Andy, where’s the beer?”

“Look in the crisper.”

Ryan paused before asking the obvious: “Why is the beer in the crisper?”

“Because grain’s a vegetable,” said Elsa, sensibly enough, as she dumped tortilla chips into a yellow plastic bowl. “That means beer is good for you.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” said Ryan, before digging a beer out from under a wilted head of lettuce. “Is Mike coming?”

“Mike’s coming, Cole isn’t.” Andy picked up the tray of sandwiches, pausing to kiss Elsa on the cheek before exiting the kitchen. The tray of sandwiches was placed ceremoniously on the dining room table, next to a veggie platter, a bowl of salsa, and a second bowl filled with peanut M&M’s. He glanced back as Ryan followed him to the table, adding, “Before you ask, Sandi’s coming. She just had to stop and pick up some root beer.”

“Right.” Ryan sat in his usual chair, cracking open his first beer of the evening. He’d stop after the third, when Sandi’s nagging became too much for him to handle. None of this was a mystery to anyone, and that was how all of them liked it. Playing the Apocalypse Game for fifteen years had transformed predictability into one of the weekly game night’s greatest attractions. Spend some time with your friends, play a board game you didn’t really care about, and plot the downfall of mankind. Pure bliss.

Cole’s absence was the only black spot on what was otherwise shaping up to be a perfect evening. She’d been more and more scarce over the past few years, as her job—which she never described in detail, being willing to say nothing beyond “I work for the government” and “I still use my medical degree”—kept her away from home more and more often. Even saying that much made her visibly uncomfortable, until they all stopped asking.

Still, Cole missing the Apocalypse Game was still a new phenomenon—new enough to be unnerving. Out of all the players, she’d always been the most reliable. “Remember the time Cole had pneumonia?” asked Ryan. “She missed two sessions in a row.”

“And then she showed up for the third session in her bathrobe.” Andy laughed, shaking his head. “Mike was so disappointed when he realized she had her clothes on underneath it.”

“Those were the days.” Ryan took a long swig from his beer, amusement fading. “This is the third session. She’s never missed three.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“I’m worried about her,” said Elsa, emerging from the kitchen with the bowl of chips in her hands. “She’s been working too much. She needs the Apocalypse Game to take her mind off things.”

Ryan snorted. “I’m going to give you a second to think about what you just said.”

“I stand by it. Cole started the Game. She should be able to find the time to play.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back as soon as she can,” said Andy.

“I hope so.” Elsa sighed. “Maybe Mike can tell us more.”

“Maybe,” Andy agreed dolefully. Silence descended.

Their little social group was just like a thousand others, all over the world, at least superficially: a bunch of old friends getting together to play games and talk until well after any sensible person’s bedtime. They met in high school, a bunch of strange, smart kids living on the fringes of teenage society. They clustered together in self-defense, as much as anything else—it wasn’t until midway through freshman year that they all started to actually like each other.

The first Apocalypse Game was practically an accident. They’d been lazing around Cole’s house, bored and restless and looking for something to do. They’d tried everything from Poker to Candyland before Cole made her characteristically mild suggestion: “Why don’t we figure out how to destroy the world?”

The first scenario was Cole’s, of course. It involved a chemical spill wiping out the world’s plankton supply. Without plankton, the small fish died; without the small fish, the big fish died; without the big fish, everything else in the ocean followed suit. It was an ineffective, inelegant apocalypse, and after they’d spent the whole night debating it, Ryan said he could do better. Elsa dared him to prove it. A week later, he did. Sandi took the week after that, and so on, and so on. High school ended. College began. Dan and Tony moved away; Elsa and Andy got married; Cole and Mike didn’t, although they may as well have. And always, always, there was the Game.

Maybe it was a strange way to spend fifteen years of Friday nights. At the end of the day, none of them really cared.

The five players took their seats around the dining room table. The chair next to Mike remained conspicuously empty. None of them could avoid glancing at it at least once. Cole’s absence was palpable, and it couldn’t be ignored, no matter how hard everyone tried. She should have been there.

Mike cleared his throat. “I, uh, brought something. Well, Cole sent something.”

“Behind her love, her regrets, and a promise that she’ll do her best to make it next week?” asked Sandi, reaching for her second root beer.

“If you run out, we’re not stopping so you can go for more,” cautioned Andy.

Sandi shot him a glare. “I know that.”

Elsa raised a hand, stopping the familiar argument before it could begin. “What did she send?”

