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by Mira Grant

  “Light,” he said, hefting it. “Did we decide to skip the cameras this time?”

  “Actually, I decided to skip the weapons.” Picking up the other two kits, I brushed past him on my way up front. “If we meet any zombies, we’ll pacify them with Hostess snack cakes.”

  “Even the living dead love Hostess snack cakes.”

  “Precisely.” I hooked open the door between the sections of the van with my foot and tossed Rick’s field kit back to Shaun. “I’m driving.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he said, with a mock annoyed look. Following me, he settled in the passenger seat and asked, “So what are we really doing?”

  “Really doing? We’re really visiting the scene of a tragic accident to determine whether it was caused by gross human negligence or a simple series of unavoidable events.” I sat and pulled my seat belt across my lap. “Buckle up.”

  He did. “You aren’t implying what I think you’re implying.”

  “What am I not implying, Shaun?”

  “They had to torch and burn the infection. Don’t you think someone would have noticed if things weren’t right?”

  “Repeat the first part of your statement again.”

  “They had to torch and…” He stopped. “You’re not serious.”

  “Shaun, the O’Neils have been raising horses for generations. They didn’t even take a break after the Rising.” I pulled out of the lot and started down the road. The countryside around us was wide, flat, and relatively unbroken by anything as plebian as signs of human habitation. Not the best hunting territory for the living dead. “They don’t make mistakes on the level of allowing a massive outbreak that kills nearly half the hired help. It just doesn’t happen. So either somebody screwed up big time—”

  “—or someone cut the screamers,” Shaun finished, hushed. “Why wouldn’t anyone have found anything?”

  “Was anyone going to look? Shaun, if I say, ‘A big animal amplified and killed its owners,’ do you think, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ or do you think, ‘It was bound to happen sometime’?”

  Shaun was quiet for several minutes as we drove toward the ranch. Finally, in a pensive tone, he said, “How big is this, George?”

  I tightened my hands on the wheel. “Ask Rebecca Ryman.”

  “What are we going to do about it?”

  “We’re going to tell the truth.” I glanced toward him. “Hopefully, that’s going to be enough.”

  He nodded, and we drove on in silence.

  A lot of time was spent looking into the science and application of forensics before the Rising. How did this man die? What did he die for? Could he have been saved? It’s been different since the Rising, as the possibility of infection makes it too dangerous for investigators to pry into any crime scene that hasn’t been disinfected, while the strength of modern disinfectants means that once they’ve been used, there’s nothing to find. DNA testing and miraculous deductions brought about by a few clinging fibers are things of the past. As soon as the dead started walking, they stopped sharing their secrets with the living.

  For modern investigators, whether with the police or the media, this has meant a lot of “going back to our roots.” An active mind is worth a thousand tests you can’t run, and knowing where to look is worth even more. It’s all a matter of learning how to think, learning how to eliminate the impossible, and admitting that sometimes what’s left, however improbable, is going to be the truth.

  The world is strange that way.

  —From Images May Disturb You, the blog of Georgia Mason, March 24, 2040

  Fourteen

  Rick was a good match for our team in more ways than one: He had his own transport, and he didn’t leave home without it. I’d heard about the armor-plated VW Beetles—they’re in a lot of Mom’s antizombie ordnance reports, which she tends to leave lying all over the house—but I’d never actually seen one before Rick’s. It looked like a weird cross between an armadillo and a pill bug.

  An electric blue armadillo.

  With headlights.

  He was parked outside the ranch gates, leaning against the side of his car and typing something into his PDA’s collapsible keyboard. He lifted his head as we drove up, folding the keyboard and stowing the entire unit in his pocket.

  Shaun was out of the van before we’d stopped moving, pointing to Rick. “You do not lower your eyes in the field!” he snapped. “You do not split your attention, you do not focus on your equipment, and you especially do not do these things when you’re alone at an off-grid rendezvous point!” Rick blinked, looking more confused than anything else.

  I stopped the van, leaning over to close Shaun’s door before opening my own. A lot of people don’t think my brother has a temper. It’s like they assume I somehow sucked up the entire quota of “cranky,” and now Shaun’s perpetually cheery and ready for a challenge while I glower at people from behind my sunglasses and plot the downfall of the Western world. They’re wrong. Shaun has a bigger temper than I do. He just saves his fits of fury for the important things, like finding one of our team members acting like an idiot in the vicinity of a recent outbreak.

