I slid off the bed, smoothed my skirt with the heels of my hands, and started for the hotel-room door.
“Where are you going?” Audrey didn’t look up from her screen. Her fingers continued to fly across the keyboard, moving so fast that it was virtually a miracle she was typing actual words, not just chickenscratch shorthand.
“Out,” I said, with a vague wave of my hand that she wouldn’t see, but might somehow intuit all the same. “I figure I’ll go see whether John has any news on this lockdown. Governor Kilburn’s schedule says she’s supposed to be in Montana in two days. Maybe that means we’re going to pack up and roll out sometime soon. Or ever. Ever would be nice.”
“Poor Ash hasn’t gone zombie-bothering in days.” Now Audrey did look up, twisting in her seat to look at me. “Are you armed?”
“Am I dressed?” I crossed my arms and mock-pouted at her. All my sundresses were made according to a series of patterns I’d worked up, leaving room for the gun at my thigh and the pockets hidden at the waist. It was a rare day when I didn’t have enough ammo on me to significantly change my weight class.
“Good,” said Audrey. She turned back to her computer. “Tell John I said hey, and ask him if he wants to drop by for a hand of poker tonight after his shift ends.”
“Oh, yes, another private poker game is precisely what I need to help me sleep,” I said airily, and let myself out of the room. The door didn’t close quickly enough to keep me from hearing Audrey’s laughter, and that was fine by me. Sometimes laughter was the sweetest sound there was.
The hotel hallway was deserted. I considered crossing to Ben’s door and seeing whether he wanted to come, but dismissed the notion. He was too serious for what I was about to try. Much of my image depended on my seeming too sweet to do or say or think the things I did, weaponized femininity on the prowl. Ben wouldn’t help me get the information I needed out of the governor’s security team. I needed them off balance, willing to answer my questions, and most of all, willing to help me move.
Our hallway was bracketed by elevators, one at either end. There were four halls on this floor, all told. To get to either of the east-west oriented halls, I would need to ride the lobby elevator down to the next floor, which was a transitional level, and switch to their midfloor elevator. Our midfloor elevator only had access to the north-south halls. It was an incredibly inefficient system, especially when you stopped to consider that all the floors connected to the same lobby. Someone trying to get away from an outbreak didn’t have time to change elevators over and over again, looking for the magic combination that would get them to safety; they needed to have a straight shot to freedom. And that was exactly what this hotel was designed to avoid.
Security theater is practically the new American pastime. I rode down to the floor below us, switched to their midfloor elevator, and rode back up. Having successfully walked a few hundred feet to travel less than fifty feet from where I’d started, I shot a glare at the closed elevator doors and made my way over to the conference room that had been claimed for use by the governor’s people.
The door was propped open. So much for security. As I approached, I could hear voices coming from within, raised in vehement argument.
“—you we have to get back on schedule!” That was Chuck. He sounded pissed. Poor mite wasn’t dealing well with the fact that his campaign had been derailed by something as small as terrorism and attempted murder. “The governor’s approval ratings got a spike when she survived the rose garden attack, but the public is fickle! Blackburn is making real hay out of the fact that she has an open playing field right now!”
“Yes, and we’re making real hay out of the fact that we have a candidate who isn’t dead,” said Amber. I put a hand over my mouth to block the laughter threatening to escape. She just sounded so offended, like she couldn’t believe she had to say these things out loud. “The security sweep is ongoing. We have a lot of data to review before we’ll know who did this, or why.”
“The Ryman campaign experienced something similar in Eakly,” said a third voice. Governor Kilburn was apparently coming to her own party. That was both a good thing—she was more likely to be able to approve changes to the status of our team—and a bad one, since she might have firm ideas about how the next few days were going to go, and it was always difficult to talk my way around the policy makers. “Peter hasn’t locked down his campaign.”
“Not just Ryman,” I said, finally stepping into the conference room doorway. All conversation stopped as the people inside turned to look at me, some pleasantly, others with an air of narrow-eyed suspicion that did my heart good. If I was that much of a threat, they couldn’t be that committed to keeping me penned up in here. It was always best to put the biting dogs in the yard, if you had any choice in the matter. “They’re trying to play it coy and quiet, but we’ve heard from the team following Congresswoman Wagman, and apparently there was an outbreak at her most recent fund-raiser.”
“Banquet?” guessed John.
“Catered burlesque show,” I said. “Really nice place, good dancers, excellent security. A friend of mine was on the team, which is the only reason I know anything.” And the reason I hadn’t actually said anything, despite how nicely this fit into the greater pattern of shit going terribly wrong. Tina was good at her job. More importantly, she enjoyed having her job. If I’d gone repeating things she’d told me in confidence, she wouldn’t have that job for much longer.
Governor Kilburn sat up a little straighter. “I’ll call Kirsten and see what she knows,” she said.
I blinked. “Kirsten Wagman? You just… have her in your phone? Is there anyone you don’t know?”
“Ironically, I’m not very well acquainted with Governor Blackburn,” said the governor dryly. “We’ve always been competing for the same votes and the same spots at the table, so she’s never felt much like making friends. Whereas my colleagues on the other side of the political divide have always been more than happy to extend the hand of friendship. It’s easier if we can argue without hating each other.”
