My ear cuff beeped, signaling a call. I reached up and tapped it on. “Georgia.”
“You coming to join the party soon, or should I drink this beer by myself?” I could hear laughter in the background. The senator’s entourage was celebrating another series of political minefields navigated with grace and charm. They were right to celebrate. If the numbers we’d been getting were anything to go by, Senator Ryman was a shoo-in for the Republican Party nomination once the convention rolled around.
“Just finishing out here, Shaun,” I said. The hall lights began coming up from their ambient “event” setting, heading for the blazing fluorescents that would keep things lit for the cleaning crew. I squinted my eyes closed, turning to walk toward the stage exit. “Let folks know I’m coming through?”
“On it,” he said. My ear cuff beeped again, signaling disconnection. I’m not much for jewelry, but disguised cellular phones are another matter. They’re more convenient than walkie-talkies and have a longer battery life, with an average talk time of fifty hours before the battery gives out. Once the batteries go, it’s cheaper to buy a new phone than it is to pay to have the case cracked and a new battery installed, but we all have to pay the price of progress. I have at least three phones on me at any given time, and only Shaun has all the numbers.
Two of the senator’s security guards were waiting by the door, dressed in identical black suits, with sunglasses covering their eyes and blotting out most of their expressions. I nodded to them. They nodded back.
“Steve, Tyrone,” I said.
“Georgia,” said Tyrone. He produced a portable blood testing unit from his pocket. “If you would?”
I sighed. “You know they’re just going to test me again before they let me into the convoy.”
“Yes.”
“And you know that a clean result now would be a clean result after the five-minute walk to the buses.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re still going to make me prick my damn finger, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I hate protocol.” My ritual grumbling finished, I extended my hand, pressing my index finger against the contact pad. The lights on the top of the box flashed in the familiar red-green pattern, settling on a steady, uninfected green. “Happy?”
“Overjoyed,” Tyrone replied, a faint smile on his lips as he withdrew a biohazard bag from his other pocket and dropped the test kit into it. “Right this way.”
“How gracious,” I said. Steve smothered a wider smile, and I smiled back, starting across the parking lot toward the distant lights of the convoy. The bodyguards fell into step beside me, flanking me as we walked. Being escorted through every open area we encountered had been a little annoying at first, but I was getting used to it.
The senator’s crew—Shaun, Buffy, and I included—had been traveling in a convoy consisting of five luxury RVs, two buses, our van, and three converted military transport Jeeps, which were ostensibly for scouting runs before entering open territory but were mostly used for off-road rallies in whatever fields presented themselves. There were several smaller vehicles, ranging from my bike to the more substantially armored motorcycles favored by the bodyguards. With as much equipment as we need to carry to meet legal safety standards, it wouldn’t make sense to break camp and check into hotels for anything less than a four-day stay, and so we often found ourselves spending a lot of nights “roughing it” in mobile homes that were better outfitted than my room back home.
Shaun, Buffy, and I had been assigned to share one of the RVs, although Buffy usually slept in the van with her equipment, claiming that the perpetual gloom of my special lights gave her, quote, “the heebie-jeebies.” The senator’s crew had been taking it as another sign that our resident techie is a little bit unhinged, and Shaun and I hadn’t been making any efforts to discourage them, even though we knew that it was less of an obsessive-compulsive desire to protect the cameras and more of an ongoing quest for something resembling privacy. Unlike most of our generation, Buffy is an only child, and life in the convoy had been getting on nerves she may not have known she had.
Life in the convoy was also creating a new issue: her religion, and our lack thereof. Buffy prayed before she went to sleep. Buffy said grace before she ate. And Shaun and I… didn’t. It was better to avoid the conflict by letting her have a little space. Besides, that gave Shaun and me the sort of privacy we were accustomed to—the kind that never actually leaves you alone, but doesn’t put people in your personal space when you don’t want them there, either.
Two more guards waited at the perimeter gates. Unlike Steve and Tyrone, who kept their pistols concealed beneath their jackets, these two openly held autofeed rifles I vaguely recognized from Mom’s magazines. They could probably hold off the average zombie mob without outside assistance.
“Tracy, Carlos,” I said, and extended my hand, palm down. “I’m tired, I’m filthy, and I’m ready to get drunk with the rest of the good boys and girls. Please confirm my uninfected status so that I can get on with it.”
“Bring me a beer later, and it’s a deal,” Carlos replied, and shoved one of the tester units over my hand, while Tracy did the same for Steve. Tyrone stepped back, waiting his turn. These were midrange units, performing a more sensitive scan and taking a correspondingly longer time to return results. It would be possible for the finger-prick test to declare someone clean and for the full-hand unit to revoke that status less than five minutes later.
My results came back clean, as did Steve’s. Tyrone stepped up to start his own tests and waved us off, toward the third RV in the chain. I could claim that my finely honed journalistic instincts told me which way to go, but they didn’t have nearly as much to do with my choice of destinations as with the fact that it was the only RV with an open door, and was definitely the source of the pounding rock music that was assaulting our ears. The Dandy Warhols. The senator is a man who loves his classics.
Senator Ryman was standing on a coffee table inside the RV with his shirt half-unbuttoned and his tie draped over his left shoulder, saluting the room with a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. People were cheering too loudly for me to tell what he was saying, but from the look of things, I’d just walked into the middle of a toast. I stopped by the door, stepping out of the way to let Steve get inside behind me, and took a wine cooler offered by one of the interns. I’ve given up trying to keep them straight; this was one of the brunette ones, which made her a Jenny, a Jamie, or a Jill. I swear, they should come with name tags.
Shaun pushed through the crowd, nodding to Steve before settling next to me. “Word?”
“Generally positive. People like our boy.” I nodded to the senator, who had pulled a Jenny up onto the table with him. The audience cheered louder. “I think we might be able to ride this one all the way.”
“Buffy said the same thing,” Shaun agreed, taking a swig from his beer. “Ready to review tonight’s footage?”
“What, and miss the bacchanal? Let me think…yes.” I shook my head. “Get me out of here.”
The first postappearance party was fun. So was the third. And the fifteenth. By the twenty-third, I had come to recognize them as a clever method of controlling the locals: let the peons blow off some steam, reinforce the idea that you’re just “one of the gang,” and get down to the real business after most of the campaign had gone to bed. It was cunning, it was productive, and I salute Senator Ryman for thinking of it. All that being what it is, I saw no reason to spend any more time in an overly bright, overly crowded RV drinking crappy wine coolers than I absolutely had to.