Feed n-1

by Mira Grant

  The blue was my choice. When I was a kid they got me brown lenses that matched the natural color of my eyes. I switched to blue as soon as I was old enough to have a say. They don’t look as natural, but they also don’t make me feel like I’m trying to lie about my medical condition. My eyes aren’t normal. They never will be. If that makes some people uncomfortable, well, I’ve learned to use that to my own advantage.

  I straightened my clothes, tucked my sunglasses into the breast pocket of my shirt, and ran a brush through my hair. There, that was as presentable as I was going to get. If the senator didn’t like it, he could damn well refrain from allowing any more late-night attacks on the convoy.

  Buffy was gone when I emerged from the bathroom. Shaun handed me a can of Coke and my MP3 recorder, wrinkling his nose. “You know your contacts creep me out, right?”

  “That’s the goal.” The soda was cold enough to make my back teeth ache. I didn’t stop gulping until the can was empty. Tossing it in the bathroom trash, I asked, “Ready?”

  “For hours. You girls always take forever in the bathroom.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Not without a blood test.”

  I kicked his ankle, grabbed three more Cokes from the room service tray, and left the room. Steve was waiting in the hall, blood test unit still in his hand. I eyed it.

  “Isn’t this going a bit far? We went from cleanup to bed. I doubt there was a viral reservoir in the closet.”

  “Hand,” Steve replied.

  I sighed and switched my pilfered sodas to my left hand, allowing me to offer him the right. The process of testing me, and then Shaun, took less than a minute. Both of us came up unsurprisingly clean.

  Steve dropped the used units into a plastic bag, sealed it, and turned to walk down the hall, obviously expecting us to follow. Shaun and I exchanged a glance, shrugged, and did exactly that.

  The boardroom was three floors up, on a level you needed an executive keycard to access. The carpet was so thick that our feet made no sound as we followed Steve down the hall to the open boardroom door. Buffy was seated on a countertop inside, keying information into her handheld and trying to stay out of the way of the senator’s advisors. They were moving back and forth, grabbing papers from one another, making notes on whiteboards, and generally creating the sort of hurricane of productive activity that signals absolutely nothing happening.

  The senator was at the head of the table with his head in his hands, creating an island of stillness in the heart of the chaos. Carlos flanked him to the left, and as we crossed the threshold, Steve abandoned us to cut across the room and flank Senator Ryman to the right. Something must have alerted the senator to Steve’s presence because he raised his head, looking first toward the bodyguard and then toward us. One by one, the bustling aides stopped what they were doing and followed the direction of the senator’s gaze.

  I raised a can of soda and popped the tab.

  The sound seemed to snap the senator out of his fugue. He sat up, clearing his throat. “Shaun. Georgia. If the two of you wouldn’t mind taking your seats, we can get things started.”

  “Thanks for holding the briefing until we got here,” I said, moving toward one of the open chairs and setting my MP3 recorder on the table. “Sorry we took so long.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, waving a hand. “I know how late you were out with the cleanup crews. A little sleep is hardly repayment for going above and beyond the call of duty like that.”

  “In that case, I’d like some groupies,” said Shaun, settling in the chair next to mine. I kicked him in the shin. He yelped but grinned, unrepentant.

  “I’ll see what we can do.” The senator rose, rapping his knuckles against the table. The last small eddies of conversation in the room died, all attention sliding back to him. Even Buffy stopped typing as the senator leaned forward, hands on the table, and said, “Now that we’re all here… how the hell did that happen?” His voice never rose above a conversational level. “We lost four guards last night, three of them at our own front gate. What happened to the concept of security? Did I miss the meeting where we decided that zombies weren’t something we needed to be concerned about anymore?”

  One of the aides cleared his throat and said, “Well, sir, it looks like there was a power short on the anterior detection unit, which resulted in the doors failing to shut fast enough to prevent the incursion from—”

  “Speak English at this table or I will fire you so fast you’ll wind up standing at the airport wondering how the hell you got from here to there without any goddamn pants on,” the senator snapped. The aide responded by paling and dropping the papers he’d been holding. “Can anyone here tell me what happened and how, in simple English words of two syllables or less?”

