Deadline

by Mira Grant

  “Same size as the rest, but it should open when you push it.”

  One door flashed by on our right, followed about six feet later by a second door, this one on the left. I slowed to keep from overshooting the third door and grabbed for the knob, all too aware of the advantage I was throwing to our opponents if Kelly was wrong. The zombies weren’t going to slow down just to keep the playing field even.

  The knob turned without any resistance and the door swung inward, nearly spilling me—and by extension, Becks—into a pantry-sized room with glowing amber tubes running all along the edges of the ceiling, like supersized versions of the portable field light. I recovered my balance and stumbled fully into the room, thrusting Becks behind me before slamming the door shut. There were three old-fashioned deadbolts on the inside, the kind of things that can never go down, not even in a power failure. I slid all three of them into the closed and locked position before I’d even finished processing the impulse to do it.

  “Shaun?” Kelly’s voice was strident enough to make me wince. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “We’re in some sort of weird closet.” I backed away from the door, keeping my pistol trained just above the knob. If the infected started trying to batter their way inside, I’d make them pay for every inch they gained.

  “Are the lights red, yellow, or green?”

  “Yellow.” It was close enough to the truth, and closer than either of the other options.

  Kelly sighed in obvious relief. “That means the security system is engaged, but you’re not in one of the sections already locked down. The door is soundproof, scent-proof, and splatter-proof, so as long as everyone inside is clean, you should be okay.”

  “As long as we don’t mind dying like rats in a cage, you mean. How do we get out of here, Doc?”

  “There should be a door directly opposite the one you came in through.”

  The wall was blank and featureless. “No door.”

  “Touch the wall.”

  “What?”

  sighed in Just do it.”

  If Kelly was trying to kill us, she wouldn’t have given us a bolt hole. I nodded toward the far wall, saying, “Doc wants us to touch it.”

  “Touch it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything’s better than going back out there.” On this philosophical note, Becks slapped her left palm flat against the wall—which immediately wavered and turned translucent, revealing a second wall behind it. There was a door at the center, twin to the one we’d entered through.

  Becks yanked her hand away, swearing loudly. In my ear, Kelly said, “I hear shouting. Do you see the real wall now?”

  “You could’ve warned us!” The newly revealed wall included three testing panels, all with reassuringly green lights shining next to them.

  “I wasn’t sure it would be there,” said Kelly. Her tone was sincere; either she really meant it, or she was a much better actress than she’d been letting on. “Put your hands against the test panels. You’re going to need to check out as clean if you want the glass to lift. If you’re not…”

  If we weren’t, we’d never get out of this room. “Are you sure the tests will work?”

  “It’s a secondary system. It doesn’t run off the main grid. If the screen was still in place and the interior lights are on, it should work.”

  “I’m trusting you on this one, Doc. Don’t fuck us.” I holstered my pistol and walked over to join Becks at the wall, slapping my hand against one of the testing units. She lifted her eyebrows. I nodded to her, and she mimicked the motion. From her grimace, the needles bit into both of us at the same time. These tests were built for crude effectiveness, not reassurance. They didn’t waste time with any of the niceties like stinging foam or pretest hand sterilizer—or full-sized needles. The feeling of the test engaging was like brushing my palm across the surface of a cactus, all tiny pinprick stings that didn’t hurt because they didn’t last long enough to totally register. They just itched like a sonofabitch.

  “Step away from the testing center,” intoned a pleasant female voice.

  Becks and I exchanged a look as we took a long step backward. “Doc, the room’s talking,” I reported.

  “That’s normal,” she said. Somehow I didn’t find that particularly reassuring.

  The lights next to the two units we’d used began to flash through the familiar red-green pattern as the units themselves filtered our blood looking for live viral bodies. There was still no sound from the hall outside, which wasn’t helping. Sure, we knew that we weren’t going to be eaten in the next thirty seconds, but the entire infected staff of the Portland CDC could be out there, and we’d have no idea. Not the sort of thing I really wanted to be thinking about.

  Breathe, said George.

  I took a deep breath as the lights nexr red-g testing units turned a uniform, steady shade of green. “Thank you,” said the female voice. “You may proceed.” The glass slid to one side, vanishing into a groove in the far wall.

  “This is your fucking fault, Mason,” growled Becks, starting for the now-accessible door.

  “How are you coming to that conclusion?”

  “You’re the one who said this was like a pre-Rising video game.”

  I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I didn’t really want to give Kelly any reason to doubt our infection status—not when I still needed her to guide us to safety. “Okay, Doc, the clear wall’s open now. There’s a door. What do you want us to do?”

  “Listen closely: You’re in one of the secondary escape corridors. They’re designed to get essential staff out if at all possible, even during an outbreak. They aren’t public, and they’re never used for the transport of biological materials, just evacuations. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  My skin crawled. “They’re set to autosterilize if there’s any sign of contamination, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are. My suggestion?” Kelly paused before finishing, grimly, “Go as fast as you possibly can. Follow the yellow lights. They’ll lead you to an exit. As long as your infection status hasn’t changed, it’ll let you out.”

  “And if it has?”

