Blackout: Book 3 of The Newsflesh Trilogy

by Mira Grant

  “Did you owe us this before or after you let your people call an air strike on Oakland?” asked Becks. “David Novakowski stayed behind when those bombs came down. He was an Irwin. A good one. He wasn’t involved in your campaign because he was in Alaska at the time, but he would have liked you.” Her tone was calm and challenging at the same time, daring him to give an answer she didn’t approve of.

  “The air strike on Oakland was called in response to an outbreak, and did not involve the president,” said the man from the CDC. I managed not to cringe at the sound of his voice. “Consider your words before you make accusations.”

  “It was a pretty convenient outbreak, considering one of your people had just shown up, running for her life,” snapped Shaun. “Don’t try to bullshit us, okay? We all know we’re not leaving this building alive. So there’s no point in fucking with our heads.”

  “Shaun.” President Ryman actually sounded offended. “Please don’t make assumptions. You’re absolutely going to leave here alive. At a certain point, it became inevitable that we’d bring you here to fully explain the situation.”

  “Does that point have anything to do with us having secure footage of a living clone of Georgia Mason running around Seattle?” asked Alaric. “I ask purely out of academic curiosity, you understand. I know you’re going to lie through your teeth.”

  President Ryman sighed. “You don’t trust me anymore, do you?”

  “Have you given us a reason to?” I asked.

  “You’re alive, Georgia. I’d think that might be enough to buy me a little patience.”

  “You were planning to have me killed and replaced with a more tractable version. I think that explains a little crankiness.”

  The man from the CDC cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter who’s angry with whom. You are here to have the true nature of the Kellis-Amberlee infection explained. With that in mind, I believe it’s time we make you understand why you have been remiss in your lines of inquiry.”

  “Ever notice how people like to use five-dollar words when they know they’re wrong?” asked Becks, of no one in particular.

  President Ryman shook his head. “Arguing is getting us nowhere. This way.” He gestured down the hall before starting to walk. His Secret Servicemen promptly moved to get behind us, making it clear that we’d be herded along if we didn’t come on our own.

  We went.

  The hallway led to a room with walls covered by crystal display screens. Two of them were already showing the structure of the Kellis-Amberlee virus. Another showed an outline of a generic human body. Ryman walked to the large table at the center of the room and stopped, clearly unhappy, as he turned to the man from the CDC.

  “I believe that, at this point, I must remind you that national security depends on your silence,” said the man from the CDC. “Nothing said here can leave this room.”

  “Uh, reporters,” said Becks. “Or did you forget?”

  “Even reporters have things they care about,” he said, with chilling calm. “Perhaps you feel immortal. Perhaps you consider martyrdom something to aspire to—a thrilling entry for your much-lauded ‘Wall.’ But you have a family, don’t you? Rebecca Atherton, of the Westchester Athertons. Your youngest sister was married this past summer. Katherine. A very pretty girl. It’s a pity they live in such a remote area.”

  Becks’s eyes widened before narrowing into angry slits, filled with a murderous rage. “Don’t you even—” she began.

  “And you, Mr. Kwong. Your sister is your only remaining family. She’s currently in the custody of Stacy and Michael Mason—not people renowned for their ability to keep children alive, when you stop to think about it.”

  For possibly the first time in my life, original or artificial, the urge to defend the Masons rose inside me. “You’ve made your point,” I snapped. “We’ll keep our mouths shut. Now do you want to explain what the hell is so important that you need to tell us your evil plan before you have us all shot?”

  “It’s not an evil plan, Georgia; it’s the truth.” With those words, President Ryman went from sounding weary to sounding utterly heartbroken. “You’ve become too associated with this whole situation, and that means we need you. You’re the ones who tell the truth, and the ones who fell off the radar when things turned bad. People will believe you.”

  “Even when we’re lying to them?”

  His silence was all the answer I needed.

  “Please sit,” said the man from the CDC.

  Grudgingly, I sat. The others did the same. Only the man from the CDC remained standing.

  “The first thing you need to understand is that the KA virus, being manmade, bonds tightly to anything it encounters,” he began, in the sort of easy, lecturing tone that all doctors seem to learn in medical school. Ignoring the tension in the room, he produced a remote from his pocket and pointed it at the nearest screen. The Kellis-Amberlee model displayed there began to rotate. “This tendency created the hybridized virus to begin with. And it is what has complicated our cure for the infection.”

  Shaun frowned. “Complicated your search for a cure?”

  “No,” said the man from the CDC calmly. “Complicated our cure.” The model was suddenly surrounded by smaller, semi-spherical images that looked something like slides I’d seen of pre-Rising flu virus. They began attacking the larger KA virus, surrounding it before engulfing it entirely. “We’ve managed to create several treatments that work remarkably well, destroying the Kellis-Amberlee infection in nine out of ten afflicted.”

  We all stared at him, even Steve. It was Alaric who found his voice first, asking slowly, “Then why haven’t you released it?”

