Blackout

Ten

The morning dawned bright and clean, with a clear blue sky that afforded absolutely no cloud cover. Any spy satellites that happened to pick up on our anomalous route—not many people take the back roads anymore, and fewer still do it in a way that allows them to skip all security checkpoints—would have a perfect line of sight.

“If we get picked up by the DEA on suspicion of being Canadian marijuana smugglers, I’m going to be pissed,” I muttered.

Becks looked up from her tablet, fingers still tracing an intricate dance across the screen. It was sort of unnerving that she could do that by nothing but the memory of where her apps were installed. I need a keyboard, or I lose my place in seconds. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.” I kept my eyes on the road.

Liar.

I didn’t answer. We’d get into a fight if I did, and then Becks would have to pretend she didn’t mind sitting there listening while I argued with myself. Back at the lab, she’d been able to leave the room when that started. Now that we were on the road again, she had nowhere to run. And neither did I.

The reality of what we were doing was starting to sink in. Dr. Abbey had insisted we get some sleep after the lab cleanup was finished—although not before she’d drawn enough blood from me to keep her surviving lab monkeys busy for a couple of weeks. “Some of us have to work while you take your little road trip,” she’d said, like this was some sort of exciting pleasure cruise. Just me and Becks and the ghost of George, sailing gaily down the highway to meet our certain doom.

Not that we were actually on the highway unless we absolutely had to be. Dr. Abbey had installed a new module on our GPS, one programmed with all the underground and questionably secure stops between Shady Cove and Berkeley. Once that was done, Alaric and Mahir worked together to reprogram our mapping software, convincing it the roads we should take were the ones the system flagged as “least desirable.” So we left Shady Cove not via the convenient and well-maintained Highway 62, but on a narrow pre-Rising street called Rogue River Drive.

We’d been on the road for almost four hours, playing chicken with major highways the entire time. Alaric and Mahir’s mapping software sent us down a motley collection of frontage roads, residential streets, and half-forgotten rural back roads, all of them combining to trace roughly the same directional footprints as first Highway 62, and then Highway 5, the big backbone of the West Coast. As long as we stuck to the directions and didn’t get cocky, we’d be able to stay mostly off the radar. As for the rest of the time…

“We’re going to need to stop for gas in fifty miles or so,” said Becks, attention focusing on her tablet. She tapped the screen twice; out of the corner of my eye, I saw the graphics flash and divide, changing to some new configuration. “Do we have any viable gas stations?”

“Let me check the map.” I took one hand off the wheel and pushed a button at the front of our clip-on GPS device, saying, “Secure gas.”

“Recalculating route,” replied the GPS. The module had the same pleasant Canadian voice as Dr. Abbey’s main computer. “Please state security requirements.”

“Uh, we’d like to not die, if that’s okay with you,” I said.

“Recalculating route.”

“Notice how she says that no matter what we ask for?” I slanted a glance at Becks. “Half the time she doesn’t even change her mind about where we’re going.”

“Maybe she’s just fucking with you.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“The nearest secure gas station is approximately twenty-seven miles from your current location,” announced the GPS. “Do you wish to continue?”

Becks looked up. “Define ‘secure.’ ”

“The station is located in a designated hazard zone, and has been officially abandoned for the past eighteen years. Security systems are running at acceptable levels. The last known transmission was received three days ago, and indicated the availability of fuel, food, and ammunition.”

“Works for me,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Recalculating route,” said the GPS, and went silent, a new set of street names flashing on the tiny screen.

“I so wish we could do an exposé on all of this,” said Becks wistfully. “I mean, the actual smuggler’s railroad? Think about the ratings!”

“Too bad we’re not purely in the ratings business these days, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But still…”

“Think about it this way, Becks. If these people had been exposed a year ago, they wouldn’t be here to help us now. Everything’s a tradeoff.” I turned off the frontage road we’d been traveling down, onto a smaller, even less well-maintained frontage road.

