Deadline (48 page)

I guess there’s nothing in the world that can’t lie to us,
said George, sounding subdued.
I think I’m glad I died before I found that out.

There was nothing I could say to that. I cleared my throat, shattering the silence. “We’re on our way home. I can’t tell you how we’re going to be coming—it’s not safe, and I’m not sure—but I want you to stay inside, lock yourselves down, and don’t go out for
anything
. I mean
anything
.”

“The dogs—” started Maggie.

“That’s what you have security for! Call them out of the woods and make
them
take the little crap factories out for walkies. Dammit, Maggie, I don’t think you understand how deep the shit is right now. Alaric, start backing up our databases everywhere you possibly can. Send encrypted copies to everyone in the employee database, everyone who’s ever
been
in the employee database, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend,
everyone
.”

“Everyone?” asked Alaric.

I hesitated.

Do it,
said George.

“Yeah—everyone,” I said. “Make the flat-drop. Encrypt the files first, to slow things down, but make it. We’ll deal with it later, assuming there
is
a later. Both of you, make sure your wills are up-to-date. Maggie, tell your Fictionals to stay the fuck home until further notice. I don’t want anyone coming within a hundred miles of Weed if they have a choice in the matter.”

“All right, boss,” said Alaric, quietly.

“Turn left at the next intersection,” said Mahir.

“Got it.” I slowed slightly as I took the turn. There were still no other cars in sight. “I’m dead serious here, guys. We’re on lockdown until further notice. Treat every door and window as a sealed air lock, and open them only if your lives depend on it. Your lives probably
do
depend on keeping them closed, since these assholes have clearly demonstrated that they wouldn’t know a scruple if it bit them on the ass. Mahir, how’s our network security?”

“Iave no fucking idea, Shaun. If you’ve got a way of bringing Buffy back from the dead, maybe
she
could tell you. The only thing
I
can tell you is that you’ve got a right turn coming up in a block and a half.”

“Right. Well, the dead are walking, boys and girls, but they’re not doing it in our favor, so for right now, we’re on our own. I don’t have a safe way of transmitting our files to you.”

Maggie broke in. “I’ll tell my Fictionals I’ve had another problem with the plumbing, and keep anything more detailed to the secure servers. Will you be able to call in again at all?”

“Maybe,” I hedged. “I’m not going to promise anything, but I’ll try. For the moment, assume you won’t be hearing from us until we arrive, and that we won’t be staying long before it’s everybody out. We wouldn’t be coming back at all if there was anywhere safer to go.” The CDC would figure out that we’d been staying at Maggie’s place, eventually. I was just praying that their fear of her parents would keep them from doing anything drastic before we had time to grab our shit and hit the road. “Pack a bag and be ready to move.”

“On it.”

“Good. This shouldn’t be more than a three-day drive, and that’s assuming we actually stop to sleep. If we’re not there inside of the week—”

“If you’re not here in a week, don’t bother coming,” she said. “We won’t be here when you arrive.”

“That’s the right answer.” I glanced over at Mahir. His attention was still focused on the phone in his hand. “Mahir? You want to send a message for your wife?”

“No.” He looked up, offering me a strained smile. “She knew where I was going. She knew I might not come back. It’s best if we don’t complicate that further, don’t you think?”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. I shook my head and checked the rearview mirror. Becks was still
in watch position, expression grim as she scanned the windows. “Becks? Any messages you wanted to send?”

“Fuck that shit.” Her narrowed eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, almost daring me to argue. “We’re going to make it home, and then we’re going to take them all down.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. Alaric? Maggie? You’ve got your marching orders. Now march. We’ll check in if we can, and if we can’t, just keep the porch light burning until our time runs out.”

“It’s been good working with you, boss,” said Alaric.

“Same here, buddy, but it’s not over yet.”

“Your lips to God’s ears,” said Maggie. “All of you, stay safe, and don’t pull any stupid heroics. I don’t want to flee to the Bahamas with nobody but Alaric for company.”

“Truly a fate worse than death,” deadpanned Mahir.

“We’ll do our best,” I said. “Stay safe.”

There was nowhere good that the call could go from there, and we were almost at the limit of what the phone’s security would allow. I killed the connection before pulling off the ear cuff and dropping it into the coin tray between the van’s front seats. “We’ll stop and torch that as soon as we can,” I said.

“Better make it sooner rather than later,” said Becks.

“On it. Mahir?”

“Take the right.”

I took the right.

Our original route took us to Tennessee by way of the American Southwest, hour upon hour of desert unspooling outside the van’s windows. Mahir’s adjusted route followed roughly the same roads, at least until we got to Little Rock. Then things got weird. Instead of heading down to avoid the mountains and the
hazard-marked farmland, we turned
up,
heading out of Arkansas and into Missouri. We stopped for gas in Fayetteville.

Mahir stayed in the van while I filled the tank and Becks visited the station’s obligatory convenience store. She’d done a remarkable job of changing her appearance while standing guard against possible CDC pursuit. Her hair was down and she’d somehow managed to trade her jacket and cargo pants for a halter top and a pair of hot-pink running shorts that might as well have been painted on and left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

I didn’t need to imagine what she’d looked like without them, and it was still hard to keep from staring at her ass as she sauntered toward the convenience store doors. The only aspect she hadn’t been able to change were her shoes, still clunky, solid, and more “fight club” than “fashion show,” but in that outfit, I doubted anyone was going to be looking at her feet.

Sometimes you’re such a guy,
said George.

“Yeah, well, I’m the one who isn’t dead yet, remember?”

I was stating a fact, not making a complaint.

I snorted and hit the button to start fueling up. If the CDC clued to the fact that we were using a Garcia Pharmaceuticals company ID to pay our bills, we were fucked, but our cash ran out in Little Rock and it wasn’t like we had another choice. The truth may set you free. It won’t fill your fuel tank.

