Blackout by Mira Grant
“I wanted to be your mother when I grew up.” Becks said it like it was somehow shameful, the sort of admission that could only be dragged out of her by a kitchen with yellow wallpaper and stupid curtains. Mom would have been proud of her environmental design. Hell, for all I knew, she already was. For all I knew, she was watching us from upstairs; they’d had this place bugged since before I could walk. “She was so… brave, and strong, and she always knew what she was doing. Not like me. I was just sleepwalking through the things my parents wanted me to do, until the day I finally got up the nerve to run.”
We never did that, said George. Her voice echoed oddly, coming half from right beside me, half from the inside of my head. It was the house. I’d spent too much of my life in this house with her; she was haunting it as much as she was haunting me.
God, was that what it was like for the Masons after Phillip died? Did they see him every time they turned around, a bright-eyed little ghost that never refused to take a nap, never drew on the walls with his crayons, never screamed because he couldn’t have another cookie? No wonder they adopted us. We weren’t just another way of bringing in the ratings. We were a living attempt at exorcism.
“We never ran,” I said softly.
Becks shot me a startled look that softened into understanding. We were raised by journalists; we grew up to be journalists. That wasn’t the whole story, but it was enough to make a nice headline. We were raised by people who hurt everyone around them in their single-minded pursuit of the story. No one could look at the number of bodies in our wake and not believe that Georgia and I were two apples that didn’t fall far from the transplanted tree.
“Shaun?” The voice was jovial and dry at the same time, the voice of every college professor who ever told a slightly off-color joke and laughed with his undergrads, proving he was “part of the gang” without giving up an inch of his authority. It was the voice of my childhood, the man I watched George beat herself to death trying to become.
Sometimes you can go home again. That’s what hurts most of all. “Hi, Dad,” I said, turning to face him.
Dad smiled as he studied my face, his calculating expression making him look so much like George that it hurt, even though the two of them weren’t biologically related. “The prodigal son comes rolling home. And who is this charming young lady?” His smile turned more sincere as he aimed it at Becks, the consummate showman finding an audience he could charm. “Please tell me our son didn’t bring you here thinking you were going someplace pleasant.”
“Hi,” said Becks, smiling glossily. I resisted the urge to groan. “I’m Rebecca Atherton. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m a real fan of your work.”
“Rebecca Atherton, from After the End Times?” Dad glanced my way for a split second, like he was making sure I saw how intimately he knew our site. “The pleasure is mine. Your report on the events of Eakly, Oklahoma, during the Ryman campaign was positively chilling. You have an eye for the news, Miss Atherton.”
“Okay, you’re laying it on a little thick,” I said, unable to contain myself any longer. “Can you stop trying to spin Becks for thirty seconds and let us tell you why we’re here?”
“Now, Shaun. Your mother was looking forward to having a nice family breakfast, just the four of us.” Dad’s smile faded. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to disappoint her.”
“I gave up on trying not to disappoint her a long time ago.” I glared at him.
He glared back. Something about that expression made him look as out-of-date as the kitchen, and somehow, between one second and the next, I started to see him, not just the man I remembered from my childhood. He was wearing pajama pants and a belted gray cotton robe, preserving the illusion of collegial dignity, but his already-thinning red Irish hair was almost gone, leaving an expanse of gleaming forehead in its wake. His eyes were tired behind the lenses of his glasses. I’d never really thought of him as tired before.
“Be that as it may, I’m assuming you wouldn’t have come out of whatever hidey-hole you’ve been tucked away in without something you considered a very good reason, and that means you need us.” Dad kept glaring as he spoke, choosing each word with exquisite care. That was something else he had in common with George. Both of them knew how to use words to wound. “If you want us to cooperate with whatever mad scheme has brought you back here, you will sit down, and you will eat breakfast with your parents like a civilized human being.”
“Right.” I shook my head. “And if you get some ratings out of the deal, well, that won’t suck for you, will it?”
“Perhaps not,” he allowed.
“Oh, good, we’re all together.” Mom appeared behind him, hair brushed, and a light layer of foundation on her cheeks. Not enough to show on camera—oh, no, never that—but enough to take fifteen years off her age. Her hair was the same silvery ash blonde it had always been.
How many times have you had to dye your hair in the last year? I wondered, and felt immediately bad about even harboring the thought. I didn’t like the Masons. I didn’t trust them. But at the end of the day, they were the only family I had left—and I needed them.
“Hands are clean,” I said, holding them up for inspection. Becks mirrored the motion, letting me take the lead. I was so grateful I could have kissed her.
“Good. Now go set the table.” Mom kissed Dad on the cheek—a glancing peck she normally reserved for public photo ops—and pushed past us into the kitchen. “Eggs and soy ham will be ready in ten minutes.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I opened the nearest cabinet and took down four plates, passing them to Becks. Getting the glasses and silverware out of their respective places only took a few seconds more. “Come on, Becks.”
“Coming,” she said, and followed me out of the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, Dad tagged along behind her, looking studiously casual, but almost certainly making sure we didn’t make a break for it before he’d had a chance to grill us on what, exactly, we had come for.
