Georgia Mason is fighting hard in this year's Unbound Cage Match, and she needs your help.

It's a simple scroll to the bottom and click to vote, and I really want to see Georgia make the finals. Can you imagine the Georgia Mason vs. Harry Dresden snark party? Because I can. Oh, yes, I can.

Please vote if you have a second.

...a signed copy of Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Short Fiction! Win this awesome tome for yourself, for a friend, or for a local library!

Welcome to the fourth of the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch. I will be starting a new giveaway every day between now and December 13th. Each giveaway will have different rules and a different deadline, although all prizes will be mailed on December 30th, because I am bad at going to the post office (and also, I am avoiding the post office as much as possible until that other winter holiday is over).

The fourth giveaway is for a signed copy of Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Short Fiction, published under the Mira Grant byline. This is going to be a random number drawing, because I am not feeling creative right now. So...

1. To enter, comment on this post.
2. If you are international, indicate both this and your willingness to pay postage. Please be aware that this is a LARGE hardcover: the cost of mailing this internationally will be considerably more than the value of the book.
3. That's it.

I will choose the winner at 1PM PST on Sunday, December 11th.

Game on!

ETA: This drawing is now CLOSED.

Feedback, by Mira Grant (me) is now available from fine bookstores and e-retailers in North America and the United Kingdom! This standalone entry in the Newsflesh world follows a new blogging team through a new adventure...and a very familiar period in time. Feedback begins the day Feed begins; it ends the day Feed ends.

It's everything in the middle that's new.

So come. Meet Ash, our Irwin narrator and Irish immigrant. Meet Ben, her Newsie companion and husband-on-paper, who's seen a less privileged side of the post-Rising world. Meet Audrey, Fictional, artist, and girlfriend, who's getting a little tired of waiting for Ash to get her life together. Meet Mat, makeup and maker blogger. Meet a lot of people, and find out how many of them will walk away.

Because Feedback provides a new angle on the original trilogy, I do not recommend picking it up until you've read Feed at the minimum, and hopefully Deadline and Blackout as well. But I hope you'll come to my party. I have so many stories to tell you.

This will serve as your discussion post; expect spoilers in the comments.

Have a look:

The cover for Feedback is now live.

This full-length Newsflesh-universe novel spans the same time period as Feed, following a group of reporters tasked with documenting the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Meet Aislinn "Ash" North, an Irwin Irish expatriate coming to the end of her green card marriage; Benjamin Ross, her Newsie husband, who has just buried his mother and is looking for something new to believe in; Audrey Liqiu Wen, a Fictional with a secret, and Ash's girlfriend; and Mat Newson, a makeup and car repair blogger under the Fictional umbrella. Meet the candidate.

Meet the dangers.

We already know how this ends. Sometimes the journey is what really matters.

I'm so excited!

RISE, by Mira Grant (me) is now available from fine bookstores and e-retailers in North America and the United Kingdom! This brilliantly hefty collection includes the following previously published stories:

Countdown
"Everglades"
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus

It further includes the following brand new stories:

All the Pretty Little Horses
Coming to You Live

Because many of these stories take place after the original trilogy, I do not recommend RISE until you've read Feed, Deadline, and Blackout, but if you have, boy do I have some tales for you! All pieces are accompanied by a new introduction, written by me, because why would you not do that when you have your own single author short fiction collection?

RISE!

This will serve as your discussion post; expect spoilers in the comments.

It's time for bullet-point updates! Hooray!

* Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 21st) marks the release of RISE, the complete Newsflesh short fiction collection. This book gathers everything from "Everglades" through Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus, along with two never-before-published pieces, All the Pretty Little Horses and Coming to You Live. It's not intended as an introduction to the world--at least four of the novellas are post-the original trilogy, which makes them great whopping slices of spoiler--but I'm incredibly proud of this material, and over the moon about finally having a short fiction collection of my very own. I feel like Stephen King. It's pretty awesome.

* Today is the last day of the Unicorn Empire T-shirt pre-sale for their gorgeous Toby Daye design. Don't miss out!

* CrossingsCon is this weekend! The first ever Young Wizards fan convention, and I'm one of their guests of honor! I keep closing my eyes and remembering standing in my middle school library with So You Want to Be a Wizard in my hand, and I'll be honest: I feel like a wizard right now. In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I feel like a wizard. Because somehow, I have willed the adulthood I wanted into being, and for all that it's not perfect, it's the imperfection that makes it all seem real.

Everything is amazing.

We are now exactly fifty days from the publication of RISE, my first short fiction collection--and more, the first collection of short fiction from the Newsflesh universe. This stunning hardcover book will include, in order:

Countdown
"Everglades"
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
All the Pretty Little Horses
Coming to You Live

If those last two titles are unfamiliar, it's because they are two all new novellas, written specifically for this collection. Also new to this collection, introductions providing more information about every single story.

I am so excited about this collection, y'all. Copies will be available from bookstores all over North America on June 21st, right before CrossingsCon in New York. I'll be appearing at Borderlands Books, in San Francisco, CA on July 9th as part of the Superhero Team-Up book tour with Sarah Kuhn and Amber Benson, for all your signed copy needs.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support, which has made this book, and so much else, possible.

Rise up while you can.

Ahem:

You might want to click this link and find out my exciting news for next summer.

This beautiful book will include all the Newsflesh short fiction to date, from "Everglades" through to "Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus," as well as two brand-new novellas that no one has ever seen before. I'm super-excited, and I think you will be too, once you see what's in store.

I'm also super-excited because this is my first short fiction collection. Another item checked off the bucket list!

Happy blonde is happy.

When will you rise?

I (as Mira Grant) was asking to put together a list of potential pandemics for Buzzfeed. I like anything that gives me an excuse to wallow in delicious virology, so...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/orbitbooks/10-epidemics-waiting-to-happen-that-you-wonat-e-16hk

Enjoy, and remember, medical science is more interested in keeping you alive than it is in cutting you up and reassembling you as a shambling horror.

Most of the time.

It's fifty days to the release of Symbiont, book two in the Parasitology trilogy. (Book three, Chimera, will follow in 2015.)

Parasite was my first hardcover, and my first non-Newsflesh work as Mira Grant. The reception it's received has been amazing, and I cannot wait for people to get their hands on the second book. Vixy says it's better than the first one. Trust Vixy. Fox girls never lie.

Fifty days. That isn't long at all.

It's long enough to be the world.

So a press release just went up on the Orbit Books website. Here's the link, if you're curious. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait here.

Done reading yet?

YES OH MY GOD YES NOW I CAN FINALLY ANNOUNCE IT YES!!!!! Mira Grant (IE, "me") is returning to Orbit for three more beautiful books. The third Parasitology book (title to be determined), a standalone book (one of three concepts, to be decided when I actually hit the point of needing to write it), and Rewind, a fourth book set in the world of Newsflesh.

Yes. We're going back to the Rising.

There will also be four new novellas set in the Newsflesh world; the first of them, "The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell," will be out this summer.

Before people start asking, no, Rewind will not be a story about the Masons: they are done. But it will cover the same time period as Feed, and will provide a long-needed view of the Democratic side of the presidential race. What really happened to Susan Kilburn and Frances Blackburn, the two most promising candidates put up by the Democrats? What happened to their teams? All is finally going to be made clear, and man, is it going to be one hell of a ride.

To quote myself from the press release, "I am overjoyed to be able to continue to write in the Parasite universe, and more, I am so, so excited to return to the world of Kellis-Amberlee, the Rising, and my unique approach to future journalism. I hope that everyone else will be as excited as I am to go back there, and I promise I have some thrilling surprises in store for you. As for that stand-alone third novel, well...You'll have to wait and see what that's going to be about. I can tell you one thing for sure: it's going to be an adventure."

I love adventures.

To (somewhat belatedly) celebrate the release of Parasite, here. Have an open thread to discuss the book.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.)

You can also start a book discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.

Have fun!

The Newsflesh universe is a pretty big place. If I continue writing novellas set there, who would you like to see take the starring role? NOTE: Shaun and Georgia are not eligible. Writing them in will just annoy me, and actually make it less likely that I'll ever write about them again. They're having their vacation. Leave them alone. But there are a lot of other options.

Game on!

I have received my author's copies of When Will You Rise, and they are gorgeous. So it's time for one more giveaway. (Not saying this is definitely the last, just that it might be.) To enter...

1. Leave a comment on this entry.
2. Identify your country.
3. If you are international, state that you are willing to pay postage.

...and that's it! I'll select a winner Friday morning at 9am PST.

PLEASE NOTE: Because these are author's copies, they are signed, but are not numbered. So you will not be receiving one of the 1,000 "real" copies of the book.

Game on!

The battle to reclaim my link file rages on! Today, some Feed reviews.

Lady Business has some thoughts on the treatment of female characters in Feed. They assume you have some idea of what happens in the book, but they're really interesting, and they reflect some of the issues that I, personally, had with the narrative when it was done. I don't regret any of the characters I chose to include. I sometimes wish I'd handled the non-central females a little better. This is a great exploration/review.

The Monitor has posted a review of Feed, and says, "Feed was a mesmerizing read." Works for me.

Working for the MANdroid has posted a review of Feed, and says, "Feed is an awesome and unusual zombie book, and it actually has a great conclusion that feels like the story is completely wrapped up." Awesome.

.Xpresso Reads has posted a review of Feed, and says, "The very first thing I noticed going into this book was the exquisiteness of the writing. The narration being notably mature and quick-witted makes it an exceptionally smart novel that is just a breath of fresh air." I like it when people think I'm smart!

Inspired Quill has posted a review of Feed, and says, "Even if you aren't a fan of zombies, this is one zombie book that you shouldn't run from." I won't lie: I kinda want this on a T-shirt.

Charles Tan has posted a review of Feed, and says, " I once read a blog entry stating that Neil Gaiman's Sandman was porn for lit majors while Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan was porn for journalists. If that's the case, then Feed is porn for bloggers."

...you know what?

That works for me.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there's some news about When Will You Rise?. Most specifically, Publishers Weekly has given When Will You Rise? a starred review!

Here's a link to the actual review.

Here's a quote from the actual review:

"Grant excels in humanizing her characters and surrounding them with believable science and circumstances. The surefooted storytelling is mesmerizing as all-too-plausible dilemmas snowball into desperation and catastrophe."

I AM THE DESTROYER OF ALL HAPPINESS AND JOY! TREMBLE BEFORE ME! I mean...ahem. Isn't that a nice review? Isn't it nice to get a starred review for a nice book like that one? If you haven't ordered your copy yet, you totally should.

I am happy.

Like, seriously. How else do you explain Blackout being the first of my books to make the print New York Times list (in position #15 on the Mass Market Paperbacks sub-list) and now making NPR's list of the best science fiction and fantasy of the summer?

In other news, HOLY CORN MAZES, YOU GUYS, BLACKOUT IS ON THE NPR LIST OF THE BEST SCI-FI OF THE SUMMER!!!!!!!

Ahem.

