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Ben had taken the simulation Mat had designed and my extrapolations from its result and run with them, picking apart the ways in which Portland had clearly been an assassination attempt. It had been enough to buy us some play during a few news cycles, although we weren’t entrenched enough to knock the Masons and their crew out of the top slot. They had a better organizational structure, with baby bloggers pumping out content even when their primary team was off-line for whatever reason. It made me want a team of minions to run and do my bidding. Too bad that wasn’t going to happen for a while. Oh, we had our baby bloggers, but they were still fulfilling contracts to other blogging sites and working for us in their spare time. You needed either money or reputation to start your own site and get that sort of overnight success, and we didn’t have either. We just had the Kilburn campaign. This was what would make or break us, and bearing that in mind, it was difficult not to become overly invested in our candidate.
I was sitting in the main section of our new RV, cleaning my sniper rifle, when the vast behemoth of a vehicle came rolling to a halt. I looked up. Ben was napping in the sleeping compartment, the curtains drawn to block the light. Mat was riding with Chuck and a few of the governor’s other advisors, presumably to plan the governor’s makeup for the week. Mat had been spending more and more time sunk in the belly of the campaign, and while they hadn’t missed a report yet, I was pretty sure we’d lost them. This would end with either the White House or a cabinet position for our candidate, and Mat would follow her to Washington D.C., ready to set fashion standards for the political elite.
I couldn’t feel bad about that. Mat had always wanted this. I couldn’t be happy about it either. The idea had been to strengthen our team, not split it up; we were supposed to come through this more united than ever. And that wasn’t going to happen.
Carefully, I put the components I was holding down on the chamois cloth I was using as a backdrop and stood, making my way toward the driver’s compartment. There was supposed to be a blood test between the driver and the passengers, but Mallory had disabled it years ago—she’d mostly traveled alone, and hadn’t felt the need to prick her finger every time she wanted access to her own things. We had decided not to put it back in place. It would have slowed us down, and we were all living in one another’s back pockets anyway. Adding a layer of sham security wouldn’t have meant anything, but it might have kept us from reaching each other in time if there was an emergency.
Audrey was behind the wheel when I opened the door and poked my head into the cabin. Her seat belt was off, and she was loading bullets into her pistol. She turned toward the sound of the door opening, offering me a quick, almost professional smile.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Pit stop,” she said, and gestured toward the windshield.
We were parked in front of a neon-encrusted dive bar in the middle of nowhere. The sign out front said this was the “Painted Rose,” and was capped by an animated hologram of white roses slowly turning red as something—paint or blood, it was hard to say—was drizzled on them from above. As an image, it managed to be erotic and disturbing at the same time. The parking lot was almost empty, which could have meant potential clients felt the same way.
“I see that we’ve stopped, and I see this is a place that can be accurately described as a ‘pit,’ but I think I’m going to ask that question again,” I said. “Where are we?”
“About sixty miles outside of Vegas,” said Audrey. “I thought we were going straight through, but the head of the convoy signaled for everyone else to pull over, so I got off the road.”
“Cool,” I said. “This place looks sleazy, dangerous, and like they probably have great happy hour specials. Let’s check it out.” I closed the door connecting the cabin to the rest of the RV. There was a click as the rest of the doors unsealed themselves. They were still locked, but we could exit the vehicle now. We hadn’t disabled all the safety systems: Some of them were legally required if we wanted to keep driving this thing.
“Maybe we should wait for someone to—and you’re already gone,” said Audrey, scowling through the open passenger-side door as I slid down to the pavement. “If you get bitten to death by zombie rattlesnakes, I’m going to pee on your grave. You know that, don’t you?”
“Looking forward to it,” I chirped, and shut the door behind me. She would be along in a moment. I had absolute faith in that. Audrey might get fussy about danger sometimes, but she loved it as much as I did. She just had different ways of showing it.
