“Shaun, where are you?” Horror was overwhelming the anxiety in his tone. He’d seen the van wall. He’d seen the gun. Mahir wasn’t an idiot—he could never have worked for George if he’d been stupid—and he knew what my surroundings meant.
“I’m in the van.” I nodded, still letting myself take comfort in the dark. I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t see the blood drying on the walls. The dark was my friend. “George is here, too, but you can’t really say hi just now. She’s indisposed. Also, I blew her brains out all over the wall.” The giggle escaped before I could bite it back, high and shrill in the confined air.
“Oh, my God.” Now there was nothing but horror in his tone, wiping everything else away. “Have you activated your emergency beacon? Have you tested yourself? Shaun—”
“Not yet.” I found myself beginning to get interested against my better judgment. “Do you think I should?”
“Don’t you want to live, man?!”
“That’s an interesting question.” I opened my eyes and stood, testing my legs and finding them good. There was a moment of dizziness, but it passed. Mahir was watching me from the screen, his dark complexion gone pale with panic. “Do you think I should? I wasn’t supposed to. George was supposed to. There’s been a clerical error.”
“Turn on your beacon, Shaun.” His voice was firm now. “She wouldn’t want it this way.”
“Pretty sure she wouldn’t want any of this. Especially not the part where she’s dead. That would be the part she liked the least.” My head was starting to clear as the shock faded, replaced by something cleaner and a lot more familiar: anger. I was furiously angry because it wasn’t supposed to be this way; it was never supposed to be this way. Georgia would attend my funeral, give my eulogy, and I would never live in a world she wasn’t a part of. We agreed on that when we were kids, and this… this was just plain wrong.
“Regardless, now that she’s gone and you’re not? She’d want you to make at least a small effort to stay that way.”
“You Newsies. Always bringing the facts into things.” I crossed the van, keeping my eyes away from the mess at my sister’s terminal and the surrounding walls. The beacon—a button that would trigger a broadcast loop to let any local CDC or law enforcement agents know that someone in the van had been infected, and that someone else was alive—was a switch on the wall next to what had been Buffy’s primary terminal, before she went and died on us.
First Buffy, now George. Two down, one to go, and the more I forced myself out of the comfort of my shock, the more I realized that the story wasn’t over. It didn’t have an ending. George would have hated that.
“It is, as you might say, our job,” Mahir said.
“Yeah, about that.” I flipped the switch. A distant, steady beeping began, the beacon’s signal being picked up and relayed by the illegal police scanner in the sealed-off front seat. “Who are you working for right now?”
“Ah… no one. I suppose I’m a free agent.”
“Good, ‘cause I want to hire you.”
Mahir’s surprise was entirely unfeigned as he demanded, “What?”
“This day can’t be good for your blood pressure,” I said, crossing to the weapons locker. The revolver wasn’t going to cut it. For one thing, it was probably contaminated, and they’d take it away when they let me out of the van. For another, it lacked class. You can’t go hunting United States governors with a generic revolver. It simply isn’t done. “After the End Times has found itself with a sudden opening for a new Head of our Factual Reporting Department. I mean, I could hire Rick, but I don’t think he’s gonna have the guts for the job. He’s one of nature’s seconds. Besides, Georgia would’ve wanted me to give it to you.” We’d never discussed it—the topic of her dying was so ludicrous that it never came up—but I was sure of what I was saying. She would’ve hired him if she had any say in the matter. She would’ve hired him, and she would’ve trusted him to take over the site if my death followed hers. So that was all right.
“I… I’m not sure what you…”
“Just say yes, Mahir. We have so many recorders running right now that you know a verbal contract will stand up in court, as long as I don’t test positive when they come to let me out of here.”
Mahir sighed, the sound seemingly summoned up from the very core of him. I glanced up from the process of loading bullets into Georgia’s favorite .40, and saw him nod. “All right, Shaun. I accept.”
