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Chapters (51)
  2. Book 2 of The Newsflesh Trilogy
  3. MIRA GRANT
  4. BOOK I
  5. Point of Infection
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. BOOK II
  12. Vectors and Victims
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. BOOK III
  19. The Mourning Edition
  20. Eleven
  21. Twelve
  22. Thirteen
  23. Fourteen
  24. Fifteen
  25. Sixteen
  26. Seventeen
  27. BOOK IV
  28. Immunological Memory
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-one
  32. Twenty-two
  33. BOOK V
  34. The Rising
  35. Twenty-three
  36. Twenty-four
  37. Twenty-five
  38. Twenty-six
  39. Coda: Living for You
  40. Twenty-seven
  41. Acknowledgments
  42. extras
  43. meet the author
  44. introducing
  45. BOOK I
  46. From the Dead
  47. One
  48. Contents
  49. BY MIRA GRANT
  50. Praise for Feed
  51. Copyright

We had another meeting with the senator today. We’re about to head out, and he wants to be sure that we all understand our roles in the campaign. I don’t think he trusts us to have our heads in the game right now, and frankly, neither do I. Shaun is barely talking to anyone, including me, and Buffy simply isn’t talking. I keep running the footage of the attacks so far over and over again, looking for something that we might have missed, looking for some clue to who is responsible for all of this.

When I sent in the application for this position, I thought I was doing us a favor. I thought I was giving us the opportunity to make a name for ourselves, and that we could change the world by telling the truth. I thought I was doing the right thing. But now I watch Shaun punching the walls, and I wake up as tired as I was when I went to bed, and I just wish that I could take it back. I wish I could take it all back. I’m tired, and I want to go home.

But oh, God, I’m so afraid that we’re not all going to make it home alive.

—From Postcards from the Wall, the unpublished files of Georgia Mason, originally posted April 18, 2041

Thirteen

The CDC conference room lived up to the design aesthetic I was coming to expect from them: white on white on white. It was like they’d looked at the uniforms American nurses wore during World War II and said “Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.” Maybe they bleached the place on such a regular basis that they didn’t want to deal with paying to have all the furnishings re-dyed. Whatever the motivation, the combination of white walls and white carpet with a glass-topped conference table and white faux-leather chairs was enough to make me feel grubby and unwashed. CDC employees probably took a lot of showers, just to keep themselves from feeling like they were too dirty to be allowed to touch the furniture.

Director Swenson walked the full length of the conference table to sit at the head. Alpha male posturing if I’d ever seen it. The gesture was designed to say “This is mine and I am in charge here”—I was sort of surprised he didn’t lift his leg and piss on something. Urine’s a natural bleaching agent, right? It would explain how they kept everything so damn white.