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Every Irwin is a badass in our own way. The job demands it. But if you want to know who the scariest person in the group is, look for the one who's been fighting zombies without smearing her eyeliner.

“I'd kill for a compact right about now,” I said, reaching behind myself to zip my dress.

“Like this one?” asked Audrey, producing a clamshell from her pocket. “You're going to need to apply foundation and walk at the same time. If you're awake and well enough to be dressed, we should be joining the debriefing already in progress. Mat is probably starting to twitch by now. They don't like answering questions they haven't already scripted.”

“And they probably don't
know
all the answers; I was the one who saw the first zombie and took off running.” I took the clamshell from her hand and clicked it open, checking my makeup. My lipstick was a lost cause, but my eyes were good; I had a bit of a smoky lid thing going, probably from where I'd slammed into the garden floor. Decontamination always gave my skin a lovely glow. I snapped the clamshell shut and tucked it into my pocket. “Good enough for now. Let's go ruin some days.”

“You've already done an
excellent
job of that,” said Audrey. She held out her hand. I took it, and she used me to pull herself out of the chair, bouncing to her feet with the sort of enthusiasm that should be reserved for small children and cartoon tigers. “I don't think I've ever heard so many people shouting at each other about nothing. It would have been impressive as all hell, if you hadn't been sedated at the time.”

Which meant Audrey had missed out on some primo people watching because she was busy worrying about me. “Sorry about that,” I said dolefully.

“You are a walking natural disaster,” she said, and opened the trailer door.

Outside was a parking lot. Not literally: There were no dividing lines to show the cars where to go. There was just a
lot
of pavement, stretching out in all directions until it encountered the square, boxy shapes of the park management buildings. There was also a crowd of security people, John among them, waiting for us.

Audrey was the first one out, her usual mask of professional indifference firmly in place. It was always amazing to me, how quickly she could shut herself off from people she didn't feel had earned the right to see her at anything but her best. Not that her cold, working face was really “her best”—it was her most practiced, maybe, but there were a dozen versions of her that I liked better, and most of them were smiling.

I was smiling. I was smiling like my face was going to split in two, like I didn't have a care in the world, because I knew my team. Even with me unconscious and Audrey attending, someone would have set up a camera, and I was going to want this footage to reflect the version of me that was acceptable to my public. I was just like Audrey, in my way. It was just that I was on the inside of my plastic smile, and I never had to look at it and feel it break my heart.

“Miss Wen; Mrs. North,” greeted John, with a nod for first Audrey, and then me. He sounded like he'd been running hard since the garden, and didn't expect to stop any time soon. “Can I get you both to take a blood test for me before I accompany you to the governor?”

“One second,” I said. “How far away is the governor? Is she in one of those buildings over there?” I pointed to the structures on the other side of the parking lot.

John nodded.

“And are we going to have to take another blood test when we get there, to prove that we haven't become mysteriously infected between this door and that one?”

John nodded again. It was hard to read his expression behind his glasses—I hate people who hide their eyes all the time, unless there's a medical reason for them to do so—but I thought he was amused. That was a good thing, because I was about to balk.

“Grand. Then we're going to pass on the blood test now, if it's all the same to you.”

Several of the security personnel tensed. A few of them reached for their weapons. John raised a hand and they all stopped. Good: He was in charge here. That was going to help. “Why are you refusing basic precautions, Mrs. North?” he asked.

“Because we just came out of a sterile medical facility. I passed a blood test before decon, and I know that means I passed another blood test
after
decon, because that's how this sort of thing works. That means we know I'm not infected. Audrey was required to take a blood test before you let her go in there with me.” I didn't know that part for sure, but it was an extremely safe bet. Putting someone unconscious in a room with someone whose infection status was unknown wasn't just irresponsible, it was criminal in multiple states—including this one. “Since we didn't get infected by stepping through the door, and we're unlikely to become infected by talking to you, I'd rather keep a bit more of the blood inside my body, and only get tested once. If it's cool with you.”