Becks sighed. “I guess that’s true.”

I grew up in California, and if you’d asked me two years ago whether it was possible to drive from Oregon to my hometown without taking I-5, I would have said no. The longer I drove the route assembled by our modified GPS, the more I realized how wrong I’d been—and how much of the country we actually lost during the Rising. Most of the roads we were following didn’t appear in normal mapping software anymore, because they’d been abandoned to the dead, or were located in places that were considered impossible to secure. Deer and coyotes peeked out of the woods at us as we drove past, showing absolutely no fear. I couldn’t tell whether that was because they’d been infected, or because they had forgotten what humans were. As long as we stayed in the van, it didn’t really matter.

“There used to be bears out here, you know,” I said.

“Really?” Becks glanced up, frowning suspiciously in my direction. “Is there a reason you’re telling me this? Should I be going for the biggest gun I can get my hands on?”

“No. I’m just wondering if there might not be bears out here again. I mean, California used to have a grizzly bear on the state flag, even.”

Becks shuddered. “I do not understand how anyone ever thought that was appropriate. I like the current flag a lot better.”

“You don’t think it’s a little, well… sanitized?” The old bear flag might not have been politically correct in a post-Rising world, but it felt like there was passion behind it, like once upon a time, someone really cared about that symbol and the things it represented. Its replacement—a crossed redwood branch and California poppy—always struck me as something cooked up by a frantic marketing department for a governor who just needed something to hang over the state capitol.

“There’s a reason the word ‘sanitized’ contains the word ‘sanity.’ Using a giant carnivore as your state symbol is insane, zombies or no zombies.”

“What’s the Connecticut state flag?”

“A shield with three grapevines on it.”

What? George sounded confused.

“My sentiments exactly,” I muttered. Louder, I asked, “What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Welcome to Connecticut; we’ll get you nice and drunk before the dead start walking’?”

“I have no idea what it means. It’s just the stupid flag. What did the bear mean? ‘Come to California; you won’t have to wait for the zombies if you’re looking to get eaten’?” Becks shot me a glare, expression challenging.

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“We’re on the run from the Centers for Disease Control, heading for a gas station that caters to drug-runners and mad scientists, and we’re fighting about the meaning of state flags.”

Becks blinked at me. Then she put her tablet down on her knees, bent forward to rest her forehead on the dashboard, and began to laugh. Grinning, I hit the gas a little harder. If we were laughing, we weren’t thinking too hard about what was waiting for us down the road.

Years before I was born, President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” like drugs might somehow realize they were under siege and decide they’d be better off going somewhere else. That war went on for decades even before the Kellis-Amberlee virus gave us something more concrete to fight against. A sane person might think the dead rising would be a good reason to stop stressing out over a few recreational pharmaceuticals. It turns out the lobbyists and corporations who stood to benefit from keeping those nasty drugs illegal didn’t agree, and the war on drugs continued, even up to the present day.

Smuggling is a time-honored human tradition. Make something illegal, create scarcity, and people will find a way to get it. Better, they’ll find a way to make it turn a profit. In some ways, the Rising was the best thing that could have happened to the world’s drug smugglers, because suddenly, there were all these roads and highways and even entire towns with no population, no police force, and best of all, no one to ask what those funny smells coming out of your basement windows were. They had to be constantly vigilant, both against the threat of the infected and the threat of the DEA, but they had more space than they’d ever had before.

The question remained: How were they supposed to move their product into more civilized areas? If drugs had been the only things in need of smuggling, maybe the answer would have involved tanks, or strapping backpacks to zombies before releasing them back into the wild. But drugs weren’t the only things people needed to move. Weapons. Ammunition. Livestock—the illegal breeding farms on the other side of the Canadian Hazard Line were constantly looking for fresh genetic lines, and would go to incredible lengths to get them. George and I once followed a woman all the way to the California state border as she tried to get her Great Dane to safety without being stopped by the authorities.

