“The CDC puts out a statement, that tends to go around in a hurry.” Senator Ryman closed his eyes, looking pained. “She was so damn young.”
“Georgia was assassinated, Senator. Plastic dart full of live-state Kellis-Amberlee, shot straight into her arm. She never had a prayer. All because we figured out what was really going on.” I swung my attention back to Tate and asked, more quietly, “Why Eakly, Governor? Why the ranch? And why, you fucker, why Buffy? I can actually understand trying to kill me and my sister, after everything else, but why?”
“Dave?” said Senator Ryman.
“This country needed someone to take real action for a change. Someone who was willing to do what needed to be done. Not just another politician preaching changes and keeping up the status quo.” Tate met my eyes without flinching, looking almost calm. “We took some good steps toward God and safety after the Rising, but they’ve slowed in recent years. People are afraid to do the right thing. That’s the key. Real fear’s what motivates them to get past the fears that aren’t important enough to matter. They needed to be reminded. They needed to remember what America stands for.”
“Not sure I’d call terrorist use of Kellis-Amberlee a ‘reminder.’ Personally, I’d call it, y’know. Terrorism. Maybe a crime against humanity. Possibly both. I guess that’s for the courts to decide.” I drew Georgia’s .40, and aimed it at Tate. The crowd went still, honed political instincts reacting to what had to look like an assassination attempt in the making. “Secure-channel voice activation, Shaun Phillip Mason, ABF-17894, password ‘crikey.’ Mahir, you there?”
My ear cuff beeped once. “Here, Shaun,” said Mahir’s voice, distorted by the encryption algorithms protecting the transmission. Secure channels are only good once, but, oh, how good they are. “What’s the situation?”
“On Tate now. Start uploading everything you receive and download Georgia’s last report directly to Senator Ryman. He needs to give it a glance.” Governor Tate was glaring. I flashed him a smile. “I’ve been recording this whole time. But you knew that, didn’t you? Smart guy like you. Smart enough to get around our security. To get around our friends.”
“Miss Meissonier was a realist and a patriot who understood the trials facing this country,” said Tate, tone as stiff as his shoulders. “She was proud to have the opportunity to serve.”
“Miss Meissonier was a twenty-four-year-old journalist who wrote poetry for a living,” I snapped. “Miss Meissonier was our partner, and you had her killed because she wasn’t useful anymore.”
“David, is this true?” asked Emily, horror leeching the inflection from her voice. Senator Ryman had taken out his PDA and seemed to be growing older by the second as he stared at its screen. “Did you… Eakly? The ranch?” Fury twisted her features, and before either I or her husband could react, she was out of her chair, launching herself at Governor Tate. “My daughter! That was my daughter, you bastard! Those were my parents! Burn in hell, you—”
Tate grabbed her wrists, twisting her to the side and locking his arm around her neck. His left hand, which had been under the table since I arrived, came into view, holding another of those plastic syringes. Unaware, Emily Ryman continued to struggle.
The senator went pale. “Now, David, let’s not do anything rash here—”
“I tried to send them home, Peter,” said Tate. “I tried to get them off the campaign, out of harm’s way, out of my way. Now look where they’ve brought us. Me, holding your pretty little wife, with just one outbreak left between us and a happy ending. I would have given you the election. I would have made you the greatest American president of the past hundred years, because together, we would have remade this nation.”
“No election is worth this,” Ryman said. “Emily, be still now, baby.” Looking confused and betrayed, Emily stopped struggling. Ryman lifted his hands into view, palms upward. “What’ll it take for you to release her? My wife’s not a part of this.”
“I’m afraid you’re all a part of this now,” Tate said, with a small shake of his head. “No one’s walking away. It’s gone too far for that. Maybe if you’d disposed of the journalists,” the word was almost spat, “it could have gone differently. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk, now, is there?”
“Put down the syringe, Governor,” I said, keeping the gun level. “Let her go.”
