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The silence supplied her answer: Ecstatic

The sound of beeping intruded onso down Bemused, I looked toward s in the van that could be beeping like that, about half of the whatever it was happened to be voice activated, I said, “Answer”

One of the wall-uard and the two infected feasting on his torso being replaced by the worried face of Mahir, overn any longer His eyes ide and terrified, the whites showing all the way around, and his hair was disheveled, like he’d just gotten out of bed

“Huh,” I said, distantly pleased “Guess it was voice activated after all Hey, Mahir”

His focus shifted down, settling on where I sat against the wall It wasn’t possible for his eyes to get any wider, but they tried when he saw the gun in led to stay level as he said, with great and anxious seriousness, “Tell me this is a joke, Shaun Please, tellhistory of tasteless jokes, and I will forgive you, happily, for having pulled it onto look at his worry-stricken face Was this how it felt to be George? To have people looking at you, expecting you to have the answers about things that didn’t involve shooting the thing that was about to chew your face off? Jesus, no wonder she was tired all the tiia Carolyn Mason has been registered with the Centers for Disease Control You can access it in the public database I understand there’s been a stateet that framed”

“Oh, dear God—”

“Pretty sure God’s not here just now Leave aat the inside of my eyelids Dark Comfortable Like all those hotel rooot hurt so easy

“Shaun, where are you?” Horror was overwhel the anxiety in his tone He’d seen the van wall He’d seen the gun Mahir wasn’t an idiot—he could never have worked for George if he’d been stupid—and he knehat smyself take comfort in the dark I couldn’t see his face I couldn’t see the blood drying on the walls The dark was e is here, too, but you can’t really say hi just now She’s indisposed Also, I blew her brains out all over the wall” The giggle escaped before I could bite it back, high and shrill in the confined air

“Oh,everything else away “Have you activated your eency beacon? Have you tested yourself? Shaun—”

“Not yet” I found ment “Do you think I should?”

“Don’t you want to live,question” I opened ood There was aone pale with panic “Do you think I should? I wasn’t supposed to George was supposed to There’s been a clerical error”

“Turn on your beacon, Shaun” His voice was firm now “She wouldn’t want it this way”

“Pretty sure she wouldn’t want any of this Especially not the part where she’s dead That would be the part she liked the least” My head was starting to clear as the shock faded, replaced by soer I was furiously angry because it wasn’t supposed to be this way; it was never supposed to be this way Georgia would attend y, and I would never live in a world she wasn’t a part of We agreed on that ere kids, and this this was just plain wrong

“Regardless, now that she’s gone and you’re not? She’d want you to make at least a s the facts into things” I crossed the van, keeping my eyes away fro walls The beacon—a button that would trigger a broadcast loop to let any local CDC or law enforceents know that someone in the van had been infected, and that someone else was alive—was a switch on the wall next to what had been Buffy’s primary terminal, before she went and died on us

First Buffy, now George Tn, one to go, and the more I forced myself out of the comfort of my shock, the more I realized that the story wasn’t over It didn’t have an ending George would have hated that

“It is, as you ht say, our job,” Mahir said

“Yeah, about that” I flipped the switch A distant, steady beeping began, the beacon’s signal being picked up and relayed by the illegal police scanner in the sealed-off front seat “Who are you working for right now?”

“Ah no one I suppose I’ent”

“Good, ’cause I want to hire you”

Mahir’s surprise was entirely unfeigned as he deood for your blood pressure,” I said, crossing to the weapons locker The revolver wasn’t going to cut it For one thing, it was probably contaminated, and they’d take it ahen they let o hunting United States governors with a generic revolver It simply isn’t done “After the End Ti for a new Head of our Factual Reporting Departonna have the guts for the job He’s one of nature’s seconds Besides, Georgia would’ve wanted ive it to you” We’d never discussed it—the topic of her dying was so ludicrous that it never ca She would’ve hired him if she had any say in the matter She would’ve hired him, and she would’ve trusted him to take over the site if ht