If they dont paint me in a good enough light, I suppose I wasnt meant to be the President of the United States of America, he said. You want to dig for scandals, Im sure my opponents have road maps for you to follow. You want to report on this campaign, you report what you see, and dont worry about whether or not Im going to like it. Because that doesnt matter a bit.
We were still staring at him, trying to frame responses to something that seemed about as realistic coming from a politicians mouth as sonnets coming out of a zombies, when Emily Ryman walked over and started setting plates onto the table. I was grateful for the interruption. After the way the day had been going, I was running out of surprised and moving rapidly into the region of mild shock, and this was enough to give me a chance to regroup.
Emily sat once shed finished putting the plates down, reaching for Senator Rymans hand. Peter, will you say grace?
Of course, he said. Shaun and I exchanged glances before joining hands with each other and the Rymans, closing the circle around the table. Senator Ryman bowed his head, closing his eyes. Dear Lord, we ask that You bless this table and those who have come to gather around it. Thank You for the good gifts that You have given us. For the health of ourselves and our families, for the company and food we are about to enjoy, and for the future that You have seen fit to set before us. Thank You, oh Lord, for Your generosity, and for the trials by which we may come to know You better.
Shaun and I left our eyes open, watching the senator as he spoke. Were atheists. Its hard to be anything else in a world where zombies can attack your elementary school talent show. Much of the country has turned back toward faith, however, acting under the vague supposition that it cant hurt anything to have God on your side. I glanced at Buffy, who was nodding along with the senators words, eyes tightly closed. Shes a lot more religious than most people would guess. Her family is French Catholic. Shes been saying grace at any sort of large gathering since she was born, and she still attends a nonvirtual church on Sundays.
Amen, said the senator. We all echoed it with varying degrees of certainty.
Emily Ryman smiled. Everybody, eat up. Theres more if youre still hungry, but I want to eat too, so youre going to have to serve yourselves after this round. The senator got a kiss on the cheek to go with his fish tacos; the rest of us just got fed.
Not that Shaun was going to let lunch pass without a little light conversation. Of the two of us, hes the gregarious one. Someone had to be. Will you be coming along on the whole campaign, maam, or just this leg of it? he asked, with uncharacteristic politeness. Then again, hes always had a healthy respect for women with food.
You couldnt pay me enough to accompany this dog and pony show, Emily said, dryly. I think you kids are totally insane. Entertaining as all heck, and I love your site, but insane.
Ill take that as a no, I said.
Uh-uh. For one thing, I am not taking the kids out on the road. No way. The tutors they hire for these things are never the sort I approve of. She smiled at the senator, who patted her knee in an unconsciously companionable fashion. And they wind up seeing way too many reporters and politicians. Not the sort you want keeping company with a bunch of impressionable young kids.
Look how its warped us, said Shaun.
Exactly, she said, unflustered. Besides which, the ranch doesnt run itself.
I nodded. Your family still manages an actual horse ranch, dont they?
You know the answer to that, Georgia, said the senator. Been in Emilys family since the late eighteen hundreds.
If you think the risk of zombie palominos is enough to make me give up my horses, youve never met a real horse nut, she said, grinning. Now, dont get your back up. I know where you stand on the animal mass restrictions. Youre a big supporter of Masons Law, arent you?
In all recreational and nonessential capacities, yes, I said.
Thanks to the Masons biological son, Shaun and I have often found ourselves with an element of unasked-for name recognition when dealing with people who work with animals. Before Phillip, no one realized that all mammals with a body mass of forty pounds or more could become carriers of the live-state virus, or that Kellis-Amberlee was happy to cross species, going from man to beast and back again. Mom put a bullet through her only sons head, back when that was still something new enough to break you foreverwhen it felt like murder, not mercy. So yeah, I guess you could say I support Masons Law.
I would, too, in your position, Emily said. Her tone carried none of the accusations Im used to hearing from animal rights activists; she was speaking the truth, and I could deal, or not, as I so chose. Now, if everyone wants to tuck in, its the start of a long dayand a longer month.
Eat up, everybody, before your lunch gets cold, added the senator, and reached for the mimosas. Shaun and I exchanged a look, shrugged in near-unison, and reached for our forks.
One way or another, we were on our way.