“Well, Sandi was right about Cole sending her love and her regrets. She also sent this.” Mike pulled a small digital recorder from his pocket. He put it down on the table, between the tortilla chips and the veggie platter. “Tonight’s supposed to be her turn, right?”

“Right,” said Ryan, dubiously. “So what, you’re going to present her scenario and record our discussion?”

“No. Cole’s presenting her own scenario. I’m here to play the game.” Mike pressed the “play” button on the top of the recorder. It beeped, once, before Cole’s sweet, always slightly distracted voice came through the speaker, just as clear as if she’d actually been there.

“Hi, guys. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in person tonight, but I had…things…I needed to take care of. This is a scenario I’ve been working on for a while, and I think it’s pretty solid. There will be beeps every few minutes, like this one”—the recorder beeped again—“to signal that it’s time to pause for discussion before you continue. I think I’ve predicted all your responses. You could still surprise me.”

There was a third beep. Mike leaned forward and paused the recording.

“Well?” he asked. “Is everybody cool with this?”

“It’s weird,” said Ryan. “Weird is good.”

Sandi giggled nervously. “I guess it’s okay. I didn’t want to skip her turn, anyway.”

“Andy? Elsa?”

“I’m cool with it, sure, but do you know what’s on the recording?” asked Andy. “Not to be a stickler, but scenarios aren’t supposed to be shared before the Game.”

“She recorded the whole thing at work and gave it to me before she left for the airport,” said Mike. “I’m not a cheater. I didn’t listen.”

“Then I’m cool with it, too,” said Elsa firmly. “Play the scenario.”

Mike pressed the button.

“If you’re listening to this, that means you’ve decided to let me take my turn. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Anyway, this is Apocalypse Scenario number six hundred and eighty-three. I’ve never been good with names—I’m more interested in the science—so I just call this scenario ‘the Box.’”

“Sounds promising,” said Sandi, taking a swig of root beer. Ryan motioned for her to be quiet. She stuck her tongue out at him.

Cole’s voice continued implacably: “First, establishment of the scenario. The Box is based around a man-made bacterial pandemic. At the time the scenario begins, the bacteria in question have already been released into the human population at several geographically distinct locations. All the locations were in North America, but they all included a very high probability of intercontinental transmission within twenty-four hours, as in Andy’s Ticket to Die Apocalypse.”

“Cute,” said Andy.

“The bacterial strain you’re dealing with was designed by a young researcher employed by the bioterrorism division of the United States government. It was originally commissioned under the auspices of ‘counterterrorism.’” Cole’s voice turned briefly bitter, causing Andy and Elsa to exchange worried glances. Bitterness wasn’t native to Cole’s state of being. “The people in charge lied about it, of course. That’s vital to understanding this scenario: It begins with the assumption that if you reported the scenario to the government, they’d believe you, because the government is the reason the situation exists in the first place.”

The recorder beeped. Mike hit the “pause” button and looked around the table. “That’s our setup.”

“It’s pretty simplistic, especially for Cole,” said Ryan. “Somebody drops a test tube, somebody else tells the people in charge, and everything gets mopped up with minimal loss of life. The world doesn’t end.”

“Nobody dropped a test tube,” said Elsa. “She said it was released into the human population in ‘several geographically diverse locations,’ and implied that they were chosen to create the widest possible infection pattern. This thing was intentionally released.”

“The government angle still makes it pretty simple,” said Andy.

Sandi shrugged. “So it’ll be a short apocalypse. Go ahead and press ‘play,’ Mike. I want to hear what comes next.”

Mike nodded, and pressed the button.

The bitterness was gone when Cole resumed her explanation. Instead, she sounded cheerful, if a little overtired. “Second, elaboration of the scenario. You’re looking at a bacterial infection based on a combination of whooping cough and tuberculosis—just like Ryan’s No Air Apocalypse, only this time, the bacteria has been tailored for antibiotic resistance. The first generation has an artificially long latency built in, to allow for extensive spread. Once the first generations of bacteria have incubated to maturity in human lungs, the latency will be halved, until the final projected generation, where it will default to the standard latency period for whooping cough. Symptoms include coughing, runny nose, headache, difficulty breathing, muscular spasm, secondary pneumonia, and, of course, death.

“Fatality estimates place the death toll at approximately ninety-one percent of the infected population. It’s impossible to accurately predict susceptibility, but projections indicate that as much as eighty percent of the human race could be infected by the end of the second latency.”

