Deadline

Twenty-five

The staff meeting went better than I was afraid it would. That’s about the only good thing that I can say about it. Everyone was scared, and everyone was expressing that fear in a different way. The Irwins were restless and pissed off about being forbidden to go into the field. The Newsies were split into two distinct camps—the ones who wanted to grab an Irwin, get outside, and find out what the hell was going on out there, and the ones who were happy to stay as far away from the disaster zone as possible but wanted information to flow freely while they stayed indoors. That’s the kind of Newsie attitude that’s always pissed me off, since it seems to come with a blanket assumption that the Irwins are overjoyed to be risking their lives for the benefit of the Newsies’ careers.

The Fictionals, on the other hand, were uniformly glad to be staying inside, but were all scared out of their minds and spent half the call going off on tangents that required all business to come grinding to a halt while Maggie calmed them down. She was good at her job, maybe better than I ever realized, and not even she could keep them on track for more than a few minutes at a time. After twenty minutes, I was ready to kill someone—and I wasn’t all that picky about who.

Mahir saved everyone’s asses. He took over the call and led it with calm and grace, pausing when Maggie needed to play kindergarten teacher, and otherwise keeping us moving forward. He fielded every question that was tossed his way, somehow prompting the rest of us to speak up just often enough that no one forgot we were there. If he’d wanted to go into event planning instead of journalism, he probably could have made a fortune.

The whole time the call was going, Alaric and Becks were packing up supplies and moving them to the back of the kitchen, just outside the closed garage door. Maggie and Alaric had done a lot of packing before the rest of us got there, but neither of them was an Irwin, and Becks felt the need—probably rightly—to go through everything and make sure that we had enough supplies to reach our destination in one piece.

“All right, folks,” I said, breaking into the fifth near-identical argument over who was getting more screwed by the current embargos, the Newsies or the Irwins. “I’m glad we’re all on the same page now, but the wireless booster is about to shut down from lack of juice, so I figure we should wrap this up. I don’t know how long it’ll be before they get our little slice of the Internet back online. In the meantime, everybody has their assignments, and we have our temporary department heads. Are there any questions?”

There were no questions. That was practically a goddamn miracle. Our three temporary department heads—Katie in Connecticut, for the Fictionals; Luis in Ohio, for the Newsies; and Dmitry in Michigan, for the Irwins—were nervous enough that their tiny digital pictures looked faintly ill. Still. We wouldn’t have asked them to do the jobs if we didn’t think they were ready. Not that anyone could really be considered ready to take over one-third of a major news site during a disaster this large, but they were about as prepared as the rest of us, and no one was shooting at them yet. That had to count for something.

“Okay, then, I’m going to shut this baby down before something manages to actually catch fire and we have to kill it with sticks.” I looked at my screen. The faces of After the End Times looked back at me, all filled with the same anxiety. The world might actually be ending. That was a bit more than we were used to dealing with on a normal workday.

Say something inspirational, prompted George. They need to hear it from you. You’re the leader.

That was a job I never applied for. I managed to bite back the words “Like what?” before they could quite escape, and cleared my throat instead, trying to think of a single damn thing to say. My mind was a blank. This was a threat way too big to prod with a stick.

You can do it, said George, quietly.

I cleared my throat again. “Guys…” Everyone loked at me expectantly. I faltered, losing my place for a second before I tried again: “This has been one hell of a year. For those of you who hired on with us after the campaign, I’m sorry. You’ve never seen me at my best. Hell, if it weren’t for the fact that we have the best damn administrative staff in the known universe, you would never have seen me at all, because we would have gone under a long time ago.”

“He’s quite right about that,” said Mahir.

Ignoring him seemed like the best idea, so I did. “And for those of you who’ve been with us since the beginning, I know this isn’t what you signed on for. Hell, it’s not what I signed on for, and you’d think I might have some say in what we do, right? But the thing is, regardless of when you came on with us, whether it was day one or yesterday, you have all done an amazing, amazing job. If I were asked to put together a team to record the end of the world, there’s not one of you who I wouldn’t want to have on board—and yeah, I don’t know all of you that well, but I know the people who recommended you, and since I would trust them with my life, I figure you’re worth taking the gamble on.”

Laughter followed this statement, some nervous, most not. A few people were nodding. That was sort of unnerving.

