How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea

My flight left London at six o'clock on Friday morning. We made a stop in Hong Kong twelve hours later to change planes, at which point everyone had to go through the entire security and boarding process again, complete with medical screening. It's something of a miracle that I was permitted to return to business class—same seat number, virtually identical seat, for all that it was on a different airplane—given that I was half asleep the whole time. After you've been pursued across the United States by a global conspiracy, it's rather difficult for airports to disturb you. All the same, my lack of response and glazed demeanor should have singled me out for additional security measures. There's little that can spoil a trip more than being trapped inside a flying metal tube with someone who has just undergone amplification.

Being in coach might well have done it. I reclined in my spacious seat, sipping my complimentary cup of hot tea—if you can call something "complimentary" when it requires buying a ticket that costs several thousand quid before they'll give it to you—and watched the other passengers being herded back to their seats. Each group of five was escorted by two flight attendants who made no effort to conceal their firearms. Before the Rising, guns were verboten on airplanes, carried only by government agents and representatives of local law enforcement. Now most passengers flew armed, and the flight attendants carried more weapons than your average Irwin. It's funny how the world can change when no one's looking.

The business class flight attendants were a slightly less menacing breed, although they still possessed the warmth and personal charm of cobras considering whether or not you were worth biting. The attendant on my side of the cabin stopped by long enough to collect my cup and check the lock on my seat belt. It would release only after a clean blood test from me and a keyed-in okay from the flight attendant. I smiled at him through the fog of my exhaustion. Staying on his good side would be extremely helpful for my bladder in a few hours.

"State your name," he said.

"Mahir Gowda," I replied. I'd been through this routine before. There was nothing personal about it.

"Place of origin."

"London, England. I flew out of Heathrow."

"Destination."

"Melbourne, Australia."

"Will you be having the fish or the chicken for this evening's supper?"

"The chicken, please."

"Very good. Welcome aboard, Mr. Gowda." He continued on with a perfunctory nod, already keying up the next passenger on his datapad.

I saluted him silently before setting my head against the thin airplane pillow. No matter how plush they make the upper tiers of flying, they'll always have those same thin, lifeless pillows. Hong Kong was a blur of lights and motion outside the window, all of it set back at a respectful distance, which blurred it even more. One more place I hadn't been, not really; one more example of "just passing through."

Sometimes I feel like it's my job in this life to be a tourist, forever visiting, never coming home. I was mulling over that thought, and what it meant for my marriage, when consciousness slipped away from me, and I fell back into the deep, unrejuvenating sleep of the traveler.

2.

I woke twice during the remainder of my flight: once to eat a bowl of some of the most tasteless chicken curry it has ever been my sorrow to encounter and once to connect to the plane's free Wi-Fi and set my phone to download all my e-mail. There was a time when I would have worked through the flight, ignoring my body's increasingly desperate pleas for rest; an airplane is a foreign environment, and the combination of changing cabin pressure and changing time zones makes it hard on even the strongest systems. I used to fight through the urge to close my eyes, refusing to admit that I could be felled by something as petty as biology.

I have matured since then, if maturity means losing a few hours of work to the Great God Sleep. Still, as head of After the End Times, one of the Internet's premiere news destinations, it was my job to have all of the world's information at my fingertips. So I set my phone to download and closed my eyes again. It wasn't as if I could do anything to change the news from where I was.

The first sign that we were approaching Australia came when the flight attendants walked through the plane, leaving breakfast trays in front of us and pressing the small buttons over our seats that would sound our personalized alarm tones. The myriad small, familiar noises were intended to wake us with a minimum of trauma, thus reducing the chances that a passenger, distressed by the unfamiliar environment, would turn violent. My alarm was the sound of my one-year-old daughter, Sanjukta, laughing. In all my experience with the world, I had never encountered any sweeter sound, or any laugh that more made me want to smile.

"Good morning, Mr. Gowda," said the attendant. He was still smiling the same plastic smile. It had been—I glanced at my watch—twelve hours. The fact that he was still smiling was either a testament to his training or an argument in favor of stimulants.

