Shaun and I left our eyes open, watching the senator as he spoke. We’re atheists. It’s hard to be anything else in a world where zombies can attack your elementary school talent show. Much of the country has turned back toward faith, however, acting under the vague supposition that it can’t hurt anything to have God on your side. I glanced at Buffy, who was nodding along with the senator’s words, eyes tightly closed. She’s a lot more religious than most people would guess. Her family is French Catholic. She’s been saying grace at any sort of large gathering since she was born, and she still attends a nonvirtual church on Sundays.
“Amen,” said the senator. We all echoed it with varying degrees of certainty.
Emily Ryman smiled. “Everybody, eat up. There’s more if you’re still hungry, but I want to eat too, so you’re going to have to serve yourselves after this round.” The senator got a kiss on the cheek to go with his fish tacos; the rest of us just got fed.
Not that Shaun was going to let lunch pass without a little light conversation. Of the two of us, he’s the gregarious one. Someone had to be. “Will you be coming along on the whole campaign, ma’am, or just this leg of it?” he asked, with uncharacteristic politeness. Then again, he’s always had a healthy respect for women with food.
“You couldn’t pay me enough to accompany this dog and pony show,” Emily said, dryly. “I think you kids are totally insane. Entertaining as all heck, and I love your site, but insane.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” I said.
“Uh-uh. For one thing, I am not taking the kids out on the road. No way. The tutors they hire for these things are never the sort I approve of.” She smiled at the senator, who patted her knee in an unconsciously companionable fashion. “And they wind up seeing way too many reporters and politicians. Not the sort you want keeping company with a bunch of impressionable young kids.”
“Look how it’s warped us,” said Shaun.
“Exactly,” she said, unflustered. “Besides which, the ranch doesn’t run itself.”
I nodded. “Your family still manages an actual horse ranch, don’t they?”
“You know the answer to that, Georgia,” said the senator. “Been in Emily’s family since the late eighteen hundreds.”
“If you think the risk of zombie palominos is enough to make me give up my horses, you’ve never met a real horse nut,” she said, grinning. “Now, don’t get your back up. I know where you stand on the animal mass restrictions. You’re a big supporter of Mason’s Law, aren’t you?”
“In all recreational and nonessential capacities, yes,” I said.
Thanks to the Masons’ biological son, Shaun and I have often found ourselves with an element of unasked-for name recognition when dealing with people who work with animals. Before Phillip, no one realized that all mammals with a body mass of forty pounds or more could become carriers of the live-state virus, or that Kellis-Amberlee was happy to cross species, going from man to beast and back again. Mom put a bullet through her only son’s head, back when that was still something new enough to break you forever—when it felt like murder, not mercy. So yeah, I guess you could say I support Mason’s Law.
“I would, too, in your position,” Emily said. Her tone carried none of the accusations I’m used to hearing from animal rights activists; she was speaking the truth, and I could deal, or not, as I so chose. “Now, if everyone wants to tuck in, it’s the start of a long day—and a longer month.”
“Eat up, everybody, before your lunch gets cold,” added the senator, and reached for the mimosas. Shaun and I exchanged a look, shrugged in near-unison, and reached for our forks.
One way or another, we were on our way.
My sister has retinal KA syndrome. That’s where the filovirus does this massive replication thing in the ocular fluid—there’s some more advanced technical term for it, but personally, I like to call it “eye goo,” because it pisses George off—and the pupils dilate as wide as they can and never close down like they do in a normal person. Mostly only girls get it, which is a relief, since I look stupid in sunglasses. Her eyes are supposed to be brown, but everyone thinks they’re black, because of her pupils being broken.
She was diagnosed when we were five, so I don’t really remember her without her sunglasses. And when we were nine, we got this really dumb babysitter who took George’s glasses, said, “You don’t need these,” and threw them into the backyard, thinking we were spoiled little suburban brats too afraid of the outdoors to go out after them. So it’s pretty plain that she was about as bright as a box of zombies.
Next thing you know, there’s me and George digging through the high grass looking for her sunglasses, when suddenly she freezes, eyes getting all wide, and says, “Shaun?” And I’m like, “What?” And she’s all, “There’s somebody else in the yard.” And then I turn around, and wham, zombie, right there! I hadn’t seen it because I don’t see as well in low light as she does. So there are some advantages to having your pupils permanently dilated. Besides the part where they can’t tell if you’re stoned or not without a blood test when you’re at school.
But anyway, zombie, in our backyard. So. Fucking. Cool.
You know, it’s been more than a decade since that evening, and that is still probably the best present that she’s ever gotten for me.
Six
Getting our equipment past the security screening offered by Senator Ryman’s staff took six and a half hours. Shaun spent the first two hours getting underfoot as he tried to guard his gear and finally got all of us banished inside. Now he was sulking on the parlor couch, chin almost level with his chest. “What are they doing, taking the van apart to make sure we didn’t stuff any zombies inside the paneling?” he grumbled. “Because, gee, that would work really well as an assassination tool.”
“It’s been tried,” Buffy said. “Do you remember the guy who tried to kill George Romero with the zombie pit bulls?”
“That’s an urban myth, Buffy. It’s been disproven about ninety times,” I said, continuing to pace. “George Romero died peacefully in his bed.”
“And now he’s a happy shambler at a government research facility,” said Shaun, abandoning his sulk in order to make “zombie” motions with his arms. The ASL for “zombie” has joined the raised middle finger as one of the few truly universal hand gestures. Some points just need to be made quickly.
“It’s sort of sad, thinking about him shuffling around out there, all decayed and mindless and not remembering the classics of his heyday,” said Buffy.
I eyed her. “He’s a government zombie. He eats better than we do.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” she said.
It took a while for the first Kellis-Amberlee outbreaks to be confirmed as anything but hoaxes, and even after that was accomplished, it took time for the various governmental agencies to finish fighting over whose problem it was. The CDC got sick of the arguing about three days in, jumped into things with both feet, and never looked back. They had squads in the field by the end of week two, capturing zombies for study. It was quickly apparent that there’s no curing a zombie; you can’t undo the amount of brain damage the virus does with anything gentler than a bullet to the brainpan. But you can work on ways to neutralize Kellis-Amberlee itself, and since all a zombie really does is convert flesh into virus, a few captive shamblers provided the best possible test subjects.