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by Mira Grant

My mother once told me that no woman is naked when she comes equipped with a bad mood and a steady glare. Fixing that fact at the forefront of my mind, I walked over to the room’s single door and tried the knob.

  It was unlocked.

  That wasn’t necessarily good.

  The hallway was as sterile as the room where I woke up, all white walls, white floors, and stark white overhead lighting. More of those large faux-mirrors were spaced every ten feet, lining both sides of the corridor. I was in the isolation wing. That was even less reassuring than the unlocked door. Pushing the UV blocker up the bridge of my nose in a gesture that was deeply reassuring if not strictly functional, I started down the hall.

  Rick was in the third room on the left, lying atop his bedcovers in white cotton pajamas identical to mine. The CDC isn’t big on gender stereotyping. I knocked on the “window” to warn him that I was coming before opening the door and stepping inside.

  “Do they actually have room service in this place? Because I’d just about die for a can of Coke right about now. Reanimation strictly optional.”

  “Georgia!” Rick sat up, relief and delight warring for control over his features. “Thank God! When I woke up in here alone, I was afraid—”

  “What, that you were the last one left? Sorry, guy, but you don’t get promoted that easily.” I leaned against the door frame, assessing him. He wasn’t visibly injured. That was good. If we needed to exit in a hurry, maybe he could keep up. “I am, in fact, immortal when annoyed.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow?”

  “You’ll never die.” He paused and raised his right hand, making vague gestures toward his eyes. “Georgia, you’re not—”

  “It’s all right.” I tapped the band. “UV-blocking plastic. The latest thing. Technically better than my sunglasses, even if everything is a little bright right now.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Your eyes are brown.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  He shrugged. “I never knew.”

  “Life is an education.” Keeping my tone as light as possible, I asked, “So were you just waiting for me? Have you seen Shaun?”

  “No—like I said before, I woke up alone. I haven’t seen anyone since the CDC Mickeyed us. Any idea what the hell is going on here?”

  “I’m thinking it’s more like they roofied us, and right now, I’m marginally more interested in finding my brother.”

  He gave me a speculative look. “You’re more interested in your brother than in figuring out the truth?”

  “Shaun’s the only thing that concerns me more than the truth does.”

  “He’s not here right now.”

  “Which is why we’re going to find him.” I stepped back into the hall. “Come on.”

  To his credit, Rick rose without argument. “They didn’t lock the doors. That means they don’t think we’re infectious.”

  “That, or it means we’re already in the middle of an outbreak, and they’ve sealed this whole wing.”

  “Aren’t you just a little ray of happy sunshine?”

  I slanted a tight smile in his direction. “I always have been.”

  “I understand your brother a little bit more with every day that passes.”

  “I’m choosing to ignore that remark.” The hall was empty, stretching in both directions with no distinguishing features either way. I frowned. “Know anything about isolation ward layouts?”

  “Yes.”

  His answer was surprisingly firm. I glanced toward him, eyebrows raised in silent question. He shrugged.

  “Lisa and I spent a lot of time in places like this.”

  “Right,” I said, after an uncomfortable pause. “Which way?”

  “CDC iso wards all follow the same basic layout. We go left.”

  That made sense. Zombies don’t learn, and if there’s a chance your personnel are uninfected, you want them to know which way to run. It would also serve as a herding mechanism; those that had already amplified but were hoping for a way out would charge straight into the air lock, where a positive blood test would buy them a bullet to the brain.

  Rick started walking. I hurried to keep up, and he glanced at me.

  “I’m sure Shaun’s fine.”

  “Mmm.”

  “If he’d amplified, we’d be seeing signs of the outbreak. Or at least smelling fresher disinfectant.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I’d like to take this opportunity to say, off the record, that your eyes are much more attractive when you don’t hide them behind those freaky-ass contact lenses. Blue really doesn’t suit you.”

  I gave him a sidelong look.

  Rick smiled. “You didn’t go ‘mmm’ at me that time.”

