Feed

by Mira Grant

  “You don’t need the ratings,” said Steve, and grabbed my arm, hauling me after him as he resumed moving, double-speed, toward the motor pool.

  Maybe it was because Carlos and Heidi had access to an entire ammo shed, and maybe it was because the motor pool wasn’t a popular hangout for the living, but the infected tapered off as we moved toward it, and we crossed the last ten feet to the fence without incident. Good thing; I was almost out of bullets, and I didn’t feel like trusting myself to the Taser. The gate in the fence was closed, the electric locks engaged. Steve released my arm, reaching for the keypad, and a shot rang out over our heads, clearly aimed to warn, not wound. Small favors.

  “Stop where you are!” shouted Carlos. I looked toward his voice and watched as he and Heidi stepped out from behind the shed, both bristling with weapons. I clucked my tongue disapprovingly. Sure, it looked good, but you can’t intimidate a zombie, and they had so many things piled overlapping that they’d have trouble drawing much of anything when their primary guns ran out of bullets.

  “Overkill,” I muttered. “Amateurs.”

  “Stand down,” barked Steve. “It’s me and the Mason kid. He tested clean when I picked him up.”

  “Beg your pardon, sir, but how do we know you test clean now?” Heidi asked.

  Smart girl. Maybe she could live. “You don’t,” I said, “but if you let us through the fence and keep us backed against it while you run blood tests, you’ll have the opportunity to shoot before either of us can reach you.”

  She and Carlos exchanged a look. Carlos nodded. “All right,” he said. “Step back from the gate.”

  We did as we were told, Steve giving me a thoughtful look as the gate slid open. “You’re good at this.”

  “Top of my field,” I said, and followed him into the motor pool.

  Carlos chucked us blood testing units while Heidi reported on the status of the other units, still remaining at a safe distance. Susan was confirmed as infected; she’d been tagged by a political analyst as she was helping Mike evacuate a group of survivors to a rooftop. She stayed on the ground after she was bitten, shooting everything in sight before taking out the ladder and shooting herself. About the best ending you could hope for if you got infected in a combat zone. Mike was fine. So, surprisingly, was Paolo. There was still no word from Andres, and three more groups of security agents and survivors were expected to reach the motor pool at any time. Steve absorbed the news without changing his expression; he didn’t even flinch when the needles on his testing unit bit into his hand. I flinched. After the number of blood tests I’d had recently, I was getting seriously tired of being punctured.

  Heidi and Carlos relaxed when our tests flashed clean. “Sorry, sir,” said Carlos, walking over with the biohazard bags. “We needed to be sure.”

  “Standard outbreak protocol,” Steve said, dismissing the apology with a wave of his hand. “Keep holding this ground—”

  “—while we break quarantine,” I said, almost cheerfully. George snorted amusement in the back of my head. All for you, George. All for you. “Steve-o and I need to take a little trip. Loan us a car, give us some ammo, and open the gates?”

  “Sir?” Heidi sounded uncertain; the idea of leaving a quarantine zone without military or CDC clearance is pretty much anathema to most people. It’s just not done, ever. “What is he talking about?”

  “One of the armored SUVs should do,” said Steve. “Find the fastest one that’s still on the grounds.” Carlos and Heidi stared at him like he’d just gone into spontaneous amplification. “Move!” he barked, and they moved, scattering for the guard station where the keys to the parked vehicles were stored. Steve ignored their burst of activity, leading me to the weapons locker and keying open the lock. “Candy store is open.”

  “So all you have to do to break quarantine is shout ‘move’?” I asked, beginning to load my pockets with ammunition. I considered grabbing a new gun, but dismissed the idea. Nothing but George’s .40 was going to feel right in my hand. “Wow. Normally, I need a pair of wire cutters and some night-vision goggles.”

  “Gonna pretend you never said that.”

  “Probably for the best.”

  Carlos emerged from the guard station and tossed a set of keys to Steve, who caught them in an easy underhand. “We can unlock the rear gate, but once the central computer realizes the seal’s been broken—”

  “How long can we have?”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  “That’s long enough. You two hold your ground. Keep anyone who makes it here safe. Mason, you’re with me.”

  “Yes sir!” I said, with a mocking salute. Steve shook his head and pressed the signal button on the key fob. One of the SUVs turned its lights on. Showtime.

  Once we were inside, belts fastened and weapons secured, Steve started the engine and drove us to the gate. Carlos was already waiting, ready to hit the manual override. The manual exits exist in case of accidental or ineffective lockdown, to give the uninfected a chance to escape. They require a blood test and a retinal scan, and breaking quarantine without a damn good reason is a quick way to get yourself sent to prison for a long time. Carlos was risking a lot on Steve’s order.

  “That’s what I call a chain of command,” I said to myself, as the gate slid open.

  “What’s that?” asked Steve.

  “Nothing. Just go.”

  We went.

