Deadline

Twenty-two

We crossed Kansas on the leading edge of the storm, chasing the light until the sun went down and we were driving in darkness so absolute that it was oppressive. The clouds covered the sky until they blocked out all traces of the stars, and when the rain started—about half an hour after the sun went down—visibility dropped to almost zero, even with the high beams on.

Becks took over driving after the rain started, while I moved to the back and the increasingly futile task owatching for pursuit. We hadn’t spotted anybody yet, but that didn’t mean no one was coming; it just meant they’d been careful enough to stay out of sight. There was a chance the rain would make them careless, driving them closer as they tried to keep from losing us. Of course, there was also a chance I’d wind up shooting myself in the leg if I tried to fire under these conditions. Sadly, that was a risk we had to take.

There was one good thing about the way the wind was howling; with Becks and Mahir in the front seat and me at the rear, they wouldn’t be able to hear me over the storm. “Christ, George, will you listen to that?” I whispered. “It’s like it wants to blow us all the way back to California.”

I don’t like it, she said, tone clipped and razor-sharp with tension. It felt almost like I’d see her if I turned my head just a little to the side, watching the other side of the van with her favorite .40 in her hands as she scanned the road for trouble. I didn’t turn. She added, There’s something not right about all this. Why aren’t they coming after us yet?

“Maybe they’re not sure it was us.” The excuse sounded stupid almost before it was out of my mouth. The people Dr. Wynne was working with had to know he’d sent Kelly to infiltrate us—he couldn’t have triggered the outbreak in Oakland remotely, and he certainly couldn’t have called in an air strike without somebody to approve it. Finding Kelly dead in his lab might confuse the legit members of the CDC, but the corrupt ones would know exactly who must have brought her back to Memphis, and they’d be watching the roads. So where were they?

This is too easy.

“I know.” I took a breath, scanning what little of the road was still visible through the darkness and the pounding rain. I almost wished there was someone else out there. At least a second pair of headlights would have broken up the black a little bit. “I think we fucked up, George. I think we fucked up big.”

We should have come up with a better plan. There has to have been another way. Her voice turned bitter. If anyone should have known better, it was me.

I didn’t argue with her. George was stubborn even when she was alive. Dead, she was basically impossible to convince of anything she didn’t agree with. “So now we head home, we regroup, and we head someplace where we can be invisible. We can’t stay with Maggie anymore. It’s not safe.”

We can’t leave her there alone, either. I could almost see the resignation on her face as she added, in an intentional echo, It’s not safe.

“Fuck,” I whispered, and settled against the seat, eyes still on the road.

Maggie never needed to be a blogger. She never needed to be anything. She had her parents’ money and could have spent her entire life doing nothing as ostentatiously as possible. I’ve never been sure how she and Buffy met. It never really mattered. They were friends when Maggie joined the site, and they stayed friends right up until the day that Buffy died. She was our only real choice to take over the Fictionals, and she’d done an amazing job from day one… and she never needed to. Most people come to the news because there’s something driving them, somethng that they need to find a way to cope with. Maggie was just looking for something to do with her time. She did it well, she did it professionally, and now she was in just as much danger as the rest of us.

She knew the job was dangerous when she took it, George said. She was trying to be reassuring. She was failing.

“Really?” I asked. “Because Buffy didn’t.”

Not even George had an answer to that one.

“Shaun?” Mahir pitched his voice just short of a shout to be heard above the roaring wind. “The wireless has gone out. We’ve no more GPS connection from here, so we’re going to need to pray for clarity of road signs.”

“That’s awesome,” I called back, as deadpan as I could manage. “What’s our last known position?”

“We crossed into Colorado about twenty minutes ago,” shouted Becks. “I’m going to go around Denver—cut through Centennial and skip Wyoming entirely. You can have the wheel when we hit Nevada.”

“Deal.” I crawled over the back of the seat, turning to face the front of the van. “But I have to get some sleep before I drive again. Mahir, can you watch the back? Just scream if anything looks funny.”

“I think I can manage that,” said Mahir, unbuckling his belt.

I stretched out on the middle seat as he worked his way past me. A bag of cheap potato chips from the first convenience store made a decent, if funky-smelling, pillow, and my jacket was a better blanket than I’ve had in some motels. I closed my eyes, listening to the howling wind and the sound of modern country drifting from the radio. George’s phantom fingers stroked my forehead, soothing some of the tension away, and the world faded out as I slipped into a shallow doze.