"Good morning," I managed, and reached for the tea which was already waiting, enticingly hot, on my tray. "What time is it?"

"The local time in Melbourne is half-past five o'clock in the afternoon." The flight attendant smirked slightly as he glanced at my plate of turkey bacon, scrambled egg, and reheated croissant. It was the first sign I'd seen that he might be human after all, and not just a very convincing robot. "I'm afraid we're serving you breakfast for dinner. Such are the trials of international travel."

"It's quite all right," I assured him. "My mother always said that eggs were appropriate no matter the time of day." That was a filthy lie: My mother was a traditional woman who would have died before she'd fed me breakfast this late in the day. Still, there was no need to tell him that, and he looked quite pleased.

"We'll be landing in about twenty minutes," he said. "Please eat quickly, and signal if you need to use the restroom." Then he was gone, moving on to the next passenger on his list.

I turned my attention to the food. It was palatable, as airplane food went; it didn't taste of much of anything, but as taste can go either way, I was content to eat my variously textured bits of tastelessness and call it a successful meal. The other passengers were stirring, reacquainting themselves with the world as they woke. Grumbles and half-formed complaints filled the cabin, providing a discordant accompaniment to breakfast. One passenger got a bit too aggressive in his complaining. The flight attendant produced a sedative patch, slapped it against the side of the passenger's neck, and moved on. The passenger's complaints did not resume.

Many of the security precautions humanity has embraced since the Rising are silly, useless things, more about what my old colleague Georgia Mason always called "security theater" than actual security. The safety regulations that have been added to air travel, however, make perfect sense to me. If someone is going to be belligerent, I would much prefer they be confined to their seat and handled by the in-flight crew, who have been trained for this sort of thing.

I picked up my phone, pleased to see that my e-mail had finished downloading, but less pleased to see that more than five hundred messages had arrived since we left Hong Kong. At least half were flagged "urgent." My staff is good about using "urgent" only when something actually is, but given my current situation, I wasn't sure how much good I was going to be.

I stowed my phone and pulled my tablet out of the seatback pocket, entering my password with a few quick swipes of my thumb. The home screen came up, and I pressed the icon that would grant me immediate access to the After the End Times management chat room. Half archaic IM protocols, half homebrew system devised by the late, lamented Georgette Meissonier, it was the most secure chat relay I had ever encountered, and quite probably the most secure relay I ever will encounter. We could exchange nuclear launch codes over that thing, and no one would ever know.

Well, except for the part where we're a news site, and if we had nuclear launch codes, everyone would know in short order, as Alaric set half the Factual News Division on writing a scathing exposé of the weaknesses inherent in the national defense system. Reporters are excellent at ferreting out a story. We're not so good at keeping secrets.

As I had hoped, Alaric was online. It was—I did some quick math in my head—ten A.M. in California. He must have just gotten out of bed. That, or he'd pulled another all-nighter and was about five minutes away from passing out on his keyboard.

ALARIC, NEED YOUR ATTENTION. Typing on a tablet computer while on a moving airplane wasn't the easiest thing I'd ever done, but it was no harder than anything else would have been, under the circumstances.

While I waited for his reply, I pulled up the forums in another window, skimming their titles to see whether anything important had managed to catch fire while I wasn't looking. It was the usual mix of serious news, frivolous rumor, and wild conjecture that would never make it past the first-tier review board. One of the newer Irwins was proposing an expedition up into Canada to try to locate the Masons. I opened the thread, scrolled to the bottom, and added a quick one-word reply: NO.

Shaun and Georgia Mason were two of the three founders of After the End Times. The third founder, Georgette "Buffy" Meissonier, died during the Ryman/Cousins presidential campaign. Georgia herself died not long after. Shaun was the only survivor of the original trio, much to his chagrin, and he had spent quite some time after Georgia's death trying to join her through whatever means were necessary. He stopped trying to get himself killed only when he found something to live for: an illegal clone of Georgia, created by the Centers for Disease Control. It was a terrible situation, made worse by the fact that no one knew who to trust until it was over—and for some of us, trust didn't come easy, even then.

