one, they started settling into their final color.

Red. Every one of them. Red.

Tears prickled against my eyelids. It took me a moment to realize what they were, and then I had to resist the urge to blink them back. Kellis-Amberlee never let me cry before. It was damn well going to let me cry now. “Told you I was right,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted. All I managed to sound was lost.

“Bet you’re sorry,” Shaun replied. I raised my head and met his shocked, staring eyes with my own.

We sat that way for several moments, looking at each other, waiting for an answer that wasn’t going to come. It was Rick who spoke, voicing the one question we all wanted to ask and that none of us was quite prepared to answer.

“What do we do now?”

“Do?” Shaun frowned at him, looking utterly and honestly perplexed. That expression was enough to terrify me, because he looked like someone who didn’t understand the idea that before too much longer, I was going to be making a concerted effort to eat him alive. “What do you mean, ‘What do we do?’”

“I mean exactly what I said,” Rick said. He shook his head, gesturing to me. “We can’t just leave her like this. We have to—”

“No!”

The vehemence of Shaun’s reply startled me. I turned toward him. “No?” I repeated. “Shaun, what the hell do you mean, ‘no’? There isn’t room for ‘no.’ ‘No’ is over.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying.” Rick was pale and shaking, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. Poor guy. He didn’t sign up for political assassinations when he decided to join the so-called “winning team.” Despite that, he met my eyes without flinching and didn’t try to avoid looking at me. He’d seen the virus before. It held no surprises for him. “You’re the closest thing we’ve got to a virologist, Rick. How long do I have?”

“How much do you weigh?”

“One thirty-five, tops.”

“I’d say forty-five minutes, under normal circumstances,” he said, after a moment’s consideration. “But these aren’t normal circumstances.”

“The run,” I said.

He nodded. “The run.”

Viral amplification depends on a lot of factors. Age, physical condition, body weight—how fast your blood is moving when you come into contact with the live virus. If someone gets bitten in their sleep without waking up, they may take the rest of the night to fully amplify, because they’ll be calm enough that their body won’t be helping the infection along. I, on the other hand, got hit with a viral payload a lot bigger than you’d find in a bite, and it happened while I was running for my life, heart pounding, adrenaline pushing my blood pressure through the roof. I’d cut my time in half. Maybe worse.

It was already getting harder to think; harder to focus; harder to breathe. I knew, intellectually, that my lungs weren’t shutting down. It was just the virus enclosing the soft tissues of my brain and starting to disrupt normal neurological functions, making normally autonomic actions start intruding on the conscious mind. I’ve read the papers and the clinical studies. I knew what to expect. First comes the lack of focus, the lack of interest, the lack of capability to draw unrelated conclusions. Then comes hyperactivity as the circulatory system is pushed to overdrive. Then, when the virus reaches full saturation, the coup de grace: the death of the conscious mind. My body would continue to walk around, driven by raw instinct and the desires of the virus, but Georgia Carolyn Mason would be gone. Forever.

I was dead before the lights flashed red. I was dead the second the hypodermic hit my arm, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. But there was something I could do before I went.

Turning to Shaun, I nodded. There was a long pause—almost too long—before his expression calmed and he returned the gesture, looking more sure of himself, more like himself, despite the tears running down his cheeks.

“Rick?” he said.

Rick turned to him, shaking his head. “You can’t beat this. There’s no beating this. She’s gone. You need to realize that. She’s gone, and I’m sorry, but we have to—”

“Get me the medical kit from under the server rack,” Shaun said. I had to envy him the calmness in his voice. I couldn’t have stayed that calm if he were the one undergoing explosive viral amplification. “The red one.”

“What do you—”

“Do it!”

The words were barely out of his mouth before Rick was rushing to the front of the van, digging under the seat for the med kit. Mom packed it for us a million years ago, for use in absolute emergency. When she put it in my hands, she said she prayed we’d never have to use it. Sorry, Mom. Guess we let you down good this time. But hey, at least the ratings will be high.

I let out a long, shuddering sigh that somehow transformed into hysterical giggling. I bit my tongue before the giggles could turn to sobs. There wasn’t time for that. There wasn’t time for anything except the red box, and the things it held, and maybe—maybe, if I was lucky—one last article.

Rick came back to Shaun’s side, holding the box at arm’s length. His expression was cold. He didn’t think Shaun would be able to do it. He didn’t know him as well as he thought he did. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the seat, suddenly tired.

“You can go now, Rick,” I said. “Take my bike and the gray backup drive. Get as far away as you can, then hit a data station and upload everything to the site. Free space. No subscription required. Creative Commons licensing.”

“What is it?” he asked, curiosity briefly overriding his determination to see me dead. Bless you, Rick. A journalist after my own heart, right up to the end.

