BooksBarbecue
Back Deadline
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

One of the Fictionals asked me this morning, if I could have one wish—any wish in the world, no matter how big or how small—what would I wish for? This would be a universe-changing wish. I could wish away Kellis-Amberlee. Hell, I could wish away the Rising if I wanted to, restore us to a universe where the zombies never came and we never wound up hiding in our houses, scared of everything we couldn’t sterilize. And I stared at him until he realized what a stupid question that was and went running off, probably figuring that I was going to start hitting next.

He wasn’t wrong.

If I could have any wish, no matter how big, no matter how small, I’d wish to have George back. Without that, nothing else I could wish for would be worth a fucking thing. And if you don’t like that, you can shove it up your ass, because I don’t care.

—From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, January 5, 2041

Twenty-seven

I woke up in a white bed in a white room, with the cloying white smell of bleach in my nose and the tangled white cobwebs of mdreams still gnawing, ratlike, at the inside of my brain. I sat up with a gasp, realizing as I did that I was wearing white cotton pajamas and covered by a white comforter with no buttons or snaps. I took a breath, then another, trying to force my heart rate down as I looked around the room, seeking some clue as to where I was.

The only furnishings were the bed I was in and a single bedside table with rounded edges. I reached out and gave it an experimental shake. It was bolted to the floor. The bed probably was, too. Nothing in the room could be used as a weapon, unless I wanted to try strangling myself with the sheets. Even hanging was out of the question, since there was nothing for me to hang myself from.

A huge, inset mirror that almost certainly doubled as an observation window took up one entire wall. That sort of fixture in this sort of room can mean only one thing: medical holding facility, probably owned by the CDC. That fit with the dreams I’d been having, horrible, tangled things about some sort of major outbreak. No, not a major outbreak—there weren’t that many people involved, at least not when we closed the doors. And we had to close the doors. We had to close the doors, because—

“I see you’re awake.”