Deadline

Twenty-four

The feeling of George’s hand against the back of my neck eventually faded. I looked up to find myself alone. Even the usual soft sense of her at the back of my mind was gone. That didn’t worry me the way it would have, once; I’d had plenty of time to adjust to the idea that her presence came and went depending on how stressed I was, how much pressure I was under, and I guess how sane I was feeling at any given moment. If she wasn’t there, that must mean I was feeling better.

In the kitchen, Mahir and Alaric were typing furiously, while Becks was finishing the reassemy of what looked like her last gun for the day. Maggie was wearing a wireless headset and sitting in front of her laptop, chattering in a rapid mixture of English and Spanish. She sounded calmer. That was good, since the speed of her responses implied that whomever she was talking to wasn’t calm in the least.

I hooked my thumb in her direction as I walked toward the coffee machine. George being out of the picture for the moment meant I could down a cup of real caffeine before I had to go back to caffeinated sugar water. “Who’s on the line?”

“Her folks,” said Becks, glancing up. “They’ve been talking for half an hour.” The subtext—that I’d been sitting by myself in the living room for half an hour—wasn’t subtle. Somehow, I didn’t really care.

“Good job with the wireless booster.” Mahir kept typing as he spoke, his head bowed in what could have been either concentration or prayer. “I believe Mr. Garcia was on the edge of commanding an armed extraction when she was finally able to get through and notify them as to her continuing safety.”

“I could do with a little armed extraction.” I took a large gulp of coffee, letting it sear the back of my throat before adding, “As long as they were willing to stay and be our private army. You think they’d stay and be a private army?”

“No,” said Alaric tonelessly.

Mahir did look up at that, shooting a worried glance toward Alaric before turning to me and saying, “Internet journalists have been largely expelled from the impacted areas, and those attempting to take pictures or live blog from inside have been cited with practicing journalism without a license.”

“What?” I straightened. “That’s not legal.”

“Becoming a blogger requires only that one establish a blog, and not necessarily even that, if one is willing to exist solely through commentary on the blogs of others. Becoming a journalist requires that one take the licensing exams, take the marksmanship exams, pass accreditation, and possess a license sufficient to allow entry to any given hazard zone, lest fines and possible charges be applied.”

“Well, yeah, Mahir. Everybody knows that. What does that have to do with—”

“The individuals involved were in established hazard zones, taking actions of the sort that journalists must be properly licensed to perform.” Mahir shook his head, light glinting off his glasses. “They’re being held while charges are brought against them.”

I gaped at him. “Wait—so—what, they’re saying that when you combine ‘has a blog’ with ‘is inside a hazard zone,’ you automatically become a journalist?”

“Poof,” muttered Becks.

“That’s insane!”

“Insane, and very, very clever, as it’s going quite a long way toward reducing the number of unapproved reports making it out of the impacted areas.” Mahir’s gaze skittered toward Alaric. Just for a moment, but long enough for me to see where he was looking. “Reduction doesn’t mea>

“Some things always do,” I said, putting my mug down. I wasn’t thirsty anymore. “Alaric? You okay, buddy?”

“The updates to the Wall started this morning,” he said. Tears ran down his cheeks as he turned to look at me. He didn’t bother wiping them away. Maybe he knew that drying his face wouldn’t be enough to make the crying stop. “My little sister posted for our parents and our brother. Dorian shot our parents, and Alisa shot Dorian, after he’d started to turn. I always knew getting her shooting lessons for her birthday was a good idea, even if Mother wanted her to take dance classes.”

I winced. “Fuck, Alaric, I’m—”

“Did it help you when I said I was sorry George died?”

Everyone said they were sorry when George died, even the Masons. And not a single apology had made a damn bit of difference. “No. It didn’t help.”

“Then don’t say it.” He looked back to his computer. “The forums are exploding. We’re one of the only major sites that has people actually responding to queries.”

“That’s because we don’t know anything.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said Mahir. “We know the outbreak started when Tropical Storm Fiona made landfall—and that it spread with the storm. Only with the storm.”

“Wait, what?”

“All the index cases have matched up with the initial footprint of the storm.”

I stared at him. What he was saying didn’t make sense. An outbreak starting when a major storm hit was reasonable, if horrifying. Storms cause devastation, they cause injuries, and they can cause a hell of a lot of cross-contamination. There have been documented cases of someone being injured in a major storm, only to have the wind carry their infected blood onto a bystander before anyone knew what was happening. But that outbreak would be geographically contained, and even though it would be horrible, it wouldn’t be anything unique enough to cause the sort of devastation they were showing on the news.

