Deadline

Twenty-one

I kept my foot slammed down on the gas as we blazed along a frontage road, taking one of the morobscure ways out of town. Mahir rode in the passenger seat with a smartphone in his hand, entering alterations to our route every few minutes as he received updates from the GPS satellites. Every change had to be registered with the Highway Commission, but our credentials were in order, and unless there was a stop order out on our vehicle, registering our route was less dangerous than dealing with the smackdown if we got caught crossing state lines without the proper paperwork in place.

Our weird little hopscotch of twists and turns wasn’t the fastest way to get where we were going, even if I don’t think we ever dropped under eighty miles per hour, but it was definitely the most confusing. I wouldn’t have been able to track us—not without an actual tracking device planted somewhere on the van, and if the CDC was that deep into our shit, we were already dead. Hacking the highway registry wouldn’t give them any of the vehicles known to be registered to our site or its employees, and I seriously doubted they had a full catalog of vehicles registered to Garcia Pharmaceuticals.

Becks rode in the rear with a rifle clutched in her hands, waiting for the moment when an unmarked car would come roaring up behind us and she’d have to start shooting. Maybe we were being paranoid, but I seriously doubted it. The CDC has had a lot of power for a long damn time now. Our deaths wouldn’t register on anybody’s radar, except for maybe Maggie’s, and there wouldn’t be too much even she could do about it. Her parents had money, political pull, and a lot of patience. That didn’t mean she’d be able to convince them to take on the CDC, even if she could convince them that the research we’d collected was the real deal.

I allowed the shuddering van to drop back to a more reasonable sixty miles per hour after we passed the halfway point between Memphis and Little Rock. There was still no visible pursuit. “Becks? How’s the road looking?”

“Clear.” I could see her in the rearview mirror. All her attention was focused on the road, shoulders tense as she waited for the moment when the ambush would be sprung. “Not a soul since we passed that tour bus.”

“With your driving, the poor bastards probably thought we were running from an outbreak,” said Mahir. There was a smothered chuckle in his tone. I knew that edge of hysteria better than I wanted to, although I hadn’t heard it that clearly in a long time. It went away after you’d spent enough time in the field. Hysteria takes too much energy to be maintained forever. “They likely turned around as soon as they found a wide enough spot in the road.”

“As long as their turn didn’t take them in our direction, I don’t care where they went.” Becks managed to sound like she was muttering even while pitching her voice to be heard at the front of the van. It’s a trick from the basic Irwin handbook: The lower and more urgent your tone, the more exciting and dangerous the situation will seem to the people at home. It’s just a matter of learning to whisper as loudly as some people shout, to make sure the cameras can pick you up. I knew exactly what she was doing. I was still impressed. She was damn good at it.

“We have enough gas to get us past Little Rock—after that, I want to get freaky,” I said. “Mahir, get us a route that doesn’t involve the roads we used to reach Tennessee. Try to get a whole new set of states if you can.”

“Why are you asking me?” Mahir asked peevishly. He started tapping a staccato pattern on the screen of his phone, calling up a more sophisticated GPS mapping program. “I’m the only one in this car not native to this damn continent.”

“Great. That means you won’t have any stupid preconceptions about what to avoid.”

“What, bad neighborhoods?”

“I was thinking more like Colorado, but sure, whatever.” I made a sharp turn onto yet another frontage road, causing Becks to whack her shoulder against the window. She swore, but didn’t yell at me. Our escape was too important to interrupt for silly things like fighting amongst ourselves. “Becks, we still clear?”

“Unless the CDC has invisible cars, yes,” she snarled.

“Good enough for me.” I pulled a disposable ear cuff out of my pocket and snapped it on, tapping the side to trigger the connection. “This is Shaun Mason activating security protocol Campbell. The bridge is out, the trees are coming, and I’m pretty sure my hand is evil. Now gimme some sugar, baby.”

Mahir stared at me with undisguised confusion. “What the fuck was all that about?”

“Single-use phone. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t activate it by mistake.” The ear cuff beeped as the connections were made, routed through half a dozen dummy servers and half a dozen more firewalls.

Fire-and-forget phones are about as secure as it gets, providing you don’t mind spending a few hundred bucks to make one call. That call can’t last for more than six minutes, and it has to end with the total destruction of the phone you used to make it. But yeah, it’s secure.

“Well, that’s definitely one thing no one’s going to say on bloody accident!”

“Exactly. Now get back to finding us a rabbit hole to dive down.”

The beeping stopped, and Alaric’s voice came down the line, asking, “Shaun? Is that you? Where are you?”

“That’s a good question, and no matter how secure I think this line is, it’s one I’m not going to answer. We have a maximum of six minutes talk time before we become traceable, so I want you to get Maggie and set your phone to speaker. Got me?”

“She’s right here,” said Alaric. There was a clicking sound. When he spoke again, his voice was tinny and a little distant, like it was coming down a tube. “Go.”

“Right. Wynne sold us out. I don’t know if he was always dirty or if they got to him after the election, but I’m not sure it matters. He’s dead. So’s Kelly.” I winced as I realized that there was one more unexpected tragedy to her death. “Shit. We can’t even put her on the Wall. She officially died months ago, and it wasn’t because of the infected.”

