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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

Things it is not polite to discuss at the dinner table: politics, religion, and the walking dead.

Things we wind up discussing at the dinner table every single night: politics, religion, and the walking dead. Along with small-caliber versus large-caliber weapons for field use, personal security gear, Maggie’s garden, our ratings, and vehicle maintenance. It’s very claustrophobic and intense, with everyone on top of everybody else pretty much all the time. There’s no real privacy, and there’s so much security on the house that getting out is almost as big a production as getting in. It’s like a fucked-up combination of prison and summer camp.

Is it weird that this is what I always dreamed the news would be like? Because, God, maybe I’m fucked in the head or something, but this is the most fun I’ve ever had. I want someone to remind me I said that when it all turns around and bites us in the ass.

—From Charming Not Sincere, the blog of Rebecca Atherton, May 9, 2041. Unpublished.

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Check it out, folks! I can add “survived an unplanned zombie encounter while visiting the CDC to discuss the outbreak in Oakland” to my résumé! Not to brag or anything, but why don’t you all download my reports, and then go fill out your Golden Steve-o nominations for the year? I’ll be your best friend…

—From Charming Not Sincere, the blog of Rebecca Atherton, May 9, 2041

Seventeen

Five days ticked by with little fanfare. Becks and I went shooting in the woods outside of town, clearing out a mixed mob of zombie humans and cows. Once the disease takes over, species isn’t an issue anymore. Maggie spent a lot of time writing poetry, weeding her garden, and avoiding Kelly, who took over the dining room table with Dr. Abbey’s research and kept muttering things none of the rest of us could understand. Alaric hung out with her, listening, taking notes, and nodding a lot. It was almost unnerving, in a geeky sort of way.

Those five days may have been the last good time for us. Maybe the universe had been listening when I made my wish out in the garden; I don’t know. I just know that I asked for time to rest, and somehow, miraculously, I actually got it. Nothing exploded. There were no outbreaks and no emergencies, nothing to pull us away from the difficult task of turning ourselves back into a team. The hours turned into days, and the days blended together, distinguished from each other only by the activity in the forums and the reports we were posting.