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  Shaun and I carry one—only one—in the van. We’ve had it for five years. We’ve never felt rich or desperate enough to use it. You only use the XH-237 when you need to be sure, right here and now, with no margin for error. It’s a kit for use after actual exposure. The army didn’t wonder what was in that syringe. Somehow, they knew. The implications of that were more than a little disturbing.

  Steve activated the kit. The lid locked down, flattening my palm until I felt the tendons stretch. There was a moment of pain. I tensed, but even waiting for it, I couldn’t feel the needles as they began darting in and out of my hand and wrist. The lights atop the unit began to cycle, flashing red, then yellow, and finally settling, one by one, into a steady, unblinking green. The entire process took a matter of seconds.

  Steve smiled as he dropped the unit into a biohazard bag. “Despite all natural justice, you’re still clean.”

  “That’s one more I owe to my guardian angel,” I said. A glance to the side showed me that Shaun’s unit was still cycling, while Rick’s test was just getting started.

  “Yeah, well, stop making that angel work so hard,” said Steve, more quietly. I looked back to him, surprised. His expression was grave. “You can leave the zone now.”

  “Right,” I said. I walked to the gate, where two blank-faced men in army green watched me press my forefinger against the much simpler testing pad. Another needle bit deeply, and the light switched from green to red to green again before the gate clicked open. Shaking my stinging hand, I stepped out.

  Our van and Rick’s car had been joined by a third vehicle: a large black van with mirrored windows that gleamed with the characteristic patina of armor plating. The top bristled with enough antennae and satellite dishes to make our own relatively modest assortment of transmitters look positively sparse. I stood, considering it, as Shaun and Rick made their own exits from the ranch and moved to stand beside me.

  “That look like our friendly order-giver to you?” Shaun asked.

  “Can’t imagine who else it would be,” I said.

  “Well, then, let’s go up, say hello, and thank them for the welcome. I mean, I was touched. A fruit basket might have been more fitting, but an armed ambush? Definitely a unique way to show that you care.” Shaun went bounding for the van. Rick and I followed at a more sedate pace.

  Shaun banged on the van door with the heel of his hand. When there was no reply, he balled his hand into a fist and resumed banging, louder. He was just starting to get a good rhythm going when the door was wrenched open by a red-faced general who glared at us with open malice.

  “I don’t think he’s a music lover,” I commented to Rick. He snorted.

  “I don’t know what you kids think you’re doing—” began the general.

  “Pretty sure they were looking for me,” said Senator Ryman, stepping up behind him. The general cut off, shifting the force of his glare to the senator. Ignoring him, Senator Ryman moved around him and out of the van and clasped Shaun’s hand. “Shaun, good to see you’re all right. I was a bit concerned when I heard that transmission had been intercepted.”

  “We got lucky,” Shaun said, with a grin. “Thanks for getting us through the red tape.”

  “My pleasure.” Senator Ryman looked back at the glowering general. “General Bridges, thank you for your concern for the well-being of my press pool. I’ll be speaking to your superiors about this operation, and I’ll make sure they know your part in it.”

  The general paled. Still grinning, Shaun waggled his fingers at him.

  “Nice to meet you, sir. Have a nice day.” Turning back to Rick and me, he slung his arms around our shoulders. “So, my beloved partners in doing really stupid shit for the edification of the masses, would you say I bought us another three percent today? No, that’s too conservative, for I am a God among men and a poker into unpokeable places. Make that five percent. Truly, you should all worship me in the brightness of my glory.”

  I turned my head enough to glance at the Senator. He was still forcing himself to smile, but the expression wasn’t reflected in his eyes. That was the face of a man under considerable strain.

  “Maybe later,” I said. “Senator Ryman? Did you drive out here?”

  “Steve was listening to your report,” the senator said. “When he heard you’d found something, he called me, and we came out here immediately.”

  “Thank you for that, sir,” said Rick. “If you hadn’t, we might have had a few issues to contend with.”

  “Permanent blindness,” said Shaun, looking at me.

  “An all-expenses paid stay at a government biohazard holding facility,” I countered. “Sir, did you want us to follow you back to the house and give you the details on what we found?”

  “Actually, Georgia, thank you, but no. Right now, I’d like the three of you to return to your hotel and do whatever it is you need to do. Go do your jobs.” There was something broken in his expression. I’d thought he looked old at the funeral, but I was wrong; he looked old now. “I’ll call you in the morning, after I’ve had time to explain to my wife that our daughter’s death wasn’t an accident, and to get very, very drunk.”

  “I understand,” I said. Looking to Rick, I said, “Meet us at the hotel.” He nodded and turned to head for his car. I didn’t want him to ride with us and leave it here. We’d just annoyed the army. A little accidental “vandalism” wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. “You’ll call if you need anything, sir?”

  “You can count on it.” The senator’s voice was mirthless. So was his expression as he walked over to his government-issue SUV. Steve was already standing next to the passenger-side door, holding it open. I couldn’t see any other security guards, but I knew they were there. They wouldn’t be taking any chances with a presidential candidate this close to a recent hazard zone. Especially not after the things we’d just learned.