Beep. Pause.

“Okay, that’s…charming.” Sandi wrinkled her nose. “Has Cole gone off her meds or something? She’s not normally this nasty with her scenarios.”

Mike didn’t say anything. He reached almost mechanically for the chips, scooping up a handful. His eyes looked haunted. Something about that look frightened Andy in ways he wasn’t sure he could put into words. Something was wrong.

“Mike?” he said. “You okay, buddy? Is Cole okay?”

“She’s been working a lot lately.” Mike forced a laugh. It sounded unnatural enough that Ryan paused with his beer halfway lifted to his mouth. “She’s just stressed, that’s all. Let’s keep going.” Mike hit the button before anyone could object, and Cole spoke again.

“Three…” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Three, explanation of apocalypse stemming from scenario. Buckle up, guys. Here’s where the real game starts.”

“See, this researcher, she was recruited right out of college. Her ‘scholarship’ to medical school wasn’t a scholarship, not really; it was a government loan. They’d pay for everything, and she’d go to work for them when she graduated. They wanted her that much, because she was that good.” Something like pride crept into Cole’s voice. “They knew she’d be able to change the world.”

Elsa’s hand clamped down on Andy’s elbow, squeezing hard. None of them said anything. Every pair of eyes was fixed on the recorder.

“For a while, she was happy with the deal. She thought she was protecting the world against the bad guys—that she could stave off the apocalypse she’d been worrying about since she was in high school. She tore viruses and bacteria apart and recombined them in ways no one else had ever been able to accomplish. She read. She researched. She was going to change the world.

“Only it turned out she already had, because she started hearing about this outbreak in Korea that perfectly mirrored one of her projects—one of her defensive projects. People were dying of something that sounded a lot like her enhanced strain of the bubonic plague. She went to her superiors and asked them…asked them if they were going to send help. And they told her to go back to her lab, and get back to work.”

“I saw that on the news,” whispered Elsa. “So many people died. It was horrible.”

Cole continued: “She got scared then, our researcher, and she started really looking at the things she’d been working on. The things that were supposed to help people. Only they weren’t helping people at all. They were hurting them. And everyone said that was okay, because we weren’t the only ones—every government in the world was doing it, and that made it okay. That made it necessary. If we didn’t build it, someone else would.” She stopped, seeming to lose her place for a moment, before repeating, “Someone else would. It wasn’t something she could stop by walking away. You know? It was going to happen. We’d made it inevitable. She’d made it inevitable. So maybe the best thing she could do was stop it all before it got even worse. Stop it the only way she knew how. Stop the whole damn arms race for a while, and give everyone a chance to breathe. For certain values of ‘everyone,’ anyway. Because if she didn’t…

“Things have been getting worse for a long time. Everybody knows that. If humanity isn’t stopped, they’re going to kill the planet, not just themselves. Someone had to do something. She was just the one watching when the time finally came.”

Beep. Pause.

“This is sick,” said Sandi. She popped the cap off her last root beer, glaring at Mike. “Why is she doing this? There’s not even anything to discuss. It’s just sick.”

“Mike?” Elsa worried her lip between her teeth for a moment before saying, “Cole never told us who she worked for.”

“No.” Mike’s voice was bleak, empty of all emotion. “She wasn’t allowed to. They made her sign a lot of papers.”

“A lot of papers in exchange for what?” asked Andy.

“Medical school.”

Mike pressed the button.

“The release happened six days ago. The infection has a latency of twenty-three days. Additional releases are ongoing. Because…” Cole stopped again before starting back up, sounding more and more like a broken marionette. She was running down. “Because the government funded the original project, they might be able to find a vaccine if they start looking immediately. It wouldn’t be hard to type the bacterial strain, and there are only a few researchers working with it. They don’t know about all the modifications that I…that she…that were made. They’d need to start right away. But there’s a catch.”

“Isn’t there always?” asked Mike, leaning back in his seat.

“The researcher who created the disease, she’s listening in on all the big channels, and a lot of the small ones. She has people feeding her information, people who have really good reason to be loyal to her. People who see the same solution she does. And if she hears a whisper from any government, anywhere, that links this pandemic to her research, she’ll release the second project she worked on. The bad one.”

