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  Shaun stepped out of the van already smiling. That smile’s made him a lot of friends in the female portion of the blogosphere—something about him looking like he’d be just as happy to explore the dangerous wilderness of the bedroom as he is to explore the mysteries of things that want to make him die. They should know by now it’s a gimmick, given his continuing lack of a social life that doesn’t include the infected, but they keep falling for it. Half the cameras swung around to face him, and several of the chirpy little “anchorwomen”—because every twit who knows how to post an interview on the vid sites is an anchorwoman these days; just ask them—shoved their microphones into his face. Shaun immediately started giving them what they wanted, chattering merrily about our latest reports, offering coy, meaningless come-ons, and basically talking about anything and everything other than our new assignment.

  Shaun’s smoke screen gave me the opportunity I needed to slip out of the car and start worming my way toward the restaurant doors. Paparazzi gatherings are one of the few times you’ll see a crowd in public. I spotted nervous-looking Berkeley Police in riot gear around the edge of the crowd as I made my way toward the thinner concentration of bodies. They were waiting for something to go wrong. They’d just have to keep waiting. There’s only been one incident where an outbreak started from a gathering of licensed reporters, and it happened when a nervous celebrity—the real sort, a TV sitcom star, not one of the ones who built themselves celebrity out of boredom—freaked out, pulled a gun out of her purse, and started shooting. The jury found the TV star, not the paparazzi, at fault for the outbreak that followed.

  One of the Newsies near the police offered me a sidelong nod, making no move to draw attention to my position. I nodded back, relieved by his discretion. He was just crowd-surfing, but it was a nice thing to do. I made a note of his face: If his site put in for an interview, I’d grant it.

  Irwins get crowd-comfortable the easy way: When you live in the hope that an outbreak will happen where you can observe it, you don’t worry about avoiding them the way a sane person might. Fictionals go one of two directions: Some avoid crowds like everybody else. Others refuse to acknowledge that they could possibly get infected when they haven’t put it in the script and they go gaily bouncing hither and yon, ignoring the danger. Newsies tend to be more cautious because we know what could happen if we’re not. Unfortunately, the demands of our job make it hard for us to be total hermits, and so even those of us who don’t need the additional income or exposure from the paparazzi flocks join up with them from time to time, getting accustomed to the feeling of being surrounded by other bodies. The paparazzi flocks are our version of the obstacle course. Stand in them without freaking out and you might be ready for real field work.

  My “skirt the crowd and keep your eyes on the door” technique seemed to be working. With Shaun and Buffy providing louder, more visible targets, no one was going for me. Besides, I have a well-established—and well-deserved—reputation for being the sort of interviewee who walks away leaving you with nothing you can use as a front-page quote or saleable sound byte. It’s hard to interview someone who refuses to talk to you.

  Ten feet to the door. Nine. Eight. Seven…

  “—and this is my gorgeous daughter, Georgia, who’s going to be the head of Senator Ryman’s hand-selected blogging team!” Mom’s hand caught my elbow just as the gushing, ebullient tone of her voice caught my ears. Trapped. She swung me around to face the crowd of paparazzi, fingers digging into my arm. More quietly, through gritted teeth, she said, “You owe me this.”

  “Got it,” I said, out of the corner of my mouth, and let myself be turned.

  Shaun and I figured out early what our purpose was in our parents’ lives. When your classmates aren’t allowed to go to the movies because they might be exposed to unknown individuals, while your parents are constantly proposing wild adventures in the outside world, you get the idea that maybe something’s going on. Shaun was the first to realize how they were using us; it’s about the only place where he grew up before I did. I got over Santa. He got over our parents.

  Mom kept an iron grip on my arm as she mugged and preened, re-creating her favorite photo opportunity, version five hundred and eleven: the flamboyant Irwin poses with her stoic daughter, polar opposites united by a passion for the news. I once sat down with the news aggregators and compared a public-image search to the collection of private pictures on the house database. Eighty-two percent of the physical affection I’ve received from my mother has been in public, in careful view of one or more cameras. If that seems cynical, answer this: Why has she reliably, for my entire life, waited to touch me until there was someone with a visible camera in shooting range?

  People wonder why I’m not physically affectionate. The number of times I’ve been a rating-boosting photo opportunity for my parents should be sufficient answer. The only person who’s ever hugged me without thinking about the shooting angles and light saturation is my brother, and he’s the only one whose hugs I’ve ever given a damn about.

  My glasses filtered camera flashes, although it wasn’t long before I had to close my eyes anyway. Some of the newer cameras have lights on them strong enough to take photographs in total darkness that seem to have been taken at noon, and there’s not an intelligence check associated with buying that sort of equipment. One of those suckers goes off in your face, you know you’ve been photographed. I was going to have a migraine for days thanks to Mom’s forced photo opportunity. There was no way I could have avoided it; it was give in before dinner or spend the entire meal being harangued about my duties as a good daughter, leading to a much longer photo session afterward. I’d rather kiss a zombie raccoon.