  “Your screamer wasn’t working,” said Buffy. Every head in the room turned to her. She shrugged. “Every perimeter rig has a screamer built in. Yours didn’t switch on.”

  “A screamer being…?” asked one of the aides.

  “A heat-sensitive motion sensor,” said Chuck Wong. He looked anxious—and with good reason. Most of his job involves the design and maintenance of the convoy’s automated perimeter defenses. If there’d been a mechanical failure, it was technically his fault. “They scan moving objects for heat as well as motion. Anything below a certain range sets off an alert of possible zombies in the area.”

  “A really fresh one can fool a screamer, but the packs we saw last night were too mixed for that. They should have set off the alerts, and they didn’t.” Buffy shrugged again. “That means we had a screamer failure.”

  “Chuck? Care to tell us why that happened?”

  “I can’t. Not until we can arrange for a physical inspection of the equipment.”

  “It’s arranged. Carlos, get three of your men and take Chuck for an inspection run. Report back as soon as you have anything.” Carlos nodded, heading for the door. Three of the other bodyguards moved away from the walls and followed, not waiting to be asked.

  “I’ll need my equipment—” Chuck protested.

  “Your equipment should be with the convoy, and since that’s where you’re going, I’m sure you’ll have everything you need,” the senator said. There was no arguing with his tone. Chuck obviously saw that. He stood, thin-boned hands twitching by his sides as he turned toward the door.

  “Mind if I go along?” asked Buffy. The room looked at her again. She flashed her most winning smile. “I’m pretty good at seeing why field equipment decided to fry. Maybe I could be a second opinion.”

  And maybe she could get us some footage for a follow-up report. I nodded, and caught the senator watching the gesture before he, in turn, began to nod. “Thank you for volunteering, Miss Meissonier. I’m sure the group will be glad to have you along.”

  “I’ll ring back,” Buffy said, and hopped off the counter, trotting out the door after Chuck and the bodyguards.

  “There she goes,” Shaun muttered.

  “Jealous?” I asked.

  “Tech geeks trying to figure out why a screamer broke? Please. I’ll be jealous if she comes back saying there were actual dead guys to play with.”

  “Right.” He was jealous. I folded my arms, returning my attention to the senator.

  He wasn’t looking his best. He was leaning forward with his hands braced against the table, but it was clear even in that well-supported position that he hadn’t had nearly as much sleep as Shaun and I. His hair was uncombed, his shirt was wrinkled, and his collar was open. He looked like a man who’d been faced with the unexpected, and now, after a little time to consider the situation, was getting ready to ride out and kick its ass.

  “Folks, whatever the cause of last night’s catastrophe, the facts are this: We lost four good men and three potential supporters right before the first round of primaries. This does not send a good message to the people. This sort of thing doesn’t say ‘Vote Ryman, he’ll protect you.’ If anything, it says ‘Vote Ryman if you want to get eaten.’
This isn’t our message, and I refuse to let it become our message, even though that’s the way my opponents are going to try to spin it. What’s our game plan?” He glared around the room. “Well?”

  “Sir, the bloggers—”

  “Will be staying for this little chat. We try covering it up, they’ll report it a lot less kindly when they manage to root it out. Now please, can we get down to business?”

  That seemed to be the cue the room had been waiting for. The next forty minutes passed in a blaze of points and counterpoints, with the senator’s advisors arguing the finer aspects of spin while his security heads protested any attempts to categorize their handling of the campaign to date as “lax” or “insufficient.” Shaun and I sat and listened. We were there as observers, not participants, and after the argument had a little time to develop, it seemed as if most of the room forgot we were there at all. One camp held that they needed to minimize media coverage of the attack, make the requisite statements of increased vigilance, and move on. The other camp held that full openness was the only way to get through an incident of this magnitude without taking damage from other political quarters. Both camps had to admit that the reports released on our site the night before were impacting their opinions, although neither seemed aware of exactly how much traffic those reports had drawn. I opted not to inform them. Observing the political process without interfering with it is sometimes more entertaining than it sounds.

