by Mira Grant
Those are strain designations, said George. Her voice was very small. Those are the strain designations for some of the most widespread varieties of Kellis-Amberlee.
Everyone has Kellis-Amberlee, but most of us have only one strain at a time. Some are more aggressive than others and will basically wipe out an existing infection in order to take over a body. The original Kellis-Amberlee strain developed when lab-clean Kellis flu met lab-clean Marburg Amberlee. That was the first infection anybody had to deal with, the one that swept the world during the Rising. It took years of study and analysis of the structure of the virus before anyone realized that it was doing what viruses have done since the beginning of time: It was mutating, changing to suit its environment. For a while, people hoped it was becoming less virulent and that it would eventually turn into something that didn’t do quite as much damage. Honestly, I think we’d have been happy if the virus just started killing people, rather than doing what it does now. At least then the dead would stay dead and the world could start moving on. Instead, Kellis-Amberlee has continued doing what it does best: making zombies and unleashing them on the world whenever it gets the opportunity.
I guess it’s consistent. That’s something, anyway.
“It’s correct,” said Mahir. His voice was dark, and there was something dangerous in his tone, something I’d never heard there before. He adjusted his glasses and continued: “There was a spike in deaths in Buenos Aires right before the substrain was isolated and identified for the first time. Eighty percent of the dead were confirmed as suffering from an early form of reservoir condition. It was five years before that substrain was identified in connection with a live reservoir condition.”
Kelly paled further.
“As part of his research into the behavior of the various substrains, Professor Brannon had access to census and death records from multiple parts of the world,” said Mahir. “Much of this data hadn’t previously been incorporated into the model—Dr. bbey is unable to acquire information through many normal channels, due to her lab’s lack of accreditation, Dr. Christopher’s focus is on treatment, not the structure of the virus itself, and Dr. Tiwari doesn’t do statistics.”
“I’m not following you,” I said.
“I am,” said Kelly. She directed her words at the wall, looking faintly stunned. “He’s saying that once they were able to feed the substrain analysis and the census data into the same model, they started getting some results they didn’t want to get. The kind of results a man who spent his life working to save lives would commit suicide over.”
Maggie frowned. “I thought results were sort of the goal.”
“They are, in the general sense, but there are negative and positive results from any analysis. Look at this.” Mahir tapped the paper, shoving it toward Maggie. “Every time a new viral substrain is identified—every time—it comes immediately after a spike in the local death rate. Buenos Aires. San Diego. Manchester. It isn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t confined to any specific country or part of the world. It’s everywhere, and it’s every time.”
Becks shook her head. “What does that prove? Maybe the new strains are more virulent when they’re first getting started, and they’re killing all these people.”
“Unlikely.” He produced another sheet of paper, this one with a brightly colored pie chart on it.
“Eye-catching,” I said, tugging it closer to my side of the table.
“That was the intent.” Mahir pulled another copy of the chart from his file and handed it to Alaric. “This shows the aggregate causes of death among the people with reservoir conditions killed immediately prior to the identification of a new substrain.”
“These wedges are too small to read,” said Alaric.
“My point exactly. There is no dominant cause of death among the victims in these regions. They just… die. They get hit by cars, they fall from ladders, they take their own lives, they die. As if it were any other day, as if theirs were any other deaths. The pattern is in the absolute lack of a pattern, and it’s everywhere, and a month later, there’s a new strain of Kellis-Amberlee running about, more virulent than the one that was in that region prior to the deaths. Three to five years after that, the first reservoir conditions linked to the new strain start showing up, and then it’s another two years before the cycle starts over again.” Mahir removed his wire-rimmed glasses, wiping them on his shirt. “Dr. Connolly, would you care to tell me what conclusions you draw from this data?”
“I can’t make any firm determinations without studying the material more thoroughly, but…” Kelly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, voice hitching a little as she continued: “I would say there are no naturally occurring viral substrains of the viral chimera generally referred to as Kellis-Amberlee.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “He just said there were new strains appearing all the damn time. This dead professor dude made his career studying them. They ve to exist.”
She didn’t say they don’t exist, Shaun. She said they don’t occur naturally.
Georgia sounded subdued, even resigned, like this was the answer she’d been expecting all along, like the part of me that kept her with me understood perfectly and was just waiting for the rest of me to catch up. I went very still, the skin tightening into goose bumps along my arms as I looked, helplessly, at Mahir. He looked back, waiting. They were all waiting, and they all knew I’d get there if they just gave me a minute. They knew George had the answers, and I… well, I had her.
“They exist, but they aren’t natural,” I said.
“Exactly.” Mahir picked up another folder and started passing its contents around the table. “These are CDC analyses of the structure of Kellis-Amberlee. They were acquired legally; they’ve all been published for public use. People have been trying for years to figure out how something this intricate and stable has been able to mutate without once creating a strain that behaved in a manner different from its parents. The answer is simple: It can’t, and it hasn’t. Every strain after the original has been created in a laboratory and has been released following what can only be an intentional culling of the individuals afflicted with reservoir conditions. It’s a bloody global study, and we’ve all been invited to participate.”
