Feed n-1

by Mira Grant

  “Thought I’d come see how things were going at the fort,” I said, closing the door behind myself. “Maybe get some decent reaction quotes as the numbers come down.”

  “Miss Mason,” acknowledged Channing stiffly. Several of the interchangeable interns were occupied at the back of the room, taking notation from the various monitors into their handhelds and PDAs. “Please try not to get underfoot.”

  “I’ll do my best.” I sat in the first unoccupied chair, folding my hands behind my head as I stared in his direction. Channing is one of those people who can’t stand the fact that my sunglasses make it hard for him to tell whether I’m actually looking at him.

  He met my stare with a disgruntled glower before grabbing his jacket and striding for the door. “I’m getting coffee,” he said, and stepped out into the hallway, slamming the door as he went.

  Senator Ryman didn’t bother to conceal his amusement. Instead, he roared with it, as though my driving his chief aide out of the room was the funniest thing he’d seen in years. “Georgia, that wasn’t nice,” he said, finally, between gusts of laughter.

  I shrugged. “All I did was sit down,” I said.

  “Wicked, wicked woman. I assume you’re here to find out whether you still have a job?”

  “I have a job whether you have a campaign or not, Senator, and I can monitor the public polls from the convoy just as well as I can monitor them from here. I wanted to get an idea of the mood around the camp.” I looked around the room. Most of the people present had shed their jackets, and in some cases their shoes. Empty coffee cups and half-eaten sandwiches littered random surfaces, and the whiteboard was largely dedicated to a series of tic-tac-toe grids. “I’m going with ‘guardedly optimistic.’”

  “We’re ahead by twenty-three percent of the vote,” the senator said, with a short nod. “ ‘Guardedly optimistic’ is an accurate assessment.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  He frowned at me. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, sir, at some point in the next,” I made a show of checking my watch, “six hours, you find out whether you have a shot at the party nomination, and hence the presidency, or whether you’re looking at the second-banana consolation prize, or worse, nothing at all. Today begins the process of winning or losing the election. So, bearing all of that in mind, how are you feeling?”

  “Terrified,” the senator said. “This is a long way from turning to my wife and saying, ‘Well, honey, I think this is the term when I make a run for the office.’ This is the real deal. I’m a bit anticipatory, but not that much. Whatever the polls say, the people will have spoken, and I’ll just have to abide with what they have to say.”

  “But you’re expecting them to speak in your favor.”

  He fixed me with a stern eye. “Georgia, has this just turned into an interview?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Warnings aren’t in my job description. Did you need me to repeat the question?”

  “I hadn’t realized it was a question,” he said, tone suddenly wry. “Yes, I’m expecting them to speak in my favor, because you don’t make it as far as I have without developing an ego, and I’m of the opinion that the average American is an intelligent person who knows what’s best for this country. I wouldn’t be running for office if I didn’t think I was the best man for the job. Will I be disappointed if they don’t pick me? A bit. It’s natural to be disappointed when you don’t get chosen for this sort of thing. But I’m willing to believe that if the American public is smart enough to choose their own president, then the American public is smart enough to know what they want, and if they don’t choose me, I need to do some serious self-examination to see where I got it all wrong.”

  “Have you given any thought to your next steps, assuming you show strongly enough in today’s polls to continue with the campaign?”

  “We’ll keep taking the message to the people. Keep getting out there and meeting people, letting them know that I won’t be the sort of president who sits in a hermetically sealed room and ignores the problems plaguing this country.” His dig at President Wertz was subtle but well-deserved. No one’s seen our current president set foot outside a well-secured urban area since before he was elected, and most critiques of his administration have centered around the fact that he doesn’t seem to realize not everyone can afford to have their air filtered before it gets to them. To listen to him talk, you’d think zombie attacks only happened to the careless and the stupid, rather than being something ninety percent of the people on the planet have to worry about on a daily basis.

  “How does Mrs. Ryman feel about this?”

  Senator Ryman’s expression softened. “Emily is as pleased as can be that things are going so well. I’m on this campaign with the full support and understanding of my family, and without them, I’d never have been able to make it half as far as I have.”

  “Senator, in recent weeks, Governor Tate—who many view as your primary in-party opponent—has been speaking out for stricter screening protocols among children and the elderly, and increased funding for the private school system, on the basis that overcrowding in the public schools only increases the risk of wide-scale viral incubation and outbreak. How do you stand on this issue?”

  “Well, Miss Mason, as you know, all three of my daughters have attended the excellent public schools in our home town. My eldest—”

  “That would be Rebecca Ryman, age eighteen?”

  “That’s correct. My eldest will be graduating high school this June and expects to start at Brown University in the fall, where she’ll be studying political science, like her old man. Supporting a free and equal public school system is one of the duties of the government. Which does mean increased blood screening for children under the age of fourteen, and additional funding for school security, but it seems to me that taking money from our public schools because they might be threatened at some point in the future is a bit of burning down the barn to keep the hay from going bad.”