“I don’t know how much worse things are going to get before they get better. We’re in the same place now that we were in twenty years ago—the dead are rising, the situation looks grim as hell, and no one really knows what’s going on. I won’t lie to you. If the first Rising is anything to go by, we’re not all going to live to see the end of this. Some of us will be going up on the Wall before this is over.” I paused, the litany of the dead running in the back of my mind. Buffy, Georgia, Dave, Kelly. The convoy guards in Eakly, Oklahoma. All our neighbors back in Oakland. Alaric’s family. Too damn many people. “Some of us already have. But see, the thing is, that isn’t what matters. What matters is that we’re going to keep doing what we do. We’re going to keep getting the news out. We’re going to keep telling the truth. And if we go up on the Wall, we’re by God going to know that we did the best we could—and that we’ve left behind as much information as we can for the ones who’ll tell the truth after us.”

There was a long pause. Well said, said George.

And then someone—one of the Irwins, I think, since we’re the ones trained to start making noise whenever we get the excuse—cheered. Several more people joined in, and the ones who didn’t clapped their hands, or just grinned. I stared at them, dumbfounded.

They like you.

I kept staring.

Mahir saved me by leaning forward and saying, “That’s the end of our motivational speaking for the day, and the end of our power supply, I’m afraid. Ladies and gents, it’s been fabulous chatting with you all, and we’ll do our best to keep updating you as things progress here, but for now, assume that we’re off-line for the foreseeable future. Ask your interim department heads if you have any questions or troubles, and stay safe.” He moved his mouse cursor to the button for Terminate Conference, and clicked.

The screen went black, all those little windows inking out in an instant. It felt weirdly final, like I’d never speak to any of these people again. In some cases, I probably wouldn’t. I coughed into my hand to clear the tightness in my throat, and straightened.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Packing the rest of the equipment took less than ten minutes. Maggie spent the time in the living room, feeding treats to the bulldogs and telling them how good they were. They were happy to receive the attention, if a little confused by all the fuss that she was making; people came and went all the time, after all, and she didn’t normally make such a big deal out of it. To their canine minds, this excursion didn’t look any different from the hundreds of others she’d taken. Maybe it was better that way.

While she was dealing with the dogs, I went upstairs to the guest room and changed into my body armor. I slathered Avon Skin-So-Soft over every inch of skin I had, even the skin that would be covered by three layers of Kevlar and leather. I was going to be as soft as a baby’s ass, and more important, I wasn’t going to get infected if I had any choice in the matter.

I paused in the doorway before heading back down to join the others, looking at the guest room. The bed was made, the nightstand was empty, and there was nothing to indicate that I’d ever been there at all.

“Will we ever stop just passing through?” I asked aloud.

George didn’t answer, and so I went back downstairs.

Maggie had joined the others in the kitchen while I was getting changed. She offered me a nod, wiping her eyes with the back of one hand before turning to walk up to the back door. “House,” she said, clearly, “please contact Officer Weinstein. Tell him it’s time for the matter we discussed earlier.”

“All right, Magdalene,” said the house. Its tone was blandly pleasant as always.

“Thank you, house.” Maggie looked over her shoulder to me. “I warned Alex we might need to go, and that we’d need it to be as quiet as possible. He’s been waiting for my word.”

“And the house will let us out?” asked Becks.

“If the security crew outside says that we’re opening the isolation lock, even for a few minutes, the house won’t have a choice. My security logs are only uploaded if there’s an unapproved breach, so unless the infected take the house, no one will know for sure that we’re gone.” Maggie wiped her eyes again. “I hate this.”

“I know,” I said, quietly.

The house speaker crackled as someone switched to manual, and a man’s voice came through, asking, “Ms. Garcia? Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

Maggie smiled unsteadily at a point just above the door—probably the location of a hidden security camera. “No. But I’m sure it’s what I have to do. Please let us out, Alex.”

“Your father—”

“Sig your checks, but you work for me, remember? That was always the deal. Now please, just give us ten minutes to get out of here, and you can lock the place down again.”

He sighed heavily. “If anything happens to you, your father will have all our asses. You understand that, right?”

“I do.”

“Just checking. You have ten minutes. Now please, try not to make me regret this.”

The speaker crackled again as he hung up his end, and the house said, sounding almost perplexed, “The isolation order has been rescinded. Thank you for your patience. You are now free to leave the premises if you so choose.”

“Grab your gear, folks,” I said, picking up a duffel bag with one hand and my helmet with the other. “We need to get rolling.”

“On it,” said Alaric, grabbing the wireless booster.