“Good. Welcome back onboard.” I’ve done my own hiring and firing from the start and I know what it takes to activate a new account or reactivate an old one. Leaning over the nearest blood-free keyboard, I called up an administrative panel and tapped in his user ID, followed by my own, my password, and my administrative override. “It’ll take about ten minutes for your log-in to turn all the way back live.” Just about as long as it had taken Georgia’s typing to degrade. “Once you can get in, get in. I want you monitoring every inch of the site. Draft any-damn-body you can get your hands on—I don’t care what department they belong to, you get them working the forums, watching the feeds, and making the goddamn news go. You need to hire people, you hire people. Until I come back, you’re in charge. Your word is law.”
“What’s the goal here, Shaun?”
I looked toward the screen, teeth bared in a grin, and he recoiled. “We’re not letting them kill my sister’s story the way they killed her. She gets buried. It doesn’t.”
For a moment, it looked as if he might protest, but only for a moment. It passed as quickly as it had come, and he nodded. “I’ll get on that. Are you about to do something foolish?”
“You could say that,” I agreed. “Good night, Mahir.”
“Good luck,” he said, and the screen went black.
I had just finished loading Georgia’s gun when the intercom buzzed. “Answer,” I said, pulling down my Kevlar vest and slamming the weapons locker shut before starting to fasten the buckles around my chest.
“—there? I repeat: Shaun, are you in there?”
“Steve, my man!” I didn’t have to feign my delight at the sound of his voice. “Dude, you’re like a cat! How many lives you got, anyway?”
“Not as many as you,” Steve replied, the rumble of his voice not quite hiding his concern. “Georgia in there with you, Shaun?”
“She is,” I said, sliding a Taser into my pocket. It wouldn’t stop someone who’d amplified all the way, but it would slow them down. The virus doesn’t like to have the electrical current of its host messed with. “She’s not really interested in talking, though, Steve-o, on account of the bullets I put through her spinal column. If you’re not infected, and you’d be good enough to open the doors, I’d be greatly obliged.”
“Did she bite, scratch, or come into contact with you in any way after exposure?”
They were routine questions. They’d never made me so angry in my life. “No, Steve, I’m afraid she didn’t. No bites, no scratches, no hugs, not even a kiss good night before that Bible-thumping bastard’s assassins sent my sister off to the great newsroom in the sky. If you’ve got a blood test unit and you’ll open the doors, I’ll prove it.”
“You armed, Shaun?”
“You gonna leave me in here if I say yes? ‘Cause I can lie.”
The pause that followed was almost enough to make me think Steve had decided safe was better than sorry and was leaving me in the van to rot. That was a goal, sure, but not yet. The story wasn’t done until the last of the loose ends were tied off, and one of those loose ends was slated to be George’s honor guard. Finally, voice low, Steve said, “I haven’t read her last entry all the way. I read enough. Stand back from the door and keep your hands where I can see them until you’ve tested out clean.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and stepped backward.
The air that rushed in when the door opened was so fresh it almost hurt my lungs. The scents of blood and gunpowder were he
avy, but not as heavy as they’d been inside the van. I took an involuntary step forward, toward the light, and stopped as a large dark blur raised what I could only assume was an arm and said, “Don’t come any closer until I’ve moved away.”
“You got it, Steve-o,” I said. “You guys dealt with the little outbreak you had going out here? Sorry I didn’t come to join your party. I was preoccupied.”
“It’s been contained, if not resolved, and I understand,” said Steve, coming into focus as my eyes adjusted. He knelt, placed something on the ground, and retreated, allowing me to approach the object. As expected, it was a blood testing unit. Not the top of the line, but not the bottom, either; solidly middle of the road, enough to confirm or deny infection within an acceptable margin of error. “Acceptable.” That’s always seemed like such a funny word to use when you’re talking about whether somebody lives or dies.
It weighed less than a pound. I broke the seal with my thumb, looking toward Steve as I did. “He doesn’t walk away from this,” I said.
