PRESIDENT RYMAN: I am speaking now, not only to the citizens of the United States of America, but to the citizens of the planet Earth. Because Kellis-Amberlee is a global issue, not a national one, and the conspiracy in which I have been engaged over this past year is thus also global in its scope. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that I have been held against my will, with my family as hostages to ensure my cooperation. The individuals responsible for this have a simple goal in mind: to continue to forward their control of the American public through manipulation of the Kellis-Amberlee virus.
I regret to state that, during my time in office, I have approved immoral, unethical, and illegal scientific experimentation, resulting in the murder of both American and international citizens. I have signed papers approving the weaponization of Kellis-Amberlee. I was present when the decision was made to release a modified strain of mosquito capable of carrying the Kellis-Amberlee virus into the sovereign nation of Cuba. The fact that I did these things under duress does not absolve me, or ameliorate the nature of my actions. I have betrayed my country. I have dishonored my office. I have betrayed myself.
Read the files accompanying this report. Read the comprehensive articles I am sure these and other reporters will shortly present to you. Realize that you have been betrayed. Realize that you have been misled. And heed the words of a very wise woman, who spoke from a place of genuine need when she addressed you a year ago. My name is Peter Ryman, and I am begging you.
Rise up while you can.
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RISE UP WHILE YOU CAN
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Rise up while you can.
—GEORGIA MASON
It’s the oldest story in the world. Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back thanks to the unethical behavior of megalomaniacal mad scientists who never met a corpse they wouldn’t try to resurrect. Anyone coming within a hundred yards of my happy ending had better pray that they’re immune to bullets.
—SHAUN MASON
We did the best we could with what we had, and when what we had wasn’t enough, we found ways to make it work. We told the truth, even when it hurt us, even when it killed us, even when it set the wolves at our doors. I can’t speak for the dead. But I think the living will agree that anything we did, we did because we felt we had to. History will judge us. The future will decide whether what we did was right, or wrong, or without meaning. In the here and now…
This is as close as we could get to an ending. The world goes on. Zombies or no zombies, political conspiracy or no political conspiracy, the world goes on.
I think I like it that way.
—From Living Dead Girl, the blog of Georgia Mason II, May 17, 2042.
Who wants to see me wrestle a zombie moose?
—From Hail to the King, the blog of Shaun Mason, May 17, 2042.
MAHIR: Forty-two
The phone rang at half-three in the morning, waking both Nan and Sanjukta from a sound sleep. Nandini glared as she levered herself from the bed and left the room, following our infant daughter’s wailing. I swore, rolling over and grabbing my cell off the bedside table, bringing it to my ear before I was done sitting up.
“This had best be bloody important, or I’m letting my wife give you what-for,” I snarled.
“Mr. Gowda, this is Christopher Rogers, from the All-Night News. I apologize if I woke you—I thought I had calculated the time difference between London and San Francisco correctly.”
Smug bastard. I could hear it in his voice, the vague self-congratulatory tone of a reporter who thinks he’s put his subject off balance. “How did you get this number?”
“Mr. Gowda, I have a few questions, if you don’t—”
“I bloody well do mind. This is an unlisted number, and I know what you’re calling about. You want to know where the Masons are, don’t you?”
Silence greeted my question. That was a sufficient answer in and of itself.
“When will you people learn to listen? I don’t know where the Masons are. No one knows where the Masons are. They disappeared after the management of the CDC was given over to the EIS. Last anyone saw of either of them, they were in an unmarked car heading God-knows-where.”
That wasn’t entirely true. The last time I saw them was on the border between the United States and Canada, when Steve handed them the keys to their own van, which was waiting for them on the Canadian side. They mailed back all the bugs the CIA had planted a week later, and they were gone.
It was true enough. Every version of their disappearance ended the same way, after all: and they were gone.