  “Sorry. I get a little anxious when I don’t know where Shaun is.”

  “Georgia, if this is ‘a little anxious,’ I never want to see you when you’re actually uptight.”

  I shot him another sidelong look. “You’re awfully relaxed.”

  “No,” he said, in a measured tone, “I’m in shock. See, the difference is that if I were relaxed, I wouldn’t be walking along, waiting for the reality of Buffy being dead to hit me like a brick to the side of the head.”

  “Oh.”

  This time, his smile was small and tight and held not a trace of humor. “Ethan taught me about CDC isolation. Lisa taught me about shock.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. We walked through the white halls, our white-clad reflections flickering like ghosts in the tinted-glass “windows” until something new appeared up ahead: a steel-barred door with an intercom and a blood testing unit set into the wall next to it.

  “Friendly,” I said, as we approached.

  “The intercom connects to the duty station, and the test unit has an automatic upload function,” said Rick.

  “Friendly and efficient,” I amended. I stopped in front of the door and pressed the button for the intercom. “Hello?”

  Shaun’s voice answered immediately, full of the rampant cheer only I was likely to recognize as his way of masking grief and fear. “George! You decided to rejoin the world of the living!”

  Something in the center of my chest unclenched and I could breathe again. “Good to see you haven’t decided to leave it,” I said. “Next time, leave me a damn note or something.”

  “Afraid that’s my fault, Ms. Mason,” said a deeper, Southern-accented voice. “We try not to leave anything that could serve for a weapon in the rooms. That includes paper. You understand the necessity.”

  I frowned. “Joe?”

  “That’s right, and I’m pretty properly glad to see you’re both all right.”

  Both? Rick hadn’t said a word since I activated the intercom. I turned and scanned the edge of the ceiling until I found a small discolored patch, off-cream against the white of the tile. Looking directly into it, finger still on the intercom button, I said, “You must have been real popular with the girls in high school. They love Peeping Toms.”

  “Hey, don’t rag on the man, George. This way I get to see your adorable pajamas. You look like Frosty the Snowman. If he were on the rag, I mean.”

  “Frosty’s going to be kicking your ass in a minute,” I said. “Can someone tell me what the hell is going on here, before I get seriously pissed?”

  “Door won’t unlock without a blood test, George,” said Shaun.

  “Of course it won’t.” Turning, I slapped my hand down on the reader panel, barely even flinching as the needles bit into my skin. For every needle I felt, there were five more I didn’t. The thicker needles on CDC kits are more for psychological reassurance than anything else—people don’t believe they’ve been tested unless they feel the sting. Most of the information the CDC needs comes from hypos so small they’re essentially acupuncture needles, sliding in and out without leaving marks.

  A light over the door flashed on, going almost
immediately from red to green, and the locks disengaged with a loud “click.” I removed my hand from the panel.

  “I assume alarms go off if Rick tries to follow right through?”

  “Got it in one. Head into the air lock, let the door shut, and he can follow you.”

  “Right.” I gave Rick a quick nod, which he returned, and opened the door and stepped through.

  If the hallways seemed featureless, the air lock they fed into was antiseptic. The walls were so white that the stark light they reflected was enough to make my eyes ache, even through the UV-blocking strip. Half squinting, I shuffled to the middle of the room.

  The intercom crackled, and Joe’s voice said, “Stop there, Ms. Mason.”

  “Close eyes, hold breath?”

  “Exactly,” he said, with faint amusement in his tone. “It’s always a pleasure to work with someone who knows the drill.”

  “I’m not really in a ‘pleasure’ place,” I said. “Maybe after I have some pants on.” Standing around and grousing wasn’t going to get me to my clothes, or my brother, any faster. Closing my eyes, I removed the UV blocker, took a deep breath, and held it.

