Deadline

by Mira Grant

  “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.

  Do you have a plan? asked George.

  “You know better,” I replied. I wasn’t worried about Maggie hearing me talk to myself; the roar of the wind would keep my voice from reaching her. Weird as it might seem, George and I actually had a measure of privacy, despite having another human being with her arms wrapped around my waist. If Maggie had been driving, I might have actually been able to fool myself into thinking everything was the way it was supposed to be, even if the illusion would only last until the bike stopped.

  George laughed. I smiled, relaxing, and kept on driving. Next stop: Forest Grove.

  The Caspell Business Park was located at the edge of town, in what was probably considered an area ripe for expansion before the dead decided to get up and walk around. It was built on a model popular before the Rising, all open spaces and broad pathways between the buildings. I’d be willing to bet that more than half those buildings had automatic doors at one point, totally unsecured against the shambling infected. It was no wonder the local authorities hadn’t bothered trying to reclaim the place; if there was anything remarkable about it, it was that it hadn’t been burned to the ground.

  According to the Doc’s instructions, the place we were looking for was in the old IT complex, where the buildings had been constructed according to much more sensible schematics: airtight, watertight, no windows, no real danger of contamination if you remembered to lock the damn doors. Georgia and I went to preschool in a pre-Rising IT complex, and we were just as secure as we could possibly be. Locating the lab in that sort of structure made a lot of sense, especially with the rest of the business park providing excellent, if hazardous, cover. Not even the bravest Irwin was going to stumble on the place by mistake, and the ones who were dumb enough to think it was a good idea would all be eaten before they arrived.

  The parking garage had developed a worrying leftward tilt. I eyed it, shook my head, and kept driving. The last thing we needed was to get a parking garage dropped on our heads, or worse, dropped on our vehicles while we were inside the building. On the other hand, we’d be dead if the garage fell on us, and we wouldn’t have to worry about this shit anymore.

  You’re in a fabulous state of mind today, said George.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” I said, and continued to blaze a trail through the deserted business park. Maggie clung a little tighter every time we hit a bump, but she didn’t jerk around enough to make me lose my balance. That was a good thing. The broken pavement was littered with rusted metal, broken glass, and other debris; if we went sprawling, we’d be lucky to get away with just a tetanus shot.

  The loading dock behind the IT complex was clear and showed signs of semirecent upkeep. That was promising. I pulled up and killed the engine, waiting for Maggie to dismount before deploying the kickstand and sliding to the relatively unbroken pavement. My thighs ached from too many hours on the road, but my head was clearer than it had been in weeks. Knowing that I’m actually doing something has that effect on me.

  The van pulled up a few yards away. The side door was open before the wheels had fully stopped turning, and Alaric jumped down, fumbling his field pack on as he trotted toward us. I pulled off my helmet and smirked at him. “Did you have a nice drive?”

  “I hate you,” he said flatly.

  “That’s nice,” said Maggie. Alaric shot her a look, and she smiled, removing her helmet. Her pupils were slightly enlarged—not in the exaggerated manner that would indicate a live infection, but in a softer, more relaxed manner that I recognized from dealing with high-strung reporters at press conferences. Her herbal tea definitely contained a few extra ingredients.

  I considered pulling her aside for a talk about taking psychoactive substances before going into the field and decided to let it pass. It wasn’t like she was a combatant. She and Kelly were so much dead weight if we got attacked. She might as well be pre-anesthetized dead weight, in case things went poorly. As it was, she was only legal to be with us because the town zoning regulations made this place technically safe. Very technically.

  Becks was the next out of the van, her own field pack already in place. Her scowl looked like it had been permanently affixed to her face. “You owe me,” she said, coming to a stop next to Alaric.

  “Me or Maggie?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. The only way to keep her quiet was to keep the radio turned to the medical news channel. If I’d been forced to spend another minute listening to the exciting new developments in the world of pharmaceuticals, I would have taken her head and—”

  Kelly’s hesitant emergence saved us from the details of what Becks would have done to her. She gave the parking lot a horrified look before hurrying toward us, demanding, “What are we doing here?”

  “This is the address your file said we should be at, Doc.”

  “There must be some mistake.”

  “Nope. Underground lab, underground facilities.” I tucked my helmet under my arm, looking at the low-slung buildings spread out around us. “Can anybody see the numbers on these things? We’re looking for eleven.”

  “You can’t mean we’re actually going to go inside,” said Kelly.

  “No, Doc, we just drove a couple hundred miles to pose on the sidewalk.” Becks shook her head before turning to stalk off toward the buildings, scanning for more signs of habitation.

  Kelly sighed. “This day just gets better and better.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure that soon, we’ll be looking back on this moment as one of the good times.” I followed Maggie, Alaric close behind me. Kelly stayed where she was for a few moments, staring after us. I could see her out of the corner of my eye. It was all I could do to not start laughing—which would have been entirely inappropriate, true, but it would have felt so damn good.

  Be careful, George cautioned. Push her too far and she’ll freak out. We need her to stay calm, stay cooperative, and keep talking.

