S omeones 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 werent doing much better. I didnt even have to check the road in front of us because the moaning started as soon as we came into view. Theyd 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 arent good at predicting suicide charges. And if theres 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 dont 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.
BY MIRA GRANT
The Newsflesh Trilogy
Feed
Writing as Seanan McGuire
Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.Copyright S 2010 by Seanan McGuireExcerpt from
Blackout copyright S 2010 by Seanan McGuireAll rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.OrbitHachette Book Group237 Park AvenueNew York, NY 10017Visit our website at [http://www.HachetteBookGroup.com] www.HachetteBookGroup.com.[http://www.twitter.com/orbitbooks] www.twitter.com/orbitbooksOrbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.First eBook Edition: May 2010ISBN: 978-0-316-12246-7
Contents
This book is gratefully dedicated to
Gian-Paolo Musumeci
and
Michael Ellis.
They each asked me a question.
This is my answer.
You cant kill the truth.
GEORGIA MASON
Nothing is impossible to kill. Its just that sometimes after you kill something, you have to keep shooting it until it stops moving. And thats really sort of neat when you stop to think about it.SHAUN MASON
Everyone has someone on the Wall.No matter how remote you may think you are from the events that changed the world during the brutal summer of 2014, you have someone on the Wall. Maybe theyre a cousin, maybe theyre an old family friend, or maybe theyre just somebody you saw on TV once, but theyre yours. They belong to you. They died to make sure that you could sit in your safe little house behind your safe little walls, watching the words of one jaded twenty-two-year-old journalist go scrolling across your computer screen. Think about that for a moment. They
died for you.Now take a good look at the life youre living and tell me: Did they do the right thing?
From Images May Disturb You,
the blog of Georgia Mason, May 16, 2039
O ur story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-six years: with an idiotin this case, my brother Shaundeciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick to see what happens. As if we didnt 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 isnt a surprise. It hasnt been a surprise for more than twenty years, and if you want to get technical, it wasnt a surprise
then.When the infected first appearedheralded by screams that the dead were rising and judgment day was at handthey 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 wont 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 didnt have the strength or physical dexterity left to knock the stick out of Shauns hands. Ill give Shaun this much: He knows not to bother the fresh ones at close range. Were 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 didnt mean there wasnt a healthier pack roaming the area. Santa Cruz is zombie territory. You dont go there unless youre suicidal, stupid, or both. There are times when even I cant guess which of those options applies to Shaun.Cant talk right now! Im 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 zombies chest to keep it at a safe distance. Really? Youd 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, thats 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 theyll start displaying pack hunting techniques; theyll start using actual tactics. Its like the virus thats taken them over starts to reason when it gets enough hosts in the same place. Its scary as hell, and its just about the worst nightmare of anyone who regularly goes into zombie territorygetting 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 infectedreally fresh onesstill 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. Its 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 didnt 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 didnt stay on would be one of the better options. Id reanimate, but at least I wouldnt 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 Shauns 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.
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