“This isn’t the bad one?” Ryan sounded incredulous. “I mean, come on, Cole…”

“Here’s where things get dicey, guys. See, the second infection isn’t bacterial. It’s a virus, based on a hemorrhagic out of Africa called ‘Lassa fever.’ It’s got a long latency and a high mortality rate, and that’s without clever virologists playing with the way it works. And this one hasn’t got a vaccine, although it does have a nasty little interlock with the vaccine for the bacterial strain. If you would have been immune to the original pandemic, either naturally or due to immunization, you’ll get the second virus and you’ll die.” Cole sighed deeply. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Is she crazy?” demanded Sandi.

“I don’t know,” said Ryan.

Cole’s laughter startled them all, even Mike, who jumped in his chair and nearly knocked over Sandi’s root beer. It was a brittle, jagged sound, like broken glass.

“Okay, okay, I give, you guys,” she said. “This ‘oh, I have a friend’ shit is so high school, isn’t it? I built the virus. I built them both. The scenario is still valid: The releases started last week. Manhattan, San Francisco, and—best of all—Disney World. I put it in the misters, just like Elsa’s Black Fungus Apocalypse. Thanks for that, Elsa. It works great.”

Elsa looked ill. Cole kept talking.

“I love you guys. You’re the best friends I’ve ever had. I mean, you may be the only friends I’ve ever had—the only real ones, anyway. That’s why I’m leaving this up to you. I vaccinated you all against the first disease months ago. You’re probably the safest people on the planet. Yes, even you, Sandi. I know you slept with Mike, but I don’t really care about that anymore. It’s too trivial a concern.”

Sandi and Mike exchanged a glance, her eyes wide and horrified, his merely resigned. Cole kept talking.

“You’re all going to live through what comes next. It won’t be fun, but you’ll live. I knew you wouldn’t want to do it alone—you were always more social than I was—so I’ve arranged to have a box couriered to Elsa and Andy’s place tonight, during the Game. Inside, you’ll find ten doses of vaccine for each of you. Use them however you want. Save your family, or your friends, or your doctor. It’s up to you. You can even give them to the government. And if you do, I’ll die with you, because I’m immune to the first pandemic, just like you are.”

Cole’s voice turned wistful. “I wish I could’ve given you this scenario in person. I think it’s the best one I’ve ever put together. I really wanted to, but in the end, I couldn’t risk it. I love you all. I love you all so much. I hope you’ll find the answer that’s right, because to be honest…I can’t. All I can do is end the world, and let you decide how much of it survives.

“This is Cole Evans, signing out.” A pause, and then, in a whisper they all had to strain to hear: “Forgive me?”

The recorder beeped one more time. Silence fell.

Ryan was the first to react. He laughed nervously, shaking his head. “Okay, wow. That’s the best mind-fuck we’ve had in a while. Points to Cole.”

“I don’t think she was kidding,” said Elsa.

“We haven’t answered the scenario yet, guys,” said Mike. He picked up the recorder, cradling it in his hand. “Do we call the government and die, or do we condemn millions of people because we’re too chicken to pick up the phone?”

“Dude, did you really sleep with Sandi?” asked Ryan.

Mike didn’t answer.

“Won’t calling the government mean killing even more people?” asked Andy. “She said the second virus was worse.”

“We don’t know that,” said Mike. “Maybe there’s only one virus.”

“Because Cole was always an underachiever,” scoffed Ryan. “If she says there’s a second virus in the scenario, there’s a second virus in the scenario. I’m just not buying the idea that it’s real life.”

“Are you willing to risk it?” asked Elsa.

“We’re not risking anything,” snapped Sandi. “It’s a game. It’s a stupid game, and that’s all it’s ever been, and that’s all it’s ever going to be. Stop taking this so seriously. Cole’s just messing with us. That’s all.”

The doorbell rang.

Silence fell again, thick and heavy as a curtain going down. Elsa looked around the group, meeting everyone’s eyes in turn. Then she slowly pushed her chair back from the table, stood, and walked to answer the door.

She was halfway across the room when the person outside began to cough.

Born and raised in California, Mira Grant has made a lifelong study of horror movies, horrible viruses, and the inevitable threat of the living dead. In college, she was voted Most Likely to Summon Something Horrible in the Cornfield, and was a founding member of the Horror Movie Sleep-Away Survival Camp, where her record for time survived in the Swamp Cannibals scenario remains unchallenged.

