grab the edge of the table, and pull myself over it into her lap. She grabs for my head but whatever's inside her isn't very good at controlling a human body and I roll again, drop arse-first onto the floor (my coccyx will tell me about it tomorrow), and scramble to my feet.
The previously orderly meeting is dissolving into the kind of carnage that can only ensue when most of the members of an international joint-liaison committee turn into braineating zombies. Luckily they're not Sam Raimi zombies, they're just midlevel bureaucrats whose cerebral cortices have been abruptly wiped in the presence of a Dho-Na summoning geometry (in this case, embedded in the dissolve between two PowerPoint slides), allowing some random extradimensional gibberers to move in. Half of them can't even stand up, and those who can aren't very effective yet.
**Have you got her?** I ask Ramona, working my way past Anna (who is currently keeping Francois occupied by chewing on his left hand) and nearly tripping over the wreckage of my tablet PC.
**She's fighting back!** A stray, booted foot lashes out at me and now I succeed in falling over, on top of Sophie as luck would have it. Sophie looks up at me with blank eyes and makes a keening noise like a cat that wants to break a furry critter's neck.
**WelI fucking do something!** I yell. **Okay.** Sophie jerks underneath me and tries to sink her teeth into my arm. But Ramona's ready with a springloaded syringe and nails her right through the shoulder.
**You'lI need to open the wards so we can get out.**
**I'm going to — ** Oh, right. Ramona's a guest. I lurch upright and lunge for the blotter in front of Anna's seat, grab at her gavel, and rap it on the table. 'As the last quorate member standing I hereby unanimously promote myself to Chair and declare this session closed.' Five heads, their eyes swimming with luminous green worms, turn to face me.
'School's out.' I race for the door, piling into Ramona as I yank the handle open. **Got her?**
**Yes. Grab her other arm and move!** Sophie is kicking and writhing wordlessly but Ramona and I drag her through the doorway and I yank it shut behind us. The latch clicks, and Sophie goes limp. **Hey.** I look sideways. **What's — ** Ramona lets go of her other arm and I stagger. **Well isn't that a surprise,** she comments, looking down at Sophie, who sprawls on the hotel carpet in front of the door.
**She's dead, Jim.**
**Bob,** I correct automatically. **What do you mean, she's dead?**
**Poison-pill programming, I think.** I lean against the wall, dizzy and nauseated. **Wie've got to go back! The others are still in there. Can we break it? The control link, I mean. If it's just a transient override — ** Ramona winces and stares at me. **Will you stop that?
It's not a transient and there's nothing we can do for them.**
**But she's dead! We've got to do something! And they're — **
**They're dead, too.** Ramona stares at me in obvious concern. **Did you hit your head or something? No, I'd have felt that. You're squeamish, aren't you?**
**We could have saved them! You knew what was going to happen! You could have warned us! If you hadn't been so fucking curious to know what was buried in the presentation — shit, why didn't you just snarf a copy and edit it yourself? This isn't the first time it's happened, is it?' She lets me rant for a minute or so, until I run down.
**Bob, Bob. This is the first time this has happened. At least, the first time anyone's gotten out of one of these presentations alive.**
**Jesus. Then why do you keep having them?** I realize I'm waving my arms around but I'm too upset to stop. I have a terrible feeling that if I'd just given in to my first impulse to yank the cord on the projector — **lt's murder! Letting it go ahead like that — **
**We don't. My department — doesn't. TLA is selling hard outside the US, Bob. They sell in places like Malaysia or Kazakhstan or Peru, and in places that aren't quite on the map, if you follow me. We've heard rumors about this. We've seen some of the ... fallout. But this is the first time we've gotten in on the ground floor. Sophie Frank was fingered by your people, if you must know. Your Andy Newstrom raised the flag. She's been behaving oddly for the past couple of months. You were sent because, unlike Newstrom, you're trained for this category of operation. But nobody else took the warnings sufficiently seriously — except for your department, and mine.**
**But what about the others?** She stares at me grimly. **Blame Ellis Billington, Bob.
Remember, if he wasn't into the hard sell, this wouldn't have happened.** Then she turns and stalks away, leaving me alone and shaking in the corridor, with a corpse and a locked conference room full of middle- management zombies to explain.
4: YOU'RE IN THE JET SET NOW
MY CHECKOUT IS EVER SO SLIGHTLY DELAYED. I spend about eight hours at the nearest police station being questioned by one GSA desk pilot after another. At first I think they're going to arrest me — shoot the messenger is a well-known parlor game in spook circles — but after a few fraught hours there's a change in the tone of the interrogation.
Someone higher up has obviously got a handle on events and is smoothing my path. 'It is best for you to leave the country tomorrow,' says Gerhardt from Frankfurt, not smiling. 'Later we will have questions, but not now.' He shakes his head. 'If you should happen to see Ms. Random, please explain that we have questions for her also.' A taciturn cop drives me back to the hotel, where a GSA cleaning team has replaced the conference room door with a blank stretch of brand-new wall. I walk past it without quite losing my shit, then retreat to my shielded bedroom and spend a sleepless night trying to second guess myself. But not only is the past another country, it's one that doesn't issue visas; and so, first thing in the morning, I head downstairs to collect the hire car.
A tech support nightmare is waiting for me down in the garage. Pinky is goose-stepping around with a clipboard, trying to look officious while Brains is elbow-deep in the trunk with a circuit tester and a roll of gaffer tape.
'What. The. Fuck?' I manage to say, then lean against a concrete pillar.
'We've been modifying this Smart car for you!' Pinky says excitedly. 'You need to know how to use all its special features.'
I rub my eyes in disbelief. 'Listen guys, I've been attacked by brain-eating zombies and I'm due on a flight to Saint Martin tonight. This isn't the right time to show me your toys. I just want to get home — '
'Impossible,' Brains mutters around a mouthful of oily bolts that look suspiciously as if they've just come out of the engine manifold.
'Angleton told us not to let you go until you'd finished your briefing!' Pinky exclaims.
There's no escape. 'Okay.' I yawn. 'You just put those bolts back and I'll be going.'
'Look in the boot, here. What our American friends would call the trunk. Careful, mind that pipe! Good. Now pay attention, Bob. We've added a Bluetooth host under the driver's seat, and a repurposed personal video player running Linux. Peripheral screens at all five cardinal points, five grams of graveyard dust mixed with oil of Bergamot and tongue of newt in the cigarette lighter socket, and a fully connected Dee-Hamilton circuit glued to the underside of the body shell. As long as the ignition is running, you're safe from possession attempts. If you need to dispose of a zombie in the passenger seat, just punch in the lighter button and wait for the magic smoke. You've got a mobile phone, yes?
With Bluetooth and a Java sandbox? Great, I'll email you an applet — run it, pair your phone with the car's hub, and all you have to do is dial 6-6-6 and the car will come to you, wherever you are. There's another applet to remotely trigger all the car's countermeasures, just in case someone's sneaked a surprise into it.'
I shake my head, but it won't stop spinning. 'Zombie smoke in the lighter socket, Dee-Hamilton circuit in the body shell, and the car comes when I summon it. Okay. Hey, what's — '
He slaps my hand as I reach for the boxy lump fastened to the gearshift with duct tape. 'Don't touch that button, Bob!'
'Why? What happens if I touch that button, Pinky'
'The car ejects!'
