by Mira Grant
“Jack’s probably off wrangling a zombie kangaroo to give me another bloody teaching moment,” I muttered, and got out of the car.
Jack was actually checking the ground around the picnic tables when we approached. He looked up, smiled, and said, “No fresh tracks. We should be safe here for a little bit. Just try not to shout or set anything on fire, all right, mate?”
“I will keep my pyromania firmly in check,” I said, uneasily taking a seat at the table. I only realized after I sat that I had positioned myself to have a clear line of sight on the car, making it easier for me to run. It’s not that I’m a coward; I believe my professional accomplishments speak to my bravery. It’s that, unlike the people I was traveling with, I am not bog-stupid about safety.
“Good,” said Olivia, and began unpacking cold sandwiches, crisps, and baggies of rectangular, chocolate-covered biscuits from her cooler. Once these were set out in front of us, she produced a self-heating thermos and broke the seal, triggering its thermal progression. “Tea should be ready in a minute.”
“There are some small blessings to this excursion,” I muttered.
Jack sighed. “Look, boss, this isn’t just about making you uncomfortable.”
“Could have fooled me, but I’m listening,” I said.
“You need to be able to deal with the outside when we tell you that it’s safe,” he said. “We don’t have hermetically sealed environments here the way you do in London. People come and go in the outside here. If you can’t adjust to that, the fence is going to be a real problem for you, since the whole thing is exposed.”
“We’re used to nature trying to kill us here,” said Olivia, with obscene good cheer. “It’s been doing that for centuries, and we refuse to let it, mostly because we want to piss it off by surviving. It’s the Australian way, Mahir. Piss off nature. Show that natural world who’s boss.”
“Don’t red kangaroos weigh something on the order of ninety-one kilograms?” I asked, still not reaching for a sandwich. “I’m reasonably sure, in the matter of me versus Australia’s natural world, that I am not the boss. The massive, infected creatures that can gut me with a kick are the boss. I’m in the mail room at best.”
Jack laughed. “You’re funny. I never realized that from your reports.”
“Yes, well. My humor is a brand best experienced live.” The top of the thermos turned red, signaling that the tea was done. I leaned over and removed the cap. Olivia passed me a cup. “Thank you.”
“No worries,” she said, and took a sandwich.
We didn’t talk much after that, being preoccupied with the simple biological necessities of eating. Jack and Olivia were nonchalant about the whole matter, remaining relaxed even as we sat in an utterly exposed position, surrounded by the Australian countryside. I found it somewhat more difficult to keep myself from jumping every time a twig snapped or a leaf rustled—both things that happened with remarkable frequency, thanks to the high number of birds that had been attracted by our lunch.
Jack caught me eyeing with suspicion a huge black and white bird that looked like a half-bleached raven. The bird was eyeing me back, looking profoundly unimpressed. “That’s an Australian magpie,” said Jack. “It’s trying to figure out whether it can knock you over and take your food. No offense intended, but I think it would have a good shot of winning.”
“Yes, especially since I would be locking myself back in the car if it so much as twitched in my direction.” I shook my head. “Are all Australian birds this bold?”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Even the emus, and those are birds the size of kangaroos. You haven’t learned to really appreciate fried chicken until the first time you’ve faced down an angry emu that wants to bite your fingers off.”
“Then why do you put up with them?”
“Two reasons,” said Olivia, opening the biscuits. “First off, we’re back to that pesky ‘conservation’ thing that we’re so fond of here in Australia. The birds have as much of a right to their home continent as we do, so we try to work things out with them when we can. Doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally shoot them—”
“And eat them,” added Jack helpfully.
“—but it does mean that when they’re just bopping about the wilderness, being birds, we mostly leave them alone.” Olivia took three biscuits and passed the package down. “The other reason we ‘put up’ with them? Early-warning system. We won’t necessarily hear an infected animal or human coming, but the birds will. They’re very good about knowing when something nasty is on its way, and we can use them to tell us when we need to leave. That’s worth a few sandwich-related muggings.”
My ears burned. I ducked my head, considering the bird with new respect. “I’d never considered it that way.”
“Most foreigners don’t,” said Jack, and tossed a biscuit to the magpie, which snatched it up and took off, piebald wings flapping hard. “Don’t worry, we won’t hold it against you. I’m sure we’ll be just as out of place when we come to London.”
“Is that in the cards, then?”
“Someday, maybe. When we’re better established here, and I can sign on for a few global reports.” Jack grinned. “I’d love to do a march across some of the abandoned bits of Russia, see what’s been going on out there while no one was looking.”
“I just want to see the British Museum,” said Olivia, a dreamy look spreading across her face. “It’s the only place in the world where you can still come face-to-face with real mummies.”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to make sure that this works out, won’t we?” I asked, and smiled, waiting for them to smile back.
They didn’t. Instead, Jack tensed, his gaze flicking to the trees around us. As if she was picking up some unspoken signal, Olivia began packing the remains of our lunch back into the cooler, moving fast enough that it was clear she was in a hurry. I wanted to ask them what was going on. Instead, I forced myself to stay quiet and listen.
