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by Mira Grant

  “I’m not a video-game designer, Ash,” protested Mat. “I work from the data you give me, not by inventing things from whole cloth.”

  “Try,” I said.

  Mat sighed and turned back to the laptop, tapping for a few moments. Finally, they said, “It’s going to be rough, but this is what I have.” They pressed “play.” The sim began.

  The first few seconds of footage were pristine and photo-realistic, thanks to Mat having simply rotoscoped the recording from my mag. Video-game design has come a long way in the last twenty years. There’s still a great deal of artistry to it, but thanks to increasingly sensitive and intuitive tools, actual artistic ability has come to matter less and less. Blame it on an ever-hungry, ever-expanding market that no longer has any other way to get out of the house.

  “All right, now normally, this is where the player—ah, you—would encounter the first infected,” said Mat. “Since the zombie grabbed your hair, the view would jerk, and then we’d go into the fight sequence.”

  “Obviously, that’s not going to happen,” I said.

  “No, because the zombie doesn’t know you’re there,” agreed Mat. “Let me see if I can move the camera.” They tapped something out. The screen shifted, swinging around to face the zombie that initially attacked me. His real face was gone, replaced by the slack, faintly greenish iconography that had defined the video-game undead since long before we’d met the real thing. That was actually soothing. The man who’d tried to eat me had already been robbed of his humanity. He didn’t deserve to lose his dignity at the same time.

  “We’re going to cut to wireframes in a moment, as the AI tries to extrapolate what the zombies would do in the absence of a target,” cautioned Mat.

  “That’s fine,” I said, and sure enough, a few seconds later, the zombie’s face vanished, replaced by a green grid. There was no footage to overwrite. “Just stay on them, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Mat. They were starting to sound interested, like this was becoming a worthwhile experiment. In a way, I suppose it was: It was demonstrating the limits of the software. “The program knows where all the zombies and all the living people are, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Our wireframe zombie shambled through the disturbingly well-rendered rose garden. As it passed, more zombies appeared, unearthing themselves one and two at a time. “Some of them took longer to dig their way out because they were buried deeper, right?” I asked.

  “Right,” said Mat. “It was like a timed release system. The deeper a zombie was buried, the longer it took for the smell of people and the sound of moaning to work its way down to them. So they didn’t exhume themselves as fast.”

  “Meaning no one could accurately predict how many zombies were going to come out of the bushes.” The zombies were almost to the last tier of rosebushes between them and the governor. I sat up straighter. “Can you run the sim with the zombies not moaning?”

  “What?”

  “They didn’t start the moan until I goaded them into it. I’ve heard about this. Some strains of the virus don’t trigger the moan response as early. I can’t tell if that means the zombies are more self-confident or if they’re just better hunters, but either way, they’re better at sneaking up when they’re not broadcasting their position all the time.” Which would make this a more successful viral strain, and probably cause it to spread more rapidly through certain populations. Swell. That was going to make my job a lot harder, and a lot more dangerous.

  If I was right, which I might not be. I was a professional zombie-botherer, not a virologist or research epidemiologist. Those were career paths I’d considered, back before it had become obvious just how isolated my little quirks were going to leave me in our supposedly “modern” Ireland, but they weren’t things I’d pursued. As a scientist, I would have been trapped. The government would never have allowed me to leave, no matter how perverse I turned out to be. And I had very much wanted to go, even before my parents had had me committed.

  “God, I hope I’m wrong,” I murmured.

  Mat looked up from adjusting the sim. “What?” they asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Woolgathering again. I’ll have enough for a sweater soon. Can you run the sim without me, and without the moan?”

  “You know, I’m not a custom lab,” Mat said, and resumed typing. “All right: Try this.”

  They hit a key. The sim rewound a few seconds—not going back to the beginning by a long shot, but pulling the figures away from that last rank of bushes—before starting again. This time, the zombies pressed through the roses and spilled into the open area where the onlookers, and the governor, were gathered. The small, computer-generated figures opened their mouths in a moan once they had their hands on their first victims, and not a second before. The people screamed and scattered, following rigid mathematical lines that were nothing like a real crowd in a state of panic, but were close enough to make my point.

  “Five,” I said. The zombies were grabbing and grappling with almost everyone. There were enough humans that some of them were getting away. There were enough newly infected zombies that some of them were giving chase. It was not a good situation for the living.

  “Four,” I said. The zombies that had stayed behind to deal with their initial targets were beginning to feed. In the presence of so many options, this meant more than a few people were bitten and then flung aside as the dead went after the remaining living. In a state of plenty, a mob will seek to expand.

  “Three,” I said. The models of the governor’s security staff were shooting at the zombies, but they were distracted by their attempts to get the governor to safety. Professional security workers are required to keep excellent life insurance, since it’s generally accepted that they’ll die early, and the government doesn’t want to take care of their families. That doesn’t make them suicidal. It does mean that they’re usually willing to put the well-being of their charges ahead of their own, since death is an outcome everyone in their line of work has long since accepted as inevitable.