Becks didn’t say anything. She just picked up a box filled with dry cereal and cans of soda and kicked the garage door open.

The van was inside, which was good. The bike was outside, which was not good. Working in tight tandem, the five of us were able to load the van in just under five minutes, cramming boxes and bags into every inch of available space. I didn’t question the amount of stuff that we were bringing. Since the odds of us coming back were pretty damn slim, we needed to take everything that was even potentially useful and assume that it was easier to throw shit away than it would be to find it once we were on the road.

We were halfway through the packing process when Alaric realized there wasn’t going to be room for everyone. “Wait,” he said. “We need to leave some of this. We’re filling the backseat.”

“It’s all good.” I raised my helmet. “I’m taking the bike.”

“But—”

“We need someone riding point. And besides,” I said and grinned, “you know I’m going to get the best footage.”

He gave me an uncertain look. “You’re going to be exposed.”

“We’ve all basically bathed in insect repellent—if they bite me, I probably deserve it. Now come on, finish packing the van. We have a pretty narrow time frame here, and we need to get out before it closes.”

Becks lobbed a duffel bag at him. He caught it with an oof, and gave me a wounded look before turning to resume packing the van. I didn’t really care if he thought I was being an idiot. Maybe I was. I was also being a realist.

When the last box was wedged into place and the last bag was stowed, the four of them got into the van, rolling the windows all the way up. I put on my helmet, sealing it tightly before nodding to activate the intercom. “How’s our connection?” I asked.

“Loud and clear,” Mahir replied.

“Great. Now le roll.”

The garage door rolled smoothly upward in answer to some unseen signal from Maggie, and the night air came flooding in, chilling me even through my leathers. It wasn’t the temperature so much as the uncertainty that the air represented: the risk of a kind of infection we’d never been afraid of before. Kellis-Amberlee was a known quantity; it was, for lack of a better phrase, a safe virus, something that could kill you, but which we understood. The thought of a new vector made it all terrifying again.

Becks started up the van engine and turned on the headlights. I didn’t need them to see where I was going, since the exterior house lights were turned up so far that it practically looked like noon out in the yard. I walked over to the bike and swung my leg over it, balancing myself. “Go,” I said, into the microphone in my helmet. “I’ll be right behind you.”

The van pulled out of the garage. I let them get to the first gate before I started the ignition and followed.

The trip down the driveway was harrowing. We moved slowly enough that I had to walk the bike about two-thirds of the time. When that wasn’t possible, I had to coast, trying to keep from either overbalancing or stalling out. Neither would be good. And I’d be dealing with it alone either way, since there was no way I was letting the others stop the van to help me. That wasn’t part of the plan.

All the gates stood open, allowing us to keep moving through as we wound our way toward the street below. Maggie’s security guards flanked the open gates, their guns held at the ready. I’m not sure they really believed that we were going until we’d passed the third gate. That was when they started locking things down behind us, each gate sliding shut and sealing itself with a clang that was audible even through my helmet. The guards moved forward as the gates closed, reforming their ranks around each new opening.

They stayed behind as we passed the last gate. One of them—Officer Weinstein, most likely—raised his assault rifle in salute. Then Becks hit the gas, speeding off down the road in answer to the instructions in the van’s GPS, and I had to gun the throttle in order to catch up. It took only a few seconds for the house to recede entirely out of sight. The view of the hill that it was on lasted for a little longer, slipping in and out of sight as we followed the curve of the road.

The lights from the house stayed visible even after the house itself was out of sight. They blazed up into the night, painting the clouds with tiered bands of light and shadow. I was relieved when they finally faded. They reminded me too much of everything that we were leaving behind.

The speaker in my helmet beeped to signal an incoming call. I nodded to activate it. “Go.”

“We’re heading for I-5 toward Portland,” said Becks, right in my ear. “We’re going to have to take the main highway for about forty miles, just to get past the worst of the forest.”

“Got it.” Under most circumstances, taking the highway would have been the safest thing to do. It was well-guarded, was well-maintained, and had access to multiple emergency services, including bolt holes we could flee to if things took a turn for the worse. It was also the single route most likely to be monitoed by anyone who was watching to see if we were on the move and, because of the nature of modern highway design, would be relatively easy to isolate from the rest of the grid. It was possible that some innocent bystanders might be caught up in an attack designed to target the five of us… and after everything we’d been through, I no longer had any illusions that the people we were running from would care.

“Watch yourself out there,” said Becks. Then the connection was cut and the van sped up, racing away from the lights of Weed, racing into the darkness up ahead.

