by Mira Grant
The waiting ended a little over two weeks after the destruction of Oakland and our arrival at Maggie’s. The house phone rang, ignored by the humans currently present—myself, Maggie, and the Doc, who was struggling to write an article about the pros and cons of exposing children to the outside world. She was having a lot more trouble meeting her deadlines now that she didn’t have Mahir to help.
The answering machine picked up after the second ring. There were a few minutes of silence, followed by the voice of the house computer saying politely, “Excuse me, Shaun. Do you have a moment?”
I hate machines that sound like people.
“sh,” I muttered. The house computer had learned not to pay attention when I spoke that quietly—I guess even machines have a learning curve for crazy—and continued to wait for my reply until I said, “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
“There is a call for you.”
“I guessed that part. Who is it?”
“The caller has declined to identify himself. By his accent, there is an eighty-seven percent chance that he is of British nationality, although I am unable to determine his region of origin with any accuracy. The call has been placed from a local number. The exact number is blocked. Would you like me to request additional information?”
I stood so fast that I knocked my Coke over. Soda cascaded across the table and onto the carpet. I ignored it, lunging for the phone next to the kitchen door. Maggie was right behind me, demanding, “House, is the line secure?”
“This end of the line is secured according to protocol four, which should be sufficient to block anything but a physical wiretap. I am unable to determine the security standards of the other end of the line. Do you wish to proceed?” The voice of the house was infinitely patient, mechanical calm unbroken by the fact that Maggie and I looked like we were on the verge of hysterics.
“Yes, dammit,” I said, and grabbed the receiver from the wall. Dead air greeted me. I gave the phone a panicked look. “Where is he?”
“House, connect,” ordered Maggie.
The phone clicked, and suddenly, wonderfully, Mahir’s voice was in my ear, muffled slightly, like he had his hand over the receiver. “—Promise you, sir, I’m phoning my ride now. I apologize for loitering within your isolation zone, but as my original flight was delayed, it was unfortunately unavoidable.” His tone was clipped, carefully polite, and shaded with a bone-deep weariness that made me tired just listening to it.
“Mahir!” I said, loudly enough that he would be able to hear me through his hand.
There was a scraping sound before he said, “About bloody time, Mason. Come get me.”
“Uh, sorry if I’m a little bit behind the program here, but come get you where?”
The house said the call was coming from a local number, said George sharply. He’s here. Mahir is in this area code.
“I’m at the Weed Airport.”
I froze, staring stupidly at the wall. Maggie nudged me with her elbow, and I said the first thing that popped into my head: “Weed has an airport?”
Maggie dropped her forehead theatrically into her hand. “The man’s been here for weeks and he hasn’t even checked the phone book…” she moaned.
“It had best, or I’m in the wrong place entirely.” Mahir sounded like he was too tired to be amused. “I’m inside twenty minutes of being toted off for loitering, which would be a bit of a problem for me, s will you please come pick me up?”
“I—” I shot a glance at Maggie, who was still covering her face with her hand. “We’ll be right there. Just stay where you are.”
“That’s not going to be a problem,” Mahir said.
There was a click, and the calm, pleasant voice of the house said, “The other party has disconnected the call. Would you like me to attempt to restore the connection?”
“No, he hung up,” I said, and did the same. My fingertips were numb, probably from the shock. “Maggie, you know how to find the airport?”
“I can get us there.”
“Good. Doc! Get your shoes on. We’re taking a road trip.”
Kelly emerged from the dining room, hugging a notepad against her chest. “We are?” she asked, sounding bemused. “Where are we going?” After a pause, she added, “Why am I going?”
“We’re going to the airport to pick up a friend, and you’re coming because Maggie has to tell me how to get there.” By group consensus, Kelly was never left alone in the house for any reason, not even for a few minutes. The closest we’d come was leaving her in the custody of a few of Maggie’s Fictionals, and even then, it was never for more than an hour. We weren’t afraid she was going to run—not anymore—but there was always the chance the CDC would finally track her down when we weren’t there to protect her.
