Deadline (12 page)

It had been almost fifteen years since the last major outbreak in Oakland. You want the recipe for a relatively zombie-free existence? It’s easy. Take an armed population, give them an ingrained bunker mentality, and tell them they can’t depend on anyone outside the community. They’ll police their borders so well that you’ll probably never need to worry about them again. Trouble is, that sort of border patrol can wind up hurting as much as it helps. Sure, Oakland had all the security features you’d expect to find in a major urban center, but most people didn’t know exactly how they worked or how to take full advantage of them. They could handle their home defense systems. The public defenses were a little more difficult.

At least half the storefronts I’d seen during my brief survey of the street had been standing open, with their
emergency gates fully retracted. Some of the blast shutters had managed to descend, but not nearly enough of them to make a difference, especially when the doors weren’t locked. Sealed blast shutters on a building whose doors were standing open wouldn’t save anyone. They’d just make sure no one could get out once the infected got in.

About half the unsealed windows had been broken—shatterproof glass is a much more academic concept when the infected are involved. They don’t have any functioning pain receptors to slow them down, and they’ll keep beating themselves against the glass until something gives way. When you’re talking about civic-use storefronts in a relatively low-income neighborhood, it’s going to be the glass that gives. There had been blood splashed all around the sidewalk, and there wasn’t much screaming coming from our immediate vicinity. For most of the locals, it was long past too late.

I stepped up to the server rack and started to disconnect drives and flip the switches to transfer as much of our data as possible to secured off-site backups. There are some files we try never to keep live on an out-facing network, including most of the research we’ve done into the conspiracy that killed my sister. Even that data gets backed up daily, both to the drives I was shoving into my pockets and to other, off-site drives, stored in safety deposit boxes, hidden caches, and stranger places all over the Bay Area. I feel I’ve earned my paranoia.

I could hear the reassuring sound of Becks loading her rifle behind me, underscored by the equally reassuring sound of Alaric emptying the contents of the primary weapons locker onto the apartment floor. He might not be a field man, but he’s one of the most
well-informed weapons geeks I’ve ever met. That’s not a contradiction in terms. Being comfortable on the firing range doesn’t mean you’ll have a damn clue what to do when a zombie comes at you. The belief that the two skill sets translate directly gets a lot of people killed.

You’re getting distracted,
chided George. She sounded anxious. I couldn’t blame her.
Focus, asshole. This would be a stupid way to die.

“I know, I know.” I shoved the last of the drives into my pocket. Time to start moving.

The sound of my voice snapped Kelly out of her fugue. “What do we do?” she asked, in a low, tightly controlled voice. Her gaze darted around the apartment like she expected zombies to come bursting through the walls. She’d probably never been in an actual outbreak before. Talk about your trial by fire: from illegal cloning and faking your own death to trying to survive your personal slice of the zombie apocalypse in just one afternoon.

I’m man enough to admit that under most circumstances, I might have enjoyed watching the biological error messages flash across Kelly’s face. Maybe it’s cruel, but I don’t care. There’s nothing funnier than seeing somebody who thinks of the infected as somebody else’s problem realize that they, too, could join the mindless zombie hordes. Most medical personnel fall into that category; by the time they have hard proof that they’re not somehow above all harm, they’re usually either dead or infected. Either way, they’re not exactly making reports after that.

There’s a time and a place for laughing at the suffering of others. This wasn’t either. “We get the hell out of here,” I said, striding toward Dave. “What’s the situa
tion at the parking garage? Do we have vehicle access, or are we just fucked?”

“They managed to take out the human security, but the autolockdown kept them from getting inside,” Dave reported, his eyes never leaving the screen. His fingers flew across his keyboard and the ones to either side of it like a concert pianist in the middle of a symphony, never missing a beat. The screens connected to the secondary keyboards flickered windows and blocks of code so fast that they were almost strobing. None of it seemed to bother Dave. This was his element, and he was damn well in control of it. “The tunnel’s clear—for the moment. The building’s automated defense systems include bleach and acid sprayers. I’ve managed to suppress the acid. I can’t stop the bleach.”

“That’s what gas masks and goggles are for. You sure there’s nothing in the parking garage?”

“It should be clear all the way to the van.” His hands didn’t slow down once. “Outer perimeter hasn’t been breached yet. I give it fifteen minutes if they keep slamming on the doors the way they are. Ten minutes if anybody gets bitten, panics, and drives their car into one of the fuse boxes on the street.”

“How likely is that?”

“Move fast.”

“Got it.” I turned. “Alaric, Becks, status?”

“Almost ready.” Becks tossed me a grenade. I clipped it to my belt. “We could blast our way out of anything, but…”

“But we need to assume the entire population of Oakland now wants to eat us. I know the drill. Alaric, how are we for gas masks?”

“Good.” He looked up, face flushed. “Kelly, what’s your weapons rating?”

She blanched. “I—it wasn’t a priority for lab work, and so I didn’t—”

All activity stopped as people turned to stare at her. Even Dave’s fingers ceased their tapping. The screams and sirens from outside seemed louder without our preparations to blur them.

“Please tell me you didn’t let it expire,” I said, quietly.

“It wasn’t necessary for lab work,” she said, her voice practically a whisper/fon

I didn’t need to swear. George was doing it for me, loudly and with great enthusiasm. The fact that no one else in the room could hear her was purely academic; it was making
me
feel better, and at the moment, that was all I gave a shit about. “That changes things,” I said. “Alaric, you’re on Kelly. Where she goes, you go, at all times. And Kelly, before you make the privacy protest, there are no potty breaks during a zombie outbreak.”

Becks raised her eyebrows, looking at me.