I don’t know whether she made it or not. We lost track of her shortly after she crossed into Oregon. But Buffy convinced George to let her scrub the identifying marks from our reports. These days, after spending some time on the wrong side of the rules, I sort of hope that woman and her dog made it over the border, into a place where they could live together the way she wanted them to.

That’s because you’re a sentimental idiot, said George.

“Probably,” I said, getting my laughter under control. “But isn’t that why you love me?”

Becks lifted her head from the dashboard, still chuckling, and went back to tapping on her tablet. “How much farther?”

“About ten miles,” I said. “Get the trade goods.”

“On it.”

The smuggler’s supply stations were largely maintained by people in the business of stealing the most forbidden commodity of all: freedom. They were the ones who chose to live in the places we’d abandoned, not because they were breeding large dogs or making meth, but because they wanted to live the way they always had. They wanted to open their doors on green trees and blue skies, not fences and security guards. I couldn’t blame them. Oh, I was pretty sure they were insane, but I couldn’t blame them.

Living off the grid came with its own set of problems, including limited access to medical care. So while the people we were on our way to buy gas from might take cash, they were likely to be a lot more interested in fresh blood test units, antibiotics, and birth control. More than half the “trade goods” we’d received from Dr. Abbey were contraceptives of one type or another.

“They choose their lives, and they love their lives, but bringing children into that environment isn’t something you want to do by mistake,” was her comment, as she showed Becks how to load the contraceptive implant gun. “This stuff is worth more than anything else you could possibly carry, and it’ll keep them from trying to barter for your ammunition. Just make sure they see that you’re armed, or you’re likely to find yourselves at the center of a good old-fashioned robbery.”

Becks unbuckled her seat belt and climbed over her seat into the rear of the van. I could hear her banging around back there as she got our kits ready. Glancing into the rearview mirror, I could see the back of her head. Her medium-brown hair was pulled into a no-nonsense braid, the streaks of white-blond from Dr. Abbey’s chemical showers striping it like a barber pole.

“We need gas, and maybe some munchies,” I called. “I think we can make it another eight or nine hours before we need to stop for the night.”

“Got it,” she called back. “Should I pack any of the antibiotics?”

“No, but grab the poison oak cream. That probably has some local demand.” I turned my attention back to the road. The counter on the GPS indicated that our turn was somewhere just up ahead. “How we wound up here is a mystery to me,” I said, almost under my breath.

The part where we’re about to bribe criminals for gas, or the whole situation? asked George.

“A little bit of both.”

“I wish I’d known about this while I was alive.” It wasn’t that surprising when I heard her voice coming from the seat Becks had vacated. I glanced over to see George with her feet braced on the dashboard and her knees tucked up almost against her chest. “I mean, Becks is right. This would have made a fantastic exposé.”

“And destroyed these peoples’ way of life. They’ve never done anything to earn that.”

“How many of the people we exposed did? I mean, we were never tabloid journalists—”

“And thank God for that,” I muttered.

“—but we weren’t saints, either. If a story caught our eye, we chased it down, and sometimes people got hurt. Like that woman with the dog that you were just thinking about.”

“Can you not remind me that you can read my mind? That’s where I keep all my private thoughts.”

“Please. Like there’s anything in your head that could shock me?” George leaned forward, resting her cheek on her knee as she smiled at me. “The woman with the dog, Shaun. Even if she got out, how many of the routes we documented her taking were closed by Homeland Security immediately afterward? How many people like her tried to run when they saw our report, and got driven straight into a trap we’d created?”

“That’s not our fault.”

“Was it Dr. Kellis’s fault when Robert Stalnaker decided to write a sensationalistic article about his cure for the common cold, and kicked off the whole stupid Rising? We’re supposed to be responsible journalists. How do we cope when the stories we report get people hurt?” She sighed. “Do you honestly think Buffy and I were the first casualties?”

