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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.

After twenty years of testing and the derailment of almost every technical field that didn’t feed directly into the medical profession, we’ve managed little more than absolutely nothing. At this point, they can completely remove Kellis-Amberlee from a living body, using a combination of chemotherapy, blood replacement, and a nasty strain of Ebola that’s been modified to search and destroy its cousin. There are just a few downsides, like the part where it costs upward of ten thousand dollars for a treatment, none of the test subjects has survived, and oh, right, the constant fear the modified virus will mutate like Marburg Amberlee did and leave us with something even worse to deal with. Where the living dead are concerned, we pretty much exist on square one.

It didn’t take long for researchers to connect the health of their “pet” zombies to the amount of protein— specifically living or recently killed flesh; soybeans and legumes won’t cut it—they consumed. Kellis-Amberlee converts tissue into viral blocks. The more tissue it can find, the less of the original zombie it converts. So if you feed a zombie constantly, it won’t wither to the point of becoming useless. Most of the nation’s remaining cattle ranches are there to feed the living dead. A beautiful irony, when you consider that cows break the forty-pound threshold, and thus reanimate upon death. Zombies eating zombies. Good work if you can get it.

A lot of folks leave their bodies to science. Your family skips funeral expenses, the government pays a nice settlement so they won’t sue if your image winds up on television one of these days, and if you belong to one of those religious sects that believes the body has to remain intact in order to eventually get carried up to Heaven, you don’t run the risk of offending God. You just risk eating the research scientists if containment fails, and some people don’t see that as being as much of an abomination as cremation.

George Romero didn’t mean to save the world any more than Dr. Alexander Kellis meant to almost destroy it, but you can’t always choose your lot in life. Most people wouldn’t have had the first idea of how to deal with the zombies if it weren’t for the lessons they’d learned from Romero’s movies. Go for the brain; fire works, but only if you don’t let the burning zombie touch you; once you’re bitten, you’re dead. Fans of Romero’s films applied the lessons of a thousand zombie movies to the reality of what had happened. They traded details of the attacks and their results over a thousand blogs from a thousand places, and humanity survived.

In interviews, Mr. Romero always seemed baffled and a little delighted by the power his movies had proven to have. “Always knew there was a reason people didn’t like seeing the zombies win,” he’d said. If anyone was surprised when he left his body to the government, they didn’t say anything. It seemed like a fitting end for a man who went from king of bad horror to national hero practically overnight.

“They better not damage any of my equipment,” Shaun said, snapping me back to the present. He was scowling at the window again. “Some of that stuff took serious barter to get.”

“They’re not going to damage your equipment, dumb ass. They’re the government, we’re journalists, and they know we’d tell everyone in the whole damn world, starting with our insurance agency.” I leaned over to hit him in the back of the head. “They just need to make sure we’re not carrying any bombs.”

“Or zombies,” added Buffy.

“Or drugs,” said Shaun.

“Actually,” said the senator, stepping into the room, “we’re slightly disappointed by the lack of bombs, zombies, or drugs hidden in your gear. I thought you folks were supposed to be reporters, but there wasn’t even any illicit booze.”

“We’re clear?” I asked, ceasing my pacing. Shaun and Buffy were already on their feet, nearly vibrating. I understood their anxiety; the senator’s security crew had their hands on all our servers, which had Buffy unhappy, and on Shaun’s zombie hunting and handling equipment, which usually makes him so restless that I wind up locking him in the bathroom just to get some peace and quiet. It’s times like this that I’m truly glad of my role as the hard-nosed reporter in our little crew. Maybe Buffy and Shaun call me a Luddite, but when the government goons take away all our equipment for examination, they lose everything. I, on the other hand, retain my MP3 recorder, cellular phone, notebook computer, and stylus. They’re all too basic to require much examination.

Of course, I can’t keep my hands on the vehicles, which had me almost as restless as my companions. The van and my bike represent the most expensive articles we travel with, and most of our livelihood depends on their upkeep. At the same time, they’re probably the easiest items to repair—a good mechanic can undo almost any damage, and my bike isn’t that customized. As long as the feds didn’t bust up the van, we’d be fine.

“You’re clear,” the senator said. He didn’t bat an eye as Shaun and Buffy ran out of the room, despite the fact that neither of them said good-bye. I remained where I was, and after a moment, he turned toward me. “I must admit, we were impressed by the structural reinforcements on your van. Planning to last out a siege in that thing?”

“We’ve considered it. The security upgrades were our mother’s design. We did the electrical work ourselves.”

Senator Ryman nodded as if this explained everything. In a way, it did. Stacy Mason has been the first name in zombie-proof structural engineering for a long time. “I have to admit, I don’t really understand most of your professional equipment, but the security systems… Your mother did a truly lovely job.”

“I’ll give her your compliments.” I gestured toward the door. “I should join the feeding frenzy. Buffy’s going to want to start assembling today’s footage, and she always goes overboard without me standing over her.”

“I see.” The senator paused for a moment. His voice was uncharacteristically stiff as he continued, “I wondered if I might ask you a small favor, Miss Mason.”

Ah, the first demand for censorship. I was going to owe Shaun ten bucks; I’d been betting that Senator Ryman could make it at least until we hit the actual campaign trail before he started trying to control the media. Keeping my voice level, I said, “And that would be, Senator?”

“Emily.” He shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips. “I know you’ll release whatever you want to, and I look forward to having the chance to read and watch it all. I don’t figure we caught half the cameras and recorders you three had on you—some of the ones Miss Meissonier was carrying were barely in the range of our sensors, which leads me to believe that she had others we couldn’t see at all, and if she ever wishes to pursue a career in espionage, I only pray she offers her services to us first—so you’ve doubtless got some great footage. And that’s