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

Dave was wrong about one thing. We didn’t have ten minutes. The building went up in a pillar of flame six minutes later, along with every other structure in its immediate vicinity. Slag and ash rained down on the entire neighborhood. Collateral damage for a major urban outbreak; the only way to be sure the infection wouldn’t spread.

We were outside the quarantine by that point, outside the kill zone, but the light from the explosion was still enough to hurt my eyes. I pulled off to the side of the road and kept watching it all the same. When the glare got to be too much, I put on the extra pair of sunglasses George always kept in a case clipped to her handlebars, and I kept watching.

I kept watching while Oakland burned, and a good man burned with it. A lot of good men, I’m sure, but only one who’d answered to me. The first man lost on my watch, instead of on my sister’s.

“All right, George,” I said. “Now what?”

For once, she didn’t have an answer.

BOOK II

Vectors and Victims

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Life’s more fun when you take the chance that it might end. I have no regrets.

—DAVE NOVAKOWSKI

A martyr’s just a casualty with really good PR. I’d rather be a living coward any day.

—GEORGIA MASON

—transmitting? You fucking useless piece of crap, don’t you cut out on me n—

—fixed it. I hope that means I fixed it. If this is getting out, this is Dave Novakowski reporting live from the headquarters of the After the End Times. Well. This was Dave Novakowski reporting live. By the time this report finishes bouncing to our servers, and Mahir sees it and clears it by the boss, I’m going to be long d—

—shit, the sirens just stopped. That means they’re not letting evacuees out anymore. Too late, ha-ha, joke’s on me, couldn’t get out if I wanted to. I take my hands off the controls, the building goes into lockdown. I stay here, I can let people out—or I could, if there were any people left—but I can’t escape. Irony in action, ladies an—

—dalene? Even if this entry stays in-house, I know you’ll see it, some. God, Maggie, I’m sorry we screwed around so much. We should’ve just gone for it. That’s what people ought to do. They should just go for it. I loved you a lot. I loved my job a lot. I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones. I guess—

—can hear the bombs now; I can hear them coming, I can he—

—From The Antibody Electric, the blog of Dave Novakowski, April 12, 2041. Unpublished.

Six