To her credit, Kelly had stopped arguing about our refusal to leave her by herself after the first week, and she wasn’t arguing now. She nodded, saying, “I’ll go get my coat,” before disappearing back into the dining room.
Maggie and I exchanged a glance. “I didn’t think he’d come here,” she said. “I’ve only met him the once, at… the last time he came to California.”
The event she wasn’t naming was Georgia’s funeral. I nodded, both in acknowledgment and as silent thanks for her not saying the word “funeral” out loud. “He’s a good guy. If he’s here, he must have found something pretty big.”
“Or he’s running from something pretty big.”
“That’s also possible.” Mahir hadn’t said anything about his wife being with him, and somehow I couldn’t imagine that she’d approved this little jaunt without a good reason. “Let’s go find out, shall we?”
“I’m pretty sure we don’t have a choice,” Maggie said, and patted my arm lightly before heading for the door.
I paused long enough to grab my gun belt and laptop, and followed. “I guess this means the break is over,” I muttered.
I think you’re right.
Maggie and Kelly were waiting next to Maggie’s van when I made it outside, miniature bulldogs frolicking around their feet. Maggie smiled wryly. “They can’t imagine any reason for us toI’ll goutside that doesn’t involve playing with them.”
“I’ll throw tennis balls for an hour once we finish the debriefing,” I said, holding up my hand. “Keys?”
“You’re driving?” asked Maggie, as she lobbed them to me underhand.
“At least that way we’ll get there alive.”
Maggie’s laughter was echoed by George, the two of them setting up a weird reverb that no one but me could hear. George always hated letting me drive, said I was trying to send the both of us to an early grave every time I swung around a corner without slowing down. I do the driving for both of us these days, by necessity, and she mostly doesn’t give me shit about it, but still, the irony wasn’t escaping either one of us.
Even when she was alive, George would have admitted that I was a better driver than Maggie. I’ve never let the car spin out just to see what would happen, for example, and I don’t view rainy days as an excuse to hydroplane. I may be crazy, but I think there’s a pretty good chance that Maggie’s suicidal.
Kelly crawled into the backseat. Maggie and I took the front, Maggie programming an address into the GPS as I started the van. I drove slowly down the length of the driveway, pausing only for the exit checkpoint—a small, almost cursory confirmation that we were aware of the dangers inherent in choosing to leave the property—before turning onto one of the winding two-lane roads that pass as major streets in a town the size of Weed. There weren’t many potholes. That was about as far as the civic planners went in terms of preparing the citizenry for an outbreak. In places like Oakland and Portland, there are standing defenses, blood test checkpoints, and lots of fences. In places like Weed, there are doors with locks, safety-glass windows, and room to breathe. I’d never spent much time in a stable rural area before; I always thought the people who chose to live that way were sort of insane. It was sort of surprising to realize that I
liked it.
When all this is over, I’ll make sure you can retire on a farm with lots of room to run around and play with the other puppies, said George dryly.
I managed to turn my laughter into a shallow cough, ducking my head to the side before Maggie and the Doc could see me smile. With as good as things had been going, I was trying not to shove reminders of my relationship with George in their faces. Knowing the boss is crazy is one thing. Dealing with it is something else.
“How far is the airport?” asked Kelly, leaning between the seats so she could see the road. Her hair was starting to grow out, and it tangled in front of her eyes in a tawny fringe. It made her look more like herself, and that made it easier for me to deal with her, especially since she was still wearing Buffy’s clothes everywhere. One ghost was more than enough for me.
“About ten miles,” said Maggie. She picked up the radio remote, beginning to flick through the frequencies. Our van has a sophisticated antenna array capable of picking up police and even some military bands, thanks to Buffy’s tinkering and George’s endless willingness to throw money into improving our access to information. Maggie’s van, on the other hand, has six hundred channels of satellite radio. Prior to riding with her, I didn’t know there was enough, say, Celtic teenybopper surf rock to fill a podcast, much less an entire radio station. Live and learn.