  The smell of bleach and disinfecting agents filled the room as a cool mist drifted down from the vents in the ceiling, blanketing me. I forced myself to keep holding my breath, counting backward from twenty. I’d reached seventeen when the fans kicked on and the mist pulled away, sucked into drains in the floor. It would be pulled into channels of superheated air, baked until any traces of infection that had managed to survive the chemical bath were burned away, and then pumped into an incinerator, where it would be destroyed. The CDC does a lot of things, but it doesn’t fuck around with sterilization.

  “You can open your eyes now, Ms. Mason.”

  Sliding the UV blocker back into place, I opened my eyes and proceeded to the door on the air lock’s far side. The light above it was green, and when I touched the handle, it swung open without resistance. I continued on.

  The duty station was one of those hybrid beasts that have become so common in the medical profession over the past twenty years: half nurse’s station and medical triage, half guard point, with alarm buttons posted at several spots around the walls and a large gun cabinet next to the watercooler. A good medical duty station can provide an island of safety for the uninfected, even as an outbreak rages on all sides. If your air locks don’t fail and you have enough ammo, you can hold out for days. One duty station in Atlanta did exactly that—four nurses, three doctors, and five security personnel kept themselves and eighteen patients alive for almost a week before the CDC was able to fight through the outbreak raging through the neighborhoods around the hospital and get them safely out. They made a movie about that incident.

  Shaun, who had his own clothes on, the bastard, was sitting atop the counter with a cup of coffee in his hands. A man I didn’t recognize was standing nearby, wearing a white doctor’s coat over his clothes, and Senator Ryman was beside him, looking more anxious than the other two combined. Nurses and CDC techs moved past the station, talking among themselves like extras in a movie background—they completed the setting, but they weren’t part of it, any more than the walls were.

  The senator was the first to acknowledge my arrival. He straightened, relief radiating through his expression, and moved toward me, catching me in a tight hug before I had a chance to register what he was planning to do. I made a soft “oof” noise as the air was shoved out of my lungs, but he just squeezed tighter, seeming unfazed by the fact that my arms remained down by my sides. This was a hug for his comfort, not mine.

  “Don’t think she can breathe over there, chief,” drawled Shaun. “Pretty sure she hasn’t kicked the oxygen habit just yet.”

  The door opened and closed again behind me, and Rick said, sounding surprised, “Why is Senator Ryman trying to crush Georgia?”

  “Post-traumatic shock,” said Shaun. “He thinks he’s a boa constrictor.”

  “You kids can laugh,” said the senator, finally letting go. Relieved, I stepped back before he could decide to do it again. “You scared me to death.”

  “We scared ourselves pretty badly, too, Senator,” I said, continuing my retreat until I was next to Shaun. He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing. There was a world of relief in that simple gesture. I leaned into his hand, looking toward the stranger. “Joe, I presume?”

  “Dr. Joseph Wynne, Memphis CDC,” he said and walked over to extend his hand in my direction. I took it. His grip was solid without being crushing. “I can’t begin to say how glad I am to speak with you face-to-face.”

  “Glad to still be in the shape to speak,” I said. Pleasantries accomplished, I frowned. “Now, can someone fill me in on why I was standing next to a highway, doing my civic duty, and suddenly woke up in a CDC iso ward? Also, if I could get hooked up with my clothes, that’d be awesome. I feel kind of naked here, and that’s weird when there’s a United States senator in the room.”

  “That’s a funny story, actually,” said Shaun.

  Releasing Joe’s hand, I craned my head around to eye my brother. “Define ‘funny.’ “

  Shaun picked up a bundle from the counter on the other side of him and passed it to me. My clothes and a plastic bag containing my gun and all my jewelry. As I hugged the bundle to my chest, he said, with all apparent sincerity, “Someone called the CDC two minutes before you did and told them that we’d all been killed in the accident.”

  For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. Then, swiveling my head around to direct the stare to Joe and Senator Ryman, I demanded, “Is this true?”

  Looking distinctly uncomfortable now, Joe said, “Well, darlin’, we have to react to every call we get…”

  “You had test results from us. You knew we weren’t dead.”