Silence fell hard. None of us knew enough to say that he was wrong, except for maybe Kelly, and she wasn’t saying anything; she was just sitting there, tears running slowly down her cheeks as she looked at the papers covering the table. That, maybe more than anything, told me that Mahir’s conclusions were correct. After all the years she had spent living the CDC party line, if Kelly could have argued, she would have.
Becks was the one to eventually break the silence, asking, “So what do we do now?”
“Now?” I stood, slapping my palms down on the table. “We get packing. We’re hitting the road in the morning. All reports will be made while mobile—I don’t want us to be sitting ducks when the shit comes down.”
“Where are we going?” asked Alaric.
“The only place I think we might have half a chance of breaking into that’s going to have the resources to tell us where we’re supposed to go next.” I looked challengingly at Kelly. She didn’t look away. Instead, she nodded, acceptance blossoming in her expression.
“We’re going to Memphis,” she said.
I wanted to be a sport reporter. I wanted to report on sport. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Rhymes a little. “Mahir Gowda, Sport Reporter.” I’d watch the cricket matches and the obstacle courses and the stockcar races, and I’d write pithy little articles about them and make buckets of money, buy a huge house somewhere on the outskirts of London, and raise a family big enough to field a cricket team of my own.
Enter Georgia Carolyn Mason. She knew I’d never be happy reporting on sporting events and the lives of professional athletes. “The news is in yur blood”: That’s what she said to me, and she hounded me until I agreed to give it a shot. A year later, when she struck out on her own, sh
e hired me. She was right too much of the time. She was right about me, and about what I was meant to do.
I have to say as I rather wish that she’d been wrong.
—From Fish and Clips, the blog of Mahir Gowda, June 21, 2041
Nineteen
It’s a little over two thousand miles from Weed, California, to Memphis, Tennessee. That would have been about a two and a half days of solid driving pre-Rising, complete with miserable traffic jams and lots of rest stops. Distance is less of a barrier these days, since the average highway speed is between eighty and ninety miles per hour, and the average traffic jam involves having three cars on the same three-mile stretch.
Our problem was simpler: getting there without getting ourselves killed. Travel that crosses more than one state line needs to be registered with the Highway Commission, so that your movement can be monitored. Your updated location gets added to your file every time you stop for gas or check into a motel. It’s a nifty system. George did an article on it once, and I didn’t think it was completely boring. That’s saying something. The trouble was that if we couldn’t trust the CDC to be secure, we sure as hell couldn’t trust the Highway Commission, an organization whose databases have been hacked so many times that they might as well put out a welcome mat and stop pretending they’re secure.
I was the subject of a highway ambush once before—an ambush that landed me, my sister, and our friend Rick in the Memphis CDC, ironically enough. The three of us got out alive. The other two members of our group, Georgette Meissonier and Charles Wong, didn’t. If we assumed the people responsible for the destruction of Oakland were waiting for another opportunity to take a shot at us, the last thing we wanted to do was put ourselves on the open road, where accidents could—and doubtless would—happen.
Trouble was, we didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t take the train; the few passenger lines still in existence are luxury-oriented and would take a week to get there. Flying with Mahir and Kelly wouldn’t work, since one of them was legally dead and the other was in the country under the sketchiest of legal pretenses. What’s sad is that I didn’t know which was the bigger concern.
Maggie’s bedrock streak of practicality came to the rescue around the time Mahir and I were starting to brainstorm about stealing a crop duster and somehow riding it across the country to Tennessee. “Why don’t you idiots take my van and get it over with?” she demanded, flinging her keys down on the table. “The VIN’s registered to Daddy so I don’t get stopped when I have to cross the border to Canada, and nobody’s going to risk nuking it if they think there’s even half a chance that I’m inside. Kill the heir to the Garcia pharmaceutical fortune while my parents are still alive to destroy them? No government conspiracy is that stupid.”
Privately, I thought she was being a little complacent—anyone whas willing to nuke a city wouldn’t hesitate before killing a pharmaceutical heir and would have the resources to make it look like an accident—but I didn’t say so. I just scooped the keys into my pocket. “You really have no qualms about abuse of power, do you? Thanks, Maggie. You’re badass.”
“Not a single one,” she said amiably. “Believe me, I know how badass I am. You’ll have to leave the bike behind, you know.”
I’d been trying to avoid thinking about that. The idea of leaving George’s bike when I didn’t know if we’d ever make it back was almost physically painful. “I know.”
“Good, just so long as it isn’t going to be a fight. Now you’d better get moving. I want my guest rooms back in time for this weekend’s film festival.”
“What are you watching?” asked Mahir.
“All thirteen Nightmare on Elm Street movies, back to back,” Maggie replied. “We’re starting with the original and going from there.”
I shuddered. “I’ll take my chances with the CDC.”
“I thought you might,” said Maggie, and smiled.
