Deadline Read online

  “What about list D?” My hands were moving as we spoke, spewing out line after line of borderline coherent claptrap. It was the day after a death. We’d be expected to update—nothing was going to get us out of that, not even actually dying; George’s blog may have changed names when she died, but her backlog of files meant she missed less than a week. That didn’t mean we were expected to be profound.

  “Ah.” Kelly’s tone was disapproving enough that I actually glanced toward her. Her lips were pursed into a tight moue of distaste. “That would be the labs where the researchers have been confirmed as following less than ethical paths in their research.”

  “What, vivisection? Human test subjects?” I pressed Post on my first entry of the day, switched from my own feed to the administrative, and started typing again as I asked, “Full-body cloning?”

  “It’s different when the CDC does it,” she said sharply. “We have a dispensation.”

  “So?” I shrugged, continuing to type. “That doesn’t make it right. Hre or afteany of the labs on list D would have been on list A if you weren’t being judgmental?”

  Kelly sighed. “Two, at most.”

  “Okay. Either of them anywhere near here?”

  There was a horrified pause as she realized what I was asking. “Shaun, you don’t understand! These people were blacklisted from reputable scientific circles for a lot of reasons, and not all of them were as petty as you seem to think! These are not the secret heroes of some underground resistance against the evil CDC—they’re bioterrorists and crazy people, and they’re dangerous. We could get seriously hurt if we go to them. We could get killed.”

  “And we could get killed if we stay here. I’m not seeing a difference in results.” I picked up George’s Coke and took another swig. “Your objections are noted. Can any of these people be trusted? At all? Or do I just pick one at random and hope they aren’t on the Frankenstein end of the ‘mad doctor’ scale?”

  Kelly swallowed, throat working as she struggled against some clear inner impulse not to answer. Finally she said, “Dr. Abbey. I read some of the work she did on reservoir conditions before she went off the grid. I think she’d be able to help us.”

  “Fine. Where is she?”

  She sighed. “Portland, Oregon.”

  “That’s a five- or six-hour drive if we take the direct route,” I said, sipping again from the can. “Annoying, but manageable. What was the big crime that got them blacklisted?”

  “Unethical experiments involving the manipulation of the viral structure of Kellis-Amberlee. None involving human subjects, thank God, or she and her staff would be in federal prison for the rest of their lives.”

  “I’m surprised they aren’t in federal prison anyway. How much blackmail material did she have?”

  “Enough.” Kelly shook her head. “I don’t know much—it was all before my time—but she worked for Health Canada. Joint research team, theirs and ours. Some bad things happened, and she quit. Ever since then, she’s been pretty careful about who she lets get anywhere near her or her research.”

  “Better watch out, Doc. That sounded almost like respect.”

  “I like people who are serious about their work.” She shrugged. “Dr. Abbey was devoted to figuring out Kellis-Amberlee.”

  “Somebody has to be.” I swung back around to the keyboard. “Better go see if Maggie’s got something you can wear, Doc. We’re going on another road trip.”

  We made it out of Oakland alive. I’m still not sure how we did it, except that my team is made up of some of the best people I’ve ever known, and I don’t deserve them. I keep making it out of places alive. I think the universe is fucking with me.

  I did something during the evacuation that yu shouldn’t ever do. I went back for George’s black box. I’d do it again, too. Because there’s already not enough of her left in this world, and I’m running out of things to hold onto.

  Fuck, I miss her.

  —From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, April 12, 2041. Unpublished.

  Santa Cruz is gorgeous this time of year. I realize it’s a zombie-infested wasteland, but hell, at least the rents are good, right? Besides, there’s a reason this used to be one of the state’s most popular vacation destinations, and I doubt it had very much to do with their boardwalk, no matter what the old tourism brochures try to tell you.

  We’re still working on getting Alaric ready for his field trials. Next up, Becks is going to take him down to the beach and see if they can find a zombie seal to poke at. Never a dull moment around here. Oh, well. It’s better than a desk job.

  —From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, April 12, 2041

  Eight

  Maggie didn’t look happy about being sent off to outfit the Doc, but she did it; that was really all I could ask of her. I stayed in the living room, getting a few posts up on the site and making it clear that we’d been nowhere near Oakland when the bombs came down. While I was at it, I surfed over to the medical blogs to see what they had to say about the “death” of Dr. Kelly Connolly. With the way they were going on about her—lost scion of one of the CDC’s proudest heritage families, rising young star of the virology world—you’d think she’d been on the verge of curing Kellis-Amberlee, not just slaving in the CDC salt mines with the rest of the peons.

  That’s the power of good press, said George dryly.

  I chuckled, and got back to work.