  One of the senator’s advisors was beginning a rant on the evils of the modern media when my ear cuff beeped. I rose, moving to the back of the room before I answered. “Georgia here.”

  “Georgia, it’s Buffy. Can you patch me to the speakerphone?”

  I paused. She sounded harried. More than that, she sounded openly nervous. Not frightened, which meant she probably wasn’t being harassed by zombies or rival bloggers, but nervous. “Sure, Buff. Give me a second.” I strode back to the table and leaned across two of the arguing aides to grab the speaker phone. They squawked protests, but I ignored them, yanking off my ear cuff and snapping it into the transmission jack at the base of the phone.

  “Miss Mason?” inquired the senator, eyebrows rising.

  “Sorry, this is important.” I hit the Receive button.

  “…testing, testing,” said Buffy’s voice, crackling slightly through the speaker. “Am I live?”

  “We can hear you, Miss Meissonier,” said the senator. “May I ask what was so important that it required breaking in on our conference?”

  Chuck Wong spoke next; apparently, ours wasn’t the only end on speakerphone. “We’re at the perimeter fence, sir, and it seemed important that we call you as quickly as possible.”

  “What’s going on out there, Chuck? No more zombies, I hope?”

  “No, sir—not so far. It’s the screamer.”

  “The one that failed?”

  “Yes, sir. It didn’t fail because of anything my team did.” Chuck didn’t keep the relief out of his tone, and I couldn’t blame him. Carelessness can be a federal offense when it applies to antizombie devices. No one has managed to successfully charge a security technician with manslaughter—yet—but the cases come up almost every year. “The wires were cut.”

  The senator froze. “Cut?”

  “The screamer shows detection of the zombies we saw last night, sir. The connection that should have set off the perimeter alarms wasn’t made because those wires had been cut before the alarm was sounded.”

  “Whoever did it did a pretty good job,” Buffy said. “All the damage is inside the boxes. Nothing visible until you crack the case, and even then you have to dig around before you find the breaks.”

  The senator sagged backward, paling. “Are you telling me this was sabotage?”

  “Well, sir,” said Chuck, “none of my men would have cut the wires on a screamer protecting the convoy that they were inside. There’s just no reason for it.”

  “I see. Finish your sweep and report back, Chuck. Miss Meissonier, thank you for calling. Please, call again if you need anything further.”

  “Roger. Georgia, we’re on server four.”

  “Noted. Signing off now.” I leaned over and cut the connection before pulling my ear cuff out of the jack and sliding it back onto my ear. Only when this was done did I glance back up at Senator Ryman.

  The senator looked like a man who’d been hit, hard and unexpectedly, from behind. He met my gaze, despite the alien appearance of my contacts, and gave a small, tightly controlled shake of his head. Please, that gesture said, not right now.

  I nodded, taking Shaun’s arm. “Senator, if you don’t mind, my brother and I should be getting to work. We’re a bit behind after last night.”

  Shaun blinked at me. “What?”

  “Of course.” The senator smiled, not bothering to conceal his relief. “Miss Mason, Mr. Mason, thank you for your time. I’ll have someone notify you before we’re ready to check out and move on.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and left the room, hauling the still-bewildered Shaun along in my wake. The boardroom door swung closed behind us.

  Shaun yanked his arm out of my hand, subjecting me to a sharp sidelong gaze. “Want to tell me what that was all about?”

  “The man just found out his camp was sabotaged,” I said. “They’re not going to come up with anything useful until they finish panicking. That’s going to take days. Meanwhile, we have reports to splice together and update, and Buffy’s dumping her footage to server four. We should take a look.”

  Shaun nodded. “Got it.”

  “Come on.”