  “Two,” I said. The zombies were everywhere. The security staff couldn’t reach any of the exits. They stopped retreating and started calling their shots a little better, thinning out the mob. Maybe that would have been enough to save them, had they already been dealing with the full extent of the outbreak. But there were zombies who had been buried deeper than the others. That hadn’t made sense to me at first. Why put a potential asset in the field, only to keep it out of the action? Because it wasn’t really being kept out of the action, of course. It was just on a delayed trigger.

  “One,” I said, and the last of the infected came lurching out of the rose garden, overwhelming the survivors in a matter of seconds. The security team went down. The governor went down. Mat looked away. The graphics might not be great, but they were good enough to get their point across, and no one wanted to watch that. Not even me.

  And yet I didn’t turn. “We were the wild card,” I said. “We fucked everything up for whoever did this. Everyone was supposed to die. You can stop the playback now. I know what I needed to know.”

  Mat hit the space bar. The image froze. Mat hit the space bar twice more, and the picture was replaced with a collage of adorable kittens. Finally, Mat turned back to me. “What did you need to know?”

  “How bad this was meant to be,” I said. “Do you have the details on the attack at the Ryman facility?”

  Mat nodded slowly. “Yes. Your reports, Ben’s reports… I was thinking of doing some commemorative makeup designs, but I couldn’t figure out whether that would be seen as advertising for the opposition.”

  Somehow, I had the feeling that where the makeup bloggers of the world put their eyeliner was the least of the Ryman camp’s concerns, but I didn’t say anything about it. We all have our own ways of coping. “Do you think you could draw a sim from that?”

  “No,” said Mat flatly. “I don’t have any first-person footage, like I had with you, and the camp had issues with
their security cameras. I don’t have any way of knowing where the zombies came from.”

  Damn. “Can you pull up blueprints of the venue, anything like that? I have a theory. I’d like to confirm it before I share it with anyone else.”

  “Give me a second—I can do the footage that’s been released, and I think there are blueprints of the venue online.” A wiggle of the mouse chased the kittens away, and Mat began typing rapidly. “Since when am I your partner in crime, anyway? I’m not the one you’re sleeping with. Or the one you’re married to. I’m supposed to get a pass from helping you do stupid shit.”

  “See, the reason you’ve been tapped for this mission is simple: You’re not the one I’m married to, and you’re not the one I’m sleeping with, which means you’ll jump straight to ‘Ash is being weird,’ instead of going for the more locally popular ‘Ash is about to risk her neck because she thinks it’s funny.’” I drummed my heels against the foot of the bed. Thump thump. “Also, you’re the one with the skill set I need right now. I need to know how the outbreak at the Ryman encampment went, and you’re the best spatial thinker we have.”

  “I’m flattered,” said Mat dryly.

  “You should be. If I want a beautiful lie with a noir moral at its center, I go to Audrey. She’s my girl. If I want a coherent, logical narrative that fits the facts as we understand them, I go to Ben. He’s the best. But if I want to know what the space looked like, if I want to understand how that narrative played out, I come to you. Because you’re the best, too.” I stopped, waiting to see what Mat would say.

  They smirked. That was when I knew I’d won. “Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?”

  “Depends,” I said. “Are you buying it?”

  “No, but I’m willing to consider a lease.”

  “Then I’m laying it on just thick enough.” I leaned back on my hands. “Even if you can’t do me a full simulation, I need to know two things. How bad was the outbreak, really? Obviously, people died, and that’s both sad and tragic, but would it have gone on to be truly terrible if no one had done anything from within the camp? Or would the authorities have shown up and taken care of things?”

  “All right. What’s your second question?”

  “Was Ryman ever in any real danger?” Because Kilburn had been. The governor had been outside, with no one directly behind her: She had been fully exposed. Whoever set this trap had been intending to kill her.

  “You don’t believe in asking for simple things, do you?” Mat kept typing.

  “Simple things are for simple minds,” I said. “I much prefer simple pleasures, which are for everyone, and only sometimes stain the carpet.”

  “Weirdo,” muttered Mat. Then: “There’s not enough footage for a simulation, but I have probabilities. Do you want them?”

  “I asked for them, didn’t I? Yes. Give me sweet, sweet probabilities, and allow me to make some sense out of all this rubbish.”

  “All right. Assuming the Ryman camp didn’t underreport the zombies to keep their insurance rates low, or overreport them to make their story seem more dramatic, the outbreak was bad, but not catastrophic.” Mat tapped the keys, more slowly now, adjusting functions of the program without completely resetting it. “The surrounding area would have suffered extensive losses without the immediate response of Ryman’s security crew, but nothing I have here indicates that a firestrike would have been necessary—and it was in a nice enough area that anyone who suggested it would probably have been shouted down.”

  “Only fry the poor people if you want to stay in office, tra-la,” I said, in a half-bitter, half-mocking tone.