I am very, very excited, as is only natural when INCREDIBLY AWESOME THINGS of INCREDIBLE AWESOMENESS decide to happen. This is so amazing. I am so amazed. Also, there have been confirmed sightings of the Newsflesh trilogy at WalMart, and no matter what you think of WalMart, that's a lot of eyes potentially falling on (and maybe even buying) my books. Dear world: please buy my books. I have a lot of cats to feed.

NPR! NYT! OMG!

Squee.

Blackout is on store shelves today. After more than six years of work, and after three years of publication dates, the trilogy is over.

I may have seemed a little quiet lately. That's honestly because I'm sort of in shock. I just can't believe it's over. I've been living with these people for so long that knowing that their book is closed is just...it's stunning. It's difficult to wrap my head around.

It's finished.

When I finished Feed, it was the best thing I had ever written, and I truly believe that writing it is what enabled me to grow enough as an author to become publication-ready (the final revision of Rosemary and Rue happened after the first draft of Feed). Each subsequent book has stolen that title from its predecessor. I am proud of these books. I am amazed by them. And no, I am not ashamed to say that. It's my book-day. I get to be proud.

This trilogy has earned me two Hugo nominations (three, if you count "Countdown"), a place on the Publishers Weekly Best Books list, and so much more. It has brought me into contact with amazing people from around the world. It has allowed me to indulge my passion for viruses and pandemic preparedness without freaking people out (too much). It has changed my life forever, and I am so grateful, and I am so pleased that you have all been here with me.

I'll open the discussion thread for Blackout tomorrow or Thursday, after more people have had time to finish the book; please, no spoilers here. But...thank you.

Thank you all so much, forever.

Rise up while you can.

I've spoken before about my love of fanfic, and how it allows you to do things you can't necessarily do "in canon." One of those things, one of my favorite things, is the alternate universe. What would have happened if Toby had never become a fish? If Thomas had convinced Alice to go back to the Covenant with him, instead of leaving it for her?

If someone else had been the first to die?

I have written an alternate ending to Feed, picking up at what was originally chapter twenty-five. It's called Fed, and I'm very pleased with it, in part because it shows that no, the original ending wasn't the worst possible outcome. This was.

Fed is kindly being hosted by Orbit, thus preventing me from becoming a blibbering mess in the week leading up to the release of Blackout, and for right now, you can download and read by liking the Facebook page they've set up specifically for this purpose. (It's getting a one-week Facebook exclusive for marketing purposes, and I surely would appreciate it if you went and hit the "like" button.) This is full of spoilers, so I recommend against reading it if you haven't read Feed.

Rise up while you can.

Don't trust your soul to no backwoods Southern lawyer, 'cause the judge in the town's got bloodstains on his hand, and the two winners of an early copy of Blackout are...

cmsieg
amberswansong

The rules!

You must send an email with your mailing information via my website contact form (mine, not Mira's) within the next twenty-four hours. If you do not, I will be forced to choose another winner. This contest was open only to the US, UK, and Canada. If you do not live in one of those places, please let me know, so I can select another winner.

Your books will be sent by Orbit, not by me. So I just need addresses, and then it's out of my hands.

Congratulations to our winners, and more giveaways to come!

The official notice of sale, ladies and gentlemen:

"Seanan McGuire writing as Mira Grant's Parasitology and Symbiogenesis, a duology of science fiction medical thrillers in the tradition of Frankenstein and Jurassic Park, in which parasites intended to bolster human immune systems rebel against their hosts, along with three novellas set in the universe of the Newsflesh series, to Tim Holman at Orbit, with Tom Bouman editing, by Diana Fox at Fox Literary (World English)."

I think of them as a bit more in the tradition of "The Only Really Neat Thing to Do" and Carnisaur, but that's why I don't write the announcements. The novellas included in this deal are...

"Countdown"
"San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats"
"How Green This Land, How Blue This Sky"

I also sort of want to do "The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell," which is the origin story of a character you haven't met yet, but that's not a part of this deal, which is to say, I have sold two more books as Mira, and three novellas (one of which has already been published), and I am very happy, and you should be, too.

My "to be read" pile is notoriously huge, to the point that I will not allow myself to configure the Kindle that The Agent gave me for our anniversary until the stack of physical books waiting to be read weighs less than I do (this might happen faster if I stopped buying books). I have no system for going through it; I basically dig until I find something that looks interesting and fits what I want to read right now, and then go.

Yesterday morning, I decided to go for some YA fiction, and grabbed Giving Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe, a contemporary paranormal about bullying, loss, grief, true friendship, and a girl who can talk to dead people. I enjoyed it quite a bit; enough that I looked up the author to see if she had anything else I could buy (like maybe a sequel). What I discovered was that her second book, The Way We Fall, had just been released. I made a note to look for it...

...and then last night, when I found it displayed on the "New Releases" shelf at Barnes and Noble, I picked it up. I am weak. And I am glad to be weak, because this book is awesome.

Told in diary entry format, The Way We Fall is the story of Kaelyn, a sixteen year old girl living in an unidentified island community somewhere off the coast of Canada. She's writing a journal of letters to her best friend, Leo, first because she wants to reestablish their friendship, and then because she wants him to know what happened while he was gone. She wants him to know how they all died.

Because see, a strange disease hits the island. Airborne, with a long latency, and a period of increased sociability during what should be considered the most infectious stage. So when you're at your sickest, that's when you want to hug the neighbors and tell them how much you've always appreciated them. And then you die. It starts slow, and gets steadily worse, as diseases of this type usually do.

Kaelyn is not a doctor; not a scientist; not a virologist; she's a teenage girl, and her view on the outbreak is both moving and unique. She just wants to protect her family, herself, and her friends. She wants answers. She doesn't get them—not all of them, not enough of them. Crewe has done enough research to put together a plausible progression and set of symptoms, without actually needing to pin down her virus and walk herself into bad science territory. Instead, she has real people, in a bad place, and she lets them deal with their circumstances as best they can.

Kaelyn is a strong, smart, believable female protagonist in an tense YA novel that focuses on character and situation, rather than romance. Her losses are genuine, and painful. Better yet, there is an excellent level of diversity in the characters. Kaelyn and her older brother are mixed-race, with a black mother and a white father, both of whom appear quite a bit. Kaelyn's niece, who is central to the story, is black. Her best friend was born in Korea. And her brother is gay without being a stereotype or defined purely by his sexuality.

I really can't recommend this highly enough. I'm excited to know that there's a sequel coming, because not everything was answered at the end...but then again, not everything needed to be. It's a beautiful book.

You should check it out.

My link file isn't "out of control," it's totally in control...of everything. Including, possibly, the laws of physics. Here is a ten-link roundup focusing on Mira and Mira's books, to try and get the file back down to size. Not that it's going to work.

( We cut because we care.Collapse )

So, uh. That happened. Deadline—the second installment in the Newsflesh trilogy—has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. This is a juried award, and, to quote the website, "The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States."

Distinguished science fiction. Screw winning (although naturally I'd like to win; I am only human, and pretending I don't dream of winning the things I'm nominated for seems needlessly coy and a little idiotic): I have been nominated for an award because I wrote something that's regarded as distinguished science fiction.

Dude. What.

Orbit, which has three books in the list of seven, has already posted a gleeful post of gleeful congratulations, which made me feel very loved. I'm seriously over the moon about this.

The full ballot for this year:

The Company Man, Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
Deadline, Mira Grant (Orbit)
The Other, Matthew Hughes (Underland)
A Soldier’s Duty, Jean Johnson (Ace)
The Postmortal, Drew Magary (Penguin)
After the Apocalypse, Maureen F. McHugh (Small Beer)
The Samuel Petrovich Trilogy, Simon Morden (Orbit)

I am very excited, and very flattered, and yeah, a little hopeful, because who wouldn't be? This is amazing.

Yay.

Hey. Remember when I wrote a novella leading up to the release of Deadline, and we called it "Countdown," and everybody had a good time watching the end of the world? Yeah, that was fun. In fact, that was so fun that Orbit wound up purchasing the novella for the Orbit Short Fiction Program, which gave me the luxury of revising and expanding on the original text (since I couldn't really afford the time when I wasn't getting paid for it). Good times.

Well. The times are getting better. Subterranean Press, the publishers of amazing limited-edition, illustrated works of speculative fiction, have acquired the rights to "Countdown," and will be publishing a special hardcover edition of the novella. These books will be limited to a signed and numbered print run of 1,000, and will include both "Countdown" and "Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box" (also previously published by the Orbit Short Fiction Program).

I am so excited. I don't know yet exactly when the books will be available, although believe me, I'll be announcing it as soon as I have any information. They should sell for about $35 USD, and are likely to sell out, if past books from this publisher are anything to measure by. Subterranean does small, beautiful, collector's-quality books, and having an edition from them is something I have dreamed of for years.

Life is good.

August 1st, 2014.

Kellis-Amberlee unified the world in a way that nothing had ever unified it before, or ever would again. Cities burned. Nations died. Tokyo, Manhattan, Bombay, London, all of them fell before an enemy that could not be stopped, because it came from within; because it was already inside. Some escaped. Some lived. All carried the infection deep inside their bodies, deep inside their very bones. They carried it with them, and it lived, too.

The Rising was finally, fully underway. Mothers mourned their children. Orphans wailed alone in the night. Death ruled over all, horrible and undying. And nothing, it seemed, would ever make it end.

RISE UP WHILE YOU CAN.

Berkeley, California. July 31st, 2014.

Marigold felt bad.

There had been a raccoon in the yard. She liked when raccoons came to the yard, they puffed up big so big, but they ran ran ran when you chased them, and the noises they made were like birds or squirrels but bigger and more exhilarating. She had chased the raccoon, but the raccoon didn't run. Instead, it held its ground, and when she came close enough, it bit her on the shoulder, hard, teeth tearing skin and flesh and leaving only pain pain pain behind. Then she ran, she ran from the raccoon, and she had rolled in the dirt until the bleeding stopped, mud clotting the wound, pain pain pain muted a little behind the haze of her confusion. Then had come shame. Shame, because she would be called bad dog for chasing raccoons; bad dog for getting bitten when there were so many people in the house and yard and everything was strange.

So Marigold did what any good dog in fear of being termed a bad dog would do; she had gone to the hole in the back of the fence, the hole she and her brother worked and worried so long at, and slunk into the yard next door, where the boy lived. The boy laughed and pulled her ears sometimes, but it never hurt. The boy loved her. She knew the boy loved her, even as she knew the man and the woman fed her, and that she was a good dog, really, all the way to the heart of her. She was a good dog.

She was a good dog, but she felt so bad. So very bad. The badness had started with the bite, but it had spread since then, and now she could barely swallow, and the light was hurting her eyes so much, so very much. She lay huddled under the bushes, wishing she could find her feet, wishing she knew why she felt bad. So very bad.

Marigold felt hungry.

