Deadline (14 page)

M
aggie’s place is located six miles outside a town called, I swear to God, Weed. Weed, California, one of the smallest urban areas intentionally reclaimed after the Rising. What made them so special? Choice of location: Weed offers convenient access to three of California’s major rivers, and with red meat permanently off the menu, the fishing industry is one of the hottest things going. If you want river-fished trout to be one of your menu options, you need to reclaim your fishing towns. Weed was rescued from the oblivion that claimed most of the towns and cities built too close to the wild, and it was rescued
because
it was so close to the wild. Sometimes, logic just doesn’t work.

Driving from Oakland to Weed takes about four and a half hours if there aren’t any quarantine barriers on I-5. According to the GPS, we were looking at clear sailing the whole way. I signaled for Becks to follow and pulled back onto the road, turning north. It was time for us to get the hell out of Dodge.

Shaun?

“I’m not in the mood right now, George.” The roar
of the wind ripped my words away as soon as they were spoken, but that really didn’t matter; she’d hear me. She always heard me, even when I didn’t say a word.

I lost him, too.

“He died on my watch, George.
My
watch. That’s not supposed to happen.”

Bitter amusement tinged her tone as she replied,
So, what, they’re only supposed to die on mine?

I didn’t have an answer for that, and so I didn’t answer her at all. She took the hint, falling silent as the bike chewed away at the miles between us and our eventual destination. The van stayed visible in my mirrors, following at a close but careful distance. There were no other cars to be seen anywhere along the highway in either direction. A reflective yellow sign caught the light and threw it back at me as we went roaring past:
CAUTION—DEER HABITAT
.

Deer can grow to more than forty pounds and meet the standards necessary for Kellis-Amberlee amplification. We can’t wipe them out wholesale—ecological concerns aside, they’re herbivores, which means their food supply hasn’t been compromised, and they breed like the world’s biggest rabbits. Periodically, somebody introduces legislation to firebomb the forests and take care of the deer problem once and for all, and promptly gets shouted down by everyone from the naturalists to the lumber industry. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other. I just find it interesting that kids apparently used to cry when Bambi’s mother died. George and I both held our breaths, and then cheered when she didn’t reanimate and try to eat her son.

A small orange light started blinking at the top right-hand corner of my visor, signaling that the van was trying to open a connection. Did I want to talk to
any of the people who were in the van? No. No, I did not. Did that mean I could get away with ignoring the call?

Unfortunately, no, it didn’t. Smothering the urge to hit the gas and drive away from the trappings of responsibility as fast as I could, I said, “Answer call.”

Becks spoke in my ear a moment later, voice rendered irregular and crackly by the sound of the wind whipping by outside my helmet. “Shaun, you there?”

“No, it’s the Easter Bunny,” I said. “Who do you expect is going to be answering my intercom? What do you want, Becks? We’re a long way from Maggie’s.”

“That’s actually what I wanted. We didn’t have time to prep the vehicles for another road trip before we left the—” She stopped, choking off the sentence with a small hiccup. Her voice was softer when she spoke again, making it even harder to hear above the roaring of the wind. “I mean, we’re not all that good for gas over here. I don’t know what your status is, but we’ve got about another fifty miles, tops, before we’re going to have an emergency.”

Fuck. “What does the GPS say?”

“There’s a truck stop about twenty miles up the road that takes journalist credentials and has a good safety rating. Clean, reliable blood tests, no outbreaks in the past nine years.”

With our luck, we’ll fix that for them.

“Probably,” I said, my shoulders sagging with relief. George had been quiet since I told her I wasn’t in the mood, and I’d been irrationally afraid that somehow, the trauma of losing someone else who mattered to me had combined with my anger and managed to repair my brain, making me fit the normal standards for “sane.” Screw sane. I don’t want anything that makes
her stop talking to me. That would drive me crazy for real.

“Shaun? What was that?”