  I watched the senator climb into the car. Steve shut the door behind him, nodded toward us, and got into the driver’s side, pulling out. Rick’s little armored VW followed a few minutes later, rumbling down the road toward civilization.

  Shaun put his hand on my shoulder. “George? We okay to get going before the jerks in power come up with a reason to detain us? Other than the cat. Rick took the cat with him, so if there’s going to be detention, it’ll just be him. Beating erasers, getting electrodes strapped to sensitive parts of his body…”

  “Huh?” I twisted around to look at him. “Right, leaving. Yeah, I’m ready to go.”

  “You feeling okay?” He peered at me. “You’re pale.”

  “I was thinking about Rebecca. You drive? My head hurts too much for it to be safe.”

  Now Shaun was really starting to look concerned. I don’t like to let him drive when I’m a passenger. His idea of traffic safety is going too fast for the cops to catch up. “You sure?”

  I tossed him the keys. Usually, I don’t like to be in the car when he’s behind the wheel, but usually, I don’t have a bunch of dead people, a distraught presidential candidate, and a splitting headache to contend with. “Drive.”

  Shaun gave me one last worried look and turned to head for the van. I followed and climbed into the passenger seat, closing my eyes. Showing rather uncharacteristic concern for my well-being, Shaun opted to drive like a sane human being, pulling out at a reasonably sedate fifty or so miles per hour, and actually acknowledging that the brakes could be used in situations other than “band of zombies blocking the road ahead.” I settled deeper into my seat, keeping my eyes closed, and started to review.

  When I said that the facts on the outbreak at the ranch didn’t add up, I’d been half-expecting to find some sign of human neglect or possibly of an intruder who kicked off the whole mess and managed to get overlooked in the carnage, leaving it to be blamed on the horses. Some small thing that was nonetheless enough to trigger my sense of “something isn’t right here.” In short, a blip, a litt
le bit of nothing that didn’t change anything.

  Rebecca Ryman was murdered.

  This changed everything.

  We’d known for weeks that Tracy’s death—and thus probably the entire Eakly outbreak, although there wasn’t anything conclusive that could be used to prove it—wasn’t an accident, but we’d had no real proof that it was anything more than some lunatic taking advantage of an opportunity to cause a little chaos. Now… the chances of two random acts of malicious sabotage happening to the same group of people were small to nil. They just got smaller when you stopped to consider that the man who connected both incidents was one of the current front-runners for the office of President of the United States of America. This was big. This was very, very big.

  And it was also very, very bad, because whoever was behind it thought nothing of violating Raskin-Watts, and that meant they’d already crossed a line most people don’t even realize is there. Murder is one thing. This was terrorism.

  “George? Georgia?” Shaun was shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes, squinting automatically before I realized that I was facing blessed dimness. Cocking an eyebrow, I turned toward him. He smiled, looking relieved. “Hey. You fell asleep. We’re here.”

  “I was thinking,” I said primly, unbuckling my belt before admitting, “and maybe also dozing a little bit.”

  “It’s no big. How’s the head?”

  “Better.”

  “Good. Rick’s already here, and your crew is driving him up a wall—he’s called three times to find out when we’d be on site.”

  “Any word from Buffy?” I grabbed my bag and opened the door, sliding out of the car. The parking garage was cool and fairly full. Not surprising; when the senator booked our rooms, he put us in the best hotel in town. Five-star security doesn’t come cheap, but it comes with perks, like underground parking with motion sensors that keep constant track not only of who’s where, but how long they’ve been there and what they’re doing. Stay down here walking in circles for a while, and Shaun and I could get a whole new view of hotel security. That might have been appealing if we hadn’t already been working a story that was almost too hot to handle. I was starting to miss the days when toying with rich people’s security systems was enough to make our front page.

  “She’s still at Chuck’s, but she says the servers are prepped to handle whatever load we ask them to and that the Fiction section won’t have a response for a day or two anyway; we should go ahead and run without her.” Shaun slammed his door, starting toward the elevators that would let us into the main hotel. “She seemed pretty shaken up. Said she’d probably sleep over there tonight.”

  “Right.”

  Like most of the senator’s men, Chuck was staying at the Embassy Suites Business Resort, a fancy name for a series of pseudo-condos that offered less transitory lodgings than our own high-scale but strictly temporary accommodations. His place came with a kitchen, living room, and a bathtub a normal human being could actually take a bath in. Ours came with a substantial array of cable channels, two queen-sized beds that we’d shoved together on the far side of the room in order to make space for the computers, and a surprisingly robust electrical system. We’d only managed to trip the circuit breakers twice, and for us, that’s practically a record.

  The elevators were protected by a poor-man’s air lock. The sliding glass doors opened at our approach, then slid closed, sealing us into a small antechamber. A second set of glass doors barred us from the elevator. Being a high-end hotel, they were configured to handle up to four entrances at a time, although most people wouldn’t be foolish enough to take advantage of that illusionary convenience. If anyone failed to check out as clean, the doors would lock and security would be called. Going into an air lock with someone you weren’t certain was uninfected was a form of Russian roulette that few cared to indulge in.

