Six months earlier

Sarah slept, finally, under the threadbare blanket they'd given her when I bitched long enough. She was learning to sleep through anything. Good kid. I kept an arm around her, shielding her whether or not there was any immediate threat. It had become an instinct, to keep as much of my body between her and the world as I could, even before the Epidemic I'd done that. We'd seen things in Africa nobody was supposed to, discovered in ourselves resources that just shouldn't have been there. I had done things... it didn't matter. I'd gotten us out of Nairobi. I'd gotten us across the border to Somalia. There had been three of us and now there were two. But we made it. Sarah's mother was, was, was not around any more but we made it. We made it to Somalia. Only to be picked up by a bunch of mercenaries at a roadblock and dumped in this cell with a bunch of other Westerners. Thrown here to await the pleasure of the local warlord.

Fuck it. I wouldn't blame myself for what I'd done. We were alive. We were still among the living. We were in the happy minority.

"I can't understand it," Toshiro said. One sleeve of his suit was ripped at the shoulder, revealing a good quarter inch of fluffy padding underneath but he kept his tie perfectly knotted at his neck. Even in the heat of the cell he was a salaryman. He waved his cell phone around the room. "I'm getting a perfect signal. Four bars! Why can I not raise Yokohama? No one in the office is answering. In the old economy we never let this occur!"

In the far corner the German backpackers clutched one another and tried not to look at him. They knew where Yokohama had gone as well as I did but in those first bad days of the Epidemic you didn't talk about that. It wasn't so much a matter of denial as of scale. All of Europe, as far as we knew, was gone. It might as well not be there anymore. Russia was gone. By the time you got to wondering where America went there just wasn't any more room for it in your brain. A world without an America just couldn't happen - the global economy would collapse. Every two-penny warlord and dictator in the Third World would have a field day. It just wasn't possible. It would mean global chaos. It would mean the end of history as we knew it.

Which was exactly what had happened.

The civilized countries, the ones with bicameral governments and honest police forces and good infrastructure and the rule of law and wealth and privilege, the entire West - when the dead came home they couldn't hold out. It was only the pisspots of the world that made it. The most dangerous places. The unstable countries - the feudal states, the anarchic backwaters - where you wouldn't dare walk out the door without a gun, where bodyguards were fashion accessories - they did a lot better in the end.

From what we'd heard the best hope the human race had anymore was the Taliban. Afghanistan and Pakistan were getting along just fine. Somalia didn't even have a government. There were more mercenaries in the country than farmhands. Somalia was pretty much okay. We used to have a map of the world in my office in Nairobi. It showed the countries of the world shaded various colors to depict how many firearms there were per capita there. You could take the legend off that map now and put a new one in its place: World Population Density.

"Four bars!" Toshiro whined. "I helped build this network, it is all digital! Dekalb - you must have some news for me, yes? You must know what is happening? I must be re-connected. You will help me with that. You have to help me. You are UN. You have to help anyone who asks!"

I shook my head but not with much conviction. So tired, so hot. So dehydrated in that little cell. We'd never wanted for water in Kenya before the Epidemic, the three of us. When the dead started coming back to life. In Nairobi with our valet and our chauffeur and our gardener there had been a fountain in our enclosed little world and we kept it splashing all year round. Sarah hadn't wanted to leave to go to the International Boarding School in Geneva next year, she'd liked Africa so much.

Jesus. Geneva. Gone, now. Switzerland was gone.

The door opened and hot light spilled across all of us. A silhouette of a girl gestured at me. For a second I didn't understand - I had thought I was going to be in the cell for good. Then I stumbled to my feet and picked up Sarah in my arms.

"Dekalb! You ask them about my connection! Damn you if you don't!"

I nodded, a sort of farewell, a sort of assent. I followed the girl soldier out of the cell and into the sun-colored courtyard beyond. The smell of burning bodies was thick but better than the smell of the shit-bucket in the cell. Sarah pushed her face against my chest and I held her close. I didn't know what was going to happen next. It could be our turn to get some food, the first we'd had in two days. The girl soldier might be leading me to a torture chamber or a refugee center with hot showers and clean bedding and some kind of promise for the future. This could be a summons to an execution.

If Geneva was gone, so was the Geneva Convention.

"Come!" the soldier said.

I went.