There was nothing. The squawks, trills, and screeches of the Australian birds had stopped sometime in the past thirty seconds, replaced by an ominous silence. My friend Maggie is fond of horror movies, and this was the sort of moment that every one of those films would have matched with an ominous soundtrack. I never understood why. That silence was the most frightening thing I had encountered in a long time.
Then Jack’s hand was on my arm. I somehow managed not to jump as I looked up into his broad, worried face.
“Come on, mate,” he said. “It’s time for us to go.”
“There are some things I don’t need to hear twice,” I said, and rose, and followed him back to the car. Olivia was already there, a rifle in her hands, scanning the surrounding landscape. It should have been a comic scene—the curvy, blue-haired woman with the high-powered hunting rifle—but instead, it seemed to fit perfectly with everything I’d come to know about Australia. She stayed where she was, a silent sentry, until Jack and I were in the car. Then she got in and closed the door, and we roared off down the road, leaving the silence of the birds behind us.
5.
We were half a mile down the road before Jack said, without turning, “I’m betting wombat. It’s the only way it could have gotten that close without scaring off the magpies.”
“I say koala,” said Olivia. “They move pretty slow, and magpies don’t always notice them.”
“Are you trying to sort out what was coming to eat us back there?” I asked. “We could have just stayed where we were and gotten a firsthand view.”
“Ah, but remember, conservation laws,” said Jack.
“We could’ve shot it if it was a wombat,” said Olivia. “They’re endangered as all get-out, but they’re still legal to kill, because they’re too damn dangerous for even the most hard-nosed conservationists to worry about.”
“What makes them worse than anything else around here?” I asked. I was picturing a monster, something the size of a bear but with the venomous fangs that every other creature in Australia seemed to come
equipped with. “How big are they?”
“Barely over the amplification limit, but they’re built like concrete wrapped in fur—even an uninfected wombat can be dangerous as hell, if you hit one with your car. They have incredibly slow metabolisms. That makes them ambush hunters. They’ll kill and eat a man, and then just sit there for a month or more, digesting, not setting off any alarms.” Olivia shook her head. “They’re a menace. It’s a pity, too; they’re quite cute, when they’re not trying to chew your face off.”
“If we were anywhere else on the bloody planet, I would think that you were having me on right now,” I said, peering out the window as I scanned the side of the road for signs of the dreaded wombat. I thought I saw something about the size of a small dog, but it was mostly obscured by the brush, and before I could point it out, we were past it and barreling onward down the highway.
“Welcome to Australia,” said Jack, with altogether too much good cheer.
“Yes, I feel a little more welcome every time you remind me how likely it is that I’m going to die here,” I grumbled, and sank lower in my seat, reaching for my laptop.
It took only a few minutes for me to locate a strong local wireless signal—a little odd, given that we were apparently in the middle of nowhere, but Australia had made great strides in connectivity since the Rising cut them off from the rest of the world. It was a very “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” ideology, and I approved, especially when it allowed me to establish an Internet connection.
Checking in on the forums and downloading the latest batch of pictures that Nandini had sent of Sanjukta helped my mood a little. Toddlers are remarkable creatures, unaware of the dangers that the world will hold for them as they grow, utterly convinced of their own immortality. They’re like tiny Irwins, and every morning I woke up glad that Sanjukta was so effortlessly fearless, even as I worried that this would be the day when she finally learned to be afraid. Judging by her latest exploits, which included clonking the cat with a toy truck and attempting to roll off her mother’s lap onto the floor, she was nowhere near that transition.
Olivia and Jack seemed content to be quiet and watch the road unfold. I twisted around until I found a position which allowed me to comfortably rest my laptop on my legs and opened the interface to my personal blog. It was time to update my followers on my impressions of Australia.
It can be difficult sometimes, juggling the formats demanded by a personal, or “op-ed” blog, and a formal, factual blog. Not everyone manages it, and we don’t require it from the Newsies anymore; we haven’t since Georgia Mason was running the site. She believed that the only way to keep spin out of the news was by putting it in a bucket of its own, clearly labeled to prevent confusion. Not that it ever worked as well as she wanted it to, but then, no one saw the world in black and white like Georgia Mason did. She was unique. That’s probably a good thing. Humanity thrives on shades of gray, and if you stripped us all back to black and white, I doubt most of us would be as well meaning and idealistic as Georgia Carolyn Mason. May she rest in peace and live happily ever after at the same time.
It’s a bit ironic that someone who was so dedicated to black and white had an ending that was so distinctly gray—but then, irony has always gone hand in hand with the news.
I summarized my flight in as few words as I could manage without slandering the airline that would be conveying me home and then began describing Australia, allowing myself all the “I felt” and “I thought” qualifiers that the more formal reports would eventually deny me. It was pleasant, soothing, and almost entirely automatic. I even found myself waxing a little romantic about the pleasures of a continent where there were still open spaces, where birds replaced klaxons as an early-warning system, and people understood that perhaps humanity was not the end-all and be-all of life on this planet.