“I am so glad not to be a politician,” I said, although I understood, in theory, why things would work as she was describing them. I got along reasonably well with most of my fellow Irwins, but some of them would always look at me and see nothing but the competition. Every story I broke first was one they hadn’t gotten; every risk I got acclaim for taking was a risk that was no longer available to them. Newsies were much more likely to be blatantly friendly toward me. Ben was the one they had to worry about. I was just another potential asset.
“That may be, but I’m sure that if I call Kirsten, she’ll tell me what’s been going on. She’s a smart lady.”
“She wouldn’t be running for President if she wasn’t,” I said.
“The jury’s still out on that one,” said Amber.
Governor Kilburn shot her a sharp look. Amber simply shrugged.
“Permission to speak?” she asked.
“Granted,” said Governor Kilburn.
“In that case, I’m just saying,” said Amber. “If you were smart, maybe we wouldn’t be here. Let someone else take all the risks, while you sit home and enjoy not being attacked by terrorists.”
“Can we sling that word around a little less in front of the journalist?” asked Chuck. “If we can even call her that. She’s more of a shock jock, and you know how the shock jocks love their buzzwords.”
I looked at him flatly. “If you want to go with me, we can go,” I said. “Step outside and I’ll show you how an Irish girl defends her honor. But since I don’t think you’d enjoy that much, maybe you should stop saying things you don’t want to pay for.”
“I would enjoy it,” said Amber solemnly. “I would enjoy it so much that I’d need to get my phone out and record the whole thing. Then I could watch you knocking his teeth out during every staff meeting from here to the election.”
“Amber, I know I gave you permission to speak freely, but please stop for now. Chuck,
stop picking fights with the reporters. Mrs. North, stop letting Chuck goad you. He’s been under a lot of pressure recently.” Governor Kilburn rubbed her face with one hand. “We all have.”
“Oh, believe you me, his goading hasn’t succeeded yet,” I said. “If it had, you’d know. I’m a bit difficult to miss when I fly into a towering rage. Like Vesuvius, I am. The fact remains that you weren’t the only one attacked. At least three of the current campaigns have been.”
“I have no way of knowing whether Tate or Blackburn got hit, but I can start sending out feelers into their camps,” said Governor Kilburn. “Even if they won’t talk, maybe someone internal will.”
“And that’s all well and good, really. It still brings us back to what brought me here. Neither of them have locked down their campaigns. Neither of them have put the rest of their schedule on hold while they sit around and argue about whether people are trying to kill them. The show must go on, and all of that.” I crossed my arms. “We need to be moving.”
“I actually agree with the shock jock,” said Chuck.
“Aw, did it hurt to say those words out loud?” asked Amber.
He shot her a venomous look before refocusing on the governor and saying, “A political campaign is like a shark. It has to keep moving, or it will die. Right now, your core constituency feels bad about what happened, but let’s be serious: None of us died. Your camp suffered no losses, and the people who were used against us were taken from the ranks of those who wouldn’t be missed.”
“Careful,” I said quietly. “Some of us have been those people, a time or two.”
Chuck ignored me. That was probably for the best, if he wanted to get through the rest of his speech without a fist to the face. “We need to be out there. We need to be in motion, showing people that you’re still a contender in this race, and that you will not be cowed by—by—”
He stopped, a sick look crossing his face. Amber realized what was happening before I did. She pounced. “By terrorists?” she asked sweetly.
“Please do not break my campaign manager,” said Governor Kilburn. She rubbed her face again. “I’m starting to think he might be hard to replace.”
“But he’s right,” I said. “A political campaign is a lot like a news team. It needs to be generating content constantly—good, interesting content that makes people want to keep coming back. Ben’s interview series will hold eyes for a while, but we’re getting crushed by Ryman’s Eakly incident. They had deaths during the event. That makes them inherently more dramatic in the public eye.” Even though, privately, I felt like the governor’s camp had experienced the more interesting attack. The senator had been beset by a bunch of zombies outside the fence, some of whom had been killed or infected in violent, frankly clumsy ways. Our attack…
Burying the infected under a bunch of prize roses might not be original, and it might result in something out of an old horror comic, but it was striking. It was the sort of thing that, had it worked—had we all died, and not started picking the scenario apart with a fine-tooth comb—would have sparked a public panic, and probably closed all the green spaces in the city. There had been urban legends about zombies going to ground in soft earth, under leaf piles, and otherwise burrowing, for decades. This would have been taken as proving all those secondhand accounts true, and if there was anything the American public did well, it was overreact to a change in the undead status quo.
“I wonder if ours was intended to knock us out of the running, while his was intended to make him look good,” I mused quietly.
“What’s that?” asked the governor.
“Nothing, yet,” I said. “I need to talk to Mat, and then maybe it’ll be something. Please tell me you’re going to let us out of here. We need to move.”
“I’m going to call Kirsten and see what she can tell me about the attack on her camp,” said the governor. “And yes, I will approve travel plans tonight. We’ve missed two public appearances, but we should be able to catch up in time for the third. Is that satisfactory to all of you?”