  Buffy came to my rescue, slinking through the crowd with the sort of grace that only comes from the kind of practice most of our generation has avoided. Reaching out, she caught hold of my other arm and chirped, all dizzy good cheer, “Ms. Mason, Georgia, Mr. Mason says our table’s ready! Only if you don’t come now, they may release it, and then we’ll have to wait at least a half an hour for another table.” She paused before delivering the coup de grace. “An inside table.”

  That was the perfect thing to say. Sitting outside added to the family’s mystique, making us look brave and adventurous. Parental opinion, not mine. I think eating outside when you don’t have to makes you look like a suicidal idiot dying to get munched by a zombie deer. Shaun sides with everybody on this one—he’d rather eat outside when we have to eat with the parents in public, since that way there’s the chance a zombie deer will come along and rescue him. He just agrees that it’s a stupid thing to do. Mom doesn’t see the stupidity. If it was a choice between an outdoor table where the photographers could get some decent shots and an indoor table where people might gossip about the fearless Stacy Mason losing her nerve, well… her answer was obvious.

  Flashing her award-winning—literally—smile at the crowd, Mom pulled me into an “impulsive” hug and announced, “Well, folks, our table’s ready.” Noises of displeasure greeted her statement. Her smile widened. “But we’ll be back after food, so if you guys want to grab a burger, we might be able to coax a few wise statements out of my girl.” She gave me a squeeze and let go, to the sound of general applause.

  I sometimes wonder why none of these news site cluster bombs ever catch the way her smile dies when she’s not facing the cameras. They run solemn pictures of her once in a while, but they’re as posed as the rest; they show her looking mournfully at abandoned playgrounds or locked cemetery gates, and once—when her ratings dipped to an all-time low during the summer Shaun and I turned thirteen and locked ourselves in our rooms—at the school Phillip had attended. That’s our Mom, selling the death of her only biological child for a few points in the ratings game.

  Shaun says I shouldn’t judge her so harshly, since we make our living doing the same thing. I say it’s different when we do it. We don’t have kids. The only things we’re selling are ourselves, and I guess we have a ri
ght to that.

  Dad and Shaun were standing outside the restaurant doors, turned just far enough that none of the microphones capable of withstanding the crowd noise without shorting out would be able to make out what they were saying. As I drew closer, I heard Shaun saying, in an entirely pleasant tone, “… I really don’t care what you consider ‘reasonable.’ You’re not part of our team; you’re not getting any exclusives.”

  “Now, Shaun—”

  “Dinnertime,” I said, snagging Shaun’s arm as I walked past. He came with me as gratefully as I’d gone with Buffy a few moments before. Shaun, Buffy, and I walked into the restaurant practically arm-in-arm, with our parents trailing behind us, both struggling to conceal their irritation. Tough. If they didn’t want us embarrassing them in public, they shouldn’t have made us go out.

  Our table proved to be nice enough to suit Mom’s idea of propriety; it was located in the far corner of the yard, close to both the fence keeping out the woods and the fence isolating us from the street. Several enterprising paparazzi had drifted over to that portion of the sidewalk and were snapping candid shots through the bars. Mom flashed them a dimpled grin. Dad looked knowing and wise. I fought the urge to gag.

  My handheld vibrated, signaling an incoming text message. I unclipped it from my belt, tilting it to show the screen.

  “Think this’ll die down when we’re on the road?—S”

  I smirked, tapping out, “Once the media machine (aka ‘Mom’) has been left here? Absolutely. We’ll be small potatoes next to the main course.”

  He tapped back: “I love it when you compare people to food.”

  “Practicing for the inevitable.”

  Shaun snorted laughter, nearly dropping his phone into the basket of breadsticks. Dad shot him a sharp look, and he put his phone down next to his silverware, saying angelically, “I was checking my ratings.”

  Dad’s scowl melted instantly. “How’s it looking?”

  “Not bad. The footage the Buffster managed to clean before we hauled her away from her computer is getting a really good download rate.” Shaun flashed a grin at Buffy, who preened. If you want her to like you, compliment her poetry. If you want her to love you, compliment her tech. “I figure once I do the parallel reports and record my commentary, my share’s going to jump another eight points. I may break my own top stats this month.”

  “Show-off,” I said, and smacked him on the arm with my fork.

  “Slacker,” he replied, still grinning.

  “Children,” said Mom, but there was no heat behind it. She loved it when we goofed around. It made us look more like a real family.

  “I’m going to have the teriyaki soy burger,” said Buffy. She leaned forward and said conspiratorially, “I heard from a guy who knows a girl whose boyfriend’s best friend is in biotech that he—the best friend, I mean—ate some beef that was cloned in a clean room and didn’t have a viral colony, and it tasted just like teriyaki soy.”

  “Would that it were true,” said Dad, with the weird sort of mournfulness reserved for people who grew up before the Rising and were now confronted with something that’s been lost forever. Like red meat.

  That’s another nasty side effect of the KA infection that no one thought about until they were forced to deal with it firsthand: Everything mammalian harbors a virus colony, and the death of the organism causes the virus to transmute into its live state. Hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, and pork chops are things of the past. Eat them, and you’re eating live viral particles. Are you sure there aren’t any sores in your mouth? In your esophagus? Can you be one hundred percent certain that no part of your digestive tract has been compromised in any way? All it takes is the smallest break in the body’s defenses and your slumbering infection wakes up. Cooking the meat enough to kill the infection also kills the flavor, and it’s still a form of Russian roulette.

