“This isn’t a news story, Shaun. The only reward you get for making it to the end is making it to the end—you get to know the truth, and that’s it. I don’t come back. The last year doesn’t unhappen. Life doesn’t go back to the way that it was; life never goes back to the way it was, no matter how hard we try to make it. But you’ll know. You’ll have the truth. You’ll have the pieces that we’re still missing.” She smiled again, despite the tears welling up in her eyes. I’d never seen her cry, even when we were kids. The retinal KA atrophied her tear ducts years before her eyes actually changed in a visible way. But she was crying now. “The only happy ending we can have is the ending where you take the bastards down and make them pay for what they did to us. Can you do it? Because if you can’t, I need you to call Mahir and tell him that he’s in charge now. Someone has to find the truth. Please.”

“I can do it,” I said. My voice was unsteady, but it was there, and that was really all that I could ask. “For you, I can do it.”

“Thank you.” She leand forward. My breath caught as she pressed a kiss against my forehead and stepped away again, leaving me with a clear path to the exit. “I miss you, too.”

I stood, glancing up as I did. The blood on the ceiling was gone. When I looked down again, so was George. I wiped my cheeks with the palm of my hand until it came away dry, still looking at the spot where George had been. She didn’t reappear. That was probably a good sign. “Love you, George,” I whispered.

She would have gotten better, hissed Kelly’s voice, but its power was gone. Oh, I was still going to have to deal with the reality of it, but I’m good at dealing with stupid shit. If the CDC wanted to play hardball, we’d play hardball. And we’d win.

I was unsurprised to find Becks standing outside the van with her pistol resting against her knee, lazily sipping from a bottle of water. She straightened when I stepped out onto the blacktop, asking. “Everything okay?”

“I think I just had a minor psychotic episode or maybe a breakdown or something, but it’s cool; I’m feeling basically okay now,” I replied, closing the van doors. “You?”

Becks blinked at me, momentarily thrown by the flippancy of my reply. Even after working with me for as long as she has, she hasn’t learned to take statements like “minor psychotic episode” in stride. I’ll give her this: She recovered fast, saying, “Well, I just watched my boss have a minor psychotic episode, and I thought I’d come out and make sure he didn’t get his damn fool ass eaten by a zombie before he settled down.” She hesitated, then added, “I didn’t shoot her. After you ran out of the room? I didn’t shoot her.”