The lights were on in the empty dining room. I stopped in the doorway, a lump forming in my throat. The dining room table was clear. The dining room table was never clear, not even when someone was coming to interview one or more of us; it was a constant bone of contention between the two generations in the household, with Mom and Dad insisting the dining room was meant for eating, and George and I insisting it was a crime to let a perfectly good table go to waste for twenty hours of any given day. We fought over it at least once a month. We…
But that was the past. I shook it off, blinking away the tears that threatened to blur my vision, and felt Georgia’s hand on my shoulder, steadying me.
The house is haunted, she said softly, but so are you, and your haunting is stronger than theirs. You can do this.
“Shaun?” asked Becks. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, answering them both with a single word. I stepped into the dining room and started putting glasses down on the table. “Sorry. Just memories.”
“We have a lot of memories invested in this house—in this family,” said Dad, moving around the table to keep us in view. “It’s good to see you, son.”
“Can we not?” This time, the tears were too close to blink away. I swiped my arm across my eyes in a quick, jerky motion. “Don’t bullshit me, okay? Please. The last time we saw each other, you were threatening to take me to court over Georgia’s will, and I’m pretty sure I told you to go fuck yourselves. So can we not play happy families for Becks’s benefit? She knows better.”
Dad’s smile faded slowly. Finally, he said, “Maybe it’s not only for her benefit. Did you consider that? Maybe we missed you.”
“And maybe you’re trying to get the best footage you can before I run out of here again,” I said. Suddenly weary, I pulled out one of the dining room chairs and collapsed into it. “You missed me. Fine. I missed you, too. That doesn’t change who we are.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” Dad turned to Becks, a seemingly genuine expression of apolog
“I’ve come this far with your son. I think I’ll stick with him a little longer.” Becks took the seat next to mine, folding her hands in her lap as she directed a calm, level stare at my adoptive father.
He blinked, glancing between the two of us before clearly coming to the wrong conclusion. A smile crept back onto his face. “Ah. I see.”
No, you don’t, I wanted to scream. I didn’t. Instead, I said, “We’re here because we need your help. We didn’t have any place else to go.”
“That’s the sort of thing a mother always loves to hear from her only living child,” said Mom, stepping into the dining room. She was carrying a tray loaded down with quiche, slices of steaming artificial ham, and even a pile of waffles. It would have been more impressive if I hadn’t known she’d pulled every bit of it out of the freezer. But it was food, and it was hot, and it smelled like my childhood—the parts of it that happened before I knew just what the score in our happy little family really was.
“At least I’m honest.” I leaned over as soon as she put the tray on the table, driving my fork into the top waffle on the stack. She smiled indulgently, picking up the serving spoon and using it to deposit a slice of quiche on my plate. “Isn’t that a virtue around here?”
“Sometimes. Rebecca? What can I get you?”
“It all looks fantastic, Ms. Mason. I’d like some of everything, if that isn’t too much trouble.”
“Nonsense. Why would I have cooked if I didn’t want you to eat?” Mom made a flapping gesture with her free hand, indicating one of the empty seats. “Michael, sit down. Shaun’s big pronouncement can wait until you have something in you.”
“Yes, dear,” he said, and sat. He winked at me, clearly trying to look conspiratorial, like we were the same because Mom was making us both eat. I ignored it, spearing a slice of “ham” with my fork rather than trying to come up with a less violent response. Anything I said would have ended with my screaming at someone—or maybe just screaming. The room, the hour, the false domesticity, it was rubbing at my nerves even more than I’d been afraid it would.
I may be a haunted house, but that doesn’t mean I was emotionally equipped to sit in someone else’s haunting, eating breakfast and pretending everything was normal.
It took about ten minutes to eat our breakfasts. While we ate, silence reigned, broken only by the clank of silverware against ceramic and the occasional sound of someone chewing a bit too loud. I kept catching glimpses of George. She was sitting in one of the otherwise empty seats, no plate in front of her, watching mournfully as the rest of us ate. She disappeared if I looked at her directly, and I was glad. If I’d been forced to sit in this house, with these people, looking at her ghost, I think I would have finally gone all the way insane.
At last, Dad pushed his plate away, patting his lips with his napkin, and turned a calm gaze on me. Becks was all but ignored; she’d had her opportunity to be a part of this little drama, to either side with the Masons or establish herself as a third party, and she’d chosen to stick with me. That meant she was basically a nonentity as far as he was concerned.
“Well, Shaun?” he asked. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“We need your help,” I said again, not sure where else to start.
“With what, dear?” asked Mom, tilting her head inquisitively to the side. Light glinted off her diamond earring. My mother never slept in diamond earrings. That was a miniaturized camera. It had to be. She was recording us.
That wasn’t unexpected. “Becks and I need to get to Florida without being stopped by the border patrols,” I said, not bothering to sugarcoat the words. “I know you know people who can get you past the hazard lines. I need to know them, too.”
“Why don’t you go looking for your own contacts?” asked Dad. “You’ve never asked us to do your research for you before.”