  Shaun took my hand, squeezing before we split up. He took the leftmost station while I took the one on the right.

  “Hello, honored guests,” said the warm, mock-maternal voice of the hotel. It was clearly designed to conjure up reassuring thoughts of soft beds, chocolates on your pillow every morning, and no infections ever getting past the sealed glass doors. “May I have your room numbers and personal identifications?”

  “Shaun Phillip Mason,” said Shaun, grimacing. Our usual games worked on the security system at home, but with a setup this advanced, there was too much potential that the computer would mistake “messing around” for “confused about your own identity” and call security. “Room four-nineteen.”

  “Georgia Carolyn Mason,” I said. “Room four-nineteen.”

  “Welcome, Mr. and Ms. Mason,” said the hotel, after a fifteen-second pause to compare our voice prints to the ones on file. “Could I trouble you for a retinal scan?”

  “Medical dispensation, federal guideline seven-fifteen-A,” I said. “I have a registered case of nonactive retinal Kellis-Amberlee and would like to request a pattern recognition test, in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

  “Hang on while I check your records,” said the hotel. It fell silent. I rolled my eyes.

  “Every time,” I muttered.

  “It’s just trying to be thorough.”

  “Every time.”

  “It only takes the system a few seconds to find your file.”

  “How many times have we gone through this garage now?”

  “Maybe they figure that if you were infected, you’d forget that stupid federal guideline.”

  “I’d like to forget your stupid—”

  The speaker clicked back on. “Ms. Mason, thank you for alerting us to your medical condition. Please look at the screen in front of you. Mr. Mason, please proceed to the line marked on the floor, and look at the screen in front of you. Tests will commence simultaneously.”

  “Lucky disabled bitch,” muttered Shaun, placing his toes on the indicated line and opening his eyes wide.

  My screen flickered, resetting from scanning to text mode, and displayed a block of text. I cleared my throat and read, “Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow, vainly I had sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrow.”

  “Please hold,” said the hotel. The black plastic doors on two of the test panels slid upward, revealing the metal testing panels. “Mr. and Ms. Mason, please place your hands on the diagnostic panels.”

  “Don’t you love how it doesn’t tell us whether we’ve passed or not?” said Shaun, putting his hand flat on the first panel. “They could be calling security right now and just stalling us until they get here.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mr. Optimism,” I said. I pressed my hand to the second panel, feeling the brief sting of a needle against the base of my palm. “Got any other cheery thoughts?”

  “Well, if Rick’s frantic, Mahir may have experienced spontaneous human combustion by now.”

  “I hope somebody got it on film.”

  “Mr. and Ms. Mason, welcome to the Parrish Weston Suites. We hope you enjoy your stay; please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make you more comfortable.” The hotel finished delivering its sugar-soaked greeting as the doors between us and the elevator slid open, allowing us to proceed. They closed as soon as we were through, locking us out of the air lock. “Thank you for choosing the Weston family of hotels.”

  “Same to you,” I said, and hit the Call button.

  The science of moving people from point to point has improved over the past twenty years, since the infected have done a lot to discourage the once-natural human desire to linger alone in dark, poorly defended places. The Weston had nine elevators sharing a series of corridors and conduits. They were controlled by a central computer that spent the day dispatching them along the most efficient, collision-free routes. It took less than five seconds for the elevator doors to open. It p
romptly skidded sideways twenty yards once we were inside, beginning the rapid ascent to the elevator access closest to our hotel rooms.

  “Priorities?” asked Shaun, as the elevator shot upward.

  “Clear the message boards, perform a general status check-in, and debrief,” I said. “I’ll get my crew online if I have to haul them out of their beds. You get yours.”

  “What about the Fictionals?”

  “Rick can handle them.” If Buffy wanted to skip out on what might be the most important scoop the two more realistic sections of the site ever had, that was her prerogative, but she’d have to cope with us rousing her junior bloggers. Her department didn’t get to hang up the blackout curtains just because she wanted to get laid.

  Shaun grinned. “Can I tell him?”

  The elevator slowed as it approached our floor, dumping inertia at such a rate that you’d never guess it had just been traveling in excess of twenty miles per hour. The doors slid open with a ding. “If it’ll make you happy, by all means, tell him. Make sure he knows Magdalene is his to abuse. That should help things a bit.” I approached our room, pressing my thumb against the access panel. It flashed green, acknowledging my right to enter. Shaun opened the door and shoved past me, leaving me standing in the hall. I sighed. “After you.”

  “Don’t mind if I do!” he called back.

  Rolling my eyes, I followed him.

  When the senator booked our rooms, he gave us a pair of adjoining suites, assuming Buffy and I would take one room while Shaun and Rick took the other. It didn’t work out that way. Buffy refuses to sleep without a nightlight, which I can’t tolerate for obvious reasons; Shaun tends to respond violently to unexpected noises in the night. So Rick and Buffy wound up in one room, while Shaun and I were in the other with all the computers, turning it into our temporary headquarters.