If the live state of the virus had gone airborne, it would be reasonable to assume that it would spread with the storm. It would also spread without the storm, and while its initial footprint might have been defined by Fiona, it wouldn’t stay that way. If this was a purely airborne outbreak, it should have been breaking out of any containment not defined through a complete absence of uninfected bodies.

“Wait…” I said again, slow dread worming its way into my stomach. I hadn’t realized I still had the capacity to be frightened. Somehow, it wasn’t a welcome discovery. “Alaric, your sister. You said she posted to the Wall. Is she all right?”

“She’s scared out of her mind, and she’s alone in the attic of the family condo, but she’s physically fine.” Alaric looked up, expression challenging me to say something as he added, “She’s using the company server to chat with me.”

“Good. Make sure she has a log-in of her own. If she wants to coauthor reports with you on what’s going on out there, use your own discretion, but I say let her. It may take her mind off things until she’s evacuated. Can you ask her a question for me?”

Alaric eyed me suspiciously. “What do you want me to ask?”

“Ask whether any of them had been outside since the start of the storm.” The idea that was unfolding in the back of my head wasn’t a pleasant one. It also wasn’t one that I could categorically ignore.

Alaric frowned. “I don’t think—”

“Please.”

He hesitated, then turned back to his computer and began to type. Mahir and Becks looked up from their respective tasks, watching him. Maggie continued to chatter in the background for a few minutes more before saying her good-byes and walking over to stand beside me. “What’s going on?”

I gestured toward the still-typing Alaric. “Alaric’s asking his sister a question for me.”

“The one in Florida?” She gave me a sidelong look. “That seems a little…”

“I know how it seems. But it’s important.”

“All right,” said Alaric. “Alisa says Dad was the first to… he was the first to get sick, and he went outside just after the storm started, to bring in the recycling bins before they could blow away.”

“Did she say whether anyone else went outside before they got sick?”

“No. I mean, no, no one else went outside. Mother was trying to make Dad feel better—no one really understood what was happening; Kellis-Amberlee doesn’t transmit like that—when he bit her. Dorian tried to separate them, and Dad bit him, too.”

“So only your father went outside, and only your father got sick without a recognizable vector?”

Alaric was starting to scowl. “Yes. I just told you that.”

Becks and Mahir kept looking at me blankly. It was Maggie—daughter of pharmaceutical magnates, fan of bad horror movies, the girl who’d grown up steeped in the medical community—whose eyes widened with a shocked horror that perfectly mirrored my own. “You can’t be serious.”

“I wish I weren’t.” I could feel George at the back of my head again, watching the proceedings. I moved to grab a Coke out of the fridge as I said, “Alaric, tell your sister to close all the windows she can get to, and not to open the door for anyone. How long is it to sunrise there? Another five hours or so?”

He nodded mutely.

“Okay. If I’m right—and let’s all hope I’m not—it should get a little safer after the sun comes up.” I started for the door back to the living room.

“Hey!” Becks hlf rose. “Where are you going?”

Maggie didn’t look at her. She just kept watching me, suddenly paler than I’d ever seen her. “He’s going to go send an e-mail, aren’t you, Shaun?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I am. Mahir, hold the fort, keep everybody working—and if anybody sounds off from the hazard zones, tell them to stay inside and close the windows. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

No one else spoke up as I left the kitchen; no one but George. How sure are you? she asked, voice tight.

“Sure enough to know that I’d give just about anything to be wrong.” I stepped over piles of bulldogs on my way to the house terminal, where I sat and tapped the keyboard to wake the computer from its slumber. “But I don’t think I am wrong. That’s the problem. I really don’t think I am.”

I’m sorry.

I laughed, a little wildly. “Times like this, I really wish you weren’t dead, you know. When you were alive, I could count on you to think of these things first. Then I got to sit back looking shocked, and let you do all the doom-saying.”

Sorry my deadness is inconveniencing you.

“Don’t worry about it. It was probably my turn to do the shit jobs.” I logged in and called up my e-mail client, ignoring the multiple messages flashing Urgent as I scanned for a single sender. She wasn’t there.

“Damn,” I sighed, and opened a new message window. I paused long enough to be sure that I wanted to do this and, when no other ideas presented themselves, began to type.

From: Shaun.Mason@aftertheendtimes.com

To: TauntedOctopus@redacted.cn.com

Subject: The current outbreak.

Hey, Dr. Abbey. I know you said we needed to stay away from you and all, but we have sort of a problem, and I was hoping you were the person who could tell me what’s up with it.