“Nothing, Becks. The truck stop sounds fine. Why don’t you call ahead and let them know we’re coming?” If the truck stop was ready for our arrival, they’d have someone waiting at the gate to run the blood tests and let us inside. Much faster and more convenient than calling from the driveway and chilling our heels while some underpaid attendant tried to pull himself away from his coffee.

I was about to hang up when a thought struck me, making my stomach drop all the way to my toes. “Fuck—what about the Doc? She’s legally dead, and her only clean ID just went up with Oakland.”

She’s died twice in under a week,
commented George.
Even I never managed that.

“Hush,” I muttered.

Becks ignored my interction as she replied, “We’re way ahead of you. Alaric dug out one of Buffy’s old clubbing IDs for her. It won’t hold up to major scrutiny, but it’ll do until we get to Maggie’s and he can find something more stable.”

“Awesome. Get a hat or something on her—we don’t want anybody getting a good look at her face. And she stays in the van; somebody else can buy her drinks.”

“Got it,” said Becks. “Terminate call.” There was a click, and I was alone with the sound of the wind once more.

The wind and the voice that lurked inside my head. “George?”

Yeah?

“Is it always like this? Losing somebody that counted on you?”

You say that like it happened all the time.

“You did it first.”

Yeah.
A long pause, and the faintest sensation of a sigh at the back of my mind.
But what else is new?

George always did everything first. She talked before I did, read before I did… about the only thing I ever did first was figure out the game the Masons were playing with us, and that was as much luck as anything else. She was the one who decided to become a professional journalist, hauling me along in her excitement. I went along with it in the beginning to make her happy, and later because it turned out I was actually pretty good at poking things with sticks for the amusement of others. It was the first thing I’d ever found that I was really good at, that I really enjoyed doing, and I never would have found it if it weren’t for her. She was the one who suggested we follow Senator Ryman’s presidential campaign. She was the first one to recognize what it had the potential to do for our careers.

She was the first one to die.

I drove quietly, giving her time to collect herself. Finally, slowly, she said,
It’s different every time. Losing Buffy was… It was basically the end of the world, but I held it together. I had to hold it together.

“Why?”

Because,
she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world,
you needed me to.

There was nothing I could say to that. I put my head down, gunned the throttle, and drove straight down the highway until the neon sign of a truck stop beckoned, promising food, fuel, and lots of burly rednecks with guns who were just aching for the chance to put down an outbreak. Everyone’s got the places where they feel safe. My top three would probably be the middle of
an Irwin meet-up, inside a CDC lockdown facility, and any truck stop in North America. You want to talk scary survivalist mentality, go find yourself a trucker, and then get back to me.

Three guards in oil-stained denim met us at the gates with handheld blood testing units. One guard for me, two guards for the van. My attendant was an unsmiling, pimple-faced teenager whose nametag identified him, probably inaccurately, as “Matt.” I didn’t bother trying to engage him in conversation. I jus pulled off my glove and held out my hand to let him do his job. He grunted appreciatively at the professionalism, jamming the test unit over my hand without pausing to make sure my fingers were straightened properly. It wouldn’t change the test results; all one of those boxes cares about is blood. I winced as he bent my pinkie, but didn’t say a word. Better to let him take care of things before I made him think of me as a person.

The lights on the top of the unit cycled from red to green, stabilizing. A grin split his cratered face, transforming it into something that was almost endearing. “Looks like you’re clean and clear, Mr. Mason,” he said, further confirming that Becks had radioed ahead with our credentials. “Love your site. Those reports you sent out of Sacramento last year? They were amazing.” He paused before adding shyly, “I was really sorry to hear about your sister.”

I plastered my best “Gosh, no, it doesn’t hurt at all when you bring up George randomly in conversation. Thanks so much for checking with me first” smile across my face, glad that the helmet’s visor mostly obscured my eyes, and said, “Thanks. It’s been an interesting time.”

“Well, welcome to Rudy’s. I hope we’ve got everything you need.”

