?Merry? wasn?t exactly in my plans. I held up the testing unit, letting Steve get a good long look. ?This good enough??
?It is,? he said, and tossed me a biohazard bag. ?What the hell happened, Shaun??
?Just what George said. Some sick fucker killed Rick?s cat and rigged our trailers to blow. When the blast didn?t kill us, they hit George with one of those hypodermic darts like the one that triggered the outbreak at the Ryman place. Shit, I wish we?d been looking for the things back at Eakly. I bet we would?ve found one.?
?I bet we would have, too,? said Steve, watching as I dropped the testing unit into a biohazard bag. He was holding his sunglasses loosely in one hand, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who?s looked into hell and found he couldn?t cope with what he was seeing. I wouldn?t have been willing to bet that my eyes were any better. ?You got a plan from here??
?Oh, the usual. Get a vehicle, head for whatever site they have the candidates under lockdown at??
?Right where you left them,? Steve interjected.
?Well, that?s convenient. I know the security layout there. Anyway, head back to the candidates and have a chat with Governor Tate.? I shrugged. ?Maybe blow his brains out. I don?t know. The plan is still in the formative stage.?
?Need a ride??
I grinned, the expression feeling foreign on my face. ?I?d love one.?
?Good. Because my boys and I?what?s left of my boys?wouldn?t like to see you get hurt just because you felt like being stupid and going it alone.?
The ludicrousness of it all was enough to make me laugh. ?Wait, you mean this was all I had to do to get myself a bigger security detail??
?Guess so.?
?Get your boys.? The laughter faded as I looked at him. ?It?s time we got on the road.?
Sometimes we leave the connecting door between our rooms open all night. We?d still share a room if they?d let us, turn the other room into an office and have done with it. Because both of us hate to be alone, and both of us hate to have other people?people outside the country we?ve made together?around when we?re defenseless. We?re always defenseless when we?re asleep.
We leave the connecting door open, and I wake up in the night to the sound of him snoring, and I wonder how the hell I?m going to stay alive after he finally slips up. He?ll die first, we both know it, but I don?t know? I really don?t know how long I?ll stay alive without him. That?s the part Shaun doesn?t know. I don?t intend to be an only child for long.
?From Postcards from the Wall,
the unpublished files of Georgia Mason, June 19, 2040
Twenty-eight
The outbreak was still going strong. The infected weren?t actually everywhere; it just seemed that way, as they lurched and ran out of the shadows, following whatever weird radar signals the virus uses to tell the active hosts from the ones where the potential for infection is still just that, potential, sleeping and waiting for a wake-up. The scientists have been trying to figure out that little trick for twenty years, and as far as I know, they?re no closer than they were the day Romero movies stopped being trashy horror and started being guides to staying alive. I should have been thrilled?it?s not every day I get to walk through the center of an actual outbreak?but I was too busy being angry to really give a damn. Zombies didn?t kill George. People did. Living, breathing, uninfected people.
I recognized a lot of faces among the infected. Interns from the campaign; a few security staffers, one long-faced man with thinning red hair who?d been traveling with us for about six weeks writing speeches for the senator. No more speeches for you, buddy, I thought, and put a bullet through the center of his forehead. He fell soundlessly, robbed of menace, and I turned away, nauseated.
?If I get out of this alive, I may need to look for another line of work.?
?What?s that?? asked Steve, between breathless radio calls to his surviving men. He was pulling them back to the motor pool. Several were moving slowly due to the need to herd less-well-armed survivors, going against the recommended survival strategies for an outbreak as they responded like human beings. You want to stay alive in a zombie swarm? You go alone or in a small group where everyone is of similar physical condition and weapons training. You never stop, you never hesitate, and you never show any mercy for the people that would slow you down. That?s what the military says we should do, and if I ever meet anybody who listens to that particular set of commands, I may shoot them myself just to improve the gene pool. When you can help people stay alive, you help them. We?re all we?ve got.
?Nothing,? I said, with a shake of my head. ?How?re we looking for support??