“Did she bite, scratch, or come into contact with you in any way after exposure?”
They were routine questions. They’d never made me so angry in my life. “No, Steve, I’m afraid she didn’t. No bites, no scratches, no hugs, not even a kiss good night before that Bible-thumping bastard’s assassins sent my sister off to the great newsroom in the sky. If you’ve got a blood test unit and you’ll open the doors, I’ll prove it.”
“You armed, Shaun?”
“You gonna leave me in here if I say yes? ’Cause I can lie.”
The pause that followed was almost enough to make me think Steve had decided safe was better than sorry and was leaving me in the van to rot. That was a goal, sure, but not yet. The story wasn’t done until the last of the loose ends were tied off, and one of those loose ends was slated to be George’s honor guard. Finally, voice low, Steve said, “I haven’t read her last entry all the way. I read enough. Stand back from the door and keep your hands where I can see them until you’ve tested out clean.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and stepped backward.
The air that rushed in when the door opened was so fresh it almost hurt my lungs. The scents of blood and gunpowder were heavy, but not as heavy as they’d been inside the van. I took an involuntary step forward, toward the light, and stopped as a large dark blur raised what I could only assume was an arm and said, “Don’t come any closer until I’ve moved away.”
“You got it, Steve-o,” I said. “You guys dealt with the little outbreak you had going out here? Sorry I didn’t come to join your party. I was preoccupied.”
“It’s been contained, if not resolved, and I understand,” said Steve, coming into focus as my eyes adjusted. He knelt, placed something on the ground, and retreated, allowing me to approach the object. As expected, it was a blood testing unit. Not the top of the line, but not the bottom, either; solidly middle of the road, enough to confirm or deny infection within an acceptable margin of error. “Acceptable.” That’s always seemed like such a funny word to use when you’re talking about whether somebody lives or dies.
It weighed less than a pound. I broke the seal with my thumb, looking toward Steve as I did. “He doesn’t walk away from this,” I said.
“I promise,” Steve replied.
Good enough for me. “Count of three,” I said. “One…”
Inside my head, Georgia said, Two…
I slid my hand into the unit and pressed the relays down, watching as the lights started cycling through the available colors. Red-yellow-green, yellow-red-green. Every damn one of those lights danced between red and gold for a few seconds, long enough to make me sweat, before settling on a calm and steady green. You’re fine, son; just fine. Now go and be merry.
“Merry” wasn’t exactly in my plans. I held up the testing unit, letting Steve get a good long look. “This good enough?”
“It is,” he said, and tossed me a biohazard bag. “What the hell happened, Shaun?”
“Just what George said. Some sick fucker killed Rick’s cat and rigged our trailers to blow. When the blast didn’t kill us, they hit George with one of those hypodermic darts like the one that triggered the outbreak at the Ryman place. Shit, I wish we’d been looking for the things back at Eakly. I bet we would’ve found one.”
“I bet we would have, too,” said Steve, watching as I dropped the testing unit into a biohazard bag. He was holding his sunglasses loosely in one hand, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who’s looked into hell and found he couldn’t cope with what he was seeing. I wouldn’t have been willing to bet that my eyes were any better. “You got a plan from here?”
“Oh, the usual. Get a vehicle, head for whatever site they have the candidates under lockdown at—”
“Right where you left them,” Steve interjected.
“Well, that’s convenient. I know the security layout there. Anyway, head back to the candidates and have a chat with Governor Tate.” I shrugged. “Maybe blow his brains out. I don’t know. The plan is still in the formative stage.”
“Need a ride?”
I grinned, the expression feeling foreign on my face. “I’d love one.”
“Good. Because my boys and I—what’s left of my boys—wouldn’t like to see you get hurt just because you felt like being stupid and going it alone.”
The ludicrousness of it all was enough to make me laugh. “Wait, you mean this was all I had to do to get myself a bigger security detail?”
“Guess so.”
“Get your boys.” The laughter faded as I looked at him. “It’s time we got on the road.”
Sometimes we leave the connecting door between our rooms open all night. We’d still share a room if they’d let us, turn the other room into an office and have done with it. Because both of us hate to be alone, and both of us hate to have other people—people outside the country we’ve made together—around when we’re defenseless. We’re always defenseless when we’re asleep.
We leave the connecting door open, and I wake up in the night to the sound of him snoring, and I wonder how the hell I’m going to stay alive after he finally slips up. He’ll die first, we both know it, but I don’t know… I really don’t know how long I’ll stay alive without him. That’s the part Shaun doesn’t know. I don’t intend to be an only child for long.
Twenty-eight
The outbreak was still going strong. The infected weren’t actually everywhere; it just seemed that way, as they lurched and ran out of the shadows, following whatever weird radar signals the virus uses to tell the active hosts from the ones where the potential for infection is still just that, potential, sleeping and waiting for a wake-up. The scientists have been trying to figure out that little trick for twenty years, and as far as I know, they’re no closer than they were the day Romero movies stopped being trashy horror and started being guides to staying alive. I should have been thrilled—it’s not every day I get to walk through the center of an actual outbreak—but I was too busy being angry to really give a damn. Zombies didn’t kill George. People did. Living, breathing, uninfected people.
I recognized a lot of faces among the infected. Interns from the campaign; a few security staffers, one long-faced man with thinning red hair who’d been traveling with us for about six weeks writing speeches for the senator. No more speeches for you, buddy, I thought, and put a bullet through the center of his forehead. He fell soundlessly, robbed of menace, and I turned away, nauseated.
“If I get out of this alive, I may need to look for another line of work.”
“What’s that?” asked Steve, between breathless radio calls to his surviving men. He was pulling them back to the motor pool. Several were moving slowly due to the need to herd less-well-armed survivors, going against the recommended survival strategies for an outbreak as they responded like human beings. You want to stay alive in a zombie swarm? You go alone or in a small group where everyone is of similar physical condition and weapons training. You never stop, you never hesitate, and you never show any mercy for the people that would slow you down. That’s what the military says we should do, and if I ever meet anybody who listens to that particular set of commands, I may shoot them myself just to improve the gene pool. When you can help people stay alive, you help them. We’re all we’ve got.