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by Mira Grant

  I shot Rick a startled look.

  He grinned. “He didn’t say I had to stop taping.”

  “If I was interested in boys, I’d kiss you right now,” said Shaun, deadpan. “George, in Newsie-speak, what does that mean for ratings?”

  “Three percent increase for starters, more if he can write well enough to sustain an audience. Rick, we can take you as a beta, you get your own byline but you run everything through me or my second, Mahir Gowda, no direct access to the candidate; if Ryman doesn’t get the nomination, you’re on a six-month base contract. I can e-mail you the legalese.”

  “And if he does get the nomination?”

  “What?”

  “If he gets the nomination—which he will—what do I get?”

  I smiled. “You get to stay with us until the bitter end, or until I fire your ass, whichever comes first.”

  “Acceptable.” He held out his hand.

  I shook it. “Welcome to After the End Times.”

  Shaun clapped him on the back before he had a chance to let go. “More testosterone on the field team! My man! What do you think about poking dead things with sticks?”

  “It’s a good way to get ratings and commit suicide at the same time,” Rick said.

  I snorted. “All right. You can stay.”

  There was a knock at the door. It opened before any of us had a chance to react, and Steve entered, sunglasses obscuring the majority of his expression. I stood.

  “Is it time?” I asked.

  Steve nodded. “Senator asked me to make sure you were ready.”

  “Right. Thanks, Steve.” Grabbing my bag, I hooked a thumb toward our newest addition. “Rick, you’re with me; we’re on the floor. Buffy, I need you here, working the terminals. Hit my remotes and tell them we’re streaming raw footage starting in ten minutes, and they should be ready to start doing the forum-facing clean and jerk.”

  “Editorial power?”

  “Fact only, no opinions until I log on and start setting the baselines.” I was checking equipment as I spoke, hands moving on autopilot. My recorder was charged, and the readout on my watch indicated that all cameras were operating at seventy percent or above. “See if you can rouse Mahir, and yes, I know what time it is in London, but I need someone sane stomping on the trolls. Shaun—”

  “Outside the convention hall with my skateboard and my stick, watching to see if the protestors and picketers do anything worth reporting on,” Shaun said, snapping an amiable salute. “I know my strengths.”

  “Play to them, and don’t get dead,” I said, turning to head for the door. Steve stepped out of the way, giving me a sidelong look as Rick followed in my wake. “It’s okay, Steve. He’s on the squad.”

  “They liked my backflip,” Rick said, looking up at Steve. There was a lot of “up” to look at. “You’re very tall.”

  “You must be a reporter,” Steve said. He closed the door behind us, leaving Shaun and Buffy inside.

  The convention center had seemed busy before. Compared to the madhouse that greeted us as we proceeded toward the main meeting hall, it was a mausoleum. People were everywhere. They ranged from staffers I recognized from the various campaigns to private security, members of politicians’ families, and reporters who’d somehow managed to get out of the press pit and into the wild. Soon, they’d go feral and start inventing scandals for the sake of their ratings.

  Rick greeted the scene with calm professionalism, sticking close as I followed in Steve’s massive, crowd-clearing wake. Rick didn’t seem to have any problems taking orders from a woman ten years his junior, either, which can be an issue with guys trying to jump from the traditional news media to the blogging world. They don’t mean to bring their prejudices with them when they make the transition, but some things are harder to get rid of than an addiction to seeing your stories physically printed. If Rick continued to listen as well as he had been, things were going to be fine.

  Steve steered a course through the back halls and into the screaming furor of the auditorium, where politicos and onlookers of every age, race, and creed were gathered for the solemn practice of screaming at the top of their lungs whenever they thought they caught a glimpse of one of the prospective candidates. A satisfying percentage of the crowd was sporting “Ryman for President” buttons. A group of clean-cut sorority girls in tight white T-shirts hung over one of the rails, shrieking with delight over the entire political process.