I woke up several hundred miles and five and a half hours later. Mahir was asleep in the rear seat of the van, and the radio was blasting—not that you could really tell. The cloud cover seemed lighter here, allowing a few traces of what might have been sunlight to cut through. The wind was still committed to playing storm, screaming even louder than it had been when I went to sleep. I sat up groggily, rubbing the grit from my eyes, and swallowed twice to clear my throat before I rasped, “Where are we?”

“About thirty miles into Nevada,” said Becks. She sounded exhausted. I was going to ask how she was still awake when I noticed the drift of Red Bull cans covering the floor. Those hadn’t been there when I went to sleep.

I rubbed my eyes again. “Another supply run?” I guessed.

“Sort of.” Becks met my eyes in the rearview mirror, and I realized with a start that she was on the verge of panic. “The wireless is still out. I can’t get a decent radio signal. I stopped for gas about twenty minutes ago, and the place was deserted. Open, but there was no one there. I grabbed what I could, filled the tank, and ran.”

“Did you grab anything but Red Bull?”

“Generic donuts, enough Coke to get you through Nevada, and some salmon jerky.” She returned her attention to the road. “I don’t think we should stop again if we don’t have to. Something’s really wrong out there.”

“How do you mean?” I dug around between the seats until I found the bag with the Cokes. I grabbed one of those and a box of donuts, the kind so cheap that they may as well have been dipped in faintly chocolate-flavored plastic. Then I half stood and made my way to the front passenger seat, dropping down next to her.

“I haven’t seen another person since Burlington,” Becks said. Her hands were clenched on the wheel hard enough to turn her knuckles white. “The streets were pretty normal there, people trying to get home before the storm really hit, people trying to stock up on the things they didn’t keep in the house—about what you’d expect. We rolled through Centennial so late that it wasn’t weird that the streets were empty, but the sun’s been up for an hour now. There should be cars. There should be commuters, even all the way out here. So where the fuck is everybody?”

“Maybe it’s a holiday?”

“Or maybe something’s really, really wrong.” Becks pressed the radio scan button, scowling as it skipped through a dozen channels of static before settling back on the canned modern country station she’d been listening to the night before. “All my live news is off the air. There’s nothing running but the preprogrammed music channels. I’d kill for an Internet connection right now, I swear to God. Something’s really wrong.”

“Have you tried to call anyone?” Making a call on an unsecured phone line could potentially blow our position. It was a last resort. With what Becks was saying, I wouldn’t have questioned the choice.

She exhaled slowly, and nodded. “I did.”

“And?”

“And I couldn’t get a connection.” Her hands clenched even tighter on the wheel. “The circuits were all full. I couldn’t even get through to nine-one-one. Nobody’s home, Shaun. Nobody’s home anywhere in the country.”

“Hey.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “Take a deep breath, okay? I’m sure there’s a totally reasonable explanation for all this. There usually is.”

“Really?” asked Becks.

Really? asked George.

“No,” I said. “But we’ve got a long way to go before we get back to Maggie’s, so let’s try to stay calm until we get there. I’d like to avoid having a fatal accident, if that’s cool with you.” I glanced back at Mahir, who was still flopped in the rear seat with his eyes closed. He was using one of Kelly’s sweaters as a blanket. I guess there was no reason for him not to. It’s not like she was going to be wearing it again.

Becks sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

“You know I’m right. It’s the most annoying thing about me.”

She actually smiled a little at that one. >

“When did Mahir go down?”

“Half an hour or so outside of Centennial. I figured there wasn’t any harm in it. The only thing that’s going to kill us on a road this empty is an air strike, and it’s not like he could watch for that. Besides, he was falling asleep anyway. I just gave him permission to stop pretending he wasn’t.”

“Poor guy. He’s really not used to field conditions.”

“Shaun, no one is used to this kind of field condition. Zombie mobs, abandoned malls, skateboarding through ghost towns, sure, we’re trained for that. Going up against the Centers for Disease Control in order to figure out who’s behind a global conspiracy? Not so much. That’s not why I became an Irwin.”

“So why did you?”

She blinked at me, surprised. “What?”

“Why did you become an Irwin?” I waved a hand at the windshield, indicating the storm. “Worrying about what may or may not be going on out there isn’t going to get us to Weed any faster. Now tell me why you became an Irwin while I try to get enough caffeine into my system to be safe behind the wheel.”

