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  The first bang was followed by a second and larger bang, echoed in the distance as another trailer—probably Rick’s—went up in a ball of blue-and-orange flame. Not that there was much time to make estimates about where the blast was coming from. Shaun still had my arm and he was running, dragging me in his wake as he rushed toward the van. Rick ran after us, clutching Lois’s body to his chest, all of us bathed in the angry orange glare of the blast. Someone was trying to kill us. At this point, I didn’t even have to wonder who. Tate knew we knew. There was no reason for him to play nice anymore.

  Once he was sure I’d keep running, Shaun let go of me, dropping back as he tried to cover our retreat toward the van. I quashed the urge to worry about him, keeping my focus on the running. Shaun could take care of himself. I had to believe that or I’d never be able to believe anything else. Rick was running like a man in a dream, Lois bouncing limply in his arms with every step. And I just ran.

  Something pricked my left biceps when we were about halfway to the van. I ignored it and kept going, more focused on getting to cover than on swatting at some mosquito with shit for timing. No one’s ever been able to tell the insects of the world that they shouldn’t interrupt the big dramatic moments, and so they keep on doing it. That’s probably a good thing. If drama kept the bugs away, most people would never emotionally mature past the age of seventeen.

  “Rick, get the doors!” shouted Shaun. He was hanging about five yards back, still moving fast. He had his .45 drawn, covering the area as we retreated. The sight of him was enough to make my heart beat faster and my throat get tight. I knew he was wearing Kevlar under his clothes, but Kevlar wouldn’t save him from a headshot. Whoever blew up the trailers might be out there watching, and once they saw us scattering into the open, there was every chance they’d decide to finish what they’d started. And none of that mattered, because someone had to watch the rear, and someone had to open the van, and if we clustered together to make me feel better, neither of those things would happen, and we’d all die.

  Knowing the realities of the situation didn’t do a damn thing to make me feel better about leaving Shaun to twist in the wind. It just meant I understood that we didn’t have a choice.

  Rick put on a burst of speed, reaching the van a good twenty feet ahead of me. He finally seemed to realize he was carrying Lois because he dropped her body, reaching out to grab the handles of the rear doors and press his forefingers against the reader pads. There was a click as the onboard testing system ran his blood and prints, confirming he was both uninfected and an authorized driver before the locks released.

  “Got it!” he yelled, and wrenched the doors open, motioning for us to get inside.

  He didn’t need to tell me twice. I sped up, breath aching in my chest as I raced to get out of the open. Shaun continued moving at the same pace, swinging his gun unhurriedly from side to side as he covered our retreat.

  “Shaun, you idiot!” I yelled. “Get your ass in here! There’s no one out there to save!”

  He glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows rising in apparent surprise. Something in my expression must have told him that it wasn’t worth arguing because he nodded and turned to run the rest of the way.

  I didn’t start really breathing again until he and Rick were both inside with the doors closed behind them. Shaun flipped the dead bolts on the rear doors, while Rick moved to do the same on the movable wall that shut the driver’s cabin off from the rest of the vehicle. With those latches thrown, we were effectively cut off from the rest of the world. Nothing could get in, and unless we opened the locks, nothing could get out. Barring heavy explosives, we were as safe as it was possible to be.

  I took a seat at the main console and brought up the security recordings for the last day. The scanner came up clean, showing no attempted break-ins or unauthorized contact with the van’s exterior during that time. “Shaun, when was the last security sweep?”

  “I ran one remotely while I was waiting for the senator’s speech to finish.”

  “Good. That means we’re clean.” I leaned over to turn on the exterior cameras—without them, we were flying blind and would have no way of knowing when help arrived—and froze.

  “George?”

  It was Shaun’s voice, sounding distant and surprised. He’d seen me reach for the switches, and seen me stop; he just hadn’t seen why. I didn’t answer him. I was too busy staring.

  “George, what’s wrong?”