The hunger was a new thing, a strong thing, stronger even than the bad feeling that was spreading through her. She considered the hunger, as much as she could. She had never been the smartest of dogs, and her mind was getting fuzzy, thought and impulse giving way to alien instinct. She was a good dog. She just felt bad. She was a good dog. She was...she was...she was hungry. Marigold was hungry.

Something rustled through the bushes. The dog that had been a good dog, that had been Marigold, and that was now just hungry rose slowly, legs unsteady, but willing to support the body if there might be something coming that could end the hunger. The dog that had been a good dog, that had been Marigold, looked without recognition at the figure that parted the greenery and peered, curiously, down at it. The dog, which could not moan, growled low.

"Oggie?"

***

We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

When will you Rise?

[Note: As today is Sunday, and the book is actually released on Tuesday, I'm going to leave yesterday blank, and just keep posting from here.]

Atlanta, Georgia. July 30th, 2014.

The bedroom walls were painted a cheery shade of rose petal pink that showed up almost neon in the lens of the web camera. Unicorns and rainbows decorated the page where the video was embedded; even the YouTube mirrors that quickly started appearing had unicorns and rainbows, providing a set of safe search words that were too wide-spread to be wiped off the internet, no matter how many copies of the video were taken down. The man sitting in front of the web cam was all wrong for the blog. Too old, too haggard, too afraid. His once-pristine lab coat was spattered with coffee stains, and he looked like he hadn't shaved in more than a week.

"My name is Dr. Ian Matras," he said, in a calm, clear voice that was entirely at odds with his appearance. "I am—I was—an epidemic researcher for the Centers for Disease Control. I have been working on the issue of the Kellis cure since it was first allowed into the atmosphere. I have been tracking the development of the epidemic, along with my colleague, Dr. Christopher Sinclair." His breath hitched, voice threatening to break. He got himself back under control, and continued, "Chris wouldn't sanction what I'm going to say next. Good thing he isn't around to tell me not to say it, right?

"The news has been lying to you. This is not a virulent summer cold; this is not a new strain of the swine flu. This is, and has always been, a man-made pandemic whose effects were previously unknown in higher mammals. Put bluntly, the Kellis cure has mutated, becoming conjoined with an experimental Marburg-based cure for cancerl. It is airborne. It is highly contagious. And it raises the dead.

"Almost everyone who breathes air is now infected with this virus. Transmission is apparently universal, and does not come with any initial symptoms. The virus will change forms under certain conditions, going from the passive 'helper' form to the active 'killer' form of what we've been calling Kellis-Amberlee. Once this process begins, there is nothing that can stop it. Anyone whose virus has begun to change forms is going to become one of the mindless cannibals now shambling around our streets. Why? We don't know. What we do know is that fluid transmission seems to trigger the active form of the virus—bites, scratches, even getting something in your eye. Some people may serro-convert spontaneously. We believe these people were involved with the Marburg trials in Colorado, but following the destruction of the facility where those trials were conducted, we have no way of being absolutely sure.

"Let me repeat: we have been lying to you. The government is not allowing us to spread any knowledge about the walking plague, saying that we would trigger a mass panic. Well, the masses are panicking, and I don't think keeping secrets is doing anybody any favors. Not at this stage.

"Once someone has converted into the...hell, once somebody's a zombie, there's no coming back. They are no longer the people you have known all your life. Head shots seem to work best. Severe damage to the body will eventually cause them to bleed out, but it can take time, and it will create a massive hot zone that can't be sterilized with anything but fire or bleach. We have...God, we have..." He stopped for a moment, dropping his forehead into the palm of his hand. Finally, dully, he said, "We have lied to you. We have withheld information. What follows is everything we know about this disease, and the simple fact of it is, we know there isn't any cure. We know we can't stop it.

"Early signs of amplification include dialated pupils, dry mouth, difficulty breathing, loss of coordination, personality changes..."

***

Please return to your homes. Please remain calm. This is not a drill. If you have been infected, please contact authorities immediately. If you have not been infected, please remain calm. This is not a drill. Please return to your homes...

When will you Rise?

Berkeley, California. July 27th, 2014.

"Get those walls up! Cathy, I want to see that chicken wire hugging those planks, don't argue with me, just get it done." Stacy Mason rushed to help a group of neighborhood teens who staggered under the weight of the planks they'd "liberated" from an undisclosed location. At this point, she didn't care where the building materials came from; she cared only that they were going to reinforce the neighborhood fences and doors and road checkpoints. As long as what was inside their makeshift walls was going to make those walls stronger, they could start tearing down houses and she honestly wouldn't give a fuck.

Berkeley, being a university town in Northern California, had two major problems: not enough guns, and too many idiots who thought they could fight off zombies with medieval weapons they'd stolen from the history department. It also had two major advantages: most of the roads were already half-blocked to prevent campus traffic from disturbing the residents, and most of those residents were slightly insane by any normal societal measurement.

The nice lesbian collective down the block had contributed eighty feet of chicken wire left over from an urban farming project they'd managed the year before. The roboticist who lived across the street was an avid Burner, and had been happy to contribute the fire-breathing whale he'd constructed for the previous year's Burning Man. Not the most immediately useful contribution in the world, but it was sufficiently heavy to make an excellent road block...and Stacy had to admit that having a fire-breathing road block certainly gave the neighborhood character.

"Louise! If you're going to break the glass, break it clean—we don't want anyone getting cut!" They really, really didn't want anyone being cut. The transmission mechanisms for the zombie virus were still being charted, but fluid exchange was definitely on the list, and anything getting into an open wound seemed like a bad idea. "We gave you a hammer for a reason! Now smash things!"

The distant shrieks of children brought her head whipping around, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. Then the shrieks mellowed into laughter, and she relaxed—not entirely, but enough. "Damn dogs," she muttered, a smile tugging at her lips. "Exciting the children and stopping my heart."

"Mrs. Mason? I can't figure out how to make the staple gun work." The plaintive cry came from a young woman who had been Phillip's babysitter several times over the summer. She was standing next to a sheet of plywood with a staple gun in her hand, shaking it helplessly. It wasn't spewing staples at the moment; a small mercy, since the last thing they needed was for everyone to get hit by friendly fire.

Stacy shook off her brief fugue, starting toward the girl. "That's because you're holding it wrong, Marie. Now please, point the staple gun away from your body..."

The comfortable chaos of a neighborhood protecting itself against the dangerous outside continued, with everyone doing the best that they could to shore up their defenses and walls. They'd lost people on supply runs and rescue trips, but so far, everyone who'd stayed on the block had been fine. They were clinging to that, as the power got intermittent and the supply runs got less fruitful. Help was coming. Help had to be coming. And when help arrived, it would find them ready, healthy, and waiting to be saved.

Stacy Mason might be living through the zombie apocalypse, but by God, the important word there was "living." She was going to make it through, and so was everyone she cared about. There was just no other way that this could end.

***

If you are receiving this broadcast, you are within the range of the UC Berkeley radio station. Please follow these directions to reach a safe location. You will be expected to surrender all weapons and disrobe for physical examination upon arrival. We have food. We have water. We have shelter...

When will you Rise?

Denver, Colorado. July 26th, 2014.

Suzanne Amberlee's nose had been bleeding for most of the morning. It had ceased to bother her after the first hour; in a way, it had even proven itself a blessing. The blood loss seemed to blunt the hard edges of the world around her, blurring things into a comfortable gray that allowed her to finally face some of the hard tasks she'd been allowing herself to avoid. She paused in the process of boxing Amanda's books, wiping the sweat from her forehead with one hand and the blood from her chin with the other. Bloody footprints marred every box and wall in the room, but she didn't really see them anymore. She just saw the comforting absence of Amanda, who was never coming home to her again.

In Suzanne Amberlee's body, a battle was raging between the remaining traces of Marburg Amberlee and the newborn Kellis-Amberlee virus. There is no loyalty among viruses; as soon as they were fully conceived, the child virus turned against its parents, trying to drive them from the body as it would any other infection. This forced the Marburg into a heightened state of activity, which forced the body to respond to the perceived illness. Marburg Amberlee was not designed to fight the human body's immune system, and responded by launching a full-on assault. The resulting chaos was tearing Suzanne apart from the inside out.

For her part, Suzanne Amberlee neither knew nor cared about what was happening inside her body. She was one of the first to be infected with Marburg Amberlee, which had been tailored to be non-transmittable between humans...but nothing's perfect, and all those kisses she'd given her little girl had, in time, passed something more tangible than comfort between them. Marburg Amberlee had had plenty of time to establish itself inside her, and, paradoxically, that made her more resistant to conversion than those with more recent infections. Her body knew how to handle the sleeping virus.

And yet bit by bit, inch by crucial inch, Kellis-Amberlee was winning. Suzanne was not aware, but she was already losing crucial brain functions. Her tear ducts had ceased to function, and much of her body's moisture was being channeled toward the production of mucus and saliva—two reliable mechanisms for passing the infection along. She was being rewired, inch by inch and cell by cell, and even if someone had explained to her what was happening, she wouldn't have cared. Suzanne Amberlee had lost everything she ever loved. Losing herself was simply giving in to the inevitable.

Suzanne's last conscious thought was of her daughter, and how much she missed her. Then the stuffed bear she was holding slipped from her hands, and all thoughts slipped from her mind as she straightened and walked toward the open bedroom door. The back door was propped open, allowing a cool breeze to blow in from outside; she walked through it, and from there, made her way out of the backyard to the street.

The disaster that had been averted when the Colorado Cancer Research Center burned began with a woman, widowed and bereft of her only child, walking barefoot onto the sunbaked surface of the road. She looked dully to either side, not really tracking what she saw—not by any human definition of the term—before turning to walk toward the distant shouts of children playing in the neighborhood park. It would take her the better part of an hour to get there, moving slowly, with the jerky confusion of the infected when not actively pursuing visible prey.

It would take less than ten minutes after her arrival for the dying to begin. The Rising had come to Denver; the Rising had come home.

***

Please return to your homes. Please remain calm. This is not a drill. If you have been infected, please contact authorities immediately. If you have not been infected, please remain calm. This is not a drill. Please return to your homes...

When will you Rise?

July 19th, 2014.

"In looking at the biological structure of the screwfly, the real question isn't 'what was evolution thinking,' it's 'are any of you paying attention to me, or should I just stop talking and put all of this on your final exam'?" Professor Michael Mason picked up one of the books on his desk and dropped it without ceremony. The resulting boom made half the students jump, and made almost all of them guiltily focus their attention on the front of the lecture hall. Michael folded his arms. "Since you're all clearly sharing with the rest of the class, does anybody feel like sharing with me?"

Silence fell over the class. Michael cocked his head slightly to the side, watching them, and waited. Finally, one of the students cleared her throat and said, "It's just there are these crazy stories going around campus, you know? So we're a little on-edge."

"Crazy stories? Crazy stories like what?"

One of the football players who was taking the class for science credit said, "Like dead dudes getting up and walking around and eating living dudes."

"We're living in a Romero movie!" shouted someone at the back of the room, drawing nervous laughter from the rest of the students.