The only thing I could do was follow her.

I-5 was eerily deserted. Even the guard stations were dark, proving once again that, when faced with a true national emergency, no amount of “duty” is going to be sufficient to get people to leave their homes. Half the men who should have been guarding the road were likely to be charged with treason if they were caught, and right now, they had absolutely no reason to care. Treason wasn’t as bad as infection and death. At least treason was something you stood a chance of surviving. We took the automated blood tests and rolled on.

Every time the occupants of the van had to roll down a window, I stopped breathing, waiting for the screams to start. They never did. We were far enough outside the footprint of the storm that we were probably safe… but “probably” isn’t something I believe in banking on. Thank God for bug repellent.

With the road empty and both of us driving as fast as we dared, we cleared forty miles of highway driving in just under thirty minutes. From there, Becks led us onto a frontage road that paralleled I-5 but was mostly concealed by the concrete retaining wall meant to protect passing motorists. I guess if you were one of the people who lived in the tiny houses and aging trailer parks we passed, you were shit out of luck. That’s something almost everyone does their best to forget: The world may have changed, but some people still can’t afford to come in out of the cold. The poor didn’t have advanced security systems or hermetically sealed windows, and now that Kellis-Amberlee had found itself a new vector…

It didn’t really bear thinking about.

We were passing Ashland, Oregon, when my helmet beeped again. “Go,” I said.

“Shaun?” Becks sounded uncertain. “The GPS just gave me our final destination.”

“And?”

“And it’s Shady Cove.”

I managed to keep control of the bike, but only because I had George to take care of the vital business of swearing like a madwoman at the back of my head while I focused on the road. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” There was a long pause before she asked, “What are the odds that she’s driving us into a trap?”

“I don’t know. What are the odds that we have anywhere else to go?” She didn’t answer me. “I figured as much. We’re going to Shady Cove, Becks. Tell everybody to take off the safeties and keep their eyes on the mirrors.”

“I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Mason,” said Becks, and cut the connection.

“So do I,” I muttered. “So do I.”

A lot of small towns were declared uninhabitable after the Rising. They’re little dead zones scattered around the map of the world, places where no one goes anymore—no one but well-prepared, heavily armed Irwins looking for a story, and even then, we never go in at night. Going into a dead zone at night is like signing your own death warrant. Santa Cruz, California, is a dead zone. So is most of India. And so is Shady Cove, Oregon. It used to be a small but comfortable town of about two thousand people, surrounded by woodlands, comfortably close to the popular tourist attraction of several state and county parks. They did okay.

Until the zombies came, and the very things that made it such a nice place to live turned Shady Cove into a deathtrap. The same thing could have happened to Weed, if not for the fisheries, and Shady Cove didn’t have anything that vital to the local economy. It just had people. We lost a lot of people in the Rising. A town that size was barely even a blip in the statistics.

This is bad, said George. We need to turn back.

“This makes perfect sense. If Dr. Abbey is trying to go off the grid, a dead zone is the best place to do it, and Shady Cove was never burned.” I forced a smile. “Besides, you only know the place exists because of the number of times I begged you to let me go there.”

There’s a reason I always said no.

“I know. But it’s not like we’ve been left with a whole lot of options.”

George didn’t have an answer to that one.

The frontage roads gave way to smaller frontage roads, which gave way in turn to roads that were barely even paved. The lights of the freeway guard walls stayed in view the whole time, almost taunting me with the idea of smooth surfaces and well-marked exit signs. We were still within Dr. Abbey’s time frame, and the GPS was clearly still feeding Becks directions, because she kept driving and didn’t stop to yell at me for getting us into this mess.

When I drove past a sign reading SHADY COVE—5 MILES, I actually started to believe that we might reach our destination alive.

Then the first zombie came racing out of the woods on my left.

It was moving with the horrible, disjointed speed that only the freshly infected can manage. A normal human will always be faster in a short sprint, but the freshly infected win every time in a long race. They don’t care about pain, and they don’t really notice when their lungs stop pulling in enough air. The uninfected will eventually stop chasing you. A zombie will run until it collapses from exhaustion, and there’s a good chance that even that won’t keep it down for long.

The van swerved to avoid the zombie. I did the same. I was so busy trying to keep the bike upright that I didn’t see the other three infected lunging out of the shelter of the trees until one of them was scrabbling at the handlebar siy bike, with absolutely no awareness of the sheer stupidity of attacking a man on a moving motorcycle. “Holy—”

I slammed on the brakes, sending the zombie tumbling away from me. The van was back on track, moving away at top speed. I twisted the throttle, starting after them, only to come up short as an arm was hooked around my neck and I was jerked off the bike.