“Thanks,” I repeated, and tugged my glove back on before starting the bike and rolling past the gates, into the truck stop proper. The other two guards were still busy testing the occupants of the van; maybe even double-checking Kelly’s credentials. I felt better knowing that she was using something Buffy built. The Monkey might be the best in the business, but Buffy was the one whose work I knew and trusted.

I set my bike to auto-fuel while I ducked into the truck stop’s generously designed convenience store, wandering past racks of real artificial cheese nachos and withered all-soy hot dogs to find the sodas. I paused in the act of opening the Coke cooler, looking longingly at the pot of coffee simmering next to the hot dogs. That stuff was probably ancient, tarlike, created through the slow compression of the bones of prehistoric creatures until their fossilized blood was pumped up from the very center of the planet to fortify long-distance truckers.

Go ahead.

“Huh?” I stopped where I was, blinking like an idiot. Not exactly a safe thing to do, since disorientation and jerkiness are early signs of Kellis-Amberlee amplification. My team may be used to my conversations with my dead sister, but the rest of the world isn’t quite so understanding.

You want coffee. Get some coffee.

“But—”

I already made you drink a hooker from Candyland once today. I can show a little mercy.
There was amusement tinged with sadness in her tone. It took me a while to learn to read how she was feeling—I wasn’t used to
watching for cues in a disembodied voice—but now that I knew, I couldn’t un-know.
Besides, you’ve earned it.

“Blow up one employee for one cup of coffee, huh?” I murmured, stepping away from the coolers and heading for the steaming prehistoric coffee. George always hated the taste of the stuff. I just don’t understand why anyone would want to get their caffeine in a less-efficient form.

Alaric must have lost the “who has to leave the car” coin toss; he was coming into the convenience store as I was coming out, the biggest cup of coffee they were willing to sell me clenched firmly in my hands. Alaric glanced at the steaming cup and blinked, raising his eyebrows. The question was clear in his expression. Lucky for me, I’ve had a lot of time to practice being the oblivious one.

“I’m going to go double-check the bike and make sure all the windows on the van are clean while you take care of things in here.” I sipped my coffee, reveling in the feeling of it searing its way down my throat. It was as thick and bitter as I’d hoped. “Make sure you remember to get something for Becks and the Doc to snack on. It’s a long way to Weed, and Maggie may not have dinner on the table when we get there.”

Alaric frowned. “Boss—”

“Go ahead and use the company card. When I get the bill, I’ll tell me that I authorized it, and I’m sure I’ll be willing to let the charge stand.” I offered him a bright, disingenuous smile and brushed quickly past as I left the convenience store, heading for the fueling stations.

The sun was dipping lower in the sky; we’d be making most of the drive to Weed in full darkness. Even in today’s safety-oriented society, there aren’t lights on
most of I-5; just around the exits to inhabited areas. Those are also the places where the guard stations are actually staffed, and where nice men with guns will be happy to “help” if you go and get yourself infected. Good Samaritans, every single one of them. Thanks to the laws regarding infection, they don’t even have to be certain before they shoot; anything that can stand up as reasonable doubt in a court of law is enough to excuse them putting a bullet through your skull. The farther into the wild you go, the less reasonable that doubt has to be.

“Night-riding,” I said, sipping my coffee again. “Gosh. That’s just what I was hoping I’d be doing tonight. Driving down a deserted highway in the dark is always superfun.”

I’d do it for you if I could.

“I know,” I said. Alaric was coming out of the convenience store, practically staggering under his load of junk food and bottled sodas. I tossed my half-full coffee cup into the nearest trash can and pulled my helmet over my head, offering him a quick salute as I kicked one leg over my bike. The faster I made for the gate, the less time we’d have to talk about what happened. There’d be time for talking when we got to Maggie’s place. We wouldn’t be able to help it. For now, all I wanted to do was drive, and I didn’t even particularly feel like doing that.