Authors: Mira Grant
Tags: #Fiction, #Horror, #Dystopian, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #FIC028000
She’s out of her element,
said George.
“We all are,” I muttered. Alaric glanced my way but
didn’t say anything. He just kept connecting cables, getting the mobile office of After the End Times up and online.
The message boards had been busy while we were off gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest, harassing mad scientists, and uncovering corruption in the CDC. I skimmed the comment feeds as I waited for my mail to finish downloading. The usual cadre of trolls, assholes, and conspiracy nuts were out in force, almost drowning out the more reserved forum participants. Mahir and the rest of the Newsies had them essentially under control. Technically I’m in charge of the site, but it can be easy to lose track of how big we really are these days. It used to be me, George, and Buffy. Now it’s dozens of people, half of whom I’ve never met and probably never will. Thank God for Mahir. Without him, we’d fall apart, becoming another fringe site clinging to the edges of extinction. He manages the marketing and merchandising that George used to handle, and somehow all the bills get paid. Even the ones relating to ammo supplies for the Irwins, which I know from experience can get pretty damn expensive.
“Anything on fire?” asked Alaric.
“Not as such, but that’s okay. I’m sure tomorrow’s field trip will supply us with plenty of matches.” I put my laptop on the bedside table, stretching until I felt my shoulders pop. “For right now, I’m going to see about catching a little sleep before I go back to professionally risking my life. You have things under control on your end?”
“Yeah. I’m going to write up a few articles on medical ethics and the lack of high-level oversight; I figure Mahir should be up by the time I finish, and I want to check in with him before I crash.” As the head of the
Newsie division, Mahir was Alaric’s direct superior and the one who actually approved his articles. They worked together well, which was a relief. I don’t know how I would have dealt if they’d hated each other. Probably by punching the walls until the two of them settled down and said they’d play nicely.
You never did have any people skills,
said George, tone managing to be dry and fond at the same time.
“You’re one to talk,” I mumbled, and closed my eyes, sinking into the too-soft hotel mattress. The sound of Alaric typing away was soothing, helping me relax even further. George and I shared a lot of rooms exactly like this one, one of us dozing while the other kept working, the staccato click of keys providing the white noise that meant it was safe to sleep.
Hush,
chided George.
You need to get some rest. You’re running yourself too hard.
“I learned from the best.” I sighed, letting out my breath in a deep, slow exhalation. Somewhere in the middle of breathing out, the world slipped away, and I slipped into sleep.
In my dreams that night, George had coppery eyes that she didn’t need to hide behind her sunglasses, and we walked in the sunlight, and we didn’t have to be afraid. Everything was perfect. Those are the worst dreams of all, because in the end, I can’t stay asleep forever.
I woke to the sharp, sweetly metallic tang of gun oil. It had managed to perfume the entire room, overwhelming the less-intrusive smells of toast and greasy hotel turkey bacon. I scrubbed my eyes with the back of a hand, clearing the gunk away before sitting up and squinting at the figure perching on the end of the bed.
“I was starting to think you’d sleep until we got
attacked again,” commented a female voice. For a single, heart-stopping moment, it sounded like George—but the moment passed. Becks raised her eyebrows at my expression, asking, “You see something green, Mason? Or are you just pissed that I messed up your beauty sleep?”
“Some of us don’t
need
beauty sleep, Atherton,” I shot back, pushing myself into a sitting position and reaching for the room-service tray someone had kindly placed on the bedside table next to my laptop. “What’s the status?”
“Alaric’s in the other room keeping an eye on the princess while Maggie makes a grocery run and checks in with the staff at her house. She’s worried they’ll forget to feed the dogs if she doesn’t remind them.” Becks continued wiping a silicon cloth along her gunstock, removing the marks her fingers left behind. Her entire kit was open in front of her, explaining the scent of gun oil in the air.
“And the princess herself?” I started making a sandwich from fake bacon and dry toast. It didn’t look all that appetizing, but I was hungry enough not to give a damn.
“Awake, anxious, the usual.” Becks started packing up her kit “She’s a good kid, but she’s also a liability. We should find a safe house and turn her into someone else’s problem.”
“She’s a useful liability—and what do you mean ‘kid’? She’s the same age you are. We need her, at least for now.”
“I wish I were as sure about that as you are.”
“I thought you were the one who started out as a Newsie.” I took a bite of my sandwich, swallowing before saying, “She knows things we don’t know—and if worst comes to absolute worst, I bet she knows the
layout of the Memphis CDC pretty darn well. Whoever tracked her to Oakland may not have thought to rekey the biometric sensors to take her retinal scans and fingerprints off the security locks yet. Everyone thinks she’s dead, right? So why waste the money to do a rekey when they don’t have to?”