  Rick was realizing he had a problem. Putting up his hands in a placating gesture, he said, “The area was cleared, and they did a full disinfect. I looked it all up before I came out here.”

  “Did they get a one hundred percent scratch-and-match between mammals meeting the KA amplification barrier, known victims, registered survivors, and potential vector points?” Shaun demanded. He knew they hadn’t, because there’s never been a one hundred percent return on the Nguyen-Morrison test array, not even under strict laboratory conditions. There’s always the chance something capable of carrying the virus, either in its own bloodstream or by carrying tainted blood or tissue on its person, got away.

  “No,” Rick admitted.

  “No, because it doesn’t happen. Which means you? Have basically been standing naked in the middle of the road, waving your arms and shouting, ‘Come get it, dead guys, I wanna be your next snack.’ ” He flung Rick’s field kit at his chest. Rick caught it and stood there, blinking as Shaun spun on his heel and stalked off toward the gates. I let him go. Someone needed to start the process of presenting our credentials to the guards on duty, and it would calm him down. Bureaucracy generally did.

  Rick stared after Shaun, still looking shell-shocked.

  “He’s right, you know,” I said, squinting at him through my sunglasses. The glare outside the van was bad enough to make me wish it were safe to take painkillers in the field. It’s not; nothing that dulls your awareness of your body and what it’s doing is a good idea. “What made you get out of your car?”

  “I thought it was safe,” Rick stammered.

  I shook my head. “It’s never safe. Get your pack on, activate your cameras, and let’s go.” I started along Shaun’s path to the ranch gates. Getting out of the car alone was a rookie mistake, but Rick’s record wasn’t heavy on field work. His reporting was good, and he knew enough to stick with the senior reporters in an area. He’d learn the rest if he lived long enough to get the chance.

  If getting out of the car was a rookie mistake, going into the ranch on foot was blatant stupidity, but we didn’t have any real choice. Not only would our vehicles have been impossible to fit into any of the standing structures, we wouldn’t have been able to avoid getting hung up in potholes or in the ruts opened by the government cleaning equipment. Better on foot and paying attention than sucked into a false sense of security and taken out by hostile road conditions.

  Shaun was outside the guard station, where two wary, clean-shaven men watched from behind thick sheets of safety glass. Both were wearing plain army jumpsuits. From the looks on their faces, this was their first outbreak, and we didn’t fit their expectations of the sort of folks who would walk into a sealed-off hazard zone, even one that was due to be unsealed within the next s
eventy-two hours and had been the scene of a complete Nguyen-Morrison testing, including bleach bombs and aerosol decontamination. If it’d been the sort of ranch that grew crops instead of livestock, they’d have been forced to shut it down for at least five years while the chemicals worked their way out of the soil. As it was, they’d be importing feed and water for eighteen months, until the groundwater tested clear again.

  The things we’re willing to do to avoid the possibility of exposure to the live virus are sometimes awe inspiring. “Any trouble?” I asked, stopping next to Shaun and casting a tight-lipped smile toward the army boys. “My, don’t they look happy to see us?”

  “They were happier before I showed them we had Senator Ryman’s permission to be here and the proper clearances to enter the property. Although I think they were kind of relieved when they realized our clearance levels mean they don’t have to come in with us.” Shaun grinned almost maliciously as he handed me and Rick the metal chits that served as our passes into the zone. Any hazard seals would react to the ID tags on the chits, opening to let us pass. “Somehow, I don’t think the boys want to meet a real live infected person of their very own. It’s amazing that they passed basic training.”

  “Don’t tease the straights,” I said, pressing the chit against the strap of my shoulder bag. It adhered to the fabric with a nearly unbreakable seal, turning on and beginning to flash a reassuring green. “How long’s our clearance?”

  “Standard twelve-hour passage. If we’re inside the zone when the chits run out, we’ll have to call for help and hope help answers.” Shaun pressed his own chit to the collar of his chain-mail shirt. It flashed before dimming to standard metallic gray.

  “Any recent signs of movement in or around the zone?” Rick asked. His chit was clinging to the earpiece of his wireless phone, where its green flashes contrasted with the blinking yellow LED.

  “Not a one.” Shaun jerked his up, indicating the guards. “Shall we move on before they book us for loitering outside a hazard zone?”

