Party Balloons — Gilbert Reid

Volume 3 in the Adventures of V seriesA chic vampire, a glamorous black US president, a loony Bible-thumping vice president, a diabolical terrorist, a randy lawyer, a handsome captain, a gorgeous assistant, a beautiful Synthetic Individual, a recklessly brave girl reporter, a grizzled cameraman, a Bollywood princess, a bitter TV producer, a pompous anchorman, a kidnapped heiress, a stunning actress, an orphaned boy, all are swept up in a desperate epic struggle for survival against a spreading zombie pandemic.The year is 2046. V is on the hunt for a mysterious renegade mass-murder hybrid, a steel-gray reptilian creature that has left a trail of blood from Texas to Vermont. Then V's attention is drawn to an even more pressing crisis - a probable terrorist attack against the president of the United States, to be carried out on the world's latest greatest luxury liner, the Eden of the Seas. The president, a charismatic black TV star, Katherine du Bois Hughes, is scheduled to speak to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association during the maiden voyage of the Eden. During her speech, Katherine announces special legislation to defend human species purity. She denounces alien-human hybrids, V's people. And she condemns, bioengineering creations, Synthetic Individuals, or SINs. She announces she will shortly propose laws to label, isolate, and eliminate them.Just after Katherine's speech, a deadly biological weapon is released - via colorful party balloons launched from a passing yacht, A Flight of Fancy. The balloons, caught up in Eden's ventilation system, burst, releasing a virus, which instantly turns 2000 lawyers and 4000 other passengers and crew into cannibalistic zombies or vine-like, tentacular, voracious, semi-conscious plants. V and a few survivors, including several hybrids, two twin teenage Chinese acrobats, Wang Fei and Wang Fang, and Marie-José Duval, a beautiful Parisian Synthetic Individual, or SIN, must save the president, and get her off the Eden before she too turns into a zombie.Then, V must spirit the president to a safe refuge from which Katherine can take back control of America, because, in Washington, there has been a coup d'état.The US vice president - tall, handsome, eloquent, Bible-thumping Joseph Humility Ebenezer Jackson - who was behind the biological attack and who has staged the coup d'état in Washington, intends to kill the president - she is too soft on hybrids and SINs - and destroy the Eden, and all those in it, using nuclear weapons if need be; he also plans to obliterate, with missiles, Sabrina Jacob's elegant research ship, Andromeda II, a symbol of the most advanced science - diabolical Darwinian meddling with the Divine Order - sailing near The Bahamas, and which, with its wealth of scientific expertise, has become the center of the anti-pandemic struggle. But ...The vice president is double-crossed by the creator of the zombie virus, a mysterious creature called the Puppet Master. The zombie pandemic does not stay confined to the Eden - but the Eden - piloted by zombies controlled by the Puppet Master - crashes into Miami. The zombie virus spreads throughout Florida. It sweeps up, in its deadly onslaught, Samantha Andrews, a feisty TV reporter for the Volpe News Network, her cameraman, grizzled veteran of many wars, Charlie Parr, and Virginia Lily, a stunning star of B-movies, and Jake, an orphaned 11-year-old, and many others, all caught up in an onrushing turmoil of suffering and death.