“Right now, I just think I’m lucky Buffy isn’t haunting me, too,” I said sourly.

“Shaun?”

I twisted in my seat to see Becks standing behind me. She looked concerned. I couldn’t blame her. I’d have looked concerned, too, if I were the one in her place.

“Hey, Becks,” I said, glancing to the empty passenger seat as I turned my eyes back to the road. George was gone. She’d be back. “Everything okay back there?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine—is everything okay up front?”

“Just arguing with myself again. Nothing new.”

“Please turn left,” said the GPS, cutting off any reply from Becks. That was probably for the best. Ignoring my crazy might seem okay when we were in a nice, relatively safe lab environment, but that didn’t mean her tolerance was going to extend to the field. I really didn’t feel like arguing about whether or not I could decide to be sane again.

The road the GPS directed us down was barely more than a dirt path winding into the trees. Tires had worn deep ruts into the earth, and the van shuddered and jumped as we jounced along. Becks dropped into her seat, grabbing hold of the oh-shit handle with one hand and bracing the other against the dashboard.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” she demanded.

“Destination in one hundred yards,” said the GPS.

“According to the creepy computer lady, yeah, it’s the right way.” I eased off on the gas. No sense in killing our shocks over a road that didn’t even come with any zombies.

“I hate this road.”

“It clearly hates us, too.”

“Destination in twenty yards,” said the GPS.

I frowned. All I could see ahead of us was more dirt road… at least until a pair of men stepped out of the trees, each holding a shotgun large and impractical enough to be essentially useless. Sure, you could shoot a zombie with one of those things, and sure, it would go down, but the kick from a shotgun that size would probably knock you down at the same time. Not to mention the weight of the ammunition. If you wanted to carry something like that and have the option to run for your life when the need inevitably arose, you’d be carrying less than two dozen rounds.

“Shaun…”

“It’s cool, Becks,” I said, turning off the engine. The men with the shotguns trained them on our windshield. I responded by blowing them a kiss and waving cheerfully. “They’re not planning to shoot us. Those guns wouldn’t make sense if they were planning to shoot us.”

“So what are they planning to do? Please, enlighten me.” Becks scowled.

I undid my seat belt. “They’re trying to scare us,” I said, and opened the van door. I kept my hands in view as I slid out of the driver’s seat. The men with the guns shifted to train them squarely on me. I smiled ingratiatingly at them, stepping far enough from the van that they could see for themselves that I wasn’t hiding anything. “We come in peace,” I called. More quietly, I added, for Becks’s benefit, “I have always wanted to say that.”

Sometimes you are an enormous dork, said George.

“True,” I agreed. The men were still pointing their guns in my direction. I sighed and raised my voice, trying another approach: “Dr. Abbey sent us. We just need gas, and then we’ll be on our way.”

The man to my left lowered his gun. The one to my right did not. Eyes narrowed with suspicion, he asked, “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“You don’t, although I suppose you could make us stand out here while you try to find someone who has the current number for Dr. Abbey’s lab and get her to give us her okay. But I really am telling the truth. I’m Shaun Mason. The lady in the car is Rebecca Atherton. We’re from After the End Times, we’re hiding from the CDC, and Dr. Abbey sent us.”

Most of that would qualify as “too much information” if I were talking to anyone else. But these were men who had chosen, for whatever reason, to remove themselves from the grid of modern existence—no small task, with government surveillance and public health tracking becoming more invasive with every year that passed. Telling them we were hiding wouldn’t give them a lever to use against us; it would give us a point of commonality with them. We were all hiding from the world together.

The second man lowered his gun. “How’s that damn dog of hers doing?” he asked. I could barely see his mouth through the bushy red thicket of his beard. He was wearing denim overalls and a plaid lumberjack shirt with the cuffs pegged up around his elbows. It was like being questioned by Paul Bunyan’s much, much shorter brother.

