“I believed him,” I whispered.
“Not all the way. If you’d believed him all the way—if you’d believed him the way I would have believed him—you would have done what we both know I would have done. You would have written your reports, held my funeral, gone home, and killed yourself.” She smiled faintly. “Probably by overdosing on everything in our field kit before blowing the top of your head off. You never were one for leaving things to chance.”
“What would you have done?”
“Slit my wrists in the bathtub,” she said matter-of-factly. “Even if I amplified before I bled out, the bathroom security sensors would never have let me out into the house. I would have been bleached to death. The Masons would have had to pay if they wanted to clear the outbreak off their home owner’s insurance, and you and I could have sat in the afterlife and laughed at them until we both cried.”
Now it was my turn to smile. “That sounds like something you’d do,” I agreed.
“But I didn’t get the chance.” She leaned over. This time, she was the one to reach for me, and when her fingertips grazed my skin, I felt it. Tactile hallucinations aren’t a good sign of mental health, but sometimes I feel like they’re the only things letting me keep body and soul together. “You got it. And you were stronger than I would have been. You’re stronger than you think you are. All you’ve ever needed to do was let yourself see it.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”
“Not too much longer, I’d wager,” said Mahir, from behind me. His normally crisp accent was blurred around the edges, like he was too tired to worry about being understood by the Americans. “How’s it coming?”
“About as well as can be expected,” I said, stealing one last look at Georgia before I turned, casting an easy smile in his direction. I didn’t need to look back to know that George was gone. She generally disappeared as soon as I took my eyes off her. I was seeing her more often with every day that passed, and that was wonderful, because I missed her so much, and it was terrible, because it meant I was running out of time.
We can cure cancer. We can cure the common cold. But no one, anywhere, ever, has found a reliable cure for crazy.
“Maggie spoke with you?”
I nodded. “She wanted to make sure I knew she wouldn’t be coming back from Seattle.”
“And you were all right with that?” Mahir walked toward me, stopping when he was still a few feet clear of the van. Maggie was a much more touchy-feely kind of person than he was. I appreciated that. One hug per day was pretty much my limit.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t want her to go. The rest of us… You’re going to be able to put your own name back on when you get home, but the rest of us, we’re done. We’ll be lucky if we don’t wind up hiding in Canada being chased by zombie moose for the rest of our lives.”
“There’s always the chance we’ll successfully manage to bring down the United States government somehow, and that will negate the need to flee to Canada,” said Mahir helpfully.
I gave him a startled look. He smirked, fighting unsuccessfully to keep himself from smiling. Somehow, that was even funnier than what he’d said. I started laughing. So did he. We were both still laughing five minutes later, when Becks came out to the garage with a can of soda in one hand and a perplexed look on her face.
“Did I miss something?” she asked.
“We’re going to topple the US government!” I informed her.
Becks appeared to think about that for a moment. Then she shrugged, cracking the tab on her soda at the same time, and replied, “Okay. Works for me.”
Mahir and I burst out laughing again. Becks waited patiently for us to stop, taking occasional sips from her soda. Finally, I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, and said, still snickering, “Okay. Okay, I think we’re done now. Did you see Maggie?”
“I did. She said something about you and me heading to Berkeley to kill your parents?”
“That’s not quite what I said, but I guess it’s close enough. We’re going to Berkeley to ask the Masons if they’ll tell us how to find a clear route into the Florida hazard zone.”
“And what will you be giving them in return?” asked Mahir.
I sighed. “You know, I really kind of miss the days when I could just e-mail a memo to the team, and everybody would know what was going on, and I wouldn’t have to repeat things seventeen times.”
Not that you ever remembered to send the memos, said George.
“Because you did that so often,” said Becks, saving me from the need to respond to someone no one else could hear. Again.
“I could have done it, if I’d wanted to,” I countered. “That made the endless repetition a choice, and hence way less irritating. I’m going to tell them how to unlock the flat-drop of all our files. The one I had Alaric send while we were running from Memphis.”
