Feed n-1

by Mira Grant

  Rosemary and Rue

  A Local Habitation

  An Artificial Night

  EXTRAS

  Meet the Author

  Born and raised in California, Mira Grant has made a lifelong study of horror movies, horrible viruses, and the inevitable threat of the living dead. In college, she was voted Most Likely to Summon Something Horrible in the Cornfield, and was a founding member of the Horror Movie Sleep-Away Survival Camp, where her record for time survived in the Swamp Cannibals scenario remains unchallenged.

  Mira lives in a crumbling farmhouse with an assortment of cats, horror movies, comics, and books about horrible diseases. When not writing, she splits her time between travel, auditing college virology courses, and watching more horror movies than is strictly good for you. Favorite vacation spots include Seattle, London, and a large haunted corn maze just outside of Huntsville, Alabama.

  Mira sleeps with a machete under her bed, and highly suggests that you do the same. Find out more about the author at www.miragrant.com.

  Interview

  *SPOILERS CONTAINED BELOW*

  Have you always known that you wanted to write novels?

  I’ve always known that I wanted to be a writer—I was one of those kids writing six-page “books” in elementary school and harassing the other kids to buy them—but it was a long time before I realized that writers actually produce novels. I spent a long time viewing novels as these magical things that just sort of happened.

  Once I figured out that people actually create novels, I absolutely knew that I wanted to be a novelist. I couldn’t imagine anything better in the world.

  How did the idea for Feed develop?

  I love zombies and I love epidemiology, and my big problem with a lot of zombie fiction is that “Well, it was a disease” seems like an easy answer, but really isn’t. So I started thinking about what sort of a disease you’d need to actually have a zombie apocalypse—and the thing about diseases is that they don’t actually want to be slatewipers (diseases that wipe out the entire susceptible population) because doing that also destroys the disease itself. I started tinkering with my postzombie world, trying to figure out what it would take to rebuild society, what kinds of social structure would arise…

  I’m also fascinated by the difference between terror and fear. Fear says, “Do not actually put your hand in the alligator,” while terror says, “Avoid Florida entirely because alligators exist.” I figured terror would be a huge component of the postzombie world. Everything arose from there.

  What kind of research did you do while writing this novel?

  Feed was a fantastic excuse for me to watch every zombie movie made in the last thirty years and call it serious research. It was an even better excuse for me to audit epidemiology courses and read books with titles like Virus X, The Speckled Monster, and Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer. It was a good time.

  I also did a lot of practical research. We “staged” several of the fight scenes, to confirm that our distances were accurate. I went to firing ranges and watched how people handled their firearms. I was unable to drive across the Sacramento River railway trestle, but believe me, the desire was there.

  Are there any particular people, events, or places that you draw your inspiration from?

  I draw inspiration from just about everything. Many of the locations in Feed are places that I’ve actually been, or adapted from places I’ve been. The Republican National Convention conference center, for example, was largely inspired by the crowds at the San Diego International Comic Convention. In terms of people, I read a lot about Hunter S. Thompson and Steve Irwin while I was working on the book, and I tried to embody some of their more iconic character traits in my lead characters.

  Feed offers a distinctive take on a postapocalyptic zombified world by viewing it through the eyes of three young bloggers. Do you think blogs will ever overtake mainstream media—without the assistance of a zombie plague?

  I think it’s already happening. Newspapers are adapting and moving online, but much like how more and more people are looking to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show for their news, I think more and more online readers are looking to the blog community. Once you figure out the signal-to-noise ratio, it’s a great way to get your news. I think what we’re getting here in the real world is much more organic than the functions of blogger society in Feed because they were actually forced to organize, while here, the blog society is allowed to evolve.

  At one point Georgia explains to the readers how the infrastructure of the blogging world is set up: Newsies, Stewarts, Irwins, and Fictionals. What kind of blogger do you think you’d be in their zombie-infested world?

  I’d be a Fictional. A seemingly suicidal Fictional, given that I have a lot of Irwin tendencies—my first reaction to something horrible is usually “Ooo, let me see” and reaching for the stick—but I’d totally spend most of my time writing epic poetry about the movement of viral bodies.

  Is there any particular scene in Feed that you love?

  That’s like asking me to pick my favorite zombie kitten! I have several favorites, but at the end of the day, I think I have to go with Georgia and Shaun in the van, after Rick leaves, and through her blog entry. I cried like a baby the day I wrote that. I actually hadn’t realized how hard it would be until I had to do it.

  Zombies aside, is there anything (fictional or otherwise) that sends you screaming in the other direction?

  I can’t stand leeches or slugs—anything without bones just creeps me out completely. Also, I can’t take things being pulled out of people. That horror movie standard where the infected character starts pulling out their teeth or pulling off their fingernails? Yeah, that’s where I go for popcorn. I freak out.

  At the same time, if you have something horrific and decayed, I am so there.

  Any interesting tidbit or teaser you can share about the next book in the Newsflesh series: Blackout?