Shaun and the new version of Georgia celebrated our successful discovery of a massive government conspiracy by vanishing into the wilds of Canada. There were very few people living there, and most of the people who chose that life had no interest in helping the government. It had been almost two years. No one had seen them since. Maybe someday they would tire of their privacy and come back to civilization. Until that day arrived, I was not going to have any member of the site that they had helped to create go after them. They had earned their retirement, if retirement it truly was.

Sometimes I worried. I won't lie about that. Cloning is a strange science, restricted by morality laws and jealously guarded by the few organizations that know its secrets. So far as I was aware, the second Georgia was the first clone ever released into the wild without medical oversight. She could collapse at any moment, killed by some previously unknown glitch in the process that made her, and the rest of us might never know.

Shaun Mason was a good man, and he held himself together far longer than the rest of us had any real right to ask him to. If I worried about him—if I worried about her—well, so what? He'd earned a little worry. They both had.

My chat window flashed, signaling a reply. I tapped the icon, bringing the chat back to the front of my screen.

HI BOSS, read Alaric's reply. HOW'S AUSTRALIA? HAVE YOU TRIED VEGEMITE YET?

STILL ON THE PLANE, HAVEN'T LANDED YET. WHY IS MY E-MAIL FULL OF URGENT FLAGS?

NOT FEELING MUCH LIKE SMALL TALK, HUH?

I HAVE BEEN IN TRANSIT FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. MY MOUTH TASTES LIKE THE BAD END OF A ZOMBIE'S DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. WHY IS MY E-MAIL FULL OF URGENT FLAGS? Alaric was a good Newsie, but he had somehow managed to lead a very sheltered life for someone who'd been through hell alongside the rest of us. Sometimes he didn't understand that brevity meant "explain yourself before I am forced to become cross with you." Still, he was loyal to a fault, and I respected that.

MINOR KA-I OUTBREAK IN ALABAMA, Alaric replied. HAD TO SCRAMBLE A FIELD TEAM TO GO OUT AND GET THE GOODS. GEO GOT A LITTLE OVERENTHUSIASTIC WITH HIS EQUIPMENT REQUESTS. MAGGIE AND I MANAGED TO REIN HIM IN. SORRY YOU GOT ALL THE CCS.

IT'S NO PROBLEM. AT LEAST I KNOW. The head of the Action News Division—more commonly known as "the Irwins," named in honor of the late Australian conservationist and crocodile enthusiast, Steve Irwin—was a very earnest young man named George Freeman, who went by "Geo" to avoid confusion with Georgia Mason. He'd been hired after Shaun left, and we'd never met in person, but he seemed like a good sort. OUTBREAK CONTAINED?

LOOKS THAT WAY.

GOOD. I'M SIGNING OFF FOR LANDING. WILL TRY TO CHECK IN AFTER I GET SITUATED WITH THE LOCAL TEAM.

MAGGIE SENDS HER LOVE.

TELL MAGGIE THANK YOU. I closed the chat window. I rarely say good-bye anymore; it feels too much like an invitation to disaster. Instead, I try to approach everything as if it were simply an ongoing sequence. Conversations didn't end. I merely had to pause them every once in a while.

Tucking my tablet back into its pocket, I relaxed in my seat and waited for the wheels to touch the ground.

3.

The Rising was a global event. It began with two American research projects, thus permanently cementing the so-very-American idea that they were the center of the world—after all, who but the center of all things could bring about the end of days?—but once the Kellis-Amberlee virus was loose in the atmosphere, it went around the world in under a week. Some places were hit harder than others when the dead began to walk. India was completely evacuated, as were parts of Japan, China, and the United States. But given time, the world recovered. That's what the world does.