“Right. I—right.” Becks took a deep breath, drumming her fingers against the wheel. “How come you never asked me this before?”

“We were already busy when you hired on with the site, and then the Ryman campaign kicked into overdrive and there wasn’t time. After that… I don’t know. After that, I guess I was too busy being an asshole to realize it was something I needed to ask about. I’m sorry. I’m asking now.”

“Okay.” Becks shook her head a little. “Okay. You know I’m from the East Coast, right?”

“Yeah. Westminster, like the X-Men.”

“No, Westchester, in New York. No mutants. Lots of money. Old money.” She glanced my way. “My parents aren’t in the same weight class as the Garcias, but they’re well-off enough that my sisters and I had what must have looked like a fairy-tale childhood. Dance lessons at three, riding lessons at five—yes, on actual horses. That may have been the only dangerous thing my parents ever approved of. I was supposed to go off to school, get a degree in something sensible, and come home to marry a man as well-bred and well-mannered as I was.”

“So what happened?”

“I went to Vassar. My concentration was in English, with a minor in American history. Wound up getting interested in the way the nation has changed, and realized that what I really wanted was to go into the news.” Becks slowed as she swerved to avoid a fallen tree branch that spanned half the road. “So I told my parents I wanted to study politics at New York University, transferred, and went for a degree in film, with a journalism minor. My parents disowned me when they found out what I was really doing, naturally.”

“Naturally,” I echoed, disbelieving.

Becks continued like I hadn’t spoken. Maybe that was for the best. “I’d been freelancing for about eight months when I saw the job posting for the Factual News Division at your site. I was doing Action News, I was doing Factual News… I was doing everything but supporting myself. I was living in a walk-up in Jersey City, eating soy noodles for every meal. I applied almost as a Hail Mary. And I got the job.”

“George was really excited about your application,” I said.

“Thanks.” Becks smiled a little. “I knew the Newsies weren’t for me after my second press conference. I kept wanting to slap people until they got off their asses and did something. So I started trying to transfer. I just wanted… I don’t know. I guess I wanted to do something fun for a change. I wanted to have a life before I died.”

“Cool.” I finished my Coke in one long swallow before wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and tossing the bottle into the back. “Thanks for telling me. I’m ready to drive, if you want to pull over.”

“Yeah, well, I figure we’re past the point of keeping secrets, right?” Becks began to slow. “Which reminds me. What’s the flat-drop you told Alaric to do?”

I grimaced.

She shot a sharp look in my direction as she pulled the van to a stop on the shoulder of the road. “Hey, I answered yours.”

“I know, I know. It’s not that I don’t want to answer. It’s just that it’s complicated.” I unfastened my belt as I spoke and moved to slide between the seats, creating the space for Becks to move to the passenger side. “So. You know the situation with the Masons, right? The whole thing where they adopted George and me after their biological son died in the Rising?”

“I’ve read Georgia’s essays on the adoption process,” said Becks carefully, as she moved to take the seat I had so recently vacated.

“Yeah, well, after she died, they tried to take her files away. We even went to court over her estate. They lost. George had a really solid will. But they weren’t happy about it.”

“So the flat-drop—”

“Was to the Masons.” I fastened my seat belt and resettled the seat, adjusting it to my height before taking the wheel. “Once those ratings-hounds get involved, there’s no way this story is getting buried again. Hell, maybe we’ll get lucky, and if anybody else needs to die, it’ll be them.”

“That’s a pretty horrible thing to say about your parents.”

“If they were my parents, I might feel bad about it.” I looked over at Becks. “Get some sleep. I’ll get us home from here.”

She nodded, an expression I couldn’t identify on her face. It might have been understanding. Worse, it might have been pity. “Okay.”

I didn’t look at her again as I pulled away from the shoulder and back onto the highway. The rain made the asphalt slick and a little hazardous, but it had been rainats, clong enough that most of the oil had washed away, and the very structure of the highway was working in our favor. Roadwork got a lot more dangerous after the Rising, and the American highway system wound up getting some adjustments that hadn’t been necessary before zombies became an everyday occurrence. In areas where flooding was a risk, the roads were slightly raised, and the drainage was improved over pre-Rising standards. It would take a flood of Biblical proportions to knock out any of the major roads, and that included the one that we were on. Let it pour. We’d still make it home.

