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was going to politely lie down and disappear just because the majority happened to disagree with them, and given further the proof that life is a short and fragile thing, he didn’t see the point of rendering anyone less free and equal than anybody else. When we got to the afterlife, God could sort us out into the sinner and the saved. Until we got there, it seemed to him that we were better off just being good neighbors and reserving our moral judgments for ourselves.

After an hour and a half of questions, more than half of which originated in the auditorium—a campaign first—the senator stood, wiping his forehead with the handkerchief he’d produced from a back pocket. “Well, folks, much as I’d like to stay and chat a while longer, it’s getting on late, and my secretary has informed me that if I don’t start cutting off these evening discussions, I’m going to seem a little dull to the folks I’m visiting in the morning.” Laughter greeted this comment. Relaxed laughter; sometime in the previous hour, he’d managed to ease the audience out of their fear and into the sort of calm most people don’t experience outside of their homes. “I want to thank you for having me, and for all your questions and viewpoints. I sincerely hope I’ll have your vote when the time comes, but even if I don’t, I have faith that it will be because you managed to find someone who was better for this great land.”

“We’re following you, Peter!” shouted someone from the back of the room. I twisted around in my seat and blinked, realizing that the shouter wasn’t someone from the campaign; it was a woman I’d never seen before, holding up a hand-painted Senator Ryman for President sign.

“The campaign has groupies,” observed Shaun.

“Always a good sign,” said Buffy.

The senator laughed. “I certainly hope that you are,” he said. “You’ll have the chance to make me put my money where my mouth is soon enough. In the meantime, good night, and God bless you all.” Waving to the audience, he turned and walked off the stage as “The Star-Spangled Banner” began to play from speakers around the room. The applause wasn’t exactly thunderous—there wasn’t enough audience for that—but it was enthusiastic. More so than it had been at the last engagement, and that one had been more enthusiastic than the one before it, and so on, and so on. Maybe you couldn’t tell by looking at it, but the campaign was gathering steam.

I stayed where I was, observing the audience as they rose, and, surprisingly, began to talk among themselves rather than fleeing the hall for the safety of their cars. That was a new development, just like the applause. People were talking. Face-to-face, real-time talking, inspired by the senator and the things he had said.

More and more, I was beginning to feel like we were following a president.

“Georgia?” said Buffy.

“Go ahead and check the backstage feeds,” I said, and nodded toward the knot of chattering attendees. “I’m going to go see what the buzz is.”

“Make sure you’re recording,” she said, and started for the stage, gesturing for Shaun to follow. Grumbling good-naturedly, he snagged his chain mail and went.

I walked toward the group of attendees. A few of them glanced over at my approach, took note of my press pass, and went back to talking. The news is either invisible or something to be avoided, depending on what’s going on and how many cameras the people around you can see. Since I didn’t have any visible recording equipment, I was just part of the scenery.

The first cluster was discussing Senator Ryman’s stance on the death penalty. That’s one that’s been going around since the dead first started getting up and walking. If you’re killing someone for the crime of killing people, doesn’t it sort of contradict the spirit of the thing if their corpse is going to get up and immediately start killing more people? Most death-row inmates stay there until they die of natural causes, at which point the government seizes their shambling corpses and adds them to the ongoing research on the cure. Everybody wins, except for the unlucky prisoners who get eaten by the newly deceased before they can be recovered.

The next group was talking about the potential candidates. Senator Ryman was definitely getting a favorable reception, since they were calling his closest competition respectively “a cheap show-biz whore”—that would be Congresswoman Wagman—and “an arrogant tool of the religious right”—that would be Governor Tate, originally of Texas, and currently the single loudest voice claiming the zombies would only stop eating good American men and women when the country got back to its moral and ethical roots. Whether this would stop the zombies from eating people of different national backgrounds never seemed to come up, which was a pity, since I liked the idea of zombies checking your passport before they decided whether or not they were allowed to bite down.

Satisfied that I wasn’t likely to hear anything new in this crowd, I started casting around for a conversation worth joining. The one nearest the doors looked promising; there was a lot of scowling going on, and that’s usually a sign that interest is warranted. I turned, walking close enough to hear what was going on.

“The real question is whether he can keep his promises,” one man was saying. He looked to be in his late fifties, old enough to have been an adult during the Rising and part of the generation that embraced quarantine as the only true route to safety. “Can we trust another president who won’t commit to an all-out purge of the zombie population of the national parks?”

“Be reasonable,” said one of the women. “We can’t simply wipe out endangered species because they might undergo amplification. That kind of rash action isn’t going to do anything to make the average man safer.”

“No, but it might keep another mother from burying her children after they get attacked by a zombie deer,” countered the man.

“Actually, it was a moose, and the ‘children’ were a group of college students who crossed a proscribed stretch of the Canadian border looking for cheap weed,” I interjected. All heads turned my way. I shrugged. “That’s a Level 1 hazard zone. It’s forbidden to almost everyone outside the armed forces and certain branches of the scientific community. Assuming you’re talking about the incident last August and I didn’t somehow miss an ungulate attack?” I knew I hadn’t. I religiously follow animal attacks on humans, filing them under one of two categories: “We need stricter laws” and “Darwin was right.” I don’t think people should be allowed to keep animals large enough to undergo amplification, but I also don’t believe wiping out the rest of the large mammals in the world is the answer. If you want to go foraging into the wilds of Canada without proper gear, you deserve what you get, even if that happens to include being attacked by an undead moose.

The man reddened. “I don’t think I was talking to you, miss.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Still, the facts of the event are pretty well documented. Again, assuming I didn’t miss something.”

Looking mildly amused, one of the other men said, “Well, come on, Carl, did the young lady miss an attack, or are you referring to the incident with the moose?”

He didn’t need to answer; his glare was answer enough. Turning his back pointedly on the three of us, he moved to join a vigorous condemnation of the senator’s stance on the death penalty that was going on just a few feet away.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him deflated with facts before,” said the woman, and offered her hand. “I’ll have to remember that. Rachel Green. I’m with the local SPCA.”

“Dennis Stahl, Eakly Times,” said the remaining man, flashing his press pass in a brief show of solidarity.

Relieved that my sunglasses would cover the more subtle points of my expression, I took Ms. Green’s hand, shook once, and said, “Georgia Mason. I’m one of the bloggers covering Senator Ryman’s campaign.”

“Mason,” said Ms. Green. “As in…?”

I nodded.

She winced. “Oh, dear. Is this going to be unpleasant?”

“Not unless you’re in the mood for a debate. I’m here to record reactions to the senator’s agenda, not forward my own. Besides,” I nodded to Carl’s back, “I’m not as hard-line as some. I just have strong opinions about large animals being kept in urban areas, and I think we can agree to disagree on that point, don’t you?”

“Fair enough,” she said, looking relieved.

Mr. Stahl laughed. “Rachel gets a lot of flack from the local media for what she does,” he said. “How’s the campaign trail treating you?”

“Are you saying you haven’t been reading our reports?” I asked the question lightly, but I wanted to hear the answer. Journalistic acceptance is one of the last things any blog gets. We may be accepted inside the community, but it’s not until the traditional news media starts to take our reports seriously that a new feed can honestly be said