“I promise,” Steve replied.
Good enough for me. “Count of three,” I said. “One…”
Inside my head, Georgia said, Two…
I slid my hand into the unit and pressed the relays down, watching as the lights started cycling through the available colors. Red-yellow-green, yellow-red-green. Every damn one of those lights danced between red and gold for a few seconds, long enough to make me sweat, before settling on a calm and steady green. You’re fine, son; just fine. Now go and be merry.
“Merry” wasn’t exactly in my plans. I held up the testing unit, letting Steve get a good long look. “This good enough?”
“It is,” he said, and tossed me a biohazard bag. “What the hell happened, Shaun?”
“Just what George said. Some sick fucker killed Rick’s cat and rigged our trailers to blow. When the blast didn’t kill us, they hit George with one of those hypodermic darts like the one that triggered the outbreak at the Ryman place. Shit, I wish we’d been looking for the things back at Eakly. I bet we would’ve found one.”
“I bet we would have, too,” said Steve, watching as I dropped the testing unit into a biohazard bag. He was holding his sunglasses loosely in one hand, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who’s looked into hell and found he couldn’t cope with what he was seeing. I wouldn’t have been willing to bet that my eyes were any better. “You got a plan from here?”
“Oh, the usual. Get a vehicle, head for whatever site they have the candidates under lockdown at—”
“Right where you left them,” Steve interjected.
“Well, that’s convenient. I know the security layout there. Anyway, head back to the candidates and have a chat with Governor Tate.” I shrugged. “Maybe blow his brains out. I don’t know. The plan is still in the formative stage.”
“Need a ride?”
I grinned, the expression feeling foreign on my face. “I’d love one.”
“Good. Because my boys and I—what’s left of my boys—wouldn’t like to see you get hurt just because you felt like being stupid and going it alone.”
The ludicrousness of it all was enough to make me laugh. “Wait, you mean this was all I had to do to get myself a bigger security detail?”
“Guess so.”
“Get your boys.” The laughter faded as I looked at him. “It’s time we got on the road.”
Sometimes we leave the connecting door between our rooms open all night. We’d still share a room if they’d let us, turn the other room into an office and have done with it. Because both of us hate to be alone, and both of us hate to have other people—people outside the country we’ve made together—around when we’re defenseless. We’re always defenseless when we’re asleep.
We leave the connecting door open, and I wake up in the night to the sound of him snoring, and I wonder how the hell I’m going to stay alive after he finally slips up. He’ll die first, we both know it, but I don’t know… I really don’t know how long I’ll stay alive without him. That’s the part Shaun doesn’t know. I don’t intend to be an only child for long.
—From Postcards from the Wall, the unpublished files of Georgia Mason, June 19, 2040
Twenty-eight
The outbreak was still going strong. The infected weren’t actually everywhere; it just seemed that way, as they lurched and ran out of the shadows, following whatever weird radar signals the virus uses to tell the active hosts from the ones where the potential for infection is still just that, potential, sleeping and waiting for a wake-up. The scientists have been trying to figure out that little trick for twenty years, and as far as I know, they’re no closer than they were the day Romero movies stopped being trashy horror and started being guides to staying alive. I should have been thrilled—it’s not every day I get to walk through the center of an actual outbreak—but I was too busy being angry to really give a damn. Zombies didn’t kill George. People did. Living, breathing, uninfected people.
I recognized a lot of faces among the infected. Interns from the campaign; a few security staffers, one long-faced man with thinning red hair who’d been traveling with us for about six weeks writing speeches for the senator. No more speeches for you, buddy, I thought, and put a bullet through the center of his forehead. He fell soundlessly, robbed of menace, and I turned away, nauseated.
“If I get out of this alive, I may need to look for another line of work.”