“You’ve got another job to take care of.” Dave’s typing resumed as I spoke. The sound took the edge off the screaming from outside. Gesturing toward the pile of weaponry, I said, “Suit up, take what you need, and hit the garage. I want that tunnel absolutely secured, and I want a thorough sweep of the vehicles before we get out of here. You’re going to be taking the van.”

Her eyes widened as she realized what I wasn’t saying. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Shaun, you’re not driving a motorcycle out through an active outbreak. That’s not just stupid; that’s suicidal.”

“You’ve all been saying I was suicidal for months
now, so I guess it’s time I proved you right.” I shook my head. “This isn’t open for negotiation. Get ready, and get moving. Alaric, after you’re done dealing with the ammo, go up and check the roof, see if any of our neighbors are up there, and check for helicopter evacuations on the nearby buildings. Once you’ve got an idea of the situation, regroup downstairs next to the door to the parking garage.”

“Got it,” he said, nodding once. He didn’t argue with my orders or try to negotiate for leaving Kelly behind; he just stood and headed for the door. George trained her people well, and Alaric started out as one of hers.

Kelly hesitated on the cusp of following him into the hall, clutching the police baton Becks had shoved into her hands against her chest like a child would clutch a teddy bear. “Where are you going?”

“My apartment.” I grabbed the rifle I’d taken from the closet, resting it against my shoulder. “I need to get something.”

Dave glanced away from his keyboard. “Shaun—”

“Don’t. Stay here, keep the network traffic moving, keep shifting the files we’re going to need later, and just don’t.” Kelly stepped out into the hall, following Alaric. I looked from Dave to Becks, shaking my head. “I’ll be right back.”

I don’t believe you just said that.

“I’ve been saying it all my life,” I muttered, and left the apartment.

The emergency lights were on all the way along the hall, bathing it in bloody red light that was supposed to “convey a feeling of urgency” while “reducing the mental trauma of possible biological contamination.” Government doublespeak for “red freaks people out so they move faster” and “it’s harder to see what you’re
stepping in that way.” o make matters worse, the emergency shutters on our building had activated, at least in the public areas where we hadn’t bothered to install any overrides. The shutters blocked out the screaming. They also blocked out the daylight.

Leave it, Shaun. It’s not that important.

“Pretty sure me being the one with the body means I get to decide what’s important.” The stairs were clear. I took them two at a time, ready to start shooting if anything moved in a way I didn’t like. Nothing did.

Shaun—

“Shut up, George,” I said, and opened my apartment door.

Every blogger keeps a black box in case something goes wrong. No, that’s not right. Every
good
blogger keeps a black box in case something goes wrong. Every
sane
blogger keeps a black box in case something goes wrong. Every blogger you should be willing to work with keeps a black box, because every blogger you should be willing to work with understands that “things going wrong” isn’t an
if
. It’s a
when.

Black boxes take a lot of forms. They’re named after the boxes the FAA puts on airplanes to record information in the event of a crash. The idea behind a blogger’s black box is basically the same: That’s where we record the information that we need to survive when nothing else does. George’s black box was built to withstand every known decontamination protocol, and a few that were still just theoretical. It was the first thing I got back from our van after she died. Becks and the others might think it wasn’t worth going out into the open for, but they’d be wrong. It was the only thing worth going out into the open for.

George and I basically grew up online. What with
the Masons cheerfully exploiting our childhoods for ratings and our own eventual entry into the world of journalism, we never had many secrets. Everything we ever did wound up in somebody’s in-box. Almost everything, anyway. There were always the things we didn’t want to share, or didn’t know how to. That’s why we kept paper journals. It was the only way to steal ourselves a little privacy. That “we” is intentional, by the way; George was always the thinker, while I was always the doer, but we kept one diary between us for almost twenty years. We still do. I write my pages, and then I close my eyes and let her take care of hers.

I don’t read them anymore. It’s better if I just imagine that they’re real.

The black box contained our paper journals. Her medical records, her extra sunglasses, her first handheld MP3 recorder, and data files from the start of the campaign up until the point where she stopped recording. Her bottles of expired pain medication. All together, it was the most physical part of my sister that I had left, and there was no way I was going to run off and leave it behind.

Getting my shit together took less than five minutes. I crammed the black box into a duffel bag, along with all the weapons I could grab, and crammed extra ammo into the space remaining. There was a picture of us on my bedside table. I grabbed it and slipped it into the pocket of my jacket. Whenever you have to evacuate, there’s always the chance that you won’t be able to come back. Take whatever you’re not willing to live without.

I paused at the door, glancing back at the boxes and the barren walls. Everything I cared about could fit in one bag, the pockets of my coat, and my head. There
was something tragic about that. Or there would be, if I let myself think about it.

Don’t,
whispered George in the back of my head, almost too softly for me to hear.

It’s scary when she fades out like that. It reminds me that, technically, her presence makes me crazy, and sometimes, crazy people get sane again. “I won’t,” I said brusquely, and pulled the door shut as I hurried toward the stairs.

My headset connector started beeping angrily when I was only halfway there. I unsnapped it from my collar and jammed it into my ear, demanding, “What?”

“We’ve got a problem.” Dave sounded so calm that he might as well have been telling me to update the shopping list. “Alaric just got back from the roof.”

“That was fast.” I kept walking, stretching my legs until I was taking the stairs three at a time. It still didn’t feel fast enough. It was the best I could do.

“Well, it turns out that he’s had enough field training to know that when you open the roof door on a mass of the infected, you should stop and turn around.”

My toe caught on the lip of the stair I was stepping over, sending me tumbling forward. I grabbed the railing, banging my elbow in the process.
“What?!”
I barked, in almost perfect unison with George.