Mira lives in a crumbling farmhouse with an assortment of cats, horror movies, comics, and books about horrible diseases. When not writing, she splits her time between travel, auditing college virology courses, and watching more horror movies than is strictly good for you. Favorite vacation spots include Seattle, London, and a large haunted corn maze just outside of Huntsville, Alabama.

Mira sleeps with a machete under her bed, and highly suggests you do the same. Find out more about the author at www.miragrant.com.

THE NEWSFLESH TRILOGY

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WRITING AS SEANAN MCGUIRE

Rosemary and Rue

A Local Habitation

An Artificial Night

Late Eclipses

Silver-Tongued Devil

Chapter 1

Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-six years: with an idiot—in this case, my brother Shaun—deciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick to see what happens. As if we didn’t already know what happens when you mess with a zombie: The zombie turns around and bites you, and you become the thing you poked. This isn’t a surprise. It hasn’t been a surprise for more than twenty years, and if you want to get technical, it wasn’t a surprise then.

When the infected first appeared—heralded by screams that the dead were rising and judgment day was at hand—they behaved just like the horror movies had been telling us for decades that they would behave. The only surprise was that this time, it was really happening.

There was no warning before the outbreaks began. One day, things were normal; the next, people who were supposedly dead were getting up and attacking anything that came into range. This was upsetting for everyone involved, except for the infected, who were past being upset about that sort of thing. The initial shock was followed by running and screaming, which eventually devolved into more infection and attacking, that being the way of things. So what do we have now, in this enlightened age twenty-six years after the Rising? We have idiots prodding zombies with sticks, which brings us full circle to my brother and why he probably won’t live a long and fulfilling life.

“Hey, George, check this out!” he shouted, giving the zombie another poke in the chest with his hockey stick. The zombie gave a low moan, swiping at him ineffectually. It had obviously been in a state of full viral amplification for some time and didn’t have the strength or physical dexterity left to knock the stick out of Shaun’s hands. I’ll give Shaun this much: He knows not to bother the fresh ones at close range. “We’re playing patty-cake!”

“Stop antagonizing the locals and get back on the bike,” I said, glaring from behind my sunglasses. His current buddy might be sick enough to be nearing its second, final death, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a healthier pack roaming the area. Santa Cruz is zombie territory. You don’t go there unless you’re suicidal, stupid, or both. There are times when even I can’t guess which of those options applies to Shaun.

“Can’t talk right now! I’m busy making friends with the locals!”

“Shaun Phillip Mason, you get back on this bike right now, or I swear to God, I am going to drive away and leave you here.”

Shaun looked around, eyes bright with sudden interest as he planted the end of his hockey stick at the center of the zombie’s chest to keep it at a safe distance. “Really? You’d do that for me? Because ‘My Sister Abandoned Me in Zombie Country Without a Vehicle’ would make a great article.”

“A posthumous one, maybe,” I snapped. “Get back on the goddamn bike!”

“In a minute!” he said, laughing, and turned back toward his moaning friend.

In retrospect, that’s when everything started going wrong.

The pack had probably been stalking us since before we hit the city limits, gathering reinforcements from all over the county as they approached. Packs of infected get smarter and more dangerous the larger they become. Groups of four or less are barely a threat unless they can corner you, but a pack of twenty or more stands a good chance of breaching any barrier the uninfected try to put up. You get enough of the infected together and they’ll start displaying pack hunting techniques; they’ll start using actual tactics. It’s like the virus that’s taken them over starts to reason when it gets enough hosts in the same place. It’s scary as hell, and it’s just about the worst nightmare of anyone who regularly goes into zombie territory—getting cornered by a large group that knows the land better than you do.

These zombies knew the land better than we did, and even the most malnourished and virus-ridden pack knows how to lay an ambush. A low moan echoed from all sides, and then they were shambling into the open, some moving with the slow lurch of the long infected, others moving at something close to a run. The runners led the pack, cutting off three of the remaining methods of escape before there was time to do more than stare. I looked at them and shuddered.

Fresh infected—really fresh ones—still look almost like the people that they used to be. Their faces show emotion, and they move with a jerkiness that could just mean they slept wrong the night before. It’s harder to kill something that still looks like a person, and worst of all, the bastards are fast. The only thing more dangerous than a fresh zombie is a pack of them, and I counted at least eighteen before I realized that it didn’t matter, and stopped bothering.

I grabbed my helmet and shoved it on without fastening the strap. If the bike went down, dying because my helmet didn’t stay on would be one of the better options. I’d reanimate, but at least I wouldn’t be aware of it. “Shaun!”