“What’s that?” asked Steve, between breathless radio calls to his surviving men. He was pulling them back to the motor pool. Several were moving slowly due to the need to herd less-well-armed survivors, going against the recommended survival strategies for an outbreak as they responded like human beings. You want to stay alive in a zombie swarm? You go alone or in a small group where everyone is of similar physical condition and weapons training. You never stop, you never hesitate, and you never show any mercy for the people that would slow you down. That’s what the military says we should do, and if I ever meet anybody who listens to that particular set of commands, I may shoot them myself just to improve the gene pool. When you can help people stay alive, you help them. We’re all we’ve got.
“Nothing,” I said, with a shake of my head. “How’re we looking for support?”
His mouth drew down in something between a wince and a scowl before he said, “Our last call from Andres came while I was on my way to get you. He was backed against a wall with half a dozen of the aides. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again. Carlos and Heidi are at the motor pool; that zone’s relatively clear. Mike… I haven’t heard from Mike. Not Susan or Paolo, either. Everyone else is either on the way to meet with us or holding fast in a safe zone.”
“Andres—crap, man, I’m sorry.”
Steve shook his head. “I never was very good at partners.” He turned and fired into the shadows at the side of a portable office. Something gurgled and fell. I gave him a sidelong look, and he actually smiled. “You thought we wore these sunglasses for our health?”
“I have got to get a pair of those.”
We kept walking. What started as a pleasant, well-configured camp for visiting politicians had become a killing ground, full of cul-de-sacs and blind alleys that could hold almost anything. Complacency had long since destroyed the functionality of the layout. I couldn’t blame them—there hadn’t been an outbreak in Sacramento in years—but I didn’t appreciate it, either. Luck was on our side: With the senator and most of his senior staff off the grounds for the keynote speech, we had fewer bodies to deal with than we might have otherwise. Our chances of survival had gotten better with every person who left the compound. “Just wish we hadn’t come back,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” asked Steve.
I started to answer but was cut off as something hit me from behind, the momentum forcing me to the ground as hands clawed at my shoulders. Steve shouted. I was too occupied with trying to shake the zombie off
to understand what he was saying. It was tearing at my back, trying to bite through the Kevlar. It would move up before too much longer, and my scalp was unprotected. The idea of having my brain literally eaten was really failing to appeal.
“Shaun!”
“Busy now!” I rolled to the left, ignoring the growls behind me as I struggled to get the Taser out of my belt. “Can you shoot it?”
“It’s too close!”
“So get it off me before it figures out where to bite!” The Taser came free, almost falling into my hand. I twisted my arm as far behind me as I could, praying the thing wouldn’t catch the unprotected flesh of my lower arm before the electricity could do its job. “Dammit, Steve, grab the fucking thing!”
Electricity spat and arced as the Taser made contact with the zombie’s side. Luckily for me, it had been an intern, not a security guard; it wasn’t wearing protective clothing. The thing screamed, sounding almost human as the viral bodies powering its actions became disoriented in the face of an electric current greater than their own. I hit it again, and Steve finally moved, grabbing the zombie and yanking it off. I rolled onto my back, reaching for Georgia’s .40, and starting to fire almost as soon as I had it drawn. My first shot hit the zombie high in the shoulder, rocking it back. The second hit it in the forehead, and it went down.
My heart was pounding hard enough to echo in my ears, but my legs were steady as I scrambled back to my feet. Steve looked a lot more shaken. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and his complexion was several shades paler than it had been before I fell. I glanced around. Seeing that nothing else was about to rush me, I bent, picked up the Taser, and replaced both it and the gun in my belt. “You okay over there, Steve-o?”
“Did you get bit?” he demanded.
There was a predictable response. “Nope,” I said, raising my hands to show the unbroken skin. “You can test me again when we hit the motor pool, okay? Right now, I think we should stop being out here, like, as soon as possible. That wasn’t my favorite thing ever.” I paused, and added, almost guiltily, “Besides, I didn’t have a camera running.” George would’ve kicked my ass for that, after she finished kicking my ass for getting that close to a live infection.