“Damn,” whispered Alaric. The seconds were ticking away from us, but we still fell silent for a moment, considering the magnitude of the tragedy in front of us. The Wall is a virtual monument to the people who’ve died because of Kellis-Amberlee. It started during the Rising with bloggers and doctors, college students, and soccer moms—anyone and everyone who came out on the losing end of the zombie apocalypse. We’ve kept it up since then. The blog community views it as a public service and a vital reminder that none of us is safe; that it never really ended. Maybe the infected don’t roam the streets the way they did once, but they’re still here. They’re never going away. And names keep going up on the Wall.

George’s name is up there. So is Buffy’s, and Dave’s, since he died during an outbreak. Hell, even Tate’s name is on the Wall. He killed my sister, but the Wall doesn’t judge. George used to call it the ultimate monument to truth, a universally accepted model of the world as it is, not as we want it to be. There was no way we could pretend Kelly died because of any reason other than Kellis-Amberlee… and because of that goddamn clone, she was never going to go up on the Wall.

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.

Mahir snorted. “That would be a rather impressive change.”

“Wouldn’t it?” I kicked some dirt onto the remaining flames. “If we burn this place down, you think we’ll get in trouble for arson?”

“I think weou tht medals from the bloody civic planning commission.”

“Cool.” I kicked more dirt onto the fire. That would have to be good enough; we didn’t have time to dawdle. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before Darwin decides we need a spanking.”

Becks looked over as we approached, nodding her chin curtly toward the smoke still wafting up from the barbecue pit. “We done here?” she asked.

“Unless you want to stick around and make s’mores, yeah, we are.”

She snorted. “I suppose we’d roast our marshmallows on sticks and tell each other ghost stories after the sun went down?”

“Something like that.” I reached for the van door and paused, looking at Mahir, who was staring up at the sky. “What now?”

“Look at those clouds.” He sounded faintly awed. Becks and I exchanged a glance, tilted our heads back, and looked.

Growing up in California meant George and I never really experienced that much in the way of what most people would consider “weather.” We got more in the way of “climate.” Still, even California gets rained on, and I know what a cloud looks like when it’s getting ready to storm in earnest. The clouds forming overhead were blacker than any that I’d ever seen, hanging low in the sky and visibly heavy with rain. They were coming together at a disturbing rate. The sky wasn’t exactly clear when we pulled off, but it hadn’t been anything like this.

Becks whistled low. “That is some storm,” she said.

“Yeah, and we get to drive in it.” I opened the van door. “As long as we don’t get washed away, this could actually work in our favor. If that sucker comes down as hard as it looks like it’s going to, we’re gonna be a bitch to track.”

“Saved by the storm,” said Mahir. “I suppose it’s true that stranger things have happened.”

Becks rolled her eyes. “I hate to be the one to get all negative on you two, but we’re in Kansas, and we’re planning to be in Kansas for hours. Isn’t this where Dorothy was when that whole ‘twister ride to Oz’ thing happened? Does either of you know how to recognize a tornado? Because I don’t. It might be a good idea for us to find a motel and hole up until this blows over.”

I shook my head. “That might be the smart thing to do, but it’s not an option. If the CDC is following us, they’re going to expect us to wait out the storm. This could be the best shot we have at getting clear.” Becks still looked unconvinced. I didn’t blame her; I wasn’t entirely convinced myself. “Look, we’ll keep the weather advisory running on Mahir’s phone. It’s a nonspecific enough program that no one should be able to use it to track us, and if it starts flashing ‘Get off the road, assholes,’ we’ll pull off until the storm passes. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, slowly. “But if we get blown to Oz, I’m going to drop a house on your ass.”

“See, that’s the sort of compromise I can live with.” I got into the van. Becks and ir did the same.

You really sure this is the right plan? asked George.

“Absolutely not,” I muttered, and started the engine.

We backed out of the rest area a little at a time. Once we were on the road, Mahir got out to close the gate, Becks covering him with her rifle the whole time. The highway was clear in all directions. What travelers we might have had to deal with were clearly all smarter than we were and had chosen to get out of the path of the oncoming storm. The van shuddered as the wheels left the cracked pavement of the rest area entrance for the smooth, well-maintained asphalt of U.S. 400, running west, toward California.

The light faded out a little bit at a time, until I was driving with the lights on in what should have been the middle of the day. The wind picked up as the light slipped away, and the flatness of Kansas offered no real shelter. The van rattled and fought against me until I was forced to slow to forty miles an hour, Mahir still tapping away in the front passenger seat. Becks stayed crouched in the back with her rifle in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other, munching as she watched out the window. As long as it kept her awake, I really didn’t care what she wanted to do. I was going to need her to take over driving duties before too much longer, at least if we wanted to get out of this storm without smashing the van by the side of the road.

Kansas stretched out in front of us like a bleak alien landscape, the shadows cast by the clouds turning everything strange. I turned the radio on just to break the silence, pushed down the gas a little more, and drove onward, into the dark.