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  “So shoot, genius, and we’ll see.”

  “I may as well.” I steadied my hands, lining up on the zombie’s forehead. “If it eats me, I hope you’re next.”

  “Always gotta go first, don’t you?”

  “You know it.” I fired.

  My shot whizzed past the zombie, punching a barely visible hole in the nearest RV. Still moaning, the zombie raised its arms in the classic “embracing” gesture of the undead, moving slightly faster now. No one’s ever figured out how the zombies can tell when their victims are unarmed, but they manage somehow.

  “Shaun…”

  “We have time.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. The zombie was still twelve feet away, well out of attack range, but it was closing on us. “I hate you.”

  “It’s mutual,” Shaun said. I risked a glance up at him, and saw that he was aiming for the zombie’s forehead, waiting for the perfect shot. One bolt, one chance. Maybe that sounds like the odds he’d been playing before, but it wasn’t. It’s easier to get a bull’s-eye when there’s nothing actually at risk.

  “Just so we’re clear,” I said, and closed my eyes.

  The gunfire came from two directions at the same time. I opened my eyes to see the last zombie mowed down by a hail of chain-fed bullets being fired by no fewer than four of the guards, two closing on either side. Above me, Shaun gave a loud war whoop.

  “The cavalry has arrived!”

  “God bless the cavalry,” I muttered.

  Our tense stand-off was over in a matter of seconds. I ignored the fallen camera as I pushed away from the fence and strode toward the nearest pair of guards. The camera was a write-off. Buffy had the footage downloaded by now, and they were going to insist on destroying the damn thing anyway, since it had almost certainly been spattered with blood when the guards started firing. The electronics were too delicate to survive a full decontamination. That sort of thing is why we keep our insurance paid up.

  Steve was there, scowling at the fallen infected like he was challenging them to get up and let him kill them again. Sorry, Steve, the virus only reanimates a host once. His partner was a few feet away, scanning the fence. It wasn’t Tyrone. I paused, starting to get the vaguest idea of how the zombies had broken through the fence.

  Ideas never drew ratings without confirmation. “What happened?”

  “Not now, Georgia,” said Steve, with a tight shake of his head. “Just… not now.”

  I considered pressing the matter. If this were a normal zombie attack, one of the hit-and-run outbreaks that can happen anywhere, I probably would have. It’s always best to question the survivors before they can start deluding themselves about the reality of what they just went through. After the adrenaline fades, half the people who survive a zombie attack turn into heroes, having gunned down a thousand zombies with nothing but a .22 and a bucket of guts, while the other half deny that they were ever close enough to the undead to be in any actual danger. If you want the real story, you have to get it fast.

  But Steve was a professional bodyguard, and that made him less likely than most men to lie to himself. Factor in the fact that unless he left the convoy after the paperwork was completed, I’d have to continue interacting with him on a regular basis, and getting the scoop wasn’t worth alienating the large, potentially violent man who managed a lot of my blood tests. Shaking my head, I took a step back.

  “Sure, Steve,” I said. “Just let us know if there’s anything we can do.”

  There was a clatter as Shaun jumped down from the fence. I didn’t turn, and he trotted to a stop beside me, eyes narrowing as he took note of the attending guards. “Christ, Steve, where’s Tyrone?” he said.

  Shaun has done more to get close to the guards than I have. A little friendliness is unavoidable, but he’d actually gotten out there and made friends. Maybe that’s why Steve answered his question with a quiet, “Conversion was confirmed at twenty-two hundred hours, twenty-seven minutes. Tracy put him down, but not before he was able to pass on the infection.”

  Shaun whistled, long and low. “How many down?”

  “Four casualties from the convoy and an as-yet-undetermined number of locals. The senator and his aides are being moved to a secure location. If you’ll gather your things and collect Miss Meissonier, we’ll take the three of you to decontamination before relocating you as well.”

  “Are all the zombies down?” I asked.

  Steve frowned at me. “Miss Mason?”