John was silent for a moment—long enough for me to start to think that no, it
wasn't
cool with him. Then the corners of his mouth twitched, betraying his amusement. “If either of you so much as blinks in a way I don't like, you're going to wish you'd taken the blood test,” he cautioned.

“Probably not, since I'm pretty sure that was a threat, and people who've been shot don't usually wish for much of anything,” I said amiably. “But sure, we'll go with it. Our regrets will be many. Now can we get moving?”

We got moving.

The walk across the blacktop felt like being marched to the gallows. John led the pack, and the rest of the security staffers fanned out around him, forming a bubble around me and Audrey. They stayed at least six feet away at all times, sometimes as far as eight or nine. If I moved toward them, they stepped away, maintaining their distance. I considered toying with their formation, but dismissed the idea as a bad one. I didn't need to antagonize a bunch of heavily armed, highly strung people who had just had a firsthand demonstration of how dangerous their job was actually going to be.

Besides, if I was being honest with myself, they weren't the only ones who were nervous. I had just come terrifyingly close to winding up on the Wall. The adrenaline had had more than enough time to leave my system while I was sleeping off the sedatives, but that hadn't done anything for my lingering, absolute denial. Now, with time moving around me again, the denial was wearing off. I could have died. I had gone into a bad situation without sufficient preparation, and I could very easily have died.

The Wall is the great virtual monument where the last moments of everyone who has died due to Kellis-Amberlee are preserved. Facebook status updates, random tweets, blog posts, even snippets of home video, they all go up there, building this constantly shifting landscape of heartache and longing and loss. Anyone who chooses to become an Irwin accepts that one day, their face will appear in the rolls of the dead, a hyperlink beneath it summarizing their life and everything that it contained. But that doesn't mean it's something that most of us aspire to. The suicidal and the foolish don't last long in our community. They get their fifteen seconds of fame, they get their lasting place on the Wall, and the rest of us move on.

I started to shiver. Audrey put a reassuring hand on my arm, stabilizing me and lending me what strength she could. I cast her a thankful look. She smiled. That was all I needed in the world.

John stepped aside when we reached the building where the governor and her people—and presumably, the rest of
our
people—were waiting. “Ladies first,” he said. He somehow managed to make the clichéd old phrase sound ironic, like it was the last thing he wanted to be saying. I decided to forgive him.

“Aren't you a gentleman,” I said, and stepped forward to press my palm against the testing panel.

Bad luck: This one included voice recognition. A snippet of nursery rhyme appeared on the screen. I cast John an alarmed look before I read, “Wee Willie Winkie ran through the town, upstairs and downstairs, in his nightgown.”

As I'd expected, a red light began flashing above the row that was verifying my blood.

“My accent's throwing it off,” I said desperately, resisting the urge to rip my hand away. That could result in a false positive, which would, in turn, make it legal for any of the surrounding men to shoot me in the head. “It thinks I'm slurring. Do you have an override for this thing?”

“Security clearance John Englund, personal staff of Governor Kilburn, identification number four two seven zero two, alpha gamma zeta,” said John, stepping up next to me and speaking in a slow, clear voice. “The subject currently undergoing analysis is an immigrant from the Republic of Ireland. She is not able to pass the voice verification due to accent, not due to infection.”

The red light continued to burn above my blood testing strip. Audrey was already done. She stepped back, holding her pin-stuck hand to her chest and watching with wide, solemn eyes. She knew as well as I did how dangerous voice recognition systems were for me. This could be a very big problem.

Then the light blinked out. The flashing lights of the blood analysis settled on green. I jerked my hand away like I'd been burnt.

“Sorry about that, Mrs. North,” said John, stepping into position at the testing panel I had so recently vacated. He slapped his own hand down. “We've already adjusted all the governor's personal testing systems to account for your accent. In the case of systems at facilities where she's speaking or making public appearances, we'll either suspend voice analysis or make sure you're traveling with someone who has the clearance to deactivate it for you specifically.”

