Blackout (27 page)

“No one’s paying us, darling.” Mom’s voice came from behind me, calm and even cheerful, with the faintly manic edge that accompanied every mother-son outing we’d ever taken. The click of a safety being disengaged was basically just overkill. “It’s simply that we don’t think you should be running around besmirching our family name. Not after everything we’ve done to build the brand.”

“Hi, Mom,” I said, still aiming the .40 unwaveringly at Dad. He wasn’t moving. I always knew he was a smart one. “Is this the part where you tell me to put my gun down?”

“No, this is the part where I save your ass,” said Becks. The statement was accompanied by the sound of her revolvers being cocked. “Please believe me when I say that I respect your work greatly, Mrs. Mason, and I will blow your fucking head off if you don’t stop aiming that gun at my boss right now.”

Mom laughed. It was a joyful, tittering, purely artificial sound. “Oh, how cute. She’s willing to step in and
save
you, darling. Such loyalty—and such a pretty girl, too. Is she sweet on you? So many of the pretty girls have been. Not that you ever paid them any attention. Not that your sainted sister, may she rest in peace, ever
let
you. Do you think things would have gone differently if she hadn’t been so selfish?”

“Don’t talk about George,” I said, gritting my teeth to keep my calm from slipping away. “She moves, shoot her, Becks.”

“With pleasure, Boss.”

“It seems we have a standoff, son,” said Dad, raising his hands. It felt almost unfair, letting him be the only one in the room without a gun. Good thing I’ve never been too hung up on playing fair. “So what now?”

“Now you stay where you are.” I took a deep breath before asking, “What did you do, Mom? Who did you call?”

“No one a concerned citizen doesn’t have the right to call,” she replied, in the same happy, artificial tone. “You shouldn’t have come here, Shaun. I’m glad you did—it was nice to see you—but you shouldn’t have come.” For a moment, I thought I heard genuine regret in her tone. As hard as I’d tried, I’d never quite been able to stop myself from loving the Masons. Maybe, difficult as it was to credit, they had the same problem.

Maybe they hadn’t quite been able to keep themselves from loving us.

“The house logged our arrival, didn’t it? And you let the information upload. You didn’t have to. We’re not residents, and no one saw us come. You could have scrubbed it, and no one would have ever known.” That’s what I’d been counting on when I suggested coming
here. I knew what that security system could do. “Why didn’t you?”

“Be reasonable, Shaun,” said Dad. He shook his head, looking almost contrite. “People are saying you may have had something to do with what’s happening right now in the Gulf. We can’t even get passes to go into the restricted zones. Other journalists with similar credentials have managed to at least get around the edges, but we’re being shut out. Bringing you to justice would counter that. It would show we weren’t working with you.”

“I’m sure the ratings wouldn’t hurt, either,” said Becks sourly. I risked a sympathetic glance her way. I’d been disillusioned by the Masons years ago. She was getting her disillusionment in one lump sum… and like anything that shows your heroes in an unpleasant light, it had to be bitter. So very bitter.

“No,” Mom admitted. “It’s been harder to keep the numbers up since we lost that family dynamic. We got a few spikes when things went bad in Oakland, and a few more when your names started coming up in conjunction with the tragedy, but nothing lasting. Nothing that would bring in the numbers remotely like an act of selfless heroism.”

“So you’re going to sacrifice us for ratings,” I said.

“Now, son, it’s not like that—” Dad began.

“Isn’t it?” I lowered my gun, slowly turning to look at Mom. Feigning curiosity, I asked, “So if you’re willing to trade one son for a better market share… what
really
happened to Phillip, Mom? Did he just
happen
to get in that dog’s way, like the official story says? Or were you afraid your fifteen minutes of fame were already over, and just searching for anything that could make them last a little longer?”

Her eyes widened. There was a moment when I wasn’t sure whether she was going to shoot me. Then she was striding across the space between us, Becks forgotten, gun dropping to her side. I could have ducked away from her hand. I didn’t, and the sound of her palm hitting my cheek rang through the room like it was the loudest thing in the world. Becks stood frozen, staring. From the silence behind me, Dad was doing much the same.