  “The zombies. Shaun and I just eliminated the better part of two packs,” ignoring the part where one of us nearly got eaten in the process, “and you seem to have handled the mess at the gates. Are all the zombies down?”

  “Channels are showing a negative on infected activity within the area.”

  “Channels are not a one hundred percent guarantee,” I said, keeping my tone reasonable. “You’re down hands, and we’ve already been in primary contact, which means we’ll need the same decon you will. Why not let Shaun and me stay and help? We’re licensed, and if you have ammo, we’re armed. Remove Buffy, but let us stay.”

  The guards exchanged uneasy glances before looking to Steve. Whatever he said would go. Steve frowned down at the bodies littering the tarmac, and finally said, “I hope you both understand that I won’t hesitate to shoot either one of you.”

  “We wouldn’t go out with you if we thought you’d hesitate,” said Shaun. He held up his crossbow. “Anybody got bolts for this thing?”

  Cleanup is the worst thing about a small-scale outbreak. For many people, this part of a rising is pretty much invisible. Anyone without a hazard license is confined outside the contaminated zones until the burials, burnings, and sterilizations are done. When the cordons come up, life goes back to normal, and this sort of thing is routine enough that, unless you know the signs, you could even fail to realize that there was an incident. We’ve had a lot of practice at cover-ups.

  That changes if you have to be involved. Part of getting your hazard license is going along on a cleanup run, just to make sure you understand what you’re getting into. George and I both threw up when we made our first cleanup run, and I almost passed out twice. It’s horrible, messy work. Once a zombie’s been shot through the head, it doesn’t look like a zombie anymore. It just looks like somebody who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I hate the whole process.

  Sterilization is horrific. You burn any vegetation the zombies came into contact with, and if they walked on any open ground, you drench it with a solution of chlorinated saline. If it’s a rural or suburban area, you kill any animals you find. Squirrels, cats, whatever; if it’s mammalian and can carry the virus in its live state, it dies, even if it’s too small to undergo amplification. And when you’re done, you shuffle back to the hazmat center that’s been established for agent decon, and you go inside, and you spend two hours having your skin steamed off, which is a nice way to prepare for the two weeks of nightmares that you’re going to have to live through.

  If you ever start to feel like I have a glamorous job, that maybe it would be fun to go out and poke a zombie with a stick while one of your friends makes a home movie for your buddies, please do me a favor: Go out for your hazard license first. If you still want to do this crap after the first time you’ve burned the body of a six-year-old with blood on her lips and a Barbie in her hands, I’ll welcome you with open arms.

  But not before.

  —From Hail to the King, the blog of Shaun Mason, February 11, 2040

  Nine

  I collapsed onto our bed at the local four-star hotel a little after dawn, my aching eyes already squeezed shut. Shaun was a bit steadier on his feet and he stayed upright long enough to make sure the room’s blackout curtains were drawn. I made a small noise of approval and felt him pulling my sunglasses off my face a moment later. I swatted ineffectually at the air.

  “Stop that. Give those back.”

/>   “They’re on the bedside table,” he said. The bedsprings creaked as he sat down, taking the side of the bed that was closer to the window. Rustling followed as he removed his shoes and slumped sideways. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know what he was doing. We shared the same room until puberty hit, and since then we’ve never been more than a closed door away from one another. “Christ, George. That was a clusterfuck.”

  “Mmm,” I replied, and pulled the covers over my head. I was still wearing my shoes. The staff was paid to wash the sheets after every visit, and by the point we left the field, I’d dressed and undressed so many times in the course of decontamination that I never wanted to remove my clothes again. I’d just wear them until they dissolved, and then spend the rest of my life naked.