  “I thought she’d already told us everything,” I muttered, as Kelly started running to catch up. Alaric cast a glance in my direction, but didn’t say anything.

  You’re not that dumb.

  There was nothing I could say to that. I kept walking, assessing the buildings surrounding us as I moved. I wasn’t exactly expecting a big sign that said ILLEGAL VIROLOGY LAB HERE, but it would have been nice. The buildings in the IT complex seemed to be essentially identical, all square, boxy, and in reasonably good repair, as long as you weren’t judging by the paint jobs. The building closest to us even had its original set of cell tower repeaters bolted to the roof, their narrow antennae making a familiar lightning-jag outline against the afternoon sky.

  I stopped in my tracks. Looking bemused, Alaric did the same. “What year did we go to block-by-block private cell towers? Anybody know?”

  “Uh… two thousand twenty,” said Alaric, after a long pause to do the math inside his head. “I remember when they put ours in.”

  “Uh-huh. This is a pre-Rising complex. So who installed that?” I jerked a thumb toward the antennae.

  Alaric’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. Over here, guys.” I waved for the others to join us and started up the cracked pathway leading to the b
uilding door. Locked. No real surprise, that; if I were running an illegal biotech lab, I wouldn’t exactly want scavengers or thrill-seekers dropping in on me unannounced. I rapped my knuckles against the metal of the door itself, hearing the echoes they sent ringing dully into the space beyond.

  No one answered. That really wasn’t a surprise, either. “Maybe we should shoot the lock out,” suggested Becks.

  I gave her a dubious look. “Did you just suggest discharging a firearm into a door that may be attached to a lab? Like, ‘explosive chemicals and weird machinery and God knows what else’ lab?”

  Becks shrugged. “At least we’d be ded something.”

  “We are doing something. We’re getting inside.” I knocked again. After a several-second pause, I cleared my throat, and shouted, “This is Shaun Mason, from After the End Times. We’re here to speak to Dr. Abbey. Is she available? It’s about the reservoir conditions.”

  The echoes of my knock were still ringing when the door swung open, revealing a short, cheerfully curvy woman with spiky brown hair streaked with bleach-white lines that looked more accidental than anything else. She was wearing an electric orange T-shirt that read DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS, jeans, and a lab coat, and was pointing a hunting rifle at the middle of my chest.

  “Got any ID?” she asked. Her voice was light, even charming, with an accent I couldn’t quite identify. She followed the question with a pleasant smile that didn’t warm her eyes. This was a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if she thought we were giving her reason.

  Not the friendliest greeting ever, and yet, not the least friendly, either, said George. Kelly gasped, either in shock or indignation. I wasn’t sure which, and I really didn’t care; it gave me something to respond to that wouldn’t convince the woman with the large gun that I was insane right off the bat. That could come later, when she no longer had a weapon aimed at us.

  “Hush,” I said, making sure to slant my eyes toward Kelly, to at least give the impression that I was talking to her. Looking back to the woman in the doorway, I asked, “May I reach into my jacket for my press pass? I promise to do it slowly.”

  “Fine by me,” she said, still smiling. “Joe! Come over here, boy.” The largest dog I’d ever seen came ambling up behind her, its flapping jowls oozing strings of gooey white saliva. Its head looked like it was bigger than my chest. That may have been shock speaking, but there was no way I was going to volunteer to do the measurements. It didn’t help that the damn thing was solid charcoal black, making it look unnervingly like the classic hellhound.

  Kelly drew her breath in again. This time, I didn’t blame her. Even Becks gasped, and I heard Maggie mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “Holy shit.”

  “Joe, guard,” said the woman with the rifle. The massive canine obediently padded out onto the walkway, standing between her and the rest of us. It wasn’t growling, glaring, or doing anything else actively hostile; it was simply standing there, being enormous. That was more than enough.

  Reaching slowly into my jacket, I asked the most sensible question I could come up with under the circumstances: “Lady, what the fuck is that?”

  That’s right. Antagonize the woman who accessorizes with Cujo. I was tired of being the only dead one in this relationship.

  I ignored her, choosing instead to focus on the woman who had the capacity to kill me. Call me single-minded. I tend to pay more attention to the immediate threats to life and limb, and leave the sarcastic dead people for later.

  “That’s Joe,” said the woman, keeping the rifle aimed soidly at my chest. “He’s shown me his ID. He’s in no danger of getting himself shot.”

  “He’s an English Mastiff,” breathed Maggie, almost reverently. She started to step forward, one hand outstretched in a gesture I’d seen her use on her video blog whenever she was adding a new rescue to her miniature pack. She froze midgesture, eyes darting toward the woman with the rifle. “Is he friendly?”

  “He will be, once I’ve seen your ID.” Still, shotgun lady’s smile took on a slightly more honest edge. “Joe’s a good boy. He only eats the people I tell him to eat.”

  “How encouraging,” I muttered, and held out my journalist’s license. “Here. All my credentials are on file. Just run the code.”

  “And your people?” She jerked her chin toward the others, not bothering to take the license from my hand.