Even in February, the Nevada sun blazed down, bouncing its heat off the blacktop and making the parking lot feel more like the world’s largest open-air pizza oven. I stretched languidly, letting the warmth bake into my bones. People sometimes asked why I’d gone for sundresses, instead of more practical expressions of femininity, like the classic Lara Croft look—cutoff shirts and khaki shorts also said “pretty, girly, pretty girly” to the viewing audience, but they did it without loose skirts and snappable straps. What I could never quite explain was how much I loved dressing for the sun. It was always gray and chilly in Ireland. Any sun was a pleasure. Here, in America, I could have all the sun I wanted. Sometimes I felt like a solar battery, soaking it all in, waiting for the day when I was finally thawed.
The door slammed on the other side of the RV as Audrey got out. I beamed, turning to face her as she walked around the nose of the vehicle. “Well, this is charming,” she said. “Were you thinking of a place like this for our honeymoon?”
“Not enough zombies,” I said.
Audrey wrinkled her nose.
Motion to the right caught my attention. I turned. John and Amber were walking toward us, both wearing sunglasses in addition to their customary black suits. Amber’s jacket was unbuttoned, revealing the butt of the gun at her belt. She had her hand resting on it, ready to draw at the first sign of danger. I approved of that. Having multiple people on watch meant that I could relax a little bit.
“Where’s Mr. North?” asked John, once they were close enough to speak without shouting.
“Ben’s asleep,” said Audrey. “I’d rather not wake him if it’s not important, since it’s his turn to drive next, and we have sixty miles to go before we get to Vegas.” She raised an eyebrow in silent question: Was it important? Did someone need to go wake Ben?
“We’re here because a good friend of the governor’s, who’s going to be catching a plane first thing in the morning, asked if we’d stop for a cup of coffee and to allow the two of them to catch up,” said John. “The governor asked me to come and let you know, and to tell you you were all invited to join, if you so wished.”
My eyes widened. It wasn’t frequent that I was the first to put two and two together and come up with the impossible four. Sometimes, however, the odds were weighted in my favor. We were parked in front of a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. There was only one person I knew of from Nevada who had enough of a stake in this election to both be in her home state this week and be catching a plane to somewhere else—somewhere like, say, the middle of the country, where she needed to do a lot more stumping if she wanted to stay in the race. Super Tuesday was almost upon us. Congresswoman Wagman was smart enough to be concerned about it.
“We wish,” I said fervently. “We wish, and Ben will murder me if I don’t get him out of bed. Murder me to death. Wait here, I’ll be right back.” I didn’t wait to see if they agreed. I just spun and ran down the length of the RV. Slapping my hand against the testing panel next to the main door, I waited impatiently for the lights to cycle green before tearing the door open and jumping inside. I could hear John and Amber laughing as it slammed behind me. I didn’t care. We were going to meet Congresswoman Wagman. How could I not be excited?
Congresswoman Kirsten Wagman was a Republican candidate. She and I had a lot of political differences. But she thought like an Irwin, all style in the quest to justify substance, and I couldn’t help but respect that. She had seen an opportunity to do some good, to
push the agendas of her constituents, and all she’d needed to do was trade her dignity for airtime. That was an exchange that every Irwin I knew was intimately acquainted with.
When Kirsten Wagman had been looking at going into politics—after putting herself through law school by working the pole at a gentleman’s club—she realized she could either hide her background or celebrate it, and had chosen the latter. Her breasts had already been excellent, at least if the old file photos were anything to go by. She’d still gone under the knife several times to improve them, along with all the other niggling little details of her physique that weren’t perfectly camera ready. And then she’d burst onto the Nevada political scene, as in-your-face as any man in her position had ever been. Most people dismissed her as uninformed and uninterested in the real issues. Most people weren’t looking deep enough.