  “How the hell did we get an outbreak that close to the convention hall? Primaries are coming up. We didn’t need this, even if it’s going to be great for ratings. Think Buffy has the initial edits up? I know you hate it when she releases footage without your say-so, but cleanup ran long. She probably won’t wait. Waiting could mean we get scooped.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Bet this spikes us another half-point. More when I can get my POV stuff edited together. Think there were faults in the fencing? Maybe they broke through. Steve wasn’t clear on where the attack started, and we lost both guards stationed on the gate.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Poor Tyrone. Jesus. Did you know he was putting his teenage son through college with this gig? Kid wants to be a molecular virologist—”

  Somewhere in the middle of explaining the hopes, dreams, and character failings of the fallen guards, Shaun’s voice trailed off, replaced by the soft, rhythmic sound of his breathing. I sighed, rolling over, and followed him into sleep.

  The curtains were pulled away from the window some unknown length of time later, allowing sunlight to stream into the room and jerk me unceremoniously back into awareness. I swore, fumbling for the nightstand I vaguely remembered Shaun mentioning in conjunction with my sunglasses. My hand hit the side of the bed, and I squinted my eyes more tightly closed, trying to ward off the light.

  Shaun was less restrained in his profanity. “Fuck a duck, Buffy, what are you trying to do, blind her?” My sunglasses were thrust into my hand. I unfolded them and slid them into place, opening my eyes to see Shaun, clad only in his boxer shorts, glaring at an unrepentant Buffy. “Knock next time!”

  “I did knock, three times,” she said. “And I tried the room phone, twice. See?” Both Shaun and I glanced toward the phone. The red message light was blinking. “When you kept not answering, I rerouted the locks to make them think your room was my room and let myself in.”

  “You didn’t just shake us because?” I mumbled. A splitting headache was rushing in to fill the void left by my disrupted REM cycle.

  “Are you kidding? You two sleep armed. I like having four limbs and a head.” Seeming oblivious to the hostility in the room, Buffy activated the terminal on the wall, pulling down the foldable keyboard. “I’m guessing you guys haven’t seen the daily returns, huh?”

  “We haven’t seen anything but the insides of our eyelids,” Shaun said. He wasn’t making any effort to hide his irritation, which was only increasing as Buffy ignored it. “What time is it?”

  “Almost noon,” Buffy said. The hotel start-up screen came up and she began typing, shunting the connection to one of our own server relays. The logo of After the End Times filled the screen, replaced a moment later by the black-and-white grid of our secure staff pages. “I let you guys sleep for, like, six hours.”

  I groaned and reached for the phone. “I am so calling room service for a gallon of Coke before she can do any more talking.”

  “Get some coffee, too,” said Shaun. “A whole pot of coffee.”

  “Tea for me,” said Buffy. The screen shifted again as she pulled up the numerical display that represents our feed from the Internet Ratings Board. It measures server traffic, unique hits, number of connected users, and a whole bunch of other numbers and factors, all of them combining to make one final, holy figure: our market share. It’s color-coded, appearing in green if it’s more than fifty, white for forty-nine to ten, yellow for nine to five, and red for four and above.

  The number at the top of screen, gleaming a bright, triumphant red, was 2.3.

  I dropped the phone.

  Shaun recovered his composure first, maybe because he was more awake than I was. “Have we been hacked?”

  “Nope.” Buffy shook her head, grinning so broadly that it seemed like the top of her head might fall off. “What you’re seeing is the honest to God, unaltered, uncensored Ratings Board designation for our site traffic over the past twelve hours. We’re running top two, as long as you discount porn, music download, and movie tie-in sites.”

  Those three site types make up the majority of the traffic on the Internet—the rest of us are just sort of skimming off the top. Rising unsteadily, I crossed the room and touched the screen. The number didn’t change.

  “Shaun…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You owe me twenty bucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  Turning to Buffy, I asked, “How?”

  “If I attribute it to the graphic design, do I get a raise?”

  “No,” said Shaun and I, in unison.

  “Didn’t think so, but a girl has to try.” Buffy sat down on the edge of my bed, still beaming. “I got clean footage from half a dozen cameras all the way through both attacks. No voice reports, since someone went and volunteered to help with cleanup—”

  “Not that going through decon without helping would have left me able to record,” I said dryly, retreating back toward the phone. Incredible ratings or not, I needed to kill this headache before it got fully established, and that meant I needed something caffeinated to wash down the painkillers. “You know that wipes me out.”