  The roads outside the Center were clear. That’s standard for the time immediately following a confirmed outbreak in a noncongested area. The people inside the quarantine zone will survive or not without interference; it’s all up to them the minute the fences come down. So the big health orgs and military intervention teams wait until the worst of it’s had time to burn itself out before they head in. Let the infection peak. Ironically, that makes it safer, because it’s trying to save the survivors that gets people killed. Once you know everyone around you is already dead, it gets easier to shoot without asking questions.

  “How long since the quarantine went down?” I asked.

  “Thirty-seven minutes.”

  Standard CDC response time says you leave a quarantine to cook for forty-five minutes before you go in. Given our proximity to the city, they wouldn’t just be responding by air; they’d be sending in ground support to make sure nobody broke quarantine before they declared it safe. “Shit.” With eight minutes between us and the end of the cooking time, we needed to get out of sight. “How good’s the balance on this thing?”

  “Pretty good. Why?”

  “Quarantine. It’s going to be forty-five minutes since the bell real soon here, and that means we’re gonna have company. Now, I’ve got a way out, but only if you trust me. If you don’t, we’re probably gonna get the chance to tell some nice men why we’re out here. Assuming they don’t just shoot first.”

  “Kid, I’m already committed. Just tell me where to go.”

  “Take the next left turn.”

  Being a good Irwin is partially dependant on knowing as many ways to access an area as possible. That includes the location of handy things like, say, railroad trestle bridges across the American River. See, they used to run trains through Sacramento, back when people traveled that way. The system’s abandoned now, except for the automated cargo trains, but they run on a fixed schedule. I’ve had it memorized for years.

  Steve started swearing once he realized where we were going, and he kept swearing as he pulled the SUV onto the tracks and floored the gas, trusting momentum and the structure of the trestle to keep us from plunging into the river. I grabbed the oh-shit handle with one hand and whooped, bracing the other hand on the dashboard. I couldn’t help myself. Everything was going to hell, George was dead, and I was on my way to commit either treason or suicide, but who the hell cared? I was off-roading across a river in a government SUV. Sometimes, you just gotta kick back and enjoy what’s going on around you.

 
We were halfway across the river when the first CDC copters passed overhead, zooming toward the Center. Three more followed close behind, in closed arrow formation. Fascinated, I leaned over and clicked on the radio, tuning it to the emergency band. “—repeat, this is not a drill. Remain in your homes. If you are on the road, remain in your vehicle until you have reached a safe location. If you have seen or had direct contact with infected individuals, contact local authorities immediately. Repeat, this is not a drill. Remain in—”

  Steve turned the radio off. “Breaking quarantine is a federal offense, isn’t it?”

  “Only if they catch us.” I settled back in my seat. “Doesn’t bother me much, and they’re not looking down.”

  “All right, then.” He hit the gas again. The SUV rolled faster, hitting the end of the trestle and blazing onward toward the city. He glanced at me as we drove, saying, “I’m sorry about your sister. She was a good woman. She’ll be missed.”

  “That’s appreciated, Steve.” The idea of looking at his face—it would be so earnest, if his words were anything to judge by, so anxious for understanding—made me tired all over again. There was nothing I could do now, nothing I could do until we got to the hall and to the man who had killed my sister. So I looked at my hands as I cleaned and reloaded Georgia’s gun, and I was silent, and we drove on.

  … but they were us, our children, our selves,

  These shades who walk the cloistered dark,

  With empty eyes and clasping hands,

  And wander, isolate, alone, the space between

  Forgiveness and the penitent’s grave.

  —From Eakly, Oklahoma, originally published in By the Sounding Sea, the blog of Buffy Meissonier, February 11, 2040

  Twenty-nine

  Quarantine procedures hit different social and economic classes in different ways, just like outbreaks. When Kellis-Amberlee breaks out in an urban area, it hits the inner cities and the business districts the hardest. That’s where you have the largest number of people coming and going, experiencing the closest thing we have these days to casual contact. Interestingly, you tend to have more fatalities in the business districts. The slums may not have the same security features and weaponry, but they’re mostly self-policing and fewer people try to conceal injuries when they know amplification isn’t just going to cost them their coworkers; it’s going to cost them their families. Inner cities and business districts turn into ghost towns when the quarantines come down. If you pass through while they’re under quarantine, you can feel the inhabitants watching you, waiting for you to make a move.

  Middle-class zones also tend to seal themselves off, but they’re less blatantly aggressive about it; windows too small or too high for a person to get in through can be left open, and not every glass door has a steel shield in front of it. You can enter those areas and still believe people live in them, even if those folks aren’t exactly setting out the welcome mats. They’ll kill you as quickly as anyone else will if you try to approach them. If you don’t, they won’t interfere.

  The hall where they held the keynote speech was far enough from the Center that it wasn’t technically in the quarantine zone. Street traffic was down to practically zero, but there were no retractable bars over the windows and no steel plating over the doors. Local businesses were open, even if there weren’t any customers. I looked around as Steve pulled up to the first checkpoint, and I hated these people for being able to ignore what was going on outside their city. George was dead. Rick and Mahir said the whole world was mourning with me, but that didn’t matter, because the man who did it—the man I intended to blame—wasn’t even inconvenienced.