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about the outbreak on the Gulf Coast. It’s been eating all the news cycles for at least a day, and maybe longer. I can’t say for sure, since we spent the first chunk of it on the road running away from the CDC—oh, right, remember what happened in Portland? Well, it sort of happened again, in Memphis this time. The doctor who sent Kelly to us turned out to be on the side of the bad guys. Kelly died. The rest of us (Mahir, Becks, me) got away. I sort of wonder whether that would have been possible if the storm hadn’t hit; if maybe the storm is what distracted them from following us. But whatever. You can’t base a report on maybe. That’s what George always says, and I need to get some facts.

Alaric’s family was in Florida when Tropical Storm Fiona hit. His father went outside after the storm made landfall, and he got sick. Two more members of Alaric’s family got sick after bit them, but the only one to actually amplify without a confirmed vector was the father.

The outbreak is spreading with the footprint of the storm—with the wind. It’s moving with the wind, and not against it, and not away from it, even though the survivors are doing their best to get away. I’ve been trying to think of every disease vector I’ve ever encountered, and I’m coming up with only one that works for this. You’re the one who understands the structure of this virus. You’re the one who can infect anything. So I’m asking you, and I think the whole world may depend on your answer:

Dr. Abbey, is it possible for Kellis-Amberlee to be spread via an insect vector?

Please reply. I need to know.

Shaun Mason

I clicked Send and sat back in my chair, leaving my hands resting limp against the keyboard. More mail was pouring into my client. The view refreshed every few seconds as things passed the filters and landed in my in-box, their subject lines screaming for attention. For the most part, I ignored them. I was waiting for an answer, not another death notice or demand for information.

You really think it’s insects?

“I don’t think anything else has this kind of distribution pattern.” One of the few saving graces of Kellis-Amberlee has always been the fact that it’s a very hands-on virus. Unless you’re in the unfortunate two percent of the population at risk for spontaneous amplification, you have to either die or get bitten by someone who’s been infected before you have a problem. Giving it any sort of a distance-based vector changed the entire game… but it was still a speed killer, taking over bodies and rewriting instincts in a matter of hours. With modern quarantine procedures and our constant, comfortable societal paranoia, even an airborne strain could be controlled.

But an insect vector changed everything. Just ask the people living in parts of the world where malaria is still a problem. Ten-dollar mosquito nets can save entire families from a slow, agonizing death—assuming they don’t get torn. Or stolen. Or left ever so slightly ajar one night, allowing one tiny bug to slip unnoticed through the mesh and deliver a stinging bite filled with microscopic death. But malaria’s a parasitic infection. That’s part of why it does so well with the whole mosquito gig. It’s little and it’s quick and it’s very well-suited to the life cycle it’s evolved for. Kellis-Amberlee is a huge, unwieldy virus, microscopically speaking, and it doesn’t have the flexibility of malaria. Marburg Amberlee provided most of the structure when it combined with the Kellis flu strain, and it was a filovirus. They’re big. So I had to be wrong. I had to be totally off-base, taking swipes at shadows. I just needed Dr. Abbey to tell me that, so we could move on to looking for answers in someplace a little bit more realistic.

Shaun? George sounded almost timid for a change. She didn’t like this theory any more than I did. Check your mail.

I allowed my eyes to focus on the screen. The top item in my in-box was from an e-mail address I recognized all too well, and it was flagged Urgent. The little status marker was blinking bright red, which meant every possible “read this immediately” switch had been flipped, some of them maybe more than once. I took a breath, sent a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening, and opened the message.

For a long moment, everything was silent.

Oh, said George, finally. I guess that answers that.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it does.”

From: TauntedOctopus@redacted.cn.com

To: Shaun.Mason@aftertheendtimes.com

Subject: Re: The current outbreak.

Ten points, kid: You got it faster than I expected you to. The yellow fever epidemic of 1858 happened after a tropical storm blew infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes over from Cuba. The city of Memphis was nearly wiped out. Hundreds of thousands died.

Tropical Storm Fiona originated in Cuba.

This time is going to be much, much worse, because the mosquitoes may have been blown in by the storm, but they’re not tethered to it—some of them are probably already breaking away and infecting random people in the countryside. It’s just not enough to cause the mass horror we’re seeing in the storm zones. People and their shotguns can keep up with it, and as long as Fiona keeps going, the majority of the bugs will stay with the winds. That means they’re concentrated, creating a steady critical mass of new infected to share the joy and make it a real community barbecue.