  “Can they do that?” asked Rick.

  “We’re within a hundred yards of a recent outbreak,” I said. “They can do just about whatever they want.” I walked toward the gates. The chit on my bag flashed and they swung open, letting me enter the ranch grounds. There were no blood tests on this side of the hazard zone. If I wanted to enter a known infection site when I was already infected, I’d just finish my transition behind a pre-established barrier. Not exactly what most people would consider a loss.

  The gates shut behind me, only to open again as Shaun approached, and a third time for Rick. Only one person was allowed to pass at a time. If they’d followed standard procedure, the gates would also be electrified, with a current set to increase exponentially if anything grabbed hold. It wouldn’t do much to stop a horde of zombies that really wanted to get through, but it was better than nothing.

  “Dropping the first fixed-point camera, setting the feed to channel eight, and activating screamers,” Shaun said, planting a small tripod. It extended an antenna, flashing yellow as it caught the local wireless. It would record everything it saw and feed it to the databases in the van. We wouldn’t get anything useful unless there was an outbreak while we were on the grounds, but it never hurts to cover your bases. More important, it would sound the alarm if it detected any motion not connected to one of the team’s identifying beacons. “George, we have a map?”

  “We have a map,” I confirmed, pulling out my PDA and unfolding the screen to its full extension. “Buffy pulled it down before she left.” God bless Buffy. No team is complete without a good technician, and the word for an incomplete team is usually “fatality.” “Cluster round, guys.” They did.

  The Ryman family ranch was laid out in the pre-Rising style, with a few adjustments to account for the increased security required by the senator’s political career and the possibility of invasion by the rampaging undead. Most of the buildings were unconnected, with four separate horse barns—one for foaling, one for yearlings, one for older horses, and the last, constructed in isolation and using modern quarantine procedures, for the sick. The main house had more windows than any sane person would be comfortable with, but that had apparently suited the Rymans just fine.

  Shaun studied the map before asking, “Do we have the outbreak grid?”

  “We do.” I started tapping. “Either of you boys care to place a bet as to where the outbreak started?”

  “Isolation ward,” Rick said.

  “Foaling,” said Shaun.

  “Wrong.” I hit enter. A grid appeared, crisscrossing the map with streaks of red. The largest red zone surrounded the yearling barn, covering the entire building and extending out in all directions. “The first outbreak was in the yearling barn. Where the strongest, healthiest, most resistant horses were housed.”

  Shaun frowned. “I don’t know much about horses, but that seems a little funny to me. We have a full match-up on the index case?”

  “Ninety-seven percent certainty on the Nguyen-Morrison,” I said, pulling up a picture of a pale gold horse with a white streak down its nose. “Ryman’s Gold Rush Weather. Yearling male, not gelded, clean vet reports every three months since birth, and a clean blood test registered every week for the same time period. No history of elevated virus levels. If you were looking for the cleanest horse on the planet, epidemiologically speaking, you’d have trouble going wrong with this one.”

  “And he’s our index?” said Rick. “That’s bizarre. Maybe something bit him?”

  “They logged every movement these horses made, all day, every day.” I closed the files, snapping the screen of my PDA into its collapsed formation before slipping it into my shoulder bag. “Goldie went out for a run the night before the outbreak, was rubbed down, and checked out clean, with no wounds or scratches. He didn’t leave the barn again before things went south.”

  “None of the other horses top out in the Nguyen-Morrison?” Shaun reached into his own bag, pulling out a collapsible metal rod that he began uncollapsing as the three of us moved, by unspoken accord, toward the side of the ranch where the barns were clustered. If there was evidence to be found, it would be in the barns.

  “The closest is the horse in the stall next to his, Ryman’s Red Sky at Morning, which tested out at a ninety-one and had visible bite marks. Six percent pretty much says Goldie’s our index.”

  “The only way that could happen is spontaneous amplification,” Shaun said, with a deep frown. He snapped the last segment of the rod into place and hit a button on the handle, electrifying the metal. “No chance of heart attack or other natural death?”

  “Not in a place like this,” Rick said. We both looked toward him. Shaking his head, he said, “I did a piece on modern ranching a few years back. They have those animals so monitored that if they just up and die—a heart stops, or they suffocate on a piece of feed, or whatever—someone will know immediately.”

  “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.”