  “Details,” said Buffy. “I spliced together three basic narrative tracks—one following the outbreak at the gate as closely as possible, one following the perimeter, and one that followed the two of you.”

  I glanced in her direction as I waited for room service to pick up. “How much of our dialogue did you get?”

  Buffy beamed. “All of it.”

  “That explains some of the jump,” Shaun said dryly. “We always get a point spike when you say you hate me in a published report.”

  “Only because it’s true,” I said, quashing the urge to groan. It was my own fault for leaving Buffy alone with the unedited footage. She had to put something up. A news blackout doesn’t heighten suspense; it just loses readers.

  Shaun snorted. “Right. So you had three tracks, and…?”

  “I tossed them up in their raw form, tapped some beta Newsies to throw down narrative tracks, got straight bio files on the confirmed casualties, and wrote a new poem about how fast everything can fall apart.” Buffy cast an anxious glance my way, smile slipping. “Did I do it right?”

  Room service confirmed that the assorted drinks were en route, along with an order of dry wheat toast. I hung up the phone. “Which betas?”

  “Um, Mahir for the gate, Alaric for the perimeter, and Becks for the attack on the two of you.”

  “Ah.” I adjusted my sunglasses. “I’m going to want to review their reports.” It was a formality, and from the look on her face, Buffy knew it; she’d selected the same betas I would have chosen. Mahir is located in London, England, and he’s great for dry, factual reporting that neither pretties things up nor dumbs them down. If I have a second in command, it’s Mahir. Alaric can build suspense almost as well as an Irwin, fitting his narration and description into the natural blank spots in a recording. And Becks would have been a horror movie director if we weren’t all practically living in a horror movie these days. Her sense of timing is impeccable, and her cut shots are even better. Of the betas we’ve acquired, I count my Newsies a
s the best of the bunch. They’re good. They’re hoping to ride our success to alpha positions of their own, and that makes them ambitious. Ambition is worth more than practically anything else in this business, even talent.

  “Of course you will,” Buffy said, clearly waiting for me to break down and say the words.

  I smiled, faintly, and said them: “You did good.”

  Buffy punched the air. “She shoots, she scores!”

  “Just don’t get cocky,” I said. There was a knock at the door. This hotel must have the fastest room service in the Midwest. “Remember, one successful set of executive decisions does not prepare you to take my—”

  I opened the door to reveal Steve and Carlos. They were impeccably dressed, matching black suits so crisply pressed that you’d never have guessed they’d been in the field incinerating the bodies of their fallen comrades less than eight hours previous. I stood there in my slept-in clothes, with my uncombed hair sticking up in all directions, and stared at them.

  “Miss Mason,” said Steve. His tone was flat, even more formal than it was on our first encounter. Dipping a hand into his pocket, he produced the familiar shape of a handheld blood testing unit. “If you and your associates would care to come with us, a debriefing has been scheduled in the boardroom.”

  “Couldn’t you have called first?” I asked.

  He raised his eyebrows. “We did.”

  Shaun and I really had been sleeping like the unrisen dead. I pressed my lips into a thin line, and said, “My brother and I have only been awake for a few minutes. Can we have time to make ourselves presentable?”

  Steve looked past me into the room, where Shaun—still clad only in his boxers—offered a sardonic wave. Steve looked back to me. I smiled. “Unless you’d prefer we came as we are?”

  “You have ten minutes,” Steve said, and shut the door.

  “Good morning, Georgia,” I muttered. “Right. Buffy, get out. We’ll see you in the boardroom. Shaun, put clothes on.” I raked a hand through my hair. “I’m going to wash up.” One good thing about going to bed straight from a cleanup operation: Even after six hours of sleeping and sweating into my clothes, they were still cleaner than they’d been when I bought them. After you’ve been sterilized seven times for live virus particles, dirt doesn’t stand much of a chance.