?So you?re saying the people on duty would have received some sort of notification that the horse had died, and they?d have been able to get there before he got up and started biting the other horses,? I said, slowly. ?Why didn?t they??
?Because when you convert instead of reanimating, there?s no interruption in your vital signs,? said Shaun. He was starting to sound almost excited. ?One minute you?re fine, the next minute, bang, you?re a shambling mass of virus-spreading flesh. The monitors wouldn?t catch a spontaneous conversion because a machine wouldn?t be able to tell that anything was wrong.?
?And people say modern technology doesn?t do enough to protect us,? I deadpanned. ?All right, so if the horse checked out clean at a seven o?clock rubdown and went into spontaneous amplification in the night, the monitors wouldn?t have caught it. That still doesn?t tell us why it happened.?
Spontaneous amplification is a reality. Sometimes, the virus sleeping inside a person decides it?s time to wake up, and there?s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Roughly two percent of the recorded outbreaks during the Rising were traced back to spontaneous amplifications. It usually hits only the very young or the very old, as the virus reacts to their rapidly changing body weight by making some rapid changes of its own. I?d never heard of spontaneous amplification occurring in livestock, but it?s never been proven that it couldn?t happen? and it seemed way too pat. The index case for equine spontaneous amplification happened to be in Senator Ryman?s barn, on the day he was confirmed as the next Republican candidate for president? Coincidences like that don?t exist outside of a Dickensian tragedy. They certainly don?t wander around happening in the real world.
?I don?t buy it,? said Rick, voicing my thoughts. ?It?s too cut-and-dried. Here?s a horse, the horse is healthy, now the horse is a zombie, lots of people die, isn?t that tragic? It?s what I would write if you asked me to pen a front-page human interest story that would never happen.?
?So why isn?t anyone digging deeper?? Shaun stopped in the courtyard between the four barns, looking first at Rick, then at me. ?Not to be rude or anything, but Rick, you?re new on this beat, and George, you?re sort of professionally paranoid. Why isn?t anyone else punching holes in this crap??
?Because no one looks twice at an outbreak,? I said. ?Remember how pissed you got when we had to do all that reading about the Rising back in sixth grade? I thought you were going to get us both expelled. You said the only way things could?ve gotten as bad as they did was if people were willing to take the first easy answer they could find and cling to it, rather than doing anything as complicated as actually thinking.?
?And you said that was human nature and I should be thankful we?re smarter than they are,? Shaun said. ?And then you hit me.?
?That?s still your answer: human nature.?
?Give people something they can believe, especially something like a personal tragedy and a teenage girl being heroic to save her family, and not only will everyone believe it, everyone will want to believe it.? Rick shook his head. ?It?s good news. People like to believe good news.?
?Sometimes it?s great living in a world where ?good? and ?news? don?t always combine to mean ?positive information.? ? I looked to Shaun. ?Where do we start??
I?m in charge in the editing studio and the office. It?s different in the field. Shaun calls the shots unless I?m demanding an immediate evac. Both of us are smart enough to know where our strengths lie. His involve poking dead things with sticks and living to blog about it.
?Everyone armed?? he asked?more for Rick?s benefit than mine. He knows I?d stick my hand in a zombie?s mouth for fun before I?d enter a field situation unarmed.
?Clear,? I said, pulling out my .40.
?Yes,? said Rick. His own gun was larger than mine, but he handled it easily enough for me to think it was a matter of preference, not machismo. He slid it back into the holster in his vest, adding, ?I?d offer to take some marksmanship tests, but this doesn?t seem like the place.?
?Later,? said Shaun. Rick looked amused. I smothered a snort of laughter. Poor guy probably thought my brother was kidding. ?Right now, we?re splitting up. George, you take the foaling barn. Rick, you hit the adult quarters. I?ll take the hospital barn, and we?ll meet up back here to go through the yearling barn together. Radio contact at all times. If you see anything, scream as loudly as you can.?
?So we can all come together to help?? asked Rick.
?So the rest of us have time to get away,? I said. ?Cameras on, people, and look alive; this is not a drill. This is the news.?