“Shaun, the CDC is piggybacking our feed,” said Mahir. “They’re not stopping the transmission, but they’re definitely listening in. Dave and Alaric are maintaining the integrity, but I don’t know that we can stop it if they want to cut us off.”
“Oh, they won’t cut us off, will you, Dr. Wynne?” I asked. I was starting to feel a little light-headed. This was all moving so damn fast.
Keep it together, dummy, hissed George. You think I want to be an only child?
“I’ve got it, George,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” asked Mahir.
“Nothing. Dr. Wynne? You there?” If it was him, the CDC was with us. If it was anybody else…
There was a crackle as the CDC broke into our channel. “Here, Shaun,” said the familiar southern drawn of Dr. Joseph Wynne. Mahir was swearing in the background. “Are you in any danger?”
“Well, Governor Tate’s holding a syringe on Senator Ryman’s wife, and since the last two syringes we’ve seen have been full of Kellis-Amberlee, I’m not betting this one’s any different,” I said. “I’ve got a gun on him, but I don’t think I can shoot before he sticks her.”
“We’re on our way. Can you stall him?”
“Doing my best.” I forced my attention back to Governor Tate, who was watching me impassively. “Come on, Governor. You know this is over. Why not put that thing down and go out like a man instead of like a murderer? More of one than you already are, I mean.”
“Not exactly diplomatic, there, Shaun,” said Dr. Wynne in my ear.
“Doing the best I can,” I said.
“Shaun, who are you talking to?” asked Senator Ryman. He looked edgy. Having a crazy dude holding a syringe of live virus on his wife probably had something to do with that.
“Dr. Joseph Wynne from the CDC,” I said. “They’re on the way.”
“Thank God,” breathed the senator.
“Want to put it down now, Governor?” I asked. “You know this is over.”
Governor Tate hesitated, looking from me to the senator and finally to the horrified, receding crowd. Suddenly weary, he shook his head, and said, “You’re fools, all of you. You could have saved this country. You could have brought moral fiber back to America.” His grip on Emily slackened. She pulled herself free, diving into her husband’s embrace. Senator Ryman closed his arms around her and rose, backing away. Governor Tate ignored them. “Your sister was a hack and a whore who would have fucked Kellis himself if she thought it would get her a story. She’ll be forgotten in a week, when your fickle little audience of bottom-feeders moves on to something more recent. But they’re going to remember me, Mason. They always remember the martyrs.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
“No,” he said. “We won’t.” In one fluid motion, he drove the syringe into his thigh and pressed the plunger home.
Emily Ryman screamed. Senator Ryman was shouting at the top of his lungs, ordering people to get back, to get to the elevators, behind secure doors, anything that would get them away from the man who’d just turned himself into a living outbreak. Still looking at me, Governor Tate started to laugh.
“Hey, George,” I said, taking a few seconds to adjust my aim. There was no wind inside; that was a nice change. Less to compensate for. “Check this out.”
The sound of her .40 going off was almost drowned out by the screams of the crowd. Governor Tate stopped laughing and looked, for an instant, almost comically surprised before he slumped onto the table, revealing the ruined mess that had replaced the back of his head. I kept the gun trained on h
im, waiting for signs of further movement. After several moments had passed without any, I shot him three more times anyway, just to be sure. It never hurts to be sure.
People were still screaming, pushing past each other as they rushed for the doors. Mahir and Dr. Wynne were trying to shout over each other on our open channel, both demanding status reports, demanding to know whether I was all right, whether the outbreak had been contained. They were giving me a headache. I reached up and removed my ear cuff, putting it on the table. Let them shout. I was done listening. I didn’t need to listen anymore.
“See, George?” I whispered. When did I start crying? It didn’t matter. Tate’s blood looked just like George’s. It was red and bright now, but it would start to dry soon, turning brown, turning old, turning into something the world could just forget. “I got him. I got him for you.”
Good, she said.