  The most well-done steak in the world may have one tiny speck of rare meat somewhere inside it, and that’s all that it takes. My brother wrestles with the infected, gives speeches while standing on cars in designated disaster zones, never wears sufficient armor, and generally goes through life giving the impression that he’s a suicide waiting to happen. Even he won’t eat red meat.

  Poultry and fish are safe, but a lot of people avoid them anyway. Something about the act of eating flesh makes them uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the fact that suddenly, after centuries of ruling the farmyard, mankind has reason to empathize with the chicken. We always had turkeys at Thanksgiving and geese at Christmas. Just another ratings stunt on the part of our increasingly media-savvy parents, but at least this one had some useful side effects. Shaun and I are some of the only people I know in our generation who don’t have any unreasonable dietary hang-ups.

  “I’m going to have the chicken salad and a cup of today’s soup,” I said.

  “And a Coke,” prompted Shaun.

  “And a carafe,” I corrected him.

  He was still teasing me about my caffeine intake when the waiter appeared, accompanied by the beaming manager. No surprise there. As a family, we’ve been excellent customers for as long as I can remember. Every time a local outbreak has closed down outside gathering areas, Mom’s been at Bronson’s, eating in the enclosed dining area and making a point of being the first one outside when they’re allowed to reopen it. They’d be stupid not to appreciate what we’ve done for their business.

  The waiter was carrying a tray laden with our usual assortment of drinks: coffee for Mom and Dad, a virgin daiquiri for Buffy, a bottle of sparkling apple cider for Shaun—it looks like beer from any sort of a distance—and a pitcher of Coke for me.

  “Compliments of the house,” the manager declared, turning his smile on me and Shaun. “We’re so proud of you. Going off to be media superstars! It runs in the family.”

  “It definitely does,” simpered Mom, doing her best to look like a giggling schoolgirl. She was only succeeding at looking like an idiot, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. We were almost on the campaign trail. It wasn’t worth the fight.

  “Be sure to sign a menu before you leave?” the manager pressed. “We’ll put it on the wall. When you’re too big to come to places like this, we’ll be able to say, ‘They ate here, they ate fries right there, right at that table, while they did their math homework.’”

  “It was physics,” protested Shaun, laughing.

  “Whatever you say,” said the manager.

  The waiter passed drinks around as we placed our orders. He finished by pouring the first cup of Coke from my pitcher with a flourish of his wrist. I smiled at that, and he winked at me, clearly pleased. I let my smile die, spiking an eyebrow upward. Hours of practice with my mirror have shown me that particular expression’s success in conveying disdain. It’s one of the few facial expressions that’s helped by my sunglasses, rather than being hindered by them. His pleasure faded, and he hustled through the rest of his duties without looking at me.

  Shaun caught my eye, mouthing “That wasn’t nice” at me.

  I shrugged, mouthing “He should have known better” back at him. I don’t flirt. Not with waiters, not with other reporters, not with anybody.

  Finally, the staff retreated, and Mom raised her glass, clearly signaling for a toast. Choosing the path of least resistance, the rest of us did the same.

  “To ratings!” she said.

  “To ratings,” we agreed and clinked our glasses around the table in doleful adherence to the ritual.

  We were on the road to those ratings now. All we had to do was hope that we were good enough to keep them. Whatever it might take.

  * * *

  My friend Buffy likes to say love is what keeps us together. The old pop songs had it right, and it’s all about love, full stop, no room for arguing. Mahir says loyalty is what matters—doesn’t matter what kind of person you were, as long as you were loyal. George, she says it’s the truth that matters. We live and die for the chance to maybe tell a little bit of the truth, maybe shame
the Devil just a little bit before we go.

  Me, I say those are all great things to live for, if they’re what happens to float your boat, but at the end of the day, there’s got to be somebody you’re doing it for. Just one person you’re thinking of every time you make a decision, every time you tell the truth, or tell a lie, or anything.

  I’ve got mine. Do you?

  —From Hail to the King, the blog of Shaun Mason, September 19, 2039

  Five

  “ ID?”

  “Georgia Carolyn Mason, licensed online news representative, After the End Times.” I handed my license and photo identification to the man in black, turning my left wrist over to reveal the blue-and-red ID tattoo I had done when I tested for my first Class B license. Tattooing isn’t legally required—yet—but it gives them something to identify your body by. Every little bit helps. “Registered with the North American Association of Internet Journalists; dental records, skin sample, and identifying markings on file.”

  “Remove the sunglasses.”

  That was a request I was all too familiar with. “If you’ll check my file, you’ll see that I have a filed notation of retinal Kellis-Amberlee syndrome. If there’s another test we can perform, I’d be happy to—”

  “Remove the sunglasses.”

  “You realize I won’t display a normal retinal pattern?”

  The man in black offered me the ghost of a smile. “Well, ma’am, if your eyes check normal, we’ll know you’ve been making all this fuss because you weren’t who you claimed to be, now, won’t we?”