Mira Grant - Deadline

“Should be.” Becks pulled her jacket back on before opening one of the bags of M&Ms. “Mahir, make sure you’re running weather projections on our route. They had a storm advisory up while I was checking out.”

“Right,” he said, and grabbed a drink before he started pecking away at his phone.

I slid my soda into the van’s drink holder and started the engine. We’d been holding still long enough, and we had a long damn way to go before we’d be anything resembling safe.

We crossed into Kansas an hour later, and I risked pulling off the road, into the parking lot of an abandoned pre-Rising rest stop. The gate across the entrance wasn’t even chained. If we wanted to go in there and get eaten, that was our problem, not the local government’s. “We should report them for negligence,” muttered Becks, as we pushed the gate out of our way.

“That’s good,” I said agreeably. “How are we going to explain what we’re doing out here? Are we on a sightseeing tour of the haunted cornfields of North America or something?”

She glared at me. I shrugged and got back into the van, pulling forward until we were completely hidden from the road by the overgrown trees surrounding what must have once been a pretty nice picnic area. People used to bring kids and their dogs to places like this, letting them run wild on the grass to burn off a little energy before they got back into the car and continued their drive toward the American dream. These days, that kind of thing will get you thrown in jail for child abuse. Not even the Masons were that crazy, and they did a lot of dangerous things with me and George while we were growing up. Running around in the grass near an unsecured structure and a bunch of trees is a good way of taking yourself out of the gene pool.

Becks stood guard with her rifle while I took the fire-and-forget phone over to the remains of a barbecue pit. Mahir followed me, observing without comment as I beat the phone with a large rock, tossed it into the hole, and set it on fire. A few squirts of lighter fluid from the travel kit made sure that it kept burning, delicate circuitry and memory chips melting into slag under the onslaught of the flames.

“Hey, check it out, Mahir—the green wires burn purple. What’s up with that?” No answer. I looked up. “Mahir?”

He was staring toward the low brick building that contained the restrooms and water fountains like a man transfixed. “Why haven’t they torn this thing down?” he asked. “It’s like a bloody crypt, right in the middle of what ought to be civilization.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they don’t have the money. Maybe they think it’s better to give the infected someplace they can hide, so they’ll know where to go when they start getting outbreak reports.” I squirted more lighter fluid onto my makeshift pyre. “Maybe the people who live around here would feel like it was too much like giving up. Leave the walls standing so we can build a new roof when the crisis is over. Don’t tear down something you’re going to want to use later.”

“Do you really think people are going to want to go to places like this ever again? Even if we kill all the damn zombies, we’ll remember where the dangers were.”

“Will we?” I stuck the lighter fluid back into my pocket. My hands were smudgy with old ash from the barbecue pit, and I wiped them carelessly clean against the seat of my jeans. “People have pretty short memories when they want to. It’ll take a few generations, but give them time, and things like this will be all the rage again. Just watch.”

“Assuming we ever get to that point.”

“Well, yeah. Which is going to take people not trying to kill us for a little while.” The bottle of knockoff Everclear Becks picked up at the convenience store turned out to make an excellent accelerant. I dumped it out over the fire. The flames leapt up and then died back down, burning off the additional fuel in seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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