“Much appreciated,” I said. We both knew I'd be having a minder for any event that required us to use a voice analysis system: They simply couldn't afford to make places
less
secure during a major political campaign. But at least they were acknowledging that this was a problem, and taking some basic steps to fix it. That was more than some would have done.

The lights flashed green. John nodded to his team, indicating that they should begin their own tests once we were gone. Then he opened the now-unlocked door and motioned us inside, to where the next phase of our already complicated day was waiting.

T
he room contained a large oval table, the sort used for committee meetings and public interest groups the world over. This one was probably used most often to discuss the types of rose that would be planted in the now-ravaged test gardens: serious horticultural discussions of thorn and leaf and blossom quality. Those people were going to be pissed when they heard what had happened.

In the present, the table was occupied by the governor, her campaign manager, her head of security, and six other people from the campaign, only a few of whom I recognized, and those only vaguely. Ben and Mat were already there, sitting to flank two empty chairs, which were no doubt intended for me and Audrey. Everyone turned to look at us when we entered the room.

I considered smiling brightly and saying something pithy. Further consideration showed that I didn't have the energy. “Sorry for the delay, all,” I said, walking over and dropping myself unceremoniously into the seat next to Ben. Audrey followed, sitting down between me and Mat. We were a united front once more. That made me feel a little better—enough to flash a cocky grin as I said, “Turns out your med staff picked some pretty high-grade sedatives for your security team. Go team.”

“We're glad you and Miss Wen were able to join us, Mrs. North,” said Governor Kilburn. She sounded stiffer than I was accustomed to. I wondered if that was what fear sounded like in the good governor. “I'm also glad you weren't hurt.”

“I'm not,” said Chuck. The stocky little man glared at me, folding his arms across his barrel of a chest. Chuck looked like the sort of man who wrestled bears for fun. In reality, he was a social engineer and image manager who did cross-stitch to relax and owned five bearded dragons, which had the run of any room he stayed in. Walking in to talk to the campaign manager and finding him completely covered in lizards was definitely an experience. “What the hell possessed you to go haring off after danger without alerting
someone
? Is this the kind of behavior we can expect from you for this entire campaign? Because it's not too late for you to be replaced, you know. There were thousands of bloggers
panting
for your job. I'm sure most of them would be thrilled to operate under a more restrictive contract.”

“Chuck, that's enough,” said Governor Kilburn.

I raised my eyebrows and turned to Ben. “Think he's been sitting on that one for a while?”

“We've been hearing variations on the theme since we sat down,” said Ben, chasing his words with a quick flash of teeth. “Good to see you. We didn't get your mag back, but Mat pulled all the footage before the cleaning crew destroyed the data storage unit. You've got some good material.” We had to manually switch to cloud storage for our raw recordings when we were on the road, weighing the risk of losing something material against the risk of getting hacked. Apparently, I had made the wrong call this morning.

“Bully for us,” I said. “It's always nice when the stupid shit I do pays to replace the good stuff I inevitably break.” I settled in my seat, assuming as casual a pose as I could manage, and turned my attention back to Chuck. “Governor Kilburn was speaking. All the security staffers I could see were busy making sure no one tried to pick her off while she was explaining her grand vision for the nation. You were totally out of the picture. Who would you have wanted me to tell? More importantly—and dig way down for the answer to this one, really
think
before you give your answer—what would you have done if I'd said something? Would you have given me permission to investigate? Would you have summoned some goons to watch my back? Or would you have told me I was borrowing trouble out of boredom, and ordered me back to my chair, where I would have had a front-row seat for the zombies boiling out of the roses and chowing down on a presidential candidate? Because I don't think I need to tell you which outcome
I
would be betting on here.”

“She's right,” said Governor Kilburn wearily. “Chuck, it's time to stand down, because you're not going to win this one.”