Australia has always been isolated by geography. That didn't keep Kellis-Amberlee out, but it did change the landscape that the virus had to deal with. Instead of cattle and horses, Kellis-Amberlee found kangaroos and wombats. There were densely packed urban population centers, but they tended to be closer to the wilderness than similar cities in other nations. Video footage of zombie kangaroos laying siege to Sydney was one of the last things to escape Australia during that first long, brutal summer of the Rising. Then the networks went down, and there were other things for people to worry about. Unbelievable as it sounds today, there was a time when the rest of the world genuinely expected the entire continent to be lost.

There was one thing no one considered, however: Australia was populated by Australians. While the rest of us were trying to adapt to a world that suddenly seemed bent on eradicating the human race, the Australians had been dealing with a hostile environment for centuries. They looked upon our zombie apocalypse, and they were not impressed.

After the Rising was over, life for Australians went on much as it had before. They went to work, went to the pub, and endeavored not to die while living in a country that contained the lion's share of the world's venomous snakes, deadly spiders, and other such vermin. The addition of zombie kangaroos—and worse, zombie wombats—did nothing to change the essential character of the nation. If anything, global response to the Rising only confirmed something that many Australians had quietly believed for quite some time: If forced to live in Australia for a year, most of the world's population would simply curl up in a fetal ball and die of terror.

Still, some things had to change, and those changes had been, by and large, ignored by the world media. They weren't sensational enough to make good headlines; they were too practical and too easy on the nerves. Add in the fact that several governments had been devoted to a campaign intended to keep us all cowering in our beds, and it was no wonder that Australia's unique approach to animal husbandry and handling had gone mostly ignored by anyone who didn't live in Australia.

A pleasant chime sounded through the cabin, signaling that it was time to stow any loose items which might have been taken out of their containers during the flight. The attendants made one last quick pass through the cabin, helping the less-prepared travelers to get their personal items secured before we began our final descent. Then, with no additional fanfare, the nose of our plane titled sharply downward, and we broke through the clouds over Melbourne, giving me my very first glimpse of Australian soil.

To be entirely honest, it wasn't that impressive. From my small window, I could see a coastal city that looked just like every other coastal city I'd had the misfortune to visit. I am a homebody at heart, and this was my third continent, as I worked my way through an unwanted checklist. Fourth continent, if I wanted to count Asia, which I didn't particularly. I'd have been perfectly happy counting nothing but London, and London alone, until the day that I died.

I was still dwelling on that thought as the city outside my window grew rapidly closer, until finally the wheels were touching smoothly down on the runway, executing a perfect landing. Applause rose from the other passengers. Apparently, they didn't know how much modern air travel depends on autopilot systems, or how unlikely it was that our pilot had done anything to aid that seamless landing.

Ah, well. Let them have their little illusions. I joined the rest of the cabin in applauding. Sometimes it's the veils that you draw over things that make them worth looking at. Not as honest, perhaps, but certainly more palatable.

Deplaning was a straightforward, if slow, process: The flight attendants unlocked our belts one row at a time, allowing us to leisurely stand, collect our belongings, and head for the jet bridge. No one grumbled about the wait. Some of the people toward the back of the plane were probably seething silently, but there was no point in voicing that sort of thing aloud. All it would do was cause problems, and when the flight attendants are authorized to use deadly force in subduing a "problem passenger," no one wants to make a fuss.

My bag was a sturdy duffel that had seen stranger trips than this one. I slung it over my shoulder as I exited the jet bridge and started scanning around for signs that would lead me to Customs. Ah, Customs, the first trial of every international traveler.

Large, pleasant signs provided directions, accompanied by helpfully animated arrows that drew lines down the wall, just in case the addled, time-shifted tourists had lost the ability to read. I staggered in the indicated direction, followed by most of the population of my flight. I am quite sure that, in that moment, there was very little to differentiate us from your average zombie mob. No one was moaning, but all the rest of the characteristic signs were there: the slack-jawed expressions, the shambling gaits, and the absolute lack of apparent intelligence.