Under Kirsten Wagman, sex work in Nevada had been fully decriminalized and stripped of much of its stigma. She’d created scholarships for strippers and camgirls, encouraging them to find backup careers for when they needed to get out of the business. She’d improved sex education and safety nets for the poor, and she had done it all while wearing lacy slips and sky-high heels. It was a beautiful act of diversion and distraction, and while I didn’t think it would be enough to carry her all the way to the White House—not with most of the journalists I knew gunning for her as making a “mockery” of the political process—no failures now were going to take away from the successes she was building upon. She was smart as a snake and canny as anything, and she might well be the closest thing to an Irwin that we were ever going to see on the political stage.
The sleeping chamber was dark when I opened the curtain and stepped inside. Ben had sealed all the windows before going to bed. It made sense, from an “actually getting some sleep” perspective, but it made my job harder than it needed to be. Did I wake him gently, or did I rip the scab off of sleep before he realized I was there?
Subtlety has never been my strong suit. I felt along the wall to the nearest window and jerked the curtain open, letting sunlight flood the room. There were two beds, both bunk, and Ben was sleeping on the bottom bed directly across from the window. He yelped, fumbling for his glasses with one hand as he covered his eyes with the opposite forearm. He tried to roll away, but there was no point to it; the light was everywhere. The light would not be denied.
“Good morning!” I chirped blithely. “We’re parked outside a brilliantly tatty-looking bar, and Kirsten Wagman is inside, waiting to have a drink with us. I rather thought you’d not want to be left out of this one. Get up, sleepyhead, and come meet a political genius.”
Ben lowered his arm enough to squint at me in bewildered disbelief. “Kirsten Wagman?” he parroted, words thick with sleep. “The congresswoman?”
“The one with the…” I made a hefting gesture in front of my breasts, whistling to illustrate it. “Yeah, that’s the one. Come on, she’s brilliant, I can’t wait to meet her, and getting you up and moving is making me wait, so get up.”
“You’re serious.” Ben sat up, positioning his glasses securely on the bridge of his nose as he stared at me. “We’ve stopped to have tea with a congresswoman.”
“It’s Wagman, so I suspect we’re having either beer or schnapps, but yes.” I beamed. “This is the best job ever. Are you awake? Are you coming out? Or do you just want me to take a lot of notes? Spoiler alert: I won’t take any notes. Your brand of boring journalism is not appealing to me, and I’m going to do my best to ignore it completely during this amazing opportunity.”
“I’m up, I’m up,” said Ben, finally sliding out of the bunk. He was wearing flannel pajama bottoms patterned with little robots. It was adorable. I knew better than to tell him that: He had a tendency to get annoyed when I commented on his wardrobe, maybe because I kept telling him not enough of it was tear-away. “Give me five minutes to make myself presentable, all right? And thanks for waking me. I would have hated to miss this.”
“You can have three, because you took so long to get up,” I said, and sauntered toward the door. When I got there I paused, grinned at him, and added, “You’re welcome.”
Then I was out, leaving Ben to the mysteries of his suitcase and a wet washcloth across his face. All of us were prepared to be up and running at a moment’s notice—it was part of the job—but we had our own ways of getting there. Ben depended on cold compresses and shocks to the system. Mat slept like a normal person, which was always disconcerting for the rest of us. Audrey believed in a healthy diet, exercise, and naps whenever possible. And I, naturally, believed in stimulants to get myself up and sleep aids to put myself down, on those rare occasions I felt like it was necessary for me to stop. Everyone copes in the manner that works best for them. That’s true of the human race, and it’s especially true of the news.
Audrey and John were sunk in a deep discussion of the virtues of the various types of whiskey when I hopped back out of the RV. Amber turned to me, a questioning expression on her face.
“Well?” she asked.
“He’s getting some clothes on and he’ll be right out, he swears,” I said. “Can we wait just a few more minutes?”
“How about you wait just a few more minutes, and I’ll take Ms. Wen with me to escort the governor inside?” suggested John. “That way, she can do that weird ‘filming everything’ you people are so obsessed with, but the governor doesn’t have to keep sitting around waiting for her pet reporters to get out of bed.”