Chuck looked incensed. “I don't think you understand what this little muckraker did today! She—”

“Discovered an active outbreak and alerted us to its presence before anyone could be hurt,” said Governor Kilburn. “She's being hailed as the hero of the hour, and not just by her own people. Do you have any idea what would have happened if those zombies had reached the podium before we heard the gunshots?”

“You could have died,” said Chuck, sounding wounded.

Governor Kilburn stared at him like he'd just grown another head. “
I
could have died?” she said. “I point out the bullet we just dodged, and that's all you can seize on, that
I
could have died? There were over fifty people there! There were
children
there, for God's sake! My death would have been the smallest part of the tragedy—and honestly, it would have mattered in the most part because I would have gotten the largest headline.”

“And because this was an assassination attempt,” said Ben. Everyone turned their attention on him. He quailed slightly, adding a belated “Ma'am.”

“How do you figure that?” asked Amber. She was leaning against the wall, seemingly filing her nails. I say “seemingly” because although the file had been moving the whole time I'd been in the room, I hadn't seen it make contact with her nails once. It was a covering motion, something to keep people from looking at her too closely. I had a few similar screen saver routines of my own. I respected the nail thing, though. The file could be used as a weapon if things got rough, and that was always useful.

On the surface, her behavior looked unprofessional, and maybe it was: Maybe that was the point. Of all Governor Kilburn's people, Amber seemed to have the best situational awareness, and was the first to read any given room. If people underestimated her because she looked like she wasn't interested in her job, well, that just put her in a better position to react when the need arose.

“As Ash pointed out, there were zombies buried in the garden beds,” said Ben. “What she didn't know—what she couldn't have known, because she was a little busy fighting for her life when she was out there—was that the roses had been replanted after the dead were buried. Someone sedated a bunch of zombies, dug up the rose garden, planted the zombies, and then put the roses on top of them as cover.”

“Which makes it an assassination attempt exactly how?” demanded Chuck.

Audrey looked at him. “How is it you're a campaign manager again?” she asked. “You're not smart, you're not clever, and you're clearly not following the conversation. The governor posted her schedule weeks ago. We've been planning for this launch event since we were hired on to follow the campaign. We have
weeks
of interviews, posts, and profiles prepared to go up, all using the rose garden as a source of imagery and metaphor. This was supposed to prove that she was prepared to grow her constituency and grow her influence, all while using a pleasing pre-Rising symbol wrapped up with modern security ideals. Instead, it's become another icon for insecurity. This undermines all our symbolism, which means it
absolutely
undermines yours.”

“That doesn't make it an assassination attempt,” said Chuck. “It could just be someone trying to destroy our campaign plans.” He sounded unsettled. Audrey often took people that way when she started talking about symbolism and iconography—usually because she was right.

As a Fictional, it was Audrey's job to make the real world less interesting than the fake one, which was no small task, since the real world had zombies, and those were pretty damn compelling, especially when they were trying to chew your face off. She used a thousand literary tricks to manipulate her readers. Some of those tricks worked in the field, too. She was the one who'd suggested that if I was going to wear sundresses all the time, I use fabric that spoke, however subliminally, to my subject matter and the mood I was trying to convey. Even a California winter could become believable if I was running around draped in silver snowflakes.

Roses were hardy, beautiful, and prized in the post-Rising America. The governor had been planning to tie her image to them, using them as a symbol of fiercely dangerous femininity. It had been a good idea, and it might even have worked, if not for the dead bodies shambling all over her garden.

“See, that's the thing about zombies,” I said. “They don't care if you're campaigning for something, and they don't care if you'll be a better tool alive but humiliated. They care about sinking their teeth into your throat and tearing until all that delicious blood comes out. One zombie might have been an attempt to undermine the campaign's symbolism. This many is an assassination.”

“An assassination with asshole roots,” said Mat suddenly. We all turned to look at them. They had been fiddling with their tablet this whole time, remaining quiet while the rest of us chased the conversation down rabbit holes. Now they looked up, blinking at the sudden quiet.