“Still the size of a small tank,” I said.

“She tell you we don’t take plastic?” asked the first man, apparently unwilling to let his companion do all the talking. If the second man was Paul Bunyan’s midget cousin, the first man would have made a decent stand-in for Ichabod Crane, even down to the prominent Adam’s apple and impressively oversized nose.

I wish we were filming this, said George.

I swallowed my automatic “Me, too,” focusing instead on looking as harmless and sincere as possible. It wasn’t easy. Most of my training had focused on looking daring and oblivious, which probably wasn’t going to fly here. “She told us our money wouldn’t be any good,” I said, still smiling. “She also said you might be willing to consider blood test units that wouldn’t give you tetanus as a fair trade for some gas and a couple of sandwiches.”

Paul Bunyan frowned for a moment—long enough that I was starting to wonder whether Becks would be able to move into the driver’s seat and hit the gas before we both got shot. Then he grinned, showing the gaps where his front teeth had presumably been, once upon a time. “Well, hell, boy, why didn’t you open with that?”

“We’re still new at this,” I replied. “Does that mean we can come in?”

“Sure does,” said Ichabod. He and Paul started toward the van, leaning their guns against their shoulders in an almost synchronized motion. “Hope you’re not averse to giving us a lift.”

This had all the hallmarks of a test. “Sure,” I said, motioning for them to follow me as I moved to climb back into the van. As expected, Becks had her pistol out, and was holding it just out of view behind the dashboard. I gestured for her to put it away before one of our new “friends” saw it.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she hissed, voice barely above a whisper.

“Nope,” I said. I would have said more, but Paul and Ichabod had reached the van. “It’s open!” I called.

“Much obliged,” said Ichabod. He opened the van’s rear door and climbed inside, with Paul close behind him. “I’m Nathan. This is Paul.”

“Nice to meet you folks,” said Paul.

“Charmed,” said Becks, with a professional smile. Anyone who didn’t know her would have trouble telling it from an expression of actual pleasure. Anyone who did know her would recognize it as a cue to grab a weapon and run.

“You look like a Paul,” I said, ignoring the danger inherent in Becks’s expression. She might not be happy about having strangers in our van, but she could cope. In the back of my head, Georgia laughed. “Go ahead and close the door. I assume you know where we’re going?”

Paul slammed the van door and replied, “Just keep heading up the road. You’ll see the turnoff in about another twenty yards.”

“Awesome.” I started the van’s engine and began driving slowly down the uneven dirt road. Much to my surprise, the surface leveled out dramatically before we’d gone very much farther. The van stopped jarring and jouncing, settling into a more normal, smooth ride. The look on my face must have been good, because Nathan and Paul both burst out laughing.

“Oh, man, that gets you newbies every time!” said Paul, slapping his knee with one meaty lumberjack hand. “We maintain the road once you get far enough off the surface streets. Never know when you’re going to need to burn rubber without blowing an axle.”

“Yeah, that was high comedy,” I said, barely managing to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I couldn’t afford to get annoyed. Becks was already halfway there, and one of us needed to be the reasonable one.

I could do it, offered George.

One of us who actually had a body needed to be the reasonable one, I inwardly amended. “Where to next?” I asked.

“Keep going,” said Nathan. “You’ll know the turnoff when you see it.”

“Sure,” I said, and hit the gas a little harder, accelerating from two miles an hour to a more respectable five. The turnoff came into view a few seconds later, leading to a broad gravel road. Trees shaded it almost completely; I could tell just by looking at the branches that it would grant almost total protection from aerial surveillance.

Even Becks abandoned her suspicious observation of our passengers as she leaned forward to study the road, and pronounced her verdict: “Cool.”

“Very cool,” I agreed, and made the turn.