  “If anyone in the escape corridor goes into conversion, the autosterilize initiates.”

  “Fuckin’ swell. Okay. Tell Alaric I’ll call back if we’re not dead.” I cut the connection over her protests, yanking the ear cuff off and shoving it into my pocket as I turned to Becks. “We’re pulling a last run. Once this door is open, you haul ass, and if the lava comes down while we’re inside, it was nice knowing you.”

  “Got it,” said Becks, with a small, tight nod. It wouldn’t actually be lava. It would be a highly acidic chemical bath, followed by flash irradiation, followed by another chemical bath, until everything organic in the corridor had been reduced to so much inert slime. That sort of thing can’t really happen in places where humans are expected to be on a regular basis, since it tends to render the environment permanently toxic, but for a rarely used, last-ditch exit, it made perfect, if horrible, sense.

  I hesitated, and then offered her my hand. “It was nice knowing you, Rebecca,” I said.

  “The same, Shaun. Believe me, the same.” She laced her fingers into mine and smiled wistfully. “Maybe when we get out of this alive, you and me can go for coffee or something.”

  “Sure,” I said. She didn’t let go of my hand, and I didn’t pull away. Leaving our fingers tangled together like computer cables, I reached for the second door and pulled it open. An amber light clicked on across from us. Becks and I exchanged one final look before stepping through the doorway, into the relative darkness on the other side.

  e door swung shut as soon as we were through, hydraulics engaging with a loud hiss that was almost reassuring. It meant all systems were go; even if those systems got us dissolved, they’d be doing so while fully operational. Another amber light clicked on to the left of the first one, and another, and another, until a line of tiny glittering beacons l
ed the way deeper into the dark.

  There was no other way to go, and Kelly’s instructions said to follow the light. We’d trusted her this far. The worst that trusting her the rest of the way could get us was dead. “Come on,” I said. We started in the direction indicated by the lights, moving as fast as we dared.

  Distances always seem longer in the dark. The greater the darkness, the longer the distance. The amber lights were meant to guide us, not show us where we were going, and even my flashlight wasn’t enough to beat back the shadows. We probably traveled no more than a few hundred yards, but it felt like ten or twelve times that. Our breath was impossibly loud in the confines of the tunnel, and my toes kept catching on the floor, which wasn’t completely level. After the third time I almost tripped, I realized we were running across the floor of an enormous shower, complete with drains every ten feet. They’d be essential if the CDC ever needed to sluice the place down—say, after melting a few unwanted guests. I sped up, pulling Becks along with me. She didn’t argue. She was smart enough to want out of there as badly as I did.

  The amber lights winked out about thirty seconds after we passed them, winking on ahead of us at the same rate. After the second time I looked back into the encroaching darkness, I forced myself to stop looking. It wasn’t doing a damn bit of good, and it was doing damage to my nerves that I really couldn’t afford.

  I’m here, said George.

  I squeezed Becks’s hand and kept going.

  The amber lights led us around a corner and into a narrower hallway with lights lining the walls on either side. They were still small, but they were plentiful enough to show the outline of Becks’s face and shoulders. Being able to see her walking beside me lowered my stress levels like nothing else. I saw her head turn toward me, and I felt her fingers relax around mine as the same wave of relaxation washed over her. Maybe it was going to be okay.

  The lights continued lighting up in front of us, finally circling a door frame directly ahead. Becks and I broke into a sprint at the same time, heading for the exit at full speed. I got there half a step before she did, purely by virtue of having longer legs, and I grabbed the door handle with my free hand. Needles stung my palm, biting deep and then—unlike every other blood test I’d ever taken—staying where they were as the light above the door flashed between red and green. The light stopped on green, and then went out, replaced by a single green bulb off to the left. The needles withdrew. The door didn’t open.

  “Oh, those slick bastards,” I muttered, pulling my hand away. “Your turn, Becks. They’re not going to let us out of here until we’re both clean.”

  “Yippee,” she deadpanned, and stepped up to take my place. The lights repeated their flickering dance, and a second green bulb came on next to the first. The latch released and the door swung inward, knocking us both back a sep. Cool air rushed into the hallway like a benediction. I took a deep breath, glorying in the taste of clean air, and let Becks pull me for a change, hauling me into the light.

  Kelly’s emergency exit let out on the edge of the employee parking lot. About a dozen people were already there, most wearing lab coats… and there, off to one side, was Director Swenson. He was standing in a small cluster with two of the people in lab coats and Miss Lassen, the receptionist. She was the first to see us. Her shoulders went stiff as she straightened, whispering something urgently to the director. He turned his head in our direction, and his eyes widened before he could compose himself.

  Becks squeezed my hand. I hadn’t even realized she was still holding it. “Don’t,” she whispered. “We have what we need. The recorders were running the whole time. This story will end him. We have everything we need.”

  I nodded curtly as I pulled my hand away. Then I smiled. “Director Swenson!” I called, raising my arms and waving them overhead like I was signaling a plane to land. “Good to see you made it out! What happened, dude?”

