Mira Grant - Feed

“No,” I said, unlocking the door. There’d be men with blood tests at the funeral home doors, and mourners waiting to tell me how sorry they were, to share their tears like I could understand them when I could barely understand my own. “You didn’t miss anything at all, I guess. You got as much as I did.” I climbed out of the car, Mahir still looking at me strangely. And then I stood there, waiting, until he followed me. “Come on. There’s a whole bunch of people waiting for us.”

“Shaun?”

“Yeah?”

“Was it worth it?”

No , whispered George, and, “No,” I said. “But then again, when you get to the end, what really is?”

She told the truth as she saw it, and she died for it. I came along for the ride, and I lived. It wasn’t worth it. But it was the truth, and it was what had to happen. I tried to hold onto that as we walked into the funeral home to say as many of our good-byes as we could. It wouldn’t be all of them. It never could be. But it was going to have to be enough, for me, and for George, and for everyone. Because there wasn’t going to be anything more.

“Hey, George,” I whispered.

What?

“Check this out.”

We stepped inside.

This is a book that truly could not have been written without the help of a dedicated and industrious team of editors, continuity checkers, and subject matter experts. From doctors and epidemiologists to people willing to attempt riding luggage carts over railroad trestles for the sake of research, there was as much field work as sit-down study. It was a group effort in many ways, and I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all the people, named and unnamed, who helped me bring the world of Feed to life.

Rae Hanson and Sunil Patel were two of the first to join the proofing pool, providing valuable advice about technology, politics, the media, and the way the entertainment world would change after the zombies rose. (Rae also carved a jack-o-lantern with Shaun and Georgia riding the bike over a crowd of zombies. I have excellent friends.) Amanda and Steve Perry were my point people for everything having to do with wireless and cellular technology, and taught me a great deal about the miniaturization going on in the real world. Between them and Mike Whitaker, who did the majority of the technical design on Shaun and Georgia’s van, I have much more accurate tech than I have any right to.

Matt Branstad was responsible for verifying the accuracy of my firearms design, and was invaluable when it came to finding new, exciting ways to kill zombies. Michelle and David McNeill-Coronado provided regional details on Sacramento (David actually suggested the railroad trestle), as well as providing active, engaging sounding boards for the political climate of the book.

Medical assistance was provided by Brooke Lunderville and Melissa Glasser, who rebuilt my medical technology from the ground up several times, while Debbie J. Gates helped out with the animal action. Alison Riley-Duncan, Rebecca Newman, Allison Hewett, Janet Maughan, Penelope Skrzynski, Phil Ames, Amanda Sanders, and Martha Hage were on tap for general proofreading and plot consultation; I couldn’t have done this without them.

Finally, acknowledgment for forbearance must go to Kate Secor and Michelle Dockrey, who received the bulk of my “talking it out” during the writing process; to my agent, Diana Fox, who is never anything short of heroic; to my editor, DongWon Song, who understood the story from the first; and to Tara O’Shea and Chris Mangum, the incredible technical team behind www.MiraGrant.com. This book might have been written without them. It would not have been the same.

Rise up while you can.

Feed

Rosemary and Rue

A Local Habitation

An Artificial Night

Born and raised in California, Mira Granthas 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.

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.