Becks blinked before admitting, “I hadn’t thought of that one.”
“That’s why I’m in charge.” A drop of hot grease hit me below the collarbone. I hissed and wiped it away, realizing as I did that I’d managed to remove my shirt sometime during the night. This led to the unpleasant but suddenly important question of whether or not I was wearing pants. “Kelly has more to tell us, and she’s
going
to tell us. We just have to give her time to realize that she doesn’t have a choice.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Never asked you to. Look, I’m pretty sure I don’t trust Dr. Wynne, but I still have to admit that he’s a damn good doctor, and she worked with him. Maybe she’s not the most efficient data-delivery mechanism ever. She still risked a lot to come here and help us out. She’s a dead woman walking. She’s got nothing left to lose. That makes her a damn good ally.”
“It also makes her a damn big suicide risk.” Becks stood, taking her gun kit with her. “How long before you’re ready to roll?”
“Give me twenty minutes to shower and clean up. We want the CDC to let us in, don’t we?” I gave her my best camera-ready smile. Becks rolled her eyes, looking unimpressed, and stomped out of the room.
The door slammed behind her. I yanked the sheets off, relieved to see that I’d managed to keep my jeans on through the night. Accidentally flashing my
female colleagues has never been one of my secret aspirations.
The hotel might be shabby, but it was good enough to have a full decontamination shower, with an attached clothing sterilization unit for people who didn’t have sufficient gear for fieldwork. It was a nice touch that probably didn’t get used too often. I stripped down and shoved my clothes into the sterilizer, hopping into the shower and triggering the bleach nozzle. The water came on at the same time, spraying me down with a heated combination of sterilizing chemicals, bleach-based antiseptics, and something that smelled like cheap lemon disinfectant. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and started scrubbing.
The amount of bleach in the average shower is why blonde highlights have become so common. They’re almost a badge of safety for some people—“See, I’ve been decontaminated so many times that my hair has lost all natural color.” Gorge always hated that. She re-dyed her hair at least twice a month, keeping it dark brown and snarling at anyone who said she was being girly. I always liked the way her hair dye smelled, caustic and sweet at the same time. A lot like George.
The shower finished running the decontamination cycle a few seconds after the clothing sterilizer beeped to signal that my clothes were once more safe to wear around other humans. I dried off, dressed, and stepped back out into the main room to find Alaric waiting for me in an eerie, unintentional imitation of Becks.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Ready to stay?” I countered.
To my surprise, he shook his head, and said, “No. Maggie and I were talking, and we want to take the van—and the Doc—back to the house while you’re at the CDC.”
“Why?” I asked, as I moved to shut down my laptop and start packing it to go.
“Maggie’s starting to get twitchy about being away from home this long, and I’d rather not be in the city when you make your trip.” Alaric shrugged. “Maybe I’m being paranoid, but if things go wrong, I don’t want Dr. Connolly this close to a CDC installation.”
“Afraid she’ll run for cover? Pretty sure that ship has sailed.”
“Afraid they’ll come and take her away from us.”
I froze in the act of zipping my laptop case. “Fuck. I didn’t even think of that. You really think it’s a risk, even after we torched her first ID?”
“It depends on whether she’s here to play decoy and herd us into danger, or whether she really was sent because they’re afraid someone’s killing CDC researchers.” Alaric shrugged. “Any institution large enough to have different departments is going to have infighting. I don’t think she’s here to stab us in the back, and that means she’s in danger as long as she’s in Portland—and we’re in danger as long as we’re here with her.”
“Damn.” I chuckled, shaking my head as I shoved the laptop case into my bag. “I bow before your logic. Yeah, take Maggie and the Doc and head for Maggie’s place. Becks and I will meet you there after we finish up at the CDC, assuming they don’t shoot us on sight. If we haven’t checked in by five o’clock this afternoon…” I paused before finishing. “Run. Got it?”
“Got it.” Alaric stood, picking up his own laptop as he did. “Kinda like old times, huh, boss?”
“What, walking into certain danger with eyes open, one hand on the recorder, and one hand on the gun?” I flashed him a quick smile. “Exactly like old times.”
“I wish—” He faltered before finishing lamely, “Anyway, you and Becks be careful out there today, okay?”
I nodded. “Do my best. Drive safe.”
“Will do.”
Maggie, Becks, and Kelly were waiting in the ll. Becks cast a thin smile my way. “So you’re good with the plan?”