My lab has moved. If you need to evacuate your current location, download the attached file and upload it to a GPS unit you don’t mind destroying. The directions will last for approximately five hours before the virus included with the file burns out your CPU. Attempts to extract the directions without uploading them will result in the file self-destructing and possibly giving you a nice little surprise as an added “you shouldn’t have fucked around with me when I’m in this kind of a mood” bonus.

If you must go outside while the sun is down, wear long sleeves and bug spray. I recommend Avon Skin-So-Soft. It’s a bath product. It smells like someone fed a Disney Princess through a juicer, but it works better than anything else on the market. Really, I recommend DDT and prayer. Sadly, those aren’t available for sale.

You have twenty-four hours before I move again. I will not transmit directions a second time.

Good luck. You assholes are going to need it.

Dr. Shannon L. Abbey

I read the e-mail twice, making sure I understood exactly what it said. Finally, I sent two copies to the house printer and leaned back in my chair, bellowing, “Mahir!” A minute passed with no reply. I ied again: “Mahir!”

“What in the bloody blue blazes are you shouting about now?” he demanded, shoving open the kitchen door and storming toward me. The bulldogs scrambled out of his way, demonstrating more in the way of self-preservation than I would have credited them with. One small brindle even mustered the courage to bark at Mahir’s ankles. I felt an unexpected pang. We were going to have to evacuate. If not immediately, then soon. The CDC knew where we were, and in the chaos of the second Rising, not even Maggie’s parents would have the reach to keep us all safe.

Between the van and George’s bike, we could easily take the five surviving members of the team. But there was no way we’d be able to take the dogs.

“I need a thumb drive,” I said.

Mahir stared at me. “Do you mean to tell me,” he said, in a measured tone, “that you just yelled like there was some sort of emergency on—when there is an actual emergency on, no less, which means we’re all a trifle jumpy—because you needed a thumb drive?”

“Sort of, yeah.” I held out my hand. “Got one?”

“I always thought the stories my staff told about you being impossible to work with were exaggerated, you know.” Mahir dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a thumb drive, which he slapped down on my palm. “This isn’t the time to be acting the bastard, Shaun.”

“I know.” I plucked a sheet of paper from the printer and held it out to him. “Here’s the latest from the lab of Dr. Abbey, crazy-ass scientist who knows more about the structure of Kellis-Amberlee than anybody else I’ve ever met. Just in case you needed a few more things to keep you awake at night.”

Mahir took the paper wordlessly and started to read. I took advantage of the lull and uncapped the thumb drive, plugging it into an open USB port. It checked out clean, so I started downloading Dr. Abbey’s embedded file for transfer. We’d need a way to get the information to the GPS when the time came.

That takes care of one GPS, said George. Are you leaving the bike?

“I’ll follow the van,” I replied, disengaging the thumb drive. It was another cold equation, and one that I liked just as little as I’d liked the first one. The more times we copied the information, the higher the odds were that someone could get hold of it. The van would be better armed and better-equipped to get away if something went wrong. The only person on the bike would be me, and I…

I wasn’t quite at the end of my usefulness, but with the way I’d been slipping, I wasn’t sure how much longer that was going to be true. If only one vehicle could reach Dr. Abbey’s safely, it wasn’t going to be mine. I was oddly okay with that.

That made one of us. Shaun, you’d better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking.

“Or what? You’ll haunt me?” I chuckled. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

George’s rebuttal was cut shI ss Mahir raised his head and stared at me. The circles under his eyes were standing out like bruises against his suddenly pale skin. I’d thought he looked tired when he first came off the plane, but compared to this, he’d been in top fighting condition. We’d been running for too long. I wasn’t the only one running out of go.

“Good lord, Shaun,” he said. His voice was shaking. Not for the first time, I wished that I’d died and George had lived—at least she could have given him a hug and told him things might not be all right but they’d take a few of the bastards out with them. I didn’t even know where to start. “Is this woman serious?”

“I don’t think she’s ever not serious. I also don’t think she’s ever wrong where Kellis-Amberlee is concerned. She’s the one who collected most of the data I gave you. She’s crazy. She’s dangerous. But I think she’s right.”

“But I…” He stopped, licking his lips nervously before he said, “If she’s right, we can’t stay here.”

“That’s true.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Well, we can’t stay here, and we can’t go home.” I stood, slipping the thumb drive into my pocket. “I suggest it’s time we head off to see the Wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Jesus We Are All So Fucked.”

I don’t think you can make that scan, said George.

“I don’t think so either,” I replied. Mahir gave me an odd look. I ignored it. We were past the point of me feeling self-conscious about talking to someone nobody else could hear. “Dr. Abbey’s right about the Avon Skin-So-Soft—it’s sold as a cosmetic, but it’s the best bug repellent on the domestic market. I have a couple of bottles in my kit. So should Becks.”

