Blackout (30 page)

“Now you’re thinking. I have to wonder whether the mosquitoes are fertile. If someone built them as a biological weapon, why would they have given them the capacity to breed? All that’s going to do is increase the chances of them hurting the people you’re trying to protect.”

“So how did they wind up in Cuba?”

“Weapons test. Cuba did too well during the Rising. It was almost insulting to certain people. I’m sure they would have loved the opportunity to run a little fear-inducing trial on soil close enough to ours that they could look horrified and appalled when someone implied we might have had something to do with it.”

“George…”

“I’m not being nihilistic, Shaun. I’m being
right
, and you know it.”

“Yeah.” I glanced out the window at the high concrete fence dividing the tiny back road we were on from the safe concrete river of I-5. “I just wish I’d stop reminding myself.”

George was gone when I looked back. I shook my head, trying to clear the malaise brought on by her last statement, and turned the radio on, scanning channels until I found something with a catchy beat and simplistic lyrics. Then I switched to NPR.

National Public Radio is a dinosaur in the modern age of podcasts and Internet radio stations, but that’s
part of what makes it useful, because when you turn on NPR, you’re getting the thoughts and opinions of the part of the population that has not yet moved into a purely virtual format. Things still move a little slower there. Not predigitally slow—I’ve read the history books, I know how long a single story used to dominate the cycle—but slow enough that you can learn a thing or two, if you’re willing to listen.

Two experts were arguing about ways to save the Everglades. One wanted to send in CDC teams in full-on moon suits to rescue as many noninfected animals as possible, and then dump enough DDT into the water table to sterilize the ecosystem for a hundred years. “We can breed them in preserves and exhibits until we confirm that the Everglades are safe, and then return them to their original environment,” was the gist of his argument, wedded to a firm belief that instinct would override generations of zoo-bound living and lead to an immediate, complete return to the wild as soon as the money ran out and somebody in accounting decided it was time to let the animals go.

The other expert claimed this would result not only in the permanent loss of a major piece of America’s biological diversity, but render most of Florida uninhabitable whether we got rid of the mosquitoes or not, since pesticide would inevitably get into the human water supply. He was in favor of releasing thousands of insectivores into the impacted areas and letting them take care of things the natural way. And by “insectivores,” he meant “bats.” He wanted to gather as many bats as possible and dump them on the Everglades, where they could do their batty thing and eat all the mosquitoes. Because the people of Florida would, of course, be totally cool with this.

At no point did either of them mention the idea that the mosquitoes had been
made
, rather than being a natural worst-case scenario. All their solutions started from the premise that the mosquitoes just happened, much like the storm that brought them to our shores. Somehow, that only made me more certain that George was right. Somebody made these mosquitoes, and somebody was going to have a way to deal with them. They were just waiting for the time to be right, just like they’d waited for the time to be right before letting the bugs out of the box in the first place.

Becks climbed back into her seat right about the time the speakers got really involved in yelling at each other. Yawning and rumpling her hair with one hand, she squinted at the radio. “Do I wanna know?”

“I can’t get a good wireless signal out here,” I said. “So we’re listening to the radio.”

“Listening to the radio talk about
what
?”

“Bats.”

Becks frowned, still clearly half asleep. “Bats?”

“Yeah. You know, flap flap, squeak squeak, works for Dracula? Bats. Because we need a vampire problem to go with our zombie problem.” I opened the cooler we had wedged between the seats, pulling out a can of Coke. “Here. You look like you could use the caffeine.”

“Oh, thank God. I thought I was going to have to deal with this without chemical assistance.” Becks popped the tab before downing half the soda in one long slug. She didn’t seem to realize what she was drinking until she lowered the can and blinked at the label. “Shaun… this is a Coke.”

“I know.”

“You gave me one of your Cokes.”

“I know.”

“Why did you…?”

“Because you needed it.” I glanced her way, smiling just a little—just enough to show her I meant it. “If the Masons can let us go and agree to get Alisa out of Florida, I can be selfless enough to give you a can of Coke.”

Becks’s expression sobered. “Do you really think they’ll go after her?”