"All right, now, settle down. Let's approach this like scientists—if it's important enough to distract from biology, we should think about it like rational people. You mentioned Romero movies. Does that mean you're positing zombies?"

There was another flurry of laughter. It ended quickly, replaced by dead seriousness. "I think we are, Professor," said the herpetology major in the front row. She shook her head. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

Another student rolled his eyes. "Because zombies always make sense."

She glared at him. "Shut up."

"Make me."

"Now that we have demonstrated once again that no human being is ever more than a few steps away from pulling pigtails on the playground, who wants to posit a reason that we'd have zombies now, rather than, oh, six weeks ago?" Michael looked around the room. "Come on. I'm playing along with you. Now one of you needs to play along with me."

"That Mayday Army thing." The words came from a tiny biochem major who almost never spoke during class; she just sat there taking notes with a single-minded dedication that was more frightening than admirable. It was like she thought the bottom of the bell curve would be shot after every exam. She wasn't taking notes now. She was looking at Professor Mason with wide, serious eyes, pencil finally down. "They released an experimental, genetically engineered pathogen into the atmosphere. Dr. Kellis hadn't reached human trials yet. If there were going to be side effects, he didn't have time to find out what they were."

She sounded utterly serene, like she'd finally found a test that she was certain she could pass. Michael Mason paused. "That's an interesting theory, Michelle."

"The CDC has shut down half a dozen clinical trials in the last week, and they won't say why," she replied, as if that had some bearing on the conversation.

Maybe it did. Michael Mason straightened. "All right. I'm going to humor you, because it's not every day that one gets a zombie apocalypse as an excuse for canceling class. You're all dismissed, on one condition."

"What's that, Professor?" asked a student.

"I want you all to stay together. Check your phones for news; check your Twitter feeds. See if anything strange is going on before you go anywhere." He forced a smile, wishing he wasn't starting to feel so uneasy. "If we're having a zombie apocalypse, let's make it a minor one, and all be back here on Monday, all right?"

Laughter and applause greeted his words. He stayed at the front of the room until the last of the students had streamed out; then he grabbed his coat and started for the exit himself. He needed to cancel classes for the rest of the day. He needed to call Stacy, and tell her to get Phillip from the preschool. If there was one thing science had taught him, it was that safe was always better than sorry, and some things were never on the final exam.

***

Professor Michael Mason has announced the cancellation of class for the rest of the week. His podcast will be posted tomorrow night, as scheduled. All students are given a one-week extension on their summer term papers.

When will you Rise?

July 18th, 2014.

It began nowhere. It began everywhere. It began without warning; it began with all the warning in the world. It could have been prevented a thousand times over. There was nothing that anyone could have done.

It began on July 18th, 2014.

At 6:42 AM, EST, in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, Susan Morris rolled over in her sleep and sighed. That was all; the starting bell of the apocalypse was a simple exhale by a sleeping woman unaware of the transformation going on inside her body. Marburg Amberlee and the Kellis cure fell dormant as their children, their beautiful, terrible children, swarmed through Susan's blood and into her organs, taking over every function and claiming every nerve. At 6:48 AM, Susan's body opened its eyes, and the virus looked out upon the world, and found that it was hungry. She would be found clawing at the door three hours later when the maids came to clean her room. The room did not get cleaned.

At 9:53 AM, CDT, in the city of Peoria, Illinois, a man named Michael Dowell was hit by a car while crossing the street at a busy intersection. Despite flying more than three yards through the air and hitting the ground with a bone-shattering degree of force, Michael climbed back to his feet almost immediately, to the great relief of bystanders and drivers alike. This relief turned quickly to bewilderment and terror as he lunged at the crowd, biting four people before he could be subdued. By nightfall, the first Peoria outbreak was well underway.

At 10:15 AM, PDT, in the town of Lodi, California, a woman named Debbie Goldman left her home and began jogging along her usual route, despite the already record-breaking heat and the recent warnings of her physician. Her explosive cardiac event struck at 11:03 AM. Death was almost instantaneous. Her collapse went unwitnessed, as did her subsequent revival. She staggered to her feet, no longer moving at anything resembling a jog. As she made her way along the road, she encountered a group of teenagers walking to the neighborhood AM/PM; three of the six were bitten in the struggle which followed. The Lodi outbreak began to spread shortly after two o'clock that afternoon.

At 11:31 AM, MDT, at the Colorado Cancer Research Center in Denver, Colorado, two of the patients from the Marburg Amberlee cancer trials went into spontaneous viral amplification as the live viral bodies already active in their systems were pushed into a form of slumber by the encroaching Kellis-Amberlee infection. The primary physician's administrative assistant, Janice Barton, was able to trigger the alarm before she was overtaken by the infected. The details of this outbreak remain almost entirely unknown, as the lab was successfully sealed and burned to the ground before the infection could spread. Ironically, Denver was the source point for one of the two viruses responsible for ending the world, and yet it was spared the worst ravages of the Rising until the second wave began on July 26th. Some will say that the tragedy which follows will come only because of that temporary reprieve; they weren't prepared. Those people will not be entirely wrong.

And so it went, over and over, all throughout North America. Some of the affected suffered nosebleeds before amplification began, signaling an elevated level of the Marburg Amberlee virus; others did not. Some of the affected would find themselves trapped in cars or hotel rooms, thwarted by stairs or doorknobs; others would not. The Rising had begun.

At 6:18 AM GMT on July 19th, in the city of London, England, a man waiting for the Central Line Tube to arrive and take him to work felt a warm wetness on his upper lip. He touched it lightly, and frowned at the blood covering his fingertips. He hadn't had a nosebleed since he was a boy. Then he shrugged, produced a tissue, and wiped the blood away. Nothing to be done.

And so it went, over and over, all throughout the world. The end was beginning at last.

***

Reports of unusually violent behavior are coming in from across the Midwest, leading some to speculate that the little brown bat, which has been known to migrate during warm weather, may have triggered a rabies epidemic of previously unseen scope...

When will you Rise?

Atlanta, Georgia, July 17th, 2014.

"We have a problem."

Ian Matras looked up from his computer screen, and blanched, barely recognizing his colleague. Chris looked like he'd managed to lose fifteen pounds in five days. His complexion was waxen, and the circles under his eyes were almost dark enough to make it seem like he'd been punched. "Christ, Chris, what the hell happened to you?"

"The Kellis cure." Chris Sinclair shook his head, rubbing one stubbly cheek as he said, "I don't have it. I mean, I don't think. We still can't test for it, and we can't afford to have me get sick right now just to find out. But that's what happened. That's what's happening right now."

"The McKenzie-Beatts TB treatment." It wasn't a question. Ian was abruptly glad that he hadn't bothered to stand. He would have just fallen back into his chair.

"Got it in one." Chris nodded, expression grim. "They died, Ian. Every one of them."

"When?"

"About an hour and a half ago. Dr. Li was on-site to monitor their symptoms. The first to start seizing was a twenty-seven year old male. He began bleeding from the mouth, eyes, nose, and rectum; when they performed the autopsy, they found that he was also bleeding internally, specifically in his intestines and lungs. It's a coin-toss whether he suffocated or bled out." Chris looked away, toward the blank white wall. He'd never wanted to see the ocean so badly in his life. "The rest started seizing within fifteen minutes. An eleven year old girl who'd been accepted into the trials a week before the Kellis cure was released was the last to die. Dr. Li says she was asking for her parents right up until she stopped breathing."

"Oh my God..." whispered Ian.

"I'm telling you, man, I don't think he's here." Chris rubbed his cheek again, hard. "You ready for the bad part?"

Numbly, Ian asked, "You mean that wasn't the bad part?"

"Not by a long shot." Chris laughed darkly. "Everyone who had direct contact with the patients—the medical staff, their families, hell, our medical staff—has started to experience increased salivation. Whatever this stuff is turning into, it's catching. They're sealing the building. Dr. Li's called for an L-4 quarantine. If they don't figure out what's going on, they're going to die in there."

Ian said nothing.

"The malaria folks? We don't know what's going on there. They stopped transmitting an hour before the complex blew sky-high. From what little we've been able to piece together, the charges were set inside the main lab. They, too, decided that they needed a strict quarantine. They just wanted to be absolutely sure that no one was going to have the chance to break it."

There was still a piece missing. Slowly, almost terrified of what the answer would be—no, not almost; absolutely terrified of what the answer would be—Ian asked, "What about the Marburg trials in Colorado?"

"They're all fine."

Ian stared at him. "What? But you said—"

"It was spreading, and it was. Half of Denver's had a nosebleed they couldn't stop. And nobody's died. The bleeding lasts three days, and then it clears up on its own, and the victims feel better than they've felt in years. We have a contagious cure for cancer to go with our contagious cure for the common cold." Chris laughed again. This time, there was a sharp edge of hysteria under the sound. "It's not going to end there. We don't get this lucky. We can't get this lucky."

"Maybe this is as bad as it gets." Ian knew how bad the words sounded as soon as they left his mouth, but he didn't—he couldn't—call them back. Someone had to calm Cassandra when she predicted the fall of Troy. Someone had to say "the symptoms aren't that bad" when the predictions called for the fall of man.

Chris gave him a withering look. "Say that like you mean it."

He couldn't, and so he said nothing at all, and the two of them looked at each other, waiting for the end of the world.

***

The CDC has no comment on the tragic deaths in San Antonio, Texas. Drs. Lauren McKenzie and Taylor Beatts were conducting a series of clinical trials aimed at combating drug-resistent strains of tuberculosis...

When will you Rise?

Reston, Virginia, July 10th, 2014.

The sound of the front door slamming brought Alexander Kellis out of his light doze. He'd managed to drift off on the couch while he was waiting for John to come home with dinner—the first time he'd slept in days. His first feeling, once the disorientation passed, was irritation. Couldn't John be a little more careful? Didn't he know how exhausted he was?

Then he realized that he didn't hear any footsteps. Annoyance faded into concern. "John?" Alex stood, nudging his glasses back into place as he started, warily, toward the foyer.

( We cut because, for many people, this is when things start getting unpleasant. You have been warned.Collapse )

Atlanta, Georgia. July 8th, 2014.

Chris Sinclair's time at the CDC had been characterized by an almost pathological degree of calm. Even during outbreaks of unknown origin, he remained completely relaxed, calling on his EIS training and his natural tendency to "not sweat the small stuff" in order to keep his head while everyone around him was losing theirs. When asked, he attributed his attitude to growing up in Santa Cruz, California, where the local surf culture taught everyone to chill out already.

Chris Sinclair wasn't chilling out anymore. Chris Sinclair was terrified.

They still had no reliable test for the Kellis cure. Instead of charting the path of the infection, they were falling back on an old EIS trick and charting the absence of infection. Any place where the normal chain of summer colds and flu had been broken, they marked on the maps as a possible outbreak of the Kellis cure. It wasn't a sure-fire method of detection—sometimes people were just healthy, without any genetically engineered virus to explain the reasons why. Still. If only half the people showing up as potential Kellis cure infections were sick...