“I like your makeup,” I said. Mat had clearly had time to freshen up since the garden, and was now wearing eye shadow in a lovely spectrum of pinks and reds. All rose colors. I wondered whether this was their way of working through the trauma.

Mat smiled quickly. “Thanks,” they said. “Anyway, I've been checking the victims—the fresher ones—against local missing persons files, and I have five hits. They're all from the assisted living facility down the road. People with mental or medical problems that required them to live under extra security.”

I blinked. “Wait.
Five
people disappeared from one facility and no one said anything?”

“Most of those homes are so overloaded that you could make off with twenty and no one would say anything after the proper reports were filed,” said Mat. “The duty nurses were upset, and they're the ones who called it in. Everyone else just kept up with business as usual.”

“Are there any other homes like that near here?” asked Ben.

“No, not that I can find,” said Mat.

A sudden terrible thought struck me. I looked toward Audrey, and saw from her face that she had thought of something similar. Dry-mouthed, I said, “Is there a home around here for queer youth?”

“The Rainbow Brigade has a halfway house downtown,” said Mat automatically. Their eyes went wide as they shot me a horrified look. “You don't think…?”

“There were more than five zombies in that garden,” I said. “If you're going for a population you can winnow without a lot of people raising the alarm, that's one of the big ones. Sadly.”

“Still,” said Audrey.

Mat began to type. I waited, lips pressed into a hard line, to hear what would come next.

Before the Rising, one in four queer teens wound up homeless when they came out to their parents. Just when they needed family love and support the most, they lost it completely. They used to live on the street, gathering in loose tribes, doing whatever it took to stay alive. Then Kellis-Amberlee came along, and homelessness—which had never been safe, for anyone—became the focus of a lot more public attention. Hostels and halfway houses opened all over the world. Mental health care became more accessible, and less stigmatized. I guess when zombies ate most of the homeless population, people finally realized they should start looking after what's left, even if it was just to cut down on the number of potential future victims who might get infected and come after them next.

But that didn't stop teenagers from coming out to their parents, and it didn't stop parents from kicking their kids out. It just meant that a new set of safety nets had to be created, before those kids fell off the ends of the world.

“They've had six kids disappear in the last two weeks,” said Mat finally. “Three of them, people assumed had gone back to their families. They'd been talking about it, anyway. The other three, there was more concern, but not that much that could be done about it. Resources were limited.”

“Resources are always limited,” I said. “Check their faces against the pictures from the garden.”

“Someone mined the disabled and queer communities for their victims,” said Ben, looking at the governor. His voice was calm and steady. I envied him for that. “This is a Democratic campaign. Those are two of the groups that have almost always consistently voted Democrat, even following the changes to the party since the Rising. Someone used your potential voter base as a weapon against you, which means that someone really
thought
about who they were going to use. There are other targets they could have gone after, some that would have been a lot easier to get. They chose those ones because they were both available and personal.”

“Symbolism again,” said Audrey. “Those kids probably wouldn't have voted. It's all about the
idea
of turning Democrats against you, and taking them away from you at the same time.”

“So you think someone doesn't want me to be President,” said Governor Kilburn.

“Quite a few people probably don't want you to be President, ma'am,” said Ben. “That's why we're having an election, instead of giving you the job by fiat. But someone was very dedicated to the idea that you could be killed before you got any further than Oregon. The only real question is why.”

Governor Kilburn was silent, just looking at him. Everyone else followed suit. Even me. Sometimes I may talk to hear the sound of my own voice—silence makes me nervous—but I understand the importance of the dramatic pause, and the role it plays in keeping the wheels of the world turning as they should. If she needed a few seconds to come to terms with whatever she was about to say, we were going to let her have them.

Finally, she said, “There are always threats. It's been part of doing business as a politician, and a female politician at that, for as long as anyone can remember. I turn them over to the authorities, and to my security, and I try to put them out of my mind. It makes it easier to keep smiling for the cameras if I don't remember how many people want to kill me.”