I thought about protesting that this stop hadn’t been on the schedule, making Ben’s nap entirely reasonable and not something he should be teased about. I dismissed the idea just as fast. John was on our side, as much as any member of the governor’s camp could be said to be “on our side.” This wasn’t important enough to risk messing that up. “Sounds good to me. Audrey, does that work for you?”
“Who do you think suggested it?” She leaned up and over to plant a kiss on my cheek. “See you in the strip club.”
“I’ve got singles,” I chirped, causing her to roll her eyes in exasperation before she followed John away from the RV, back across the blacktop toward the governor’s tour bus. I watched them go. They were laughing again within ten feet of leaving us.
Amber stepped up next to me. “You know, if I were you, I might find a way to have a date night in all this crazy. You, her, a bottle of wine, a reminder that you really do love her more than you love your beard…”
“Huh?” I turned to look at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Just that you may have the whole ‘hot femme’ thing sewn up, which clearly does it for your girl, but no girl likes to be ignored, and John doesn’t ignore her.” Amber shrugged. “I’m not saying she’s cheating on you—”
“You’d better not be. Audrey would never do that, and I’m morally obligated to defend her honor.”
“—but I am saying maybe she’s going to remember she deserves better if you don’t step up your game. You’re traveling America with a political campaign. You’re seeing things most people are happy to leave on paper.” Amber gestured to the desert surrounding us, and for the first time, I really registered the fact that we were standing in the open without a fence. Nothing protected us from roving undead, because nothing needed to. Any zombies who found themselves in this unforgiving landscape would most likely die a second, final time before they did any damage.
It was amazing. It was exhilarating. And it was something I’d completely missed in my eagerness to make sure everyone was where they needed to be.
“After this meeting is over, I’m taking a stick and finding a rattlesnake to irritate,” I said. “And when we reach our next stop, I’m taking my girl out for dinner.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Amber.
The RV door banged open, cutting off any further conversation about my relationship with Audrey. I wasn’t sure whether I should be grateful or annoyed as Ben descended to the pavement. He was wearing fresh-pressed tan slacks and
a white button-down shirt. Beads of water gleamed on his hair. They were the only sign that he’d been asleep up until recently; he looked as alert and awake as a man who’d been up for hours.
“I’m here,” he said. There was a beat, and then he asked, “Where are Mat and Audrey?”
“Mat’s with Chuck, presumably, so no one knows, and Audrey went in with the governor’s team, so she could film the arrival for you,” I said. “Amber’s going to walk us over.”
“Hi, Sleeping Beauty,” said Amber, looking amused by her own joke. “Does either of you need anything else before we move? A frosty beverage, a shower, a bucket of tarantulas…?”
“Tarantulas are too fragile,” I said. “You can’t really have any fun with them without killing them, and that’s not fair. They never did anything to me.”
Amber blinked, apparently trying to decide how seriously she needed to take my response. Then she shook her head and said, “Follow me,” before beginning to stride across the blacktop toward the building.
I produced my mag—replaced and newly updated by Mat—and settled it on my face before following her, setting it to record with a tap of my finger. However much useless footage I got, it would all be worth it if I found one image worth using. Ben trailed along behind, his recorder already out in his hand, murmuring impressions and shorthand comments into the microphone. We were ready to work.
Two of the governor’s security people were standing by the door, along with two security agents I didn’t know. The new agents were wearing sensible button-down shirts in impressively bright neon colors, one in pink, and the other in electric green. I grinned. “Congresswoman Wagman’s detail, I assume?”
Electric green produced a blood testing unit from her pocket and held it out to me. “Please place your thumb on the panel,” she said.
Pink was doing the same with Ben. He was a big man, and dwarfed my companion without trying. I looked him over, getting a good shot for my records, and did the same with electric green as I pressed my thumb down.