“Yes,” said Chuck.
“Sure,” said Amber.
“Barring a time machine, it’ll do,” I said. I smiled quickly. “Pleasure doing business with you.” Then I turned on my heel and marched out of the room, heading back down the hall toward the elevator. I needed to talk to Mat.
Being an Irwin doesn’t mean clinging to facts and figures the way being a Newsie does, in part because we don’t need facts and figures. We have the infected. We have the fences surrounding the brightest, greenest, most interesting parts of the world, and we have the burning desire to be in those places, to dig our fingers into the earth and feel the grass beneath our protective footwear. A lot of the time, we can just count on our cardio and let anything more complicated go. Sure, it means we get written off as the brainless jocks of the blog world—there are even betting pools, run by supposedly reputable sites, taking odds on which of us will die next, and how gruesome that death will be. But it doesn’t mean we can actually be stupid.
An Irwin who doesn’t know how to pay attention to their surroundings is an Irwin who is about to be spread in a thin layer across their surroundings. We may not be the deepest thinkers, but in some essential ways, we’re the ones who put the most weight on detail. A scuff in the dirt can be a sign that a zombie has passed through recently. A clean spot on the wall can mean that something is missing.
Navigating the poorly considered elevator system meant it took too long for me to get back to our rooms. By the time I reached Mat’s door I was vibrating, bouncing onto my toes every few seconds just to burn off some of the extra energy that I didn’t need. I knocked. When that didn’t get me an instant response, I knocked again. I managed to wait for almost a five count before I knocked the third time, with both hands, hammering out an urgent beat against the wood.
“I’m coming!” Mat sounded less angry than frazzled. That was probably a good thing. Pissing them off when I needed them to help me wasn’t the best approach.
Why did I never think of those things when it would actually do me some good?
Mat wrenched the door open and blinked at me. I smiled as sunnily as I could.
“Hallo,” I said. “Mind if I come in? I need your big brain to do some simulations for me.”
Mat blinked again. They were wearing a loose green sweater over black yoga pants, and didn’t look like they’d been planning to get out of their unmade hotel bed before our evening team assembly. Really, I was doing them a favor by asking them to help me out. Socialization is important.
“Sure,” they said finally. “Is something up?”
“Only in the abstract sense,” I said, stepping past them and into the hotel room. It was a mess. Eye shadow was smeared on all the pillows, and the bathroom looked like it had been the site of several small, pigmented explosions. I wrinkled my nose. “Have you let the cleaning staff in here at all?”
“My mess is nobody’s business but my own,” said Mat, almost primly. “As long as I don’t live with my mother, nobody gets to tell me I need to make my bed.”
“Ah,” I said, understanding at last. No one gets out of their childhood unscarred. Some just wear their scars on the inside, where no one can see. “Look, I was talking to the governor, and I had a thought. Have you been working on a sim of the attack?”
Mat glanced to the side, suddenly shifty. “What do you mean?”
“Come off it, Mat, we all know you make sims of my best footage and sell them to your buddies.” The mag made my job easier. It also made it a lot easier for someone like Mat to create an immersive re-creation of the original experience, complete with stumbles, heavy breathing, and the occasional headlong flight into a tree.
“I don’t sell, I trade,” protested Mat. “Where did you think I got you all that choice Frozen-print fabric for Christmas?”
Frozen was the last big Disney movie released before the Rising hit and people started caring more about survival than they did about cartoon pr
incesses. As a result, the merchandise had been somewhat truncated. I had three sundresses made from movie tie-in fabric, thanks to Mat’s unexpected holiday generosity. Guilt fueled the best presents.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I never gave you permission to use my kinesthetic likeness for your shut-in friends. I didn’t say anything about it because it wasn’t hurting anyone, and because I knew that one day, I was going to need you to do me a favor, and I wanted to have as much leverage as I could when that glorious day arrived.”
Mat gulped. “Leverage?” they asked, nervously.
“Leverage means you do what I want you to do, and nobody gets dangled out a window,” I said. “Is the simulation finished or not?”
“Sure, um, come over here, and don’t dangle me out the window.” Mat motioned for me to follow as they walked to the desk, which had been buried under computer equipment. Most of our servers and relays were bunking with Ben. That had confused me before. Now, looking around at the mess, it made perfect sense. Better a slightly cramped living space than a world where our servers were inaccessible due to wadded-up burrito wrappers.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, where I would have a clear view of the screen, but wouldn’t really need to touch anything. “How sensitive is it?”
“Pretty sensitive,” said Mat, waking up their laptop with a click of the keys and beginning to activate programs. “The default is basically a replay of what actually happened. I’ll need a few more days before I can put in the alt mods. You know, ‘what if the player becomes a zombie,’ and all that fun stuff.”
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate the number of times I’ve become infected on your watch,” I said dryly. “Can you do a run that removes me completely?”
Mat twisted in their seat to blink at me. “Come again?”
“You’ve rendered the environment, and modeled the behavior of the zombies according to standard infected behavior, yeah?” I shrugged. “So take me out. What happens to the overall sim if there’s no player character to find the infected before they reach the governor?”