“Because there isn’t time, and because any contacts I could find that easily wouldn’t be as good as the ones you’ve been working on for years.” I shrugged. “I’m smart enough to know a plan is only as good as the tools you use to carry it out.”
“How were you planning to deal with the mosquitoes?” asked Mom. “Florida’s a death sentence right now.”
“Bug spray,” said Becks. “Mosquito netting. The things they’ve been using to stay alive in regions with malaria problems for generations.”
“Kellis-Amberlee is a bit nastier than malaria, young lady,” said Dad.
“Guess that ‘Miss Atherton’ routine couldn’t last, huh?” I took another slice of fake ham. “We have a plan for handling the bugs. What we don’t have is a way to get to Florida without getting arrested.”
“What you’re asking for, Shaun… this isn’t some little trinket. This is the name of a trusted ally, one who might never work with us again after we sell you his or her identity.” Mom’s eyes narrowed, that familiar calculating gleam lighting them from within. “What are you prepared to give us in exchange?”
“Georgia’s files.”
A momentary silence fell over the room, the Masons staring at me in startled surprise, Becks sitting by my side, and all of us waiting to see what would happen next. Then, finally, Dad began to smile. For the first time since we’d arrived, it actually looked sincere.
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Let’s go upstairs. You kids are going to need a map.”
Dr. Abbey is edgy, which is making everyone in the lab edgy, which is making me edgy. I never realized how much space my coworkers occupied until they were gone. I keep expecting to find Mahir at one of the terminals, or have Maggie chase me out of the bathroom, or run into Shaun arguing with the air like he doesn’t give a fuck who sees him being bat-shit crazy. It doesn’t help that Dr. Abbey lost almost a third of her people in the security failure—and it doesn’t make sense that the security failed. It’s like the protocols all reset at the same time, and that sort of thing doesn’t happen by mistake.
If someone here is letting the dead things out to play, then someone is feeding information back to whoever’s driving this crazy train to hell. If someone here is against us, then the people responsible for all this know exactly where we are and what we’re doing.
God, I’m scared.
—From The Kwong Way of Things, the blog of Alaric Kwong, July 27, 2041. Unpublished.
Michael’s gone to pick up Phillip from his school. My office has been shut down for the day, and I managed to get to the Andronico’s before they closed the doors. We should have enough canned food to see us through the next week—maybe more than that, if it’s necessary. We have a high fence. We have good doors. We’re going to be fine.
Paul, Susan, Debbie: If any of you see this, please, leave me a comment; let me know that you’re okay. I have my minivan, and I can come get you if I have to, but I need to know exactly where you are. Come on, guys. Just keep me posted.
It’s not like this is the end of the world, right? :)
—From Daily Thoughts, the blog of Stacy Mason, July 18, 2014. Taken from the archives of The Wall.
Thirteen
The sound of alarms screaming in the hall outside my room slammed me from a sound sleep straight into adrenaline-laced consciousness. I was on my feet with my hands over my ears before I was aware I was awake, every muscle tight with the need to move, move, move. I didn’t know whether I wanted to run away from the danger or toward it. In a more lucid moment, I would have embraced that confusion, because it was what my journalistic training told me I should be feeling—the need to get the story warring with the need to not die in the process.
Funny thing about dying, coming back from the dead, and finding out you’re not actually the woman you think you are: Anything that goes the way it’s supposed to becomes reassuring as hell.
The alarms were still going, making it hard to hold any single thought for more than a second. Curiosity and
None of them were turning toward my door. And the alarm was still going.
“Hey!” I shouted, stepping back from the mirror. “Monitor people! What’s going on?” There was no response. A thin worm of fear began working its way through my guts, twisting and biting as it gnawed toward my center. I was alone in here. I had a little gun, but that wasn’t going to be enough if things were going really wrong. If they didn’t let me out… “Hey!”
A group ran by in the hall, making so much noise that I could actually hear them through the window and over the alarm, even if I couldn’t quite make sense of what they were doing. Were they screaming? Singing? Laughing? Or—worst of all, and looking increasingly possible as the seconds slipped by with the alarm still screaming—were they moaning?
I shrank back from the mirror, putting another useless foot between me and the glass. If we were in an outbreak situation, a few feet weren’t going to make a difference one way or the other. Either the infected would realize I was there, or they wouldn’t. Either the people outside the building would decide it needed to be sterilized, or they wouldn’t. Where I was standing wasn’t going to do a damn thing to change the outcome.
I wonder if the clone lab is zombie-proof, I thought, almost nonsensically. A titter of laughter escaped from my lips, the sound bright and ice-pick sharp under the shriek of the alarm.
Somehow, that little sound was what I needed to snap me out of my nascent panic and back into the problem at hand. There was something going on outside the room; whatever it was, it wasn’t a good thing. I wasn’t unarmed, but I might as well have been, for all the good my little gun would do me if this was an outbreak. I was, however, observing Michael Mason’s first rule of dealing with the living dead: I had enough bullets that they wouldn’t take me alive.