After a day of arguing about what to pack and how many bullets we’d need, Maggie’s van was loaded and ready to go. She didn’t normally drive on run-flats—something about the way they changed the steering made them too much trouble for her to deal with—but one of the faceless security men we normally never saw walked up the driveway with a brand-new set and installed them before I could even ask if it was an option.
She’s been expecting this for a while, said George.
I said nothing.
Kelly and Mahir were coming along, naturally; they’d both come too far and been through too much to do anything else. Becks was coming, too, despite our mutual misgivings about spending that much time crammed into a van together. We’d need another Irwin on hand if things turned bloody, and after what had happened to Dave, this was almost as personal for her as it was for me. Alaric and Maggie were staying behind.
“I’m no good in the field. I don’t even have my licenses yet,” said Alaric, not meeting my eyes. I think he was afraid I’d start yelling—or worse, that I’d somehow talk him into coming with us. “You’ll be better off if I stay here.”
“You’re right.”
That wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. He glanced to me, eyes gone wide.
I shrugged. “We can’t pretend we’re here if we’re posting reports from the road, and we can’t all go silent at once, either. Like that’s not going to look suspicious? So we’ll bounce them to you, and you can post everything from here. Same IP address. Business as usual.”
“Right.” Alaric smiled, either not bothering or not managing to hide his relief. “I can do that.”
“On it,” he said.
There was nothing to do after that but leave.
Maggie packed us a cardboard box of sandwiches and potato chips on the morning we finally started for Tennessee, along with a cooler full of sodas. She loaded everything into the backseat with Kelly before turning around and handing me two things: a large envelope packed with cash, and a debit card. “Don’t use the card unless the money runs out. It draws on the company account. Seeing charges from it that match the van’s movements shouldn’t set off any red flags, and my parents won’t care unless you buy a submarine or something.”
“And here I always wanted a submarine,” I said.
“Where would you put it?” asked Mahir.
“I’d have to buy a lake.”
“Well, that’s reasonable, I suppose.”
Maggie laughed—a short, sharp sound that had a lot in common with the confused yipping of the teacup bulldogs milling at her feet—and threw her arms around my shoulders, hugging me close before I had a chance to step back. “Come back,” she whispered, voice small and tight and right next to my ear, so only I could hear it.
We’ll try, said George.
“Don’t worry about us,” I said. I hugged her back, feeling awkward until she let go and stepped away, turning her face to the side to hide the tears that were glinting in her eyes. I sighed. “Maggie—”
“Go,” she said.
I swallowed the things I still wanted to say and turned to walk toward the van. Behind me, I could hear Maggie and Mahir exchanging their last good-byes, too softly for me to make out the words. The words didn’t matter, really, because we all knew that we might not be coming back.
Becks was in the passenger seat with a laptop propped open on her knees when I slipped behind the wheel. “File transfer and backup is almost complete; when it finishes, we’ll have files stored in twenty different places, ten outside the United States.” Becks kept her eyes on the screen, fingers tapping out rapid patterns across the keyboard.
I fastened my seat belt. “How solid is the encryption?”
“Solid enough that I wouldn’t want to be the one who was trying to break it. Not unless I had a week to waste.”
“I hope that’s good enough.” I slid the key into the ignition before letting my hands rest on the wheel, trying to feel the shape of it the way I felt the shape of my own van, the one George and I rebuilt almost on our own. It wasn’t going to happen, but I could at least fo
rce myself to be comfortable with the idea that I was about to drive across the country in someone else’s car. “Alaric’s going to drop the security keys to Dr. Abbey’s last known e-mail address in an hour and a half. If there’s no response withlf an hour, he’s sending a coded message to Dr. Shoji to let him know that we need to reach her.”
“Do you think it’s going to work?”
“Jesus, Rebecca, I don’t know. This cloak-and-dagger shit was never my first choice for a career. I think it stands a chance, anyway, and if there’s any way we can get this to Dr. Abbey, we should. She’ll know what to do with it.”
“If we don’t come back from Memphis?” Becks kept her eyes on her laptop, but I could hear the tension in the question.
“Pretty much,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. She just sighed, shoulders straightening a little, and got back to work. In the backseat, Kelly pulled out one of Mahir’s research files and started reading. She’d been over it all a thousand times, but that didn’t stop her from trying to find something the rest of us might have missed. I stayed where I was, hands resting on the steering wheel, and waited.
It can’t have been more than ten minutes before Mahir pulled open the van’s side door and climbed inside. It felt more like ten years. Becks kept typing the whole time, fingers dancing across her keyboard without missing a single stroke. She was brilliant, beautiful, and brave as hell. If anything proved how fucked-up I was, it was my inability to tell her any of those things. All I could do was hurt her, and having already done it once, I wasn’t exactly racing to do it again.
“Right,” said Mahir, settling next to Kelly as the door shut and locked behind him. “Unless we’ve got any more messy good-byes to make, I suppose we’d best be on our way.”
I nodded and started the engine.