  “The Kellis-Amberlee virus has become so entwined with our immune systems that killing it kills them as well. Without a functioning immune system, the cured become targets for every opportunistic infection that comes along. None of our subjects have lasted long.” The image on the screen reset itself, returning to the single Kellis-Amberlee virus, floating serene and undisturbed. “To put it in simpler terms: Kill the virus, kill the population.”

  “So why don’t you just tell people that?” demanded Shaun. “We’re not idiots!”

  “Try telling Alexander Kellis that people aren’t idiots,” suggested the man from the CDC. “We cannot say ‘there will never be a cure.’ People need hope. The hope that someday, Kellis-Amberlee will be banished, and we will be free to resume the lives that we remember.”

  “Why?” asked Alaric. He shook his head slowly. “We can live with the virus. The reservoir conditions are proof of that. We can find a new status quo.”

  “One where anyone could become a zombie, anytime, and you don’t dare shoot them because they might—might—recover their senses? This nation barely recovered from the Rising when the lines were clear and infection meant death. I doubt we could hold together as a people if we were told that recovery was an option.” I was starting to hate the absolute calm of the man from the CDC’s delivery. He continued to watch us coolly. “A cure may be impossible, but a solution will be found. A strain of the virus that doesn’t generate anomalous reservoir conditions will be discovered, and will be used to standardize the tragically incurable condition that now informs our society. No one will ever need to know that a cure is not possible. No one will ever need to give up hope.”

  “No one except for all the people who would have recovered if you’d just failed to shoot them in the head,” said Shaun. The bitterness in his voice was strong enough to worry me. I put a hand on his arm, praying that would be enough to keep him from doing anything stupid. “The ones who would have gotten better.”

  “Sacrifices must be made,” said the man from the CDC.

  Something in his tone provided the last piece I needed to fully understand what he was saying. “You want to infect the entire world with the same strain of the virus,” I said slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to need a better distribution method if you’re plannin
g to accomplish that. You can’t be sure of everyone getting exposed the natural way.”

  For the first time, he looked uncomfortable. Alaric, meanwhile, was staring at him, mouth actually falling slightly open in shock.

  Finally, Alaric said, in a hushed tone, “You built the mosquitoes?”

  “ ‘Built’ is a strong word—” began Rick.

  “They were never intended to reach the American mainland,” said President Ryman.

  I had heard that man speak with conviction a hundred times on the campaign trail; I had heard him make promises he damn well intended to keep. I had never heard him deliver a party line with that little sincerity. He wasn’t lying. He might as well have been. “What happened?” I asked. “Was there a leak?”

  “No,” said Shaun, before anyone else could speak. “They let them go. They wanted to bury the news cycle, keep what happened in Memphis from getting out. Isn’t that right?”

  “The storm was an unexpected complication,” said the man from the CDC. “The carrier mosquitoes were never intended to make it out of Cuba.”

  I was busy holding Shaun’s arm, keeping him from doing anything we might regret later. I didn’t think to grab Alaric. Neither did Becks. Before any of us had a chance to react, the normally nonviolent Newsie was launching himself at the man from the CDC, locking his hands around the taller man’s throat and slamming him into the wall. The crystal display screen shook dangerously, but didn’t fall.

  “YOUR COMPLICATION KILLED MY PARENTS!” shouted Alaric, slamming the man from the CDC against the wall again. No one moved to pull them apart. “THEY WERE IN FLORIDA! YOU KILLED MY FAMILY TO BURY A NEWS CYCLE, BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T READ A FUCKING WEATHER REPORT!”

  The man from the CDC made a strained choking noise, clawing helplessly at Alaric’s hands. Still, no one moved to pull them apart.

  Finally, wearily, President Ryman said, “It would make everyone’s job easier if you would stop trying to actually kill him. I understand that you’re angry. This isn’t helping.”

  Becks glared at him as she stepped forward, putting her hands on Alaric’s shoulders. He slumped, fingers still locked around the doctor’s throat. “Let him go, Alaric,” she said quietly. “It’s time to let him go.”

  “They killed my parents,” Alaric mumbled.

  “They killed a lot of people. They even killed Georgia. But strangling this man won’t bring them back, and he hasn’t finished telling us everything he knows. Now let him go. It’s time to let him talk. You can kill him later.”

  Reluctantly, Alaric let go. The doctor staggered away from him, coughing, one hand coming up to clutch at his throat like he was going to finish the job of strangling himself. Pointing at Alaric, he demanded, “Restrain that man!”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but no,” said Steve. “I serve at the pleasure of the president, not at the whim of the CDC.”

  The man from the CDC glared daggers at him. President Ryman ignored him, turning to us. “The mosquitoes are a modified form of the species that carries yellow fever,” he said. “They’re purely artificial. They can’t reproduce, and they can’t survive in temperatures below a certain level. The loss of American life has been tragic. It will end when winter comes.”

  “They can’t reproduce?” said Shaun incredulously. “That’s your big solution? They won’t fuck? Did none of you people ever see Jurassic Park?”

  “It may take us years to clean out the zombie mobs left by the outbreak, but I assure you, the mosquitoes will not be a factor for long,” said President Ryman. He met my eyes for an instant, and I almost recoiled from the pain lurking in his face. He was the president. He was the man at the head of this conspiracy—somehow, he’d gone from being Tate’s patsy to the man in the position Tate once aspired to. And he looked like he was being tortured.