Mom’s eyes were filling with furious tears. “Don’t you
ever
,
ever
say something like that to me,” she snarled. The anger in her voice may have been the most honest emotion I’d ever seen from her. “You don’t get to talk about him.”

“Well, then, you don’t get to talk about Georgia,” I countered. “How is this different, Mom? I’m your son. You didn’t give birth to me, but you raised me. You’re the only mother I’ve ever had. And now you’re selling my life—my
life
—because you want better ratings. How is this different from what happened to Phillip? Give me one good answer. Please. Just one.”

She stared at me, seemingly unable to decide whether she should get furiously angry or break down and start to cry. Becks was still holding her pistols aimed at Mom’s head, standing in an easy hip-shot stance that I knew she could hold for hours, if she needed to. I also knew she wasn’t going to need to. Someone was going to break this standoff before much longer. I just hoped it would be someone in the room, rather than someone driving an official vehicle and commanding an urban cleanup squad.

“It was an accident,” said Dad. I didn’t turn. I didn’t want to take my eyes off Mom. “Marigold wasn’t supposed to be in our yard. Phillip was unlucky. This is different.”

“Why? Because it’s premeditated? Because you pulled me and George out of some state orphanage somewhere, and that gives you the right to decide how I’m going to die? Don’t kid yourselves. If you keep us here, we’re
going
to die. Someone’s going to be careless, someone else is going to say we moved for a weapon, and we’re going to be so much sterilized ash by lunchtime.”

“You don’t know that,” said Mom. She seemed to be getting herself back under control. That probably wasn’t good. “They may just take you in for questioning.”

“The mosquitoes got loose while we were in the Memphis CDC, Ms. Mason.” Becks’s voice was as calm as it was unexpected. Mom’s head whipped around to stare at her. “If it hadn’t been for the storm—if it hadn’t been for bad timing—they would have been confined to Cuba. They would never have reached the coast without the wind to help them.”

“So?” demanded Mom.

“Stacy.” Dad’s voice was soft, thoughtful; the same sort of tone that George used to get when something occurred to her in the middle of the night. She’d wake me up and whisper in my ear in that soft, contemplative voice, telling me stories I only half heard, but that would be posted on our site within the week.

“What?” Mom turned back toward him, and consequentially, toward me.

“The weather maps
do
show that the mosquitoes originated in Cuba. They’re on record as a mutation. Some sort of horrible trick of natural selection.”

“You don’t believe that, do you, Mr. Mason?” asked Becks. “Doesn’t it seem a little pat? Twenty years of no insect vectors, and then one comes along at the right time to bury a news cycle no one wants to deal with? If it hadn’t been for the storm, we’d be hearing a lot of
different stories right now. The Cuban tragedy would be dominating the news for the next year, and no one would ever hear about a break-in at a CDC facility, or about the corruption leading to the death of Dr. Kelly Connolly, granddaughter of the man who broke the news about the Rising.”

“But Tropical Storm Fiona had other ideas,” I said, taking up her argument. “Whoever let those mosquitoes loose wasn’t counting on a big ol’ wind sweeping in and carrying their nasty little pets to American soil. So the cycle got buried, and so did a lot of innocent people. It was a mistake. It still did its job. You never heard about any of that, did you?”

“No.” Dad stepped up behind me, and stepped around me, moving to stand beside Mom. Becks shifted her position, widening her stance as she adjusted to include him in her line of fire. “We never heard any of those things.”

“So either I’ve gone entirely out of my mind—which isn’t out of the question, I guess, since I talk to myself and everything; but if I’m crazy, I’ve managed to take my team with me—or someone is really out to get us. And whoever it is, they were willing to gamble with the Kellis-Amberlee virus in order to keep us out of the headlines.” I took a breath. “Lots of kids died in Florida, Mom. Lots of little kids. And not because they ran into dogs that hadn’t been chained up properly. Not because their parents did anything wrong. They got bit by mosquitoes, and it killed them, and it wasn’t
fair
. Just like what happened to Phillip wasn’t fair.”

“I told you not to talk about him,” she said. This time, the anger in her voice wasn’t there, and the tears were beginning to overflow her lower lids, starting their slow tracks down her cheeks. She looked old, and
tired, and like the woman I’d only ever seen in pictures taken before I was even born. She looked like someone who could have loved me.