Senator Ryman was shouting my name, but he was too far away to matter. Steve and Emily would never let him this close to a hot corpse. Until the CDC showed up, I could be alone. I liked that idea. Alone.
Taking two steps backward, I pulled out a chair and sat down at a table that would let me keep an eye on Tate. Just in case. There was a basket of breadsticks at the center, abandoned by fickle diners when the trouble started. I picked one up with my free hand and munched idly as I kept George’s gun trained on Tate. He didn’t move. Neither did I. When the CDC arrived to take command of the site fifteen minutes later, we were still waiting, Tate with his pool of slowly drying blood, me with my basket of breadsticks. They seized the site, sealed it, and ushered us all away to quarantine and testing. I kept my eye on him as long as I could, watching for some sign that it wasn’t over, that the story wasn’t done. He never moved, and George didn’t say a word, leaving me alone in the echoing darkness of my mind.
Was it worth it, George? Well, was it? Tell me, if you can, because I swear to God, I just don’t know.
I don’t know anything anymore.
CODA:
Dying For You
The next person who says “I’m sorry” is going to get punched in the nose. Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t do a damn thing except remind me that this can’t be fixed. This is my world now. And I don’t want it.
—SHAUN MASON
I love my brother. I love my job. I love the truth. So here’s hoping no one ever makes me choose between them.
—GEORGIA MASON
Somebody once asked me if I believed in God. It was probably the windup to some major proselytizing, but it’s a good question. Do I believe in God? That somebody made all this happen for a reason, that there’s something waiting for us after we die? That there’s a purpose to all this crap? I don’t know. I’d like to be able to say “Yes, of course” almost as much as I’d like to be able to say “Absolutely not,” but there’s evidence on both sides of the fence. Good people die for nothing, little kids go hungry, corrupt men hold positions of power, and horrible diseases go uncured. And I got Shaun, maybe the only person who could make it seem worthwhile to me. I got Shaun.
So, is there a God? Sorry to dodge the question, but I just don’t know.
—From Postcards from the Wall, the unpublished files of Georgia Mason, April 17, 2040
Thirty
It took three months for the CDC to release Georgia’s ashes. It would normally have taken longer, given the way she died. Lucky me, my sister died an international celebrity. That sort of thing gets you friends in high places. Even inside the CDC itself, which has been preoccupied with internal reviews as it tries to find the source of Tate’s anonymous “donors.” When Dr. Wynne went to his superiors and petitioned them for the right to let us have Georgia’s ashes, they listened. Guess they didn’t want to risk being our story of the week. No one does, these days. That’ll fade with time—Mahir says we’re losing percentages daily, as people move on to newer things—but we’re always going to have a certain cachet after everything that went down. “After the End Times: So dedicated to telling you what you need to hear that they’ll die to do it.” I’d probably be a lot more disgusted by the whole thing if it weren’t for the part where it let us bring George home.
Dr. Wynne brought the box containing her ashes to me himself, accompanied by a fresh-faced, yellow-haired doctor I remembered from Memphis. Kelly Connolly. She’s the one who gave me the pile of cards, handwritten by CDC employees from all over the country, and said they had three more as large from the WHO and USAMRIID. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. Buffy died, and we got accused of trying to hoax the world. George died, and that same world mourned with me. Maybe that should have been a comfort, but it wasn’t. I didn’t want the world to mourn. I just wanted George to come home.
She would have needed a forwarding address to find me. I came back from the campaign trail battered, exhausted, and ready to collapse, and discovered that home wasn’t home anymore. My room was connected to George’s room, and George wasn’t there. I kept finding myself standing in her room, not sure how I got there, waiting for her to start yelling at me and tell me to knock first. She never did, and so I started packing my things. I wanted to get away from the ghosts. And I wanted to get away from the Masons.