  “I…” I began, and stopped, swallowing in an effort to clear the sudden dryness from my mouth. Forcing myself to start again, I said, “I think we may have a problem.” Raising my right hand, I wrapped numb fingers around the hollow plastic dart projecting from my left biceps and pulled it free, turning to face the other two. Rick paled, seeing the red stain spreading through the fabric of my shirt. Shaun just stared at the dart, looking like he was seeing the end of the world.

  In a very real and concrete way, there was an excellent chance that he was.

  If you want an easy job—if you want the sort of job where you never have to bury somebody who you care about—I recommend you pursue a career in whatever strikes your fancy… just so long as it isn’t the news.

  —From Another Point of True, the blog of Richard Cousins, June 20, 2040

  Twenty-six

  Shaun broke the silence. “Please tell me that didn’t break the skin,” he said, almost pleading. “The blood came from something else, right George? Right?”

  “We’re going to need a biohazard bag.” There was no fear in my voice. Really, there was nothing there at all. I sounded… empty, disconnected from everything around me. It was like my body and my voice existed in different universes, tethered by only the thinnest of threads. “Get one from the medical kit, put it on the counter, and step away. I don’t want either of you touching this.” Or me. I didn’t want them touching me when there was a risk that I could infect them. I just couldn’t say that. If I tried, I’d break down, and any chance of containing this would go right out the window.

  “George—”

  “We need a testing kit.”

  Rick’s voice was surprisingly strong, considering the circumstances. Shaun and I turned to face him. He was white-faced and shaking, but his voice was firm. “Shaun, I know you don’t want to hear this, and if you want to hit me later, that’s fine, but right now, we need a testing kit.”

  Storm clouds were gathering in Shaun’s expression. He knew Rick was right; I could see it in his eyes and in the way he wasn’t quite willing to look at me. If he hadn’t known, he wouldn’t have cared that Rick was calling for a blood test. But because he did, it was the last thing in the world he wanted. Well. Maybe not the last thing. Then again, it was starting to look like the last thing had already happened.

  “He’s right, Shaun.” I placed the dart on the counter next to my keyboard. It was so small. How could something so small be the end of the world? I barely noticed when it hit me. I never thought it was possible to overlook your own death, but apparently it is. “Don’t just grab a field box. Get the real kit. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.” The XH-237 has never had a false result; it’s one hundred percent accurate, as far as anyone can tell.

  Shaun would never believe anything else. He was staring at me in open disbelief. He was denying this as hard as he could. So why wasn’t I? “Georgia…” he began.

  “If I’m overreacting, I’ll buy a new one with my birthday money,” I said, sagging backward in my chair. “Rick?”

  “I’ll get it, Georgia,” he said, starting for the medical supplies.

  I closed my eyes. “I’m not overreacting.”

  Almost too quiet for me to hear, Shaun whispered, “I know.”

  “I brought the bag,” said Rick. I opened my eyes, turning toward his voice. He held up a Kevlar-reinforced biohazard bag. I nodded and he put the bag on the counter, before stepping away. We knew proper
protocols. They’d been drilled into us for our entire lives. Until we knew I was clean, no one touched me… and I knew I wasn’t clean.

  Moving with exaggerated care, so both Shaun and Rick could see me every inch along the way, I reached for the bag and thumbed it open before picking up the dart. Dropping it into the bag, I activated the seal. It was a matter for the CDC now. Its people would break the seal after it was turned over to them, and what happened after that wasn’t my concern. I wouldn’t be around to see it.

  I looked up once the bag was sealed and set aside. “Where’s the test kit?” It felt like the muscles in my eyes were relaxing. It could be psychosomatic, but I didn’t think so. The viral bodies responsible for the perpetual dilation of my pupils were moving on to greener pastures. Like the rest of my body.

  “Here,” said Shaun, holding it up. He stepped closer and knelt in front of me. He was only inches outside the federally defined “danger zone” for dealing with someone who might be amplifying. I shot him a sharp look, and he shook his head. “Don’t start.”