  “Money makes the world go round,” agreed Mat. “As to whether Ryman was in any real danger, he’s not Irwin trained, and he wants to live to be President, which means he wouldn’t have tried to play hero unless the situation was very cut-and-dried. I’m putting a ninety-five percent probability on him staying indoors, away from the action, until the cleanup crews had come and gone.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he was never in any real danger. He would have survived even if his people hadn’t engaged with the dead. The outbreak started on the other side of a fence, and while there was a break in the fence—the footage the Masons got is chilling—it wasn’t big enough to allow the zombies to overwhelm the camp. Everyone could have just stayed inside with their doors locked and been fine until the professionals arrived.”

  “I see.” I stood. “Thanks, Mat. You’ve been a lifesaver.”

  Mat turned to look at me, seeming guardedly pleased with the praise. “What did you want to know all this for, anyway?”

  “Ah, see, that’s to be a mystery for this age, or at least for this afternoon; I need to talk to Ben.” I blew them a kiss and started for the door.

  “Hold up,” said Mat. They grabbed their laptop, yanking out cords without concern for the mess they were making, and hurried after me. I raised an eyebrow. Mat shrugged. “I’m as bored as you are. Maybe you don’t like being cooped up, but I don’t like being cut off, and I know you. If you’re sniffing around like this, you have an idea. I want to know what it is.”

  There was no point in arguing, and there was some virtue to bringing Mat along. The simulation they’d whipped up was nice. Having the whole team on the same page would be even nicer. Which meant…

  I tapped my ear cuff as I walked. It beeped three times before Audrey picked up, with a mild, “Are you abseiling down the side of the building right now? Do I need to start gathering bail money for your inevitable arrest?”

  “You have so little faith in me,” I said. “You really think I’d get caught? And no, I’m in the hotel, about to pass the room. Mat and I are heading for Ben’s room. Have some things to go over where the attack on the governor’s appearance is concerned, and thought you might like to come to the party.”

  “Really?” Now there was actual interest in her tone. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. “I’ll be right over. Don’t start without me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” I tapped my ear cuff again before stopping in front of Ben’s door and knocking briskly.

  “Coming,” he called. The door swung open. Ben looked nonplussed at the sight of me and Mat standing there, Mat still clutching the laptop, me smiling like I was getting ready to win a beauty-and-brutality pageant.

  “Hi,” I said. “Based on the timing of the attacks and the skill shown in placement of the initial infected, I’m pretty sure the people who attacked the Ryman camp are also the people who attacked the Kilburn camp, only they wanted Ryman to survive his attack, and they wanted our candidate to go down in glorious flames. Can we come in?”

  Ben stepped wordlessly aside. Mat and I walked into the hotel room. Audrey would be there in a few seconds, and then we could begin our work. Now that we were to be released, she could finally go collect Mallory’s RV as well, which would give us a rolling command center of our own. Privacy, and the ability to be alone together: exactly what we needed.

  We had so beautifully much to do.

  The attack on Governor Susan Kilburn’s first (and apparently, last) Portland appearance is being investigated as an act of terrorism. Not all zombie outbreaks are terrorist plots, no matter what some fringe groups may try to tell us: The virus is in the wild, and as such, it will inevitably infect inconvenient people, at inconvenient times. Weddings and birthdays and yes, political rallies will all be the target of an indiscriminating enemy that only wants us for our bodies. So why is this outbreak any different?

  This outbreak is different because the zombies which attacked the governor’s assembly were all taken from groups that have traditionally voted Democrat, and have faced discrimination from their own families or social groups due to factors outside their immediate control. This outbreak is different because the zombies were, quite literally, planted in the rose garden: They were buried at varying depths, a fact that would have been missed had a standard cleanup crew moved through before our re
porter found herself surrounded by infected bodies that were actually rising from the ground.

  This outbreak is different because Governor Kilburn was not the only politician to be hit within a narrow time frame, although she was, perhaps, the politician in the greatest danger. It’s hard to say for sure, since we don’t have accurate sources of information within every political campaign office in the country. But it certainly looks as if some of the attacks were intended to wound, while others, including the attack on Governor Kilburn, were intended to kill.

  Why her? Why now? And why is someone choosing to disrupt the American political process in this manner? It makes little sense, and we have less comprehension of the motives that may well be behind it all.

  Most of all, I wonder… why isn’t anyone else up in arms about this? Why aren’t people angry?

  What’s going on?

  —From That Isn’t Johnny Anymore, the blog of Ben Ross,

  February 16, 2040

  Ten

  Super Tuesday and the choosing of the candidates was a week away, and it was anybody’s guess which way things were going to go. The governor was still working to regain the ground she’d lost during her impromptu layover in Portland. Her approval numbers were high, if that meant anything: Her opponent’s approval numbers were also high, and she and Governor Blackburn had roughly equivalent experience in politics, putting them on a playing field that was temporary, illusory even. Sadly, “our candidate is better because she performs Journey songs during Friday night karaoke, and she’s awful; elect her so we can share this with the whole country” wasn’t a slogan the rest of the campaign could get behind. More’s the pity. Congressional karaoke would have transformed American politics into something I could actually enjoy.