  Alaric came into the room with a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand as I was firing off an e-mail to authorize the continuing sale of Dave’s merchandise line. “Did you see the crime scene photos on the gossip sites?” he asked. I nodded. He continued: “This is, like, Invasion of the Body Snatchers levels of scary. I always knew cloning technology was better than we saw here on the fringes, but the CDC employs the best doctors in the world, and even they couldn’t tell it was a clone.”

  “Could be worse.”

  “How?”

  “I have no idea. But it can always be worse.” I glanced toward the kitchen door. “Where’s Becks?”

  “She’s helping Maggie with Dr. Connolly.” He took a bite of toast, sitting down at thnitor next to mine. “I don’t think she wanted to leave them alone together.”

  “I always knew she was smart.”

  Alaric grunted as he logged on and started working the message boards. I leaned over to “supervise,” which really meant “look over his shoulder, drinking a Coke and pretending to pay attention.” He ignored me. I took his tendency to shut me out while he worked personally at first, until George assured me that he’d always done the same thing to her. He was just one of those people who really liked to focus on his work.

  I love how you ignore the inherent impossibility of me telling you something you didn’t already know, George said.

  “Don’t start with me,” I said, and took another drink of Coke. That’s normally enough to shut her up for a little while. When that doesn’t work, I zone out in front of the news feeds. Comforting for her, educational for me. Everybody wins.

  It’s true.

  “It’s a shitty thing to say and you know it.”

  Alaric ignored my conversation with the air. He learned the hard way that sometimes it was best to turn a blind eye. During our first few months in the office, he asked who I was talking to every time I forgot and answered George aloud, and he pointed out that she was dead more than once. He stopped after I finally lost my temper and introduced my fist to his face, resulting in skinned knuckles on my part and a broken nose on his. He still flinches if I move too fast. Guess I can’t blame him. If my boss were a potentially crazy man with a mean right hook, I’d probably be a little jumpy, too.

  The title of one of the threads caught my eye. I leaned forward, tapping Alaric’s screen. “There. Can you expand that thread?”

  “Sure.” He clicked the header line: CDC Safety Precautions Insufficient? “I don’t see what it has to do with—”

  “Just scroll.”

>   “Right,” he said, and started scrolling.

  The thread started as a discussion of the break-in at the Memphis CDC and devolved into a discussion of CDC security precautions over the course of half a dozen posts. As I’d hoped, the posters quickly started naming names, citing every CDC doctor, intern, affiliate, and publicity person to have died during the last eighteen months. “Alaric, can you grab the names of the deceased and start calling up obituaries and circumstance-of-death reports? If anyone looks at you funny, you can say you’re basing a report off this thread.”

  “Sure,” he said, warming to the idea as he saw where I was going with it. “I can do you one better. I still have a few of Buffy’s old worms live and functional. I’ll set one of them digging for connections between the deceased employees, Kelly Connolly, Joseph Wynne, and any other unusual or unexplained deaths in their circle of friends.”

  “Just don’t get caught or traced and you can do whatever you want.”

  “Awesome.” Alaric bent d, starting to type. He had the same focus I’ve seen from George, Rick, and every other Newsie I’ve ever met. I could probably have danced naked on his desk without getting him to do more than grunt and shove me out of the way of his screen. Content that I’d done something useful, I got up and walked to the kitchen. A fresh Coke would keep me from thinking too hard about the tools he was using to do the job.

  There are people who say that Kellis-Amberlee and its undead side effects are going to bring about the end of the human race. I tend to disagree with this perspective. I’m pretty sure that if the zombies were going to destroy humanity, they would’ve done it back in 2014, when they first showed up. I think that if anything destroys the human race at this point, it’s going to be the human race itself.

  With my posts done, Alaric working, and Becks and Maggie sequestered with Kelly, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I settled for sitting at the kitchen table with my fresh can of Coke, waiting for something to happen. My patience was rewarded about fifteen minutes later, when something happened.

  Footsteps descended the stairs and Becks appeared in the kitchen doorway, hands raised in a warding gesture. Not the best sign. “Okay, Shaun, before you freak out, this was the best way to do it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That’s a really shitty elevator pitch, and I would never buy your project based on that. Just so you know.”

  “I’m just saying, don’t freak out.” She finished stepping into the kitchen, looking back over her shoulder. “Come on, Kelly.”

  “I feel like an idiot,” said Kelly. She moved into view, Maggie half a step behind her.

  I stared.

  Buffy left a lot of her shit to me and George when she died. Her parents gave us even more. We were her best friends, and they couldn’t think of anything else to do with her collection of gaudy jewelry and hippie skirts. The fact that I’m not a cross-dresser and George wouldn’t have been caught dead in that sort of thing didn’t matter: They were grieving parents, we were Buffy’s friends, and we got it all. Only we didn’t have much room in the apartment, and the idea of getting rid of her things left me feeling sick. So we stored them at Maggie’s.

  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 d
uring 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?”