“I do, yeah.” The experts on NPR were still arguing. I leaned forward and turned the radio down. “I don’t think they’ve changed completely. I mean, knowing Mom, she’s probably already convinced herself I cheated by bringing up Phillip, and that she and Dad let us go out of the goodness of their hearts, not because it was the right thing to do. But rescuing a little girl from a refugee camp in an interdicted hazard zone? That’s the kind of ratings you can’t buy. It’s just gravy that they have that whole martial law thing going on over there, which gives Dad an excuse to trot out a bunch of old chatter about personal responsibility and freedom of the press.”

“So they’re going to do it for the ratings.” Becks’s mouth twisted into a disapproving line. She took another large gulp of Coke, presumably to stop herself from saying anything she’d regret later.

It didn’t matter. There was nothing she could say that I hadn’t heard before. Some of it I had heard from George. Some of it I had said myself. “There are worse reasons, and the fact that they’re always in the public eye means that if they get her back to Berkeley, they can’t mistreat her. They can be themselves, which is bad enough, but Alisa’s older than George and I were when they took us in. She’ll be fine until Alaric can get there and take her away from them.”

“You’re willing to count on that?”

“I don’t think we have much of a choice. We can’t head for Florida. We’d never make it past the barricades. We need to get to the rest of the team and regroup.”

“How long before we reach Seattle?”

“We’re about twenty miles out. I figure I’ll try calling Mahir right before we hit the city limits—if he picks up, we can go straight to where he is, and not need to keep the connection open.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Becks asked, taking a smaller sip of her soda.

“I have no idea. I’m sort of making all this up as I go along, you know.”

You’re doing an excellent job
.

“Thank you,” I said automatically, and winced.

Becks politely ignored my slip. “I know you are. I don’t envy you the lead on this story.”

“Hey, it’s worked so far. What are you going to do when we meet the Monkey? You could be anyone. What’s your new identity going to be?”

“I think I’ll be an Internet journalist.” She smiled. “I understand they don’t need much in the way of training. Or brains. How about you?”

“I’m going to ask for anything that lets me disappear.” I kept my eyes on the road. “This is going to end soon, Becks. It’s gone too far to last much longer. Too many people have died. So if I get through this story alive… I just want to be left alone.”

“You want to be alone with George,” said Becks.

“Maybe.”

“I don’t… Shaun, I…” Becks paused, taking a breath. “You know I love you, right? As a friend. I may have loved you as something more once, but that’s over now. You know that.”

“I do.”

“So it’s as a friend, and as a colleague, that I ask… are you sure? You’re not holding on that tightly as it is. Going off to be alone with the voices in your head—”

“It’s not just voices anymore. I see her sometimes.” That stopped her. I continued. “She was sitting in that seat not long before you woke up. We were talking. If I get deep enough into the conversation, if I forget long enough, sometimes I can even feel her. I’m
going
to wind up alone with the voices in my head. The only question is whether or not I get the rest of you hurt in the process. Mahir was Georgia’s second. You’re mine. You know how badly I could fuck everything up if I refused to let go. So let me plan to let go. It might help me hold on a little longer.”

Becks sighed. “You’re asking me to help you turn into a crazy hermit living in the mountains somewhere.”

“Yeah. I am.”

“As long as you realize it.” She slumped in her seat, giving the jamming device a light smack with the heel of her hand. “How does this damn thing work, anyway?”

“You want the technical answer, or the honest answer?” I paused. “Actually, those are the same answer.”

“Shoot.”

“I have no fucking clue. Buffy was always real impressed with it, I know that; she wanted to build one for us, but other stuff kept getting in the way, and then we were working for a presidential hopeful, so it didn’t seem like a good political move.” And then she was dead, and she wasn’t going to be building anything for anybody. Things would have gone so differently if she’d lived. She would have seen what was happening and turned on the conspiracy that had turned her against
us, and all this might already be over. George might still be alive. And I might not be looking forward to going all the way insane.

“It was nice of the Masons to give it to us.”