“You guys don’t have to conspire against me, you know,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s a good plan; I am good with the good plan. Maggie, I want you messaging Mahir every twenty miles until you get home, you hear me?”
“No problem,” she said. Taking Kelly by the elbow, she said, “Come on. Let’s get out of here before somebody gets hurt.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” asked Becks, and turned to lead the way down the hall and out of the hotel.
Watching the van drive off with Alaric at the wheel left me strangely numb, like somehow their departure meant I would never see them again, like this was some sort of an ending, rather than another step along the road to learning why George really died. I stood frozen in the parking lot, staring after them, a hard lump blocking my throat when I tried to swallow.
“Hey.” Becks touched my elbow. I turned to face her. She raised her eyebrows. “Are you okay?”
I managed a small smile. “I’m always okay. You ready to go and piss off the CDC?”
“Why, Shaun,” she said, flirting her eyelashes coquettishly, “I thought you’d never ask.” She turned to head for the bike. After a moment’s pause, I followed her.
The Portland CDC was located in its own facility, a large, meticulously clean collection of low, white-painted buildings that could easily have been repurposed as a
hospital or maybe a medical college. From a distance, it looked friendly and inviting, the sort of place that would make a routine checkup almost enjoyable. That first impression didn’t survive getting close enough to see barbed wire topping the fence that circled the entire installation, or the small yellow-and-black signs indicating that the fence itself was electrified. Pre-Rising, they would have used a low wattage and backed it up with guard dogs.
Post-Rising, well, let’s just say they probably cranked things up to lethal levels at the slightest excuse.
Becks kept her arms looped around my waist as I pulled the bike up to the guard station. It was a small, featureless gunmetal booth that gave no indication whether it was occupied or automated. I held up our IDs, careful to keep both of my hands visible, and said, “Shaun Mason, After the End Times, and Rebecca Atherton, same.”
“Please place your identification in the slot,” said a mechanized voice. A slot hissed open in the side of the guard station, right next to the speaker. I dropped our ID cards into the slot, which hissed shut. “Please wait.”
“Because I was totally planning to zoom off and leave you with our IDs,” I muttered.
Shaun,
said George warningly. Becks pinched me on the back of the neck.
“Your identification has been confirmed,” announced the guard station. The slot opened again, allowing me to reclaim our cards as the first gate began sliding open. “Please proceed onward for blood testing and examination.”
The procedure from there was exactly as the guard
station threatened—sorry, “indicated.” We reached a second gate about ten yards onto the campus, this one accompanied by men wearing Kevlar vests and clutching assault rifles. There were also blood testing units waiting there, one for each of us. We both passed our blood tests, robbing the sentries of the chance to use the weapons they clutched so carefully, and drove on to the third station, where the retinal scanners were waiting.
“I’d think this was excessive if I hadn’t just been to Maggie’s place,” I muttered to Becks, who snorted with quiet laughter. I wasn’t kidding, either; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Maggie and the CDC get their security designs through the same firm. God knows her family has the money, and they’ve never been shy about spending a few extra bucks for the sake of a little bit more safety.
Finally, after running the security gamut, we were allowed to enter the CDC parking lot, where I parked in a space marked
VISITOR
in large yellow letters. Becks slid off, removing her helmet and producing a hairbrush from her pack while I was still getting the kickstand positioned. She began briskly brushing out her hair, making adjustments in accordance with some secret set of female rules that even George had never been willing to share with me.
“You look fine, especially for this sort of visit,” I said, securing my own helmet to the handlebars. “Nobody’s going to be looking at your hair.”
Becks gave me a frosty look. “So says you,” she said stiffly. “I’ve found that good hair can open many doors for the female investigative reporter. It certainly doesn’t hurt my ratings when I take steps to avoid looking like I just rolled out of bed.”
I had to admit she had a point: Becks paid more attention to her appearance than any other Irwin I knew, male or female, and her merchandise sales were even higher than mine. She wore her hair longer than was strictly safe for fieldwork, with blonde highlights and dark brown lowlights that made her otherwise medium-brown hair seem somehow exotic, especially in the sort of light conditions she was usually filming under. Combined with naturally green eyes and a fondness for wearing tight white tank tops, well, it wasn’t a mystery why eighty percent of her viewers were male. It was more of a mystery that she seemed to want me to approve of it. I was never going to get that one.
Let her brush her hair so we can get moving,
said George.
“Fine,” I said, digging my equipment out of the bike’s saddlebag more briskly than was strictly necessary.
“What?” asked Becks.
“Nothing.”