  “How do you speak to the criticisms that your campaign depends too heavily on the secular issues facing our nation, while ignoring the spiritual?”

  Senator Ryman’s lips quirked in a smile. “I say when God comes down here and helps me clean my house, I’ll be more than happy to help Him with cleaning His. Until then, I’ll trouble myself with keeping people fed and breathing, and let Him tend the parts I can’t do anything to help.”

  The door opened as Channing returned, balancing a tray of Starbucks cups on his outstretched arms. The interchangeable interns promptly mugged him. An open can of Coke was somehow deposited in front of me in the chaos that followed. I acknowledged it with a grateful nod, picked it up, and sipped before saying, “If the campaign ends today, Senator, if this is the culmination of your work to date… was it worth it?”

  “No,” he said. The room went quiet. I could almost hear heads turning toward him. “As your readers are no doubt aware, an act of sabotage committed at my headquarters earlier this month led to the deaths of four good men and women who were dedicated to supporting this campaign. They signed on to draw a paycheck and maybe, along the way, help an ideal find a place in this modern world. Instead, they passed on to whatever reward may be waiting for us—for heroes—in the next world. If those men and women had lived, then yes, I could have walked away from this a little sadder, a little wiser, but convinced that I’d done the right thing, I’d done my best, and next time, I’d be able to make that run all the way to the end of the road. At this point?

  “Nothing I do is bringing them back, and if there were something I could do to change what happened in Eakly, I would have done it ten times over. From where I sit, there’s only one thing left that I can do, and that’s win. For the ideal they died supporting, and for the sake of their memories. So if I lose, if I have to go home empty-handed, if the next time I contact their families it’s to say, ‘Sorry, but I couldn’t make it after all’… then no, it wasn�
��t worth it. But it was the only thing I knew to do.”

  There was a long, stunned pause before the room erupted in applause. Most of it came from the interchangeable interns, but the technicians were applauding as well—and so, his hands devoid of coffee cups, was Channing. I noted this with thoughtful interest before turning back to the senator and nodding.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said, “and best of luck in today’s primaries.”

  Senator Ryman flashed a practiced grin. “I don’t need luck. I just need the waiting to be over.”

  “And I just need the use of one of your data ports, so that I can clean this up and transmit it over for upload,” I said, pulling out my MP3 recorder and holding it up to the room. “It’ll take me about fifteen minutes to do the surface edits.”

  “Will we be permitted to review your report before release?” asked Channing.

  “Down, boy,” said the senator. “I don’t see where we need to. Georgia’s been square with us so far, and I don’t see where that’s going to change. Georgia?”

  “You can review it if you’d like, but all that’s going to do is delay release,” I said. “Leave me to work, and this hits my front page before the polls have closed.”

  “Go to it,” said the senator, and indicated a free space on the wall. “You have all the data ports you need.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and took my Coke, moving over to the wall to settle down and set to work.

  Editing a report is both easier and harder for me than it is for Shaun or Buffy. My material rarely depends on graphics. I don’t need to concern myself with camera angles, lighting, or whether the footage I use gets my point across. At the same time, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in today’s era of instant gratification and high-speed answers, sometimes people aren’t willing to deal with all those hard words when a few pictures supposedly do the job just as well. It’s harder to sell people on a report that’s just news without pictures or movies to soften the blow. I have to find the heart of every subject as fast as I can, pin it down on the page, and then cut it wide open for the audience to see.

  “Super Tuesday: Index Case for a Presidency” wouldn’t win me any awards, but once I cleaned up my impromptu interview with Senator Ryman and intercut the text with a few still shots of the man, I was reasonably sure that it was going to catch and hold an audience, and tell the truth as I understood it. Anything beyond that was more than I had a right to ask.

  With my report uploaded and turned in, I settled to do what a lifetime of reporting the truth has equipped me for best of all: I settled to wait. I watched the interchangeable interns come and go, watched Channing pace, and watched the senator, aware that his fate was already determined, holding calm and implacable sway over them all. He just didn’t know what that determination was.

  The polls closed at midnight. Every screen in the room was turned to the major media outlets, a dozen talking heads conflicting with one another’s words as they tried to string the suspense out and drive their ratings just a few degrees higher. I couldn’t blame them for it, but that didn’t mean that I had to be impressed with it.

  My ear cuff beeped. I tapped it.

  “Go.”

  “Georgia, it’s Buffy.”

  “Results?”

  “Senator Ryman took the primary with a seventy percent clean majority. His position jumped eleven points as soon as your report went live.”

  I closed my eyes and smiled. One of the talking heads had just revealed the same information, or something similar; whoops and cheers were filling the room. “Say the words, Buffy.”

  “We’re going to the Republican National Convention.”

  Sometimes, the truth can set you free.

  * * *

  The importance of the Raskin-Watts trial and the failure of all subsequent attempts to overturn the ruling have been often overlooked in the wake of more recent, more sensational incidents. After all, what bearing can two long-dead religious nutcases from upstate Indiana have on the state of modern politics?