If only half the people showing up as potential Kellis cure infections were sick with this sickness that wasn't a sickness at all, this stuff was spreading like wildfire, and there was no way they could stop it. If they put out a health advisory recommending people avoid close contact with anyone who looked excessively healthy, they'd have "cure parties" springing up nationwide. If was the only possible result. Before the chicken pox vaccine was commonly available, parents used to have chicken pox parties, choosing sickness now to guarantee health later. They'd do it again. And then, if the Kellis cure had a second stage—something that would have shown up in the human trials Alexander Kellis never had the opportunity to conduct—they would be in for a world of trouble.

Assuming, of course, that they weren't already.

"Still think we shouldn't be too worried about a pandemic that just makes everybody well?"

"Ian." Chris raised his head, giving a half-ashamed shrug as he said, "I didn't hear you come in."

"You were pretty engrossed in those papers. Are those the updated maps of the projected spread?"

"They are." Chris chuckled mirthlessly. "You'll be happy to know that our last North American holdouts have succumbed to the mysterious good health that's been going around. We have infection patterns in Newfoundland and Alaska. In both cases, I was able to find records showing that the pattern manifested shortly after someone from another of the suspected infection zones came to town. It's spreading. If it's not already everywhere in the world, it will be soon."

"Have there been any reported symptoms? Anything that might point to a mutation?" Ian filled his mug from the half-full pot sitting on the department hot plate, grimacing at the taste even as he kept on drinking. It was bitter but strong. That was what he needed to get through this catastrophe.

"I was wondering when you'd get to the bad part."

"There was a good part?"

Chris ignored him, shuffling through the papers on his desk until he found a red folder. Flipping it open, he read, "Sudden increased salivation in the trial subjects for the McKenzie-Beatts TB treatment. That was the one using genetically modified yellow fever? Three deaths in a modified malaria test group. We're still waiting for the last body to arrive, but in the two we have, it looks like their man-made malaria suddenly started attacking their red blood cells. Wiped them out faster than their bone marrow could rebuild them."

"The Kellis cure doesn't play nicely with the other children," observed Ian.

"No, it doesn't." Chris looked up, expression grim. "The rest of these are dealing with subjects from the Colorado cancer trials. The ones that used the live version of the modified Marburg virus. They're expressing the same symptoms as everyone else...but their families are starting to show signs of the Marburg variant. Somehow, interaction with the Kellis cure is teaching it how to spread."

Ian stared at him, coffee forgotten. "Oh, Jesus."

"Not sure he's listening," said Chris. He handed his colleague the folder, and the two of them turned back to their work. They were trying to prevent the inevitable. They both knew that. But that didn't mean they didn't have to try.

***

Effective immediately, all human clinical trials utilizing live strains of genetically modified virus have been suspended. All records and patient lists for these trials must be submitted to the CDC office in Atlanta, Georgia by noon EST on July 10th. Failure to comply may result in federal charges...

When will you Rise?

Somewhere in North America, July 7th, 2014.

The location doesn't matter: what happened, when it happened, happened all over North America at the same time. There was no single index case. It all began, and ended, too fast for that sort of record-keeping to endure. Listen:

On migratory bird and weather balloon, on drifting debris and anchored in tiny gusts of wind, Alpha-RC007 made its way from the stratosphere down to the world below. When it encountered a suitable mammalian host, it would latch on with its tiny man-made protein hooks, holding fast while it found a way to invade, colonize, and spread. The newborn infections were invisible to the naked eye, and their only symptom was a total lack of symptoms. Their hosts enjoyed a level of health that was remarkable mostly because none of them noticed, or realized how lucky they were. It was a viral golden age.

It lasted less than a month. Say July 7th, for lack of a precise date; say Columbus, Ohio, for lack of a precise location. July 7th, 2014, Columbus: the end of the world begins.

The only carrier of Marburg Amberlee in Columbus was Sharon Morris, a thirty-eight year old woman celebrating her second lease on life by taking a road trip across the United States. She had begun her Marburg Amberlee treatments almost exactly a year before, and had seen a terminal diagnosis dwindle into nothing. If you'd asked her, she would have called it a miracle of science. She would have been correct.

Susan's first encounter with Alpha-RC007 occurred at an open air farmer's market. She picked up a jar of homemade jam, examining the label with a curious eye before deciding, finally, not to make the purchase. The jam remained behind, but the virus which had collected on her fingers did not. It clung, waiting for an opportunity—an opportunity it got less than five minutes later, when Susan wiped the sweat from her eyes with the back of her hand. Alpha-RC007 transferred from her fingers to the surface of her eye, and from there made its entrance to the body.

The initial stages of the Alpha-RC007 infection followed the now-familiar pattern, invading the body's cells like a common virus, only to slip quietly out again, leaving copies of itself behind. The only cells to be actually destroyed in the process were the other infections Alpha-RC007 encountered in the host body. These were turned into tiny virus-factories, farming on a microscopic scale. Several minor ailments Susan was not even aware of were found brewing in her body, and summarily destroyed in Alpha-RC007's quest for sole dominion.

Then, deep in the tissue of Susan's lungs, Alpha-RC007 encountered something new; something which was confusing to the virus, in as much as anything can ever confuse a virus. This strange new thing had a structure as alien to the world as Alpha-RC007's own, half-natural, half-reconfigured and transformed to suit a new purpose.

Behaving according to the protocols that were the whole of its existence, Alpha-RC007 approached the stranger, using its delicate protein hooks to attempt infiltration. The stranger responded in kind, their protein hooks tangling together until they were like so much viral thread, too intertwined to tell where one ended and the next began. This happened a thousand times in the body of Susan Morris. Many of those joinings ended with the destruction of one or both viral bodies, their structures unable to correctly lock together.

The rest found an unexpected kinship in the locks and controls their human creators had installed, and began, without releasing one another, to exchange genetic material in a beautiful dance that had begun when life on this world was born, and would last until that life was completely gone. Oblivious to the second miracle of science that was now happening inside her, Susan Morris went about her day. She had never been a mother before. Before the sun went down, she would be one of the many mothers to give birth to Kellis-Amberlee.

***

It's a beautiful summer here in Ohio, and we have a great many events planned for these sweet summer nights. Visit the downtown Columbus Farmer's Market, where you can sample new delights from our local farms. Who knows what you might discover? Meanwhile, the summer concert series kicks off...

When will you Rise?

Manhattan, New York. July 7th, 2014.

In the month since his report on the supposed "Kellis cure" had first appeared, Robert Stalnaker had received a level of attention and adulation—and yes, vitrol—that he had previously only dreamed of. His inbox was packed every morning with people both applauding and condemning his decision to reveal Dr. Alexander Kellis's scientific violation of the American public. Was he the one who told the Mayday Army to break into Kellis's lab, doing thousands of dollars of damage and unleashing millions of dollars of research into the open air? No, he was not. He was simply a concerned member of the American free press, doing his job, and reporting the news.

The fact that he had essentially fabricated the story had stopped bothering him after the third interview request. By the Monday following the Fourth of July, he would have been honestly shocked if someone had asked him about the truth behind his lies. As far as he was concerned, he'd been telling the truth. Maybe it wasn't the truth Dr. Kellis had intended, but it was the one he'd created. All Stalnaker did was report it.

Best of all, he hadn't seen anyone sneezing or coughing in almost two weeks. Whatever craziness Kellis had been cooking up in that lab of his, it did what it was supposed to do. Throw out the Kleenex and cancel that order for chicken soup, can I hear an amen from the floor?

"Amen," murmured Stalnaker, pushing open the door to his paper's New York office. A cool blast of climate-controlled air flowed out into the hall, chasing away the stickiness of the New York summer. He stepped into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him, and waited for the applause that inevitably followed his arrival. He was, after all, the one who had single-handedly increased circulation almost fifteen percent in under a week.

The applause didn't come. Bemused, he looked around the room and saw his editor bearing down on him with a grim expression on his face and a toothpick bouncing between his lips as he frantically chewed it into splinters. The toothpicks had been intended as an aid when he quit smoking the year before. Somehow, they'd just never gone away.

"Stalnaker!" he growled, shoving the toothpick off to one side of his mouth as he demanded, "Where the hell have you been? Don't you check your email?"

"Not during breakfast most mornings," said Stalnaker, taken aback by his editor's tone. Don never talked to him like that. Harshly, sure, and sometimes coldly, but never like he'd done something too wrong to be articulated; never like he was a puppy who'd made a mess on the carpet. "Why? Did I miss a political scandal or something while I was having a bagel?"

Don Nutick paused, forcing himself to take a deep, slow breath before he said, "No. You missed the Pennsylvania police department announcing that the ringleaders of the Mayday Army were taken into custody Friday afternoon."

"What?" Stalnaker stared at him, suddenly fully alert. "You're telling me they actually caught the guys? How the hell did they manage that?"

"One of their own decided to rat them out. Said that it wasn't right, what they were doing." Don shook his head. "They're not releasing the guy's name yet. Still, whoever managed to get an exclusive interview with him, why. I bet that person could write his or her own ticket. Maybe even convince a sympathetic editor not to fire his ass over faking a report that's getting the paper threatened with a lawsuit."

Stalnaker scoffed. "They'd never get it to stick."

"You sure of that?"

There was a moment of silence before Stalnaker said, reluctantly, "I guess I'm going to Pennsylvania."

"Yes," Don agreed. "I guess you are."

***

While the identity of the Mayday Army's deserter has been protected thus far, it must be asked: why did this man decide to turn on his compatriots? What did he see in that lab that caused him to change his ways? We don't know, but we're going to find out...

When will you Rise?

Allentown, Pennsylvania. July 4th, 2014.

The streets of Allentown were decked in patriotic red, white, and blue, symbolizing freedom from oppression—symbolizing independence. That word had never seemed so accurate. Brandon Majors walked along, smiling at every red streamer and blue rosette, wishing he could jump up on a bench and tell everyone in earshot how he was responsible for their true independence. How he, working in the best interests of mankind, had granted them independence from illness, freedom from the flu, and the liberty to use their sick days sitting on the beach, sipping soft drinks and enjoying their liberty from the Man! They'd probably give him a medal, or at least carry him around the city on their shoulders.

Sadly, their triumphant march would probably be interrupted by the local police. The Man had his dogs looking for the brave members of the Mayday Army, calling them "eco-terrorists" and making dire statements about how they'd endangered the public health. Endangered it how? By setting the people free from the tyranny of big pharma? If that was endangerment, then maybe it was time for everything to be endangered. Even the Man would have to admit that, once he saw how much better the world was thanks to Bradley and his brave compatriots.

Brandon walked toward home, lost in thoughts of glories to come, once the Mayday Army could come out of the shadows and announce themselves to the world as saviors of the common man. What was the statue of limitations on eco-terrorism, anyway? Would it be reduced—at least in their case—once people started realizing what a gift they had been given? Maybe—

There were police cars surrounding the house. Brandon stopped dead, watching wide-eyed as men in uniform carried a kicking, weeping Hazel down the front porch steps and toward a black and white police van. The back doors opened as they approached, and three more officers reached out to pull Hazel inside. He could hear her sobbing, protesting, demanding to know what they thought she'd done wrong.