The Kevlar jacket I was wearing absorbed most of the impact with the road, but it couldn’t save me from the hands that were pulling me down, uncoordinated fingers trying to find an opening in my body armor. I smacked them away, flailing to get free. If I could get to my guns, either of them, I would stand a chance of getting away from this. Not a good chance, but a chance.

My questing fingers found the grip of a pistol. I yanked it from the holster hard enough to break one of the snaps and fired it into the face of the first zombie without pausing to aim. The report was loud enough to make my ears ring, even through the still-sealed helmet. The zombie fell back, leaving me with just enough leverage to push myself into a sitting position and shoot the zombie to my right. That left—crap. That left at least three, by a quick count, and all of them focused entirely on me. The bike was on its side up ahead. There was no way I’d be able to get it righted and running again unless I took all the zombies out, and the numbers were not on my side.

Don’t be an idiot. You’ve survived worse.

“Says you,” I muttered, and took another shot.

I was so focused on the zombies I could see that I forgot one of the first rules of dealing with any zombie mob larger than three: Remember that they’re smarter than you think they are. Surprisingly strong hands grabbed me from behind, jerking me back.

Maybe it was the fall I’d taken earlier, and maybe it was just a natural flaw in the construction of my body armor, but when the zombie pulled, I heard something tear. I whipped my head around, looking for a shot, and saw to my horror that the entire left sleeve of my jacket was ripped along the main seam, leaving my arm—protected only by a flannel shirt—exposed.

The infected who was holding me hissed, showing me his shattered, blackened teeth, and brought his head down as I brought my gun up. The bullet caught him in the crown of the head, blowing a jet of brain matter out onto the pavement. The zombie’s hands went limp, and he fell, a look of comic bewilderment on the remains of his face. More infected were coming out of the woods. For the moment, however, I wasn’t sure how much concern I could spare for them.

Most of my concern was for the new hole in my flannel shirt, and the blood welling up through the fabric. The pain hit half a second later, but the pain wasn’t really that important. The blood had already told me everything I needed to know about the situation.

I grabbed the sleeve and yanked it back into place before running toward the bike, shooting as I went. The speaker in my helmet was beeping insistently. I didn’t know how long that had been going on. The encounter felt like it had started years ago, even if I was reasonably sure it had been only a few seconds. I nodded sharply.

—there? Shaun, please, are you there?”

“I’m here, Mahir.” I shot another zombie as it ran for me, and snickered. “Hey, did you know that rhymes? Where are you guys?”

“We’re coming back for you. Can you hold your position?”

“I can, but I gotta tell you, buddy, that’s not the best idea you’ve ever had.”

He took a sharp breath. “Shaun, please don’t tell me…”

“No test results yet, but I’m definitely bleeding.” The lights of the van blazed back into sight ahead of me. I groaned. “I told you not to come back!”

“Not in so many words, you didn’t, and if you think we’re leaving you without a test, you’re an arsehole. Now down!”

Mahir’s command was sharp enough that I obeyed without thinking, hitting the road on my hands and knees a second before bullets sprayed through the air where I’d been standing. The rest of the undead fell in twitching heaps. The gunfire stopped, leaving the night silent.

“Get on the bike and go,” said a voice in my ear. For a dazed second, I couldn’t tell whether it was George or Mahir. Then it continued: “We want the turnoff for Old Ferry Road.”

“Mahir, I really don’t think—”

“If you amplify before we get there, you’ll lose control of the bike. If you don’t, I’m sure Dr. Abbey will appreciate the chance to check your blood for signs that this is a new strain.” Mahir’s voice gentled. “Please, Shaun. Don’t make us leave you out here.”

“This is idiotic,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Just wanted to be sure you were aware.” I nodded again to cut the connection and took a moment to pull my sleeve closed as best as I could before righting the bike and getting back on. It started easily. There went that excuse for staying behind. I could want to protect them, but I couldn’t lie to them.

“Well?” asked George, next to my ear. “Are you going to follow them, or what?”

“I’ll follow,” I said.

The van turned laboriously around on the narrow road, taillights gleaming red through the darkness as Becks hit the gas and started forward once again. I squeezed the throttle, whispered a prayer for swift amplification, and followed them.