Feed: The Newsflesh Trilogy - By Mira Grant Page 0,134

alive, shouting at me for not wanting you to rush right back out and keep getting yourselves killed! Georgia, I?m not keeping this from you because you?re a reporter. I?m keeping it from you because I?d rather you didn?t die.?

?With all due respect, Senator, I think that?s a decision you have to let us make for ourselves.? I shook my arm free of Shaun?s grasp. As soon as Shaun released me, Rick did the same. We looked at Senator Ryman together, waiting for his answer.

The senator glanced away. ?I don?t want your deaths on my conscience, Georgia. Or on my campaign.?

?Well, then, Senator, I guess we?ll just have to do our best not to die,? I said.

He turned back to us. His expression was bleak. It was the face of a man who?d spent his life chasing a dream and was only now beginning to realize how much it might cost to get it.

?I?ll have the reports sent to you,? he said. ?Our plane leaves in an hour. If you?ll excuse me.? It wasn?t a question, and he didn?t wait for an answer. He just turned and walked away.

first time I met Buffy. Man, I didn?t even know I was meeting her, y?know? It was one of those types of things. Me and George, we knew we needed a Fictional if we wanted to get hired at one of the good sites because you can?t just log in and be like ?Yo, we?re two-thirds of a triple threat, give us our virtual desks.? We needed a wedge, something to make us complete. And that was Buffy. We just didn?t know it yet.

They do these online job fair things in the blogging community, like Craigslist gone even more super-specialized. Georgia and I flagged our need for a Fictional at the next fair, opened a virtual booth, and waited. We were about to give up when we got a chat request from somebody who IDed herself as ?B.Meissonier? and said she didn?t have any field experience but she was willing to learn. We talked for thirteen hours straight. We hired her that night.

Buffy Meissonier was the funniest woman I knew. She loved computers, poetry, and being the kind of geek who fixes your PDA before you know it?s broken. She liked old TV and new movies, and she listened to all kinds of music, even the stuff that sounds like static and church bells. She played guitar really badly, but she meant every note.

There are people who are going to say she was a traitor. I?ll probably be one of them. That doesn?t change the fact that she was my friend. For a long time, before she did anything wrong, she was my friend, and I was with her when she died, and I?m going to miss her. That?s what matters. She was my friend.

Buffy, I hope they have computers and cheesy television and music and people laughing where you are now. I hope you?re happy, on the other side of the Wall.

We miss you.

?From Hail to the King,

the blog of Shaun Mason, April 21, 2040

Twenty

The senator and his security team came from Houston to Memphis via the Houston CDC?s private plane. Every CDC installation has one fueled and ready at all times. Not because there could be an evacuation?any outbreak large enough to require evacuating an entire CDC installation would leave a distinct lack of uninfected people to actually evacuate?but for the transfer of specialists, patients, and, yes, politicians and other such notables from one location to another in a quick, efficient, and, above all, discreet manner. It wouldn?t do to set off a public panic because someone had seen, say, the world?s leading specialist in Kellis-Amberlee-related reservoir conditions being flown into a populated area. The nation is constantly poised on the edge of a riot, and the CDC is very aware of how easy it would be to be the match that starts the fire.

The last time I was on a CDC plane and conscious of the experience, I was nine and on my way to visit Dr. William Crowell. Dr. Crowell was that ?world?s leading specialist? I mentioned before, and he thought he might?ve found a cure for retinal KA. My parents, ever eager to do stupid shit in the name of a good story, flew me to Atlanta to let him test his treatment on me. His cure proved as artificial as his toupee and his ?light therapy? left me seeing spots for a month, but I got