There was nothing he could do.

He repeated that to himself over and over again as he took two steps backward, turned, and began to run. The Man had found them out. Somehow, impossibly, the Man had found them out, and now Hazel was going to be a martyr to the cause. There was nothing he could do. The pigs already had her, they were already taking her away, and this wasn't some big Hollywood blockbuster action movie; he couldn't charge in there and somehow rescue her right from under the noses of the people who were taking her away. Her parents had money. They would find a way to buy her freedom. In the meanwhile, there was nothing, nothing, nothing he could do.

Brandon was still repeating that to himself when the sirens started behind him, and the bullhorn-distorted voice announced, "Mr. Majors, please stop running, or we will be forced to shoot."

Brandon stopped. Without turning, he raised his hands in the air, and shouted, "I am an American citizen! I am being unfairly detained!" His voice quaked on the last word, somewhat ruining the brave revolutionary image he was trying to project.

Heavy footsteps on the street behind him announced the approach of the cop seconds before Brandon's hands were grabbed and wrenched behind his back. "Feel lucky we're arresting you at all, and not just publishing your name and address in the paper, you idiot," hissed the officer, her voice harsh and close to his ear. "You think this country loves terrorists?"

"We were doing it for you!" he wailed.

"Tell it to the judge," she said, and turned him forcefully around before leading him away.

***

The ringleaders of the so-called "Mayday Army" were arrested today following a tip from one of their former followers. His name has not been released at this time. Brandon Majors, 25, and Hazel Allen, 23, are residents of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Drug paraphernalia was recovered at the scene...

When will you Rise?

Denver, Colorado. July 2nd, 2014.

Janice Barton knocked twice on the door to Dr. Wells's office before opening it and stepping inside, expression drawn. "Do you think you can see three more patients today?" she asked, without preamble.

"What?" Dr. Wells looked up from his paperwork, fingers clenching involuntarily on his pen. "I've already seen nine patients so far! I've barely finished filing the insurance information for Mrs. Bridge. How am I supposed to see three more before we close?"

"Because if you'll agree to see three more, I can probably convince the other nineteen to come back tomorrow," Janice replied. For the first time, Dr. Wells realized how harried his normally composed administrative assistant looked. Her nails were chipped. Somehow, that seemed like the biggest danger sign of all. A man-made virus was on the loose, Marburg Amberlee was doing...something...and Janice had allowed her manicure to fray.

"I'll see the three most in need of attention, and then I have to close for the night," he said, putting down his pen as he stood. "If I don't get some sleep, I won't be of any use to anyone."

"Thank you," said Janice, and withdrew.

She was gone by the time he emerged from his office, retreating to wherever it was she went when she was tired of dealing with the madhouse of the waiting room. On the days when it was a madhouse, anyway. This was definitely one of those days. The gathered patients set up a clamor as soon as he appeared, all of them waving for his attention, some of them even shouting. Dr. Wells stopped, looking at the crowd, and wondered if the other doctors involved in the Marburg Amberlee tests were having the same experience.

He was deeply afraid that they were.

The trouble wasn't the patients themselves; they looked as hale and healthy as ever, which explained how they were able to yell quite so loudly for his attention. Their cancers were gone, or under control, constantly besieged by their defensive Marburg Amberlee infections. It was the people they had brought to the office with them that presented the truly alarming problem. Husbands and wives, parents and children, they sat next to their previously ill relatives with glazed eyes, taking shallow, pained-sounding breaths. Some of them were bleeding from the nose or tear ducts—just a trickle, nothing life-threatening, but that little trickle was enough to terrify Dr. Wells, making his bowels feel loose and his stomach crawl.

They were manifesting the early signs of a Marburg Amberlee infection, during the brief phase where the body's immune system attempted to treat the helper virus as an invasion. That was the one stage of infection that could be truly harmful; when Marburg Amberlee was hit, it hit back, and it was more interested in defeating the opposition than it was in preserving the host. These people were infected, all of them.

And that simply wasn't possible. Marburg Amberlee wasn't transmittable through casual contact. Pointing almost at random, he said, "You, you, and you. I can see you before we close. Everyone else, I'm very sorry, but you're going to have to come back tomorrow."

Groans and shouts of protest spread through the room. "My baby's sick!" shouted one woman. A year before, she'd been dying of lung cancer. Now she was glaring at him like he was the devil incarnate. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to see you tomorrow," said Dr. Wells firmly, and waved for the chosen three to step through the door between the reception area and the examination rooms. He retreated with relief, the feeling of dread growing stronger.

He honestly had no idea what he was going to do.

***

Rumors of an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in and around the Colorado Cancer Research Center have, as yet, been unsubstantiated. The head doctor, Daniel Wells, is unavailable for comment at this time.

When will you Rise?

[NOTE: I am a day behind, due to the convention I attended this past weekend. This should have gone up yesterday; after the next one, I'm all caught up.]

Atlanta, Georgia. June 18th, 2014.

The atmosphere at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia was best described as "tense." Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and had been waiting since reports first came in describing the so-called "Mayday Army's" release of an experimental pathogen into the atmosphere. The tension only intensified when Dr. Alexander Kellis responded to requests for more information on the pathogen by supplying his research, which detailed, at length, the infectious nature of his hybridized creation.

One of the administrative assistants had probably put it best when she looked at the infection maps in horror and said, "If he'd been working with rabies or something, he would have just killed us all."

If he was being completely honest with himself, Dr. Ian Matras wasn't entirely sure that Kellis hadn't just killed them all, entirely without intending to, entirely with the best of intentions. The proteins composing the capsid shell on Alpha-RC007 were ingeniously engineered, something that had been a good thing—increased stability, increased predictability in behavior—right up until the moment when the Mayday Army broke the seals keeping the world and the virus apart. Now those same proteins made Alpha-RC007 extremely virulent, extremely contagious, and, worst of all, extremely difficult to detect in a living host. The lab animals they'd requested from Dr. Kellis's lab in Reston were known to be infected, but showed almost no signs of illness; four out of five blood tests would come up negative for the presence of Alpha-RC007, only to have the fifth show a thriving infection. Alpha-RC007 hid. It could be spurred to reveal itself by introducing another infection...and that was when Alpha-RC007 became truly terrifying.

Alpha-RC007 was engineered to cure the common cold, something it accomplished by setting itself up as a competing, and superior, infection. Once it was in the body, it simply never went away. The specific structure of its capsid shell somehow tricked the human immune system into believing that Alpha-RC007 was another form of helper cell—and in a way, it was. Alpha-RC007 wanted to help. Watching it attack and envelop other viruses which entered the body was a chilling demonstration of perfect biological efficiency. Alpha-RC007 saw; Alpha-RC007 killed. Alpha-RC007 tolerated no other infections in the body.

What was going to happen the first time Alpha-RC007 decided the human immune system counted as an infection? No one knew, and the virus had thus far resisted any and all attempts to remove it from a living host. Unless a treatment could be found before Kellis's creation decided to become hostile, Dr. Matras was very afraid that the entire world was going to learn just how vicious Alpha-RC007 could be.

Dr. Ian Matras sat at his desk, watching the infection models as they spread out across North America and the world, and wondered how long they really had before they found out whether or not the Mayday Army had managed to destroy mankind.

"Cheer up, Ian!" called one of his colleagues, passing by on the way to the break room. "A pandemic that makes you healthy isn't exactly the worst thing we've ever had to deal with."

"And what's it going to do in a year, Chris?" Dr. Matras shot back.

Dr. Chris Sinclair grinned. "Raise the dead, of course," he said. "Don't you ever go to the movies?" Then he walked away, leaving Dr. Matras alone to brood. It wouldn't be long before they all had cause to regret those words.

***

The Centers for Disease Control have issued a statement asking that people remain calm in the wake of the release of an unidentified pathogen from the Virginia-based lab of Dr. Alexander Kellis. "We do not, as yet, have any indication that this disease is harmful to humans," said Dr. Chris Sinclair. A seven-year veteran of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, Dr. Sinclair graduated from Princeton...

When will you Rise?

[NOTE: I am a few days behind, due to the convention I attended this past weekend. So I'll be posting several of these today. We're almost there, I promise.]

Reston, Virginia. June 15th, 2014.

"Alex?"

All the lights in the main lab were off. Most of the staff had long since gone home for the night. That made sense; it had been past eleven when John Kellis pulled into the parking lot, and the only car parked in front of the building was his husband's familiar bottle-green Ford. He hadn't bothered to call before coming over. Maybe some men strayed to bars or strip clubs. Not Alex. When Alex went running to his other lover, he was always running to the lab.

John paused to put on a lab coat before pushing open the door leading into the inner office. The last thing he wanted to do was upset Alex further by providing another source of contamination. "Sweetheart? Are you in here?"

There was still no answer. John's heart started beating a little faster, spurred on by fear. The pressure had been immense since the break-in. Years of research gone; millions of dollars in private funding lost; and perhaps worst of all, Alex's sense of certainty that the world would somehow start playing fair, shattered. John wasn't sure that he could recover from that, and if Alex couldn't recover, then John couldn't, either.

This lab had been their life for so long. Vacations had been planned around ongoing research; even the question of whether or not to have a baby had been put off, again and again, by the demands of Alex's work. They had both believed it was worth it for so long. Was one act of eco-terrorism going to change all that?

John was suddenly very afraid that it was.

"I'm back here, John," said Alex's voice. It was soft, dull...dead. Heart still hammering, John turned his walk into a half-jog, rounding the corner to find himself looking at the glass window onto the former hot room. Alex was standing in front of it, just like he had so many times before, but his shoulders were stooped. He looked defeated.

"Alex, you have to stop doing this to yourself." John's heartbeat slowed as he saw that his husband was alive. He walked the rest of the distance between them, stopping behind Alex and sliding his arms around the other man's shoulders. "Come on. Come home."

"I can't." Alex indicated the window. "Look."

The hot room had been re-sealed after the break-in; maybe they couldn't stop their home-brewed pathogens from getting out, but they could stop anything new from getting in. The rhesus monkeys and guinea pigs were back in their cages. Some were eating, some were sleeping; others were just going about their business, oblivious to the humans watching over them.

"I don't understand." John squinted, frowning at the glass. "What am I supposed to be seeing? They all look perfectly normal."

"I've bathed them in every cold sample I could find, along with half a dozen flus, and an airborne form of syphilis. One of the guinea pigs died, but the necropsy didn't show any sign that it was the cure that killed it. Sometimes guinea pigs just die."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand the problem."

Alexander Kellis pulled away from his husband, expression anguished as he turned to face him. "I can't tell which ones have caught the cure and which haven't. It's undetectable in a living subject. After the break-in, we're probably infected, too. And I don't know what it will do in a human host. We weren't ready." He started to cry, looking very young and very old at the same time. "I may have just killed us all."

