Mira Grant - Deadline

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?”