  “Tell that to my parents,” said Alaric. He sagged against Becks, glaring daggers at anyone who made the mistake of looking his way. If he’d been armed, I think more than one person would have been in danger of dying.

  Still clutching his throat, the man from the CDC said, “Regardless, you were brought here for a purpose. You will do as you’re told, or you will not leave here alive.”

  “What purpose would that be?” I asked warily.

  “You have a certain reputation for honesty,” said the man from the CDC. “You will begin reporting the news as we present it, rather than reporting it as you see fit. By adding your voices to ours, we can hopefully control some of the more unpleasant rumors to have arisen since the events surrounding the most recent presidential election.”

  It was my turn to stare at him. Finally, I said, “You want me to lie for you.”

  “Oh, no,” said the man from the CDC. “You know, I’m disappointed. I really thought you’d be smarter. I suppose the cloning process wasn’t as reliable as we had hoped.”

  “No,” said Shaun. He pulled his arm free of my hand. “You’re already out of the game as far they’re concerned. You said it yourself. The George I got was supposed to be the brainwashed agreeable one who thought they had the best damn ideas ever.”

  “Then why?” I asked.

  President Ryman sighed. “Shaun, I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.” Shaun glanced at me. The look on his face was enough to make me wish I’d never come back from the dead. “They brought you back so they’d have something they could use to make me do what they told me to do. They brought you back for leverage, so they could make me lie for them. You always told the truth, George. But I made people believe it.”

  “Oh.” My voice was barely a whisper. It hurt to even force myself to speak that loudly. “Well, then it’s over. We won’t do it.”

  “Again, I thought you’d be smarter.”

  I turned to the man from the CDC. He was shaking his head, and holding what looked like a fountain pen in his hand. Shaun went rigid, barely seeming to breathe.

  “You’ll do what we tell you to do. If you choose not to, well. We’ll have to find ourselves some replacement reporters, because you are all going to die.”

  Because we chose to tell the truth

  (The cool of age, the rage of youth)

  And stand against the lies of old

  (The whispers soft, the tales untold)

  We find ourselves the walking dead

  (The loves unkept, the words unsaid)

  And in the crypt of all we’ve known

  (The broken blade, the breaking stone)

  We know that we were in the right

  (The coming dawn, the ending night).

  So here is when we stop the lies.

  The time is come. We have to Rise.

  —From Dandelion Mine, the blog of Magdalene Grace Garcia, August 7, 2041.

  The problem with people who have power is that they start thinking more about what it takes to keep that power than they do about what’s right or wrong or just plain a bad idea. Here’s a tip for you: If you’re ever in a position to be making calls on right and wrong that can impact an entire nation, run your decisions past a six-year-old. If they look at you in horror and tell you you’re getting coal in your stocking for the rest of your life, you should probably reconsider your course of action. Unless you want to be remembered as a monster, in which case, knock yourself out.

  —From Charming Not Sincere, the blog of Rebecca Atherton, August 7, 2041.

  SHAUN: Thirty-six

  The pen in the doctor’s hand—so much like the one Dr. Wynne used to kill Kelly in the Memphis CDC, what felt like the better part of a lifetime ago—was enough to make me go cold. I was immune to Kellis-Amberlee. None of the others could say the same. Especially not George, who made me immune, but didn’t confer the same immunity on her own clone.

  Do you think you could survive losing me again? asked her voice, sweet and low and somehow poisonous. She’d never taken that tone with me before. But why shouldn’t she turn on me? I was replacing her, and doing my best to shove her away.

  What k
ind of world were we living in, where the people we trusted to keep us healthy were the ones keeping us sick, and a man couldn’t even depend on his own insanity?

  I raised my hands defensively and said, “There’s no reason for us to do anything crazy. Let’s just settle down, okay?” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Becks restraining Alaric, keeping him from moving toward the now-deadly doctor. He wasn’t with us in Memphis. We’d told him what happened, but he didn’t really understand.

  “It’s a pen,” said George.

  It took me a second to realize that it was the live George who was speaking, not the increasingly malicious voice inside my head. I glanced her way, giving a quick, tight shake of my head. “We’re all going to stay calm,” I said, hoping she’d decide to listen. “Okay?”

  George frowned before nodding slowly. “Okay.” She put her own hands up, mirroring my defensive position. “I’m sorry. I spoke too hastily. We’ll consider your proposal.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?” asked the doctor. He glared at President Ryman. “I knew this was a terrible plan from the start. We should have arranged for an outbreak in their hometown as soon as the campaign was over. Wynne was soft on them, the old fool. Leaving them alone was his idea, not mine.”

  “That sounds less like ‘soft on us’ and more like sensible resource management,” said Becks, pulling the doctor’s attention back to her. I winced, but didn’t try to stop her. She was keeping him from focusing on any one person. That was valuable. I just hoped it wouldn’t get her shot.

  “Put down the pen,” said Steve. His tone was clipped, indicating that he, too, knew exactly what it was.