“And when they post our research far and wide? What happens then?” Mahir didn’t sound annoyed, just curious. Even so, I was relieved when Becks crunched her empty soda can in her fist and chucked it into the trash can against the wall, where it landed with a rattling clunk.
“If the Masons post the things we’ve been withholding, they’ll be the target of the firestorm that follows,” she said. She sounded utterly calm. Her calm continued as she added, “Which means we can’t let them do it.”
“Hey!” I frowned at her. “I thought you were supposed to be on my side here.”
“I’m on the side that doesn’t get us slaughtered, Mason. Think about this for thirty seconds, why don’t you? We give them the key to the files. They unlock them, and go all kid in a candy store over the contents, since hey, their stupid son just gave them the scoop of the century. They toss it all online. And people everywhere stop shooting zombies because they think their loved ones might get ‘better.’ ”
I grimaced. “Not good.”
“Not good at all. And then the government will lean on the Masons to tell them where to find us, so we can be used to ‘prove’ that it was all a hoax.”
“Lovely,” said Mahir.
Becks shrugged. “If you’re going to think like a paranoid, you need to really commit to thinking like a paranoid.”
Mahir looked at her quizzically. “What makes you so good at it?”
“I’m from Connecticut,” said Becks. “It’s not a bad idea—going to the Masons may be the fastest way to get ourselves access to a reasonably safe way through some pretty bad territory, and since I’m not leaving the van without dipping myself in DDT, I’d like it if we could make the trip in reasonable safety. But you’re going to need another carrot to dangle in front of your freaky parents. Telling them how to get at our data isn’t the way.”
Yes, actually, said George, very quietly. It’s exactly the way.
“What are you—” I began, and froze. “Oh, no. No, you can’t be serious.”
You know I’m serious. It’s the best shot you’ve got.
“I won’t.”
You will.
Mahir and Becks had gotten good at knowing when I wasn’t actually talking to them. They watched me with varying degrees of impatience, waiting until I stopped protesting before Mahir broke in, asking, “What does Georgia say we should do?”
“You know, addressing my crazy by name doesn’t exactly help me stay sane,” I said.
“Nothing can help you stay sane at this point, Mason,” said Becks. “That ship has sailed. Now what does she say?”
I took a deep breath. “She wants me to sign her unpublished files over to the Masons. The stuff they were willing to take me to court over.” I stopped, waiting for them to protest. Neither of them said a word. I scowled. “Well?”
“It’s not a bad idea,” said Mahir slowly. “I mean, it’s true that her unpublished op-ed pieces were reasonably lucrative when we were able to publish regularly, but her news articles have been timing out at a fairly high rate. We’ve had our exclusive. If what’s left can be used to benefit us—”
“You’re f**king with me, right?” I stood, glaring at them, barely aware that my hands were balled into fists. I could hear George at the back of my head, telling me sternly to calm down, but I didn’t pay any attention. That was nice, in its way. I so rarely felt like I could ignore her anymore. “Those files are her private thoughts. They’re the last privacy she has left in this world. And you want me to just sign it over to those… those… those people?”
“Yes,” said Mahir, sounding utterly calm. “That’s exactly what we want. And I’d wager it’s what Georgia wants as well, or you’d not be so angry about it. You’d be laughing it off.”
“We’ve been using her private thoughts for our gain since she died,” said Becks. “I’ve been okay with that, because you’re okay with it. But, Shaun, you’re the one who really knows what she would have wanted. You’re the one who really knows her. If she were alive, would she be saying no, no way, not going to happen? Or would she be suggesting we stop f**king around and get our asses to Berkeley with the transfer papers already?”
George didn’t say anything. George didn’t need to say anything. I forced my fingers to unclench, waiting until I could feel my palms again before I looked away from Becks and Mahir, and said, “I’ll get the transfer papers drawn up before we leave. That way, all we have to do is hand them over and get the hell out of town.”
Thank you, murmured George. I felt the shadow of a hand brush my cheek, and shivered. I don’t believe in ghosts. Never have, never will. George is a figment of my overactive imagination, nothing more, and nothing less. But moments like that, when she touches me with other people in the room…