  Well, as you probably gathered from the end of Feed, Shaun’s now the main narrator, and he’s trying to cope with living in a world that doesn’t have Georgia in it, which is something he just isn’t equipped for. So he talks to her, and she talks back. Georgia is, in fact, still a main character because she’s constantly advising Shaun and communicating with him—and if you tell him he can’t talk to his dead sister, he’ll hurt you.

  Blackout is really focused on Shaun looking for revenge. He wants to know just how far the conspiracy goes because he wants to make absolutely everyone who was involved pay for taking her away from him. The After the End Times team isn’t new, exactly—they were all in the first book—but they weren’t in the field with the Ryman campaign, and they aren’t entirely sure how to handle what’s ahead of them.

  Also, there are epileptic teacup bulldogs.

  A Preview of Blackout

  Introducing

  If you enjoyed FEED, look out for

  BLACKOUT

  BOOK 2 OF THE NEWSFLESH TRILOGY

  by Mira Grant

  Sometimes you need the lies to stay alive.

  —SHAUN MASON

  Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-seven years: with an idiot—in this case, Rebecca Atherton, the head of the After the End Times Irwins, three-time winner of the Golden Steve-o Award for valor in the face of the undead—deciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick to see what happens. Because, hey, there’s always the chance that this time, maybe things will go differently. I know I always thought it would be different for me. George told me I was an idiot, but I had faith.

  At least Becks was being smart about her stupidity and was using a crowbar to poke the zombie, which greatly improved her chances of survival. She’d managed to sink the clawed end under the zombie’s collarbone, which made it a pretty effective defensive measure. It would eventually figure out that it couldn’t move forward. When that happened, it would pull away, either yanking the crowbar out of her hands
or dislocating its own collarbone, and then it would try coming at her from another angle. Given the intelligence of your average zombie, I figured she had about an hour before she really needed to be concerned. Plenty of time.

  It was a thrilling scene. Woman versus zombie, locked in a visceral conflict that’s basically ground into our cultural DNA by this point. And I didn’t give a damn.

  The guy standing next to her looked a whole lot less sanguine about the situation, maybe because he’d never been that close to a zombie in his life. The latest literature says we’re supposed to call them “post-Kellis-Amberlee amplification manifestation syndrome humans,” but fuck that. If they really wanted some fancy new term for “zombie” to catch on, they should have made it easy to shout at the top of your lungs, or at least made sure it formed a catchy acronym. They’re zombies. They’re brainless meat puppets controlled by a virus and driven by the endless need to spread their infection. All the fancy names in the world won’t change that.

  Anyway, Alaric had never been a field situation kind of a guy. He was a natural Newsie, one of those people who is most comfortable when sitting somewhere far away from the action, talking about cause and motivation. Unfortunately for him, he’d finally decided that he wanted to go after some bigger stories, and that meant he needed to test for his Class-A journalism license. To get your Class-A, you have to prove that you can handle life in the field. Becks had been trying to help him for almost a week, and I was rapidly coming to believe that the kid was hopeless. He was destined for a life of sitting around the office compiling reports from people who had the balls to pass their exams.

  You’re being hard on him, Georgia chided.

  “Don’t really care,” I replied, under my breath.

  “Shaun?” Dave looked up from his screen, squinting as he turned in my direction. “Did you say something?”

  “Not a thing.” I shook my head, reaching for my half-empty Coke. “Five gets you ten he fails his practicals again.”

  “No bet,” said Dave. “He’s gonna pass this time.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why are you so sure?”

  “Becks is out there with him. He wants to impress her.”

  “Does he now?” I returned my attention to the screen, more interested now. “Think she likes him back? It’d explain why she keeps wearing skirts to the office…”

  “Maybe,” said Dave, judiciously.

  On the screen, Becks was trying to get Alaric to take the crowbar and have his own shot at holding off the zombie. No big deal, especially for someone as seasoned as Becks. At least, it wouldn’t have been a big deal if there hadn’t been six more infected lurching into view on the left-hand monitor. I flipped a switch to turn on the sound. Not a thing. They weren’t moaning.

  “… the fuck?” I murmured. Flipping another switch to turn on the two-way intercom, I said, “Becks, check your perimeter.”

  “What are you talking about?” She turned to scan her surroundings, raising one hand to shield her eyes. “Our perimeter is—” Catching sight of the infected lurching closer by the second, she froze, eyes going wide. “Oh, fuck me.”

  “Maybe later,” I said, standing. “Keep Alaric alive. I’m heading out to assist evac.”

  “Empty promises,” she muttered, barely audible. “Alaric! Behind me, now!”

  I heard him swearing in surprise, followed by the sharp report of Becks shooting their captive. Every infected within range would add to the intelligence of the pack. That meant that Becks and Alaric needed to cut the numbers by as much as possible. I didn’t see her shoot; I was already heading for the door, grabbing my shotgun off the rack along the way.

  Dave half-stood, asking, “Should I…?”

  “Negative. Stay here, get ready to drive like hell.”

  “Check,” he said, scrambling from his seat toward the front of the van. I didn’t really pay attention to that, either; I was busy kicking open the doors and stepping out into the blazing light of the afternoon.