Maggie settled on a station blaring pre-Rising grunge pop, cranking the volume a few notches before she put the remote down and reclined in her seat. “That’s better.”
“Better than what?” asked Kelly.
“Not having the music on.” Maggie twisted to face me, delivering a firm jab of her forefinger to my ribs at almost exactly the same time. “Now spill. Did you have any idea he was coming?”
“I really had no idea, Maggie, I swear.” I slowed at a stop sign—not quite coming to a full stop—before gunning the engine again and going barreling down a narrow, tree-lined street at a speed that only bordered on unsafe. As long as I didn’t cross that line and kill us all, I figured I was doing pretty well. “He was doing some research for me, but I honestly never expected that particular phone call.”
Neither did I, and that worries me, said George.
“Who are we talking about?” asked Kelly. She sounded worried. “I’m already a little uncomfortable with the number of people who’ve been in the house lately. Is this guy going to be staying?”
“For a while, yeah,” I said. “We’re on our way to pick up Mahir Gowda. You met him at the funeral.” Not that they’d had very much time to talk, or reason to; Kelly was only in attendance because the FBI had seized George’s body as evidence in the case against Governor Tate, and the CDC doesn’t allow human remains to be shipped without an escort. Thanks to that little rule, I wound up with two extra guests at a party I never intended to hold: Kelly and her boss, Dr. Wynne. I left George in the van and went to confront the man who really killed her—I shot her, but Tate ordered her infection, and I held Tate responsible for what happened—and I didn’t see her again until she was nothing but a heap of sterile ash—
Steady, said George, breaking my black mood before it could fully form.
“Right, sorry,” I muttered. Mahir’s unexpected visit had me on the edge of panic, and every little thing—like the reminder of how Kelly and Mahir had first met—was enough to send me over the edge into seriously brooding. That wasn’t something I could afford just now.
Maggie gave me a sidelong look that was thoughtful and, oddly, relieved. “He was the one in the really unfortunate brown pants,” she said, directing her words toward Kelly.
“He flew in from London, didn’t he?” Kelly paused, eyes widening. “Wait, did he just fly in from London again?”
“That’s what it I looks like,” I said. We were approaching a large green sign that read WEED AIRPORT (MUNICIPAL FIELD O46) AHEAD. I slowed to match the posted speed limit, turning into the lane that would take us to the quarantine zone.
Air travel changed a lot after the Rising. According to the history books, it used to be a pretty simple process. Older movies show airports packed with people comg and going as they pleased, and the real old ones show really crazy shit, like guys who aren’t even passengers pursuing their runaway girlfriends through security and people buying tickets from flight attendants, in cash. Every flight attendant I’ve ever seen has been carrying more ordnance than your average Irwin, and if somebody ran onto a flight without the proper medical clearances and a green light from the check-in desk, they’d be dead long before they hit the floor. Working for the airlines teaches a person to shoot first and ask questions later, if ever.
People who can’t hack it as Irwins because they’re too violent go into the air travel industry. There’s a thought to make a person want to stay at home.
Travel between the major airports requires a clean bill of health from an accredited doctor, followed by inspection by airport medical personnel before even moving into the ticketing concourse. Nonpassengers aren’t allowed past the first air lock. Once you’re inside, you’re herded from blood test to blood test, usually supervised by people with lots and lots of guns. That’s another thing that seems unbelievable about pre-Rising air travel: Nobody in those old movies is ever carrying a weapon unless they work for the police or the air marshals. Something about the fear of hijacking. Well, these days, the fear of zombies ensures that even people who have no business carrying a gun will have one when they want to get on a plane. You get on, you sit down, and you stay sitting unless one of the flight attendants is escorting you to the restroom—after a blood test, of course. It takes their clearance to even unbuckle your seat belt once the plane is in motion. So yeah, air travel? Not simple, not fun, and definitely not something people undertake lightly.