  I elbowed Rick, indicating the girls. “See their shirts?”

  He squinted. ” ‘Ryman’s My Man’? Who comes up with this stuff?”

  “Shaun, actually. He’s got an amazing ear for doggerel.” I tapped my ear cuff. “Buffy, we’re in. How’s my signal?”

  “Loud and clear, O glorious recorder of really jumbled footage. Try to get yourself to a clean shot, I’m only getting fifty percent signal off the stationary cameras.”

  “You mean the stationary cameras that belong to the convention center and were installed for security purposes? The ones with the supposedly unbreakable signal feeds?”

  “Those would be the ones. I won’t be able to use them for anything but pan shots, and the networks have the wall-mount cameras under exclusive coding that I can’t break through, so get something good!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Buffy out.”

  The connection clicked off, and I turned to Steve. “Where are we?”

  “Mrs. Ryman has said you can sit backstage with her if you’d like, or you can stay out here and film the crowd,” Steve said. “Either way, I need to head back there. We’re hitting the wire.”

  “Got it.” I looked to Rick, unclasping the recording array from my left wrist. “Take this. Three cameras, direct feed back to Buffy in the closet—just lift it up, the lenses are set to autofocus.”

  He took the wristband and snapped the Velcro around his own wrist. “You’ll be backstage?”

  “Got it. Meet back in the office when the crowd disperses, and we’ll see where we’re going from there.” The footage I got backstage wouldn’t be as sensational, but it would be more intimate, and that sort of thing has a staying power that crowd shots lack. We’d hook readers with the screaming and keep them with the silence. Plus, this was a good opportunity to test Rick’s reactions in a field situation. The term “probationary period” doesn’t mean much in the news. He’d work out or he wouldn’t, starting tonight.

  “Right.” He turned toward the stage, raising his arm to give the cameras the best view. Satisfied that he wasn’t going to screw around, I followed Steve along the edge of the hall toward the curtained-off area behind the stage.

  You wouldn’t think one little canvas curtain could make that much of a difference. Most little canvas curtains aren’t equipped with enough private security to stop a full-scale invasion. The men at the entrance eyeballed our credentials but didn’t bother to stop us or ask for blood tests—once we were this deep into the convention center, either we were clean or we were all dead already. So we just sailed on through, out of the chaos and into the calm harbor on the other side.

  Once upon a time, in a political process far, far away, the candidate selection results were known before they were announced to the general public. With necessary enhancements in security and increases in the number of delegates who chose to vote remotely, this has changed over the last twenty years. These days, no one knows who’s taking the nomination until the announcement is made. Call it part of a misguided effort to reinsert drama into a process that has become substantially more cut-and-dried as the years went by. Reality television on the grandest of scales.

  Emily and Peter Ryman were sitting in a pair of folding chairs near the stage, his left hand clasped in both of hers as they watched the monitor that was scrolling current results. David Tate was pacing not far away; he shot me a poisonous look as I entered.

  “Miss Mason,” he said. “Looking f
or more muck to rake?”

  “Actually, Governor, I was looking for more facts to pass along,” I said, and continued for the Rymans. “Senator. Mrs. Ryman. I hope you’re ready for the results?”

  “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Georgia,” said the senator gravely. Then he laughed, releasing his wife’s hand and standing to grasp and shake mine. “Whatever the numbers say, I want to thank you and your crew. You may not have changed the race, but you made it a hell of a lot more fun for everyone involved.”

  “Thank you, Senator,” I said. “That’s good to hear.”

  “After Peter’s had a few weeks to rest, all three of you must come and visit the farm,” Emily said. “I know the girls would love to meet you. Rebecca’s very fond of your reports, especially. It would be a real treat for them.”

  I smiled. “We’d be honored. But let’s not assume a break just yet.”

  “Far from it,” said the senator, with a glance at Governor Tate. Governor Tate’s return look wasn’t a friendly one. “I think we’re going to go all the way.”