  “I won’t.” I extended my left hand. If he wanted to administer the test himself, he had the right. Maybe it would make him believe the results.

  “You could be wrong. You’ve been wrong before,” Shaun said, sliding the testing kit over my hand. I flattened my palm until I felt the tendons stretch, and gave him the nod to clamp down the lid. He did, pinning my fingers in their wide, starfished position.

  “I’m not wrong,” I said. Dull pain lanced my hand as the needles—one for each finger, and five more set in a circle at the center of the palm—darted out, taking blood samples. The lights on the top of the unit began to flash, cycling from green to yellow, where they remained, blinking on and off, until one by one, they started settling into their final color.

  Red. Every one of them. Red.

  Tears prickled against my eyelids. It took me a moment to realize what they were, and then I had to resist the urge to blink them back. Kellis-Amberlee never let me cry before. It was damn well going to let me cry now. “Told you I was right,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted. All I managed to sound was lost.

  “Bet you’re sorry,” Shaun replied. I raised my head and met his shocked, staring eyes with my own.

  We sat that way for several moments, looking at each other, waiting for an answer that wasn’t going to come. It was Rick who spoke, voicing the one question we all wanted to ask and that none of us was quite prepared to answer.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Do?” Shaun frowned at him, looking utterly and honestly perplexed. That expression was enough to terrify me, because he looked like someone who didn’t understand the idea that before too much longer, I was going to be making a concerted effort to eat him alive. “What do you mean, ‘What do we do?’ “

  “I mean exactly what I said,” Rick said. He shook his head, gesturing to me. “We can’t just leave her like this. We have to—”

  “No!”

  The vehemence of Shaun’s reply startled me. I turned toward him. “No?” I repeated. “Shaun, what the hell do you mean, ‘no’? There isn’t room for ‘no.’ ‘No’ is over.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I know exactly what I’m saying.” Rick was pale and shaking, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. Poor guy. He didn’t sign up for political assassinations when he decided to join the so-called “winning team.” Despite that, he met my eyes without flinching and didn’t try to avoid looking at me. He’d seen the virus before. It held no surprises for him. “You’re the closest thing we’ve got to a virologist, Rick. How long do I have?”

  “How much do you weigh?”

  “One thirty-five, tops.”

  “I’d say forty-five minutes, under normal circumstances,” he said, after a moment’s consideration. “But these aren’t normal circumstances.”

  “The run,” I said.

  He nodded. “The run.”

  Viral amplification depends on a lot of factors. Age, physical condition, body weight—how fast your blood is moving when you come into contact with the live virus. If someone gets bitten in their sleep without waking up, they may take the rest of the night to fully amplify, because they’ll be calm enough that their body won’t be helping the infection along. I, on the other hand, got hit with a viral payload a lot bigger than you’d find in a bite, and it happened while I was running for my life, heart pounding, adrenaline pushing my blood pressure through the roof. I’d cut my time in half. Maybe worse.

  It was already getting harder to think; harder to focus; harder to breathe. I knew, intellectually, that my lungs weren’t shutting down. It was just the virus enclosing the soft tissues of my brain and starting to disrupt normal neurological functions, making normally autonomic actions start intruding on the conscious mind. I’ve read the papers and the clinical studies. I knew what to expect. First comes the lack of focus, the lack of interest, the lack of capability to draw unrelated conclusions. Then comes hyperactivity as the circulatory system is pushed to overdrive. Then, when the virus reaches full saturation, the coup de grace: the death of the conscious mind. My body would continue to walk around, driven by raw instinct and the desires of the virus, but Georgia Carolyn Mason would be gone. Forever.

  I was dead before the lights flashed red. I was dead the second the hypodermic hit my arm, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. But there was something I could do before I went.

