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  There is no index case for viral amplification. It happened in too many places at the same time. We can only pinpoint things to this degree because of what the movies got wrong: Infection wasn’t initially universal. People who died before getting dosed with Kellis-Amberlee stayed dead. Those who died after infection didn’t. Why it brings its hosts back to literal, biological life is anyone’s guess. The best theories hold that it’s an enhanced version of normal filovirus behavior, the urge to replicate taken to a new and unnatural level, one that taps into the nervous system of the host and keeps it moving until it falls apart. Zombies are just sacks of virus looking for something to infect, being “driven” by Kellis-Amberlee. Maybe it’s true. Who knows? Whether it is or not, the zombies are here, and everything has changed.

  That includes the shape of the political world, because a lot of the old issues shifted once the living dead were among us. The death penalty, animal cruelty, abortion—the list goes on. It’s hard to be a politician in this world, especially given the xenophobia and paranoia running rampant through most of our more well-off communities. Senator Ryman was going to have a long, hard fight to the White House, assuming he could get there at all. And we’d be with him every step of the way.

  I sat with my face toward the sun, ignoring the way my head was throbbing, and waited for Buffy to tell me that the time had come to begin.

  BOOK II

  Dancing with the Dead

  You tell the truth as you see it, and you let the people decide whether to believe you. That’s responsible reporting. That’s playing fair. Didn’t your parents teach you anything?

  —GEORGIA MASON

  Darwin was right. Death doesn’t play fair.

  —STACY MASON

  To explain my feelings for Senator Peter Ryman, I must first note that I am a naturally suspicious soul: that which seems too good to be true, in my experience, generally is. It is thus with the natural cynicism that is my hallmark that I make the following statement:

  Peter Ryman, Wisconsin’s political golden boy, is too good to be true.

  As a lifelong member of the Republican party in an era when half the party has embraced the idea that the living dead are a punishment from God and we poor sinners must do “penance” before we can enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it would be easy for him to be a bitter man, and yet he shows no signs of it. He is friendly, cordial, intelligent, and sincere enough to convince this reporter, even at three in the morning when the convoy has broken down in the middle of Kentucky for the third time and the language has turned saltier than the Pacific tide. Rather than preaching damnation, he counsels tolerance. Rather than calling for a “war on the undead,” he recommends improving our defenses and the quality of life in the still-inhabited zones.

  He is, in short, a politician who understands that the dead are the dead, the living are the living, and we need to treat both with equal care.

  Ladies and gentlemen, unless this man has some truly awe-inspiring skeletons in his closet, it is my present and considered belief that he would make an excellent President of the United States of America, and might actually begin to repair the social, economic, and political damage that has been done by the events of these past thirty years. Of course, that can only mean that he won’t win.

  But a girl can dream.

  —From Images May Disturb You, the blog of Georgia Mason, February 5, 2040

  Seven

  The civic center had been prepared for Senator Ryman’s visit with row upon row of folding chairs and video screens angled to broadcast his image all the way to the rear of the cavernous room. Speakers were mounted every fifth row to make sure his words remained crystal clear as they fell upon the ears of the twenty or so brave souls who had actually dared to come hear him speak. The attendees were clustered in the front four rows, leaving the back of the room for the senator’s entourage, security folks, and, of course, the three of us. Put together, we outnumbered the voting public almost two to one.

  Not that this was a unique occurrence. We’d seen this scene play out in nearly two dozen states and more than three times as many locations in the six weeks since we had left California. People don’t come out to “press the flesh” the way they used to, not even for the primaries that determine which candidates will be making it all the way to the presidential elections. They’re too worried about contagion and too afraid that the weird guy who keeps muttering to himself isn’t actually insane—there’s always a chance that he’s going through massive viral amplification and will take a chunk out of someone at any moment. The only safe people are the ones you know so well that they can’t surprise you with the personality changes the virus causes during replication. Since few people have enough close personal friends to fill an auditorium, most folks don’t come out.

  That doesn’t mean that things have been going unobserved. Judging by the ratings, page hits, and downloads, the campaign has been maintaining some of the highest viewer numbers since Cruise versus Gore in 2018. People want to know how it’s going to turn out. There’s a lot riding on this election. Including, incidentally, our careers.

  Shaun’s always said that I take things too seriously; since the start of the campaign, he’d started saying my sense of humor had been surgically removed to make room for more anal-retentiveness. Anyone else who said that would probably have gotten slapped, but from Shaun, I had to admit to an element of truth. Still, if I left things up to him, we’d be living with our parents and pretending we didn’t mind the lack of privacy until we died. Someone has to watch the bottom line, and someone has pretty much always been me.

  Glancing to Buffy, I stage-whispered, “How do our numbers look?”

  She didn’t look up from the text scrolling rapidly across her phone. The data feed was moving so fast I didn’t have a prayer of following it, but it obviously meant something to Buffy because she nodded, with a small smile on her lips as she said, “We’re looking at a sixty percent local audience on the video feed, and we just hit top six percent on the Web. The only candidate getting a higher feed ratio is Congresswoman Wagman, and she’s lagging in the actual polls.”