  A bell rang as if to punctuate his words, and a hush fell over the convention. I stepped back, lifting my chin to bring the camera on my collar to a better angle.

  “Let’s see if you mean that,” I said.

  Over the loudspeaker, the voice of a third-rate celebrity who’d gone from bad sitcoms to convention announcements blared: “And now, the Republican Party’s man of the hour, and the next President of these fabulous United States of America—Senator Peter Ryman of Wisconsin! Senator Ryman, come on out here and greet the people!”

  The cheers were almost deafening. Emily gave a little squeal that was only half-surprise, and wrapped her arms around the senator’s shoulders, kissing him on both cheeks as he lifted her off the ground in a hug. “Well, Em?” he said. “Let’s go make the people happy.” Beaming, she nodded her agreement, and he led her onto the stage. The cheers doubled in volume. Some of those people wouldn’t be able to talk at all the next day. Right then, I doubted any of them particularly cared.

  Tate stayed where he was, expression blank. Before I moved toward the stage exit, still filming, I paused long enough to get a reaction shot of a man whose dreams had just been dashed. “Go, Pete, go,” I murmured, unable to keep from smiling. He had the nomination. That was our man out there on that stage, accepting the nomination.

  We were going on the road.

  My ear cuff beeped three times, signaling an emergency transmission. I tapped it, stepping away from the opening. “Shaun, what did you—”

  Buffy’s voice cut me off. It was all business, and so cold I almost didn’t recognize it at first. “Georgia, there’s an outbreak at the farm.”

  I froze. “What farm?”

  “The Ryman farm. It’s on all the feeds, it’s everywhere. They think one of the horses went into spontaneous conversion. No one knows why, and they’re still digging in the ashes and setting the perimeter. No one knows where the… where the—oh, God, Georgia, the girls were in there when the alarms went off, and no one knows—”

  Slowly, as if in a dream, I turned back toward the opening. Buffy was talking, but her words didn’t matter anymore. Senator Ryman had formally accepted the nomination and was standing there grinning, his beautiful wife holding his arm, waving to the crowd that chose him to bear their banner toward the highest office in the country. They looked like the happiest people in the world. People who had never known what a real tragedy was. God help them, they were about to learn.

  “—you there? Mahir’s trying to control the forums, but he needs help, and we need you to find the valid news feed into all this, we—”

  “Tell Mahir to contact Casey at Media Breakdown and arrange a fact-only feed-through of the situation at the farm; tell him we’ll trade an early release on my next candidate interview,” I said, tonelessly. “Wake Alaric, get him backing Mahir until Rick finishes on the floor, then throw him in there, too. He wanted to join the party? Well, here’s his invitation.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Emily Ryman was laughing, hands clasped together. She had no idea.

  Grimly, I said, “I’m going to stay here and report the news.”

  BOOK III

  Index Case Studies

  The difference between the truth and a lie is that both of them can hurt, but only one will take the time to heal you afterward.

  —GEORGIA MASON

  We live in a world of our own creation. We’ve made our bed, ladies and gentlemen, whether we intended to or not. Now, we get the honor of lying down in it.

  —MICHAEL MASON

  I’ve done a lot of difficult things over the course of my journalistic career. Few, in the end, were pretty; most of the supposed “glamour” of reporting the news is reserved for the people who sit behind desks and look good while they tell you about the latest tragedy to rock the world. It’s different in the field, and even after doing this for years, I don’t think I grasped how different it was. Not until I looked into the faces of presidential candidate Peter Ryman and his wife and informed them that the body of their eldest daughter had just been cremated by federal troops outside their family ranch in Parrish, Wisconsin.

  You’ve heard about Rebecca Ryman by now. Eighteen years old, scheduled to graduate high school in less than three months, ranked fifth in her class, and already accepted at Brown University, where she was planning to study law and follow in her father’s footsteps. She’d been riding since she was old enough to walk; that’s how she was able to bridle that postamplification horse and get her baby sisters off the grounds. She was a real American hero—at least, that’s what all the papers and news sites say. Even mine.

