Two weeks in Houston. Two weeks of sending Rick on every assignment we could get away with sending him on, while Shaun and I locked ourselves in our hotel room and planned for a war wed never signed up for, against an adversary wed never volunteered to fight. Whose side was Ryman on? I was guessing he wasnt a part of Tates plan; no sane man would sacrifice his daughter like that. Then again, Shaun and I were adopted to satisfy the Masons desire to prove the zombie war had been won by the living, and theyve never stopped us from walking into the jaws of deathif anything, theyve encouraged it, living for the ratings, because when they lost Phil, the ratings were all they had. So who are we to judge the sanity of parents? We sat up until almost dawn every night, working through the darkness, making plans, making contingencies for those plans, looking for a way out of a maze we didnt see before we were already lost inside it.
Shaun pretended he didnt know I wasnt sleeping, and I pretended not to hear him punching the bathroom walls. Caffeine pills and surgical tape; thats what Ill always think of when I think of Houston. Caffeine pills and surgical tape.
I tried to talk to Ryman twice; he tried to talk to me three times. None of our attempts synchronized. I couldnt trust him when I didnt know whether or not he was working with Tate; he couldnt understand why wed pulled away, or why we were overworked and snarly with exhaustion. Even Shaun was visibly withdrawn. Hed stopped going out in the field with Steve and the boys when he didnt need to file reports, and while he was still meeting his contracted duties, he wasnt doing it with anything like the flair and enthusiasm Ryman had come to expect from him. From all of us. There wasnt anything we could do about it. Until we knew if we could trust him, we couldnt tell him what was going onwhat we suspected, what we knew, anything. And until we told him what was going on, we couldnt be sure we could trust him. It was a Möbius strip of a problem, endlessly twisting back on itself, and I couldnt see a way out of it. So we pushed him away and hoped hed understand the reasons when things were over.
After Houston, it was time to get back on the road, rolling across the country like nothing had ever gone wrong. Not nothing; Chuck was gone, replaced by a pale-faced drone who scuttled around doing his job and avoiding anything that resembled socialization. Our security detail tripled while we were moving, and Shaun was no longer allowed to ride out unescorted. He took an almost malicious glee in forcing his babysitters to follow him into the nastiest, most dangerous terrain he could find, and some of the footage he got out of it has frankly been amazing. The Irwin community has been buzzing about putting him up for a Golden Steve-o award this year, and Ill be surprised if he doesnt win.
We spent a month glad-handing our way across the western half of the country while the other candidates stayed in the air and the major cities, assuming major metro areas would have better anti-infection measures. Tell that to San Diego. The devil-may-care approach was winning Ryman big percentage points, enough to keep him in the news even as the media flurry kicked up by this latest tragedy died down. Man of the People Keeps the World Groundedhuman interest gold. A few outlets made the requisite noises about how Rymans insistence on an old-fashioned campaign had dogged him with tragedy from the beginning, but the facts of Rebecca and Buffys deaths were enough to pretty much silence them. Maybe you could blame the senator for Eakly if you reached, but you couldnt blame him for terrorist action or assassination attempts. America is the land of the free and the home of the paranoid, and yet, blessedly, we havent fallen that far. Yet.
Six weeks after Memphis, we were overworked, overtired, and about to hit the crowds in one of the countrys toughest, most essential markets: Sacramento, California.
Youd think Shaun and I would be excited about a stop in our states capital, being California kids bred and raised. Youd be wrong. California is essentially a bunch of smaller states held together by political connections, water rights, and the stubborn refusal of any segment to cede the cash-cow name California to any of the others. The California secessionist movement has been around since before the Risingnot the state quitting the country, but the various parts of the state quitting each other. Sacramento has no love for the Bay Area. We get the good weather, the good press, and the big tourism dollars, and they? They get the state government and a lot of hard to defend farmland. To say that theres a little resentment there is to understate the case just a little. Whatever fellow-feeling Sacramento had for the rest of the state died when it stopped hosting the annual state fair and started hosting the annual everybody hide in their houses and pray they dont die-a-thon in its place.
The air was hot and so dry it seemed to suck the moisture out of my throat as we stepped out of the Sacramento Airport and onto the partitioned-off loading zone where wed be meeting the senators convoy. It was late afternoon, and the sun was bright enough to stab at my eyes through the lenses of my sunglasses. I staggered, catching myself on Ricks shoulder. He shot me a questioning glance. Silent, I shook my head. We were all feeling the strain, Shaun as much as any of us, and if Rick said anything, Shaun would spend the rest of the afternoon fussing over me. There was too much to do for me to let him do that.
Senator Ryman had flown in the day before, along with Governor Tate and most of the senior staff. We were supposed to be right behind them, flying commercial air rather than via private jet; unfortunately, a medical emergency grounded our plane in Denver, forcing us to wait on the tarmac with a hundred terrified passengers to see whether our aircraft was about to be declared a closed quarantine zone. Ill admit, for a few guilty moments, I was almost hoping it would be. At least then wed be able to get some sleep before heading back to our home state. I was really starting to worry about Shaun. It had gotten to where he only went to bed when I put him there.