  Quite a lot. For one thing, the current tendency to dismiss Geoff Raskin and Reed Watts as “religious nutcases” is an oversimplification so extreme as to border on the criminal. Geoff Raskin held a degree in psychology from UC Santa Cruz, with a specialization in crowd control. Reed Watts was an ordained priest who worked with troubled youth and was instrumental in bringing several communities “back to God.” They were, in short, intelligent men who recognized the potential for turning the waves of social change engendered by the side effects of Kellis-Amberlee to their own benefit, and to the benefit of their faith.

  Did Geoff Raskin and Reed Watts work for the common good? Read the reports on what they did to Warsaw, Indiana, and see if you think so. Seven hundred and ninety-three people died in the primary infection wave alone, and the cleanup from the secondary infections took six years to complete, during which time Raskin and Watts were held in maximum security, awaiting trial. According to their own testimony, they were intending to use the living dead as a threat to bring the people of Warsaw, and eventually of the United States, around to their point of view: that Kellis-Amberlee was the judgment of the Lord, and that all ungodly ways would soon be wiped from the Earth.

  It was the finding of the courts that the use of weaponized live-state Kellis-Amberlee, as represented by the captive zombies, was considered an act of terrorism, and that all individuals responsible for such acts would be tried under the International Terrorism Acts of 2012. Geoff Raskin and Reed Watts were killed by lethal injection, and their bodies were remanded to the government to assist in the study of the virus they had helped to spread.

  The moral of our story, beyond the obvious “don’t play with dead things”: Some lines were never meant to be crossed, however good your cause may seem.

  —From Images May Disturb You, the blog of Georgia Mason, March 11, 2040

  Eleven

  Georgia! Shaun! It’s so lovely to see you!” Emily Ryman was all smiles as she approached, arms spread wide in an invitation to an embrace. I glanced at Shaun and he stepped forward, letting her hug him while he blocked her from reaching me. I don’t like physical contact from semistrangers, and Shaun knows it.

  If Emily noticed the deliberate way we positioned ourselves, she didn’t comment. “I never quite believe you’re alive after those reports you do, you foolish, foolish boy.”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Emily,” Shaun said, and hugged her back. He’s much easier with that sort of thing than I am. I blame this on the fact that he’s the kind of person who believes in shoving his hand into the dark, creepy hole, rather than sensibly avoiding it. “How have you been?”

  “Busy, as usual. Foaling season kept us hopping, but that’s mostly over, thank God. I lost two good mares this year, and neither managed to reanimate on the grounds, thanks to the help being on the ball.” Emily detangled herself from Shaun, still smiling, and turned to offer her hand. Not a hug, just her hand. I gave her a nod of approval as I took it. Her smile widened. “Georgia. I can’t thank you enough for your coverage of my husband’s campaign.”

  “It hasn’t just been me.” I reclaimed my hand. “There are a lot of reporters keeping a close eye on the senator. Word on the street is he’s receiving the party nomination tonight.” The other political journalists were starting to smell “White House” in the water and were gathering like sharks, hoping for something worth seizing on. Buffy spent half her time disabling cameras and microphones set up by rival blog sites. She spent the other half writing steamy porn about the senator’s aides and hanging out with Chuck Wong, who’d been spending a disconcerting amount of time in our van recently, but that was her business.

  “Yes, but you’re the only one I’ve met who’s reporting on him, rather than the interesting things his campaign drives out from beneath the rocks, or the fictional affairs of his office aides,” Emily said, wryly. “I know I can trust what you say. That’s meant a lot to me and the girls while Peter was o
n the road, and it’s going to mean a lot more from here on out.”

  “It’s been an honor.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s going to mean a lot more’?” asked Shaun. “Hey, George, are you finally going to learn to write? Because that would be awesome. I can’t carry you forever, you know.”

  “Sadly, Shaun, this doesn’t have anything to do with how well your sister can write.” Emily shook her head. “It’s all about the campaign.”

  “I understand,” I said. Glancing to Shaun, I continued, “Once he accepts the nomination—assuming he gets nominated—this gets real. Up until now, it’s been a weird sort of summer vacation.” After the nominations, it would be campaigning in earnest. It would be debates and deals and long nights, and she’d be lucky to see him before the inauguration. Assuming all that work didn’t turn out to be for nothing; assuming he could win.

  “Exactly,” said Emily, expression going weary. “That man is lucky I love him.”

  “Statements like that make me wish that I didn’t have quite so much journalistic integrity, Emily,” I said. The statement was mild, but the warning wasn’t. “You, expressing unhappiness with your husband? That’s about to become sound-bite gold for both sides of the political fence.”

  She paused. “You’re telling me to be careful.”

  “I’m telling you something you already know.” I smiled, changing the subject to one that would hopefully make her look less uncomfortable. “Will the girls be joining you? I still need to meet them.”

  “Not for this silly convention,” she said. “Rebecca is getting ready for college, and I didn’t have the heart to drag Jeanne and Amber away from the foals to get their pictures taken by a thousand strangers. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”