Becks was right about one thing: The roads were deserted. I didn’t see anyone else as we roared across Nevada. Even the usual police patrols were missing, which struck me as more disturbing than anything else, and every checkpoint had been set to run its blood tests on unmanned automatic. I expected the cars to come back when the rain tapered off, but they didn’t. Driving along an empty, sunlit road was even more disturbing than driving alone through the darkness. At least when the storm was hanging overhead, I could blame it for the sudden desertion of America.

The radio remained mostly static, with a few stations playing preprogrammed playlists, and I couldn’t restart the wireless when I was the only one awake. I kept trying the phone, but the lines were all tied up. It didn’t change when we crossed the border into California, although Mahir woke up around that time, moving up to the middle seat before he asked, blearily, “Where are we?”

“California, and we’re about to need to stop for gas. Becks got donuts. They’re crap, but they’re edible. In the bag behind me.”

“Cheers.” Mahir fished out a box of donuts covered in something that claimed to be powdered sugar. I didn’t want to take any bets on what the covering really was. I also didn’t want to put it in my mouth. Mahir didn’t have any such qualms. A few minutes passed in relative silence before he asked, through a mouthful of donut, “’ow much ’ther?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dude. That’s disgusting. We’ve got about another five hours to go. There’s a truck stop ahead. I’ll fill up while you get the wireless working, cool?”

He swallowed, and nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Good.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I’d been afraid to stop the van with both the others asleep. Something about the world outside the van was just too eerie, and somehow, deep down, I knew that if I stepped into that emptiness alone, I’d never come back.

The truck stop didn’t help with that impression. The diner was closed, metal shutters drawn over the windows and locked into place. There were no vehicles in sight. I kept one hand on my gun during the fueling process, and I didn’t mess around with wiping down the windows or checking the grill. Something about this whole thing was making my nerves scream, and you can’t be a working Irwin for more than a few months without learning to trust the little voice in the back of your head that tells you to get the fuck out of a bad situation.

This is not good, said George.

“You got that right,” I muttered, and got back into the van. Mahir, what’s the story with the wireless?”

“No luck. All the local networks are either locked down tight or off-line. I think we’re running blind until we get home.”

“Because we really needed this day to get worse.” I jammed the key into the ignition. The van started easily—thank God, car troubles were the one thing we hadn’t been forced to deal with—and we got back out on the road.

We reached the base of Maggie’s driveway an hour before sunset. Becks was driving, and I was in the passenger seat, while Mahir sat in the back with his laptop plugged into the car charger, tapping relentlessly away. He’d been writing for about four hours, recording everything we’d seen or heard in true Newsie fashion. It was a comforting sound. George used to do the same thing, back when she still had fingers.

The first two gates opened like they were supposed to, recognizing our credentials and letting us drive on through. “Looks like we’re home free,” said Becks. “Just a little farther and—holy shit!” She hit the brakes, hard. I slammed forward, my seat belt keeping me from hitting myself on the dashboard. There was a crash from the back as Mahir—who wasn’t wearing a seat belt—went sprawling.

“Jesus, Becks, what the fuck?” I demanded.

She didn’t answer me. She just raised one trembling finger and pointed to the driveway ahead of us. I turned to look where she was pointing, and stared.

Normally, the third gate on Maggie’s driveway is the first one that requires authorized visitors to interact with the security system. The normal system wasn’t in operation today. Instead, the gate stood open, and three men in full outbreak gear stood to block the road, assault rifles at the ready. Their faces were concealed by the biohazard masks they wore, filtering their air and blocking them from all fluid or particle attacks. That, more than anything else, told me this wasn’t a drill. Those masks are hell to wear. Nobody would do that without good reason.

One of the men beckoned for us to come closer. Becks crept forward until the same man waved for us to stop. He walked over to the van and tapped the muzzle of his rifle against the glass of my window. “Please lower the window, sir,” he said, in case his message hadn’t been clear enough.

Swallowing hard, I did as I was told. “Uh, hey,” I said. “You’re one of Maggie’s security ninjas, aren’t you? I was starting to think you were a myth.”

“Credentials.”

“Right.” I dug out my wallet and handed him my license card.

“All three of you.”

“Got it. Becks? Mahir? A little help here?”

“Here,” said Becks, shoving her card into my hand. Mahir followed suit.