My sister has retinal KA syndrome. Thats where the filovirus does this massive replication thing in the ocular fluidtheres some more advanced technical term for it, but personally, I like to call it eye goo, because it pisses George offand the pupils dilate as wide as they can and never close down like they do in a normal person. Mostly only girls get it, which is a relief, since I look stupid in sunglasses. Her eyes are supposed to be brown, but everyone thinks theyre black, because of her pupils being broken.
She was diagnosed when we were five, so I dont really remember her without her sunglasses. And when we were nine, we got this really dumb babysitter who took Georges glasses, said, You dont need these, and threw them into the backyard, thinking we were spoiled little suburban brats too afraid of the outdoors to go out after them. So its pretty plain that she was about as bright as a box of zombies.
Next thing you know, theres me and George digging through the high grass looking for her sunglasses, when suddenly she freezes, eyes getting all wide, and says, Shaun? And Im like, What? And shes all, Theres somebody else in the yard. And then I turn around, and wham, zombie, right there! I hadnt seen it because I dont see as well in low light as she does. So there are some advantages to having your pupils permanently dilated. Besides the part where they cant tell if youre stoned or not without a blood test when youre at school.
But anyway, zombie, in our backyard. So. Fucking. Cool.
You know, its been more than a decade since that evening, and that is still probably the best present that shes ever gotten for me.
From Hail to the King,
the blog of Shaun Mason, April 7, 2037
Six
Getting our equipment past the security screening offered by Senator Rymans staff took six and a half hours. Shaun spent the first two hours getting underfoot as he tried to guard his gear and finally got all of us banished inside. Now he was sulking on the parlor couch, chin almost level with his chest. What are they doing, taking the van apart to make sure we didnt stuff any zombies inside the paneling? he grumbled. Because, gee, that would work really well as an assassination tool.
Its been tried, Buffy said. Do you remember the guy who tried to kill George Romero with the zombie pit bulls?
Thats an urban myth, Buffy. Its been disproven about ninety times, I said, continuing to pace. George Romero died peacefully in his bed.
And now hes a happy shambler at a government research facility, said Shaun, abandoning his sulk in order to make zombie motions with his arms. The ASL for zombie has joined the raised middle finger as one of the few truly universal hand gestures. Some points just need to be made quickly.
Its sort of sad, thinking about him shuffling around out there, all decayed and mindless and not remembering the classics of his heyday, said Buffy.
I eyed her. Hes a government zombie. He eats better than we do.
Its the principle of the thing, she said.
It took a while for the first Kellis-Amberlee outbreaks to be confirmed as anything but hoaxes, and even after that was accomplished, it took time for the various governmental agencies to finish fighting over whose problem it was. The CDC got sick of the arguing about three days in, jumped into things with both feet, and never looked back. They had squads in the field by the end of week two, capturing zombies for study. It was quickly apparent that theres no curing a zombie; you cant undo the amount of brain damage the virus does with anything gentler than a bullet to the brainpan. But you can work on ways to neutralize Kellis-Amberlee itself, and since all a zombie really does is convert flesh into virus, a few captive shamblers provided the best possible test subjects.
After twenty years of testing and the derailment of almost every technical field that didnt feed directly into the medical profession, weve managed little more than absolutely nothing. At this point, they can completely remove Kellis-Amberlee from a living body, using a combination of chemotherapy, blood replacement, and a nasty strain of Ebola thats been modified to search and destroy its cousin. There are just a few downsides, like the part where it costs upward of ten thousand dollars for a treatment, none of the test subjects has survived, and oh, right, the constant fear the modified virus will mutate like Marburg Amberlee did and leave us with something even worse to deal with. Where the living dead are concerned, we pretty much exist on square one.
It didnt take long for researchers to connect the health of their pet zombies to the amount of proteinspecifically living or recently killed flesh; soybeans and legumes wont cut itthey consumed. Kellis-Amberlee converts tissue into viral blocks. The more tissue it can find, the less of the original zombie it converts. So if you feed a zombie constantly, it wont wither to the point of becoming useless. Most of the nations remaining cattle ranches are there to feed the living dead. A beautiful irony, when you consider that cows break the forty-pound threshold, and thus reanimate upon death. Zombies eating zombies. Good work if you can get it.
A lot of folks leave their bodies to science. Your family skips funeral expenses, the government pays a nice settlement so they wont sue if your image winds up on television one of these days, and if you belong to one of those religious sects that believes the body has to remain intact in order to eventually get carried up to Heaven, you dont run the risk of offending God. You just risk eating the research scientists if containment fails, and some people dont see that as being as much of an abomination as cremation.