George died, and the world mourned with me, sure. All the world but them. Oh, they did the right things in public, said the right things, made the right gestures. Dad did a series of articles on personal versus public responsibility and kept invoking the “heroic sacrifice” of his beloved adopted daughter, like that somehow made his platitudes more relevant. Guess it did, because it got him the highest ratings he’d had in years. George died a celebrity. Can’t blame a man for capitalizing on that. Except for the part where I can. Oh, believe me, I can.
George and I’ve had our last wills and testaments filed since before we were required to, and even though we both always assumed I’d go first, we both still filed with predeceasement clauses. If I went first, she got everything I had, including intellectual property, published and unpublished. If she went first, I got the same. We both had to die before anyone else had a shot at our estates, and even then, we didn’t leave them to the Masons. We left them to Buffy, and, in the event that she hadn’t survived whatever event managed to kill us both—since we always figured the only way we’d die together was something like the van breaking down in the middle of an outbreak—it all rolled to Mahir. Keep the site going. Keep the news in the right hands. The Masons haven’t been in the chain of inheritance since we were sixteen. Only they didn’t seem to have realized that because I hadn’t been home for three days before they started harassing me to sign over George’s unpublished files to them.
“It’s what she would have wanted,” Dad said, doing his best to look solemn and wise. “We can take care of things and leave you free to build a career of your own. She wouldn’t have wanted you to put your life on hold to take care of what she left behind.”
“You’re one of the top Irwins in the world right now,” Mom added. “You can write your own ticket. Whatever you want to do, you can do it. I bet you could even get a pass to visit Yosemite—”
“I know what she wanted,” I said, and I left them sitting there at the kitchen table, not quite certain how they’d failed. I moved out the next morning. Two weeks couch-surfing with local bloggers who knew the score, and then I was in my own apartment. One bedroom, security controls so far out of date that the place would have been condemned if it hadn’t been in such a well-certified hazard zone, and no ghosts or opportunistic parents waiting to ambush me in the halls. George followed me, of course, in the form of all her things, tucked into neat cardboard boxes by the movers that I’d hired… but she’d never been there while she was alive, and so sometimes, I was able to forget she wasn’t there anymore. For minutes at a time, even, it seemed like the world was the way it was supposed to be.
Doctors Wynne and Connolly cut the delivery of George’s ashes pretty close; they didn’t bring them until the da
y before the funeral. I wouldn’t have scheduled it at all, not until I had her back in hand and maybe had a little time to come to terms with things again, but circumstances didn’t leave me much of a choice. It was the only day Senator Ryman could make it, and he’d asked that we hold the service when he could attend. I might still have put it off, except for the part where our team couldn’t come out of the field if the senator—who was fighting, and apparently winning, an increasingly vicious battle for his political position—was still out there. Magdalene, Becks, and Alaric deserved their chance to say good-bye to George, too. Especially since they’d taken over where she and I, and Buffy, had to leave off.
Becks runs the Irwins now; I meant it when I said I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. Site administration is enough excitement for me, at least for right now. Mahir and Magdalene are doing fine with their departments. Ratings have actually gone up for the Fictionals. Magdalene is better at staying focused than Buffy ever was, even if she doesn’t have a flair for technical things or espionage. And maybe that’s good, too. We’ve been down that road before.
Mahir’s flight from London landed at eleven the day of the funeral. I drove to the passenger collection zone at the edge of the airport’s quarantine border, hoping I’d be able to pick him out of the crowd. I didn’t really need to worry. His plane had been almost empty, and I would’ve known him anywhere, even if I hadn’t been seeing him on video screens for years. He had the same empty confusion in his eyes that I saw in my mirror every morning, that odd sort of denial that only seems to come when the world decides to jump the rails without warning you first.
“Shaun,” he said, and took my hand. “I’m so glad to finally meet you. I just wish it could have been under better circumstances.”
“This is from George,” I said, and pulled him into a hug. He didn’t hesitate. He just hugged me back, and we stood there, crying on each other’s shoulders, until airport security told us to clear out or be held in contempt of quarantine regulations. We left.