Shaun whipped around, staring at the emerging zombies. “Whoa.”

Unfortunately for Shaun, the addition of that many zombies had turned his buddy from a stupid solo into part of a thinking mob. The zombie grabbed the hockey stick as soon as Shaun’s attention was focused elsewhere, yanking it out of his hands. Shaun staggered forward and the zombie latched onto his cardigan, withered fingers locking down with deceptive strength. It hissed. I screamed, images of my inevitable future as an only child filling my mind.

“Shaun!” One bite and things would get a lot worse. There’s not much worse than being cornered by a pack of zombies in downtown Santa Cruz. Losing Shaun would qualify.

The fact that my brother convinced me to take a dirt bike into zombie territory doesn’t make me an idiot. I was wearing full off-road body armor, including a leather jacket with steel armor joints attached at the elbows and shoulders, a Kevlar vest, motorcycling pants with hip and knee protectors, and calf-high riding boots. It’s bulky as hell, and I don’t care, because once you factor in my gloves, my throat’s the only target I present in the field.

Shaun, on the other hand, is a moron and had gone zombie baiting in nothing more defensive than a cardigan, a Kevlar vest, and cargo pants. He won’t even wear goggles—he says they “spoil the effect.” Unprotected mucous membranes can spoil a hell of a lot more than that, but I practically have to blackmail him to get him into the Kevlar. Goggles are a nonstarter.

There’s one advantage to wearing a sweater in the field, no matter how idiotic I think it is: wool tears. Shaun ripped himself free and turned, running for the motorcycle with great speed, which is really the only effective weapon we have against the infected. Not even the fresh ones can keep up with an uninfected human over a short sprint. We have speed, and we have bullets. Everything else about this fight is in their favor.

“Shit, George, we’ve got company!” There was a perverse mixture of horror and delight in his tone. “Look at ’em all!”

“I’m looking! Now get on!”

I kicked us free as soon as he had his leg over the back of the bike and his arm around my waist. The bike leapt forward, tires bouncing and shuddering across the broken ground as I steered us into a wide curve. We needed to get out of there, or all the protective gear in the world wouldn’t do us a damn bit of good. I might live if the zombies caught up with us, but my brother would be dragged into the mob. I gunned the throttle, praying that God had time to preserve the life of the clinically suicidal.

We hit the last open route out of the square at twenty miles an hour, still gathering speed. Whooping, Shaun locked one arm around my waist and twisted to face the zombies, waving and blowing kisses in their direction. If it were possible to enrage a mob of the infected, he’d have managed it. As it was, they just moaned and kept following, arms extended toward the promise of fresh meat.

The road was pitted from years of weather damage without maintenance. I fought to keep control as we bounced from pothole to pothole. “Hold on, you idiot!”

“I’m holding on!” Shaun called back, seeming happy as a clam and oblivious to the fact that people who don’t follow proper safety procedures around zombies—like not winding up around zombies in the first place—tend to wind up in the obituaries.

“Hold on with both arms!” The moaning was only coming from three sides now, but it didn’t mean anything; a pack this size was almost certainly smart enough to establish an ambush. I could be driving straight to the site of greatest concentration. They’d moan in the end, once we were right on top of them. No zombie can resist a good moan when dinner’s at hand. The fact that I could hear them over the engine meant that there were too many, too close. If we were lucky, it wasn’t already too late to get away.

Of course, if we were lucky, we wouldn’t be getting chased by an army of zombies through the quarantine area that used to be downtown Santa Cruz. We’d be somewhere safer, like Bikini Atoll just before the bomb testing kicked off. Once you decide to ignore the hazard rating and the signs saying Danger: Infection, you’re on your own.

Shaun grudgingly slid his other arm around my waist and linked his hands at the pit of my stomach, shouting, “Spoilsport,” as he settled.

I snorted and hit the gas again, aiming for a nearby hill. When you’re being chased by zombies, hills are either your best friends or your burial ground. The slope slows them down, which is great, unless you hit the peak and find out that you’re surrounded, with nowhere left to run to.

Idiot or not, Shaun knows the rules about zombies and hills. He’s not as dumb as he pretends to be, and he knows more about surviving zombie encounters than I do. His grip on my waist tightened, and for the first time, there was actual concern in his voice as he shouted, “George? What do you think you’re doing?”