"Oh, honey, no." John gathered him close, making soothing noises...but his eyes were on the animals behind the glass. The perfectly healthy, perfectly normal animals.

***

Dr. Alexander Kellis has thus far refused to comment on the potential risks posed by his untested "cure for the common cold," released by a group calling itself "the Mayday Army" almost three days ago...

When will you Rise?

[NOTE: I am a few days behind, due to the convention I attended this past weekend. So I'll be posting several of these today. Please don't tell me how it's not spam.]

Denver, Colorado. June 13th, 2014.

Suzanne Amberlee had been waiting to box up her daughter's room almost since the day Amanda was diagnosed with leukemia. It was a coping mechanism for her. Maybe some would call it morbid, the way she spent hours thinking about boxes and storage and what to do with the things too precious to be given to Goodwill, but as the parent of a sick child, she'd been willing to take any comfort that her frightened mind could give her. These were the things she would keep; these were the things she would send to family members; these were the things she would give to Amanda's friends. Simple lines, long-since drawn in the ledgers of her heart.

The reality of standing in her little girl's bedroom and imagining it empty, stripped of all the things that made it Amanda's, was almost more than she could bear. After weeks of struggling with herself, she had finally been able to close her hand on the doorknob and open the bedroom door. She still wasn't able to force herself across the threshold.

There were all Amanda's things. Her stuffed toys that she had steadfastly refused to admit to outgrowing, saying they had been her only friends when she was sick, and she wouldn't abandon them now. Her bookshelves, cluttered with knick-knacks and soccer trophies as much as books. Her framed poster showing the structure of Marburg EX19, given to her by Dr. Wells after the first clinical trials began showing positive results. When she closed her eyes, Suzanne could picture that day. Amanda, looking so weak and pale, and Dr. Wells, their savior, smiling like the sun.

"This little fellow is your best friend now, Amanda," that was what he'd said, on that beautiful afternoon where having a future suddenly seemed possible again. "Take good care of it, and it will take good care of you."

Rage swept over Suzanne as she opened her eyes and glared across the room at the photographic disease. Where was it when her little girl was dying? Marburg EX19 was supposed to save her baby's life, and in the end, it had let her down; it had let Amanda die. What was the good of all this—the pain, the endless hours spent in hospital beds, the promises they never got to keep—if the damn disease couldn't save Amanda's life?

"I hate you," she whispered, and turned away. She couldn't deal with the bedroom; not today, maybe not ever. Maybe she would just sell the house, leave Amanda's things where they were, and let them be dealt with by the new owners. They could filter through the spindrift of Amanda's life without seeing her face, without hearing her voice talking about college plans and careers. They could put things in boxes without breaking their hearts.

If there was anything more terrible for a parent than burying a child, Suzanne Amberlee couldn't imagine what it would be. Her internal battle over for another day—over, and lost—she turned away, heading down the stairs. Maybe tomorrow she could empty out that room. Maybe tomorrow, she could start boxing things away. Maybe tomorrow, she could start the process of letting Amanda go.

Maybe tomorrow. But probably not.

Suzanne Amberlee walked away, unaware of the small viral colony living in her own body, nested deep in the tissue of her lungs. Content in its accidental home, Marburg EX19 slept, waiting for the trigger that would startle it into wakefulness. It was patient; it had all the time in the world.

***

Amanda Amberlee is survived by her mother, Suzanne Amberlee. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be sent to the Colorado Cancer Research Center...

When will you Rise?

[NOTE: I am a few days behind, due to the convention I attended this past weekend. So I'll be posting several of these today. Sorry about the spam.]

The lower stratosphere. June 12th, 2014.

Freed from its secure lab environment, Alpha-RC007 floated serene and unaware on the air currents of the stratosphere. It did not enjoy freedom; it did not abhor freedom; it did not feel anything, not even the cool breezes holding it aloft. In the absence of a living host, the hybrid virus was inert, waiting for something to come along and shock it into a semblance of life.

On the ground, far away, Dr. Alexander Kellis was weeping without shame over the destruction of his lab, and making dire predictions about what could happen now that his creation was loose in the world. Like Dr. Frankenstein before him, he had created with only the best of intentions, and now found himself facing an uncertain future. His lover tried to soothe him, and was rebuffed by a grief too vast and raw to be put into words.

Alpha-RC007—colloquially known as "the Kellis cure"—did not grieve, or love, or worry about the future. Alpha-RC007 only drifted.

The capsid structure of Alpha-RC007 was superficially identical to the structure of the common rhinovirus, being composed of viral proteins locking together to form an icosahedron. The binding proteins, however, were more closely related to the coronavirus ancestors of the hybrid, creating a series of keys against which no natural immune system could lock itself. The five viral proteins forming the capsid structure were equally mismatched: two from one family, two from the other, and the fifth...

The fifth was purely a credit to the man who constructed it, and had nothing of Nature's handiwork in its construction. It was a tiny protein, smaller even than the diminutive VP4 which made the rhinovirus so infectious, and formed a ring of Velcro-like hooks around the outside of the icosahedron. That little hook was the key to Alpha-RC007's universal infection rate. By latching on and refusing to be dislodged, the virus could take as much time as it needed to find a way to properly colonize its host. Once inside, the other specially tailored traits would have their opportunity to shine. All the man-made protein had to do was buy the time to make it past the walls.

The wind currents eddied around the tiny viral particles, allowing them to drop somewhat lower in the stratosphere. Here, a flock of geese was taking advantage of the air currents at the very edge of the atmospheric layer, their honks sounding through the thin air like car alarms. One, banking to adjust her course, raised a wing just a few inches higher, tilting herself hard to the right and letting her feathers brush through the upper currents.

As her feathers swept through the air, they collected dust and pollen...and a few particles of Alpha-RC007. The hooks on the outside of the virus promptly latched onto the goose's wing, not aware, only reacting to the change in their environment. This was not a suitable host, and so the bulk of the virus remained inert, waiting, letting itself be carried along by its unwitting escort back down to the planet's surface.

Honking loudly, the geese flew on. In the air currents above them, the rest of the viral particles freed from Dr. Alexander Kellis's lab drifted, waiting for their own escorts to come along, scoop them up, and allow them to freely roam the waiting Earth. There is nothing so patient, in this world or any other, as a virus searching for a host.

***

We're looking at clear skies here in the Midwest, with temperatures spiking to a new high for this summer—so grab your sunscreen and plan to spend another lazy weekend staying out of the sun! Pollen counts are projected to be low...

When will you Rise?

Allentown, Pennsylvania. June 11th, 2014.

Hazel Allen was well and truly baked. Not just a little buzzed, oh, no; she was baked like a cake. The fact that this rhymed delighted her, and she started to giggle, listing slowly over to one side until her head landed against her boyfriend's shoulder with a soft "bonk."

Brandon Majors, self-proclaimed savior of mankind, ignored his pharmaceutically-impaired girlfriend. He was too busy explaining to a rapt (and only slightly less stoned) audience exactly how it was that they, the Mayday Army, were going to bring down The Man, humble him before the masses, and rise up as the guiding light of a new generation of enlightened, compassionate, totally bitchin' human beings.

Had anyone bothered to ask Brandon what he thought of the idea that one day, the meek would inherit the Earth, he would have been totally unable to see the irony.

"Greed is the real disease killing this country," he said, slamming his fist against his own leg to punctuate his statement. Nods and muttered statements of agreement rose up from the others in the room (although not from Hazel, who was busy trying to braid her fingers together). "Man, we've got so much science and so many natural resources, you think anybody should be hungry? You think anybody should be homeless? You think anybody should be eating animals? We should be eating genetically engineered magic fruit that tastes like anything you want, because we're supposed to be the dominant species."

"Like Willy Wonka and the snotberries?" asked one of the men, sounding perplexed. He was a bio-chem graduate student; he'd come to the meeting because he'd heard there would be good weed. No one had mentioned anything about a political tirade from a man who thought metaphors were like cocktails: better when mixed thoroughly.

"Snozberries," said Hazel, dreamily.

Brandon barely noticed. "And now they're saying that there's a cure for the common cold. Only you know who's going to get it? Not me. Not you. Not our parents. Not the kids. Only the people who can afford it. Paris Hilton's never going to have the sniffles again, but you and me and everybody we care about, we're just screwed. Just like everybody who hasn't been working for The Man since this current corrupt society came to power. It's time to change that! It's time to take the future out of the hands of The Man and put it back where it belongs—in the hands of the people!"

General cheering greeted this proclamation. Hazel, remembering her cue even through the haze of pot smoke and drowsiness, sat up and asked, "But how are we going to do that?"

"We're going to break in to that government-funded money-machine of a lab, and we're going to give the people of the world what's rightly theirs." Brandon smiled serenely, pushing Hazel gently away from him as he stood. "We're going to drive to Virginia, and we're going to snatch that cure right out from under the establishment's nose. And then we're going to give it to the world, the way it should have been handled in the first place! Who's with me?"

Any misgivings that might have been present in the room were overcome by the lingering marijuana smoke, and the feeling of revolution. They were going to change the world! They were going to save mankind!

They were going to Virginia.

***

A statement was issued today by a group calling themselves "The Mayday Army," taking credit for the break-in at the lab of Dr. Alexander Kellis. Dr. Kellis, a virologist working with genetically-tailored diseases, recently revealed that he was working on a cure for the common cold...

When will you Rise?

Manhattan, New York. June 9th, 2014.

The video clip of Dr. Kellis's press conference was grainy, largely due to it having been recorded on a cellular phone—and not, Robert Stalnaker noted with a scowl, one of the better models. Not that it mattered on anything more than a cosmetic level; Dr. Kellis's pompous, self-aggrandizing speech had been captured in its entirety. "Intellectual mumbo-jumbo" was how Robert had described the speech after the first time he heard it, and how he'd characterized it yet again in communication with his editor.

"This guy thinks he can eat textbooks and shit miracles," that was the pitch. "He doesn't want people to understand what he's really talking about, because he knows America would be pissed off if he spoke English long enough to tell us how we're all about to get screwed." And just as he'd expected, his editor jumped at it.

The instructions were simple: no libel, no direct insults, nothing that was already known to be provably untrue. Insinuation, interpretation, and questioning the science were all perfectly fine, and might turn a relatively uninteresting story into something that would actually sell a few papers. In today's world, whatever sold a few papers was worth pursuing. Bloggers and internet news were cutting far, far too deeply into the paper's already weak profit margin.

"Time to do my part to fix that," muttered Stalnaker, and started the video again.

He struck gold on the fifth viewing. Pausing the clip, he wound it back six seconds and hit "play." Dr. Kellis's voice resumed, saying, "—distribution channels will need to be sorted out before we can go beyond basic lab testing, but so far, all results have been—"

Rewind. Again. "—distribution channels—"

Rewind. Again. "—distribution—"

Robert Stalnaker began to smile.