  If the guard thought there was something odd about us arriving in a dusty, dented SUV over an hour after the Center went into lockdown, he didn’t say anything. Our blood tests came back clean; that was what his job required him to give a damn about, and so he just waved us inside. I clenched my jaw so hard I almost tasted blood.

  Calm down, counseled George. It’s not his fault. He didn’t write the news.

  “Go for the writers,” I muttered.

  Steve shot me a look. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  We parked next to a press bus that had doubtless been loaded with reporters who were now thanking God for their timing, since being on assignment with a bunch of political bigwigs meant they weren’t available to be sent out to report on the quarantine. Local Irwins would be flocking to the perimeter, getting footage of the CDC men as they locked and secured the site. I would’ve been with them not that long ago, and been happy about it. Now… I’d be just as happy if I never saw another outbreak. Somewhere between Eakly and George, I lost the heart for it.

  Steve and I got into the elevator together. I glanced at him as he keyed in our floor, saying, “You don’t have a press pass.”

  “Don’t need one,” he said. “The Center’s under quarantine. By contract, I’m actually obligated to circumnavigate any security barricade between myself and the senator.”

  “Sneaky,” I said, approvingly.

  “Precisely.”

  The elevator opened on a sickeningly normal-looking party. Servers in starched uniforms circulated with trays of drinks and canapes. Politicians, their spouses, reporters, and members of the California elite milled around, chattering about shit that didn’t mean a goddamn thing compared to George’s blood drying on the wall. The only real difference was in their eyes. They knew about the quarantine—half of these people were staying at the Center, or worked there, or had a stake in its continued success—and they were terrified. But appearances have to be maintained, especially when you’re looking at millions of dollars in lost city revenue because of an outbreak. So the party continued.

  “Poe was right,” I muttered. The man with the blood tests was waiting for us to check in. I slid my increasingly sore hand into the unit he held, watching lights run their cycle from red to yellow and finally to green. I wasn’t infected. If being shut in a van with George’s body didn’t get me, nothing was going to. Infection would have been too easy a way out.

  I yanked my hand free as soon as the lights went green, held up my press pass, and ducked into the crowd. Steve was right behind me. I dodged staff and guests, arrowing toward the room where I had last seen Senator Ryman. They wouldn’t allow him to leave after the Center went into lockdown, and if he couldn’t leave, he wouldn’t have left the room where he had his surviving staff and supporters gathered. It just made sense.

  People recoiled as I passed them, eyes going wide and suppressed fear surging to the front of their expressions. I paused, looking down at myself. Mud, powder burns, visible weapons—everything but blood. Somehow, I’d managed to avoid getting George’s blood on me. That was a good thing, since she’d died infected and her blood would have made me a traveling hot zone, but still, it was almost a pity. At least then she would have seen the story find an ending.

  “Shaun?”

  Senator Ryman sounded astonished. I turned toward his voice and found him half standing. Emily was beside him, eyes wide, hands clapped over her mouth. Tate was on his other side. Unlike the Rymans, the governor looked anything but relieved to see me. I could read the hatred in his eyes.

  “Senator Ryman,” I said, and finished my turn, walking to the table that looked like it held all the survivors of the Ryman campaign. Less than a dozen of us had been at this stupid speech; less than a dozen, from a caravan that had swelled to include more than sixty people. What kind of survival rate were we looking at? Fifty percent? Less? Almost certainly less. That’s the nature of an outbreak, to kill what it doesn’t conquer. “Mrs. Ryman.” I smiled narrowly, the sort of expression that’s always been more Georgia’s purview than my own. “Governor.”

  “Oh, God, Shaun.” Emily Ryman stood so fast she sent her chair toppling over as she threw her arms around me. “We heard the news. I’m so sorry.”

  “I shot her,
” I said conversationally, looking over Emily’s shoulder to Senator Ryman and Governor Tate. “Pulled the trigger after she started to amplify. She was lucid until then. You can increase the duration of postinfection lucidity with sedatives and white blood cell boosters, and first-aid classes teach you to do that in the field. So you can get any messages they may have for their family or other loved ones.”

  “Shaun?” Emily pulled away, looking uncertain. She glanced over her shoulder at Governor Tate before looking back to me. “What’s going on here?”

  “How did you get out of the quarantine zone?” asked Tate. His voice was flat, verging on emotionless. He knew the score. He’d known it since I walked through the door. The bastard.

  “A little luck, a little skill, a little applied journalism.” Emily Ryman let me go entirely, taking a step backward, toward her husband. I kept my eyes on Tate. “Turns out most of the security staff liked my sister more than they ever liked you. Probably because George tried to help them, instead of using them to further her political ambitions. Once they knew what happened, they were happy to help.”

  “Shaun, what are you talking about?”

  The confusion in Senator Ryman’s voice was enough to distract me from Tate. I turned to blink at the man responsible for us being here in the first place, asking, “Haven’t you seen Georgia’s last report?”

  “No, son, I haven’t.” His expression was drawn tight with concern. “Things have been a bit hectic. I haven’t had a site feed since the outbreak bell rang.”

  “Then how did you—”