Mahir’s proposed route was a good one, cutting through the corner of Missouri and into Kansas. From there, we’d travel through Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah before hitting the home stretch across Nevada. Of the six states we’d be crossing before we got to California,
only two had laws forbidding self-service fueling stations, and those were the two we’d be spending the least overall time in: Colorado and Utah. If we paced ourselves right, we’d be able to avoid stopping in either state for anything longer than a bathroom break. That was good. The more we could stay away from people, the better.

While the tank filled, I washed the windshield, checked the tires, and did my best not to think about the fact that we were running from an organization that had the power to declare martial law without any justification more sophiicated than a sneeze. I couldn’t believe the CDC was doing this alone, or that the entire CDC was involved—Kelly clearly hadn’t been, and I was willing to bet that all the other team members who’d died hadn’t been either. Still, a properly seated cabal of people willing to do anything to get their way is more than enough to be a major problem, especially when they have essentially infinite resources to throw around. At the same time, they were obviously trying to stay at least somewhat under the radar, or they wouldn’t be bothering with artificial outbreaks and assassinations made to look like natural deaths. All that spy shit is necessary only when you’re trying to pretend you don’t exist.

Becks came sauntering out of the convenience store with a paper sack in each arm and a smug, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile curling her lips. It faded as soon as she was close enough to be out of the cashier’s sight, and she yanked the van’s rear door open without so much as a hello as she scrambled to get herself and our supplies inside. I unhooked the fuel pump and opened the driver’s-side door, sliding myself behind the wheel.

“Any problems?” I asked, twisting to watch Becks
unpack bottles of water, sodas, and snack food all over the backseat. We’d told her to buy as much as she could without attracting suspicion. Apparently, this meant focusing on things that made it look like she was heading for a bachelorette party, including a bottle of cheap Everclear knockoff and seventeen bags of M&Ms.

“Next time
you’re
wearing the ‘look at my titties’ shirt, and
I’m
filling the tank.” She chucked a bag of M&Ms at my head. I caught it and passed it to Mahir. “No, no problems. If they’re running our pictures on the news, the dickhead working the counter didn’t know anything about it. There’s been a minor outbreak alert in Memphis, and the area around the CDC there is on lockdown, but it wasn’t a big enough deal to peel Dicky’s eyes off my ass.”

“See, I wouldn’t get the same results with that shirt. I just don’t have the figure for it. Mahir might do a little better. We can try it next time we stop.” I leaned into the back to grab a bottle of Coke before she could chuck that at my head, too. “We’re good to go, then?”

“Should be.” Becks pulled her jacket back on before opening one of the bags of M&Ms. “Mahir, make sure you’re running weather projections on our route. They had a storm advisory up while I was checking out.”

“Right,” he said, and grabbed a drink before he started pecking away at his phone.

I slid my soda into the van’s drink holder and started the engine. We’d been holding still long enough, and we had a long damn way to go before we’d be anything resembling safe.

We crossed into Kansas an hour later, and I risked pulling off the road, into the parking lot of an abandoned pre-Rising rest stop. The gate across the entrance wasn’t even chained. If we wanted to go in there and
get eaten, that was our problem, not the local government’s. “We should report them for negligence,” muttered Becks, as we pushed the gate out of our way.

“That’s good,” I said agreeably. “How are we going to explain what we’re doing out here? Are we on a sightseeing tour of the haunted cornfields of North America or something?”

She glared at me. I shrugged and got back into the van, pulling forward until we were completely hidden from the road by the overgrown trees surrounding what must have once been a pretty nice picnic area. People used to bring kids and their dogs to places like this, letting them run wild on the grass to burn off a little energy before they got back into the car and continued their drive toward the American dream. These days, that kind of thing will get you thrown in jail for child abuse. Not even the Masons were that crazy, and they did a lot of dangerous things with me and George while we were growing up. Running around in the grass near an unsecured structure and a bunch of trees is a good way of taking yourself out of the gene pool.

Becks stood guard with her rifle while I took the fire-and-forget phone over to the remains of a barbecue pit. Mahir followed me, observing without comment as I beat the phone with a large rock, tossed it into the hole, and set it on fire. A few squirts of lighter fluid from the travel kit made sure that it kept burning, delicate circuitry and memory chips melting into slag under the onslaught of the flames.

“Hey, check it out, Mahir—the green wires burn purple. What’s up with that?” No answer. I looked up. “Mahir?”

He was staring toward the low brick building that contained the restrooms and water fountains like a man
transfixed. “Why haven’t they torn this thing down?” he asked. “It’s like a bloody crypt, right in the middle of what ought to be civilization.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they don’t have the money. Maybe they think it’s better to give the infected someplace they can hide, so they’ll know where to go when they start getting outbreak reports.” I squirted more lighter fluid onto my makeshift pyre. “Maybe the people who live around here would feel like it was too much like giving up. Leave the walls standing so we can build a new roof when the crisis is over. Don’t tear down something you’re going to want to use later.”

“Do you really think people are going to want to go to places like this ever again? Even if we kill all the damn zombies, we’ll remember where the dangers were.”

“Will we?” I stuck the lighter fluid back into my pocket. My hands were smudgy with old ash from the barbecue pit, and I wiped them carelessly clean against the seat of my jeans. “People have pretty short memories when they want to. It’ll take a few generations, but give them time, and things like this will be all the rage again. Just watch.”

“Assuming we ever get to that point.”

“Well, yeah. Which is going to take people not trying to kill us for a little while.” The bottle of knockoff Everclear Becks picked up at the convenience store turned out to make an excellent accelerant. I dumped it out over the fire. The flames leapt up and then died back down, burning off the additional fuel in seconds.