“Yeah, it was. I figure we’ll kill it with a hammer as soon as it’s served its purpose.” Becks shot me a scandalized look. I shook my head. “You really think they don’t have some sort of a tracking beacon in this thing? Buffy built alarms into the van security system that would have gone off if it were broadcasting—she had to reprogram them not to go off when Maggie got too close, since her parents have her rigged up with ‘do not abduct’ heiress crap. So I figure they’re just waiting until we stop moving long enough that they can assume we’re not in the vehicle anymore, and then they’re going to start pinging our position.”

Becks stared at me. “If they’re planning to use the thing to track us, why did you let me take it?”

“Because it was the only thing that would get us out of Berkeley. Even if the Masons just called the local cops on us, they’d be turning on every tracking chip they could think of as soon as we ran. And I somehow doubt they just called the local cops—or called them at all.”

“Why?”

“It took too long for them to get there. There’s a police station less than eight blocks away. My parents were turning us in for the ratings, remember? They called the CDC. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” It explained both the delay in their arrival, and why the Masons listened when I said they were making a mistake. The CDC is still the government, and after what happened during the Ryman campaign, trusting them might not have come as easy as it once did.

“Right.” Becks sighed and slumped in her seat. Then she leaned forward and turned the radio back up, signaling that she was done talking for the moment. I smiled a little, catching her meaning, and returned my focus to the road.

Things are almost over
, murmured George.

“I know,” I said, and kept driving.

The outskirts of Seattle loomed up with surprising speed; the relative obscurity of the roads we’d been taking meant that there was minimal traffic. I dug a burner ear cuff out of my pocket, snapping it on. A tap triggered the connection. “This is Shaun Mason activating security profile Pardy. Something’s wrong with Brenda, we’re out of Mister Pibb, and hunting season’s here. Now let’s go to Hollywood.”

“Your taste in passwords is crap,” commented Becks.

I made a shushing motion. Mahir picked up after two rings, asking, “Oh, thank God. Shaun? Is that you?”

“If it weren’t, somebody would have just gotten really, really lucky trying to turn this thing on. Where are you guys?”

Mahir’s voice turned instantly suspicious. “Why?”

“Because we’ve just reached Seattle, and we’d like to come join you. Especially if wherever you are has a bathroom. Is there a bathroom? Please tell me there’s a bathroom. We’ve been driving for like, twenty hours, and I need to piss like you wouldn’t believe.”

“TMI, Shaun,” said Becks.

“How did you get out of Berkeley?”

“Wait, what?” Now it was my turn to get suspicious. “What are you talking about?”

“Several local Berkeley bloggers posted yesterday morning about a surprise CDC hazard team drill being run in a residential neighborhood—and their target
was your family home. The Masons have even posted about it. They said they were glad to cooperate with anything that might improve safety procedures and response times.” He paused before adding, grimly, “We thought they might have turned you in.”

I sighed. “They kind of did. They just changed their minds before things could go all the way horribly wrong. How did they look?”

“Your mum had a black eye—”

“Yeah, I gave her that.”

“—and a broken arm. Your dad just had some taped-up fingers.”

“What?” I demanded. “I didn’t do
that
. Neither did Becks. The black eye was so it would be believable when they said we got away.”

“Apparently, it wasn’t believable enough for the CDC. Snap your transmitter to the GPS, I’ll send you the address for our hotel. Wipe it as soon as you get here.”

“Done. See you soon, Mahir.”

“One hopes,” he said.

I removed the cuff from my ear and handed it to Becks. “Here—connect this to the GPS. Mahir’s going to send us directions on how to get to the hotel he and Maggie are staying at. Keep the jammer going. The Masons made the news.”

“What?” Becks glanced at me in confusion as she connected the ear cuff to the GPS. The GPS unit beeped and began to display its “loading” screen.

“Mom has a broken arm. Dad has some broken fingers. Think they tripped and fell after we left the house?” I gripped the wheel harder than necessary, resisting the urge to slam my foot down on the gas and race my anger away. “The fucking CDC, Becks. My
parents called the fucking CDC and said we’d be waiting for them, gift-wrapped and unsuspecting, and when we weren’t there, the fucking CDC showed their disappointment.”