Mira Grant - Deadline

Becks was looking at me with rare anxiety, clearly waiting for me to say something. I swallowed the lump that was blocking my throat and said the first thing that came to mind:

“Wow. That’s… different.”

Kelly was wearing a multicolored broomstick skirt, a white peasant blouse, and a patchwork vest with little mirrors sewn all over it. They twinkled when she moved, not quite as gaudily as the dozen or so bangle bracelets crusted with LED “jewels.” There were matching “jewels” on the straps of her sandals, which looked entirely impractical. I knew better. Buffy was an idealist and sort of an idiot, but she knew the importance of being prepared, and she didn’t own a single pair of shoes she couldn’t run in.

God, I miss her, said George, almost too quietly for me to hear.

“Me too,” I murmured, just as softly.

Georgette “Buffy” Meissonier was the original head of the Fictional News Division. She designed almost all of the After the End Times network and computer systems. She was one of the only people I ever met who could make George smile on a reliable basis. She was sweet, and she was funny, and she was smart as hell, and she was an enormous geek, and every time her name comes up, I have to remind myself that she didn’t do any of the things she did on purpose. Sure, she let Tate’s men into our system, and sure, a lot of people got killed because of that, but she had the best intentions.

Buffy died because of what she did. On the days when I’m really getting my crazy on, that seems like sufficient payment. Of course, those are the days when I can convince myself that George isn’t dead, just, I don’t know, mysteriously intangible and pissed off about it. Most of the time, well…

I’m just a little bit bitter.

Either Maggie or Becks—I was betting on Maggie—had hacked off most of Kelly’s hair, leaving her with a spiky mess that stuck up in all directions. I’d never been so glad a woman was blonde in my life, because that was exactly the way George always wore her hair—too short for the zombies to grab, long enough to be controllable with a minimum of effort—and if Kelly had been a brunette, I think I would have screamed.

“Well?” asked Maggie.

“Right.” I swallowed several more possible responses, starting with “dead friend’s clothes, dead sister’s haircut, good job” and going downhill from there. “She definitely looks, uh, really different.” That seemed insufficient, so I added, “Good job.”

Becks grinned, looking unaccountably pleased.

Kelly, meanwhile, reached up to touch her hair with one hand, saying, “I haven’t kept my hair this short since I was a little kid. I don’t even know what to do with it.”

“Better cropped than arrested for hoaxing the CDC, Doc,” I said.

Kelly sighed. “I wish I could argue with that.”

“I wish a lot of things,” I said, and stood. “Come on, gang. Let’s get moving.”

Herding everyone out of the house was more difficult than it should have been, since Kelly was exhausted and wanted to stay behind, leading to loud protests on Maggie’s part. She said she didn’t trust people alone with her dogs. What Kelly was supposed to do to a pack of epileptic bulldogs wasn’t entirely clear to me, but Maggie was firm: No one was staying home unsupervised—and, apparently, the enormous army of security ninjas lurking in the bushes didn’t count as supervision. To complicate matters further, Maggie refused to stay behind.

“I just lost Dave,” she said. “I’m not letting you drive off and leave me here. If I’m going to lose everyone, I’m going to go with you.”

I couldn’t really bring myself to argue with that.

After a lot of shouting, some plea bargaining, and an outright threat to leave Alaric sitting by the side of the road, we wound up with Becks driving the van, Alaric manning the forums from the passenger seat, and Kelly riding in the back. I drove the bike, Maggie riding pillion. She insisted, probably because she didn’t trust herself in an enclosed space with Kelly. Dave’s death wasn’t the Doc’s fault. Maggie would realize that eventually. I hoped.

I’d never driven any real distance with a passenger—not unless you counted George, who didn’t actually change the way the bike was balanced, or make it necessary for me to compensate for additional weight. Oh, I’d been a passenger on the bike often enough, back when George was doing the driving, but it wasn’t the same thing by a long shot. It didn’t help that Maggie wasn’t used to riding a motorcycle and didn’t know to shift her weight to help me keep us balanced. If we’d encountered any real problems, we would have been screwed.

There aren’t many real problems along I-5. The combination of tight security, large stretches with little to no human habitation, and most motorists being unwilling to drive more than a few miles has done a lot to make distance travel safer for those of us crazy enough to attempt it.

Buffy died during a long-distance road trip, when a sniper shot out the wheels of the truck she was riding in. But beyond little things like that, it’s perfectly safe.

Safe. Now there’s a laugh.

Nearly six hours and fifteen security checkpoints later, we were approaching Eugene. I-5 is the fastest route to damn near any major city on the West Coast, but it has its downsides, like the constant barricades. We had to stop every time we drove into or out of a city, or even too close to one, by whatever the local definition of “too close” happened to be. It was always the same song and dance: Where are you going? Why? Can we see your licenses? Can we see your credentials? Would you like to submit to a retinal scan? Do you really think you have a choice?

The CDC had no reason to be tracking our movement—not yet, anyway. Our papers were in order, and every checkpoint wound up waving us through, but the stops still made me nervous. I was being paranoid. After the past twenty-four hours, I figured it was justified.

The orange light in the corner of my visor started blinking, signaling an incoming call. “Answer,” I said.

“Hey, boss.” There was a note of tension underscoring Alaric’s normally laid-back tone. “We’re an hour and a half out of Portland, according to the GPS. You going to give us the actual address soon, or are we going to play guessing games with the surface streets?”

“We’re not going to Portland,” I said. Becks started swearing in the background. I almost laughed. “Tell Becks to keep her panties on. We’re going to a town near Portland. It’s called Forest Grove. We’re heading for an old business park that got shut down during the Rising and never officially reopened. The address is in the GPS. I uploaded it under the header ‘Shaun’s secret porn store.’ ”

Charming, commented George.

“Ew,” said Alaric. “Okay, accessing coordinates now. Ihere anything else we need to know?”

“You know what I do, and you can pump the Doc for information if you need to.” I swerved to avoid a pothole, feeling Maggie’s arms tighten around my waist. She was staying amazingly calm for a woman who almost never left her house. I was starting to wonder exactly what was in that “herbal tea” she drank right before we left. “We’re heading for an illegal biotech lab to talk to somebody the CDC is too afraid of to fuck with. What could possibly go wrong?”

There was a long silence before Alaric said, “I’m hanging up on you now.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

“You’re fucked in the head.”

“That’s probably true. See you in Forest Grove.” The amber light flicked off. I allowed myself a grim chuckle and hit the gas. Our little road trip of the damned was well under way.