Mira Grant - Deadline

Staring at the end of the world.

BOOK V

The Rising

The one thing I have absolute faith in is mankind’s capacity to make things worse. No matter how bad it gets, we’re all happy to screw each other over. It’s enough to make me wonder if we should have let the zombies win.

—SHAUN MASON

I believe in the truth. I believe in the news. And I believe in Shaun. Everything else is extra.

—GEORGIA MASON

Shaun had a close call today.

He won’t tell me exactly what happened; I wouldn’t even know anything had happened if it weren’t for the glitches in his video feed, the places where the picture cut out and picked back up again a few hundred seconds later. The footage he posts from the field is usually seamless, smooth and easy and effortless looking. Not this. This is amateur-hour stuff, and that tells me more clearly than anything else possibly could that whatever happened out there, it was bad.

He came home stinking like bleach and rank terror-sweat, the kind that comes after the adrenaline fades, and he didn’t stop hugging me for almost ten minutes. I stopped laughing and trying to get away when I felt his shoulders shaking. My own shoulders started shaking when I realized what that sort of fear from Shaun—Shaun! Who once called a zombie in our backyahe best present I’d ever given him—actually meant.

Maybe life was always fragile and easy to lose, and maybe all those people who talk about how good things were before the Rising are full of crap, but we don’t live in that world; we live in this one. And in this world, it takes only one slip, one unguarded moment, to lose everything. I don’t know how close I came to losing him today. He won’t tell me, and maybe this makes me a coward, but I’m not going to ask. This is one truth I have no interest in knowing. There are some truths we’re better off without.

I don’t know what I’d do without him. I really don’t. I’d never tell him to stay out of the field—I know how much it means to him—but one day, the close call is going to cross the line into “too close,” and after that… I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

—From Postcards from the Wall , the unpublished files of Georgia Mason, originally posted June 24, 2041

My parents, Yu and Jun Kwong, are dead.

My brother, Dorian Kwong, is dead.

My colleague, Dr. Barbara Tinney, is dead.

While reports are currently sketchy, it is entirely possible that the state of Florida, and much of the surrounding region, is dead.

Welcome to the end of the world.

—From The Kwong Way of Things , the blog of Alaric Kwong, June 24, 2041

Twenty-three

Yes, I’ll hold,” snarled Mahir, and continued pacing. I barely noticed. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the television, where CNN continued to faithfully record the worst disaster to strike the human race since the summer of 2014, when the dead first decided to get up and nosh on the living.

Maggie sat next to me on the couch, even more fixated on the news than I was. Her interest in the situation was a little more proprietary than mine; Garcia Pharmaceuticals owned three factories and a research center in the affected area, and with the fatality reports updating every few seconds, a moment’s inattention could mean missing the deaths of people she’d known her entire life.

Alaric and Becks had retired to the kitchen after the first hour. Alaric was trying to get the wireless up and running, while Becks was cleaning her guns and checking the catches on the windows—just in case. It was a sentiment I could appreciate, even if I couldn’t find it in myself to move.

That’s enough, said George abruptly. The television was showing a school bus packed refugees being besieged by the living dead. The people inside were screaming; I could see their faces through the windows. As long as they were screaming, they were still essentially human. They were past saving. I hoped that infection took them quickly, or that someone had enough bullets to—

Shaun! George’s shout was enough to shock me out of my stupor. It’s amazing how loud something like that can seem when it’s coming from inside your head.

I turned to glare at the air to my left. Maggie, sunk deep in her own fugue state, didn’t appear to notice. “What?” I demanded.

George folded her arms and glared back. “You’re not doing anyone any good sitting there like a media consumer, you know. You need to be finding out what the hell is going on.”

“And how do you suggest I do that, huh?” I spread my arms, indicating the television and Mahir—still pacing and snarling into his phone—with the same gesture. “Things are sort of shitty right now, George, in case you failed to notice.”

“Oh, trust me, I noticed, I just don’t see where I need to care .” George grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Come on. You’ve got work to do.” Giving me a slow look, she added, “And some clothes to put on. God, Shaun, are you really sitting around watching television in your boxers? That’s just sad.”

“If there’s all this work, why don’t you do it?”

“Because I’m dead, remember?” She kept hold of my wrist as she spoke, pulling me toward the kitchen. “You need to ask Alaric whether Maggie moved our van into the garage before things locked down.” Catching my blank expression, she sighed. “Come on, Shaun, try to keep up for, like, thirty seconds while you’re losing your mind, okay? If we can get to the van without going outside, we can get to our emergency wireless booster.”

My eyes widened. “Crap, you’re right. We still have that thing, don’t we?”

“Unless you threw it away in a moment of unrepeated sanity and then didn’t tell me about it, yeah, we do.”

Being on a news team with Buffy Meissonier meant dealing with a girl who was occasionally twenty pounds of crazy crammed into a ten-pound sack, and who eventually sold us out to the government conspiracy that got George killed. It also meant working with the best espionage technician I’ve ever encountered, either in the private sector or working for the government. She could make computers do things I’m not sure even science fiction considers possible, and she did it all while wearing holo-foil butterflies in her hair and T-shirts claiming that some dude named Joss was her master now. People say Buffy was good. They’re wrong. Buffy was great .

Mahir was still shouting at the phone when George pulled me past him. He gave me a harried glance and nodded, eyes skipping straight past George. That made sense, I guess, since it’s not like she was really there.

“I’m pretty sure this represents a whole new level of fucked-up crazy,” I muttered, as George yanked me into the kitchen.

“I’m he cause of your psychotic break; I’m just a symptom,” she replied waspishly, and shoved me toward Becks and Alaric.

Becks, like Mahir, had managed to dress while I was staring at the television and was wearing combat boots, a black tank top, and camouflage pants—the Irwin equivalent of a uniform. She and Alaric were sitting at the table, him with his laptop pulled as close to his body as it would go, leaving the rest of the space for her. She had what looked like a small armory spread out in front of her, and was in the process of reassembling a semiautomatic handgun that had yet to be legally cleared for private ownership. They looked up when they heard my footsteps.