  If you’ll allow a reporter her brief moment of sentiment, I’d like to tell you about the Rebecca that I met, if only for a moment, in the words and the faces of her parents.

  Rebecca Ryman was a teenage girl. She was petulant. She was sulky. She hated being asked to sit for her sisters on a Friday night, especially when there was a new Byron Bloom movie opening. She liked to read trashy romances and eat ice cream straight from the container, and nothing made her happier than working with the horses. She stayed home from the Republican National Convention partially to get ready for college and partially to be with the horses. Because of that decision, she died, and her sisters lived. She couldn’t save her grandparents or the men who worked the ranch, but she saved her sisters, and in the end, what more could anyone have asked of her?

  I told her parents she was dead. That, if nothing else, qualifies me to say this:

  Rebecca, you will be deeply missed.

  —From Images May Disturb You, the blog of Georgia Mason, March 17, 2040

  Thirteen

  The funeral services for Rebecca Ryman and her grandparents were held a week after the convention at the family ranch. The delay wasn’t for mourning or to allow family members time to travel; that’s how long it took for regional authorities to downgrade the ranch from a Level 2 hazard zone to a Level 5. It was still illegal to enter unarmed, but now at least nonmilitary personnel could enter unescorted. The area would return to its original Level 7 designation if it could go three years without signs of further contamination. Until then, even the kids would need to carry weapons at all times.

  Most public opinion held that it wouldn’t matter how long it took for the hazard rating to drop; no family would choose to stay in a home and a profession—viewed by many as a dangerous, glorified hobby—that claimed the life of one of their children. They said the ranch would be long deserted by the time that happened.

  I wish I could say that attitude was confined to the conservative fringe, but it wasn’t. Within six hours of Rebecca’s death, half the children’s safety advocacy groups were clamoring for tighter guidelines and attempting to organize legislation that would make the life led by the Rymans illegal. No more early riding classes or family farms; they wanted it shut down, shut
down now, and shut down hard. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone but the Rymans, I think: Peter and Emily never attempted to map out the scenarios leading to the martyrdom of their eldest daughter, and so they’d never considered what a boon her death would be to certain organizations. Americans for the Children was the worst. Its “Remember Rebecca” campaign was entirely legal and entirely sleazy, although its attempts to use pictures of Jeanne and Amber had been quashed by the Rymans’ legal team. It didn’t matter. The images of Rebecca with her horses—and of postamplification horses attempting to disembowel the federal authorities putting them down—had already done their damage.

  In the chaos and noise surrounding the outbreak at the ranch, it wasn’t really a surprise that Senator Ryman’s selection of a running mate barely made anyone’s radar, save for the hardcore politicos who couldn’t care less that people were dead… and me. I wasn’t surprised, although I must admit that I was more than slightly disappointed when it was announced that Governor Tate would accompany Senator Ryman on the ballot. It was a good, balanced ticket; it would carry most of the country, and it stood a good chance of putting Senator Ryman in the White House. The tragedy at the ranch had already put him twenty points up on his opponent in the early polls. The Democratic candidate, Governor Frances Blackburn, was a solid politician with an excellent record of service, but she couldn’t compete with a teenage heroine who sacrificed herself to save her sisters. This early in the race, people weren’t voting for the candidate. They were voting for his daughter. And she was winning.

  My team and I offered to head back to California until after the services. While our contract with the senator said “constant access,” there’s a difference between honest reporting and playing the ghoul. Let the local news film the funeral. We’d do our laundry, give Buffy a chance to upgrade the equipment, and introduce Rick to the parents. Nothing says “crash course in working as a team” like starting with a major political convention, then moving on to meeting my mother on her home turf. Shaun can seem like a minor natural disaster sometimes, but Mom’s always a seven point five on the Richter scale.