“Hold, on,” I said. Then we were rolling up the hill, bringing more zombies stumbling out of their hiding places behind trash cans and in the spaces between the once-elegant beachfront houses that were now settling into a state of neglected decay.

Most of California was reclaimed after the Rising, but no one has ever managed to take back Santa Cruz. The geographical isolation that once made the town so desirable as a vacation spot pretty much damned it when the virus hit. Kellis-Amberlee may be unique in the way it interacts with the human body, but it behaves just like every other communicable disease known to man in at least one way: Put it on a school campus and it spreads like wildfire. U.C. Santa Cruz was a perfect breeding ground, and once all those perky co-eds became the shuffling infected, it was all over but the evacuation notices.

“Georgia, this is a hill!” he said with increasing urgency as the locals lunged toward the speeding bike. He was using my proper name; that was how I could tell he was worried. I’m only “Georgia” when he’s unhappy.

“I got that.” I hunched over to decrease wind resistance a few more precious degrees. Shaun mimicked the motion automatically, hunching down behind me.

“Why are we going up a hill?” he demanded. There was no way he’d be able to hear my answer over the combined roaring of the engine and the wind, but that’s my brother, always willing to question that which won’t talk back.

“Ever wonder how the Wright brothers felt?” I asked. The crest of the hill was in view. From the way the street vanished on the other side, it was probably a pretty steep drop. The moaning was coming from all sides now, so distorted by the wind that I had no real idea what we were driving into. Maybe it was a trap; maybe it wasn’t. Either way, it was too late to find another path. We were committed, and for once, Shaun was the one sweating.

“Georgia!”

“Hold on!” Ten yards. The zombies kept closing, single-minded in their pursuit of what might be the first fresh meat some had seen in years. From the looks of most of them, the zombie problem in Santa Cruz was decaying faster than it was rebuilding itself. Sure, there were plenty of fresh ones—there are always fresh ones because there are always idiots who wander into quarantined zones, either willingly or by mistake, and the average hitchhiker doesn’t get lucky where zombies are concerned—but we’ll take the city back in another three generations. Just not today.

Five yards.

Zombies hunt by moving toward the sound of other zombies hunting. It’s recursive, and that meant our friends at the base of the hill started for the peak when they heard the commotion. I was hoping so many of the locals had been cutting us off at ground level that they wouldn’t have many bodies left to mount an offensive on the hill’s far side. We weren’t supposed to make it that far, after all; the only thing keeping us alive was the fact that we had a motorcycle and the zombies didn’t.

I glimpsed the mob waiting for us as we reached the top. They were standing no more than three deep. Fifteen feet would see us clear.

Liftoff.

It’s amazing what you can use for a ramp, given the right motivation. Someone’s collapsed fence was blocking half the road, jutting up at an angle, and I hit it at about fifty miles an hour. The handlebars shuddered in my hands like the horns of a mechanical bull, and the shocks weren’t doing much better. I didn’t even have to check the road in front of us because the moaning started as soon as we came into view. They’d blocked our exit fairly well while Shaun played with his little friend, and mindless plague carriers or not, they had a better grasp of the local geography than we did. We still had one advantage: Zombies aren’t good at predicting suicide charges. And if there’s a better term for driving up the side of a hill at fifty miles an hour with the goal of actually achieving flight when you run out of “up,” I don’t think I want to hear it.

The front wheel rose smoothly and the back followed, sending us into the air with a jerk that looked effortless and was actually scarier than hell. I was screaming. Shaun was whooping with gleeful understanding. And then everything was in the hands of gravity, which has never had much love for the terminally stupid. We hung in the air for a heart-stopping moment, still shooting forward. At least I was fairly sure the impact would kill us.

The laws of physics and the hours of work I’ve put into constructing and maintaining my bike combined to let the universe, for once, show mercy. We soared over the zombies, coming down on one of the few remaining stretches of smooth road with a bone-bruising jerk that nearly ripped the handlebars out of my grip. The front wheel went light on impact, trying to rise up, and I screamed, half terrified, half furious with Shaun for getting us into this situation in the first place. The handlebars shuddered harder, almost wrenching my arms out of their sockets before I hit the gas and forced the wheel back down. I’d pay for this in the morning, and not just with the repair bills.

Not that it mattered. We were on level ground, we were upright, and there was no moaning ahead. I hit the gas harder as we sped toward the outskirts of town, with Shaun whooping and cheering behind me like a big suicidal freak.

“Asshole,” I muttered, and drove on.

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