I went through a science fiction phase when I was in my teens, around the time George was having her American history and angry beat poetry phase. We always shared the best stuff, so she learned a lot about ray guns, and I learned a lot about revolutions. There was this one story—I don’t remember who the author was—about a dude who was flying a bunch of vaccine to a sick planet. The fuel was really precisely calculated, because fuel was expensive and the ship was pretty small. And this teenage girl who didn’t understand stowed away on his ship. She wanted to get to her brother. Only there wasn’t enough fuel to get them both to the sick planet, and she didn’t know how to land the ship or deliver the vaccine. If she lived, everybody died. That was the cold equation. How many lives is one person, even a totally innocent person, going to be worth? We used to argue about that, more for fun than anything else, but we never managed to get that equation to equal anything but death.

If the outbreak was bad enough, they’d start diverting all but the most essential services to the big cities. Cold equations again: An outbreak in Weed would have a limited amount of fuel to feed it, and be geographically isolated enough to mop up without too much secondary loss of life. An outbreak in Seattle or San Francisco would kill millions, and then spill out of the city to kill millions more. We were the stowaways on this ship, and there was only enough fuel to get one person safely to the other side.

“You should call a staff meeting,” said George, sitting down next to me and resting her head against my shoulder. She was affectionate like that only when we were alone, even when we were kids. She never wanted the Masons to see.

“I know.” I left my head in my hands. “Maggie’s crew won’t be the only worried ones.”

“Did we have anyone in Florida?”

“Not Florida, but we had a Newsie in Tennessee, and I think a couple of Irwins in Louisiana. They were doing the bayous.” Their faces flashed behind my eyes, still photos that would have looked totally natural up on the Wall. I was grimly afraid they’d be going up there soon. Alana Cortez, who loved reptiles and had been bitten by more venomous snakes than any person has a right to survive encountering, and Reggie Alexander, a walking mountain of a man whose biggest claim to fame was the time that he punched a zombie and survived to brag about it. They were both solid, well-trained, and on the way to having lucrative careers in the news. But they’d been in Louisiana. And Louisiana wasn’t there anymore.