  “Those types of test results can be falsified,” Joe said. “We did the best we could.”

  I nodded grudgingly. Under the strict interpretation of the law, the CDC would have been within its rights to come into the valley, shoot us, sterilize the surrounding area, and deal with our remains. The fact that it took us alive for extensive testing was unusual, because it represented an unnecessary risk on its part—no one would have questioned it if the CDC had killed us.

  “What made you take us alive?” I asked.

  Joe smiled. “Ain’t many people who can make a call that drastic to the CDC and sound that calm about it, Ms. Mason. I wanted to meet anyone who could do that.”

  “Our parents taught us well,” I said. Raising the bundle of clothes and gear, I asked, “Is there a place where I could get dressed?”

  “Kelly!” Turning, Joe flagged down a passing woman in a doctor’s coat. She was fresh-faced and wide-eyed; she couldn’t have been any older than Buffy, and her long blonde hair, clipped back with a barrette, created the illusion of resemblance. A knot formed in my throat.

  Joe gestured from the woman to me. “Georgia Mason, Dr. Kelly Connolly. Dr. Connolly, if you could please show Ms. Mason to a changing room?”

  Shaun slid off the counter. “C’mon, Rick. I’ll show you the men’s room.”

  “Much obliged,” said Rick, snagging his own clothes from the counter.

  “Certainly, Dr. Wynne,” said Kelly. “Ms. Mason, if you’d come this way?”

  “Sure,” I said, and followed her.

  We walked down a short hallway, this one painted a warm yellow, and Kelly opened a door leading into a small locker room. “The nurses change here,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. Putting my hand on the knob, I glanced to her. “I can find my own way back.”

  “All right,” she said. Hesitating, she looked at me. I looked back. Finally, she said, “I read your site. Every day. I used to follow you on Bridge Supporters, before you managed to schism off.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Really? To what do I owe the honor?”

  She reddened. “Your last n
ame,” she said, sounding abashed. “I did a report in medical school on human-to-animal transmission of the Kellis-Amberlee amplification trigger. I found you when I was looking for information on your… your brother. I stayed for the writing.”

  “Ah,” I said. She seemed about to say something more. I waited, watching her.

  Her blush deepened. “I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that I’m sorry.”

  I frowned. “About…?”

  “Buffy?”

  It felt like all the blood in my veins had turned to ice. Careful to keep breathing, I asked, “How did you know about that?”

  She blinked, surprise unconcealed as she said, “I saw the notice that she’d been added to the Wall.”

  “The Wall?” I said. “But how would they know to… oh, Jesus. The cameras.”

  “Ms. Mason? Georgia? Are you all right?”

  “Huh?” At some point, I’d looked away from her. I looked back, shaking my head. “I just… I didn’t realize she’d already be on the Wall. Thank you. Your condolences are appreciated.” I turned and walked into the changing room without waiting for her to respond, closing the door behind me. Let her think I was rude. I’m a journalist. Journalists are supposed to be rude, right? It’s part of the mystique.

  Thoughts chased themselves through my head like leaves tumbling in the wind as I stripped off my CDC-issue pajamas and began getting my own clothes on. It took longer than normal because I had to pause every step along the way to get the appropriate recording devices, cameras, and wireless receivers into their assigned pockets. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to find anything for weeks.

  Buffy’s death was on the Wall. I should have known it would be, since her family would have been notified, which meant there would have been an obituary, but somehow, knowing that simple fact—that she’d joined all the other victims of this endless plague on the Wall—made her death all the more impossible to deny. More, it reminded me of one crucial fact: We were connected to the rest of the world, even when we were isolated. The cameras were always rolling. And right now, that was what concerned me.

  I slid my sunglasses into place, removing the UV blocker as I shoved them up the bridge of my nose. They made me feel less naked than anything else. Reaching up, I tapped my ear cuff. “Mahir,” I said.