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  the past hundred years, because together, we would have remade this nation.”

  “No election is worth this,” Ryman said. “Emily, be still now, baby.” Looking confused and betrayed, Emily stopped struggling. Ryman lifted his hands into view, palms upward. “What’ll it take for you to release her? My wife’s not a part of this.”

  “I’m afraid you’re all a part of this now,” Tate said, with a small shake of his head. “No one’s walking away. It’s gone too far for that. Maybe if you’d disposed of the journalists,” the word was almost spat, “it could have gone differently. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk, now, is there?”

  “Put down the syringe, Governor,” I said, keeping the gun level. “Let her go.”

  “Georgia, the CDC is piggybacking our feed,” said Mahir. “They’re not stopping the transmission, but they’re definitely listening in. Dave and Alaric are maintaining the integrity, but I don’t know that we can stop it if they want to cut us off.”

  “Oh, they won’t cut us off, will you, Dr. Wynne?” I asked. If I was right and he was listening in, the CDC was with us. If it was anybody else…

  There was a crackle as the CDC broke into our channel. “Here, Georgia,” said the familiar Southern drawn of Dr. Joseph Wynne. Mahir was swearing in the background. “Are you in any danger?”

  “I’m not, but Emily Ryman is,” I said. “Governor Tate has her, and he’s holding a syringe full of what I assume is Kellis-Amberlee.”

  “We’re on our way. Can you stall him?”

  “I’m trying.” I forced my attention back to Governor Tate, who was watching me impassively. “The CDC is on their way. You know this is over.”

  Governor Tate hesitated, looking from me to the Senator and finally to the horrified, receding crowd. Suddenly weary, he shook his head, and said, “You’re fools, all of you. You could have saved this country. You could have brought moral fiber back to America.” His grip on Emily slackened. She pulled herself free, diving into her husband’s embrace. Senator Ryman closed his arms around her, backing away. Governor Tate ignored them. “You and your brother will be forgotten in a week, when your fickle little audience of bottom-feeders moves on to something more recent. But they’re going to remember me, Mason. They always remember the martyrs.”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “We won’t.” In one fluid motion, he drove the syringe into his thigh and pressed the plunger home.

  Emily Ryman screamed. Senator Ryman was shouting at the top of his lungs, ordering people to get back, to get to the elevators, behind secure doors, anything that would get them away from the man who’d just turned himself into a living outbreak. Still looking at me, Governor Tate started to laugh.

  The sound of my gun going off was almost drowned out by the screams of the crowd. Governor Tate stopped laughing, and looked, for an instant, almost comically surprised before he slumped onto the table. I kept the gun trained on him, waiting for signs of further movement. After several moments had passed without any, I shot him three more times anyway, just to be sure. It never hurts to be sure.

  Steve and Rick stepped up beside me as people pushed past us, rushing for the doors. Mahir and Dr. Wynne were trying to shout over each other on our open channel, both demanding status reports, demanding to know whether I was all right, whether the outbreak had been contained. They were giving me a headache. I reached up and removed my ear cuff, putting it on the table. Let them shout. I was done listening. I didn’t need to listen anymore.

  “I’m sorry, Georgia,” said Rick softly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I wiped my eyes with the back of the hand that held my gun, wishing that there was some mercy in the world. That getting the bad guys meant you got your loved ones back; that there had been another way.

  That I could cry.

  “What now?” asked Steve.

  I shook my head. I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t know anything anymore.

  * * *

  Should we have seen it coming? I suppose. If we’d been less blinded by our own grief; if any of us had truly understood how shattered she was. But we were all of us shattered in those moments, and no one thought to take the gun from out her hand.

  Rest well, Georgia Mason.

  God, I miss you.

  —From Fish and Clips, the blog of Mahir Gowda, June 21st, 2040.

  Six: Rick

  It took five and a half months for the CDC to release their ashes. Shaun’s would normally have taken longer, and Georgia’s would normally have been released almost immediately, but there are protocols for suicides, and they kept her body for a lot longer than any of us were expecting. When we finally got the notice that she was going to be released, Dr. Wynne petitioned his superiors to release Shaun’s ashes at the same time, so that we could bury them together.

  Georgia kept her word. She’d always said that she didn’t want to live in a world without Shaun, and she didn’t. A week after we broke the story of Tate’s actions, she returned to the house she shared with her family, locked herself in the bathroom, and slit her wrists in the bathtub. No one was hurt when she reanimated, and the house security system kept her from ever leaving the room. The Masons have threatened to sue the site three times for the cost of cleaning up the mess she made. We’re ignoring them.

  Mahir is in charge now, of everything. I do what he tells me, I try to keep the Newsies in line, and I drink more than is strictly good for me—but there’s no one to tell me not to, so why does it matter? We all died on that campaign trail. One way or another, we all died there.

  Shaun’s ashes arrived the day before the funeral. I wouldn’t have scheduled the funeral at all, but once Georgia was released, we had to make plans for interment, and this was the only day Senator Ryman could make it. He’d asked us to hold the service when he could attend, if possible. I might still have put it off, except for the part where our team couldn’t come out of the field if the Senator—who was fighting, and apparently winning, an increasingly vicious battle for his political position—was still out there. Magdalene, Becks, and Alaric deserved their chance to say goodbye to the Masons.

  Mahir’s flight from London landed at eleven the day of the funeral. I drove to the passenger collection zone at the edge of the airport’s quarantine border, hoping I’d be able to pick him out of the crowd. I didn’t really need to worry. His plane had been almost empty, and I would’ve known him any-where. He looked as lost as I did.

  “Rick,” he said, and took my hand. “I’m so glad to finally meet you. I just wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

  “So do I,” I said, and led him to the car.

  “What news?” Mahir asked, as we pulled onto the freeway. “I’ve been incommunicado for hours. Blasted flight.”

  “Senator Ryman’s plane touched down about the same time yours did. They’ll be meeting us at the funeral home. Emily couldn’t make it, but she sends her regrets.”

  “And how are you?”

  He meant “Are you sober?”, and since I was driving, I couldn’t fault him for asking the question. “I’m getting by,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” he said, and we drove the rest of the way without saying anything else. There was nothing else to say.

  The parking lot of the funeral home was choked with cars. Packing the staff of multiple blog sites and a Presidential campaign, as well as friends and family, into a single building will do that sort of thing. I pulled into the last parking slot reserved in the “family” section of the lot. Today, we were family. We were the only family they had left in the world—the only family that mattered.

  “Here we are,” I said, unlocking the door. I paused, then, looking to Mahir, and asked the one question I needed answered more than anything else: “Was it worth it?”

  “No,” said Mahir quietly. “And yet… what is?”

  The Masons did what they knew and loved best, and they died for it. Not before Shaun saved her one last ti
me; not before Georgia found her truth.

  Maybe that was enough. Maybe this was all over.

  And maybe it didn’t matter, because our story ended with a razorblade and a bathtub full of water, and a girl who never knew how to cry weeping in the only way she knew how. Even if this wasn’t over, someone else was going to have to save the world next time.

  We were done.

  Rise up while you can.

  END.

  THE NEWSFLESH TRILOGY AVAILABLE NOW

  © 2012, by Seanan McGuire

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