“Right.” She shoved the brush back into her bag. “There, all done.”
“Really?” I lifted my eyebrows, giving her an appraising look. “You sure you don’t need to touch up your makeup or something before we can go in?”
“I’m sure the CDC will be thrilled to know that you made such an effort on its behalf,” I said, and started
down the path that was labeled
ENTRANCE
in more large yellow letters. At least these ones were on a sign, not painted onto the pavement. Becks made an entirely unladylike snorting noise, and followed me.
After all the security checks required to get to the parking lot, walking up to the front doors of the Portland CDC was almost anticlimactic. They were clear glass, making a point with their total lack of reinforcement—this was the CDC. If the infected made it this far in, the city was already lost, so why bother wasting money that could be put to better use elsewhere? These were
scientists
. They didn’t feel the need to squander public funds on fripperies.
Those fripperies included furniture for their front lobby. A wave of comfortably chilly climate-controlled air hit us as we walked into the building, so devoid of character that it might as well have been an unused movie set. The floor was black marble, and the walls were white, except for the large steel sign proclaiming this to be the Portland office of the Centers for Disease Control. “Got that part, thanks,” I muttered, arrowing toward the one piece of furniture in the room: the sleekly futuristic reception desk.
The receptionist herself was also sleekly futuristic, possibly because she felt the need to live up to her workstation. Her hair was pulled into a bun so severe it looked almost molded, her jacket was impeccably cut, and the eyes behind her black-framed glasses were cold. “Names and business?” she asked as we approached. Her fingers never stopped darting across her keyboard, even as she glanced in our direction, looked us up and down, and dismissed us as unimportant.
“We’re with the After the End Times news site, and we’d like to speak to the director of this installation,” I
said mildly, leaning against the edge of her desk as I flashed her my ID. Becks did the same, unsmiling. “Don’t worry, we can wait if we have to.”
The receptionist gave us another of those quick, cold, up-and-down glances before asking, “The nature of your business, sir?” The “sir” was grudging, purely a formality to check off some internal list marked “proper procedure.”
“That’s for us to discuss with the director,” said Becks.
“I see.” The receptionist sniffed. “If you’d like to make an appointment, I’m sure we can fit you in sometime this week. In the meanwhile—”
“Sometime this week? Really? That’s
awesome
.” I smacked the edge of the desk for emphasis as I straightened, and was only a little gratified to see the receptionist jump. “Okay, Becks, you start setting up the cameras, and I’m going to analyze the light levels in here, see where it’s best for us to start shooting.”
“Well, this is a government building, right?” I asked, guilelessly. “Which means that we, as citizens, are totally entitled to be here whenever and whyever we want, as long as we’re not actively disrupting normal business or committing acts of vandalism? No appointments required unless there’s an active state of emergency?”
“Yes, but—”
“So we’re going to be streaming live from the lobby here until we get in to see your director. Let the good
citizens of Portland—and the world, did I mention we’re a top-rated global news site? Right, I may have left that little tidbit off when we were making introductions—see what an awesome job the CDC does responding to visitors.”
“I think we can set the cameras up right over there,” said Becks, stabbing a finger at a random patch along the wall.
“You can’t do that!” said the receptionist. She sounded agitated. Poor thing. She’d probably sprain herself if she tried for any real facial expressions with her hair pulled back that tightly. “I’m sorry, there was a little—this is all a misunderstanding, give me a moment and I’ll get Director Swenson for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, flashing a wide grin in her direction. “It’s cool, Becks, you can hold off on setting things up.”
“Check,” said Becks. She re-shouldered her pack. We watched as the increasingly anxious-looking receptionist picked up her phone, muttering into it with her palm cupped around the receiver, like that would magically keep us from hearing what she was saying. It worked, a little; most of her side of the conversation was too garbled to understand, although I was pretty sure I caught the words “crazy,” “reporters,” and “threatening to.” As press went, it wasn’t bad, and might actually give the director an idea of what he was about to be dealing with.
Nothing could ever prepare him for you,
said George.
“Flatterer,” I murmured. The receptionist shot me a wary look, hand still cupped around the receiver. I smiled at her. Brightly. She looked away again.
“Yes, sir; of course, sir,” she said, and set the receiver back into its cradle, not looking in our direction as she
said, “Director Swenson is on his way down and apologizes for any inconvenience that you may have experienced in being forced to wait so long.”
“It’s cool,” I said.