Half an hour later, his research had confirmed that no standard insurance program in the country would cover a non-vaccination preventative measure (and Dr. Kellis had been very firm about stating that his "cure" was not a vaccination). Even most of the upper-level insurance policies would balk at adding a new treatment for something considered to be of little concern to the average citizen—not to mention the money that the big pharmaceutical companies stood to lose if a true cure for the common cold were actually distributed at a reasonable cost to the common man. Insurance companies and drug companies went hand-in-hand so far as he was concerned, and neither was going to do anything to undermine the other.

This was all a scam. A big, disgusting, money-grubbing scam. Even if the science was good, even if the "cure" did exactly what its arrogant geek-boy creator said it did, who would get it? The rich and the powerful, the ones who didn't need to worry about losing their jobs if the kids brought home the sniffles from school. The ones who could afford the immune boosters and ground-up rhino dick or whatever else was the hot new thing right now, so that they'd never get sick in the first place. Sure, Dr. Kellis never said that, but Stalnaker was a journalist. He knew how to read between the lines.

Robert Stalnaker put his hands to the keys, and prepared to make the news.

***

Robert Stalnaker's stirring editorial on the stranglehold of the rich on public health met with criticism from the medical establishment, who called it "irresponsible" and "sensationalist." Mr. Stalnaker has yet to reply to their comments, but has been heard to say, in response to a similar but unrelated issue, that the story can speak for itself...

When will you Rise?

Reston, Virginia. May 15th, 2014.

The misters above the feeding cages went off again promptly at three, filling the air inside the hot room with an aerosolized mixture of water and six different strains of rhinovirus. The rhesus monkeys and guinea pigs who had entered the cages five minutes earlier, when the food was poured, ignored the thin mist drifting over them. Their attention was focused entirely on the food. Dr. Alexander Kellis watched them eat, making notes on his iPad with quick swipes of his index finger. He didn't look down.

"How's it looking?"

"This is their seventh exposure. So far, none of them have shown any symptoms. Appetites are good, eyes are clear; no runny noses, no coughing. There was some sneezing, but it appears that Subject 11c has allergies."

The man standing next to America's premiere expert in genetically engineered rhino- and coronaviruses raised an eyebrow. "Allergies?"

"Yes." Dr. Kellis indicated one of the rhesus monkeys. She was sitting on her haunches, shoving grapes into her mouth with single-minded dedication to the task of eating as many of them as possible before one of the other monkeys took them away. "She's allergic to guinea pigs, poor thing."

His companion laughed. "Yes, poor thing," he agreed, before leaning in and kissing Dr. Kellis on the cheek. "As you may recall, you gave me permission yesterday to demand that you leave the lab for lunch. I have a note. Signed and everything."

"John, I really—"

"You also gave me permission to make you sleep on the couch for the rest of the month if you turned me down for anything short of one of the animals getting sick, and you know what that does to your back." John Kellis stepped back, folding his arms and looking levelly at his husband. "Now which is it going to be? Marital bliss and a lovely lunch, or nights and nights with that broken spring digging into your side, wishing you'd been willing to listen to me?"

Alexander sighed. "You don't play fair."

"You haven't left this lab during the day for almost a month," John countered. "How is wanting you to be healthy not playing fair? As funny as it would be if you got sick while you were trying to save mankind from the tyranny of the flu, it would make you crazy, and you know it."

"You're right."

"You're damn right I am. Now put down that computer and get your coat. The world can stay unsaved for a few more hours, while we get something nutritious that didn't come out of a vending machine into you."

This time, Alexander smiled. John smiled back. It was reflex, and relief, and love, all tangled up together. It was impossible for him to look at that smile and not remember why he'd fallen in love in the first place, and why he'd been willing to spend the last ten years of his life with this wonderful, magical, infuriating man.

"We're going to be famous for what we're doing here, you know," Alexander said. "People are going to remember the name 'Kellis' forever."

"Won't that be a nice thing to remember you by after you've died of starvation?" John took his arm firmly. "Come along, genius. I'd like to have you to myself for a little while before you go down in history as the savior of mankind."

Behind them, in the hot room, the misters went off again, and the monkeys shrieked.

***

Dr. Alexander Kellis held a private press conference yesterday to announce the latest developments in his oft-maligned "fight against the common cold." Dr. Kellis holds multiple degrees in virology and molecular biology...

When will you Rise?

Denver, Colorado. May 15th, 2014.

"How are you feeling, Amanda?" Dr. Wells checked the readout on the blood pressure monitor, attention only half on his bored-looking teenage patient. "Any pain, weakness, unexplained bleeding, blurriness of vision...?"

"Nope." Amanda Amberlee let her head loll back, staring up at the colorful mural of clouds and balloons that covered most of the ceiling. They'd painted that for her, she remembered, when she was thirteen; they'd wanted her to feel at ease as they pumped her veins full of a deadly disease designed to kill the disease that was already inside her. "Are we almost done? I have a fitting to get to?"

"Ah." Dr. Wells smiled. "Prom?"

"Prom."

"I'll see what I can do." From most patients, Dr. Wells took impatience and surliness as insults. Amanda was a special case. When they'd first met, her leiukemia had been so advanced that she had no energy for complaints or talking back; she'd submitted to every test and examination willingly, although she had a tendency to fall asleep in the middle of them. From her, every snippy comment and teenage eye-roll was a miracle, one that could be attributed entirely to science.

Marburg EX19—what the published studies were starting to refer to as "Marburg Amberlee," after the index case, rather than "Marburg Denver," which implied an outbreak and would be bad for tourism—was that miracle. The first effective cancer cure in the world, tailored from one of the most destructive viruses known to man. At thirteen, Amanda Amberlee had been given six months to live, at best. Now, at eighteen, she was going to live to see her grandchildren...and none of them would ever need to be afraid of cancer. Like smallpox before it, cancer was on the verge of extinction.

Amanda lifted her head to watch as he drew blood from the crook of her elbow. "How's my virus?" she asked.

"I haven't tested this sample yet, but if it's anything like the last one, your virus should be fat and sleepy. It'll be entirely dormant within another year." Dr. Wells gave her an encouraging look. "After that, I'll only need to see you every six months."

"Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but that'll be awesome." The kids at her high school had mostly stopped calling her "bubble girl" once she was healthy enough to join the soccer team, but the twice-monthly appointments were a real drain on her social calendar.

"I understand." Dr. Wells withdrew the needle, taping a piece of gauze down over the puncture wound. "All done. And have a wonderful time at prom."

Amanda slid out of the chair, stretching the kinks out of her back and legs. "Thanks, Dr. Wells. I'll see you in two weeks."

***

Denver, Colorado. May 29th, 2014.

"Dr. Wells? Are you all right?"

Daniel Wells turned to his administrative assistant, smiling wanly. "This was supposed to be Amanda's appointment block," he said. "She was going to tell me about her prom."

"I know." Janice Barton held out his coat. "It's time to go."

"I know." He took the coat, shaking his head. "She was so young."

"At least she died quickly, and she died knowing she had five more years because of you." Between them, unsaid: and at least the Marburg didn't kill her. Marburg Amberlee was a helper of man, not an enemy.

"Yes." He sighed. "All right. Let's go. The funeral begins in half an hour."

***

Amanda Amberlee, age eighteen, was killed in an automobile accident following the Lost Pines Senior Prom. It is believed the driver of the car had been drinking...

When will you Rise?

Today marks the launch of the Orbit Short Fiction Program, through which they will be bringing you delicious nuggets of juicy fiction goodness from Orbit authors. Including, naturally, one miss Mira Grant.

In fact, they have a new Mira Grant story available right now.

"Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box" is a heartwarming story about high school friends who still see each other every week to play a game that they love very much. Namely, the Apocalypse Game, wherein they end the world with gleeful abandon. But sadly, someone may be taking the game a little more seriously than was originally intended...

"Apocalypse Scenario," and all other stories in the Orbit Short Fiction Program, are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Diesel Ebooks, and Booksonboard.com. Follow the link to either the landing page for the program or the story itself to get the links.

Enjoy the end of the world.

They hold my trial in absentia; an empty gesture intended only to placate the screaming public. The growing silence outside the courthouse walls only serves to illustrate the pointlessness of the proceedings. It takes three days to present the evidence: the charts, the lab results, the videos. It would take longer, but after the fourth prosecutor fails to return from recess, the court decides to pass judgment on the case as it stands. There is enough—more than enough—to convict.

—from "The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells," available to read now at Apex Magazine.

The January issue of Apex is now available for all to read! (Prior to this, you had to actually buy the issue. A worthy investment. Seriously.) And in the spirit of this availability, have a few reviews of my story:

Carl at The Portal says "Alternating between moments before and after the key event in her story, McGuire tells a tale of biological terrorism and cold, calculating vengeance that is frightening in its reality." Also: "'The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells' brought to mind films like 28 Days Later and the various incarnations of Resident Evil, stripped of all their implausibilities so that all that remains is the sheer horror of a very real threat to mankind." Dude. I win at creepy.

Terry at Fantasy Literature says, "Those who have read Seanan McGuire’s tasty urban fantasies starring October Daye will be surprised at the dark science fiction she serves up in 'The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells.'" That was the goal! She goes on to say that she didn't realize I was Mira Grant, and will now be reading Feed.

If you haven't heard the bells, this is your chance.

You've been warned.

So people are stating to post their "best of..." lists for 2010. Heck, I'm even doing it, and I'm frequently the last person to notice that the bandwagon is rolling through the center of my town. Much to my surprise and delight, Feed is showing up on a few of those lists, which is sort of like, whoa, really? I mean...whoa, really? I love this book like I love sunshine and zombie puppies, but I didn't write it to make lists, I wrote it to get it out of my head. So the fact that it is is just...

It's staggering.

But here it is on Book Yurt's 2010 W00t List, described as "smart, scary, sassy and not at all what you'd expect from a zombie novel." (I'm also described here, as "both hilarious and ferociously smart." I can roll with that, being an overly-intellectual former stand-up comic. See? Every skill applies somewhere.)

And the Devourer of Books listed Feed as one of the books she gushed about in 2010, describing it as, "a smart book with fantastic world building." She was talking about the audio book, too, and gave kudos to the narrators.

But the one that really floored me—I mean floored me, knocked me on my ass and stole my lunch money—is the one that half the world emailed me about while I was sleeping. Because Feed, my little zombies-and-politics Sorkin/Romero love letter, Feed...

Well, it made The Onion AV Club's list of the Best Books They Read in 2010. Feed. My book. Made that list. HOLY CRAP. And they say:

"Feed resembles a Cory Doctorow novel in its intelligent speculation about how technology will reshape familiar aspects of the world, but it's more like The West Wing in its close observation of a presidential campaign from the inside, as seen through the eyes of a handful of bloggers invited along on the campaign trail. It's a breathless, exciting pulp novel with one of 2010's most surprising endings, but it's also a smart futuristic extrapolation about what the future may look like thanks to the Internet and new modes of communication, zombies or no."

I am stunned. Totally stunned. And also, have no lunch money, because this review took it. And somehow, I do not mind.

BEST OF 2010, BABY! WOOOOOOOOO!