“Thank God,” breathed the senator.
“Want to put it down now, Governor?” I asked. “You know this is over.”
Governor Tate hesitated, looking from me to the senator and finally to the horrified, receding crowd. Suddenly weary, he shook his head, and said, “You’re fools, all of you. You could have saved this country. You could have brought moral fiber back to America.” His grip on Emily slackened. She pulled herself free, diving into her husband’s embrace. Senator Ryman closed his arms around her and rose, backing away. Governor Tate ignored them. “Your sister was a hack and a whore who would have fucked Kellis himself if she thought it would get her a story. She’ll be forgotten in a week, when your fickle little audience of bottom-feeders moves on to something more recent. But they’re going to remember me, Mason. They always remember the martyrs.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
“No,” he said. “We won’t.” In one fluid motion, he drove the syringe into his thigh and pressed the plunger home.
Emily Ryman screamed. Senator Ryman was shouting at the top of his lungs, ordering people to get back, to get to the elevators, behind secure doors, anything that would get them away from the man who’d just turned himself into a living outbreak. Still looking at me, Governor Tate started to laugh.
“Hey, George,” I said, taking a few seconds to adjust my aim. There was no wind inside; that was a nice change. Less to compensate for. “Check this out.”
The sound of her .40 going off was almost drowned out by the screams of the crowd. Governor Tate stopped laughing and looked, for an instant, almost comically surprised before he slumped onto the table, revealing the ruined mess that had replaced the back of his head. I kept the gun trained on him, waiting for signs of further movement. After several moments had passed without any, I shot him three more times anyway, just to be sure. It never hurts to be sure.
People were still screaming, pushing past each other as they rushed for the doors. Mahir and Dr. Wynne were trying to shout over each other on our open channel, both demanding status reports, demanding to know whether I was all right, whether the outbreak had been contained. They were giving me a headache. I reached up and removed my ear cuff, putting it on the table. Let them shout. I was done listening. I didn’t need to listen anymore.
“See, George?” I whispered. When did I start crying? It didn’t matter. Tate’s blood looked just like George’s. It was red and bright now, but it would start to dry soon, turning brown, turning old, turning into something the world could just forget. “I got him. I got him for you.”
Senator Ryman was shouting my name, but he was too far away to matter. Steve and Emily would never let him this close to a hot corpse. Until the CDC showed up, I could be alone. I liked that idea. Alone.
Taking two steps backward, I pulled out a chair and sat down at a table that would let me keep an eye on Tate. Just in case. There was a basket of breadsticks at the center, abandoned by fickle diners when the trouble started. I picked one up with my free hand and munched idly as I kept George’s gun trained on Tate. He didn’t move. Neither did I. When the CDC arrived to take command of the site fifteen minutes later, we were still waiting, Tate with his pool of slowly drying blood, me with my basket of breadsticks. They seized the site, sealed it, and ushered us all away to quarantine and testing. I kept my eye on him as long as I could, watching for some sign that it wasn’t over, that the story wasn’t done. He never moved, and George didn’t say a word, leaving me alone in the echoing darkness of my mind.
Was it worth it, George? Well, was it? Tell me, if you can, because I swear to God, I just don’t know.
I don’t know anything anymore.
CODA: Dying For You
The next person who says “I’m sorry” is going to get punched in the nose. Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t do a damn thing except remind me that this can’t be fixed. This is my world now. And I don’t want it.
I love my brother. I love my job. I love the truth. So here’s hoping no one ever makes me choose between them.
Somebody once asked me if I believed in God. It was probably the windup to some major proselytizing, but it’s a good question. Do I believe in God? That somebody made all this happen for a reason, that there’s something waiting for us after we die? That there’s a purpose to all this crap? I don’t know. I’d like to be able to say “Yes, of course” almost as much as I’d like to be able to say “Absolutely not,” but there’s evidence on both sides of the fence. Good people die for nothing, little kids go hungry, corrupt men hold positions of power, and horrible diseases go uncured. And I got Shaun, maybe the only person who could make it seem worthwhile to me. I got Shaun.
So, is there a God? Sorry to dodge the question, but I just don’t know.
Thirty
It took three months for the CDC to release Georgia’s ashes. It would normally have taken longer, given the way she died. Lucky me, my sister died an international celebrity. That sort of thing gets you friends in high places. Even inside the CDC itself, which has been preoccupied with internal reviews as it tries to find the source of Tate’s anonymous “donors.” When Dr. Wynne went to his superiors and petitioned them for the right to let us have Georgia’s ashes, they listened. Guess they didn’t want to risk being our story of the week. No one does, these days. That’ll fade with time—Mahir says we’re losing percentages daily, as people move on to newer things—but we’re always going to have a certain cachet after everything that went down. “After the End Times: So dedicated to telling you what you need to hear that they’ll die to do it.” I’d probably be a lot more disgusted by the whole thing if it weren’t for the part where it let us bring George home.
Dr. Wynne brought the box containing her ashes to me himself, accompanied by a fresh-faced, yellow-haired doctor I remembered from Memphis. Kelly Connolly. She’s the one who gave me the pile of cards, handwritten by CDC employees from all over the country, and said they had three more as large from the WHO and USAMRIID. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. Buffy died, and we got accused of trying to hoax the world. George died, and that same world mourned with me. Maybe that should have been a comfort, but it wasn’t. I didn’t want the world to mourn. I just wanted George to come home.
She would have needed a forwarding address to find me. I came back from the campaign trail battered, exhausted, and ready to collapse, and discovered that home wasn’t home anymore. My room was connected to George’s room, and George wasn’t there. I kept finding myself standing in her room, not sure how I got there, waiting for her to start yelling at me and tell me to knock first. She never did, and so I started packing my things. I wanted to get away from the ghosts. And I wanted to get away from the Masons.
George died, and the world mourned with me, sure. All the world but them. Oh, they did the right things in public, said the right things, made the right gestures. Dad did a series of articles on personal versus public responsibility and kept invoking the “heroic sacrifice” of his beloved adopted daughter, like that somehow made his