  Back in our hotel room, I turned the main terminal over to Shaun while I plugged my handheld into the wall jack and settled down to work. We couldn’t both record voice feeds at the same time, but we could edit film clips for our individual sections of the site and we could write as much text as we needed. I skimmed the reports Buffy authorized while Shaun and I were on cleanup. All three of the betas had done excellent jobs. Mahir, especially, had done an amazing amount with his relatively straightforward video feed, and I saw from the server flags that both the footage and his voice tracking had already been optioned by three of the larger news sites. I tapped in a release, authorizing use of the footage under a standard payment contract that would give Mahir forty percent of the profits, with clear credit for the narrative. His first breakout report. He’d be so proud. After a pause, I added a note of congratulations, directed to his private mailbox. He and I have been friends outside of work for years, and it never hurts to encourage your friends to succeed.

  “How’re things in your department?” I asked, pulling up the raw footage of the attacks and setting it to run sequentially on my screen. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I had a hunch, and I’ve learned to follow my hunches. Buffy knows visual presentation, and Shaun knows shock value, but me? I know where to find the news. There had been sabotage. Why? When? And how had our saboteur been able to cut those wires without coming into the range of Buffy’s cameras?

  “I’m taking Becks away from you,” he said. I glanced over. Shaun’s screen was dominated by the footage of the two of us against the fence, holding off the last of the zombies. The audio was being fed directly to him via the earpiece plugged into his left ear. His expression was serious. “She wants to go Irwin. She’s been begging for weeks. And this report—this isn’t a Newsie report, George. You know that.”

  I scowled, but it wasn’t like the request was a surprise. Good Irwins are hard to come by because the death rates during training are so damn high. You don’t have time for a learning curve when you’re playing with the infected. “What are her credentials?”

  “You’re stalling.”

  “Humor me.” The footage on my screen was set to play in real-time, which meant some of the feeds would pause to let the others catch up again. The gate cameras had chunks missing from their narrative, while the attack at the fence was almost complete. I couldn’t help wincing when I saw one of the women from the po
litical rally come staggering up, clearly among the infected. I didn’t need the dialogue tracks to tell me what Tyrone was saying: He was telling her to halt in her approach, back off, and present her credentials. But she just kept coming.

  “Rebecca Atherton, age twenty-two, BA in film from New York University, Class A-20 blogging license, upgraded from a B-20 six months ago, when she passed her final marksmanship tests. She’s testing for an A-18 next month.”

  An A-18 license would mean she was cleared to enter Level 4 hazard zones unaccompanied. “If you take her, my side of the site retains a six percent interest in her reports for the next year.” The infected girl was sinking her teeth into Tyrone’s left forearm. He screamed soundlessly and fired into the side of the zombie’s head. Too late. The damage was done.

  “Three percent,” Shaun countered.

  “Done,” I said, not taking my eyes off the screen. “Draft an offer letter. If she agrees, she’s yours.” Tyrone was staggering in circles, clutching his arm against his body. I could see Tracy barking orders; Carlos turned and ran for the convoy, presumably to get reinforcements. That’s why he survived—because he ran away. How must that kind of thing sit with a man like him? I can’t imagine that it sits very well.

  “George? What’s up? I expected you to fight me more than that.”

  Instead of answering, I pulled the headphone jack out of my machine and let the sound start broadcasting to the room.

  “Oh God Tracy oh God oh God,” Tyrone was babbling. The moaning in the background was low and constant; the infected were coming, and the gate in the convoy fence was standing open.

  “Shut up and help me close this thing,” Tracy snarled, grabbing the gate with both hands. After a moment’s hesitation, Tyrone ran over and joined her, placing his hands well away from hers. It was a good way of dealing with things. As long as she didn’t encounter any of the live virus, she wouldn’t begin amplification, and in someone Tyrone’s size, full conversion would take longer than was needed to close a simple gate, even one that heavy. Once it was shut, she could wave him off to a safe distance and put a bullet through his brain. It wouldn’t be pretty, but elimination of contagion rarely is.