Weed’s airport was tiny, three buildings and a runway, with only the minimum in federally mandated air lock and quarantine space between the airport and the curb. Several airport security cars were parked nearby. Overkill most of the time, especially for an airport this small, but I was willing to bet they wouldn’t be nearly enough if a plane actually flew in with an unexpected cargo of live infected. That’s the trouble with being scared all the time. Eventually, people just go numb.
I stopped the car in the space marked for passenger pick-up and drop-off, hitting the horn twice. Kelly winced, but didn’t question the action. Only an idiot gets out of their car unprompted at even the smallest of airports.
We didn’t have to wait long. The echoes from the horn barely had time to die out when the air lock door opened and Mahir came walking briskly toward us, dragging a single battered carry-on bag behind him. The formerly black nylon was scuffed and torn and patched with strips of duct tape in several places. At least that probably made it easy to recognize when it came along the conveyor belt at baggage claim—not that Weed’s airport was large enough to have a conveyor belt. I was pretty sure Mahir hadn’t arrived on any commercial flight.
He pulled open the van’s rear passenger-side door without saying anything, putting his carry-on bag on the seat before he climbed in and pulled the door shut again. Even then, he didn’t say anything, just fastened his seat belt and met my eyes in the rearview mirror, clearly waiting.
I started the engine.
Mahir held his silence until we were half a mile from the airport, and the rest of us stayed silent just as long, waiting for him to say something. Finally, closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Magdalene, how far is it from here to your home?”
“About ten miles,” she said, twisting in her seat to look at him with wide and worried eyes. “Honey, are you okay?”
“No. No, I am not okay. I am several thousand miles from okay. I am quite probably involved in divorce proceedings even now, I am present in this country under only the most tenuous of legal umbrellas, I am entirely unsure as to what time zone I am in, and I want nothing more than to rewind my life to the point at which I permitted myself to first be hired by one Miss Geor
gia Mason.” Mahir dropped his hand away from his face, eyes remaining closed as he sagged backward. “I believe that if I were any more exhausted, I would actually be dead, and I might regard that as a blessing. Hello, Shaun. Hello, Dr. Connolly. I would say it is a pleasure to see you again, but under the circumstances, that would be disingenuous at best.”
“Hello, Mr. Gowda,” said Kelly. I didn’t say anything. I kept driving, listening to George swearing loudly in the space between my ears. If there had been any question about what Mahir had found—whether it was good, bad, or just weird—his demeanor answered it. There was no way he’d look that beat down over anything but the end of the world, and somehow, I was starting to suspect that the end of the world was exactly what he represented.
Maggie looked around the car, a crease forming between her brows as she considered the expressions around her. Then she reached for the remote and turned the volume on the radio up. Somehow, that seemed like exactly the right thing to do, and we drove the rest of the way home without saying a word, blasting the happily nihilistic pop music of a dead generation behind us as we went.
Mahir opened his eyes when we reached Maggie’s driveway, watching with interest as we passed the first and second gates. As we approached the third gate, he asked, “Does it know how many people are in the vehicle?” I hit the switch to roll down the van windows as I glanced to Maggie for her answer. Metal posts telescoped up from the bushes around the driveway, unfolding to reveal small blood test units with reflective metal panels fastened to their sides. The tiny apertures where the needles would emerge glittered in the sunlight.
“The security grid runs on biometric heat-detection, equipped with low-grade sonar,” Maggie said, with the sort of rote precision that implied she knew because she’d read the manual, not because she really understood what the security system was doing. At least she read the manual. Some people trust their safety to machines without even doing that much. “It always knows how many people need to be tested. We ran a bus up here once, when we did the group trip to Disneyland, and the gate wouldn’t open until all thirty-eight of us had tested clean.”