I passed both cards to the security ninja. “So does this have anything to do with the total disappearance of the population of the American Midwest? Because we’re a little creeped out right now, and I’d really li to get to the bathroom.” I was babbling to cover my sudden conviction that something, somehow, had happened to Maggie and Alaric. We were driving into a murder investigation. We had to be. It was the only thing that made sense.

The security ninja didn’t answer me. He fed our cards into a handheld reader, one at a time, before handing them back to me and waving one of the other men forward. This man carried a stack of top-of-the-line blood testing units—the same model we used to confirm that George had been infected.

“Please distribute these to the rest of your party,” said the first man, as the second man carefully passed the test units through the window to me. He avoided touching my fingers, like I might be carrying a contagion that could somehow travel through his triple-lined Kevlar gloves and burrow into his skin. Not even Kellis-Amberlee can do that. The live virus has only ever traveled through direct fluid contact, thank God, or we’d all have been shambling our way around the world a long damn time ago.

I handed a test unit to Becks and held another out behind me, waiting until I felt Mahir take it out of my hand. I didn’t take my eyes off the man in the outbreak gear. This wasn’t outbreak protocol. They shouldn’t have been outside at all, and if they were, they should have started firing as soon as we came into range. “What’s going on?”

“Please open your test unit.”

There were three security ninjas I could see, which meant there were probably half a dozen more that I couldn’t. If they were all armed as heavily as the ones guarding the road, making trouble would be a good way to get dead without actually accomplishing anything. I frowned and popped the lid of the testing unit up, sliding my entire hand inside. The lid clamped down, holding my hand in position with the fingers spread for optimal sampling. Small snaps from beside and behind me told me that Becks and Mahir were doing the same. I kept watching the security ninja, trying to figure out what was going on.

The security ninja’s mask wasn’t directed toward my face anymore. It was directed at the lights on my testing unit. I realized with a start that his companions had moved to flank the van, putting them into position to shoot any one of us the second a test came back positive. That would fill the interior of the van with blood, turning it into a mobile hot zone, filling the enclosed space with the sharp tang of gunpowder—

Blood drying on the walls in half a dozen different shades, reds and browns and oh, God, George, I don’t think that I can do this without you. I don’t think I’m allowed to do this without you. So take it back, okay? Take back the blood, open your eyes, and if you’ve ever loved me, come back, take the blood away and come back—

George’s voice cut through the sudden jangle in my head with clear, soothing calm: That was a long time ago; that was a different van. Your test is clean.

“What?” I said, before I could remember that talking to myself in front of strangers isn’t a good idea.

The security ninja either didn’t notice or had been briefed on my little idiosyncrasies. “I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Mason,” he said. A fourth man had appeared from somewhere—I wasn’t sure wanted to know exactly where, or how many friends he had lurking out there. He was carrying a large biohazard bag. “If you would collect the units and return them, we’ll be glad to allow you to continue on your way.”

“Uh, yeah.” I took the bag with my free hand, dropping my green-lit testing unit inside before passing the bag to Becks. “Now do you want to tell us what’s going on? Because seriously, we have no idea, and you’re freaking me out more than a little.”

“Me, too,” contributed Becks.

“Myself as well,” said Mahir. He leaned forward to drop his testing unit into the bag in Becks’s hands. “I think we can safely declare this the worst vacation I have ever taken.”

“Mr. Mason, Ms. Atherton, Mr. Gowda.” The security ninja held out his hand. After a pause, Becks handed the bag back to me, and I handed it to him. He pulled it out of the van, handing it to the fourth man, who promptly vanished back into the brush surrounding the road. “If you would please continue on to the house, Ms. Garcia is anxiously awaiting your arrival.”

And had probably been notified by the security system as soon as we passed the first gate. “You’re not going to tell us what’s going on, are you?”

“Please continue on to the house.” The security ninja paused. When he spoke again, he sounded a lot more human, and a lot more frightened. “It isn’t safe for you to be out here. It isn’t safe for anyone to be out here. Now roll up those windows, and go.”

“Got it. Thanks.” I rolled up my window and turned to Becks, who looked like she couldn’t decide between being terrified and being furious. “You heard the man. Let’s get the hell out of here before they decide to shoot us just to be sure.”

“Oh, right.” Becks slammed her foot down on the gas, and we roared onward, up the circling driveway.

The other gates were standing open, each one flanked by a pair of men in outbreak gear. Whatever was happening, it was bad enough to mobilize the private security force that Maggie’s parents maintained for her. That was terrifying, in and of itself.