“Please. We’re trying to get to Florida because the family of one of our team members was there when the storm hit. His parents died. His little sister’s still alive. We promised him we’d get her out.”

Dad shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, son.”

What?
demanded George.

“What?” I asked, half a heartbeat later.

“They’ve had our house under surveillance for weeks. Even if we’d wanted to hide your presence, we couldn’t have done it for long. They’ll be here any minute now.” He turned to his wife, my adopted mother, the first of the world’s true Irwins. “Stacy. It’s up to you.”

She hesitated. Then, finally, she nodded. Turning back to me, she said, “It’s not like Phillip at all, Shaun, because we couldn’t save him.” She turned her gun around, offering it to me butt-first. “Make it look realistic, and get the hell out of here.”

“Mom…”

“You have maybe three minutes. Four, if you’re willing to leave the van and take mine instead—but you won’t do that, will you?” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Michael, take Rebecca to the garage and get her set up with one of the portable jammers, will you?”

“Yes, dear,” he said. Then he paused, looking back at me, and said, “I’m proud of you, son. We didn’t do right by you or by your—by Georgia—but I’m proud of you, all the same. I think I have the right to that much.”

“Yeah, Dad. You do.”

“Thank you.” He motioned for Becks to follow him. “Come along, young lady.”

Becks glanced at me, eyes wide. I nodded, hoping the gesture would be reassuring, and not sure what I’d do if it wasn’t. “It’s okay, Becks,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

“Shaun…”

“Just go. I promise, I’ll be
right
there.”

Still looking uncertain, she followed him out of the room. Their footsteps drifted back down the hall; then the door connecting the kitchen to the garage slammed, and even that was gone. I returned my attention to my mother.

“You sure?” I asked.

“No.” She laughed a little, still holding her gun out to me. “But hell, when have I been sure about anything? I think the last time I was absolutely
sure
of something was in July of 2014. I was sure that was going to be the summer when I finally learned how to swim.”

“Mom…” I stopped, realizing I had no idea what else I could say to this woman. We were family and we were strangers. She was my mother and my teacher and the one person I had never been able to please, no matter how hard I tried or how much I played the clown. I took the gun from her hand. “What are you going to tell them?”

“That you realized we’d called the authorities, and ran.” Her eyes were clear and calm. “Or maybe I won’t tell them anything. The choice is yours.”

It took me a moment to realize that she was saying I could shoot her: She was unarmed, and I had her gun. They wouldn’t be able to use the ballistics to trace me, or to conclusively prove I’d pulled the trigger while she was still alive. I shook my head. “Tell them whatever you have to in order to get them off your back, and
then find a way to get to Florida. Alaric’s sister is named Alisa Kwong. She’s in the Ferry Pass Refugee Center. Get her out.”

“Then what?”

I stepped forward, leaning in to kiss her forehead the way she used to kiss mine when there was an appropriate photo opportunity. Until that moment, I hadn’t really realized that I was taller than her now. “Do what you couldn’t do for us, Mom,” I said. “Love her. Until Alaric can come back for her, just love her.”

She nodded. “I’ll try,” she said. “That’s all that I can promise.”

“That’s fine.” I smiled at her. She smiled back. She was still smiling when I slammed the gun into her temple. I wasn’t trying to knock her out—the human head is thicker than most movies want you to believe, and knocking someone out without killing them is a precise science—just catch her off guard. I managed that. She staggered backward with a shout, the skin split and bleeding above her eye. That was going to be one hell of a shiner.

She didn’t grab for the gun. She didn’t swear at me. She just clapped a hand over the wound and pointed to the door, saying, “Go. We’ll take care of things from here.”

I went. As I ran through the kitchen, I threw Mom’s gun into the sink. It was still half-full of soapy dishwater. The gun sank into the bubbles. I broke into a run.

Dad and Becks were in the garage with the door standing open. The sky was starting to lighten, hints of sunrise creeping up around the edges. “Come on,” I said, gesturing for Becks to follow me. “Dad—”

“The scanner says they’re eight blocks out. Miss Atherton has the jammer. Now
go
.” He adjusted his
glasses with one hand. His shoulder was bleeding copiously. There was no telling what Becks had used to make the wound. Mom’s toolbox provided a wealth of possibilities.