Finally, Shaun spoke. “George?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think you’re a paranoid freak anymore.”

“Good.” I gingerly used the rake to pull the syringe closer. “Check the sharps bin and see if there are any isolation bags left. We need to vacuum seal this before we take it out of here, and I don’t trust our biohazard baggies.”

“Why?” Rick asked. “They did the Nguyen-Morrison.”

“Because there’s only one thing I can think of that someone would inject into a perfectly healthy animal that then turns around and becomes the index case for an outbreak,” I said. Just looking at the syringe was making me feel nauseous. Shaun could have stepped on that. He could have put his foot down wrong and

New thought, Georgia. New thought.

“Syringes are watertight,” Shaun said, as he turned to head for the sharps bin. “Bleach wouldn’t have been able to get inside.”

“You mean—”

“Unless I’m wrong, we’re looking at enough Kellis-Amberlee to convert the entire population of Wisconsin.” I smiled without a trace of humor. “How’s that for a front-page headline?

“Rebecca Ryman was murdered.”

The Kellis-Amberlee virus can survive indefinitely inside a suitable host, which is to say “inside a warm-blooded, mammalian creature.” No cure has been found, and while small units of blood can be purged of viral bodies, the virus cannot be removed from the body’s soft tissues, bone marrow, spinal fluid, or brain. Thanks to the human ingenuity that created it, it is with us every day, from the moment of our conception until the day that we die.

We’ll have multiple “infections” of the original Kellis strain during our lifetimes. It manifests to fight invading rhinoviruses seeking to attack the body and it acts to support the immune system. Some will also have minor flares of Marburg Amberlee, which wakes when there are cancerous growths to be destroyed. The synthesis of these wildly different viruses has not changed their original purposes, which is a good thing for us. If we’re going to have to live with the fact that formerly dead people now rise up and attempt to devour the living, we may as well get a few perks out of the deal.

We only have problems when the conjoined form of these viruses enters its active state. Ten microns of live Kellis-Amberlee are enough to begin an unstoppable viral cascade that inevitably results in the effective death of the original host. Once the virus is awake, you cease to be “you” in any meaningful sense. Instead, you’re a living viral reservoir, a means of spreading the virus, which is always hungry and always waiting. The zombie is a creature with two goals: to feed the virus in itself, and to spread that virus to others.

An elephant can be infected with the same amount of Kellis-Amberlee as a human. Ten microns. Speaking literally, you could pack more viral microns than that onto the period of this sentence. The horse that started the infection that killed Rebecca Ryman was injected with an estimated 900 million microns of live Kellis-Amberlee.

Now look me in the eye and tell me that wasn’t terrorism.

—From Images May Disturb You,

the blog of Georgia Mason, March 25, 2040

Fifteen

It turns out that calling a United States senator from inside a quarantined biohazard zone to report that you’ve found a live cat and a syringe containing what you suspect to be a small but terrifying amount of live Kellis-Amberlee is a great way to get the full and immediate attention of both the army and the Secret Service. I’ve always known radio and cellular transmissions out of quarantine zones were monitored, but I’d never seen the fact so clearly illustrated. The words “intact syringe” were barely out of my mouth before we were surrounded by grim-faced men carrying large guns.

“Keep filming,” I hissed to Rick and Shaun. They answered with small nods but were otherwise as frozen as I was, staring at the many, many guns around us.

“Put the syringe and any weapons you may be carrying on the ground and raise your hands above your heads,” boomed a dispassionate voice, distorted by the crackle of a loudspeaker.

Shaun and I exchanged a look.

“Uh, we’re journalists?” called Shaun. “On Class A-15 licenses with the concealed carry allowance? We’ve been following Senator Ryman’s campaign? So we’re carrying a lot of weapons, and we’re sort of uncomfortable with this whole ‘syringe’ thing. Do you really want to wait while we take off everything?”

“God, I hope not,” I muttered. “We’ll be here all day.”

The nearest of the armed men—one of the ones in army green rather than Secret Service black—tapped his right ear and said something under his breath. After a long pause, he nodded and called, in a much less intimidating voice than the one from the loudspeaker, “Just put down the syringe and any visible weapons, raise your hands, and don’t make any threatening moves.”

“Much easier, thanks,” said Shaun, flashing a grin. At first, I couldn’t figure out why he was wasting the energy to show off for the crowd, which was probably pretty high-strung and might be trigger-happy. Then I followed his line of sight and had to swallow a smile. Hello, fixed-point camera number four. Hello, ratings like you wouldn’t believe, especially with Shaun doing his best to keep it interesting.

I stepped forward and placed the syringe on the ground. It was safe inside its reinforced plastic bubble, which was safe inside a second plastic bubble. A thin layer of bleach separated them. Anything that leaked out of that syringe would die before it hit the open air. Still moving with extreme care, I put my gun a few feet away, followed by my Taser, the pepper spray I keep clipped to my shoulder bag—there are dangerous things out there other than the infected, and most of them hate getting stinging mist in their eyes—and the collapsible baton Shaun gave me for my last birthday. Holding up my hands to show that I didn’t have anything else, I began to step back into the line.