Maggie’s door was closed, and all the shades were drawn. They didn’t twitch as we pulled to a stop in front of the house. Becks turned off the engine and simply sat there, staring through the windshield.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now we grab whatever we absolutely can’t live without and run for the house,” I replied, picking up the bag with my laptop and guns in it. “Whatever the fuck is going on, it’s bad enough to have men in outbreak suits on Maggie’s driveway. Assume that once we’re inside, we’re not coming out again for anything short of the apocalypse.”

“Funny, that,” said Mahir. “I’m rather concerned that’s what we’re going in to hide from.”

On the count of three, said George.

“Okay. One, two—” and I was out of the van, slinging mybag over my shoulder as I ran for the house. Doors slammed behind me as Becks and Mahir followed, the one only slightly faster than the other.

There was no blood test required to get inside the house. Once you were past the security on the driveway, you were clean—or that had always been the assumption before, anyway. I swung open the front door to find myself staring at an emergency air lock, the kind that can be slotted into place to block any standard hallway or door frame. This one was set far enough into the front hall that it left room for the three of us, and not much more than that.

There was no doggy door in the air lock. Whatever was going on, the bulldogs weren’t being allowed out either.

Mahir and Becks piled in behind me while I was still staring at the air lock in dismay. As soon as Mahir was past the door frame, the door slammed itself shut. He twisted to try the knob, eyes widening. “The bloody thing’s gone and locked on us,” he said.

“Somehow, not surprised.”

“Greetings,” said the air lock.

We all jumped.

It was Becks who collected herself first, clearing her throat before she said, “Hello, house. What do you need us to do?”

“Please remove all exterior layers of clothing and place them in the chute for sterilization.” A panel slid open at the base of the air lock, displaying a metal box.

“You want us to strip?” The words burst out before I could stop them.

“Please remove all exterior layers of clothing,” repeated the house, with the infinite patience of the mechanical. “Once all potentially contaminated materials have been placed in the chute for sterilization, blood testing can begin.”

Mahir cleared his throat. “Excuse me, but—”

“Failure to comply will result in sterilization.”

Okay, maybe not infinite patience. “What about our equipment?” I asked. “Our laptops can’t survive a full sterilization.”

A second panel slid open next to the first. “Please place your equipment inside,” said the house. “Anything that is not contaminated will be returned to you. All fabrics will be isolated and sterilized. Any materials that test positive for contamination will be destroyed. You have five minutes remaining in which to comply.”

“Let’s stop arguing with the creepy house and just do what it says, okay?” I slung my bag into the equipment chute before hauling my shirt off over my head and stuffing it into the clothing chute. “I don’t really feel like getting sterilized today.”

“The things I do for journalism,” muttered Mahir, and took off his shirt.

In under a minute, the three of us were standing there barefoot in our underwear, trying to look at anything but each other. Since we were crammed in like sardines, that wa’t easy. The panel in the air lock door didn’t close until the last of our clothing had been shoved through. “Please place your hands on the test panels,” said the house, voice still mechanically calm. “Your testing will commence as soon as everyone is in compliance.”

“I fucking hate talking machines,” I muttered, and slapped my palm down on the nearest panel.

Getting Mahir and Becks access to their respective panels practically required us to play a game of standing Twister in the hall. I’d never noticed how narrow the damn thing was until I was penned in it. Finally, all three of us were in skin contact with the house security system. Three sets of lights clicked on, beginning to cycle rapidly between red and green.

“We haven’t encountered any contagions between here and the gate,” said Mahir. He sounded uncertain. I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t feeling all that certain myself.

“What if that’s the problem?” asked Becks, giving voice to the one thought I was trying desperately not to have. “Maybe that’s why there was no one on the roads—why those men were all wearing masks. Maybe the virus has finally gone airborne.”

“It’s already airborne,” I said. That was true—Kellis-Amberlee is an airborne virus with a droplet-based transmission vector—but it wasn’t the point. Becks wasn’t talking about the passive, cooperative version of Kellis-Amberlee, the one that protects us all from colds and cancer. She was talking about the live version, the one that turns us into shambling zombies who’d eat our own families in order to fuel the virus powering our bodies.

“I suppose we’ll know in a moment, won’t we?” said Mahir. As if on cue, the lights started settling on green. Becks was the first, followed by Mahir’s. Mine kept flashing for a few seconds more, just long enough to start making my chest get tight. Then the light settled on green, and the air lock hissed as it unsealed.