Mahir blinked. “Kellis-Amberlee has never had an insect vector. I’m not sure I’m willing to believe that it has one now. Why are you already carrying this stuff?”

I smiled thinly. “Because it’s the best bug repellent known to man. When you’re an Irwin, poking into places men were not meant to poke, being chased by the living dead, the last thing you want to do is stop to deal with mosquito bites all over your ass.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“I’m going to go get the others up to speed. We need to start packing, and we need to give Maggie time to tell the house security systems to stand down.” If I doused myself in bug repellent and wore my full-field armor, I’d be able to take the bike. Any mosquito that could bite through Kevlar deserved to get a piece of me. “We’re taking the work van. If it doesn’t fit in there, it isn’t coming.”

“What are you talking about? We need to wait—”

“The sun rises in five hours. The instructions will wipe themselves in five hours. If we want to get to Dr. Abbey alive, we need to leave now.”

Mahir hesitated, eyes searching my face. Finally, carefully, he said, “Shaun, are ou sure? I mean, are you really sure we should be going to this woman, rather than staying here, where it’s safe?”

“Is it safe here? Maggie’s folks know where we are. The security staff knows. It’s only a matter of time before one of us slips and our readership knows. We’re on the verge of full-blown martial law, which means that eventually some asshole at the CDC is going to put two and two together and realize that we’re sitting ducks. It’s going to be Oakland all over again. They just have to make sure their fall guy knows enough to be believable as the one who pressed the button and blew the only heir to Garcia Pharmaceuticals to hell. If we want to stay alive through this, we need to get the fuck out of here.”

“I…” Mahir stopped. Squaring his shoulders, he looked me in the eye, and asked, “What is it you need me to do?”

“Check with your Newsies. See who’s posting what and how much they have ready to go up. Also see who can play phone-tree. We’re going to want to hold a short staff meeting before we get out of here—and by ‘we,’ I mean you, me, and Maggie.” Becks and Alaric weren’t department heads. They could be packing the van and gathering any essential supplies from the house while we made the requisite reassuring noises and made it seem like we’d be staying where we were for the foreseeable future. I hated the idea of lying to my crew, I hated it, but I didn’t see any alternative. Not if we wanted to stay alive. I didn’t think any of them were secretly working for the enemy—Buffy was a special case—and I was pretty sure they were all willing to do whatever it took to help us spread the truth. George had a gift for hiring good people, and the best thing about hiring good people is that they’ll recommend other good people when it comes time to expand.

I would trust our staff with my life, and had, on several occasions. But we couldn’t take them all with us, and that meant they couldn’t know where we were going. More cold equations. If someone came looking, it was important there be no one who could give our location away.

Mahir was clearly doing the same math I was because he looked stricken before he nodded. “I’ll get them to report in, and I’ll pass the word about the staff meeting. How long do you think we need?”

“Tell ’em to be online in fifteen minutes. Anyone who isn’t there when we get started can join late and try to catch up as best they can.” I paused. “Also… tell them I’m not my sister. I’m not going to pull a grand gesture like she did. But if they want to quit without consequences, now would be the time to do it.”

George called a staff meeting when we first started to realize the size of the conspiracy we were facing. She made sure everyone was connected—and fired them all. Anybody who wanted to stay on could stay, but they had to sign another contract first. They had to understand what they were getting into. It was a big deal. It was incredibly important. And there just wasn’t time for that kind of theater. They’d stay or they wouldn’t. Anyone who’d signed on during the meeting with George knew the score, and so did anyone who’d signed on since.

“All right,” said Mahir. He was already moving toward the house terminal, my printout clutched in one hand.

I leaned over and pluckedt from his grasp, offering a wan smile in his direction before I turned and started for the kitchen. It was time to get everybody on the same page, get Maggie to start packing, and get ready to go on the run.

Bet you wish we’d never signed up for the Ryman campaign, huh?

“The thought has crossed my mind,” I admitted. “When you said, ‘Hey, Shaun, let’s be journalists,’ I’m pretty sure this part wasn’t in the brochure.”

Would it have made any difference?

I paused with my hand raised to push the kitchen door open. Mahir and Buffy, Maggie, Alaric, and Becks, we knew them all because of what we’d chosen to do with our lives. More important, they were our lives, not mine. If I’d said no, that I wanted to be something else when I grew up, George would still have become a blogger, and I would have lost her long before I actually did.

“Not a bit,” I said, and stepped into the kitchen.