afternoon, folks?”
“Getting out of here,” I said, turning back to the others. “I’m on the bike. I’ll take point, but we need to get back to civilization.”
Buffy blinked at me, looking baffled. She’s a Fictional; her style of blogging is totally self-contained, and she only sees the field when Shaun and I haul her out to work our equipment. Even then, she pretty much never leaves the van. It’s not her job to pay attention to anything that doesn’t live on a computer screen.
Shaun, on the other hand, sobered immediately. “Why?”
“There’s nothing moving out there.” I opened the back door, scanning the land more closely. It had taken me a few minutes—maybe too long—to realize what was wrong, but now that I’d seen it, it was obvious.
There should always be something moving in a town the size of Watsonville. Feral cats, rabbits, even herds of wild deer looking for the overgrown remains of what used to be gardens. We’ve seen everything from goats to somebody’s abandoned Shetland pony wandering through the remains of the old towns, living off the land. So where were they? There wasn’t as much as a squirrel in sight.
Shaun grimaced. “Crap.”
“Crap,” I agreed. “Buffy, grab your gear.”
“I’ll drive,” Shaun said, and started for the front of the van.
Buffy was looking between us with wide-eyed bafflement. “Okay, does somebody want to tell me what’s causing the evacuation?” she demanded.
“There aren’t any animals,” Shaun said, dropping into the driver’s seat.
I paused while yanking my gloves back on, taking pity, and replied, “Nothing clears the wildlife like the infected. We need to get out of here before we have—”
As if on cue, a low, distant moan came through the van’s back door, carried by the prevailing winds. I grimaced.
“—company,” Shaun and I finished, in unison.
“Race you home,” I called, and ducked out the door. Buffy slammed it behind me, and I heard all three bolts click home. Even if I screamed, they’d never let me back inside. That’s the protocol when you’re in the field. No matter how loudly you yell, they never let you in.
Not if they want to live, anyway.
There were no zombies in sight, but the moaning from the north and east was getting louder. I tightened the straps on my gloves, grabbed my helmet, and slung my leg over the bike’s still-warm seat. Inside the van, I knew Buffy would be checking her cameras, fastening her seatbelt, and trying to figure out why we were reacting so badly to zombies that probably weren’t even in range. If there’s really a God, she’s never going to know the answer to that one.
The van pulled out, bumping and shaking as it made its way onto the freeway. I gunned the bike’s engine and followed, pulling up alongside the van before moving out about ten feet ahead, where Shaun could see me and we could both watch the road for obstructions. It’s a simple safety formation, but it’s saved a lot of asses in the last twenty years. We rode like that, separated by a thin ribbon of broken road, all the way out of the valley, through the South Bay, and into the cool, welcoming air of Berkeley, California.
Home sweet zombie-free home.
…as he pressed his hand to her cheek, Marie could feel his flesh burning up from within, changing as the virus that slept in all of us awoke in her lover. She blinked back tears, licking suddenly dry lips before she managed to whisper, “I’m so sorry, Vincent. I never thought that it would end this way.”
“It doesn’t have to end this way for you,” he replied, and smiled, sorrow written in his still-bright eyes. “Get the hell out of here, Marie. There’s nothing in this wasteland but the dead. Go home. Live, and be happy.”
“It’s too late for that. It’s too late for me.” She held up the blood testing kit and watched his eyes widen as he took in the meaning of the single red light burning at the top. “It’s been too late since the attack.” Her own smile was as weak as his. “You called me the hyacinth girl. I guess I belong in the wasteland.”
“At least we’re damned together,” he said, and kissed her.
Shaun and I never met our parents’ biological son. He was a kindergarten student during the Rising, and he survived the initial wave thanks to our parents, who pulled him out of class as soon as the data started pointing to public schools as amplification flash points. They did everything they could to protect him from the threat of infection. Everyone assumed he’d be one of the lucky ones.
The people next door had two golden retrievers, each weighing well over forty pounds, putting them in the range where amplification becomes possible. One of them was bitten—it was never determined by what—and began conversion. No one saw it coming because it had never happened before. Phillip Anthony Mason was the first confirmed case of human Kellis-Amberlee conversion initiated by an animal.
This honor does not help my parents sleep at night.
I am aware that my stance on pet ownership legislation is not popular. People love dogs, people love horses, and they want to continue to keep them in private homes. I understand this. I also understand that animals want to be free, and that sick animals are twice as likely to slip their restraints and go looking for comfort. Eventually, “comfort” becomes “something to bite.” I support the Biological Mass Pet Ownership Restrictions, as do my parents. Were my brother alive today, he might feel different. But he’s not.
Three
Buffy’s neighborhood doesn’t allow nonresident vehicles to enter without running blood tests on all passengers, so we dropped her at the gate where she could get tested and head inside on foot. I don’t like pricking my fingers, and we were already looking at a second blood test when we reached the house. We live in an open neighborhood—one of the last in Alameda County—but our parents have to meet certain requirements if they want to keep their home-owner’s insurance, and until we can afford to move out on our own, we have to play along.
“I’ll upload the footage as soon as I finish cleaning it up,” Buffy promised. “Drop me a text when you hit the house, let me know you made it okay?”
“Sure, Buff,” I said. “Whatever you say.”
Buffy’s a great techie and a decent friend, but her ideas about safety are a little skewed, probably thanks to growing up in a high-security zone. She’s less worried in the field than she is in supposedly protected urban environments. While there
“See you tomorrow!” she said, and waved to Shaun through the van’s front window before she turned to head for the guard station where she’d spend the next five minutes being checked for contamination. Shaun waved back and restarted the engine, backing the van away from the gate. That was my cue. I flashed a thumbs-up to show that I was good to go as I kicked my bike into a turn, leading the way back to Telegraph Avenue and into the tangled warren of suburban streets surrounding our house.
Like Santa Cruz, Berkeley is a college town, and we got swarmed during the Rising. Kellis-Amberlee hit the dorms, incubated, and exploded outward in an epidemic pattern that took practically everyone by surprise. “Practically” is the important word there. By the time the infection hit Berkeley, the first posts about activity in