The receptionist didn’t say anything. She leaned slightly forward, shoulders hunched as she focused her attention on her computer. It was obvious that she couldn’t entirely dismiss our presence as a bad dream—we were a little too solid for that—and it was equally obvious that she was giving it the old college try. I rocked back on my heels, content to let her ignore us. There’s pushing the envelope of polite behavior to get what you want, and then there’s just plain being mean. I try not to cro the line when it can be avoided.
We’d been waiting less than five minutes when the sound of crisp footsteps echoed through the lobby and an immaculately groomed man in a white lab coat stepped around a corner and into view. He was dressed like a generic midlevel bureaucrat at any corporation in the country, assuming you could overlook the lab coat: gray slacks that were probably some sort of insanely expensive natural fiber, white button-up shirt, sedate blue-and-green tie, and immaculately polished black shoes. Even his lab coat looked like it was tailored for him, rather than being the standard off-the-rack lab wear. If the CDC was running in the red this season, his wardrobe definitely wasn’t feeling the pinch.
Neither was his plastic surgeon. His hair was thick and well-styled, but still uniformly silver, and his unwrinkled skin had the characteristic tightness of a man in his late fifties paying through the nose to maintain the illusion that he was a well-preserved thirty-seven or so. He walked to the receptionist’s desk with the calm assurance of a man who knows himself to be
in absolute control of his environment, extending a hand in my direction. “Shaun Mason, I presume?”
“The same.” I took his hand and shook it. Even with all the training I’ve had to desensitize me to the necessity of occasional contact with strangers, the gesture felt
wrong
. You aren’t supposed to touch people you don’t know. Not unless they’ve just demonstrated their infection status with a successful blood test, and maybe not even then. “This is my colleague, Rebecca Atherton. She works with our action news division.”
“Ah, an Irwin,” said the man, reclaiming his hand and turning to study Rebecca. His gaze started at her face, swept down her body, and returned to her face again, all without a trace of hesitation or shame. “You know, I’ve always liked that term. Irwin, for the late, great Steve Irwin. He died in the field, you know. Just the way he would have wanted to go.”
“No shit, asshole,” muttered Becks.
“Actually, sir, I’m pretty sure the way he would have wanted to go was in his sleep, sometime in his late nineties, but that’s beside the point.” Something about him was putting my hackles up. Maybe it was the way he looked at Becks. Maybe it was his tone, which was slick enough to grease a rusty chainsaw. “I’m guessing you’re Director Swenson.”
“Precisely so. I apologize for making you wait. Next time, please be sure to call ahead. That will allow us to avoid these little delays.”
Yeah, because we’ll never get past security again.
I forced my expression to remain composed as I said, “I’ll keep that in mind. If you don’t mind, though, my colleague and I were in the area and had some questions we wanted to ask you—in person, hence the dropping by. Is there a place where we could talk?”
A flash of discomfort crossed his face, there and gone before I could blink. “Of course,” he said, smoothly. “If you’d both come with me, I believe one of the conference rooms is available. Miss Lassen, as you were.”
The receptionist—Miss Lassen—nodded, looking deeply relieved as Director Swenson turned I’m gan retracing his steps, leaving the front lobby behind. She might not have been able to keep us out, but at least we weren’t going to be her problem anymore. Becks and I exchanged a look, shrugged, and followed the director to the back of the lobby, around a corner, and into a nondescript hall that seemed to stretch on for the better part of a mile.
Director Swenson walked past three identical doors before stopping at a fourth and pressing his thumb against a small sensor pad. The light above the door changed from red to green, and the door swung open. “Past this point, you’ll need blood tests as well as someone with the proper clearances to open any doors, including the restrooms,” he said, sounding self-indulgently amused. “I recommend not wandering off unescorted.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I need to pee,” muttered Becks. I gave her a speculative look, which she met with a glare.
Funny, normally you’re the one pissing off the natives,
said George.
I bit my lip to keep myself from answering as we followed Director Swenson through the door and into one of the long, featureless white hallways characteristic of CDC installations everywhere. It’s like they’re afraid to spend money on interior decorating when there’s such a good chance of the place needing to be hosed down with bleach at any moment. We didn’t pass any doc
tors, although we did walk past several large glass “windows” looking in on empty patient rooms. White walls, white beds, white floors—white everything. I woke up in one of those rooms once, after the CDC team picked us up outside of Memphis. I thought I’d died and gone to the sterilized afterlife.
Director Swenson stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like every other door in the place, except for the larger, more elaborate-looking testing unit built into the wall next to it. “The cycle takes approximately fifteen seconds,” he said, pressing his palm flat against the test pad. “Once I go through, the door will close and the unit will reset. Please don’t try to follow without a clean test. I’d really rather not send the entire facility into lockdown today.”