“Thank you for your compliance,” said the house.

I directed my middle fingers at the ceiling.

Mahir and Becks pushed past me while I was distracted by telling the house to go fuck itself, stepping out of the air lock and into the living room where Maggie and Alaric were waiting. Becks ran to hug Alaric, while Mahir stepped off to one side, crossing his arms over his chest and looking self-conscious. I stepped out of the air lock, looking cautiously around.

Inside the house, it was obvious that the shades weren’t just drawn; they were locked down, reinforced with sheets of clear plastic. The floor was practically covered with diminutive bulldogs, the entire pack forced inside by whatever emergency was at hand.

Maggie walked calmly over to me, slapped me hard across one cheek, and then, while I was still staring at her in confusion, throwing her arms around my shoulders. “We thought you were dead,” she hissed, through gritted teeth. “You didn’t call, and you didn’t call, and we thought you were dead. You asshole. Next time, find a way to send a fucking message.”

“How about there’s not a next time? Can we do that, instead?” Maggie wa clothed. I essentially wasn’t, which was making this hug even more awkward than it would normally have been. I extricated myself from her embrace, looking around the room again. “I know we said to close the windows, but I didn’t mean you had to go quite this far.”

“Wait—what?” Alaric pulled away from Becks, looking utterly bemused. “What do you mean? After you told us to close the windows—don’t you know what’s going on out there?”

Maggie studied my face for a moment, horror dawning in her expression. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You really don’t know. You have no idea, do you?”

“No idea about what?” I shook my head. “We haven’t seen anyone since Kansas, but we thought it was just the storm keeping people inside—”

“It’s not just the storm.” Alaric walked across the room with sharp, jerky motions and grabbed the television remote, turning the TV on. He hit another button and the infomercial that had been playing disappeared, replaced by CNN.

The picture showed a flooded street, helpfully labeled “Miami—Live Footage.” A newscaster was speaking in a low, anxious tone, saying something about death tolls and tracking survivors. I didn’t really hear him. I was transfixed by the picture, my brain refusing to accept what my eyes were telling me.

As always, it was George who grasped the reality of the situation first, and her understanding allowed me to understand. Oh, my God… she said, horrified.

I couldn’t argue.

The street was choked with debris and abandoned cars, brown-and-white water swirling everywhere as it tried to force itself down clogged sewer drains. They should have been cleared before the flooding could get this bad, and the city had tried to clear them; that much was obvious from the number of people in fluorescent orange shirts who were shambling down the street, moving jerkily along with the rest of the mob. I had never seen that many infected in one place. I counted fifty before my brain shut down, refusing to process any more.

“—we repeat, the federal government has declared the state of Florida a hazard zone. Uninfected citizens are urged to stay in your homes and await assistance. Anyone found on the street may be shot without warning. Anyone leaving their home will be assumed infected and treated with the appropriate protocols. Please stay in your homes and await assistance. Please…” The newscaster faltered, losing the rhythm of his carefully prepared statement. The footage of the flood was silent. Even recorded moaning can bring zombies to your position.

Recovering himself, the newscaster said, “Reports of similar outbreaks are coming in from Huntsville, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Houston. We don’t have numbers yet, but the death tolls are estimated to be in the thousands, and are climbing steadily.” He paused again, longer this time, before saying, “Some sources are referring to the event as the second Rising. God forgive me, but I’m not so sure they’re wrong. God forgive us all.”

There was a rattling noise, like someone putting a microphone down, and then the sound of footsteps. The silent footage of the flood, and the infected, continued to play.

“That’s what’s going on,” Alaric said. His voice was toneless, and I remembered with a start that his family lived mostly in Florida. “The second Rising. You drove right through the middle of it, and you didn’t notice.”

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, echoing George’s earlier statement. The picture on the TV jumped, the label at the bottom changing to “Huntsville.” The newscaster didn’t return. “Is this for real?”

“It’s real,” said Maggie.

It’s the end of the world, said George, and I silently agreed.

Maggie was crying without any sign of shame, tears running down her cheeks. Her nose was chapped; she’d been crying off and on for a while. She reached for my hand, and I didn’t pull away, letting her lace her fingers through mine. Becks moved to stand next to Alaric, and he took her in his arms again, holding her against his chest. All five of us stood transfixed, staring at the television.

Staring at the end of the world.