  “Rebecca Atherton, head of the Irwins. Magdalene Garcia, head of the Fictionals. Alaric Kwong, he’s with the Newsie division; the actual division head lives in London and isn’t with us today. And this is—” For a sickening moment, I couldn’t remember Kelly’s alias.

  Barbara Tinney, prompted Georgia.

  “—Barbara Tinney,” I echoed. “She’s a social scientist on loan to the site for a few months. Getting some field experience.”

  From the look on the woman’s face, she wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh. What are you folks doing here? Take a wrong turn on the way to a real story?”

  I had two choices. I could try to come up with a plausible lie or I could tell her the truth. Once, I would have gone straight for the lie, the more interesting the better. I’m not really comfortable with that sort of thing anymore. “We came to see Dr. Abbey,” I said, still holding out my license. “I have some files from the CDC that I need to have explained to me, and I thought she might be the person who could do it.” Her brows lifted slightly; she was interested. I decided to press my luck. “I don’t know if you follow the news, but my sister, Georgia Mason—”

  “Retinal Kellis-Amberlee, wasn’t it? I remember her. That was a real tragedy. I was very sorry to hear about it.” The rifle wavered slightly. “I need a better reason for you to be here, and not at a ‘real lab’ somewhere.”

  Tell her. George’s mental voice held a venom I rarely heard from her, even when she was alive. Then again, I couldn’t blame her. The CDC’s secret keeping might be the reason she was just a voice in my head.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “Barbara Tinney is a cover ID for Dr. Kelly Connolly of the CDC. The researcher who was killed in a break-in recently—that was a full-body clone. The real Dr. Connolly wasn’t killed, and this is her.” This time, Kelly’s horrified expression was more than a bit betrayed. I did my best to ignore it. “She’s how we got the files, and those same files identified this lab as being disreputable enough that no one would suspect we’d go to you, while still having staff who know how to find their asses with both hands. It didn’t mention the giant dog, or we might have gone somewhere else. Now, are you or can you tell us where to find her? I’m getting a little uncomfortable standing out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” The spiky-haired woman lowered her gun, suddenly smiling with genuine sincerity. “I’m Dr. Abbey—you can call me Shannon—and it’s a pleasure to have guests. Especially guests with such interesting connections.” Her smile dimmed as her gaze fell on Kelly, who was too busy staring at me to notice. “How about you all come inside, and we’ll sort this out.”

  Alaric managed to find his voice, swallowing hard before he asked, “Will—will the dog be coming?”

  “Of course he will. Joe’s my lab manager, aren’t you, Joe?” The enormous canine responded with a bark loud enough to make my ears hurt, tail beating against the ground. Maggie looked like she was physically restraining herself from running over and throwing her arms around his neck. Catching the look, Dr. Abbey laughed. “He doesn’t bite. Joe, guest passes for all these folks. Got it?” The dog stood, tail still wagging.

  “Does that mean I can pet him?” asked Maggie eagerly.

  “Can you pet the moving legal violation after we get inside?” I asked.

  “Come on.” Dr. Abbey stepped aside, waving a hand at the open door. “Ladies first.”

  “That means us, princess.” Becks looped her arm through Kelly’s, tugging the reluctant doctor along with her as she went striding through the door to the lab. Maggie followed, st
ill casting longing looks at the dog. Alaric gave me an uneasy glance and went after her, presumably unwilling to leave her alone in the company of a bona-fide mad scientist.

  Dr. Abbey crooked an eyebrow, studying me. “Will you be joining us?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I did my best to swagger as I walked toward the door, even going so far as to give her enormous pet a pat on the head as I passed him. “Good doggie.”

  Joe made a deep buffing sound in the back of his throat. I hoped that meant he was happy, rather than planning to bite my hand off at the shoulder. The law forbidding urban ownership of any domestic animal large enough to undergo Kellis-Amberlee amplification was named after my family. That means I never got much experience with dogs beyond Maggie’s epileptic teacup bulldogs.

  Dr. Abbey snorted with amusement and followed me inside. Joe padded after her, killing any lingering hope that I might have had about the big dog staying outside to, I don’t know, guard the sidewalk or something.

  I was so busy watching what the dog did that I walked right into Becks, bumping her forward a half step. “Hey, watch it,” I began.

  Shaun, hissed Georgia. Look.

  I looked. And promptly understood why the rest of the team was standing frozen in their tracks at the end of the short entrance hall, staring into the gutted warehouselike depths of the former IT building. I’d been expecting a dingy little basement operation, something barely more technically advanced than a buh of kids running their own pirate news site out of their parents’ house. This was a functional lab, operating totally outside all sane safety precautions, but still equipped way beyond anything I might have anticipated.

  All the interior walls not essential for structural support had been knocked out at some point, replaced with a maze of cubicles, portable isolation tents, and live animal cages. Racked computer servers stood side-by-side with rabbit hutches. Hydroponic beds studded the floor, growing healthy-looking crops of things I vaguely recognized from Maggie’s garden. The light was an even, brilliant white, and about half the people I could see moving around the computers were wearing either sunglasses or the clear plastic bands hospitals sometimes used to protect the eyes of individuals with reservoir conditions.