  When you’re going to play with dead things, do it during the daylight if you possibly can. They don’t see as well in bright light as humans do, and they don’t hide as well when they don’t have the shadows helping them. More important, the footage will be better. If you’re gonna die, make sure you do it on camera.

  The tracker on my wrist indicated that Becks and Alaric were two miles away. That’s the federally mandated minimum distance between an intentional zombie encounter and a licensed traveling safe zone, such as our van. Not that the infected would avoid coming within two miles out of some sort of respect for the law; we just weren’t allowed to lure them any closer than that. I did some quick mental math. If they’d already attracted a group of six, and the infected weren’t moaning yet, that implied that there were enough zombies in the immediate vicinity to form a thinking pack. Not good.

  “Right,” I said, and swung myself into the driver’s seat of Dave’s Jeep. The keys were already in the ignition.

  Unlike most field vehicles, Dave’s Jeep has no armor to speak of, unless you count the run-flat tires and the titanium-reinforced frame. What it has is speed, and lots of it. The thing has been stripped down to the bare minimum, rebuilt, and stripped down again so many times now that I don’t think there’s a single piece that still conforms to factory standards. It offers about as much protection during an attack of the infected as a wet paper bag. A very fast wet paper bag. It’s evac-only when we’re in hostile territory. We haven’t lost a man yet while we were using it.

  Dropping my shotgun onto the passenger seat, I hit the gas.

  After the Rising, large swaths of California were effectively abandoned for one reason or another. “Difficult to secure” was one; “hostile terrain giving the advantage to the enemy” was another. My personal favorite applied to the small, unincorporated community of Birds Landing in Solano County: “nobody cared enough to bother.” They had a population of less than two hundred pre-Rising, and there were no survivors. When the federal government needed to appoint funds for cleanup and security, there was nobody to argue in favor of cleaning the place out. They still get the standard patrols, just because letting the zombies mob is in nobody’s best interests, but for the most part, Birds Landing has been left to the dead.

  It was the perfect place to run Alaric’s last field trial, or should have been, anyway. Abandoned, isolated, close enough to Fairfield to allow for pretty easy evac if the need arose, but far enough away that we could still get some pretty decent footage. Not as dangerous as Santa Cruz, not as candy-ass as Bodega Bay. The ideal infected fishing hole. Only it seemed that the zombies thought so, too.

  The roads were crap. Swearing softly but steadily to myself, I pressed the gas pedal farther down, getting the Jeep up to the highest speed that I was confident I could handle. The frame was shaking and jerking like it might fly apart at any second, and, almost unwillingly, I started to grin. I pushed the speed up a little farther. The shaking increased, and my grin widened.

  Careful, cautioned George. I don’t want to be an only child.

  My grin died. “I already am,” I said, and floored it.

  My dead sister who only I can hear—and yes, I know I’m nuts, thanks for pointing out the obvious—isn’t the only one who’s been worried about me displaying suicidal tendencies since she passed away. “Passed away” is a polite, bloodless way of saying “was murdered,” but it’s better than trying to explain the situation every time she comes up in conversation. Yeah, I had a sister, and yeah, she died. Also yeah, I talk to her all the damn time, because as long as I’m only that crazy, I’ll stay basically sane.

  I stopped talking to her for almost a week once, on the advice of a crappy psychologist who said he could “help.” By the fifth day, I wanted to eat a bullet for breakfast. That’s one experiment that won’t be repeated.

  I gave up the bulk of my active field work when George died. I figured that might calm people down, but all it did was get them more worked up. I was Shaun Mason, I
rwin to the president! I wasn’t supposed to say, “Fuck this noise” and take over my Georgia’s desk job! Only that was exactly what I did. Something about shooting my own sister in the spine just left me with a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to field work.

  That didn’t change the fact that I was licensed for support maneuvers. As long as I kept taking the yearly exams and passing my marksmanship tests, I could legally go out into the field any time I damn well wanted. I was close enough now that I could hear gunshots up ahead, accompanied by the sound of the zombies finally beginning to moan. The Jeep was already rattling so hard that I probably shouldn’t try to make it go any faster.

  I slammed my foot down as hard as I could.

  The Jeep went faster.

  I came screeching around the final bend in the road to find Becks and Alaric standing on top of someone’s old abandoned tool shed, the two of them back to back at the center of the roof like the little figures on top of a wedding cake. The figures on wedding cakes aren’t usually armed, however, and even when they are—it’s amazing what you can order from a specialty bakery these days—they don’t actually shoot. They also aren’t customarily surrounded by a sea of zombies. The six I’d seen on the monitors had been quiet because they didn’t need to call for reinforcements; the reinforcements were already there, and now a good thirty infected bodies stood between my people and the Jeep.

  Becks had a pistol in each hand, making her look perversely like an illustration from some fucked-up pre-Rising horror/Western. Showdown at the Decay Corral or something. Her expression was one of intense and unflagging concentration, and every time she fired, a zombie went down. Automatically, I glanced at the dashboard, where the wireless tracker confirmed that all her cameras were still transmitting. Then I swore at myself, looking back toward the action.