It took perhaps an hour to compose the post and another twenty minutes to edit it down to my satisfaction, trimming anything that read as overly romanticizing the nation. Finally, I hit the key to submit and leaned back against the seat, rubbing my hands together as I tried to get the tension out of my fingers.
“Feel better?” asked Olivia. I raised my head to find her watching me over the back of the seat, a surprising degree of understanding in her round, friendly face.
I nodded. “I do, yes. Sometimes, a little time with my thoughts is all I need to center myself.”
“I understand that but good. I got the bug when I was still in school. The other kids would tease me for this or that, and I’d go sit in the library and write these long, angst-ridden blog posts about how no one would ever understand me, and how Australia was a benighted hellhole filled with barbarians and bastards.” Olivia’s grin was sudden, and broad enough for me to see that one of her incisors was slightly chipped. “It’s all still out there, although I was posting under a closed pseudonym back then, thank God. Australia’s very strict about preserving the Internet anonymity of minors, and I was never one of those girls who felt the need to drop clues about who she really was. I went online to get away from who I really was, not encourage the horrible kids at my school to track me down and give me hell.”
“So what made you get into the news?” I asked. “Forgive me if this seems overly personal, but that’s the sort of background I expect from a Fictional, not a Newsie.”
“I know, right? Trouble is, I can’t make shit up to save my life. I’m the worst liar you’ll ever meet. But telling the truth, see, that’s something I’m pretty good at. I was just finishing college when After the End Times went online, with this head Newsie who everyone agreed was just mad as a cut snake about the truth. If it even smelled of a lie, she didn’t want it anywhere near her. I looked at her and said that’s it. That’s who I want to grow up to be. All I had to do from there was sort myself out so’s I’d be good enough to get the shot.” Olivia smiled again, more subdued this time. “I really do wish I’d had the chance to meet her. Georgia Mason, God. What was she like?”
I hesitated. There were a lot of easy answers to that question. I knew them all; I’d written most of them, one resentfully given interview at a time. It can be hard to see one of your closest friends go from person to icon to ideal over the course of your lifetime—not to mention her own. She became an icon when she died for the news. She became a strange platonic ideal of herself when she came back, whether or not she had anything to do with that eventual return. But Olivia was a member of the team, even if she’d joined up after Georgia, and she deserved something better than an easy answer.
She deserved the truth.
“Georgia Mason was the single most headstrong person I ever met in my entire life,” I said seriously. “Once she got an idea in her head, she wasn’t going to be happy until she’d run it to ground and, if necessary, beaten it to death. I once had to talk her out of doing a six-week series on irregularities in the manufacturing standards for energy drinks. Not because they were dangerous, not because they were going to get anyone killed. Just because they didn’t match up to the rules. She mellowed out about that somewhat once she got her teeth into some real stories, but when she didn’t have something to be focused on, she’d try to focus on the entire world, all at once, and she was always astonished when it didn’t work.”
“Was she a good friend?”
“The best,” I said, without thinking about it. “We never met face-to-face—I never met the original, anyway, and the clone that the United States government created, while perfectly pleasant in her own right, was never the same person. Chalk it up to the trauma of dying, if you’re one of those people who believe that clones share the souls of the people that they’re cloned from. Both versions of her were passionate in their defense of the people that they allowed to get close to them, and they’d stop at nothing to help a friend. Having Georgia on your side was like…it was like knowing that you were somehow privileged to be on a first-name basis with a natural disaster. You knew that one day it was going to rage out of contr
ol and destroy everything in its path, and until that day arrived, you didn’t have to worry about a damn thing. You were the one with the tornado in your corner.”
“I’ve heard you talk about her before,” said Jack casually. “I think everyone has, if they’ve listened to more than one of your interviews. But I’ve never heard you talk about her like that. I think Australia’s getting to you, mate. You’re starting to look out the window and tell yourself stories.”
“If I can’t tell myself stories here, where can I?” I shrugged. “Besides, Georgia would have wanted me to be straight with you. You’re part of the site. That means you’re family, even if you’re distant cousins. Family deserves the truth whenever possible.”
“You always talk about her in the past tense,” said Jack. “Isn’t she alive right now? It’s confusing. Dead people are supposed to stay dead.”
“Georgia Mason had too much indignation for a single lifetime,” I said. “She had to come back, if only so she could correct the accounts of her death. I refer to her in the past tense because she died. My friend died. That she came back was a miracle. She did not come back the same person, and in a way, that’s a very good thing.”
“Why’s that?” asked Olivia.
“Because the original Georgia Mason could never have gone quietly off to live a life that no one was ever going to write down,” I said. “The woman that the CDC made with her face…she’s a friend, too, and a good one, and I miss her, but I don’t begrudge her the life she’s chosen, even as I am fully aware that it is a life that would have driven the original Georgia summarily insane.”
Olivia laughed. “I think I like this version of original-recipe Georgia better than the saintly one you normally talk about in interviews.”
I smiled. “Yes. Me, too.”
Part III:
Small Planes, Large Fences, and a Rather Daunting Number of Zombie Kangaroos, Because That Is Exactly What This Day Needed