The trees that sheltered the road also cut off most visibility as we drove. That, too, was almost certainly intentional. We had been following the gravel road for about five minutes when it curved gently to the side, a last veil of foliage fell away, and we found ourselves facing a pre-Rising building that looked almost unchanged from those careless, bygone days. Unchanged except for the electrified fence with the barbed wire around the top, that is. The fence didn’t fit with any of the pictures I’d seen of pre-Rising architecture. The rest of the structure, however, was almost certainly older than I was, built when this area was a thriving tourist corridor, and not the blasted back end of nowhere. Two men were pulling the gate open.

A row of fuel pumps sat off to one side, inside the fence but distanced from the main building, as if they had been an afterthought. There was also a row of portable toilets, and what looked like a portable decontamination shower. These people had thought of everything, and then they’d jury-rigged it all with plastic sheets and duct tape.

“Welcome to Denny’s,” said Nathan.

I glanced over my shoulder at him as I pulled the van through the open gate and steered to a stop just outside a second, shorter fence. This one only encircled the main building. “I thought that was a diner chain.”

“It was. So was this.” He grinned. “We’re handy out here.”

“Really?” I turned back to the building, blinking. “I’ve never seen one with the windows intact.”

“We got lucky out here,” said Paul. “The Denny’s was already closed down when the Rising hit. They said it was an ‘economic downturn,’ and then the zombies came before anybody had to admit that we were having a depression. Good timing for everybody.”

“Except the people who got eaten,” said Becks.

“Well, true; probably not for them,” allowed Paul. He opened the van door, sliding out. His boots crunched when they hit the gravel. “Come on. Let’s see what we can work out in terms of trade.”

Nathan followed him out of the van. The two of them seemed to be perfectly at ease as they ambled toward the refitted diner. I stayed where I was for a moment, squinting at the trees.

Becks paused in the process of unbuckling her seat belt. “What?”

“We’re in the woods. Even if there aren’t any bears out here, there should be deer. So why are our friends so calm?” A glint of light high in a tree—in a spot where light had no business glinting—caught my eye. I jabbed a finger toward it, not caring if anyone saw me. “There. They have cameras in the trees. Possibly snipers, too. They were stalling us on the road while their people got into position.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you really know how to make a girl feel all warm and fuzzy inside, Mason?”

“It’s one of my best qualities,” I said. I climbed out of my seat to exit through the van’s rear door, grabbing the first of the boxes of trading supplies as I passed it. Becks followed me, muttering something under her breath. Not for the first time, I was glad that George was the only woman who had a direct line to the inside of my head.

You’d go crazy if there was more than one of us in here, said George.

I smothered a snort of laughter and didn’t say anything at all.

Nathan and Paul were waiting by the second fence when Becks and I came walking up to them. This gate was standing open, with no blood test in evidence. Nathan must have seen the surprise in our faces. He shrugged, scarecrow shoulders jerking up and down in a sharp, birdlike motion as he said, “We can’t afford the kind of paranoia you get out there in civilization. Unless we’ve got reason to think you’ve been exposed, we handle our outbreaks the old-fashioned way.”

“With bullets,” added Paul, just in case we were too dumb to get the point.

“Yeah, thanks for that,” I said. Hoisting my box of trade goods, I asked, “Is this where we get down to business, or can we go inside first?”

“Sure thing,” said Nathan. “Indy’s got coffee on.” He beckoned for us to follow as he stepped into the circle of ground protected by the fence. Paul stayed where he was. They weren’t going to let us get behind them both once we were past the gate. Smart. I like people who can manage to be paranoid and smart at the same time. They’re usually the ones who make it out of any given situation still breathing.

“Any chance I could get a Coke?” I asked. Becks glared at me as we followed him past the fence. Unsurprisingly, Paul swung the gate shut behind us, leaving himself on the other side.

“I’m not comfortable leaving the van unattended,” said Becks.

“If you’re worried we’ll loot it, don’t be,” said Nathan. “If you pass the last checkpoint, we’ll give you gas and supplies and whatever else you need, and no one will touch anything you don’t trade freely. We’re civilized here. That’s probably why the Doc told you to come see us.”