  Turning to Shaun, I nodded. There was a long pause—almost too long—before his expression calmed and he returned the gesture, looking more sure of himself, more like himself, despite the tears running down his cheeks.

  “Rick?” he said.

  Rick turned to him, shaking his head. “You can’t beat this. There’s no beating this. She’s gone. You need to realize that. She’s gone, and I’m sorry, but we have to—”

  “Get me the medical kit from under the server rack,” Shaun said. I had to envy him the calmness in his voice. I couldn’t have stayed that calm if he were the one undergoing explosive viral amplification. “The red one.”

  “What do you—”

  “Do it!”

  The words were barely out of his mouth before Rick was rushing to the front of the van, digging under the seat for the med kit. Mom packed it for us a million years ago, for use in absolute emergency. When she put it in my hands, she said she prayed we’d never have to use it. Sorry, Mom. Guess we let you down good this time. But hey, at least the ratings will be high.

  I let out a long, shuddering sigh that somehow transformed into hysterical giggling. I bit my tongue before the giggles could turn to sobs. There wasn’t time for that. There wasn’t time for anything except the red box, and the things it held, and maybe—maybe, if I was lucky—one last article.

  Rick came back to Shaun’s side, holding the box at arm’s length. His expression was cold. He didn’t think Shaun would be able to do it. He didn’t know him as well as he thought he did. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the seat, suddenly tired.

  “You can go now, Rick,” I said. “Take my bike and the gray backup drive. Get as far away as you can, then hit a data station and upload everything to the site. Free space. No subscription required. Creative Commons licensing.”

  “What is it?” he asked, curiosity briefly overriding his determination to see me dead. Bless you, Rick. A journalist after my own heart, right up to the end.

  “Everything I died for,” I said. My eyes were starting to itch. I took my sunglasses off and threw them aside as I rubbed my eyes. “Files, bank records, everything. It’s just everything. Now get out of here. You’ve done everything you can.”

  “Are you—”

  “We’re sure,” said Shaun. I heard the box pop open and the distinctive snap of polyvinyl-Teflon gloves. They’re nearly impossible to tear and so expensive that even the military only uses them under special circumsta
nces. Shaun always insisted we carry a pair. Just one. Just in case. “Take my extra body armor. There’s always a chance they’re still shooting out there.”

  “Do you think they are?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No. I guess it doesn’t.”

  I listened as Rick moved around the van. He pulled Shaun’s body armor out of the closet where it was stored and yanked it on over his clothes, snaps and zippers fastening with their quiet, distinctive sounds. It kept me distracted from the sounds that were coming from Shaun’s direction, the sloshing, snapping sounds as he got the injector cartridges ready.

  “Thanks, Rick,” I said. “It’s been one hell of a ride.”

  “I… right.” I heard Rick’s footsteps approach; the scrape of metal as he lifted the drive from beside my computer; then his retreat, until the door creaked open and he stopped, hesitating. “I… Georgia?”

  “Yes, Rick?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I cracked my eyes open, allowing him a small, mirthless smile. For the first time that I could remember, the light didn’t hurt. I was going into conversion. My body was losing the capacity to understand pain. “That’s all right. So am I.”

  For a moment, he looked like he might say something else. Then his lips tightened and he nodded, before undoing the latches on the door. That was the last exit: When the van was locked again, it would detect infection and refuse to open for anyone inside.

  “Shaun? Train’s leaving,” I said, quietly. “You want to jab and go?”

  “And let you finish this without me?” He shook his head. “No way. Rick, you be careful out there.”

  Rick’s shoulders tightened and he was gone, stepping out into the evening air. The door banged shut behind him.

  Shaun sat down on the floor in front of me, the injector in his hands. It was a two-barrel array, ready to deliver a mixed payload of sedatives and my own hyper-activated white blood cells. Together, the mixture could slow conversion… for a while. Not for long, but if we were lucky, for long enough. Expression staying neutral, he said, “Give me your right arm.”