I listened as Rick moved around the van. He pulled Shaun?s body armor out of the closet where it was stored and yanked it on over his clothes, snaps and zippers fastening with their quiet, distinctive sounds. It kept me distracted from the sounds that were coming from Shaun?s direction, the sloshing, snapping sounds as he got the injector cartridges ready.
?Thanks, Rick,? I said. ?It?s been one hell of a ride.?
?I? right.? I heard Rick?s footsteps approach; the scrape of metal as he lifted the drive from beside my computer; then his retreat, until the door creaked open and he stopped, hesitating. ?I? Georgia??
?Yes, Rick??
?I?m sorry.?
I cracked my eyes open, allowing him a small, mirthless smile. For the first time that I could remember, the light didn?t hurt. I was going into conversion. My body was losing the capacity to understand pain. ?That?s all right. So am I.?
For a moment, he looked like he might say something else. Then his lips tightened and he nodded, before undoing the latches on the door. That was the last exit: When the van was locked again, it would detect infection and refuse to open for anyone inside.
?Shaun? Train?s leaving,? I said, quietly. ?You want to jab and go??
?And let you finish this without me?? He shook his head. ?No way. Rick, you be careful out there.?
Rick?s shoulders tightened and he was gone, stepping out into the evening air. The door banged shut behind him.
Shaun sat down on the floor in front of me, the injector in his hands. It was a two-barrel array, ready to deliver a mixed payload of sedatives and my own hyper-activated white blood cells. Together, the mixture could slow conversion? for a while. Not for long, but if we were lucky, for long enough. Expression staying neutral, he said, ?Give me your right arm.?
I held it out.
Shaun pressed the twin needles to the thin skin at the bend of my elbow and a wash of coolness flowed into me as he pressed the plunger home.
?Thanks,? I said, shivering.
?That?s all we?ve got.? He opened a biohazard bag and dropped the used injector into it before sealing the top. ?You?ve got half an hour, tops. After that??
?There?s no guarantee I?ll be lucid. I know.? He rose, walking stiff-legged across to the biohazard bin and dropped the bag inside. I wanted to run after him, wrap my arms around him, and cry until there weren?t any tears left in me, but I couldn?t. I didn?t dare. Even my tears would be infectious, and the sedatives he?d shot into my arm weren?t going to work any miracles. Time was short.
I still had work to do.
I swung back to my monitor, trying to swallow away the dryness as I heard Shaun moving behind me, taking one of the spare revolvers out of the locker by the door and loading it, one careful cartridge at a time. What was it the reports said? The dryness of the mouth was one of the early signs of viral amplification, resulting from the crystal blocks of virus drawing away moisture and bringing on that lovely desiccated state that all the living dead seem to share? That seemed about right. It was getting harder to think about that sort of thing. Suddenly, it was all just a little too immediate.
My hands were still hovering above the keyboard while my mind struggled to find a beginning when I felt the barrel of the gun press against the base of my skull, cold and somehow soothing. Shaun wouldn?t let me hurt anyone else. No matter what happened, he wouldn?t let me hurt anyone else. Not even him. Not more than I already had.
?Shaun??
?I?m here.?
?I love you.?
?I know, George. I love you, too. You and me. Always.?
?I?m scared.?
His lips brushed the top of my head as he bent forward and pressed them to my hair. I wanted to yell at him to get away from me, but I didn?t. The barrel of the gun remained a cool, constant pressure on the back of my neck. When I turned, when I stopped being me, he would end it. He loved me enough to end it. Has any girl ever been luckier than I am?
?Shaun??
?Shhh, Georgia,? he said. ?It?s okay. Just write.? And so I began. One last chance to roll the dice, tell the truth, and shame the devil. One last chance to make it all clear. What we fought for. What we died for. What we felt we had to do.
I never asked to be a hero. No one ever gave me the option to say I didn?t want to, that I was sorry, but that they had the wrong girl. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and let people draw their own conclusions from there. I wanted people to think, and to know, and to understand. I just wanted to tell the truth. In the van that had carried us across a country, and through the last months of my life, with my brother standing ready to pull the trigger, my hands came down, and I wrote.
Was it worth it?
God, I hope so.
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