I winced a little. One of our former team members, Kelly Connolly, went by “Doc” most of the time. My choice, not hers. She’s dead now, like so many others. “And if we fail the last checkpoint?” I asked.

“It’s not looting to take from the dead,” said Nathan implacably. He opened the diner door and stepped inside.

“And on that cheery note…” muttered Becks.

Durno v. Wisconsin was the case that decided the dead had no rights regarding property on or around their immediate persons at the time of death, making it perfectly legal to take a zombie’s car and claim it as your own. It’s been abused a few times over the years. It’s still seen, and rightly, as one of the best legal decisions to come out of the Rising. I mean, who has the time to transfer a pink slip in the middle of a zombie uprising?

“At least there’s coffee.” I caught the diner door as it was in the process of swinging closed, indicating the doorway with a grandiose sweep of my free arm. “Ladies first.”

“What, assholes second?” asked Becks—but she smiled as she stepped inside, and that was what I’d been shooting for. I followed her into the surprisingly bright interior. The windows must have been tinted to make it harder to tell that people still used the place. That made a lot of sense. The infected don’t seem to recognize light as a sign of possible human habitation. The police do.

The last Denny’s in California closed years ago, when the new food service and hygiene laws were still shaking out. I was pretty sure this one had been heavily modified from the original floor plan, since I can’t imagine many “family diners” would have ammo racks or hospital beds in the middle of their dining areas. A few booths were intact, cherry-red vinyl upholstery patched with strips of duct tape. Most had been ripped out, replaced with wire convenience store shelving. About half the shelves were empty. The rest were filled with packaged snack foods, first aid supplies, and the necessities of life: toilet paper, tampons, and cheap alcohol.

The diner’s original counter was also intact. Standing behind it was a tall African-American woman with strips of bright purple fabric wound around her dreadlocks and a suspicious expression on her face. She had a pistol in either hand. I was relieved to see that they were pointing downward, rather than aimed at us. Somehow, I didn’t think she’d hesitate for a second before shooting us both.

“Indy, these are the folks that our cameras caught coming down the old post road,” said Nathan. “They say the Doc sent ’em. They need to gas up.”

“Hi,” I said. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

“Hello,” said Becks.

Indy frowned, eyes narrowing. “What’s the password?” she asked.

Becks blinked. “There isn’t one.” Then she froze, tensing. I did the same. If these people had been looking for an excuse to shoot us, our not knowing the password would probably count.

Hold on, cautioned George. Look at her face.

Indy was smiling. She looked a lot less menacing that way. “See, if you hadn’t been from the Doc, you would have tried to make something up. Welcome to Shantytown.”

“Is that the name of this place?” asked Becks.

“Hell, no. They’re all Shantytown. That way, no one can ever really give away a location. Nathan says you’ve come looking for fuel?”

“Snacks would be good, but gas is the primary objective,” I said. Holding up my box again, I said, “We brought contraceptives.”

“And poison oak ointment.”

Indy laughed. “Those are two things that go together more often than not out here. Come on over, kids. Let’s look at your toys, and see if we can’t come to some sort of an agreement about what they’ll buy you.”

Becks and I exchanged a relieved glance as we walked over to the counter. Indy held out her hands for the box. I briefly considered refusing to hand it over, since that would reduce our bargaining power. Stupid idea. Bargaining power wouldn’t do us any good if we didn’t get out alive. I gave her the box.

“Where you kids heading?” Indy asked, as she put the box down and began picking through its contents.

“Berkeley,” said Becks.

“Florida,” I said at the same time.

Indy glanced up, a glint of amusement in her eyes. “Long-term and short-term goals, I see. The Doc put you up to this?”

“She wants mosquitoes,” I said with a shrug. “There are some people in Berkeley who may be able to help us get to Florida and back out again without getting arrested for suspected bioterrorism. I’m pretty sure the people maintaining the blockades out there won’t like the idea of us just popping in.”