“Everything I died for,” I said. My eyes were starting to itch. I took my sunglasses off and threw them aside as I rubbed my eyes. “Files, bank records, everything. It’s just everything. Now get out of here. You’ve done everything you can.”

“Are you—”

“We’re sure,” said Shaun. I heard the box pop open and the distinctive snap of polyvinyl-Teflon gloves. They’re nearly impossible to tear and so expensive that even the military only uses them under special circumstances. Shaun always insisted we carry a pair. Just one. Just in case. “Take my extra body armor. There’s always a chance they’re still shooting out there.”

“Do you think they are?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. I guess it doesn’t.”

I listened as Rick moved around the van. He pulled Shaun’s body armor out of the closet where it was stored and yanked it on over his clothes, snaps and zippers fastening with their quiet, distinctive sounds. It kept me distracted from the sounds that were coming from Shaun’s direction, the sloshing, snapping sounds as he got the injector cartridges ready.

“Thanks, Rick,” I said. “It’s been one hell of a ride.”

“I… right.” I heard Rick’s footsteps approach; the scrape of metal as he lifted the drive from beside my computer; then his retreat, until the door creaked open and he stopped, hesitating. “I… Georgia?”

“Yes, Rick?”

“I’m sorry.”

I cracked my eyes open, allowing him a small, mirthless smile. For the first time that I could remember, the light didn’t hurt. I was going into conversion. My body was losing the capacity to understand pain. “That’s all right. So am I.”

For a moment, he looked like he might say something else. Then his lips tightened and he nodded, before undoing the latches on the door. That was the last exit: When the van was locked again, it would detect infection and refuse to open for anyone inside.

“Shaun? Train’s leaving,” I said, quietly. “You want to jab and go?”

“And let you finish this without me?” He shook his head. “No way. Rick, you be careful out there.”

Rick’s shoulders tightened and he was gone, stepping out into the evening air. The door banged shut behind him.

Shaun sat down on the floor in front of me, the injector in his hands. It was a two-barrel array, ready to deliver a mixed payload of sedatives and my own hyper-activated white blood cells. Together, the mixture could slow conversion… for a while. Not for long, but if we were lucky, for long enough. Expression staying neutral, he said, “Give me your right arm.”

I held it out.

Shaun pressed the twin needles to the thin skin at the bend of my elbow and a wash of coolness flowed into me as he pressed the plunger home.

“Thanks,” I said, shivering.

“That’s all we’ve got.” He opened a biohazard bag and dropped the used injector into it before sealing the top. “You’ve got half an hour, tops. After that—”

“There’s no guarantee I’ll be lucid. I know.” He rose, walking stiff-legged across to the biohazard bin and dropped the bag inside. I wanted to run after him, wrap my arms around him, and cry until there weren’t any tears left in me, but I couldn’t. I didn’t dare. Even my tears would be infectious, and the sedatives he’d shot into my arm weren’t going to work any miracles. Time was short.

I still had work to do.

I swung back to my monitor, trying to swallow away the dryness as I heard Shaun moving behind me, taking one of the spare revolvers out of the locker by the door and loading it, one careful cartridge at a time. What was it the reports said? The dryness of the mouth was one of the early signs of viral amplification, resulting from the crystal blocks of virus drawing away moisture and bringing on that lovely desiccated state that all the living dead seem to share? That seemed about right. It was getting harder to think about that sort of thing. Suddenly, it was all just a little too immediate.

My hands were still hovering above the keyboard while my mind struggled to find a beginning when I felt the barrel of the gun press against the base of my skull, cold and somehow soothing. Shaun wouldn’t let me hurt anyone else. No matter what happened, he wouldn’t let me hurt anyone else. Not even him. Not more than I already had.

“Shaun…”

“I’m here.”

“I love you.”

“I know, George. I love you, too. You and me. Always.”

“I’m scared.”

His lips brushed the top of my head as he bent forward and pressed them to my hair. I wanted to yell at him to get away from me, but I didn’t. The barrel of the gun remained a cool, constant pressure on the back of my neck. When I turned, when I stopped being me, he would end it. He loved me enough to end it. Has any girl ever been luckier than I am?

“Shaun…”

“Shhh, Georgia,” he said. “It’s okay. Just write.” And so I began. One last chance to roll the dice, tell the truth, and shame the devil. One last chance to make it all clear. What we fought for. What we died for. What we felt we had to do.

I never asked to be a hero. No one ever gave me the option to say I didn’t want to, that I was sorry, but that they had the wrong girl. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and let people draw their own conclusions from there. I wanted people to think, and to know, and to understand. I just wanted to tell the truth. In the van that had carried us across a country, and through the last months of my life, with my brother standing ready to pull the trigger, my hands came down, and I wrote.

Was it worth it?

God, I hope so.