Blackout

“Not really, no,” said George. She grinned at him, gun still aimed toward the unseen zombies.

I could have kissed her. It would probably have been a good thing, since we were all about to be zombie- chow. Instead, I adjusted my position, calling over my shoulder, “A little speed in the carpool lane would be appreciated, guys. We’ve got incoming, and I didn’t bring enough limbs to share with everybody.”

“The system’s cycling as fast as it can,” said Steve reproachfully.

“Don’t really give a fuck how fast the system is cycling. Just don’t want to get eaten by zombies right after uncovering a mass conspiracy to deceive the American public. Seems a little anticlimactic, you know what I mean? Like getting empty boxes on Christmas morning.”

“You got empty boxes?” asked Becks. “Lucky bastard. I always got dresses.”

Alaric glanced up. “Dresses?”

“Frilly dresses,” she said with disgust. “Lacy frilly dresses.”

“Are all journalists insane, or did I just hit the mother lode?” asked Gregory.

“Yes,” said Rick and George, in unison.

We were still laughing—the anxious laughter of people who know they’re about to die horribly—when the first zombies came around the corner, and laughter ceased to be an option.

At least the sight of the zombies answered the question of where they came from. They were wearing White House ID badges, dressed in respectable suits and sensible shoes. Someone must have trigged an outbreak inside the building, opened the right doors, and let the feeding frenzy commence. Anyone who hadn’t been caught by the initial infection would have been taken out by the first wave of actual infected.

I’ll give my companions this: No one screamed. Instead, everyone but Alaric and Gregory braced themselves and opened fire, giving the people at the airlock time to cycle through. Alaric moved to put himself behind Becks and out of the line of fire, attention still focused primarily on the device in his hands.

“Forty percent uploaded!” he called.

“Not enough,” muttered George, and fired. Her shot went wild. With a wordless sound of frustration, she shifted the gun to her left hand and used her right to pull off her sunglasses and throw them aside. She resumed her stance and fired again. This time, she didn’t miss.

“Mr. Vice President!” Steve’s voice was anxious. “Sir, you need to go through the lock!”

Rick didn’t move.

“Go on, Rick,” I said, firing twice more into the seemingly endless tide of zombies. “Get out of here. Go be important. If we don’t get out, somebody who understands the news is going to need to interpret what Alaric’s putting online.”

Rick still didn’t move. He fired again; another zombie went down.

“Go on, Rick,” said George. “Mahir gets left behind, and you leave when we need someone to make it off the battlefield. That’s how this story goes.” She never looked at him. She just kept shooting.

Rick shot her a stricken look, and he went, turning and retreating toward the airlock. I stepped a little closer to her, closing a bit more of the distance between us, and kept shooting. We were all falling back now, just a little bit, just a few steps. There are people who’ll tell you the worst place to be in an outbreak is a narrow tunnel with a limited number of exits. They’re probably right. But a narrow tunnel with a limited number of exits is also the best place to be in an outbreak, because the zombies can only come at you so fast.

The airlock hissed. Rick was through. “Dr. Lake!” called Steve. “Come on!”

Gregory didn’t need to be told twice. He turned and ran, vanishing from my range of sight. My clip clicked on empty. I ejected it and slapped a new one into place, twisting the stock until I felt the clip snap home. George repeated the process two bullets later. By then, I was firing again, covering the hole she made. We still worked together well, even if neither of us was really the person we used to be. Even if neither of us was ever going to be that person—those people—again.

“If this is crazy, I don’t care,” I said, and fired. Another zombie went down. We were losing ground fast now, and still they kept coming.

“Neither do I,” said George, and kept firing.

“Alaric!” shouted Steve.

“Coming!” Alaric started forward, and froze, eyes widening as he looked at the screen of his little device. “There’s no signal there. I almost lost the connection.”

“Alaric, just go!” snapped George.

“I can’t! I have to get these files up before somebody hits us with an EMP screen!”

Becks took two long steps backward, firing all the while, and snatched the device from his hand. “I can manage an upload as well as you can,” she snarled. “Now go.”

Alaric stared at her. “Becks—”

“Go!”

He turned and fled. The zombies were still closing. There were five of us left now. Me, George, Becks, one of the Secret Service agents—I still didn’t know his name—and Steve, who was urging Alaric through the airlock as quickly as he could.

“You see the failure inherent in this model, don’t you?” asked George. She fired; a zombie went down. They were closing in.

“What are you talking about?”

Becks groaned, the sound similar to a zombie’s moan only in that it held no actual words. No zombie could have sounded that aggravated. “You can’t shoot while you’re going through the airlock. That means someone has to watch your back. One person to stand guard, one person leaving. Until eventually…”

“There’s only one person left,” I said, feeling suddenly numb. A zombie lurched forward. I put a bullet through its skull. It fell. “Fuck.”

“It always comes down to the cold equations,” said George.

“Fuck!” I fired again. This time, I missed.

“Next!” shouted Steve.

“Go,” said Becks, nodding to George. “Both of you, go. You need to get out of here.”

“We’re not leaving you.”

“You’re not leaving him, either.” The last of the Secret Service agents was running for the airlock. “You’re not going to leave her, and she’s not going to leave you. We can’t ask your big friend to stay behind, not when he may be the most muscle we have left. That leaves me. Now get out of here.” Becks held up Alaric’s PDA with the hand that wasn’t holding her gun. “We’re at ninety percent. I’ll make sure the news is waiting for you when you hit the surface.”

“Rebecca—”

Becks shot me a venomous glance. “I don’t have her nose for news. I don’t have your total lack of regard for my own safety. What I have is a family that doesn’t want me, and a job that I know how to do. And that job says I stand here and let you get out, because you’re the ones who can do the best job telling this story. Now go!”

“Shaun, come on.” George took a step backward, still firing.

“I don’t want to do this,” I said quietly.

So don’t, said George, in the space behind my eyes. Her voice was soft, cajoling. She would never ask me to do something I didn’t want to do. She would never try to convince me to leave a teammate behind.

She would let me die here, and take everything we’d fought and bled for with me.

“Shaun! Go!” shouted Becks. She shoved the PDA into her pocket, and called, “Hey, big guy! How sturdy are those doors?”

“Sturdy enough,” rumbled Steve. “Georgia, come on.”

“Coming.” She kept shooting as she backed away, until she had to turn and press her hand against the test unit, and shooting ceased to be an option.

“Good.” Becks dug her hand into a different pocket, producing a small round object that I recognized, after a few seconds, as a concussion grenade. “Then I’m taking no prisoners.”

“You had a grenade in your pocket?” I asked, unsure whether to be impressed or horrified.