“The Masons can probably help you,” agreed Indy, pulling three packs of contraceptive implants out of the box and setting them on the counter. “Don’t look so surprised. I looked you up as soon as you told my boys who you were.”

“We know what the Internet is,” contributed Nathan.

“Not all the old networks have been shut down,” said Indy, and straightened, pushing the box toward me. “The implants—we have our own injection gun—two boxes of condoms, four test kits, and some antibiotics. We’ll give you a full tank of gas, feed you lunch, and let you leave here alive. We’ll even throw in a shower, if you want one.”

“I’ll pass on the shower for now, but the rest works,” I said.

“It’s amazing that you can live out here like this,” said Becks.

“Well, honey, if you grew up before the whole world was behind walls, this can seem like the only way to live.” Indy smiled a little wistfully. Then she caught herself. Wiping her hands briskly against her jeans, she straightened. “Come on. Let’s get you fueled up.”

Paul was still standing at the gate when we emerged. He and Indy exchanged a nod, and he watched silently as I got back into the van and pulled it up to the fuel pumps. Becks went back inside while I pumped the gas, emerging a few minutes later with a brown paper sack of something that smelled spicy and delicious.

Indy followed her, watching with folded arms as I finished pumping. “You want some free advice?” she asked. “It’s worth what you’ll pay for it.”

“I’m listening,” I said, hanging the fuel pump back on its hook.

“Trust the Doc as long as you’re not between her and whatever crazy-ass thing she’s working on right now. Trust the Masons as far as you can throw them.”

“I learned that second part a long time ago,” I said, with what I hoped was a wry smile. “Thanks for your hospitality.” I wanted to ask what she knew about the Masons. I didn’t think it would be a good idea, and so I kept my mouth shut.

“Any time.” Indy turned to smile at Becks, who was staring at her like she’d just seen a ghost. “Drive safely, kids.” She walked back inside before either of us could answer.

Becks followed me back to the van in stunned silence, climbing into the passenger seat without saying a word. I waved to Paul and Nathan as I started the engine, and navigated the van carefully around the closing gate, back onto the gravel road.

It wasn’t until we reached the end of the gravel and started down the uneven dirt road that she spoke. “That was Indigo Blue,” she said.

“What?” I asked, only half listening as I fought to keep from losing control of the van. “I hate this road.”

“I said, that was Indigo Blue. The Newsie? The one who disappeared after she collaborated with your father?”

“Adoptive father,” I said automatically. Then I blinked. “Wait, really? Are you sure?”

“We covered her in my History of Journalism class. I didn’t recognize her immediately, but yes, I’m sure.”

“Huh. I wonder what she’s doing out here?”

“I wonder why she isn’t dead! Everyone thought she was.”

“Want to go back and ask her?”

“No!” Becks’s answer was fast enough to make me take my eyes off the road and frown at her. She sighed. “If she’s out here, she’s got a reason. I want to know what it is, but I’ll respect it. We’re not here for that.”

“I guess not.” I turned my eyes back to the road. “I wonder if Dr. Abbey knew.”

“I wonder if Dr. Abbey cared.”

“There’s always that. I—” My sentence went unfinished as I hit the brakes, causing my seat belt to cut painfully into my shoulder. Becks yelped as she was flung forward.

“Shaun! What the fuck?”

I didn’t answer her aloud. I just raised my hand, pointing at the shaggy hulk that was standing at the end of the dirt road. Becks turned to follow my finger, her eyes going wide.

“Shaun. Is that… is that a bear?”

“Yeah,” I said, not quite managing to keep the glee out of my voice. “You ever killed a zombie bear before?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Maybe we’ll be going back to use their showers after all.” I unbuckled my seat belt, moving slowly. “First one to get the headshot gets first shower.”

“Deal,” said Becks, and grabbed her gun.