  “And we know why she’s getting the feeds, now, don’t we children?” drawled Shaun, continuing to test the links in his favorite chain-mail shirt with a pair of lightweight pliers.

  I snorted. Word on the blog circuit is that Kirsten “Knockers” Wagman had serious breast augmentation surgery before she went into politics, acting under the assumption that in today’s largely Internet-based demographic, looking good is more important than sounding like you have two brain cells to knock together. That worked for a while—it got her a seat in Congress, partially because people enjoy looking at her—but it isn’t going to get her very far in a presidential race. Especially not now that she’s up against folks who understand the issues.

  Senator Ryman didn’t appear to have noticed the emptiness of the hall or the nervous expressions on his few actual, physical attendees. Most were probably local politicians coming out to show that they believed in the safety of their community, since several of them looked like they’d explode if you snuck up behind them and said “boo” in a commanding tone of voice. Most, not all. There was one little old lady, at least seventy years old, sitting dead center in the front row. She held her purse primly in her lap, lips set into a thin, hard line as she watched Senator Ryman go through his paces. She didn’t look nervous at all. If any zombies tried to invade this political event, she’d probably wind up giving them what-for and driving them back outside to wait their turn.

  The senator was winding down. You can only give your political platform in so many ways, no matter how much practice you have at saying the same thing from sixteen different angles. I adjusted my sunglasses, settling in my chair as I waited for the real fun to begin: the question-and-answer period. Most of the questions people come up with have something to do with the infected, as in, “What are you going to do about the zombies that the other guys haven’t tried already?” The ans
wers can get seriously entertaining, and honestly, so can the questions.

  Most questions are e-mailed in by the home audiences and asked by the polite, slightly bland voice of the senator’s digital personal assistant, which has been programmed to sound like a well-educated female of indeterminate age and race. Senator Ryman calls it “Beth” for no reason anyone has been able to get him to explain. I intend to keep trying. The best questions are the ones that come from the live audiences. Most of them are scared out of their minds after being out of the house for more than half an hour, and nothing loosens the tongue like fear. If I had my way, all questions would be asked by people who had just taken a trip through a really well-designed haunted house.

  “—and now I’d like to take a few questions from our audience—both those watching this event through the electronic methods provided by my clever technicians,” Senator Ryman chuckled, managing to telegraph his utter lack of understanding of such petty details as “how the video feeds work,” “and the good people of Eakly, Oklahoma, who have been good enough to host us this evening.”

  “Come on, lady, don’t let me down,” I murmured. Sure enough, the lady in the front row had her hand in the air almost before the senator finished speaking, arm jutting upward at a fierce, near-military angle. I settled back in my chair, grinning. “Jackpot.”

  “Huh?” Buffy looked up from her watch.

  “Live one,” I said, indicating the lady.

  “Oh.” Suddenly interested in something other than the data feed, Buffy sat forward. She knows potential ratings when she sees them.

  “Yes—the lady in the front row.” Senator Ryman indicated the woman, whose tight-lipped face promptly filled half the monitors in the room. Buffy tapped two buttons on her phone, directing her cameras to zoom in. The senator’s tech team is good, and even Buffy admits it; they understand camera angles, splicing footage, and when to go for a tight shot. Thanks to Chuck Wong, who does all their planning and design, they’re probably near the top of their field. But Buffy is better.

  The lady in question lowered her hand, fixing the senator with a stern gaze. “What is your stance on the Rapture?” Her voice was as clipped and thin as I’d expected. The sound system picked it up clear as a bell, reproducing every harsh edge and disapproving inflection flawlessly.

  Senator Ryman blinked, looking nonplussed. It was the first time I’d seen a question take him completely by surprise. He recovered with admirable speed, though, saying, “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Rapture. The event in which the faithful will be elevated to the Heavens, while the unfaithful, sinners, and infidels will be left to suffer Hell on Earth.” Her eyes narrowed. “What is your stance on this holy, foreordained event?”

  “Ah.” Senator Ryman continued to look at her, thoughtfulness clearing away his confusion. I heard a faint clink and glanced to my left; Shaun had put down his chain mail and was watching the stage with open interest. Buffy was staring at her phone, furiously tapping buttons as she angled her cameras. You can’t edit or pause a live feed, but you can set up the data to give you the best material to work from later. And this was the sort of material you just can’t stage. Would he bow to the religious nuts who have been taking over more and more of the party in recent years? Or would he risk alienating the entire religious sector of the voting public? Only the senator knew. And in a moment, so would we.

  Senator Ryman didn’t break eye contact with the woman as he stepped out from behind his podium, walked to the edge of the stage, and sat, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked like a schoolboy approaching confession, not a man jockeying for the leadership of the most powerful country on the planet. It was a well-considered position, and I applauded it inwardly, even as I began to consider an article on the showmanship of modern politics. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  “Suzanne Greeley,” she said, pursing her lips. “You haven’t answered my question, young man.”

