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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

“That makes calling a meeting even more important. If we’ve lost anyone, people are going to be convincing themselves that we’ve lost everyone.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

George put a hand on the back of my neck. Maybe I should have been disturbed by the fact that I could feel it, but I just couldn’t work up the energy. I was too busy being grateful that she was there at all.

“Hey, George?”

“What?”

“That stuff I said before… before.” Before Kelly died, before Dr. Wynne turned on us, before we fled the CDC hours ahead of a disaster of Biblical proportions—before everything. Before the world changed.

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t mean it. I really, really didn’t mean it.” I lifted my head and she was there, looking at me with open anxiety, alien eyes grave. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you, and if you try to make me, I don’t think I’m going to be okay.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Her smile was sad, and her hand continued to rest against the back of my neck, feeling solid and warm and alive. If this was crazy, God, I wasn’t sure I was capable of wanting anything else. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good,” I whispered. I sat on the couch with my dead sister, listening to the voices from the kitchen, and wondered just how the fuck I was going to get us through this one in one piece.

… fuck it. I don’t have the energy to be profound right now. Turn off your goddamn computer and go spend some time with your family before the world decides to finish ending. That’s about the only profound thing that I have left.

We ran out of time, and we didn’t even know that it was being metered.

—From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, June 24, 2041

image

What he said.

—From Charming Not Sincere, the blog of Rebecca Atherton, June 24, 2041

Twenty-four

The feeling of George’s hand against the back of my neck eventually faded. I looked up to find myself alone. Even the usual soft sense of her at the back of my mind was gone. That didn’t worry me the way it would have, once; I’d had plenty of time to adjust to the idea that her presence came and went depending on how stressed I was, how much pressure I was under, and I guess how sane I was feeling at any given moment. If she wasn’t there, that must mean I was feeling better.