Deadline

muttered, yanking on a clean pair of khakis.

Better than tomorrow, said George.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” I hesitated. This seemed to be my night for heart-to-heart talks, maybe because I wasn’t entirely sure I’d still be alive in twenty-four hours. “George—”

Yes?

I swallowed. “How long is it going to be like this? I mean, how long am I going to be your haunted house, or are you going to be my imaginary friend, or whatever the fuck the cool kids are calling it these days? Is this forever?”

George’s answer, when it came, was thoughtful and slow. Are you asking because you’re scared of losing me, or because you’re hoping I’m going to go away one day?

“Yes. No. I mean… I mean I don’t know, George, and I sure as shit need you right now, but I have to wonder sometimes if this is my life. If this is the rest of my life.”

I think I’m here as long as you keep me here, Shaun. I think one day you’re going to look at a mountain and say “I should climb that,” or hell, look at a pretty girl and say the same thing. I think when that happens, I’ll go. She laughed a little, and added, But what do I know? I’m just the dead girl in your head.

“You know everything, George. You always did.” I put my hand flat against the steamed-up mirror. If I squinted a little, and didn’t let myself really look, I could pretend it was her looking back at me and not my own blurred reflection. “I miss you.”

I know. But that won’t keep me here forever.

The others were waiting for me in the girls’ room. Mahir was in the process of towel drying his hair, and Kelly was back in street clothes. The CDC costume was for tomorrow, when we’d storm the gates or die trying. The hair extensions were gone, and she had a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes to hide her features from any bored bloggers taking pictures for background color. Becks had put her rifle away. She was leaning against the wall next to the door, expression one of bland detachment.

“Hey,” I said, stepping inside. “Who feels up for pizza?”

“What took you so long?” asked ecks.

I shrugged, smiling a little. “I had to talk something out with myself before I could come over here. That’s all.”

“Well, I’m starving,” said Mahir, dropping the towel and grabbing his jacket off the bed. Kelly and Becks followed. I brought up the rear, pausing to close and lock the motel room door.

George didn’t say anything as we walked toward the van… but in the back of my head, I was pretty sure I could feel her smiling.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege blogging for you over these past few weeks. Thank you for your insightful questions and for your commentary in the forums, where I have learned a great deal about what does— and doesn’t!—work in this form of reporting. I promise to take these lessons, and this experience, with me in my future endeavors.

Also, while I’m being sappy… thank you, all of you, for continuing to care as much as you do about the world. This is the only one we’re going to get, and I think it’s important that we continue to give a damn about every single part of it, even the ones that aren’t currently a part of our lives. You are the reason that someday, when this disease has been defeated, the amusement parks will become family fun lands once again, and people will laugh and live and love just the way they always have. Thank you for sharing yourselves with me.

Thank you.

—From Cabin Fever Dream, guest blog of Barbara Tinney, June 23, 2041

Twenty

I’m not sure any of us slept that night. We were on an Internet blackout while stationary: no uploads, no message forums, nothing that could be traced to prove we were ever here. That also meant no phone calls, since turning on our phones could activate their GPS chips. We’d been scrupulously careful since leaving Weed. We just had to hope we’d been careful enough.

It was the blood tests that worried me. You can’t survive in America without at least one blood test a day, and possibly—probably—more than that. We’d been taking blood tests at toll booths and convenience stores all the way across the country, and if the CDC was somehow tracking clean results, we were screwed.

Oh, the CDC swears they don’t track clean results, only the ones that come back positive for a live infection, but no one knows for sure. Legally, they’re not allowed to track clean results. It’s considered an invasion of privacy. If there’s nothing to indicate that a person is at risk of amplification, you can’t use their tests for anything. Not tracking, and not medical profiling—which is why we have that handy little ruling to depend on. See, the insurance companies would love an excuse to analyze the blood of every person in the country, looking for pre-existing conditions. Ironically, the insurance companies may have the sort of big pockets that can normally shove something like blood test tracking through, but the pharmaceutical companies makthem look like paupers, and the pharmaceutical companies didn’t want to lose their customer base because people couldn’t afford coverage anymore. That’s one more thing we can thank Garcia Pharmaceuticals for.

We left the motel at four-thirty in the morning. The sky was still pitch-black, and the streets were deserted. We planned to arrive at the CDC about fifteen minutes before the janitorial staff, stash the van in the maintenance parking lot, and enter through a side door while the grounds were still mostly deserted. It was a risky approach, but it was no worse than any of the other ideas we’d come up with, and it was way better than some of them. Maggie’s van was generic enough to be ignored, without crossing into the overly generic “plain white van with blacked-out window.” That sort of thing attracts attention by virtue of being designed to be ignored.

Kelly and I were the only ones awake in the van for the first hour of the drive. She sat next to me in the passenger seat—another risky approach, since her death was big news for weeks in the Memphis area. “Local hero doctor dies in the saddle” is the sort of headline that has legs. Newsies like stories like that; they can go back to that well again and again when things get slow, milking them until they go dry. At the same time, Kelly was the one who could steer me down the frontage roads and through the shortcuts only a local would know. The thing that made her a possible danger also made her a major asset.

Then again, hadn’t that been the case all along?

The sun was starting to burn a smoky line along the horizon when we hit the outskirts of Memphis. I clicked the radio on, cranking the volume as the scrambler grabbed the nearest station and blasted Old Republic through the van. “Classic rock!” I shouted to Kelly. I had to shout or she wouldn’t have been able to hear me. “That’s awesome! I hate this shit!”

Judging by the loud swearing now coming from behind me, Becks and Mahir hated it even more. “Turn that crap off!” shouted Becks, smacking me hard on the back of the head.

I grinned as I turned the volume down. “Good morning, sunshine.” Kelly was hiding a smile behind her hand. That was good. The more relaxed we all were going into this, the better our chances of getting out alive. “Sleep well?”

“I should shoot you in the bloody head, dump you on the side of the road, and go back to the motel for another six hours of not being in this van,” said Mahir.

“That’s a yes. Water’s in the cooler. Who needs caffeine pills?”

Everyone needed caffeine pills. Kelly handed them out, three to a person. We all gulped ours, me with Coke, Mahir and Kelly with water, and Becks dry. I didn’t say anything. Some people blast pre-Rising rock music, some people put on lab coats, and some people try to prove they’re the biggest badass around. If it made her feel better, I didn’t have a problem with it.

The maintenance lot was just as easy to access as Kelly said it would be. Only one blood test was required to pass the gate, and it was conducted by an unmanned booth. “Can’t say I think much of their security,” I said. “Portland was a lot harder to get into.”