  “Well, Ms. Greeley, that would be because I was thinking,” he said, and looked out at the small gathering, a smile spreading across his face. “I was taught that it’s rude to answer a lady’s question without giving it proper thought. Sort of like putting your elbows on the table during dinner.” A ripple of laughter passed through the crowd. Ms. Greeley didn’t join in.

  Turning back toward her, the senator continued: “You’ve asked me about my position on the Rapture, Ms. Greeley. Well, first, I think I should say that I don’t really have ‘positions’ on religious events: God will do as He wills, and it isn’t my place or my position to judge Him. If He chooses to lift the faithful into Heaven, He will, and I doubt all the politicians in the world saying, ‘I don’t believe you can do that’ would stop him.

  “At the same time, I doubt He’s going to do anything like that, Ms. Greeley, because God—the God I believe in, anyway, and as a lifelong Methodist, I feel I know Him about as well as a man who doesn’t devote his life to the Church can—doesn’t throw good things away. God is the ultimate recycler. We have a good planet here. It has its troubles, yes. We have overpopulation, we have pollution, we have global warming, we have the Thursday night television lineup,” more laughter, “and, of course, we have the infected. We have a lot of problems on Earth, and it might seem like a great idea to hold the Rapture now—why wait? Let’s move on to Heaven, and leave the trials and tribulations of our earthly existence behind us. Let’s get while the getting’s good, and beat the rush.

  “It might seem like a great idea, but I don’t think it is, for the same reason I don’t think it’s a great idea for a first grader to stand up and say that he’s learned enough, he’s done with school, thanks a lot but he’s got it from here. Compared to God, we’re barely out of kindergarten, and like any good teacher, I don’t believe He intends to let us out of class just because we’re finding the lessons a little difficult. I don’t know whether I believe in the Rapture or not. I believe that if God wants to do it, He will… but I don’t believe that it’s coming in our lifetime. We have too much work left to do right here.”

  Ms. Greeley looked at him for a long moment, lips still pressed into a thin line. Then, so slow that it was almost glacial, she nodded. “Thank you, young man,” she said.

  Those four words couldn’t have been sweeter if they’d been backed by the hallelujah choir.

  “Internet share just jumped to top three percent,” Buffy reported, raising her head. Her eyes were very wide. “Georgia, we’re getting a top-three feed.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I murmured, leaning back in my chair, “I do believe we’ve got ourselves a presidential candidate.”

  Top-three feed. The words were, if you’ll pardon the cliché, music to my ears. The world of Internet percentages and readership shares is complicated. It all comes down to server traffic. There are thousands of machines dedicated to calculating the flow of data, then reporting back which sites are getting the most access requests from outside sources, and which subsidiaries are attracting the biggest number of hits. Those turn into our ratings, and those are what the advertisers and financial backers base their investments on. Top three was the top of heap. Anything more would require adding click-through porn.

  The rest of the question-and-answer period was pretty standard stuff, with a few hardballs thrown in just to keep things interesting. Where did the senator stand on the death penalty? Given that most corpses tended to get up and try to eat folks, he didn’t see it as a productive pursuit. What was his opinion on public health care? Failure to keep people healthy enough to stay alive bordered on criminal negligence. Was he prepared to face the ongoing challenges of disaster preparedness? After the mass reanimations following the explosions in San Diego, he couldn’t imagine any presidency surviving without improved disaster planning. Where did he stand on gay marriage, religious freedom, free speech? Well, folks, given that it was no longer possible to pretend that any part of the human race was going to politely lie down and disappear just because the majority happened to d
isagree with them, and given further the proof that life is a short and fragile thing, he didn’t see the point of rendering anyone less free and equal than anybody else. When we got to the afterlife, God could sort us out into the sinner and the saved. Until we got there, it seemed to him that we were better off just being good neighbors and reserving our moral judgments for ourselves.

  After an hour and a half of questions, more than half of which originated in the auditorium—a campaign first—the senator stood, wiping his forehead with the handkerchief he’d produced from a back pocket. “Well, folks, much as I’d like to stay and chat a while longer, it’s getting on late, and my secretary has informed me that if I don’t start cutting off these evening discussions, I’m going to seem a little dull to the folks I’m visiting in the morning.” Laughter greeted this comment. Relaxed laughter; sometime in the previous hour, he’d managed to ease the audience out of their fear and into the sort of calm most people don’t experience outside of their homes. “I want to thank you for having me, and for all your questions and viewpoints. I sincerely hope I’ll have your vote when the time comes, but even if I don’t, I have faith that it will be because you managed to find someone who was better for this great land.”

  “We’re following you, Peter!” shouted someone from the back of the room. I twisted around in my seat and blinked, realizing that the shouter wasn’t someone from the campaign; it was a woman I’d never seen before, holding up a hand-painted Senator Ryman for President sign.