  “Mr. Mason—Ms. Atherton,” said the director. He’d managed to compose his face, but there was still a quaver in his voice. The bastard really didn’t think we’d make it out. “I’m so glad to see you both. I was so afraid you wouldn’t realize what had happened in time to make it to an exit.” His eyes flickered toward the door that we’d emerged through. “I had no idea that you knew about the evacuation tunnels.”

  Which explains why he didn’t have them purged while you were still inside, said George. She sounded furious. No one threatened me and got away with it.

  “We’ve done our homework.” I kept smiling. It was that or punch him in the face, and that seemed a hell of a lot less productive, if a hell of a lot more fun. “So seriously, dude, what happened? Was it pit bulls again? Another illegal breeding program like the one in Oakland?”

  “I—we’re not quite sure yet.” Director Swenson’s eyes darted toward the door again. He clearly hadn’t prepared a cover story. Why should he have bothered? We weren’t intended to survive. “There will be a press release as soon as we have a better idea of what went wrong.”

  “Cool. Make sure we get a copy. Oh, and also, that documentation you said you had, the stuff that related to Georgia’s research? I’ll expect copies, since we couldn’t, y’know, go over it together. I guess if I don’t get it, I’m going to have to assume you’ve got something to hide.” I turned, still smiling, and started for the visitor parking area.

  “Wait—where are you going?”

  I turned back to Director Swenson long enough to flash him the biggest shit-eating grin I could muster. It felt more like I was baring my teeth. Maybe it looked that way, too; he took an involuntary step backward, eyes going wide. “We’re going to do what we’re paid to do,” I said. “We’re going to go and tell everybody the news.” I waved to the rest of the survivors of the Portland CDC and kept on walking, with Becks following close behind me. Neither one of us looked back as we got to the bike, stowed our gear, put on our helmets, and drove away.

  Fuck you all. If that’s the way you want to play things… If that’s the way you want things to go… Then fuck you all. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. You have no idea what I’m capable of. And you have no idea how little I have left to lose.

  You’re about to be sorrier than you could possibly believe, and I am going to laugh while I’m pissing on your grave.

  —From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, April 18, 2041. Unpublished.

  Fourteen

  According to the bike’s GPS, the drive from the Portland CDC to Maggie’s place should have taken a little over five hours on the main highway. It actually took us closer to eight. Since the chances that we were being tracked by the CDC had just gone way, way up, we stuck to the back roads, keeping our cameras off and avoiding checkpoints whenever we could. I won’t say we drove through the ass-end of nowhere, exactly, but we had to stop twice to gun down the zombie deer trying to chew their way through the fence between the road and the undeveloped land around us.

  “I wish to God I could post this,” bemoaned Becks, shooting another infected herbivore squarely between the antlers.

  “Yeah, well, I wish to God I had a cup of coffee,” I replied, and gunned the bike’s engine. “Come on.”

  There was a time when I thought George was paranoid for asking Buffy to build a jammer into her bike’s tracking system. I’m over it, especially since that jammer allowed us to duck back onto the highway three times for fuel and twice more for caffeine. Becks kept scanning through the newsfeeds as I drove, listening for reports of the outbreak in Portland. “We can’t be too careful,” she said when we stopped for drinks and enough greasy snack food to get us to Maggie’s without crashing. I agreed with her. We’d come too far to die because we weren’t paying attention to the news.

  None of the initial reports mentioned our presence. They were all bland, tragic, and carefully sanitized. We’d been on the road for about two hours when the “official record” began admitting that perhaps some journalists had been present for the outbreak, but they didn’t
identify us by name and they didn’t try to pin things on us. That was good. That meant it would be a little longer before we needed to kill them all.

  George stayed uncharacteristically quiet during the drive. She wasn’t gone—that would’ve left me too shaken to control the bike, especially after everything that had happened since Kelly’s arrival—but she wasn’t talking, either. She was just quiet, sitting at the back of my head and brooding over God knows what. I figured she’d tell me when she was through working it out for herself. Maybe it says something about my mental health that I didn’t find the idea even a little strange. We were too far away from normal for strange to have any meaning anymore.

  The sun was hanging low in a mango-colored sky w turned onto Maggie’s driveway. I had to keep one foot on the ground to keep the bike upright while we navigated the various security gates, until my clutch hand was cramping and I started to feel like we would have made better time if we’d ditched the bike on the street and made the rest of the trip to the house on foot. Becks clearly shared my frustration. By the time we cleared the ocular scanner, she was all but twitching with the anxious need to be back in the safety of friendly walls.

  The fifth gate was standing open, just like it was when we first arrived as refugees from the ashes of Oakland. A casual observer might have thought Maggie never closed the damn thing. They would have been proven wrong almost immediately, because as soon as I coasted to a stop, the gate slid slickly shut. The sound of the locks engaging was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

  Becks barely waited for the bike to stop before she dismounted; my foot was still on the kickstand when she hopped off. She stayed where she was for a few brief seconds, jittering in place as she worked the feeling back into her legs. Then she grabbed her bag off the side of the bike, announced, “I’m going to go take a shower,” and took off for the kitchen door. I watched her go without commenting. She didn’t want to give the live breakdown on what happened at the CDC, and, since I was the boss, she was leaving that little luxury for me.